The Good Ship Bison

We didn't really need it yet, she was right.

One of the first aboard of our new crew was Gretchen Cole, the first crewmember who was taller than me. She was 6'1", and I was right at six feet (I know, US measurements, ug).

I felt odd looking up at her for a little while, until she bent over to kiss me (on both cheeks, being French-German) and it seemed perfectly natural. She smelled nice, too.

For all of the crew newly arriving, they took some adjusting to the idea that I took very regular sex breaks during the day. At least, it was unusual for the first few hours, and I suspect... I know that Pat had a lot to do with this culture change.

Gretchen specifically asked me about it, maybe 3 hours after we'd picked up the last of the new crew. We were on our way to a small town in Japan for dinner.

She asked, in broken English, "Kevin. You having much-much sex, no? You going conference room short ago."

I shrugged and said, "Yes. I like sex. I have a lot of sex. With the crew."

"You ... expect ... crew making sex you, also new peoples?"

"Only if you want to."

She pondered this, squinting at me in a small evaluation. "You are, very sexy-man. I enjoying look at you. I think you much sexy. When ...?"

"Talk with Alice. Ask Alice."

Not but 2 hours later, I called (not too loud, but loud enough for a few to hear me), "Sexytime," did something to finish up my task, and walked off to my cabin. There, waiting for me, was Gretchen, sitting in a bra and panties, on the side of the bed.

I shut the door behind me and started taking off my clothes, dropping them as I walked. "Good to see you."

"Ya, ich auch... I also yes," she replied, and stood, reaching below to pull off her jog-bra and let her gorgeous D-cup+ melons come free. Her body was tall and athletic, with surprisingly muscular-looking shoulders that it turned out had been from collegiate volleyball.

She dropped in front of me and held my hips, and looked at my cock, sticking up at a 45-degree angle, from the side, bending it around, then sniffing. Approving, she pulled it down enough to suck it into her mouth, starting a bobbing process that was very, very nice.

I stopped her after a minute, pulled her up, and we kissed for another couple of minutes before going down on the bed. She wanted to know if I wanted to be on top, or her, and I chose to be on top of her since there'd be no fear of her being 'too fragile' or anything.

Normally I didn't worry about the girls being smaller or larger than me, and I for-sure out-weighed her, but the height thing was kind of fun for me.

Dipping down to lick her out, pushing her legs up and to the sides, I got a great treat - her taste was delectable to me, more so than the first crewmembers at least. That led to having a fun time just licking her silly and making her cum twice, shuddering and pinning-tight my ears while she shuddered around.

Fingers inside don't lie about orgasms. Fluttering rhythmic muscle contractions? I doubted that it could be faked even if someone wanted to.

After she'd settled down from the second one, I sat up, positioned my cock to swipe up and down her lips, and waited, looking at her eyes. The desperation and wanting were unambiguous, so I pushed in just a tad...

And met more resistance than I was expecting.

She nodded, "Yah, Yah, bitte, bitte jezt..." (please, now).

I moved in, got resistance again, and then pushed harder, and broke through.

She'd been a virgin!

In college, and a virgin, and an athlete, and an amazingly beautiful person? I was startled.

She cried out! Sharply, she screamed, but then cut it off, and said it was okay. I stopped and waited, but she got her breath back and pulled in on my lower back to get me moving again.

Wow!

Setting up a rocking motion, her legs came up to bend around behind mine, pressing in on me to urge me into her, and I did press, regularly, not fast, but not slow either, loving the sensations of her soft skin, her caring eyes, the dots of hard nipple on my chest, and the slippery hot grip her pussy had on my cock, sliding in and UP ... buried, then out and down, relax, and UP IN again, and down...

I'd established there was almost no variation in how long I'd last while making love, always between six and seven minutes, but my inner urge to start going very fast in the last two minutes was kind of something that I'd gotten used to about myself.

Gretchen loved it and started coming, probably to her surprise given her rapidly-dancing facial expressions, culminating in a climax that had her pulling so tightly on my back it actually felt constricting on my breathing.

I kept going through her climax, faster and faster, until I came, too, Slamming Slamming Hard and IN and UP SPURT and IN SPURT to her hot FUCKKKing cunt YESSS spurting IN there with a reckless abandon, HARD IN deeply DEEPly yes YESSSS ooooohhhh fuck FUCK yesszzz....

