MOONIE IN TOO MANY MOONS
By
Nicola Cuti
© Nicola Cuti 2011
WGAE Registration # 1217268
First printed in North America
The work contained in this book is a collection of fiction. All characters are the product of the creator’s imagination. Any similarities, between persons living or dead, are purely coincidental.
Black and White illustrations by Nicola Cuti (pencils) and Mark Stegbauer (inks).
Cover art by Nicola Cuti.
1 MATHILDA MOON
CAPTAIN’S STORY
I suppose my story starts when the starship Gray Goose stopped at my station for refueling, and I killed the Captain.
I ran a starship refueling station on Ocarina. I had owned and run it for close to a decade. My wife used to help out, before she passed away about two years ago, by operating the café next to the station, where the starship crews could grab something to eat while they were waiting for me to refuel their ships.
I loved her honey biscuits. They were light and fluffy and when you broke them apart the dough would thin out like a spider web. The steam rising from those biscuits would drift through the café and fill the place with the odor of fresh-baked bread. I can still smell them, even though I never bake. I tried once, but mine came out like stones. The starship crews also remember her biscuits and ask me for them, but I tell them they’ll have to settle for toast, because when my wife passed she took the recipe with her. I suppose I could learn to bake them properly, but I wanted them to be a sort of legacy that died with her. She was a great gal, and I miss her something awful.
Ocarina is a moon in orbit around the planet Silver Valley. Although it’s only ten miles long, it’s still classified as a moon and not an asteroid. Heck, it’s bigger than Deimos, Mars’ smaller moon, so it’s got the right. It gets its name from its shape, kind of like the Italian musical instrument sometimes called a “sweet potato.” The moon is oval, with one high rocky mountain protruding off center like the mouthpiece of an ocarina. Because it’s so small, it has no air and hardly any gravity, but we’d been able to fix enough buildings there, with artificial gravity in them, that you could have called us a village.
So, my story starts when the Gray Goose stopped at my station for refueling, and I killed the Captain. I had never met a man as ornery as him, and although I’m not the type of person who hands out judgments and sentences— I’m a live-and-let-live type of guy—he really left me no choice.
It began routinely enough. The Gray Goose launched from Silver Valley, which is an Earthlike planet, and spent most of its chemical fuel in the escape, so it had to refuel at my station before it could continue on. It was a small ship with only five people aboard, three male crew members and two female passengers. I told them to wait in the café while I started the refueling, and then I would fix them something to eat.
The two crewmen seemed pleasant enough— Chris Dooley, a redheaded Irishman complete with freckles, and Ben Day, a tall black man with an easy smile. But their Captain, Willis Beek, was a surly brute, unshaven and unkempt, more like an Asteroid Belt tramp than the Captain of a ship. He barked orders at them when it didn’t seem necessary to give them any orders at all, and he asked if I served liquor. I told him there was a bar on Ocarina but it didn’t open for four more hours, and his ship would be refueled long before then. That news didn’t set with him very well, but he grumbled and slouched off to the café.
Now, the two women were much more interesting. The first one, Ophius Ry, carried herself with the studied movements of royalty— nose in the air, deliberate steps, hand gestures which can only be described as elegant. Her billowing robes were embroidered with the symbols tracing her family history, and the sunburst symbol identified her as a member of the royal family of the providence of Fen on the planet of Ku. Her skin was marked with splashes and dots of green, from forest green to olive drab to mint. Even her long, flowing hair was green. If she were naked in a jungle, her camouflaged flesh would have made her practically invisible, and Ku was a jungle world in a highly primitive state. I know, because I did some big game hunting there about a decade ago.
The other woman, Mathilda Moon, was from Earth, and she followed Ophius like a servant. Her hair was straight, black and silky, worn in bangs on her forehead and in twin, unbraided ponytails over her shoulders, the way a teenager would wear her hair. Her eyes were large and dark. They had the wondering innocence of a deer in a wood, taking in her surroundings with a childlike joyfulness. But if her face was childlike, her figure was anything but. Her bosom was enormous, yet well formed, her waist slim and tight and her hips generous but not overly wide. Although she reminded me of an ancient fertility goddess from the Greek island of Crete, she carried herself like an athlete, with toned muscles and a light step. Her garb, contrasted with the lavish robes of her mistress, was a simple, two-piece black elastic bodysuit.
As she passed me she noticed me studying her figure, but instead of being offended she gave me a sly glance and her cupid’s-bow lips curved into a smile. She was a woman worth pursuing, I thought; yet there wasn’t much time to follow through. I had to start the refueling process and then, after they had all taken showers and generally cleaned up, I had to whip up some meals for the passengers and crew.
Most starships today are hybrids, although a few hardy souls are still driving anti-matter engines. Nasty stuff. I wouldn’t allow them near my place. One little accident and your ship is history, along with anything in the immediate vicinity. Gone, like flash paper. Hybrids are safer.
Hybrids use liquid propellants to achieve escape velocity, but once they’ve broken the bonds of gravity they switch to Quark, Beam or Solar Thermal Power for their journey through deep space. Of course they still need liquid propellants for their retro-rockets when they want to touch down, and that’s why they stop at my station.
I carried a wide variety of fuels: LOX, liquid hydrogen, nitrogen tetroxide, hydrazine, as well as monopropellants such as hydrogen peroxide and nitrous oxide, to name a few. They were stored in big tanks outside, and color-coded and labeled, so the robots wouldn’t accidentally put the wrong fuel in the wrong tanks. Beek ordered me to refuel his LOX and liquid hydrogen tanks, and, since they were just about bone dry, it would mean a nice sum of money when I finished. I set the robots to work immediately.
