Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 24

Ryan took Carlin's hand. He made a little bow.

"Hello, Carlin," he said.

"Hello, Ryan."

They began to speak at the same time.

"I'm sorry," Ryan said.

"Please, you first," she said.

"I was going to say, just because Yael is never embarrassed, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be."

Carlin laughed.

"That's exactly how I feel. Welcome to Samothea, Ryan."

"Kelly!" Yael cried.

Leaving Carlin and Ryan to get on without her (though she doubted that was possible), Yael had seen her friend, Ryan's sixteen-year-old sister, Kelly, carrying her backpack and a box from the cargo hold. Yael sprinted up to hug her, to ask about the journey and welcome her to Samothea. She took up a box herself and led Kelly to meet Carlin, talking incessantly, which put Kelly at her ease (though Yael would have talked incessantly even if it had no good effect on her younger friend).

With greetings done and the shuttlecraft unloaded, it was time to take the visitors and the four new Petticoats to the Council Hall to meet the rulers of Samothea.

By the time the party reached the Council Hall, Madam Gloria, the Prefect of Samothea, had gathered her Advisory Council in the Council Chamber, dressed in their robes. Gloria made a point of formally greeting all visitors to Samothea in front of all the curious women who could escape their chores to witness something interesting or important.

After Gloria kindly welcomed the Petticoats, Robyn Bradford assigned them to their tribes. Having met Kelly and Ryan on Celetaris, Gloria was not so formal. She made sure Kelly felt welcome and hoped she would enjoy being the first of the 'Samothean Juniors'. Carlin was tasked to look after her and make her stay in the Cloner City so happy that Kelly would want to come back again and tell all her friends.

Her greeting to Ryan was a simple 'hello' with a friendly smile and a promise of a private chat later. He smiled back and bowed politely.

With the Petticoats on their way to their tribes and Kelly making friends with Carlin, who helped her with her pack to the Junior dormitory, the hall began to empty. Yael took hold of Ryan to drag him upstairs to the room she shared with Carlin, but Solange, the Deputy Prefect, stood up.

"Wait a moment, Yael," she said. "We still need Ryan here."

"Madam Prefect, Ladies," Solange addressed the Cloner Council. "There's a question about Ryan's status on Samothea during his visit. When we gave Yael permission to bring him here, we didn't discuss his sexual duties."

"What sexual duties?" Ryan whispered to Yael but she didn't answer.

"Though he's quite thin," Solange continued, "Ryan looks fit. Yael reports that he's extremely virile and has strong loins. So I think, as a condition of his staying with us, his sexual duty should be to service all the women of Samothea. Shall we take a vote?"

Ryan recognised Solange, the wiry Zulu woman with purple tattoos, as soon as she stood up to speak, but it was only now that he remembered Ezra's description of her teasing, joking, testing way of dealing with people. Ryan wasn't intimidated.

In fact, despite his shyness in greeting Carlin (understandable, under the circumstances), Ryan had grown in confidence all the time he had known Yael. Any boyfriend of Yael would have to acquire a good deal of self-assurance, to keep up with her vibrant enthusiasms and to be worthy in the eyes of such a confirmed hero-worshipper.

"Madam Prefect, Madam Deputy Prefect, Ladies of the Council," Ryan said, speaking more loudly than he was used to. "I will be honoured to do my sexual duty to all the beautiful women of Samothea, but am I free to choose my bedmates or is there an order in which they will be assigned to me?"

Madam Gloria smiled at his reply, giving Ryan a wink not entirely in keeping with the dignity of her office. He glanced at Yael, who still held him around the waist, a little protectively now, despite the amusement shining in her eyes.

"Ryan's bedmates ought to be assigned to him," Solange ruled. "We can't have any favouritism. I suggest they be assigned by seniority."

"Good idea," said Madam Recorder. "If 'seniority' means 'age', then it's Lenta Merrynsdaughter Woodlander or me. If 'seniority' means 'social position', then that's you, Madam Prefect ..."

"Ryan and I are old friends. I wave my claim to his services."

"As Madam Deputy Speaker already has a bedmate," Madam Recorder continued, "next in line would be Dolores Leanesdaughter Cloner."

Dolores Leanesdaughter was Madam Lawspeaker, Gloria's aunt, the famously irascible stickler for law and order. With her rasping voice and her formidable manner, she was universally respected but also secretly resented because she kept Samothean society functioning smoothly by controlling flighty nonsense with a stern look or a sharp word.

