Chapter 8: Aladdin - 3753 C.E.

When Captain Kerensky was offered the opportunity to be captain of an Interplanetary Space Ship, she welcomed it full-heartedly. It was exactly the distraction she needed so soon after the messy fallout accompanying her divorce from Veronika. The heartache and acrimony that accompanied their separation had driven Nadezhda to the psychotherapist's couch for the first time in her life. She'd been anxious whether this admission of human frailty might lessen her eligibility for such a responsible role, but it was made clear to her that no one in the Socialist Republics' Interplanetary Merchant Navy was better qualified or, more to the point, more immediately available. Her unsurpassed experience of shipping freight to and from the Oort Cloud was ideal for a mission to such a remote location in the Solar System.

Captain Kerensky's delight was compromised, however, when she discovered that she was to be captain of an antique space ship, the Intrepid, and, furthermore, that the mission had such an ill-defined objective. The expedition was in the company of an international militia who were prepared to defend the space ship against any eventuality but were just as ignorant as Nadezhda as to what those risks might be. The captain was no more satisfied than anyone else with what she was told about the nature of the ship's destination. Could it really be true that no one knew what the Anomaly might be?

"Surely there must be a better account of the mission's destination than what you've just told me, sir?" Captain Kerensky remarked to Admiral Collins after he'd briefed her.

"I've told you not only all that I'm permitted to tell but all that I actually do know," the Admiral admitted. "This truly is a mission into the unknown."

"But if you don't mind me asking, sir," Captain Kerensky persisted, "why has it been decided to send a manned expedition to such a remote location given the high risk and the huge expense? The Anomaly is as far away as it's possible to be in the Solar System from a colony or space station, so there is no possible way to refuel or re-equip the ship. Why not send a robot-controlled mission? And why is it even necessary to travel such a vast distance given that modern telescopes can study planets at the edge of the galaxy?"

"These are all valid, captain," the Admiral conceded. "Don't think that I haven't asked the very same questions. All I know is that whatever secret the Anomaly hides cannot be observed from a distance. In fact, there's some doubt whether it's composed of matter or energy at all. Several robotic missions have been dispatched to the Anomaly but not one has sent back any useful data."

"Is it likely that a manned mission would be any more successful?"

"I don't know. There is an opinion that there may be some intelligence associated with the Anomaly and that human contact is exactly what it expects. The fear is that if nothing is done then the entire Solar System may be in peril."

"How can that be, sir? The Apparitions that some people associate with the Anomaly have generally been benign. However mysterious they might be, they're unlikely to do as much harm as, for instance, a full scale war between the Socialist Republics and any other advanced nation within the Solar System."

"Not every Apparitions has been harmless, captain," the Admiral reminded Nadezhda. "Although fewer than a few thousand lives have been lost, their frequency of occurrence has been steadily increasing over the last century and there's always a possibility that there might be one in the future whose affect will be truly catastrophic."

"In what way, sir?"

"Some of the more dangerous exotic Apparitions have been kept secret from the general public," the Admiral confided, "but the plasma cloud and the asteroid incursion are fairly well-known. Some of the others, like the ball of hot fire spotted in one of Titan's seas, the Higgs boson agglomeration, the brief appearance of an antimatter space craft and other such anomalies are equally troubling. We have no idea what the maximum extent in scale or duration of the apparitions might be, any more than we know of their composition. The short-lived appearance of a neutron star or black hole, for instance, would have a major adverse impact across the entire Solar System. It would be enough to dislodge colonies and asteroids from their orbits and bring about the death of hundreds of millions or even billions of people."

"I still don't understand why a fully-manned Interplanetary space ship is needed, sir. The mission is incalculably expensive and there is no measure by which to assess whether it will be a success."

"I'm sure the accountants have made their case as to why the mission shouldn't go ahead, captain. My private theory is that the cost of the mission is justified by the belief that the Anomaly might very well be the long sought after and equally long dreaded first contact with an alien intelligence. Why else does the scientific crew include not only cosmologists and geologists, but also linguists, biologists and computer scientists?"

"There have been missions to establish contact with intelligent alien life forms from the very earliest days of space travel, sir. Probes have travelled as far away as a hundred light years. And in all that time there's been no evidence for any alien life-form larger than a microbe."

"That is true, captain," said the Admiral. "I am bound to speculate as you do whether the failure to discover alien intelligence means there is none at all or whether it has simply avoided contact with our civilisation. For instance, it does seem strange that despite all the missions sent to other star systems there is an apparent disparity between the promising signatures of possible intelligent or at least organised activity identified from a distance and the total lack of such evidence when the probes arrive. It's almost as if the probes were intercepted and then sabotaged to send back only what would suit an alien intelligence eager to hide its existence."