Each tank had its own tank truck, also color coded and marked, with a robot driver. I went for the LOX first, and guided the truck to the Gray Goose from my office. My office is dark so I can concentrate on the controls and the window overlooking the landing pads. Electronics are fine, but there’s nothing like seeing exactly what’s going on in the big picture. I have vidscreens, but I like my eight-foot-wide window.
The truck had just arrived at the Goose when I sensed I wasn’t alone. I guess I was concentrating so intently on the refueling operation that I didn’t hear the door slide open, nor the footsteps approaching me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure approach the far end of the window and lean over the instrument panels just below it. There was no mistaking who it was. The light from Harvey, one of Silver Valley’s other moons, was beaming through the window, illuminating her juvenile features and her great white breasts bulging through the décolletage of her outfit.
‘Hi,’ she said without turning toward me. She seemed fascinated by what was going on outside.
‘You’re Mathilda Moon. Do they call you Mattie?’
‘Moonie.’
I was a little alarmed to see her, because it meant the others were ready for their meals— but then I realized they hadn’t had time to get through their cleanups yet. I guessed Moonie had taken a shower on board the ship. Most people prefer to wait until they reach port, where the facilities are better, but maybe she had been in a hurry to get ready to accompany her mistress.
‘You seem fascinated by the refueling process,’ I remarked, because she wouldn’t take her eyes off the window.
‘Umm.’
“What about it interests you so much?’
‘It’s so— sensuous.’
Okay, so maybe I’d been doing this too long. I could describe the mechanics of refueling ships in many ways, but “sensuous” would not have been one of them.
‘What, in blue blazes, is sensuous about loading fuel?’
‘If you can leave your controls for a second and come over here, I’ll show you.’
Right at that point, I was free to move. The robot had parked the truck and was about to start a process it had done hundreds of times before. So I went over and stood behind her so she could explain her idea to me. Besides, from my vantage point I could also enjoy the sight of her lovely, rounded bottom pressing against the high-cut waist of her shorts, without her noticing my attention. That is, I thought she wouldn’t notice.
‘Please look at where I’m pointing. You can check out my bottom later,’ she said.
I immediately looked up and saw my reflection in the window— the same reflection she had seen. She tapped on the Plastek and said: ‘Did you ever notice how ships are always women, no matter what their names are? A Captain might name his ship Billy Bob and his Bloody Marauders, but he’ll always say: “She’s the finest vessel in the fleet.”’
I had to admit that was true.
‘It’s because ships are loaded with fuel,’ she continued in a low, sultry whisper, ‘and watch how they’re loaded. Someone shoves a nozzle from a hose into her access port and begins pumping away. There, look! He’s putting the nozzle into her now. He’ll start up the pump any second, and then it will go chug… chug…chug.’
I suppose what I did next was really improper, but her meaning was obvious and my plunger was much too close to her access port. In a zip it was out and pointing straight ahead, just like the nozzle of the fuel hose.
‘Are you going to fuel me?’ she asked coyly, as she felt my knob rubbing the cleavage of her butt.
‘Is there a problem?’ I asked, just to be sure we were both on the same wavelength.
‘Yes,’ she said sternly— and I could feel my hose losing its turgidity. Seduction was one thing, and I had convinced myself she was all in favor a good screwing, something I had not done in too long a while, and perhaps it was just as long a while for her— but if she was only teasing, then it had to stop now.
‘There is a problem,’ she continued. ’It’s that little strip of cloth covering my crotch. Why don’t you pull it?’
She was a colossal tease.
I slid two fingers underneath the ‘little strip of cloth’ and pulled it — and it promptly snapped loose, opening her shorts. As my pulse thundered in my ears, I dragged her shorts up above her slim waist, exposing the magnificent, rounded globes of her butt, and probed her love well with two fingers. She was wet and ready.
I drove my plunger into her up to the hilt, her warm buttocks quivering as my belly smacked against them. It felt indescribably wonderful to be inside a woman again. Sparks went off in my head and traveled down to my legs, making them wobbly—yet, somehow, it felt right, as if this thrill was natural and predestined. Even the tiny squeal she made when I pushed myself into her sounded so familiar. I was back in action, and it was incredible.
I lingered for a while because I just wanted to enjoy the sensation of being inside her warm body, but I knew I would have to start my thrusts, or else the energy building up within us would explode, wasting this glorious opportunity— or, worse, just fade away. I pulled out, up to the ridge of the head, and pushed in again. Another squeal, right on cue. I started pumping, and each thrust evoked another squeal. After a time I leaned forward, reaching below her arms to lift her mammoth mams out of her décolletage and began squeezing and toying with them, batting them around, gently, like warm balloons.
‘My tits are huge, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘I wish my creator hadn’t made them so large, but what choice did she have?’
It seemed there was something odd in what she said, but my attention was so occupied with screwing her that I wasn’t able to think. I was just enjoying myself— a lot more than I had any right to.
I couldn’t stop myself. I was hammering into her with frantic speed, while her vast white breasts lurched and flailed wildly over the control panel.
As I was reaching my climax I groaned, knowing I must pull out now, since I wasn’t wearing a sheath and I didn’t know if she wanted my seed— but she must have sensed my uncertainty.
‘Do it,’ she whispered. “Cum in me!’
Glorious! Explosive! Fireworks erupted in my head and my legs felt so weak I thought they would collapse as I lobbed round after round into her until my cannon was empty.
I wanted to stay inside her, but my withered gun contracted and slid out.
