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Message-ID: <49168asstr$1095073804@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Shakes Peer2B <shakespeer2B@yahoo.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} (New) Lost Colonies:The ZeeGees (MF, FF, SciFi, slow, anal)
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Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 07:10:04 -0400
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Like the other Lost Colonies stories, this one contains sex, but its not 
really about sex, and it takes a while to get to it.  If you're not 
looking for stroke material, though, you just might enjoy the story.
________________________________
This is a story about a sexual FANTASY written for consenting adults. If 
you're not both of those, don't read it.  Characters in a FANTASY don't 
get sick or die unless I want them to. In real life, people who don't 
use condoms and other safe-sex techniques do get sick and die. You don't 
live in a FANTASY so be safe.  The fictional characters in my stories 
are trained and experienced in acts of FANTASY - don't try to do what 
they do - someone could get hurt.

If you think you know somebody who resembles any of the characters here, 
congratulations, but you're wrong - any similarity between the 
characters in this story and any real person is purely coincidental, 
since all of these characters are figments of my dirty little imagination.

This is my story, not yours. Don't sell it or put it on a pay site. You 
can keep it and/or give it away with all of this information intact, but 
if you make money off of it without my permission, you're breaking the 
law and pissing me off.
_________________________________
Lost Colonies:The ZeeGees (MF, FF, SciFi, slow, anal)
(C)Copyright 2004 - Shakes Peer2B
shakes_peer2b@NONOsbcglobal.net
(remove 'NONO' from the above address to contact me)

http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Shakes_Peer2B/
http://storiesonline.net/library/author.php?name=Shakes_Peer2B
________

As soon as the Folder dumped us into real space-time, Mary and Bill 
began searching for the tell-tale signal Mary had picked up once before 
in this region of space.  No more than an hour had passed when Bill 
knocked on my cabin door and came charging in, portable terminal in hand.

"Mary wanted to... Oh!" he turned red when he saw that Gail and I were 
engaged in a little extra-curricular activity, "Sorry, Captain! I just 
sort of assumed...  Uh, shall I come back later?"

"I have a better idea, Bill," Gail answered on my behalf, "Why don't you 
take off that shipsuit and join us?"

Said shipsuit suddenly tented just below its equator, but Bill was too 
intent on his quest to falter now.

"That's very tempting, Doc." he said, "but we've picked up that signal 
again and it's definitely CM20951212-2! As near as our on-board 
directional equipment can determine, it originates somewhere along this 
vector."

He activated the terminal's holosphere and an orange line appeared 
crossing the sparse field of stars at an upward angle from the center, 
which represented our current location.

"Well," I observed, not bothering to cover myself. Bill had been in my 
bed as often as my other senior officers, and I wasn't about to get shy 
this late in the game. "there don't appear to be any systems for 
hundreds of light years in that direction. What's your take on it?"

He touched the controls and a green line appeared, cutting a chord 
across the holosphere and intersecting the orange line.

"This was the planned course of the CM20951212-2." he said, "but to 
still be in that region of space, she would have had to stop 
accelerating before she left the solar system! As you know, the mission 
profile called for acceleration at about a quarter gee to the halfway 
point of the journey, then reverse thrust for the remaining half of the 
first leg."

"Do we know that she's still on course?" I asked

"Well, no." he replied.

"Then let's make a jump to a point out here..." I took his terminal's 
stylus and touched it's tip to the region of the display I was 
interested in. "That will give us an idea if she's still on course and 
add another vector to locate her precisely. If you're right, that point 
should be closer to her current location and we should get a stronger 
signal."

"Mary's already working on it." Bill said, "Shall I notify you before we 
jump?"

"No, Mary takes care of that as a matter of routine," I replied, eyeing 
Gail's lush, naked figure on my bed, "and even if she neglected to, I'd 
feel the Folder engage."

As it turned out, Bill was almost right. Readings from the second 
location told us the CM20951212-2 had drifted off-course by about half a 
degree, which put her several light weeks off the original course.  It 
took two more jumps to pinpoint her location and guage her speed, before 
we felt confident that our next jump would put us in her vicinity.  With 
no gravity well to worry about, we simply homed in on the CM's signal 
and depended on round-off error to ensure that we didn't emerge from 
sidereal space-time right on top of the colony ship.

When you travel for tens to hundreds of light years by folding space and 
slipping through to your destination, even with the unfathomable 
precision of the AI's processors working on the calculation, there is 
still a point where there are just too many decimal places to deal with, 
and numbers get rounded off.  On a short jump, that error is minimal - 
say a few hundred miles. On jumps longer than, say, fifty light-years, 
the error can be anywhere from several light-minutes to a couple of 
light-hours.

Since we had moved closer to the CM20951212-2's projected position with 
each jump, the final jump was very short, but even a volume of space 
only a few hundred miles across leaves plenty of room to miss a ship the 
size of a CM. Someone did a calculation once that showed the chances of 
jumping directly onto a target for which you're aiming are smaller than 
the odds of hitting it if you try to jump to one side.

We expected, of course, to find a drifting hulk of a ghost-ship.  The 
CM's were built to last and to take hundreds of years to deliver their 
cargo, but this one had apparently been drifting for almost two thousand 
years, and if nothing else, just the radiation should have done in her 
crew. It was always possible, of course that everyone was still frozen 
solid in their SA chambers, but I doubted that they'd still be 
operational after that much time.

I was on the bridge for the final jump, and saw the sensor blip in the 
battle plot at the same time the rest of them did.  It was less than two 
hundred miles away, but even at maximum magnification, looked nothing 
like the CM's we had already seen on this trip.  I didn't have much time 
to study it because our velocity vector was almost perpendicular to the 
CM's and it took some tricky maneuvering to swing us around parallel to 
her course without wasting too much of our impulse mass.  Within a 
couple of days, however, we were hot on her trail, and I gave Bill the 
go-ahead to hail her.

Much to my surprise, a wizened, brown face appeared in the viewscreen 
almost immediately.

