Fulcrums of the Universe: A TESS NOVEL #2

by Randy Moffat

  I launched myself upward then… in a hurry to get back up to eleven forward before simulated gravity was returned so I could continue with my sulking before things got really busy and I completely lost the thread of everything that was pissing me off.

  Ten minutes later I had returned firmly into the warm comfort of my pout and was seriously considering sticking my thumb in my mouth for a good noisy sucking when I was hailed by a soft and feminine voice that tended to make my heart thump.

  “What ho, ship mate! You’re looking glum.”

  I was fully practiced in weightless operations after repeated trips to space and spun fairly adroitly in midair. My grumpy went instantly away and I traded my mope for the broad smile that always seems to plaster itself goofily across my face whenever I see her these days.

  Maureen O’Hara was hanging behind me with three fingers on a conduit, poised more beautifully in mid air than any ballerina. Maureen was my friend, fellow admiral in TESS and incidentally my lover. I thought she looked utterly fetching in her cotton panties and like most women in orbit, the ubiquitous sports bra that kept her mammary glands from flying about in distracting un-gravitied counter rotating spheres at every turn or simply bounced them off her chin at random shifts of breeze from the ship’s ventilators.

  The shipboard regulations on dress were practically non-existent. I should know, I had set them. As always I set them by trial and error. As the commander of this new service I had found myself reluctant to put out restrictions that kowtowed to useless social norms from any particular tiny corner on the home world out here in our brave new one.

  The way I saw it my people were rapidly breaking brush across the relatively undiscovered trails of what in my mind’s eye was likely to be the full time habitation of outer space by humanity. I was nominally in charge of that effort and looking forward in time to the hard effects of pressing crews cheek by jowl into close proximity aboard a ship for periods that could conceivably stretch out to years rather than the mere weeks or months that had already been achieved by TESS’ predecessors like Mir, Salyut, Skylab and the International Space Station. I was recruiting humans for those kind of crews. Humanity was all I had to choose from. I am no fool. Among human considerations, sex held position as number one on any list. It is my observation that it was also second and third on any list too. Boys and girls are human males and human females. Members of a short handful of terrestrial species whose females remain sexually receptive all the time, which meant humans are built for lots and lots of sex. The primary practical reason I wore my briefs was similar to the one that drove Maureen to wear the bra; to keep my anatomical equipment from drifting about in annoying or impractical ways. From personal experience I could attest that there was nothing more educative than having the paltry remnant of your foreskin pinched in a panel cover as you slammed it shut carelessly. While genital safety concerns were important though, they took a distant back seat to the big sociological elephant in the room. Sex. I am a bit slow, but in time I had become aware of catching a fair number of inadvertent and many clearly advertent glances at my neatly packaged or unpacked Freudian lever from several female crew members… along with a couple males. This was particularly true on the few occasions I had found it convenient to go truly naked in this wilderness of space. Message received. I got it.

