Meanwhile, Back in the Solar System....

[sinanju]

Who: Cassandra Sugarbaker
Where: The Lifeboat
When: Wednesday, June 16th
Invited: Chloe Sullivan, Xander Harris, Faith Lehane
Status: Incomplete

Cassandra Sugarbaker looked over the controls one last time. Everything looked right. The lifeboat--they still hadn't named it and Cassandra had begun to think they never would--was in orbit

Comments

[Cassandra] No, Not A Good Thing

[sinanju]

"No, not a good thing," Chloe agreed. She gave Cassandra a worried glance. "Any ideas?"

Cassandra shifted her attention repeatedly between the fog that swirled outside the lifeboat and the sensor display on the control panel. The exterior temperature of the lifeboat continued to climb. It wouldn't get hot enough to threaten the ship's structure for a short while--but surrounded as they were by that...red hot fog, the ship's life system would become unbearably hot very, very soon. Already Cassandra could hear the usually inaudible life support system whining shrilly as it pumped excess heat into a heat sink. But that couldn't continue for long.

Unfortunately, she didn't know what to do about it. The dimension shift device took days--at a minimum--to recharge. The lifeboat's sensors could detect nothing but red hot gases to the limit of their range--which wasn't much at the moment. She had no idea which way to fly the ship to escape the heat, even assuming that was possible.

For all Cassandra knew this universe was nothing but a red

This Looks Better....

[sinanju]

As Cassandra stared at the star, fins grew out of the surface of the lifeboat, spreading and branching in fractal patterns that glowed white hot as the lifesystem began dumping excess heat as fast as possible. The howling of the ventilation system abated slightly

[Cassandra Sugarbaker] Eighteen Hours Later

[sinanju]

"So what do we know?" Xander asked. This time he was leaning in the cockpit doorway while Faith sat at the engineer's station. Cassandra and Chloe were back in their usual seats. Outside the viewport an earthlike planet hung in space, a glittering blue sphere frosted with white streaks

[Xander]

[fikgirl]

Xander pondered it quietly and briefly while Cassandra and Chloe -- and yes, Faith -- awaited an answer. They worked here as a group, a team effort as it were. If there was some place that someone didn't want to explore or had reservations about, there wasn't a "majority rules," mentality. Though really that hadn't come into play during the few short months that Faith and Xander had been with Cassandra and Chloe; and before them, Daniel, Ami and Jon as well

[NPC Walter Harriman] All personnel!!

[lost_mckay]

On the ground

Saved by the blip?

[wolfcat]

The moment the words "We have an unidentified craft in satellite range..." crackled across the radio, Elizabeth was on her feet, pushing away from the conference room table. She didn't need to hear the summons that came after. Unidentified craft in satellite range triggered much the same response in her that "Unscheduled off-world gate activation" did. The short translation?

Move your tail, Elizabeth.Of course, it helped that the meeting she was currently drowning in was one she didn't want to sit through in the first place. Even so, it was easy to suppress her smile of relief at the legitimate excuse to bail. Given the effects the last ship in orbit had on the colony, there was more cause for concern than not

[NPC Walter Harriman]

[sinanju]

"We got an alarm from the satellite about half an hour ago, Ma'am," Walter said. "We're still working through the data but it appears to be a manned spacecraft

[tweets]

Six hours on guard at the gate, offworld had left Ron feeling edgy and tired, not a good combination. The next offworld shift had arrived, he'd passed on orders and returned to Gamma before he passed out from exhaustion.

Even as a blended human, he still found that 36 hours awake would drain him completely.

And so, less than 30 minutes after his head hit the pillow, the call came through and he found himself rolling off his cot with a groggy moan.

Running a hand through tousled hair, he grabbed his discarded flack jacket, his Zat and the staff weapon he'd left at the foot of his bed, automatically running to the point he'd been summoned to.

"Ma'am?" he queried of Wier "What do we have?"

He hoped he'd managed to keep the tiredness from his voice.