The Good Ship Bison

Pat said that, superheated and under pressure, it had mixed nicely, but might take a week or two to finish reacting and radiate away the heat.

Playing with our lava droplet was kind of fun.

The only difference between this and furnaces on Earth was the sheer magnitude of the work. The worldwide price of pure silicon was going to plummet, and the economics of that did disturb me a little, wondering if there'd be any 'unintended consequences'.

== CHAPTER: Mercury, Why Not ==

By the next morning, I had a call from Marge again, wanting us to know they had an Earth-sensing mission satellite already built and in storage, but it wasn't fueled. They were working on that. If we wanted to wait another 6 hours they could run through final checks.

I said sure, we were busy so we could delay a little bit.

Really, I had counted on NASA to introduce a delay into anything. They were kind of famous for doing that. In exchange for the delay, they offered up a bunch of super-nice cameras and SSD cards to put data on. We could, maybe, take pictures from orbit?

I almost burst out laughing, but refrained, it wouldn't be nice to Marge, and she was doing what she could. Mostly she'd started as an expert in Lunar regolith, but with me reaching out to her first, she'd turned into a liaison between us and NASA.

The humor factor was that giving us cameras wasn't so much a gift but a self-serving thing for them. I got it, politically, they couldn't 'give' anything to us, but they could 'supply' us with handy tools that would get them better pictures.

The other bonus was they gave us a huge variety of catered lunches from all the restaurants inside 5 miles from Johnson Space Center, and each one of those, Bison scanned in. That is, we got Bison to put the actual lunches into 20-kelvin storage, and scan them at the same time, so the food replicators on the ship could grow / print / create new food with the scan as a template.

In a quick comparison later, none of us could tell the difference between purchased and printed.

Off we went, the cargo hold full of two satellites, one a hot-spare exact-build-alike of the lunar reconnaissance orbiter, and an old landsat one we captured dead from orbit that Pat said could be fixed easily.

With that, we headed off for Mercury.

Pat told us we could get there in 48 hours instead of 72 if we were willing to take 2 g's instead of just one, but none of us were in that kind of rush.

== ==

Several times during the day, I felt a strong need to do something about being horny. I went into the bedroom each time, and whoever Mads arranged to be there gave me some Great Wham Bam (though they came, too, it wasn't one-sided).

Pat had put in some kind of change to their bodies already so that within two or three minutes of me being in there, they cooked off into an orgasm that shook their world.

So, I got to watch them from about halfway through to the finish, going to the Moon (metaphorically) and then I'd get to finish with them still cooking off.

After the second 'interlude', an hour after we left, I just walked back into the main bridge naked - I'd taken a quick shower and had my towel with me, but I wanted to see how we were doing.

The fact that I was naked made a stir, and Tina even got her top off before I told her I'd just done it, so I wasn't necessarily up for anything.

Still, as I stood there talking with Jan (carefully watching the avionics to see what was up, and reading through the data we'd gathered from melting the ores in space), Tina said she didn't need to put her top on again, did she?

"No, not if you don't want to. Boobs are great."

At the mention of this, everyone else in the room started pulling their blouse-jacket off, and then their top, and getting naked.

Wow!

Jan, looking around at us, took a long slow sigh, and asked if I wanted her to get naked.

"I'm not going to ask you that. You're the pilot, sorta, the communications officer, right? Do what you want to do. Not gonna stop you."

Jan nodded, looked around, and shook her head with an eye-roll. "What the heck!"

She bent over, untied her shoes, stood and stepped them off, pulled off her uniform top, and started getting applauded by the other girls.

This led to a little embarrassment, via a red-face and flushed chest, but she held up a hand and said distinctly, "_I_, for one, am not going to get Shown Up, by some Random Teenagers, when it comes to Looking Like a Beautiful Goddamn Woman in here."

This of course generated more whoops, and I realized that at almost 31 years old, she was by far the oldest person in our group. I looked down her chest and watched her pull off her pants, then socks, then, with a flourish, her panties, twirling them on a finger.

Her voice was falsely-dramatic as she said, "Wooo. Definitely. Wooo," and chuckled. "Not my expectation for this job, but, heck, we're going to a different fuckin' PLANET."

Something occurred to me. "Pat, what kind of radiation are we going to be exposed to on this flight? We're going a lot closer to the sun."