"Who the hell is that?" it said, the accent stronger than the 
Galadrians, but not nearly as distorted as that of the Edenites.

"This is the Golden Hind." I replied, making sure my face was visible in 
the view screen, "We have been sent by the Federation of Earth Aligned 
Planets to seek out the colonization missions sent out from Earth in the 
twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. Your transponder identifies 
you as CM20951212-2, but I don't recognize the configuration of your ship."

The face had drifted around the view screen to a different angle.

"Yeah, I guess we started out as one'a them Colo-whatsits missions, but 
if the history programs is right, somepin went wrong, so our ancestors 
set up shop out here, and here we be!" the brown gnome of a man didn't 
seem too disturbed about that.

"How many of you are there?" I asked. If they were in distress, we could 
take a few to somewhere more hospitable, but not very many.

"Oh, reckon we're prolly holdin' steady at about three thousand." the 
gnome responded. "Now, if you're driftin' too, we cain't take nobody 
else aboard, but we'd be happy to swap DNA with ya an show ya how we 
make out. Don't look like you're doin' too bad though."

"No, we're not drifting." I replied, having flashbacks to Eden, "Since 
your ancestors left Earth, we've invented a drive that lets us traverse 
space much more quickly.  We only left Earth about a year ago, real 
time. Is there anything you need?"

The wizened face screwed up in thought for a moment, and replied, "Naw, 
just some fresh DNA. If y'all don't mind swapping, that is."

"Why don't a few of my crew and I shuttle over and discuss it with your 
leaders?"

"Sure!" the gnome's face broke into a grin, "I'll let the cap'n an' the 
gov'nor know. Shoot, I reckon y'all are 'bout the most exciting thing 
that's happened since we passed through that gas cloud back 'fore I'uz 
born!"

"Um, is there a place to dock our shuttle? Or do we need to come across 
in suits?"

"Oh, yeah!" he replied, "go on around neat th' back end yonder, just 
under that big mast, an' you'll see kind of a tunnel through the 
plastifoam. Just hang off 'til you're lined up so's not to get fouled in 
th' sails. Keep about a hunnert klicks out 'til then. Them sails can be 
tricky to see."

That was why the vessel looked nothing like a CM!  The original module 
was buried somewhere within an enormous cocoon of plastifoam! 
Apparently, the colonists had simply colonized their ship, using the 
plastifoam intended for building planetary habitats to expand its hull. 
  For many kilometers beyond the bloated plastifoam cloud that 
surrounded the original module, a fine spiderweb of titanium spars and 
cables stretched an even finer network of something as yet unidentified. 
Closer inspection revealed a number of suited figures darting about the 
network.  What they were doing wasn't readily apparent.

There were protrusions and satellites attached to the main body of the 
ship in various places. A couple of the satellites were rotating slowly, 
and I briefly wondered why they didn't rotate the entire ship to 
simulate gravity.

The maneuvering was delicate, but my pilot was good and got the gig 
landed in the standard CM shuttle bay without incident.  The two 
shuttles assigned to the mission were still parked there as well, and 
seemed to be in good working order.

The pilot warned us about the null gravity, and as we came through the 
bio-shield in hazard suits, our mag-boots automatically activated, but 
had little effect since the CM's were made primarily of a titanium alloy 
to optimize fuel effectiveness.  They were never intended to be used as 
space platforms, though.  The Edenites had put some axial spin on their 
CM module to simulate gravity for those aboard the orbiter, but there 
was nothing of the kind here.

I grabbed the handrail of the ramp as my boots floated above my head. 
We still train in Zero G, but most of us never get a chance to practice, 
so it took me a while to get straightened out.  The others were having 
similar difficulties. Two even drifted away from the shuttle, and I was 
wondering how we were going to retrieve them and get across the shuttle 
bay, when a number of suited figures shot like arrows from the vicinity 
of one of the hatches.

One of them deftly grabbed the two of my people who were drifting away, 
and used their mass to change directions, swooping to the ramp and 
handing them down to grab the rails.

"Not used to ZeeGee, I see!" one of them said.

"Trained a little in it, but with artificial gravity, we don't get much 
chance to practice!" I replied.

"The secret," the same voice said, "is once ya git movin', don't stop 
'til ya git somewhere, pref'bly where yer goin'!"

That sounded wise until I realized that in the vacuum of the shuttle 
bay, with no air resistance, it would be harder to stop before 'getting 
somewhere', than to keep going.

"That's cute!" I said, "But we have had some training and aren't THAT 
wet behind the ears!"

Like me, once the rest of them got used to the idea of not being in a 
gravity field, their training took over.

I launched myself at the hatchway from which the others had come, and 
was gratified to see, in my suit's display, that the others followed in 
reasonably controlled fashion. Since our group was blocking the straight 
path to the hatch, our welcoming committee took off like a shot toward 
the 'roof' of the bay, and caromed, almost as one, at precisely the 
right angle to bring them to the hatchway. There they waited and snagged 
us as we drifted in.

Once through the airlock, the colonists immediately skimmed out of their 
suits - NOT, I noted, the clumsy design originally shipped with these 
missions.  These vacuum suits were supple, and even easier to get into 
and out of than ours.

The people were uniformly brown, possibly from long exposure to cosmic 
radiation, and had short, powerful legs with long supple toes.  If their 
legs were disproportionately short, their arms were as 
disproportionately long, yet muscular. Forearms, biceps, triceps, chest 
and shoulders all bulged with muscle, even on the women.  Their torsos 
looked long in contrast to their legs, but were probably about normal. 
The only clothing in evidence consisted of pouches strapped to their 
bodies in various ways, presumably to allow carrying things while 
leaving hands free for maneuvering in zero gee. The men also appeared to 
be wearing some sort of harness around their gonads.

Once free of the suits, they casually gripped one of the ubiquitous 
handles that lined the corridors with a long-fingered hand or a 
long-toed foot.  It was a little disconcerting to see them clustered 
about the airlock exit at all angles and orientations.  This was a 
people who truly had no concept of 'up' or 'down'!

