The Golem of Haven

Dagny was startled when she awoke. She was startled to find herself alone in her bed. This was the first time since she had ascended the beanstalk that she'd not invited at least two men to join her in her bed. She instantly knew why she was alone. Her entire body ached from the abuse that had been inflicted upon her during her ordeal in the barge. Her vagina was particularly tender.

Over the years Dagny had engaged in a number of marathon sexual encounters with multiple partners. However; only a few of those partners had been even nearly as well endowed as the Golem. Those group encounters had invariably lasted for hours, just like her ordeal in the barge. However; those encounters had been consensual. While the men had selfishly used Dagny for their pleasure, they hadn't misused her much less abused her. The men had been motivated by pure, unadulterated lust rather than malice. While the Golem had used Dagny for his sexual gratification, his primary motivation had been hatred. He had been determined to assert his dominance over her. He had succeeded.

Reaching between her thighs to gently palpate her vulva, Dagny was surprised to find globules of dried semen in her pubic hair. She'd showered in an effort to wash away the memory of that encounter in the bulk barge. She hadn't rinsed herself thoroughly enough. Although her biometric ring as well as the similar functions on her bracer still refused to function, she knew that she was near if not in the middle of her cycle.

Of course Dagny's cycle had been becoming somewhat erratic in recent years. She couldn't be entirely certain of if or when she might be fertile even with biometric monitoring. Although she was more than forty Earth years old, she wasn't as yet menopausal. She was merely perimenopausal. She might be ovulating soon but maybe not. The Golem just might have succeeded in impregnating her. Even if she wasn't yet pregnant, his potent sperm were still swimming free in her womb. He might yet impregnate her sometime within the next few days.

Dagny took solace in the fact that she had been extremely active as well as promiscuous these last few days. The Golem's sperm would be confronted by billions of competitors from her previous, consensual encounters. The sperm from multiple men were at that moment in a race to reach any ovum that might be released by her ovaries. She could easily visualize how these sperm from the various men were actually battling to reach and fertilize her ovum. Hopefully; the Golem's sperm wouldn't be victorious.

Dagny glanced at the clock. While there was no need to hurry, she couldn't linger much less malinger in bed. The rendezvous with the rogue asteroid was today. She had promises to keep.

Rather than go to the lounge to share a communal dinner, Dagny had stayed in her cabin last night. She hadn't wanted to engage in the customary flirting that so routinely culminated in yet another casual hook up. Such hookups were customarily with multiple men. The men would invariably be competitive. Her aching vagina would have gotten yet another workout. She'd preferred to eat emergency rations in her cabin. No one had questioned her about her absence.

Dagny opened another emergency ration for breakfast. As she was eating she asked, "Oracle, has anyone noticed that I've become a hermit?"

"A few of the other women have asked if you were okay. Fortunately; none seemed to know about your...encounter," the machine responded. "I told them that you were fatigued and not feeling well. I didn't want to violate your privacy by telling them what happened. Obviously; given the current situation, pressing charges might be problematic at best?"

Although she resented the obvious attempt to discourage her, Dagny understood the logic of the semi sentient computer. If they'd still been on the colony ship in Haven synchronous orbit, they could have just shipped the Golem back down the beanstalk. They could have even summoned reinforcements if they were needed. Now they were two light minutes, over thirty-six-million kilometers, from Haven. With only eighteen people on board the tug and the other tug out of commission, they were on their own. They really couldn't spare the manpower to incarcerate the Golem much less spare other people to guard him.

Dagny was certain that just like John Wayne, the Golem wouldn't take kindly to being arrested. It was an understatement to suggest that subduing the Golem would be problematic. Dagny suspected that in a physical confrontation, the Golem would be more than a match for any two of the other males. It was doubtful that any of the other inmates from Botany Bay would be willing to try to subdue the Golem anyway. None professed any allegiance to the colony.

The half dozen women on board would not have a chance against the Golem. The Oracle had a number of weapons at its command, some lethal but most less than lethal. However; Dagny suspected that the computer wouldn't cooperate. The Golem was obviously prime breeding stock.

There was also little be gained by making a formal accusation. The need to safeguard genetic diversity was paramount. The Colony couldn't afford to impose the death penalty. They couldn't afford to incarcerate people either. Criminals were simply exiled to Botany Bay to either survive or not. Those that did survive to reproduce were considered prime breeding stock. The Golem had been born an inmate. He was obviously a survivor. Although he was merely a resident who'd been born in Botany Bay rather than an inmate, he'd never shown any interest in emigrating to the Colony. He'd just be going home again. Pressing charges would simply subject Dagny as well as her wife and husband to public humiliation.

Dagny glanced at the compartment where she'd stashed her pistol. She knew that she could just shoot the Golem easily enough. The twelve-point-five millimeter projectile would almost certainly be lethal. However; attempting to take him into custody would inevitably degenerate into a physical altercation. While she was an expert markswoman, she'd never been taught close quarters combat techniques much less weapons retention skills. She suffered from no delusion that the Golem wouldn't be able to disarm her in such a situation. She was certain that as humiliated and angry as she was, she wasn't willing to just shoot him either. At least not yet.

