Chapter 3

Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

"It's beautiful here, isn't it!" exclaimed Beatrice who squeezed Paul's hand in hers as they walked through a park not far from their home on the Intrepid's outermost level.

Paul squeezed her hand in return. He gazed lovingly into her eyes. What he wanted to say was that the park was nothing like as beautiful as she was, but although she was his wife and they made love so often together he still didn't find it easy to say such things to a real woman. This was odd because he had less trouble in expressing himself so freely to the avatars in Nudeworld.

"Yes," he said, "even if it is very 32^nd century in style." He was referring to the quaint statuary of naked women that were scattered between the bushes and trees in a park that evoked the baroque style of an age that celebrated geometric perfection.

"And what's wrong with that?" remarked Beatrice as she rubbed her thumb along Paul's knuckles. "This space ship was the ultimate in technology then and it's still pretty advanced now. I just love the lawns, the villas and the water features. They don't make space ships like this any more."

Paul's thoughts weren't really focused on the landscape around him. He gazed fondly at his wife who was dressed as always in the bare minimum that convention allowed. She wore nothing more than a skimpy thong and plasters that covered her nipples but hid nothing of her impressive bosom. Despite the fact that so many women in this day and age had their bodies enhanced in the most peculiar and erotic ways, there was something especially beautiful and sensuous about Beatrice.

"Look at those bluebirds flying over there," she said with a chuckle of delight. "See how they spiral and circle around each other. Look at the butterflies on that flower bush. Aren't they so very delightful?"

Another characteristic of Beatrice's that captivated Paul was her undisguised passion for the beauties of the Solar System. It was almost as if she'd only recently discovered them.

They strolled by a copse of leafy trees where a small fallow deer had been grazing just before they approached. All this seemed so natural that it was often easy to forget that the climate was controlled from the roof not many metres above the height of the tallest trees.

"There's no one here!" exclaimed Beatrice with delight. "We must be the only ones in the park today."

Paul knew exactly what his wife was implying and the result pressed against the crotch of his loose rope-belted trousers. She turned to face him, her full round bosom up against his chest. She pressed an open palm over his erect penis under the fabric.

"There's absolutely no one here," she remarked.

Paul surrendered himself to the inevitable. They'd already made love this morning and many times during the night before but there was no limit to Beatrice's desire for Paul's cock. And he was equally excited by the prospect of once again entering Beatrice's obliging vagina.

Although the grass was neither as comfortable nor as accommodating as the mattress in their marital bed, there was a vicarious pleasure in making love in the open air. Small insects and mites scattered away while Paul thrust in deep and hard, all their clothes discarded with the peculiar exception of Beatrice's nipple-plasters. However much Paul enjoyed his liaisons with Blanche, there was something special about making love to a real woman. The sensations of Beatrice's warm perspiring body might not have the hyperreal qualities of Paul's virtual lover (to whom making love now seemed rather like infidelity), but the human sensation of her flesh and the less absolute tightness of her vaginal grip enhanced rather than distracted from Paul's pleasure.

Although Beatrice would have been quite happy if their lovemaking culminated in anal sex and facial ejaculation, it seemed more natural to Paul to release his semen inside her and for the couple to lie down together on the grass under the sheltering shadow of an apple tree. The warmth in the air was generated from the ship's engines. The slight breeze that cooled the lovers' bodies came from the ship's revolutions.

"I love you," said Paul, who was only able to express the emotions that raged inside him when he was in a state of post-coitus. "I love you so much!"

"I know," said Beatrice as she peppered his face with kisses. "And I love you too!"

Even now Paul wasn't convinced. How could a woman so skilled in the ways of love, who could and, in fact, once did make love to anyone she chose, be in love with someone like him? He was such a social inadequate who relied rather more than he'd care to admit on his wife's sophisticated social skills when in mixed company. Just what was it that made her love him so much?

"Excuse me," said a voice from a few metres ahead of them. "I hate to interrupt but the captain has requested that I come to fetch you. She would like to see you in her office."

Paul turned his gaze upwards, suddenly ashamed of his nudity. This wasn't a characteristic he shared with Beatrice who made no attempt to hide her crotch. A trickle of recently ejaculated semen was still visible on the inside of her open thighs.

The voice belonged to Colonel Vashti, who was one of the military officers stationed on the Intrepid. She was dressed in an army uniform that Paul thought made her look more, rather than less, sexy, although she was much more handsome and muscular than pretty. She was a tall brown-skinned woman with a bosom much the same size as Beatrice's. Her khaki uniform was pulled tight around her waist and her similarly tight leggings trailed from the puff of her waist to just above her knees ... Her face exhibited a curious mix of racial identities that suggested Asian ancestry. Her lips were full. Her cheeks were high. And her long jet black hair was tied back in a plait down her back. Although undoubtedly a woman, she had a slightly masculine bearing.

