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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 08:00:02 -0500
From: "Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@pendorwright.com>
Subject: {ASSM} Journal Entry 133 / 01309  Albedo One (MF)
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Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:10:07 -0400
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Albedo One
Attendes 1309
Kwarat/Takan twisted the horizontal control dial on the control panel.
Before his eyes the image from the survey probe sent to Mapetus II, the
largest of the gas giant's many moons, flickered to the left. He had
been at this particular task for nearly half his waking day and had yet
to see anything more exciting than unending expanses of snow and rock.

Fifth expedition to Mapetus. First expedition to bring with it a
contingent of graduate students and professors, real *scientists*
instead of glory-seeking astronauts. Or so he had thought when he had
first volunteered. He had come to know some of those astronauts and now
had a much greater respect for the knowledge, wisdom, and caution they
brought with them to their craft. He now knew that each of them cared
more for science than some pairs of professors he had left back home.
They felt as much excitement as he in joining this trip.

He didn't feel those thrills now. He felt bored. His eyes hurt
intensely. He reached for the bottle of eyedrops in his pocket. He kept
them there rather than in his small carry tote because it would stay
warm against his skin and he preferred to avoid the sensation of cold
drops in his eyes. As he leaned back, he twisted the dial a little
further.

The terrain slid by as the drops fell into his left eye. Takan blinked,
wiped the drops from the barbules of his cheek with his fingertips and
looked at the screen. Satisfied he hadn't missed anything he leaned back
to put drops into the other eye. The bottle, small and made of a smooth
plastic, slipped out of his wet fingers. "Starve," he swore as he leaned
over to pick it up. As he bent down, a bright shape just edging its way
off the screen caught his attention. "Eh?"

He hit pause on the computer, turned the knob back the other way until
the bright spot on the screen lay dead center. He retrieved his bottle
of eyedrops, put several into his right eye, and then turned his
attention back to the bright spot.

It reflected light more brightly than anything in its immediate
surroundings. The albedo registered far higher than the ice at which he
had spent most of his day staring, and it lay alone in one corner of an
isolated, rocky plateau far from any of the large ice fields. With a
lightpen he marked off two corners around the object and defined a
rectangle. A few commands through the keyboard and the object filled the
screen. He fiddled with the controls for slightly more resolution, but
nothing that cause anyone to question the accuracy of his image. "Par,
could you come here a moment?"

"Whatcha got, Tak?" Nannar/Parin asked, leaning over his shoulder.

"What do you make of that?"

Parin looked over Takan's shoulder at the screen. "Not sure. Albedo of
one, so it's better than the grey ice which covers ninety percent of
this rock. Six and a half *oma* long, or thereabouts. Slightly more than
two *oma* wide at the widest point, with some kind of hump right above
that wide point, tapering down to about one *oma* at the other end."

"Par, that's a Sayrin form."

"Don't jump to conclusions, Tak."

Takan jumped to a standing position instead. "Look at it, Par! Tell me
that's not sayrinoid. It's got a head, those are shoulders, those are
its legs."

Parin looked again. It did have that compelling shape. "Why are the legs
so narrow?"

"Maybe it's got them crossed over, you know, the way some people sit
with their legs up." Takan sat down again. "It's just a theory,"

"Tak, next thing you'll be telling me that there really *is* a face in
the stone under the clouds of Regor and that the SFA is covering it up."
Parin took a breath. If nothing else, this object held a little mystery.
And to a couple of graduate students who had started to feel like
nothing more than wageless slaves to professorial masters, a mystery was
easily welcomed. "You're right. It's a theory. And it's an
interesting-looking object. I'll point it out to Maykir/Cot and see if
she'll approve an extra fly-by of the Mapetus II probe."

            *            *            *

Brynda looked down through her enhanced eyes at the world below. As
uninviting as Dante's Hell and twice as cold, it looked just right to
her. She selected a flat space on an elevated plain for her project, and
then began casting about for a place where she could quarry the
necessary materials. She found it, about sixteen kilometers from the
display site down a steep slope. *Perfect.*

            *            *            *

Maykir/Cot adjusted the glasses over her eyes and peered at the display.
"You haven't mentioned this to anyone else, have you?" she asked Takan
and Parin as they examined the logs of the second, "sledded" flyby of
the site now labeled Albedo One.

