by Glenn Smith
About half an hour later he emerged from the bathroom, still naked but otherwise ready to take on the day. He pulled on one of the new sets of briefs and tee shirts that he’d bought at the Mandela Rotunda, threw his dirty clothes in the washer-dryer and turned it on, then started a pot of coffee and prepared his breakfast while it brewed. Four slices of lightly buttered French toast, no syrup, four mildly spicy link sausages, two crispy hash browns, and a glass of orange juice. That was what he would have liked to have. Unfortunately, since he hadn’t thought to go grocery shopping, all he had available to him was a standard Solfleet-issue ration pack from the complementary supply in the freezer. Not exactly the greatest tasting option—he could have gone to one of the dining facilities, of course—but certainly the quickest and most convenient.
After breakfast, such as it was, he sat down at the computer terminal and called up a list of the station’s recreational facilities. He knew, of course, that taking the opportunity to review some more of the mission information Royer’s people had loaded onto his handcomp would be a more productive use of his time, but he also knew that he’d have plenty of time to do that later, during the flight to Mars. For now he just wanted to relax and have some fun. He wanted to try to take his mind off of his mission for a little while and just enjoy the day. Besides, when he and Beth had stayed there for the week or so prior to his departure for Window World, circumstances had prevented them from visiting all but a very few of those facilities, and he’d really wanted to check some of them out again at the time to see how they might have changed in the eight and a half years since he was stationed there.
And now that he finally had some time, so to speak, he was about to find out what they’d had to offer a decade and a half before he was stationed there. How ironic was that?
Combing through the list, it didn’t take him very long to come to the conclusion that the station’s recreational facilities were all pretty much the same as he remembered them. In addition to the numerous, more traditional physical fitness facilities such as well-equipped weight rooms, Olympic-size swimming pools, and open-court gymnasiums that were located in various places throughout the station, there was a wide range of more amusement-oriented options from which to choose. Dylan thought maybe he’d start with a stroll through Central Park’s Solfleet History Museum, a virtual treasure trove of knowledge and information that for whatever reason he’d never taken the time to visit before. Afterwards he might go swimming or boating... or both... at the huge artificial beach. Or maybe spelunking through the deep, dark caverns of the Appalachia Hills might be fun.
On second thought, his last foray into such an environment had been anything but fun, so maybe he’d forego the spelunking and go rock climbing instead.
The farther down the list he read, the more amazed by what the engineers who’d designed and built the station had been able to pack into it he became, and he began questioning why they had ever bothered, or rather would bother in about a dozen years or so, to install the virtuality booths that had become so popular in his own time. What could any virtual environment possibly have to offer over the real thing, or even an actual, tangible recreation of the real thing? That all too common obsession with the ethereal worlds of virtuality had always been one that he simply could not understand, and very likely always would be.
More than a dozen top-name restaurants appeared on the list, as did six different theaters dedicated to motion pictures, virtuavids, or live performances, both dramatic and musical. There was even a separate, strictly administrated and policed adult-oriented area located in the civilian business sector. A sort of Las Vegas in space, where a number of the live acts involved little if any wardrobe, and where specially licensed escorts—‘socialators,’ as they commonly referred to themselves—earned their livings practicing one of the world’s oldest professions.
The museum first, he decided. Then lunch, and possibly some rock climbing after that. Then he’d go to the beach until dinner, and then maybe wrap up the day with a show at one of the theaters. Which show, he’d decide later.
He logged off of the terminal, then got dressed and headed out.
* * *
The old Solar Defense Command. Precursor to the modern Solfleet. An entire wing of the museum had been dedicated to it. Dedicated to those pioneering men and women who’d served in Earth’s first truly international military space fleet. That older and somewhat more politically-oriented body had never had to face an all out interplanetary war, but countless thousands of its brave men and women had nonetheless paid the ultimate price for mankind’s expansion into the stars. Tragic accidents sometimes claimed hundreds at a time, while a simple lack of knowledge and understanding often claimed them by ones or twos or in small groups. Heroes all.
Dylan finished reading a long article about the United Earth Spaceship U.E.S. Icarus, the first manned Earth vessel to ever travel beyond the edge of the solar system, then stood there for the next few minutes and gazed at the large, highly detailed model of the famous ship that was hanging from the ceiling. He’d found the article interesting, and no doubt the ship’s voyage deep into interstellar space had been the biggest news story of its time by far. But what he found most amusing about it, and certainly most ironic, was the fact that the vessel that had voyaged farther from the sun than any before it had been named after the character from Greek mythology known for having flown too close to sun and then falling from the sky and drowning in the sea after his wings of feathers and wax melted. Of course, the vessel shared its name with Admiral Icarus Hansen, too, but try as he might, Dylan couldn’t think of any reason why that might be amusing or ironic.
From the first manned Earth vessel ever to travel beyond the confines of the solar system, Dylan moved on to a display dedicated to the first manned Earth vessel ever to visit another one. The first Earth vessel equipped to make use of what was then, at least to humankind, the newest thing in space propulsion technology—the technology known simply as ‘jump.’ That vessel was the United Earth Starship U.E.S.S. Australia. Benny’s ship. Dylan began to read.