Pat replied quickly to assuage this worry. "Lower than Earth's surface. The interior of the ship, including the cargo bay, are fully protected by shields that shunt radiation around them. The Bison cannot shield against neutrino flux, but such flux even as close as the Sun's photosphere is negligible."

"Good to know." I turned back to Jan, and noticed her taut body. "I'm sorry we don't have exercise equipment here. You obviously work out."

She smiled, she was proud of her body. "Yeah, once a Marine, always a Marine. I've been slacking the last few days, I feel a little itchy."

"Pat, can you construct a treadmill for us to exercise on, and running shoes, please?"

"In process. ETA 3 hours."

Mads had come up to Jan and wanted to give her a hug, so I got to stand back and watch 10 girls come up and give Jan a hug, pressing their chests together even more tightly after Mads said, "OOooo, press those boobs! Kevin loves to see boobs squish together!"

This generated some significant laughter, but it was true. I did love watching it.

Finally, I took the chance to give her a hug, too, but I just opened my arms and said, "If you're comfortable, otherwise..."

"Oh, I want that hug, too."

Her chest wasn't big, but it was comfortable against me, skin on skin is always nice... and soon it was more than her. All of them crowded in and we did a giant group-hug, skin on skin on skin.

Someone grasped my penis.

I looked around, but then Jan pulled back her head and looked at me and winked at the same time there was a squeeze.

I was growing in her hand.

She said, slightly too loudly, "Kevin's gotta stiffie! Watch your butts, everyone!"

There was some mock-high-pitched-screaming, but then Jan said, "Can I share a bunk with you tonight? It's been a dry spell for me."

"Sure! Gotta clear it with Mads, though. She's doing scheduling."

Mads, right near us, said, "Sure thing. Alice has him right now, though, before dinner."

Jan said, "Check-fire noted. Alice, I've got him alert-high, so he's all yours."

The group broke up, and I got lots of cheek kisses and chest-rubs before Alice took me 'by the handle' and led me back to my room.

As soon as the door was shut, I said, "Lean over the desk, I'm gonna do you from behind, I think."

This was far more assertive than I normally was, but, what the heck, why not.

Alice, already naked, leaned over the newly-assembled Ikea desk and stood with her legs apart. Looking behind herself at me, we smiled at each other as I walked up behind. My dick was up straight so I bent it down and went forwards, pressing into her waiting pussy.

This was ...quite different from our normal dates.

She pushed back and grunted onto me

I asked, "Tell me, what do you want?"

"Fuck me. Fuck my pussy."

"Fuck what?"

"My ... cunt. Fuck my cunt, hard."

I pushed into her.

"Fuck, it's Good! Yeahhhhhh, ooh yessss push that ... fuck that cock is nice. I love your cock. I ...worship your cock."

"Even if my cock goes into your ass?"

She inhaled a sharp bit. This wasn't something I'd talked about at all. I thought it was pretty disgusting, and wasn't going to do it, but I wanted to see what her reaction would be.

"Uh...sure! Fuck me. I'm... not ... yeah. Fuck me in the ass, if you want to, fuck me all the way, slam in and make me yours... I AM yours. I'm completely Yours."

We kept rocking as I kept slamming into her with happy abandon.

I said, "I do LOVE this fuckin cunt you've got here, so tight and wet and wow, it feels ... amazing... Not gonna stick it in your ass. Not now. Probably not ever. Just wondering how you'd react."

"Kevin, you've got me. No question here. Completely yours. I ... shall... Obey... Anything."

Roundabouts that time, her timer went off, and she climbed Mount Nitaka in a beautifully convulsive and hippy-happy way. I benefited from her squeezings, her writhing ass twisting as I kept thrusting into it even through her orgasm, and then kept on riding it even after, as she calmed down briefly and started to climb again.

"Fuuuuuuuck!!!!" I came, slamming into her hips and pulling hard on the sides, to get myself any slight bit deeper than I was, deeper still, buried, spurting, painting her cervix, my cock fully wrapped and head touching enough of the end of her vagina to compress me there, too.

Well then.

I slumped down, still holding her butt tightly in place, keeping my cock up and in as far as it went, locked.

She sighed, long and deep, happy, and relaxed her grip on the desk.

We stayed that way for a minute or more, and I could feel myself declining slightly, so I pulled out. "Oh..."

