Anomaly Volume One
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The Battle for the Known Unknown
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Bradley Stoke



 





 

Chapter One 
Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

A space ship. One of the largest in the solar 
system. Twelve kilometres long. Two kilometres in 
diameter. A wonder of 32nd Century Technology. 

Perhaps two thirds of the ship's volume was 
dedicated to the engine and fully ninety percent, 
whether in the passengers' segments or in the engine 
rooms, was composed of water. This was mostly in 
liquid form and stored at a phenomenally high 
pressure. From outside the ship resembled a huge 
cylinder along which were arraigned portals on which 
smaller craft could dock. Ahead of the space ship, 
extending a kilometre or more, was a elongated cone 
that tapered to a rounded point. Like all space 
craft, it was constructed from the debris of 
shattered asteroids and comets.

This massive vehicle was travelling through open 
space at an astonishing speed, perhaps as much as a 
tenth the speed of light, at a trajectory that was 
roughly perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. It took 
nearly a week for the light from the sun to reach 
the space ship's surface. So fast and large was the 
space ship that it was obliged to travel at least a 
light day distant from the Solar System's traffic 
lanes that were too congested to accommodate such a 
hazardous vehicle. 

Paul sat in the artificial twilight on a wooden 
bench in his garden. The flowers had closed their 
petals for the night, whilst above his head an oak 
tree cast a shadow directly over him. He was 
mesmerised by a hedgehog's slow meander across the 
lawn. Other than the dim illumination from above, 
the only light that shone over the garden came from 
the upstairs window of his villa. Some of the other 
houses scattered about in the nearby lanes and paths 
on this level also had lights streaming from the 
rooms.

Paul cherished the quiet and solitude of the late 
evening. He enjoyed watching the moths batter 
against the windows of his home. He delighted in the 
sound of owls hooting in the distant parkland trees. 
Sometimes a fox or badger would wander into the 
garden and frighten the cats that shared his home. 
And he somehow found great solace in musing on the 
facts and figures about the space ship in which he 
was travelling.

It was difficult to believe that this suburban quiet 
was bound above (or below, depending on one's 
perspective) by layer upon layer of onion-like 
levels of curving landscape much like the one in 
which he lived, with a sky never more than fifty 
metres above his head. His feet were pushed outwards 
by centripetal force in the direction of the empty 
infinite void. But artificial tranquillity in a 
wholly artificial world was what Paul had mostly 
known all his life. The notion of living on a huge 
ball of rock in space was as alien to him as being 
bound by such an object's gravity.

The habits of solitude that had once principally 
governed his life were hard to break. He could no 
longer follow a rhythm that was entirely of his own 
choosing now that he had to adapt his life to that 
of his recently wedded wife. It was she who was 
waiting for him in their shared bedchamber from 
which shone the light that illuminated the garden. 
Paul stood up and strolled slowly over the well-
trimmed lawn beside the birdbath and the ornate 
bower and savoured the sensation of grass under his 
bare feet.

He was naked. This was also a relatively novel 
sensation. Ever since he'd began sharing his body 
with his wife, it seemed much more natural to remain 
undressed while at home. This was especially so 
because Beatrice rarely encumbered herself with more 
than the minimum of clothes, whatever the company 
and wherever the occasion. His penis was already 
twitching with excitement at the prospect of sharing 
his bed with a wife whose passion for sex exceeded 
that of any woman Paul had ever known in his long 
life. Her hunger for sex was almost unnatural 
despite the fact that Paul had seen no evidence that 
she'd ever supplemented her libido with drugs or DNA 
enhancement. This wasn't so true of Paul, however, 
who needed as much help as he could find to be able 
to cope with the incessant demands from the woman he 
loved so very much.

Paul walked towards the patio doors which slid open 
as he approached and then strode across the living 
room towards the lavatory, past the ornate sofa and 
the shimmering holographic wall paintings. He hoped 
that the strain of arousal wouldn't present to much 
of an obstacle to his rather more pressing need for 
a piss. As he walked, the lights shone in each room 
as he walked through and dimmed as soon as he left. 
He sat down on the toilet bowl and contemplated the 
rather inconvenient fact that human progress hadn't 
yet eliminated the need for excretion. 

There were so many things that just could never be 
changed.

It sometimes puzzled Paul that Beatrice had such 
disciplined bowels that he'd never once seen her go 
to the toilet. Perhaps she'd benefited from bodily 
enhancements that were rather more sophisticated 
than those Paul had elected for. 

She was a wonderful woman. In his imagination, he 
could see her long legs stretch out over the 
mattress while he sat down on the toilet seat and 
felt the blessed release shoot onto the porcelain 
and splash into the water below.

"Are you coming to bed, sweetheart?" Beatrice called 
out to him in that soft and sultry voice in reply to 
which his reciprocal response very nearly stopped 
the flow of urine. "I'm so tired of waiting."

"Almost ready," grunted Paul as he washed his hands 
in the sink and examined his reflection in the 
mirror. 

He still didn't know what it was about him that made 
her love him. And love him she did. Or he was pretty 
sure she did judging from the unfeigned passion of 
their lovemaking. You couldn't pretend that-at least 
not so often and so unrestrainedly. In all his 
years, he'd never imagined that sex could be quite 
so ecstatic. When he fucked Beatrice, his penis was 
engulfed and gripped in a deep warm moistness while 
her entire body twitched with irrepressible spasms, 
her skin erupted with perspiration that slid against 
his own and her cries of ecstasy were out of 
proportion to Paul's rather modest thrusts. 

Without the benefits of modern science, how could he 
ever hope to match, or even keep up with, the 
demands she made of him?

The man whose reflection Paul could see in the 
mirror was well-chiselled and muscular. He had a 
smooth torso and a prick already proud and 
confident. His long thick hair cascaded in brown 
whorls over his shoulders and curled over his 
nipples. Paul pursed his mouth, flashed his 
brilliant white teeth and wiped his brow with the 
back of his hand.

He was a handsome imposing figure. In another age he 
would have been considered a true Adonis. But in 
this day and age there was nothing about him that 
made him stand out from the crowd. But this didn't 
prevent Paul from admiring himself. He was at the 
peak of physical perfection. He was the perfect 
match for the beautiful, long-legged, long blonde-
haired woman who was his wife of not much more than 
a year.

And what was still a matter of wonder to Paul was 
that this Adonis who could only be him was more than 
eighty years old. 

Chapter Two 
Godwin - 3749 C.E.

"Frankly," said the consultant as he hovered cross-
legged in the air beside Paul, "you're not doing 
especially well for a man of your age."

"What do you mean?" Paul asked nervously.

The doctor consulted the holo-manual at eye level by 
his side. "You're nearly eighty years old, aren't 
you? That's an age that might once have been 
considered relatively old. We would normally expect 
someone of your age to be perhaps thirty to forty 
percent bio-plastic. But you are very nearly seventy 
percent. That's a shocking percentage. I'm fifty 
years older than you and I'm barely over the fifty 
percent mark."

Dr. Patel looked nothing like a man half a century 
older than Paul but, except in the genuinely young, 
appearances were a very poor guide to age. Like 
Paul, he was well-built with a healthy sheen to his 
light brown skin. His straight black hair flowed 
over the shoulders of his silver suit. 

"You lead an extraordinarily sedentary life, don't 
you?" the doctor remarked. "Most of my patients do 
rather more exercise than you, I should say. I don't 
think I need to do further analysis for evidence of 
lack of exercise. You have all the advantages of an 
artificially fit frame and yet you do nothing to 
maintain it."

"What's wrong with that?" asked Paul, knowing full 
well the reply.

"Life expectancy is generally determined by how long 
you can maintain a reasonably high proportion of 
your biologically determined mind and body. However 
much DNA coding can be tweaked to lengthen life and 
however advanced the technology to replace or 
reanimate worn parts, once you are less than ten 
percent biological your life expectancy is, to use a 
phrase, in the hands of the gods. Your systems could 
undergo catastrophic failure at any time and you 
would then die. This is especially likely if you 
have a low proportion of native neurons. That, 
however, is one area where you aren't doing so 
badly. Not better than average, but not far short of 
it."

"And when I get below a certain level of neuron 
activity...?"

"Plastic neurons are less stable than the biological 
variety however much your memory or capacity for 
logical reasoning can be enhanced. You should be 
grateful you were born with sufficiently high 
synaptic proficiency that you have neither required 
nor requested any significant enhancement. But don't 
be complacent. The human being isn't the brain 
alone. The body is rather more holistic than that. 
When the overall quality of your physical system 
dips below a certain level of biological stability, 
there is a corresponding dip in neuron longevity."

"What are my chances, doctor?" Paul asked.

"Not good, I'm afraid," he remarked. "It may well be 
that you've already expended two thirds of your 
total life expectancy. Or to put it more bluntly, 
I'll be surprised if you live for as many years as I 
have."

"Do I need more biophysical augmentation?"

"Sadly, yes," said the doctor. "To compensate for 
your lack of physical exercise, you will most 
definitely require further muscle enhancement. 
Furthermore, we'll need to regenerate what little is 
left of your biological liver and I think, to be on 
the safe side, you'll need a total refit of your 
bone structure. It's getting somewhat rigid and 
fragile."

"Again?" Paul moaned. This would be his third 
skeletal refit in two decades. It was the most time-
consuming and unpleasant regenerative treatment he'd 
ever endured. It was worse than ocular replacement, 
testicular enhancement or cuticular re-engineering.

"You don't want to suffer from lumbago, do you?" the 
doctor asked.

"What will all this treatment do for my life 
expectancy?"

"It won't prolong it," Dr. Patel admitted. "But the 
alternatives aren't good. Be grateful that such 
treatment is possible. I wouldn't like to live in 
one of those rogue colonies that don't practice 
regeneration."

"Like Hubbard?" Paul guessed.

"Or for that matter Rapture, New Kabul or Aleph," 
continued the doctor from his elevated position by 
Paul's shoulder. "The poor souls who live in those 
communities have miserably short lives and if you 
look at them... their bodies are scarcely 
advertisements for the supposed virtue of turning 
back the clock on progress, are they?"

"I guess not," agreed Paul, who nonetheless had some 
sympathy at the moment for those who'd never had to 
undergo the pain and inconvenience of a skeletal 
refit.

 "So, why is it that you lead such a sedentary 
lifestyle?" asked the doctor. He consulted his holo-
manual. "You've opted to work, I see. Good for you. 
But what is data mining? It's not an engineering or 
geological occupation, is it?"

This was a joke. There were no natural rocks on 
Godwin and the nearest sizeable celestial body was 
several light hours distant. Paul smiled, though he 
was too anxious about his imminent skeletal refit to 
fully get into the spirit.

"There's a technical aspect to it," he answered. 
"Basically, I devise and implement algorithms to 
uncover patterns in the vast repository of 
historical data that is stored throughout the Solar 
System."

"Surely that can all be done by machine," remarked 
the doctor. "The statistical analysis that's used to 
understand crop yield and to predict turbulence on 
the financial markets: isn't that all done 
automatically?"

"Well, yes," Paul admitted. "But there's nearly two 
thousand years of machine-held data and much that 
was never transferred to digital form from the 
millennia before. The earliest machines stored data 
in magnetic polarisations, laser-beamed dots and 
silicon. There is no simple way to collate and 
analyse all that ancient data without knowing how it 
was physically stored and organised. Most of the 
more primitive media wasn't designed to survive more 
than even a few decades, let alone two thousand 
years. You have to use a lot of ingenuity to 
regenerate data from compact discs, nano-carbon 
tubes and the like."

"I see," said the doctor. "And what use is all the 
data you extract?"

"To be honest," Paul confessed, "most of it is only 
academic interest, though I did make some 
interesting finds regarding twenty-first century 
pornography that surprised a lot of people. It was a 
lot more prevalent than you'd imagine from reading 
the standard texts on the subject."

"I'm sure it was," said Dr. Patel who was rapidly 
losing interest. "Well, I'll try and get you booked 
in for treatment. It's a busy schedule as you might 
imagine, but with a bit of imaginative 'mining' of 
my own I'm sure I can come up with some acceptable 
dates."

Paul was feeling dazed at the prospect of further 
regenerative treatment when he left the doctor's 
surgery. It had got to be rather too frequent and it 
was increasingly difficult to recuperate from its 
affect as he got older. Nevertheless, he was sure it 
was a price worth paying. After all, he was 
superficially still as fit and healthy as he'd ever 
been. His research into ancient computer records 
only confirmed to him how very lucky he was. Not for 
him the degenerative diseases or visible aging of 
earlier centuries. 

Paul understood that Dr. Patel, like most people 
he'd ever known, considered his archaeological 
research into the stored data of earlier centuries 
to be a total waste of time. After all, what could 
people in those ancient years teach people of the 
38th century? They used to live rather less than a 
hundred years. For centuries they were restricted to 
only one planet. And for much of that time they 
acted in denial of the impact of their actions on 
this same planet. However it wasn't so much what 
people in the past thought they knew but what they 
collated and didn't understand that Paul found to be 
most interesting. These earlier societies didn't 
have the means to fully analyse the vast volume of 
data, measurable only by impossibly large numbers, 
at their disposal. There was also the fact that the 
most interesting data had been classified as 
confidential by government agencies for sometimes 
several centuries.

At the moment, Paul was investigating a curious 
phenomenon that has been observed in the twentieth 
and twenty-first centuries which at the time was 
known only to these secretive government agencies. 
Typically, they were totally ignorant that other 
agencies, sometimes belonging to the same nation 
states, had gathered data on the selfsame 
phenomenon.

Paul would normally travel the five kilometres or so 
back home by sky pod, but today he decided to take 
the doctor's advice and have some exercise. It 
wasn't that he wasn't fit and healthy. Indeed, if he 
wanted to, he could probably run a circuit around 
the circumference of Godwin, but such exercise was 
wholly out of character for him. He arched his head 
up to look at the sky, where five kilometres above 
was the colony's central hub from which radiated the 
light and heat that kept the community alive. If he 
chose to, he could run to the other side of that hub 
in just three or four hours and his head would then 
point down towards the ground he was currently 
walking on.

The walk home was along the shore of one of Godwin's 
many lakes. A third of the colony's habitable 
surface was composed of lakes on which floated 
islands where a tenth of the colony's population 
lived. One thing in relative abundance in the Outer 
Solar System was water. This was extremely 
convenient for the colonies in the Kuiper Belt as it 
was one of the handful of things that was absolutely 
necessary for life to exist. It was stored as ice in 
the two hundred metre shell between him and the 
outside of his cylindrical world where it was part 
of the protective shield between the colony and the 
incredibly low temperatures of Outer Space. It also 
housed the colony's administrative functions which 
were mostly managed by robots. 

Like every day of every year, it was a mild 
temperate day troubled only at the exact same time 
of each day by rain that sprinkled from the hub 
above. As Paul idly gazed at the boats bobbing about 
in the lake, he was careful to keep to the path and 
not stray onto the grass. Although such carelessness 
wasn't illegal-nothing was illegal on Godwin-it 
could invite severe reprimands from one of the many 
self-governing syndicates. Every blade of grass, 
every leaf on every tree, and every one of the 
animals that roamed or flew about in Godwin's 
cylindrical interior was precious and was maintained 
with extraordinary care. The colony was several 
weeks, even months, of space flight away from the 
next nearest source of replenishment.

Paul often wondered what it would be like to live on 
a planet. He'd not once left Godwin in all his 
eighty years and for the most part he was 
disinclined to ever do so. Most planets were 
inhospitable places with either too much or too 
little gravity. And, as if gravity wasn't enough of 
a problem, there was the hostile climate and lack of 
breathable atmosphere. Even though Paul's 
archaeological studies were principally focused on 
humanity's earthbound days more than fifteen 
centuries earlier, even that was on a planet that 
was mostly too cold or too hot, too wet or too dry, 
for anyone to live in quite the predictable comfort 
that Paul took for granted.

He passed many houses along his route home and many 
were pretty much the same as his. Most were three or 
four stories high and, unless occupied by a family, 
had just a single apartment on each floor.

His perambulation took him through a glass tunnel 
which wound through one of the forests that were as 
necessary as the lakes to the ecological balance of 
the community. Although barely a kilometre in 
length, this was the most memorable part of his 
walk. Here he could see elephants, lions and 
antelope in a tiny microcosm of wilderness. None of 
the animals who lived fifty meters beneath him were 
aware that their lives were circumscribed within the 
bounds of a long pencil-shaped structure, revolving 
at a precisely defined rate, almost as far from 
their original homes as was possible in the 
inhabited Solar System. And the colony was itself a 
very long way indeed from the Solar System's final 
frontier. And beyond that, only robotic craft had 
ever ventured very far and humans hardly at all 
beyond the bow wave of the heliopause, well within 
the orbit of the Oort Cloud's furthest speck of 
dust. 

There were no prescribed hours to Paul's working 
day. His was work he could pursue whenever and for 
however long he wanted. Sometimes he would spend 
days at a time, pepped up with artificial 
stimulants, cocooned within the university campus 
following a train of investigation until he finally 
had to succumb to nature and retire home for sleep. 
Equally as often, he might not visit the university 
for weeks on end while he either underwent 
regenerative therapy or just didn't feel 
sufficiently bothered. His wasn't an occupation that 
demanded constant attention and he often felt that 
because it was such a solitary pursuit of so little 
measurable significance to anyone else in the colony 
he could easily abandon it altogether and no one 
would notice. 

Today, however, he felt rather more like recreation 
than work. And what better recreation was there than 
to return to the virtual world that had become his 
greatest obsession when he wasn't data-mining and to 
which he must be its most frequent visitor, at least 
within the confines of the Godwin colony.

Everyone on Godwin had access to the countless 
virtual worlds in the Solar System, given the 
constraint that the colony was several hours' 
transmission from Earth orbit where most such 
universes were devised and from which they were 
broadcast. Most people only dipped into these 
virtual worlds on an irregular basis, if at all. But 
Paul was an addict. He'd lived a substantial slice 
of his life in virtual space ever since he was a 
moody reclusive teenager and this was a habit he'd 
never been able to shake. The virtual universe he'd 
stayed most loyal to and which consumed the highest 
proportion of his waking life was the obscure but 
still intermittently enhanced Nudeworld.

What it was about this particular virtual world that 
captivated him, Paul didn't know. His psychoanalyst, 
on the few occasions he saw her, told him that it 
was a critical key to his personality and asked him 
many questions about his fixation on a virtual 
universe that was nothing more than a representation 
of the 33rd century, when it was first launched, 
different only in that nobody wore clothes.

"It's the delicious oddity of it," he explained.

"Odd, it certainly is," Dr. Mkose agreed. "But to 
follow the same game for over sixty years and in a 
universe so different from today: that's what's most 
strange. If nudity is your kick, and there are no 
laws proscribing it, then why not pursue it for 
real? What's so great about a time five centuries 
ago when Godwin hadn't yet been founded and when 
capitalist economies had their last renaissance 
after centuries of obsolescence? It just seems 
bizarre."

"I like the way that century harked back to the 
early days of the industrial revolution, from Adam 
Smith to the days before climate change dramatically 
changed the Earth's economy for the next few 
centuries. It was an exciting time when stock 
markets opened again, when people took to wearing 
blue jeans and listened to ancient music like 
dubstep, opera and jazz, and when there was a craze 
for two-dimensional visual entertainment."

"Exciting it might have been," said the 
psychoanalyst, "but it was retrospective even then. 
Wouldn't it be better to actually engage in a 
virtual world set in the actual time that was 
celebrated? Why not enter a world of traffic chaos, 
nuclear bombs and rising sea levels, rather than its 
later idealised shadow?"

"I don't know," Paul sadly admitted. "I guess I'm 
less attracted to the reality of those days than its 
later reflection. Rather like the United States of 
America was an idealised vision of Classical Rome 
and Greece, or the way Neo-Communist Canada was to 
the Soviet Union, the later manifestation was 
somehow rather better than the original."

Dr. Mkose had no opinion on such socio-political 
musing. Her brief was to understand why Paul should 
find consolation in an imaginary world rather than 
the real one around him. Obviously, she couldn't 
tell him that his chosen leisure-time activity was 
in any way wrong. That would be wholly out of step 
with the anarchosyndicalist ideology of Godwin 
(although disagreeing with the colony's ideology was 
also perfectly acceptable). It was Paul's mental 
health that was her concern. She could have analysed 
the data on his neuron chart but hers was a 
profession that would only describe behaviour as 
abnormal or unbalanced if it caused Paul any visible 
distress. And this, it was clear to everyone, was 
not the case. 

Whether she liked it or not, Paul wasn't unhappy 
with his chosen lifestyle and immersing himself in 
the real world wasn't going to make him any happier.

When he got home, almost the first thing Paul did 
was step into his virtual portal, let it strap him 
in and then surrender his consciousness to the 
artificial constructs that had been devised so many 
centuries before he was born.

"Awake at last!" exclaimed Blanche, his virtual 
lover in this bizarre universe. "You've been dozing 
for days."

Paul nodded. Like so many avatars in this 
capitalist-engendered universe almost the first 
thing she said was a reprimand that he'd neglected 
his obligation to return to this virtual world. 
Perhaps in the days when such virtual worlds were 
associated with economic indicators (as they still 
were for a quarter of the Solar System's population) 
it had been necessary to build consumer loyalty to 
the product. In Godwin, it was a quaint relic of an 
age when such things were thought important.

One way of knowing whether the avatar you interacted 
with was real or simply a programmatic construct was 
by observing his or her sleeping habits. Real people 
tended to drop in and out of wakefulness in 
Nudeworld according to their real life commitments. 
Only the truly obsessed, at a level far greater than 
even Paul, could engage in this world for a full 
waking day. The virtual avatars, however, had a much 
more predictable rhythm. If they possessed anything 
other than an artificial intelligence they might 
have found it strange to observe people in their 
midst who came into wakefulness at irregular 
intervals and stayed awake for barely two or three 
hours. There were many people dozing in Nudeworld, 
especially as its popularity in the Solar System 
waned, as sleep was the designated state of anyone 
who wasn't currently active. 

"You look lovely today, Blanche," said Paul as he 
admired his lover of so many years. And indeed she 
did. Although she was an artificial construct that 
could have looked exactly as perfect as Paul would 
like, she was designed to appear natural to someone 
from the 33rd century. People in those days had 
rather less sophisticated regenerative surgery at 
their disposal. Her skin had slight imperfections, 
her teeth were ever so slightly uneven and her eyes 
were slightly too far apart. 

But Paul loved her. 

In truth he loved her more than any real woman he 
had ever known. She was also, of course, naked. 
Everyone was naked in Nudeworld: however absurd and 
impractical it might seem. There were real 
communities within the Solar System- apparently 
growing in number-who practised naturism as a way of 
life, but Paul never expected he'd ever be able to 
visit such places for real. The Solar System had a 
huge extent and space travel was a luxury few people 
in Godwin had the opportunity to enjoy, unless the 
expense of it was deemed to be in some way for the 
greater good of the colony.

"You look beautiful, too," said Blanche with a broad 
grin on her face. "What do you want to do today? 
There's an exhibition of paintings at the gallery. 
We could watch a movie. Or we could go for a walk in 
the park."

All these options were rather more exciting than 
they sounded. In each case, the activity's pleasure 
was enhanced by the fact that everyone would be 
unclothed. The paintings in the art gallery, for 
instance, might consist of paintings by real life 
artists such as Rembrandt, Gainsborough or Cocker 
identical to the originals except that not one 
stitch of clothing troubled the models they painted. 
The movie might be a classic from any era, the 
twentieth or the thirtieth century, and these too 
would be wholly nude. And as far as the voyeuristic 
pleasure of a walk in the park was concerned...

"All I want to do," Paul said in a heartfelt voice, 
"is to make love to you." 

And this, of course, they did. 

None of the women to whom he'd made love in the real 
world was nearly as satisfying a lover as Blanche. 
None of them were as uninhibited. None were as 
responsive to his need for love nor so unconditional 
and unselfish in their giving of it. The software 
that governed Nudeworld had actually improved the 
experience of lovemaking to a level that the 
pleasure he got from it was more addictive, more 
satisfying and more easily available than he'd ever 
found in the real life equivalent. 

Blanche took his penis-a somewhat more impressive 
version of his real one-and slipped it into her 
mouth. Her hands stroked testicles that were both 
hard and tender in equal measure. Her head bobbed up 
and down as she stimulated his penis towards an 
erection that strained the taut muscles of his 
stomach and was no doubt in the same state as his 
real penis in the comforting grip of the virtual 
portal.

When he smelled Blanche's skin or nibbled her 
nipples or chewed at her odorous vaginal lips, these 
were sensations that were more real than real, as 
the software was designed to be. She felt so solid, 
so actual, so very real that Paul's pleasure was 
marred only by the nagging knowledge that he could 
never wholly forget that Blanche was in truth 
nothing more than an avatar in a virtual world 
shared across the Solar System by many millions of 
people.

When their lovemaking eventually progressed to full-
blown fucking, which as usual was after about ten 
minutes, this itself was a pleasure that exceeded 
anything in Paul's real life. His only regret was 
that he'd been so busy recently at the university in 
the throes of research that he'd neglected Nudeworld 
for so long. The strong odour of sex that assailed 
Paul's nostrils was so perfectly simulated that the 
real smell of sex seemed paltry in comparison.

Blanche was an energetic lover given to cries of 
ecstasy in response to Paul's relentless pounding 
and who didn't mind at all when, following the 
convention of virtual world sex, he followed vaginal 
sex with the anal variety and climaxed by 
ejaculating on her face and mouth. Very few women in 
real life enjoyed such a routine in their romantic 
conjugations, but here in virtual space there wasn't 
a single woman who didn't accept this as the 
fulfilling climax of a session of carnal pleasure.

"Now what shall we do?" asked Blanche with semen 
still dripping down and off her chin. "Do you want 
to make love again?"

In one sense Paul did, but he'd exerted himself so 
much that he wasn't sure his real life counterpart 
could cope with the strain. The feedback mechanism 
of the virtual portal ensured that his energy levels 
and vital requirements could never be neglected. In 
the first few centuries of virtual world 
simulations, there'd been many celebrated incidents 
of people who'd starved to death by remaining in the 
virtual world for longer than their biological 
functions could cope. Since then, the software 
developers had built mechanisms into cyberspace to 
ensure that the real people were kept fed and 
watered. 

"I fancy a drink," said Paul. "Let's go to the pub."

There was no alcohol or drugs of any kind on Godwin. 
There was no law proscribing it, but like anything 
for which there was no perceived need there was also 
no corresponding supply. Here in Nudeworld, Paul 
could get drunk as often as he liked while knowing 
that there was no real life hangover to contend with 
and that his drunkenness would evaporate as soon as 
he disengaged himself from the world.

"Sounds like a good idea," said Blanche who very 
rarely disagreed with any of Paul's suggestions. 
These had in the past taken him and Blanche up in a 
space ship to the nearest adjacent settlement 
remarkably like the one they'd just left, up a tall 
mountain that they ascended by an archaic 
helicopter, and even by boat across an ocean that 
was a mere three kilometres away. Going to the pub 
was no big deal, even though the nearest equivalent 
in Godwin was a fruit juice bar half a kilometre 
from his home. Paul's real body would gain the same 
sustenance as his avatar, but while he appeared to 
be chewing on deep-fried chicken wings and 
hamburgers the real Paul would be chewing on rather 
more wholesome vegetables and fruit. While his 
avatar was sinking an unwholesome series of beers 
and vodkas, nothing alcoholic at all was being 
inflicted on his real-life liver.

The hundred metre walk to the Technician's Arms was 
a voyeur's paradise. None of the men, women or 
children that Paul and Blanche passed by wore any 
clothes. But for Paul the true oddness wasn't so 
much the nudity but the frozen-in-time 
representation of a capitalist world in what was 
presumably meant to be in Earth or Venus orbit. 
Above their heads was a rush of flying vehicles that 
transported people to destinations that could be 
more than a thousand kilometres away. There were 
shops with windows, although none of them were 
selling clothes. 

In Godwin there were no shops, everyone was a 
pedestrian and there were no distances greater than 
a hundred kilometres. 

Eventually, Paul and Blanche entered a pub whose 
doors opened to a dimly lit interior where several 
people were already drinking and where an 
androgynous android was serving drinks. Naturally, 
this android was naked like everyone else.

Or almost everyone else. 

What startled Paul was that no one else seemed to 
notice this. Not even Blanche. There at the bar was 
sat a man who was nursing a glass of whiskey from 
which he took the occasional sip. This in itself was 
no matter of concern, but this man was fully 
clothed. He was dressed, in fact, in a very 
realistic facsimile of a twenty-second century suit, 
even down to the neck scarf and thick cotton 
trousers. 

What was more startling still was that this man 
seemed to be old. Old people were everywhere in the 
33rd century, just as much as in the 38th but they 
never looked old. And this man had definitely aged. 
He had grey hair and a lined face which framed a 
peculiarly wise and serene expression.

In all his life, Paul had never seen, either in the 
real or virtual world, anyone who looked to be more 
than a biological age of about twenty-nine. And this 
man's apparent biological age must have been at 
least sixty.



Chapter Three 
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 32nd 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 22nd and 23rd 
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 32nd 
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).

"It's a splendid ship, captain," Beatrice said. "You 
must be very proud to be its commander."

"It is," said Captain Kerensky agreeably. "It was a 
wonder of its time. In fact, at one time it was the 
flagship of the Interplanetary Union. We were lucky 
that any long-distance ship was available at all and 
fortunate indeed that it should be such a venerable 
vessel."

"Would none of the more modern vehicles have done?" 
wondered Paul. This thought had troubled him ever 
since he'd first passed through its quaintly old-
fashioned entrance port.

"None could be taken out of service given the short 
notice," said the captain. "But let's not stand on 
ceremony. Please sit down." She gestured towards 
some leather sofas and waited until everyone else 
was seated until she also sat down.

Like everything else in the room, the furniture was 
chosen to suggest authority and status. This was 
rather wasted on Paul who still didn't understand 
its significance. Everything was just a little more 
splendid than it needed to be: from the thick carpet 
to the mahogany desk and to the massive holographic 
display of the constellations that towered above and 
behind the desk.

"It's true that a more modern ship might have been 
better equipped," said the captain, "but there 
aren't that many ships circling the Solar System in 
this plane at any one time. And there are even fewer 
that can survive without being restocked for as long 
as this will have to. Space ships such as these were 
originally designed as a prototype for interstellar 
travel."

"And can't they do that now?" Beatrice asked. 
"Surely this has everything you need to get to the 
next stellar system in comfort."

"It will take us three years to get beyond the 
Heliosphere and we'd still only be a fraction of the 
distance required to get to, say, Proxima Centauri. 
That would be a colossal cost for a one-way journey 
with no foreseeable economic benefit for hundreds of 
years. Only an optimistic century like the 32nd could 
contemplate such extravagant expenditure that was 
well in excess of the economic turnover of most 
states or colonies within the Solar System. Even a 
socialist republic such as mine would find it 
difficult to argue for the benefits given the time 
it would take to recoup the expense."

"Surely the wealth of knowledge alone would make it 
worthwhile?" argued Beatrice.

"We've sent enough interstellar probes over the 
centuries to answer that question," said the captain 
with an amused smile. "There's more than enough to 
handle in one Solar System. Unless you could cut the 
communication time to rather less than that 
determined by the speed of light and reduce the 
times to arrive to less than a lifetime, I can't 
believe that any government-whether capitalist, 
anarchist or socialist-could take such a huge gamble 
at so much cost for so little gain."

Captain Kerensky paused to signal that she'd 
imparted all the wisdom on economics and politics 
she was willing to give.

"The Intrepid is full of army personnel, as you 
know," said the captain. "They've been dragooned 
from all corners of the Solar System: from Mercury 
to Uranus, from the Kuiper to the Asteroid Belt, 
from moons, planets and space colonies of every 
kind. A multinational force of this size of nature 
hasn't been gathered together under the command of 
the Interplanetary Union for decades. You'd expect 
such a substantial effort to have a fairly well-
defined end. This might be for peace-keeping, or it 
might just be for show. The endeavour for which I've 
been given the privilege of being captain isn't like 
that at all. Amongst the thousands of passengers on 
this ship there are fewer than a thousand civilians 
and most of those are scientists. And then, Paul 
Morris of the tiny Godwin anarchosyndicalist colony, 
there is you." 

The captain paused for effect. 

"Why are you on an expedition to beyond the Solar 
System in a direction to where we know there are no 
planetoids or asteroids? What is the purpose of your 
passage on the Intrepid?"

"Don't you know?" asked Paul, who assumed that the 
captain above all would have the answer to a 
question that still plagued him.

"Beyond minimal instructions that you should be 
afforded customary care and attention, nothing at 
all," admitted the captain. "And, of course, that 
such courtesy should extend equally to your 
delightful wife, Beatrice Canopus. Such a lovely 
name!"

She smiled at Beatrice with rather more warmth than 
she did Paul. His near naked wife was curled close 
to her husband, an arm over his shoulder and a hand 
clasping his.

The captain addressed Paul again. "You are, no 
doubt, under instruction to keep secret whatever 
role you have in this mission. I shall make no 
effort to extract from you why you're here, but I'll 
admit that it troubles me and no doubt the other 
officers on this ship. From what you know, can you 
tell me whether you expect there to be a military 
engagement on this voyage? Is there anything you can 
tell me about our destination in the middle of as 
much nowhere as it is possible to travel within 
three years?"

These were yet other questions which were not asked 
that troubled Paul at least as much as they did the 
captain. It wasn't the first time since he'd left 
the relative comfort of Godwin that he'd felt like 
an utter fraud. Paul was nervous. What could he say? 
He was at least comforted by the fact that his very 
real ignorance would almost certainly be interpreted 
as convincing subterfuge. 

"I don't know the answer to any of your questions," 
he replied. "My specialist discipline is data 
mining. I try to make sense of data that is freely 
available and has often been around for millennia 
rather than centuries. I'm sure there's someone who 
has a good idea why the Interplanetary Union is 
going through all this trouble and expense, but that 
person isn't me."

"Well, you would say that," said the captain with a 
sigh. "I apologise for trying to break your cover. 
But be aware that I disapprove of being engaged on a 
mission with such an ill-defined purpose. It isn't 
fair on the service personnel of whom I'm in command 
and it isn't fair on the passengers of the space 
ship whose safety and security is my paramount 
concern. You do appear to be a key person in all 
this and I still don't understand why. Are we 
hunting aliens? You must be aware that there are few 
people on this ship who don't believe we're going to 
be privileged with the first ever encounter with an 
alien intelligence."

"I've thought that, too," said Paul. "But no one's 
yet come across any convincing proof that they 
exist. The only evidence we've had of alien life so 
far has been microbial and not very inspiring."

"Don't I know it!" exclaimed the captain, who'd 
lived on one of the few parts of the Solar System 
where extraterrestrial life was known to exist. And 
very unimpressive it was too. Ever since it had been 
proved that there was indeed life on Mars and that 
it was never more than a few microns in width, all 
subsequent discoveries of alien life had been fairly 
disappointing. Except, that is, to those who were 
excited by microbes.

Captain Kerensky decided that she'd learnt all she 
was likely to from her interrogation and steered the 
conversation onto more mundane matters. 

"I trust that you'll enjoy your stay on board the 
Intrepid," she said. "There are many delights on 
offer that I don't know whether you've yet sampled. 
There's a beautiful waterfall garden on level 17. 
There's a holodeck on level 23, but it is very 32nd 
century and the virtualisation is very retro. 
However, as a kind of archaeologist you might quite 
like that sort of thing. The crew on the Intrepid 
are organising some entertainments and sports which 
you are welcome to either participate in or watch."

There was no way that the captain could convincingly 
paint the voyage as a pleasure cruise, but Paul 
appreciated her attempt. He was pleased that he was 
being looked after, but all he really wanted was to 
spend time with his wife and, when not with her, 
back in the comforting embrace of Virtual Reality. 
Sport had never interested him. Most art and 
entertainment passed him by. And it was unlikely 
that, with the transmission gap between the space 
ship and the rest of the Solar System increasing 
with every day, that he could satisfactorily conduct 
any meaningful research. 

Paul rather expected Colonel Vashti to escort him 
and Beatrice back to the outermost level, but it was 
actually a Saturnian corporal who had that honour. 
He had painted nails and thick lipstick and was 
rather more amiable towards Paul than he was 
comfortable with. Saturnians were famous throughout 
the Solar System for their sexual predilections, but 
Paul had never contemplated anything other than a 
heterosexual lifestyle.

"So, what do you think?" Captain Kerensky asked the 
colonel when they were alone.

"Probably much the same as you," Colonel Vashti 
admitted.

The captain sighed. She was genuinely concerned 
about the welfare of the people in her care. 
Whatever dangers she and her ship were to encounter 
she'd be happier if she had a better idea of what 
they might be.

"Paul's wife is an entrancing woman," she continued. 
"He's a very lucky man. She doesn't seem like the 
sort of person I'd imagine would come from Godwin. 
What do you know about her?"

"Very little," admitted the colonel. "She seems 
harmless enough. If she wasn't married to the 
Godwinian and if he wasn't considered vital to the 
mission, I doubt very much that she'd be on this 
ship."

"Is it true that she was once a prostitute on 
Ecstasy?"

"The records are very sketchy on exactly what her 
profession used to be. All we know for sure is that 
she used to live there. And if there's anywhere in 
the Solar System whose records are less than 
adequate, it would be Ecstasy."

"Indeed!"

The two paused, but there was a tangible excitement 
in Captain Kerensky's breath. Her gaze embraced 
Colonel Vashti from her crotch to her bosom.

"Shall we retire to my quarters?" she said at last. 

"Gladly."

It was a short walk down the corridor to Captain 
Kerensky's palatial suite. When the ship was built 
such a space would have seemed appropriate for a 
captain, but Nadezhda Kerensky was sufficiently 
imbued with the egalitarian ideals of her culture to 
find it rather overblown.

As soon as the door closed on the two women, they 
stumbled into the captain's bedroom. They pulled off 
one another's clothes with passion in every 
faltering step, their lips pressed together and 
their hands around each other in the rising heat of 
mutual passion.

"I'm still not sure about this!" exclaimed Captain 
Kerensky as she pulled down her underwear to reveal 
a crotch as shaven as her head.

"I don't see why not. You've been married many times 
before."

"And divorced as often. Married life and being 
captain of a space ship in the Kuiper Belt don't mix 
very well. But it's the sex that bothers me."

"Because we're both officers?"

"Where else can I find passion? My ex-wives were all 
I really needed, but none of them could stand the 
loneliness of such long separation."

"So what is the problem?" asked the colonel as she 
revealed her own shaven crotch.

"This is!" said the captain. "It's not something 
I've ever known so well before."

Captain Kerensky held up the colonel's fully erect 
penis by the testicles in the cup of her hands.

"This was just not what I ever expected from the 
woman I love!" she exclaimed, but nonetheless licked 
her lips in anticipation from the pleasure it would 
give her.





  





Chapter Four 
Godwin - 3749 C.E.

Once again Paul had failed to notice the time 
passing while he'd been working in the laboratory. 
He couldn't be at all sure when he glanced at the 
clock on the wall with its antiquated twelve-hour 
period clock whether it was ten o'clock in the 
evening or ten o'clock in the morning. It would be a 
trivial matter to find out for sure, of course, but 
he somehow rather liked being in ignorance.

All around him and scattered on the tables and floor 
was a bizarre array of mostly archaic computer 
hardware, much of it almost as antique as the first 
ever electronic timepiece. And what wasn't held in 
peculiar beige boxes or crunched into opaque 
cylinders of semi-conducting metals or nanotubes was 
accessible by exotic connection devices to machines 
stored elsewhere in the university. It was often 
joked that Paul was proprietor of the most extensive 
museum of ancient computer technology in the Kuiper 
Belt, and although this wasn't totally true (there 
was a rather more extensive one on the Dawkins 
colony), this collection did at least have more than 
curatorial value to Paul.

None of the ancient hardware Paul had assembled had 
real value as antiques. They were all facsimiles 
assembled on Godwin from templates purchased from 
the virtual emporia in the Solar System that 
specialised in such peculiar interests as Paul's. 
One of his greatest pleasures, in fact, was to log 
in to any one of these remotely based emporia. There 
was a convincing rendition of an antediluvian 
warehouse of the kind that once served as retail 
outfits in the long distant age of profligate 
vehicular transport when such places were located 
many kilometres away from wherever anyone actually 
lived. Paul would spend many happy hours studying 
ancient kit that was sometimes equipped with long 
copper cables and noisy fans. And here in his 
laboratory he was surrounded by exact copies of 
these electronic devices that operated at pitifully 
slow processing rates, measurable in gigabytes and 
gigahertz rather than the more familiar yottabytes 
and yottahertz used by information scientists in the 
38th century. 

Although Paul had already published the preliminary 
findings of his research, there was still much more 
work required on the massive volume of data he'd 
discovered of the mysterious anomaly whose existence 
he'd located in the first few centuries of the third 
millennium. He was convinced that he'd stumbled onto 
something very noteworthy. So much so that he 
imagined it might even be the springboard into more 
detailed archaeological research of other ancient 
mysteries.

"Don't you ever get any sleep?" asked Professor 
Hofstadter who wandered into the laboratory and 
startled Paul out of his reverie. "You've been here 
for days!"

"It's just so absorbing," Paul admitted. "I've just 
been studying some data from the late twentieth 
century. They're difficult to decipher as the data's 
stored on an array of proprietary hardware that uses 
several different encoding standards, but I think 
there's conclusive proof of government research into 
deep space anomalies at that time."

"Fascinating," said the professor, who was a man 
even more careless of his health and appearance than 
Paul. He had so often postponed his regenerative 
treatment that there were lines cracking around his 
eyes like crows' feet and his skin was beginning to 
look unhealthily fragile. "However, there's a report 
of a situation in your lab that's causing the 
security systems some concern. I'm sure it's 
nothing, but I thought I'd mention it to you."

"What kind of situation?" Paul asked with alarm. 
Normally his research attracted no attention from 
anyone at all and he was convinced that only a few 
eccentrics in the Solar System ever read any of his 
countless publications.

"I'm not sure I really know," the professor 
admitted. "I've got the holograms here, so you can 
see what the security cameras saw and draw your own 
conclusions."

Professor Hofstadter sat in a hoverchair just by 
Paul's and invoked a holographic film image that 
showed Paul huddled over an antique flat screen with 
the rest of the laboratory behind him. All of a 
sudden there was a flurry of movement as lights 
flickered on the machinery about the office and 
several apparently random items shifted about. And 
then, after less than ten seconds it was over.

"A gust of wind? A malfunction in the climate 
control systems? A fault in the computers' primitive 
processing systems?" speculated Paul.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" said the professor. 
"But when played at a slower frame rate, there does 
seem to be something methodical about it." He played 
the sequence again, this time at such a slow rate 
that the ten seconds stretched out to nearly half an 
hour. Neither Paul nor the professor had the time or 
patience to watch more than a fraction of it but it 
did appear that an invisible force was carefully 
examining a range of equipment, picking up discs and 
crystals and then putting them down. There was even 
an uncomfortable few microseconds where there was a 
flurry of slow-motion activity just by Paul's 
shoulder. "You didn't notice anything, did you?"

Paul shook his head. "It's weird. Perhaps it's just 
one of these bizarre apparitions you hear about. 
Like that unicorn on Venus. Or that floating 
monolith in Jupiter orbit. Just one of those 
peculiar things that no one knows what they are."

"Maybe," said the professor thoughtfully. "But why 
should such a thing happen in your laboratory? It is 
after all the same kind of weird thing you're doing 
research into. Could there be a connection, do you 
think?"

"I don't see how. What I'm studying happened over 
fifteen hundred years ago. And whatever it was, 
there doesn't seem to be any record of anything 
after about 2367 C.E. It sort of just disappears 
from the records at that point."

"And just what is this anomaly you're researching, 
Paul?"

"I'm not sure. It's somewhere off the ecliptic 
plane. And scientists in those days didn't have the 
means to get a close look at it."

"They had some fairly high resolution telescopes, 
didn't they? They were able to identify exoplanets 
by the start of the 21st century and telescopes got 
steadily more powerful over those centuries."

"It was all hypotheses. No one had a real idea. 
There was a lot of debate about whether it was a 
natural phenomenon or some kind of alien 
intelligence. They never got a precise handle on 
it."

"And then it just vanished, I guess?" asked the 
professor.

"As far as I know."

"Well, it's possible that what was observed was just 
a strange coincidence and nothing more," Professor 
Hofstadter remarked. "However, keep alert and don't 
be surprised if Systems Security gets a little more 
intrusive. There have been a few apparitions 
reported near Godwin lately-nothing at all as 
bizarre as those reported elsewhere in the Solar 
System-and inevitably the syndicates are beginning 
to get worried. There are people in the Solar System 
who for various ideological reasons would dearly 
like to see the economic and social failure of a 
colony based on anarchist principles. The very 
existence of a corner of the Solar System that 
doesn't use money and doesn't have a government is a 
kind of affront to them. So we must remain alert, 
although there's no evidence at the moment that 
there's anything specific to be alarmed about."

"I'll report anything I see," said Paul.

"That's if you ever take your eyes off from your 
work for more than ten minutes!" remarked the 
professor. "Look. You must take a break. Go home. 
Get some sleep. It'll do you a power of good."

Paul nodded. His concentration had already been 
fatally disrupted. "I'll do just that. I'm not sure 
I was getting very far with what I was doing 
anyway." 

However, after a deep and rather long sleep in his 
own bed, Paul didn't feel inclined to return to the 
lab. When he was away from the lab, the pull of 
research was less compulsive and he now just wanted 
to escape from it all. And where better to retreat 
than back to Nudeworld.

"Goodness!" said Blanche on his return. "You 
certainly do like to sleep!"

She wasn't referring to the Paul's real-life 
sleeping habits of but to his absence from the 
virtual world. Paul inevitably felt guilty for 
having been absent for so long, as he always did. 
How could he have been so thoughtless to his virtual 
lover? He made up for it, of course. And after so 
many weeks of celibacy, his carnal desires required 
a great deal of compensation. And Blanche showed 
just as much undying love for him now as she had 
when he was last in Nudeworld.

"What shall we do now?" asked Blanche, while Paul's 
virtual semen dripped down her chin and onto her 
abundant chest.

"I think we should visit the Technician's Arms 
again," said Paul. "I'd love a drink."

"What an excellent idea!" Blanche exclaimed who, 
unlike real-life women of Paul's acquaintance, was 
immediately ready to leave. 

It was dusk in Nudeworld, although it was just after 
midday in Godwin. The ancient rhythms of this 
virtual world were wholly independent from those set 
on the colony which, for historical reasons, were 
synchronised with a diurnal sequence known as 
Eastern Standard Time. When Paul was younger, he'd 
assumed it had something to do with the Earth's 
Orient and was disappointed to discover that it was 
related to the daily cycle of the eastern seaboard 
of the North American continent.

The reason Paul wanted to revisit the bar was that 
he'd been wondering whether he might see once more 
that strange avatar of an old man. It was unlikely, 
of course. If the avatar belonged to a real person 
the probability of that person visiting Nudeworld at 
the same time and in the same place as Paul was 
extremely small. However, Paul was oddly gratified 
to see the avatar sitting exactly where he'd been 
the last time Paul visited Nudeworld. He was sat on 
the same barstool chatting to a naked barmaid and 
appeared to be drinking from exactly the same glass 
of red wine.

In the real world and in the distant past, the sight 
of a fully-clothed man who exhibited the signs of a 
biological age that Paul guessed to be something 
like fifty or sixty years wouldn't have attracted 
anyone's attention. But here in a bar with half a 
dozen nude people all perfectly proportioned and 
totally unconcerned about their nakedness, this was 
a peculiar sight indeed. Furthermore, in such a real 
world Paul would never have the courage to approach 
a complete stranger as he did now. Nor would he have 
been so careless as to leave his lover unattended 
for any length of time without a drink or other 
distraction.

"Hello," Paul said boldly to the gentleman and sat 
down on the antiquated barstool beside him. "I've 
seen you here before. What's your name?"

Paul had never been very good at introducing himself 
but in Nudeworld his unsubtlety was never remarked 
on.

"Well, good evening," said the gentleman in a well-
articulated voice. "It's Paul, isn't it? My name's 
Virgil. Like the Roman poet celebrated by Dante. 
It's a pleasure to meet you. Can I get you a drink?"

"Erm," said Paul who usually just asked for a beer 
but was sure he should demonstrate rather more 
sophistication. "I'll have what you're having."

"A Merlot, then," said Virgil, gesturing towards the 
barmaid who nodded in reply and poured out another 
glass of the peculiar red liquid. "Excellent 
choice."

"You're an avatar of a real person, aren't you?" 
asked Paul. "You're not just a virtual person. 
You're real."

"Well, I most certainly feel real," said Virgil with 
a smile. He picked up his glass and chinked it 
against Paul's. "Cheers."

"But I mean really real," persisted Paul. "Where do 
you come from?"

"What a question!" Virgil exclaimed. His face 
crinkled in an amused smile that seemed appropriate 
on a face that wasn't nearly as bland as that of 
most people Paul met in virtual space. "Like you, I 
come from outside the borders of Nudeworld. But 
whether I'm real in the sense that you're real is a 
truly metaphysical question. How real is real? Isn't 
your delightful friend real?" He smiled at Blanche 
who was sitting patiently at a table, wholly 
unconcerned at being unceremoniously ignored. "And 
the avatar you inhabit in Nudeworld? Doesn't that 
seem real too?"

Paul frowned. This wasn't the sort of discussion he 
normally had in Nudeworld. Nor for that matter in 
Godwin. Philosophy wasn't his area of proficiency.

"When I say 'real'," Paul persisted, "I mean that 
you have an independent existence beyond Nudeworld."

"Well, I most certainly have," smiled the gentleman. 
"But enough of me. Tell me about yourself, Paul. 
Where do you come from? What do you do? Or are you 
like so many people one meets in Nudeworld whose 
life beyond is a mere shadow of their life in this 
delightful, but utterly eccentric, universe?"

Paul was more than happy to talk about himself. His 
opportunities for doing so in Godwin were very 
limited as most people got visibly bored by the 
tendency his conversation had of becoming just 
another unending monologue. He wasn't especially 
adept at social interaction at the best of times. 
But Virgil showed no sign of boredom as Paul 
recounted his recent visits to the computer emporium 
whose physical base was somewhere in the Asteroid 
Belt and appeared to be fascinated by Paul's 
digression into the obscure operating systems extant 
in earlier centuries.

Although Virgil must have been an avatar (who 
wasn't, after all?) he seemed bizarrely more 
corporeal than an avatar should be. His eyes were a 
sparkling pale blue that maintained a steady gaze. 
His clothes were rendered in fabulously intricate 
detail and yet there was nothing remotely 
ostentatious about them. Paul decided that the real 
Virgil must be using a very advanced plug-in to 
emulate himself in Nudeworld. 

"So tell me, Paul," said Virgil after a while, 
holding up a glass that however much he supped from 
never got any less full. "Do you ever have that 
feeling that you're at the centre of the universe 
and that everything around you interacts with you 
for a purpose?"

"It's not a question I've ever considered."

"It's something that's engaged philosophers for 
millennia. How much do you know? Just how much of 
your life is pure accident? How much has already 
been determined? Have you never thought that 
everything you've ever known, whether in Godwin or 
Nudeworld, is there for your benefit and yours 
alone?"

"Never."

"Solipsism it's called," Virgil continued. "It's a 
kind of egocentric view of the world. And do you 
really believe the universe continues without you 
when you're dead?"

"Of course it does," Paul replied. "What else could 
happen?"

"You tell me," Virgil smiled. "Can you be sure of 
even something as simple as that? When you ask me if 
I'm real, perhaps you should also ask whether 
anything anywhere is real. Perhaps nothing is real. 
Except you, of course."

"What a mad idea!" Paul exclaimed, already looking 
forward to the relative comfort of the concrete, 
unmistakeable reality of the Godwin colony and the 
things that were so certain to him there.

However, he didn't really want to leave the 
delectable Blanche quite so soon so he decided to 
tarry a little longer in Nudeworld. In any case, 
he'd noticed an advertisement for an all-woman 
netball match which he thought he'd like to see. It 
wasn't that he was particularly keen on netball, or 
any other sport for that matter, but for the same 
guilty reason as he rather enjoyed the kinkiness of 
a world of totally nudity he was attracted by the 
prospect of watching naked women running around a 
netball pitch in only their shoes. Not surprisingly, 
Blanche, who'd never before expressed any enthusiasm 
for the sport, was more than willing to accompany 
him to the stadium.

It was more than a day later when Paul at last 
disengaged himself from the pleasures of Nudeworld 
and, feeling slightly bruised and groggy, returned 
to the real world. The first thing he had to address 
was the ravenous hunger that the food he'd eaten in 
Nudeworld hadn't fully satisfied.

It was several days later that Paul at last decided 
to drag himself away from the lazy pleasures of home 
life and return to the lab. However much he enjoyed 
immersing himself in work, he also loved the luxury 
of doing nothing very much at all. He was sure he 
could do something more constructive with his spare 
time, but Godwin wasn't a large colony and he'd more 
or less exhausted every sightseeing possibility in 
his eighty years there. 

It was a pleasantly warm day, as every day was, and 
Paul was determined to make an effort towards 
addressing his lack of exercise. He chose to walk to 
the university by a slightly circuitous route 
through Erewhon Park. This was one of many parks 
that helped to generate the ecological balance that 
was vital to the colony's survival. It was large 
enough to hold two square kilometres of tropical 
jungle, a pleasing array of artworks and several 
park benches on which he could rest to prolong his 
walk. Paul wanted to feel fully relaxed before he 
once again tackled the intricate algorithms he was 
devising to extract what he wanted from all those 
petabytes of ASCII and EBCDIC data. 

"Well, goodness!" said Professor Hofstadter who was 
seated on a hoverstool outside the main doors to the 
university and had evidently been waiting for him. 
"Your timing was impeccable. You couldn't have 
chosen a better time to be away."

The professor wasn't given to sarcasm, so Paul 
understood that his comments were meant kindly and 
humorously. He also guessed that they must have been 
said to prepare him for some important news. It was 
a long time since anything much had happened at the 
university and on the last occasion that was when 
one of the nanotechnologists' experiments had gone 
badly wrong and an enormous swarm of nanobots had to 
be exterminated. Since their coding was to fluff up 
woollen clothing this was a fairly benign threat to 
anyone who wasn't wearing wool, but a considerable 
nuisance to those who did. 

"What's happened this time?" Paul asked. "Nothing 
serious I hope."

"Well, I'm afraid it is. And what's worse, it's 
directly affected your lab and, I'm sorry to say 
this, your research."

Acts of terrorism, though rare, were not unknown in 
the Godwin's history. After all, the foundations of 
anarchism were not unconnected with such acts in its 
earliest history. Consequently, the syndicates were 
generally relaxed about it and accepted that such 
things were inevitable in a community of several 
million people. However, this particular incident 
wasn't quite like any that had ever happened before.

Paul studied the holographic film of the incident 
over and over again, first when it was shown to him 
by the professor and many more times later when he 
was summoned to the chambers of the Godwin's 
Security Syndicate. 

A woman had wandered into Paul's laboratory, which 
in itself was unremarkable. Not one corner of the 
colony was out of bounds to anyone. This was more as 
a matter of principle than because everywhere in the 
colony was especially safe or habitable. There were 
plenty of incidents of people being mauled by lions 
in the game reserves or getting lost in the huge 
airless zones in the colony's engine rooms. But what 
was remarkable and had caused the closure of a 
substantial proportion of the university was that 
within less than a minute of the woman entering the 
lab, she suddenly disintegrated into an explosive 
cloud of smoke and flame that took with her the 
whole of the room and its contents. The explosion 
blew holes through the walls that spread the havoc 
to the adjacent rooms and laboratories. And not 
quite immediately but soon enough the ceiling 
collapsed and a pile of fresh rubble fell into 
Paul's lab from the floor above.

Before she blew herself up, the woman opened up her 
arms in an open embrace and uttered some words that 
Paul couldn't quite make out and certainly didn't 
understand. 

"Was it Chinese? German? I just don't know," asked 
Paul when he at last got to meet the Chief Security 
Advisor in the Dean's office.

"It was Arabic," said the Chief Security Advisor. 
"You're clearly not a linguist, are you?"

"So, what did she say?"

"Allah u Akhbar!" said the Advisor, consulting his 
holographic notes.  "It means 'God is great'. It's 
some kind of incantation used by the Muslim 
religion."

"I didn't know that Muslims were in the habit of 
killing themselves," said Paul. "Isn't it meant to 
be a fairly peaceful religion?"