"No, Professor," Takan said. Parin shook his head as well in the
negative.

"You're right, Parin. It's... interesting." She said the word slowly,
not sure what to make of the image on the screen. Closer up and
deliberately examined from no more than a *siloma* it looked even more
like a sayrinoid form than it had in the original pictures.

"Look at it," Takan said. "It's like someone just lying there on the
beach. You can see everything. The top of his head, his feet--"

"How do you know it's a 'he'?" Maykir/Cot asked testily. "We don't even
know if it's an 'it' yet, young mel. Parin is more correct this time--
we don't know what it is. We will not know until we go down there." She
smiled patiently. "However, we *will* be going down there. You are
invited first, of course."

Takan's eyes widened with the offer. "Of course!"

"Parin, you as well."

"Thank you, Maykir/Cot. I accept gratefully."

"And not a word of this until dinnertime. I shall be making the
announcement. We'll need two more students, two pilots, and another
professor. I shall ask Fedden/Cot first, privately. You do not have that
luxury. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Professor," Parin agreed. Takan shook his head in agreement.

            *            *            *

Brynda panted inside her powered armor. The work was harder than she had
first anticipated. But then, when was such work ever *easy*? There was
precious little silver on this ball of rock, although she had almost
collected enough for the task at hand. She snarled a little at the small
tunnel before her, then caught a glint of light down and to her left.
Sensors lit up and told her she had struck a vein of bright, clean
silver. More than enough for the project she had in mind.

            *            *            *

At dinner that evening, they sat at a table with several of their
classmates, wondering exactly how Maykir/Cot was going to deliver the
announcement. Parin was right and both of them knew it-- it was probably
a coincidence, late volcanic ejecta smoothed to a polish by some
unexplained phenomena. But if Takan was correct then both of them knew
that his name would go into history books. Parin wanted to go along to
be at least a footnote in that same history.

About halfway through dinner the monitors mounted in the four corners of
the messroom came to life. Normally during meals they simply displayed
the time and a scrolling list of news reports back home, but for
assemblies and important announcements they were the easiest way of
gaining the attention of people raised to watch such boxes.

"Ladies and gentlemels," Maykir/Cot opened up, "An opportunity has
arisen for some of you to visit Mapetus II. I require two of you to
volunteer to go to the surface of Mapetus II to investigate an unusual
geological structure. I have attained the permission of Tikiniri/Fen for
a shuttlecraft to visit the site. For those of you who would like to
know what we're interested in, this is one of the clearer images we have
of the site." The image flickered as the signal switched to a new feed,
and now the picture they had been looking at only a short while ago came
back to Takan and Parin. With the monitor some distance away, it looked
even more like just some mel, lying on the beach, watching the girls go
by. The whole pose seemed uncanny.

The room erupted in people running for the terminals. Takan and Parin
got out of their way. Parin gave Takan a two-fingers- vertical salute,
an acknowledgment that, whether it was real or not, it was causing a
stir. Actual knowledge would have to wait.

            *            *            *

She took the silver, the steel, the miscellaneous metals, and her little
bag of tricks and settled down by the quarry. She had been careful not
to disturb the final site for her catstone (she hesitated to call it a
'monument,' and 'monolith' was completely out of the question), and so
would do the final construction here. It would take her several days at
least.

Lasers and fusion power made smelting and blending the silver and steel
into an alloy as casual an act as mixing flour and water. That was not
the hard part. Directed with gravitics fields and containment zones, it
became a four-meter long block of stainless steel roughly the shape of a
Uncia. Making it look like a Uncia, one made of silver so polished it
shone with the full rage of the sun-- that would take much longer.

