[Gwaihir]

Before anyone else grabs the idea, Gwaihir returns to the stasis box that the gun came in, but this time, slight differences in the quantum state of the universe cause him to realize the dangers of using the gun, and he devises a different plan.

He gets himself a nice fast ship, fitted with a very low-gain, but high powered ramscoop, and carefully plots a course. scribbling some calculations, he figures out how long it will take to speed out to the sun at maximum acceleration, slingshot around through the outer layers to gain maximum benefit from scooping and igniting the solar gases, and attaches the stasis case to the ship with a shaped thermonuclear separation charge. he then sets the timer device on the stasis box, and gets in it, taking along some battle armor and a lot of compact climing gear. He closes the box, turning it on and triggering the autopilot sequence he programmed into the ship.

The ship aligns itself carefully, checks the latest satellite data on solar flare activity to fine tune the flight path, and lights its engines. It accelerates far beyond their design capacities, causing them to burn out one by one, but this ship wasn't going to fly again anyway.

As it hurtles into the sun's outer atmosphere, the ship turns on its ramscoop. Imstead of the standard huge magnetic funnel, this scoop has only a small, heavily shielded frontal port to scoop in the fuel, which is far denser here than in deep space. even so, the ramscoop drive begins to overheat rapidly, flooded well beyond capacity with already-ignited hydrogen. Just as the ship is about to break up, the required speed is reached, and the thermonuclear device detonates, propelling the stasis chamber along the flight path at insane speeds while the rest of the ship disintegrates. As the stasis chamber flies out from the sun, it slows, losing the energy it gained by flying at the sun, but keeping the speed gained from the engine burn, ramscoop thrust, and the thermonuclear bLast, so that the planetary defense cannons don't even see the small object, masked as it is by the sun right behind it, until it is too late to fire. Not that they could do it any harm, but the aim must be precise.

The stasis chamber tears down through the atmosphere, lighting up the night sky as though it were noon, because everyone knows that all dramatic meteor-like objects can only fall at night, even when they are coming directly from the sun, which in non-dramatic settings is on the daytime side of a planet . . .

and the impact sends a sound like a thunderclap around the city, as the kinetic energy of the projectile is released to explosive heat. Fortunately, the object is small enough that this blas only demolishes the building, dropping the incredibly strong box to the ground, where it is hit (because everyone also knows that falling objects always get a chance to hit the ground, regardless of the fact that they fall from a standing start and their pursuers, only a few feet away, are usually moving several times the speed of sound) by the mass screaming down from the sky, which has slowed just enough that the force punches through the plating on the top, goes out the bottom and burrows a few hundred feet into the ground with only a minor secondary kinectic explosion. The pizza is saved from the shower of dirt because the solid ground below the several feet of crumbled concrete debris under the box is a much more solid impediment than the wall of the box, and it creates a third explosion that throws the box into the air just in time for the dirt and debris to blow out underneath of it.

67.5 seconds later, the stasis box turns off, and Gwaihir emerges, in full battle armor. He takes temperature and radiataion readings, smiles, and fires several grapnels out of the hole, reeling himself up once they latch on. He then calls his ship to the location, and while waiting for it to arrive, snatches the pizza, which is sizzling lightly, dripping delicious melted cheese. He opens his battle armor helmet to take a victorious bite . . .

and the sprinkler system which was preserved by the cosmic irony force finally sputters into life, with one bent nozzle firing directly into his face. Fortunately, Gwaihir is able to close the pizza box and fire his bLaster at the pipe, melting it closed, before any damage occurs.

His ship arrives, and he stomps on board, his combat suit now sloshing and squelching with every step. When he removes it, he knows that as he pulls off the leg section, enough water will pour out to fill the entire suit, despite the fact that he is clearly occupying most of the space, and his boots will contain approximately twice their volume in water. This is true in every universe, cartoon and non-cartoon alike. But the pizza is safe, and as his ship departs, it snags the stasis box with a magnetic grapple, ripping it out of the hole and reeling it into the cargo hold for future adventures. Being the cautious sort, Gwaihir irradiates the compartment with the box open, vents it to space for a while, then goes into the hold to personally check it over, first in full armor with the hold exposed to vacuum, then with only a biosuit in a repressurized hold. He contemplates bouncing it off of the sun or sending it on a slingshot trip through again, to be safe, but decides against it for the moment. he puts the half of the pizza he didn't eat in the box and closes it, turning on the stasis field, so that he can have warm and sizzling pizza fresh at a moment's notice. He makes a note to try this with other foods, and puzzles at the fact that he can STILL SMELL THE PIZZA throughout the ship, despite the stasis field's complete freezing of all activity even below the atomic level. This supports his budding theory that pizza is entangled with a force even mightier than the galactic force of irony, and ponders how to tap that potential . . .

edit:
Fyron, we seem to be consistently tangling the troUsers of time. however, thinking back, Gwaihir recalls seeing someone among the pile of unconscious people in that box who looked a bit like Narf, but of course, that couldn't be right, since Narf would never get stuck in his own box . . . would he? ah well, it is of no importance, Gwaihir was in a hurry, and he must continue pondering the pizza paradox.

[ May 14, 2003, 09:18: Message edited by: Gwaihir ]