  My take away lesson was that totally eschewing clothing actually did telegraph a sexual message to people from most human cultures. Though transmissions of that kind could be desirable in leisure moments, when work was going on it tended to click a transmit button unnecessarily and at inopportune moments. I internalized the lesson. Clothes were required, but not many. I reluctantly settled at the drapery halfway point and set a minimalist rule that required crew members to wear at least non-see-through scanties when moving around ship to cover any hint of unintended temptation presented by a free willy in free fall—or its deeply female equivalent. I used my usual technique. As Admiral I led by example and the crew copied me. There was always work to do aboard and so the minimum required work uniform aboard ship had now devolved more or less to what amounted to underwear on Earth. The way I saw it skivvies were handy for crawling about in tight spaces without catching on snags. I had contemplated briefly if smallclothes was still too provocative, but after five minutes thought I realized there were whole cultures back on the home world who wore much less and I had discovered that the ultimate judge of what right looked like was the old English adage that “use makes master.” Five minutes was all the time I could spare. Wearing knickers full time seemed to be working so far. I found that after a couple weeks or so, people noticed less and less the exposed bits of flesh. Through some legerdemain of sexual chemistry the human imagination ignored what it could see and focused instead on mentally trying to fill in the bits it could not see. Imagination is where the thrills lie. I am sure there is some psychological name for the principle but I am usually too damn tired to look it up. I was simply satisfied for now. Over our short testing period it had become clear that any human mind faced with underpants day in and day out eventually settled down and seemed to examine its neighbors for sexual receptivity with about the same frequency as when humanity is wearing a full Inuit snowsuit. So I had just given up worrying what the long term social impacts of what wearing knickers around ship might be until they got here. Lately the sparse uniform had turned out to be a better decision than usual. The “Gaia” was tinkering also with initial experiments around hydroponics, vertical gardens and dirt grown vegetation in various beds—warming them with bleed heat from the nuclear fission in our modified light water reactor that was powering the ship and several batteries of sun lamps. The humidity and warmth from our practice rainforest garden topside amidships had slowly leaked through our metal hull walls from the test farm compartments into surrounding hull spaces—slowly raising the ambient temperature of surrounding chambers into the higher 70’s of Fahrenheit. Wet armpit territory if you are working hard. Two days ago the air conditioning system had decided to develop a glitch, hiccupping on and off apparently in accordance with microwave bursts from the big bang. Wet forehead territory. Then 24 hours ago the cooling system on the upper two decks had cut out altogether so that several compartments were now about 90 degrees Fahrenheit and rising. Wet everywhere territory… with a heat rash. By this time it was so hot in half the spaces amid-ship that underpants were quite suddenly the absolutely perfect uniform for the environment. Ironic if you considered the outside temperature was so cold it would almost halt molecular motion.

  And now she showed up. Miraculously my already over hot male thermometer got cranked up another notch.

  “All A-tanto here…” I lied tritely. “I was just thinking about all the levers in the universe. Physical and human. I am looking for a grand unified theory of levers actually. Imagining what common theme there was in moving levers that are political, physical, human, monetary and emotional.”

  “Knowing you, you were just comparing the size of your lever with the universe’.’” She goaded me.

  “A reasonable comparison too. Dangerous though. Might give the Universe a lever complex. A sense of inferiority. Not that the universe is primarily male though. I have begun to think of her lately as more of a cold hearted woman. Whatever her suspect sexuality though… I am calling my idea ‘lever theory’. Trademark implied. A grand unified theory of levers… or GUT-L for short…” Then I stopped chattering embarrassedly to cover what I was really thinking and just said what I really in my head anyway. “I just cannot get tired of looking at you, lass.” I said softening my voice and adding my eyes to it. Maureen dimpled prettily. I think I caught her off guard with the remark and she was accidentally genuinely flattered. Certainly her eyes were a shining bright green today behind the thick lens of her glasses that were held to her head by a rubber strap. TESS had discovered early on that contacts had a disconcerting way of drifting askew or right off in near zero gravity if your eyes dried at all and g
lasses were sometimes worse, so most people still wearing corrective lens had taken to strapping their glasses to their faces. Several who got tired of that were opting for laser surgery instead. So far Maureen was allergic to the lure of amplified light waves toasting her corneas. She stuck with the glasses. Personally I had grown to think the magnification a very cute look. Around the glasses frames I flattered myself that Maureen’s face had the sort of flushed happiness and softness of glance that comes from a recent physical manifestation of the deeply held admiration between us.

  To be truthful we had been physically manifesting that admiration like bunnies ever since I came aboard three days ago. We had both been very ready after spending two months apart while I was pulling duty down on dirt-side; it was the kind of forced separation I flattered myself that we were both increasingly reluctant to make.