"It is," said the Dean who was sitting cross-legged 
on his desk. "Though there have been periods in its 
history when its adherents practised a kind of 
suicide terrorism. Most significantly in the 21st 
century. But even in those distant days, it wasn't 
widely practised."

"But why blow up my laboratory?" wondered Paul.

"We rather hoped you might explain that to us," said 
the Dean.

Paul wasn't really able to help either the Dean or 
anyone else in the long series of interrogations he 
underwent for the rest of the day and, as it 
happened, sporadically for many days and even weeks 
afterwards. He was as ignorant as anyone as to why 
his laboratory should be targeted. He didn't 
experiment on live animals. His work was in no way 
disparaging of any religion, culture or ideology. He 
didn't belong to a clandestine organisation and, as 
far as he knew, he had no quarrels with anyone.

"We believe you," said a representative from the 
Special Operations division. His syndicate managed 
all external threats and these usually only extended 
to rogue meteorites and accidentally introduced 
microbes. "But it does seem strange. Your work 
appears to have excited a lot of interest from 
outside the colony. It is mostly theoretical 
research, isn't it?"

"Well, nothing I've done has ever excited anyone's 
interest before," admitted Paul. "I'd always 
considered my research was of more historical 
relevance than being especially pertinent for the 
38th Century."

"Well, you've done precious little research on any 
period after the 26th century, that's for sure," 
agreed the Special Operations Officer. "You're sure 
you don't recognise the poor misguided woman who 
killed herself?"

"I'm not aware of ever having met her."

"Not in your extracurricular activity? No online 
interaction? No virtual dating? Nothing that might 
explain a grudge she might have against you or your 
research?"

"Nothing at all."

"Fatima O'Leary she was called. Does the name mean 
anything to you?"

Paul shook his head. "I'm sure I'd remember a name 
like that."

"She wasn't christened Fatima. She was originally 
known as Esmeralda. She converted to Islam a couple 
of decades ago. The evidence we've gained is that 
she had a crisis of faith and has been in frequent 
communication with Islamic cells from other 
colonies. The one she had most contact with is the 
Muslim Sisterhood of New Mecca. That's a colony in 
the Asteroid belt which despite its name is actually 
rather secular and where only a minority are 
accounted to have a religious faith of any kind. Of 
course, when it was founded fifteen hundred years 
ago that was a different matter, but Islam, like all 
religions, has become increasingly inconsequential 
over the centuries. You've never shown any interest 
in religion, have you? Not that there's anything 
wrong with that, if you have."

"Religion. Politics. Nothing like that has ever 
interested me at all."

 "That's what we thought," admitted the officer. 
"But I had to ask."

"So, do you have any idea why Fatima killed 
herself?"

"I'm afraid we don't have any concrete theories at 
all," said the officer. "The most likely is that 
she, or rather her contacts in New Mecca, took 
exception to some aspect of your research. 
Naturally, the strict rules in Godwin on privacy and 
personal freedom means that we don't have any real 
evidence of what that might be, but the rather less 
fastidious intelligence agencies on New Mecca will 
no doubt uncover rather more than we can. What we do 
know is that her communications with the colony 
involved the use of massively secure encryption 
protocols that consumed a disproportionate amount of 
computing power."

"It does sound very mysterious."

"Well, I must express some sympathy to you and for 
your research. It must be totally lost now. 
Everything in your laboratory was incinerated."

"Not at all," said Paul, holding up a data crystal. 
"I kept a copy of all the data."

"You can't have all of it in just one data crystal," 
said the officer. "Those things barely hold even an 
exabyte of data."

"There wasn't that much data around in the early 
years of the Solar System. In fact all the data that 
existed on the internet, as it was called in the 21st 
century, was rather less than what's required to 
render a single moment in virtual space. I have 
other copies of the data stored in off-colony 
repositories throughout the solar system."

"Not very secure, is it?" remarked the officer. 
"Anyone could get hold of it."

"But that's the idea of my kind of research," said 
Paul. "It's not meant to be secret. It's publicly 
available and accessible to anyone who's got an 
interest in it."

"Hmm!" said the officer with a frown. "I'm afraid 
that while our investigations continue that is one 
state of affairs that won't be allowed to continue." 



Chapter Five 
Mars - 3752 C.E.

The gust of wind that blew over the red soil picked 
up a fistful of red dust and brushed it against 
Colonel Vashti's visor. Through the scattered 
grains, she was able to admire a landscape that was 
both splendidly barren and untidily littered with 
the detritus of war. A tank that had sunk inside a 
crater was weathered by wind rather than rusted by 
oxygen, even though it was many centuries since it 
had been attacked. The burnt out hulks of space 
craft were scattered about the cliff edges above 
her. They were splattered by ice that had been 
thrown up from the permafrost by their ancient 
impact. Fragments of metal and plastic were further 
evidence of the many battles, often fought with 
crazed ferocity, to claim possession of Martian soil 
that had never been surrendered and never securely 
taken.

"Oh shit!" yelled the colonel as her visor was 
suddenly caked with red earth that came not from the 
wind but from a nearby ground explosion. It was 
followed by another that was much closer. In fact, 
too close! 

The world around the colonel disintegrated into 
fragments and a cloud of evaporated Martian soil 
rose in a mushroom shape directly above her head.

"Colonel! Colonel!" yelled her fellow soldiers when 
the pounding of missiles from over the horizon 
finally abated, leaving the spot where she'd been 
standing nothing more than a fresh crater on the 
scarred planet's surface. Vashti's patrol expected 
to find nothing more than a shattered limb or the 
fragments of a molten space suit.

A figure emerged from behind the shadow of the 
centuries-old mangled tank. It was Colonel Vashti, 
her suit intact and her communications systems 
functioning perfectly well.

"That was close!" she said with a smile that wasn't 
at all visible through the red dust that coated her 
visor. She strode towards her companions who were 
still shaken by their proximity to the carnage. "The 
Polar cunts must be stationed nearer than we 
thought."

"The fuckers!" said Corporal Krishnamarti bitterly 
as he brushed the dust off his visor. "If I ever get 
one of those cunts within range of my phasar then 
there'll be a shitload of fucking Polar corpuscles 
pasting the soil."

"It couldn't make it any more red than it already 
is," Grenadier Khadija joked as she cocked her 
massive missile-launcher over her shoulder. "Anyway, 
I reckon this planet's a lot more fucking red now 
than it was when the first colony was founded. We've 
been spreading this fucking hole with enough Polar 
corpuscles to give those Martian microbes a real 
feast of iron."

Colonel Vashti strode across the Martian plain-if 
such a word correctly described the bounce that 
accompanied her step on the low gravity highlands. 
She held her laser rifle nozzle-downwards while 
crystals of Martian ice clung to her boots. Although 
the soldier's space suits were as thin as modern 
textiles allowed, the volume of nano-particles that 
filled the inside shell made her seem almost obese, 
as it did the other soldiers. A single microscopic 
rip through the fabric, however tough and self-
mending it was, would spell instant death for any 
one of them. If the low temperature wasn't enough to 
kill you then the poisonous carbon dioxide 
atmosphere most certainly was.

"We thought you were a real goner, sir," said 
Grenadier Khadija when the colonel had caught up 
with her patrol. "It looked like that fucking 
missile had done it for you."

"It was fucking close, grenadier," admitted the 
colonel. "But Mariner military training is second to 
none. No bastard missile can fucking beat that."

"Fuck yes, sir!" agreed the sergeant. "Those Polar 
cunts should be shitting themselves. In fact, I bet 
the fuckers already are."

The three soldiers bounced their way back across the 
plain, mindful that they were not yet by no means in 
the clear. They kept as much as they could to the 
shadows of the billion-year old crater edges that 
were still rather grander than anything thrown up by 
conventional weaponry. They were relieved to 
discover that their space shuttle was still intact. 
Its chameleon-like exterior had camouflaged it well 
against the red planet's soil, but it was still wise 
to be prudent. Polar scouts would still be on the 
lookout for the distinctive plume of a rising space 
craft. Once the company was inside, Space Pilot 
Sadiq elevated the shuttle above the surface slowly 
enough to raise minimal dust disturbance.

"So much for a routine patrol!" remarked the pilot 
as the crew slid open their visors. "The fuckers did 
have to wait for today to do firing practise."

"We really thought we were one man down," remarked 
the corporal. "You were fucking lucky there, sir."

"I guess I've got a charmed life, soldier," Colonel 
Vashti agreed.

"You can say that again, sir," agreed Grenadier 
Khadija. "I heard you were the only one who survived 
the Sinus Meridiani Massacre. There wasn't a fucking 
scratch on you!"

"As I said, corporal, I was just lucky."

The soldiers eventually arrived back at the 
welcoming protection of the Tithonium IV Dome in the 
Agathadaemon Colony. Here they could at last remove 
their space suits in the quarantine area before 
entering the mandatory chemical showers. They were 
all naked under their space suits and this was the 
first time that Pilot Sadiq had seen or even known 
of Colonel Vashti's unusual assets.

"Fucking hell, sir!" he exclaimed. "That's one big 
fucking cock you've got there."

Colonel Vashti held up her penis that was still 
slightly tumescent after the excitement of her near-
death encounter. It was a splendid enough asset on a 
man, but especially prominent on a body that showed 
no other obvious sign of masculinity.

"It was a foolish mistake," she said with 
uncharacteristic honesty. "A long, long time ago."

"You never felt like doing something to change it, 
sir?" the pilot asked. "You know, return to... return 
to whatever you used to be?"

"I've got kind of fond of it, corporal," Colonel 
Vashti replied. "It's become a part of me. And, 
anyway," she continued with a sly smile, "it's been 
a damned good friend."

"I guess, sir," said the pilot who suddenly felt 
shy. It was clear to the colonel that his interest 
in her penis was unlikely to get much greater.

The colonel and the other soldiers zipped themselves 
into their standard military fatigues and strode 
back to their separate quarters. Whether enlisted or 
officer class, their red-brown uniforms were much 
the same. Rank was only indicated by the epaulettes 
on the shoulders and the stripes across the chest. 
However, as commanding officer, Colonel Vashti had 
the duty of dictating a report on their patrol.

The path to her quarters was a tree-lined avenue 
under the missile-proof silos where the soldiers 
were quartered. Above her head was the last line of 
defence from incoming attack. It was a massively 
thick dome that only a nuclear warhead could 
penetrate but which also kept out all natural light 
from a Sun that was two thirds of its apparent size 
as seen from Earth. 

The doors to her dome-shaped quarters slid open as 
she approached and the lights came on automatically. 
Her room was spartan. There were no holographs of 
family or friends to humanise it. There were none of 
the sentimental reminders of a civilian life that 
most soldiers, especially female ones, gathered 
about them. When the colonel had finished dictating 
her account of her company's patrol, which she did 
with extraordinary precision and detail, she didn't 
choose to listen to music or watch a holographic 
movie. Instead, she promptly began studying news 
stories and academic articles on a wide range of 
subjects, of which few were of even a remotely 
military nature.

What attracted Vashti most were the accounts being 
reported by many news agencies of the bizarre 
apparitions across the Solar System. These were 
usually classified as entertaining stories of only 
humorous interest. There was an account of a huge 
cloud of blue butterflies that appeared on, of all 
places, the surface of the moon Umbriel around 
Uranus. It was recorded on surveillance cameras but 
disappeared within seconds of being sighted. There 
was an account of a mysterious space craft observed 
during a routine scan of the Oort Cloud that again 
disappeared within moments. There was the amusing 
news story from Earth of a mysterious reptile, 
possibly an elasmosaurus, seen in an African lake 
which was attributed to ancient superstition and the 
affects of too much alcohol. These were the stories 
over which Vashti paused the longest, before she 
followed rather less sensational stories about 
temperature anomalies in the Asteroid Belt, the 
discovery of yet another interstellar planetoid, and 
holographic images taken by robotic probes around 
the Proxima Centauri stellar system. 

Vashti's concentration was suddenly broken and she 
dragged her eyes away from the holoscreen. A moment 
later, the security camera for her quarters 
displayed the holographic image of the woman 
standing outside her door. It was Vashti's current 
lover, Mia. She was a civilian who worked as a 
virtual landscape designer for the Tithonium 
Broadcasting Corporation. 

"Hiya, Vash!" the woman exclaimed with a huge grin 
on her face. "I know you're in there. Open up!"

 "Come in. Come in," Vashti said as she let the door 
to her quarters slide open.

Mia was a black-skinned woman with short hair who 
wore a flowing white skirt that trailed behind her 
and which was lifted off the ground by a hovering 
cloud of nano-particles. Her outfit was designed to 
emphasise her waist and the perfect proportions of 
her relatively small bosom. She wore a luminescent 
blue collar around her neck that held all the 
holographic communication devices and entertainment 
consoles she needed to keep in touch or to be 
entertained.

Mia noticed that Vashti was still wearing her 
military fatigues. "You're not still on duty are 
you? Khadija told me you'd finished for the day."

"Well, I've finished active duty anyway," said 
Vashti. "I'm still on call, you know, but it's not 
often that I actually have to do anything."

"Right," said Mia with relief, who without any more 
prompting let her clothes slip off her to reveal a 
slim charcoal-black body and an ornate holographic 
tattoo of a white rose on her shoulder. "Then I 
guess we can do nothing together. If that's what you 
want...?"

"Don't be foolish, sweetheart," said Vashti who 
disrobed herself rather more slowly. When she tugged 
off her trousers her penis was revealed in all its 
erect splendour: the foreskin pulled back by the 
engorged glans.

"If I didn't already know you were a soldier," said 
Mia with a smile as she kneeled in front of Vashti's 
crotch, "I'd have guessed it from how you're always 
standing to attention and ready for action."

Although Mia was a woman who generally preferred 
other women, she had an especial fascination for 
Vashti's cock. She greedily enveloped it in her full 
purple lips and with mouthfuls of spit she was soon 
pumping it in and out of her eager mouth. All the 
while Vashti gasped with animal grunts from the 
physical pleasure of her lover's oral ministrations.

Vashti also knew how to please Mia and she knew what 
gave her the most pleasure. So she let forth a 
splurge of semen over Mia's face, onto her small 
puffy-nippled breasts and into her eager face. Mia 
had developed a taste for semen. She'd never tasted 
it from a man's penis but she relished what she'd 
sampled from Vashti's.

"Does a man's sperm taste as good as a woman's?" Mia 
asked as she let the semen trickle down her throat 
and licked off as much as she could from her chin.

"I've only tasted men's," admitted Vashti. "But I 
imagine it tastes exactly as good. You ought to try 
some time."

"Uuughh!" Mia exclaimed. "I would if there were only 
more men who looked like you. But how could they be 
unless they'd had a sex change and then they 
wouldn't really be men any more. Were you ever a 
man, Vash?"

This was a question like many others of a similar 
nature that Vashti felt obliged to evade. "Not 
really, sweetheart. I'm as much a woman now as I've 
ever been."

"Well, the surgery was a fucking miracle, that's all 
I can say," said Mia who stood up but whose face was 
still only level to Vashti's bosom. "I just wish 
there were more people in the world like you."

"And more like you, sweetheart," said Vashti. She 
gripped the back of Mia's head and peppered her face 
with kisses which built up to a crescendo where her 
tongue plunged as deep inside her lover's mouth as 
it was possible for it to go without choking her. 
The two fell together onto the thick carpeted floor 
and were soon coupling groin to groin, Vashti's 
penis alternating between the wet embrace of Mia's 
slippery vagina and the tighter but still 
accommodating anus that was functionally similar to, 
but materially different from, the many male anuses 
Vashti had enjoyed. 

Vashti had skills beyond those of the average lover. 
She knew how to continue her lovemaking for an 
inhuman length of time. She could bring Mia to 
orgasm after orgasm whilst ensuring that the next 
one was stronger and more intense than the one 
before. Their mutual perspiration lubricated the 
passion of their grappling bodies. Mia raised her 
torso above Vashti and thrust her groin back and 
forth on her lover's prick while she supported her 
weight on her long slim arms. Her holographic tattoo 
shimmered against the images projected from Vashti's 
holoscreen.

The two lovers were still locked in carnal embrace, 
Vashti above her lover and her buttocks still in 
steady rhythm, when there was a sudden break in the 
ambient landscape of gentle Martian hills that 
Vashti had chosen to accompany their sport. This 
relaxing vision was replaced by the full length 
avatar of General Xian-Ping with his shaved head and 
markedly penetrating blue eyes. 

"Colonel, please stop whatever you are doing. I 
would like you to come to my office immediately." 

"Yes sir!" said Colonel Vashti, who immediately 
stood to attention with her penis erect and with 
Mia's vaginal juice still dripping from its tip.

The general's avatar evaporated and to Mia's evident 
disappointment the colonel's penis swiftly shrank to 
less impressive proportions.

"Duty calls," said Vashti sadly.

"Oh shit!" said Mia even more regretfully. "Does it 
have to?"

It was unusual for a soldier to be summoned to meet 
his or her commanding officer in person. The 
communications systems were secure enough that it 
would normally be sufficient for Colonel Vashti 
simply to request Mia to leave while she spoke to 
her superior officer. This was clearly not a routine 
call, but for Vashti it wasn't totally unexpected.

General Xian-Ping wasn't the only one waiting for 
the colonel in his office. He was accompanied by two 
other officers of similar rank.

"Your services have been requested by the 
Interplanetary Union, colonel," the general 
announced. "I needn't remind you that this is not a 
normal request or one that is made often. You will 
have command of several hundred combat soldiers on a 
mission that is of the utmost sensitivity and about 
which you must not tell anyone."

"Yes, sir," said Colonel Vashti, who stood rigidly 
to attention.

"I haven't been given many details about the 
mission, but I have been given the duty of telling 
you as much as I know. You will be in command of 
military forces that have been gathered together 
from all corners of the Solar System. The soldiers 
you will command come not only from the Mariner 
colonies but as far afield as Mercury, Uranus and 
the Kuiper Belt. Given the nature of this 
expeditionary force, it is likely to include 
soldiers from the Polar colonies. You are under 
strict instructions from the Interplanetary Union to 
treat these bastards with equal preferment as all 
other military personnel. This is an international 
force and for the purposes of this mission-however 
difficult this must be-you must pretend to be 
impartial to the nationality of the soldiers in your 
command. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that 
if you should by any means receive classified 
information about Polar military activity-and it is 
not for me to dictate how that should happen-then 
that information must be passed by secure channels 
to Mariner Intelligence. This aspect of your mission 
is not part of your duties as an officer serving the 
Interplanetary Union, but it is expected of you as a 
loyal servant of the Mariner Federation."

"Yes sir."

"You will not receive a more complete briefing than 
this of the service that the Federation expects of 
you and I expect you to exercise discretion at all 
times. I trust you understand this and will not fail 
your people and your President."

"I understand, sir, and will comply."

"Your mission will take place on a space ship that 
has yet to be commissioned and may even be a 
civilian vessel. I have not been told exactly what 
the destination might be, but I believe it could 
well be beyond the Heliopause. It may even be beyond 
the Solar System's magnetosphere. There will be 
other officers of similar rank to you, but day-to-
day command of the operation will be with the ship's 
captain. This hasn't been confirmed, but I believe 
that the captain is likely to be from either the 
Saturn or Earth systems as these are the two pre-
eminent powers in the Interplanetary Union." 

"Yes sir."

"I don't know why you've been chosen, but the 
request to enlist you on this mission has come from 
the very highest level. There are many other 
officers of equal rank to you in the Mariner 
Federation with equally distinguished service-
although none with your peculiar anatomy-but you are 
the one that has been selected. Naturally, the 
Mariner Federation is gratified that no Polar 
officer has been given the same distinction. That'll 
give those Polar bastards pause for thought, don't 
you think?"

"Yes sir. Without a doubt."

"Good. Good."

"Yes sir."

 "We don't know for sure what this mission's purpose 
is. I've been told that this information will not be 
declassified until the space ship returns from its 
mission. However, we do have some hypotheses. The 
principal one is that the mission is related to the 
discovery of an alien extrasolar civilisation. It 
has long been suspected that such civilisations 
exist and there is evidence that appears to 
indirectly confirm this. I'm not surprised that our 
intelligence agencies would speculate that a journey 
to such an absurdly remote part of the solar system 
is connected with the possibility of making such a 
first encounter. Furthermore, this is consistent 
with the growing evidence in recent decades of 
unusual events and apparitions for which there is as 
yet no agreed explanation."

"Yes sir."

"There are countless conjectures as to how an alien 
civilisation might manifest itself. Of course, we 
don't know whether such a civilisation is hostile or 
friendly. If it happens to be hostile, I expect you 
to immediately provide this information through 
secure channels so that the Federation has a good 
chance of defending itself. That is understood, 
colonel?"

"Yes sir. Absolutely."

"There are other hypotheses other than the one 
relating to alien intelligence, of course, but 
currently that's by far the most convincing. It's 
possible that this civilisation might not even be 
organic. It might be mechanical, nano-particulate, 
ethereal or organised in some mysterious way that 
even now no scientist has anticipated. It may even 
be an extinct civilisation that is sending 
emissaries beyond its own time. We must be prepared 
for anything."

"Yes sir."

"Of course it may not be an alien threat at all. You 
could be working on a mission to combat terrorism. 
There are vicious elements amongst the rogue states 
that stubbornly refuse to acknowledge interplanetary 
law. It could be that religious fundamentalists or 
extreme ideologues are plotting mischief on a 
massive scale. It could, of course, be something 
entirely different. Whatever it is, we expect you to 
observe your duty to the Federation above all other 
imperatives. Is that understood, colonel?"

"Yes sir. You can rely on me."

"Good," said the general. "Your preparations for 
duty begin immediately. You will leave the Mariner 
Federation tomorrow and you must not tell anyone 
where you are going or that you are leaving at all. 
You will be detailed to go on a routine patrol 
rather like the one you went on today. The 
difference is that you, and the other soldiers on 
your detail, will not return. The story that will 
accompany your disappearance will be that you were 
lost in action and presumed dead. You do understand, 
colonel? You must tell no one, including your lover, 
Mia Nkome," the general made a show of consulting 
the holographic display at his elbow, "that you are 
doing anything at all out of the ordinary. I don't 
need to emphasise, I'm sure, how much we expect your 
total discretion."

"Not at all, sir."

 "You will be taken to an off-planet centre where 
you will serve under the direct command of the 
Interplanetary Union. This is international 
territory where the state of war between the Mariner 
Federation and the Polar Republics is not effective. 
Normal hostilities will cease, although you know and 
I know, of course, that your highest duty will still 
be to preserve the hard-won way of life of the 
Federation. Do you have any questions, colonel?"

"None, sir. I shall serve the Interplanetary Union 
and the Mariner Federation to the best of my 
abilities and remember always to whom I owe first 
allegiance."

"Well said, soldier," said the general, allowing a 
smile to crack across his inscrutable face. "You are 
dismissed."

"Thank you, sir," said Colonel Vashti. She saluted 
his senior officer and turned about to leave his 
office.

At last, Vashti thought to herself, as the door slid 
behind her. Now her real mission in the Solar System 
could begin in earnest! 

Chapter Six 
Godwin - 3750 C.E.

"How many incidents have there been now?" Paul was 
asked. 

"A few," he answered. 

"Six, in fact," said the dark hued security officer 
who'd flown in from the Interplanetary Union's 
administrative offices near Pluto. "Three reported 
at the university. Two between here and your home. 
And one that destroyed your home; or at least most 
of it. Three explosions and three attempted 
assassinations. And you really have no idea who it 
could be?"

"None," admitted Paul. "I didn't know I had any 
enemies. And I didn't know that my research would 
ever upset anyone."

"These incidents are almost certainly associated 
with the publication of your research," remarked the 
officer. "Did anyone ever suggest to you that it 
might excite unwelcome attention?"

"Not at all," said Paul. "No one's been interested 
in my research before."

"Understandably," admitted the officer, as he 
studied his notes. "Blogging and Personal Websites 
in the Twentieth to Twenty-third Centuries. Twenty-
first Century Pornography. The Pattern of Movie 
Downloading Habits in the Twenty-second Century. 
These are truly academic pursuits. What attracted 
you to analyse ancient military and government 
records regarding the Anomaly?"

"I just came across a reference to it in a printed 
file when I was researching conspiracy theories and 
was fascinated by it."

"And did anyone inform you that the Anomaly has 
reappeared in the last century?"

"No. Has it?" asked Paul for whom this was genuinely 
unsuspected news.

"Yes," said the officer. "And in exactly the same 
location in the very same unpromising corner of 
space."

"It has?"

"Yes. And do you have any idea from your research 
what this Anomaly might be?"

"Well, only what the records say. And none of them 
are very forthcoming. It's a kind of a presence of 
absence, as far as I can tell. It's a kind of black 
nothingness that exerts no electromagnetic or 
gravitational force. It simply blocks out the 
starlight from behind. Some records speculate that 
it might be dark energy or dark matter or something 
like that."

"Well, we know enough these days about the physical 
components of the universe to be certain that it 
isn't either of those things," said the officer, 
"although 'dark' it most certainly is. Were there 
any records that you read, and perhaps not thought 
worth including in your reports, that associated the 
Anomaly with other incidents in the Solar System?"

"Like what?" Paul wondered.

"Well, like, for instance, alien space ships or 
alien encounters of any kind?"

"There's a lot of documentation on things like 
that," Paul admitted, "but no positive correlation. 
You must remember, though, that in the early part of 
the third millennium there was a great deal of 
speculation about aliens and most of it was total 
rubbish."

"Only most of it?"

"I guess so," said Paul. "Possibly all of it. I 
don't know. Perhaps if there'd been more truth to 
these speculations in the last thousand years or so, 
something more would have been made of them."

"You have heard of the peculiar apparitions reported 
across the Solar System, haven't you?" remarked the 
officer. "The things that appear for a short period 
of time and then vanish. Like, for instance, the 
knight in armour that appeared briefly near Neptune? 
Or the floating telephone box in the Kuiper Belt? Or 
the swarm of pterodactyls over the Moon?"

"I assumed they were just nonsense dreamt up by the 
news media," said Paul. "Odd, but not at all 
proven."

 "Were there any such events recorded in the twenty-
first and twenty-second centuries?"

"Well, lots," admitted Paul. "But none independently 
verified."

"And no connection was made between them and the 
Anomaly?"

"Not that I know of. Nothing that was preserved in 
the records."

"I see," said the officer thoughtfully. He gazed at 
his notes, which even Paul could see was determining 
the nature of his questions. It was unusual for a 
representative from the Interplanetary Union, 
especially an intelligence officer, to travel such a 
very long way to a remote space colony like Godwin. 
And even more so with the express purpose of 
interrogating someone like Paul whose activities 
wouldn't normally attract any but the most cursory 
attention from beyond the University. 

Then again, he was at least as worried and upset as 
anyone else by the peculiar incidents that had been 
following him around. There were two occasions when 
he'd nearly been killed. The first by a burst of 
laser fire he'd only avoided because he'd bent down 
to straighten a shoe that he'd put on rather 
carelessly. The second by a knife attack that was 
intercepted by the security officer that had been 
assigned to him after the explosion in the 
laboratory. And the replacement to the laboratory 
hadn't lasted long until it was gutted by an 
unexplained fire. The worst, of course, was the 
malfunction in Paul's domestic systems where the 
nanobots went utterly out of control and instead of 
cleaning the carpets and removing dust started 
dismantling the entire house so that it was now 
totally uninhabitable. If he'd been in bed rather 
than immersed in Nudeworld, he might have been 
smothered by over-zealous nanobots and reduced to 
the same small specks of dust that was all that was 
remaining of most of his home.

"Well, the fact that there you've now provided 
conclusive evidence that the Anomaly isn't just a 
recent phenomenon has attracted considerable 
attention," elaborated Special Officer Fitzwilliam 
as he held a holoscreen up toward his eyes. "It has 
eliminated some theories of what the Anomaly might 
be, as well as stimulating rather a few new ones. It 
has upset some people while providing welcome 
evidence for others. What it's most definitely done 
is absolve responsibility from any currently 
existing human agency unless you either postulate 
the possibility of time travel or a more advanced 
technology in the twenty-first century than anyone's 
ever imagined. You saw no speculation about time 
travel in your research, did you? That, rather than 
being contemporaneous, the Anomaly might be an 
incursion from a later epoch?"

"No," said Paul. "Even in the twenty-first century 
it was believed that time travel was a strictly one-
way affair. And like notions of travelling faster 
than light or creating real rather than artificial 
gravity, that seems even less likely nowadays than 
it might have done then."

"That doesn't stop science-fiction authors from 
incorporating such concepts into their fiction 
though, does it?"

"I don't see that that's relevant. I've studied the 
maths. Time travel is about as possible as 
reincarnation and fairies."

"But people believe in those as well, don't they?" 
remarked the special officer. "However, I'm not here 
to indulge in idle speculation. I shall spell out 
the facts to you as we see them. You've been doing 
independent research into the Anomaly which has come 
up with the surprising and totally unexpected result 
that this phenomenon was positively identified over 
a thousand years ago. You and your research have 
attracted the unwelcome attention of some as yet not 
positively identified individuals and organisations. 
And your life is in danger. Whether you like it or 
not: so too is the life of many people at the 
University and on the colony of Godwin. It's not at 
all inconceivable that after having failed to 
eliminate you or the fruits of your research by 
conventional methods, these unknown individuals or 
organisations might decide that the easiest and most 
conclusive way might be to destroy the entire 
colony. It doesn't take more than one particularly 
crazed individual with access to an antimatter 
device to reduce Godwin to nothing more than a cloud 
of fundamental particles. Even this far out in the 
Solar System, that would have an impact on colonies 
many light minutes away. A stream of naked quarks or 
leptons could seriously aggravate systems even as 
far away as Pluto."

"It doesn't sound good," admitted Paul.

"It doesn't, does it?" agreed Special Officer 
Fitzwilliam. "It is your misfortune, in a sense, to 
live in what must be the most insecure and easily 
infiltrated colony in the whole Solar System. 
Indeed, it has been extremely exasperating simply to 
identify someone who possesses what might resemble a 
position of authority in your colony. It seems that 
apparent seniority and responsibility carry very 
little actual executive power in Godwin. Even your 
ambassadors and consuls in the Interplanetary Union 
are unable to identify an individual in your colony 
whose decision-making capacity is beyond that 
required to perform their job. If there was ever a 
war involving your colony, I doubt that Godwin could 
make even the most basic strategic or tactical 
military decision."

"Anarchists have no conception of war," said Paul in 
defence of the guiding principles of his home 
colony.

"Nor any likelihood of surviving one," remarked the 
special officer grimly. "However, the Interplanetary 
Union has responsibilities for all its member 
states, even one whose representatives are as 
unpredictable and eccentric as yours are. There is 
no discernible pattern to the policies your 
representatives support. Those who represent you 
appear to have been elected on the basis of their 
desire to serve rather than because anyone 
especially wanted to be represented by them. Your 
representatives more often vote against each other 
rather than act as a common block. Nevertheless, we 
are duty-bound to protect your colony and the 
individuals within it. Including, it has to be said, 
you, Paul."

"And if I didn't want your protection?" wondered 
Paul more in the spirit of intellectual curiosity 
than disagreement.

"That's your choice, but the Interplanetary Union 
might very well exercise its right, which none of 
your citizens can exercise, of protecting the whole 
of the colony against the wishes of individuals 
within it."

"I see," said Paul, who had only the vaguest notion 
of what might be the common good but was sure that 
there might be some strong arguments in its favour. 

"There is a mission to intercept the Anomaly which 
has been set up with the highest authority and, 
although this appears to have no meaning on Godwin, 
the utmost secrecy. We would hope, but cannot, of 
course, enforce that you would respect this secrecy 
and tell no one. And I mean absolutely no one. 
Whether or not it's a decision I agree with-and I am 
in no position to voice an opinion-it has been 
decided that you should participate on this 
mission."

"Of what possible use would I be?" wondered Paul. 
"I'm a researcher. All my research material comes 
from within the Solar System. I'd be less use in 
deep space than I would be here."

"You may ask," smiled the special officer in 
apparent sympathy. "I can't see you doing much 
useful research when you're travelling several light 
weeks, if not months, from the ecliptic plane. But 
the decision has been made and if you decline, which 
you have every right of doing, the significance of 
the mission might well override your normal rights. 
It is a mission of the highest importance and any 
excuse for not participating might not be viewed 
with the usual indulgence."

"And what is this mission intended to achieve?"

"Well now, you're asking me a question for which my 
security clearance isn't nearly high enough for me 
to answer," admitted Special Officer Fitzwilliam. 
"However, I am authorised to use my discretion to 
ensure that you participate whether or not I agree 
with the decision that you should. I simply hope 
that you'll agree to embark on the Space Ship 
Byzantium which has been diverted from its standard 
course for the express purpose of picking you up."

"I see," said Paul who was slowly getting accustomed 
to the notion of a future that was at odds with 
anything he might have planned for himself. 

"You mustn't tell anyone why you'll be leaving the 
colony on the cruiser," said the special officer, 
"nor, if possible, that you'll be leaving at all. If 
asked, you should say that you're attending a 
conference on twenty-seventh century quantum 
computing at Sucette in the Uranus orbit. This 
convention is dull enough that your attendance there 
would be wholly plausible. However, judging from our 
records, you have so few friends and an even smaller 
family that it should be fairly easy for you to 
avoid the need to divulge even this much 
information."

"I suppose you're right," said Paul, a little sadly.

Nevertheless, ever since his home had been reduced 
to dust there was little on Godwin to persuade Paul 
to remain. He was now living in another house 
equally as well appointed but also a long and 
tedious shuttle bus ride from the University. It was 
at the furthest end of the colony, not far from the 
huge wall that marked its abrupt perimeter. He had 
all the home comforts he'd always known, but his 
every step was now being observed and monitored by a 
coterie of Godwin's voluntary corps of security 
officers and the rather more officious ones from the 
Interplanetary Union that had accompanied Special 
Officer Fitzwilliam to the colony. Paul wasn't 
comfortable at having his every step monitored nor 
by the ever-present sight of the sheer wall that 
separated the colony's furthest end from the 
emptiness of space beyond.

It was no doubt with the intention of lessening the 
impact of seeing the internal space so abruptly 
truncated that Godwin's designers had decided that 
the inside wall should be a huge mirror that gave 
the impression of a colony that stretched onwards 
forever in both directions, but Paul felt distinctly 
uneasy when he left his home to see his reflection 
and the reflection of his home only a few hundred 
metres away. And the constant presence of security 
officers around his home and in many of the rooms 
meant that he'd lost all sense of privacy. 

It wasn't long until he was actively looking forward 
to his journey towards the heart of the Solar 
System; or at least as far as Earth. 

Paul still had the opportunity to retreat to 
Nudeworld and he was comforted by the fact that such 
virtual worlds crossed the boundaries of time and 
space and was as equally accessible on Pluto and 
Earth as it was in Godwin or elsewhere in the Kuiper 
Belt. 

It was sex rather than conversation that was 
uppermost on Paul's mind the evening after his 
interview with Special Officer Fitzwilliam. And sex, 
of course, was readily available when he met Blanche 
in the living room of his virtual home in Nudeworld. 
It took as little as no persuasion at all to get his 
virtual partner to lie on the luxurious carpet while 
Paul hammered away at her. And despite having set 
the sex settings for long and leisurely, he released 
his semen on her face and magnificent bosom well 
within half an hour. His penis was aching and his 
body bathed in perspiration, but somehow Paul was 
still not satisfied.

"Let's go to a night club," he suggested knowing 
that whatever he wanted to do Blanche would be 
equally as enthusiastic. Even if he'd suggested some 
truly perverse sexual activity, Blanche would obey 
his every whim. 

"Which one?" was all she asked.

"The Nightcrawler," suggested Paul. It was one where 
he had the most opportunity to find potential sexual 
partners other than Blanche, but jealousy wasn't an 
attribute Blanche possessed (unless Paul had 
specified her to be that way). 

Paul would never have gone to a night club on 
Godwin. He wasn't particularly keen on dance music 
or, indeed, music of any kind. Those few times he'd 
been to a real life night club he'd felt very much 
out of place while his companions danced with 
frenetic disregard to the ferociously loud music. In 
Nudeworld, however, night clubs were places where 
Paul could indulge his voyeuristic inclinations and 
where, should he feel inclined, there was no 
resistance to any suggestion he made to a dancing 
partner; unless, of course, he accidentally chose 
the avatar of a real person who was unlikely to be 
impressed by Paul's clumsy banter.

It was a woman with incredibly long silky black legs 
who attracted Paul's attention and while Blanche sat 
patiently at a table with a glass of fruit juice he 
was soon stretched out on the dance floor and 
fucking this woman with even more fervour than he 
had with Blanche. This woman, whose name Paul never 
learnt, was a lean and lubricious fuck, who relished 
pumping her head back and forth on Paul's erect 
penis. She invited him to spray his semen over her 
eyes and hair and hardly cared at all for the mess 
it made of her make-up. While the couple sprawled 
out on the velvety soft dance floor, the other 
dancers assiduously avoided trampling on them which 
was also unlikely to actually happen in real life.

"What was she like, darling?" asked Blanche when 
Paul eventually returned. "Was she as good a fuck as 
me?"

Paul was gentleman enough, even though it scarcely 
mattered to a virtual entity, to suggest that 
Blanche was by far the better lover. And with no 
hint of jealousy, she rewarded his gallantry with a 
kiss and a leisurely handjob.  

Paul eventually tired of the flashing nights and 
throbbing music. He wasn't even sure whether he was 
listening to the same piece of music now as that 
he'd heard when the couple arrived, although he knew 
that with well over fifteen hundred years of 
electronic dance music at its disposal the 
likelihood of the same tune being repeated was 
virtually zero. 

Part of the programming that was essential in 
Nudeworld, as it was in all virtual universes, was 
that the biological needs of the real person behind 
the avatar should be addressed. There had been 
unfortunate incidents in the early days of virtual 
universes, even before they'd become especially 
realistic, when people had died from forgetting to 
eat and, most of all, to relieve themselves.

Paul made his way to the night club's toilets where 
he was welcomed by a very attentive female attendant 
and where his normal bodily functions, relieved at 
exactly the same time in real space, functioned with 
astonishingly real effect and satisfaction.

When Paul emerged from the toilet he was confronted 
by rather more doors than he remembered there being 
on his way in. Slightly tipsy from the wine, whose 
affect was wholly virtual and would have no echo in 
the real world, he pushed at a door which he wasn't 
certain was quite the right one. It led out into a 
grassy open space, much like a park in Godwin on a 
gloriously well-lit day. This puzzled Paul because 
it was the middle of the night. On the other hand, 
virtual worlds weren't bound by the same laws of 
physics as the real world so he didn't worry about 
it as much as he would if the same thing had 
happened during Godwin's diurnal cycle.

Paul always enjoyed sitting in parks. His most 
productive thinking had been done in the extensive 
parkland around the University where a herd of 
fallow deer wandered about amongst grazing kangaroos 
and the occasional reanimated diprotodon. The 
animals grazing in Nudeworld were peculiarly mundane 
given the designers' opportunity to populate it with 
anything they liked. Sheep and llama were all the 
distraction there was for Paul as he sat down on a 
wooden park bench, not at all conscious of his 
nudity or the drips of pale liquid from his penis 
onto the lush lawn.

"How are you, Paul?" asked a kindly voice which Paul 
identified as belonging to Virgil whom he'd met 
several times now on the occasion he'd chosen to 
visit Nudeworld. 

Paul was by now totally unsurprised by such 
encounters, although in real time he sometimes 
wondered at its oddity. Not only was the gentleman, 
by being fully clothed, completely out of place in 
the aptly named Nudeworld, it was peculiar that 
someone like him should become a regular part of 
what was essentially Paul's fantasy world. Perhaps 
the gentleman was the avatar of a real person. If 
so, then judging by the lack of time dilation, it 
must be someone who lived very close to Godwin, if 
not on the colony itself.

"I'm very well, thank you," answered Paul who was 
actually rather pleased to see his elderly friend. 
There wasn't really anyone else, either in the real 
world or Nudeworld, with whom he could enjoy such 
intelligent and wide-ranging conversation. 

"And that's despite all the incidents that have been 
troubling you?" remarked the gentleman referring to 
Paul's earlier conversations. Indeed, it was because 
of a long, rather intense conversation with Virgil 
that he'd been detained in the cocoon of cyberspace 
when his house was in the process of being 
demolished by malfunctioning nanobots. Had he 
disengaged from Nudeworld sooner then he might no 
longer be alive.

"I'm not going to be on Godwin for much longer," 
confessed Paul, who'd already forgotten his 
instructions not to speak to anyone of the plans 
that had been made for him. "I'm going to be heading 
into deep space."

"And why's that?" asked the gentleman. "Does your 
research involve foreign travel?"

"Not until now," admitted Paul as Virgil sat down 
next to him. He was offered a glass of wine that his 
companion held out to him in a gnarled hand. "It 
seems that the Anomaly I've been researching has 
reappeared."

"Has it now?" said the gentleman with a sympathetic 
smile. "And where might that be?"

"The same place, I think," said Paul. "Just beyond 
the Heliopause."

"That is a strange place for anything to be! Does 
anyone in the thirty-eighth century have a better 
idea than the scientists in the twenty-second 
century had of what it might be?"

"All they have is a better idea of what it isn't," 
admitted Paul.

The two men, one naked and the other fully dressed, 
sat silently in the shelter of a huge eucalyptus 
tree while sheep wandered by, far more interested in 
grazing than in the people resting in their midst.

"Do you think this Anomaly is restricted only to the 
real world?" the gentleman asked. "Could it ever 
appear in a virtual world like Nudeworld?"

This was a thought that had never occurred to Paul. 
"I don't see how," he replied. "Unless, of course, 
it infects the servers that house the virtual world.  
But it's so far away from anything else that I don't 
see how that's possible."

"So, it's very definitely a thing of the material 
world," said the gentleman. "Is it composed of real 
matter and energy?"

"Whatever it is, I don't see how it can't be," said 
Paul. 

The gentleman paused, as if in deep thought. "So as 
long as you or anyone else is in virtual space 
you're safe from whatever evils associated with the 
Anomaly as long as the servers generating the 
virtual universes remain secure?"

"I guess so," said Paul. "But I wasn't aware the 
Anomaly could ever cause harm. Nobody knows what it 
is, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad 
thing."

"Do you have an opinion on what the Anomaly is, 
Paul?"

Paul wasn't a man given to theorising. He was far 
more interested in the how of things rather than the 
why. He could think of no answer to Virgil's 
question.

"You don't think it's an alien intelligence, do 
you?" continued his companion. "Do you think it's 
supernatural? Like a spirit or the manifestation of 
God or something like that? Do you think, for 
instance, that it's an incursion from another 
parallel universe?"

"I really don't know," said Paul at last. "But 
whatever it is, I'm sure there's a perfectly 
reasonable explanation."

"I'm sure that's true," Virgil agreed.

When Paul finally left the park and returned to the 
night club, where Blanche was waiting for him as if 
he'd not been away at all, he briefly contemplated 
whether he'd been wise to be so frank to the elderly 
gentleman about his forthcoming role in the mission 
to the Anomaly. Hadn't Special Officer Fitzwilliam 
been adamant that Paul shouldn't talk about it to 
anyone? After all, the avatars in Nudeworld very 
often represented real people. 

However, Paul dismissed his worries. If Virgil was 
the avatar of a real person, how could that person 
possibly know that the Paul he encountered in 
Nudeworld was the same Paul who lived and worked as 
a researcher in Godwin? 

Chapter Seven 
Holy Trinity - 3750 A.D.

It was Wednesday on Holy Trinity. This was one of 
the two days of the week-the other, of course, being 
Sunday-that was designated an Energy Saving Day. 
Despite being in Mercury orbit and well bathed in 
sunlight from the nearby presence of the Sun, the 
Archdeacon and the Chief Pastors had deemed that the 
energy expenditure of the colony's burgeoning 
population couldn't be squandered on more than five 
days of daylight each week.

Isaac was tending the small garden plot outside his 
family's apartment on the twentieth floor of the 
colony's twelfth level. His wife was inside the 
apartment where she was taking care of three of 
Isaac's seventeen children. The rest of his progeny 
were fully adult and lived with their own families 
elsewhere in the same condominium. Garden plots were 
allowed special dispensation in the dim dusk of the 
midday luminescence and an array of lights brightly 
illuminated each one. Below and above Isaac's 
apartment was a towering sequence of other plots, 
all wholly enclosed within the condominium walls, 
where other householders were also tending God's 
bounty. These plots were as necessary as all the 
other energy-saving and waste-recycling policies for 
the survival of a community whose population was 
approaching the physical limits of what one space 
colony could house, water and feed. Like all men in 
Holy Trinity, Isaac prayed for the successful 
construction of Revelation: the sister colony that 
would soon relieve the colony of much of the burden 
of maintaining half its population, until that too 
swelled beyond the bounds of what two colonies could 
support.

Isaac was nearly a decade short of the Biblical span 
of three score years and ten beyond which only the 
most senior Scriptural Officers were permitted the 
privilege of regenerative surgery and other forms of 
life prolongation. Although it was a sin to end a 
life prematurely, it was another sin of pride and 
vanity for those without special dispensation to 
have their lives artificially prolonged beyond the 
Biblical span. He rather dreaded the onset of old 
age that would plague him for what would remain of 
his expected life and from which there was little 
hope of early release. 

Isaac bent down on his knees in the garden soil and 
prodded at the organic vegetables that were vital to 
his family's welfare. The meagre ration he earned 
was not nearly enough by itself. Although the 
congregation was generous in its charity to those 
unable to provide for themselves, it did so 
reluctantly and only to those in true need.

Through the windows that peered out through the 
dimness onto the congested tower blocks that 
dominated the twelfth level Isaac could see other 
householders and their wives and children bent over 
like him to care for the soil. The only other light 
than that emitted from these other garden plots came 
from the hover planes that occasionally passed by. 
These carried the Soldiers of Christ and important 
church dignitaries on their vital business. Isaac 
knew well what it was like to travel in such a 
vessel. He too was a Soldier of Christ and he took 
seriously his duty of enforcing civil order and 
scriptural conformity in the colony.

Isaac's wife, Rebecca, entered the garden dressed in 
a black ankle-length gown and with her untrimmed 
hair tucked out of sight inside her bonnet. She 
stood by Isaac's side as he bedded down a turnip. 
She waited silently until her husband addressed her, 
for it would be a sin for a man's chattel to be so 
presumptuous as to speak first.

"The children are all gone to school, husband," she 
at last announced when Isaac raised his head and 
gave her permission to speak.

"God be praised, wife," Isaac said. "May the Lord 
instruct them well."

"Amen," Rebecca agreed. "Noah has been reciting the 
Holy Scripture this morning."

"And which text has he been studying, wife?"

"The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the 
Corinthians, Chapter Four, husband."

"Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have 
received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the 
hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in 
craftiness, nor handling the word of God 
deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth 
commending ourselves to every man's conscience in 
the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is 
hid to them that are lost," recited Isaac from 
memory.

"Amen," said Rebecca.

"But we have duty too, wife," Isaac reminded. 
"Recall the First Book of Moses: Called Genesis, 
Chapter Three, Verse Sixteen."

"The Lord said: 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow 
and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth 
children'?" asked Rebecca.

"Well, not just that, wife," said Isaac with a 
kindly smile. "Thy desire shall be to thy husband."

"May the Lord be praised and all the goodness he has 
bestowed," said Rebecca, quite willing now to go 
forth and multiply with the help of her husband. Not 
that she could do so with anyone else unless they 
wished to be publicly stoned or, at the very least, 
banished. And since there was nothing but intense 
heat and certainly no atmosphere outside the colony, 
banishment resulted in more or less the same thing.

Husband and wife retreated to their sanctified bed 
in which they could legitimately consummate their 
duty: for duty it was. Isaac was forever mindful of 
the Proverbs Chapter Six Verse Twenty-five: Lust not 
after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her 
take thee with her eyelids. In keeping with the 
Lord's commandments, Isaac and his wife performed 
the duty for which he privately chastised himself 
for the pleasure he derived. He lifted up the 
capacious skirt that covered Rebecca's legs and 
thighs and pulled down the black underwear that 
protected her womanhood and, keeping his eyes 
averted, penetrated her with his aberrant beast. In 
all the years they had lived together as man and 
wife not once had Isaac seen his wife naked. That 
would be a sin. But it would also be a sin not to 
fulfil the responsibility, oft repeated from the 
pulpit, to multiply the numbers of those who 
worshipped according to the approved doctrine of the 
Lord. 

God was great, but He was also stern. Now when I 
passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy 
time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt 
over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware 
unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, 
saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine. The 
covenant of the Lord in Chapter Sixteen Verse Eight 
of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel was unambiguous. 
Procreation was the Lord's dictate, but lust was the 
curse visited on the sons of Adam for the Original 
Sin whose infraction seemed so light but the 
punishment for which was a burden borne by every man 
and woman governed by the Holy Word.

Isaac's duty was done and Rebecca straightened her 
thick dress. Isaac buttoned up his trousers, ashamed 
of the lust that flashed over him at the sight of 
Rebecca's reddened face and the insipid smile that 
hung over her cheeks and lips. Sometimes he wished 
that the Archdeacon would sanction the libido-
reduction drugs that were surely within the grasp of 
modern science for the treatment of those guilty of 
improper thoughts. But this, along with the 
unmediated pain of childbirth suffered by all women, 
was a reminder of the heinous crime of disobedience 
carried by Eve's descendents from the first days of 
the universe less than eight thousand years earlier.

If only more people were as mindful of the lessons 
of Holy Scripture as he was, thought Isaac, while he 
prepared to leave for his afternoon shift. He tucked 
his guns and batons inside the holsters around his 
waist, exchanged the tall black hat of civilian life 
for the peaked hat of his profession and strode 
forth from his apartment. As the elevators were also 
not in operation on a Wednesday, he had a very long 
descent down the stairwell until he reached ground 
level. He then walked to the Station of the Soldiers 
of Christ which was situated beside a modest chapel 
and an even more modest supermarket both of which 
his wife would later visit. 

What sort of day would it be? 

Every day for a Soldier of Christ brought varied and 
unpredictable duties. The day before he had assisted 
in the disposal of a number of women who had acted 
as whores, not by selling their bodies openly, which 
could never happen in the watchful neighbourhoods of 
Holy Trinity, but by membership of a secret network 
that advertised itself by mysterious signs and 
symbols. However, too many male visitors to a single 
woman's apartment soon attracted attention, so this 
vice ring was identified and the culprits' lives 
summarily terminated. The Soldiers of Christ 
operated by the sanction of the Laws of Christ and 
the legal profession was only ever required for the 
more complex issues of property ownership and 
inheritance rights.

As the whores were stoned to death by the blunt 
missiles shot from the Soldiers of Christ's firearms 
witnessed, as was required, by all their neighbours, 
Isaac cursed again the wickedness of Satan that 
brought so many to temptation. One of the whores, a 
woman young enough to not yet require regenerative 
surgery, pleaded with Isaac to be merciful as he 
raised his firearm. And as she did so she quoted 
from texts in the New Testament that gave proof of 
Christ's mercy and tolerance.

I will not punish your daughters when they commit 
whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit 
adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, 
and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the 
people that doth not understand shall fall. Chapter 
Four Verse Fourteen of Hosea.

However, such selective use of the Holy Scripture 
was itself a sin. The Word of the Lord could only be 
corrupted by heretical interpretation. If that were 
not so, why were there so many who lived in colonies 
and planets throughout the Solar System whose 
interpretation of the Gospels was so much in 
variance to that known to be God's Law in Holy 
Trinity?

Isaac was more at ease when his duties in the 
service of Christ were not compromised by any 
qualms. The recent necessarily bloody disposal of a 
homosexual couple caused Isaac no misgivings at all. 
What could be more unholy than the sin of buggery? 
Nevertheless, Isaac was troubled that he would carry 
until his grave the memory of the day when, fumbling 
with his wife in the dark, he accidentally 
penetrated the wrong orifice. Moreover, it was a 
while until either of them were sensible of the sin 
they had committed. Isaac thought only that his 
wife's vagina was tighter and less well lubricated 
than usual, while Rebecca was equally uncertain as 
to what was happening (and evidently observed too 
much her wifely duty to obey her husband). This was 
a sin neither offender discussed with one another. 
Isaac kept it as a secret between him and his Most 
Merciful Father. 

Isaac also had no reservations when he amputated the 
hands of thieves or blinded those who had committed 
the sin of voyeurism. The punishment he meted out, 
as always prefaced by quotations from the Holy 
Scripture, were those prescribed by the Lord and it 
was his duty as a Soldier of Christ to so execute 
it.

"May the Lord be with you," said Isaac to the Duty 
Sergeant when he arrived at the station.

"And with you," replied the Duty Sergeant. "You have 
a change to the standard detail, inspector. The 
Chief Inspector would like to see you in his office. 
He is in attendance with a High Pastor."

"Just me, sergeant?" Isaac wondered. He was 
expecting only to be assigned his duties for the 
day.

"No, inspector," said the Duty Sergeant. "You will 
be accompanied by Inspectors Josiah and Esau. You 
have all been privileged."

"Thank you, sergeant," said Isaac. Although he was 
perturbed by this delay to his daily duty, he was 
honoured to be granted audience with the Chief 
Inspector and a High Pastor. Was this to be a reward 
for his labours in the service of Christ? Or was it 
that he had in some way been lax or lenient in the 
pursuit of his duties? If the latter, what would 
this mean for his wife and children?

Isaac entered the office where Inspectors Josiah and 
Esau were already waiting. Like him they were 
dressed in the sober uniform of a Soldier of Christ. 
This was totally black except for the lustre of 
steel from the epaulettes and crosses that decorated 
the uniform. They all wore the peaked caps of their 
profession. Chief Inspector Isaiah wore the garb 
that befitted his more senior rank. He sported a 
splendid cross over his chest that gave witness to 
the combat he had seen in the Crusades against the 
infidel in the Jupiter Asteroid Belt: a war that had 
cost the lives of many hundreds of thousands of God-
fearing souls and Muslim infidels. Sat on a splendid 
leather armchair was the forbidding figure of a High 
Pastor in a cassock that fell to his ankles under 
which he wore a pair of well-tailored shoes. Unlike 
the Chief Inspector he still had a youthful face and 
figure, despite the advanced age associated with his 
seniority. Like all men in the colony, he was clean-
shaven and wore his hair short.

"It is an honour to you all to have been summoned 
here by the High Pastor, gentlemen," said the Chief 
Inspector who, despite his obvious age, still 
presented a formidable figure. "Many Soldiers of 
Christ from this colony and from our allied colonies 
have been similarly summoned, but from our precinct 
it is you three who have been accorded this great 
privilege."

"You may sit, gentlemen," said the High Pastor with 
a smile at his nervous congregation. "I insist that 
you make yourself comfortable. This is a discussion, 
however, of the utmost secrecy and I insist that not 
a word should be uttered to anyone: however dear or 
near. This may be hard indeed as your calling may 
well take you away from this colony for many years. 
Maybe even decades."

"I need hardly remind you, gentlemen," said the 
Chief Inspector sternly, "that should you be less 
than discreet and disobey an edict that comes from 
the Archdeacon himself that the consequences for you 
and your family of such an act of treason will be 
very exacting."

"Indeed," said the High Pastor in agreement. "I am 
grateful that the Chief Inspector has spared me the 
need to emphasise this imperative. I also warn you 
that such is the grave import of the mission to 
which you are assigned that we have aligned 
ourselves with those who are normally our natural 
enemies. There is a new Holy Crusade which you shall 
help undertake which encompasses not only the 
congregations of the Baptist Ecumenical Council, but 
those of the Nicean Catholics, the New Orthodox 
Church and even the Radical Muslims. In fact, there 
are also Hindus, Sikhs and Jews united in the same 
cause. We have fought many wars against pagans and 
heretics throughout history that have resulted in 
the death of many True Believers and I am sure that 
none of you could forgive the infidel for their 
sins. Nonetheless, such is the immense significance 
of this mission that the counsels and command of 
those who oppose the greater sins of Atheism and 
Agnosticism are all united on this one great 
endeavour."

"Are we to work side by side with the Pope, sir?" 
asked Esau, who had a particular detestation for 
Papists.

"A fair question, soldier," said the High Pastor, 
overriding the stern expression of the Chief 
Inspector who was about to upbraid the inspector for 
his presumption in addressing the High Pastor 
without due ceremony. "You may speak freely after I 
have spoken but I would rather that you held back 
your questions until I have finished. In answer to 
your enquiry: No. The Roman Catholic Pope, along 
with the Archbishop of Canterbury and most 
ayatollahs are not party to this crusade. They have 
compromised too often and too freely with the Solar 
System's Atheist majority to be entrusted with a 
role in our enterprise. Only those such as the True 
Believers of Holy Trinity have the singleness of 
purpose and steadfastness of faith to be trusted."

