Author's note:
Thanks for the encouraging comments.
If anyone has sent me a private message, I'm sorry I haven't replied but my emails from Literotica were going into the spam folder and automatically deleted. I didn't realise until recently.
This is a lengthy chapter, with some sex, some humour (I hope), some fictional science, some real science, some history and some details necessary for the later plot. I hope you like it.
*****
The story:
As Ezra and his party trudge across the sunny plain to the Mariner Settlement to start his long-delayed salvage operation, we turn to his family on Earth, who continued with their lives, trusting he was well. His younger sister, Danielle, who thought most often about him in the last year, had twice been too preoccupied by sex with her boyfriend (in chapter 2 and chapter 4) to learn why Samothea had been cut off from the rest of the galaxy.
1 Roger surprises Danielle
Danielle and Roger had been together more than a year and settled into a comfortable rhythm. Both had apartments in Cambridge, England. Danielle, who earned the most, had a spacious modern flat in the town-centre but worked in a high-rise office at an out-of-town science park, except for the class she taught once a week at Trinity College. Roger worked at the university but shared a house with a buddy in the suburbs, where accommodation was cheaper. He saved his money to take Danielle out.
Had they put their brilliant minds together, they could have found a simple way to save money and improve their living arrangements; but they were always busy with work and, when they had time to see each other, had much better things to do than talk about accommodation.
After two weeks apart, during which Roger went home to Boston (Massachusetts, not Lincolnshire), to deliver a lecture, do some research and visit his folks, they decided on a special trip for the coming Saturday. He arranged to pick her up in King's Parade.
It was the first warm day of spring and the dull yellow-grey stones of the Gothic King's College entrance gate, so dismal on a rainy winter's day, now almost sparkled under a clear blue sky. Not only was the college looking good, so were the women of Cambridge, relieved at last to go out in short skirts and skimpy tops. It made a man's heart glad to see them.
Danielle sunned herself on a stone ledge on the Parade, turning the heads of passers-by and attracting the admiration of a group of horny male students. Her flowery sun-dress exposed her generous cleavage. She pulled the dress up to let the rare sun warm her legs.
Like most beautiful women, Danielle was convinced she had flaws. Sometimes she thought her eyes were the wrong shade of blue. Sometimes she thought her forehead was too high. Sometimes she thought her breasts were too large. Sometimes she thought her legs were too plump. Today, however, she was convinced her bum was too big; hence the sun-dress with its wide skirt.
The cause of all this dissatisfaction was the fashion industry, of course, which, even in the twenty-fifth century, elevated emaciated and drug-addled teenagers to the pinnacle of feminine beauty.
The admiring students instinctively knew better. Their erections proved that, to red-blooded males, a woman's physical allure was measured by her pretty face and her curves.
Danielle wasn't offended by the gorping boys. She was teasing them quite innocently, but their enjoyment of the view was spoiled when a tall man appeared behind them. Roger put his hands on the shoulders of the two outlying students and said:
"Gorgeous, isn't she?"
"Oh, yes!" one randy youth agreed before looking around and recognising the history lecturer.
"Oh, God! Sorry Sir."
The boys made a quick escape with barely a glance back at the sexy woman.
"Hello, you're late," Danielle said to her boyfriend.
"Sorry. You ready?"
She stood up and kissed him.
"Yes. Where are we going?"
"I'll tell you on the way. More important is how we get there."
That was intriguing and Danielle waited for the surprise as Roger pressed a button on his communicator. A minute later, the crowds of ambling students and tourists in the high-street parted as a beautiful bright-red vehicle came out of the side-street where Roger left it, and rolled up, its engine making a throaty growl. It stopped at the kerb. Low to the ground, looking muscular and sleek with a chrome grill and wide cooling vents. There was a hiss as its gull-wing doors swung open.
"Is this yours?" Danielle asked.
"Sort of. I've hired it."
"What the devil is it?"
"A car. What your ancestors would have called a motorcar and my ancestors an automobile."
"This isn't a car," she said. "That's a car," pointing at something that looked like a thick mattress with half an Easter-egg on top. It shimmered with vibro-lucent colours in the current fashion, like an electrified cuttlefish, and zipped along almost silently on mag-lev beams about ten feet off the road.
"That's a soulless ugly people-mover. It's plastic, robotic, functional ... it's ..."
