Nick is not up yet.

And when he does get up, he sets about getting the ship moving again quietly.

Lots of time to think, then.

After a while he'll look for Nick, see if he's still busy.

Nick is moderately busy doing final morning checks, but will tolerate talking.

Well that's obviously much more important than what he was going to say. He'll wait until distracting Nick is less likely to get them killed. And he'll watch, if Nick doesn't mind that.

Sure, as he likes.

And then he's done checking things and heads towards the bridge. "Morning. What's up?"

"I was thinking about what we can do with just little generators and lights and I've got some ideas that could be good but I've been assuming people in the bigger towns will live like people in Hari cities and that's probably not true. You wouldn't happen to have a bunch of blueprints for people's homes, would you?"

"I do not have a store of house plans, no. My cabin is sort of like a room in a house would be? You can take a look if you don't touch my stuff, it's the room opposite the bathroom. Oh, the bathroom will be kind of similar, too."

"That'll help some but I want to know... in Har, there are people who have houses with a dozen rooms or more, and they use them all but they don't use them all at once. And they can use magic to make it too hard for someone to break into an empty room and steal things, but you don't have enough magic here and you do have thieves. But maybe no one has a really big house here, or maybe no one has a really big house that's divided into rooms, I wouldn't know."

"The rich people with big houses tend to put locks on their doors. Or hire guards. And this might depend on the place, but I think families live together and cover for each other some?"

"So maybe there's not much market for silent alarms. What about for front doors, for letting people know they have guests? Since you don't have the magic to soundproof it if you just used bells."

"Door bells are promising. Alarms are also promising, actually - they'd be cheaper than a guard. Smoke detectors too. Apparently good ones require tiny amounts of this normally hard-to-get isotope of a rare radioactive element. Conveniently, we have you. That might be a project for a couple months in though."

"Radiation isn't safe, I'd want to make it in a gold box to keep it from poisoning us. But if you're sure you can work with it safely..."

"Lead was traditional here. And I'm talking less than a microgram per detector, if you can even go that small when making stuff. Also, element 95 isotope 241 only does the least dangerous kind, apparently."

"I can go that small. I could do just one atom if having one atom of anything were ever useful."

"I'm sure physicists would find uses for that. Meanwhile, yes, radioactivity is not something I want to build with yet. Even though it'd be pretty useful."

"If you decide to become a physicist and want my help with single atoms just let me know. ...Do we have any colorful translucent materials to cover lights with? Because I bet people would like that."

"Oho, colored lights. Diffuse lighting is good either way, if I can mix up thin white plastic... I can probably make some."

He finishes arriving at the bridge and adjusting things. "About time for me to get us moving."

"Mind if I watch?"

"Why not. Maybe I can even manage a running commentary."

He describes what he's doing and why, at a rapid pace. The ship starts moving.

Valanda watches and listens and tries to be as undistracting as possible.

Nick clearly enjoys this. The open sky... Showing off just a bit...

It would be nice how cute he is when he shows off, if it weren't just really uncomfortable.

"How did you get a ship?"

"I built it myself. Well, not entirely by myself. I had saved up money to buy pars and workers by being very clever on my home island. I built a small one first, sold that one, used the proceeds to finish this one. I - also had an apprentice who helped me build and run it in exchange for being taught."

"Can you get all the parts on any island, did you have to import things?"

"I did have to import things to make such a fine vessel. I could probably have managed something that technically flew with only local resources. Conveniently, I didn't have to. Trade's nice like that."