44 If the force were bigger, the board would have five members. By 2412, the IPSF will have enough ships online to go to a five-member inquiry board - but then, by the middle of that year, they won't need inquiry boards in the first place, since the galaxy will be in a state of civil war.

70 Zetans salute in the British style, with the palm of the hand facing outward instead of down - a mannerism the early Wedge Defense Force picked up from their Salusian allies.

99 Kraal and Zargh are members of the same graduating class from the Klingon War Academy.

117 Ektaar is named after Ektar, a now-discontinued series of Kodak color film.

180 Note that Zargh has changed from addressing Utena as sutai-Tenjou, as he did in Blue Moon Serenade, and is now calling her vestai-Tenjou. This, too, is a mark of respect - it shows that he accepts her as the undisputed head of a warrior clan. Among Klingons who accept this notion, Clan tenjoH' is considered a branch by acclamation of the large and influentual House Kalaan. The epetai-Kalaan is grandmother to both Kraalgh (who is her designated heir) and Klaang.

187 Lo'kang, son of Morg, would disgrace himself in 2409 by being the highest-ranking officer of the Klingon Defense Forces to ally himself with Klayvor.

212 The New Avalon Cornet-Scientifer is the largest daily paper in the Republic of Zeta Cygni, with three editions per day and a circulation of roughly nine million. Owned by BaconMedia and operated in tandem with the Avalon Broadcasting System/Avalon 17 under a special form of incorporation designed to insulate both news organizations from the influence of corporate ownership, it is the Republic's newspaper of record. Its offices are on the 100th through 120th floors of the Entire State Building. The Sci, as its friends call it, is known for its incisive international reporting and its excellent sports section, but is a bit weak on financial news. A copy of a weekday or Sunday edition costs a half-credit. Unusually for a newspaper in the Federation, its "big edition", which costs cr1.50, comes out on Saturday, not Sunday.

213 Sphere is a weekly news magazine concentrating on political and military developments within or affecting the Republic of Zeta Cygni - sort of the Zetan equivalent of Time. It is the flagship title of Sphere Communications, an independent media company, which also owns Multimedia Spotlight and Chrome & Cannon.

220 Avalon This Afternoon is a popular newsmagazine program which runs on the independent Channel 6 from 5 to 6 PM on weekdays.

268 The Trib, as it is popularly known, is New Avalon's second-biggest daily paper, with a rather stolid broadsheet format and better financial coverage than the Cornet-Scientifer. It has a circulation of around four million.

288 New Avalon's city planners had the New English habit of naming intersections "Something Square", even though the implication that there's some kind of public square or park there is usually false. Often the names have evolved into nicknames for the general neighborhoods surrounding major intersections. Gibson Square, at the corner of Allard Avenue and Daniels Street, is named for Walter B. Gibson, who created The Shadow for Street & Smith Publications under the pen name Maxwell Grant.

299 The prize court ruling document was devised by Kris Overstreet and based on the naval prize rules of the Napoleonic Wars. In UF, this system has existed for much longer than the treaty named in the document; it is merely the most recent in a long line of prize-rule treaties stretching back to the early days of interstellar trade in the modern epoch, and may contain elements of Corellian prize rules picked up, in turn, from the ancient Atlantean Empire.

366 Carl, one of Zed Cochrane's engineering team, is a distant relative of Lieutenant General Stephen "Spike" Witwicky, commander of the 17th Autobot Lancers.

429 Like father, like son; Gryphon is also undeterred from a good Ghostbusters reference by consternation.

457 In Magic Knight Rayearth 2, we learn that Cephiro is not alone in its pocket universe. Autozam and Chizeta are revealed to be separate worlds in the miniature cosmos; Autozam is industrialized (they even have space warships), while Chizeta produces powerful magic-users. In UF's version, Autozam and Chizeta are two of the several nations of Cephiro (along with Shalhara, Gaulia, Nihonia, and the rest), and are among the more remote ones. Autozam occupies Cephiro's northern highlands, while Chizeta is a sort of Cephirean Australia, occupying a separate continent in the Great Ocean far to the south of Nihonia.

461 The Kaoru twins' mother is originally from Autozam, though they may or may not know that; their parents don't strike me as the sort who would ever have had a conversation with their children long enough for their own childhoods to come up.

510 Or Allard Avenue. I should really sift through all this material and compile a proper writer's bible sometime, but on the fun scale, that rates somewhere below alphabetizing my clothes.