There might have been some yelling, and it might have been me. Okay, yes, it was me.

We slowed down, and I caught my breath, too, feeling all of her inner pussy surface bending and holding the head of my cock as it rode up and down that passage in tiny movements even in declining motions of happy relaxation.

Pulling my head back up to look in her eyes, I could see she was crying, but I knew it wasn't sadness, the tiny crinkles at the corners showing her broad happiness (not to make a pun).

We talked for a while, but then it was back to work time (I had some meetings) and we headed back to the control room.

My third meeting (after talking for two hours with various heads-of-projects) was a meet-and-greet with Dr. Allison Kraft, a new crewmate from the Netherlands, and one of the oldest people (besides Dr. Shoe) onboard. She'd been working on ITER, the tokamak fusion project in France, but they'd hit some snags and the project wasn't turning out to be that useful.

We sat down in a conference room; she'd been aboard about a day at that point and we'd said hello but the point of the meeting was to find out where she was with the physics.

She said hello and we sat down.

I asked if her accommodations were okay and she laughed and said it was better than her summer cabin in Finland so she was not arguing, and the food had been good.

"I have several things to talk about," I told her, looking at a translation of her resume on the wall-display, "and these are, first, if you've heard of Dr. Booth's work in Boston, second, how we can disguise some improvements we're going to suggest, and third, whether you will be interested in a trade that involves some personal matters."

"Dr. ...Booth? No."

"Grad student. Did some work about 3 years ago on theoretical Polywell and Z-Pinch reactor designs."

"Not familiar."

"Here's the thing. Pat - the ship's computer, can suggest things _only_ that have already been discovered by humans or are otherwise utterly obvious improvements that will come soon, in tech development. The goal is to give humanity a way to generate electrical power, fast - in the next year - but not introduce military tech, as an ethical issue."

She smiled widely and nodded, her long hair waving with the motion. "Ya. This I understand. Bison must remain neutral or it becomes a military target itself."

"More than that, it's an internal ethics thing, and it's something I feel deeply about. Regardless. Here's a diagram of something I've thought about, and I'd like you to imagine. First, you set up a polywell to shoot toroid waves into a stellarator which then self-propagate against boundary layers, here, and here..."

I should mention that I was getting somewhat more familiar with these physics concepts over time (with Pat's help), and though I was a long way behind her, Pat said Dr. Kraft was the most likely to be able to pick up these ideas quickly.

"Hold on!" She stood up from the mediocre office chairs we were sitting on, and walked over to the wall. "You say, this Dr. Booth came up with this?"

"Almost. He had the self-propagating wave theory, but he didn't apply it to the stellarator. That, you are doing."

"I'm doing this? You just laid it out!"

"No, YOU just invented it, in your head, as I said a string of words I barely understand."

She laughed but was too thunderstruck by what she was seeing. "This could... You could get arbitrary beta values... scaling with ... wow, yeah, we could do this...!"

"You would agree this is a viable candidate for an experiment?"

She laughed with an incredulous 'duh' response of "YES!!! SOOOoo going to do this!"

"You can write up the patent application?"

"...I think so? I'd need some attorneys, I think. I've never done that."

"Good. That's your project onboard, write it up. Then, go back to Boston, maybe in the next week or so, once you've run some simulations on potential designs."

"On what computer?"

"Pat can run any simulation you ask for."

She nodded. She wasn't used to the idea of Pat yet. "Ah."

"You will get invention credit, and 10% of patent fees. My corporation gets the 90%."

"Okay? This will make more money than God."

I was still smiling. I knew where I needed to use the money. "I already have more than that. And, it won't be that much, we have other plans going to help the power supply."

"Won't be small though. Probably a medium-sized office block and a year from now, you'll have a working example." Something dawned on her. "We could do... Proton-Boron-11 fusion in this! Direct electric generation!"

I was aware of the idea, "Good to hear." I cleared my throat. "You'll need to give away some credit for this and ensure the academic credit mostly goes to other people. I don't want to get in the habit of making Nobel prize winners, the credit should mostly go to other people. We should just recognize the commercial aspects."