As I staggered back, she looked over her shoulder at me with an impish grin, turned, then hopped up and sat on the edge of the desk, swinging her heels like a happy schoolgirl and smiling at me. Her huge, pink-tipped breasts stood proudly bare above her pushed-down top, her shorts were still bunched up around her waist and her curly black delta was fully exposed, her plump cleft dripping with my milky sperm.
“It has been a long time for you, hasn’t it?’ She said brightly.
I felt defensive— yes, it had been a long time, a damnably long time, so long I was ashamed to admit it. I had been on such a hair-trigger that I fired off before this beautiful girl was ready, and now she’d never give me a second chance…
‘Want to go again, after you’ve recharged?’ she smiled.
I gaped at her, thunderstruck. Empty years on this damned lonely rock, and now the Goddess smiles on me twice in the same hour?
‘Why— why did you choose me?’ I stuttered.
Her lovely round face grew more serious. “You needed me,’ she said simply.
I was puzzling over this inhumanly honest reply when my eye fell on the wide window— and outside there was chaos. While we two had been thrashing around over the control panel, her huge, swinging globes must have brushed against a switch. The nozzle of the fuel hose had been pulled loose from the ship’s LOX tank and was flailing about, spurting great white fountains of LOX snow into the black sky, like a huge serpentine penis ejaculating into the womb of the universe. I dove for the controls, shut off the flow and directed the robot to replace the nozzle in the refueling port.
Behind me, Moonie giggled and said, ‘I guess there were two climaxes at the same time, one inside and one out.’
The double meaning only struck me after a second.
I leaned against the edge of the desk, panting, then mumbled,
‘I’d better take a rain check on that second round. I should get over to the café and tend to my customers. They’ll be hungry.’
She merely smiled. I became aware of a warm sensation on my limp penis. Looking down, I saw that she had taken it in her soft white hand, and was gently squeezing and massaging it with her plump fingers. The sight brought a sudden dizzy surge of warmth to the base of my belly. I sucked in a harsh breath. She calmly placed her other hand over my penis, rubbed it gently between her warm palms, then stroked the red head with her fingertips. My shaft twitched, filled slowly and began pulsing erect.
Moonie released me, leaned her hands on the desk edge and smiled quizzically at me. I tried to keep my eyes on her face, not on her plump, dripping delta or her huge milky bosom. Gods, she was young enough to be my daughter…
“Really, I’ve got to—‘ I croaked.
She pursed her lips reprovingly, then raised her heels and rested them on the edge of the desk, knees spread wide, so that her plump curly mountain of love jutted out invitingly.
‘I’ve—‘ I groaned.
She arched one dark eyebrow, slid her hands backward behind her, leaning back so that her warm pussy stood out more boldly, gaping pinkly, and her great warm breasts sagged a little to each side. My prick was rigid and throbbing.
The hell with the customers—let them rustle their own grub.
I lunged forward, swept my arms around her and kissed her passionately.
She seemed a little surprised at that, but responded with delight, her soft lips quivering under mine, her little tongue peeping timidly between them. It had been too damn long! I was starving to hold a woman again. I covered her pretty face with hot kisses, nuzzled behind her delicate ears as she shivered and gasped, ran a chain of kisses over her round chin and down her slim, warm throat as she rolled her head luxuriously. I scooped up one of her huge breasts, rubbed my face in the warm quivering softness of it, groaning with pleasure. I sucked the broad, soft nipple into my mouth, teasing it with my tongue, rubbing it with my teeth, and felt it turning stiff and rough with her excitement as she cooed and writhed slowly in my arms.
One of her soft hands crept down and opened the closure of my coveralls. I shrugged impatiently out of the confining cloth, then lifted her enough to wrench her shorts off, dragged the top off over her flushed breasts, and ground our naked bodies together with a groan of ecstasy. Time was slowing to a stop as I drew her to the edge of the desk, lifted her heels once again to spread her knees. She leaned back, her eyes closed, a soft flush covering her face and making her great breasts glow like rosy moons, her pouting, open cleft shining with her love-fluid.
Now I was in control. My first orgasm had taken the desperate edge off my lust, and I intended to give this wonderful girl whatever pleasure I could.
Gripping my rigid prick with one hand, I rubbed the throbbing tip up and down the pink groove in her curly delta, stroking her clitoris and its excited little nubbin. She moaned and wiggled impatiently, but I continued to slowly work her into a frenzy with strokes, kisses and squeezes. When her hands flew up and clenched impatiently on my shoulders, I finally placed my tip against her hot, soaking grotto and—pushed slowly in.
Her soft legs clamped around my waist, and her broad hips began rocking with the primitive, instinctive rhythm from beyond time. Her hot, wet softness cradled and gently squeezed my thrusting shaft. We fucked slowly, luxuriously, pausing to kiss deeply, look into each other’s eyes, then resuming, glorying in the humid magic of our shared flesh. Gradually our motions grew faster, more urgent. Then I was pounding into her furiously, and her head rolled back as quivering yelps were forced from her, then a high-pitched cry of ecstasy. I pressed on through two more of her orgasms, then released my own self-control and spurted into her with a groan.
We clung together, panting and sweating, as the universe slowly spun to a stop around us and my softening prick slid out of her warm body.
I got towels from the little work shower and we dried each other carefully, then began to dress.
As I was starting to put my spent cannon away, she knelt down and offered to do it for me. Taking my numb and flaccid member in her hand, She licked off the cum still coating it.
‘Ah— It’s useless, girl,’ I said. ‘I’m numb. Completely drained.’ She rolled her eyes ironically, as if to say, ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ and sucked my limp willy into her mouth, and— and— I decided the customers would just have to wait a little longer for their meal. Her movements were gentle and even, her tongue knowing, and those pouty lips were moist and soft. Astonishingly, I felt a return of sensation, then a last spurt of my sperm jetting into her warm mouth.
