Chapter 350

Matt and his women fell in behind a snowplow as they began the climb up the mountain on Highway 40. Near the crest, it was snowing so hard they could barely see the flashing yellow lights on the big machine, but by the time they reached Winter Park, the snow had slackened. Just as they were deciding which fast food restaurant they would turn into, Arlene called to ask if they had eaten yet. When she learned that they had not, she told them to wait to eat with them, saying that they were still waiting supper on her mom and Selina.

"They're still in the simulator?" Courtney asked.

"Yeah. Ship says they're okay, but they're on a long mission that she doesn't want to interrupt."

"But it's already after eight..."

"Dad insists that we wait, so everyone else is waiting too. We'll finalize supper when Ship says the session is almost over. And remember, days in simulator time translate to only minutes of our time."

"It might take a while to get up the mountain because of the snow," Matt responded when Courtney told him what Arlene had said.

"It's snowing hard up here. I'll have Security meet you at Martha's restaurant with the snowplow."

When Courtney gave Arlene's response, "Sounds good to me," the new SAC responded with a grin. "I have to eat fast food much of the time at work. I'll take home cooking over that junk anytime."

When they turned off the highway onto the road by Martha's Restaurant, Security's plow was sitting on the side of the road waiting for them. Matt flashed his lights, and the driver waved before pulling out. The trip up the mountain was a rerun of Highway 40 to Winter Park – just following the plow.

At the end of the uneventful trip up the mountain, the snowplow turned into the Matthews' steep driveway and continued all the way to the back door, where it circled, the driver again waving at them before retracing his route back down the driveway. Arlene, Jennie and Melissa were waiting at the back door for them.

"Dad has given up," she said as Matt, Courtney and Bridget were hanging up their coats. "He says we're not going to wait any longer. Apparently the sim is continuing far longer than Ship expected."

"I hope there's nothing wrong," Matt began.

"Ship says there isn't. It's just that Mom and Selina have done some things that Ship wasn't expecting, which has caused the sim to last a lot longer than she anticipated."

Changing the subject, Arlene turned to Bridget. "Ready to become a married woman and be part of Matt's harem?" she asked with a smile.

Blushing, Bridget looked at Arlene, "I never thought I would share the man I married, but..." she said as she turned a radiant smile to Matt, then Courtney, "I could never be happier than to be married to these two. We have a beautiful home..."

"Thanks to the Hensons and the Matthews," Matt inserted.

" ... and I'll have a wonderful husband and sister-wife," Bridget finished.

Arlene kissed all three of them on their cheeks, then grabbed Courtney and Bridget by their hands and started toward the kitchen with a grinning Matt following.

After eating, Matt and Eric, since they were both going to be marrying their women the next day, naturally migrated toward each other as the family gathered in the living room.

Eric, a carafe of coffee in hand, offered the other man a refill. "You as uptight as I am?" he asked with a sick grin.

Matt held his cup out for the coffee as he slowly shook his head, but more in amazement than disagreement. "Courtney and I are already married, so I didn't expect remarrying her to be a big thing. Oh, I expected to be a bit uptight about marrying a second wife, but the nearer the time to the wedding, the more tense I've become. Now they tell me I have to sleep alone tonight. Shit, I'm going to be a nervous wreck. What if the two of them start squabbling after we get married? What do I do about that? If I take sides with one, I'll hurt the other's feelings. It could quickly become a no win situation for me."

"Well," Eric said as he put the carafe down on a nearby table and took a sip of his coffee, both men turning back to stare out the window, "I don't have that problem – yet. But remember, I'm marrying my sister. That's something I have to keep quiet from anyone outside the family, especially when my drugstore is completed and I'm meeting the public on a regular basis. If people find out, I'll get hit with, 'Your kids will be monsters, ' and all that sort of crap. I surely can't tell them that Little One will make certain nothing like that happens."

There was a hesitation before, "And ... there's something else that I have to watch out for."

"Oh, what's that?" Matt asked as he eyed a big platter of something sweet and steaming that Helen had just put on one of the coffee tables.

"More who than what," Eric returned. "Alice and Terri. And Terri is already fourteen." At Matt's raised eyebrow, Eric went on, "Both of them have adamantly stated that they are impatiently waiting to be old enough to become my wives. They're my daughters. Until I came out here, I never for a second entertained a thought about having sex with them, but even Angie is just as adamant that it will become a fact as soon as they are old enough. So, my friend, you're not the only one who is a little uptight tonight."

"Well, you have at least a couple of years..." Matt began.