She thought about that for a moment. "You could have as many Nobel prizes as you wanted, with Pat giving you clues."

"Exactly. The point of this is, humans do the work, Pat recognizes things. Otherwise, all scholars and engineers will get fatalistic and just go into a 'why bother, Pat will solve all our problems' slump."

She nodded.

I'd had this conversation several times already, I was used to it.

The last part I wasn't used to, but I wanted to pursue it.

"Third. I'm curious about your interactions with me while you've been aboard. We've seen each other several times. I've seen you around. I know from your bio that you're 35, divorced, step-mother to an 18 year old Korean girl named Daeso, though she's at University now. Correct?"

We were looking at a bio on the wall with pictures of her from her social media I'd just brought up. She nodded.

"I am about to offer you a trade. This offer, and the result, and anything about it, must remain utterly secret for the next 2 years, not even when confronted will you admit to anything."

Her attention had been on the fusion stuff, still, but this kind of talk brought her back to being centered on me. "Yes? Oh, yes, I agree to keep the offer secret. What's it you want?."

"Very well. The trade is that you get perfect health and a very long lifespan - well over 100 years, while being and appearing to be about age 25, at least until you're over 100."

She looked at me with suspicious eyes, "In exchange for?"

"Bearing and raising several children by me."

This was confusing, "That's ... it? Are these going to be alien children or something?"

I laughed, "No, normal humans. I had a small family. I want a large family. I don't want to do much of the work, so, yes, I'm lazy. I'm willing to financially support everyone, for gosh sakes, you're going to be one of the richest people on Earth in about 2 years."

She sat back, and I could tell she was deep in thought. "You won't interfere in how I raise the children?"

"I ask that you tell them who their father is once they're old enough to know it. I'm Catholic, so I'd ask you to bring them up in some spiritual tradition, even Buddhist is fine, I just think that's important. Otherwise, I'll have to trust you, yes."

She thought for another few minutes - a long time to sit there without talking - and said, "I agree."

"Excellent."

Her gaze returned back to the wall, and the diagrams. "Uh... what's the ... timing?"

She wasn't talking about fusion reactors.

I shrugged, "Talk to Alice. Put yourself on the schedule. I'd ask you to go right now, I'm horny, but I'm not going to put you on the spot."

She stood up, grinning from ear to ear, and said, "In my wildest dreams, I didn't think I'd get invited to come here - on this ship. Then, when I get here? You're this normal, nice guy, and everyone around is so genuine and happy to be here. Then, THEN, you show me THIS, and ... save the planet, almost, and... THEN THEN, you tell me I get to get like a fountain of youth thing, and, THEN THEN THEN, I get to have kids, when doctors told me I couldn't."

This worried me, I hadn't considered whether she might be unable, since Pat would really have mentioned it, I thought. Turning to the wall, I said, "Pat, display Allison's health status."

The normal status record I usually saw showed up, complete with uterine polyps, fallopian tube obstructions, high chances of fatal stomach cancer starting at +6 years, and Alzheimer's at age 68.

She gasped and started crying.

"Good thing I said yes."

"Yes. I might have asked Pat to treat you for the long term stuff anyway as a goodwill gesture. If you got cancer after having been onboard it might reflect badly on us."

Her hands over her mouth, she was still crying.

"You want some time alone?"

"No, no... who do I call first?"

"About?"

"To say goodbye?"

I chuffed. "Pat, can we treat her problems?"

"In process. As crew, I started fixing her when she came aboard. ETA on the last fix is 3 days."

She cried for a while; I read some emails on my phone.

I moved on, "So... your next steps. Focus. Create a team. Call up some people. Give away nothing, get them to fly to Boston, Pat will tell you where. They'll sign NDA's, and work with the attorneys."

We talked for a while until I stood up and she stood, too, coming around the table.

I opened my arms and she accepted; it felt good to hug her, like she was totally into it. Pulling away a little, I bent down more and kissed her cheek.

She changed the cheek kiss into a mouth kiss, and my mouth kiss turned into a more-kiss. Asking Pat to turn up her stimulation level, we got naked, and busy. I laid her down on the table and knelt down, nose and lips in, and gave her a big-happy, which she was quite eager to get.

