A couple chapters ago I decided I would use rounded corners as comic symbolism to denote flashbacks… and then forgot about it when I got to Carl’s Hiawatha story. So that’s why the first couple pages have straight-edged corners, and the rounded ones don’t begin until here. I’ll put it all right for the eventual printed volume, but here online is where I preserve all my original mistakes!
Many thanks to acrisp for posting the answer first to my mystery from last week, to Brad for (independently) posting it second, and to everyone else who went looking. I really appreciated it!
We have them on the planet now, so at least that’s something concrete.
(Who knows what could happen when trying to alter time and space, or shifting dimensions, or whatever their jump-engines are supposed to do if they actually work correctly? Probably a lot of things could go wrong so I’ll just accept that somethng didn’t work.)
But now the story is about the Hiwatha’s crew and how they survived (or didn’t) on the landing.
Now we’re getting somewhere!
Carl and his selective memories are actually a good way to tell this story, since having ALL the facts would take away the mystery and suspense. Great strip. Well done.
Well, it looks like those are IP uniforms in the triage area, so we know that Carl was far from the only crash survivor. That’s a start.
It seems unusual that the crew of the Hi(A)watha would be outside under such primitive conditions unless the ship was toasted, or contaminated, or toxic. But they appear to be just going about business. If there was hostility there would be security forces or guards. For that matter, what this says is that there are no “natives” around. Maybe they haven’t showed up yet. That ship coming in would have alerted anyone in the neighborhood. If there were any authorities they would be showing up. Something is not right.
They could have moved the party outside because (a) the ship was at an angle, rather than perfectly level, making standing around inside it problematic (trying to recall if that was the case from the Galaxion survey team exploration), or (b) there was no power inside the ship and, hence, no lights or forced air circulation to remove the smoke. Or, for that matter, if most of the obvious locations within the ship to set up triage and ER stations (Medical, or the ship’s hold) were among the areas too damaged to be used.
Lookit them, a casualty clearing station right out in the open…
…ripe for slaughter.
More importantly… Why is Carl strapped down to the gurney as though he were a raving lunatic?
They may believe that he has a back or spine injury of some kind that would make moving about inadvisable. Or he may still just be strapped into a stretcher from when he was hurriedly evacuated from the ship — perhaps even by one person dragging him. Having him tumble out of the stretcher while being moved wouldn’t be very helpful to anyone.
Tara obviously knows best about what is going on, but if they were concerned about a spinal injury (a reasonable concern seeing as how he has obvious head trauma), he’d be in a neck brace and other, more restrictive lumbar containment (been there, done that, got the t-shirt). If it was just a case of wanting to isolate him so he couldn’t fall off the stretcher while he was unconscious, why not set the stretcher on the ground?
What do you mean “as though he were”? :p
I’ll grant you Lunatic. I think my own rants have made it clear that for what we the readers have actually seen of Carl, he is far too passive to qualify as Raving.
True enough–he’s just a fly on the wall of the Hiawatha. I don’t really think he’s a lunatic in any case. Just an engineer who’s way out of his depth.
J. Wilde@ From what I’ve seen of accident evacuation, It’s actually pretty standard to fasten someone to the stretcher before moving them.They probably carried him out, ascertained the fact he is in no immediate danger, then left him to take care of more serious cases. As you can see, the straps on his arms are actually pretty loose and he can easily slide them out.
It’s possible, but see my comment above on that. I was once on the receiving end of that type of emergency medical treatment, so I have a decent idea about what is done. No cervical collar, however. I’m not a corpsman/medic, so I’m not sure where head trauma stands in the Triage food chain.
Sorry, I meant Carl has no cervical collar. I had one. Good times.
J. Wilde@.I never had the “pleasure” of sustaining any trauma that required the application of a cervical collar (so far I only managed two broken bones and one unfortunate impalement injury) but in a normal situation, that type of collar is a must for any wounds sustained to the head/back, because you never know…
Unfortunately, that happens during peacetime in a civilised country, where the emergency personnel are well supplied, whereas this is clearly something more on the lines of a war zone/ earthquake relief triage, with a lot of makeshift equipment. Thus I’m not sure the crew of the Hiawatha have any cervical collars, or if they have that they are enough for all the injured people on board.
Pssst, Tara, “in between” is two words.
Love the facial expressions in the background characters on this page, though!
I’m anticipating something happening. This is like the moment in one of those old westerns just before the indians attack with flaming arrows! It looks fine for the moment, but…….. !
I think the emphasis shouldn’t be on why he has been restrained and more about what will happen to those still standing out in the open in the casualty clearing station.
Considering how quickly the survey team party got ambushed (twice) and considering Carl’s reaction a few pages ago when asked to explain what happened I’m not exactly pinning my hopes on a happy ending for these chaps.