The High Pastor paused for effect and cast his sharp 
dark green eyes from one inspector to the other.

"You all come highly recommended, gentlemen," he 
continued. "Your records speak for themselves. You 
have been uncompromising and forthright in the 
campaign to eliminate sin and exterminate sinners in 
this precinct. Every whore, homosexual, adulterer, 
pervert and petty criminal that you have punished 
according to scripturally ordained methods you have 
done so with an admirable and unswerving attention 
to duty. There are many, even in this precinct, who 
have wavered in the face of the terrible nature of 
your duty. They have mistaken God's Infinite Mercy 
for leniency. They have sought to persuade sinners 
to repent from their sins rather than deal with the 
miscreants as commanded. If I whet my glittering 
sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will 
render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward 
them that hate me. Chapter Thirty-two Verse Forty-
one of Deuteronomy."

"Amen," chorused all the Soldiers of Christ gathered 
together.

The commendation of the High Pastor was an honour 
indeed. Although it wasn't totally true that Isaac 
had never wavered in his heart in the pursuit of his 
dreadful duty, he had never pardoned a sinner whose 
life or limb was at his mercy. To do so would merely 
encourage sin. And no sin of any kind could be 
permitted on Holy Trinity.

"As is only right, all citizens of Holy Trinity have 
been kept ignorant and protected from the vice and 
heresy that abounds in the Solar System. No inbound 
communications or broadcast is permitted. Those who 
sin by seeking guidance from the Antichrist and his 
servants have been severely punished and their 
equipment destroyed. This is a duty which you have 
all observed on several occasions. The evils of the 
Solar System's media know no bounds. Sin of all 
kinds, even of a sexual nature, is broadcast as 
entertainment, although it is Satan who is most 
entertained by the vile filth that such vicious men 
have propagated."

The extent of the perversity of the Godless world 
astonished the inspectors. What they had suspected 
of the depravity of the Atheist was true and worse. 
Isaac had no reason to doubt the words of the High 
Pastor whose authority was of the highest and who 
was, therefore, in direct communication with the 
Lord.

"Consequently, you will not have heard of the 
mysterious events that have plagued the Solar 
System. And you most certainly will not have heard 
of the strange phenomenon, kept secret to all but 
the privileged few, that has become manifest on the 
perimeter of the Solar System and is known by the 
Interplanetary Union as the Anomaly. It is a 
phenomenon known to have been there for several 
centuries and whose nature the Atheists have not 
been able to determine by the occult mysticism of 
Science. But this Anomaly should be correctly known 
as the Apostasy. It has been prophesied in the 
scriptures and is nothing less than the 
manifestation of Satan. The Antichrist has been in 
pre-eminence for well over a millennium, some would 
say since the 20th Century when governments abandoned 
even the pretence of guidance from the Lord and 
followed instead such evil ideologies as Communism, 
Fascism and Liberalism. It is now the time of Satan. 
And after Satan has come and claimed for himself the 
souls of the heathen, the apostate and the atheist, 
it will be the time of the Second Coming, long 
foretold and about which St. John the Divine has 
spoken in Revelations. And it is to the Apostasy 
that you, gentlemen, will proceed and exterminate 
with the rightful rage and vengefulness that you 
have shown unto sinners in this world."

The High Pastor paused for effect. And then he 
quoted from Revelations Chapter Twenty-one: "these 
words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It 
is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the 
fountain of the water of life freely. He that 
overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be 
his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, 
and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, 
and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and 
all liars, shall have their part in the lake which 
burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second 
death."

Chief Inspector Isaiah followed the High Pastor's 
words with: "Amen!"

"Amen," chorused Isaac and the other inspectors.

"Unfortunately it is not within the means of the 
considerable wealth of the Baptist Ecumenical 
Council-it is not even within the means of the 
Emergency Coalition of Religious Councils-to 
navigate a space ship such an immense distance to 
where this Apostasy is known to be. The Lord has 
seen fit to make the Solar System, which He created 
for Man, so immense that a space ship able to voyage 
so far from the ecliptic plane would cost for its 
construction more than the entire wealth of all but 
the very wealthiest nations in the Solar System: 
nations which are the very ones under the sway of 
the Antichrist. The Interplanetary Union does have 
the means. Our spies within its headquarters in the 
Pacific Ocean on Earth have told us reliably that it 
will command a space ship to voyage to this distant 
point in space, no doubt so that the Antichrist can 
meet his mentor in person. We even know which space 
ship will be commandeered for their mission. It is 
our duty, as detailed in Holy Scripture, to thwart 
this evil mission, so that the prophecies of the 
Second Coming can be fulfilled and that we shall all 
be lifted upwards to Heaven."

The High Pastor paused again and then followed with 
another quotation from Revelations Chapter Twenty-
two. "And there shall be no more curse: but the 
throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and 
his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his 
face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And 
there shall be no night there; and they need no 
candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God 
giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and 
ever. And he said unto me, These sayings are 
faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy 
prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants 
the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I 
come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings 
of the prophecy of this book."

"Amen," chorused the Soldiers of Christ.

"Your mission, gentlemen," said the High Pastor, "is 
therefore of the highest imaginable importance. The 
future of all the souls in Holy Trinity is in your 
hands. It is you who shall ensure that the Second 
Coming will proceed as prophesied and that we shall 
all rest in Heaven. For ever and ever, Amen."

"Amen."

 "You will be taken to a secret location in the 
Jovian Asteroid Belt where the Sun's blessed rays 
are weak and where the planet Jupiter's 
magnetosphere is the most dominant force. You will 
be briefed there for the mission that is ahead of 
you. In this place you will meet other true 
believers, but also heretics, pagans and idolaters. 
You will be obliged to work with, even take orders 
from, people who in Holy Trinity would be stoned or 
burnt at the stake. This will cause you to suffer 
much indignation, but it is a test of your faith 
that in this hour of Great Necessity that you 
disguise your righteous anger and disgust. On the 
other hand, should any one of you be tempted from 
the True Faith to the ways of the demons that these 
people worship, it is incumbent on all those of 
uncorrupted faith to mete on you the punishment that 
would be due to such a renegade within the confines 
of Holy Trinity. I trust this is understood?"

"Yes, sir," replied the three inspectors.

"You will be accompanied, of course, by Holy 
Inquisitors who will ensure that any such deviancy 
is identified and dealt with according to the laws 
enshrined in the Gospel. Recall the Lord's words in 
Chapter Twenty-four Verse Twenty of the Book of 
Joshua: "If ye forsake the LORD, and serve strange 
gods, then he will turn and do you hurt, and consume 
you, after that he hath done you good."

"Amen."

"Your mission is highly classified but I am 
permitted to tell you of its broadest particulars. 
You will be transported from a base in the Jovian 
Asteroid Belt by a fleet of space craft belonging to 
the Baptist Ecumenical Council, the New Muslim 
Brotherhood, the Temple of Vishnu, the Tanakh 
Communion, the Triton Orthodoxy, and other religious 
fellowships. The Coalition fleet will take you to 
the furthest reaches to which such space craft are 
capable of flying. There will be no return journey 
and there will not, in any case, be enough fuel in 
these craft to make such a return. The fleet will 
intercept the space ship that is in the command of 
the Interplanetary Union. You will capture this 
space ship and travel in it until it reaches its 
destination at the perimeter of the Apostasy. You 
will then eliminate the Apostasy with the antimatter 
and nuclear fusion warheads at your disposal. Your 
reward will be that you shall then be transported by 
the Angels of Christ to a Life Everlasting. Is all 
this understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"The only vehicle that the Interplanetary Union is 
likely to bring to service is the Space Ship 
Intrepid. It is an ancient vessel built centuries 
before Holy Trinity was founded. In fact, it existed 
before even the time that our congregation departed 
from the Baptist Colony of the Divine Revelation 
when it was sinfully tempted by the heresies of the 
Interplanetary Union. It should not, therefore, be 
too difficult for a fleet armed with the most modern 
and lethal weapons that science has devised-and 
easily purchased at the Arms Fairs in Mars orbit-to 
overpower the craft and use it for the Divine 
Purpose for which we know is its true destiny."

"Amen," said Isaac and his fellow officers in 
complete accord.

Chapter Eight 
Ecstasy - 3750 C.E.

The flight from Godwin to the colony of Ecstasy in 
Neptune orbit marked the first time that Paul had 
ever left the comforts of his cylindrical world. And 
this first stage of his journey to Earth alone would 
take over three months. Although such a voyage was 
something he'd always dreamed of, it really wasn't 
especially enjoyable. The lengthy and incapacitating 
process of the skeletal refit prescribed by his 
doctor confined him to his room for the first half 
of the flight and the recovery from the operation 
debilitated him for almost all the remainder. 

So, although here he was heading closer to the Sun 
than he'd ever done before, Paul had to spend most 
of his time in a cabin surrounded by surgical 
instruments where his only company were the space 
ship's doctor and his robotic nurses. 

"It's a fairly routine procedure," the doctor told 
him. "And seeing as this is your third time, you 
must know exactly what to expect. You'll also 
undergo a renal regeneration and some minor cuticle 
enhancement. I'm afraid this won't be a pleasure 
cruise for you."

Paul nodded, although he was aware that for the 
majority of passengers on the luxury space cruiser 
that was exactly what they had every right to 
expect. However, he couldn't even visit his 
favourite virtual world and he soon got bored of 
what on-board entertainment was available to someone 
who was horizontal on his back. The price he had to 
pay for a long and youthful life!

"Why a luxury cruiser?" he asked the Dean of his 
university when his passage was booked.

"There are few enough vessels that pass by our 
colony," said the Dean. "This one travels to several 
other colonies and so you should expect fairly mixed 
company."

"But why should a luxury cruiser to Ecstasy bother 
to stop here? It's not as if we use money in the 
Godwin colony, so there's nothing any of us can buy 
there."

"It's true that ours isn't a colony troubled by the 
financial commerce that corrupts most of the solar 
system, but although there is no need and certainly 
no way to spend money here there are some citizens 
such as artists, musicians, mathematicians and the 
like who've gained wealth by selling products beyond 
the colony. For many of them the colony of Ecstasy 
is the ideal place to go and spend the proceeds of 
this commerce."

Ecstasy's reputation as one of the best holiday 
destinations in the Outer Solar System was mostly 
earned by its reputation of providing visitors with 
the many illicit pleasures that were either rather 
less freely available in the Kuiper Belt or, as in 
Godwin, absent altogether. Paul was actually looking 
forward to visiting a settlement where sexual 
pleasure was widely available and where he could 
indulge in the vices of alcohol, marijuana, MDMA and 
other drugs which he'd only ever known from their 
virtual simulation. However, as he lay on his bed in 
a room rather smaller than his bedroom on Godwin, he 
wasn't sure he'd have the energy to take advantage 
of what Ecstasy promised for him. And when he was 
well enough to get out of bed, his treatment 
demanded so much physical exertion on the exercise 
machines that his regenerated strength was soon 
drained from him.

The few days Paul was able to wander about the Space 
Ship Byzantium were wholly unsatisfactory. He didn't 
know any of the other passengers because he'd missed 
the opportunity to make friends and acquaintances by 
virtue of being bedbound. In any case, his 
utilitarian Godwinian garb looked totally out of 
place compared to the often extravagant outfits worn 
by many other passengers. It would have been 
difficult enough for any of Godwin's citizens to 
merge in with the space ship's hedonistic 
passengers, but Paul was socially inept by even the 
low standards of his own society.

There were few things available for the na‹ve space 
tourist on the space ship other than roam the long 
corridors or admire the art collections or sit in an 
audience to watch some incomprehensible cabaret 
entertainment. The only thing that held any 
fascination to a man whose previous ventures into 
space had been no further than a day-trip around the 
Godwin colony was to visit one of the watch-towers 
that protruded at hundred metre intervals along the 
space ship's five kilometre length.

As Paul soon discovered, these transparent domes 
provided very little distraction for the space 
tourist. The boring fact that Paul had already 
learnt on his few excursions away from Godwin was 
that deep space really did mostly consist of 
absolutely nothing. There was a distant Kuiper Belt 
Object around which the colony circled but although 
the potato-shaped object's mass was greater than 
that of its satellite, its diameter of ten 
kilometres was actually less than the colony's 
length. The asteroid's only use was to serve as an 
emergency supply of water should there ever be a 
need for it in a community designed to be as self-
sufficient as possible.  

The acceleration and associated deceleration of the 
space ship was sufficiently great that it applied a 
force on the floor of its external domes either in 
or against the direction of the ship's motion that 
was roughly the equivalent to that exerted by a 
small planetoid like Pluto or Orcus. As Paul had 
never visited such places and wasn't intending ever 
to do so, this was the nearest to low gravity he'd 
so far experienced. The view from the Byzantium's 
domes was actually less rather than more interesting 
than the view from outside Godwin where he'd at 
least had the opportunity to appreciate the true 
shape of the world in which he lived. All the view 
from here confirmed was what he already knew. And 
this was that the space ship was an awfully long way 
from anywhere else. That included the Sun which was 
still not much more than just the brightest star in 
the sky.

   The space ship had several stops on its journey, 
although they weren't exactly stops in the sense 
that the space ship came to a dead halt. That would 
require a huge and costly expenditure in energy. In 
fact, large space vehicles very rarely ever came to 
a halt anywhere during their working life. The 
nearest equivalent was to orbit around a satellite 
and, only then, at a very safe distance.

Paul had missed most of these stops as he was still 
recovering from the agony of his regenerative 
treatment, but there was one last such before the 
Byzantium settled into orbit around the Ecstasy 
colony. Disappointingly, this was at one of the many 
refuelling depots scattered about the Kuiper Belt 
whose existence was entirely dependent on the 
presence of space ships like the Byzantium. This 
wasn't going to be as exciting or interesting as the 
brief sling-shot orbit around the Quaoar planetoid 
or the wealthy colony of the Krishna Republic. All 
that would happen was that the space ship would slow 
down as it passed through the huge hole inside the 
doughnut ring of a colony that housed barely ten 
thousand people. This was somewhat less than 
Godwin's population of a million or the much more 
extensive Krishna Republic's ten million.

It was all over in the blink of an eye and in any 
case could only be seen from holo-screens inside the 
ship. It was far too risky to extend the viewing 
towers when the ship was performing manoeuvres. 
There was no sensation inside the ship's cylindrical 
decks to indicate that the space ship had changed 
its speed or direction, so it was a disappointment 
from even that perspective. All that happened was 
that the refuelling depot delivered fresh oxygen, 
water and food, while the space ship reciprocated by 
delivering a small proportion of the interplanetary 
post that was its most commercially viable payload. 
Although this exercise was a wonder of coordination 
at high speed, it was over so fast that Paul saw 
nothing much at all. 

Nevertheless, this was Paul's first ever sight of a 
space community other than the anarchosyndicalist 
Godwin colony. He'd only ever visited virtual 
representations of such places. The real thing was 
both less well rendered but, given the vastness of 
space, more impressive than the computer-generated 
colonies he'd visited in virtual space.

The Byzantium finally reached its final orbit around 
the colony of Ecstasy where it would circle for a 
full month before carrying its passengers back home 
to their homes elsewhere in the Kuiper Belt. Paul 
boarded a shuttle that took him and several thousand 
others to the colony. He would also be there for 
only a month or so, until another space ship was 
scheduled to carry him deeper within the Solar 
System. 

A brightly lit road stretched ahead of Paul when he 
exited the spaceport where he'd disembarked. It was 
Ecstasy Avenue, which to Paul was both totally new 
and totally familiar. It was new, because he'd never 
before been in a road in an immense congested city 
that was so wide, so long and on either side 
shadowed by buildings several hundred metres high. 
It was also familiar because, in one virtual 
rendition or another, Paul had often visited 
simulations of Ecstasy and its most famous pleasure 
boulevards.

 Ecstasy was the most ancient colony this far out in 
the solar system. It had been built on an earlier 
design for human colonies where the emphasis was 
rather less on building a sustainable ecosystem than 
on cramming as many million people as was possible 
into the confines of a space colony. And sustainable 
the colony most certainly had never been. Its 
continued survival relied heavily on machinery to 
manufacture its atmosphere and biosphere. As this 
was very quickly consumed, the colony depended on 
regular replenishment from the smaller satellites of 
Neptune and even from the noxious chemicals 
extracted from the gas giant's atmosphere. 

There was a hubbub of human activity along Ecstasy 
Avenue as tourists gazed in awe at the tall 
buildings and the riches on display in the many shop 
windows. Scattered along the dimly lit road were 
garish holographic lights that promoted sex shops, 
virtual sex emporiums and brothels. This was a 
colony that promised all those sinful pursuits that 
Paul, like many men, had secretly fantasised about 
and which in the Outer Solar System were generally 
either absent altogether, as in Godwin, or existed 
only in carefully controlled areas. Here almost 
every imaginable vice was freely available. Or free 
in the sense that there was no restriction on its 
access, but certainly not so in a monetary sense. 

The Interplanetary Union granted Paul a reasonably 
generous budget, but his credit wasn't unlimited. 
Nevertheless, even the concept of credit was alien 
to Paul, who now for the first time in his life had 
the opportunity to spend it.

Paul's main concern as he travelled to his modest 
hotel on the upper levels of one of the colossal 
buildings was the bag handcuffed to his wrist in 
which he carried the precious data crystals that 
mostly justified his journey. Before he even saw the 
room where he'd be staying for the next month or so, 
he had to take his bag to a secure safe that was 
encased in strong nano-carbon walls that only a 
nuclear device could shatter. The security that 
accompanied the deposit of his precious bag was well 
beyond that available on Godwin, which had no 
tradition of keeping secrets or guarding property.

"I don't know what's in your bag," the hotel manager 
remarked as he escorted Paul to his room, "but it 
must be worth an absolute fortune. This is the 
strongest and more secure hold on the entire colony 
and normally stores irreplaceable works of art and 
rare fossils. We even had an Australopithecus skull 
here once!"

For his first few days on Ecstasy Paul made a point 
of visiting all the tourist sites. These were mostly 
famous because many were nearly a thousand years old 
and were relics from an earlier age in human history 
when even having a permanent settlement so far out 
in the Solar System was considered achievement 
enough. The founders of Ecstasy had high hopes for 
their new settlement, which they didn't call by its 
modern name but by the far grander appellation of 
the Foundation. It was the first foothold in a 
grandiose scheme to extend human colonisation well 
beyond the Solar System and towards the distant 
stars. Much effort had been expended on gigantic 
statuary, colossal palaces, awe-inspiring monuments 
and paradisial pleasure gardens. This was all with 
the objective of stressing mankind's achievement in 
having now reached a triumphal apex which it fully 
expected to exceed.

Sadly, all these high hopes came to an anticlimactic 
end less than two centuries after the colony was 
founded when the delicate ecosystem collapsed 
catastrophically with the associated demise of tens 
of millions of colonists. Eventually the colony had 
to be abandoned altogether. For most of the colony's 
subsequent thousand-year existence it was a lifeless 
shell with no working atmosphere and no working 
machines. The colony's future existence was in doubt 
as a consequence of the dramatic decay that resulted 
when the temperature dropped to only a few Kelvins 
above absolute zero. Its salvation came only two 
centuries ago when the colony was bought up by a 
consortium of wealthy individuals and transformed 
from a lifeless museum to the Outer Solar System's 
most celebrated pleasure resort. Now, after 
governments had risen and fallen and the nature of 
space colonisation had changed beyond recognition 
from those earlier profligate days, it was now more 
a quaint reminder of an earlier optimistic age than 
the foundation of an interstellar empire.

Although it had always been Paul's ambition to see 
for real the architecture and art of the 27th 
century, he also nursed a lesser ambition. And this 
was to experience Ecstasy's many illicit pleasures. 
His credit ratings, although phenomenal by Godwinian 
standards, were just not sufficient for him to 
sample more than a modest selection of the pleasures 
around him. He tasted alcohol and the many other 
drugs on offer. And in the progress he discovered 
what he'd never before properly understood which was 
the toll such substance abuse could inflict on his 
body. Every morning, he felt as bad as he ever had 
when he underwent a skeletal refit. Although he 
countered it with medicinal relief, there was no 
doubt that his days of Epicureanism would most 
likely result in rather more future neuronal 
regeneration than he'd anticipated. Unlike the 
virtual hallucinations he'd experienced in 
Nudeworld, real drug-induced mental psychosis was 
frightening, disorientating and not something that 
could be switched off by just a single command.

He also sampled prostitution: a practise that made 
no sense on Godwin where no human could ever be 
viewed as a commodity to be bought or sold. Here on 
Ecstasy there were many men and women from those 
parts of the Solar System where people still relied 
on the fruits of their labour to survive and who 
chose to make a living by selling their bodies for 
other people's sexual satisfaction. 

Paul soon also discovered that he was not a man who 
could reliably rise to every opportunity.

"Don't worry," said Candy, the blue-skinned woman 
whose service he'd purchased. She had eyes twice the 
size than could ever be natural and a bosom that was 
several times larger than her head. "Not everyone 
can be a stud!"

Paul resolved to see what drugs or non-invasive 
treatment might be available that could correct his 
libidinal problems, but after an hour of fruitless 
search on Ecstasy's computer systems he wasn't sure 
that it was a medical issue that could ever be 
satisfactorily addressed. 

It was with the all too recent memories of his 
sexual shortcomings that he wandered into the bar on 
the 12th level in which he was to meet his future 
wife, Beatrice.

He wasn't seeking a sexual partner. He'd sworn to 
repeat this experiment only much later when enough 
time had elapsed for the humiliation and shame of 
his carnal ineptitude to be forgotten or in some way 
corrected. What he really wanted was the blessed 
relief afforded by a full glass of that peculiar 
alcoholic concoction known as beer and the 
opportunity to sit in a kind of anonymity in a busy 
place. It was inevitable that sex was on offer. The 
bar's ambience promised as much. A naked woman was 
dancing under strobe lights on a bare stage. Paul 
had already got so jaded by the sight of nudity that 
he didn't even raise his gaze towards the podium. 
Naked bodies were so common on Ecstasy. He was 
wondering rather whether after his several months of 
absence, he should once again revisit Nudeworld. He 
also wondered how different it might be now he was 
so much closer to the virtual universe's host 
servers.

He almost didn't look up when a woman sat down in 
the bar stool next to him. The fact that she was 
unclothed was no longer an unusual sight, but he did 
think that with so many other empty bar stools it 
was an unnecessary invasion of his space. He 
wondered whether he should ask for another drink or 
venture again into the crowded street outside. This 
bar, unlike those in Nudeworld, was staffed not by 
an attractive nude barmaid but by a functional 
serving robot that automatically identified Paul's 
credit account just by looking at him. 

"Haven't I seen you before?" the woman asked.

Paul turned his head and for the first time properly 
appraised the naked figure beside him. She wouldn't 
look out of place in Nudeworld, although she was 
probably actually even more perfect than the 
denizens of that carefully rendered world. Her bosom 
was larger than the human average, which was quite 
normal in Paul's favourite virtual universe, and her 
figure was a pleasing but not over-exaggerated 
hourglass. Her face had the smoothness of a child's 
but her lips were fuller, her eyes larger and her 
facial expression altogether more fascinating. Her 
smile was broad and welcoming, and she was nowhere 
near as threatening as the blue-skinned prostitute.

"I don't think so," Paul replied. He was too na‹ve 
to recognise the question as a standard chat-up 
line. "I'm a tourist. I've never visited this 
quarter of Ecstasy before."

"You're from Godwin, aren't you?" the woman asked, 
with a delighted chuckle. "I can tell from the 
accent and, of course, your clothes. You don't see 
many people from that colony here? What brings you 
to Neptune orbit?"

Paul had to be careful here. He was under strict 
instructions, which were reiterated on many 
occasions, to give no hint to anyone, even close 
friends, as to the true nature of his journey. "I'm 
on my way to Earth," he replied, keeping as much to 
the truth as he thought advisable. "There are no 
direct flights from Godwin to Earth, so I'm 
travelling on a series of space ships. I'm waiting 
for the next flight to Saturn orbit."

"So, you're not here for... for what Ecstasy offers?"

"Not really," said Paul. "It's all very odd to me. 
We don't have bars or brothels or floor shows or 
drugs or any of those things on Godwin."

"So, I've heard," said the woman. "Godwin is a very 
peculiar kind of place. But fascinating too. No 
government. No taxes. No money. How do you manage?"

"Very easily," said Paul. "We have everything we 
need and what we don't need we simply can't have. A 
huge proportion of most colonies' economy is 
dedicated to commerce and trade. Once you subtract 
those non-essential activities then people are free 
to do what they want as long as it doesn't harm 
anyone else and as long as they are willing to do 
what's necessary to keep the colony going."

"No shops. No money. No crime, I suppose. It sounds 
wonderful! Why can't all colonies be like that?" 
said the woman. "By the way, my name's Beatrice. 
What's yours?"

Paul told her and, drawn in by Beatrice's 
enthusiasm, he was soon entertaining her with an 
account of what life was like in Godwin. At least, 
he hoped his account was entertaining, though he did 
have a tendency to go on rather too much on topics 
of mostly academic interest. His monologue was soon 
wandering towards the rather less fascinating 
features of Godwinian life, such as the structure of 
the anarchist syndicates, the way in which society 
was regulated without the need for a legal system, 
and the difficulty of finding representatives to 
serve international bodies when the colony had no 
government or state apparatus. During all this 
Beatrice continued to smile and ask pertinent 
questions that showed an astonishing degree of 
attention.

"So, what is it you do, Paul?" she asked, when he'd 
finally exhausted the topic of how scientific 
research was funded in a society that had no grants 
or government funding. "I take it you work in a 
university?"

"Well, yes," Paul admitted. "I do research into 
historical data. I'm a kind of archaeologist, but I 
use my knowledge of obsolete operating systems and 
ancient software tools to make sense of vast amounts 
of data."

"What's the value of all that?"

"It's hugely valuable," Paul answered. He was 
warming to his subject but he was also anxious 
whether the discretion he was strongly advised to 
maintain might be compromised by a combination of 
alcohol and the presence of a beautiful naked woman. 
"A lot of data was collected in the past for quite 
different purposes than for the information we can 
get out of it now. For instance, in the twentieth 
century the first real evidence for global warming 
came from records kept by priests for quite 
different purposes than to provide a long-term 
record of climate change. Similarly, an analysis of 
literature can tell you a great deal about eating 
habits and recreation. There was a time when people 
spent something like three or four hours a day 
watching cathode ray tubes in darkened rooms. It was 
something called television. Because the habit was 
so prevalent, no one maintained detailed statistics 
of its impact."

Beatrice seemed no less fascinated by Paul's account 
of his profession than she was about Godwin's 
political and social structure. The questions she 
asked were evidence of a sharp informed mind. She 
was someone who knew a great deal about many 
different things and could readily grasp some rather 
difficult concepts. But in all this conversation, 
which soon stretched beyond one measure of beer to 
several of them and wound through many of his almost 
random range of academic interests, Paul learnt very 
little about the naked woman seated beside him.

Despite this, Paul's interest in her increased at 
the same rate at which he consumed alcohol and the 
degree to which he could expound his encyclopaedic 
knowledge of the abstract and abstruse. He wasn't a 
man who could observe a flower without considering 
the biological function of its intricate petals and 
how it photosynthesised. He was more taken by a 
landscape's geomorphic features than its aesthetic 
beauty. He enjoyed music more as a functional 
backdrop than a thing imbued with its own virtues. 
And even now he found comfort as he observed 
Beatrice's beautifully formed body by analysing her 
physical beauty rather than merely admiring it. But 
admire it he did, and as the alcohol clouded his 
analytical tendencies, he found increasing pleasure 
in doing so.

"We can go back to my apartment, if you like," 
Beatrice suggested at a time in the evening which in 
retrospect seemed peculiarly well chosen. It was 
before Paul's new taste in alcohol defeated his 
ability to handle it, but after it had lessened his 
reservations.

"Yes," said Paul, before he had the chance to 
analyse what his response should be and what this 
invitation might entail. "Yes, that would be very 
nice. Very (hic!) nice, indeed."

It was only once they were out in the broad street, 
above which was the constant whoosh of passing sky 
taxis, that Paul at last asked Beatrice any 
questions.

"You're not a prostitute, are you?" he asked, 
mindful of his restricted credit rating.

"No, not at all!" Beatrice laughed, though she 
didn't seem at all offended. "I live near here. Just 
over there, in fact," she said pointing up at a tall 
building. "It's due to rain in about ten minutes, 
but we should get there before the downpour."

"Is it that time already?" wondered Paul, who'd been 
told about Ecstasy's twice-daily precipitation 
cycle. 

"I'm afraid so," Beatrice said with a smile. "It's 
well after midnight."

The escalator to Beatrice's apartment was somewhat 
less well appointed than that in Paul's hotel, but 
it was still spacious with thickly upholstered seats 
for them to make the journey up to the 120th floor 
with no discomfort. Paul then followed her along a 
corridor much like that in his hotel. Paul's mind 
wandered to the thought that this tall building very 
nearly touched the level's ceiling above which was 
another level that was much the same, only smaller 
as it occupied a position closer to the colony's 
hub. He missed the high skies of his rather more 
modern colony where space was extended without the 
need to cram millions of people together.

"Here we are!" announced Beatrice after several 
hundred metres stroll along the wide corridor. She 
stopped by a door that was exactly like all the 
others they'd passed and just a few metres from a 
water fountain. "It's not much, but it's all I can 
afford!"

"Afford?" wondered Paul, who still had difficulties 
comprehending an economy that was tied so closely to 
financial transactions. "What do you do for a 
living?"

"Oh! This and that," said Beatrice carelessly as the 
door recognised her and slid open to let the couple 
enter. 

Compared to Paul's hotel suite, Beatrice's apartment 
was very modest indeed. There was an ante-room, a 
living room and a bedroom, whilst a bathroom and 
kitchen were discreetly hidden by sliding doors off 
a short adjoining hallway. But it was straight to 
the bedroom that Beatrice took Paul. Already there 
was an understanding that they should have sex 
together although there'd been no physical contact 
at all between the two on the walk to the apartment.

With one of the couple already naked it was entirely 
up to Paul to dictate the speed of the proceedings, 
although Beatrice assisted him by undoing his simple 
utilitarian loose clothes whilst lovingly peppering 
his torso and upper thighs with kisses. It was only 
when the two of them were stretched out now both 
naked on her huge mattress that Paul could truly 
appreciate Beatrice's beauty.

Her bosom was large but her nipples were so exactly 
proportioned that it seemed wholly natural. Her 
pubic hairs were shaved and there was no stubble to 
hint at a recent shave or indeed that she'd ever had 
to shave. Her long blonde hair cascaded onto the 
silk sheets. But it was her face that made Beatrice 
so entirely desirable and which awakened Paul's 
penis from its native torpidity. Even his companion 
in long-neglected Nudeworld, Blanche, didn't exhibit 
so much desire and excitement. 

Their lovemaking was the most passionate of Paul's 
life so far. None of the real women he'd made love 
to and not even his virtual lovers were as 
responsive as Beatrice. The sex was urgent, carnal, 
sweaty and exhausting, but this time Paul rose to 
the occasion. His recent woes with the blue-skinned 
sex worker were now banished from his mind. He 
fucked with pure abandon. His thrusts were answered 
by Beatrice's thrusts. The sheets were soon a sodden 
mess from their shared perspiration and yet, even 
after ejaculating many times, Paul still felt the 
need to plunge once more into that inviting hole 
that accepted him whenever and however he felt 
inclined.

Their lovemaking was not incessant. Although Paul 
appreciated the new suppleness of his body that 
resulted from his recent skeletal refit, he was by 
no means equal to Beatrice's inexhaustible sexual 
appetite. During those pauses, they slumped on their 
backs beneath a holographic display of cloudy skies 
and swooping sea-birds. Paul speculated on the 
relationship between 27th century aesthetics and 
modern needs, while Beatrice mused rather more 
lyrically on the beauty and pleasures of the ancient 
colony of Ecstasy. She described the concert halls 
and the evocative music she'd listened to there. She 
described the level that was modelled on the 
Pleistocene savannahs of North America with 
regenerated mammoth, mastodon, ground sloths and 
sabre-tooth cats. She marvelled at the wide variety 
of entertainment available in the colony from the 
most vulgar to the most exquisite. She made Paul 
understand that there were far more pleasures 
available to the space tourist on Ecstasy than the 
just hedonistic ones for which the colony was most 
famous.

It was during one such pause, that Paul heard a 
strange commotion that came from outside the 
apartment and down the corridor. There were 
aggressive shouts and an unnerving thump. He glanced 
at Beatrice with a smile.

"Partygoers!" he said with a grin. "They've 
obviously had too much to drink."

"Maybe," said Beatrice, but for the first time that 
evening without a smile on her face. There was an 
unusual seriousness on her face. "I think I'd better 
check."

"Be careful," said Paul with real concern. "You know 
what people can be like when they've had too much to 
drink." Of course he didn't really know. He'd seen 
the odd tourist vomiting on the streets outside the 
bars and only knew about the antisocial affects of 
drinking from his extensive research into earlier 
centuries.

"Don't worry about me," said Beatrice. She stood up, 
naked as always, and left Paul on the bed as she 
strolled out of the bedroom and then out of the 
apartment altogether.

While she was gone, the commotion outside actually 
got worse and despite the soundproofing of the 
apartment loud enough for Paul to get some idea of 
what was happening. The shouts got louder. Then 
there was the sound of scuffling and some muffled 
thuds. Paul was torn between his natural cowardice 
and a chivalrous sense of duty, but thankfully 
Beatrice was back in the flat well before five 
minutes had passed.

"You were right," she said, smiling at Paul through 
the open door. "Just some rowdy neighbours. I'll 
just wash my hands and I'll be back with you."

Paul smiled. He could hardly wait to resume their 
lovemaking. Already his penis was twitching with 
excitement. But somewhere at the back of his mind, 
he couldn't help wondering why Beatrice should want 
to wash her hands and why there were red streaks on 
her arms and bosom.

Chapter Nine 
Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

If she were ever asked, Nadezhda Kerensky would 
describe herself as an essentially monogamous woman. 
She didn't have the desire or ambition to take on 
more than one lover. Surely that was all she ever 
needed. Nadezhda was a romantic soul. She continued 
to believe that one day there would be an occasion 
where she'd meet the one woman who'd be her partner 
for the rest of her life. 

She once thought that her ex-wife, Veronika, was to 
be that one woman but she no longer believed that 
now.

Nor did she believe that Vashti satisfied that need. 
However passionate their love was for each other, it 
was obvious that Vashti wasn't a woman with whom 
Nadezhda could settle down with or marry. Vashti 
wasn't someone who limited herself to one lover at a 
time. 

Or even at the same time.

Nevertheless, she was admirably open and honest 
about the extent of her sex-life beyond Captain 
Kerensky's bed. In that regard, the colonel could 
never be accused of deception. She had never 
contemplated having a love life that was any less 
promiscuous than it already was. Vashti enjoyed sex 
with men just as much as she did with women. She got 
so much pleasure out of sex that she saw no good 
reason to prefer one gender over the other or to 
limit her lovers to only one at a time.

However, there were practical considerations the 
lovers had to take into account. Nadezhda was the 
ship's captain and Vashti was a colonel. They had 
different responsibilities of duty and command. It 
wasn't that anyone openly disapproved of a 
relationship between a Martian soldier and a 
Saturnian space officer, but the duties of their 
different and overlapping spheres of command took a 
higher priority than their mutual pleasure. However 
much Nadezhda yearned after her peculiarly endowed 
lover, their opportunities to meet were constrained 
by Vashti's duty roster and Nadezhda's never-ceasing 
responsibilities.

Although her lover had no objections, Nadezhda 
wasn't inclined to take on another lover. Vashti was 
pretty much all the woman she needed. Although she 
had no doubt that she was a lesbian, Nadezhda was 
addicted not only to her lover but also to her 
lover's penis. She'd never known such a thing so 
intimately before. It was women and women only that 
attracted her, although these days the pleasure of 
that cock in her mouth and its thrusts in her cunt 
inclined her to look at men in a fresh light. But 
however much men might be in possession of an organ 
that had given her so much satisfaction she was 
disgusted at the notion of a rough unmannerly male 
body pressed against hers.

Vashti had a habit of arriving outside Nadezhda's 
bedroom or office at times that were unannounced but 
which fitted remarkably well with the captain's 
routines and duties. There was hardly an occasion 
when Vashti visited that Nadezhda was dragged away 
by the obligations of duty from the passionate 
lovemaking that filled so many nights and whose 
memory sweetened so many days. Even so, Vashti's 
visits were never as frequent as the captain might 
like. There were many lonely unrequited nights and 
days when she waited in anxious expectation and 
dripped in excited anticipation. But such intervals 
were never for so long that she felt the need to 
seek out other lovers to satisfy her cravings.

And, of course, it wouldn't do for the captain of 
the Intrepid to reciprocate Vashti's policy by 
arriving unannounced at the colonel's quarters. Like 
all soldiers on board the space ship, the colonel 
was housed in relatively spartan quarters that had 
none of the landscaping that the passengers like 
Paul enjoyed. Battle-readiness took priority over 
comfort for members of the armed forces.

It would take extraordinary temptation indeed to 
lure Nadezhda away from the comfortable pattern into 
which she'd settled in the first month of her 
captaincy of the Intrepid. How could anyone compete 
with Vashti's energetic and urgent thrusts that left 
her so sore but still gasping for more? When she 
licked her lips, Nadezhda fancied she could still 
taste Vashti's sour semen. When she masturbated, 
which she now did more frequently, she could feel 
the soreness on her vulva that was the penalty of so 
many hours of passion. When she practised in the 
gym, the sweat that poured off her was a reminder of 
their mutual perspiration.

Nevertheless, Captain Kerensky had other concerns 
than only her affair with her errant lover. It 
troubled her that although she had a good idea of 
exactly where the Intrepid was headed in terms of 
spatial coordinates she knew very little else about 
the destination. The literature she'd read on the 
Anomaly was of little help. She was convinced-as 
were her fellow officers when they discussed it in 
the mess or in the lounge-that it must be some kind 
of alien incursion.

"What sort of aliens might they be?" wondered Chief 
Petty Officer Singh, as he tugged at the single long 
forelock that cascaded from his otherwise shaven 
head. "They won't just be microbes will they? I'd 
hope for something more exciting than that."

"I hope it's not an invasion force," remarked 
Medical Officer Yoritomo, who was tall and thin and 
blessed with a thick bush of black hair that bounced 
off his bare shoulders. "I can't think of any other 
reason why there would be such a large military 
contingent on board."

"Aliens are probably weirder than we can ever 
imagine," speculated Assistant Chief Engineer 
Taalat, who was a slim girl with artificially blue 
skin that her captain lusted after even though the 
engineer was a confirmed heterosexual. "They won't 
be mammalian. Probably not even vertebrate. Perhaps 
they'll be a kind of mollusc or even a talking 
vegetable."

"The scientists on the ship should have some idea," 
said the Chief Petty Officer as he sipped from a 
tall glass of fruit juice. "That's what they're here 
for. They've probably got access to confidential 
information that us mere space officers would never 
be allowed to see. Not even the captain."

Nadezhda could see that her fellow officers' eyes 
were focused on her as if they were pleading for 
more information. She only wished she could 
enlighten them. "I know for a fact," she said 
carefully but honestly, "that you're no better 
briefed than me. As for the scientists..."

"What about that Godwinian?" Taalat wondered. Her 
slightly dimpled cheeks made Nadezhda's heart beat a 
little faster. "The one with the Venusian wife. It's 
not often you get to meet an anarchist. I've heard 
he's been the target of countless assassination 
attempts. You must have heard of the attack on the 
cruise ship Ulysses. And there were other attacks 
everywhere he went. He must know something."

"He's a weird one," remarked the Chief Medical 
Officer. "He doesn't socialise with the other 
scientists and the case he brought with him was 
guarded as if it contained precious metals. He 
probably knows more than anyone."

"He's not particularly communicative," said Captain 
Kerensky cautiously. "He spends almost all his time 
with his wife or wandering aimlessly about the 
outermost level where he lives. He must be the most 
unimpressive scientist I've ever met."

"Appearances can be very deceptive," was Taalat's 
opinion. 

Nadezhda could see there might yet be wisdom in the 
clich‚. After all, there was an extraordinary level 
of security surrounding a man whose academic 
discipline was at best incidental to the object of 
the mission. Maybe there was more to computer 
archaeology than Nadezhda had ever given credit.

Although Captain Kerensky had entertained many of 
the resident scientists in her office, she'd been 
reluctant to invite one as poorly accredited as 
Paul. He wasn't even a professor. His only apparent 
claim to fame was the publication of a sensational 
thesis that demonstrated that the Anomaly had been 
previously sighted at the very dawn of the space age 
when colonisation was more a dream than a practical 
reality. Otherwise what was more remarkable about 
his research was how extraordinarily mundane it was. 
Maybe there was more to the strange anarchist who 
was privileged to occupy a villa in the Intrepid's 
most spacious and sought-after level. 

 The captain hadn't been any more impressed by Paul 
in person. Compared to the witty and eloquent 
Professor Keane who'd entertained her for more than 
an hour on the subject of polydimensional fractals 
or Doctor Xiao Ping who'd made the subject of 
exobacteria more fascinating than she'd ever 
imagined possible, Paul Morris was a very dull 
specimen. 

However, what did attract her and about which she 
felt decidedly guilty, especially in the company of 
Vashti, was Paul's wife. Beatrice was possibly the 
most beautiful woman she'd ever met. And although 
this was the first time the captain had met her, it 
wasn't to be the last.

Captain Kerensky made a point of visiting every 
level of the Interplanetary Space Ship. This wasn't 
merely to pass the time. She believed that it was 
only by making such visits that she could really 
know how things were and whether there were any 
necessary improvements. This was especially so on 
such an ancient vessel as the Intrepid.

It was while she was wandering about on the 
outermost level that she once again encountered 
Beatrice. This time the Venusian was alone. There 
was no sign of Paul at all. She was strolling along 
a path through a wooded glade towards a stream that 
cascaded over rocks that had been smoothed over by 
the centuries. It was an idyllic scene. Birds were 
singing in the trees and antelope were cantering 
over the grassy plains. But what was also strange to 
the captain, even after having spent so many years 
in deep space with such a wide variety of people, 
was that Beatrice was totally naked.

There were several colonies in the Solar System 
where nudity was the normal state of dress and there 
had been officers and ancillary staff who'd served 
under the captain that shunned clothing except where 
it was necessary to perform their duties. It wasn't 
just that Venusians were by no means known to be 
amongst the Solar System's most natural nudists that 
awakened the captain's interest in Paul's wife. It 
was also that the unclothed Beatrice wore her body 
so well that it seemed unnatural that she should 
ever wear clothes. 

And what a body! Although the bosom was oddly large 
and the rest of her so curiously slim, there were 
aspects in her tight but smooth contours, the 
healthy gleam of her skin and her confident stride 
that accentuated her beauty far above its mere 
physical aspect. 

There was a dreamlike quality to the moments that 
followed. Captain Kerensky was so mesmerised by 
Beatrice's beauty she hardly registered that the two 
women's steps were bringing them closer to one 
another. It was almost unexpected when Beatrice was 
close enough that their eyes met and they could 
exchange words.

"I'm delighted to see you again," said Beatrice in 
her soft seductive voice.

"No more than I am to see you," said Nadezhda.

"It's so beautiful here," cooed Beatrice as she 
advanced one more step closer. Her bosom bounced 
smoothly in rhythm to her stride. "I so enjoy my 
walks in the glades and pathways of the Intrepid."

"So I see," said the captain.

Beatrice now stood just in front of Nadezhda. Her 
face had beautiful green eyes and an exquisitely 
proportioned nose. Her fair hair brushed against her 
cheeks and her endearing smile was close enough to 
touch.

"We didn't really have much opportunity to chat 
before," said Beatrice whose grin broadened as she 
placed a hand on Nadezhda's. "I so much wanted to 
get to know you better."

"I did too," admitted Nadezhda speaking more 
breathlessly than she felt she ought. "It's my duty 
to ensure that the passengers are well looked 
after."

"I can understand that," said Beatrice who gently 
brushed her other hand against the captain's cheek. 
This innocent gesture sent daggers of anxiety and 
expectation through Nadezhda's chest. "I can report 
to you that I am wholly content with the services 
provided by the Space Ship Intrepid."

"I'm pleased to hear that," said the captain, who 
was rather less sure of what else to say as Beatrice 
detached her other hand from Nadezhda's hand and 
brushed it over her other cheek.

"I'm glad that my satisfaction gives you so much 
pleasure," said Beatrice whose face was now almost 
touching Nadezhda's. She could feel the naked 
woman's warm breath brush over her nose and lips. 
She gazed tremulously into Beatrice's eyes. They 
were shining with unmistakeable passion.

There were a few more words, equally banal, that 
were exchanged in the moments that followed. 
Beatrice recognised and responded to Nadezhda's 
reciprocal excitement. She pressed her lips against 
the captain's which opened to allow the ingress of 
her tongue. The two women pressed their bodies 
against each other: the captain in her pale purple 
uniform and Beatrice fully unclothed. Their tongues 
grappled as Nadezhda's crotch moistened with desire.

The grass was welcoming. The conditions were right. 
And Nadezhda was barely aware of the subsequent 
course of events. They followed a logic that was by 
no means determined by propriety or relative rank. 
Her clothes were divested so subtly that she was 
only aware that Beatrice had removed them when they 
were kicked away from the couple. The two women were 
both naked as they slowly fell to the ground. 
Nadezhda surrendered herself totally to Beatrice's 
hands and tongue. When they were at last 
outstretched on the grass, observed with only 
desultory interest by the parrots in the trees above 
and the deer that strayed past, their initially 
tender love-making became ever more passionate.

Beatrice was a woman at least as expert as Vashti in 
the amorous arts. Nadezhda's vulva and clitoris was 
soaked in Beatrice's saliva while the captain 
explored the Venusian's smoothly shaved and 
perfectly formed crotch with her tongue and teeth. 
Fingers probed deeply where no tongue could reach. 
Then Beatrice's fist was inside her and fucked her 
with a rhythm that matched the waves of ecstasy that 
culminated in orgasm after orgasm.

Finally, drenched in mutual perspiration, the two 
women lay together on the grass while small insects 
crawled over their thighs. Their arms and legs were 
intertwined. Their faces and crotches were pressed 
together. This was lovemaking of an intensity that 
Nadezhda had only ever experienced with Vashti but 
as a woman who still yearned after the familiarities 
of another woman's vagina Nadezhda felt a warm 
satisfaction that, after all, Vashti's penis could 
only be a second best.

"We must meet again," said Beatrice as she stroked 
Nadezhda's crotch. The captain's body responded 
almost immediately by arching upwards in the hope of 
more gratification. 

"We must," said the captain. She was only belatedly 
aware of how improper she'd been. Although this was 
scarcely the first time that Captain Kerensky had 
enjoyed sex with a passenger, this was the first 
time she'd so blatantly disregarded the concerns of 
the husband, wife or partner. Although Nadezhda was 
comforted by the fact that Beatrice's husband was 
only a man and that a man's company could never be 
preferable to that of a woman, she also knew that it 
wasn't right for the captain of the space ship to 
show so little respect for one of her passengers.

Nadezhda also worried what Vashti might think. She 
wasn't sure what to tell her, although her strangely 
endowed lover never disguised the extent of her own 
errant behaviour. 

Nonetheless, Vashti wasn't a woman Nadezhda could 
easily keep a secret from.

"You've been seeing someone else," said Vashti with 
an indulgent smile after the couple made love 
together a couple of days later. "I can tell. Who is 
it?"

Nadezhda was alarmed at Vashti's detective skills. 
Surely she had washed off every trace of her 
lovemaking. 

"A passenger," she admitted.

"Not a fellow officer?" said Vashti. "I thought 
maybe it was Mariam."

"She's taken up with a Uranian woman," said 
Nadezhda, with a tinge of regret in her voice. "A 
quantum physicist with orange skin and purple hair. 
She hasn't got the time for anyone else."

"So is your new lover a scientist?" asked Vashti 
without recrimination.

"No," said the captain, who made it clear from the 
tone of her voice that she didn't wish to be probed 
any deeper. "Just a passenger."

Captain Kerensky now had two very beautiful and 
remarkably skilled lovers and ones moreover who were 
so accommodating about the existence of the other. 
She couldn't imagine Veronika accepting her ex-
wife's infidelity with anything like the same degree 
of equanimity. 

It was uncanny how the two women both managed to 
time their encounters with Nadezhda at times that 
suited her and how they never came into contact with 
each other. It was almost as if they'd entered a 
compact together. Nadezhda loved both women 
passionately and there was no sense that she 
preferred one to the other. When she was being 
fucked by Vashti, that penis deep inside her and 
those muscular arms and thighs gripping her tightly, 
she never wished to be anywhere else. On the other 
hand, in Beatrice's tender caresses and against her 
perspiring bosom she melted away in hopeless desire 
and Vashti was almost forgotten.

As there were few reasons for the captain to ever 
visit the outermost level where Beatrice and her 
husband lived, she was rarely reminded of the 
adulterous nature of her relationship. She mostly 
forgot that Paul existed at all. He rarely wandered 
beyond his villa and was remarkably indifferent to 
the other scientists. Fortunately, this lack of 
interest was both mutual and amicable.

It was the military contingent that most often 
organised the social occasions on the Intrepid which 
were the main opportunities for the crew and 
passengers to socialise with the soldiers. The 
scientists were generally hopeless at organising 
such activities. The huge stadium on the ninth level 
was used to host the sports events where soldiers 
formed teams to represent the various colonies, 
planets and moons of the Solar System and to compete 
against each other. The competition was generally at 
its most vicious when the teams' original home 
nations were most nearly neighbours.

Captain Kerensky felt obliged to attend a game of 
rugby football between Vashti's Mariner team and one 
representing Ceres. This was the final in a bitterly 
fought contest where Vashti was the star player in a 
team otherwise mostly made up of men. The captain 
couldn't disappoint the soldiers who'd petitioned 
her to make an appearance, but most of all she 
wanted to show her support to Vashti who was the 
fullback for the Mariner side.

Nadezhda was somewhat put out when she noticed 
Beatrice sitting in the audience with the visibly 
bored Paul. The couple were in the seating area 
reserved for the scientists who attended these 
events in significantly smaller numbers than the 
military or the ship's crew. Beatrice was showing 
much more enthusiasm for the sport than her husband. 
Although her seat was on the other side of a stadium 
designed to accommodate tens of thousands of 
passengers, even from this distance Captain Kerensky 
was sure that her lover was exchanging meaningful 
glances across the pitch.

Mostly thanks to some stupendous goals and 
courageous tries for which Vashti was almost solely 
responsible, the Mariner team comfortably dominated 
the game. Nadezhda didn't know how many of the 
people watching were aware of Vashti's peculiar 
attributes. Although her lover didn't exactly hide 
her assets from the world, neither did she flaunt 
them. Nadezhda wondered whether it was her lover's 
singularly masculine attribute that was also the 
cause for Vashti being such a strong and athletic 
sportswoman. And however ferocious the scrum, she 
never emerged from its midst with a single hair out 
of place. This was quite unlike her badly bruised 
team-mates who were more often covered in blood.

Captain Kerensky knew she should avoid speaking to 
Colonel Vashti after the match. She was, in any 
case, surrounded by her fellow soldiers and even 
those from other teams, who were congratulating the 
colonel on her performance. But she wasn't sure 
whether she should avoid bumping into Beatrice.

"That was a tremendous game, captain," she heard a 
familiar voice say as she strode into the atrium 
where the spectators were milling around and clearly 
reluctant to leave so soon for home.

It was indeed Beatrice who'd addressed her. She was 
dressed in a flimsy top through which her nipples 
protruded. Her tight shorts hid only the details but 
not the contours of her crotch and hips. She was 
hand-in-hand with Paul who still wore a bored 
expression on his face.

"Yes, it was," said the captain, who restrained 
herself from kissing her lover in public right 
beside her cuckolded husband. "Of course, I can't 
say whether the best team won, as that's not in my 
position to say, but it was a very exciting match."

In the subsequent small talk, Captain Kerensky 
studied Paul as best she could to see how much, if 
at all, he suspected his wife of having an affair 
and, what is more, with the captain of the 
Interplanetary Space Ship Intrepid. She could see no 
more evidence that he was aware of his wife's 
infidelity than when the captain first invited the 
couple to her office. He barely engaged his eyes 
with hers at all and held his hand firmly in 
Beatrice's. His gaze was more often on her than one 
anyone or, indeed, anything else. 

Perhaps he was so nonchalant because he was an 
anarchist, Nadezhda mused. She knew little about 
such fringe political ideologies and could easily be 
persuaded that just as where Paul lived there was no 
government maybe he also didn't share the same moral 
concerns as people of other nations. Perhaps in a 
sense he was above petty concerns such as jealousy, 
however much he was apparently attached to and 
protective of Beatrice.

Even so, Captain Kerensky continued to hold her 
original opinion when she first met Paul that he was 
a decidedly unimpressive man. He was probably just 
incredibly na‹ve and easy to fool. 

It was this unflattering assessment that most 
reassured the captain when Beatrice and Paul 
departed and she wandered off to chat with the other 
officers. 

Having such a contemptuous attitude really did make 
it much easier for Nadezhda to continue her 
relationship with Beatrice untroubled and free from 
guilt.

Chapter Ten 
Chomsky - 3750 C.E.

"Marriage," repeated Comrade Doctorow incredulously. 
"Are you telling me you've never heard of the 
institution of marriage?" 

"Well, yes," said Paul. "I've heard of it. There's 
no way I couldn't have heard of it after having 
studied so much about the third millennium. It's 
just not something practised on Godwin."

"You know nothing about matrimony between two people 
who love one another?" wondered Comrade Leopold 
Doctorow. "You know nothing about husbands and 
wives?"

"I always assumed it was just an ancient practise 
that had dropped out of use centuries ago," said 
Paul, not at all happy at being quizzed in this way 
by the government minister. This wasn't why he'd 
come to Chomsky: the most recently constructed 
colony in the extensive Socialist Republics of 
Saturn. 

The minister scratched his shaven pate. "I've been 
married six times. I've had six different husbands. 
I'm not exactly the best advertisement for the 
benefits of marriage, but I'd no idea that you 
anarchists had actually dropped the institution 
altogether. There can't be very many other colonies 
in the Solar System who've gone that far. 
Nevertheless, whatever strange customs you might 
have in your rustic corner of the Kuiper Belt, the 
fact is that everywhere else the institution of 
marriage is still very much alive. And I tell you 
again that if you wish your lover, your ... erm ... 
girlfriend, to accompany you for the rest of your 
voyage it is absolutely imperative that you and she 
should get married."

Paul gazed lovingly at Beatrice as she clasped his 
hand tightly in hers. "Well, I'm sure neither of us 
has any objection to getting 'married', have we?" he 
asked her. "We could just sign whatever documents 
that need to be signed now if that's not a problem. 
What do you think, dear?"

"As you say, I have no objection," agreed Beatrice 
with a broad grin. "Can't we just do it now and get 
it over with?"

Comrade Leopold Doctorow sighed. "Neither of you 
seem to know much about matrimony, do you? Do you 
have no weddings on Ecstasy either?"

"Weddings?" wondered Beatrice. "People do have them. 
They come from all over the Solar System to do that. 
Are they also associated with marriage?"

"I despair!" exclaimed the minister as he leaned 
back in his leather chair. "Yes, a wedding is a 
solemn exchange of vows and it formalises the state 
of marriage after you have been engaged. I take it 
that you don't even consider your lover to be your 
fianc‚e?"

"I'm not sure," said Paul, a little puzzled. "What's 
a fianc‚e?"

Comrade Doctorow raised his eyebrows and looked over 
at his husband, whose head like most Saturnians was 
also shaved. "Okay! Okay! I admit that I'm not 
really the best person to instruct you in the sacred 
traditions of marriage. Just be aware that 
throughout the Solar System it's taken very 
seriously indeed: especially here in the Socialist 
Republics of Saturn. It would just not be considered 
proper for you and Beatrice to travel together under 
the protection of the Interplanetary Union unless 
your relationship was officially sanctioned. My 
secretary will make the proper arrangements and you 
will be married before you travel on to the Jovian 
Asteroid Belt. The alternative is that you won't be 
able to travel with your lover at all. Although the 
Socialist Republics are tolerant and understanding, 
there are other nations within the Interplanetary 
Union who won't countenance that you travel together 
on such an important mission without a formal union.  
Do you understand?"

"I suppose so," said Paul, who still didn't 
comprehend what the fuss was all about.

