Hilde was a drunken old crone from Dayport who was hired by the Astronomer to be his assistant after the death of Brellick, his previous assistant. The Astronomer planned to send her to a new planet he had discovered, by means of a thick wooden box launched into the air by the blast of a sunburst device. Once there, she would signal to the Astronomer by smoke signal that it was safe for him to follow. Hilde was nervous about being launched, but the astronomer planned to assuage her fears with a pint of aged gin.[1] Garrett visited the Astronomer's Workshop before she was launched, so he did not learn of her eventual fate.
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