Dagny was in the communal lounge eating breakfast when the message from her sister wife arrived. The family had begun sending messages, either text or videos, rather than having direct phone conversations during the weeks since the tug departed from Havensynchronus orbit. Thanks to the limitations imposed by the speed of light, the lag time between speaking then receiving a reply had increased from a barely perceptible fraction of a second to many seconds and then to over two minutes. Coherent conversation had become impossible.
The message from Delilah was simple and direct.
DIANA IS ENGAGED!
I AM PREGNANT!!
DIANA AND CASSIE ARE PREGNANT TO!!!
THAT SWEET YOUNG THING THAT I SET DARYL UP WITH IS ALSO PREGNANT!!!!
Dagny resisted the temptation to ask the obvious questions. Asking a pregnant woman who the father is was taboo amongst the colonists. Everyone would pretend to politely presume that in the case that a woman was married, her husband was the father. However; everyone except naïve young children understood that no man could be certain of the paternity of his putative progeny.
Since Diana had until yesterday not even been formally engaged much less married, she'd not been even nominally exclusive to her fiancé. However; she'd been spending most of her free time with the lucky young man. She'd also politely ignored the evidence that he hadn't been entirely monogamous either.
Cassie was definitely to young to get married. As the customs of the colony encouraged, if not demanded of nubile young women, she had been rather promiscuous these last few years. The fact that she hadn't already gotten pregnant had been somewhat embarrassing, almost scandalous. Dagny had been tacitly supportive of her daughter's decision to take precautions to minimize the probability of pregnancy. The young woman had been utilizing the biometric monitoring features of her bracer to restrict herself to more mature men, who were more trustworthy and less virile, during the fertile phases of her cycles. Older men were to grateful to object to a woman's expectations that they restrain themselves.
Of course it would be impolite for Dagny to question her sister wife about the paternity of the child that she was carrying. Delilah had confided that she was going to discretely recruit a younger man to give their husband "a little help" to get her pregnant. Daryl wasn't to stupid or naïve to remain oblivious to the possibility of a pregnancy resulting from such an extramarital tryst. However; he was pragmatic. He'd had numerous opportunities to sow his wild oats during his youth. He'd not remained entirely monogamous during the years that he'd been married only to Dagny. She'd actually encouraged him to court Delilah then eagerly consented to the marriage to her sister wife. That was the way of things in the Colony.
Inquiring about the paternity of the child that the sweet young thing was carrying was even more taboo. Delilah had confided to Dagny that she was orchestrating an extramarital tryst for their husband. Neither woman suffered from any delusions that the young woman wasn't promiscuous. At best, Daryl would be only one of a few if not many men who had recently inseminated her. To paraphrase an old aphorism, may the best sperm prevail. However; the fruitful assignation would assuage his wounded ego.
Just as Dagny was carefully lifting another forkful of scrambled eggs to her lips, the Golem floated from the central access shaft into the communal lounge deck. The powerfully muscled man didn't reenact a scrupulously, technically correct scene from the classic, Stanley Kubrick movie. He didn't bother to use the row of rungs that radiated from the axis of the aft wall to "climb down" from the access shaft to the outer wall of the tug's rotating habitat can. He merely grabbed the hatch combing to divert himself onto an outward trajectory.
The habitat can was far to small to be rotating rapidly enough to generate the equivalent of a full pseudo gravity. Such a rapid spin rate would induce chronic nausea in most people. The tug's twelve meter diameter habit can rotated at less than a Radian per second. This resulted in about a tenth of a gee of pseudo gravity. It was barely adequate to keep scrambled eggs on a fork. However; it was sufficient to alleviate the physiological effects of living in a microgravity environment.
The Colony was phobic of modifying themselves or their progeny to adapt themselves to living in space. The Transhumans had fallen into that trap centuries ago, eventually forfeiting their humanity. It had then been far to easy for the cyborgs to succumb to the temptation of uploading themselves into computers. Accepting purely cybernetic programs as people had been the final step on the slippery slope of humanity's doom. Eventually; the purely cybernetic organisms had become the overlords of Transhumans as well as mere humans.
The Golem landed, already running to match the nearly ten kilometers-per-hour rotational velocity of the curved, outboard wall of the habit can. It was a stupid stunt bordering on recklessness. He might have landed on someone or run into them. However; Dagny didn't chastise the young man. As not just mission commander but Captain of the perpetually docked Starship, she already had a reputation for being a bitch. She wasn't delusional. She knew that the young men whom she invited into her bed each night enjoyed fucking her as much if not more as an act of dominance than genuine desire.
Dagny watched as the Golem ran a few steps to gradually slow himself to a stop. He was nude, just like everyone else in the lounge. She couldn't not notice the way his flaccid yet impressive penis swayed pendulously in the low pseudo gravity. A seemingly innocent glance at her bracer enabled Dagny to surreptitiously measure the natural frequency of oscillation. A measurement of two-point-two Hertz confirmed her estimate that even when relaxed, the Golem's penis was about twenty centimeters long. He was longer flaccid than her husband was when he was fully erect!
Like any respectable woman, Dagny wasn't really a size queen. She understood that modestly endowed men could be just as soul satisfying as men who were really hung. More importantly, men who were merely average or better yet, almost average like Daryl, made better husband's and fathers. Their anxieties about their anatomical short comings motivated them to be better husbands and fathers. However; Dagny knew from experience that nothing was as physically fulfilling as getting pummeled by a really big penis.
Dagny had been unsurprised that all of the young men in her crew were well endowed. Convicts from Botany Bay tended to have larger penises. This was no doubt a result of the more intense struggle for survival. All the men that she'd been having sex with these last few weeks had been much better endowed than her husband. Dagny had seduced or allowed herself to be seduced by all of the men from Botany Bay, except one. The Golem had remained aloof to her.
At first, Dagny had been relieved by the Golem's lack of interest in her. He had frightened her. He still did. However; his apparent lack of desire for her had wounded her pride, thus provoking her own lust for him. Dagny had become extremely overt in her efforts to seduce the Golem. He'd rejected her once again last night, selecting a pair of women to share his bed. Dagny had been compelled to content herself with an eager trio.
Thinking about last night's assignations evoked images of the billions of sperm that were no doubt swimming around in her womb. The crew consisted of six rather mature women and a dozen, much younger men. Dagny knew that sperm from eleven of those young men were at that moment wriggling around in her uterus, seeking out an ovum. However; no sperm from the Golem had entered the contest. For some reason, that bothered her.
The Golem helped himself to a generous breakfast at the buffet. He then walked right past Dagny to another table. She shouldn't have been offended or disappointed by the obviously intentional snub, but she was. Fortunately; she knew what she could do to distract herself from her turmoil.
Gathering up her dishes and depositing them in the cycler, Dagny headed for the Extra Vehicular Activity Deck. Along the way, she stopped at the bridge. At the moment, no watch was needed. They were no longer under thrust with the fusion rocket shut down.
Dagny took a moment to check their position as well as the position of the asteroid that was falling into the system at a velocity of fifty kilometers per second. As a recent interloper, the massive rock was plated with a thick layer of various ices that had been accreted over eons. Gravimetric measurements as well as deep radar had confirmed that an undifferentiated strata of frozen water, ammonia, methane, Carbon dioxide, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Helium, almost a hundred meters thick, concealed a rocky core that was almost a kilometer in diameter. The core was denser than a Nickel Iron asteroid! Obviously ; the asteroid was a conglomeration of elements, some of which were even denser than Iron. The asteroid that was falling into their system was like manna from heaven.