  But whatever our personal feelings each of us was also part of the triumvirate of TESS bosses who had built TESS up from scratch and we had learned early on to lean hard into of the TESS wagon traces as an example to others. As always duty was so often in contravention to desire. Fleetingly I envisioned the third member of our meanage et commande . . . Rear Admiral Wong. He was head of Operations and had gone down planet side when I had come up under the new, but increasingly normal routine of ensuring one of TESS’ Admirals was available on Earth while the other two remained out in space, pretty well out of reach of planetary security threats, but periodically within easy range for encrypted teleconferencing. Personnel rotations were a security lesson we had learned reluctantly during the tumultuous birth of TESS—a process that had culminated in my being shot and nearly killed. I scratched the puckered scar where the bullet had gone home on my chest absently. I had certainly hated the pain of that wound and the surgeries to repair it, but ended up loving the opportunity that convalescing had given me to be nursed by Maureen. Playing doctor day in and day out had allowed us to achieve a period of domesticity that we had never had before and likely would not find again for a very long time. The time has cemented our relationship. We grabbed love where and when we could find it these days, but we had the many soft memories from that extended time together to sustain us when we are apart.

  Under the impulse of that thought I launched himself across the space and grabbed Maureen with both arms and legs like a limpet to show her I was still grateful for her care. Me Tarzan… you Jane. Seeing me coming she planted her buttocks and one hand against the bulkhead and gathered me into a practiced arm, absorbing the momentum of my mass effortlessly like a spring. She’d had a fair amount of practice. She giggled as I buried my face at the juncture of her neck and shoulder in a purely girlish way that I still found utterly endearing… and frankly rather maddening. I dug deeper, got a throaty chuckle as reward and began ferreting for the squeal I knew was hiding in there somewhere.

  “Harummph.” Someone cleared their throat behind us and I turned while Maureen peered wide eyed over my shoulder at the intruder. I edged away from her trying to ignore where my blood had been flowing while maintaining my usual image of Admiral-like savoire faire. I was reconsidering the virtues of wearing loose pants instead of briefs in concealing masculine semaphore. Luckily Maureen helped distract him.

  “Chief Pinta!” Maureen called delightedly, presumably because he had saved her yet another ravishing. She had not seen him since he had come aboard with me and the poor woman had become helplessly entangled in my sheets.

  Pinta grinned despite the fact that his Admiral and vice Admiral were grappling like horny school kids behind the stadium. Pinta was one of the original members of Team Q-Kink, the secret group that had accidentally discovered the ‘Petrovski Effect’ that now powered the ‘McMoran’ engines that drove the ship’s ability to travel rapidly through space. It had not been my idea to name the drive after me. That was yet another gift of the same idiots who called our lounge Eleven Forward and my being bothered by it had just about as much effect. The inventions of the Q-Kink skunk-works made them the core founders of the new independent space agency called TESS that arose on top of the pillar of their discoveries. As a member of that original group Pinta was simply not surprised to find his leadership making out. The fact that Maureen and I were lovers might startle the slower tabloids, but was nothing new to an old friend like him. Maureen pushed me to one side absently, floated to Pinta and embraced him naturally. He looked a bit embarrassed, but stiffly pleased never-the-less as old-school military men often did at public displays of affection.

  “Chief, you are a sight for sore eyes. I get really tired of not seeing you when you are away dirt-side…” Maureen said cupping Pinta’s face in her hands. If only she would talk to me that way.

  Pinta laughed self consciously. Like the crusty old bastard he was… a bit awkward around Admirals who caressed his cheeks.

  “We miss you too ma’am.” The jaded former NCO said reminding her of the social construct between them—she was an admiral and he was a mere warrant officer.

  Maureen peered at him closely and ignored the hint.

  “Stuff that ‘ma’am’ in private, chief.” Maureen had been presented with her military rank late in her life and though she was learning the forms slowly, she did so with her own motherly style. The service adored her for it. My own leadership paled beside hers.

  “How’s the hand?” She asked concernedly.

  Pinta held up his left hand and waggled his remaining fingers. Two were missing.