We got through the Med-screen without too much difficulty.  Seems we had 
nothing that would come close to harming these people, but they carried 
some really nasty strains of viruses that had been virtually eliminated 
on Earth.  Docs med-kit synthesized the proper antigens as we waited, 
but the leathery-skinned doctor from the CM suggested a few changes to 
keep up with the mutation rate.  Apparently everything mutated much more 
quickly in this environment than on most planets.

Once inoculated and declared safe by Gail, we too removed our suits.

"Whoa!" one voice said, on seeing our relatively pale bodies, short 
arms, and long legs.

"Damn!" said another, "You folks really ain't been in space long!"

"Compared to you," I said, "perhaps not.  I'm Cecilia Barnes, Captain of 
the Golden Hind!"

Each of them, in turn, extended a hand or foot, whichever was most 
available, to be shaken. I thought I was going to have to have Gail put 
my hand through the regenerator by the time I finished the rounds of 
those bone-crushing grips.

"I am Farley Hines, Governor of the Ark." He smiled engagingly.

"Captain Lucille Davenport, in command of the Ark's crew," she had a 
lovely brown face and the grip of a stevedore, "at your service!"

"I am SO happy to finally meet someone from EARTH!" He wore a kind of 
goggles in place of spectacles, "I have studied our history and wondered 
what our ancestors were like! To finally meet an original human! It's 
just too much!  Oh, uh, Henry Unger, by the way! Historian for the Ark!"

I introduced Bill and Gail and the other two crew members who had come 
aboard with us. The pilot stayed aboard the gig, just in case.

"How did you come to colonize your own ship?" I asked.

Farley smiled and said, "That's a VERY long story Captain, and if you 
don't mind accompanying us to a more comfortable meeting place, Henry 
will be more than happy to fill you in! We, of course, would like to 
know what's happened on earth since our ancestors left, as well. 
According to our history tapes, it was a planet on the edge of collapse 
at the time."

"Yes, of course!" I replied.

The Arkadians took off at a blistering pace down the corridor, and we 
had all we could do to keep them in sight as they launched themselves 
from handhold to handhold faster than the fastest sprinter on Earth.

They finally noticed our difficulty and slowed their pace, waiting 
impatiently at each turn for us to catch up.  We tried to emulate their 
smooth, hand over hand sort of crawling/swimming motion, but it was 
tricky getting the force vectors right so that you went straight down 
the corridor and not at an angle that had you bouncing off the 
bulkheads. The legs, apparently, were used primarily for starting and 
stopping.  A number of Arkadians stared in wonder as they zoomed past us 
in the corridor, or stopped to watch us go by. Kids - even smaller 
sprites than the adults - chased each other up and down the corridors, 
or played a ball passing game of some sort.  All zipped and zoomed 
through the null gravity as naturally as you or I walk.

The intersections of the corridors were color-coded. A small placard at 
each intersection held a number of bands of color. The outermost band on 
one end was always white - apparently indicating the starting position 
for interpreting the other bands.  One band of color apparently served 
as traffic control. I noticed that whenever the first band after the 
white one was green, we continued past the intersection without pause, 
but when it was red, we stopped to watch for oncoming traffic before 
proceeding.  When we passed from the metal bulkheads of the CM module to 
the plastifoam outer shell, I noticed that the second band changed from 
blue to green, but the third band remained purple, while the fourth 
stayed orange.

As we travelled further along the ship's axis, the fourth band changed 
to yellow.  The third band became blue as we moved further around the 
cylinder, and further out, the second band became yellow.

The bands were apparently coded such that the white band was the 
reference point for reading the others. The first band was traffic 
control, the second apparently designated cylindrical sections that 
moved outward from the original CM hull. The third band designated 
radial position, and the fourth, axial position.  A neat, compact 
system, but it required that every person know the key by heart. 
Strangers like us could use it to find our way back to our shuttle, but 
not to anywhere new.

Finally, we found ourselves in a compartment that was criss-crossed by 
taut cords.  The Arkadians each hooked a limb around one of these and we 
mimicked their action.

"Can we offer you something to eat or drink?" the Governor asked politely.

"Not just now," I answered, "we had a meal just before coming aboard."

That wasn't entirely true - it had been a couple of hours since our last 
meal, but I didn't want to be distracted by the intricacies of eating or 
drinking in Zero Gravity just now.

"As you wish!" Farley said, "We actually have livestock aboard. What 
once were sheep and cattle on earth have adapted quite nicely to space. 
We maintain just enough spin on the ranch module to allow them some 
purchase for their hooves and keep the grass under their feet, but we 
keep the simulated gravity very low, which makes for very tender meat. 
Oh and chickens just LOVE ZeeGee!"

"I would love to try all of it at some point. At the moment, though, I'm 
curious about how you have managed to survive in space for so long." I 
replied.

The be-goggled Henry spoke up excitedly. "Oh I've studied that at 
length! When the ship departed Earth, its trajectory was set to pass 
just outside the plane of the ecliptic, only a couple of degrees off 
plane, thereby missing most of the debris and bypassing the gravity 
fields within the system itself.  We missed the asteroid belt by several 
thousand miles."

"For some as yet unexplained reason, there were several off-course 
asteroids, one of which," Henry continued, "unbeknownst to the crew, was 
on a collision course with us!"

I checked with Mary and she retrieved some historical data. The courses 
of most bodies in the solar system were well known, even in olden times, 
so it was strange to hear of an asteroid being off course.  Mary dug up 
a report of a CM crash in the asteroid belt a few days before the 
CM20951212-2's passage.  The crash had not been discovered until an 
orbiting observatory noticed several asteroids out of their usual orbits.

"Seems one of the ships preceding yours by a few days crashed in the 
asteroid belt." I told them, "This caused a chain reaction that sent a 
number of asteroids out of orbit or into different orbits."