Realizing I'd left my towel on the bridge, I pulled Alice up and spun her around and gave her a deep kiss, passionate and lip-smackingly good. My hand came up and grasped her breast with my fingers around the periphery. "I like these," I intoned while looking deep into her eyes.

Swatting her butt (not hurtfully but not too lightly either), looked into her eyes deeply and said, "I like these, too."

Pulling her face to mine in both hands, one hand on each cheek and tilted up so I could tilt down to it, I kissed the lips I was pushing in from the sides, but softly and with just a little soft tongue. Backing my face up slowly, I looked at her again in the eyes, and said, "And, I like what's in here," my fingers holding her head, "too. Very smart. Very sexy. Very... You. And that's a Very Good thing."

She kind of leaned back against the desk, and her eyes said it all.

I smiled back and said, like I was just figuring it out, "I left my towel on the bridge. You can have the bathroom first if you want."

Her head nod was just looking at me, an 'okay', a 'wow, what was that?' moment.

Walking out the door and around over to the bridge, I walked in and spotted my towel.

Beth was standing near the chair where it was. She saw me coming and said with a smile, "Oh, no, now, hold it, mister. That's not allowed."

"Huh?"

She came up to me and dropped to her knees in front of me, my still half-hard cock dripping from Alice's juices and my cum, "This, this needs to be cleaned. It's important to be tidy."

She sucked me in, tentatively at first, not sure about it, but then firmly and jacking, pressing (really, milking) any remaining cum out. Her smug "Hmmmmm" was just how it felt for me, too, and I said so, and thanked her, too.

== ==

Dinner was whatever leftovers we wanted; I had some Azores food, sopa de sagra, 'mother in law soup', which apparently is always a family recipe and thus varies all over. This one had small bits of potato and sardine in a cream butternut squash base. I loved it the first time, and wow did it just get better the second time.

Pat had provided a 'microwave' which consisted of a box with a front, you closed the box and the latch instantly applied the right amount of heat to make the entire dish the right temperature to eat, right there.

We'd all tasted all of the dishes on that first night. I picked one of my favorites: Lapas, a kind of barnacle, tender when fried, but it had to be full of butter because it tasted amazing.

We had gotten dressed for dinner, to sit on the chairs, and we decided to play some what-if games planning for our future endeavors.

I asked Pat about doing fix-ups on the satellites we were carrying, and the news was it was already done. Pat had replaced broken parts with new ones of about the same technology as the original. But, since they were parts Pat had made, they were so much better that they'd last a lot longer than the originals, even given the increased radiation environment.

We spitballed some ideas for how to protect fish, and asked Pat to run some simulations on whether they'd be effective, cost-effective, and humane for everyone.

Asking Pat what was possible, we imagined a superheated ball of sea-floor sand and rock, held in the air in a protected sphere. Letting a hole go in the sphere, liquid rock would squirt out as a stream, cool in the water to a rock arch or super-tough spiderweb (depending) truss.

Trusses, built this way could be layered over each other, each 20 meters to 50 meters long and thick as an arm, that had merit. It could enclose vast spaces if piled up, and we were planning on piling them up.

Pat said the Bison could construct a sponge-like labyrinth of jumbled rock trusses, a gordian knot of interwoven spars and threads of varying length and width, all impossible to pull out and break, impossible to suspend baited lines into, and only about a tenth of a percent rock-to-water. Or, more, if we wanted.

This was a thought.

The problem was, scooping up that much seafloor, might raise turbidity and mean the fish couldn't see. Still there's enough current, Pat said, to blow it away soon enough, and square mile by square mile, it would make an impenetrable web up to 1000 feet, 300 meters, thick.

If we put that around at the bases of the Azores seamounts, the fish population there would skyrocket. It couldn't be harvested unless the fish came all the way to the surface, and even then, boats would have to sail carefully if they had any nets. Other boats, regular ones, even deep-water draft boats, those would be fine, but only if we started 25 meters down.

Even the biggest aircraft carriers only had a draft of 15 meters or so, I vaguely remembered, so 25 meters would be plenty.

Starting with this idea, I wondered if there was a better way that we could do this, a faster way, a machine we could have the Bison construct, which would spooge out this material.

Or, even better yet, if there was a conventional way we could make this happen, with conventional energy sources.