Knowing Madam Lawspeaker's lack of humour, the assembly feared an offended reaction from her, but Dolores defied all their expectations by issuing an unexpectedly dirty laugh. Gloria had not heard her aunt laugh like that in ages.

"Madam Lawspeaker!" Gloria exclaimed. "What is the meaning of this undignified merriment?"

"If that young man begins his seduction of the women of Samothea with me, then there will be a lot of disappointed women. He won't want to move on to anyone else when I've shown him what I can do."

As the women laughed, Solange said: "With your pride, Dolores, you should have been a Herder."

******

It was black and silent in the flight cabin of the spaceship, Sunrise. Three inert bodies lay in their seats in the safety position: forty-five degrees back, harnesses tight, heads cushioned by inflated airbags. There was blood on their chests and necks.

Without life-support, heating or mechanical activity, the immobile spaceship languished and slowly grew cold. Spaceships can die, as well as people.

In the dark, dust from past human activity, shaken up by cosmic violence only an hour ago, settled invisibly on the piloting console and on the motionless bodies.

Unspent liquid hydrogen fuel accumulated silently in the cold engines and once-molten lava solidified in the cargo tanks. The robot arms hung limply down the side of the dead ship and crushed pumice gently dripped from the rocket vents.

Wildchild's eyes flickered.

She shook her head and forced herself to wake up. She opened her eyes.

The dark did not worry her but something trapped her in place. Then she remembered the safety harness that anchored her to the pilot's chair and the airbags that pressed around her head.

Her chest and arms hurt with an intense muscle-ache. She tasted blood on her lips. Despite the pain in her arms, she punched the button that released the harness and deflated the airbags. She righted the chair and sat up.

Wildchild could hear quiet breathing in the dark. She delved painfully in a pocket of her flying suit for her laser penknife and made a white beam. She took a look around. Tatiana was unconscious in her seat, wrapped by the airbags. Blood from her nose soaked her flying suit.

Wildchild turned her light on her girlfriend, Hazel. It was the same story. She was knocked out and suffered a nosebleed.

Looking at the stream of blood down Hazel's neck, Wildchild felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. It immobilised her.

"I did this!" she said to herself. "I set the co-ordinates and punched the button. What if I'd killed her?"

Forcing herself to stay calm, Wildchild shut her eyes and relaxed, pushing the dark thoughts away. Guilt wouldn't help. Action would. She could fix this. There would be plenty of time later to feel sorry.

"Think!" Wildchild said to herself. "What caused the blackouts and nosebleeds?"

"Air pressure," she said. "That might mean cabin collapse."

Ignoring the pain in her chest and arms, she pushed herself out of her seat and made a wide beam with her laser-penknife for a good look around the flight cabin. All the electronic equipment on the ship was turned off but there was no obvious breach to the hull. The air was clammy but there was plenty of it, which suggested the air-scrubbers were not working.

The cabin was colder than normal but not frozen.

"Cold is good," she said, repeating the lesson on emergences from Tatiana and Ezra. "Heat is bad."

She and Hazel had studied the spaceship's manual at Danielle's request, with attention to the safety features. Wildchild shut her eyes briefly and conjured up a perfect memory of the safety procedures. She found a spare torch in its harness under the piloting console. It had a wide and powerful beam that could light up the cabin for days. She knew where she could manually turn on an emergency oxygen supply.

Wildchild pushed herself up from the piloting console. The magnestrip artificial gravity was no longer working but there was a weak natural gravitation. She didn't float for long.

A thorough check of the cabin for its integrity, feeling over the walls for hotspots and listening at the seams for leaks of air, showed evidence of outside heating but no breach or internal fire. Wildchild was satisfied it was safe to turn on a small stream of oxygen.

With absorbent swabs from a medical kit, she went to check on Tatiana. Wildchild cleaned off the bloodstains and gently tried to wake the stout Russian lady but she was firmly unconscious. Tatiana breathed steadily, so Wildchild let her be.

Now Wildchild did what she wanted to do first but forced herself to attend to other priorities. She checked on Hazel, releasing the airbags and wiping away the blood from her nose, mouth and neck. Pushing strands of hair from her girlfriend's face, Wildchild wiped Hazel's forehead.

Hazel stirred, took in a good breath through her mouth and blinked.

"Are you all right?" Wildchild asked.

"Yes. How's Tatiana?"

"She's still unconscious."

"My head hurts."

Wildchild put her hand on Hazel's cheek. Hazel put her hand on Wildchild's cheek and smiled.

"I almost killed you," Wildchild said.