"As it turned out, we almost got away with it." Henry said dramatically, 
"Had the CM been accelerating infinitesimally faster, or slower, or been 
a tenth of a degree off the course it was on, the asteroid would have 
missed altogether. As it was, the crew caught its image on radar and 
attempted to maneuver out of its path, but it clipped the main 
thrusters, tearing them from the module with very little other damage. 
The crew and the failsafes did their jobs admirably, got the fuel cut 
off quickly before an explosion could occur, and saved the lives of the 
crew and colonists."

He paused for effect, then continued, "So there was good ol' 
CM20951212-2 only slightly off-course, her journey completed almost 
before it began. The maneuvering thrusters stabilized the hull along its 
new trajectory well enough, but we had no way to accelerate. As you may 
know, the plan was for the main thrusters to burn continuously halfway 
to the destination, and only a tiny fraction of that acceleration was 
completed, so it would take practically forever to reach our 
destination, if we ever did.  We had literally tons of fuel, but no way 
to use it.

"The captain and crew debated just blowing up the ship to end their 
misery, but finally decided that no decision should be made without the 
colonists inputs.  Now, as you may remember, there were a number of 
scientists and engineers on most of these missions, and when they got 
wind of what was going on, they figured and calculated and calculated 
and figured, and decided that they could just colonize the ship!"

"They and the crew got out the few vacuum suits we had, and opened the 
cargo pods, hauling out the plastifoam and the constructors.  They set 
up a solar collector several miles wide that provided energy for almost 
a generation. The plastifoam machinery worked even better in space than 
in atmosphere, and because of the greater pressure differentials, they 
used less water to make a stiffer mixture so the bubbles wouldn't just 
burst through the surface.  The mission planners had supplied us with 
plenty of titanium alloy, not knowing what resources would be available 
at our destination, but they shipped it as reels of cable so it could be 
melted down easily for shaping into whatever we needed to make from it. 
  We didn't bother.  The cable was ideal as reinforcement for the 
plastifoam."

Henry was a storyteller, and he was in his element.  Had he been in 
gravity, he would have been pacing.  Here, he swung absentmindedly from 
cord to cord, using feet and hands, to expend the energy the telling of 
the story gave him.

"The CM encountered another wayward bit of space flotsam, apparently 
left behind by a comet, a few years later.  It was in no danger of 
colliding with the ship, but spectrographic analysis revealed it to be 
made primarily of ice." the goggle-eyed gnome continued, "So they 
contrived to corral it with the shuttles, then encased it in plastifoam 
to ensure against the escape of any of its precious aitch-too-oh. They 
had  invented recyclers that could recapture damn near anything, but 
water had not been included in the supplies in very great quantities 
because it was thought that it would be plentiful at our destination. 
Now, stranded in space, we had our own water supply.  Mind you, the 
water from that little bit of a comet has long since been melted down, 
but the recyclers now reclaim it from the air, from the sewage, and from 
the bodies of the deceased.  Still, we lose about a cup a decade, but 
not to worry - all that leftover fuel?  Well it's rich in hydrogen and 
oxygen, and we make whatever water we need to make up for the loss.  Any 
time we pass near a piece of space junk we mine it for whatever we can 
get. That's not often, but we don't need much.  At our current rate of 
consumption, if we don't get anything more from the outside, we can 
probably survive for another three thousand years. That's thanks, in 
part, to the gas cloud we passed through a couple of generations ago. 
We built an enormous scoop to collect as much of it as we could - mostly 
hydrogen."

"But what about radiation?" I asked.

"We do get our share, and as the good doctor pointed out, things mutate 
faster here." Henry replied, "As you can see, we've adapted fairly 
rapidly to our environment.  Of course, we have kind of 'helped' 
evolution along.  We can't afford to allow mutants that can't contribute 
to our colony to survive, so we recycle 'em.  I know it sounds callous, 
but we've got the whole colony to think about.  Other mutants, we allow 
to survive and observe them.  If their mutation seems useful, we allow 
'em to have children.  If not, they live out their lives, but don't 
leave any offspring. That's kind of how we got looking like this so 
quickly.  Of course, the radiation itself weeded out those gene strains 
that weren't resistant to it.  They usually got sterile or didn't 
survive long enough to have kids.  Oh yeah! I forgot!  The Plastifoam, 
with its high hydrogen content, actually shields out the few stray 
neutrons, as well as alpha and beta particles, but X and gamma rays 
still get through pretty much unchecked."

"What do you mean by 'useful' mutations?" I asked.

"Well, aside from the usual," the doctor answered, "you know, extra 
fingers, toes, etc. We occasionally get some really useful changes to 
our makeup.  Most of the crew tending the sails is extremely resistant 
to radiation, and the emergency response teams now are almost entirely 
made up of individuals that can actually survive in vacuum for short 
periods of time, without a pressure suit!"

"Yeah," I grinned, "I can see where that would be useful! But that 
brings up another question: What ARE those sails?"

Henry fielded that one. "When the CM left the solar system, of course, 
the solar collector slowly lost its effectiveness until it was basically 
useless. We needed an alternative.  Turns out, the void of space ain't 
so empty after all. Seems that besides radiation, there are ions, 
positive and negative, all over the place.  That little network is 
basically a gigantic charge collector.  Whenever a charged particle 
passes near, its charge is passed into one side or the other of the 
sail.  Electrons from negatively charged ions are collected on one face, 
and donated to positively charged ions on the other.  These build up 
electrical potential between them that's almost constant, and generates 
more electrical energy than you'd think!  We're still adding to it, but 
it's already surpassed the capacity of the solar collector."

"Do you have some way to store the electricity it generates?" Leave it 
to Bill to focus on the technical aspect of it.

"Oh yes!" Henry replied excitedly, "Our forefathers thought of that too! 
  When they built the plastifoam outer hull, they plated thin coats of 
metal on the inside and outside of it. The charge is stored on those 
plates like an enormous capacitor, and if we hit a 'dry spell', our 
electrical system feeds off the charge on those plates. It's really 
amazing how much they can store, but if you can imagine a capacitor with 
a charge surface of several hundred acres..."

