FULL SIZE IMAGE
The comic has returned. So has the enormous non-diagetic rat.
I had people wildly speculating about an airplane with paws I drew in an earlier junkyard scene, and asking me if it was canon. If you see something odd in the background like that it's never canon, it's there because drawing ten thousand squiggles representing trash is booooring.
Transcript
Chapter 5: Construction
3 panels in the foreground show the progress of deconstruction on one of the apartment complexes, with scaffolding and a tower crane being erected and floors being carefully stripped down to support pillars to be rearranged.
In the background, an ant line of vehicles in the junkyard travel between the Runaway in its hiding spot and the newly arrived prototype vessels, taking parts with them to repair the Runaway.
33 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 137 and 138”
40
Seeing the immense amount of spacecraft junk from my 2025 perspective makes me think “Oh they throw so much out they’re wasting it!” and now that makes me think how like George Washington would react to a modern garbage dump where we just have like thousands of tons of miracle materials thrown out to rot.
Dizzy
Zoomed in at random and the first thing I see is the Eraserhead baby. Amazing
Boxthing
Found the rat AND a cheese wheel! 😀
Fun fact: rodents have a sweet tooth and prefer treats such as banana chips, peanut butter and raisins.
Rad Internet Stranger
I found the rat!!
Martin
Woah huge respect for the intricacy and detail on these pages….. very pretty.
Patteroast
in enormous non-diagetic rat we trust
The Foolish Maker of Worlds
Found what I think is a water flea.
Paroxysmall
i think i found several orange slices? and everything else mentioned so far
Looking at the Bip parade down below…
TotallySomebody
I found the rat!!!!! And a heart!
0xabad1dea
the Stuff to employee ratio of this rock, especially when you consider how many of them are just doing life support, is staggering and terrifying
Matt
Haven’t found the rat yet, but I did find the realistic heart next to the cartoon one! 😀
AHA! there’s the rat! Also a cheese wheel
JoB
Hmmmm, let’s see what we have there …
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The trees in the background look Terran to me, so the building getting remodeled ought to be one of the “human housing blocks” in pp. 27+28. The low building on the left would then necessarily be the “rec center”, and the remodeled housing block the one the farthest from the factory, and closest to Talitas current housing.
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We know from p. 47 that the floors of the human housing have 2.5 m ceiling height, i.e., 3 m floor-to-floor, just like we do it today, and it seems that they’re turning eight floors into five – that gives a new clear height of ~4.3 m, maybe a little less if they have to reinforce the floors as well. Ayup, that’s centaur dimensions.
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I can’t quite see whether they’re tearing just through the block closest to the street (minimum of 5 floors x two sides of the entrance/staircase = 10 flats), or all *three* rungs between ring road and the “forest” …
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Considering that the new workers will likely want to have something to *eat*, I have to assume that half the animal ag team, Ash in particular, is working frantically to set up a centaur “farm” 10+ times the size of what they needed for Talita. Which would be a downright *miracle* to remain unnoticed, even if Mel threatened the ag team with the Spanish Inquisition Fleet if they blab and spoil the surprise! :-3
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Umh. Do the housing blocks actually have *lifts*, in addition to stairs? Elevator shafts tend to have massive walls, remodeling those to allow larger cars and different spacing of floors could turn out to be the *really* painful part … (No, you don’t have to answer that where Guiomar could overhear you …)
creetur
Yummy yummy junkyard cheeseweel :]
Curious on what the new construction will mean
Pathfinder
Hey that rhymed, nice!
Bruce Mickelson
I see traffic lights going to and from the construction site, but I also see traffic lights going to the pit where the Runaway is stored. Skullduggery on both ends of the roadway?
Enai
That is where the experimental vessels are stored. The junkyard and the Runaway are both outside in the extremely thin atmosphere of Dirtball, while the apartment buildings are all in the pressurized dome with amenities like “a day-night cycle” and “being able to step out of your front door without a space suit”.
Bruce Mickelson
Ah, I mistook the site on the left to be inside the pressure dome. So there IS skullduggery going on in two places at once!
Darth Biomech
I love how… crunchy the lighting is on the outdoor shots!
bug ferret irl
waterflea spotted!!!
Enai
Also the eraser baby and a wheel of cheese 🙂
Apollo235
Are we finally gonna get confirmation on what Mel’s surprise is?
Greebus
Eraserhead baby *points*
bitty
yippee found the rat 🐀! and a heart <3
Tentament
I found the Eraserhead baby, a Starfleet symbol, a cheese wheel, a chicklike thing saying “P”, a heart symbol, an anatomically correct heart, and the giant rat.
zy
i think the “P” creature is a water flea? i hope so. big fan of those things. love the I Spy backgrounds
bitty
oh dang theres more? 👀
rdm
Is that a Starfleet symbol or the *other* Federation symbol? Should we be looking for a Liberator?
Armindster
More than the enormous rat, there is also a gigantic cheese wheel!
Sen
Found the rat :3
Lovely establishing shots again with many details. <3
Teod
So… From a few hints before as well as this page, it seems that the next round of temps will be centaurs. Mel thinks that it’s a good idea (it’s probably not) and that it’s a good idea to surprise Talita with it (it’s absolutely, definitely not).
Calcifer
I can only imagine what sorts of nonsense Talita’s temp crew are gonna say if this is true. Talita did say that Mel’s way of “fixing” things tends to just make things worse. Ohhh boy.
JoB
If those centaurs come with fitting *space suits*, I bet that the previous temps will endlessly complain about how the centaurs “took our jobs!!!”, but they’ll likely do most of that on the trip back to Jovia …
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(They might have enough time to wax paranoid along the lines of how it’s “no wonder that the boss had us replaced with her own kin!” within Talitas hearing range, though …)
Teod
I don’t think that’s the problem angle. Temps have no reason to complain about someone “Taking their jobs”. They’re temps, they never intended to stay there long term.
The problem is that Talita is culturally human. She has some trouble with humans, but she at least understands them. This will be way way way worse with centaurs. She doesn’t know their languages and is disconnected from their culture. And looking at all the mentions of centaur clans I think she may have a low social standing due to being clanless.