1 Return to Celetaris
Tatiana, Hazel and Wildchild were the first set of adventurers to return to Celetaris. They left the spaceship,
Sunrise
, docked to an engineering station in high orbit around Celetaris, for repairs and refitting for the next mission. Tatiana fretted that the work would eat into the profits of the venture, but Ezra (who was underwriting the mission) made no comment when she sent him the bill.
The three of them caught a shuttlecraft down to the surface and landed at Ocean City Astroport, where Ed and Rod waited for the girls. Before they had a chance to leave messages for their friends, the lads bundled them all into a jetcar. Dropping Tatiana off at a hotel in Arts City, they whisked the girls away, keen to make the most of the time before the new University year began.
Tatiana made herself comfortable in her hotel room, where she sent a report to Ezra on Earth by videolink and waited for his own report. Tatiana's report praised the girls and asked him not to tell Danielle the details of their near-disaster. In his reply some hours later, Ezra updated Tatiana on his meetings with the mining and manufacturing companies. They made more commercial plans together and discussed sending fully equipped mining vessels to the white dwarf star.
The lads whisked the girls away to Rod's family cabin in the forested mountains north of Arts City. On the way, Wildchild signed to Hazel:
"You know I love Rod."
"I do."
"I've never told him so."
"Why not?"
"I think it would be disloyal to you."
"You're nuts. You don't think I'm disloyal to you because I love Ed."
"No."
"Well then?"
"Well then ... I'll tell him tonight."
Ten minutes after arriving at the cabin, having settled who got which bedroom, the girls were in bed with their boyfriends, giving them the best shagging of their lives.
They were at it all night and most of the next morning. Hazel was the noisiest. Wildchild was the most inexhaustible, riding Rod (who lived up to his name) for hours. Ed also had pretty good stamina, but it was the boys who slept in late and the girls who got up the first day to make lunch and compare notes.
Wildchild had still not told Rod that she loved him. The opportunity did not come up (unlike Rod, who came up so many times that his balls ached; so much so that he doubted they would ever work again).
For most of the next two days, the couples stayed in bed, reconnecting in the best possible way.
When they left their bedrooms, the girls walked around the cabin in their knickers. They met in the kitchen or in the living room for an occasional chat, using their sign-language if the boys were present. Other times they shared a kiss, a caress or a fondling hand to the waist or a pat on the bottom as they passed. It made the girls happy and it teased the boys, keeping everything nicely on the boil.
Everyone was finally satiated on the third day. They sat in the living room with large mugs of hot soup and Hazel told the story of their adventure, including the near-disaster and the fascinating visit to Argus Space Station.
"Do you know Viktor Bogdanov?" Hazel asked.
"No," said Rod.
"He's a famous merchant," said Ed.
"How come Ed's heard of him and you haven't?" Wildchild pretended to be let down by her boyfriend.
"The advantage of reading around a subject and not just doing the bare minimum of work," Rod said.
Wildchild shook her head at him.
"We met Viktor in the merchant's hall on Argus Space Station," Hazel said. "We like him very much. He bought our cargo, paying 7.5% over the odds so that he could ask Sam and me some questions. Then he took us on a tour of the station, bought us dresses, paid for our hotel room and gave us dinner."
"What did you tell him?" Ed asked.
"Nothing, we think. We don't really know anything."
"He must have thought you do. Merchants like Bogdanov don't waste their money. They have lots of schemes running at the same time. I bet you told him something useful, even if you don't realise it."
"Is that what you two want to do," Wildchild asked: "become merchants like Viktor Bogdanov, growing rich and fat?"
"Yes," said Rod, "especially fat."
"I don't mind if you grow rich," Hazel said to Ed, "but please don't grow as fat as Viktor. I don't think it's healthy."
"All right, I won't. Do you know why Viktor lives on Argus? He's rich enough to live anywhere he likes."
"We didn't ask him. Maybe it's so he can be with his girlfriends. He has two gorgeous Chinese bedmates who look after him."
Hazel described Hui-Yin and Jia-Li, the delicate porcelain dolls who seemed to adore Viktor.
"They tease him and spend his money but I think they love him," she said.
Although the lads had no entertaining stories to tell their girlfriends, they did have a surprise: two long brightly-wrapped oblong boxes.
Presents were such a rare treat on Samothea that Hazel and Wildchild received even the smallest gift as if they were the richest jewellery. They tore off the wrapping-paper with childlike delight and opened the boxes to reveal bows and arrows. There could be no better presents.
With a shared wink, the girls leapt on their boyfriends and dragged them to their bedrooms to show their joy. In the afternoon, they went hunting in the forest.
The cabin was in an isolated spot in a thick temperate forest. It was cool, humid and peaceful under the canopy. Shy deer roamed freely among the trees and bracken. It was open season for bucks.
Hazel and Wildchild quickly got used to the bows, which were lighter and more powerful than their wooden bows at home. The arrows were long and flew straight. Their metallo-plastic arrowheads were even sharper than Wildchild's glass arrowheads.
Although they managed to stalk some deer and even came in sight of a buck they could shoot, neither girl had the heart to kill such a graceful and timid creature. The boys had rifles, but seeing the reluctance of the girls, also spared the buck. Instead, they found some pigeons to shoot, although no one could explain why deer were more worthy of mercy than birds.
That evening they built a fire outside the cabin and cooked the pigeons. After dinner, they sat around the dwindling flames, sharing blankets, enjoying the magic of the sputtering embers and the dancing shadows, as the forest around them went to sleep.
In bed, both couples made love to a nocturnal rhythm, slowly and gently, in sympathy with the tender night that descended on the forest like a soft blanket.
Next morning they went to an outdoor supplies shop in the local settlement. It was a large wooden shack with a stock of weaponry, tents, tools, fishing gear and clothing.
In the store, the girls found trousers in camouflage grey and green, with multiple pockets and legs that could be unzipped to make cool shorts, plus jackets with removable arms to match: the perfect outfits to replace the short dresses they bought on Argus Space Station.
Although Hazel preferred a short skirt or short dress when she was not hunting, Wildchild always wore trousers on Samothea, even men's trousers. The hunting trousers suited her perfectly, with her perky buttocks and the gap between her thighs. She wore them all the time.
Back at the cabin, Rod said: "I think it was a mistake buying her trousers. Now we'll never get her out of them."
"Really?" said Hazel. "All I need to do to get her out of her trousers is to say: Sam, let's make love."
Rod laughed heartily, to Hazel's relief. It was only as she spoke that she realised he might have taken her joke to imply a competition between them over Wildchild. But Rod had never shown her any jealousy.
Wildchild did not worry that her girlfriend and her boyfriend would compete for her. They had naturally fallen into an unspoken agreement, that the girls had sex with their boyfriends when the boyfriends were there and they had sex with each other when they were not.
