Chapter 716

After supper, several of Jeff’s wives were looking through the dress shop’s wedding dress catalog when Emma walked into the room. Susan turned to Emma and asked, “Which of these do you prefer?”

Emma glanced at the catalog and saw through their scheme — she thought. Barely keeping the snarl out of her voice, she declared that she was not in the market for a wedding dress and probably never would be.

“Uh,” Susan stammered, playing her part well, “Adrienné said she knew nothing of the ‘custom’ and asked our help in deciding which dress would be appropriate.” Adrienné had, but that was weeks ago. Her dress was bought and hanging in her closet.

Emma’s face flamed red, and she apologized. In the embarrassing quiet of the room, she reached for the catalog. As she began turning through the pages, she realized that most of the dresses shown here were, indeed, beautiful. Since she had been an ass about it, she tried her best to make an honest decision instead of just picking something.

It wasn’t long before the wives were huddled around Emma as they made comments pro and con about each picture. “If you really want my opinion, I think it would be one of these two — number 14 or number 27,” she said as she moved the pages back and forth to show each dress.

“But which one is the best?” Laura asked.

“I can’t decide. They are equally beautiful.”

Amazingly, the women all agreed with her. They thanked Emma for her input, and Laura left with the catalog.

A few minutes later, Laura reported to the Clan Queen. “She couldn’t make up her mind but said she liked both of these dresses equally,” Laura said while showing Diana the dress pictures.

“Well, there’s only one real choice. We’ll buy both then. Who knows? Whichever dress she doesn’t wear might just come in handy someday. Our husband isn’t done with weddings after Adrienné, no matter what he thinks. We will need more children than twenty-plus wives can produce. She will help produce variations, but during our travels, maybe we can find other compatible women for our husband. From what he says, there are many populated worlds, and some have races that are essentially duplicates of human beings.”

Laura brought up the next problem. “But, how will we get her measurements when she is so adamant about not marrying? We all know she will change her mind when she’s been around Jeff for a while, but having her choice of a wedding dress isn’t going to do any good without her measurements.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. AI?”

“Yes, my Clan Queen.”

“Jeff went to discuss the trip with Ship. Call him and tell him not to ask any questions but to ask Ship to please take Emma’s dress measurements when she comes to tell him to turn his phone on. And, Ship is to do this covertly. Emma must not realize.”

“Uh ... yes, my Queen.”

A moment later, the AI confirmed that he had delivered the message, and Jeff, although probably wondering, said he would comply.

“Oh, and AI?”

“Yes, my Queen?”

“Emma was in the living room. Please tell me when she starts to leave the room.”

“Yes, Diana.”

A few minutes later, the AI told her that Emma was just leaving the room.

Diana hurried out of the kitchen and into the hallway just as Emma started down the hall in the opposite direction.

“Emma,” Di called out.

Emma turned, and the two met halfway. “Look, I hate to ask, but if you aren’t too busy, would you go out to Ship and ask my idiot husband to turn his phone on? I really need to talk to him. I have something going on, and I can’t spare the time to go out there just now.”

“Sure. No problem,” Emma replied.

Diana touched Emma’s shoulder briefly and thanked her profusely before hurrying back into the kitchen.

Emma chuckled as she turned toward the garage exit. Just like my old boyfriend. He could never remember to turn his phone on after he had it on the charger, then bitched when I didn’t call him.

Five minutes later, Emma walked up the ramp and through the open hatch. “May I help you, Emma?” Ship asked, having done a quick review of how to measure for a wedding dress, and had already collected a complete set of measurements during Emma’s first seconds aboard.

“I just need to see Jeff for a moment.”

“He’s on the Bridge,” Ship returned even as she teleported Emma, who fought back a gasp as she materialized ten feet from Jeff, who looked surprised.

“Your wife, uh, your Clan Queen sent me to tell you to turn your phone on.”

“Oops. Sorry about that,” Jeff said as he took the instrument out and did as she asked.

“Stick around for a minute, please,” Jeff told her as he pressed a couple of buttons on the phone and put it to his ear while walking a few steps away so he could have a supposed private conversation with his Number 1 wife.

“Ship just informed me that she now has a full set of measurements for Emma. But ... she had better not find out about this ruse, or I’ll be even farther down the shit list than I already am, just because I’m a man.”

“Good job, Husband,” Diana responded, laughing. “If I can get you away from the girls long enough, I’ll give you a blow job later.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” he said with a chuckle.

“This place is huge,” Emma said when Jeff returned.

“Yeah, and there’s something I want you to see, but you might want to grab hold of something first.”

Emma looked a question, but Jeff just motioned. Shrugging, she took hold of a console just as the lights went out, and the overhead seemed to open with a view of space high above the atmosphere. Emma’s grip tightened, and she realized why he had cautioned her.

“It feels as if I can actually fall into it,” she exclaimed as she stared at the billions of stars displayed above her. “Are we...” Emma began.

“No, we’re still behind the Retreat. Ship just has a method of viewing space without the atmosphere blocking or light from the sun bothering the view.”

