Lonely Planet Guide To Goyle – Part 5

FACTS FOR THE VISITOR (Continued)

Getting There & Away

These two issues can best be covered by the phrases ‘You must be mad’ and ‘You’ll be lucky’ respectively. However, if you are determined to go ahead with your rash plans to visit the Goyle homeworld, then there are ways and means to achieve your goal. Even – and for advice on survival while there see Tourist Information – making it a two-way trip.

The only ships to land on Goyle are military vessels and unless you have some special arrangement with the Goylish military of any nation you will have to make alternative arrangements should you wish to make planetfall, rather than merely view the world from a safe distance.

An orbital parachute drop from a passing vessel is your best bet. However, most commercial liners will not permit this practice owing to insurance concerns and stringent health and safety policies. Since the smoking ban on all commercial flights, it’s not even possible to claim you are going to the airlock for a cigarette. No, for this you will need to go with a less reputable operator, but to be fair those are by far the most common type with routes through Goylish space. Even some of these will shy from open flouting of health and safety regulations, so you may have to make a sufficient nuisance of yourself on board to get yourself thrown out of the airlock – or ‘spaced’ as it is officially termed. Just make sure you have your grav-assist parachute packed and timing is of course critical. A number of passengers have been known to miss the planet altogether and end up sling-shotting around on a trajectory into open space, drifting forever long after their air supply has run out. Or slap bang into the viewport of a Goylish War Pinnace and we have no need to tell you which is worst.

If you can find a respectable liner travelling that route – possibly as an economy measure – then you can in theory adopt the same approach and at least travel in comfort prior to being spaced. The crews are sticklers for rules though and their customer service training means they will take a lot more pissing off before they will resort to such extremes.

So we come to the matter of Getting Away. As already mentioned, the only shipping making surface landings and departures are Goylish military vessels. So unless you have some means of personal teleportation or anti-gravity boots to spring yourself into orbit – or some other means of achieving escape velocity (which, just in case you have, is 15 m/s/s) you will need to secure a place on one of these craft. This might involve bribing a Goylish officer (although see Money), covert infiltration of a Goylish base and stowing away. Or, of course, enlistment in the Goylish military as an ‘irregular’. Good luck.