She tucked me safe inside and closed my coveralls, then stood up, smiling happily, and wiped her lips with a towel. She hugged me tightly, chirping, “That was wonderful! Oh— and by the way, what’s your name?’
I laughed aloud at the incongruity of the question. ‘People call me ‘Captain,’ Moonie,’ I said, returning her hug and patting her wonderfully rounded butt. ‘I was a starship Captain until a few years ago.’
‘Okay, then, Captain— Thanks for a most enjoyable evening!’ She caroled, and skipped out of the office.
They kept me busy at the café. The men ordered steaks and onions with Brussels sprouts, my specialty, while Ophius imperiously ordered some exotic vegetables— of which I only had one type, but I added some of the local stuff, very similar. When I asked Moonie for her order, she smiled into my eyes and said she had already eaten.
I thought I caught the joke— then.
When the group had finished their meal, my robots picked up the dishes and I handed the check to Captain Beek. I included the bill for the refueling, and pointed it out to him.
‘I’ll pay you for the fuel on the way back,’ he said.
‘Hold on, Beek!’ I said angrily. This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to pull that old con on me. With the fuel already in the ship I was at his mercy, since pumping it back out was a tedious process, and he knew it. I could have asked for the money up front, but that wasn’t the way it was done. ‘I may never see you again,’ I said firmly. ‘I need my money now, before you lift off.’
I glanced over at his two crewmen and they were rolling their eyes, as if he had pulled this stunt before and they didn’t want to be obliged to back him up.
‘Captain Beek,’ Ophius said frostily, ‘I have given you plenty of money. Pay the man.’
‘I will, but on the way back.’
He rose to his feet and I confronted him, blocking his exit to the transit car ramp. Beek had no idea how much experience I’d had with bad men. He probably thought I was just some hick jelly farmer who had decided there was more money in sloshing fuel than in raising jellies, but I was a war veteran and during my stint as a starship Captain I had run into a lot of baddies of all races and planets. I knew how to tell when one was going to back down from a challenge, and when one was planning to do me in. I could see it in their eyes— no matter how many they had or where they were located. Beek was planning to do me in.
He gave me that big friendly smirk first, as if I should have known he was only kidding and the only reason he was reaching under his jacket was to get his wallet and pay me—but I knew he was actually going for his blaster. As he pulled it out, I grabbed his wrist with both hands and turned it toward his stomach.
What happened next was one of those blurs that flash across your mind when the adrenalin is pumping and things seem to happen in slow motion. Either he pulled the trigger, thinking the gun was still pointed at me, or the sudden twisting of his hand caused his finger to yank the trigger. Whatever the reason, the gun went off at point-blank range and burned one hell of a hole through him. He must have had it set on full charge. He dropped to the floor and died instantly.
The janitor robs floated over and began to clean up the mess. I had to shoo them away because I knew the Rangers, the only law in deep space, would prefer to have an untouched crime scene. The only touching I did was to check to be absolutely certain he was dead. He was.
I turned to the others and said, ‘You all saw what happened. I had no choice.’
‘He was a rotten dude,’ Day said. ‘We’ll back you up.’
But Ophius was furious. ‘Rotten or not, he was the Captain of the ship, and now we don’t have one!’
I pulled out my vidphone, but I didn’t dial the Rangers yet.
‘What are you going to tell the Rangers when they get here?’ I asked Ophius.
‘I’m going to tell them you murdered him and everyone will say the same thing, because I am paying them their salaries,’ she said flatly.
‘Why would you say that? It’s a lie.’
She leaned toward me so there would be no misunderstanding of her words. She had a feral accent and her facial expressions were slightly different from a full-human’s, and she wanted to be sure I was in total rapport with her.
‘This was a mission we were undertaking,’ she hissed, ‘a vital mission for the people of my planet. There are aspects of the mission that are not exactly within the law, and that is why I traveled this far to find exactly the right sort of man to Captain the mission. Beek was the right man, and now he is dead.’
‘There are lots of Beeks out there,’ I said wearily. ‘I can direct you to places where you will have your pick of starship Captains who have little or no regard for the law.’
‘I’m sure you can, but I don’t have the time.’
‘So, you’re going to throw me to the Bulls because I’ve delayed your mission?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled coldly. ‘But I have a proposition for you. If you accept it, then I will direct everyone to be truthful and you will be exonerated.’
I glanced at Moonie, but I could read nothing on her face—not concern or uncertainty or even disgust at Ophius’ selfish malice. Surely, Moonie and I had made some sort of emotional connection up there in my office. She could at least have offered to support me.
‘What’s the proposition?’ I growled.
Ophius sat up. She was no longer concerned with maintaining total rapport. As far as she was concerned, I had already agreed.
‘I have been informed that you are a former starship Captain,’ she said. “I wish for you to take Beek’s position on the ship. I’m offering you a Captaincy. You should be flattered.’
The only place she could have gotten that information was from Moonie. Besides not defending me, she had also betrayed my confidences.
‘Unlike Beek, I do have moral principles,’ I said.
‘Really?’ Ophius drawled. ‘And how are your survival instincts? By the time I finish talking to the Rangers, the only decision left for you to make will be where to have your ashes scattered.’
I didn’t want to work for this woman. She had turned the bottle around so I could read the label, and it was pure poison. I knew the two crewmen had nothing against me, but they would go where the money was. My only recourse was to break through the ice covering Moonie. Why hadn’t she said anything? It was as if she had left herself out of the entire drama. She appeared to not even understand what was happening. Whether she was a paid servant or even a slave of some sort, I was sure she would side with me if I could only reach her. But I had lingered too long on her, and it made Ophius suspicious.
