Tremyr startled a little as a hand grasped his shoulder. Ingdor, the dockmaster smiled at him. "I beg to disagree, mister." Ingdor pointed at the retreating form silhouetted against the bright lights of the transition corridor, "She's still pretty hot." Tremyr shook his head slowly. "Isn't there some cargo you should be unloading somewhere?" Ingdor raised both hands, palms up and shrugged, grinning as he turned to address his crew of AI robots. "Come along, my minions. There's cargo about!" As the warehouse mechs set to work, Tremyr caught up to Ingdor on the elevated walkway that overlooked the entirety of the starboard landing bay. He gave a gentle rap on the dockmaster's chest. "Ingdor, you've been on this crew a lot longer than I have... what's the story with Althea's little side trips?" "Not a single clue, my friend. She's never talked about them, even, you know--" Ingdor nudged Tremyr with his elbow. "And I've never been curious. It's her business and the captain says nothing. Probably high security stuff we lower life forms aren't allowed to know." "Anything in the jumpship's logging data?" "Hah! Are you going to explain to Althea what you were doing poking around her ship, much less trying to figure out where she goes?" Ingdor laughed, a short and deep barking sound. "You are much braver than you look, Tremyr. Much braver than I." Tremyr absent-mindedly scratched at his beard. No he wasn't that curious. But it was interesting that no one else on the crew seemed to be curious about these little jaunts either. "Have you noticed? After each little adventure, she meets with Kiha'ilahl within a couple of hours?" Ingdor shrugged. "You spend too much time worrying about trivia. Must be an engineer thing. Talk to Kiha yourself. He's always struck me as a personable fellow-- for a gorilla." "Not a bad idea. No time though. We have to meet'n'greet the new colonists in a half hour." Tremyr headed for the transition corridor. "Thanks, Ingdor!" - - - - - - Continuing my little space opera, started here: Amazon CE:4693 This transition corridor as well as most of the landing bay set were cobbled together using Stonemason's Modular SF kits. No sci-fi buff should be without that collection! The two foreground characters are from Renderosity artists, the balance of assets are from DAZ or rDNA. The DOF effect was added in GIMP. Thanks for stopping by, have a great weekend everyone!