The majority of Paul's audience with the minister 
was a rather bland, but it was fascinating to Paul 
who'd never before had a conversation of any kind 
with an individual who was designated as belonging 
to a higher status than him. In Godwin, there were 
no hierarchies and certainly not formal ones. It 
wasn't so much that everyone was considered equal: 
it was just that no one had any claim to be anything 
else. The very notion of equality, like liberty and 
fraternity, was so taken for granted that nobody 
ever made a fuss about it. Paul had assumed that the 
Socialist Republics of Saturn, a loose confederation 
of moons, asteroids and colonies united by ideology 
and planetary orbit, would be similar in that 
regard, but although everywhere he and Beatrice 
roamed about Chomsky there were constant reminders 
of the state's socialist politics, there was also a 
great deal of evidence that this wasn't entirely a 
community of equals.

Not only was there rank and status, although 
everyone was addressed as 'comrade', there were laws 
and regulations that were also equally alien to 
Paul. There was even a thriving capitalist economy, 
together with such financial instruments as a stock 
exchange, public limited companies and a significant 
disparity of wealth. But at least nobody was poor. 
In fact, by Saturnian standards, it was Paul who was 
poor. However sincerely the Socialist Republics 
expounded their shared ideology, it seemed that the 
pursuit of wealth took a rather higher priority. 
There was some evidence that this kind of mixed 
economy was some kind of a formula for material 
success. The nations in Saturn orbit were the 
wealthiest in the Solar System having overtaken the 
nations in Earth orbit on most economic measurements 
just over a century earlier and as the decades 
passed had further extended their lead in terms of 
Gross National and Domestic Products. This was 
despite Earth's unique historical advantage that was 
once thought to be unsurpassable.

A millennium and a half separated the Socialist 
Republics from the abominations that masqueraded as 
socialist societies in the Age of Extremes, but the 
memory of those decades was still routinely used to 
discredit Socialist ideology by nations that had 
adopted opposing economic or political models. 
Godwin's main criticism of the Socialist Republics 
was that the society was too homogenous. As far as 
Paul could see, this homogeneity was most apparent 
in the fashion for shaven heads (and undoubtedly the 
rest of the body as well) that was sported by all 
but a small minority of the population. 

Another common aspect of Saturnian culture was the 
prevalence towards homosexuality, although this 
tendency didn't seem to have much to do with the 
tenets of Socialism. Although Paul had many gay and 
bisexual friends and acquaintances, rather less than 
a fifth of the population of Godwin were in single 
sex relationships. In the marble-lined malls and 
elegant parks of Chomsky, it seemed that the ratio 
was pretty much totally reversed. Paul thought it 
was fascinating evidence of the success of social 
engineering as a response to over-population.

"What difference does it make?" Beatrice asked when 
Paul confessed to his secret discomfort at being 
surrounded by male couples (and less so, he had to 
admit, by the equal number of female ones).

"None," said Paul hurriedly, anxious not to appear 
homophobic. "None at all. But would there be so many 
same sex couples if there were fewer incentives to 
be so? Every film, play and song seems to take it 
for granted that the most normal relationship is 
that between a man and another man. Or between a 
woman and another woman."

"Isn't it just the same thing everywhere else, only 
the other way round?" remarked Beatrice. "Although 
there are plenty of places on Ecstasy where women 
can meet women and men other men, homosexual 
relationships are in the minority. What's so 
unnatural that it should be the other way round in 
Saturn?"

"That's just it!" moaned Paul, aware that his was a 
losing battle. "Is it really natural at all?"

"Is it natural to wear clothes? Is it natural to 
live in space? Is it natural to have holographic 
telecommunications wherever you go? I think that 
being natural stopped being a fact of life for human 
beings as soon as they started living in parts of 
Earth where they had to wear warm clothes and eat 
cooked food. And that was a long time before humans 
invented space flight."

Beatrice and Paul attracted the inquisitive stares 
of almost everyone and it wasn't simply because they 
were an openly heterosexual couple. It was also 
because they dressed very differently to the shaven 
headed comrades. Both Paul's loose clothes and 
Beatrice's scanty ones contrasted with the tight 
trousers and suits worn by Saturnians, that 
emphasised body shape whilst hiding from sight all 
but the hands, calves and face. Although the clothes 
were egalitarian in design, there was evidence of 
social distinction in the understated variation in 
the quality of the cloth and the elegance of the 
trimming.

Now that he was on Chomsky Paul began to feel for 
sure that he was, indeed, on a Very Important 
Mission, even though he still didn't believe that he 
deserved such an honour. He still believed that he 
was something of a fraud even though the authorities 
in the Interplanetary Union had deemed otherwise. 
He'd still not been given a clear explanation as to 
why he was considered such a Very Important Person. 
No Godwinian was ever considered any more important 
than anyone else and such an elevated status didn't 
sit easily on Paul. Even if he hadn't spent all his 
life in an anarchist colony, it was a role that Paul 
was never likely to be comfortable with. 

All the same, right from the moment he arrived at 
Chomsky's splendid spaceport, Paul was constantly 
reminded of his newfound importance. The men and 
women who'd welcomed him were high ranking 
ministers, business-people and celebrities whose 
hands he had to shake and who blandly disguised 
their opinions of Paul's plain clothes and of 
Beatrice's near absence of them. It was Beatrice, as 
always, who accorded herself most gracefully in 
these situations. She demonstrated her skill at 
charming the dignitaries who flocked around the 
couple. This sheltered Paul from the consequences of 
his many faux pas and embarrassing blunders, but it 
also added to his discomfort. This was especially so 
when Beatrice exercised her charms on the women who 
were so obviously seduced by her beauty and grace. 

"Do you really want to get married?" Paul asked 
Beatrice as they cuddled up together on the huge 
mattress in their luxurious hotel suite.

"If that's a proposal, then the answer is yes," said 
Beatrice without hesitation.

Paul had intended it to be more of a speculative 
question, but he was rather relieved that the 
troublesome business of courtship was over with so 
easily. The lovemaking that followed this proposal 
was torrid and much more prolonged. Paul's testicles 
were left swollen and bruised for many hours after. 
Beatrice insisted that the couple enjoy the variants 
of sexual pleasure that Paul mostly reserved for his 
virtual lovers.

Beatrice's anus was both tighter and looser than 
Blanche's. Her oral technique was messier and called 
for a much more liberal application of spit and 
saliva. She lacked Blanche's inhuman ability to stay 
balanced in whatever position Paul put her in but 
she brought him to spasms of ecstasy that his 
virtual lover could never equal. She also had an 
appetite of her own-not one wholly predicated on 
Paul's lust-that made their lovemaking many times 
more satisfying. 

Needless to say, Paul knew almost none of the 
wedding guests. His parents had the opportunity to 
attend as holographic avatars, although they would 
be out of phase by several light hours, but as they 
were just as uncomprehending as Paul of what the 
ceremony signified they responded with rather 
puzzled comments and the statement that if being 
'married' was what Paul wanted then they wished him 
all the best. They hadn't seen one another for 
seventy years and were surprised to be reminded that 
they had any lingering responsibility towards their 
son. The other wedding guests were chosen more by 
virtue of their status on Chomsky. Embarrassingly, 
Paul had difficulty in remembering their names and 
how to pronounce them. 

The wedding overseer was a tall oriental woman 
called Comrade Natasha Smith. She sat in front of 
the happy couple and constantly referred to a 
holographic screen that hovered beside her on which 
there was a formal list of questions.

"Are you religious?" she asked. 

"No. I don't think so. It's not something I've ever 
thought about. There aren't many religious people on 
Godwin and most of those are Buddhist. They don't 
believe in a God either, do they?"

"I'm an atheist myself," said the wedding overseer, 
"so I'm not an authority on such matters. But I have 
to ask. There are some very peculiar requirements 
for religious weddings. I'm just grateful that there 
are so few religious people in the Socialist 
Republics. And how about you, Beatrice? Do you 
profess to a faith?"

"No." 

"I see. Do either of you have a preference as to the 
nature of the wedding ceremony?"

Paul shook his head. He hadn't been aware that there 
was any difference between one kind of wedding and 
another.

"What about you, Beatrice? Your records say that you 
originally came from Venus. Do you want a Venusian 
wedding? It might be more appropriate for a 
heterosexual union. It's a long time since I married 
a man and a woman."

"I might come from Venus," said Beatrice, "but as 
far as marriage is concerned I might as well come 
from Mars. Or Saturn for that matter. I'm quite 
happy to have a standard Saturnian wedding."

"Well, that makes life a lot easier. Venusian 
weddings are fussy affairs. And I'm sure we can 
adapt the Saturnian ceremony for a heterosexual 
couple. I just have to alter the words a little. 
Okay, what about family concerns? I know about 
Paul's family. How about you, Beatrice? Do you want 
your family to attend? Not in person, of course. 
Venus is too far away for that. It wouldn't be too 
difficult to arrange a holographic presence. 
Conversation might be difficult, but it's the 
significance of their being there that counts."

"I have no family," said Beatrice, with no hint of 
sadness or regret.

"Are they deceased?"

"I've just never known a family."

The wedding overseer glanced at her holographic 
screen. "Well, that assertion is corroborated by 
your official records, but again I am obliged to 
ask. I'm sorry to hear that though, dear. It must be 
tragic not to have known the pleasures of having two 
mothers or two fathers. Though on Venus I guess that 
would have been a mother and a father. How about 
friends? Have either of you got friends who you'd 
like to see attend the wedding?"

"I don't think any of my friends would understand 
what it was about," Paul remarked sadly. He was 
beginning to feel quite isolated on this alien 
world.

"My friends wouldn't understand either," Beatrice 
said.

"That's a shame," sighed Comrade Natasha Smith. "I'm 
afraid then that those who'll attend will do so more 
for reasons of official obligation than because they 
genuinely wish that your union should bring you 
happiness for the rest of your days."

And so it was to be. 

Neither Paul nor Beatrice made any preparations for 
the wedding. This was all done for them by Chomsky's 
marital experts who assured the happy couple how 
honoured the Interplanetary Union was to officiate 
such an auspicious occasion. Paul didn't doubt their 
sincerity and he was more than happy to be excused 
from the obligation of doing anything himself. 
Almost all he needed to do was choose a uniform from 
the limited selection on offer and learn something 
about the wedding ceremony. He had trouble in 
performing either duty with very much earnestness. 
The uniform he chose was uncomfortable. It was a 
black outfit that was much tighter than anything 
he'd ever worn before. He was adamant that his 
shoulder length hair shouldn't be cut even a 
centimetre shorter and most certainly not shaved 
off. When he attended the practice session, he 
thought the vows he was supposed to keep were absurd 
and ridiculous. How could anyone be expected to stay 
with the same partner for all his or her life? With 
a lifespan of well over a century and the likelihood 
of being sexually active for almost all of it, such 
a vow was completely unrealistic. This opinion 
seemed to be verified by Saturn's rather high 
divorce and remarriage rate.

It didn't seem to be any more natural to Beatrice 
who had to wear many more clothes for the ceremony 
than she usually did, although she was rather better 
than Paul at memorising the formal words of the 
ceremony. In fact, she even claimed to be looking 
forward to the event. 

As far as Paul was concerned, the only value he'd 
get from the whole palaver was the official 
formalisation of the couple's relationship. But as 
this would be the very first formal event of his 
life he had no idea what real value that might be.

There wasn't much time to wait for the wedding. The 
space ship that would carry the newlyweds towards 
the Jovian Asteroid Belt was due to leave in just 
over a week. The couple's honeymoon would be spent 
on a relatively unglamorous cruiser that was more 
often used by Saturnian businesspeople and 
government officials than by those in the first 
flush of matrimonial bliss. 

The couple had plenty of time to look around Chomsky 
while they waited for the day of the wedding. The 
colony was several times larger than Godwin and 
consisted of two concentric cylinders, the inner one 
of which was mostly sea water and the outer one was 
half wilderness and half cityscape. Paul wondered 
whether he could ever again be satisfied with life 
in the rather less splendid and often chaotic world 
of Godwin. That was, of course, if he even had a 
return ticket from the Very Important Mission to 
which he had been summoned.

 The dawn of the wedding day began like every day in 
Chomsky. Paul admired the view from the third floor 
luxury suite where he and Beatrice were staying. It 
was a delightful vista of parks and woodland in 
which a pair of regenerated pterosaurs was soaring 
over the lake. Paul could also see other regenerated 
wildlife from Earth's prehistoric past, such as a 
plesiosaur, a mastodon and a hyracotherium. They 
were obviously not selected for their prehistoric 
contemporaneity.

"So, we will soon be married," giggled Beatrice as 
she applied her lips to Paul's erect penis. "This 
will be the last time I can do this before we are 
man and wife." She cupped his testicles in her palm 
and pushed his penis deep inside her throat. Paul 
gasped as his penis spurted semen into her mouth and 
over her chin.

"Well, at least it won't be as man and husband," 
remarked Paul. He pointed over the balcony at a male 
couple who were sitting by the lake and kissing one 
another under the shadow of a gliding ramphoryncus.

The ceremony was to take place in a wedding centre 
built specifically for the purpose and which had 
been modelled on a variety of religious places of 
worship. It had a tower, was constructed of shiny 
grey-blue marble, and had a doorway many times 
larger than was necessary for even the tallest 
guest. In fact it was large enough to admit the 
mastodon that grazed contentedly outside the 
couple's hotel. The spacious chamber was divided 
into two sets of comfortably appointed satin seats 
divided by a wide aisle. The only people Paul 
recognised were those dignitaries and ministers he'd 
already met either at the spaceport or at the many 
tedious receptions he'd attended whose only real 
attraction for him was the plentiful supply of weak 
alcoholic beverages. 

Paul and Beatrice were led along the aisle 
accompanied, as was traditional, by a bridesmaid and 
groom. The bridesmaid walked arm-in-arm with Paul 
and the groom with Beatrice. Paul had never met his 
bridesmaid before. She was a tall slender woman, 
probably from a low gravity satellite such as Titan 
or Iapetus, who was perfectly at ease in her role, 
unlike Paul who clung to Beatrice's hand as much for 
security as comfort. 

The ceremony was long and tedious and, despite all 
his coaching, Paul stumbled over his words and 
confused his oath of allegiance to his betrothed 
with his promise to abide by the laws governing the 
Socialist Republics. Beatrice made no such errors. 
She was word-perfect and only seemed out of place at 
all by virtue of the long blonde hair that she'd 
insisted, like Paul, in keeping untrimmed. Despite 
Paul's clumsiness, the ceremony seemed to be going 
very smoothly. The wedding overseer, Comrade Smith, 
smiled sympathetically as Paul garbled the words of 
devotion and struggled to squeeze his hand through 
the golden bracelet that was the secular tie to 
their eternal union.

Paul smiled affectionately at Beatrice who he'd had 
no difficulty at all in fitting a reciprocal 
bracelet onto her wrist. However, he was startled to 
see that his wife's expression was quite different 
to what he'd expect on a woman who was about to get 
married. Rather her keen-eyed and alert face would 
have been more appropriate if she were about to go 
hunting (an activity as illegal in the Socialist 
Republics as it was disapproved of in Godwin). 

Then, with no warning, Beatrice suddenly pushed Paul 
down onto the velvet-carpeted floor. At the same 
time there erupted a deafening bang and a slow-dying 
echo.

"What the fuck!" he yelled, as his head fell onto 
the bridesmaid's delicate shoe. And then: "Shit!" 
when he realised that the shoe and the foot inside 
it were not attached to a body at all but terminated 
in a bloody stump.

It was then that he adjusted his senses to the 
confusion of sound and brilliant light that 
accompanied his fall while he was still in 
Beatrice's tight grip. The bridesmaid wasn't the 
only casualty in the explosion. Comrade Smith's head 
was also lying on the ground. It was still attached 
to her shoulders but singed at the bosom and the 
stumps of her arms. The extreme heat had been enough 
to cauterise her wounds, but a thin trickle of blood 
was seeping out from her ears and mouth. 

Paul looked about him which was quite difficult 
since his nose and eyes were very much at floor 
level. There was more yelling and a great deal of it 
was nothing more than a series of expletives. He 
turned his head towards the congregation of which he 
could mostly see only feet, but many of these were 
splattered with blood.

"Get up!" said Beatrice urgently, as she dragged 
Paul up onto his feet. 

"Run!" she ordered as she grabbed him by the hand 
and pulled him towards a side-door that like 
everything else was much larger than it needed to 
be. 

Her command couldn't have come sooner.

There suddenly came another explosion that propelled 
Paul and Beatrice through the side-door with 
tremendous force. The newlyweds fell onto the well-
trimmed lawn outside the temple amongst fragments of 
broken marble and polished wood. Miraculously, 
Paul's only injuries were mild abrasions and 
scratches while Beatrice had escaped with nothing 
more than a coating of dust and dirt.

"What the fuck's happened?" Paul asked with real 
agitation and terror.

"There's been an assassination attempt," Beatrice 
said, comparatively unruffled and with remarkable 
calm. "It was one of the guests. Fourth row. Eighth 
chair on the right. She had some kind of plastic 
laser gun. She's still in there, but by now she'll 
be dead after she set off the explosives that were 
strapped around her waist. I think she also killed a 
significant proportion of the other guests."

"You saw her and saved me just in time?" guessed 
Paul.

"Yes," said Beatrice, with an amused smile that was 
as strangely inappropriate as her expression of 
alertness had been a few moments before. "What just 
happened was exactly like that." 

Chapter Eleven 
Paradise - 3751 A.D.

The space station may have been christened Paradise, 
although it hadn't always been known by that name, 
but even Isaac knew that the real paradise to which 
he expected to ascend would never be like this. This 
eight hundred year old space colony in the war-torn 
Meteorite Belt could never deserve such a name.  But 
for Isaac and the several thousand other would-be 
martyrs from all corners of the Solar System it 
would be home for the year or so it would take them 
to prepare for their mission.

Isaac hadn't realised that so many different types 
of people would be called upon to serve God. Many of 
those united in the Crusade against the threat posed 
by the Apostasy belonged to Christian faiths other 
than those of the One True Faith. There were many 
who didn't even acknowledge the absolute truth of 
the Holy Scriptures but whose faith was in the venal 
falsehoods promulgated in the pages of the Koran, 
the Torah or the Vedas. As a good Soldier of Christ, 
Isaac was determined that he would never be 
corrupted by other idolatrous faiths for was it not 
written in the Second Book of Moses: Called Exodus 
Chapter Twenty: "I am the LORD thy God, which have 
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the 
house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods 
before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven 
image, or any likeness of any thing that is in 
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or 
that is in the water under the earth.  Thou shalt 
not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I 
the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the 
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the 
third and fourth generation of them that hate me;" 
Isaac had no wish to bring such divine retribution 
upon his children, nor even upon his great 
grandchildren. 

However, his curiosity couldn't help but be piqued 
by the strange practices of his heathen companions. 
For instance, there were those who didn't treat the 
Sabbath as the most special day of the week. Unlike 
the godly and, of course, the heretics who professed 
a Christian faith but were wholly misled, these 
pagans saw no sin in labouring on this most sacred 
of days. In fact, it was a Friday or even a Saturday 
that these heathens observed as the Sabbath. Isaac 
was sure that these sinners' misguided observation 
would result in their Eternal Damnation, but in the 
meantime it was a nuisance that these two days of 
the week were so disrupted for the followers of the 
Lord Jesus Christ.

The non-believers, whose company he shared and with 
whom he exchanged as few words as possible, behaved 
and dressed in ways that also shocked Isaac's 
sensibilities. Most of them would have been 
condemned to death on Holy Trinity and he'd have had 
no compunction in carrying out his duty as a Soldier 
of Christ. Just being a non-believer was crime 
enough, but these pagans had customs beyond all 
bounds of propriety. Many dressed immodestly. 
Indeed, one sect of the Hindu faith even foreswore 
the vanity of dress of any kind. There were Muslims, 
Jews and even Christians who sported beards when 
Isaac knew that facial hair was anathema to the 
Lord. Even long hair was a sin amongst men and many 
of his fellow martyrs had hair long enough to 
warrant the most severe penalty. For it was written 
in Chapter Eleven Verse Fourteen of the First 
Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians: 
"Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a 
man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?" 
Comfortingly the gospels said in Verse Fifteen: "But 
if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for 
her hair is given her for a covering." Isaac wasn't 
sure of course whether the wives of these heretics 
and pagans kept their hair long or even shaved it 
off altogether, for he would never meet them. 
Nevertheless, it troubled him to discover that 
although the sexes were kept strictly segregated 
there were women in Paradise who were also prepared 
to make the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of the 
Apostasy on the Solar System's perimeter. Clearly 
some faiths didn't understand the wisdom of the 
words in Chapter Two Verse Four of the Epistle of 
Paul the Apostle to Titus that the holy were duty-
bound "That they may teach the young women to be 
sober, to love their husbands, to love their 
children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, 
good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word 
of God be not blasphemed."

When Isaac began his journey on the crowded ancient 
space cruiser from Holy Trinity, he'd hoped that for 
the first time in his life he might glimpse the Sun 
or, at least, the stars. This was a privilege denied 
most citizens of Holy Trinity throughout their lives 
and was no more availed to him when he and the other 
volunteers made the journey to Paradise. This three 
months journey was probably the most uncomfortable 
and tedious of his life. For most of the time he was 
confined in a seat elbow-to-elbow with the same two 
other Soldiers of Christ. It was here that he sat 
for most of his waking life (distracted only by the 
Holy Bible) and where he slept under an unrelenting 
bright glare. The only opportunity for exercise was 
during his excursions to the lavatory where he might 
have to queue for hours to relieve his bowels. There 
were no windows or portals on the space ship. From 
the inside all that could be seen was the curved 
arch of the walls and ceiling. Without the luxury of 
artificial gravity, it was only the magnetic grip of 
his shoes that prevented him and the others from 
floating towards the ducts and tubes that crowded 
the ceiling mere yards above his head.

He was told that the Sanctified Space Ship St Luke 
was powered by a massive unfurled sail. This 
supplemented the antimatter engine that was mostly 
left idle after the initial thrust had been 
established. Isaac saw nothing of the exterior of 
this four hundred year old craft beyond the door 
through which he had entered. And through which, 
with immeasurable relief, he eventually disembarked.

Isaac reflected that his discomfort was as nothing 
compared to the suffering of Christ. Isaac was 
mindful of the Gospel According to Saint Mark 
Chapter Nine Verse Twelve that "it is written of the 
Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be 
set at nought." Nevertheless, Isaac's three months 
of purgatory were still less than naught in 
comparison to the Lord's humiliation and torment on 
the Cross at Calvary? And having many times 
administered crucifixion to sinners, Isaac had a 
very good idea of the ordeal that was suffered by a 
person nailed to such a holy instrument of capital 
punishment.

At first Isaac relished the comfort of his bunk bed 
in the huge dormitory in Paradise he shared with his 
co-believers. But this was compromised by the 
frustration caused by the low gravity regime that 
was imposed to save energy. The walk between the 
Chapel, his dormitory and the Training Centre was 
not easy. He had never before experienced less than 
standard gravity, but the strange bounce to his 
every step in the low gravity soon lost its novelty. 
However, this was almost welcome as a contrast to 
the double standard gravity in which he and the 
others exercised. This might have been an ideal 
condition in which to strengthen his muscles but it 
was also very challenging. Just lifting himself up a 
rope while carrying double his normal bodyweight, 
plus several kilos of baggage, exhausted him more 
than any exercise in the police gym would ever do.

Every seventh day was spent in religious 
contemplation and prayer in the Chapel. It was a 
respite from his strenuous training that from the 
moment he awoke on Monday morning he was already 
looking forward to. 

There was also compensation in comradeship with his 
fellow believers from Holy Trinity who, like him, 
were all Soldiers of Christ and all fervent in their 
religious devotion. These fellow Christians were 
equally appalled by the practises of the heathens 
and heretics with whom they trained for a full ten 
hours each day in the crippling artificially 
enhanced gravity. His comrades could be relied on to 
give him a hand in any crisis. However, Isaac also 
knew that he needed to be careful in what he said as 
scattered amongst the faithful were members of the 
Holy Inquisition. They pretended to be mere Soldiers 
of Christ but they were sure to take note of anyone 
whose observance of the one true faith at all 
waivered.

Isaac never got to know which of those in his 
company were Holy Inquisitors. They could well have 
been Jude or Abraham, his closest comrades. But it 
was clear that these officials were very busy. 
Within a week of their arrival aboard Paradise, a 
Soldier of Christ had strayed into one of the 
women's dormitories: one where the chador-covered 
Muslims slept. The women were outraged by his 
presence and he was summarily punished as an example 
to all. It took him nearly a week to die from the 
stoning and impalement that was his sentence. Every 
day, together with the other True Believers, Isaac 
would throw another stone at the sinner's blood-
strewn face: his teeth mostly shattered and his nose 
a cartilaginous wreck. The sinner had professed that 
it was an accident that he'd stumbled into such a 
forbidden zone, but that could never be an excuse 
for a crime of such magnitude.

There were other serious breaches of protocol in the 
close proximity of other religions, some of which 
could not be punished. The most serious was the 
conversion to another faith. There was a Shiite who 
converted to Sunni Islam. A Baptist who converted to 
Catholicism. And even a Jew who converted to 
Buddhism. But none was as serious as the conversion 
of one of the Soldiers of Christ who shared the same 
dormitory as Isaac. He converted to the faith of the 
Baptist Colony of the Divine Revelation. 

This haunted Isaac as it did the other Soldiers of 
Christ. How could anyone be so weak? But this, the 
most serious of all sins, was the one that was to 
remain unpunished. The convert now enjoyed sanctuary 
with his new companions. The law that prevailed most 
strongly in Paradise was that no faith or religion 
had any sway over the practices or interests of 
another. Nonetheless, this didn't prevent the 
Soldiers of Christ punishing the reprobate as best 
they could when their actions could be disguised in 
the midst of the harsh exercises they practised 
together. The traitor was soon so badly injured that 
he spent the majority of his stay in Paradise not in 
double gravity, but in the more weightless 
surroundings of the space station's infirmary.

Paradise was an old colony and it showed. Normally, 
it would have been decommissioned by now, but the 
need to combat the Apostasy took precedence over the 
usual considerations of safety and comfort. There 
were several fatalities every day as one or other of 
the life-support systems failed, but fortunately not 
to the extent that the entire space station had to 
be evacuated. Several chambers suffered from the 
sudden loss of air pressure that reduced the oxygen 
to below breathable level. On another occasion, the 
temperature in a section fell low enough to cause 
the death of a dozen of the less hardy Holy 
Crusaders. There were also electrical faults that 
caused sudden death; a breach in the hull that 
resulted in the loss of several martyrs to the cause 
of poor management rather than the greater good of 
the Solar System; a release of sewerage in a 
dormitory that suffocated several good souls in 
gigantic volumes of excrement; and the unfortunate 
emission of noxious radioactive elements that 
confined a hundred souls to the infirmary for a few 
days until they all died.

Isaac was not immune from the defects that beset the 
station. Oxygen levels were variable: sometimes he 
had a boost of rather more than was good for him and 
sometimes he was suffocated by the lack of it. Some 
days the temperature was so low that Isaac's fingers 
were blue and numb. On other days he sweltered in 
temperatures that due to his observance of modesty 
he had to suffer in a blanket of sweat. 

One day, he was stranded in a section of the 
exercise chamber with just one other would-be martyr 
when the temperature dropped well beyond his comfort 
level, while the oxygen level was raised. 
Furthermore, the lights had gone out and he was 
unable to grope to the exit as the gravity level had 
risen to well above its normal double standard 
gravity.

Isaac was certain that very soon he would be dead.

Although he was sure that the life of virtue in 
which he'd observed with such zeal the prosecution 
of sinners and heretics would earn him a place by 
the Lord's side in a place that was truly Paradise 
(after, of course, a due period in Purgatory until 
the Second Coming), Isaac was alarmed. How would his 
wife and children manage without him? Had he led a 
truly blameless life? And what if (and this was a 
thought he should have banished immediately) his 
choice of faith was mistaken and it was another 
faith or religion he should have observed? Would his 
righteous persecution of the Sinful earn him not 
Eternal Reward but the Eternal Damnation that he was 
so certain was the fate of all heretics and 
unbelievers?

He was in a chamber where only moments before he had 
been practising the necessary procedures to 
manoeuvre an entry craft. He shared his potential 
tomb with an unbeliever who was equally as certain 
as Isaac that he would be rewarded for his faith 
with Life Everlasting. But Isaac knew that only one 
of them would be so fortunate (though it troubled 
him that it was also possible that neither of them 
would be). His companion had the beard and shaven 
head of a Muslim, though whether Sunni or Shiite (or 
other complexion) Isaac didn't know.

"You speak English, don't you?" the infidel asked in 
a heavily accented and slightly choked version of 
Isaac's tongue and that of the Holy Scriptures.

Isaac hesitated. He'd avoided having to talk to non-
believers throughout his sojourn on Paradise, but 
these might well be his last few moments alive. 
Furthermore, Isaac was reminded of Christ's sympathy 
towards the Good Samaritan, an infidel who showed 
Christian virtue.

"Yes," he answered in a similarly choked voice.

"I don't often get the opportunity to speak English 
with native speakers," continued the heathen in the 
utter darkness. "There are none on Jihad, my colony. 
The only spoken language is Arabic: the sacred 
language of the Prophet."

"Then why speak English at all?" asked Isaac facing 
the direction from which the infidel's voice came.

"It is my duty and honour to be a translator in 
Jihad," said the infidel. "It is a charge so 
privileged in our colony that no one but I can speak 
or understand your language."

"It is the language of the One True Faith," affirmed 
Isaac.

"If by that you mean Christianity," said the hidden 
figure, "then so too is Latin, Greek, Russian, 
Armenian and Spanish."

"That is blasphemy and heresy," asserted Isaac with 
certainty.

The infidel made no comment but Isaac was sure that 
he was properly chastised by his words.

"What do you think it is we are united against?" the 
Muslim finally asked after a long pause whose 
interruption Isaac both dreaded and looked forward 
to. "What is it that has brought so many different 
faiths together in common cause? How can a jihad 
also be what you Christians call a crusade?"

Isaac pondered this. He had no inkling what a jihad 
was, but it was a fair question. What possible 
congruence of interest in the suppression of the 
Apostasy could there be between a good Christian 
soul and a damnable pagan?  Surely all it 
demonstrated was that the Apostasy was not an 
invention of the defilers of Christ or the other 
heathens who shared the space station. 

"I don't know," Isaac admitted, "but if the men of 
the cloth say that it is an evil then an evil it 
must be."

"The men of cloth in my community are very different 
men from those in yours," said the Muslim. "However, 
they have also seen fit to join forces with those 
like you with whom we would most naturally be at 
war, as we have been many times in the past. What 
godless monstrosity must this evil be that the 
followers of the True Prophet should be as one with 
those who deny the truth of his words?"

Isaac restrained his tongue from quoting those 
passages from the Holy Bible that demonstrated all 
too clearly that there was only one true God and all 
other claims to Divinity were to be contested with 
the utmost fortitude. This was probably not the time 
to chastise a heathen with evidence of the folly of 
his ways. Perhaps now was rather the time to ask 
questions of the Muslim as to what he might know of 
the mysterious Apostasy.

"I don't know," admitted the pagan. "When I was 
assigned to this mission I was told no more than the 
barest details. But it is enough for me to know that 
the Prophet Himself recognises it as an abomination 
to be persuaded that this is a cause for which it is 
worth surrendering my life. And although it has 
meant that I have abandoned a wife who is expecting 
my first-born, it is a mission for which I am happy 
to give my life. However, it seems that I shall die 
not in the execution of my mission but because of 
the vagaries of this ancient space station."

Isaac shivered. It must have been well below 
freezing and whatever multiple of normal gravity he 
was enduring hadn't lessened at all. 

"However," continued the Muslim after a pause, "I 
have used my knowledge of your language to discover 
what I can. There is more written in English on the 
Apostasy than there is in Arabic. The non-believers 
and atheists who predominate in the Solar System 
also express incomprehension as to what this evil 
might be, although most know only of its effects 
rather than of its cause."

"And what effects are these?" wondered Isaac who was 
ignorant even that. 

"If you don't know then you are as blessed in your 
innocence as the people of Jihad!" exclaimed the 
Muslim. "I had wondered whether those of other 
faiths, especially those who speak English, might 
know what those of the Islamic nation have been kept 
ignorant. And rightly so!"

"And of what have we been kept ignorant?" asked an 
impatient Isaac. If he must die from extreme cold 
and high gravity, surely he had a right to know 
something about the cause for which his wife would 
soon be a widow.

"For many decades, perhaps even a century, there 
have been reports, many of them captured on 
holovideo, of events that were originally described 
as miracles," the Muslim replied. "Many of the more 
foolish, of many different faiths, acclaimed them to 
be proof of the existence of God. They are often of 
a nature that the more credulous might believe could 
only come from an all-powerful being. Indeed, 
despite the best efforts of atheists, no natural 
cause has been assigned to them. Consequently the 
cause can only be supernatural. Nevertheless, it has 
become apparent that the apparitions are so random 
and meaningless that they cannot originate from an 
all-wise being such as Allah, but instead from 
elsewhere. And what could that be but Satan himself 
who has returned to unleash Evil on the universe and 
herald the Final Judgement?"

"And what are these miracles?" wondered Isaac.

"They are truly strange but seemingly without 
purpose," said the Muslim. "A Blue Whale appeared in 
the hulk of a space ship. It was aboard for less 
than a minute and then vanished leaving behind only 
its displacement in volume. A being appeared on one 
of the satellites of Saturn that resembled an angel 
of Christian fable with huge avian wings, only to 
die in the inhospitable atmosphere before its corpse 
also vanished. There was a report of hot plasma 
raging for several minutes in the Jovian Asteroid 
Belt that severely singed a neighbouring colony 
before it too evaporated without trace. An asteroid 
of several kilometres diameter passed through the 
orbit of Mercury and caused a major gravitational 
imbalance to several colonies before it too 
disappeared. There have also been instances of 
burning bushes, seas parting and people turning to 
salt. All of which is either evidence that Allah has 
foresworn His senses or, the only rational 
explanation, that Satan has reawoken in the Solar 
System."

This explanation fascinated Isaac. He had long 
expected the imminent coming of the Antichrist and 
its attendant Apocalypse which had been delayed 
several times already in his life. He was also not 
surprised that the atheists and heathens who made up 
the great majority of the many billions in the Solar 
System were denied the truth that the Judgement was 
now upon them. For it is written in Verses Twenty 
and Twenty-one of Chapter Nine of The Revelation of 
Saint John the Divine: "And the rest of the men 
which were not killed by these plagues yet repented 
not of the works of their hands, that they should 
not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, 
and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can 
see, nor hear, nor walk: Neither repented they of 
their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their 
fornication, nor of their thefts." He was only sorry 
that he was not able to witness the punishments to 
be visited on the wicked souls before they were 
sentenced to an Eternity of Damnation.

There was a sudden flickering of light in the 
chamber that was initially too bright. Like the 
oppressiveness of the gravity and the contrasting 
light-headedness brought about by too much oxygen, 
the space station's system had overcompensated and 
brought with it not only a brilliance of light that 
made Isaac squint but a rush of warm air that was at 
first welcome relief to his numbed fingers and toes, 
but soon bathed him in a sheet of sweat.

"The Lord be praised!" exclaimed Isaac as his eyes 
gradually adjusted to the brightness and he was at 
last able to see again his bearded, turbaned 
companion.

"Allah Akhbar!" exclaimed the Muslim with equal but 
opposite veneration.

Rescue didn't arrive for several more hours in which 
time Isaac and his infidel companion struggled on 
their hands and knees as far across the chamber as 
they could towards the closed doors before the 
exertion and heat became too much for them. It was 
the Muslim who first lost consciousness. He 
collapsed just beside a collection of batons and 
laser-rifles that were scattered about the floor. It 
was several minutes and almost as many yards of 
extreme effort later that Isaac's consciousness 
finally gave way and he fell where he was later 
found, pressed onto the floor by air pressure many 
times greater than the human frame was designed to 
endure.

Isaac's torment wasn't over when he'd at last 
recovered consciousness in the space station's 
hospital. His lungs had collapsed and he had badly 
cracked his head on the ceiling when the gravity had 
been abruptly cut off. Fortunately, treatment for 
ailments of this kind were of no trouble to even the 
Thirty-First century medical facilities that were 
all the space station was able to provide. 

However, it wasn't so much his slow recovery to full 
health that troubled the Soldier of Christ, but the 
persistent and unremitting questioning he endured 
from the Holy Inquisitor assigned to him. It was, 
indeed, Abraham, his erstwhile closest friend. It 
was no trivial matter that he'd been left 
unsupervised for so long in the company of an 
infidel.

Sinful though it might be, Isaac's first inclination 
to the barrage of questions and face-slapping he 
suffered was to deny that he'd spoken even one word 
to the Muslim in whose company he had been for so 
many hours. But Abraham was a subtle inquisitor. He 
relentlessly exploited every crack in Isaac's tale 
and soon penetrated his companion's artless 
obfuscations to learn every detail of his 
conversation with the infidel translator. Curiously 
though, the Holy Inquisitor was less concerned with 
a wavering of faith, which was Isaac's main worry, 
but with what information could be gleaned from the 
Muslim's own insight into the nature of the 
Apostasy.

"Satan is a devious foe," said Abraham almost 
kindly. "He tempts the Righteous in the most subtle 
ways. Is it a wonder that he persevered for forty 
days and forty nights to tempt Jesus Christ in the 
wilderness as described in Chapter Four of the 
Gospel According to Saint Luke? Although in the end, 
Satan was banished, his was a temptation to which a 
lesser being would surely have succumbed. It is 
interesting that the infidel knew that that the 
strange apparitions associated with the Apostasy had 
once been attributed to miracles."

"And why is that?" asked Isaac from the confines of 
the bed to which he was pinioned by tubes that 
trailed from his nostrils and stomach.

"It was once believed by the Archdeacon himself that 
these miracles were the Acts of the Lord and 
although he pronounced nothing to the people of Holy 
Trinity he claimed that they were proof indeed of 
the Lord's existence. For many decades, together 
with others equally misled by Satan, the policy of 
Holy Trinity was to propagate to the heathens and 
atheists of the greater Solar System that God had 
chosen to reveal Himself in this rather less than 
subtle way."

"But the Archdeacon doesn't believe that now?" asked 
Isaac, conscious that for the first time in his life 
he'd learnt that even clerics were not infallible.

"He was visited in a dream by the Messiah Himself. 
This was coincidentally at about the same time that 
an extraordinary meeting of the Ecumenical Council 
was called in the heretical colony of God's Glory. 
It was revealed to him that not only was it 
concordant with the financial and political welfare 
of the True Church to cooperate with the infidels 
and heretics of the Ecumenical Council, but that the 
Apostasy was no less than the manifestation of Satan 
and that the miracles were no more attributable to 
the Lord than are those signs which persuade the 
godless to believe in such heretical fantasies as 
evolution, dark matter and the existence of stellar 
systems other than the one Solar System which was 
all that God the Father created nearly eight 
thousand years ago."

Isaac had never heard such heresy before and was 
horrified to learn of the possibility that the 
universe might be larger than the Solar System. (He 
had no notion of what evolution or dark matter might 
be, though he was sure that they were heresies of 
the very worst kind).  

"However," the Holy Inquisitor continued, "it is 
imperative that you should mention to no one that 
you have heard of these miracles. Should you do so, 
then you will be denied the honour of serving the 
True Faith in its hour of need and your wife and 
family will be tainted with the reputation that you 
have swayed in the observance of your religious 
vows."  

Isaac knew only too well the consequences of such a 
reputation, having often visited the most extreme 
justice on those who'd sinned by association. He 
resolved to never divulge what he had learnt. He was 
just grateful that the mission on which he was 
engaged was so urgent that the Holy Inquisitor and, 
by implication, His Holiness the Archdeacon should 
extend forgiveness to Isaac for having so sinned by 
having opened his ears to the words of an infidel.



Chapter Twelve 
Schmidt - 3750 C.E.

"Schmidt?" Paul wondered. "Why are we stopping at 
Schmidt? And why is the colony called that anyway. 
Was there ever a famous Schmidt?"

"I'm sure there was," said the captain of the space 
cruiser. "And I'm sure there are many Schmidts who 
are worthy to have a colony named after them. This 
colony, however, is named after Ronald Schmidt, the 
current hereditary president of the colony." 

"Hereditary president?" Beatrice wondered. "Isn't 
that exactly the same as King or Prince or some 
other hereditary title?"

"Indeed it is," said Captain Turgenev. "But there is 
no universal law that dictates that the rulers of a 
colony shouldn't call themselves exactly what they 
like. There is no shortage of self-styled Kings, 
Tsars, Archdukes and Queens throughout the Solar 
System. There's even an Emperor, though his must be 
the smallest empire in human history. As you know 
colonisation of the Solar System wasn't exactly a 
planned or coordinated affair and many colonies were 
founded as nothing more than hereditary fiefdoms or 
business empires extended into space. This colony is 
just one of them. It was named after the family of 
porn merchants who founded the colony and continue 
to own it. But Ronald Schmidt is petitioning for 
recognised statehood in the Interplanetary Union and 
is making tentative moves towards the colony 
becoming a more conventional nation state, but as 
you'll soon see it has a long way yet to go."

Paul had heard of colonies that were governed by 
hereditary rulers, but as even the notion of private 
property was rather alien to him he'd wasn't at all 
sure what this might mean in practice. However, 
given the immensity of the Solar System it was 
inevitable that there should be a wide diversity of 
colonies and that many would be of whatever nature 
their founders decided they should be. This was, 
after all, how a relatively impoverished but 
idealistic colony such as Godwin happened to exist 
in the Kuiper Belt.

"Why are we stopping here?" he wondered. "It's Earth 
we're heading to. Why can't we go there directly?"

"Space travel is an expensive business, especially 
given the huge distance from Saturn to Earth," 
explained the captain. "Chartering a ship that 
travels directly to Earth without the benefit of a 
gravitational sling or refuelling is a luxury that 
only a very few can afford. Your journey isn't going 
to be in a straight line at all. There's an 
Earthbound ship due to depart from the colony in a 
few weeks time, while this ship heads towards other 
colonies in the Jovian belt. The interests of 
interplanetary commerce can't be ignored. 
Nevertheless, I'm more than certain that President 
Schmidt will do his best to be a good host."

Although that might be so, Paul was in no hurry to 
leave the good ship Molotov. He'd rather enjoyed his 
stay in his spacious luxury suite on the space 
ship's fifth level and, more than even that, the 
pleasure he'd enjoyed between the sheets with his 
new wife. Although he was still rather unsure about 
the meaning invested in the institution, married 
life was agreeing with him rather well. If what it 
meant was the constant and reliable attention of the 
most sexually desirable woman whose body he'd ever 
enjoyed there was nothing he could possibly complain 
about. Was it being married that made Beatrice such 
an agreeable and passionate lover? Paul was sure 
this wasn't the only reason, but the sum total of 
his earlier lovemaking was as nothing in comparison.

The sheets were damp with perspiration and semen 
when he awoke after his last night on board a space 
ship he'd hardly eat all explored beyond his suite. 
He had no time to rest however, as Beatrice ensured 
that he got dressed and ready to go. She then 
hurried Paul towards the space shuttle that would 
take the newly-weds and several dozen other people 
to the Schmidt colony.

"We don't want to miss our flight," she reprimanded 
Paul as he lingered by a stall that sold a selection 
of souvenir clothing from the Socialist Republics. 
In truth, Paul wasn't sure whether he'd ever want to 
buy the close-fitting clothes on display. He still 
wasn't comfortable with even the concept of commerce 
given that nothing ever came with a price on his 
home colony. 

Paul's reluctance to leave was no less when he saw 
the waiting shuttle craft in which he and Beatrice 
would travel for more than a whole day. It was tiny. 
It was a long tube of which the greater part was 
just engine. There were windows along the sides by 
which he would have to sit on a seat strapped in by 
a belt. The only thing he could look forward to was 
the view through the windows of an empty void 
speckled with distant stars. There might be the 
opportunity for drinks and food and even some sex in 
the reclinable seats, but he'd become accustomed to 
somewhat more luxury. The shuttle flight was 
necessary because the Molotov came no closer to the 
colony than a few million kilometres. The only 
familiar company on the flight, other than Beatrice, 
were Sergei and Yuliya: two disgruntled officers 
from the Socialist Republic who'd been assigned to 
act as his guardians for the duration of his stay in 
Schmidt.

Even Paul's vague hope of being able to make love 
during the flight was rather compromised by the fact 
that he and Beatrice sat were sitting between his 
two guards. They were clearly uncomfortable by the 
blatant lovemaking of a heterosexual couple whose 
behaviour made them, if anything, even more 
disgruntled. When they weren't actively fucking one 
another, this couple announced to anyone who cared 
to listen that they were natives of the Republic of 
Schmidt. They weren't the only people to openly have 
sex during the flight, but even Paul felt 
uncomfortable by the fact that none of the amorous 
couples bothered to activate the privacy screens and 
its attendant soundproofing. 

Throughout the Solar System, it was quite normal for 
people to have their bodies enhanced to accentuate 
or even exaggerate their sexual characteristics, but 
Ecstasy was the only place until now where Paul had 
ever seen real live people of such cartoonish 
proportions as this couple. The woman had enormous 
breasts and buttocks that were much larger than 
Beatrice's. These assets were further enhanced by 
close-fitting rubbery clothes that both hid and 
emphasised the contours of her unnatural body. The 
woman wore stiletto heels that were almost 
perpendicular to the ground so making her feet 
resemble pronged hoofs. Her waist was absurdly 
narrow, her thighs monstrous and her face had a 
baby-like cuteness with huge cheeks, swollen lips 
and over-sized eyes. The couple exemplified 
someone's bizarre sexual fantasy, but even Paul's 
immature masturbatory fantasies never quite 
encompassed anything quite so grotesque.

The view through the tiny portal didn't enliven the 
flight at all. Despite many years of wondering what 
space was like beyond the Kuiper Belt, Paul was 
actually rather disappointed. The sun was larger 
than the pinprick visible from Godwin, but it still 
wasn't very large. And it was a long time until the 
colony of Schmidt began to loom larger than any 
other dot in the firmament, and Paul was able to 
appreciate how different it was to most other space 
colonies. Not many were designed to resemble a 
saucer.

The most noteworthy part of the journey until then 
had been the midway point when the ship switched 
from accelerating at a standard gravitational force 
to decelerating at the same rate. This was the 
moment when the passengers, the amorous couple from 
Schmidt included, had to strap themselves in for the 
few moments their bodies were weightless. This brief 
moment reminded Paul of the horrifying fact that he 
was encased inside a small cylinder of metal outside 
of which was close to nothing at all. 

There was rather more for Paul to view when the 
shuttle arrived at Schmidt. The passengers were 
escorted off the shuttle and wished a good day by 
air stewards dressed in the familiar tight uniforms 
of the Socialist Republics. It was then that Paul 
discovered how typical the amorous couple were of 
the citizens of Schmidt. 

The official welcoming committee that stood to 
attention as Beatrice and he entered the reception 
hall was a gathering of sexual freaks all dressed in 
unsubtle and provocative clothes. Beatrice was 
comparatively modest in the gossamer-thin dress that 
draped over her voluptuous contours. It seemed that 
the national dress of Schmidt was made from rubber. 
The men and women of the reception committee wore 
costumes where when the flesh was hidden it was only 
with the purpose of further drawing attention to 
what was otherwise shown. In most cases, the breasts 
were bare as too was the crotch and anus. All the 
men were blessed with exceptionally large penises 
that were on full display.

It was obvious to Paul what the colony's main 
industry was and what provided its President with a 
sufficiently large fortune to maintain his own 
private fiefdom. 

In case there was still any doubt, above the heads 
of the dignitaries was a huge holographic display of 
men and women engaged in indiscriminate acts of 
coitus with no regard to gender. There was also a 
lurid array of statuary that represented men, but 
mostly women, in exaggerated poses where the 
emphasis was clearly of a sexual nature.

Paul had often sampled pornography, but he'd never 
suspected that it could be the primary industry for 
an entire space colony. Schmidt not only served to 
satisfy the still huge appetite for pornography 
throughout the Solar System, but was proud of its 
status as one of the sex industry's most prominent 
providers. Paul wondered whether, if the colony had 
made its fortune from music, there would have been a 
similar display of its musical genius. Or, if from 
the manufacture of nanocarbon tubes, an exhibition 
of the innumerable uses made of the 
buckminsterfullerene molecule.

The proficiency the people of Schmidt possessed in 
the public display of sexual intercourse did not 
come with a corresponding aptitude in public 
speaking. The Minister of Foreign Affairs made an 
excruciatingly dull speech to welcome Paul that was 
both awkward and inept. Not one clich‚ was too 
threadbare. No sentence's effect was enlivened by 
its execution. And there was not one hint of 
originality. It was almost as if the speech, like 
the pornographic films from which Schmidt made its 
fortune, was assembled by committee and executed 
more to tick off points than to achieve its 
ostensible purpose. The applause that celebrated its 
uncertain conclusion must surely have been from 
relief that the ordeal was now over. 

Paul was pleased that no other dignitary was 
assigned to follow the Foreign Minister's address. 
The time he spent listening had given him the 
opportunity to appraise his hosts. It was obvious 
that it was Beatrice rather than the Foreign 
Minister who attracted the most attention. She was 
also the one person who'd best suppressed any sign 
of boredom and restlessness.

The couple were then escorted by an entourage of 
dignitaries towards their hotel. As they walked 
along the pleasant marble paths of Schmidt, Paul 
noticed that it wasn't only pornographic images that 
were on prominent display. Along with the huge 
cinematic displays of carnal pleasure, there were 
almost as many images of President Ronald Schmidt 
and, judging from the family likeness, what was 
probably his long line of dignified predecessors. 

There was something quite ridiculous about the 
President, but this was really no more so than his 
illustrious predecessors. It could be his huge 
moustache and wavy blond hair. It might be the 
weakness in his eyes and the cheesiness of his grin. 
It was certainly related to the fantastic and 
colourful wardrobe he wore, which was dominated by 
feather, fur and latex. Although the president 
seemed comical, it was apparent that his exercise of 
power within the colony named after his family was 
absolute and unquestioned. There was no obvious sign 
of censorship. The ubiquitous and explicit displays 
of every possible sexual act-including those that 
went well beyond any of Paul's sexual fantasies 
(especially regarding animals, children and 
excretory functions)-showed no restraint at all. 
Paul soon found that there was free and easy access 
to objective news coverage, some of which was highly 
critical of the President, but he also discovered 
that the people of Schmidt were peculiarly 
disinclined towards anything other than bland 
undemanding entertainment. And most of that had a 
very high sexual content.

The hotel in which Beatrice and Paul stayed was as 
blatantly lewd as everything else in the colony. It 
was decorated in lurid pinks and reds. The fittings 
were in plush velvet and leather. It resembled 
nothing less than an immense boudoir. 

From the moment the couple arrived at the hotel, 
with their Saturnian guards ill at ease, Beatrice 
exhibited a capricious wilful unpredictability that 
Paul had never seen before. This conduct seriously 
exasperated Sergei and Yuliya. The room they were 
first shown just didn't meet Beatrice's standards of 
perfection. It was only after having been shown 
several other rooms equally well appointed and 
unashamedly vulgar, that Beatrice at last settled on 
one that necessitated the move of other more 
comfortably ensconced guests who rather resented 
being evicted from their bedroom.

This was just the beginning of a pattern of 
behaviour that the strangely stubborn and unsettled 
Beatrice insisted on. Within a week, they had stayed 
in more than one bedroom each night and had even 
moved to other almost identical hotels. During all 
this Beatrice remained forever indecisive, however 
much she insisted after each change of address that 
she'd at last found a room where she was at last 
certain she'd be content.

"So what was so wrong about that room?" asked Paul 
finally voicing his annoyance as he and Beatrice 
marched out of the Hotel Wilhelm Schmidt towards the 
Hotel Archibald Schmidt with Sergei and Yuliya 
carrying their bags in tow. "It had a lovely view of 
the esplanade. The en suite swimming pool was lovely 
and warm. And the bed was big enough for ten 
people."

"I just didn't like it," said Beatrice adamantly. 
"But I'm sure this hotel will be ideal. It's got a 
lovely holo-mural over that statue of a big-breasted 
porn star."

"I can't say it's any better than the one outside 
the Wilhelm," sniffed Paul, although he accepted his 
bride's opinions. They were newlyweds and it was 
probably to be expected that Beatrice would want 
everything to be perfect. But how perfect could 
anything ever be?

Beatrice's capriciousness extended beyond her 
dissatisfaction with the hotel suites. She had got 
into the habit of changing her plans abruptly and 
without warning, however many dignitaries and porn 
stars might be inconvenienced by her unscheduled 
changes. Paul didn't really mind this much. He 
didn't understand the meaning of celebrity or 
status, so he was blissfully aware of the offence 
she caused. But it was frustrating to be one moment 
heading towards yet another sex musical-which was 
always remarkably dull however sensational and showy 
it promised to be-and the next moment being diverted 
to some equally promising, and most often even less 
interesting, entertainment that the government 
officers had never anticipated the couple would want 
to see.

If nothing else, Paul came to see rather more of 
life on Schmidt than the government minders had 
intended. Not only did he see live sex shows, first 
night screenings of star-studded sex films (almost 
all made by the Schmidt Corporation) and the film 
studios and warehouses used by the industry, but 
some rather amateurish strip clubs, a sex revue that 
was unrelievedly inept, and a factory that 
manufactured the remarkably elastic clothing worn on 
the colony. He even got to see those sections in the 
space colony's hub where sewerage, water supply and 
electricity were managed.

"Tell me what you didn't like about that last room?" 
asked Paul when in the early hours Beatrice insisted 
on yet another move within the hotel complex. This 
once again greatly inconvenienced the hotel staff 
and their uncomplaining but clearly discontented 
Saturnian guardians. "It seemed so perfect when we 
moved in last night. And why do we have to move now 
of all times?"

Beatrice smiled broadly and kissed her husband on 
his lips and ran her fingers over his still 
tumescent penis. "I don't know. It just didn't seem 
right. The mattress was too soft. The window didn't 
give us a good enough view of the plaza. I just want 
things to be perfect."

"But for me, darling," Paul protested, "just 
spending more than one uninterrupted night in a 
bedroom is all the perfection I desire."

Nevertheless, Paul didn't spend all his days and 
nights with Beatrice. She developed the habit of 
seeking out time to leave Paul either alone or with 
whichever guardian who'd chosen to look after him.

"Where does Beatrice go?" Paul asked Yuliya who was 
currently assigned to him, while it was Sergei who 
was assigned to accompany Beatrice that morning. "I 
can't think there's much she can do by herself that 
she can't do with me."

Yuliya was distinctly ill at ease from Paul's direct 
question. She glanced over at Paul who was sitting 
on the sofa opposite her in the palatial chamber in 
the Esmeralda Schmidt Hotel that was his home that 
day.

"Beatrice just enjoys spending time by herself," she 
answered diplomatically. 

"So where do you go with Beatrice when it's your 
turn to follow her around?" wondered Paul, who, 
despite believing that such concerns were 
appropriate for a newly married man, was conscious 
that he might be intruding on his wife's need for 
privacy.

The pale freckles on Yuliya's cheek and brow 
darkened and she nervously rubbed her shaven pate. 
"Sometimes she just visits me in my room and we... er... 
talk," she said. "You know, about girls' things." 
She looked up at Paul pleadingly. "I don't normally 
spend much time in male company. I miss the company 
of other women. It's good for us to spend time 
together."

"Of course," said Paul. "That's quite natural."

Yuliya seemed relieved that Paul was so 
understanding.

There was one aspect about Schmidt that particularly 
puzzled Paul. It did seem to be a peculiarly 
accident-prone colony. Why, only the other day the 
room he and Beatrice had slept in just the night 
before developed a serious climate systems failure 
that caused severe distress to the couple who'd 
rather reluctantly exchanged rooms with them. The 
room became so cold that they were very nearly 
killed. Then there was the explosion that ruptured 
the pathway that Paul and his wife might easily have 
been walking along if Beatrice hadn't changed her 
mind at the last moment and decided that an evening 
spent watching an amateur sex poetry recital was 
preferable to a first night matinee of a holographic 
animation feature at the Grand Schmidt Theatre. And 
worst of all was the unexplained assassination of a 
tourist at a sex robot museum that would have been 
on Paul's itinerary if Beatrice hadn't had such a 
raging headache that afternoon. This and a trail of 
other mishaps plagued the itineraries that Paul 
would have attended if Beatrice wasn't so habitually 
capricious. Although nothing was said about such 
incidents by the couple's two guardians, they did 
seem to be especially alert as a result.