Captain Kerensky sniffed. She'd heard so many conspiracy theories in her life and they were all just too absurd to be true. She was sure that if the Anomaly was evidence of alien intelligence, it was unlikely to come from the neighbouring star systems. Any aliens that lived there would face the same problems encountered by the human race in travelling across interstellar space where there was no opportunity to refuel and where even a modern lifespan wasn't long enough to survive the journey's duration.

Even the journey to the Space Ship Intrepid took the best part of a year. Captain Kerensky had to travel closer to the Sun than she'd ever been before. She'd never before travelled as far inwards as Martian orbit, but this time she travelled as far as Earth where the Sun was uncomfortably large and the space lanes frighteningly congested. The space ship that carried her in the last month of her journey travelled at a relatively leisurely pace to avoid space traffic and she had to spend several weeks on the Moon until a shuttle was arranged to transport her and her crew to the space ship of which she was to be captain.

Nadezhda had no complaints about the quality of accommodation she enjoyed on the Space Ship Aladdin that transported her and several hundred others to the venerable Space Ship Intrepid that was circling in an orbit exactly parallel to the Earth at a light hour to the Solar System's plane. However, she was impatient to take up her role and uncomfortable being just a passenger of the luxury cruiser. She might enjoy special privileges, such as being able to sit on the captain's dining table, but her only professional duty was to study the Space Ship Intrepid's technical specifications.

She did have the opportunity to get to know members of her future crew, which on the Aladdin included a medical officer, a boatswain, an engineer and a sports and social secretary. However, it was with the military officers that Captain Kerensky felt most at ease. Although she'd spent most of her interplanetary career aboard merchant shipping, she was first and foremost a military officer even though the Socialist Republics' pacifist policies had spared her the need to engage in actual military combat.

Although Captain Kerensky had travelled to the furthest edge of the Solar System and had got to know the Oort Cloud rather better than most of the few million people who lived in its sparsely populated orbit, she'd spent most of her long career in the company of other Saturnians. She took for granted the ethics that governed a Socialist society (even though its accommodation with the most aggressive capitalist economy in the Solar System often seemed at odds with its stated principles) and most of all she accepted as normal that the best kind of relationship was that between two people of the same sex. She'd never once contemplated a relationship with a man. She was content to leave such doubtful pleasures to other men.

There were very few Saturnians on the Aladdin. The crew and passengers came from all over the Interplanetary Union: from the orbits of the eight planets, the Asteroids, the Kuiper Belt and the intraplanetary colonies. The captain was naturally drawn towards those who came from Mars and the Asteroid Belt. They understood the discipline and rigour of a military life more than anyone. Although Nadezhda belonged to a very small minority in her own society, she was fascinated to discover that almost every Martian and a high proportion of those from the Asteroids (particularly those at war) had spent at least a year in compulsory military service. Such discipline and its attendant respect for authority was surely only for the good.

Captain Kerensky first observed Colonel Vashti from a distance, but she was immediately attracted to the woman. Those full thighs, that splendid bosom and, most of all, her height was exactly to her taste. The colonel possessed a sexual charisma that attracted the gaze of both women (which Nadezhda had no difficulty in understanding) and heterosexual men.

There was a distinct dampness in the captain's crotch as she watched Colonel Vashti stride across the ship's restaurant in the company of admirers of both gender. Her buttocks were so full that her tight trousers seemed almost about to split when she bent down to pour herself a cup of coffee from the vending machine. As the colonel wandered over to the table where the other Martian soldiers gathered, Nadezhda's heart beat almost audibly in synchrony with the ripple of the muscles in Vashti's thighs and calf. And when the colonel sat down, Nadezhda felt certain that her bright brown eyes had sought her out across the space between her and the captain's dining table. She was convinced that Colonel Vashti's smile was meant for her.

Captain Kerensky had many more occasions to appreciate Colonel Vashti's beauty. In fact, she actively sought out such opportunities. Although it wasn't a captain's duty to observe the Martian soldiers practise their drill or to examine their living quarters, she asked permission to do so. This was given with no reservation. The military officers were pleased that she should show concern for the welfare of the soldiers.

Every time Nadezhda saw Colonel Vashti, she was struck by the Martian's beauty. She was tall. She was strong. And above all she was sexy. When the colonel leapt an improbable height to drop the basketball into the net, Captain Kerensky gasped not just in appreciation of her skill but also at the tautness of her frame. When the colonel demonstrated her skill on the firing range, hitting every one of the targets with impossible accuracy, it was the recoil that shimmered through her body that Nadezhda most appreciated. When in a game of Rugby Football Colonel Vashti fought her way through a scrum of male bodies to collapse over the line with the ball clasped to her soft but voluptuous bosom, Nadezhda marvelled at how well mud and sweat agreed with her light brown flesh. If only she'd been one of those in the scrum that were pressed against her hard sensual muscularity.