"And what do the people tending the sails do?" the things these 
Arkadians had done to make life possible out here were amazing and 
intriguing, and I was excited just listening to them.

Captain Davenport chose to respond to that one.

"There's also a lot more tiny pieces of solid junk out here than you'd 
think," she said, "and part of the crew's job is to repair the damage 
they cause.  The plastifoam just absorbs most of it and reseals itself, 
but the sails tear and have to be mended.  The other part of their job 
is angling the sails just right to catch the 'breeze' as we pass through 
ion streams and such."

As I was searching for something else to ask, Gail came up with what 
probably should have been my FIRST question.

"Surely, after some eighteen centuries," she asked, "you must have 
shortages of something. Is there anything we can provide for you, or 
have shipped out?"

The Captain and the Governor looked at each other for a few moments, 
shrugged, and turned back to me.

"There are always little things we'd like to have," Farley answered for 
both, "but I can't think of anything specific at the moment.  I think 
it's been mentioned that we could use some fresh DNA to strengthen our 
gene pool, but a night or two of debauchery between my people and yours 
will take care of that - if you don't mind, that is... Of course, we'll 
have to add to the hull to compensate for the baby boom, but we've still 
got plastifoam!"

I smiled, "I'm sure the crew would love a night or two of debauchery. 
They've proven themselves quite eager to try sex in different ways, and 
have been leaving DNA all over the damn galaxy!"

They laughed with us, but I sobered quickly.

"You know," I said, "we COULD arrange a tow or transport for your people 
to the planet of your choice..."

Again they exchanged glances and shrugs.

"That's very kind, Captain, but we've kind of gotten used to life out 
here," Farley replied, "and besides, we're no longer suited to life in a 
gravity well."

"That brings up another question:" I said, "Why didn't your ancestors 
just spin the hull with the maneuvering thrusters to simulate gravity?"

"Couldn't while the solar collector was being built and the hull 
expanded," Henry replied, "that took years, and when it was finally 
done, it was really too late.  Even if they'd a spun it up gradually, 
letting folks get used to it a little at a time, they knew that within a 
generation they'd have to shut it down permanently when they built the 
sails, 'cause the crews'd just get flung off into space. Just decided 
that we were going to have to live in ZeeGee whether we liked it or not!"

We spent several more hours in discussion of how they had survived. We 
gave a synopsis of the collapse of Earth's economy along with its 
ecology as a combined result of the tech and terrorist booms, the long, 
slow recovery, including mandatory population control and the 'green' 
laws, including the outlawed use of fossil fuels and fission reactors 
for energy production.  We summarized the historical highlights up to 
the invention of the Folder drive and the subsequent explosion into space.

We also told about the recent accidental discovery of a couple of former 
CM colonies - one thriving, the other with no survivors - that had led 
to the discovery on Earth of the forgotten records, and the subsequent 
outfitting of the Golden Hind for this mission.

Slowly, over the course of the telling, the compartment had filled with 
Arkadians, all listening raptly to our story.  By the time we were 
finished, we were famished as well, and eagerly took the Governor up on 
his offer of a meal.  He pushed his way good naturedly through the crowd 
and led us to a smaller compartment down the corridor. There we found a 
spherical space lined with what appeared to be picnic tables.

Closer examination revealed that the surface of each table was a grate. 
There were squeeze pouches containing liquids, but solid and semi-solid 
food seemed to be sitting on a plate on the surface of the table. We 
'seated' ourselves by slipping our feet into loops on the 'floor'.  The 
'plates' were actually wire mesh platforms, and the food stayed on the 
table because there was a constant flow of air into its 'top'.  It was a 
good idea to eat quickly so that the airflow didn't cool the food too 
much before you got to it.

We observed how the Arkadians ate and tried to emulate them.  There were 
no spoons, as liquids were served in pouches with varying sizes of 
elastic diaphragm closures.  A delicious soup was served this way, and I 
soon got the hang of squeezing the tube to allow the pressure on the 
inside to force the diaphragm open, discharging liquid and bits of meat 
and vegetable into my mouth.  Any spillage simply got sucked into the 
tabletop. Roast chicken - plump, tender, and delicious - was served on 
the 'plates' and eaten with the fingers. In fact, almost everything was 
roasted or grilled with radiant heat. Frying and boiling were pretty 
difficult to accomplish in free fall.

A cut of beef that I didn't recognize was also served.  I have never 
tasted such tender, delicious beef in my life!  The knife and fork, when 
not in use, were held on the table by the airflow, and any juices that 
escaped during cutting simply disappeared into the table. It was a novel 
way of eating, but one of the best meals I have had in a long time!

After the meal, I presented the Governor with a crystal reader and a set 
of crystals detailing the history of the FEAP all the way back to the 
inception of the CM project.  It included some things about the 
colonization missions that none of the original crews or colonists had 
been told.  To put a ribbon on it, Bill had rigged an interface that 
would allow the reader to be plugged into the old computer systems used 
at the time of the Ark's departure from earth.

With a promise to return later in the 'evening' (the Arkadians, like us, 
maintained a 24 hour light/dark cycle to simulate Earth's day/night 
cycle.) for a festival to celebrate their 're-discovery' by Earth.

I gave about half the crew liberty, cautioning them about the Zero Gee 
condition. Captain Davenport had been kind enough to provide us with a 
color-coded map of the colony, confirming my conjecture about the 
color-banded signs in the corridors.

Mary reproduced the map as a 3D image that she could feed directly to 
our implants, ensuring that we could find our way around the Ark with 
relative ease.

I had noticed that, despite the deliciousness of the meal, they had used 
very little salt in its preparation.  On impulse, I had the crew 
synthesize about twenty kilos of good old NaCl with a touch of Iodine 
(for goiter prevention) from our chemical stores, and presented it to 
the Governor on our return to the festivities.

At first, he looked confused as I pushed the bag toward him. I poked a 
small hole in the bag and touched my finger to it, drawing out a few 
small, white crystals, and showing it to him.