Standing again, I held her legs up, looking down at her slightly flabby 35-year-old boobs (versus the 18-year-old ones I had been looking at), and at her overjoyed face, and pressed my cock in her folds, finding a warm, wet, welcoming spot there to stroke in and out of.

My thumb, even while she was there, found her clit, and she cooked off to a long string of almost continuous orgasms as I just kept stroking in.

Life is good. Sex is good. We should all have more sex.

I came, spurting and happy, throwing my head back and groaning with the joy of it as I did fairly often, and loved that my sperm was going someplace useful.

As I relaxed and slowed down, I internally asked Pat for a visual, and was shown that (certainly not by accident), Allison had ovulated on both sides the day after she'd come aboard, and her birth control drug's effectiveness was at zero.

The obstructions in both fallopian tubes had been tiny polyps, which were mostly drained already, and wouldn't interfere with the both descending eggs. The data overlay Pat typically gave me showed the chances of fertilization would be above 90% for one of the two, or 82% for both.

Well then. Good times! And, one hell of a smart lady. Whoever these kids turned into, they'd almost certainly be above-average smart.

She spoke as I pulled out, holding her legs back and open. I said, "Might want to lie upside down for 20 minutes."

Still panting, she said, "I'm on birth control."

"That might not work, this time. Might as well stop."

Her appreciative smile was open-mouthed because of the breathing, but she said, "I love it."

I nodded.

"And, Kevin... I love you, too."

"Not my fault!" I laughed, "But, yeah. I don't know you well enough to love you yet, but I can say I love a lot of things about you already."

We got dressed, and she took off for the bunkroom. I saw her prop herself up on the wall-side with her hips up in the air, and I knew she had to have tried to have kids before if that was a move she already knew.

== CHAPTER: Bases and More Bases but Few Basses ==

We went ahead with our legislative agenda, put some teeth into it by noting who we'd do business with and who not, just like I told the President.

The EU already had most of my decidedly liberal ideas, so they were onboard. China was pretty close, but they didn't have free-and-fair elections and we had to negotiate a little. Our push was for local officials to be chosen in free and fair elections with ranked-choice voting. This didn't threaten the national leaders to start with, but we advised them that as time passed, higher and higher offices would need to be elected posts.

China was deeply suspicious, and frankly they didn't like Bison, or me, or anything to do with us.

It made sense. China had lots of large-scale refineries that processed ore into pure metals, and we were competing with that. On the other hand, more materials let them build stuff faster and they were all about the fast growing aspect of it.

Plus, one of the limiting factors on Chinese economic growth was electric power, smog, and protein availability. We were uncapping their potential with clean power and inexpensive artificial fish meat made from soy plus yeasts.

A shipyard in South Korea built a set of habitats and almost beat out the Portuguese (Azores) one, but we put the Azores one first out of general principles. It wasn't quite done, but there was enough done and it was sealed enough to give them an orbital platform.

The pet project I wanted to start with was a 'proof of concept' POC base where people could live and demonstrate it was possible. People had odd ideas of what was possible.

Until some people see it, it's not real.

As soon as someone's doing something, and being bored by it, then it gets very real.

My POC (proof of concept) base would be (for travel time simplicity) on the Moon, at the south pole.

I had the ship (really Pat) excavate and fuse walls solid for a set of tunnels about 30 meters below the surface. The size was impressive for the standards then, about 20,000 square meters of floor space and tunnels, plus the tunnels to get down to them.

The design was from an US Army base and the furniture was Ikea, but the base was functional and useful if minimal in amenities.

I wanted to establish that it was possible to have a good and useful base on the Moon, and have 'normal' people there.

Parts of the lunar south pole are permanently in shadow, and ridges permanently in sunlight. Extremes of temperature are thus very normal, though we weren't walking around much outside yet because pressure suits are surprisingly high-tech.

The important factor was putting it next to a large subsurface glacier of water, since transporting that from off-moon is a giant hassle.

On other nearby crater rims, we put sets of sun-tracking solar panels, and a backup RTG courtesy of the French government. The USA had too many rules on that, but the French were happy as long as they knew it wasn't being stolen or misused.

The base, of course, was Owensville.

We named it in honor of Jesse Owens, not U.S. Senator Clyde Owens, Owen Wilson (actor), or any variation on the concept of the verb 'to owe' an obligation.