2: Where the Women Arrive

We all listened over Mahmoud’s shoulder at our communications station like a herd of schoolboys, then stumbled into our suits and rushed across the plateau where the stories-tall lander was already on the ground, dirt billowing around its volcanic landing jets and an array of sports field sized parachutes settling down around it. In practical terms our biggest acquisitions were a couple of big honkin’ land rovers the size of buses and an automated factory capable of pouring various metals into various molds. As far as we were concerned however the main event came in cold sleep tanks. After a few instructions from the carrier’s crew already breaking orbit, we set to the task at hand, rigging up platform trailers to haul our new companions into Habitat 1, then awkwardly circled the five long and sleek treasure chests lined up alongside the tent’s edge.

“So how do we do this? Who gets first peek?”

“We don’t mob them, certainly.” Huang said, glancing at Pascal for approval. “I only need two or three of you to help monitor vitals while they wake up. The rest of you can go about your day, and you will meet the ladies in the morning.”

In the end those of us with knowledge of biology stayed while the rest vacated the tent. It took hours for the cold sleep chambers to be ready to open to the air. I stared blankly at the simple identification panel of cryo tank serial #41693747. Sheila. American. 35 years old. No known allergies, vascular or digestive problems aside from lactose intolerance. Well, lucky her, I thought, the nearest cow’s a thousand light years away. I sat there doing my best Superman impression, trying to visualize the body through the cylinder. Then again, the damn things were supposed to be radiation-shielded, so even old Supes’ x-rays wouldn’t have much luck. I did a double-take when her EEG spiked, indicating she was shifting into normal sleep, suddenly blanking on the procedure.

“Just gradually raise the temperature to ambient as she warms up and start the glucose drip.” Huang said, passing by and patting me on the shoulder. I shook the cobwebs out of my head. Fat chance she’d fuck me if I wound up responsible for her waking up with organ damage! Another few minutes and finally, my hands trembling, I unsealed, unlatched and threw back the lid. She was breathtaking. Black, dark-skinned with wide, sensuous lips and medium-length hair which she’d straight-permed before getting frozen for her journey to the stars. An utterly ridiculous thing to have done, yet somehow endearingly feminine nonetheless. On her softly rising and falling chest rested two gloriously rounded mounds of tit, D-cups at the least, with wide, black areole and thick nipples. Her hips flared out in a perfect hourglass figure and when my eyes reached that neighbourhood my jaw dropped slightly. Her pubic mound was waxed bare, her clitoral hood and the top of her labia clearly visible between the cleft of her thighs. A large abstract, angular blue and rust-colored tattoo adorned her outer left thigh. No idea how long I was stuck admiring the spectacle, but a soft moan from her snapped my eyes up to hers just before they flew open. Brown, large and soft.

“Ggnnngh. Wherrr’m I?”

“You’re just waking up from cold sleep. Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong.” I said, dredging up my most professional and reassuring tone as my stiff cock twitched inside my pants.

“M I on an’thrrr ... another planet?”

“Heh, yes, you certainly are. Freya 2.”

“Dass da one. Fuck yeah ... made it.” She grimaced weakly and closed her eyes again. I brought up a blanket and draped it over her, sorry to lose sight of her charms but thinking she might appreciate the gesture, blankets being a luxury we’d lacked on our own arrival. Seeing she was doing fine I keyed up the rest of her glucose bag and started her final dose of stimulants. Pretty soon her consciousness returned.

“Where am I? Shit ... no ... did that one already. Umm, planet with a Viking name.”

“Freya 2.”

“That’s the one. Ugh ... shit I feel like shit. Feel like puking up my spine.”

“Yup, that’ll wear off in a bit ... Don’t worry, we all went through it and we’re still kicking. If you think the nausea’s fun, wait ‘til the shaking starts.”

“Y’ain’t really a doctor, are ya? Doctors ain’t supposed to talk like that.”

“Guilty. I’m just a guy who knows what glucose is so they’ve got me helping out. Docs’re over there.” I hooked my thumb to Huang and Pascal both talking over two other women. She made the effort to lift her head then dropped it back down.

“Yeah, those guys look like doctors.” She paused a bit, wincing and staring up at the ceiling as her tremors began.

“Hey. Hey, name’s Sheila. Yours?”

“Adam. Here. Bite this. Huang wants me to check on someone else.” I let her suffer through the defrosting shakes and moved to the tank just opened. Valeriya, Russian, 30. Healthy as a horse and about the same size. They breed ‘em tall over there. Her knees were actually slightly bent so she’d fit, which yielded a half-view of her crinkly shaved labia hanging below a thick but neatly trimmed landing strip of black pubic hair. The hair on her head was also trimmed short but stylish, dyed blonde, stopping just shy of making her look butch. I draped a blanket over her modest breasts just in time for her to open her eyes. They darted right and left before resting on my face.

“Blyat s’ka...”

“Err, sorry, I don’t speak any Russian.”

“Eh. English is good. I feel sick. We have arrived?”

“Yes. You’re on Freya 2.”