519 Named for an Indian restaurant of my acquaintance called the Star of India.

532 Boyce Memorial is named for Dr. Philip Boyce (2270-2379), a United Galactica Navy surgeon and the first chief medical officer of UGS (later USS, now WDF) Enterprise (NCC-1701) under Captains Robert April and Christopher Pike. Boyce later served as Surgeon General of the Navy and, later still, as dean of the Naval Medical Academy, where he was a mentor to Leonard McCoy. gryphon named New Avalon's WDF-sponsored hospital, widely considered the finest in the sector, after him in honor of an unchronicled adventure he had with the crew of Pike's Enterprise during the Exile. (This is obliquely referred to early in Split Infinitive, when Gryphon, upon encountering that universe's Enterprise and being hailed by Captain Kirk, remarks to himself, "Who? And why aren't you Chris Pike?")

540 Buttercup is, in fact, a reserve member of the New Avalon Fire Department, specializing in - what else? - hazardous environment search and rescue.

572 FFCS = Fellow of the Federation College of Surgeons, indicating that Dr. Abernathy (whose nametag really shouldn't have both "DR" and "MD" on it, but my sloppiness occasionally knows no bounds) is a board-certified surgeon and, as such, licensed to poke around inside patients.

596 Dr. Rockford "Rocky" Stone, previously seen in Days of Miracle and Wonder, is by this point chief of staff at Boyce Memorial.

623 We are indebted, if that's the word, to Kris for this summation of affairs.

638 Well, more like 300, but that's OK; Bubbles is clearly not a hockey fan and has probably gotten that particular factoid third- or fourth-hand.

733 Edgerton's Syndrome is named for Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton (1903-1990), an MIT professor and pioneer in strobe photography. You know that famous photograph of the drop of milk forming a perfect little crown shape, captured by the strobe in the instant it hits a hard surface? Edgerton took that. Like the drop of milk in Milkdrop Coronet, Detians with Edgerton's Syndrome are, in an illusory way, frozen in time.

735 Omega-2 bears no relation whatsoever to the "Omega-3 fatty acids" so commonly bandied about in health-food circles these days. It was named by its creator, Joe Martin, years before that fad ever reached the ears of anyone in rural Maine.

748 "Biocontrol" is a catch-all term which can mean a number of different things, but when used in a personal context it usually referes to the ability - either species-specific or achieved through intensive personal training - to control one's normally automatic biological processes with conscious effort. Persons skilled in biocontrol can achieve a number of effects with this ability, including (but certainly not limited to) slowing their metabolic rates for survival purposes, tapping normally-latent reserves of strength or endurance, and adjusting various bodily processes (for instance, to heighten immune response in case of infection, or suppress it to reduce allergic reactions).

Some masters of the art can go so far as to use directed muscle contraction to alter their facial features, and even trigger certain endocrine responses that change their eye and skin color; others can put themselves into a state of deathlike suspended animation profound enough to fool physicians.

The Dutch Valerian art of lichaams beheersing is an example of a form of learned biocontrol geared toward exploiting the full potential of the student's physiology.

Most learned biocontrol methods (as opposed to those that are species-innate) come from prabin, Salusian meditative discipline that is thought to descend from the prana-bindu techniques of the long-extinct Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. Prabin is widely practiced, at least in part (it's regarded by the general public as a fitness/meditation form like yoga or tai chi), and certain of its biocontrol techniques are taught in public schools throughout Salusian and Zetan space. The most common of these enables members of most humanoid species to regulate their reproductive systems. (Gryphon made reference to this in Another Christmas Rose.)

785 But not the pants? Juri, you're slipping.

791 While fencing in a formal school uniform is not, perhaps, as easy as doing so in standard fencing gear, it should be noted that not having outgrown one's uniform does help.

815 I considered sending the Utonium sisters along for the rest of the tour, but that would've posed considerable authorial problems (I'm not sure what I would've had to do in order to present them with any kind of challenge in Valiant Rose), so I let the idea quietly drop after covering my bets by foreshadowing it here, just in case.

891 It appears Corwin may have been the only one not aware that Buttercup had kind of a thing for him by the time she revealed it to him in A Night to Remember.

902 This tendency to go charging valiantly off in all directions at once is genetic. As a member of Aeka's branch of the Jyuraian royal family, Achika is cursed with certain predispositions, such as a tendency toward impulsive road trips and an inability to hold liquor.

955 Kate cheated a little; if you look closely, you'll note that, except for the last syllable, her line is in iambic pentameter.