Dagny retrieved her skinsuit from her locker. She hadn't put it in the cleansing machine. The stain of semen at the crotch was humiliatingly obvious. She pulled the garment on anyway. She donned her brass brazier then inserted her liquid waste recovery system. She winced as the opening in the fabric of her skinsuit dilated to allow the phallus shaped probe to penetrate her still tender vagina. It reminded her of her ordeal.

As she was preparing to exit her cabin, Dagny reconsidered her pistol. While she wasn't willing to kill the Golem in retaliation nor risk trying to take him into custody, she feared him. However; she wasn't eager to explain why she had armed herself either. Fortunately; the Golem along with all of the other inmates from Botany Bay would be engaging in extravehicular activities today. She'd be safe enough on the bridge inside the ship.

The EVA crew was already waiting for Dagny on the EVA deck. The weeks of training and practice had not been for naught. Everyone knew their business. Dagny checked their equipment anyway. She even checked the Golem's. She resisted the temptation to subtly sabotage his life support systems even though no one would suspect. When her inspection was finished, the EVA crew strapped in. Today's maneuvers were going to be somewhat erratic.

Judith accompanied Dagny to the bridge. The two women strapped in. Not for the first time, Dagny found herself appraising Judith. Although she was a bit zaftig, her breasts were even bigger than Dagny's. Daryl had been contemplating wooing the recently widowed woman to join their dyad to form a triad. Dagny had eagerly encouraged the courtship until they met Delilah. Another somewhat younger, unattached man who had also been courting Judith married her. Dagny allowed the somewhat younger, far less educated woman to bring the fusion reactor on line. She needed the experience.

The tug had been boosting all day yesterday to match velocities and trajectories with the asteroid. While Dagny had enabled her copilot to manage that mundane task, she handled the final rendezvous herself. The asteroid had already fallen deep enough into the system that the heat from Eta Cassiopeia was melting and vaporizing the cryogenic ices on its surface. The icy asteroid had grown a tail, just like a comet. Technically; it was arguable that the asteroid was a comet. Comets were by definition on long period elliptical orbits if not hyperbolic orbits. The orbit of the asteroid met that criteria. Most comets were accurately described as snowballs with some embedded gravel. Although the asteroid was mostly rocks and boulders it was coated with a meters thick layer of ices.

The various cryogenic ices on the surface of the asteroid were already beginning to ablate as it grew near to Eta Cassiopeia. The asteroid was sporting a spectacular tail, just like a comet. Of course the resulting gases, mostly hydrogen and Helium with only traces of Oxygen and Nitrogen, were as yet far to tenuous to be dangerous. However; they obscured their vision which was disconcerting.

An anomaly further complicated rendezvous. The asteroid hadn't been deep enough in the system long enough for the differential heating that resulted from stellar irradiation to gradually spin it up yet. However; the three-quarters of a kilometer diameter rock had acquired considerable angular momentum during the eons of its interstellar odyssey. The most plausible yet improbable explanation had been a collision between two asteroids somewhere and sometime during its interstellar odyssey. This theory had been confirmed over a year ago by the discovery that the primary asteroid actually had a much smaller secondary. Bagging and tagging the billion ton asteroid then docking with it wasn't going to be quite so simple.

For a less adept pilot, the task of rendezvous might have been daunting because the asteroid was a binary. The orbital period was a bit more than one revolution every eleven hours. With an orbital radius of barely fourteen hundred meters, the icy secondary was almost within its Roche limit. It wasn't quite on the verge of being torn apart by the tidal forces exerted by its far more massive primary. However; Dagny had recognized that the icy moonlet could be exploited. The primary asteroid was tidally locked to its smaller companion. As a result, all five of the Lagrangian points were synchronous with the primary asteroid's rotation.

The hundred meter diameter moonlet had already been useful. Observing the orbit of the icy moonlet had enabled Dagny to calculate the mass and confirm the diameter, and thus calculate the density of the far more massive primary. With an average density of over five times that of water, it was obvious that the ices that had accreted on the surface concealed a core that was rich in heavier metallic elements. If the asteroid hadn't been a binary, neither Dagny or the Oracle would have deduced that it was such a treasure trove. They would not have been willing to expend the resources to retrieve the marginally useful ices.

It was probably no coincidence that the axis of the orbit of the secondary asteroid was congruent with the primary asteroid's axis of rotation. Dagny had deduced that the moonlet was a remnant of the collision that had imparted so much angular momentum to the primary asteroid. She'd also developed a plan to exploit the secondary to help her arrest the rotation of the primary.

Dagny intended to shamelessly exploit a phenomenon of celestial mechanics. She used attitude jets to nudge the tug into orbit around the asteroid at the Lagrangian Three point in opposition to the moon. Since the two bodies were tidally locked, the tug was in asteroid synchronous orbit. It would hover over the same location over the equator. The tug's orbital radius from the asteroid was barely fourteen hundred meters, just like its natural moon. While the Lagrangian Four and Five points were stable, the L-Three point wasn't. Occasional spurts from the attitude jets were needed to maintain position.