Back in October of 2114, under the leadership and supervision of then Chief Propulsion Engineer Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Andreievich Sedelnikov—Dylan grinned, recalling how Benny had told him that he’d served in the Solar Defense Command as a ‘technician’—the starship Australia had already been retrofitted with the brand new first-generation jump nacelles when Earth’s first jumpstation, the Trident Station, went online. Her first mission? Jump to the Proxima Centauri star system 4.24 light years away and map the surfaces of its planets. The jump out had taken approximately four and a quarter days, about a day per light year of distance, but without a jumpstation on the other side the crew had had to depend on their vessel’s sub-light fusion drive to bring them back home afterwards. With a best speed of roughly three-quarters the speed of light, that leg of the trip had taken more than five and a half years to complete.
Dylan went on to read about several of the Australia’s numerous other missions and was pleasantly surprised to learn that many of the fantastic stories Benny had told him during their voyage together aboard the H.G. Wells were actually true. Sure the old captain had embellished some of the facts a little now and then, as old storytellers often tended to do, but he’d essentially been telling the truth the entire time.
One story that Dylan found particularly interesting and informative was that of the Naku, a race of hardy proto-humans whom the intrepid explorers of the Australia had discovered a few years after visiting Proxima Centauri, living in huge caverns deep beneath the surface of a frozen world they called Naku’Wei in what was at that time the farthest reaches of explored space. For reasons once known only to archaeologists, anthropologists, and xenobiologists, now spelled out in minute detail on the elaborate display before him, the Naku were believed not to be native to their world, but rather to be the descendants of an ancient humanoid race of deep space travelers. According to several published studies, a large group
of those ancient travelers had crash-landed on the surface of that barren, inhospitable world several thousands of years ago and had been forced to move down into the caverns below in order to survive. And survive they did, but over the ensuing generations they lost the knowledge necessary to maintain their once superior level of scientific and technological achievement. Having eventually regressed to the more primitive level of a tribal-based culture, the Naku had been forced to return to the surface and fight both the unforgiving elements and a wide variety of vicious, carnivorous wild animals as they hunted for food, and to procreate as profusely as possible to continue to survive as a species.
As the centuries passed into millennia, their hearing grew keener and their eyesight grew sharper, enabling them to hunt more effectively in the harshest of winter storms. Their teeth grew larger and sharper, more suited to their forced carnivorous diet. They developed strong, leathery tan skin and translucent inner eyelids to protect against the cold and wind and the brightness of the sun reflecting off the snow and ice. They grew thick manes of dense black hair to retain more of their body heat as their average body temperature rose to a torrid forty-eight degrees Celsius. Their average fetal gestation period shortened by as much as twelve percent, and giving birth to twins or triplets rather than to a single child per pregnancy became the norm. An extraordinarily rapid evolution to be sure, anthropologically speaking, as the article pointed out.
The Naku had been reintroduced to modern technology only a few years after the crew of the Australia discovered them, and had adapted to it quickly. However, according to the article, they still rarely if ever traveled very far away from their adopted home world, because to do so meant spending weeks at a time in the much warmer controlled environments of Terran space vessels, which in turn meant feeling uncomfortably warm all the time and having to take frequent cold showers or baths to keep from overheating. Needless to say, a Naku staying away from Naku’Wei long enough to serve a standard ten-year tour of duty in the Solar Defense Command, or even the shorter five-year tour in the present day Solfleet, remained virtually unheard of.
Dylan finally understood why he’d seen so few Naku serving with the fleet they claimed to love and appreciate so much for reintroducing them to the modern galaxy, and why those few he had seen had always been allowed to wear such scant, loose-fitting uniforms. He’d always known they had a tendency to overheat easily, but he’d had no idea just how difficult it was for them to function in what people from Earth considered to be a normal environment.
His stomach rumbled. Time for lunch.
* * *
Dylan found a relatively inexpensive restaurant overlooking the artificial beach, sat down at a table next to one of the large transluminum windows, and ordered what the waitress claimed would taste just like a genuine Philadelphia cheesesteak, with barbecued potato chips and a tall glass of raspberry iced-tea. While he ate, he watched the crowd of literally hundreds of people—mostly humans, but with a handful of Centaurians and even a pair of Naku mixed in—enjoying the same kinds of activities that people routinely enjoyed along the real beaches back on Earth. Swimming, surfing, boating, building sand castles and creating sand sculptures, sunbathing... They were doing it all, and it all looked so relaxing that by the time Dylan finished eating—as usual, getting a good Philadelphia cheesesteak outside of the Philadelphia area had once more proven more easily said than done—all he wanted to do was to go buy a pair of swim trunks and a beach towel and spend the rest of the afternoon out there with them, swimming and basking under the artificial sun. So that was exactly what he did.
He found a relatively clear spot about halfway between the nearest entrance to the beach and the water’s edge, spread his towel out on the fine tan-yellow sand, and sat down facing the water. He grabbed up a handful of that sand and let it pour out between his fingers. Though he knew it was artificial, it looked and felt very real. He looked out at the water and watched as azure waves broke one after another and rolled in on the beach, just as they did at the Jersey Shore, and the gentle breeze carried with it the smell of fresh, salty sea air. If he hadn’t known better, he could have sworn that he was back on Earth. The place was nothing short of amazing.