"Don't be silly, girl," Hazel said, smiling. "You almost killed us all."

Wildchild smiled bitterly back.

"Samothea," Hazel said seriously, "you're the other half of my soul. I love you more than life itself. I'd go anywhere with you, take any risk, suffer any pain. Nothing matters except that I'm with you."

"I love you, Hazel."

"So you should, considering what we do together in bed. ... Where are we?"

"I don't know yet but I know how to find out."

Wildchild stood. She took her laser penknife and dropped it from head-height, counting seconds to herself.

"The mass of my penknife is 120 grams," she said. "I'm 1.78 metres tall and the knife took 5 and a half seconds to fall. The acceleration due to gravity is too low for Moon 18 but just right for Moon 17. I'd say the jump was successful."

Hazel watched this performance with admiration.

"I'm in love with a genius," she said, happily. "Is the ship all right?"

"The flight cabin is sealed off from the other parts of the ship but everything seems to be intact. I can't feel or hear any breaches. We've got no power to the lights, the magnetic floor or the piloting console. The air scrubbers aren't working. The head, galley and shower are all sealed tight."

Hazel sighed.

"If you want to pee," Wildchild said, reading her girlfriend well, "you'll have hold it for now."

"I can hold it," Hazel said with a smile. She tried to move and winced with pain.

"Ow! My chest and arms hurt like hell. What happened to us? And why have you got blood down your chest?"

"Nosebleed. I think we were hit by a shockwave. It changed the air pressure in here, knocking us out. I can't see any crumpling in the cabin walls, so I don't think we hit anything solid. Also, I remember feeling a surge of heat. There's blistering to the inside skin of the cabin on the starboard side toward the bows."

"What do you think it was?"

"Maybe an eruption from Moon 18 just before we entered hyperspace. It might have pushed us out from behind the moon directly into the star's blaze for a second, which would have boiled the hull and fried the electrics. Maybe an anomaly in a hyperspace plume can cause a compression wave strong enough to knock us out. We need to get back to Celetaris so I can ask Danielle to explain the physics. It's way beyond me."

"I love you, Samothea," Hazel said again, admiring her girlfriend even more. "So it wasn't your fault after all?"

"Maybe not."

"Do you think we can jump away from here again?"

"I don't know yet. I need to get the power on first. I'm going to try to attach manual cables to the console from the emergency batteries. Then I'm going outside to check over the hull and the hyperdrive unit."

"I'm coming with you."

Wildchild looked into her girlfriend's clear blue eyes, reading her mind again. This was something she learned from Ezra when Kalyndra almost drowned while salvaging his sunken ship but insisted on diving to the ship again. Wildchild's instinct as a lover was to protect Hazel, but what Ezra taught her was that to love is to trust, as he had trusted Kalyndra.

Trust goes both ways, though. Hazel's love for Wildchild might make her want to do more than she could. An almost telepathic communication revealed to Wildchild that Hazel did not underestimate her present limitations from pain and blood-loss and would not risk her life foolishly. Hazel didn't need protecting.

Wildchild helped her out of the seat and they worked together to unpack the manual cables.

The power and data streams normally routed through the ship's hull, finding their own paths, even if there was a minor breach; but there had been such a big impact on the system that it needed a kick-start. It took some jiggling with the power settings on the console after they plugged the cables in for the piloting system to come back to life. It was followed by some of the cabin lights. A wheezing noise indicated the air scrubbers were back on. Wildchild closed the manual oxygen tap.

Even now, Tatiana hadn't woken up, but there was a bigger worry, which was the danger of going outside. The cameras on the robot units were obscured by caked-on pumice and lava from the volcanoes on Moon 18. A visual inspection was needed: it was dangerous to start a hyperdrive motor if anything was caught in the rotator couplings. It was also dangerous to put a stress on the hull if there was a outside breach.

Not knowing what was outside the spaceship beyond the heat and radiation shielding didn't deter the girls, who donned their spacesuits, checked their air supplies and fearlessly entered the compression chamber. They took torches, powerful laser cutters and metal scrapers on poles with them.

With the air sucked out of the air-lock, they stood carefully either side of the outer door. Wildchild pulled the manual lever to crack the hatch open an inch. There was no stream of light or burst of lava. It looked black and cold outside. She fully opened the hatch and peeked out.

They were on the dark side of a large moon, in a shallow crater.

Moon 17 seemed peaceful and safe. The girls hopped out of the airlock and floated down to the surface, where they raised cloudy footfalls on an airless world.

