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"Sure. Where do you want that mounted?"

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"Top bow of the ship?"

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"Show me?"

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"Right this way." He clicks a bone-lever into place and a few other mechanisms snap to a halt. He goes back out to the hall, opens a wooden door to open air (the ship is moving downright sedately by modern standards, the wind can't be more than twenty miles an hour), ties a knot to his belt in a well-practiced motion, and starts climbing up ridges that form a ladder built into the (stone?) hull.

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Cam doesn't climb; he just leans out into the air and catches wind and flaps up.

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He looks a little jealously at the wings.

The ship is roughly pill-shaped. The greenhouse takes up much of the topside's space, but a large section of the front is free of glass, rope mountings, and the other miscellaneous adornments that dot the ship.

"I could drill a hole through the ship for wires. Electricity needs wires, I think. Hull of this ship is the same stuff the core of big islands are made of by the way. Floatstone. Mostly hydrogen, neutrally buoyant at 150 kilometers or so."
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"I can do wireless electricity. And you don't need to drill anything, I can stick it in a case that attaches like it grew there. Any requests before I make it?"

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"Not green. Too much green makes the ship look like a Jellywing and could attract squid."

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"Black all right?"

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"Yeah, black's fine."

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A nubbin appears on the described location.

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"I suppose black works better than leaves because it doesn't reflect green light? With lots of science for why it can do what plants can't."

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"So much science."

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"I'd like to learn it sooner or later. Textbooks don't even require you to waste time teaching me when you could build up steam toward improving everyone's lives instead."

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"Well, they're not written in a dialect you'll decipher easily or designed for your level of context, but you could get somewhere with them, I suppose."

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"I have spare time in my day-to-day and I suspect everyone will soon have more time. And I like to think I'm cleverer than average, though who knows if I'm right."

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"I might skip making a giant island and being a trading hub and just see about replacing the stargate."

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"Your trade hub would have trouble reaching very far. Navigation is tricky around here. Feel free to copy my books on it."

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"Maybe I'll just make a habitable layer down on the ground."

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"Would it continue to be habitable without your intervention?"

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"Probably? It depends on what's wrong with the ground and how seismically active it is."

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"The largest part of what's wrong with the ground is that it's significantly warmer and more sulfurous than up here. I have zero idea what seismic means."

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"Earthquakes, volcanoes, continental drift. I can maybe just confine all the sulfur in something; the heat it matters why it's hot. I assume no one will miss anything about the ground as-is?"

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"As far as I know, yes. I think we would have rumors at least if the original settlers found aliens."

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"So I'll go down and check that out and maybe just make a shell for the whole thing."

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