‘Why are you staring at Moonie?’
Ophius glanced back and forth between us before she understood.
‘Oh! Did the two of you have a… tryst? I was wondering what you were doing in your office for so long. Is she good?’
There went my last hope.
‘I asked you if she was good,’ Ophius purred. ‘Being a Royal Priestess, I don’t partake of her sexual skills, but I was told she’s very dexterous. Is it true?’
She had won, but she couldn’t resist taunting me.
‘Are you a shy man, Captain? Or are you so noble you don’t want to embarrass the lady with male bragging? Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to embarrass you. You see, she’s very important to this mission, and I don’t want the two of you to become too… attached… to one another. Without her, we would never be able to succeed, and that is why I purchased her. Please note I didn’t say I purchased her abilities, I said I purchased her. She’s a robot.’
2 THE EYES OF HUB
CAPTAIN’S STORY
The Gray Goose was in deep space before I allowed myself to talk with Moonie.
The Rangers had come and gone, and, true to her word, Ophius and the others backed up my story of self-defense. On planetside there would have been a more thorough examination, but in deep space the law is simple. Either you are guilty or innocent, which meant you would soon be either dead or alive. Since I had worked with both of the Rangers who came to make the investigation, I wasn’t concerned this event might rise up later to bite me in the ass. The case was closed. But I had given my word to Ophius that I would be her new Captain, and she knew I would keep my word.
Therefore I was in the cramped control room of the Goose, keeping an eye on the softly glowing dials and 3D models on the EICAS, Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System, and the MFD, Multi-Functional Display. The walls were so covered with instruments, support members, piping, wiring and various controls that there was room for only one other chair in the room— and you didn’t just walk in and sit down, no, you had to crawl over everything to get into it.
The hatch behind me opened and I thought it was Ophius, announcing the time for the big meeting where she was going to reveal the details of this mysterious mission we were undertaking— but instead it turned out to be Moonie.
All she said was ‘Hi,’ and then she began to crawl into the co-pilot’s chair. Watching her struggle with that big torso of hers, twisting her voluptuous body over various obstacles until she could wiggle her way into that cushioned chair, gave me a sadistic delight. There was an easier way for her to climb into the chair than her trial-and-error method, but I wasn’t going to tell her. I wasn’t happy to see her, and she knew it.
‘Hi,’ she repeated, but I pretended to watch the instruments.
‘Are you angry with me because I’m a gynoid?’
When I refused to answer, she thought I wasn’t familiar with the term.
‘A gynoid. A robot shaped like a wo—‘
‘I know what a gynoid is,’ I snapped. ‘I’m not angry with you because you’re a gynoid. I’m pissed because you didn’t tell me what you were before we—’
‘Most men would rather not know.’
‘I want to know. Spak! Here I thought I was finally making it with a real flesh-and-blood woman, and instead you were only a machine! If I needed a whack-off device, I would have bought something on the Grid.’
‘So the problem is, I’m not flesh and blood?’ ‘That’s it.’
‘Do you think about the flesh and blood part of a woman when you’re doing the bump and grind with her?’ she asked. ‘I mean her organs, her heart and lungs and intestines?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then what’s the difference? I look like a woman, I act like a woman and I certainly screw like a woman. Why go any farther than that?’
She was making sense. I had to admit she was. Who really pictures a woman’s internal organs when you’re rocking and rolling in bed? However, I still had one more round to volley.
‘Do you think like a woman?’
‘I don’t really think at all, you know that. I’m just programmed with automatic responses, the same as the mechanical voice on a communicator. That’s why I didn’t respond to the shooting. I didn’t have a response for that particular situation. But I did end up being your best witness. I gave the Rangers the facts of the incident just as it happened. No embellishment.’
‘But you have no self-awareness, no feelings.’
‘None,’ she agreed.
It was difficult for me to accept the fact I was having a conversation with a machine. Sure, I had had contact with robots, androids and even gynoids, but most were clearly labeled, or, if not, were programmed to introduce themselves as ‘roids to avoid confusion. For some reason, Ophius had someone remove the introduction command from Moonie’s electronic brain. That was illegal— but, as Ophius had indicated, some of what we were planning to do was less than legal. In spite of my promise to Ophius, I had my limits. I wouldn’t kill anyone for her, that was certain.
‘But you have a personality,’ I persisted. ‘I liked your personality. You even came in here to try to appease me, regain my friendship.’
‘It’s what my creator would have done. I have my creator’s personality. I even look like her.’
‘Who’s your creator?’
‘Her name is Roxanne Moon. She works for MAPS, the Mettlemen Artificial People Systems, on New Saturn. Why did you want to know?’
‘I thought I might look her up. As I said, I like your looks and personality.’
‘It’s just my robot insides which turn you off, to use a mechanical analogy.’
She made me laugh. I admit the laugh was on the inside, but a smile did sneak out on my face, and she caught it.
‘You know I’m available to you anytime you want me, while Ophius, a flesh-and-blood woman, is not. The choice is yours.’
I decided I liked her. Robot or woman, she was very likable. She pulled back her blouse top, and her gigantic boobies popped out like two marker buoys breaking the ocean’s surface. She giggled.
She had me.
I lunged at her boobs with both hands, and crawled on top of her. I think she believed I was just going to play with her tits, since I might not yet be ready to accept her as a full-service sex partner, but my excitement had been building as we talked and when I dragged open her shorts and shoved my boat into her canal, her eyes popped open in surprise. She was going to say something, but I placed two fingers across her lips and started to pump her.