            *            *            *

The other two students had introduced themselves as Leksan and Helia.
Fedden/Cot and Maykir/Cot sat in the front of the shuttle's personnel
hold, talking animatedly, exchanging precious hardcopy photographs of
Albedo One. That the supply officer had let them have the dense, glossy
paper necessary for such printing indicated that even he had been
convinced of the serious nature of this investigation. On such a long
trip-- five months, each way-- blank paper was a rare and precious
thing. Parin, who doodled almost habitually, had once confided in Takan
that if he didn't have something to draw on he would go mad. Computer
memory, fortunately, was not so rare and precious these days, and
Parin's quota had quietly been filled and emptied six times since the
beginning of the voyage. Each time a little less was freed as Parin saw
something he couldn't bear to part with.

Fasst/Fen, their pilot, announced that they were coming close to the
landing site. Maykir/Cot had decided that they should land no closer
than a *siloma* from the anomaly and approach on foot. The idea of
walking that far in their space suits failed to appeal to Takan.

"What do you think it is?" Leksan asked Takan as the latter stared out
the window.

Takan shrugged. "We'll find out."

"I think it's a message left by aliens," Helia said, her eyes wide and
ingenuous.

"But why would they make it look like it was resting? I mean, can you
picture it?" Parin asked. "It's like this." He leaned his seat back,
laced his fingers behind his head, and put his feet up on the seat
across the aisle. "What kind of message is this?"

"'Relax'?" Takan asked. "'Lay down, cool off, the universe isn't as wild
as you think it is'?"

"If that is true," Fedden/Cot said from his seat up front, "Then their
gesture is a complete failure. Any species with enough time and power to
send such a frivolous message indicates to me that the universe, if
anything, is more wild than I have imagined it to be." Fedden/Tarim/Cot
had published a number of books on the possibility of extraterrestrial
life. Although his books were considered to be 'imaginative' in the way
they presented such possibilities, they were not best-sellers due to the
technical layers he heaped onto his presentations. A colorful genius
with a flare for the startling (he had once postulated that the aliens
could already be here, as robots too small for the eye to see), the
students had welcomed him on board as a counterpoint to the dry and
seemingly humorless, but no less brilliant, Maykir/Cot. "In the
meantime, Parin, I suggest you put your seat up and prepare for
touchdown."

            *            *            *

It had taken her nearly two weeks just to get the general shape right,
and the polishing had gone on for another week. Even with power tools
and nanotech at her disposal, some thing had to be finished by her
hands, her eyes. But when she was finally done, he looked perfect. "I
dub thee Uncia Apollo," she said, touching the shining head of her Greek
God. The face was the best part, she thought. It was a delightful
expression; she had managed to get it just precise. Although she had to
admit to herself that the face might not have been quite so wonderful
without the rest of the package; the muscled chest, the casually crossed
legs, and, of course, his penis. Standing large and erect, it made it
clear quite why he looked the way he did. "Maybe I should call this
work, 'I am for you.'" She hadn't made up her mind yet.

On the bare wasteland of this rock world whose name she barely knew, she
reached up for the seals on her armor. With a casual flick, she let air
out into the jealous vacuum, each atom of which was sucked out into an
infinity of space it desperately tried to fill. She felt the curious
tingle of final life-support kicking in, the micropressors scattered
about her body providing her with life-sustaining warmth and pressure
for four hours-- or for several days when she was within reach of a
SDisk network. Her ship qualified. The only thing she had to fear was
micrometeorite impact-- and without an atmosphere to destroy them, that
might present a very real risk. Even in orbits like this world's, which
had been swept almost clean by eons of gravitic tides, the possibility
was remote. For safety's sake she tossed a pair of CKK drones into the
air, then shucked the rest of her armor, even her boots-- to finally
stand naked on the surface of this tiny moon.

Overhead, the great gas-giant gleamed down at her like some majestic
deity. She understood how people could get religion over things like
that. Swirls of orange, yellow, and red coruscated back and forth on its
surface. Unlike Jupiter, which she had first visited many centuries ago,
the planet Mapetus had a very slow rotation, and so its storms mixed and
merged like differently- weighted fluids in a tumbler, rather than in
bands. "Shaken, not stirred," the line from the astronomers went.