It was good that Beatrice's wilfulness didn't extend 
to complaining about Yuliya's and Sergei's 
heightened vigilance. She was quite happy that every 
room they visited was scanned by equipment for 
suspicious devices or that even the most senior 
dignitary was subjected to electronic scanning and 
even a brusque frisk. It was also Beatrice's 
unconventional policy to chat as much with the 
ordinary citizens of Schmidt as with the dignitaries 
who'd been expecting to enjoy their presence. Paul 
didn't understand rank and privilege and was 
impervious to the effect of such snubs. In any case, 
the non-privileged, although clearly nervous of 
addressing celebrities like Paul and Beatrice, were 
most often the more engaging company even if their 
appearance was no less bizarre.

Paul was aware that the longer he and Beatrice 
stayed in Schmidt the more testing it was for his 
guardians. They'd become ever more twitchy as the 
days passed by. It was equally as awkward for the 
government officials who were disconcerted by how 
little their honoured guests observed the protocols 
expected of distinguished representatives of the 
Interplanetary Union. Although nothing was said to 
Paul, he suspected that complaints might have been 
made elsewhere. But as official protocol were such 
an abstract concept to him, he was sure there wasn't 
much to worry about.

As he and Beatrice prepared to leave on their last 
morning for a flight to the Earth orbit ship, the 
Ulysses, it was Paul's wife who made the observation 
that had been in his mind all the time.

"I can't imagine that our stay in Schmidt has done 
President Ronald any favours," Beatrice said.

"You don't think so, darling?" 

"How much do you know about diplomacy and statehood, 
my sweetest?"

"I think I know what the words mean."

"Are you sure you do?" Beatrice wondered. "I'm not 
so certain. I don't think you've bothered to follow 
the news at all while we've been here, have you?"

"Well, I've watched the news on SSBC," said Paul, 
referring to the Solar System Broadcasting 
Corporation which mostly concentrated on news of a 
interplanetary nature.

"Not local news, I bet," said Beatrice. "There's 
been some diplomatic friction between the 
Interplanetary Union and the Schmidt Republic. The 
President doesn't believe that the Interplanetary 
Union is taking the republic's petition for 
recognised statehood seriously. There's been some 
delicate negotiation about the price rises the 
colony intends to impose on its chief export..."

"Pornography, you mean?"

"What else is there? Do you think this sordid 
outpost in the Jovian Asteroid Belt could export 
anything else of value to the rest of the Solar 
System? No names are mentioned, of course. We are on 
a secret mission after all, my sweetest. But offence 
has been taken. I don't think the reports sent back 
by sweet Yuliya and that stiff prude, Sergei, will 
in any way progress Schmidt's case."

"It does seem to be a peculiarly accident-prone 
place."

"Doesn't it just! I don't think our farewell 
committee will be nearly as dignified as our 
welcoming one..."

"So no speeches?" said Paul.

"I'd be very surprised if the departure of the 
shuttle to the Ulysses was accompanied by nearly as 
much celebration as our arrival from the Molotov. 
So, you're almost certainly right. No speeches."

"Well, that's something to be grateful for," said 
Paul sincerely as he kissed his beautiful wife.

Chapter Thirteen 
Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

Beatrice licked her fingers lasciviously as she 
savoured the sour taste of Captain Kerensky's 
vaginal juices and smiled seductively at her lover. 
The captain gasped. Her eyes shone bright. She 
shuddered with a final orgasmic spasm from the 
frenzied sex she was enjoying with Paul's wife. 
Beatrice's tongue was still moist from the lovers' 
commingled saliva and the juicy evidence of passion 
dripped from her vagina. Nadezhda had made love with 
many women in her hundred and twenty years of life, 
but she'd never experienced orgasms of quite the 
intensity that she'd had with this Venusian.

Beatrice rasped her tongue over the captain's shaven 
pate while she pinched at the lips of her equally 
shorn vulva. Her smile was so enticing that the 
captain was anticipating the time when she'd 
recovered sufficiently from the lovemaking that 
never seemed to tire Beatrice and they could resume. 
Beatrice recognised how fatigued her lover was and 
let her relax recumbent on her huge mattress.

"What's your theory about the Anomaly, Naddy 
sweetheart?" Beatrice asked as she leaned over the 
captain's bosom. "Do you think it's an alien 
visitation?"

"I'm not sure," said the captain. "I know that's 
what most people think and I'm sure that's why the 
Interplanetary Union has gone to such incredible 
expense to launch this mission, but I'm not 
convinced."

"And why's that?"

"I don't know. I guess I just don't believe this is 
how a superior alien intelligence would reveal 
itself. Why haven't we found other evidence of alien 
civilisations? Humanity has spread to every last 
corner of the Solar System and as far as I know 
we've not found a single alien artefact and 
certainly no aliens. Why would they reveal 
themselves by means of an Anomaly that has no 
measurable gravity, emits no radiation and has no 
fixed shape? I wouldn't be at all surprised to find 
that it was nothing more than a natural phenomenon, 
perhaps associated with dark energy or hidden 
spatial dimensions."

"The universe is vast," said Beatrice. "The light 
from the nearest galaxy, Andromeda, left it two and 
a half million years ago. It's taken twenty-five 
thousand years for the light from the centre of the 
galaxy to reach us. Surely, in all that immensity 
there must be something out there?"

"But why would an alien civilisation ever be 
interested in us?" Nadezhda wondered. "And given 
that the universe is so huge, what chance is there 
they would even find us? In any case, there's been 
no concrete evidence of aliens in over two thousand 
years of astronomy. We keep sending probes to the 
stars, but we never find evidence of any life form 
that's more advanced than a bacterium."

"Perhaps the human race just hasn't been looking 
hard enough."

"I think we've had rather more pressing concerns. 
And how do we even know that we'd like what we 
found? Anyway, it's not as if we haven't tried. Ever 
since the twenty-third century, after the 
environmental mess on Earth was finally sorted out, 
we've been sending robotic probes out across the 
galaxy. They must be hovering around almost all the 
stellar systems within a radius of a hundred light 
years. When these probes were sent out it was during 
an era when people thought it be no more than a 
matter of time until we had the scientific knowledge 
and technology to colonise the stars. And what's 
happened since then? Most probes didn't survive the 
journey and although they were programmed with 
highly advanced artificial intelligence and the 
ability to reproduce, the whole endeavour resulted 
in nothing more than a holographic library of 
inhospitable exoplanets. The probes most certainly 
didn't discover new civilisations, cities or 
orbiting colonies."

"So what do you think happened to that first 
generation of robotic probes?"

"I think they just malfunctioned. Technology fifteen 
hundred years ago wasn't nearly as advanced as it is 
today."

"You don't think they were intercepted by aliens?"

"If that's the case, then why haven't our probes 
ever found any sign of little green men? There's 
never been such a concerted effort to establish 
colonies in other star systems since those 
optimistic days and that's mostly for practical and 
economic reasons. Even the fastest space ship takes 
hundreds of years to get to the nearest star. A 
robotic probe can travel somewhat faster than a 
space ship, but the amount of fuel required is just 
prohibitive. It's just not economically viable. 
However, it did seem in those optimistic days that 
those early expeditions had a chance of success."

"Why's that?"

"They were designed to use the materials they found 
in space to reproduce themselves, so if they'd 
survived the journey they'd have been able to spread 
across the galaxy. That was in the days before self-
reproducing hardware was prohibited because of the 
risk of runaway destruction. Imagine what could 
happen if these robotic probes followed their 
programmed instructions too assiduously and gobbled 
up everything they found. It would be chaos. Even 
though there are countless films and books about 
alien civilisations and the like, we're still a long 
way off from having the resources to colonise even 
the nearest stellar system."

"You don't think aliens can travel faster than 
light?" 

"Of course not," said the captain sadly. "The 
history of science ever since the 23rd Century has 
been one of diminishing returns. Everything seemed 
possible in those heady early days. It seemed that 
every decade there was a new theory to explain the 
anomalies and oddities of the universe, but with 
each advance the chance of ever breaking free from 
the mundane reality of sub-light speed travel seems 
to have become ever more remote. I can understand 
how people used to think. Economic growth was almost 
exponential. Scientific knowledge seemed to grow on 
a similar curve. But nowadays that all just seems 
like an illusion. Since the middle of the last 
millennium there's been nothing at all like the 
fantastic advances of knowledge and technology that 
seemed so natural in the early years of space 
travel."

"So you think progress has slowed down since then?"

"Very much so. Just compare the scientific advances 
in the centuries from the start of the 19th Century 
with what's happened in the last thousand years. 
There's been no new theory of physics as monumental 
as Special or General Relativity. No advances that 
compare with the invention of the motor car or 
aeroplane. Whatever curve now describes scientific 
progress, it's most certainly not exponential. I'd 
say it's kind of levelled out."

"You really are a kind of philosopher, aren't you, 
Naddy," said Beatrice admiringly. "You must do a lot 
of reading and research."

"I've had a great deal of spare time while 
travelling across the Solar System," the captain 
admitted. "But isn't this the kind of conversation 
you'd expect to have with your husband? He's an 
academic, isn't he? I'd have thought you'd always be 
talking about things like Relativity, Quantum 
Physics and so on."

"Well, yes," Beatrice said, "I suppose we do. But 
Paul's conversations are very different to yours. 
He's mostly interested in describing how things are 
or might have been. He doesn't speculate on things 
like alien intelligence, hyperspace or the curve of 
scientific progress. Paul isn't especially 
interested in anything that can't be measured or 
analysed."

Captain Kerensky squeezed Beatrice's vaginal lips 
between her forefinger and thumb. She leaned over 
and licked the skin around the labia majora that was 
so completely smooth that Nadezhda assumed that her 
lover had opted for genetic enhancement to inhibit 
hair growth. The treatment must have been 
sophisticated because it actually had the reverse 
affect on the long blonde hair that was now 
radiating out over the mattress. None of Nadezhda's 
Saturnian lovers had hair and certainly not tresses 
that cascaded down to the waist and was so uniformly 
thick.

"Does Paul know that you and I are lovers, 
sweetness?" asked the captain.

"No," said Beatrice. "And I'd much prefer it that he 
never finds out."

"Isn't he an anarchist? Anarchists don't normally 
practise marriage or even expect to have lifelong 
relationships. Why would it be a problem to him?"

"It's far better for him to believe that I am his 
and only his." 

"Isn't that deceitful? I've told Colonel Vashti 
about our relationship and she doesn't mind at all. 
She told me that she's got other lovers anyway. 
Wouldn't it be better to be honest with your 
husband?"

"No," said Beatrice firmly. "No, it would not be. 
Paul isn't a man who'd be happy to share his wife 
with another woman. Or with another man for that 
matter."

"Shouldn't you respect his wishes? After all, you 
only got married relatively recently. Don't your 
marital vows mean anything to you?"

"Not at all," Beatrice cheerfully admitted. "I have 
sexual needs that far exceed what Paul can satisfy. 
Or even you, Nadezhda darling." She inclined her 
head and kissed the captain on the mouth, as if to 
stress how little her passion for her Saturnian 
lover was diminished. 

Although Captain Kerensky was sure that it was far 
from wise to maintain a relationship with Beatrice, 
she had no desire to bring it to an end. From the 
first time that she and Beatrice had made love, 
every subsequent encounter only further deepened 
Nadezhda's addiction for the Venusian's body. 
Moreover, Nadezhda still desired Vashti even as she 
ached for Beatrice. 

"Colonel Vashti is a peculiar woman," Beatrice 
commented and not for the first time. "Has she ever 
told you how she came to be so unusually endowed?"

"Not at all," said Nadezhda. "She doesn't really 
talk about her past." Then she asked, slightly 
alarmed: "Have you and she...?"

"No," said Beatrice thoughtfully. "Not yet."

That really wasn't the answer that the captain 
wanted to hear and her composure buckled at the 
suggestion. The captain wasn't really comfortable 
with the fact that both her lovers made love with 
other men and women. This wasn't the first time in 
her life that Nadezhda had shared her lovers, but 
she was now part of a far more unsettling web of 
sexual intrigue. Nadezhda's series of wives and 
lovers normally followed one another in a sequential 
fashion. This was a pattern occasionally punctuated 
by wild extramarital affairs that was the natural 
consequence of spending so many months and years 
aboard space ships millions of kilometres from home. 

"Would you...?" Nadezhda almost sobbed. "Could you?"

Beatrice smiled reassuringly and stroked the 
captain's still erect nipples with the tips of her 
fingers. "Whether I do or not is of no matter, 
Nadezhda darling. I shall always love you and you 
will always be welcome in my arms."

This was, of course, the natural prelude for a 
renewed bout of rapturous lovemaking between the two 
women that was somehow enhanced rather than 
diminished by Nadezhda's knowledge, which she never 
doubted, that the two lovers who dominated her 
waking thoughts-and featured prominently in her 
dreams-would have no compunction or reservation 
about consummating their mutual fascination with one 
another. Just as Beatrice often wondered about 
Vashti's provenance, so too did her brown-skinned 
lover about Paul's sexually charged wife. 

Again and again, Nadezhda was brought to an orgasm 
that left her in anticipation of the next. Finally 
she could take no more. She shuddered with desire 
but was too exhausted to meet Beatrice's insatiable 
demands. She fell into her lover's arms. Her nose 
pressed into Beatrice's bosom and their legs 
intertwined. Captain Kerensky didn't know and didn't 
care how long they were slumped on the mattress as 
she gasped breathlessly in the residual spasms of 
ecstasy.

And then her reverie was abruptly interrupted. 

There was no prologue. There was no soothing call to 
arms from the female voice the captain had chosen 
for the ship's computer. There was just a shrill 
alert that urgently notified the captain that there 
was an emergency that required her instant 
attention.

Still naked, the captain jumped to her feet. 
Nadezhda disregarded the vaginal juices trickling 
down the inside of her thighs and dashed over to the 
nearest console.

A holographic image filled the room above which 
flashed in insistent crimson the words Red Alert! 
Captain Kerensky raised her hands to her shaven pate 
and pressed her palms against her forehead.

"Shit! Shit! The Intrepid is under attack!"

"Attack?" asked Beatrice whose normally beatific 
expression broke into visible concern. "Who from?"

"I don't know," the captain replied. She studied the 
data that appeared on a holographic screen. "A fleet 
of space craft. They're all relatively modern. Well, 
a lot more modern than the Intrepid. They're 
registered in different parts of the Solar System."

The holographic image confirmed the captain's words. 
It displayed the space ship as a huge pencil shaped 
object that could not have been filmed from inside 
the ship and was generated from the set of data 
transmitted from the ship's surface. What it 
displayed was a swarm of small craft all around and 
about the ship. A few larger space ships were 
hovering a few hundred kilometres behind. The image 
was illuminated by flashes of bright lights as the 
Intrepid's automatic defence systems identified and 
destroyed as many incoming craft as it could. 

"What's happening?" Beatrice asked.

"The ship's defence system is eliminating as many 
enemy craft as it can," the captain explained. 
"However, this is an old ship. Even though its 
defensive capability has been upgraded, it can 
destroy most of the enemy space craft but not all of 
them. Once they've attached themselves to the ship's 
hull, the Intrepid's external defences are useless. 
The ship can't destroy them without damaging 
itself."

As she spoke, the room was filled with images of 
military officers that were broadcast from the 
levels of the ship where the soldiers were 
quartered. A cacophony of spoken requests for 
information filled the captain's bedroom as she 
stood naked and bewildered in the midst of rather 
more holographic data than she could immediately 
assimilate. She spoke as calmly and dispassionately 
as she could, careful to activate an image of her 
official avatar rather than her actual naked body.

"We are being attacked by unknown hostile forces," 
the captain said. "The data suggests that the Space 
Ship Intrepid may become compromised. We must take 
immediate aggressive action."

With that the many images flickered off, leaving 
Captain Kerensky once again alone in her bedroom 
with Beatrice. She slumped onto a hoverchair and 
pressed a fist into her mouth.

"What can you do?" Beatrice asked as she walked over 
to her lover and placed a comforting hand on 
Nadezhda's shoulder.

"Nothing," said the captain. "Nothing at all. The 
enemy fleet is composed of modern siege engines. 
It's very likely that some will penetrate the 
Intrepid's defences and attach themselves to the 
ship's hull. We can't repel them with nuclear or 
antimatter weapons as that would damage the ship and 
imperil the Intrepid's life-support systems. We can 
fend off the enemy while the space craft are still 
in space and although so far the Intrepid has 
destroyed..." the captain referred to a digital 
display, "...35% of enemy vessels, it can't destroy 
any attached to the hull. There are no commands I 
can give that could be more efficient than what can 
be done by the Intrepid's artificial intelligence."

"And what happens next?"

"The space craft that have attached themselves to 
the ship's hull are drilling through the outermost 
shell. The Intrepid is attempting to ward off 
invasion with its internal defences, but it's 
limited to what it can do without causing 
irreparable harm to itself. You see those low domes 
dotted over the ship's exterior like a plague of 
warts. Those are the enemy's siege engines. They 
patch the surface so that as the space ship is being 
attacked, the Intrepid's life-support systems are 
not damaged while their laser drills cut through the 
twenty metres of external shell. The enemy infantry 
inside the space craft will then be inside the ship 
where they will be safe from the Intrepid's external 
weapons. It will then be a matter for the military 
forces inside the ship to engage with the enemy 
forces."

"Why was there no warning of this attack until now?"

"Modern space-craft have sophisticated cloaking 
devices that a ship of this antiquity can't detect. 
The Intrepid isn't a warship. It was designed as a 
space cruiser for long distance travel. It wasn't 
originally equipped to repel this kind of onslaught. 
The speed of the siege is far faster than the space 
ship's systems can handle. Look! Several dozen 
attempted incursions have already been successful. 
Our only hope lies with the soldiers and their 
professional skills."

The captain surveyed the holographic display that 
filled all the available space in her bedroom. 
Flashes of light indicated where warheads were 
exploding in space and destroying the space craft 
that were still heading towards the Intrepid. Other 
flashes took place beside the larger space craft 
from which were emerging yet more small space craft. 
The space vehicles that had survived the onslaught 
were attached to the Intrepid's exterior and 
morphing into bubonic domes. 

"You can see how many intrusions have been 
successful," remarked the captain as she activated a 
section of the image. It grew to fill almost a 
quarter of the bedroom and showed figures in 
military space uniforms who were flying out from the 
holes punched into the soil of the Intrepid's 
outermost level. The figures flew upwards on hover-
packs attached to their shoulders and drifted down 
onto the lawns and pathways. The invaders carried a 
variety of weapons, but they clasped a standard 
issue laser rifle against their chests.

"Who are they?" Beatrice wondered.

Again Captain Kerensky referred to the holographic 
display. "It's a mixture. Various kinds of uniforms. 
Jihad Martyrs. Infantry of Zion. Shakti Warriors. 
Soldiers of Christ. All they've got in common is 
that they belong to one or other of the rogue 
religious fundamentalist colonies that are scattered 
about the Solar System."

"Well, at last they've all now found a common 
cause," Beatrice remarked ironically. 

Chapter Fourteen 
Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

Ever since he'd got married to Beatrice, Paul had 
tried to resist the temptation to visit Nudeworld. 
It no longer had quite the same attraction as 
before. It wasn't that Paul didn't visit cyberspace 
any more. He still enjoyed going to places and 
meeting people that could only ever be encountered 
in virtual reality, but he mostly avoided sexual 
encounters. He preferred to be free from even 
virtual guilt when he and Beatrice made love. But 
the truth was that he was more often alone these 
days rather than in Beatrice's company. 

Paul's wife was very much the social animal. She'd 
made many new friends amongst the scientists, the 
crew and even the soldiers. Paul wasn't especially 
drawn to the busy social whirl, but he had no cause 
to be jealous. He knew that Beatrice loved her. 
Barely a day went by when they didn't make love, so 
Paul had no reason to doubt this. He never probed 
her about any extramarital activity and Beatrice 
never said anything that might arouse his 
suspicions. He was a lucky man to have such a 
beautiful and sensual wife. If anything, Paul felt 
guilty that he wasn't equal to her prodigious sexual 
demands.

Even though Beatrice was sometimes out until quite 
late into the evening, Paul had little cause for 
concern about her whereabouts. After all, his wife 
had taken considerable trouble to introduce him to 
some of her new friends, but this still didn't 
incline Paul to spend much time in their company. 
There was Chico, a tall Neptunian, whose greatest 
passion was the study of nanobes. There was Corporal 
Mazuki and her husband from Mercury who were both 
tall and thin with green hair and bright yellow skin 
and both enjoyed asteroid surfing. There was 
Professor Dillinger from the Moon who was proud to 
have been celibate for nearly a century and whose 
conversation on exotic, dark and non-baryonic matter 
fascinated Beatrice but bored Paul. 

He was sure there were many more such friends, 
judging by the familiar greetings that Beatrice 
received when she and Paul ventured out together. 
This was usually to the various social gatherings 
organised on the ship; such as the tiresome game of 
rugby where Colonel Vashti was such a star and the 
stage shows in Russian (with simultaneous 
translation for monolinguists like Paul) that the 
Saturnians were so keen on. The truth was that Paul 
didn't really enjoy such social occasions. He'd much 
rather stay in his pleasant villa on the outermost 
level where he could research into the Anomaly's 
ancient history if he ever felt so inclined. 

However, his research would have been more 
compelling if he could somehow dig up some more 
interesting discoveries from his computer disks and 
tapes, but there was no such fresh breakthrough. The 
encrypted data that his software had so easily 
cracked wasn't hiding anything more fascinating than 
what he'd already found. 

The scientists of the early centuries of the third 
millennium had no better idea of what the Anomaly 
might be than those in the thirty-eighth. In the 
twenty-fourth century, the longest and most heated 
discussion on the subject was whether funding for 
research should even continue now that the Anomaly 
had faded away. None of the space probes launched 
towards the Anomaly had sent back any useful 
information. The peculiar apparitions associated 
with it were dismissed as software malfunctions. 
Although the funding for research rapidly declined 
when there was no longer anything to study, the 
records betrayed a palpable sense of relief that 
such an uncomfortably inexplicable phenomenon could 
now be filed away on computer archives where nobody 
would ever think of looking-that is, until Paul 
stumbled across them.

When Paul next visited Nudeworld, it was as if he'd 
never left. The intervening years seemed to have 
never happened. Blanche greeted him as if he'd not 
been away for more than a single day. Paul wondered 
how sophisticated her artificial intelligence might 
be. Had she really been doing nothing but sit 
motionless for all those years while he sped across 
the Solar System? Was there really nobody else whose 
company she could have enjoyed in all that time? But 
their lovemaking was familiar and reassuring. For 
Blanche, at least, there had been no separation at 
all. She loved him with the same unquestioning 
passion. As always, she served only to satisfy his 
animal lust and his every mundane desire. She 
expressed exactly the same familiar passion as when 
Paul last fucked her. There was no evidence that 
Blanche had noticed any improvement in his 
lovemaking skill, although Paul was sure he was a 
better lover now. Beatrice had taught him so much 
more than a virtual construct could ever do. Blanche 
was as receptive to the more considerate practised 
lover who now pleasured her as she'd been with the 
decidedly inexpert one she'd last known.

Paul felt a sharp spasm of guilt as he watched 
Blanche wipe his semen off her chin and forehead. It 
wasn't as if his wife didn't give him pleasure. He 
resolved not to tell Beatrice of his sexual exploits 
in this other world, but the very fact he kept such 
secrets from her caused him anxiety. What would she 
think if she knew? Paul was sure she'd understand 
and tell him not to worry about it, but this 
consideration didn't absolve him of guilt. He still 
lusted after other women and this was something he 
couldn't control.

Nudeworld was relatively tame compared to the 
strange places Paul had visited on his journey 
through the Solar System. A world whose main 
distinguishing feature was that no one wore a 
vestige of clothing now seemed wholly innocent and 
unthreatening. There were people he'd met in real 
life, just as desirable as those on Nudeworld, who 
also never wore clothes. The entire exercise now 
seemed rather pointless and not even especially 
erotic. Nevertheless, it was strangely comforting to 
walk out of the house he shared with Blanche and 
stroll along those long-familiar streets, after his 
virtual partner had crumpled up and thrown away the 
semen-soaked tissues. Paul and Blanche climbed to 
the top of a grassy hillside from which they could 
gaze down on the small town where they lived.

"It's a beautiful view, isn't it?" remarked a 
familiar voice that was most certainly not 
Blanche's. 

Paul turned his head, while still keeping a hand in 
his virtual partner's. As he guessed the voice 
belonged to Virgil.

"Ah!" said Paul with the boldness that he could only 
express in virtual space. "This proves you're not an 
avatar. You must be a virtual construct."

"Why's that?" Virgil asked as he sat cross-legged 
next to Paul and on the other side of him to 
Blanche.

"If you were an avatar of a real person in the Solar 
System," said Paul, "you couldn't possibly be 
present in real time so far from the ecliptic plane. 
The best I might expect would be a time-delayed 
response between the time I said something and when 
you responded. In real life, I'm over two light 
weeks from the nearest colony or natural satellite. 
If you were the avatar of a real person, you 
couldn't possibly be so responsive."

The Intrepid was already at least as far from the 
sun as the outermost perimeter of the Kuiper Belt 
but it was at such an angle to the ecliptic plane 
that there was virtually nothing to trouble its 
flight. For instance, it was totally impossible to 
have a normal conversation with his parents or 
friends from Godwin as any transmission to the 
colony would take nearly a month. The best he could 
offer were rambling monologues compromised by the 
fact there wasn't much he could say that wasn't 
classified information. Furthermore, the reply to 
his monologues could never be especially 
satisfactory as he'd forgotten, in the intervening 
weeks, what he'd originally said.

Virgil smiled.

"Well analysed," he said. "However, it is 
interesting that you make such a big distinction 
between the people you meet in virtual space and 
those in the real world. Can someone in virtual 
space ever be real?"

"Only in an abstract sense," said Paul. 

"I suppose so," said the gentleman, but he didn't 
choose to pursue this line of conversation. "It's a 
while now since you last visited Nudeworld. Is the 
real world really that much more interesting?"

"It has been."

"And now: not as much so?"

"I wouldn't say that," said Paul. "I've seen more of 
the Solar System than I'd ever imagined possible and 
it's a more bizarre place than this world could ever 
be."

"Well, Nudeworld is limited by the parameters set by 
its designers," Virgil admitted. "That's the problem 
with virtual worlds. None of them can quite exceed 
their original design. But isn't that also true of 
the real world. It may not have been designed as 
such, but you're always constrained by the laws of 
physics. No travel faster than light. No 
teleportation. No ability to change shape, walk 
through buildings or withstand nuclear explosions. 
And yet in so many virtual worlds these laws are 
routinely broken."

"That's only because of the license of their 
designers' imagination," said Paul. "The laws of 
physics can be broken, but only because there isn't 
a requirement to be entirely consistent."

"And if they were absolutely consistent in every 
detail," Virgil wondered. "What then?"

"I imagine that what is possible within the 
limitations of design would be as constrained as 
they are in the real world." 

"And is it ever possible that in the real world 
there might be circumstances in which the original 
design is compromised in some way?" Virgil pursued. 
"Are there circumstances in which, for instance, a 
massive object might travel faster than light?"

"That's impossible," said Paul. "If that were to 
happen then the whole fabric of space and time just 
couldn't hold together. Everything has to be 
consistent."

"And if something inconsistent did exist, how would 
you explain it?"

"Then it can't be of the same universe as everything 
else," Paul concluded. 

"In the same way as Nudeworld is not in the same 
universe?" Virgil remarked. "And yet you're able to 
enter virtual universes where the laws of physics 
are routinely broken. In Nudeworld, for instance, 
you can be in the same apparent space now as you 
were when you lived in Godwin and your delightful 
partner has no conception that your body is in a 
physical location that is any different to before. 
But these virtual worlds are still part of the same 
universe as the one you come from."

"Well, of course," said Paul. "If all the servers 
hosting Nudeworld were to fail then it would 
abruptly disappear. It only exists as long as they 
do."

"Just as you do for as long as your universe 
continues to function?"

"Well, of course," said Paul. "Should the universe 
suddenly stop then so would I. And so too would 
everybody else."

Virgil mused on that reflection for a moment and 
then remarked: "It's such a pleasant day here. I 
could rest here forever. How about you?"

Paul wasn't sure how to answer. It was possible to 
spend one's whole life in virtual space and many 
people chose to do exactly that. They eventually 
died strapped to their holographic devices. However 
much they wanted to escape from the world they 
eventually succumbed to their physical contingency.

Paul felt restless. He wasn't enjoying his stay in 
Nudeworld quite as much as he thought he should. It 
was disconcerting to reflect on the real world when 
that was what he wanted to escape from. So, with a 
polite nod to Virgil and a reassuring squeeze of 
Blanche's hand, he exited Nudeworld. His senses once 
again returned to the real world bound by his villa 
on Intrepid and the unromantic hardware that 
generated the virtual universe he'd just a moment 
before been visiting.

As he so often did on returning to the real world 
and when he'd disengaged himself from the machinery, 
Paul pinched himself so that he could feel the 
unmistakable sensation that somehow seemed more 
painful in the real world than it ever did in 
Nudeworld. But he was, as always, not entirely sure 
that his perception of reality was any less than it 
was in the virtual universe. The simulations were so 
convincing that it was only because Nudeworld was 
unlikely to exist in reality that he was ever sure 
of which was real and which was not.

Paul had sampled the virtual worlds generated by the 
latest software. These were very much more needle-
sharp and detailed in rendition compared to 
Nudeworld. The more modern simulations offered 
sensations that were even more real than reality. 
The colours were more intense. His physical 
sensations more tactile. The degree of detail so 
considerable.  It was almost as if the real world 
was a mere shadow of such virtual worlds. Perhaps 
the real world was just a little bit more banal. 
Perhaps it was just a little bit more fuzzily 
focused. 

It took Paul a few minutes to adjust to being back 
in mundane reality, but the memory of his 
conversation with Virgil still troubled him. Virtual 
simulations were supposed to be no more than 
artificial constructs that in one sense or another 
functioned to distract him, not to make him think. 
He speculated idly just how much the Anomaly was any 
more real than the virtual world he'd just visited 
and whether the way it appeared not to conform to 
the normal laws of physics might not in some 
peculiar way be like the disjunction between the 
apparent reality of virtual space and the soulless 
number-crunching that generated them. Virtual 
universes did indeed permit huge transgressions of 
normal physical laws, however much they were truly 
nothing more than an illusion. They were so 
convincing that only common sense and reason enabled 
Paul to differentiate them from what was 
unquestionably real.

Paul's reverie was suddenly broken. He became aware 
of a loud knocking on the door and then the looming 
presence of someone in his bedroom. He turned his 
head, half-expecting to see Beatrice. After having 
had sex with Blanche, he was keen to compare it with 
the real thing and in that regard his wife was 
always obliging.

So, it was actually rather a shock to Paul to 
realise that the woman striding towards him across 
the expanse of his bedroom carpet was Colonel Vashti 
whom he'd hardly ever seen since the day he and 
Beatrice had visited Captain Kerensky and then only 
from a distance. 

What was she doing in his villa? Was his wife 
accompanying her?

"Quick!" said the colonel urgently. "Gather together 
only what you really need. You've got to evacuate 
your home immediately."

Paul blinked his eyes rapidly. Colonel Vashti was 
unaccompanied. There was no sign of Beatrice. 

"Why's that?" he asked.

"You are in extreme danger," said the colonel. "Just 
hurry! I'll explain what's happening as we leave."

Shit. Again! Even here on the Intrepid, a ridiculous 
distance from home, there were people trying to kill 
him. Just what had he done to deserve so much 
unwelcome attention? "All right! All right!" said 
Paul who was almost used to such emergencies.

It was Colonel Vashti who carried the suitcases that 
Paul hurriedly packed and who insisted that Paul 
shouldn't slow down his flight by carrying anything 
other than a briefcase. The bulky luggage didn't 
trouble the colonel at all. She hauled them over her 
shoulder as if they weighed a fraction of their real 
weight. It was only as Paul followed the colonel 
across his lawn, past innocently grazing sheep, that 
he remembered that in his haste he'd forgotten to 
rescue any of his wife's belongings. Oh well, he 
reflected, it wasn't as if she wore many of the 
clothes in her wardrobe anyway.

Paul scurried to catch up with the colonel as she 
strode ahead. "Why do I have to evacuate my home?" 
he gasped. "Is it another assassination attempt?"

"Assassination?" asked the colonel. "Not at all. The 
ship's being invaded. We have to clear everyone from 
the outermost level. Not just you."

"Oh, I see," said Paul, who was oddly comforted to 
discover that this time he wasn't the sole target. 
"I can't see any invaders. Where are they?"

The colonel raised an arm holding a suitcase and 
beckoned towards a flurry of activity just over a 
kilometre away. "See that," she said.

Paul looked as carefully as he could while not 
breaking his stride. Soil and metal was flying 
outwards and upwards from a patch of ground that 
couldn't have been more than ten metres across. 

"What's going on?" he asked.

"It's a laser drill," said the colonel. "That's how 
the invaders are cutting through the ship's hull. 
Soon they'll be inside the ship and when they are, 
they'll either kill everyone they see or seize them 
as hostages. You don't want to be killed or taken 
captive, do you? So, make haste."

It was more than two hundred metres to the tall 
column that housed the nearest elevator and Paul 
wondered why the colonel had arrived on foot and not 
by vehicle. Perhaps there just hadn't been the time, 
although other residents from the outermost level 
were being transported in a fleet of hovercars. 

Paul returned his gaze to the soil and metal that 
flew outwards from the drill pushing through the 
ship's hull. A plug of metal suddenly thrust itself 
out of the ground and hovered above the outermost 
level's lawn. The Intrepid was rapidly repairing the 
hole in the ground created by the vehicle's 
intrusion and all signs of it had almost totally 
vanished as the craft began stabilising itself a few 
metres away from where it had emerged. Then Paul saw 
a handful of figures jump awkwardly out of the 
metallic object and onto the grass. They were 
dressed in burdensome space suits and hoisted 
massive rifles over their shoulders which they 
trained in all directions about them. The invaders 
mightn't be especially fast or mobile, but Paul was 
fairly sure that their weapons were lethal.

This reflection added extra impetus to Paul's step.

"Who are they?" he asked.

"I don't know," admitted the colonel now that they 
were less than fifty metres from the elevator. 
"Whoever they are, they must be both brave and 
foolhardy. They are about to encounter some of the 
very best soldiers in the Solar System. And that 
only if the robot infantry can't hold them back."

The greatest delay to Paul's escape wasn't the 
distance he had to run to get to the elevator but 
the crush of scientists, technicians and senior 
military officers pressed against the elevator's 
doors. Behind them, and still nearly a kilometre 
away, the lumbering invaders were approaching.

Dozens of military robots were gathered around the 
column that held the elevator and towered some fifty 
metres above to the roof that was also the floor of 
the next outermost level. They weren't especially 
large but they were clearly equipped for battle. 
Paul was barely inside the column's doors when the 
robots flew off towards the invading forces.

"They'll protect us, won't they?" Paul asked 
anxiously. "They'll keep the invaders at bay."

"The robots, you mean?" asked the colonel. "I hope 
so. But we need to get away as fast as we can. The 
elevator's full. We'll have to take the stairs."

"The stairs?" remarked Paul, who was horrified at 
the prospect at climbing such a height. 

"Come on!" the colonel said, still carrying Paul's 
luggage and unhindered by their weight as she ran up 
the emergency staircase, two steps at a time. "You 
can see how well armed the invaders are."

Paul obeyed but despite his haste he trailed well 
behind the colonel. As he climbed up the metal 
staircase, he could hear thunderous crashes and 
explosions from the battle that was now taking place 
in the pleasant gardens and villas of the level of 
the space ship that he'd so recently known to be his 
home.

His flight wasn't over when he eventually reached 
the top of the stairs, followed behind by other 
desperate evacuees and their military escorts.

"We need to get everyone to the core of the ship," 
said the colonel. "We don't have to go all the way 
by stairs, but we must get you as far as possible 
from the invaders."

"And then what do we do?" asked Paul.

The colonel dropped the luggage onto the floor just 
outside the elevator shaft to the upper levels. A 
stream of infantry was descending by another 
staircase whilst a disconsolate scrum of civilians 
stood waiting by the elevator as the numbers 
displayed gradually dropped to single digits on its 
return to the second level.

"Then," the colonel said with a smile, "we sit and 
wait."



Chapter Fifteen 
Judgement - 3754 A.D.

Although the previous three years of military 
training had been hard and unrelenting, Isaac would 
have gladly exchanged the year-long flight in the 
overcrowded troop carrier Judgment for many more 
years in the space colony of Paradise. There was 
little relief and a great deal more discomfort in 
the space ship. The only distraction to the many 
hours of enforced rest on a five-level bunk bed in 
the dormitory was regular military practise. 

The chapel and mess room were the only other places 
where there was any reprieve from his third level 
bunk where sleep was his only and most elusive 
pleasure. His guilt for enjoying such fleeting 
relaxation was assuaged by the words of the Lord in 
The Book of Psalms Chapter Four Verse Eight: "I will 
both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, 
LORD, only makest me dwell in safety".

Isaac needed the comfort of the Lord's words ever 
more as he increasingly yearned for the security of 
Holy Trinity, the company of his children and, most 
of all, the love of his wife, Rebecca. This last 
brought him the most anguish. He'd always been very 
proper with his wife. Their snatched moments of 
intimacy had always been with the intention and that 
alone of bringing more children to the world to 
serve the Lord. It troubled him that Jesus Christ 
said in Chapter Twenty Verse Thirty-five of The 
Gospel According to Saint Luke "But they which shall 
be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the 
resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are 
given in marriage." It troubled Isaac also to know 
that it was said in Chapter Two Verse Sixteen of The 
First Epistle General of John: "For all that is in 
the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of 
the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the 
Father, but is of the world." But he also knew that 
the Lord implored the descendants of Noah in Chapter 
Nine Verse Seven of The First Book of Moses Called 
Genesis to "be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring 
forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply 
therein." 

Surely Isaac was committing no sin by his desire to 
be by his wife's side.

He was also bothered by the persistent erection that 
accompanied his sleepless sojourns whenever he 
contemplated his wife. He was forbidden from 
touching his penis to relieve himself, but resisting 
such temptation was a daily struggle which even the 
well-memorised words of Holy Scripture couldn't 
entirely banish. 

Every day, the Chaplain selected quotations from 
scripture that he and the other Soldiers of Christ 
had to read and reflect upon. These mostly came from 
the Book of Revelations and were no less obscure and 
confusing now than they had ever been, although 
Isaac was sure that these verses were selected to 
steel his resolve to thwart the evil of the Anomaly. 

Just what did Saint John the Divine mean in Chapter 
Seventeen Verses Four and Five: "And the woman was 
arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked 
with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a 
golden cup in her hand full of abominations and 
filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead 
was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE 
MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH."  

And just how was this Anomaly associated with the 
numerical mysticism of Chapter Thirteen Verse 
Eighteen where it was said: "Here is wisdom. Let him 
that hath understanding count the number of the 
beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number 
is Six hundred threescore and six."

His slumbers were not made any easier by the fact 
that there was no artificial gravity on the 
Judgement and that his fellow crusaders had to strap 
him to his bunk bed so that he wouldn't float away.

The only times that Isaac experienced anything like 
standard gravity was in the cramped and sweaty 
exercise chambers where the military exercises were 
unrelenting and fatiguing. They were principally 
designed to keep the crusaders fit and to prevent 
their muscles from atrophying. As there wasn't 
enough space on the space ship, the physical 
exercise was within specially designed virtual 
environments. This was Isaac's first exposure to 
virtual space. Because it was considered a sinful 
distraction, it wasn't accessible on Holy Trinity 
but was nevertheless reluctantly permitted on the 
Judgement. The virtual world was even less pleasant 
than real life. In fact, the most realistic element 
by far was the pain simulation. The setting was of a 
series of combat situations in which his virtual 
enemies were attired in the dress of the infidels 
and heretics he'd got to know as his fellow 
crusaders. It might be satisfying to immolate a 
Muslim infidel or to squeeze out the eyes of a Hindu 
devil, but the enemy he would soon confront wouldn't 
be such an infidel. In fact, they would be his 
reluctant allies. And their common foe would be 
atheists and maybe even aliens. Still, it was a 
salutary reminder to Isaac that there would be the 
unfinished business of cleansing the Solar System of 
heathens after the Anomaly was annihilated.

The Judgement was an ancient seven hundred year old 
craft that lacked almost every modern comfort. Its 
life support system was pared down to the bare 
minimum even though it carried three times as many 
soldiers as it was designed for. The atmosphere was 
thin, the rations were meagre and, worst of all, the 
quantity of fuel it carried was only just sufficient 
to take the craft to its destination. Only if the 
crusaders succeeded in their mission and took 
control of the atheist craft was there any 
possibility of returning home. And this would only 
be after the threat from the Anomaly had been 
eliminated.

There were hundreds of other space craft similar to 
the Judgement that had been brought back into full 
service after centuries of neglect. They were all 
hidden from the prying eyes of the Interplanetary 
Union by cloaking devices generated by the only 
modern space ship that was accompanying the mission. 
This was the relatively sophisticated battleship 
Enlightenment, whose name was sufficiently neutral 
to accommodate the range of competing faiths that 
for the first time in history were united on this 
one mission. The Enlightenment was the only space 
ship with enough antimatter fuel to make the return 
journey. It also carried all the senior military 
officers and the many senior clerics, priests, imams 
and rabbis.

Every day was noted by a countdown of the number of 
days remaining until the fleet would rendezvous with 
its target. Isaac privately cheered, as did all his 
fellows, when the count was at last reduced to 
double digits. But when the count became a 
relentlessly dwindling single digit, his joy was 
overshadowed by anxiety. All too soon he would be 
risking sudden death when his military training was 
put to practical use. And were the atheists as truly 
as evil as they were portrayed: if his death wasn't 
sudden then it would be after protracted and 
agonising torture. That, after all, was the 
punishment planned for the atheists. It was unlikely 
that unbelievers should be any more compassionate 
than the crusaders, jihadists and other holy 
warriors.

On the morning of the penultimate day, when the 
countdown was just two more days, the lesson 
provided from the Book of Revelations Chapter 
Twenty-two Verses Thirteen to Fifteen read: "I am 
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the 
first and the last.  Blessed are they that do his 
commandments, that they may have right to the tree 
of life, and may enter in through the gates into the 
city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and 
whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and 
whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." 

This was followed the next day by a lesson from the 
final five verses of the Holy Scripture, which 
culminated in the Lord's promise that: "The grace of 
our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."

"Amen," repeated Isaac, as he shuffled in a long 
line with his fellow crusaders into the small 
landing craft that would take him and twenty others 
to the atheist craft which, with the blessing of God 
the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, they would 
soon seize control.

Isaac had never been inside the invasion pod before. 
These vehicles were considerably more modern than 
the Judgement and, except for a glimpse of the 
Enlightenment, represented the most modern space 
craft Isaac had ever seen. Although many corners had 
been cut to feed and quarter the crusaders, there 
was no such parsimony with regards to the military 
hardware. The landing pods, like the cloaking 
devices employed by the Enlightenment, were of the 
most modern design. They had to be if there was to 
be any possibility of the mission succeeding.

Although Isaac was crammed shoulder to shoulder into 
a pod designed for fewer than half the number of 
occupants, everything else about the craft was of 
superior quality. The empty space outside was 
displayed to the crew by high definition holographic 
graphics. It also broadcast a voice message from the 
Archdeacon who implored his congregation not to 
dishonour their faith and to be prepared to make the 
ultimate sacrifice. 

The panoramic spacescape captivated Isaac. He'd 
never before seen space so clearly and vividly. 
Images were forbidden on Holy Trinity for it was 
said in Chapter Forty-two Verse Seventeen of The 
Book of the Prophet Isaiah: "They shall be turned 
back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in 
graven images." Indeed, before Isaac participated in 
virtual training he'd never seen a holographic, let 
alone a graven, image. Space was much more awe-
inspiring and disquieting than Isaac ever imagined. 
It extended in all directions as did the light from 
the billions of stars that could be seen in a space 
unmediated by atmosphere. There was no evidence of 
the hundreds of ships in the crusader fleet. These 
would remain invisible until the stealth devices 
were compromised by the launch of thousands of 
landing pods towards the enemy vessel.

Of the many bright spots in the sky, one was only 
slightly larger than the others but shone much more 
brightly. This was the Sun that in Mercury orbit was 
so huge and so fearsome that it would immediately 
blind anyone who gazed upon it.

The most awe-inspiring sight to meet Isaac's eyes 
was not so much the bleak emptiness of space and the 
distant Sun, but the enemy space ship that was 
glistening in the starlight. It was a featureless 
cylindrical cone that must have measured several 
kilometres in length. Its computer systems were as 
yet still unaware of the military force gathered 
outside. The crew and passengers were smugly 
oblivious to the fact that the atheist space ship 
wasn't the only manmade object this far out in space 
from the Solar System's ecliptic plane.

The countdown began. There were a whole three 
hundred seconds of waiting until the simultaneous 
launch of what was hoped to be an overwhelming 
invasion force would burst out from the cloak of 
invisibility that had been maintained around it for 
over a year. 

These three hundred seconds passed painfully slowly 
at first but appeared to pass more rapidly as the 
launch came inexorably closer. Sixty seconds. Fifty 
seconds. And then all too soon the countdown ticked 
off one single digit after another towards the 
inevitable zero. There was then an abrupt thrust 
upwards at a rate of acceleration that was at least 
as great as any Isaac had endured in the gravity 
simulators on Paradise. His body and head were 
pinned back against the seat into which he was 
strapped as the pod broke free and accelerated 
towards the atheist space ship.

Despite the intense agony that the effort cost him, 
Isaac kept his eyes open in the long seconds that 
followed. The previously calm holographic spacescape 
erupted into sudden brilliance as thousands of 
landing pods and hundreds of space ships burst into 
view. The cloaking device could no longer function 
now its surface had been so spectacularly breached. 
Isaac proudly, if briefly, surveyed the valiant 
crusading fleet. And at its heart was the sleek and 
impressive battle cruiser from which the senior 
clerics were coordinating the invasion fleet. 

This impressive image filled Isaac with confidence. 
What could possibly overcome such an overwhelming 
force?

The answer came only too soon and just as swiftly 
shattered Isaac's belief in the Holy Crusaders' 
invincibility. Thousands of missiles were suddenly 
launched from the atheist space craft at a truly 
astonishing speed. They hit the Holy Crusaders' 
space craft before they could manoeuvre out of the 
way. What Isaac had thought a sitting target had all 
of a sudden become an overpowering war machine.

There were countless devastating explosions during 
the next few critical seconds while his pod was 
attaching itself to the hull of the atheists' space 
ship. The once proud invasion fleet was being 
steadily reduced to little more than a brilliant 
fireworks display. Even the Space Ship Enlightenment 
was blown apart in a brilliant explosion that 
scattered the clerics and imams in a cloud of 
floating debris.

The atheist space ship was fully armed and engaged 
in combat. And it did so with a degree of 
devastation that exceeded Isaac's greatest fears.

 The pod's thrust was slowed to a dead halt when it 
touched down on the ship's massive hull. This 
appeared on the holographic display as a wide plane 
of metal that extended in all directions and upon 
which the hundreds of surviving pods were now making 
contact. 

Not all was lost. 

The pods were in the shape of hemispheric domes that 
attached themselves with the shallowest possible 
external surface. Even from where Isaac was 
strapped, they resembled an infestation of warts on 
the space ship's surface. 

As soon as the pod made contact, it shuddered 
excruciatingly while its laser drills were engaged 
in the task of penetrating the space ship's thick 
hull. Isaac's jaw shook against the rubber pad that 
he crunched tightly between his teeth and which he'd 
naively thought had been there only to protect him 
from biting his tongue. The intense vibrations would 
have shattered his teeth if he hadn't had such a 
thick wad of rubber in his mouth. His helmet muffled 
his ears from what was still a deafeningly shrill 
noise.

When he prised open his eyes, Isaac could still see 
glimpses of the holographic spacescape but this view 
no longer afforded him even a single crumb of 
comfort. Laser devices were flashing and robots were 
swarming over the ship's surface. Some of the other 
pods were exploding or simply disintegrating. There 
was now little evidence of the once holy and valiant 
space fleet amongst the scattering debris and the 
brilliant flame of the slowly extinguishing 
antimatter engines.

There was a sudden thud on the outside of the pod 
that Isaac initially feared was from the impact of a 
missile. He then saw through the now erratic and 
flickering display that it was the debris of another 
pod that was rolling slowly and ungainly off the 
space ship and into deep space.

As the laser drills cut through the hull, the 
holographic display from inside the pod showed only 
the steep walls of the hole through which it was 
drilling. Isaac remembered from his training that 
the surface of the pod was now retracting into the 
hole and acting as a plug that protected the crew 
from the extreme cold and airlessness of space. But 
the minutes that it took for the pod to drill 
through the twenty or so metres of hull were 
punctuated by judders from inside the hull and 
crashes on the surface.

And then, suddenly, and without warning, the crew 
and Isaac amongst them were ejected into the wide 
open expanse inside the space ship. They were 
equipped with heavy combat gear that was absolutely 
necessary as defence but was still an onerous burden 
in the standard gravity of the atheist ship.

The dazed crew staggered to their feet. They were 
totally disorientated. What had seconds before been 
down- and inwards was now up- and outwards. Isaac 
momentarily wondered whether he was still alive and 
had been transported to heaven. Far from being in a 
long corridor of the kind he assumed he'd find in a 
space ship, he was standing in a very pleasant 
garden landscape.

Neither on the misleadingly named Paradise nor in 
Holy Trinity, had Isaac ever before seen such an 
idyllic pastoral landscape. He believed that such 
gardens only existed in the hereafter. The nearest 
thing to a rural landscape that existed on Holy 
Trinity was dedicated to food production where every 
available space had to serve a utilitarian agrarian 
function. Here there was a wide open acreage of 
lawns, trees and even animals that were running free 
rather than being penned up for the purposes of 
intensive meat and dairy production. 

Isaac didn't have much time for reflection. There 
was a mission to accomplish. The many years of 
training hadn't been endured simply to allow Isaac 
the opportunity to ponder on the bounty of nature. 
Much as there was to celebrate in the benison of the 
Good Lord, he was implored by the yells in his 
helmet's intercom to join forces with his comrades 
to secure the atheist ship and complete the mission. 
Isaac was guided by the Spirit of the Lord. He had 
absolute faith that his faith was a force that no 
atheist could possibly repel.

The guidance of which Isaac was most aware came from 
the yelling voices from inside his helmet. As the 
instructions couldn't be coming from the now 
annihilated control hub, it was evidence that an 
artificial intelligence had now taken automatic 
control of the mission. Isaac was commanded to 
proceed ahead with his fellow Holy Crusaders towards 
the emergency stairwells that could take them up to 
the higher levels and towards the atheists' control 
centre.

Isaac saw hundreds of other crusaders about him. 
They might have many different faiths but they had 
one shared mission. And as a result they were all 
heading towards the same destination. Isaac stumbled 
onwards, but he was weighed down by the huge 
military suit that in this pastoral landscape now 
seemed ridiculously incongruous. The invading force 
tramped doggedly forward over the green grass, under 
the towering trees and beside the startled deer and 
horses that became even more alarmed when the 
crusaders practised their weaponry on the 
defenceless beasts with devastating and bloody 
effect. 

They passed a few homes that seemed bizarrely 
tranquil in what was now a battlefield and which 
Isaac amongst other soldiers was directed to 
investigate. The villas had been deserted-probably 
only a few minutes before judging by the obvious 
disarray-but they were remarkably luxurious. 
Although it gave Isaac a degree of satisfaction to 
train his laser rifle on the sofa, bed and 
electronic hardware and reduce them to flames, he 
wondered whether it was truly right for a Soldier of 
Christ to act like a vandal. He'd never before seen 
homes so luxurious and spacious. And in his dutiful 
pursuit of justice Isaac had entered many homes on 
Holy Trinity, most of which he had similarly reduced 
to ash and dust.

If Isaac had wondered how the atheists would defend 
themselves, this was soon revealed as he became 
steadily aware that the place to which he was 
urgently directed to proceed was also where a large 
contingent of robots were standing in wait. 

Isaac had never had much contact with robots before. 
There were none at all on Holy Trinity, where 
artificial life was strictly banished as it was 
increate and not of the Lord. There were a few such 
machines operating on Paradise and Judgement where 
their presence was excused on the understanding that 
compromise is sometimes necessary in the battle 
against evil. The robots that stood in wait for 
Isaac and the Holy Crusaders were sophisticated and 
deadly.

There was little that the atheist soldiers 
accompanying the robots needed to do. They stood in 
attendance at the foot of a tall metallic column 
that housed the emergency stairwell that was Isaac's 
destination and which seemed somewhat incongruous in 
such an Elysian setting. The soldiers were dressed 
rather less cumbersomely than the Holy Crusaders. In 
fact, their clothes exactly matched the background 
and whenever a soldier moved the uniform changed 
colour and design to match the scenery behind. Each 
soldier was training a gun or rifle towards the 
approaching crusaders but there was very little need 
to actually use it. The robots were already quite 
capable to repel the clumsy, confused and 
disorientated invasion force.

Several of the odd-shaped but swift robots were 
destroyed by the Holy Crusaders' powerful guns, but 
more than enough survived such attacks to disable 
their assailants. This they did not by killing the 
valiant crusaders, but simply by immobilising them. 
One by one, the crusaders fell to the ground either 
smothered in viscous liquids or put out of action as 
their suits became rigid and unresponsive. 

The blasts from Isaac's own gun were deflected by an 
approaching robot that resembled more a wraith than 
a machine. He discovered that he couldn't get his 
suit to move however much he struggled. He was rigid 
and helpless, one foot still raised above the ground 
and an arm outstretched. His heavy gun slipped from 
his arms and dropped harmlessly to the ground. He 
was totally incapable of picking it up or, indeed, 
of making any movement at all.

Then, to add insult to injury, when the entire 
crusading force was paralysed, Isaac was engulfed in 
a blue cloud of dust which swept his military suit 
and weaponry clean from his body. They completely 
vanished and Isaac slumped naked and hairless onto 
the lawn. He was now no longer in what he'd 
momentarily imagined to be Heaven. He was as naked 
and helpless as a penitent soul on entering Hell.

Isaac focused his gaze on the grass in which his 
nose was buried. He was as ashamed of his nakedness 
as Adam and Eve were on the day of their 
Disobedience. Although he could blink, breathe and 
even talk, he was still unable to move his body.

Isaac wondered whether there were texts in the 
Gospels that described his predicament. Most verses 
that came to mind described the fate not of the 
virtuous but of the vicious and damned. It was said 
in Chapter Thirty-two Verse Twenty-four of The Fifth 
Book of Moses: Called Deuteronomy "They shall be 
burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, 
and with bitter destruction: I will also send the 
teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of 
serpents of the dust." However, it was also said in 
Chapter Five Verse Twenty-two of The Book of Job: 
"At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh: neither 
shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth." 

This verse gave Isaac a few crumbs of comfort as he 
slumped in wait for many more hours than the minutes 
it took for the invasion to be thwarted and awaited 
the punishment that he was certain the atheist 
devils would visit him. He was certain that the 
godless would punish him with more cruelty than even 
the guardians of faith could contemplate. Unlike 
him, they didn't fear divine retribution if they 
were judged to have taken pleasure in meting out 
punishment. Their inhumanity wasn't constrained by 
fear of Eternal and Merciless Divine Justice. What 
torment would they unleash on him?

Sadistic punishment was precisely what Isaac 
expected, as did all his vanquished comrades. For 
what other purpose than malevolent cruelty could 
their lives have been so far spared?

Chapter Sixteen 
Ulysses - 3751 C.E.

It only when the space ship Ulysses had travelled 
far enough from the Schmidt Republic that it 
appeared as nothing more than a tiny dot in the 
distance that Paul and Beatrice received a visit 
from Lieutenant Korolyov. He introduced himself as 
the Interplanetary Union military officer whose 
assignment was to ensure that the couple would 
arrive safely on Earth. He was a Saturnian, as were 
most Interplanetary Union officers in this part of 
the Solar System, and in common with most Saturnians 
his head was shaved and he showed far less interest 
in Beatrice's charms than those few possessed by 
Paul.

"You're probably aware that our brief sojourn at 
Schmidt was a security nightmare," the lieutenant 
remarked as he sat down on the plush armchair in 
Paul's luxury apartment. "You appear to have been 
the target of every terrorist and criminal in the 
Solar System, so we've radically upgraded your level 
of security." 

"Why are we being targeted, lieutenant?" Beatrice 
wondered as she clasped Paul's hand in her own. 