Screwing in reclining seat was a better way, so I could enjoy her full range of expressions as I speeded up or slowed down. Her face ran the gamut from tight-faced pain to rolling-eyed spasms of pleasure. She was a real woman, as good as they get, and she even reached down to her twat and rubbed her little boatman to increase her toot. I was falling in love with her, and though I knew it wouldn’t… couldn’t… last, I was lost in the joy of jamming my member into her tiny organ grinder. I thought I thrust in and out at least a hundred times, but I wasn’t counting. Her milk-bags were bouncing every which way. Scooping them up, I shoved my face between them and burbled, and heard her giggle again. I loved that giggle.
And when it was time to get out of the gate, I remembered it wasn’t necessary, and fired my entire load into her. Then we started over, again and again, until we were both as soaked as fresh-caught fish.
After the fifth time she asked, ’Are we done? Because I have something important to tell you?’
‘I guess we’re done, for now,’ I wheezed.
‘Good, because I couldn’t take any more, and neither can Ophius.’
‘Ophius? What does she have to do with us?’
‘She sent me in here to bring you to that special meeting. We’re fifteen minutes late right now.’
When we finally arrived at the crew quarters, the largest room on the ship, Ophius was seated at a fold-out table and the others were on their pull-down bunk beds. She looked at our drenched bodies as we entered and hissed, ’Oh, Great Hub, they’ve made up! We’ll never get any work out of either of them again.’
We ignored her sarcastic greeting and sat on bunks. We all faced the center area, where the Queen was in court.
‘Since we’re all finally here— and remind me never to send Moonie to fetch the Captain again— I will begin.
‘As most of you know, I am from the planet Ku, where I preside as the Royal Priestess to the province of Fen. When I was seventeen, my father sent me to the University of Florida, on Earth, for a six-year course of study, which is why I am more advanced than the rest of my people. I returned to pass on my knowledge, only to discover my people had fallen on desperate times— famine, disease, raids by renegade tribes. My own family had been ravaged by Hz’s Syndrome, a disease causing vine-like growths in the digestive tract. It is a long and painful illness, which strangles the intestines and always ends in death. I lost three of my siblings to it. My beloved little sister Nen…’
She stopped briefly, her voice cracking, and it seemed she would be unable to go on, but she regained her composure and continued.
‘From 50,000 people, we are now down to at most 18,000, and struggling to survive. And the cause of all the suffering was the loss of the Eyes of Hub.’
Again she paused, as if she expected us to know what the Eyes of Hub were, but of course we couldn’t know unless she told us, so I concluded this pause was for dramatic effect. It was. She couldn’t allow the tragedy to speak for itself. Every unhappy event had to be emphasized with gestures and pauses. Thankfully, this lull was short.
‘In the center of our village is the giant statue of Hub. This 10-meter-tall effigy is the embodiment of our entire planet, and he watches over us through two diamond eyes— or at least he did, until two Earthling adventurers stole them. Those eyes were the eyes of the planet itself. Ku is now blind, and in his fury he has unleashed those lethal afflictions upon my people.’
I felt it was time for me to interject an opinion. It was obvious she wanted us to get the stolen eyes back, and before I risked my life to appease some alien god, I had to be committed to what we were doing.
‘You’re now an educated woman, Ophius,’ I said. ‘Do you actually believe the loss of a statue’s baubles can bring down the Horsemen of the Apocalypse?‘
‘As an educated woman, I cannot deny what I have myself observed,’ she said harshly. ‘The eyes are gone, and disaster strikes my people. Is it possible that one event has nothing to do with the other? Perhaps, but my people and my instincts say otherwise— and I am a servant of my people. Yet, can you deny that the return of the eyes to their proper place will restore hope to my people and give them the courage to resist the plagues killing their friends and children?’
I couldn’t argue with her logic. Besides the possibility of helping restore a planet’s health, I was excited by the idea of adventure. I had been away from my old spacer companions far too long.
Day spoke up. ‘Who stole the eyes, and where do you think they are right now?’
‘The eyes were stolen by the infamous Two Simons, Simon Crawley and Simon Le Greed– not their real names, of course— of the starship Black Light.’
Day blew a whistle of distress though his lips. The reputation of the Two Simons was considerable. Even the Rangers were reluctant to go up against that pair.
‘And do you know where the stones are located?’ Day repeated the second part of his question.
‘They are in a security box in the Vault of Mammon.’
Now it was my turn for dismay. ‘The Vault of Mammon! The vault is in an artificial satellite of the planet, it’s sheathed in three nested globes of titanium armor, and guarded by who knows how many layers of automated security systems and spacecraft. No one has ever robbed the vault; in fact, I don’t think anyone has even made the attempt!’
Without answering my comment, Ophius removed a holograph projector from within her robes and aimed it at the air above her table. When she flicked the switch, a 3-D schematic of the vault appeared. The three shells revolved around a central sphere, the core of the vault.
‘Opening the vault itself will be fairly easy,’ she lectured. ‘It’s on an alternating six-digit laser box, and I have the device which can defeat it.
‘Getting to the vault will be the problem. We cannot stow away on an escort car. The security is too tight for that, and we cannot fly our own ship to the vault for the same reason. The vault is a ball surrounded by three shells, and each shell is filled with a deadly gas. The first gas is an acid, and the last gas is radioactive. Nobody knows what the middle gas is.
‘Sensors will detect any unauthorized living organism approaching the vault, and alert robotic guards. Remote control signals would be deflected by the titanium shells. The only thing able to get though to the vault would be a self-directed robot.’
I immediately turned to Moonie. So this was her function on the mission— to get to the vault.