Snapping a small pack on a belt around her waist, she directed two cargo
drones to pick up the statue she had crafted and walked with them
towards the selected site. It would be a long walk. She relished it.

            *            *            *

"Oh my goddess," Takan said, pointing off slightly to his left as they
approached the anomaly. "Look!"

They all did, of course. It's nearly impossible to resist the impulse to
follow another's excitement. Maykir/Cot saw it next, and when she did,
she took in a sharp breath of disbelief as well. "That's impossible."

"Impossible or not, we must get photographs," Fedden/Cot was saying even
as he hauled his camera up and began recording the images for history.

"He was *barefoot*?" Helia asked, as surprised as the others. "How...
how is that possible?"

"We do not know he was barefoot," Maykir/Cot said, recovering her
demeanor as quickly as she could. "For all we know, this is a hoax."

"By *whom*?" Fedden/Cot asked testily.

Maykir/Cot looked flustered. "I... I don't know. This is unbelievable."

"Yes, but let us not say it is *impossible,*" Fedden/Cot argued. "We
know nothing about who made these prints. All we know is that they are
here, on land no sayrin has ever stepped on. We see prints that are of
feet, yet look at them. They are much larger than our feet. That could
be a bootprint."

"With *toes*?" Takan asked.

"How much do we know about the maker of footprints?" Fedden/Cot replied.
"We see footprints. They head in the direction of the anomaly. Another
set seems to head away from it, see there? They are not bootprints that
we make, but that does not mean they were not made by alien boots,
rather than alien bare feet. Let us progress, being careful not to
disturb the footprints of the other."

They walked on. It took only a few more minutes to approach the anomaly,
which seemed to rest against a small outcropping of rock. The footprints
approached on its left side, so they walked around the rock to the
right. Helia giggled. "Oh, dear."

            *            *            *

The climb up the side of the precipice had been painful. But she had
managed to make it all in one piece and without drawing blood anywhere.
It didn't hurt that the moon had but a shadow of gravity, barely
one-tenth of what she had grown up under. The two drones carrying her
artwork followed her dutifully as she walked the last three kilometers
across the plain to the small crop of rock where she had chosen to leave
Uncia Apollo. She liked that name because it was a *name*, rather than
the title of just another piece of art. The site lay on the far side of
the plateau from where she had climbed, and from the edge of the almost
vertical cliff it wasn't even visible to the unmodified eye.

She walked for nearly an hour. The lower gravity necessitated moving
more slowly. When it finally did come into sight, she realized that she
had chosen well. A small cropping of rock, barely more than a meter
tall, it sloped gently downwards into the ground, the final ejection of
some cataclysmic world-making event many billions of years ago. She
directed the drones around the rock to the side furthest away from her
approach-- and, she hoped, furthest away from the approach of others.
She wanted them to have to walk up close to see it. Yet even she
realized that by the time the species on the second planet had enough
technology to get here they would probably have cameras good enough to
get a clear picture long before they set foot on this little world.

            *            *            *

"I don't get it," Parin said as he walked around the statue with a
camera in hand. "It's... it's weird, that's what it is."

"He is a handsome creature," Maykir/Cot admitted as she admired the
form. "The artist who created him clearly knew what she was doing."

"'She?'" Fedden/Cot inquired. "Are we talking about female intuition
here?"

Maykir/Cot felt relieved that the blush would not be visible through the
tinted visor of her helmet. "Yes. I can feel it, Fedden. A fem made
this. The lines are right for a feminine touch. And the smile... look at
how he smiles. He is thinking mischief, but a happy, satisfied kind of
mischief. He's relaxed. And then there's his erection. It's magnificent
but if you measure it in comparison to the body it is easily within the
average ratios we find among our own mels. It is thick but not long, not
for a body of this size. A fem would make that."

"Or a homosexual," Leksan offered as he rolled up the plastic tape
measure he had used to take measurements. "We notice these things, too."

Maykir/Cot nodded. "That hadn't occurred to me. You're right that many
homosexual artists have sensitivities we do not see in many heterosexual
male artists. But I still go with my first impression. A fem made him."