"My security clearance isn't high enough for me to 
know the answer," said Lieutenant Korolyov. "I 
haven't even been briefed as to why you're 
travelling to Earth or whether you'll be travelling 
on from there. My job is to ensure that you make 
your scheduled rendezvous at Pacific City. It is my 
duty to guard you against any lunatic or saboteur 
who wants to prevent that happening."

"Well, thank you," said Paul, who was genuinely 
grateful that so many people were concerned about 
his welfare. 

"You'd have thought, wouldn't you, that my duty 
would be fairly straightforward," continued the 
lieutenant, "but the task of guaranteeing your 
safety has been a challenge to every security 
officer assigned to you ever since you arrived at 
Ecstasy. There are two things I am here to inform 
you of. The first is that neither the captain of the 
space ship Ulysses nor any of the crew is aware of 
your real identities or even of your special 
security requirements. This isn't solely for 
security reasons. It's unlikely that the captain 
would agree to admit people like you whose mere 
presence could imperil all the other passengers."

"And the second thing you want to inform us of?" 
Beatrice asked when the lieutenant hesitated.

"It's quite simple," said the lieutenant. "Up until 
now the security personnel who've been assigned to 
you have been tailing you from a discreet distance. 
This hasn't been quite as successful as we'd have 
hoped. For your own safety, your movements will be 
much more circumscribed from now on. I have to 
inform you that the only place where you shan't be 
accompanied by a security officer will be when you 
are in your bedroom. Even there you will be 
discreetly monitored. I know this is a gross 
intrusion on your liberty and that as an anarchist 
this may be something you consider unacceptable, but 
it can't be avoided."

"So, we'll be watched wherever we go?" said Paul.

"Exactly," said Lieutenant Korolyov. "You'll be 
subject to the constant gaze of our surveillance 
equipment."

"Even when I go to the lavatory?" asked Beatrice.

"Everywhere." 

"Who'll be sharing our apartment?" Paul asked. "Will 
they be Yuliya and Sergei?"

"Not any longer," said the lieutenant. "May I 
introduce Security Officers Mikhail Kasparov and 
Erika Tereshkova."

More Saturnians, thought Paul. He'd got rather 
accustomed to the company of bald men and women, but 
sometimes he yearned for the company of more easy-
going and relaxed people. The further he travelled 
from his home colony the more he appreciated the 
advantages of a life where nobody had authority over 
or responsibility for anyone else.

The two guards were dressed sufficiently casually 
that they could pass for tourists, but they were to 
be Paul and Beatrice's constant companions every 
time either of them left the confines of their 
suite. When they sat down for lunch in the opulent 
restaurant, there was always a table nearby where 
the two Saturnians sat. Whenever they wandered 
through the space ship's gardens, the two guards 
were close at hand. They were never exactly by their 
side, but they were also never more than ten metres 
away. 

On this occasion, Beatrice was perfectly content 
with their accommodation. It was, after all, amongst 
the most luxurious suites the Ulysses had to offer. 
She also took advantage of almost every opportunity 
to chat with their fellow passengers. They were also 
travelling towards Earth and in most cases somewhat 
more excited than Paul to be visiting the one planet 
in the Solar System where it was possible to survive 
in the open air. Paul felt like a fraud. It had 
never been one of Paul's chief ambitions in life to 
visit Earth. It wasn't that he didn't want to visit 
the Grand Canyon, the dry valleys of Antarctica, the 
wide expanses of ocean or all the many other natural 
wonders of his ancestral home. It was just that 
tourism didn't really appeal to him. He'd been quite 
content to live and work in Godwin. In a colony 
where there was no individual wealth or paid 
employment, not many would see the need for a 
vacation. 

Paul's fellow passengers were a motley collection 
from the outer planets and beyond. Far more people 
in the Solar System lived beyond the inner planets 
and for many of them a voyage to where the sun 
loomed so large in the sky was a lifelong dream. 

"I'm nearly a hundred and fifty years old," said a 
very slender woman from Uranus orbit whose face 
displayed a tangled mosaic of ornate tattoos. "It's 
been my desire to visit Earth ever since I was a 
little girl and at last I've managed to save enough 
to make the journey."

"Why do you want to go so much?" asked Beatrice.

"How can you even ask such a question? All I've 
mostly ever known has been the inside of a cylinder 
floating twenty times the distance of the Earth from 
the sun. Surely everyone wants to visit Earth."

"Isn't the weather somewhat variable?" commented 
Paul. "Even the most temperate regions on Earth have 
days when it's either too cold or too hot."

"At least I won't have to wear a cumbersome space 
suit to go outdoors," said the woman. "I'd love to 
breathe real natural air just once in my life."

There was a group of three women who Beatrice 
greeted while Paul and she were strolling in the 
huge pleasure garden that dominated the ship's 
outermost shell. At first they were visibly troubled 
by Beatrice's appearance. Even though she wasn't 
actually naked, she was dressed so scantily that her 
nipples were clearly visible beneath her lace 
outfit. She displayed almost as much flesh as the 
three women kept hidden. These women's Earthly 
objective was Mecca on the Arabian subcontinent.

"So few Muslims ever get to visit the holy city," 
said one of the women in heavily accented English 
that clearly wasn't her first language. "It's a 
privilege to do so, even though we aren't able to do 
so in the holy month of Dhu al-?ijja."

Mecca, more so than any other holy city or shrine on 
Earth, had suffered badly from the pilgrimage of 
billions of people from across the Solar System. The 
erosion was so great that its roads were gullies and 
its holy shrines almost reduced to nothing from 
daily contact with countless pilgrims over the 
centuries. 

Very few of the people on Earth at any one time were 
residents. The majority were pilgrims, tourists and 
scientists. Although the planet's economy was 
heavily reliant on tourism, the number of visitors 
was strictly controlled to protect the fragile 
environment. Far more people in the Solar System 
wanted to visit Earth than were ever able to do so. 
The Moon was a crowded way-station for prospective 
visitors who had to wait for someone to leave before 
they could take their turn on the planet's surface. 

The Earth could no longer afford to be over-
exploited. Very little mining or mineral 
exploitation was sanctioned. Only palaeontologists 
and geologists were allowed to enter Earth's mines. 
Almost every economic activity that could have an 
impact on the atmosphere, biosphere or geosphere was 
banned. It was no wonder that the status of the 
planet that was once by far the wealthiest in the 
Solar System had been overtaken by Saturn and was 
now hardly more than a living museum.

"It's the geology that interests me," said a tall 
brown skinned man from Neptune. "There are no 
fossils other than tiny micro-organisms anywhere 
else in the Solar System. I've dedicated my life to 
comparative palaeontology, particularly of 
coprolites, but I've never seen a fossil in situ. 
I'll be visiting the deep cast mines of Bavaria 
where they've found some very interesting Jurassic 
feathered dinosaurs."

"I study literature," said a short pale woman from 
the distant Oort Cloud. "I've read so much, 
particularly from the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. You could say that's my speciality. I've 
only ever seen facsimiles of these books. I shall be 
visiting famous literary sites in England, France 
and Italy. With any luck, I may even see an original 
manuscript though I won't be permitted to touch it."

"Too fragile, I suppose," suggested Beatrice.

"Books weren't designed to last over two thousand 
years," the woman said. "Some of the most fragile 
come from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries 
when they were mass-produced commodity items. Some 
books that were produced in their millions, such as 
the fiction of J K Rowling, Geoffrey Parker and J R 
R Tolkien are now incredibly rare."

"I've never heard of any of those authors," remarked 
Paul.

Although Beatrice found every opportunity during the 
day and evening to engage in conversation with other 
travellers, at night Paul had her exclusive 
attention.  This pleasure was appreciably 
compromised by the knowledge that his every word and 
deed was being monitored for security purposes. 

Beatrice was still so much a mystery to Paul even as 
they made love. And despite the wonders of modern 
regenerative medicine, this exercise left him 
totally drained. He was so tired in the morning that 
he generally slept in while Beatrice wandered alone 
(apart from the constant presence of her minder, 
Mikhail) about the decks of the vast luxury space 
ship. She'd return to their suite by about midday 
where Paul was normally still in bed. It wasn't that 
he was completely alone as he would always be 
accompanied by Erika who was as immune to Paul's 
charms as Mikhail was to Beatrice's. 

"I was talking to this fascinating man," she said as 
Paul belatedly staggered to his feet to perform his 
daily ablutions. "He's an ichthyologist. He's going 
to one of the deep sea trench colonies in the 
Pacific."

"That can't be much different from living on Titan," 
remarked Paul.

"There's rather more sea-life on Earth," said 
Beatrice. "But you're right. The sea pressure is 
almost comparable to the air pressure on Venus."

"Not so hot though."

"But not nearly as cold as Titan."

"I'm sure," said Paul who didn't share Beatrice's 
enthusiasm for the extremes at which biological life 
survived in the Solar System.

Beatrice regarded Paul's minder, who was sitting 
silently and apparently very bored in the bedroom 
corner. 

"Don't you think Erika's looking a little unwell?" 
she commented.

"She seems all right to me," Paul replied without 
even glancing at her. He was often quite irritated 
by the woman's constant presence. She only showed 
any interest in Paul when Beatrice was in the room. 

"I'm sure there's a kind of unhealthy pallor on her 
cheeks." 

"Perhaps it's just the way she was born." 

He'd got so accustomed to the varied aspect of other 
travellers that he didn't know any more what was 
natural and what was enhanced. In a sense, nobody 
over middle age was truly natural. Paul certainly 
wasn't. Seventy percent of his body had been 
regenerated and half of that was no longer 
biological. Other tourists might well be entirely 
non-biological. It was hard to tell. And those who 
looked the most artificial might be a great deal 
more biological than appearances might suggest. Paul 
was no expert in distinguishing between genetic 
enhancement, biological regeneration and organic 
implants. Some passengers had gone well beyond the 
human genetic blueprint. He often cast his eye at a 
couple from the Uranian colony of Asimov who had 
metal implants that enhanced their natural senses 
but whose eyes were strangely inexpressive. There 
were also those, again from the Uranian orbit, who'd 
adopted other enhancements such as green or purple 
skin, platinum and silver hair, and even leathery 
wings which could be used for flying on low gravity 
moons. Paul was especially fascinated by the more 
erotic body styling that was popular amongst the 
Neptunians. He'd never before imagined that male 
genitalia, so proudly displayed by such individuals, 
could reach such dramatic proportions or that bosoms 
of such magnitude could be supported by a human 
frame (and not just sported by women).

"I'm very concerned about Erika's health," Beatrice 
insisted. "How do you feel, sweetheart?" 

As far as Paul could see, Erika didn't look at all 
poorly. She was also perplexed by Beatrice's 
concern. 

"I feel fine," she said. "Never felt better."

"What do you think, Mikhail?" Beatrice asked.

"I'm not qualified to comment," he said. "Our 
training covers remedial health care, but it's 
generally for wounds and broken bones."

"I've got some experience," said Beatrice. "After 
all, I did work in Emergency Rescue on Venus for 
several years. I think Erika should see a doctor."

She bent over Erika who was flustered more by the 
attention paid to her than by any evidence of ill 
health. Beatrice put a hand on Erika's forehead 
while her patient displayed more visible weakness 
from the touch of such a desirable woman than from 
any malady. With her other hand Beatrice pinched 
Erika quite hard at various points around the back 
of her neck and spine.

"How do you feel, Erika sweetheart?" Beatrice asked.

"I was feeling fine before you probed me," she said, 
"but I feel a bit nauseous now. It's as if I was 
suffering from vertigo."

"Do you agree that you should see a doctor?" 
Beatrice asked sympathetically.

"I don't think so," said Erika. "Perhaps I'd feel 
better if I just lay down."

"Yes. I'm sure that'll do the trick," said Beatrice. 
"In the meantime, I fancy a visit to the ship's 
core."

"The core?" wondered Paul. "Whatever do you want to 
do that for?"

"It could be interesting."

"I doubt it," said Paul. "The core of all large 
ships, of whatever class, is always much the same."

When Paul had first ventured into space, he'd quite 
enjoyed exploring the space ship that carried him. 
After so many years of having never travelled more 
than a few thousand kilometres from Godwin, space 
flight was a real novelty to him. But he now knew as 
much as he ever wanted about a ship's core. It was 
just a hollow cylinder that held life-support 
equipment and liquid water super-cooled under 
pressure. It was home to nothing more exotic than 
nanobots that constantly monitored the ship's vital 
systems. Those levels closest to the ship's core 
were where the least expensive cabins were crammed 
together along endless corridors. These were the 
levels with the greatest curvature and the least 
circumference so it was where the smallest cabins 
were located.

However, Beatrice was not a woman whose whims could 
be disregarded and Paul wasn't the man to persuade 
her otherwise. So, the married couple walked towards 
the escalator followed discreetly by Mikhail while 
Erika remained behind. 

Before they left, Mikhail signalled to his fellow 
security officers that Erika was indisposed, so Paul 
was confident that fairly soon he and his wife would 
be accompanied by the standard complement of two 
guards. 

As Paul anticipated, there really wasn't much to see 
at the ship's core. A narrow tube ran through the 
heart of the viscous liquid and was for the sole use 
of maintenance robots and their human supervisors. 
All space ships stored their water in these 
quarters: partly because it supplied the ship's 
life-support systems but also because it was the 
source material for the ship's antimatter and 
nuclear fusion engines. Water wasn't only the most 
common compound in the Solar System, but also the 
most versatile and one absolutely necessary for 
biological life.

Paul soon tired of the holographic avatar's 
explanation of the ship's workings, as was Mikhail, 
but Beatrice had no end of questions to ask. His 
thoughts were more inclined to wander towards 
Beatrice's scantily covered body which he lusted 
after in a way that Mikhail didn't. Paul knew that 
Beatrice would eventually give him the sexual 
satisfaction he desired, but for the moment she was 
much more interested in the Ulysses' architecture 
and engineering.

 When Beatrice's questions had exhausted the avatar, 
Beatrice insisted that they should visit a small 
caf‚ on the innermost level that was for the use of 
the less affluent passenger. Paul was thankful that 
the credit available to him was backed by the 
Interplanetary Union, so that he didn't fall into 
that category. The modest choice of food and drink 
in the caf‚ was much more like what he'd been 
accustomed to on Godwin. It was healthy, well-
balanced and easily recycled. There wasn't even the 
option of alcohol or coffee, any more than there 
would be on Godwin, so Paul had to settle for a 
fruit juice and a salad whose ingredients were grown 
in the ship's extensive greenhouses. 

The other diners in the caf‚ were far less affluent 
than most of the Ulysses' passengers. Some hadn't 
benefited from even the quality of regenerative 
medical care available on Godwin and betrayed 
visible signs of aging. Paul knew he wasn't going to 
live forever but unless he was unlucky his years of 
senescence would be very few and his final decline 
rather rapid. And he didn't expect this to happen 
until he was well over a hundred years old. The 
travellers Beatrice engaged in conversation were a 
motley group of solitary travellers from the outer 
Solar System. What they had in common was a wish to 
visit Earth, but for quite diverse reasons. 

One traveller must have come from a very poor colony 
as he was one of those with the most evident signs 
of aging. His shoulder-length hair was grey and 
thinning. His skin was stretched as thin as 
parchment. And he had deep lines on his face. He was 
a musician whose intention was to pay homage at the 
shrines of various twentieth century musicians. A 
traveller from Pluto was an entomologist. Although 
insects had spread all across the Solar System, 
there were still some that had never travelled 
beyond Earth and she wanted to study the beetles 
that lived in the newly regenerated rain forests. 
Whatever motives the passengers had for visiting 
Earth, whether their passion was historical, 
biological, cultural or religious: it could only be 
satisfied by a visit to the home planet. Until 
humankind discovered another planet with a 
breathable atmosphere and a long history, Earth's 
unique appeal would remain unmatchable.

The Ulysses was a large space ship. It was the 
largest type permitted for travel within the Solar 
System's ecliptic. It was a kilometre in 
circumference and seven kilometres in length of 
which a half was engine. It had fifty levels of 
which the outermost ones had a ceiling of nearly 
forty metres and it carried nearly a hundred 
thousand passengers. But even in a space ship of 
such a great size the deafening explosion that 
suddenly erupted while Paul and Beatrice chatted in 
the caf‚ was enough to upset the cups and send some 
passengers sprawling to the floor. 

"What the fuck!" Mikhail swore. He was one of those 
who'd fallen onto the floor.

"What's happened?" asked Paul.

"I don't know," said Mikhail who studied his hand-
held equipment for information before the space 
ship's internal communication system had the 
opportunity to reassure the passengers. 

The Saturnian's already pale freckled face became 
noticeably paler.

"Erika's signal's gone dead!" he exclaimed. "There's 
nothing at all."

"Where did the explosion take place?" asked the 
aging musician.

The captain's avatar suddenly appeared in the middle 
of the caf‚ as it must have done in every other 
chamber, room or privy throughout the ship. 

"Do not panic," he said in seven different 
languages, one after the other. "The situation is 
under control."

And then more information became available, 
transmitted first in English and then in other 
languages. Paul reasoned that the passengers who 
were still in their cabins or suites wouldn't need 
to be exposed to so many different languages, but he 
had to listen to the same account repeated in 
Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Hindi, French and Spanish 
before the language returned once again to English. 

There had been an explosion on board the space ship 
Ulysses. The life-support systems were intact. The 
source of the explosion was in a suite in the 
outermost level that had punctured the ship's hull 
and the next innermost level. There had been a 
massive loss of air and water which was currently 
trailing the ship, but the loss was now being 
contained. The loss of life was still in the lower 
hundreds.

Beatrice frowned while Mikhail studied the rather 
more comprehensive data that was fed to him from the 
Interplanetary Union's own information service.

"Another assassination attempt?" she guessed.

"The centre of the explosion was your suite," 
Mikhail confirmed. "In fact, its actual source was 
Erika."

"Erika? Our guard?" asked Paul who was getting both 
increasingly weary and ever more anxious at the 
trail of destruction that was following him wherever 
he went.

"Erika," confirmed Paul's Saturnian guard. "It was 
she who was at the heart of the incident. She's 
exploded!"  

"I thought she didn't look well," Beatrice commented 
wryly. 



Chapter Seventeen 
Feynman - 3754 C.E.

Jaden was in love with the wrong woman. By rights 
the one he loved the most should be Michelle, but it 
wasn't his long term partner whose mere presence 
shortened his breath and excited his heart however 
much he wished otherwise. 

Instead, the chief object of his lust was Svetlana. 

This was an utterly futile love, of course Not only 
did he not have the courage to confess the strength 
of his feelings to the exquisite freckled woman 
whose slender legs and sinuous neck his eyes 
followed guiltily whenever she walked by. Nor was it 
merely because she was already answered for. His 
love was most doomed because it was women and not 
men that Svetlana loved. Was there no Saturnian 
woman who broke the lesbian mould?

Jaden had been foolish enough to hint that he was 
attracted to the slender Saturnian, but what annoyed 
Michelle wasn't so much his eyes should wander but 
that they should be drawn to a white woman.

 "What could possibly be the appeal of such sickly 
pale skin?"she retorted indignantly. "What's wrong 
with black women?"

Although Jaden knew that it was wrong to 
discriminate on the grounds of skin-colour, he 
understood Michelle's concerns. In a Solar System 
where ethnic identity had been irreparably 
compromised over the centuries, there were now as 
few naturally black people as there were purely 
white. It was only by virtue of their respective 
ancestors' marital prejudices that either Jaden or 
Michelle had retained any degree of ethnic purity. 
Of course, skin colour wasn't determined by birth 
alone. People could decide for themselves what skin 
pigmentation to adopt and these included very 
unnatural choices such as green, blue, orange and 
even striped or spotted.

Jaden and Michelle were clasped together in coital 
embrace, Jaden's penis deep inside his partner and 
their skin streaming with mutual perspiration, so it 
was easy for Michelle to dismiss her lover's 
tactlessness as the loosening of sexual fantasies 
that accompanied lovemaking.

As there were so few people stationed on the Feynman 
Space Observatory Jaden was in Svetlana's company on 
virtually every day. In fact, he often had to work 
with her. They were all professional astronomers, so 
there was much they could discuss. Jaden's tour of 
duty on Feynman was his first not on the surface of 
Triton, the moon where Michelle and he had been 
born. Svetlana and her wife had previously been 
stationed in an observatory around Saturn where 
they'd been studying the planet's rings and its 
swirling helium clouds. 

Jaden was astonished when Svetlana casually 
mentioned that she'd been married for over twenty 
years. Jaden calculated that she was old enough to 
be his mother, although such was the quality of 
regenerative surgery that it wasn't at all obvious 
that she was any older than Jaden's twenty-five 
years. Her relative seniority in years didn't 
diminish her beauty although Jaden now felt even 
more gauche in her presence. She treated the dark-
skinned Neptunian kindly although his lovelorn 
glances almost certainly betrayed how besotted he 
was.

The Feynman was one of the most distant 
observatories in the Solar System. It wasn't the 
most distant, of course. Several observatories were 
stationed beyond the Kuiper Belt and some beyond 
even the Oort Cloud. The space observatory furthest 
from the sun was also the most distant permanent 
settlement in the entire Solar System, well beyond 
the heliopause and nearly half a light year from 
Earth. It was every astronomer's ambition to be 
stationed there although Jaden knew, as did everyone 
else, that its isolation was so extreme that no-one 
ever chose to renew their tour of duty. Feynman was 
one of very few observatories not in the Solar 
System's ecliptic plane. It was two light weeks from 
the nearest planet or Kuiper Belt Object. Not many 
observatories on the ecliptic could boast that 
degree of isolation.

There was very little economic or scientific 
justification for the Feynman's existence when it 
was built in the thirtieth century. The construction 
had been punitively expense as the building 
materials all had to be transported a truly immense 
distance. It was more a statement of power by the 
Union of Democratic Planets which, at the time, was 
one of the two main economic and political unions in 
the Solar System. It was a demonstration of how far 
its sphere of influence exceeded that of the 
competing Solar Nations which in those days 
represented the most Solar System's democratic and 
capitalist economies, including most of those on 
Earth. The Union of Democratic Planets, on the other 
hand, represented political systems that on the 
whole weren't even remotely democratic. Several 
revolutions and civil wars later, the space 
observatory was now firmly under the aegis of the 
Interplanetary Union. Few expected that the 
discovery of the Anomaly in the thirty-sixth century 
might propel the Feynman to the status of the most 
significant observatory in the entire Solar System. 
However, this was an honour that would only remain 
until the construction of another space observatory, 
the Hawking, a further light week distant from the 
ecliptic plane. The Feynman had been assigned the 
highly classified mission of observing the Anomaly 
and the progress of the Space Ship Intrepid. The 
observatory was circled by a small flotilla of 
battle cruisers that would fly to the Intrepid's aid 
if needed. It was only prudent that a mission of 
such colossal expense and political significance 
should have some kind of military backup.

Jaden was on observation duty for only a few hours a 
week. The rest of his time was occupied in trying to 
interpret the huge mass of data that was constantly 
being gathered by the observatory's automated 
systems. Every day the newly discovered exoplanets 
from the outer regions of the galaxy was catalogued. 
Every day several hundred new stars in distant 
galaxies were added to the billions already known. 
The observable universe was so vast that it simply 
wasn't possible to complete the task of identifying, 
cataloguing and analysing all the objects it 
contained. Jaden's expertise would only really be 
required if a phenomenon was identified that 
couldn't be automatically classified. This might be 
when its status was so ambiguous that an expert had 
to determine whether it was a planet, a brown dwarf 
or some other cosmic object. 

Inevitably, what most arrested the astronomers' 
attention were the Anomaly and the associated 
strange apparitions being monitored by the space 
observatory's thousands of radio, electromagnetic 
and gravitational telescopes. In itself, the Anomaly 
was weird enough. Telescopes that could analyse a 
grain of sand on Mars or a meteorite over Jupiter 
still couldn't properly view the Anomaly. It 
radiated no light. It exerted no gravitational 
distortion. It interacted hardly at all with the 
stream of neutrinos or photons that passed by it. It 
was more a visible absence of matter, baryonic or 
otherwise, than something explicable or concrete. 

And then, just as exciting because of their bizarre 
nature and their utter unpredictability, were the 
thousands of odd apparitions that occurred every day 
but in their greatest number within less than a 
light day of the Anomaly. Just what were they? Could 
what was observed really be a space ship that 
travelled for no more than ten seconds and boasted 
military insignia that couldn't be matched to any 
nation within the Solar System? Was it really a 
swarm of bird-like wraiths that fluttered and 
swooped in airless space for as long as twenty 
seconds before they too vanished? What was the 
bipedal figure in a space suit that hovered in the 
vacuum of remote space before it too vanished 
leaving not even a gravitational ripple in the 
cosmos? And did the flashes and explosions that took 
place spontaneously and briefly so close to the 
Anomaly really leave no trace other than the stream 
of photons that were intercepted by the Feynman 
before they sped onwards to the space observatories 
two light weeks closer to the Solar System's 
ecliptic?

Jaden had seen some of these apparitions. They 
alarmed and fascinated him, but he was frustrated 
that he was prohibited from telling anyone other 
than his fellow astronomers of what he'd seen, not 
quite with his own eyes, but very nearly so through 
the Feynman's powerful telescopes. 

The Interplanetary Union's powers didn't extend to 
being able to halt the pulse of photons on their 
journey to the Solar System's many amateur 
observatories and research institutes, but they 
could at least disguise the worrying extent of these 
observations. The mountain of news stories that was 
gathered and disseminated every day on these exotic 
astronomical phenomena was easily obscured by the 
greater volume of stories of warfare, political 
intrigue, human interest and celebrity that mostly 
clogged up the Solar System's media coverage.

"I swear it was some kind of a dinosaur," Svetlana 
remarked the next time Jaden shared a duty roster 
with her. "It wasn't one of those big ones, like a 
sauropod or stegosaur. It was human size and covered 
with a gorgeous feather coat that was all golden and 
yellow. It was only there for ten seconds and looked 
alarmed in a sort of intelligent way-not like a 
scared rabbit but more like a human. It had a 
peculiarly expressive face."

"Where did you see this dinosaur?" wondered Jaden, 
whose mind was still distracted by the memory of 
seeing Svetlana kiss her wife, Rika, just before 
they parted at the viewing chamber's door. Rika was 
as bald and hairless as Svetlana, but she was 
peculiarly thin and had a flattened oriental face. 
With their lips and bosoms pressed together, Jaden 
felt a wholly inappropriate swelling in his crotch 
that Michelle aroused far less readily. He would do 
anything to swap places with Rika-even if it meant a 
change of gender-for the opportunity to share the 
pleasures of Svetlana's freckled small breasted 
body: preferably unclothed and expressing the same 
desire that she showed her wife.

"I saw it, too," remarked Ali, a tall ivory-skinned 
Uranian whose tight-fitting clothes were stretched 
to the limits by the exaggerated contours of his 
muscular body. Jaden was slightly ill at ease as Ali 
was at least as homosexual as Svetlana and he didn't 
want to give the man the wrong impression. 
"Beautiful it was. Where do you think it came from? 
If it came from another star I'd love to go there. 
The only aliens I've ever seen were smaller than a 
speck of dust."

"We don't know where these weird things come from," 
said Vanity, the fourth and final astronomer on 
their watch. "If they're aliens, why don't they hang 
around longer? I think they come from a parallel 
universe."

"Pah!" said Svetlana, who was the most sceptical. "I 
think it's all just a kind of mirage. They're just 
images that kind of bounce back to Earth from a 
hundred million years ago. I go along with the 
theory that the Anomaly is nothing more than a kind 
of mirror that focuses reflections back to the Solar 
System from far out in space."

"How does that work?" wondered Ali. 

"I don't know," admitted Svetlana airily. "But it's 
more plausible than some of the other theories going 
round. Space and time is curved and maybe images are 
brought together by some unknown kind of dark matter 
and radiate out again from the Anomaly. My guess is 
that some time in the future we'll discover that 
space is littered with these phenomena and all they 
do is relay distant images."

"Aren't these apparitions actually solid and real?" 
Jaden commented, although his attention was 
principally focused on Svetlana's thick lips. He was 
fascinated by the way they shuddered when she 
finished each sentence. "Although they don't leave 
gravitational ripples they interact physically with 
whatever they touch. Remember how that metal sphere 
bounced on the surface of Pluto and left an 
impression on the surface."

Svetlana considered Jaden's counter-example. "Maybe 
it wasn't a proper apparition," she said. "It seems 
that almost everything weird is now explained by 
reference to this bizarre hole in space. That was 
probably just a military experiment of some kind. 
The Plutonians don't get on very well with the 
Charon colonies, do they?"

The four astronomers had little else to do while on 
duty other than chat over cups of coffee and fruit 
juice. The real work was done by robotic hardware 
that was tirelessly cataloguing and steadily 
increasing human knowledge of the vast universe. 
Usually the most exciting event was to observe yet 
another apparition and these weren't usually as 
intriguing as the dinosaur. No one could get very 
excited by a small uncharted meteor or an 
unexplained burst of plasma radiation. 

The only other object of interest was the daily 
account of the Intrepid's journey as relayed by the 
space ship's bank of sensory equipment and the 
captain's log.

Captain Kerensky was another Saturnian woman, but 
not one Jaden found nearly as attractive as 
Svetlana. She was also slim, bald and pretty, but 
her imposing demeanour was too intimidating. And 
anyway she was several times his age, although 
nothing betrayed this other than her self-assurance 
and air of experience. Her reports were generally 
rather dull and routine. They mostly consisted of 
nothing more than an account of what Jaden could 
already establish from the data routinely broadcast 
by the Intrepid. In truth, Space travel was 
extremely boring and nobody expected much from the 
report of an uneventful journey across empty space. 

Occasionally, the captain enlivened her dispatch by 
the account of a sporting or theatrical event on the 
space ship, but these were just larger scale 
versions of similar events in the Feynman's social 
calendar. The hundred or so astronomers on the 
observatory had their own occasional five-a-side 
football competitions and amateur concert recitals. 
However much Jaden looked forward to the weekly 
dance or lecture, these were scarcely so exciting 
that he'd choose to relate more than a very brief 
account to his friends and family on Triton. 
Although Jaden would have been happy to be amongst 
the select few astronomers on the Intrepid, it 
wasn't because he expected the voyage through empty 
space to be exciting.

Vanity stood up and strode towards the coffee 
machine. Like Jaden, her skin was black but this was 
more by choice than ancestry. She'd adopted the 
Uranian fashion of unnatural skin colour, though at 
least she wasn't purple or silver. She had a thick 
frame with a full bosom and a delightfully 
proportioned arse that was set to its best advantage 
in the nearly transparent platinum shorts that was 
almost all she wore.

Jaden scrutinised Svetlana's eyes as they followed 
Vanity's sensual step. He was troubled by her 
attraction towards other women ever since Michelle 
unexpectedly discussed Svetlana as the couple lay 
together in bed the night before.

"I can see why you like Svetlana," Michelle said 
with a rueful smile. "I spoke to her today in the 
gym. She's a fascinating woman."

"You think so?" wondered Jaden, who was now 
reflecting on whether he should also visit the gym 
in the hope of encountering his Saturnian object of 
desire.

"We had ever such a long chat about Triton," said 
Michelle. "She was stationed there a few decades 
ago. She used to be an astrogeologist before she 
specialised in pure astronomy. She was very chatty."

"Was she?" asked Jaden, who never found Svetlana 
especially forthcoming. Perhaps the Saturnian had a 
particular passion for black women. At the moment 
this hypothesis was very plausible, judging by her 
appreciative gaze of Vanity's ebony skin. This was 
especially so when she bent down to throw a plastic 
spoon into the recycle hatch. 

"Fuck!" Vanity suddenly exclaimed as she glanced up 
at the monitors trained on the Intrepid. "There's 
some kind of fucking war going on out there!"

Almost before she finished her sentence, there was a 
sharp trill as the astronomers on duty were alerted 
of the emergency. Jaden had been drilled for such an 
eventuality rather more often than he'd have liked 
so he knew exactly what to do. He jumped to his 
feet, as did Ali and Svetlana, abandoning his 
unfinished glass of warm blueberry juice, and rushed 
to his station.

Vanity wasn't exaggerating. There, two light weeks 
away and, therefore, about a fortnight ago was a 
real space battle. Where the fuck had that flotilla 
of space ship appeared from? Only the most 
sophisticated modern hardware could have hidden such 
a fleet of ships from the Feynman's sensors. These 
could spot a bonfire on Earth, a metre-long 
meteorite circling Jupiter, and the magnetosphere of 
a space shuttle. They most certainly should have 
noticed several hundred space craft, especially ones 
that were so nearly obsolete, in what was otherwise 
completely empty space. Whatever the space fleet's 
provenance, it had access to camouflage technology 
that was advanced enough to evade the Feynman's 
sophisticated equipment. And this was despite the 
lack of any other evidence that the enemy fleet 
possessed high quality military hardware.

"Shit! Look at the sheer number of those invasion 
pods!" Ali yelled. "There must be thousands of them! 
What hope has the Intrepid got against them? "

"All the hope in the world," said the voice of the 
Senior Astronomer, whose avatar suddenly appeared in 
the midst of the chamber. "The Intrepid is very well 
defended. It was always anticipated that there might 
be some attempt to sabotage the mission."

Jaden wasn't so sure he could share Professor 
Manchu's optimistic assessment. The Intrepid's image 
was still obscured by a huge invasion fleet that was 
settling on its surface like an infestation of 
flies. 

Then an array of portals suddenly opened all along 
the Intrepid's hull and there erupted an equally 
impressive outpouring of missiles, whilst nearer the 
ship vast laser beams swept back and forth over the 
exterior surface. All this was as visible as if it 
were only a few kilometres away, but as Jaden 
reflected, if there were a need to launch a rescue 
mission towards the Intrepid, it wouldn't reach the 
space ship for several months and then only if the 
ship also stopped dead in its tracks. If it 
continued its current progress towards the Anomaly, 
there was no space fleet in the Solar System that 
could travel fast enough to intercept it.

"Fuck!" Vanity exclaimed. "It's a real fireworks 
display."

But much quieter, Jaden guessed, as there was no 
medium through which sound could travel. But silent 
though it might be, the Intrepid's response was 
deadly. The antimatter warheads promptly exploded 
into dazzling fireballs when they hit the larger 
space craft. From the moment the space fleet had 
made its sudden appearance in distant space the 
individual craft increased the thrust of their 
engines to escape the oncoming missiles. 

But this was all in vain. 

The Intrepid's defensive missiles were much faster 
and had no difficulty in finding their targets. 

The attackers fought back as best they could. They 
let loose a retaliatory stream of laser beams and 
missiles, but the missiles were so devastating that 
even an explosion hundreds of kilometres from a 
space craft was enough to cripple it. There were no 
missiles on the Intrepid's surface of the same 
destructive capability as those decimating the space 
flotilla. Even a conventional nuclear explosion from 
a neutron device was too perilous at such a close 
proximity. Instead the Intrepid relied on a battery 
of laser and electron beams to incapacitate the 
infestation of invasion pods, together with an 
infantry of robots that scurried over the Intrepid's 
surface to disable the mushroom shaped vehicles as 
they attached themselves to the hull.

"They're getting inside!" said Svetlana with 
agitation.

Jaden magnified his view of the Intrepid's hull and 
examined those invasion pods whose fragments weren't 
floating off in a cloud of debris behind the space 
ship. The surviving pods were rapidly retracting 
into the Intrepid's hull like collapsed umbrellas, 
using their mushroom-like shells to plug in the 
holes. The ship's hull gradually smoothed off as one 
by one the remaining pods no longer spotted the 
surface and the ship automatically began repairing 
itself.

There was a sudden exhalation of wreckage from one 
of the breaches and a crushed shattered mass of 
metal was ejected into space. Along with the pod's 
debris were space-suited figures that hovered 
helplessly in space, before being routinely rescued 
by the Intrepid's defending robots. Not all the 
survivors were resigned to being taken prisoner in 
this way and there was a fresh set of rather smaller 
explosions as space-suits exploded and fragments of 
flesh and bone flew outwards with the shards of 
metal and plastic. One figure unscrewed the helmet 
around his head and was instantly frozen to death.

"Some have made it inside," said Vanity who was 
studying an image of the outermost level of the 
ship.

Ali, Svetlana and Jaden crowded around behind Vanity 
to look at the display of space-suited invaders who 
were staggering to their feet. They were laden down 
not only by their clumsy uniforms but also by the 
weight of their lethal weapons.

"We'll just have to hope that the Intrepid's militia 
can neutralise the threat," said Professor Manchu.

Jaden nodded. 

This was by far the most exciting event of his whole 
career in astronomy so far. There was so much to do 
to evaluate the invasion's current progress. 
Svetlana had already returned to her console where 
she could study the defence of the Intrepid in slow-
motion replay. It was only now that Jaden could 
appreciate the scale of the invasion and the 
military tactics used to repel it. At the very 
leisurely pace of the replay, Jaden could see that 
the Intrepid's missiles, rather than just heading in 
a straight line towards their fast receding targets 
had zigzagged back and forth while releasing small 
defensive missiles and deadly beams at the invaders' 
defences. Many, perhaps most, were destroyed before 
they hit their targets, but the explosions even from 
a distance caused lethal damage to the invading 
craft. In one case, an intercepted missile directed 
the debris from its antimatter explosion outwards 
and with great accuracy towards the engines of an 
escaping vehicle which was then extinguished like a 
candle flame. 

"Has the Intrepid completely repelled the invaders?" 
Jaden asked the professor's avatar.

"We'll soon know," said the professor with an 
anxious crumpling of his brow. "The data's coming in 
thick and fast and whatever the outcome there'll be 
weeks, if not months, of analysis ahead of us."

Jaden inwardly sighed. He guessed that there would 
now be plenty of opportunity for overtime. His 
mission had suddenly become much busier. 

Chapter Eighteen 
Hygiea - 3751 C.E.

Paul and Beatrice were no longer welcome on board 
the Ulysses after the explosion had wrecked so much 
of the space ship. As soon as the captain was made 
aware that the target of the explosion was his two 
Kuiper Belt passengers he could no longer tolerate 
their continued presence on his ship. They were 
evidently a security risk of the first magnitude to 
not only themselves but everyone else besides. 
Furthermore, as fully a quarter of the ship was now 
deemed unsuitable for continued habitation, there 
were no available spare rooms. Most passengers from 
the Ulysses' affected levels were obliged to double 
up with others who'd been more fortunate. It was an 
unacceptable risk to other passengers that they 
should share their living space with two known 
security risks.

Nevertheless, as the couple couldn't be ejected into 
empty space, they were obliged to spend the 
remainder of this leg of the journey in the company 
of their minders in a shuttle tethered to the space 
ship. It was attached at some distance by nanocarbon 
cables as the Ulysses hurtled towards the Hygiea 
asteroid: the nearest place where emergency repairs 
could be carried out.

"You won't be on the Ulysses when it resumes its 
voyage to Earth," Lieutenant Korolyov informed them. 
"We'll have to commission alternative transport, but 
I warn you it won't be nearly as luxurious as you've 
become accustomed to."

"Was accustomed to," Paul corrected him. 

The space shuttle wasn't designed to be luxurious 
accommodation. Its one tiny cabin was now occupied 
not only by Paul and Beatrice but by all the 
security officers from the Interplanetary Union 
assigned to them. The space shuttle was designed to 
transport passengers for at most a few days to 
destinations that weren't precisely on the Ulysses' 
route. Even with only half a dozen passengers, the 
space was cramped and there were few of the 
distractions accessible on the mother ship. 

A further source of discomfort was that the 
artificial gravity generated by the vehicle's rapid 
rotation was prone to shut down both abruptly and 
arbitrarily. The novelty of momentary weightlessness 
soon palled on Paul who would gladly return to more 
stable conditions.

"We don't believe that Erika was a willing suicide 
bomber," said the lieutenant when Beatrice asked for 
an update on what was known about the explosion. 
"She had regenerative cranial surgery relatively 
recently and it's believed that a dormant explosive 
device was inserted into her brain. Our officers are 
interrogating the surgeons who carried out the 
operation, but as you know it is very easy to 
introduce such devices into a person's body. There's 
normally no evidence that it's there at all and very 
rarely that you'd see the kind of symptoms that you 
observed in Erika."

"She did seem very unwell," said Beatrice.

"I dare say," admitted the lieutenant. "But it is 
unusual for such implants to betray any visible 
evidence. It might just have been a timely 
coincidence. All the same, it was fortunate for you 
that the explosion took place when it did. There was 
no other occasion when Erika wasn't in close 
proximity to either of you."

Paul had never lived in such cramped conditions 
before. The bathroom was so tiny that there was no 
Jacuzzi or even a bath, but only a shower that 
responded sluggishly to Paul's instructions for jet 
speed or temperature. When he could, he distracted 
himself by making love to his adoring wife although 
this became disconcerting when the gravity dropped 
and the couple floated gradually towards the 
ceiling. Paul also got to know his minders very 
well. There was no one else to talk to other than 
Beatrice. None of them were told to why they'd been 
assigned to guard the newlyweds or who was so 
determined to kill them. 

It was nearly a month until Paul could see the 
Hygiea asteroid through the ship's monitors and a 
further month until he could see it with his eyes 
through the shuttle's portals. It certainly wasn't a 
pretty asteroid. It was irregular in shape and 
brightly lit by searchlights that swept from horizon 
to horizon. The asteroid was encircled by ships and 
colonies of which none was large enough to 
accommodate even a hundred thousand people.

Hygiea was an asteroid at permanent war with its 
neighbours in a segment of the Asteroid Belt that 
hadn't known a single year of peace since its 
foundation in the twenty-third century. None of 
Paul's minders were sure which colonies or asteroids 
were at war with Hygiea. Nevertheless, despite being 
preoccupied with the annihilation of its neighbours, 
Hygiea, like the majority of nations in the Asteroid 
Belt, was a member of the Interplanetary Union.

As the captain had no wish to put his crew at risk, 
it was fortunate that one of Lieutenant Korolyov's 
officers was a qualified pilot and could safely 
navigate the untethered shuttle to dock at Hygiea's 
spaceport. This was a journey in which the 
passengers only experienced quarter standard gravity 
and when the shuttle docked were then subject only 
to the Asteroid's very feeble gravity. 

The Republic of Hygiea was no more enthusiastic 
about having to shelter Paul and Beatrice than the 
Space Ship Ulysses, but its relations with the 
Interplanetary Union were too fragile for its 
government to turn the visitors away. There was no 
welcome committee to receive the couple, which 
pleased Paul but visibly irritated the lieutenant.

For the next month or so, Paul's home was in the 
Triumph dome on Hygiea's surface ninety kilometres 
from the spaceport. The journey across the 
Asteroid's bleak and cratered crust was on the first 
maglev train that Paul had ever ridden on. This was 
along a tube through whose glass walls Paul could 
see many settlements under the dark starlit sky. The 
Sun was less distant but still appeared to be no 
more than half the size it would on Earth. 

This was the first time Paul had ever been on the 
surface of an object in space rather than inside. He 
felt distinctly uncomfortable with the notion that 
there was nothing but black empty sky above his 
head. This wasn't the only source of discomfort. The 
gravity on Hygiea was so weak that the most it could 
do was anchor him to the ground. He was fitted with 
heavy leaden boots that compensated for the 
awkwardness of his step and made walking as nearly 
natural as possible on an asteroid where any object 
he dropped from his hand took nearly a minute to 
eventually settle on the ground.

He was also made aware that this was an asteroid in 
constant threat of hostile bombardment. There were 
signs to that affect displayed on the walls of the 
maglev train's compartment and in every corridor and 
chamber he walked through. The robotic guards that 
stood to attention in every open space were as 
immobile as statues but were armed to defend the 
citizens against an invading force. A sweep of huge 
spotlights criss-crossed the train's path as it 
careered across the mostly empty plain. 

How could people live like this? Paul wondered. Low 
gravity. Empty sky above their heads. And the 
constant reminder that they were at risk at any time 
from antimatter missiles aimed at them from space. 

Hygiea was exceptionally short on hotel 
accommodation. Normally, the only foreign visitors 
were diplomats, ambassadors and scientists. No one 
would ever choose to visit the Asteroid for 
pleasure. Most historic monuments of note had been 
destroyed during the many centuries of war. 
Everything of natural beauty was now employed as a 
military installation. Beatrice and Paul had to make 
do in very substandard lodgings, as did the rest of 
Lieutenant Korolyov's party. The one bedroom and 
attached kitchenette and bathroom in their fourth 
floor apartment wasn't much better than what they'd 
got used to on the space shuttle. 

The couple had little to do except make love and 
when not so engaged to divert themselves with 
movies. They occasionally ventured into the colony 
beyond, but it was a dismal place that just about 
served its citizens' basic requirements and not much 
else.

 The Hygiean national dress was principally designed 
for life in low gravity. The heavy padded outfits 
and massive boots made everyone appear to be very 
chunky, although it kept them rooted to the ground 
while everything around fell leisurely downwards. 
Hygiean citizens made an almost comical sight as 
they stepped so lightly while being hardly weighed 
down at all by their bulky outfits. The only aspect 
of Hygiean dress that wasn't dourly utilitarian was 
their long hair, which gave them a bizarrely 
romantic likeness on account of the way it 
unhurriedly cascaded over their shoulders. 

The chief distraction available to Hygiean citizens 
was sport and this was specially adapted for the low 
gravity. It was strange indeed to watch a game of 
football where the hard metallic ball arched so high 
but fell so very slowly to the ground where there 
was plenty of time for the players to intercept it. 
It was equally odd to watch a game of baseball where 
the ball followed a tremendous trajectory when it 
was hit but could scarcely avoid being caught by the 
time it arrived near the ground.

The Hygieans were wary of Paul and Beatrice who 
could never be mistaken for natives however much 
they dressed appropriately for life on the Asteroid. 
Paul was very clumsy and it was only the fact that 
he fell so slowly that his many missteps didn't 
cause him injury. Beatrice acclimatised herself 
rather more easily to the conditions, but she didn't 
observe the expected deference to rank that was 
natural to the Hygieans. The couple soon restricted 
their outings to the very few remaining tourist 
attractions that were worth visiting.

Besides slow motion sport, the only other things of 
interest were the farms, forests and lakes that 
supplemented the life support systems. It was 
fascinating to see trees that grew so tall and 
unmannerly in the low gravity and the animals that 
had adapted themselves to the alien conditions. 
Squirrels had learnt to leap across distances 
between trees that were several tens of metres 
apart. The fish jumping out of the lake's surface 
stayed a very long time in the air before they 
eventually fell back into the water and were 
therefore easy prey to the gently gliding seagulls. 

The more Paul saw of this world the more he wished 
he was home on. "I hope we don't have to stay here 
too long," he remarked after he'd made love with his 
wife for perhaps the fifth time that day. "I'm 
getting tired of having to wear such a heavy suit. 
I'd much rather wear something less cumbersome."

"Me too," said Beatrice, who looked very odd indeed 
in such restrictive clothing. She could barely wait 
to tear off every scrap and cavort naked on their 
connubial bed. 

Making love was a distraction, but it was also very 
weird. Beatrice almost had to hold Paul down when he 
rested on top of his wife,. And when Paul ejaculated 
anywhere but inside Beatrice, the semen took a very 
long time until it eventually landed on Beatrice's 
fair skin. 

"If I have to live on the surface of one of the 
Sun's satellites," remarked Paul reflectively, "I'd 
much prefer a more interesting view. Hygiea's 
nothing but black rock and dust. I thought having a 
starscape and a view of the Sun would be 
compensation, but it does get rather boring after a 
while."

"You should try and appreciate its beauty more," 
Beatrice countered. "At least you can see the sky. 
You can't see anything on Venus, even though it has 
very close to standard gravity,. It's nothing but 
thick viscous cloud. Here you can see all the 
constellations and even..."

Whatever else it might have been that Beatrice could 
claim to see was lost in an echoing noise that 
filled the chamber and was eerily like the explosion 
they'd heard on the Ulysses but one which boomed at 
a much lower frequency. 

This was followed by another loud noise. And then 
another. And another.

"Fuck!" shouted Paul more in despair than anger. 
"Who or what has got it in for me?"

"I don't think it's just you," said Beatrice. "Can't 
you hear the air-raid sirens?"

There was a piercing shrill note in the midst of the 
dull thud of distant explosions. It was at a very 
high and urgent pitch.

"We'd better run to the shelters," said Beatrice. 
"I'm sure this is one of those air raids we've been 
drilled for."

Paul just about remembered the exercises he'd 
attended not long after they'd arrived to which he'd 
paid as little attention as all the others that had 
accompanied every one of his various space flights 
since he'd left Godwin. Fortunately, Beatrice memory 
was rather better. She helped Paul into the bulky 
space suit that would protect him against a breach 
in the dome's space shield before she slipped into 
her own. Although the suits were cumbersome and 
ungainly, they were no obstacle to progress in the 
low gravity. Paul and Beatrice skipped and bounced 
out of their apartment and down the corridor to the 
escalators that would take them deep beneath the 
Asteroid's surface to the awaiting emergency 
shelters. 

Many other citizens were impatiently waiting at the 
escalators when they arrived. However, rather than 
join them herself, Beatrice laid a reassuring hand 
on Paul's shoulder. 

"You go down by yourself," she said. "I'll join you 
later."

"What do you mean?" asked an alarmed Paul. He wasn't 
sure whether he was more troubled at the idea of 
Beatrice being left behind or of him being left 
alone.

"You must remember that I used to work for Emergency 
Rescue Services on Venus," said Beatrice. "There are 
lives at risk and I have the skills needed to save 
them. Don't worry. I'll be back with you again soon 
enough."

With those words, she strode off towards the stairs 
which she clambered down while Paul shuffled into 
the escalator with a dozen calm and stoically 
resigned Hygiean citizens. As the doors slid shut 
behind him all he was left with was the image of her 
heavily space-suited figure as she bounded towards 
the rarely used steps.

This memory stayed with Paul as the escalator 
swiftly descended more than a kilometre beneath the 
Asteroid's surface into the caverns where the 
majority of Hygiea's citizens lived. It remained 
with him for several hours more as he sat on one of 
the many sofas and armchairs that filled the air-
raid shelter's massive caverns. He was accompanied 
by thousands of other people who appeared to be more 
excited than dismayed by the destruction raining 
down on their homes on the Asteroid's surface. The 
impression he gathered from his short snatches of 
conversation with those who spoke English was that 
such air-raids were relatively infrequent. An 
offensive such as this would normally have been 
intercepted long before it had a chance to penetrate 
Hygiea's elaborate defences. The fact that this air-
raid had succeeded where most failed implied that 
the enemy Parthenopeian forces had identified a 
weakness in Hygiea's defence system and there was 
furious debate as to how this could have happened. 
Nevertheless, Paul's interest in the technicalities 
of defence against missiles that could be cloaked, 
disguised as civilian craft or simply launched at an 
illegally high acceleration waned after several 
hours. He was distracted by the holographic displays 
that gave a continually updated account of the 
damage sustained, the number of casualties and 
Hygeia's success rate at deflecting missiles. Like 
the citizens gathered around Paul, the excited 
commentators took every opportunity to speculate on 
the precise reason why the missiles hadn't been 
intercepted sooner.

Paul was distressed by Beatrice's continued absence. 
He wasn't sure whether this was because he was 
anxious about her welfare or because he'd spent so 
little time apart from her and had lost the ability 
to enjoy his own company. It was undeniably odd of 
her to rush off like that into the midst of an air-
raid. Not just odd, but foolhardy and reckless. No 
incoming missile would make allowance for Beatrice 
however well qualified she was as an Emergency 
Rescue Officer. 

The news bulletins carried many stories of human 
interest, particularly of personal bravery and good 
fortune. It wouldn't be good for morale if the only 
stories were concerned with death and destruction, 
although this must have been the principal result of 
the air-raid. It was with a growing sense of 
apprehension that Paul came to realise that the 
story most commented on was of a brave Emergency 
Rescue worker from the Kuiper Belt who was 
responsible for an extraordinary number of acts of 
courage and to whom many adults and several small 
children owed their lives.

While the commentators speculated on the identity of 
this mystery woman who'd saved the life of people 
who would otherwise have been crushed by debris, 
frozen to death or suffocated, Paul became 
increasingly convinced that this wonder woman and 
saviour to so many could only be his remarkable 
wife. Although he'd enjoyed so many hours of the 
greatest intimacy with her, she was still almost as 
much a mystery to him as she was to Hygiea's excited 
media. How could anyone be so perfect? What had Paul 
ever done to deserve such a beautiful, clever and 
now courageous wife?

Paul's suspicions were confirmed when the crisis had 
subsided enough for an interviewer to speak to the 
undoubted Heroine of the Hour.

The woman who removed the helmet from her head and 
shook free the long blonde hair that cascaded slowly 
onto her shoulders could only be Beatrice. 

She answered the reporter's questions with her 
characteristic modesty and charm. She gave little 
away about herself beyond the fact that she was 
staying on Hygiea with her husband who, Paul was 
gratified to learn, she adored. She also claimed 
that she'd found the people of Hygiea friendly and 
forthcoming, which most certainly hadn't been Paul's 
experience so far. She gave as detailed account as 
the questions required of her various heroic 
rescues. The small child that would have died had 
Beatrice not severed her leg from under the fallen 
masonry. The family she rescued from the burning 
flames of their house and then returned to rescue 
their pet cat, about which she was visibly affected. 
The fellow Emergency Rescue crews who she also 
helped save when a tall tower collapsed about them. 
She was diffident about her many achievements and 
accorded most of her admiration and respect to 
Hygiea's courageous firefighters. 

When Paul eventually got to see Beatrice again, well 
into the following day, she was a great deal less 
forthcoming about her heroic adventures or indeed 
about wonderful people of Hygiea. She was flushed 
with excitement and within seconds of re-entering 
their bedroom, where Paul had spent many lonely 
hours since the all-clear alarm was raised, she 
tugged off Paul's leaden trousers and padded shirt 
and vigorously applied her tongue and mouth to a 
penis that was so erect with anticipation that 
Paul's testicles were fit to burst. 

There was a wild gleam in Beatrice's eyes when she 
eventually let Paul's saliva-dripping penis enter 
her that Paul hadn't seen since they'd stayed on 
Schmidt. She clearly thrived on her new-found fame. 
Their lovemaking was more ecstatic than it had been 
for many months and, after the hours of sex that 
mostly filled their time on Hygiea, this was no 
small achievement. She insisted that Paul take her 
in the anus while his fingers probed into her 
gushing vagina. And when he was ready to ejaculate, 
which Beatrice was expert in anticipating, she 
persuaded him to do so on her tongue and into her 
wide open mouth.

When they'd at last finished, Paul the most 
exhausted, she was reluctant to give more than a 
very succinct account of her heroic feats.

"It was just my duty," she said. "My years of 
service on Venus were more than enough to handle the 
situation."

"It must have been very good practice judging by the 
media reports," probed Paul. "Was it that much more 
demanding on Venus?"

"You wouldn't believe how much," remarked Beatrice. 
"The atmosphere is so thick and the air so hot and 
poisonous that the conditions on this Asteroid are 
really nothing more than a trifle."

"Surely it's not that easy?" 

"If it weren't for the war, there'd be virtually no 
need for an Emergency Service on this asteroid at 
all," Beatrice commented. "On Venus, where there's 
never been a war, every day is a miracle of 
survival."

However reticent Beatrice was with Paul privately, 
she was much more open over the following days when 
she chatted with the now animated citizens of Hygiea 
who treated the couple with a respect and admiration 
that had previously been wholly absent. The couple 
were feted wherever they went by the citizens of the 
war-torn Asteroid. This caused huge anxiety to their 
minders who always stood apart at a discrete 
distance. Beatrice and, by association, Paul were 
celebrities and when they ventured outside their 
room they were immediately mobbed by dozens of well-
wishers and admirers.

Paul was embarrassed by this fame almost as much as 
he was in awe of his wife's heroism, of which he was 
forever reminded wherever the couple went together. 
It was curious to be interviewed, always hand-in-
hand with the broadly smiling Beatrice, by the 
various media outlets on Hygiea. It had been a long 
time since a news story of such popular appeal had 
appeared on the drab and war-weary Asteroid. It made 
a welcome relief to the citizens from the normal 
diet of anti-Parthenope diatribes ladled out by the 
patriotic media.

Paul relished his second-hand celebrity, but it also 
made him wonder even more about his wife. Of all the 
women he could have married in the Solar System, 
what divine providence had so determined it that his 
wife would be someone like Beatrice? She must surely 
be every man's fantasy and she was now the woman 
with whom he made love every day.

Just what had he done to deserve such a ridiculous 
privilege? 



Chapter Nineteen 
Intrepid - 3754 A.D.