His eyes grew large and round. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Depends on what you think it is!" I laughed.

"May I?" he gestured toward the hole where a few grains drifted slowly 
away from the bag.

"Be my guest!" I replied.

Moistening a finger, he carefully touched each of the escaped crystals, 
drawing back a fingertip lightly sprinkled with the white particles. I 
smiled encouragingly as he touched it to his tongue.

"It IS salt!" he said delightedly, as murmurs of wonder arose from the 
crowd. "How did you know?"

"I figured if you didn't have enough salt to season the food you served 
your first guests in almost two thousand years," I laughed, "you must be 
running pretty low!"

"Low, hell! Today's meal is the first time I've tasted even a hint of 
salt in almost thirty years!" Farley said, "I think the cook pretty much 
had to wipe the meat around the inside of the salt bin to get any flavor 
at all!"

"But how do you avoid goiter?" I asked.

"Oh, we HAVE Iodine, and feed it into the drinking water supply," he 
replied, "but salt is one of those little shortages I couldn't think of 
when you asked earlier."

"Well, now you know at least one thing you can trade for." I said.

"Trade?" he looked puzzled.

"I guess I'm jumping the gun here a little bit," I smiled, "but once 
word gets out about your little Zero Gee resort, here, and the tasty 
meals you serve, you'll have rich folks from all over wanting to 
vacation here!  Now, you don't HAVE to let them in, but with the money 
they pay you, you can buy all sorts of little things like salt or even a 
fusion power plant so you don't have to deal with those sails!  You may 
even decide you need more plastifoam to expand the Ark to make room for 
your guests!"

A buzz started from the people near us as the idea took hold and flew 
around the room.

"You really think people would come all the way out here just to float 
around in ZeeGee?" Farley asked.

"Well, it'd depend on how you sell it." I said, "A couple of places have 
tried it, usually in-system somewhere, but they've all failed because 
they couldn't get enough staff that could handle null gravity, and 
nobody wanted to be on permanent staff.  If you folks wanted to go into 
the resort business, you'd already be well staffed with trained 
personnel, and you serve some of the best meals I've ever tasted.  Think 
up a few activities that rich people can do without gravity, and come up 
with some entertainment for them, and you're all set! But what do you 
say we talk business tomorrow?  You invited us to a party, and we're 
ready for one!"

A cheer went up around us, and the Arkadians, almost as one, flowed down 
the corridor, taking us with them. Farley passed the bag of salt to 
another Arkadian with instructions to take it to the chef for tonight's 
feast.

We wound up in a spherical chamber with another sphere suspended inside 
it by numerous cables or rods. The inner sphere was composed of some 
sort of wire mesh, and had, at two diametrically opposed points, a pair 
of  large basket-like devices sunken into its inner surface. Everyone 
found a hand- or foot-hold on one of the cables supporting the inner 
sphere, though some, apparently, were quite comfortable just being 
suspended in air.

"We thought you might enjoy a game of 3D soccer before the festival 
proper!" the Governor shouted in my ear.

I nodded, not bothering to try to speak over the hubbub of the crowd.

"We actually have eight teams!" he continued, "They are fielded by 
various 'neighborhoods' of the Ark, and their supporters can get quite 
passionate about their team!  Tonight is really an exhibition put on 
between the two leading teams, though it doesn't really count in their 
standings.  Because of that, you'll probably see more flashy play 
tonight than their coaches usually let them try!"

Two groups of Arkadians, male and female, entered the mesh sphere 
simultaneously from opposite sides.  One group wore gold sashes, and 
nothing else.  The other group wore green belts.  They swung lazily 
around the inside of the sphere as introductions and opening comments 
were made over a PA system.  Instead of positioning themselves within 
the volume of the sphere for the kickoff, as I half expected, each team 
of about ten players spaced itself out around the mesh wall of the 
enclosure.  An Arkadian wearing a black belt positioned himself in the 
basket that represented the goal defended by green, while a woman 
wearing a red sash took position in the gold team's goal.  A pair of 
Arkadians with old-fashioned whistles entered the sphere, closing the 
gates behind them.  Each of the newcomers, presumably the officials, 
wore a black-and-white striped sash, and one carried what appeared to be 
a regulation soccer ball.

The official with the ball positioned himself at the midline painted 
around the inside of the sphere, and without a word, launched the ball 
slowly toward the center of the sphere. Nobody moved.  When the ball was 
about ten feet from the center point, the official blew his whistle, and 
several players from each team shot toward the ball. One of the green 
players reached it first, and blasted it, with both feet, toward the 
gold team's goal.  His effort sent him tumbling, slightly off-angle from 
his original trajectory. Almost without thought, he twisted around and 
landed on the side of the sphere, gripping the mesh with his toes.

As soon as the green player kicked the ball, a couple of gold players 
who hadn't joined the rush for the ball launched themselves after the 
shot.  A third, closer to the goal, delayed, timing his flight to be on 
a collision course with the ball.  The first two defenders were too 
late, but the third, eyeing their flight paths, passed the ball to one, 
who launched it in the direction of the the other.  The green player who 
had originally kicked it, tried to intercept, but the gold player, 
having reached the wall, used his powerful legs to launch himself in the 
direction of the ball, spinning end for end to pass the ball further up 
the sphere to another gold player, deep in green territory.

This one who was flying toward the green defended goal, instead of 
powering the ball toward the goal, bumped it only slightly and followed, 
dribbling the ball with his feet with nudges and gentle kicks, twisting 
his own body into impossible shapes to change direction, and try to 
avoid the green players who took off after him, waiting for his 
teammates to get into position.

Like the soccer that I was accustomed to watching, the 3D variety was 
fast and furious, and very low scoring.  The action was somewhat 
different, however.  The players didn't stay in position in the 
playspace, but tried to position themselves around it for the optimum 
opportunity to make a play or to zoom across in time to receive a pass. 
  Bicycle kick? Routine for these free-fall athletes! In fact, since 
hands were not allowed, as in regular soccer, the most powerful kick 
that could be made was performed by adding the angular momentum of an 
end-for-end body tumble to the body's forward momentum through the 
playspace.  Since there was no 'out of bounds', the players caromed the 
ball off the walls of the sphere as often as they kicked it straight 
toward its intended target.

