Chapter 3

New characters appearing in the next couple of chapters:

Mr. Przbylski (Ski)

Chief of the Cargo Section, 6’-1’’ tall, 220 pounds, 50 years old, gray hair, blue eyes, red complexion

Thorn

Rock miner student, 5’-9’’ tall, 165 pounds, 25 years old, black hair, brown eyes

Nickolas Kuznetsov (Nick)

Captain of the weight lifting team, 6’-4’’ tall, 245 pounds, 24 years old, short blond hair, gray eyes

Several weeks later, we arrived at the gym much later than than we normally do on a Saturday morning following a night of love and sex. We had risen late for us that morning and had shared a very light breakfast before coming to the gym for our usual first workout on a weekend day. This is how we met the members of the CSM weight lifting team. Since they usually worked out at a different time than we did, we hardly ever ran into them, especially all of them together.

Today was different as the entire team was there, and they were standing around Mare’s barbell setup when we entered.

“Who in the world put that together?” one of them was asking, as we walked in.

“What are they using it for would be a better question?” one of them asked.

“They couldn’t possibly be using it on the bench,” a third stated.

“Maybe we should take it apart, so we can all workout together,” a fourth one suggested.

“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Mac warned them, as he spied us walking toward them.

“Are you big boys playing with my weights?” Mare asked in a quiet voice, as we joined them. All of the weight lifters, who were much taller than she was, turned to look at her, while Mac just smiled.

“Are these your weights?” the first guy, Nickolas, the captain of the team, asked.

“Yes, give me a few minutes to change, and I’ll prove it,” Mare told him in a quiet voice.

I couldn’t get over the contrast between the two of them standing there facing each other. Mare is short at 5’-4’’ and a bit chunky with short hair and is very soft spoken. Nick on the other hand is a big guy at 6’-4’’ tall and about 245 pounds with a large muscular chest and arms. His head was shaved, and he is rather loud.

“I want to see this,” the big guy said, as Mare and I turned toward the locker rooms. A few minutes later we both emerged from our separate sides after changing, and we moved over toward where the free weights were kept.

Mare had on her usual workout clothes which are a sleeveless t-shirt, shorts, a head band, and her boots. She never wears the large leather belts that the weight lifters are so fond of.

“Now, just what do you do with these?” Nick asked in a condescending voice, pointing to the weights.

“I work out with them,” Mare told him in her quiet voice, and pushed him out of the way with one hand, surprising him, as she moved up to the weights, squatted down, and picked up the barbell and its weights, then walked over to her usual exercise area and set them down. Those on the team were looking at her in amazement. Nick was frowning.

“Would you like to try them out?” Mare asked quietly.

“Yes, they can’t be all that heavy, if you can move them around like that,” Nick replied in his much louder but normal voice.

“Knock yourself out, big boy,” she told him.

Nick powdered his hands with chalk before walking over and standing behind the weights. You could see him take several deep breaths, and the muscles of his chest and arms move while doing that. He squatted down and got a good grip on the bar, then giving a strong yell, he pulled up on the bar and its weights. The weights actually came up off the floor – six ... eight inches ... a foot, before slamming back down again. You could hear them land all across the gym.

“Damn!” Nick said in amazement while breathing hard, as he stared at the weights on the floor. “How much is that?” he asked.

“Eight hundred and seventy-five pounds, more or less,” Mac told him.

“Nobody can lift that,” one of the team members said.

“Pardon me, big boy, do you mind if I start my workout now?” Mare asked in her quiet voice, as she moved over where he had been standing behind the weights. She stood there for a few seconds, as she flexed her shoulders and arms before squatting down and wrapping her hands around the bar. Without so much as a grunt, she stood up with the weights before bringing them up in front of her face, and then raising them over her head. She held them there for fifteen seconds or so before lowering the bar back in front of her face. She did ten more repetitions before gently setting the weights back down on the floor again.

The entire team was standing there a short distance in front of her with amazement now showing on their faces. “Fuck!” several of them said nearly together.

Mare twisted her torso from side to side several times and flexed her arms a bit. A minute or so following that, she squatted down again and brought the weights up again over her head, but instead of bringing them down again to her face, she bent her arms back, bringing the bar and its weights down behind her head almost to her shoulders before returning them over her head. She did another ten repetitions before setting the weights down again. The entire team was staring at her incredulously as the weights reached the floor.

“Nobody but nobody can do that!” Nick said in an amazed voice.

“You just saw her do it with your own eyes,” one of the team told him, as they all recovered from their shock.