‘I warned you not to become too attached to one another,’ Ophius said coldly. ‘Moonie is not going to survive the mission. If she is not destroyed outright by the acid, the radioactivity will turn her into a deadly pariah. She must be left behind.’
‘No!’ I yelled. ‘I won’t allow you to sacrifice her.’
Ophius was at ease with my outburst, as if she had expected it. She flicked off the holograph and spoke calmly.
‘If I purchased a remote-controlled robot, something shaped like a ship with extensor arms, would you be all right with that?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘You wouldn’t copulate with a small robot craft, would you?’
I was beginning to fume quietly, especially when I heard snickering from Day and Dooley.
‘Of course not!’
‘I’m relieved to hear it— but Moonie is exactly that and more. She can operate and make decisions according to her environment or situation.’
Dooley was laughing hysterically now, although he tried to muffle his laughter with a pillow from his bunk. I stood up with the intention of jamming the pillow down his throat when Day broke in with, ‘How are we going to sneak her into the vault?’
‘There is a meteor shower scheduled in a few days. It will pass close to the vault, and blanket the air above Mammon. Moonie will be clinging to one of those meteoroids.’
Day and Dooley seemed fine with the plan and said they were in, but I didn’t like it and told her so. She didn’t care.
‘You are only our pilot. Just get us to Mammon. The crewmen and Moonie will take care of the rest.’
As I sat in the pilot’s chair, back in that tight little control room, I kept thinking about the roller-coaster ride my mind had been taking. First I think Moonie is a woman, then Ophius tells me she’s a machine, and then Moonie convinces me she’s a woman, and now I’m back to just thinking of her as a machine. I knew she was a machine, with no true feelings for me. Anything close to a relationship was all coming from me and not her– but damn, I couldn’t get away from how cute she was and maybe, with all of her decision-making capabilities, she was actually developing a mind.
There is that school of cybernetics which toys with the concept of the soul of the machine, and then there is the activist group MHM, Machines Have Minds, who protest the slave labor we force ‘roids to perform. For some reason they had no problem placing robots in harm’s way, but not the ‘roids– and that was because ‘roids look like us.
Even in that ancient play, “R.U.R.,” written by a man named Capek long before there were any true robots or ‘roids, the robots in the play became so close to us the heroine couldn’t tell the difference. As far back as 1921, people were already concerned about creating machines that were enough like us that they could actually think. Was I really imagining a sense of awareness in Moonie, or did she have one? If she did, sending her on a suicide mission was murder.
As if on cue, Moonie came into the compartment and crawled into the seat next to me.
‘Ophius sent you, didn’t she?’
‘She was afraid you were becoming too fond of me, and it would compromise your ability to carry out the mission.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t think. I respond. I don’t have any private thoughts roaming around in my head, the way you humans do. I have no feelings and do not consider my own existence.’
‘For a machine, you put forth a very convincing argument.’
‘It’s all Roxanne’s thoughts, not mine. She knew I would run into this problem, so she programmed my answers to any predictable questions. If you ever ask me something which Roxanne could not have foreseen, then I will say, “I do not understand,” just like the voice on the communicators.’
I don’t know what made me say what I said next; I suppose it was because she was so cute, just like a doll, a toy sex doll, but a doll. Those eyes, so big and round, like the eyes of a fawn; those majestic breasts, as comforting as pillows; that figure like a doll, a very shapely doll. Her voice was sweet, like the voice of that shy little girl who would peek at you from over her books in high school. Even the way she wore her hair in bangs and twin ponytails. How could I have stopped myself?
‘I’m in love with you, Moonie.’
‘I do not understand.’
Then, suddenly, she smiled. ‘Just kidding. Roxie was prepared for that, as well.’
Ah, yes, I had forgotten about her damned, programmed, robot sense of humor.
3 A CLUTCH OF THIEVES
CAPTAIN’S STORY
We touched down on Mammon just as its sun was setting and casting those long shadows I loved. Long, purple shadows that told me all the toil of the day was ending and we could go home to our families. There was a time I used to do exactly that.
Ophius told us to break into small groups, have supper and meet up in two hours at the Café Terra for coffee and discussion. I asked Moonie to join me for supper, but she reminded me she didn’t eat— and besides, she and Ophius had a great deal to discuss. The time was getting close for her suicide mission, and she had to stay as far away from me as possible. Whatever ties we had formed had to be severed.
The planet of Mammon was a human planet. It had been established by a corporate expedition from Earth, and so most of the buildings were reminiscent of Earth architecture—not that there weren’t alien neighborhoods. I was passing through one now, where the corners weren’t at right angles and the streets narrowed and widened in ways no human designer would ever construct. I guessed the neighborhood was Antari Mas, but my conclusion was influenced by some of the people I saw.
They were short and slow moving, with wide bodies, typical of a heavy-gravity planet. Their street lamps were also unusual, cone-shaped, and although a muted mauve in color they gave off a greenish light.
There was a rippling breeze whipping through the streets. A pert red beret came sailing though the air. I caught it and waited for its owner to come chasing after it. She came up behind me. She had been chasing the errant cap through twisting streets and changing winds, and was breathing hard. On her, it looked good.
She wasn’t from Antari Mas, or even Mammon, but from Earth— Iowa, I found out later. Her hair was a soft amber and she had a chipmunk smile— very round-cheeked, with a hint of an overbite. I guess you could have described her as cute because she was tiny and slender, in her early thirties, I guessed.