“It looks as if I could fall into it, if I don’t hang on,” Emma replied, amazed at the view.

After they had stared at the scene for a few minutes, Jeff had Ship turn the lighting back on. “To remind you, we have access to two pocket planets in another dimension. I use a small section on one of them for living space for the Miadax, and I also have a place on the other pocket planet that I use to test weapons and my burgeoning TK abilities. There is no animal life on either. I have a crude firing range set up on the one. Want to fire a few rounds with a pistol or maybe a pulse rifle?”

Diana says he will never touch me without an invitation, and I’m certainly not going to give him one. If he’s going to be an ass, better to find out about it now instead of when I’m cooped up with him on Ship for two years.

Emma shrugged. “After watching your wives fire their pulse rifles, I realized just how much more practice I need, and my ability with a pistol could certainly stand some improvement. Sure. I’m game to go, but I’m not going to shoot unless you do too.”

Ship, anticipating, put two gun belts and shooting trays on a nearby console along with two pulse rifles. Each gun belt bore a holstered pistol and extra magazines. In addition, each shooting tray also had shooting glasses, ear protection, extra ammunition, power canisters and gun cleaning equipment.

Jeff chose to walk to the entrance to the pocket planet instead of Ship teleporting them. As they walked along the corridor, “One thing we have to do is collect all the spent brass. Art has two wives — sisters — who love to reload. Despite my having a literal truckload of ammo, they insist on reloading the spent brass. They’re good at it, and there isn’t any way to tell the difference between their rounds and new ammo, particularly after they polish the brass until it may even look better than factory ammo. I got back at them, though, and bought each the absolute best loading equipment in addition to the best polishers to clean and polish the brass. I also bought enough bullets (projectiles) to start a war and enough powder and primers to last practically forever. We can shoot all we want while on vacation.”

“Are they going with us so we’ll have plenty of practice ammo on the trip?” she asked.

Jeff hesitated. “I don’t think so. Hmmm, I’ve already loaded practice ammo on board, but you may have a point. We could shoot up a lot of it in two years. Maybe I should add loading equipment, primers, powder and bullets to go with us so we won’t chance running out. Thanks for reminding me.”

“All that will cost a lot of money,” Emma blurted before she thought.

“True, but once we do settle on another world, my Earth money will be useless there.” He didn’t mention how much his inventions were bringing in every month.

“You are really going to look for a planet for you and your family to move to?”

“I’m going to look, but we should be able to put off the actual move for quite a while yet. We have little personal contact with the public, but when we get to our nineties and beyond, Uncle Sam might well begin to notice. Better to be set up and ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

“Primarily, we are looking for clues to what happened to the race that built Ship’s brain. I promised her, and I intend to uphold that promise to the absolute best of my ability. However, we don’t even know what dimension she came from. Her builders kept all that from her, because they didn’t want her to come looking for them should the war be lost. Ship seems to hold little hope that we will ever find them — after all, they were very thorough about not leaving any clues. They were to return in due time. Eons have come and gone, but a promise is a promise, and Ship has been faithful to me and mine, giving us far more than we will ever be able to return. In addition, I love her as if she were one of my wives — Little One the same. Just think what they have given us, and long life only heads the list.”

Emma shivered as they walked through the hatch to the pocket planet where Jeff’s firing range was located.

Jeff had added a shooting shed with one side open toward the targets and the mountain range beyond.

“After I built this, I realized the hard way that I needed some sound baffles since the three enclosed sides tend to amplify the noise. Ship added them for me, and they do a great job.”

“The machine will take the targets out to a maximum of twenty-five yards and bring them back for evaluation. If you choose to shoot at more distant targets, you will have to walk out to check the targets.”

“I have enough problems at 15 yards, so I certainly won’t need to shoot at a target at more than 25 yards.”

“True for ninety-nine percent of what you will ever do with a pistol, but ... the bullet keeps going at killing velocity much farther, although you tend to have to add some ‘Kentucky windage’ if you expect to hit at greater distances. Believe it or not, after you practice until you know how much elevation to give it, you can hit a five-gallon bucket at a hundred yards.

“Years ago, before semi-auto pistols became the rage, handgun matches were at fifty yards. With their tuned revolvers, those guys could consistently hit the ‘X’ ring at that distance — even clover-leaf three shots. Sure, it was slow-fire with race guns tuned to a fine edge, but the sport was widespread. Now with high-capacity magazines, it’s more spray and pray. When you only had six rounds in the gun, you had better be able to hit what you were shooting at.”

“Helen bragged about your shooting on the way back from the cavern planet.” She hesitated before saying, “I see what seems to be a bucket near the fifty yard marker. Isn’t the expression, put your money where your mouth is?”

“I don’t bet,” Jeff said.

“I didn’t think you did,” Emma returned.

Jeff looked at her but couldn’t read her expression. Just as he started to turn away, he saw the edge of her mouth move into a grin, and his temper wanted to get into the act.