            *            *            *

Brynda carefully guided the statute, which massed over two metric tons,
to its final resting place. It nestled up against the stone as if it had
been made to fit just in that place, which in a way it had. Lying there,
her polished, smiling, stainless steel god looked... divine. He would
lie here, patient and waiting, for the day when he would shock the
natives. To her thinking he would not wait long; she would still be
alive when the Sayrin, as they called themselves, arrived here in orbit
about their fourth world, their gas giant.

Looking again at the lovely work she had managed, she felt tempted. "No,
you don't, Brynda," she said to herself. But why not? a voice asked her.
True, nobody was around to watch her. And it would be such a shame to
let such a magnificent phallus go to waste. She had to admit to herself
what she had really known, underneath, since the beginning of this
project. "I can't leave you here all by yourself without at least giving
you a moment's pleasure," she said to the statue. He smiled back at her.

            *            *            *

"I must agree with you," Fedden/Cot said as he examined the statue
closer. "The artist is definitely a fem."

"Why do you think so?" Maykir/Cot asked.

"Because the penis is neither excessively large nor vanishingly small."

"Didn't Maykir/Cot already say that?" Helia asked.

"No, she did not. She observed that the penis is average and for that
reason concluded that a fem made. A fem would seek a comfortable medium.
I conclude that a mel did *not* make this for the opposite reason and
for different reasons. Mels are often embarrassed by their penises-- and
artists may seek to minimize what is rightly a strange projection on an
otherwise well- constructed body. The penis has no muscles and no
control you see, and men are loathe to admit that any part of them is
beyond their control.

"Opposing that, some artists would seek to emphasize the penis, to make
a spectacle of the enormous focus of power and masculinity that they see
in it. Such a penis would be excessively large and there would never be
any hint that it was beyond the mel's control. This statue shows
neither. The expression on the face, if I read it well, is one of
anticipation but not dominance. He is neither worshipful nor embarrassed
by his erection. Therefore, a mel did not make this."

"Sounds like the same reasoning to me," Helia said.

"That is why my name ends in 'cot', and you are still a student."

            *            *            *

Brynda knelt before Apollo, looking at him. The smile hadn't moved. Of
course it wouldn't. But she still admired it all the same. I made that,
she thought to herself. Damn, it's a fine piece of work. She crawled up
along his legs until she knelt directly before the gorgeous dick she had
crafted for her Greek godling. It gleamed, the surface reflecting the
light from the gas giant overhead in bright, swirling colors. "What a
handsome tool you have there," she giggled. She had checked the heaters
she carried with her in her small pouch and they all acknowledged that
the statue should be warm to the touch. She finally did touch him along
his metallic thigh and as her sensors had shown he was comfortable to
the touch.

She found herself taking Apollo very seriously. Her mind conjured up
fantasies of what this mel would look like if he should rise from his
eternal lounging and put his hands upon her.

She reached out with her tongue to touch the solid steel head of his
cock. It, too, felt warm, and the silver reacted with her saliva to give
her the strange taste of flowing electrons. A small voice asked her if
it wasn't too strange that she could the taste exciting. She bent her
head down and took the head of his cock into her mouth, wrapping her
tongue around it, feeling it. Although warm, it was completely steel
solid and no amount of coercing would make it soft enough for her to
actually show it the kind of attention her lovers had relished in the
past. But then, Apollo wouldn't mind. He was her little godling. He was
here to do her bidding.

            *            *            *

"Um, Maykir/Cot?" Takan asked as he walked around it. He found it hard
not to look at the shaft of steel pointing up at Mapetus overhead. It
was an impressive looking object. Leskan's mentioning quite so casually
his own homosexuality made Takan even more uncomfortable than the statue
alone had managed to achieve. His scientific training told he was
supposed to be curious about this object, and that the object had an
enormous hard-on jarred slightly in his head.

"Yes, Takan?" She looked up in his direction.

"I, um, I brought one of the 16Khz sensor lasers with me. There appears
to be organic material deposited on the, um, penis."

"You do not think..." Fedden/Cot let his words fade.