One rule that was added, however, was that no player could kick the ball 
while touching the wall of the sphere, the exceptions being the goalie 
clearing the ball, a 'corner' kick, which was made from any point on the 
line designating the goalie's 'box', a goal kick, or a penalty kick.

The tackle was an even more effective tactic in this sort of soccer, 
since it could knock an opposing player out of position or even nullify 
his forward motion and leave him spinning in mid sphere until he either 
'swam' to the nearest point of the wall, or a teammate came by to give 
him a tow.

Since I was sitting among the gold fans, I got caught up in their 
excitement, and was almost as happy as they when the gold team won by a 
score of two to one.

The banquet served after the soccer game was even more sumptuous than 
the earlier meal, and was accompanied by a superb red wine.  As you may 
know, wine doesn't hold up well under the stresses of Folder jumps, and 
so is not found on interstellar runs.  The Arkadians, though, had 
learned how to grow the grapes under controlled conditions and to make 
excellent wines.  With the addition of enough salt to enhance the 
flavors of the deliciously tender meats, the meal was unsurpassed, and 
even included fish!

When I asked Farley about this, he called over one of the Ark's 
'farmer's' to explain it to me.  Seems the fish didn't care which way 
was up, as long as they had places to hide, plenty of food, and well 
aerated water.  Like the livestock grown from frozen embryos, the fish 
had originally been grown from frozen eggs brought from Earth. The only 
real issue was keeping the water aerated enough so the fish wouldn't 
suffocate.  This problem was solved by the simple expedient of 
recirculating the water in the 'fish tank' through an aerator.

The meal was served in a much larger hall than the earlier one, and 
since the tables lined the bulkheads, the entertainment took place in 
the center of the sphere.  Juggling doesn't happen in free-fall, but a 
similar skill, involving the passing of a number of objects rapidly back 
and forth between two or more performers was at least as impressive. 
The highlight of the evening, however, was the free fall ballet 
performed to an old Earth tune that Mary identified as having been 
composed by someone named Tchaikovsky.  The grace and beauty of the 
performers was nothing short of miraculous, and the way they used each 
other's mass to keep the motion flowing was an art form in and of itself.

As the evening wound to a close, Farley asked if I would care to 
accompany him to his quarters.  On the way, we passed a number of 
crewmembers and Arkadians in passionate clinches.  The Arkadian women, 
especially, were aggressive about seeking out my male crewmembers.

I raised an eyebrow and gave Farley a smile when I notice four brown 
women pulling one of my guys into a room.

"We have issued a special dispensation in order to capture as much new 
genetic material as possible." He laughed, "Any woman who gets pregnant 
by one of you will be allowed to give birth.  Normally, an unauthorized 
pregnancy results in mandatory abortion.  We have struggled to keep our 
population rates constant, but even with high infant mortality rates, if 
we weren't very strict about this, we would soon overload our systems."

"And now?" I asked.

"Actually," he said, "the debate still rages over whether the new DNA is 
worth the strain on our resources, but if your comments before the party 
hold any truth, they may also make the arguments against allowing 
additional births moot!"

"I think you have a superb opportunity to become a premier resort. Hell, 
old people might want to just come out here to live!" I replied, "But 
that's a discussion we'll have tomorrow!"

We had entered a room with a vid-screen on one bulkhead, and velcro 
straps at various places around it.  Furniture would have been 
redundant, I suppose.  How much more relaxed can you get than not having 
any weight?

In a strange parody of a romantic lover on earth, Farley turned to me 
and folded me into a passionate kiss.  He was actually quite a good 
kisser, and I allowed my hands to glide over his muscular back, then 
drift down toward his maleness.

As we tumbled slowly across the room, I stroked him to hardness - about 
two strokes worth - and reached lower to fondle his balls.  What I 
encountered, instead, was a metal pouch of some sort.

"Lead." he whispered into my ear. "We don't have much of it so we use it 
where it counts! Helps minimize the number of mutations."

"Ah!" I replied. Not that I'd have to worry about mutations. I wasn't 
allowing myself to get pregnant before the Golden Hind's odyssey was over.

Making love in null gravity has been a dream of many people in mankind's 
history, and the Arkadians certainly knew ways to make it happen, but 
I'm here to tell you, if you want a down and dirty fuck, you need 
something besides your partner to hang onto.

Farley inserted himself into my wet pussy as we drifted across the room. 
His toes grabbed my calves while his hands grabbed my buttocks.  I 
figured the best place for my hands was on his buttocks, and it worked 
out okay.  His hands pulled me up.  My hands and his legs pulled me 
down.  It was a lot of effort, and not very satisfying for either of us, 
so the next time we bumped gently into the bulkhead, Farley turned us so 
that I was between him and the bulkhead, grabbed handles and straps with 
hands and feet, and started nailing me to the wall.

NOW we were FUCKING! At some point, he pulled my legs up and hooked my 
calves over his shoulders, then started really pouring it to me!

It was a good, hard, fuck, but I didn't have to contend with his weight 
crushing me. As a result, I was able, for the first time in my life, to 
focus solely on the sensation of the long, hard cock sliding swiftly in 
and out of me!  It was incredible, and I wasted no time getting to my 
first climax!

Farley was in no hurry to cum and took his time.  He pulled out for a 
moment, and turned me to face the bulkhead.  He guided my  hands to 
hand-holds, then strapped my thighs almost perpendicular to my body with 
velcro straps.  I felt like a specimen pinned to dissection tray - open, 
vulnerable.

Resuming his grip on the bulkhead, Farley re-entered me from behind. Oh 
God! What a masterful cocksman! His probe explored every inch of my 
insides, driving me to three or four more climaxes, then withdrew, 
poking tentatively at my little brown ring.