‘Melanie Barnard,’ she introduced herself, and shook my hand. ‘Thanks for catching my hat. I just bought it and I paid too much for it, or I wouldn’t have bothered to chase it. Are you looking for a place to eat?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
‘You had that hungry, lost-stranger look, and it is suppertime. If you like Antari food, there’s a lovely outdoor bistro just around the corner— if you can call those turns corners. They even serve delicious Greek food, if you want that. I think they believe Greek food is typical Earthling cuisine, because there was a horde of Greek sailors who landed here when they were first opening up. Anyway, you just walk down this street and keep to your right, and there it is.’
‘Will you join me?’
‘I was hoping you would ask, because all I have at my apartment is leftovers from an office party I went to two nights ago, and cat food.’
She covered her mouth to giggle, and explained, ‘The cat food is for my cat, Minerva.’
‘She won’t mind if you show up late?’
‘Oh, she’ll mind, but she’ll get over it. Come on, let’s go. I’m famished.’
The bistro, with an unpronounceable name, turned out to be just as charming as Melanie had promised. We were given the choice of eating indoors or on the terrace and Melanie—Mel—begged me to choose the terrace, because all the moons were out tonight.
After we were seated by a low trellis with a leafy vine woven through it, Mel looked at the sky, her face charmingly lit by the light of the five moons of Mammon. She named them all for me, finishing with the big one in the Southwestern region of the night sky.
‘That’s the vault, Plutus. I work for the company.’
‘Really?’ This was interesting but not an unusual coincidence, since most of the people in Mammon City worked for the Richmond Corporation in some capacity or another. ‘What do you do for them?’
‘I monitor the vault from the Richmond Building in Mammon City. I’m not the only monitor, of course, or else the vault would be up there right now with no one to watch after it, but I’m one of the people… when it’s my shift… but you must have figured… anyway, what do you do? I know you must be a tourist, or maybe you’re here on business.’
‘Business. I’m a starship Captain.’
Her face lit up and she asked, ‘are you the Captain of the Queen Morgana? It’s such a beautiful ship. Could you give me a tour sometime?’
I was familiar with the Queen Morgana. With five decks, swimming pools and shopping malls, it could carry 300 passengers. No wonder Mel was so thrilled.
‘My ship is the Gray Goose, and it’s about the size of one of the Morgana’s escape pods,’ I said dryly.
‘Oh!’ she said with a disappointed look on her face, and then quickly added, ‘I didn’t mean it was terrible that your ship is so small, I was embarrassed for expecting so much from you. I put you in an awkward position and I… look, if you want to leave, I would understand.’
I had to reassure her and I had to do it quickly, because I doubted Ophius would be understanding if I was late again for another of her meetings. But Mel needed reassuring. She was so certain that she had messed up our date; instead, she had actually charmed me into liking her, liking her a lot. Besides, I needed to get Moonie out of my system, and Mel was enough unlike Moonie to be the one to do it.
‘Your new beret really frames your face very well,” I said. ‘It was a good investment— in fact it was a good investment in more ways than one.’
‘How do you mean that?’
‘It brought us together.’
A warmth seemed to flow over her body as she relaxed and reached across the table for my hand. I caught a glimpse of the waiter hovering nearby, waiting impatiently because we had not even looked at our menus yet.
‘Listen, I think it might be a good idea for us to leave.’
She looked puzzled and sad.
‘I’ve suddenly gotten a craving for leftovers,’ I explained. ‘Do you know where I can get some?’
‘I have some in my apart—’
Her face flushed when she caught my meaning.
‘You work fast. Do you have to take off soon?’
‘I have to meet with my client in about an hour and a half. Please forgive my brashness, but I think there was something we both wanted to do, eventually, and I didn’t want to lose the opportunity.’
Now it was my turn to feel uncomfortable. Obligations had forced my hand too soon, and on second thought I felt I probably should have waited. We could have eaten a pleasant meal and maybe taken a stroll through the gardens along the canal. I could have made a date with her for the next day and met with her, and perhaps the second date would have led to an evening of romantic pleasure. I was certain I had ruined any chance for a relationship with her, however brief.
Instead, she released my hand and said, ‘you’d better call the waiter over and pay the check. We haven’t much time.’
Her small apartment was only a short distance away, and overlooked the Richmond Building. As we stepped through the door and she reached for the light plate, I told her not to bother.
I undressed in her tiny bedroom, while she went into the bathroom, and when she reappeared she had taken off her clothes, but she had wrapped herself in a sheet. I thought it was to enhance the mystery of the moment, but it was actually because she was shy. I doubt if she had many lovers. I think she was just swept up by the excitement of our chance encounter, and had turned off her inhibitions for this one night. I’m sure she didn’t let her guard down very often, but she was looking for an adventure, and decided this was it.
Reaching up from the bed where I lay, I tugged at the sheet covering her body— and met resistance. Perhaps she was afraid I wouldn’t like her figure, or was simply having second thoughts, so I let go. The gate had gone up— but every gate has its key, and the key to this one, I thought, was patience. So I simply smiled reassuringly, slid under the bedclothes, scooted over on the bed and patted the edge of the mattress invitingly. After a moment’s hesitation, she sat down primly, clutching the sheet at her waist and neck.
I had found a bottle of New France Bordeaux in the tiny kitchen/den, and put it on the bedside table with a couple of wineglasses. She took her glass timidly and held it nervously while I clicked the rims and said, ‘Here’s to crime…’ appropriate under the circumstances, I thought.
She gulped down half her wine immediately, but I didn’t force more on her.
‘How long since you left Earth?’ I asked.
“Three years,’ she said, and nothing more.
‘You like Mammon?’
‘No!’ she shook her head violently, and gulped more wine. It might take a while for her to open up. I refilled her glass, adding some to my own glass to reassure her, and persisted:
‘Why not?’