“Were you seen?” she asked as she pulled him inside. He looked over his shoulder to the upper corner of the room. A CCTV was mounted there, only it had a woman’s teddy draped over it obscuring its view.
“You worry too much,” he said.
Every room and corridor had a CCTV that ISAAK monitored to locate personnel during emergencies. It was a testament to the realism of his AI sentience that most of the crew felt like they were being stared at rather than just ‘located.’ Blocking the view of the CCTVs was technically against regulations, but the Captain allowed it in the staterooms—how else could he have a private moment with her?
“Do you have time to…?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Next watch. I’m only supposed to be ‘stretching my legs.’” He finger-quoted the last part.
“Did the launch go okay?” she asked.
“Oh yeah. Usual juvenile guff from Hamilton. Had to jerk his chain a little.”
“You should have replaced him six months ago.”
The Captain shrugged, “He may be a little irreverent, but if things go sideways he’s the one I want in the First Officer’s chair. Besides the Bridge team is pretty used to it by now.”
“I have a drill at the lander dock,” she said as she turned and began was stripping out of her coveralls. A pair of nappies and sports bra lay on the bunk.
“What’s this one?” he asked.
“Simulated unpacking of core samples and stowing them in the hazmat locker.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Only if I fuck up!” She didn’t like being stared at by the flight techs while she was in the buff, and they all stared, even the women. For this reason, she had modified her own suit-up procedure so she could put her nappies on under her coveralls while she was still in her stateroom. The nappies and bra were so cheesy they would have embarrassed her grandmother but at least they provided minimal modesty.
By official policy, SpaceCorp was coed. The men didn’t seem to mind and adapted to the unspoken etiquette of the shared locker room. Most of the women adapted as well, but there were a few holdouts, usually older women fresh up from Earthside, or the ones that were just too damn sexy to ignore. With her blazing red hair, full lips, and curvy figure, she was in the latter category.
The Captain forced his gaze to meet hers while she changed. They both wore coy smiles, neither fooling the other. She faced him with full frontal nudity. Her thick lips were parted as she looked at him out of the tops of her eyes while lifting one of her breasts with her hand. Then she snickered and marched him toward her door.
“See you next watch, Cowboy!” She stood on tiptoe to nibble his ear while she spoke.
* * *
The Captain circled back to the Bridge past the Primate House. He paused by the hatchway that led into Roxanne’s lab. He put his hand on the latch, then took it away. As Captain, he could tap into any CCTV on the ship using his communicator. For that matter he could have done his spying back in his office, but he was already here when the thought occurred to him.
Roxanne was in the viewing room, her back to the CCTV. There was too much glare to see through the viewing window. He switched to the CCTV inside the Primate House. The chimps were sacked out in their beds, triple bunks on either side of their sleeping area, the lights dimmed but their images still plain. They slept funny. Some of them shared a bed embracing each other with their long hairy arms. One of them was entwined with his bedding, his hind limb hanging down into the bunk space below.
Beyond them he could make out the apparatus that had been installed for them to play on during the voyage. It had tire swings—made from new tires no less, plus an elaborate network of thick ropes draped about the double high room. It was still a bit cramped by wild standards, but he’d been told it was more spacious than what they’d been raised in on the Einstein. Still, it was six chimps taking up more living space than twenty humans. He snorted.
The one with the hind limb encroaching on his neighbor’s bunk got up to use the toilet, his blanket draped over his shoulder as he walked. He wore a T-shirt, but no pants, his oversized balls and penis keeping time with his gait. He didn’t knuckle walk the way his cousins in the wild would have. Rather, he walked almost upright, stooped slightly forward to compensate for legs that did not fully extend at the knee. He resembled a little old man with a touch of rheumatism. At the toilet, he followed proper procedures for waste disposal, then went to the sink to rinse his hands. He didn’t dry them on the towel that was hanging nearby, just gave them a shake and rubbed his palms on his shirt before returning to his bunk. The Captain raised his eyebrows, then scowled.
He walked away speaking sotto voce, “No, Miss Carvalho, you are not going to make a monkey out of me.”
About the Author
Mr. Fulsang is an accomplished author with two critically acclaimed speculative fiction novels and a prize-winning short story under his belt. Although he is passionate about good SciFi, he has always felt that he was not space-savvy enough to write a true ‘hard’ science fiction novel. Not anymore—working as a NASA tech writer from 2007 to 2017 has changed that. He spent that time helping world-class scientists and engineers craft proposals for space missions and getting a unique education in the bargain. The topical areas have included manned Mars missions using nuclear thermal rockets, searching for microbial life under the Martian regolith, extremophiles as analogs for life in high radiation planetary environments, interstellar space travel, asteroids as both hazards and resources, and a good deal of spare time in such arcane fields as quantum entanglement and beamed core antimatter drives. He has become so obsessively conversant in these subjects that he is no longer invited to his friends’ parties. Hopefully you will enjoy reading the Galactican Series as much as he enjoyed researching it.
Also by Ejner Fulsang
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2070 AD—The dire prophecies of the Kessler Syndrome have rendered Low Earth Orbit non-viable for conventional satellites. SpaceCorp has solved the problem with giant ring-shaped space stations that protect their payload instruments while housing a large human crew to affect the continuous repairs needed to keep the stations in orbit. But the people of SpaceCorp dream of one day living among the stars. This is the first of the Galactican Series where SpaceCorp moves to LEO. Future books will take them to CisLuna, Mars, the Main Belt Asteroids, the Jovian and Saturnian moons, the Trans Neptunian region, Alpha Centauri, and beyond. New Features in 2nd Edition: --New cover artwork by master space artist Douglas Shrock --New Epilogue describing migration to CisLuna --28-page essay ‘On Becoming a Spacefaring Society’ --First 3 chapters of Book II, CisLuna.
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FINALIST – 2006 Florida First Coast Writers’ Festival
“Sometimes I send some suggested corrections to entrants so the final manuscript is as clean as possible, but your writing is so clean that I would only be quibbling about commas here and there.”
—Howard Denson, Judge, Florida First Coast Writer’s Festival
EDITOR’S PICK – June 2004 Online Writing Workshop for SF/F/H
“There is a lot to like in this short chapter [four], which goes down as smooth as pricy bourbon but still has a wonderful bite.”
—James Patrick Kelly, Hugo Award Winner, Think Like a Dinosaur
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“A Knavish Piece of Work will satisfy anyone who studies human nature under fire. From specials on the History Channel to articles in military magazines, we see a special reverence for the fallen comrades. Fulsang’s book pays homage to his close friend, Richard Van de Geer, the last man to die in the Vietnam War. In addition, since it’s human nature to imagine conversations ten or fifteen years later after the deaths of loved ones, the book conjures up a Twilight Zone twist that takes friends into parallel worlds, where wicked bureaucrats are forced into their special Circles of Hell.”
—Howard Denson, Judge, Florida First Coast Writer’s Festival
&nb
sp; "You have been able to shed a flood of light on a very dark period. You have a knack for telling it like it really is."
—Darryl Kastl, Mayaguez crewmember
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