  “No sweat… I am getting used to it. I tried to pick my nose the other day with a finger that wasn’t there. Say… is there such a thing as a finger phantasm?” A large load had been shoved at him unexpectedly a month before while the ship lay in orbit around the moon. The weight for the three quarter ton load was greatly reduced in weight, but the mass was unchanged and Pinta had instinctively tried to reach out to stop it. The momentum had pinched his hand between the hull and the crate—mashing two of his fingers into pulp inside his suit. The naval medical sawbones we now carried routinely aboard had been obliged to cut the fingers off. “It’s kind of cool actually… the chicks sure think it’s sexy. A lot cooler than Gaston’s missing toe—I can wave my hand around ordering drinks and advertising my studliness in bars while he is still trying to get his shoes off.”

  Maureen guffawed and I tittered nervously hoping no one remembered. Gaston’s little toe had been amputated even earlier than Pinta’s fingers. We had lacked a doctor in those days and the task had fallen to me while several of my hard-bitten piratical crew were racing about squealing and wringing their hands over their heads like teenage twits in a bug filled room. Lacking tools, training and time I had used a chisel to amputate his icy little piggy after his space suit heater had failed and frozen it to a solid black.

  Gaston and Pinta’s penchant for missing appendages were a mere manifestation of the fact that they were now locked in a race to accumulate the most extra-vehicular time in space suits outside the ship of anyone in the human race… . ever. With the natural competitiveness of stallions in spring they had been racing break neck from the waft of each other’s testosterone by volunteering for every single mission outside the ship that arose; and in the wreck that was Gaia they arose pretty often too. I had put my foot down two months ago when they had started fabricating things to do outside like ‘polishing the radar housing’ or truly inventive fantasies like ‘examining the diametric androgenic latticework,’ which sounded important but didn’t exist. At that point I pulled rank and demanded that they at least take other people with them each time they went out there to spread their experience around. I made it clear that I now regarded them as my senior teachers on space work. Not only would they take trainees with them, but they would have to alternate trips with each other. Essentially every space walk was now a training mission with a scheduled instructor. Despite the sour looks they gave me for screwing up their cool contest they seemed to be getting used to swapping out now though they had taken to stret
ching their mission times out-ship to longer and longer periods to make up for the artificial restrictions I’d imposed. They assumed I was too busy to notice. I pretended not to notice like any good annoying leader, but had them watched instead. I was forced to reach the conclusion that they had been working far too hard when I got wind of their latest games. They had reached the point of pushing the limits of their suit air supplies to its maximum. My sources told me that the latest double dare was seeing how far past their ‘3 minutes to end-of-air’ telltale light on their helmet HUD they could push things to build time. I blamed Pinta’s non-fingers more on fatigue from this kind of idiocy than any bad luck. My spies warned me that Pinta had taken things so far to beat Gaston that he had passed out while in the airlock trying to reenter the hull. The children were pushing the envelope to its limits and I couldn’t spare them. I had directly ordered Pinta to accompany me down planet-side the last time I went. It was blatantly an enforced break that took Pinta away for two months to a beach in Maui. Punishments vary, I can think of worse ones than the Hawaiian Islands. Based on Gaston’s performance with the torch outside the ship today I clearly needed to send him down for some much needed R&R too. Fair is fair.

  Maureen had examined the de-fingered hand and now she cooed over it. Genially she kissed the stumps of the missing digits.

  “It is sexy, chief. Losing whole fingers is just… hot! So manly! It makes a girl think hard about what the remaining fingers can do for her. I was just fantasizing the other day that if only Admiral McMoran could contrive to lose… well… he could… .”

  “That’s OK, Maureen…” I said tartly. “Hanging around with this crew it’s not fingers I’ll be losing. It is my mind instead. Insanity! I can’t wait until that get’s to be sexy. My neo cortex must look like a hunk of Jarlsburg cheese after trying to ram-rod this lot of reprobates day in and day out. Listen… speaking of brain damage.” I looked pointedly at Pinta. “Your pal Gaston cut a hole in one of the waist water tanks this morning…”