The great ring of dust was a mile or so above their heads, curving gently away to the horizon like a phantom rainbow, dark-grey in the shadow of the moon, shading through smoky brown to bright orange where its outside edges caught the direct glare of the burning star.

They each took a side of the craft to make a visual inspection of the hull and the hyperdrive unit. After fifteen minutes, Wildchild radioed to Hazel:

"My side looks fine. Nothing's broken or sheared off."

"It's all good on my side as well," Hazel confirmed.

"We'll clean the debris off the cameras and manoeuvring rockets. Then we should wake up Tatiana."

Tatiana was awake when the girls got back. She needed help to get up and though her head hurt, she was full of praise for the girls.

"Is very good work you did. We are not damaged and have eyes again. I start engine. Ready?"

For safety, the girls strapped themselves back into their piloting seats. Tatiana checked the fuel-cell levels and turned the motor over a few times to clear dust from its pipes and conduits. It caught on the fifth turn. Now power was flowing along its usual channels, giving a strong boost to the cabin lights and the air scrubbers. The magnetic floor turned on and the batteries began to charge.

Tatiana cancelled the emergency status. The doors to the head, shower and galley sighed as the seals relaxed. The bulkhead hatches released with a reassuring clank.

A hard burn on the manoeuvring rockets cleared their vents of debris and lifted the ship a few inches off the surface of the moon.

"It's good ship, Soonrise, da? Very strong!" Tatiana said, patting the console.

"Yes, Madam," Wildchild answered.

"Sunrise is the best ship ever made," Hazel said.

"Da, da. Best ship ever. ... Samothea, we plot big jump out of system. Hazel, you check cargo is secure. Then we leave."

In thirty minutes, the co-ordinates were plotted and put into the navigation system. All other systems were checked and working.

Tatiana waited for Wildchild to hit the red button and initiate the hyperspace jump, but Wildchild hesitated.

"What problem?"

Wildchild said nothing.

"You think you caused previous accident?" Tatiana asked Wildchild.

"No, Madam."

"You think laws of physics care who presses button?"

"No, Madam."

"Then what problem?"

"We almost died."

"Hazel, you care we almost die?"

"No at all, Tatiana."

"Me: I not care we almost die. So press, Samothea, and we go off. Da?"

"May I have a minute, Madam," Wildchild asked.

"I give you one minute."

Wildchild sat silently, breathing deeply, relaxing her nerves.

Soon she said: "I'm ready."

"You scared, Samothea?"

"Yes, Madam."

"Good. Fear heighten senses, makes cautious. Did fear stop you going outside?"

"No, Madam."

"Will fear stop you pressing button?"

"No, Madam."

"Very good. Press!"

Wildchild hit the button and they jumped ninety million miles from the white dwarf star, emerging from hyperspace into an empty black world surrounded by a curtain of pinprick stars.

Tatiana opened the metal shielding on the windows, so they could gaze at the violent world that had almost killed them. The white dwarf star was a yellow ball, serene, harmless and beautiful in its shroud of red and gold dust.

They floated safely in empty space, plotting a hyperspace pathway to Argus Space Station, where they could re-fuel, lodge a prospecting claim to the eighteen moons and trade the cargo.

When all was calm, Tatiana said:

"You girls are braver than me. Hazel has no fear. Samothea bites down fear and breathes deep. Then one minute, she's ready. When I first almost died, I got in my sleep bag and shivered one whole day. I couldn't speak. Or drink and eat. ... You two are Prospectors for sure."

The girls shared a smile.

"So, girls," Tatiana quizzed. "Is best training to be Prospector?"

"Yes, Tatiana."

"What lessons we learn?"

"In an emergency," Wildchild said, "don't try to keep the cargo (however precious) but jettison it and be safe."

"Da. What else?"

"Memorise the safety manual," Hazel said.

"Da, more."

"Don't panic, even if you almost die," Samothea said.

"Da, again."

"Take a pee before a potentially disastrous hyperspace jump," Hazel said, who had been relieved in more senses than one when the head door unsealed at last.

"Da, something else. Most important lesson of all."

"Please tell us it, Madam?" Wildchild asked.

"Never, ever tell Daniella!"

******

Kelly and Ryan stayed a week in the Cloner City, acclimatising to life on Samothea, before setting off to stay with the Woodlanders. Carlin made a smooth handover to Odette as the senior Junior. Aged nineteen and a half, it was time that Carlin went back to her mother and her tribe, though her medical studies with the Petticoat's doctor, Jane Bradford, were unfinished.