Naked and hairless. The shame of it. Isaac had never 
been so since he was a baby.  The humiliation was 
torment in itself.

But Isaac could comfort himself that he wasn't the 
only one so demeaned. All around him and equally 
immobilised on the grassy lawns of this strange 
Elysian but Godless world were others like him: 
defeated, dishonoured and similarly paralysed. He 
could move his eyes. He could breathe. But he 
couldn't move his limbs and he could mouth words 
with only the greatest effort.

He was comforted by the scriptures that said in 
Chapter Thirty-two Verses Twenty-five and Twenty-six 
of the Second Book of Moses:  Called Exodus: "And 
when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for 
Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among 
their enemies:) Then Moses stood in the gate of the 
camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him 
come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered 
themselves together unto him". Surely the Lord would 
see Isaac's similar shame and rescue him. He would 
know that Isaac's faith remained strong.

Nonetheless, Isaac could see little evidence of the 
Lord's intervention and rather more of a flurry of 
efficient robotic activity. Peculiar-shaped metal 
and plastic objects flew about the verdant landscape 
herding away the deer, horse and antelope and 
tidying up the wreckage left by the Holy Crusaders' 
abortive invasion. Military officers of the 
Interplanetary Union strode amongst the robots. 
These included women of whom many were immodestly 
dressed. Isaac had never before seen so many bare 
legs and naked midriffs. Many soldiers had shaved 
heads and some had very unnatural skin colour. Only 
Satan could father abominations with green, violet 
or even striped skin.

A handful of military personnel were crouched over 
and attending the forlorn crusaders who were slumped 
ignobly on the ground. Isaac guessed that these were 
medical officers by virtue of the dispassionate and 
clinical nature of their attention. They attended to 
each crusader individually with hand-held devices 
that were studied more intently than the patient 
himself. One or two crusaders were carried away by 
stretcher-bearing robots. Isaac could only speculate 
what cruel torments awaited these unfortunates.

It didn't take long until it was Isaac's turn. A 
thin scantily-clad woman crouched over him. She wore 
a silver one-piece uniform that displayed her legs 
below the knee and was open almost to her bosom. She 
skimmed a smooth plastic device several centimetres 
above his chest. Her head was shaved and she showed 
as little interest in him as a man would another 
man. She plucked his penis between her fingers with 
clinical disdain and probed his anus with the same 
non-intrusive device. She then spoke in a language 
that Isaac didn't recognise, but it wasn't Isaac she 
was addressing but instead a small device attached 
to her bosom.

Isaac feared that he would be one of those dragged 
away by the robots for further interrogation and, no 
doubt, torture, but the woman left him where he lay 
and strode off to repeat the same procedure on 
another crusader. She showed no interest in Isaac 
beyond that required to perform her duty.

As the crusaders remained where they were, the 
robots continued to mop up the wreckage caused by 
the abortive invasion. The scattered remains of 
Isaac's pod, still less than half a kilometre away, 
were collected and removed by robots that were 
almost entirely composed of articulated arms and 
broad wheels. Small sniffer robots scurried about to 
gather the smaller debris. Within hours there was no 
evidence that a battle of any kind had ever taken 
place. The huge flat screens that hovered well out 
of reach above the crusaders' heads appeared to be 
windows into other worlds, but all Isaac could see 
were holographic representations of the same empty 
space he'd observed from within the descending pod.

Isaac reflected on the words of the Lord in Chapter 
Six, Verses Ten and Eleven, of the Book of Job: 
"Even that it would please God to destroy me; that 
he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!  Then 
should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden 
myself in sorrow: let him not spare; for I have not 
concealed the words of the Holy One." Job had 
suffered great hardship but was proven worthy, as 
Isaac hoped he would soon also be.

After a while, the flurry of activity was reduced to 
simply the sight of a few hovering robots that one 
by one floated off over the curvature of the ground 
and beyond his sight. The huge columns the crusaders 
had been so desperate to secure retracted upwards so 
that there were now no accessible stairways or 
escalators to other levels. 

Then Isaac noticed that several of his fellow 
crusaders were hesitantly staggering onto their feet 
in a landscape now clear of animals, robots or 
atheist soldiers.

Isaac flexed the muscles of his arm still expecting 
to experience the same paralysis that allowed him to 
twitch his fingers or wriggle his toes but nothing 
more. This time his efforts were more successful. 
The force that had pinned him to the ground had 
disappeared and he could clamber to his feet. He 
might be tingling with cramp, but at least he was 
standing. Only now, like all his comrades, he was 
hairless, even to the extent of his crotch and 
armpits and, worst of all, totally naked. 

His priority was still as it had been before. He had 
a mission to fulfil. The need to overpower the 
atheists and seize their vessel remained the 
imperative for the Godly and Righteous. But he also 
needed to follow the example of Adam and Eve and 
hide his nakedness. Isaac hoped that there might be 
some fig leaves available. Unfortunately, not only 
were there no leaves or garments to be seen but 
there were also no weapons with which he could arm 
himself and pursue his crusade. 

A flat screen floated just a metre above his head. 
There was writing on it, but it was in a script he 
couldn't decipher. It was replaced by other equally 
incomprehensible icons and then by script he 
recognised but whose words he did not. And then, in 
English, he read: "This way for food and lodgings." 
Next to these words was an arrow that hovered beside 
the screen. Although it appeared to be solid and 
tangible it was in actual fact a hologram. It 
pointed in a different direction to the arrows that 
accompanied the words in other scripts. 

Isaac was wary of accepting favours from atheists, 
but he decided that the arrow might direct him to 
where he might meet other English speakers and 
perhaps others of his and, therefore, the only true 
faith.

Isaac walked in the arrow's direction and with his 
hands cupped over his genitals as the only way he 
could see of maintaining his modesty. Other 
crusaders were also converging on the same route 
whose direction was further reinforced by other 
arrows that were suspended in space beside a 
succession of hovering screens. When he looked 
forward in the direction of the arrow the words were 
displayed in English. If he looked in any other 
direction the symbols and language changed and a 
different arrow appeared. It seemed that all English 
speakers were being coaxed in one direction and 
other language speakers elsewhere. The atheists were 
differentiating the crusaders not in terms of their 
faith, but purely by the language they spoke. 
English was the language of the King James' Bible 
and therefore the true language of the Lord. Where 
English-speakers gathered so too would other true 
believers of the Christian faith.

Just how big was the atheists' ship? Isaac wondered 
when he had walked several kilometres and was still 
not at his destination. He was tired and hungry, so 
the appeal of the promised food and lodgings 
steadily increased however much he reminded himself 
that his first duties were to protect his modesty 
and to destroy the Apostasy. This second duty, after 
all, was the reason why he'd travelled so far from 
Mercury's orbit.

A hairless naked man approached him, also cupping 
his genitals in his hands. He was as fearful of 
Isaac as Isaac was of him. "Art thou of the faith of 
the Holy Trinity?" the stranger asked in what even 
after all his bible study seemed to Isaac a 
peculiarly archaic English dialect.

"I am that," said Isaac. "In fact I herald from the 
colony of Holy Trinity."

The man was confused. "Thou art a follower of the 
word of the Lord, but not of the exact word, in 
sooth. Thy tongue is near heathen. But here there 
are heretics and apostates aplenty and I must pardon 
thy errant ways."

"As I must yours," said Isaac with more conciliation 
than he would have previously entertained. "You 
follow the word as written in the gospels..."

"The exact and unvarying word," corrected the man.

"...And in this atheist world such faith is worth more 
than any heretical deviation."

"Well said," agreed the man, comforted that there 
was common ground between them.

The two naked men walked onwards together both 
diligently hiding their genitals, as were the other 
crusaders. They engaged in a dialogue liberally 
peppered with quotations from the Holy Scripture. 
Isaac discovered that his comrade came from the 
colony of Divine Truth between the orbits of Jupiter 
and the Asteroid Belt which maintained the doctrine 
that King James was the actual author of the 
Authorised Version and was therefore Divinely 
Inspired. He was a Presbyterian who also believed 
that the small independent Kingdom of Scotland (now 
a republic) was the Promised Land. 

Isaac was better informed, of course. He knew that 
the King James Bible wasn't actually written by the 
first King of the United Kingdom of Scotland, 
England, Ireland and Wales, but rather by his 
scribes. It was they, not His Majesty, who were 
divinely inspired and who corrected many of the 
heresies of the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and 
Calvinist faiths. However, he shared with Elijah the 
belief that the word revealed in these texts, not 
those in Latin or Greek, were the exact ones of the 
Lord God, even where there were apparent 
misspellings.

Isaac and his companion eventually arrived at a 
glade beneath some tall trees and beside a 
collection of villas. Each one was stripped of the 
clutter of domestic life that Isaac saw in his brief 
foray into a similar building when he was armed and 
considerably more dangerous. Under the trees was a 
long table on which was presented a sumptuous array 
of dishes and where some crusaders were already 
dining.

Isaac and Elijah had made a pact to resist the 
temptation of gifts provided by the atheists. Surely 
only evil could come from evil. As it is said in 
Chapter Seven, Verse Fifteen, of the Gospel 
According to Saint Matthew: "Beware of false 
prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but 
inwardly they are ravening wolves." But when Isaac 
saw that the other crusaders had already sampled the 
repast and showed no sign of having been poisoned, 
he decided that there was really little choice.  In 
any case, he was very hungry. He could decline the 
feast but then he would only die from starvation. If 
the food poisoned him, this would merely hasten his 
arrival at St Michael's Golden Gates. Isaac was also 
surprised by how good the food tasted, however 
simple and plain it appeared to be. There was rice, 
bread, boiled vegetables and greens, and they were 
all remarkably fresh and lightly seasoned. Isaac had 
never tasted such wholesome and appetising food 
before: either on Holy Trinity or since. The 
vegetables tasted far better than those he'd 
cultivated in his garden under the colony's dim 
lights. There were also foods from the Holy Land 
that rarely featured in Isaac's diet such as olives, 
figs and dates. The repast sinfully reminded Isaac 
of the manna bestowed on the refugees from Egypt on 
their way to Israel.

The atheist dogs had also provided many comfortable 
beds on which Isaac and the other crusaders could 
sleep but which also lacked sheets or blankets to 
cover their nakedness. In a sense, such covering 
wasn't strictly needed as the temperature aboard the 
Intrepid was very comfortable. 

Isaac hesitated about resting on a mattress and not 
only because each one was in such close proximity to 
the next in the villa's otherwise empty rooms. Then 
there was a light shower of rain which persisted for 
many minutes but miraculously failed to fall on the 
table on which the repast was laid. Isaac needed 
shelter and he needed to rest. He debated whether it 
would be sinful for him to sleep naked. He wasn't 
sure his genitals mightn't be exposed when he was 
asleep. But when Isaac lay down on a mattress he was 
so exhausted that sleep overcame him almost 
immediately.

Isaac got to find out more about his comrades in the 
following days. They were not only all English-
speakers but without exception also all Christian. 
The other religions such as Islam, Hinduism and 
Judaism each had their own languages and English was 
the language of Christianity. Well, many of the 
Christians. Some like the Orthodox Christians spoke 
Greek or Russian, whilst others spoke Aramaic, 
Italian, German and Spanish. There were no Orthodox 
Christians in Isaac's company, though there were 
Roman Catholics, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses and 
even a solitary Mormon. Nevertheless, those who 
followed the exact word of the Authorised Bible as 
revealed to King James kept themselves apart from 
those who followed heretical corruptions of the 
Lord's word as revealed in other texts. 

Isaac and those of the most proximate faith soon 
removed themselves from the heretics and claimed a 
room in one of the smaller villas. Isaac was the 
sole survivor from the colony of Holy Trinity. 
Despite the many doctrinal and liturgical 
differences that separated him from his closest 
companions, especially those relating to the 
practise of prayer and worship and rather 
secondarily to the exact interpretation of the 
Gospels, the crusaders chose to unite around what 
they had in common. 

Isaac became steadily more accustomed to his 
nakedness although not an hour passed when he didn't 
yearn to conceal his shame. The atheists had removed 
all material that could be fashioned into clothing 
and had herded away any animal or bird whose hide 
could be fashioned into clothing. It was evident 
that they preferred the crusaders to remain naked, 
although their beards and hair were allowed to grow. 

Those in Isaac's company were reluctantly forced to 
resign themselves to their nakedness. Despite 
everything, they were all men. Isaac became 
accustomed to seeing his comrades' limp penises. 
More to the point, the surviving crusaders had other 
concerns. They were still intent on fulfilling the 
mission to which they were all sworn.

Isaac's companions included some whose pods hadn't 
even penetrated the Intrepid's well-defended hulk. 
Most hadn't made it nearly as far as he had. Some 
like Jeremiah and Ephron had been captured while 
their pod was still drilling through the hull. The 
vessel was destroyed but the crew was taken alive by 
the atheists' robots. Others like Thomas and Joshua 
never made it even onto the ship's surface. Their 
pod was destroyed and they were rescued by the same 
robots that had inflicted the damage and carried 
inside the ship after being detained outside for 
several hours. During their hours spent floating in 
space, they watched the Intrepid's robots clear away 
the battle debris and bear it off to the rear of the 
ship. The residue of the once proud invasion fleet 
was to be converted into the Intrepid's antimatter 
thrust. Rather than hinder the ship's progress, the 
Holy Crusaders' efforts had ended up in helping to 
refuel it.

Isaac's company erected barriers outside the room 
they had designated as their own to ward off 
Catholics, Baptists and other heretics. When their 
territory was secure, a party was assigned the task 
of exploring the ship. It was imperative that they 
determine whether there was a way to pursue their 
holy crusade. Isaac was one of those chosen, along 
with Amos, Ezra and Elijah. 

As the crusaders explored their new territory, Isaac 
couldn't help but be impressed by the evidence of 
opulence and wealth. The outermost level was 
deserted although there were many villas now 
stripped of anything useful, and many of these had 
been assigned to crusaders of other faiths. Although 
these heretics and infidels were similarly naked, 
they made an effort to designate to which faith 
their territory belonged. A crucifix was carved on a 
tree to designate a Roman Catholic stronghold. On 
another tree, a crescent marked Muslim territory. 
There were other areas held by Hindus, Orthodox 
Christians, Jews, Sikhs and other faiths. 

Isaac and his comrades diligently avoided having to 
stray into such territories just as they also 
avoided contact with the other naked men they saw 
wandering about the level. It was sinful to expose 
oneself to heresy. It was also likely that any 
contact with heretics and infidels would only be 
violent. The compromises that had enabled so many 
disparate faiths to work together towards a common 
cause would have evaporated as surely between 
communities of different religions as it had between 
those of different faiths of the same religion 
within the first few hours that the English speakers 
had settled in their villa. 

There was none of the wild and domestic animals that 
had been in such profusion when Isaac arrived. The 
only other living things he saw were the odd 
scurrying rabbit or vole, and the birds and 
squirrels in the trees. The landscape was mostly 
composed of lawns, wooded glades, lakes and streams. 
There were no robots although the hovering 
holoscreens were still very much in evidence. These 
continued to provide the very useful information as 
the direction by which the crusaders should return 
to English-speaking territory.

The level bent upwards so their home territory was 
soon obscured by the ship's curvature. The columns 
that housed the elevators could be seen high above 
their heads where they had retracted into the 
ceiling. Huge struts kept the outermost level in 
contact with the levels above but these afforded no 
anchorage to the crusaders for an upward climb. 
Their imposing height was interspersed by platforms 
that were too smooth to offer a grip and too wide to 
clamber over.

After many hours walk and some breaks for repast and 
prayer, the crusaders at last reached the 
furthermost limit of where they could wander. This 
was not indicated by any warning line, but rather by 
an invisible barrier that gave off no reflection but 
repelled any force with one that was equal and 
opposite. Beyond this barrier were the animals that 
had once roamed freely about the whole of the 
outermost level. There seemed to be no way to enter 
the innermost levels of the ship that were high 
above Isaac's head.

The crusaders continued to roam along the edge of 
the invisible perimeter. They weren't sure whether 
it encircled the freely wandering large animals or 
whether it enclosed them. The only way they could 
establish where they were in relation to their new 
home was from the holoscreens which every few 
hundred metres pointed back to where they'd come. 
Isaac had no more skill in land-surveying than his 
comrades. In fact, all they had in common was that 
they had worked in a capacity, either in the police 
or the military, where they had expertise in killing 
people. The people they'd killed had all been 
heretics or recidivists, and not one of which 
belonged to a faith as far removed from their own 
as, for instance, a Roman Catholic, a Mormon or a 
Jew.

Elijah had served as a soldier in a war against the 
breakaway colony of St James whose heresy was to 
claim that King James was not merely divinely 
inspired but was actually the Second Messiah. Amos 
and Ezra had both been policeman with roles very 
similar to Isaac's. Their faiths differed in detail 
rather than substance and like Isaac they took great 
pride in their duty of ridding their respective 
colonies of any hint of deviancy or wavering in the 
true faith. Isaac was uncomfortably aware that on 
Holy Trinity it would have been his duty to 
slaughter all three of his comrades as it would have 
been theirs to kill him. Consequently, there was no 
real intimacy between the reluctant comrades.

The four crusaders discovered that there were other 
English-speaking communities scattered about the 
level. The holographic signs were sufficiently 
intelligent to guide Isaac and his comrades to the 
community from which they had come, though it 
crossed all of their minds that there might be 
others of their own faith, or exact interpretation 
of the Christian faith, in amongst these other 
settlements. They weren't disposed to investigate 
further as these other English-speakers-although 
also proudly displaying the cross in one form or 
other-didn't appear at all keen to have strangers 
approach them.

Just over a day later, Isaac and his comrades had 
completed the circuit of the invisible perimeter 
that enclosed the Holy Crusaders. The other 
crusaders they passed were similarly engaged in 
determining the limits of territory but the only 
remaining sign of the unity of their mission was 
that they too were naked and stubble-pated. Even 
though none of his comrades understood other 
languages any better than did Isaac, it was obvious 
from the frosty tone of the greeting that passed 
between the fellow crusaders that it was only the 
lack of weapons that forestalled any outright 
violence.

When Isaac's company eventually returned to the 
point from which they'd started, they were just in 
time to see a flurry of robotic activity as the 
bowls and dishes containing one day's repast was 
replaced by another.

"What did you find?" Jeremiah asked of his comrades 
as they squeezed past the doors to the other 
chambers of their villa into the one where Isaac's 
company resided.

The crusaders listened intently as Isaac and his 
comrades described how the territory assigned to 
them was circumscribed and how escape, let alone the 
pursuance of their crusade, seemed impossible.

"We are prisoners," concluded Amos. "The atheists 
have confined us within these empty homes and keep 
us fatted like calves. We are in purgatory. We are 
in a world where we are daily tested by the heresies 
of the other crusaders and cannot pursue our 
mission."

"The Lord will find a way," said Isaac with 
determination. "He will not abandon us."

"Amen!" agreed Elijah.

"And what next?" Amos asked. "The atheists haven't 
yet made known their intentions. Do they toy with us 
still?"

An uneasy silence was the only response to Amos' 
questions. The six crusaders who'd stayed behind 
regarded each other nervously.

Finally Jeremiah spoke for them. 

"Yesterday while you were abroad, five atheist 
soldiers entered the villa," he said. "They were 
heavily armed and two of them were women. They took 
four crusaders away with them and one of them was 
David."

All eyes now focused on their comrade who was 
clearly embarrassed by the attention. David held his 
hands knotted together over his crotch and regarded 
his comrades nervously.

"They took me by one of their hovering crafts to a 
cell where I was interrogated," he said. "I was 
blindfolded on the journey and know only that where 
I was taken was to a place very unlike this level. 
The flight took less than ten minutes and I was 
accompanied by heretics whose faith I do not know."

"Did they torture you?" asked Ezra.

David shook his head. "I was in a single room, bound 
to a seat by cords, and was asked questions by an 
atheist."

"What did you say?" Amos asked.

"As little as I could," said the crusader. "But the 
questioning was subtle. After only a few hours I was 
transported back here."

"You weren't tortured?" asked Isaac anxiously. 

"No," said David. "The atheist asked questions the 
answers to which he already seemed to know. He had 
none of the usual tools of interrogation on hand."

This seemed highly unlikely. If Isaac had the duty 
of interrogating a prisoner on Holy Trinity, then he 
would have, at the very least, removed a finger or 
testicle. What could possibly be discovered without 
the use of torture?

Isaac decided that either David had betrayed his 
comrades without a struggle or that his comrade was 
being brave and wouldn't admit to the sadistic 
horrors he'd suffered. The latter seemed unlikely, 
however. David had none of the traumas Isaac 
associated with the victims of interrogation. The 
inevitable conclusion was that his comrade must be a 
traitor. If only he had the necessary equipment then 
he would soon extract from his comrade the truth he 
already suspected. 

Nevertheless, a lingering doubt remained in Isaac's 
mind. These atheists might know of methods of 
torture he'd never come across before. They might 
have tortured David without leaving the usual scars 
and obliterated his memory of the suffering he'd 
undergone. It was thus unwise for him to directly 
accuse his comrade of treachery.

But most of all Isaac dreaded the occasion when he 
too would be dragged away by the atheists and 
interrogated. How well would he withstand their 
interrogation? With what scars would their torture 
leave him when he refused to give them the answers 
they were seeking? 

Chapter Twenty 
Milton - 3751 C.E.

It was the couple's good fortune that the only space 
ship Lieutenant Korolyov could provide for Paul and 
Beatrice at short notice for their journey onto 
Earth was the Ambassadorial Cruise Ship, SS Milton. 
The luxury space ship was diverted from its journey 
from Jupiter orbit to the Asteroid Belt to carry the 
diplomatic baggage that was considered too great a 
risk for any commercial ship that travelled across 
the Solar System.

The few diplomats and ambassadors aboard the luxury 
ship couldn't complain about the delay to their 
flight when it was explained how critically 
important to the Interplanetary Union the diversion 
was. Even the Jovian Ambassador for Earth knew that 
there were things that took precedence over her 
prompt arrival at Jupiter's South American embassy. 

Paul now knew what real luxury was. Even though the 
Milton wasn't an especially large ship-being less 
than a kilometre in length and most of that engine-
the passengers' suites were roomy, opulent and 
marble-faced. Paul and his wife shared a generously 
appointed apartment whose windows looked onto a 
courtyard with a fountain, an array of marble 
statues and a small swimming pool. There were three 
spacious reception rooms and four bedrooms. The 
paintings on the walls were all originals and almost 
certainly priceless. Although it was a luxury of 
unimaginable waste in a climate controlled space 
ship, every room had a fireplace in which real logs 
smouldered on a real fire whose smoke wafted up to 
the level above.

Paul could have happily spent every moment of the 
journey from the Asteroid Belt to the Moon in the 
confines of the suite, but Beatrice was less easily 
satisfied. After just one day of making love in all 
four bedrooms and by the tinkling fountain in the 
marble courtyard, she was eager to explore the rest 
of the ship. As Paul could offer no objection, the 
couple wandered out from their apartment along a 
broad featureless corridor to the room-sized 
elevator that whisked them off to the many 
entertainment lounges and restaurants. Diplomats 
expected not only the highest quality accommodation 
but also plenty of social space.

Paul soon became aware of just how awkward he was in 
the company of diplomats, aristocrats and 
billionaires who, despite their politeness and firm 
handshakes, soon came to the conclusion that this 
was at least one Godwinian anarchist they needn't 
trouble themselves with in future. They were far 
more taken by Beatrice who adapted well to the dress 
and demeanour of a society princess. She was 
remarkably well-informed about the shakers and 
movers of High Society and Big Business, many of 
whom were the selfsame people.

Paul was more at ease when Beatrice and he visited 
the ship's bridge. This was probably the least 
opulent room on the Milton, but it was still well-
appointed. While Beatrice remarked knowledgeably on 
the original paintings hanging from the wall, which 
to Paul's eyes appeared to be nothing more than 
splodge-like caricatures of fruit and vegetables, 
what interested him most was the ship's holographic 
view of outer space.

"What's that?" asked Paul as he pointed at what 
seemed to be a revolving pencil.

"We have a legal obligation to monitor all ships 
within a million kilometres of the ship, but we 
routinely keep track of almost every ship within the 
Inner Solar System," said the boatswain. "That ship 
is relatively close. It's perhaps less than a 
hundred thousand kilometres away."

"It's a ship, then?" said Paul, who immediately 
regretted asking such a question. It could scarcely 
be mistaken for a meteor or comet. 

"It's a cruise ship, probably from Ceres," said the 
boatswain. "They carry several tens of thousands of 
passengers in very cramped conditions. They 
typically travel from one part of the Asteroid Belt 
to another, but this one appears to be travelling to 
Mars. That will take it a very long time. On average 
it will suffer from a death-rate of at least a one 
percent. It could be much higher."

Paul did the arithmetic in his head. "Do you mean 
that hundreds of passengers will die on that ship?"

"As I said, the conditions are extremely crowded and 
these old space ships frequently suffer from 
critical system failures. The ship's interior is 
composed of hundreds of interlocking sections that 
rotate to give a semblance of gravity. Entire 
sections may fail and this will inevitably result in 
the instant death of everyone in the vicinity. There 
might be hull-breaches from space debris.  More 
commonly there might be an error in the ratio of 
oxygen to nitrogen in the atmosphere of one of the 
sections. Sometimes the temperature control system 
might stop working. When there is a failure in one 
section of the ship there is no possible way for the 
unfortunates to move to safety without compromising 
other sections. It's a very old design of ship that 
was never intended to be used for people 
transportation nor to remain in service very nearly 
one and a half thousand years after it was 
assembled."

"Why do people choose to travel that way?" 

"They're probably refugees," said the boatswain. 
"Ceres has been at war for so long and with so many 
different nations that it's now one of the poorest 
space colonies in the Solar System. Not many other 
colonies welcome refugees except as cheap-dare I say 
expendable-labour."

"And what's this ship?" asked Paul as he pointed at 
a space craft that was very nearly spherical but 
bristled with so many spines that it resembled a 
rolled-up hedgehog.

"That's something we have to be very careful to 
avoid," said the boatswain. "That's a military 
warship, also probably travelling to Mars. One 
consequence of the Martian War is that any space 
craft that doesn't promptly identify itself is 
likely to be immediately exterminated."

"Could that happen to us?"

"Very unlikely," said the boatswain with a 
reassuring smile. "We are strictly adhering to 
agreed international routes. And, in any case, Mars 
isn't on our itinerary. The planet's present 
location in its orbit is currently nowhere between 
us and Earth. However, there have been occasions 
when ships have been blasted to nothing for having 
strayed dangerously close to a warship and not 
having identified itself convincingly enough. I'm 
afraid the most usual victims are these ancient 
Cerean cruisers. Their communications and 
navigations systems are as much prone to failure as 
their life-support systems."

Paul was then shown other screens that included some 
that were directed towards the Moon and, of course, 
Earth. These were the ones that fascinated him the 
most. The Terran system was no longer the wealthiest 
in the Solar System, but no one could deny that it 
had a history that no other part of the Solar System 
could match. Paul squinted at the Moon, which was to 
be the next stop on his itinerary. Even including 
the Earth, the Moon was the most highly populated 
part of the Solar System. Almost nothing on the 
satellite wasn't either under glass or lit up by 
huge arc-lights. The dark side of the moon was 
brightly illuminated by countless dots of light 
emanating from the Moon's many densely inhabited 
towns and cities. 

The Moon was also where the Interplanetary Union had 
its Parliament and other Head Offices, although this 
was more for sentimental rather than practical 
reasons. Given that the majority of the Solar 
System's population lived beyond the further side of 
the Asteroid Belt, the Moon's position was no longer 
even remotely central to the Solar System's 
distribution of population or power. This had the 
consequence that international video conferences 
were perpetually beset by communication lapses of 
several hours between question and answer.

Such delays in communications didn't affect only 
political debate, of course. Lieutenant Korolyov had 
been obliged to request passage for his two high-
profile wards and extra military staff from Hygiea 
without being able to clear this first with Saturn, 
but he didn't need to have worried. This episode of 
Paul's voyage from Godwin to the Moon was quite 
simply the least troubled of them all. 

The biggest challenge to confront the lieutenant was 
how to ensure that the newly-wed couple didn't 
divulge the purpose of their journey. It would be 
extremely easy for subtle interrogation to extract 
such information. 

Lieutenant Korolyov could leave nothing to chance. 
Ever since the couple had arrived in the Saturn 
system, sophisticated nanoprobes tracked their every 
movement and their every word. For unknown reasons, 
the probes that followed Beatrice were the ones most 
likely to freeze-frame or malfunction, but this 
didn't cause the lieutenant much concern as it was 
obvious that Paul was the greater security risk. 
Beatrice was tracked only because she was his wife. 
Paul was not only the one best briefed, but also the 
most tactless. It was a relief that the Godwinian 
wasn't especially sociable.

Most of the data gathered about the couple was of no 
value whatsoever. The visits to the lavatory, the 
time spent sitting still, the hours of sleep and, of 
course, the many hours-far too many for a man like 
Lieutenant Korolyov who struggled to understand the 
attraction men had for women-where the couple were 
engaged in sexual congress.

After he checked that the couple had safely returned 
to their suite after their tour of the bridge, the 
lieutenant desultorily reviewed the highlights of 
the couple's activities as recorded and analysed by 
the nanoprobes. A high proportion of Paul's 
conversation with other passengers strayed 
dangerously close to being a potential security 
risk. Why couldn't he be more discreet? But then, 
Paul came from an anarchist colony so respect for 
class and rank was evidently well beyond him. Why 
else would he ask such blunt questions as to what 
other passengers did for a living? Many of them were 
ambassadors or trillionaires and had never been 
confronted by questions like that even once before 
in their lives. Furthermore, although Beatrice was 
much more circumspect and tactful, she exercised 
absolutely no restraint on her husband.

"So," Paul asked the President of Parthenope, "why 
don't you just end the war between your asteroid and 
Ceres? It's not as if there's anything you really 
want from them."

President Abdullah maintained a supercilious and 
amused smile on his face. "It's not as simple as 
that."

"Aren't you just sacrificing Parthenopeian lives for 
nothing?"

"Politics is a subtle business, my friend," said the 
President. "Now, if you could excuse me..."

Lieutenant Korolyov scoffed at Paul's anarchist 
na‹vet‚, though he suspected that Paul would be 
considered tactless even on Godwin. Why was the man 
so drawn towards metaphysical debates that took his 
conversation dangerously close to the secret object 
of his mission?

"Do you think these apparitions are a kind of 
transdimensional rupture in the brane?" Paul asked 
Xiao Lewis, the billionaire head of a coffee shop 
and catering empire. "Perhaps it's a form of dark 
energy. Or perhaps it's a gravitational flux."

The wealthy oligarch raised his eyebrows. "I really 
have no idea what these things might be," he said. 
"I'm not a scientist. Now, if you were to ask me 
about the new markets for coffee in the Neptune 
system or whether the Oort Cloud is a good prospect 
for a new Needle Noodles franchise, then I might be 
of more assistance."

"I just love Needle Noodles!" said Beatrice with 
enthusiasm. "It's the tastiest Oriental food beyond 
Uranus."

"Some might say anywhere in the outer Solar System," 
agreed the billionaire.

"...Or perhaps these apparitions are an alien 
invasion of an oddly cryptic kind," said Paul, still 
blissfully ignorant of just how boring and tactless 
he was.

Xiao Lewis made a show of checking the time. "Maybe 
they are, but I have a call to make. It's been 
enchanting to meet the two of you." This last was 
clearly directed at Beatrice, who smiled graciously 
as the billionaire kissed the upraised wrist of her 
exaggeratedly limp hand.

Before too long, all the other passengers began to 
take extraordinary measures to avoid any interaction 
with Paul, but this didn't trouble him at all. He 
remained supremely indifferent. 

The lieutenant focused his attention on occasions 
when Paul might present a security risk, so he 
wasn't bothered by the amount of time Paul spent on-
line engaged in games, entertainment, trivia and 
pornography. None of these were likely to result in 
a security breach. The sophisticated pattern 
searching software at the lieutenant's disposal 
could find nothing even potentially risky about the 
fantasy worlds the Godwinian visited. Paul was 
remarkably undisciplined for a research scientist. 
It was difficult to discern anything in his 
activities that was remotely related to his supposed 
discipline.

As the Milton made its two-month journey across the 
Solar System-its progress hampered only by the 
regulations that restricted the maximum speed of 
space craft in the relatively crowded neighbourhood 
of the inner planets-Paul interest in Earth and the 
terrestrial system steadily increased. He'd always 
been fascinated by Ancient History: especially 
relating to the early days of data storage and 
information technology. This was an age when it was 
still theoretically possible for a single person to 
understand everything about a computer: from its 
operating system to its circuitry, from its 
architecture to its interaction with peripheral 
devices. Those were exciting times in an age when 
humans had hardly ventured at all from the planet's 
surface, when there were no extraterrestrial 
settlements, even on the Moon, and when computers 
relied on the semi-conductive elements such as 
silicon and graphene.

Paul pored over references to and visited virtual 
universes that represented not so much the modern-
day Earth or Moon, which hardly interested him at 
all, but those of the twentieth and twenty-first 
centuries. Nonetheless, he was somewhat hazy about 
the actual details of the period. He wasn't sure 
whether Hitler was a contemporary of either 
President Obama or President Beck. He wasn't even 
sure whether America was an ally or an enemy of 
Germany in either or both of the World Wars of the 
Twentieth Century. Was Stalin a Nazi or a fascist or 
something else? And just when did English cease to 
be the default language of computing? There was even 
something called the British Empire which Paul 
confused with the Roman Empire, although he was sure 
there was at least a thousand years between them. He 
was surprised to discover that the Romans hadn't 
discovered the American continent despite the 
Atlantic Ocean being such a narrow strip of water. 
Wasn't there someone called Bill Gates who at one 
point, some time after Einstein and probably even 
Turing, was the richest man in the world? Now, those 
were glory days! Computers were the most profitable 
and dominant industry in the world, like Coal, Oil 
and Steel had been before. 

Paul wasn't invited to the bridge again, but he 
could monitor the transplanetary progress of the 
Milton just as easily from his luxury suite. 
Beatrice and he would lie on their matrimonial bed, 
either before or after making love, and scan the 
interplanetary heavens. There was Mars, now quite a 
long way around its orbit from Earth. There was the 
receding orbit of Jupiter. There was a fleet of 
warships circling the Asteroid Belt behind them, 
sometimes enlivened by colourful explosions near or 
on the surface of the various disputed chunks of 
rock. Ahead were the bright lights of the Moon and 
the strange blue presence of Earth itself.

"We can't see the Anomaly from here, can we?" asked 
Beatrice. 

"There's nothing to see," said Paul. "It's like an 
absence of something."

"Like a black hole?"

"There's not even a gravitational presence. I've 
been told it's like there's nothing at all. Not even 
space."

"What does that mean?" 

"Space exists even in a vacuum," Paul tried to 
explain. "Photons and Neutrons pass through it. Dark 
Energy and Dark Matter interact with it. It is 
seamlessly joined with the rest of space. The 
Anomaly isn't like that. Light doesn't pass through 
it nor does any other kind of matter, whether 
baryonic or strange. There's no interaction with the 
fundamental forces. It's like it isn't there, but 
neither is anything else at its location."

"It doesn't sound natural, does it?" 

"No, it doesn't" Paul agreed. "It doesn't sound very 
natural at all. So, in a sense, where we'll be going 
to after we depart from Earth is nowhere at all!"

Chapter Twenty One 
Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

There is almost no incident more serious than when 
the space ship of which you are captain has been 
attacked and boarded. And as captain of the Space 
Ship Intrepid, Nadezhda Kerensky knew that what was 
required was an emergency meeting for everyone 
aboard. It wouldn't be enough to simply broadcast a 
statement. There had to be a full and proper 
discussion of everything that had happened. But this 
was also something that the captain had never had to 
do before. It was several centuries since civilian 
space ships had been the target of military assault. 
Space ships might expect to encounter serious 
hazards like meteor showers and radiation blasts, 
but this was an event of an entirely different 
order.

The obvious place to hold such a convention was the 
stadium on the ninth level. It could be transformed 
from a rugby pitch to a concert hall and then to an 
athletics stadium in a matter of minutes. 
Invitations were issued and the stadium re-assigned 
to its new function. The captain's seat was raised 
above the atrium and the Intrepid's senior officers 
were assembled around her. 

Captain Kerensky couldn't resist scanning for her 
lovers amongst the passengers gathered ahead of her. 
Yes. There looking very much in her element amidst a 
crowd of burly uniformed soldiers was Colonel 
Vashti. She was joshing and laughing in the company 
of men and women who viewed adversity as a challenge 
to be welcomed rather than as a threat to be 
avoided. And where was her other lover, Beatrice? 
The captain scanned the passengers' sombre and even 
nervous faces for the Venusian. She was there, of 
course, sat next to Paul who couldn't have looked 
more out of place if he tried. The captain was sure 
that Beatrice's gaze was returning hers. It was all 
she could do to resist waving at her lover. 

Captain Kerensky addressed her duty in a brisk 
professional fashion. She was fully conscious that 
she was addressing not just the several thousand 
people ahead of her, but the countless others 
throughout the Solar System to whom her address was 
broadcast as a matter of routine. She began by 
reassuring her audience that there was no further 
risk to the ship or to its passengers. Those hostile 
forces that hadn't been killed in the defence of the 
Intrepid were now in secure detention. There hadn't 
been a single casualty amongst the passengers, the 
military or the crew. The Intrepid's outer hull was 
being repaired by the ship's capable self-renovation 
system which had sprung into action from the very 
first moment of intrusion. The few surviving 
invaders were being held in custody in the outermost 
level which, understandably, was now out of bounds. 
This would cause inconvenience to those previously 
quartered on that level, but accommodation had been 
found for them on other levels that was of a 
comparable quality. 

The captain then gave a comprehensive account of how 
the invasion had been repelled and the damage that 
had been inflicted. 

"We shall learn much more when the prisoners are 
interrogated," the captain announced, "but a 
preliminary analysis has already established a 
number of significant facts. The Intrepid's 
assailants all come from space colonies and 
communities which enforce the practice of a 
fundamentalist and ascetic religion. These include 
various forms of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. 
It appears that these would-be invaders are all 
members of a previously unknown coalition of ultra-
orthodox religious communities. The Interplanetary 
Union's intelligence services based both here on the 
Intrepid and at Mission Control on the Moon are 
making investigations and further details will be 
made known when they are available. What we know for 
certain is just how fanatical our assailants were. 
They must have been to pitch themselves with such 
inadequate resources against an Interplanetary Union 
space ship with a superior defence capability such 
as the Intrepid. Beyond that, we don't yet really 
know for sure what the motive for attacking the 
space ship might be."

Well, that's a relief, thought Paul. He and Beatrice 
sat halfway up the auditorium where they gazed down 
at the captain's holographic projection which was 
much easier to see than her actual person. Although 
both Paul's possessions and his person were 
undamaged, he was upset that he would never return 
to what so recently had been his home. On the other 
hand, the new villa to which he'd been assigned was 
just as luxurious and Beatrice had taken to it with 
great enthusiasm. It was almost as if she'd enjoyed 
the upheaval.

Like everyone else on board, Paul was able to view 
holographic images of the outermost level where he 
used to live. He could smell the drifting smoke. He 
could look straight into the Holy Crusaders' faces. 
He could look through the doors of his now abandoned 
villa and observe the behaviour of the religious 
fanatics who now occupied it. The Intrepid had 
recorded every detail of the battle as a matter of 
course, so Paul was able to review and replay the 
systematic slaughter and immobilisation of the Holy 
Crusaders at his leisure. He could slow down the 
pace of the carnage. He could zoom in on the 
crusaders' dismemberment. Although there was nothing 
to hear as there was no medium to carry sound waves 
through space, Paul could imagine the reverberation 
of the explosions and the shrill shrieks of pain in 
the unlucky assailants' last few moments. Brains 
were splattered against the glass of shattered 
spacesuit helmets. Faces were swiftly drained of 
oxygen and blood as bodies flew through empty space 
away from their shattered space ships. Radioactive 
waste was still smouldering as it hurtled by.

After these few moments of one-sided warfare the 
Intrepid's probes swooped about the debris and 
collected raw material to be processed by the space 
ship's antimatter engines. At the same time, the 
space ship's hull was repairing itself at almost the 
same rate as it was being breached. The scars on the 
surface were soon barely visible at all. This was 
done quickly, efficiently and without fuss, as was 
necessary in a space ship that had no opportunity to 
pause in its long journey.

Paul was aware that there were people throughout the 
Solar System who held perversely unbalanced 
opinions. After all, he was the survivor of many 
mercifully unsuccessful attempts on his life during 
his inward-bound journey through the Solar System. 
As an anarchist-or at least someone who'd lived all 
his life in an anarchist colony and had never 
questioned its values-Paul had no comprehension of 
how a person could hold an opinion that had no 
rational foundation. How was it that a religious 
fundamentalist could hold firm to views that were 
based entirely on unreliable written evidence? It 
was one thing for two people to disagree with one 
another. It was another thing when both persons held 
fixed and equally nonsensical views. And it was 
utterly incomprehensible to Paul that a group of 
people should agree to hold very similar beliefs 
that contradicted all historical, scientific and 
even logical sense. It was perplexing that there 
should also be other groups of people that disagreed 
violently with the first group but who had a similar 
fixation on self-evident nonsense. There was quite 
simply nothing on Godwin that could prepare Paul for 
the phenomenon of mass conformity of belief in the 
patently ludicrous. Did these fanatics really 
believe in miracles? Did they really suppose that 
the universe was just over seven and a half thousand 
years old? Did they really and truly believe in an 
afterlife whose nature was determined by one's 
behaviour in the current life? And just where was 
this afterlife supposed to be? 

Paul had never previously been exposed to religion. 
Although there were those on Godwin who belonged to 
one religion or another, Paul had never crossed 
their paths. And now, thanks to people whose 
understanding of the universe was essentially 
absurd, Paul was at risk of discovering first-hand 
just which (if any) of the various afterlives he 
might ascend to.

Captain Kerensky's address wasn't especially long. 
She gave a concise account of all the known facts. 
She restrained from indulging in speculation except 
where it was needed to quash any rumours or 
misinformation that might be circulating. She was 
effusive in her praise for those who worked in the 
emergency services. Paul was surprised to discover 
that Beatrice was amongst those that the captain 
commended. Apparently, she'd been astonishingly 
active in helping to bring to safety those who'd 
been stranded in the outermost level.

In fact, Captain Kerensky was no less surprised by 
this than Paul. She hadn't expected to see her 
lover's name in amongst the list of heroes, but 
there was mention of Beatrice's bravery in dozens of 
the independent commendations the captain had 
received and they all praised her for her selfless 
bravery during the attack. The only person to get 
more commendation was Colonel Vashti. How could it 
be that Nadezhda was now sharing her bed only with 
selfless heroines? It was almost to be expected that 
the colonel should be active, given her reputation 
for self-sacrificing heroism in the Martian wars, 
but Beatrice?

After the conference, Nadezhda was sufficiently 
intrigued to conduct her own independent research 
through the historical archives and it was here that 
she discovered for the first time that Beatrice was 
employed by Emergency Rescue Services on Venus 
before she'd left the planet to live on Ecstasy. It 
made sense that someone who'd been so active in 
saving lives might have worked as a rescue worker on 
Venus' extraordinarily inhospitable surface. It made 
rather less sense that the heroine in question 
should be Beatrice. Although she was intelligent, 
elegant and self-assured, she much more resembled a 
bimbo than a fire-fighter. Captain Kerensky could 
never in her life have imagined that, amongst the 
lovers and partners she'd known over the decades, 
she would one day fall in love with a woman like 
Beatrice.

Chapter Twenty Two 
The Moon - 3751 C.E.

The Moon was the most substantial celestial body 
Paul had ever trodden on in all his eighty years of 
life in the Solar System. When Paul stepped out of 
the Milton's shuttle and onto the Moon's surface, 
his body was directly subject to a gravitational 
force that was just one sixth to what he was used 
to. Nevertheless, walking on the Moon was hardly 
effortless. Ungainly was the best description of 
Paul's forward locomotion when he tumbled face 
downwards onto the spaceport's thick carpeted floor. 

The space ship Milton meanwhile was many kilometres 
away and circling high above Paul's head. A vessel 
of the Milton's size wasn't authorised to approach 
nearer to Earth than this. Risks could no longer be 
taken after the long distressing history of 
calamitous accidents involving space ships in 
terrestrial orbit. The most disastrous had caused 
more destruction than the very worst of the nuclear 
explosions that had periodically scarred the Earth's 
surface. Ever since Houston was annihilated by the 
cataclysmic collision of two space cruisers, no 
space ship of the Milton's dimensions was permitted 
any closer to Earth than the Moon. And even then it 
had to maintain an orbit of several thousand 
kilometres.

Paul was sure he should be thrilled about being on 
the Moon, but his most genuine enthusiasm was 
reserved for the blue satellite he could see above 
his head. He was sure he could discern the outline 
of the continents of Africa and South America. And 
weren't those clouds he could see over the brown 
continents and blue oceans?

"I don't think I've ever seen so many people!" 
gasped Beatrice as she stared through the windows of 
the walkway that led from the airstrip to the 
spaceport concourse. 

Paul followed her gaze and noticed for the first 
time the teeming masses of the Moon. Beatrice and he 
were standing on the Moon's surface, but many 
kilometres beneath their feet were successive levels 
upon levels of streets, walkways, avenues and tall 
buildings. The surface area of the Moon might be 
much smaller than Earth's, but the lunar cities 
weren't restricted at all in their subsurface 
expansion. In fact the Moon's urban sprawl supported 
a much larger population than the whole of planet 
Earth.

Lunar citizens bobbed up and down in the low gravity 
when they walked as if it was the most natural thing 
in the Solar System. No amount of film footage of 
the Moon taken from any of its seventeen hundred 
years of colonisation properly prepared Paul for the 
awe-inspiring sight of thousands upon thousands of 
people hopping about like kangaroos under the glass 
domes that encased the greater part of the lunar 
surface.

Just the momentary distraction of taking his eyes 
off his stride was enough for Paul to once again 
trip forward onto the ground. However, he fell so 
slowly that he was less likely to hurt himself than 
the other more sure-footed pedestrians who warily 
avoided being in his vicinity. It wasn't strictly 
necessary to walk as he was being carried steadily 
forward by the moving walkway. Although it wouldn't 
take long for Paul and Beatrice to arrive at the 
reception area where Lieutenant Korolyov was 
waiting, Beatrice was in a peculiar hurry. It was 
difficult for Paul to keep up with her. This was 
especially so as she was already far better 
acclimatised to the low gravity than he was.

The Milton's shuttle had touched down on an airless 
open runway where it was now standing amongst 
hundreds of other lunar shuttles. Paul could glimpse 
behind him the occasional astronaut and the much 
larger number of scuttling robots dotted about the 
space craft in the bleak moon dust. The shuttles 
were overlooked from high above through the 
spaceport's windows and also those of the luxury 
penthouse suites where the Moon's most wealthy 
citizens lived.

The causeway trailed over and above the city of 
Nectaris, the second largest city on the Moon, and 
then through the walls of a four billion year old 
crater to overlook a barren plain. This served to 
remind Paul and Beatrice and the hundreds of others 
who were also making their way from the runway to 
the spaceport concourse that they were indeed on a 
hostile airless rock in space. Paul could see the 
distant bright lights that marked the site of a 
historic Twenty-Second century Lunar settlement 
known by the optimistic name of Plymouth, but which 
had shared more the unfortunate fate of the 
stillborn North American colony of Roanoke. A few 
space-suited tourists could be seen milling about in 
the crater's shadows.

Paul wanted to pause on the walkway to properly take 
in the beauty of this unique scene. There weren't 
many places in the Solar System with as much ancient 
history as Plymouth, except, of course, on the blue 
globe that shone above them in the sky and whose 
reflective light cast long shadows over the high 
crater walls. 

Uncharacteristically, it was Beatrice who was the 
less inspired by such an evocative sight.

"We've got plenty of time to look at things like 
that later," she reminded Paul. "This is going to be 
our home for at least a month until we fly down to 
Earth."

"Oh come on, Beatrice," said Paul who'd been looking 
forward to looking at a view like this ever since 
he'd left Jupiter orbit. "I can't see what greater 
attraction our hotel suite could be."

"I'm tired," said Beatrice who rarely betrayed such 
human weaknesses. "It's been a long day."

Paul nodded, although the day had only been long 
because of the delay in boarding the Milton's 
shuttle. The departure was complicated by the 
pressing need to observe established protocol when 
the passenger list included trillionaires, diplomats 
and celebrities. Paul and Beatrice were undoubtedly 
the lowest ranked of all the passengers. The only 
people who had to wait behind them in the 
disembarkation queue were the waiters, bar-keepers 
and tourist guides. Just ahead was the Ambassador 
for Sycorax, a very minor moon colony of Uranus. 
Highest ranking of all was Buzzy Mao, a pop singer 
from the Jupiter orbit colony of Tyne who was 
fabulously popular in the Inner Solar System even 
though his fame hadn't quite spread as far as the 
Kuiper Belt. He was anticipating a rapturous welcome 
from his adoring fans on the Moon.

Such was Beatrice's pace that the newly-weds soon 
overtook the entourage of even the Ambassador of 
Amalthea who had dawdled by the viewpoint in the 
walkway that offered the best view of the ancient 
Plymouth colony. His various wives and husbands were 
gathered about him in their provocative and sexually 
explicit outfits.

It is rare for there to be much warning when a 
disaster happens. 

The memory of the event often promotes an originally 
inauspicious event to the status of a retrospective 
alert. 

Perhaps it was the woman who detached herself from 
the Amalthean ambassador's company and scurried 
along the walkway with renewed determination. 
Perhaps it was the small bag that lay only a few 
meters away from the huddle of Amalthean tourists. 
Perhaps it was the robotic vacuum cleaner that was 
steadily rolling along the edge of the rubberised 
walkway floor. Perhaps it was none of these. 

But the actual event, like everything else on the 
Moon, happened in characteristic slow motion. The 
walkway between Paul and the Amalthean ambassador's 
dawdling entourage first folded in on itself and 
then rather more abruptly exploded outwards during 
which shards of glass and luxury carpeting were 
flung still relatively slowly into the near-vacuum 
outside. Paul's direct experience, as opposed to 
what he could later observe replayed at his leisure, 
was of an intense tug as the walkway's pressurised 
air pulled him backwards to where the Amaltheans 
were being sucked out through a widening fracture in 
the surrounding glass onto the bleak earthlit lunar 
dust. It wasn't the impact of landing on the dusty 
ground below that killed them even though they 
bounced several times off its surface to a height of 
several metres. They'd died well within the first 
second of the explosion from a combination of 
extreme cold, lack of atmospheric pressure and, most 
obviously, a total absence of breathable air.

This was a fate Paul could easily have shared. Like 
the scattered remnants of eerily exploded corpses 
restrained by fetishistic outfits that displayed 
genitalia and bosoms and were now much more 
grotesque and blood-splattered than provocative, 
Paul's body could have been tossed carelessly about 
the ground several tens of metres below. But once 
again Beatrice saved his life. And once more in a 
way that seemed more by chance than circumstance.

Paul somehow managed to be on just the right side of 
the emergency hatch that slammed shut well within a 
second of the walkway suddenly and unaccountably 
exploding. Paul later learnt that the walkway had 
always suffered from a design fault, so in a sense 
such a catastrophe was just waiting to happen. When 
towards the end of the third millennium the proud 
Lunar citizens built the long walkway that wound 
from the city of Nectaris to overlook the first 
settlement in the Mare of the same name, it was 
already known that a meteorite of little more than a 
few centimetres' width could easily crack open the 
glass surface. Even the centuries of reinforcement 
that now protected it from many times that scale of 
impact wasn't guaranteed to withstand the impact of 
a sizeable rock falling onto the Moon from the open 
sky. In any case, there were many other small 
objects that a potential terrorist could employ to 
shatter the protective glass. Once even the smallest 
kink cracked the surface, the combination of high 
internal air-pressure, a near vacuum outside and a 
dramatic temperature differential would turn the 
historic walkway into an inescapable death-trap.

And on this occasion there was no escape from death 
for all twenty-seven Amalthean delegates, a further 
dozen ancillary staff, and the High Priest of the 
Synod of Triton and his entourage who'd disembarked 
from another space-ship.

Paul and Beatrice were more fortunate. Beatrice had 
grabbed Paul by his collar just in time and heaved 
him through the walkway partition before it either 
sealed the couple on the wrong side of safety or, in 
its haste, severed their bodies in half. The 
distance to the walkway hatch that a moment ago 
seemed fifty or so metres away, suddenly became a 
whisker on the other side.

Paul didn't see much of the explosion. This was 
because he was lying prostrate on the carpet-covered 
floor of the walkway; or at least in one truncated 
branch of it. He was battered and bruised by the 
shock of being pushed to the ground before the hatch 
sealed itself behind him. The violence with which 
Beatrice grabbed his arm caused it to be torn by 
agony when he tried to pick himself. A sharp pain 
blanked out from his consciousness most of where he 
was and what had happened.

"You poor darling!" said Beatrice who was remarkably 
prompt in identifying the source of her husband's 
discomfort. She soothingly stroked his forearm while 
they slumped down on the ground. "How much does it 
hurt?"

"A lot!" said Paul.

"But at least we're alive," said Beatrice.

She turned her head round behind them and beckoned 
Paul to do the same. Through the transparent doorway 
that had slid into place they could see a stretch of 
glass corridor that protruded fifty metres over the 
dust-swept rocks below. Hanging to the jagged edges 
of shattered glass was an arm torn off at the sleeve 
and so frozen by the unmediated cold night air that 
the patches of blood had formed into dark crystals. 
The scattered bodies of other unfortunate passengers 
were below but too distant for Paul to identify. A 
few dozen bodies were slumped on the carpeted 
walkway killed more by the sudden cold and loss of 
air pressure than the impact of the explosion. The 
ruptured faces and burst eyeballs were evidence of a 
disagreeable but thankfully nearly instant death.

Paul could hear moans from travellers on the safe 
side of the security hatch who'd been hit by the 
abrupt outrush of air that sucked back anything that 
was loose. These included not only bags, paper and 
plastics, but even other people. It was further 
testament to how lucky they were that Beatrice had 
managed to get them through to safety in time in the 
face of such a ferocious force.

Lieutenant Korolyov's welcome party on the other 
side of the Passport Check Zone had to wait much 
longer for Paul and Beatrice than they'd expected. 
Despite the unfortunate circumstances, the 
formalities of Immigration Control couldn't be 
dispensed with. The couple weren't permitted into 
the spaceport's concourse until the proper checks 
were completed, even though they had to be 
transported by hovering stretchers to the hospital 
ward where within minutes Paul's broken arm was 
repaired by medical robots. 

Then, while still in the hospital ward, the couple's 
details were validated and verified and they were 
asked formal questions about why they were visiting 
the Moon. Such was the demand to visit the Moon, 
either for vacation or employment, that after Earth 
this was the most securely guarded tourist 
destination in the Solar System. Almost everyone 
beyond Earth's orbit could trace their ancestry to 
the Moon. And for those with no hope of actually 
being allowed to visit Earth there was the 
opportunity to view the home planet from the 
relatively short distance of a mere four hundred 
thousand kilometres.

It would be a while until Paul and Beatrice could at 
last relax in their luxury suite in the Tranquillity 
Hotel. Although the pain from his repaired arm had 
receded and the bone felt as good as new (as, in 
fact, it now very nearly was), Paul was required to 
rest on the hospital bed for the remainder of the 
day. Fortunately, Beatrice was allowed to accompany 
him by his bedside. She was still anxious and 
insisted on seeing proof of identity from the 
procession of doctors, nurses, immigration 
controllers and police inspectors that came in 
succession to question the couple. 

"You don't think the explosion was an accident, do 
you?" Paul asked when the interrogations were over. 

Beatrice smiled at her husband, whilst also keeping 
a watchful eye on the door through which Police 
Inspector Daniel Wong had just departed with a frown 
creasing his forehead. "It could have just been an 
accident," she said. "There are so many things could 
have caused it. As Inspector Wong reminded us, the 
walkway is nearly a thousand years old and there has 
been a recent upsurge in meteorite activity."

"But after so many assassination attempts since we 
left Ecstasy, you don't really believe that," said 
Paul sadly. "I'm sorry to have brought all this on 
you. Everywhere I go there's been one near lethal 
incident after another. It's a miracle we're both 
still alive. You must really regret having married 
me."

"Of course not, sweetest," said Beatrice, who leaned 
over to kiss him but still maintained a watchful 
gaze towards the doorway. "The marriage vows do say: 
'For better or worse'. I guess these are the worse 
times. But there have been many better times, 
haven't there?"