“How can she do that though?” another one asked.

“She’s from Telchines,” Mac told them. He had been watching also.

“Damn, I thought that we had someone who could win in the intercollegiate competitions, but the board would never allow her to compete. Not someone from Telchines anyway,” the professor who was the team’s coach and adviser, and who had arrived during the demonstration, said from the back of the crowd.

“Think what she could do on the bench though,” one of the others said.

“Bench?” Mare asked not understanding.

“You’ve never done any bench press work?” Nick asked.

“No.”

“We need to add more weight to the bar,” some one said. There was still some room on the two inch thick bar.

“Who is going to pick it up though, and who is going to act as the safeties?” the coach asked to frowns from all of them.

“No one!” Nick said in a disappointed voice. “We’d have to go over a thousand pounds to make it even moderately hard for her, and there isn’t anyone here who could handle that much weight safely.”

“Show me what this bench press involves,” Mare asked in a curious voice.

“Why not!” several asked, as they moved toward the bench press area. Nick was the one who lay down on the bench to demonstrate.

“How much weight do you want?” his friend asked.

“Put on 600 pounds,” Nick told him as he adjusted his position. This was followed by the clang of plates being added to both sides of the bar sitting on the floor behind the bench. Two of the team then picked up the barbell, but were having a little trouble getting it up on top of the rack. Mare reached out, grabbed the middle of the bar to help them, and together they guided it to the rest area on top of the rack behind the bench.

“Are you two going to be the safeties?” she asked.

“Yes,” they answered, as they took up their positions on either side of the rack, while Mare stood behind the rack watching.

Nick reached up, grabbed the bar and lifted it off of the rack before lowering it to his chest, and then lifting it over his head again. He had completed eight repetitions before running into trouble. As he started on the ninth repetition something went wrong, and the weights started coming down very fast and out of control. Before they could land on Nick and crush his chest or throat, Mare’s hands shot out, and she grabbed the bar and brought it back up before sitting it in its place on the top of the rack. The two men who were the safeties hadn’t even begun to act yet. Nick sat up a short time later dripping sweat. The two safeties were sweating also.

“Thanks, I thought I was a goner there for a few seconds,” Nick told her.

“What happened?” their coach demanded in a worried voice as he rushed up.

“The muscles in my back gave out, and my arms alone couldn’t handle the weight,” Nick told him. “I didn’t think anyone was that fast,” he added looking at Mare.

“If it wasn’t for Miss ... what is your name young lady?” the coach asked.

“My name is Marianne, coach,” she told him.

“Thank you, and thank you for saving Nick here from a very bad accident,” he told her. Mac arrived then, and he looked steamed.

“You failed to set the lower safeties in your haste to showoff. Things would have been alright if you had. From now on, one of you will be appointed the safety officer each time you are here to work out, and that individual will be responsible for checking each setup before any of you use it to ensure that it is safe. If you had been injured or killed our insurance rates would have gone up, and the school may have decided to cancel the weight lifting team,” Mac told them, obviously upset.

“The rest of you, only light workouts today. One near accident is enough for today,” their coach told the rest of the team before turning to Nick. “You get over to the dispensary and have them look at your back. You’ll need to take it easy for a few days at least,” he finished.

In the meantime, Mare had been looking at the bench press setup. Now she lay down on the bench and looked to either side at the lower safeties after adjusting the bench to suit her.

“Will, give me a hand and adjust these safeties,” she asked. We soon had them adjusted, and Mare began to workout using the 600 pounds on the barbell. She did two groups of ten repetitions each before returning to barbell to its place on the top of the rack. On rising from the bench, she worked her shoulder and back muscles for a short time.

“I like that. I believe that I’ll add it to my workout schedule,” she told me. Mare sat the bar and the weights on the floor before we returned to our own workouts. Later there was lunch after showering at the gym.

“Thank you, my dear,” Mac told us, as we were leaving the gym later. “They really would have raised our insurance rates if that big Russian had been killed or badly hurt,” he told us with a smile.

There were no more incidents with the weight lifting team even though we often saw many of them in the gym now. There were only two of them in our classes though, as the remainder were upper class-men.

Soon after this, we were into the holiday season here. Since the school is located in North America there were a number of regional holidays celebrated at the school. The first that we saw was Thanksgiving. We had a similar type of holiday on Vespa II, but at a different time of year. It occurred on the 23rd of November here this year. Our last class was on Friday the 17th, and the next one wasn’t until Monday the 27th. This was to give the local (Earth) students time to go home for the holiday, if they could afford it, of course.