Contact across the Solar System

Europe

Much of the trip was uneventful, and as a result, Kalna's and Ilmuth's clothes got a lot of attention. The two showed off the sorts of clothes that they had worn on their residencies, and also past Earth fashions and SSC fashions.

The SSC's first stop in Europe was Athens, and the SSC people visited touristy sites like the Parthenon. Orthon showed off pictures of the Parthenon in its early years taken by residents back then, and he entertained his audience by speaking Minoan, Mycenaean Greek, Classical Greek, Koine Greek, Byzantine Greek, and Modern Greek. Ilmuth showed up in a tank top and a long flounced skirt, a Minoan tribute, and Kalna in an iridescent yellow-white pantsuit. At one point, Ilmuth held two snakes in her hands in the Minoan "Snake Priestess" pose.

A reporter asked Kalna about the detective work that BeerKeg and German Shepherd had done, and she congratulated them on their tracking out where she and Ilmuth had lived in Los Angeles in the 1990's. She also stated that she and Ilmuth had lived in Los Angeles in the late 1960's. She also described how the two had also gone to Boston back then and how Ilmuth had cured her of her fear of lightning.

Someone asked Ilmuth why she didn't wear high heels, and she responded "I want to take care of my feet. I have to walk on them, and I don't want to have to go through a lot of surgery to fix them. Besides, there are lots of pretty shoes without high heels." She also noted that high heels are not very common among the women of the worlds.

In Switzerland, the SSC people returned to Emmen, though with only scoutcraft landing there, and they then went to a ski resort high in the mountains where some SSC people were staying. Diplomatic relations had progressed far enough along for Switzerland to be accepting SSC tourists, though they preferred to stay high in the mountains, away from people who might love them too much or hate them too much. One of the tourists raved about what long ski slopes Switzerland has, while another one found it too cold and left on the Aurora. "It wasn't what I expected", she said.

They also had reunions with some of the second-trip travelers: Jenny McDonald in London, Hugo Dupont in Paris, Isabel Alvarez in Madrid, and especially Ingrid Baer in Berlin. Sheila McKenna was with Ingrid, taking a break from a speaking tour, and some people suspected something suspicious between Sheila and the SSC people. What did they do to Sheila to make her so confident? Neither Sheila nor Ilmuth nor anyone else were very talkative about that issue, and that almost overshadowed the clothing issue. Ilmuth wore blue jeans underneath a short pastel-striped minidress and Kalna a rather loose mid-length lavender-print dress with a white plastic belt over it -- and a few people did comment on Ilmuth's odd way of wearing a minidress.