“Good. Anything wrong? Everyone healthy?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Good. I feel sick. I sleep until I feel better.”

“I’m sorry but they say you have to be awake for this part. We’ve already started giving you stimulants so you don’t have much of a choice anyway.”

“Suka.” She twisted her mouth in disapproval. “Fine. Anything else?”

“You’ll be shaking a lot. Here’s something to bite down on to keep your teeth from chattering.”

“Hmph. G’way naw” She turned her head to one side and closed her eyes, dismissing me.

I wandered around a while helping the doctors disconnect the intravenous tubes as the women regained their strength. They were all fine, none very talkative at first as they suffered through the after-effects of their journey. A small, lithe hand reached up to stop me at some point. Its owner, a short Asian woman with closely cropped hair, raised herself on one elbow, clutching her blanket to her chest. Her I.D. panel said Min, Chinese, 26.

“What is this place?”

“This? Where we are now?” She nodded. “We call it Habitat 1.”

“It look ... not solid.” She hesitated.

“It’s a tent. Mostly. Some solid framework.”

“A tent?” Her eyes widened. Her heart rate monitor pitter-pattered. “It will not lose aihr? Lose pessuhe?”

“No danger of that. The atmosphere here is a little thicker than back on Earth actually. We just need heating and extra oxygen, so we pump that in. We’re not in any danger.”

“You live in this? You come to this alien planet and you live in ... this tent?”

“Think of it as extreme camping.” I patted her hand, grinned at her and after wavering a bit she returned it and lay back down to rest some more.

A blonde figure suddenly rose from the nearest tank.

“You ‘ave windows on this thing?” She looked around eagerly, seemingly unconcerned that her blanket had fallen away exposing her large, firm breasts. “Give me a ‘and now. I want to see outside.”

I glanced at the two doctors, who just shrugged and nodded. Leaning on my arm, she levered herself heavily over the tube’s side and padded completely naked over to the nearest porthole.

“Shite. It’s real.” She suddenly suffered a fit of the giggles. I’d made a superhuman effort not to stare down at her body as we walked but now standing behind her as she pressed her face to the clear plastic I found it impossible not to admire her backside, flat but wide and adorned with a sizeable tramp stamp. She eyed what she could of the river valley outside.

“Looks like rain soon. Gawd. Came alla way from literally soddin’ England just to stand in the rain!” She broke out laughing again, the soft, heartwarmingly feminine tone music to our male ears. “Is that another tent like this one over there?”

“No, that’s Habitat 3. It’s solid. Alluminum and plastic sheeting soldered together.”

“ow many of these ‘ave you made?”

“Just the three so far. No materials for anything else until you came.”

“ow many of you ‘ere? Eighteen they said?”

“Thirteen, I’m afraid. We had some accidents.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear. Is that grass out there? Yellow wrinkly grass?”

“It’s not anything related to Earth plants. You could call it moss or a fungus or some kind of upright lichen. The sedentary life here never seems to have evolved much of a vascular system so it doesn-”

“You a plant scientist then?” She interrupted, not bothering to turn around, eyes still glued to the porthole.

“Botanist? No, not really. Never got any degree.”

“It’s what ya do here though? I can tell by yer voice ya love that stuff. Hey, there’s more than one kind of it.”

“Well, yes, I work mostly growing things, and yes, it’s a fully functional ecosystem, lots of different species. It’s slow going trying to catalog even the obvious taxa.”

“So how d’ye like it?”

“Oh. It’s ... good. Sometimes it seems more boring than Earth but most of the time it’s amaz-”

“Actually, I meant me bum. You’ve been staring at it this whole time.” She tapped the transparent plastic illustrated with both our reflections and I mentally kicked myself, feeling my face flush to boiling temperature. She twirled around triumphantly, giving a little bump of her chest toward me and cackled maniacally at my eyes snapping of their own accord to the jiggling. Muted laughter circled the room.

“Now don’t you boys laugh at ‘im. You both look like you’re packing bananas in your pockets!” She pointed around to our bulging pants. “What say you gents get me some clothes ‘fore I break all your brains with my sexiness, roight?”

As the other two men scrambled to hand all the women our generic unisex polyester pants and shirt, she turned to me and gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, love. You’re adorable when you blush. Name’s Sarah by the way. Need to lie down now. Stomach’s still doing flips.”

Stymied and more sexually frustrated than ever, I left as they dressed and busied myself until nightfall, somewhat amused by watching every one of the other guys making some kind of flimsy excuse to enter Habitat 1’s air lock only to be ushered out by one of the doctors moments later. Come evening we men exiled ourselves and left them in their very own interstellar hareem. I don’t know how the women slept but our side barely quieted down, continually kept buzzing by several men at once rhapsodizing about the gals, their faces, their voices, their curves and nooks and crannies and everything we wanted to do with them. Turns out they’d all peeked in the windows at some point. We all had designs on the ladies’ virtue, sure, but none of us dared hope to get laid anytime soon after their arrival. Little Jerome the oil rig tech amused us to no end by declaring he was going right for Valeria.