I pushed my hips away from the bulkhead to give him better access and 
groaned as he filled my ass!

"Oh yes!" I cried, "Fuck my ass!"

With my thighs strapped down, I needed only one hand to hold my torso in 
place, so I reached down with my right to stroke my clit as Farley 
pounded my ass! He was grunting and had abandoned all pretense at 
finesse as he rutted in my fundament.  Fine with me! I love a good, 
hard, assfuck, and I was getting that WITHOUT having to support my 
lover's weight!  This time, I came as I felt his cock dumping warm goo 
deep inside my body! Farley went rigid for several seconds, pushing my 
pelvis against the bulkhead with every ounce of his strength!

We rested, twitching and spasming, for several minutes. It was wonderful 
to be surrounded by my partner's warmth without the strain of supporting 
his weight, and I drifted off to sleep.

I couldn't have slept for more than a few moments when I felt Farley's 
wilting member pulled slowly from within me.

"Would you like to shower?" He asked.

"We can do that?" Somehow, the idea of being able to shower in null 
gravity had never occurred to me. Of course, taking a bath was going to 
be even harder.

"Sure!" Farley replied, "I'll show you!"

In another chamber - their spherical shape made it difficult to think of 
them as rooms - a cylinder about seven feet long was held in place by a 
pair of pipes that went into each of its ends.  A big red arrow With the 
word 'Head' at its tip adorned the front of the cylinder.  When Farley 
pulled on a small handle,  most of the front opened outward.

"Unfortunately," Farley grinned, leering at my naked body, "it will only 
hold one person.  Water on/off is here..." he put his finger on a 
button, "...temperature control here..." he touched a knob, "...soap 
dispenser, shampoo dispenser. When you turn the water off, the airflow 
will increase and you'll be dry in no time.  Air shuts off when you open 
the door."

I slipped into the chamber and pulled the door shut behind me. 
Immediately, warm air started flowing into the shower from above my 
head, pushing my feet against the grate at the other end.  I touched the 
water switch and was pleasantly surprised that the water came out warm 
from the first drops.  I adjusted the temperature to suit my tastes, 
figured out how to pump the shampoo and soap into my hand without losing 
too much, and eventually emerged with feeling refreshed, though my hair 
was still slightly damp.

Against Farley's protests, I insisted on getting back to the 'Hind to 
relieve the duty officer and allow the port watch to turnover and get 
some liberty.  Ever the gentleman, Farley insisted on escorting me back 
to the shuttle bay.

"You know," I said, as we made our way back through the Ark, "the only 
real problem with you guys becoming a premier resort for the FEAP is the 
fact that you're continually moving away from earth.  Besides the 
navigational niceties that entails for ships wanting to find you, it 
also means that eventually you'll get too many jumps away to bother with."

"Well," Farley replied, "the maneuvering thrusters still work. The 
original crew moved 'em to the outside of the plastifoam in case we 
encountered any more space junk and had to get out of the way.  I reckon 
we could do a series of small burns that'd eventually get us turned 
sorta parallel to Sol's path, if we had the right nav data."

I started to ask why they didn't just do a single long burn, but then 
realized that would be pretty hard on people unaccustomed to gravity.

"We can give you the nav data you need." I said instead, "You'll have to 
keep a close eye on the effect of your first burn to calculate your 
exact mass..."

"Nah!" he interrupted, "Captain Davenport knows all that to the gram! 
Doesn't want to be caught guessing if she has to do any emergency 
maneuvering!  She's not too happy about the extra shuttle and bodies 
right now, but since it's been generations since we actually had to 
dodge anything, I guess we'll be all right."

The rest of the liberty party was converging on the shuttle bay at the 
same time we were, and I bade Farley farewell.  The bosun got a full 
head count and I felt a sense of pride in my crew.  They knew how to 
party, but they didn't forget their duty.

On the way back to the Golden Hind, I couldn't help but overhear the 
crew excitedly swapping stories about their first null gravity sex.

"Man, those ZeeGee girls are wild!" one said, "I had three of 'em all 
insisting that I get 'em pregnant! Tell you what, if they ain't carryin' 
Earth babies this mornin' it ain't for lack of tryin'!"

"That's nothin'!" one of the female crewmembers piped up, "I was 
free-fallin' with three guys! Man, they had me watertight an' give me a 
right royal reamin' in all three holes, but it was cool, you know? I 
wasn't squashed under their weight! Damn! It was like they hadn't had 
sex with a woman in years!"

"Prob'ly hadn't!" another man piped up, "one'a them ZeeGee spiderwomen 
told me they ain't allowed to get pregnant unless they got special 
permission. You know, population control an' all, so usually, the women 
have sex with the women an' the guys do it with other guys."

"Yeah, that's what I heard, too!" someone else said, "An' they ain't got 
no pills or nothin' to keep 'em from gettin' knocked up, so, to avoid a 
forced abortion, they just do it with the same sex!"

"That's okay with me!" another guy said, "I wound up with a married 
couple. Only way they 'uz ever gonna have kids 'uz if they had a Earth 
baby, so hubby jus' pulled up behind me and pretended he'uz doin' his 
wife, an' she closed her eyes an pretended it was him doin' her.  Here I 
am in the middle, screwin' the wife to beat the band, while her ol' 
man's reamin' out my shit chute an' dreamin' of his ol' lady's pussy!"

That got a round of laughter and some good-natured ribbing, then someone 
else told her story, and so it went, all the way back to the 'Hind.

After a good 'night's' sleep, I had Mary prepare the navigational data 
to make the Ark's course change possible.  I got a signed statement of 
intent to open a Zero Gravity resort, added nav data and transponder 
frequency and signature, and packed it off in the personal mail pouch 
that went with the Folder drone carrying our report.  It was addressed 
to  a fellow I'd once dated on Earth who was in the luxury resort 
promotion business.

We collected the last of our liberty parties and, after roll call 
assured us that none had decided to become ZeeGees, headed off to find 
another colony.

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