"Ok," she nods. "You can come with me to get him if you'd like but it'll be getting hot out there by now."

"Eh, I'll live.  And I do want to see how badly my environmental shielding doesn't work without my Ring, too."

"All right."

It's hot out, not dangerously so but definitely uncomfortably, and very bright. Daisy leads the way to one of the watchtowers - Nine is visible at the top, a broad-shouldered and apparently headless shape half-hidden by the parapet - and inside, where it's somewhat cooler and comfortably dim. The inner wall of the tower is lined with a spiral staircase, leading up three stories to a hatch in the ceiling, which she raps on and waits a moment before opening. "Nine? I've got Diana with me, is it a good time for her to meet you?"

"Sure," he rumbles, low bass to her easy soprano, and she moves away from the hatch to give him room to come down onto the stairs. He's tall, approaching seven feet, and not quite as headless as he appeared from a distance, though it's more of an abstracted suggestion of one set into the hump of his shoulders than anything designed to look personable.

And Diana's environmental shield is...actually doing a pretty good job of keeping the worst of it off of her!  Huh.

"Hello up there!"

"Hello!" He starts down the stairs. "Let's go back to the house, it's not really meant for humans in here."

"Yeah, it really isn't, is it?  And yet us stubborn bags of meat keep trying to do it anyway, Vegas, that does mean you -"

"...Excuse me, I just, have some opinions of people who build in deserts just for kicks."

"Oh?"

"My opinion is that nobody should be building shit in fucking deserts.  I much prefer tundra, if you must be somewhere incredibly isolated from others, though that's possibly just my bias for a nice bracing blast of cold air speaking."

"Ah, so just personal preference, then?"

"Yes and no; deserts are really inhospitable in general and I think building a whole city of casinos in the middle of one is stupid.  I just also dislike heat."

"Huh. I don't see why anyone would do that, yes."

"The land was cheap and the arm of the law tied down to the point where the one-armed bandit had free reign, as I understand it.  But yes.  Whyyyyyy.  Vegas is execrable."

"In this case we're the closest habitable planet to the intersection of two hyperspace lanes. They're working on improving the climate, if I remember correctly, but that's a slow process."

"Huh.  Neat.  What's hyperspace like?"

"Traveling in hyperspace isn't like anything much, but most biologicals find the transition in and out of it unsettling. Logistically, realspace gravity is much more dangerous in hyperspace, which is why most ships stick to the hyperspace lanes that are known to be safe, and that makes hyperspace travel times unintuitive, too - they have much more to do with how many hazards the ship needs to navigate around than how far the destination is from the origin."

"Huh.  There's lots of FTL methods back home, but none quite like that that I know of."

"It seems strange that you have several," Nine muses.

"I mean, most of them are variations on a couple underlying themes, ignoring whatever bullshit the Speed Force is up to this Tuesday.  'Bend space' - I bet this is closest to hyperspace, there's a practical model of a drive that works just off of gravity and antigravity - 'skip space', 'this isn't FTL it's just going fast in another dimension that's got different topology'...Teleportation."

"Hyperspace is the 'different topology' kind, I think."

"You can predict hyperspace obstacles fairly linearly from realspace topology, though, can't you?  I wonder if hyperdrive engineers would recognize the topology Alcubierre devised."

"I'm not sure. Maybe I'll have Daisy get me some books about it next time she's in town."

"I'll see if I actually have the math handy; I don't think so, though.  Only so much I ever stored locally."

"Mmhmm. So, did you want to talk about something?"

"...There must have been, but heck if I know.  What do you do around here, actually?"

"I help guard the place. Not that it really needs it, but it helps Lord Pradnakt relax to have someone else keeping watch."