Pat pointed to a possible device to make badly-refined aluminum cheaply. It didn't need to be perfect, it would be underwater and wouldn't corrode over reasonable timescales of 75 years or so. Bauxite was amazingly cheap and plentiful, so a field of solar panels that turned it into cross-linked chains and similarly confusing nest fibers, that'd be great, too.

So, we had some thoughts about what to build - at least until we came up with better ones.

== ==

That night, after Jan and I made love (yes!), we just lay in the immense 2-kings-together bed and listened to the quietness of the ship. There was noise, mostly from outside the door where it obviously had less sound insulation.

Carla was to my right by the edge, then Jan to my left, and Anna on the other side of her. If I really thought about it, with the crew being "limited" and my sleeping with three per night, plus more during the day, I could get plenty of action and most everyone could have some good orgasms on a reasonably frequent basis.

Jan had a much more businesslike attitude than the others, brusque but friendly. She got things done. Of course she did, really, she was a USMC pilot, for gosh-sakes, she said, and she could 'kill people in 12 languages.'

But, that was just her skillset, there was more to the situation.

"Jan, are you embarrassed you fell into bed here tonight?" She'd had some hesitation, I'd noticed.

She laughed, "My God, no, dude! I wanted you from about 10 minutes in. That's not ... that wasn't the problem. I just.. I think of you as a kid, like, a fresh-faced high school boy. I know, you're lots more than that, for sure. But, my perspective? I'm 31, almost 32 years old. I've been around the block. I've partied with guys that could break you in half. I've... done bad things, too. So, you're a good-guy, and I try to be a good-guy, but, I know, sometimes when you have powerful things, the chi has to flow, and the karma has to flow backwards, too, for the mistakes I've made. So, I wasn't sure."

I didn't want to ask about the 'bad stuff' because as a pilot, she might have been in combat, and that meant killing people, and there's no way around that part, it seemed to me.

Instead, I addressed the other part of it. "So, I'm too young for you? There are some advantages to being young."

"As we saw," she said, "and proof is right here in the fact these two beautiful young things are lying beside us waiting for us to quit talking so they can go to sleep."

I yawned, acknowledging that was a concern, and patted Carla's leg. "I'm glad you're here, all three of you. VERY glad. I don't think I could have done a tenth of what we've done if it was just me. It's hard coming up with good ideas, and all you girls...women, are making that just an absolutely normal part of this operation."

Carla turned on her side and snuggled up to me, her soft breasts on my arm. I turned and kissed her, and said, "Thank you for ... being here, I guess, Carla."

"Of course."

I kissed Jan again, and said, "Let's get the covers up and go to sleep."

We did, and as we lay down again, settled, I realized I was happier with Jan in the room. It was like she was a "real" grown-up. I had immense respect for her, but she acted like the other women in a lot of ways, too.

Probably she was trying to be professional. Technically, I was paying her, but then I was supposed to be paying the rest of the crew, too, and she'd never actually said how much money she wanted as salary.

It didn't matter. That was the answer - it didn't matter.

Warm and cozy and full of skin, we slept.

== ==

The next few days, were they busy?

NO.

We had nothing to do.

Mostly we just sat around and designed space stations. To be fair, Pat was excellent at turning a narrated shape into a model, sizing it, dividing up interior spaces, and adding the features we decided we wanted.

For one, we liked the interior-airlocks idea as a safety feature.

The idea for that is you have doors between rooms that aren't slide or flap-opens. Instead, it's an outer cylinder with two holes and an inner cylinder with one. Walk in, slide the inner one around to line up with the other hole, bingo, airlock.

It would literally never be unsafe, it couldn't be.

We also had to come up with an, is-it-safe indicator. For that, we figured we could have a balloon in both rooms we could see thru the window. If the pressure was low, the balloon would be huge. High, small. Easy way to tell if there's a problem.

Then, we had to have airflow, fans, that blew from one room to another, or every room would have to have an air regulator. We liked the idea of a widely distributed system, not a central piped one that could be taken out all at once.

Power systems, yeah, that was easy, and water, and sewer, those would take some designing, but heck, it should be simplistic, easy to build, and for sure that no one would have problems.

The design changed very little when we put it on the surface of a planet like Mars. For the space station, it would need a truss system and a set of counter-rotating masses to keep it stable, and an egress system that allowed travel between different sections even in emergencies.