982 A dichotomy we'll be looking into again, you may be sure.

1162 Apparently Corwin and Kozue did quite a bit of talking during their semester at Tenjou Academy.

1256 Common toast among Englishmen during the Napoleonic Wars.

1317 Ten Minute Walk takes its name from the GweepCo nickname for Playoff Entertainment, an arcade in Worcester that is rather more than a ten-minute walk from WPI, no matter what macquivr claimed the first time he convinced other gweeps to go there with him.

1325 Major Edward R.S.C. Replogle, RSMC, 12th Duke Newcomb, a Salusian military officer and distant relation on the Salusian side of the Ajlond-Mui clan. Duke Newcomb (say it out loud if you don't get the joke) is an internationally known man of action and all-around badass.

1370 The Oxbow River is named after Oxbow Plantation, Maine (pop. 56), where my grandparents lived when I was a kid. It, in turn, takes its name from the loop (or "ox bow") in the Aroostook River near the settlement.

1422 The beacon on the Berkeley Building (more commonly known as "the old John Hancock Building") in Boston does something similar to this, though the Berkeley's beacon actually indicates the weather (steady red means rain; flashing red means snow in winter and that the Sox game has been called on account of rain in summer).

1500 Awwwww. PJM

1534 Well, it wasn't the only reason. Most people still, in the 25th century, can't quite bring themselves to believe that the Salusian people - most prominently their princess herself, but she was hardly alone - simply fell in love with the wild tapestry of culture, cuisine, and tradition they found on Earth, and couldn't bear the idea of waiting centuries for the planet to get around to making contact with the galaxy in its own time. Their alliance with the early Wedge Defenders only reinforced the collective Salusian notion (most notably not shared by the Sword of Salusia Party) that Earthpeople belonged, metaphorically speaking, right next to Salusians, front and center on the galactic stage.

1549 A 25th-century descendent of the Tosci's that used to have a location in the MIT student center.

1578 It should go without saying that January 8 is a national holiday on Funkotron.

1583 December 22 will eventually be celebrated in Cephiro as Trinity Day, part of the three-week-long Yule festival that also includes Christmas, Boxing Day, the Prince's Birthday, and New Year's Day.

1631 Not Romulan ale.

1984 This scene took a much more serious turn than I originally intended it when I started it. I knew it was going to be fairly serious, just because of the subject of the conversation, but I wasn't expecting it to end up being the Kaorus' equivalent of the Juri-Shiori scene in Roses in Springtime - the moment, never gotten around to by the TV series, in which Kozue apologized for, and Miki offered absolution for, her sins.

2009 Soul Asylum's "Somebody to Shove" (from their 1992 album Grave Dancers Union) was a song Gryphon and Kei used to dance to (for sufficient values of "dance") back in the ancient times; the distinctive opening hook, heard at parties aboard the SDF-17, was everybody else's cue to get the hell out of the mosh pit if they knew what was good for them.

2014 Hey, she's reformed, not dead.

2061 This punch line is a fond nod to the late Brian Daley, author of (among other things) the trilogy of Han Solo novels that were among the Star Wars franchise's only tie-in novels back in those halcyon days before Del Rey loosed the blood-dimmed tide. In Han Solo's Revenge, we see Han tell a joke with this punch line to Chewbacca in a bar, causing Chewie to burst out laughing and spray beer foam everywhere. As here, the rest of the joke is omitted. The setup for the delivery in this scene is also borrowed, in this case from a George Carlin routine about the fact that one always seems to be saying the most embarrassing possible thing when the lulls in party noise happen. (In the original, it's "RIGHT, I KNOW! I KNOW! SO WHAT I'M GONNA DO IS, I'M GONNA HAVE MY TESTICLES LAMINATED!")

2085 I'm not sure if Kris, who wrote this bit, intended to imply that the Romulan government was actually sending personnel to assist the IPO, or if this officer is a renegade who happens to be proud of her homeworld, if not the political structure currently governing it. From an astropolitical standpoint, the latter would seem more likely.

2173 She owes him a lifedebt.

2227 Couldn't resist backreferencing "I Feel Better than James Brown".

2233 As seen in the reference image section, though it's embarrassingly sloppy work, if I do say so myself. I do like the banner I came up with for the Cornet-Scientifer, though. The original version of the page was created by Geoff Depew and more directly imitates the look of the New York Post.

2269 An attitude shared by many real-world Frenchmen.