"Antiseptic?" she helped him out.
"Exactly!"
"I agree your motorcar looks wilder but you're not telling me it's as safe."
"No but it's more fun. Come on, let's get in."
"I'm not going in that until you tell me how it works."
"Darling, I'm a historian, not an engineer. I've no idea how it works. I just know how much fun it is to drive."
"You've been in it before?"
"A little way this morning, but I've had lessons on other automobiles and practised for hours on a simulator."
She was impressed by the effort he made to surprise her and cut him some slack.
"All right, tell me what you know about the motorcar."
"That I can do. It's an Aston-Martin-Williams. A wonderful collaboration of the Anglosphere two-hundred years ago: Hong Kong money, Yank marketing, British design, Japanese gears, built in India."
"It's two-hundred years old?"
"Re-modelled and rebuilt, though it's based on an original four-hundred years old."
"Four-hundred years! You're joking?"
"Things were solidly built in the past, before everything was metallo-plastic."
"It's ancient!" she protested.
"It's vintage," he countered.
"It's obsolete."
"So am I," he admitted. "I don't fit into the modern world, either."
"That's true."
In fact, it was a reason she loved him. Roger wasn't predictable, like the other antiseptic men she knew. She relented a little.
"What are those?"
"Wheels."
"I can see they're wheels. I mean, why was it rolling on them, not levitating?"
"That's how it works. It's driven by its wheels."
"Good God! You mean it runs on the ground?"
"Of course."
"How fast does it go?"
"220 mph."
"That's about 350 kph, and it's in contact with the ground! How does it turn?"
Roger pointed to the steering wheel.
"That wheel turns the front ones."
"My God! Have you never heard of centripetal force? Friction? Newton's laws of motion? That thing's a death-trap!"
"Yes, but fun. Come one. I'll do my best not to kill us both. Besides, we're insured."
"Just so long as we're insured," she said indulgently. In fact, she was interested in the ancient vehicle and trusted her boyfriend. Even more, she felt a frisson of excitement from the idea of taking a risk. Lately, her life had been so dull.
They got in and the doors closed. Roger addressed the onboard control system:
"Computer."
"Hello, my lover."
It was a woman's voice, a thick West-Country burr, honeyed and sexy, instantly conjuring up the image of curvy blonde woman with plump rosy cheeks and big buttery breasts.
Roger didn't need to look at Danielle to see her arched eyebrows.
"Previous user," he explained. "I forgot to change it. ... Er, Computer, do you have another voice?"
"Sure, buddy. Hank here, where d'you dudes wanna go?"
Danielle's eyebrow hadn't dropped.
"Er, do you have someone more reserved, please?"
"Good morning, Sir. I am Aston. How may I assist you?"
"Thank you, Aston. Can you drive us to the motorway, please? We want to go to north."
"Yes, sir. The motorway is seven miles away, twelve minutes in present traffic. Please fasten your seat-belts."
With a throaty rumble and a slight lift to the front, the car trundled slowly off down the high street. Danielle was impressed by how smoothly it drove over the cobbles and turned sharp corners, weaving through the narrow streets to the main road.
"Why aren't you driving?" she asked.
"I'm waiting until we're on the straight flat road. I'm pretty good at the wheel but I don't want to risk running anyone over."
"Very thoughtful, I'm sure."
She was amused. It was an experience and not unpleasant.
"Tell me why the English and Americans have different name for cars."
"Well, I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's mainly because, in the Twentieth Century, we Americans were trying to forge our own identity and break all ties with the mother-country, even linguistic ones. So this perspex window is a windscreen to you and a windshield to us; the front of the car is a bonnet to you and a hood to us; the back is a boot or a trunk; and this is the gear-stick or a gear-shift."
"Interesting. Who's right?"
"It's half-and-half: we perfected the automobile but you perfected the language."
"Very diplomatic, Roger."
She settled back into the white leather seat and began to enjoy herself. Soon they were at the main road, which they had almost to themselves.
Personal transports generally followed magnetic-levitation strips, which took direct routes across open countryside, so many roads had decayed; but the main roads were maintained in case of emergencies and for heavy freight traffic; and small country lanes were in better condition than ever, dedicated to walkers, cyclists and robot farm vehicles.
"Aston," Roger ordered, "give me manual control."
"Very good, Sir. Would you like me to navigate?"