"I do think," Maykir/Cot. "If he is a handsome creature to his maker,
and this is not atrophied muscle, these are not deformed limbs, then why
not?"

            *            *            *

With one hand she caressed the hard shaft again. She knew its every
curve, every raised vein, every little crease. She had worked for two
days on just his cock to get it perfect. It had to look perfect for the
aliens when they arrived. With the other hand she caressed her own cunt,
two fingers massaging around her clitoris in delicate whorls, closing in
slowly. She could hear herself giving off small whimpers every time she
got too close to her sensitive spot, pushing her own pleasure up one
more notch.

She reached into the belt pouch she had tossed on the ground nearby and
pulled out the small bottle of aloe she kept there for times as these
she had with toys on her ship. She applied nearly a quarter of the
bottle to the groove formed by her two furred fingers held together and
then slid those fingers into her body. "Oh..." she said to her Apollo,
her stainless steel godling lover. "Yes, that's it, Apollo. Yes. I am
ready. I know you are too."

            *            *            *

They walked back to the shuttlecraft. "I'm still shocked," Parin said.
"What does she think she was trying to say?"

"We shall be arguing about that until she comes back and tells us
herself, if she still exists," Fedden/Cot replied.

"But, I mean, she had... *relations* with her statue before she chose to
leave it here?" His tone said he believed that the artist had but he had
not come to any reasons as to why. "I mean, did she mean to leave her...
fluids... on the statue for us to find or was she overcome with some
strange urge while installing it or... or what?" Parin spoke slowly,
having trouble finding the polite words he needed to talk about this
subject with his professors in earshot.

Helia giggled. "I think she was afraid he'd be lonely. I mean, just
think, she'd be leaving him out where all alone with that erection and
he'd still be a virgin."

"We're talking about a statue," Parin said.

"Not necessarily, not in the mind of the artist," Maykir/Cot pointed
out. "She was clearly quite creative-- he is beautiful, even if it is an
alien beauty. She had a sense of mischief, for she left him here for us
to find. And she was clearly a sexual being, given to lust and desire--
not the kind of hyperlogical creatures you find in poor vidscreen
science fiction. Who knows what kind of fantasies she had to dream just
to craft him? Surely those fantasies were intact when she brought him
here."

            *            *            *

Brynda positioned herself above the rampant phallus of her polished
lover, then lowered herself on it. She felt the warmed head of it nuzzle
against her cunt, tilted her hips enough to make it go in at just the
right angle, and penetrated herself with it. The head slid in a cent or
two. She pumped her hips in gentle cycles, each cycle making both the
cock and her own cunt wetter, until she had the entire length of it
embedded inside her body. "Oh, Apollo..."

It felt better than she had dreamed. His cock was lodged inside her
body. Under her left hand his warm and unrelentingly hard body felt...
like that of a Greek god. She looked up and the smile was still there.

Her other hand continued to play with her clit, those two fingers
sliding around it as quickly as she could manage as she pumped herself
up and down on the eternal, steel shaft. His body gleamed, as mirrors
will, with the light from overhead, the coruscating light changing as
she rose and fell, fucked herself on his magnificent cock. The light
shifted over his face, neck, shoulders, the ridges of muscle on chest
and belly. As her pleasure rose, she dreamed that his gleaming fingers
were on her thighs, holding her, caressing her. She was bathing in light
and rejoicing in pleasure. She thought she could hear his delighted
laughter filling her ears as she came.

            *            *            *

"We are obsessing on the penis precisely because it is a penis and we
don't see penises, especially not erect ones, in art very often. But
look at this statue. Remember what we were looking for when we got here.
The artist is a fem-- it all makes sense only if the artist is a fem. We
came up on it and we saw its feet and that confirmed for us that we were
about to have a unique experience, the first people in all the solar
system to actually have evidence of life other than our own. And then we
walk further, and we see the penis, and we're frozen in place for a
moment by the sight of it. And I agree with Leksan, it's a magnificent
piece of art. But aside from Fedden/Cot's analysis of it, when you
finally see the rest of the statue, you see how magnificent this entire
creature is. And that is not a grimace of pain-- that is pleasure,
amusement, something elated just to be here. And if he's smiling at the
artist or at us doesn't matter."