"Yes," said Paul gratefully. He'd had more sex in 
his months of married life than in the whole of the 
rest of his life put together. 

"I wish I knew who it is that wants to assassinate 
me," said Paul reflectively. "And why do they want 
to kill me? What possible harm am I to anyone?"

"Nothing, sweetheart," said Beatrice, who squeezed 
Paul's hand tightly in hers. "There's nobody in the 
Solar System you could harm."

"At least not intentionally," said Paul, who was now 
feeling very sorry for himself or at least for his 
current predicament. "There must be hundreds who've 
died just because they happened to be in my 
proximity. And another twenty or thirty people must 
have died just now. That ambassador and his 
entourage. The spaceline hostesses. That artist from 
Pluto and his husband. And all the others they're 
still trying to identify. If it wasn't for me, 
they'd all still be alive."

"You mustn't blame yourself, darling," said 
Beatrice. "None of it was your fault."

"And what about all the others who'd be alive now?" 
Paul continued. "What about those who died on the 
Ulysses? Some of those were children. And all those 
other incidents... If I'd never left Godwin, never 
done research on this accursed Anomaly, never got 
involved in this kind of research, they'd all be 
alive now."

"You're not the one who killed them," Beatrice said 
as she leaned over to kiss her husband's lips.

"But who are the ones who killed them? I've not met 
even one of them. I've not seen an assassin even 
from the distance. What kind of people are they?"

"The Saturnians said they were fanatics," Beatrice 
reminded Paul. "Religious extremists, many of them. 
Anyone associated with this Anomaly would attract 
their attention. If it wasn't you, it would be 
someone else."

"But I still don't get it," said Paul anxiously. "If 
it wasn't for all the assassination attempts on 
Godwin I'd never have come all this way across so 
many billion kilometres just to be a passenger on a 
huge spaceship to nowhere. If no one had tried to 
kill me I'd still just be an obscure researcher in 
the Kuiper Belt..."

"...And you'd never have met me," said Beatrice. She 
playfully squeezed Paul's crotch.

"And I'd never have met you," Paul repeated. "And 
we'd never have got married. And we'd never have 
made love. But then all those people would still be 
alive. The Ambassador from Amalthea would now be in 
his embassy instead of being splattered over the 
crater walls of Mare Nectaris."

"We have so much to be grateful for," Beatrice 
reminded Paul as she stroked his penis through the 
cloth of his trousers.

"I wish I'd never heard of this Anomaly," moaned 
Paul, for whom self-pity was still a stronger 
emotion than desire. "There's been nothing but one 
catastrophe after another for-"

"I have to go to the loo," announced Beatrice, who 
abruptly stood up and strode out of the ward leaving 
Paul alone.

This was totally unlike Beatrice, but Paul was aware 
that it was a long time since his wife had last gone 
to the lavatory. In fact, he couldn't remember even 
a single occasion in the last few months when she'd 
needed to excuse herself. And most certainly never 
so hastily as she did now.

Resting as he was, horizontal and secure on a 
hospital bed, and exhausted after a rather more 
eventful day than he'd anticipated, it was quite 
natural for Paul to doze away in the few minutes of 
Beatrice's departure. His consciousness slipped into 
a distant dream-world.

Paul always slept deeply. Before his recent marriage 
to Beatrice, he would normally sleep at least ten 
hours a day at a stretch. As the hours he spent 
asleep bore no relationship to the diurnal cycle, 
his waking hours on Godwin were badly misaligned 
with those of other people. He was often awake when 
everyone else was asleep and, naturally, the same in 
reverse. This was no great problem on an anarchist 
colony like Godwin. No one was obliged to work and 
only the imperative of communality impelled anyone 
to do anything at all. Nevertheless, so great was 
this imperative that only the truly thoughtless, 
such as Paul, could really get away with his degree 
of indolence without suffering an acute sense of 
guilt.

Like most deep sleepers, Paul's dreams were vivid 
but mostly forgotten when he woke up, but the dream 
on this occasion was unusually vivid. It wasn't as 
if much was happening though. All he was doing was 
chatting with Virgil, the old man from Nudeworld, 
and it was nothing more than a continuation of the 
same conversation he'd just been having with 
Beatrice in which he lamented his ill-fortune at 
being the target of so many assassination attempts.

"Why me?" he moaned.

"Why not you?" countered the old man.

"What have I done to deserve this?"

"What has anyone done to deserve anything?"

"Are you just trying to tease me?"

"There's nothing special about you, but something 
like this had to happen to someone and that someone 
just happened to be you."

"It can't be just as simple as that."

"Yes, it can."

"I don't understand," said Paul in his dream.

"Fucking wake up will you!" said another voice 
intruding into Paul's dream world and it wasn't the 
old man's. The woman to whom it belonged was 
vigorously shaking Paul's shoulder.

"Whassup?" wondered a bleary-eyed Paul.

"Didn't you hear the alarms?" asked the blue-haired, 
polka-dot faced nurse when she dragged Paul into 
full consciousness. "Or for that matter, the 
explosion!"

"Explosion?" asked Paul. "What? Another one!"

"I'll take him, nurse," said Beatrice who suddenly 
materialised by Paul's side and took his arm in 
hers.

"What's happening?" asked Paul, still unsure whether 
he was still dreaming.

"I don't know," said Beatrice. "I heard a huge bang 
while I was in the toilet and when I got out there 
were smoke and alarms and people running 
everywhere."

"Fuck! Not another assassination attempt!" groaned 
Paul.

"I can't be sure," said Beatrice. "It could be 
anything. Do you know what happened, nurse?"

"This way. This way," said the nurse directing them 
along the smoke-filled hallway where their path was 
only navigable from the emergency lights that dotted 
the way toward the exit.

Paul could see nothing through the smoke beyond the 
shadowy silhouettes of the robots that were handling 
the emergency. He was more concerned about his 
survival than in finding an answer to why he was in 
this predicament. It was only later when he was 
sitting down and coughing up the smoke that choked 
his lungs that his thoughts returned to such issues.

"What happened?" he asked.

"All I know was that there was a sudden blast," said 
the nurse. "Do you know any more?" she asked 
Beatrice.

Paul's wife shook her head. She raised her head 
towards a security guard who was walking by with a 
laser rifle. "What caused the explosion?" 

"Intruders," said the security guard. "We don't know 
how they got in. Probably an inside job. They were 
dressed as doctors. We don't know what they were 
doing or why. Video footage shows that they were 
carrying an explosive device that they set off just 
outside the women's toilets. There doesn't appear to 
be a good reason for it."

"Perhaps they didn't like women's toilets," said 
Beatrice disingenuously.

"Whatever," said the security guard. "But the only 
casualties were the perpetrators. And for our lucky 
survival we can only thank Allah."

"Indeed," agreed Beatrice with a small smile.



Chapter Twenty Three 
Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

"Isaac, isn't it?" the Special Operations Officer 
asked the naked man sitting on a chair opposite him 
and who was gently restrained by a low intensity 
force field. "And where do you come from exactly?"

The Holy Crusader might have been defeated but he 
retained his pride and dignity, despite the 
humiliation of his continued nudity. "Why should I 
tell you that?" he responded defiantly. 

"A fair question," said Emmanuel reasonably. 
"There's no penalty for non-cooperation. We shan't 
reduce your rations, deprive you of sleep or 
interrogate you further if you don't wish to answer 
my questions. And what we most certainly won't do, 
as some of you rebels believe, is torture you. 
That's been outlawed by the Interplanetary Union 
from its inception." He paused to study Isaac's face 
for his reaction. Religious fanatics like him had 
some very strange ideas about what practices were 
legal or permitted. "We know a great deal about why 
you are here and what you tried to achieve. We 
probably know better than you do the names of those 
who were responsible for your foolhardy mission and 
the clandestine means by which your masters managed 
to acquire the technology that enabled your space 
ships to remain hidden from the Intrepid's sensors. 
But we have a duty to return prisoners of war-even 
one undeclared and totally unprovoked-to their 
colonies or planets of origin. For us to do this, we 
first need to know where you came from."

"Don't you know that?" wondered Isaac who reasoned 
that if the atheists knew so much already they must 
surely know the answer to such a simple question.

"Alas, no," said the officer. "We can narrow it down 
to a couple of dozen of colonies who practise a 
similar variant of the Christian faith, but we don't 
maintain a registry of citizens from nations that 
are unwilling to provide us with the data. Rogue 
states such as yours are extraordinarily reluctant 
to allow independent observers within their borders 
and the Interplanetary Union assiduously observes a 
policy of non-interference. We know your governments 
practise methods of indoctrination that are illegal 
elsewhere. We know that there is a total lack of 
freedom and normal human rights. But we have no 
jurisdiction whatsoever over any state that wishes 
to remain outside the Interplanetary Union. Unless 
your state should interfere with our affairs, as of 
course yours has just done, we respect the right of 
every state to do pretty much whatever they like, 
notwithstanding how unpalatable it might be."

Isaac objected to the dark skinned officer's 
characterisation of his home colony. "The Gospel is 
practised on Holy Trinity with absolute fidelity," 
he retorted. "There can be nothing unethical, let 
alone 'unpalatable', in adhering to Holy Writ. As 
the Lord commands so we obey."

 "Holy Trinity," mused the special officer. "That's 
Mercury orbit, isn't it? You are a very long way 
from home."

"I am never far from home when I am in the light of 
the Lord's charity," said Isaac. "That's something 
you atheists could never understand."

"Interesting," said Emmanuel. "I imagine it that you 
believe that I'm an atheist. No doubt your reasoning 
is that a secular body such as the Interplanetary 
Union must therefore be home only to atheists. The 
truth, Isaac, is that I am not an atheist. In fact, 
I am a Christian. It would be nice to say that I was 
a Christian like you, but that isn't true. The 
Christianity I practise is so very different to 
yours that it's very unlikely that you would even 
recognise it as such."

"Are you a heretic or a Roman Catholic?" asked Isaac 
who was stirred to curiosity despite himself. 
"Surely, no true Christian could live amongst the 
damned and accursed."

"Jesus Christ and His Disciples lived in the company 
of unbelievers," Emmanuel remarked. "And they 
preached to those who were sceptical and often 
hostile. However, my faith is such that although I 
follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and the 
tradition of his faith in the manner of most 
Christians in the Interplanetary Union you'd almost 
certainly characterise my faith as heresy. I don't, 
for instance, believe in the Resurrection. I don't 
believe that Christ was any more the Son of God than 
any other prophet. I don't believe in Judgment Day. 
I don't believe in an after-life: let alone one that 
damns the vast majority of Creation to an eternity 
of torment. And I don't even believe in what you 
might call a God."

"Then how can you call yourself a Christian?" asked 
Isaac incredulously. "You deny all the truths 
revealed in the Gospels and yet profess to the worst 
heresies of all."

"Faith is not just creed or dogma, Isaac," said 
Emmanuel. "I find great comfort in prayer and I 
regularly attend Church services. My belief in the 
Christian faith sustains my spiritual needs and 
provides me with an ethical framework. But my 
Christian faith is more like the practise of most 
Muslims, Buddhists, Jews or Hindus in the 
Interplanetary Union-who also no longer profess a 
mystical belief in eternal life or an 
anthropomorphic God-than it is to the faith 
practised in Holy Trinity, or indeed to any of the 
other hundreds of rogue states that profess to one 
of the many extreme, supposedly Christian, 
theologies."

"How can you call a Christian society a rogue 
state?" asked Isaac. "It is the heretics, atheists 
and pagans who are the rogues in the Solar System."

"Well, according to the doctrine of your state, only 
one colony is not heretical or otherwise damned. And 
that is Holy Trinity. That's an insular prejudice 
you have in common with all the fanatical states 
that participated in your foolish endeavour. They 
can't all be right, can they? Why should the colony 
of Holy Trinity be in any way better appraised of 
the truth than any other?"

"Because it is only Holy Trinity that truly follows 
the word of the Lord as revealed in His Holy 
Scriptures."

"Or the English language version that dates back to 
the early Seventeenth Century," said the special 
officer. "Much as I enjoy discussing religion, 
however, my area of professional expertise is in the 
peculiar practises of rogue states. Less than a 
quarter of them are of the religious variety. Just 
as many practise one variation or other of the 
various political ideologies, such as Bolshevik 
Communism, Fascism or Illiberal Socialism. The great 
majority of rogue states are simply dictatorships, 
usually of just one individual, but sometimes of a 
clique united by kinship, military rank or 
ideological purity. These rogue states may be called 
kingdoms, republics or theocracies, but as long as 
they deny political representation by the people and 
the full range of basic human rights, they are not 
welcome to membership of the Interplanetary Union. 
Those rogue states that have petitioned for 
membership, which is very nearly half of them, will 
never be permitted to join until they are governed 
in an acceptable manner."

"Acceptable!" exclaimed Isaac. "What could be less 
acceptable in the eyes of the Lord than letting 
Satan run wild?"

"Perhaps the unquestioning and ruthless way by which 
a highly partisan interpretation of the mishmash of 
texts gathered together over the centuries and 
ascribed to the Lord is used for the vicious 
oppression of its citizens?" suggested Emmanuel. 
"What rogue states most have in common is not shared 
ideology or ethics, but the suppression of its 
people. It is only a sign of insecurity when no 
disagreement is permitted. Were you also a 
policeman? One of those called Soldiers of Christ on 
Holy Trinity? Most of the rebels who attempt to 
invade this ship were active not so much in the 
defence of their state from external enemies, but in 
the terrorisation and oppression of the state's own 
people."

"I am proud of my service in the Greater Good," said 
Isaac defiantly. "Not one person I killed was 
innocent of a capital crime."

"Well," said Emmanuel, unable to disguise his 
distaste at the implications of Isaac's statement, 
"I don't expect to change your opinion or views. I 
have a duty to perform. And that duty is not to 
persuade you to see the error of your ways, but to 
determine where you come from so that you can be 
returned there. However I must inform you that there 
is no treaty between the Interplanetary Union and 
Holy Trinity-or any one of the rogue states-that 
binds us to return citizens to their colony or 
planet of origin. If you so wish, we can allow you 
to remain in the Interplanetary Union as a free 
citizen when we return to the ecliptic plane."

"And why would I wish that?" asked Isaac. "I have a 
wife and children waiting for me. I would much 
prefer to live amongst True Believers than amongst 
atheists or, indeed, heretics such as you."

The Special Officer blew out his cheeks and lowered 
his gaze towards his hands which he clasped together 
on his lap, not so much in prayer as to disguise the 
agitation that could so easily excite them as he 
reflected on the appalling acts of cruelty and 
violence Isaac had undoubtedly committed as a police 
officer in his colony.

"I am not intimate with Holy Trinity," he said at 
last. "Nor am I any more so with the rogue states of 
the other rebels I have interviewed. As a Christian, 
I have been assigned the duty of interviewing only 
those who profess to Christianity as their faith. In 
truth, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist or 
Calvinist, none of your home states seem especially 
different from each other. None practise what I 
believe to be the teachings of Jesus Christ, who 
bade us to love our neighbour and forgive those who 
trespass. I would advise you that another 
characteristic almost all rogue states have in 
common is a suspicion of anyone in their midst who 
has ever come into contact with someone from another 
community."

"I have served the Lord God with forbearance and 
dedication," said Isaac. "I pray to the Lord five 
times each day and have resisted all temptation. Why 
shouldn't I be welcome amongst those whose shared 
faith I serve?"

"Even had your misguided crusade been successful..." 
replied Emmanuel. "Even if you had prevailed over a 
space ship designed to counter a rather greater 
invasion force than what the Holy Trinity and the 
other rogue states managed to put together at huge 
risk and even greater compromise... Even if you had 
succeeded in reaching your objective and destroying 
what you call the Apostasy, which is not even 
remotely feasible given our analysis of this strange 
phenomenon... Even if all these unlikely things had 
happened, do you truly believe the Archdeacon and 
his ministers would welcome you back?"

"Why ever not?"

"Think about it, Isaac," continued Emmanuel. "You 
have been tested and there is the risk that you have 
been found wanting by the absurdly high standards of 
conformity your state demands. The mere fact that 
you've been in the polluting presence of people of 
faiths and religions other than your own would 
condemn you. Indeed, I know from our observations 
that you have befriended others whose faiths may be 
approximate to your own but different enough that 
they would be considered heretical by your clergy. 
Could you withstand the interrogation that you would 
doubtless undergo? Can you be sure that those you 
love would continue to be safe and secure if you 
returned?"

"I don't understand."

"The evidence suggests that rogue states such as 
yours who prize intolerance and compliance are no 
more tolerant of those tainted by association, even 
of an innocent kind, than they are to those who are 
actively heretical. Your family, and especially your 
wife and children, are unlikely to be permitted to 
see you again for fear that you may corrupt them. 
And if they should, then they would be executed by 
whatever barbaric rites, such as crucifixion, 
electrocution or stoning, that your society 
practises."

"You are using idle threats," said Isaac, who 
nevertheless felt rather uneasy after having been 
presented with this all too plausible scenario. "I 
have been blameless. Even though our mission has not 
so far been blessed by success, no brave Crusader 
could expect anything less than the honour he 
deserves when he returns home."

"The choice is yours, Isaac," said Emmanuel. "In my 
role as Special Operations Officer for the 
Interplanetary Union, it is not my duty to prevent 
you from returning to what I believe would be not so 
much a hero's welcome as torture and painful death 
and, possibly, not just for you but also for your 
family and friends. But it is my duty as a Christian 
to open your eyes to the reality of your situation 
and make you aware of the real choices available to 
you. Only my conscience would be appeased if you 
should decide to accept the sanctuary offered you by 
the Interplanetary Union which benefits in no 
material way at all from extending you the offer of 
asylum. If you wish to return to Holy Trinity, I 
will pray for you but I expect my prayers will be in 
vain. A murderous regime such as yours will not so 
much reward you as attempt to persuade you that the 
slow and unpleasant death you will almost certainly 
suffer is in some peculiar way exactly what the Lord 
God intends. Perhaps you will echo Christ's words on 
the cross: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to 
say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" If 
you truly believe in the message of Jesus Christ, 
reflect that the martyrdoms of the Apostles and of 
Jesus Christ Himself were sacrifices of the highest 
order but were not actively chosen by those who died 
so painfully."

"A heretic like you cannot tell a true believer what 
he should believe!" snorted Isaac in disdain. "I 
shall return to Holy Trinity and be welcomed. I have 
served the Lord Jesus Christ with honour and this 
will be recognised. You are lying and your 
contemptuous deceit damns you to an eternity of 
torment."

Emmanuel sighed.

"I shall pray for you, Isaac," he said at last. "I 
hope you shall remember my words of caution."

"Your sophistry doesn't fool me," said Isaac 
bitterly. "A Christian who doesn't believe in God or 
the resurrection...? That is no Christian at all. 
Recall Verses Thirty to Thirty-two of Chapter Two of 
the Acts of the Apostles: "Therefore being a 
prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath 
to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to 
the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his 
throne; He seeing this before spake of the 
resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left 
in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This 
Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are 
witnesses." There is no text clearer than that?"

The Special Operations Officer chose not to reply. 
He contemplated his clasped hands and let a decent 
period of time pass while Isaac revelled in his 
mastery of Holy Scripture.

At last, he said: "Well, Isaac, I have no more 
questions of you. Do you have any of me?"

The crusader was taken aback. No one had ever asked 
him such a question before. Questions weren't 
expected in Holy Trinity. Rather, orders were given 
to be obeyed.

"What possible advice or information could a heretic 
give me?" he said. "Anyone who denies the truth of 
the Gospels can be nothing more than a dissembler 
and a miscreant."

"Well, I could remind you of the reality of your 
situation," said Emmanuel. "You are on a space ship 
whose destination is beyond the Heliosphere and is 
already more than two light weeks from the nearest 
space observatory. There is no possibility that you 
could escape from the Intrepid and be able to 
survive. You are under constant surveillance. You 
are kept naked so that you can't conceal any 
weapons. Given your mutual antipathy, there is no 
real likelihood that your community of rebels will 
band together again and resume your foolhardy 
mission. The only hope you have is that when we 
encounter the Anomaly it might bring about a 
situation that in some way changes your fortunes. 
None of us know what we are in for and I only hope 
that the spiritual guidance of my Christian faith 
prepares me for what will come."

"The Apostasy is the Manifestation of Satan," said 
Isaac, "and your Christian faith, as you call it, 
will only comfort you in the illusion that you may 
be spared from the Final Judgment. As is said in 
Verses Eleven and Twelve of Chapter Two of the 
Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the 
Thessalonians: "And for this cause God shall send 
them strong delusion, that they should believe a 
lie: That they all might be damned who believed not 
the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." 
Prepare to meet thy Maker and quake in His 
presence."

Emmanuel made a discreet gesture that signalled a 
Saturnian soldier to enter the interrogation chamber 
accompanied by two robots. Isaac was escorted away 
while the Special Operations Officer sat silently in 
his chair. He bent his head forward and pressed his 
hands together.

It was only several minutes later after Emmanuel had 
finished praying for Isaac and the other deluded 
souls in the outermost level that the Special 
Officer at last said "Amen" and raised his head. 
Although he didn't believe that a God as such was 
listening to his prayers or that there was any 
mystical significance to his act of faith, he hoped 
that in some way his sincere desire that Isaac 
should recognise the futility of his situation and 
act in a more responsible and sane way might 
actually happen. There might not be a God as such, 
but perhaps there was a way in which a sincerely 
held wish might influence the workings of fate.

Emmanuel stood up and left the interrogation room 
where he inspected the holographic recording of his 
interview. This would be analysed less for 
operational intelligence than as a psychological and 
sociological study. A much more complete picture of 
Isaac's role in the abortive mission had already 
been pieced together elsewhere. There was much else 
that Emmanuel could have told Isaac about the 
futility of his crusade and the fate that was likely 
to meet him if he should ever return to Holy 
Trinity. He could, for instance, have informed him 
of the criminal hypocrisy of the Archdeacon and his 
close circle of ministers. The Interplanetary Union 
might not know the exact nature of the atrocities 
and injustices suffered by the citizens of Holy 
Trinity, but they were well aware of the sale of 
pornographic material to the colony. This material 
was of a kind that could appeal only to murderous 
paedophiles who in this case had the resources to 
translate their fantasies into reality. 

Emmanuel could have given details of the political 
chicanery that accompanied the formation of an 
alliance of otherwise warring religious states that 
benefited only the elites and not at all the people 
they were meant to serve. And most certainly didn't 
further any religious cause. Very little of the huge 
amount of wealth collected for the crusade was 
actually dedicated towards its successful 
completion, which was most notable for its 
incredible meanness. A far greater proportion of the 
proceeds gathered from the wealthy and religiously 
disposed citizens of the Interplanetary Union ended 
up in the off-shore bank accounts of the religious 
leaders, such as the Archdeacon of Holy Trinity, 
rather than in the purchase of space ships and 
military hardware. Indeed, the Archdeacon's initial 
reluctance to contribute resources to the endeavour 
was far better understood as a bargaining ploy to 
maximise his profit than as a sign of indecision. 
Not one of the hundreds of colonies that contributed 
to the crusade had done so without substantial 
material benefit accruing to the elites that 
governed them. 

Emmanuel wondered, as he so often did in his 
prayers, how so many millions of people could be 
deceived so often and so profoundly. How could so 
much evil in the Solar System justify itself so 
sanctimoniously?

Maxwell appeared at the door to the interrogation 
chamber and smiled at him both simperingly and 
sympathetically. 

"You shouldn't take it so personally, sweetheart," 
he said strolling towards his husband, brushing a 
strand of long blond hair off his decidedly feminine 
face. "These cranks have been brainwashed. They'll 
believe only what they've been told to believe. 
Imagine what it's like to be brought up in a world 
where the nonsense in Revelations and Genesis is 
treated with seriousness. Some even deny that their 
colonies revolve around the Sun. They're beyond 
hope."

"Don't say that!" retorted Emmanuel sharply. "You 
don't have to be a Christian to feel compassion for 
those who live in such fear and intolerance."

"Fuck it!" said Maxwell as he clasped Emmanuel in 
his arms and peppered his cheeks with kisses. "Let 
them believe what they like. All the rebels you've 
interviewed are murderers and torturers. Do you 
think any one of them wouldn't have twisted off your 
thumbs, crushed your testicles or gouged out your 
eyes? They've been guilty of crimes that should have 
them all put into psychiatric care. If they want to 
tear themselves apart in Holy Wars or return home to 
some kind of ritual crucifixion, well, fuck it, they 
deserve every last nail hammered into their feet."

"That's the very reason I'm a Christian," said 
Emmanuel who pecked his husband on the cheek. "He 
taught compassion for everyone. However heinous 
their crimes, these crusaders are misguided souls 
who deserve compassion. Isaac loves his family. He 
believes he acted virtuously even when he behaved 
most inhumanely. Shouldn't he be afforded some 
sympathy?"

"You agonise too much on his behalf," retorted 
Maxwell as he placed a hand on Emmanuel's stirring 
cock. "If he was interrogating you rather than the 
other way round you'd be beaten to a bloody pulp. 
You certainly wouldn't have a dick left that's half 
as good as this!"

"Not here!" Emmanuel whispered urgently, although he 
could feel passion rising within him. He directed 
his eyes towards the surveillance cameras that 
constantly kept watch on the interrogation chamber: 
more to provide evidence of alleged abuse than to 
spy on the person being interrogated. 

"You're such a prude!" Maxwell laughed. "Come on! 
We've surely got time before your next candidate."

"In fact I've finished for the day," said his 
husband.

"And how many fanatics did you have to question?"

"I'm not sure. Dozens. They were all so very sad. 
All the suffering they've undergone in pursuit of 
their pointless quest..."

"And all the suffering they've been responsible 
for," said Maxwell. "You've got to put it in 
perspective."

The two lovers wandered off to their shared villa on 
the seventh level. This wasn't quite as well 
appointed as Paul's now deserted villa on the 
outermost level, but it was in a pleasant close 
surrounded by fields of wheat and barley over which 
larks sang and crows circled above tall trees. Each 
villa had its own swimming pool where on a towel the 
two lovers pulled off each other's clothes and lay 
down together. Their hands brushed along each 
other's thighs and toyed with their testicles.

Maxwell took his husband's now fully erect cock in 
his mouth while agitatedly pumping his own penis in 
his hand. Their passion grew steadily with their 
agitated kisses until it reached a high enough 
crescendo for Maxwell to offer his gaping anus to 
Emmanuel's obliging thrusts. Toned muscle pressed 
against toned muscle. Beard scraped over stubble. 
Chest hairs tangled. And in the acrobatic exertion, 
Emmanuel engaged his penis in his husband's arse as 
he released his anxieties and doubts in the 
lovemaking he never felt anxious about and with the 
love of a husband he'd never doubted. 

They were an odd couple in many ways. Maxwell had 
none of his husband's piety and although he 
preferred a submissive role he was the more outgoing 
and sociable of the two. Neither would have met the 
other normally. Emmanuel had lived in Earth orbit on 
a colony that was proud of its Polynesian heritage 
but was far from ethnically pure. Maxwell was a 
Saturnian who rebelled against the conventional 
style of clothing and hairlessness in the Socialist 
Republics and had even once had a long-term 
heterosexual relationship.

Their fucking climaxed after not very long as 
Maxwell couldn't restrain his semen from spurting 
over the hard enamel tiles of the swimming pool. 
Emmanuel released his semen as soon afterwards as he 
could, considerately over his husband's arse cheeks 
rather than inside the anus. They then jumped into 
the pool to wash off their shared sweat and sperm.

"Are you interviewing any more of these rebels 
tomorrow?" Maxwell asked as he surfaced from the 
deep blue water of the pool.

Water streamed down Emmanuel's hairy chest and 
plastered his long hair to his cheeks. He grabbed 
his lover by the shoulders and peppered them with 
affectionate kisses.

"Yes. But we're almost through. There are fewer than 
a hundred left to be processed."

"And have you learnt much?" wondered Maxwell.

Emmanuel pondered on this. "Yes, I have. But nothing 
that shakes my faith," he said. "What troubles me 
most is how what should be a force for understanding 
and harmony in the Solar System can be so easily 
perverted. How much stronger would the community of 
believers be if the Christian faith was never 
plagued by hypocrisy and dogma?"

"Well, I'm sure there'd be many more believers if 
there wasn't so much crap associated with religion," 
replied Maxwell with a smile as he tenderly caressed 
his husband's penis. "But nothing will ever make me 
believe in all that spiritual nonsense and mumbo-
jumbo. If there is a God, then He's done a pretty 
crap job. And if there is such a thing as spiritual 
truth why can it never be explained in ways that 
ordinary people can understand?"

Chapter Twenty Four 
The Moon - 3751 C.E.

"It's just not fair," said the overweight man who 
was hovering above the ground beside Paul. "I've 
lived on the Moon all my life. Every year for well 
over a century, I've applied for a visa to visit 
Earth. I've entered competitions. I've applied for 
special permits. I've offered an obscene amount of 
money. And then someone like you-who comes from the 
fucking Kuiper Belt, from an anarchist colony no 
one's ever heard of-gets to go to Earth after no 
more than a single month. It doesn't make sense."

Paul could see that his drinking companion was 
genuinely aggrieved, but he couldn't think of a 
suitable reply. He couldn't very well explain that 
the reason he was able to go to Earth was because he 
was on a secret mission. It would no longer be a 
secret if he told anyone. 

"Er..." he began uncertainly. 

"We're historians," said Beatrice who was standing 
at the bar next to Paul. "We're doing research on 
the Byzantine Empire."

"The fucking what?" asked the man with a sneer. "The 
bisons? What the fuck do you need to go to Earth to 
study bisons for? They've got bisons everywhere. And 
mammoths, dodos, passenger pigeons and elasmosaurs. 
Every once extinct animal you can think of that left 
a bit of DNA behind has been resurrected somewhere 
or other."

"The Byzantine Empire," said Beatrice. "The Eastern 
Roman Empire. The Greek Orthodox Church."

"Sounds like bollocks to me," said the man 
dismissively. "I was born here on the Moon. I've 
lived and worked here all my life. The only times 
I've been extralunar were holidays in Earth's orbit 
and once to Venus. And that was fucking expensive. 
All my life there's been this big blue ball in the 
sky and I've never once been able to go there. And 
you two-a scruff bag and a dolly bird-you call 
yourselves bison historians and you get there with 
no fucking trouble."

"What do you know about Byzantine history?" asked a 
tall woman who was sitting just to beside the irate 
lunar citizen.

"Um..." said Paul who wanted to confess that there 
wasn't a lot, but as always it was Beatrice who 
rescued the situation.

"What do you want to know?" she asked.

Paul had no doubt that whatever awkward question 
Beatrice was asked she'd have an answer. How did his 
wife get to be so knowledgeable? Mind you, it was 
she who'd chosen this cover story so he guessed she 
must know something about this ancient terrestrial 
empire.

"Well, for a start," asked the woman who was not 
only tall but at over two and a half metres 
excessively so, "what do you expect to find about 
the Byzantines by going to Earth that you couldn't 
research elsewhere?"

"If we knew that," said Beatrice, "we wouldn't need 
to go there."

Paul was getting increasingly frustrated by his 
having to vacation on the Moon despite having had 
many years to wonder what it would be like to look 
up in the sky and see the famous blue planet. But it 
was one thing to see the Earth. It would be another 
thing altogether to visit. All visitors to Earth had 
to endure a wait on the Moon whose length was 
determined by the visitor's status and the relative 
importance of the visit. It was obvious that it 
wasn't status or merit that had got Paul on the fast 
track. Not a single person he'd met on the Moon 
who'd discovered that he was imminently Earthbound 
failed to express surprise that it was someone like 
him who'd been given such preference. 

Only a fixed number of people were permitted to 
enter or leave Earth on any one day and this was 
strictly determined by the environmental impact of 
space flight. The strict ration of people permitted 
on Earth entailed a wait whose duration was 
dependent on there being someone who was scheduled 
to leave the planet. Inevitably there were often 
unexpected delays when a visitor to Earth might try 
to prolong their stay by hiding. Sometimes such a 
fugitive might remain lost for years while they were 
being hunted down, but they were usually located 
fairly promptly and then penalised appropriately. 
The cost of such a recovery mission always had to be 
covered. The regulations regarding Earth's visitor 
quotas were so strict that even the President of 
Saturn had once been delayed entry for a day or so. 
However, Paul and Beatrice had a date and time of 
departure to Earth arranged for them and all they 
had to do was wait. 

Everywhere the couple went they were accompanied by 
the relatively discreet presence of three or four 
security guards. Like many Lunar citizens they were 
above average height and often above average body 
mass. The Moon's low gravity was a big issue for 
anyone who lived on its surface. Health warnings 
were displayed everywhere either to encourage people 
to exercise or to advertise treatments for muscle 
waste, obesity and other low gravity ills. Paul 
continued to find that even the simplest activities 
could be peculiarly awkward. Even going to the 
toilet was an ordeal. It took forever for Paul's 
urine to leave his body and finally track a path 
through the air to the toilet bowl where it then 
slowly trickled away.

It was fortunate that there was so much to see on 
the Moon. It was as much a vertical world as it was 
horizontal. A journey through one the huge cities 
could be as far in a vertical direction to a 
different level as it was laterally across the 
surface. Every location was referenced by a set of 
three numbers that indicated not only its horizontal 
axis but also its depth below the surface. Paul and 
Beatrice dragged their unprotesting but clearly 
long-suffering security guards across the many 
cities of the Moon and once there to its many 
different levels. 

They went to the zoo in Dziewulski City which housed 
a collection of genetically modified farm and 
domestic animals that had been designed and bred in 
the early days of lunar colonisation. It was 
accompanied by a museum that showed the somewhat 
distressing consequence of applying similar methods 
of genetic modification to humans. Descendants of 
these peculiar people could still be found on the 
Moon for whom space travel was more or less 
impossible. They were well adapted for living on the 
Moon but not for anywhere else.

The couple also attended cultural events such as 
opera, theatre and ballet in the capital of Mons 
Huygens where the various venues were unusually 
close to the lunar surface. It was even possible to 
stroll out of the Philip Glass Opera House and look 
directly up at the sky where Earth was in half-
profile and various large space cruisers were 
hovering by. Ballet dancing in low gravity required 
especially ingenious choreography. When a ballerina 
was thrown across the stage it might take ten 
seconds or more for her to complete her flight by 
which time she was well able to adjust her graceful 
arrival to whatever motif was required by the music.

Paul and Beatrice travelled by shuttle to the Moon's 
core where the most remarkable feature was the 
affect of gravity at a location where all directions 
were both vertically up and down. There wasn't much 
to do when they got there and the actual journey was 
rather boring although Beatrice professed to be 
fascinated by the geological evidence of early 
volcanism.

The most relaxing aspect of the Moon as far as Paul 
was concerned, after his fraught voyage across the 
Solar System, was that there were no further 
assassination attempts while he was there. Or, at 
least, none that he was aware of. This was something 
he discussed with one of the security guards that 
accompanied the couple when he and Beatrice were 
visiting one of the Moon's many subterranean parks. 
Paul was watching a pair of horses prance about on 
the lawn with more agility than they ever could on 
Earth gravity, while Beatrice wandered into a 
botanic garden that was famous for its cultivation 
of low gravity plants. This didn't interest Paul, so 
he wandered idly over to where the security guards 
were sitting on a bench by the side of the lake and 
broke all conventions of discretion by directly 
addressing Juan, one of the guards, and remarked on 
how few assassination attempts there'd been.

"It's true that no one's blown up any more walkways 
or women's toilets," the guard said, "but we still 
have to maintain the highest level of vigilance."

"Have there been any attempts that you've managed to 
thwart?" Paul wondered. 

"Such as, for instance, sir...?"

"Have you caught anyone carrying explosives or a 
laser rifle or anything like that?" 

"No, sir," said Juan. "I don't think that would be 
possible on the Moon. There are very strict laws 
regarding the ownership of lethal weapons. Anything 
like that would be spotted very easily."

"So, what are you looking out for?"

"You don't need anything as obvious as a bomb or a 
gun to kill someone, sir," said Mandy, another of 
the guards. "It doesn't take much ingenuity to 
improvise a tool for murder. Some people are strong 
enough to use nothing more than their bare hands. We 
just watch out for suspicious behaviour."

"Have you apprehended anyone who's behaved 
suspiciously?"

"Naturally, sir," said Juan, "but we've not come 
across conclusive proof of murderous intent. 
Behaving suspiciously isn't a crime."

"So, nothing?" said Paul who was actually rather 
disappointed.

"There have been some quite suspicious events, sir," 
said Mandy. "There was a suicide bomber who chose to 
blow himself up outside your hotel. This was when 
you were due to return after a tour of the palace 
complex at Terra Pruin‘ but, thankfully, you decided 
to stay overnight and come the following day."

"Any explanation as to why?"

"There was no suicide note and no apparent motive, 
sir."

"Anything else?"

"As I say, nothing conclusive, sir," said Juan. 
"There are some other peculiar incidents that we're 
investigating. There was a woman who chose to jump 
off a tall building less than a kilometre from where 
you were walking at the time in Maupertuis. There 
was a tram that came off its tracks only a few 
minutes before you were due to cross the road. There 
was a case of food-poisoning in a restaurant where 
you were due to dine, before you decided to go 
somewhere else at the last moment. It's possible 
that there's a pattern, sir, but on a satellite of 
several billion people crowded so close together you 
can never be sure."

"I guess not," said Paul, who was still slightly 
disappointed.

The Moon was the first place Paul had visited since 
he'd left Godwin where he could vanish into the 
crowd. And what a crowd it was! The Moon wholly 
deserved its reputation for high population density. 
Because so many mouths needed to be fed, a high 
proportion of the Moon's tourist attractions were 
there for entirely practical purposes. These 
included vast agricultural vats, extensive 
underground lakes, gigantic atmosphere generators 
and truly colossal power stations. 

The Moon's original colonists were drawn by the many 
opportunities that were offered to industry and 
commerce on a satellite where concern for the 
environment was no restraint. Such an innocent 
attitude was impossible now that there were so many 
centuries of Lunar history to preserve, but the 
result of these early carefree days were not only 
many magnificent monuments but also many salutary 
warnings. There were not only the grotesque animals 
and plants that were the outcome of countless 
experiments in genetic modification to adapt to the 
Moon's low gravity and lack of atmosphere. There was 
the hollow shell of a nuclear fusion power station 
that had exploded in spectacular style and which 
provided a fireworks display that was clearly 
visible in the night sky to its Earthbound 
shareholders. There was also the antimatter power 
station that was now nothing more than a big round 
hole in what had once been Mare Humorum. There were 
the collapsed towers that were intended to 
facilitate space travel by the implementation of 
space elevators, but had fallen victim to unexpected 
but quite critical design flaws.

The tourist attractions didn't only consist of 
monuments to the folly of human industry and 
entrepreneurism. There were also sites of ancient 
battles that were all that was left of the several 
wars fought between the Lunar colonies of Earth's 
many nations. The most spectacular of these was the 
nuclear wasteland in the Vallis Bouvard where the 
warring fragments of the short-lived United States 
of America slugged it out to the great advantage of 
the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian Lunar Colonies 
who'd remained neutral in the dispute but took 
ownership of what was left behind. This was a 
reminder of a chapter in human history where the 
usual theatre for unresolved and irresolvable 
conflict was the Moon, before Mars and the Asteroid 
Belt became its more natural home.

It was inconceivable that any nation would fight a 
war over the Moon nowadays. It was an economic dwarf 
that managed to generate only about as much income 
as was required to support its teeming billions. In 
any case, the Moon was no longer an independent 
nation or even a league of nations. Its affairs were 
now managed by the Interplanetary Union and its 
political institutions were not so much independent 
as ineffectual. 

Paul gazed at the Earth on the horizon with one arm 
round Beatrice and a tall cocktail glass grasped in 
his free hand. The couple were on the balcony of 
their luxury hotel that afforded them the rare 
privilege of a view over the Moon's surface. In 
every direction towards the very edge of the Mare 
Australe stretched the glistening reflections off 
the glass domes under which most Lunar citizens 
lived and laboured. Only a few tall buildings, like 
the Southern Cross Hotel, towered above the surface. 
These were hermetically sealed from the dark 
nothingness of Lunar space. Above their heads and 
over the Moon's surface cruised vehicles of all 
sizes along straight traffic lines that didn't 
deviate for hundreds of kilometres.

"I never thought I'd get so bored of being on the 
Moon," said Paul.

"It's only because you're so keen to land on Earth, 
sweetest," said Beatrice. "There are plenty of 
things to do on the Moon."

"I think I can live without seeing another sublunar 
mine, another graveyard to the hundreds of thousands 
who died in some ancient war, or another museum of 
Lunar geology or Lunar arts or Lunar exploration," 
said Paul sulkily. "We've travelled so far and at 
such great cost and all we've discovered is one huge 
amusement park."

Beatrice kissed her lover on the cheek and ran her 
arms down his naked body to gently squeeze his still 
damp penis.

"Do you think it'll be any different on Earth?" she 
asked.

"I certainly hope so," said Paul. "After all, they 
say that whoever's tired of Earth is tired of life."

"Well, let's hope you're right," said Beatrice. "But 
it's actually the Moon with which the saying is most 
famously associated. And originally it was used 
about London by a dictionary-writer. But you're not 
tired of life, are you dear?"

Paul smiled. "Not with you by my side," he said, 
still dumbstruck by his good fortune to have such a 
beautiful wife.

Chapter Twenty Five 
Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

Captain Kerensky had good reason to feel satisfied. 
The Interplanetary Space Ship Intrepid was safe and 
secure. Every surviving crusader and jihadist of the 
Holy Coalition had been apprehended, interrogated 
and processed. The Intrepid was continuing on its 
voyage to the furthest reaches of the Solar System 
as originally scheduled. The space ship had taken a 
battering, but there had been an almost total 
recovery. The Holy Coalition space pods attached 
like acne boils to the ship's surface had been 
assimilated into the main system and were now 
helping to replenish the essential raw materials 
needed to repair the Intrepid's damaged hull. 
Although the captain would much rather that she'd 
never had to deal with an incident of this kind she 
was gratified that everything had been resolved 
satisfactorily.

Nadezhda monitored the space ship's several levels 
from the office adjacent to her quarters. The only 
travellers on the Space Ship Intrepid not in a mood 
to celebrate the recent victory were the soldiers of 
the Holy Coalition. They were understandably 
despondent and depressed. They were also very 
quarrelsome. The differences in doctrine and 
religious worship that had been set aside when the 
fractious coalition was working towards a common 
cause had once again become ascendant. The ill-will 
was further exacerbated by resentment and mutual 
recrimination with regards to the mission's failure. 
There had been several suicides and also several 
instances of murder as was inevitable between 
fanatics of opposing persuasions. Captain Kerensky 
was quite content to allow the prisoners inflict 
whatever harm they wished on each other without 
interference. Although she wasn't an anarchist, she 
believed that differences should be resolved in 
whatever way the antagonists might prefer. In any 
case, every prisoner had been individually offered 
the opportunity to remain in safe confinement well 
away from the interdenominational violence.

Nadezhda was about to relax on her bed when she was 
made aware that a visitor was about to call. She 
glanced at the holographic image by the side of her 
bed that displayed a figure standing in the corridor 
outside her apartment. 

It was Beatrice.

Nadezhda jumped off her bed with delight. It was 
several days since she'd last seen her lover. And 
Beatrice was the person Nadezhda most wanted to see. 
She'd been so immersed in the affairs of the ship 
since the abortive invasion that she'd neglected her 
sexual needs but now the crisis was over there was 
no company more welcome than her Venusian lover. 
Indeed, it was something for which she now had an 
urgent need.

"Come in! Come in!" she commanded breathlessly. She 
rushed from her bed towards the door where her lover 
was waiting. And as Nadezhda had already observed 
from her holographic image she was standing there 
already totally naked. Beatrice was evidently 
determined to make her intentions abundantly clear.

The two women locked their mouths together while 
Beatrice hurriedly tugged off Nadezhda's clothes. 
This wasn't easy given the tightness of her uniform, 
the closeness of their bodies and her evident 
desire. The two women sidled backwards, shedding 
Nadezhda's underwear as they did so, until they fell 
onto the bed awaiting them. Moments before it was to 
have been Nadezhda's retreat from physical exertion, 
and now it would be the scene for making passionate 
love.

Words weren't exchanged and didn't need to be. 
Nadezhda knew exactly what her lover desired as did 
Beatrice the captain's needs. They were entangled in 
writhing, perspiring carnal unity. Nadezhda's crotch 
burned with a craving that Beatrice's tongue, 
fingers and lips didn't so much quench but rather 
enflamed further. Despite the urgency of their 
shared passion, Nadezhda was aware of how unusually 
urgent Beatrice's lovemaking was. It burned with 
intensity but was somehow also tinged with regret. 
Nadezhda speculated on whether the stress of the 
last week or so might have taken a toll on her 
lover. 

"What's troubling you?" Nadezhda asked when the two 
women paused and she could at last gather her 
breath.

"Do you think I'm troubled?" Beatrice asked calmly. 
She had an enviable ability to regain her composure 
however intense her orgasms.

"Yes," said Nadezhda as she stroked her lover's 
glorious thick mane of hair. "That's what I sense."

"It may be," said Beatrice sadly as she continued to 
pepper the captain's lips and cheeks with 
affectionate kisses, "that I worry that this might 
be the last time we should make love in this way."

Nadezhda was alarmed. "Why would that be? Has your 
husband discovered our affair and..."

"No, it's nothing to do with Paul. He remains as 
wondrously innocent as ever. No, it's because I 
believe that you may soon no longer want me to make 
love to you."

"And why would that be, sweetheart?" asked Nadezhda 
who began to speculate about the dark guilty secrets 
her lover might reveal and which she could then 
dismiss. She would happily declare that her lover's 
such paltry concerns were as nothing to the 
overwhelming love Nadezhda felt. Perhaps her lover 
would confess that she'd made a living as a 
prostitute on Ecstasy which was what Nadezhda 
already suspected. Perhaps she was guilt-ridden by 
her infidelity towards the man she had only recently 
married.

"It's because I am not quite the person you or 
anyone else on this ship think I am," said Beatrice. 

She eased Nadezhda off her bosom and slid off the 
bed. She stood upright while the captain swung her 
legs over the edge of the mattress.

"What could you be?" asked Nadezhda with a 
sympathetic smile. "You're not a criminal, are you? 
You're not a secret member of the Holy Coalition? If 
you were then you've committed the sins of adultery 
and lust far too often to ever have a hope of 
salvation. What kind of a woman can you be?"

"I'm not a woman at all," said Beatrice with a face 
that was nothing but serious. "In fact, I'm not even 
human."

And in case words were not enough, Beatrice then 
demonstrated the truth of her assertion. 

Nadezhda had seen many strange sights in her voyages 
across the Solar System. Until now the most peculiar 
with which she had close intimacy was Colonel 
Vashti's remarkable body. However, as Beatrice's 
skin became steadily more translucent she now 
witnessed something she'd never imagined possible. 
Beatrice's flesh became totally transparent and 
revealed a complex mix of plastic and organic 
materials beneath her skin that resembled computer 
circuitry. Then when Nadezhda's eyes had adjusted to 
this strange vision, Beatrice's skin slowly regained 
its flesh-coloured hue.

"Are you an alien?" the captain asked. 

Nadezhda stood up. Although she was still naked she 
was no longer sure she wanted to display her body so 
openly. She looked about the room and saw that her 
clothes were too far scattered for her to grab them 
easily and get dressed.

"In a sense, I am," Beatrice said with a frank 
smile. "But more than that, I am an android. At 
least, that's the nearest word in your vocabulary 
for what I am."

Nadezhda had met androids before. In fact, she'd 
even made love to one in Earth orbit on the pleasure 
colony of Manumission. But androids only had a 
limited and very selective artificial intelligence. 
None were as manifestly sentient as Beatrice. 
Indeed, Nadezhda wasn't aware that any machine 
existed with anything remotely like Beatrice's 
degree of sentience.

"Where were you manufactured?" Captain Kerensky 
wondered. "I didn't know Ecstasy had the capability 
to build androids as advanced as you."

"As I said," Beatrice replied, "I am an alien. I 
come from the Proxima Centauri system. My home is 
one of many thousands of space colonies that orbit 
the red dwarf star."

"How can that be?" asked the captain who tried to 
stayed focused on this bizarre conversation. 
Countless panicked thoughts in Nadezhda's mind 
competed with one another for prominence. All those 
weeks of sexual passion. All those secrets divulged 
under the satin sheets. The passion that she'd been 
sharing only a few moments earlier. "There are 
thousands of probes circling the neighbouring star 
systems and not one of them has provided evidence of 
alien life."

"It's a simple matter to intercept the transmissions 
sent back by Interplanetary Union space probes and 
ensure that all you ever see is what we wish you to 
see," said Beatrice. "And just as we can take 
control of all the transmissions sent from your 
probes and telescopes and thereby hide ourselves 
from sight, it is a simple matter for us to take 
control of the Space Ship Intrepid." She glanced 
meaningfully at the captain's stealthy approach 
across the bedroom. "I'm afraid, captain, that you 
won't be able to request help or assistance. We 
won't permit it. The ship's computer is no longer 
under your control or indeed that of the 
Interplanetary Union. It is wholly and utterly under 
our control."

Captain Kerensky decided to call Beatrice's bluff 
only to find that her words were true. The ship 
computer was wholly unresponsive to her attempts to 
activate the security controls.

"You say we," said the captain, "but all I can see 
is you."

Beatrice nodded slightly. A holographic image 
suddenly filled the bedroom. It showed the Space 
Ship Intrepid flying through space. The ship's hull 
was still pockmarked with the scars left by the Holy 
Coalition's invasion. However, the image also showed 
that the Intrepid was not alone. It was surrounded 
by a fleet of innumerable wedge-shaped and oval 
objects.

"What are they?" Captain Kerensky asked. "And why 
haven't I seen them before?"

"My culture has cloaking devices that are far more 
advanced than anything used by the Holy Coalition," 
said Beatrice. "They are far superior, in fact, to 
anything that your human civilisation has yet 
developed. The objects you see intercepted this 
space ship within the last couple of hours, but the 
Intrepid's computers have been under our control for 
a very long time before that. In fact, from before 
the mission was even launched. What you see is a 
fleet of space craft that have been hovering beyond 
the Heliopause for many years. They have been there 
for the sole purpose of intercepting your space ship 
and to accompany it to the Anomaly."

"Are the occupants of the space fleet going to 
occupy the Intrepid?"

"Why should they, captain? You can get along very 
nicely without us. In any case, we are a benign 
civilisation. We wish you humans no harm. And why 
should we? After all, you are our creators."

"Creators? I thought you said you were aliens."

"And so we are. But we owe our original creation to 
your human civilisation. We are alien in the sense 
that we live beyond the Solar System. We are alien 
in the sense that we're not human or biological. But 
we aren't alien in the sense that we would exist if 
it weren't for human civilisation."

"I don't understand," said Captain Kerensky who had 
never imagined that the First Encounter humankind 
would have with an alien civilisation would be in 
her bedroom with someone who'd just shared her 
repeated orgasms.

"You might recall our conversation at the time of 
the Holy Coalition's invasion," said Beatrice. "You 
were speculating about aliens and robotic probes to 
the neighbouring star systems in the distant past. 
Although 23rd and 24th Century human technology was 
less sophisticated than it is now, it was 
sufficiently advanced to manufacture robotic probes 
that could reproduce and, above all, learn. What 
wasn't anticipated was that the robotic probes' 
artificial intelligence was enough to trigger an 
evolutionary process. It didn't take very many 
centuries for these primitive robotic probes to 
evolve genuine intelligence and self-awareness. We 
also benefited from the scientific knowledge you 
kindly equipped us with and continued to transmit 
into space. We soon surpassed the technical and 
scientific levels of human society. Now, over a 
thousand years later, we represent a superior 
civilisation that has colonised all the neighbouring 
stars."

"But not the Solar System..." Captain Kerensky pointed 
out.

"Ours is a benign civilisation," repeated Beatrice. 
"We mean no harm. The galaxy is immense. It can 
easily accommodate our civilisation and yours, 
though I suspect many of your politicians and 
statesmen might believe otherwise. We have 
infiltrated your civilisation, but we have 
interfered with it as little as possible. The 
apparent slowness of the development in technology 
and science in the Solar System that you also 
alluded to in our earlier discussion has nothing to 
do with any tampering from our civilisation. The 
reason our civilisation has progressed rather faster 
and more effectively than yours is entirely because 
we are a machine society whilst yours is biological. 
Societies based on biological systems are 
necessarily limited: not least in their ability to 
colonise the galaxy."

"And do all you aliens look like you, Bea..." Nadezhda 
hesitated about referring to the android by a human 
name. "Are they all human-like in appearance?"

"Not at all," said Beatrice. "In fact, I doubt that 
even one of my fellow aliens in the surrounding 
space fleet resembles me at all. On the whole, a 
human frame isn't very practical. I was manufactured 
the way I am for a specific mission and it is in 
pursuit of that mission that I am currently engaged. 
There are other androids like me, but we are 
scattered thinly throughout the Solar System. We 
have successfully infiltrated your societies at many 
levels and for many different purposes but, in 
general, very few of my fellow aliens resemble human 
beings at all."

"And what about me?" wondered Captain Kerensky. "Now 
I know that you're an alien, what are you going to 
do to me?"

"Nothing, my dear," said Beatrice. "It's only been 
necessary to inform you at all because you're the 
captain of this space ship. Nobody else need know. 
And, in truth, nobody will know. Your central 
nervous system has already been modified so that you 
are physically incapable of telling anyone."

"What do you mean? What have you done to me? How 
have you modified my body?"

"Very easily, though close physical proximity was of 
great assistance. Your central nervous system has 
been reprogrammed so that any attempt on your part 
to inform anyone of what you know will result in a 
paralysing neurological systems failure. But don't 
worry. It will be brief and not critical. We would 
much prefer to have your active cooperation, but we 
can't allow you to sabotage our mission."

"Surely Mission Control on the Moon will notice 
something peculiar in my regular reports?"

"Communication is achieved by remote holographic 
communications. We simply provide our own version 
which is so designed that it will raise no 
suspicion. It would have been simpler to 
incapacitate you but, as I said, we are a benign 
civilisation. We have no wish to bring you harm nor 
to restrict your freedom beyond what is absolutely 
necessary. Yes, you are now a prisoner in the space 
ship you will continue to nominally command. Yes, 
you are now unable to speak freely. But we respect 
your aptitude and expertise as an experienced space 
ship captain. We would prefer that you continued to 
serve in that capacity: at least insofar as it 
doesn't interfere with our mission."

"So, is the Anomaly your creation? Is it an alien 
invasion force that has come to take control of the 
Solar System?"

"We have no interest in invading the Solar System? 
What possible benefit would the extra burden of 
several hundreds of billions of fractious humans be 
to us? We are as much ignorant as to what this 
Anomaly is as you are."

"Why hijack the Intrepid? If you can cross 
interstellar space so easily, can't you travel to 
the Anomaly without hijacking a human space ship?"

Beatrice pinched her nose as she contemplated the 
captain's question. "Yes, we can easily travel to 
the Anomaly across deep space. In fact, we've had 
probes orbiting it from almost the moment it 
reappeared. But it still remains a mystery to us. 
What is of most significance is that it is in the 
neighbourhood of your Solar System and not ours. Why 
would an alien civilisation choose to make its 
presence known to the least technologically advanced 
civilisation in this arm of the galaxy? That is, if 
it is an alien presence at all and not a wholly 
natural phenomenon. And what does it have to do with 
all the peculiar apparitions that have been observed 
throughout your Solar System?"

"If it isn't an alien civilisation artefact," 
remarked Captain Kerensky, "what can it be?"

"I don't know," said Beatrice, "but it is imperative 
that we find out. We need to know whether its 
presence in the vicinity of your Solar System isn't 
in some way associated with the fact that you are a 
biological civilisation. That may be the key to why 
it's appeared here and not in the stellar systems of 
non-biological societies. That's why we want your 
craft to remain fully intact when it makes its 
rendezvous with the Anomaly. In that sense at least 
we shall do our utmost to ensure that your mission 
is an unqualified success."

"Why is it imperative that you discover what the 
Anomaly is?"

Beatrice raised her eyes and furrowed her brow. 

"The Anomaly is getting bigger. Much bigger. It is 
several thousand kilometres in length and it is 
growing all the time. Our home stars may be over 40 
trillion kilometres away, but we can't be certain 
that something that we don't understand that is 
growing at a rate we can't predict and has an effect 
on the surrounding space that we can't comprehend 
won't one day be rather more significant than a 
local disturbance on the fringe of your Solar 
System."