"Yeah, but during that 'couple of years' they will be developing even more than they are now, and in case you haven't noticed, Terri is quickly becoming a young woman, and even Alice's boobs are well beyond just bumps on her chest, and they seem to be growing almost daily. And yeah, I know. Fathers aren't supposed to notice things like that, and I tried to avoid thinking those thoughts until we got out here and everything started to happen at once. Less than two years until Terri is sixteen, and I have no idea if I'll be able to convince Alice to wait until she reaches that age or not. I'm beginning to feel almost as if I'm being ... uh, stalked or something. And ... there have been far too many wardrobe malfunctions where I got a glimpse of girl titty. And Angie isn't helping any. She thinks it's funny and is behind the girls one hundred percent."

The two men looked at each other for a moment, then both burst out laughing.

Shortly, Courtney and Bridget joined the men, soon followed by Angie, Terri and Alice.

"We know you two were talking about us," Angie said as she tried to tickle Eric, causing him to almost spill what was left of his coffee. "We could tell by the expressions on your faces when you realized we were coming to join you."

"Probably talking about sex," Terri said to the astonishment of her father, who blushed despite himself.

"Sixteen, Daddy," she said, emphasizing the word, which only increased the color in Eric's cheeks. It didn't help that everyone thought the comment was funny. Well, everyone except Eric.

The Planetoid – Selina and Diana's Mission

The ten miles seemed like a thousand to the women as the little stealth craft drifted toward the planetoid. When their vessel finally neared, Selina, with minimal and judicious use of the drive, centered the dark fissure in her forward screen, slowing their craft to a crawl as they started into what amounted to a crack in the surface. With a single pulse, they could have determined how far it extended into the planetoid, but if one of the pickets detected the pulse, they would soon be dead.

The crack appeared to be nearly a hundred yards wide and several times that in length, the sides unbelievably rough and boulder-strewn as they viewed the walls in their night vision screens. They had no way to determine its depth without resorting to active scanning. The walls of the crevasse seemed to glide past slowly as Selina allowed the small ship to continue its path inside the planetoid.

"I hope they haven't put sensors in here," Diana quietly said. "If they have, there is no way we'll go undetected."

"As we observed while we were drifting in, much of this area is covered with fissures, although this one is by far the widest," Selina commented, then sat without saying anything more for several minutes as she manually continued their slow descent – now almost a crawl – into the noticeably narrowing fissure.

At one point, they thought they had reached the end, but Selina expertly maneuvered their craft through a narrow gap to find that the fissure continued on.

Diana chuckled nervously. "We've come nearly a mile," she said as she checked her instruments. "I'm beginning to think that this little planetoid almost became two when those two planets did their thing. The scientists thought our package might destroy the base if it was underground and we managed to place the package against bedrock within a hundred miles of the installation, but I never anticipated anything like this. What do you think?"

"Our instructions were to put the package as deeply as we could manage into the asteroid, should the base be mounted on or in one, but I never expected anything like this," Selina responded.

A few tense minutes later found the two staring at their screens that were now showing only faint glimpses of the rugged walls as they slowly slid by. "We've got to do something. After we came through that last narrowing, there's so little starlight that our sensors have nothing to magnify," Diana declared.

"Suit up and move the device into the lock, but anchor it there with the magnetics until I instruct you otherwise. Also, alter its settings from Standby to Ready Mode. Keep a remote with you and give me the backup. When you are ready, I will bring the lighting up enough for us to continue. Should we be detected..."

As Diana moved out of her seat, she put her hand on her partner's shoulder and gently squeezed. "Understood, Commander."

Time crept slowly onward as Diana followed Selina's instructions. Finally, she was standing in vacuum in the special airlock that had been installed for the mission, barely able to maneuver around the package that was taking up so much of the room. On the suit's intercom, she told her Commander. "Package is in the lock and is in Ready mode. When you give the order, all I have to do is open the lock, release the magnetics and maneuver the device into position."

"As you are certainly aware, but I shall remind you anyway, the device weighs slightly more than a ton at one standard gee. Even though the micro gravity here inside the planetoid renders the device practically weightless, its mass remains, and thus its momentum. Take care, and do not allow it to crush you against the walls of the fissure as you maneuver the device into position."

"Affirmative, Commander."

"You have the remote in hand and fully understand that we may alert nearby pickets when I initiate our light source? We must destroy this base, Second."

Diana knew exactly what her commander was saying. "Understood, Commander," she responded, hoping that her suddenly dry mouth hadn't caused her to slur her words.

As Selina brought up the outside lights in a frequency that their night vision equipment worked best with, the screens showing the continuing fissure in detail. Both women were tense, but so far there was no response from the enemy – at least none that they were aware of.