He leaned back on his elbows and started gawking like a horny teenager at the abundance of beautiful young women all around him, some of whom were wearing some of the skimpiest string bikinis he’d ever seen. How some of those small patches of cloth could even be considered legal at a public beach was beyond him, but they were certainly nice to look at.
A few minutes into his time-passing ‘sightseeing,’ a fairly petite young woman with short dark hair and pretty impressive curves for someone of such a slight build walked past him from behind and kept on walking toward the water. Dylan gazed after her and licked his lips, noticing that she had a very nice... walk.
She stopped about twenty feet ahead of him and then turned around and laid her towel out on the sand, and when she knelt down on it and leaned forward to smooth it out, Dylan saw that her walk wasn’t all that was ‘very nice’ about her. She was a lot more well endowed than he’d expected her to be when he first saw her from behind. The next thing he noticed was that she looked familiar, and it only took another moment for him to realize who she was. The Greek girl from Supply and Logistics, Crewman Ami something or other. When he’d met her at Clothing Issue last night, he’d thought she was a fairly pretty girl, though perhaps a little too skinny for his taste. Her uniform had obviously hidden the best of her, as they had a tendency to do. She looked a whole lot different in her little powder blue bikini.
She looked up suddenly and caught him staring at her, sat back on her heels, and for the next few moments only stared back at him, her expression one of detached neutrality. Then she seemed suddenly to recognize him, which apparently distressed her because she rolled her eyes in obvious disgust and threw her hands into the air as if to surrender, then stood up, grabbed up her towel, and moved farther on down the beach.
“Not holding much of a grudge, are you?” Dylan asked sarcastically under his breath.
“Wasting no time making friends, I see,” someone behind him observed aloud, speaking with a familiar Australian accent.
Dylan sat up and looked back over his shoulder to find that attractive, sandy-blond-haired Solfleet representative with the very nice legs standing just a few feet away, smiling down at him. She was wearing a lemon-yellow bikini that didn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination and was holding a rolled up beach towel under her arm, and Dylan quickly forgot all about the petite young crewman with the short, dark hair.
“Hello, Sergeant,” she greeted him cheerfully. “Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all,” he answered enthusiastically. “Please do.” It would feel good to have some pleasant company for a while. Especially some pleasant company that looked like her.
He leaned back on his elbows again and enjoyed view as she spread her towel alongside his, dropped to her hands and knees to smooth it out, and then sat down beside him. She adjusted its corners a little and then crossed her ankles and leaned back on her elbows as well, mirroring his posture right beside him. “So?” she prodded, looking him in the eye.
“So... what?” he asked in return, almost losing himself in her baby-blues.
“So, what was that all about?” she repeated. “That girl acted like you’d just insulted her whole family.”
“Oh.” He felt hesitant to fill her in. After all, if she considered the way he’d treated the girl last night to be mean, she might just get up and leave him there alone. Then again, he didn’t really know her, so how much of a loss would that really be? He decided to go ahead and tell her and let the chips fall where they may. “She was on duty in Clothing Issue last night. She didn’t want to give me a new uniform, so I uh... I sort of changed her mind by indirectly threatening to turn her in for being out of uniform herself and for sleeping on the job.”
“Well that wasn’t very nice,” she told him, while at the s
ame time smiling with approval.
“You’re right, it wasn’t,” he agreed, “but I got my new uniform, so it worked.” When she just stared at him without saying anything more—what she had on her mind was pretty obvious anyway—he added, “No, I wouldn’t really have turned her in.”
“Good. That would have been an awful thing to do.”
A few moments of silence passed between them, and because Dylan hated uncomfortable silences so much he quickly decided that it was as good time as any to ask her the most basic and obvious question of all. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Olivia Dunn,” she answered, smiling. “Yours?”
Dylan held his hand out to her. “Dylan Graves, and I’m very pleased to meet you again, Olivia Dunn.”
Olivia shook his hand and replied, “And I’m very pleased to meet you again as well, Dylan Graves.” Then she asked him, “How’s your head?”
“Pretty good,” he told her as they released one another’s hands. “I woke up with a slight headache, but it didn’t last too long.”
“Good. So... you want to go for a swim?”
Dylan glanced down over her curvaceous body and those fantastic legs and then quickly turned his gaze out to the gently undulating artificial sea. Go for an afternoon swim in the rolling artificial sea with a beautiful young woman wearing almost nothing? He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The last time he’d gone swimming with a beautiful young woman he’d ended up asking her to marry him. What would Beth think about his going swimming with Olivia if she ever found out about it? She might not say anything, but she certainly wouldn’t be thrilled by the idea. Then again, it was just a swim. An innocent daylight swim at a public beach with a lot of other people around. Where was the harm in that?
“Well, Dylan?” she coaxed. “Do you want to go for a swim or not?”
He gazed into those baby-blues again. God, she really was a beautiful girl. “Why not?” he suddenly heard himself say. He hadn’t intended to say it out loud... had he?