She stood in front of the pair and betrayed no sign of embarrassment. Although her home on Mars was most famous for its military culture, perhaps it was also sexually liberal.

Beatrice strapped her thong about her waist while Paul took rather more time to fight his way back into his underpants, trousers and loose shirt. He wished he'd known sooner that this summons would come so that he could dress more formally, but he knew such concerns wouldn't bother Beatrice.

The lovers walked with the colonel towards the nearest portal which was just beside an open-air swimming pool several hundred metres away. The colonel's strides were so long that Beatrice had to run to catch up with her.

"So, it's Mars you come from," she said to the colonel. "Is it true that the whole planet is at war?"

"Almost the whole planet," Colonel Vashti said with a sad smile. "My nation, Agathadaemon, belongs to the Mariner States Union and we've been in a state of war with the Polar States and their colonies for several centuries now. The conflict is as intense now as it's ever been."

"Isn't it appropriate that the planet named after the God of War should be the most warlike in the Solar System?"

"Appropriate, maybe," Colonel Vashti agreed. "But probably also unavoidable. The planet was the first to be properly colonised back in the 22^nd and 23^rd centuries. In those days, Earth was governed by nation states that employed their military for hazardous missions in space. So it's no surprise that the governments that came to dominate Mars should be of a military nature."

Paul caught up with the two women. "I've never been to Mars," he said. "It must be weird to live on a planet with such low gravity."

"It is only a matter of what you get used to," the colonel remarked. "My home is on the surface of a planet rather than inside a hollow cylinder. It's just as peculiar to live with your head under an artificial ceiling and with your feet facing outwards to the emptiness of outer space."

They entered a circular pod whose doors slid open both vertically and horizontally. Inside were chairs, a low table and a holographic wall display that showed whatever the passengers might choose but which was now displaying a view of the space outside. The doors slid close behind them when they sat down and a voice in a slightly archaic 32^nd century accent asked them where they wanted to go.

It was dangerous for any free moving object to travel fast within the confines of the space ship. The journey took long enough for Paul to admire the view of deep space, while Beatrice chatted to the colonel about Martian customs.

It was less than two weeks since Paul and Beatrice had arrived on board the Interplanetary Space Ship Intrepid. It had taken well over a month to travel from the Solar System's ecliptic plane to dock after travelling in a series of rather smaller and less well-appointed space craft. None had sufficient space for forests, lakes or luxury villas. At the start of their journey, it was the planet Earth and the Moon that first vanished to dot-like proportions behind them, but now the Sun itself was getting steadily smaller. It was still by far the brightest object in space and appeared to be many times larger than it was from the far distant Godwin colony.

The many concentric levels of the space ship revolved around each other at different rates to maintain a force of one standard gravity on their surfaces. There was no direct link from one level to another except at the transparent interconnecting posts spaced half a kilometre apart. These moved constantly in relation to the ground and were the most hazardous objects on the space ship. The pod carried the passengers through a series of tubes in the floor space between the levels and didn't stop or pause until it reached its destination. And this was at the heart of the space ship where the captain and crew were stationed.

This was the section of the Intrepid that most resembled the majority of space ships that flew across the Solar System. It was generally utilitarian in design and made no attempt to be like the space colonies where most people in the Solar System lived. The captain's office was surrounded by an extensive network of rooms with relatively low ceilings interconnected by corridors. This would once have accommodated a ship's crew of several thousand people, but modern technology had reduced the number of necessary human staff to a fraction of that number. On this mission, however, it now also housed a few thousand military personnel.

Captain Kerensky was probably well over a hundred years old but she looked exactly as old as everyone else. She was a slender woman, with pale freckled skin and a totally shaven head. Despite her rank and official bearing Paul was immediately attracted to her. However inappropriate it might seem, a woman in uniform held a bizarre sexual fascination for him. This was probably because in Godwin there was no institution such as the military and nobody ever wore a uniform of any kind.

The captain wore the livery of a space officer of the Socialist Republics of Saturn. This was pale purple, tight around her bosom and buttoned up to her throat. Like Colonel Vashti her trousers tapered to above her knees to display her calves and smart functional shoes. She was standing as the colonel escorted the two civilians into her office. She extended a hand towards Paul, who had only recently learnt about this peculiar custom of shaking hands that was still practised throughout much of the Solar System. He shook it with none of the captain's firmness of grip, unlike Beatrice who showed once again her skill at adapting to the customs of other cultures, (even though she didn't understand the conventions of modesty that some cultures insisted on).