Maykir/Cot took a breath. "Whatever she meant to say, she has said it
well. She started out by shocking us, and... I was shocked. A grinning,
erect alien is shocking. But in such a gesture she's managed to tell us
so much more-- about ourselves, and about herself."

"The universe has truly become more wild than I imagined," Fedden/Cot
said with a grin.

"You mean the artist really did mean to say 'Sit down, lean back,
there's time to relax?" Takan asked, puzzled.

"Better than that, young mel. She is telling us to be prepared. For in
her universe, there is time enough for the laughter of a good joke, and
the pleasure of intimate contact. In a universe where people cross the
stars there is still time for Sayrinity." Fedden/Cot rubbed his eyes.
"Well, we are docking at the ship. What shall we tell them?"

Maykir/Cot grinned at her comrade. "The truth, of course."

            *            *            *

Spent, exhausted, Brynda pushed herself upwards, feeling the now-warmed
steel prick sliding out of her happy cunt. With the fur on the back of
her hand, she tried to wipe the penis as clean of her juices as
possible. Although in theory the surgical-grade stainless steel wouldn't
degrade from contact with bodily fluids, she wasn't aware of what they
would do after more than a century, especially not in hard,
radiation-filled vacuum.

She stood up and looked down at her Apollo. "There, feel better now?" He
just smiled at her, and the smile looked satisfied now, rather than the
mischief she had intended. She knew that was a trick of her own
imagination. She stretched her back and looked across the vast expanses
of space for the very brightest star, the sun around with this world
visited. "I hope the Sayrin don't take too long in getting to you.
You're too nice a guy to be here all alone." She leaned over and gave
him one more soft kiss on the forehead. "Good-bye, Apollo. Thank you."
She walked back the way she came, back to the small lift platform that
would take her to her starship.

            *            *            *

Tired and achy, Maykir/Cot collapsed onto her bunk with a satisfied
sigh. Her porthole, covered now with a curtain, would have only shown
stars slowly spinning by. A low growl reverberated through the ship, the
sound of the fusion drives at the far end pushing the vessel ever faster
away from Mapetus. She wanted a shower.

The news had made the whole world crazy. Most people thought it was a
practical joke-- and almost half of those people thought the joke had
been perpetrated by someone from the expedition. The religious sorts had
gone berserk. Most still reeled from the knowledge that there
intelligent life did exist outside Sayrin; a few had recovered enough to
actually say something, and many of them denounced the statue as
evidence that the intelligence out there was decadent and corrupt. Some
even proposed that space travel itself "corrupted."

Maykir/Cot thought of it all as complete nonsense. She had seen the Hard
One up close, even touched him. After much debate, the decision had been
made to bring it onto the ship and it still lay in the cargo hold, no
longer in a vacuum after the biology people had decided they'd collected
enough samples. Fingerprints, not like any a sayrin ever made, were all
over the chest, right arm and right leg of the statue. Although nobody
yet knew why the fingerprints were only on that one side Maykir/Cot
thought the easiest explanation was that those places were where she had
held onto it as it had been lowered into place.

They had found the hole where the artist had dug out her collection of
silver, iron, and other metals for her work, had found evidence of
bootprints (apparently she took off her shoes to make a point-- 'See, I
can go barefoot on this cold, airless world.'). They had taken thousands
of photographs, collected hundreds of samples, and already students were
writing dozens of papers.

She hoped someday to meet the artist.

If only to thank her for making life even more interesting today than it
had been yesterday.

----------------------
The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik 
and Related Tales.

The entire archive of stories can be found at:
http://www.pendorwright.com/journals

Copyright 1996 Elf Mathieu Sternberg.
Distributed under the Creative Commons License BY-ND-NC/1.0
Some Rights Reserved. 

Elf's latest stories are available in paperback!  Buy 
the genderbending novel _Sterlings_, available
now from http://stores.lulu.com/elfsternberg

--

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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