Dagny spoke to her crew over the radio. "Everyone. Get to work." The dozen convicts from Botany Bay as well as Laurie, Stacy, Stella and Nancy to oversee them cycled through the airlock. Six of the convicts manned the micro-tugs that were docked to the main tug. The other six convicts unhooked the extensions of the hemispherical bag from the tug's winch cables. The convicts then hooked each of the arms to one of the micro-tugs.

The outgassing from the two asteroids wasn't really problematic. Neither light pressure or the stellar wind had had time to accelerate the gases and dust particles to significant velocities. However; the outgassing was disconcerting. It was like a thin fog that obscured vision. The fog also seemed ominous, almost spooky.

The micro-tugs were little more than a transparent, spherical control cabin attached to a compact, nuclear isomer powered rocket and associated reaction mass tanks. It was very similar in concept to the old NERVA, an early fission thermal propulsion systems that had first been developed during the middle twentieth century. Refinements of those systems had been critical to the early interplanetary colonization efforts of the twenty-first century. However; the nuclear isomer system didn't generate any nasty neutrons much less radioactive fission products.

With their partners and supervisors standing by, the pilots of the tugs gently maneuvered to stretch out the six arms of the bag. The splayed out arms looked like the sections of an orange peel or early attempts to map the spherical Earth on flat paper. When fully splayed out, the arms were three kilometers across. The tugs then began to gently pull the bag towards the asteroid.

Practicing with gas pistols and thruster boots had taught the convicts well. However; it remained necessary for Dagny to instruct them on how to compensate for Coriolis effects. As they drew closer to the asteroid, the effects of orbital mechanics also reared their ugly head. The bag began to gently accelerate towards the asteroid while its orbital velocity gradually increased to conserve angular momentum. The micro tugs were needed to counteract both effects. They needed to coax the bag into a carefully orchestrated, low velocity, gentle collision. The Oracle remained silent as Dagny supervised her crew. She was grateful that the machine was so confident in her expertise.

Dagny's crew operated with such precision that the central portion of the bag skidded barely a millimeter as it made first contact with the surface of the asteroid. The fabric of the envelope slowly fell to cover the nearest hemisphere. The pilots of the micro-tugs then maneuvered to wrap the splayed out arms of the bag around the prize. It was as if a six armed octopus was enveloping its prey. The other half dozen convicts moved adroitly to connect the main cables of the six arms to a central yoke. Six umbilicals for power and fluid transfer to and from the processor unit in the center of the bag were incorporated in the six extensions. These were also hooked up to the central yoke.

Dagny surveyed their handy work. She was once again reminded of how much the processor unit in the middle of the near hemisphere of the bag resembled the nipple on a woman's breast. The function of the processor unit was similar. It was intended to extract gases, liquids, ices, dusts, sand and even gravel rather than mother's milk from the asteroid. Boulders would have to be broken up before they could be processed.

Once the bag was secured around the asteroid, the six micro-tugs returned to the main tug. As they docked, probes were connected. Reaction mass was pumped into the micro-tugs to replenish their tanks.

While the micro-tugs were being replenished, the other six convicts working with and under the supervision of Laurie, Stacy, Stella and Nancy began to seal the edges of the six extensions together. The bag was a composite consisting of a hexagonal grid of Fullerene fiber cables that reinforced a polymer membrane that was less than a millimeter thick. A complex set of shackles that would have been familiar to any logger or sailor of the nineteenth century secured the main cables. The sections of the membranes were secured by mechanisms similar to a zipper. However; the zippers were over a kilometer long. The process was much like unpeeling an orange. The result was a teardrop shape a kilometer in diameter and one-and-a-half kilometers long.

Eventually; the Extra Vehicular Activity crew had returned to the tug. Aside from needing a break, they needed to replenish the reaction mass for their thruster boots. After everyone had cycled through the airlock and strapped in, Dagny maneuvered the tug to the Lagrangian-Two position on the far side of the asteroid just a few dozen meters outward from the surface of the secondary moonlet.

The EVA crew cycled through the airlock again. They hooked up the tugs to a second, much smaller bag. The crew repeated the process on this much more modest scale. The splayed out arms of the smaller bag were less than a kilometer across. The bagging process was repeated. The moonlet was soon secured within the second bag. This teardrop shaped bag was more than only somewhat oversized at two hundred meters in diameter and about three hundred meters long. The extra volume would serve a purpose.

The surfaces of the two asteroids were continuing to ablate as the were heated by Eta Cassiopeia. The bags around the asteroids now contained the gases. The fog abated as the already ablated gases were blown away by the stellar wind. The bags quickly inflated. However; the pressures and densities of the contained gases remained inconsequential. The processor units would soon begin to liquefy the gases and pump them up to the tug.

Dagny might have allowed her crew to return to the tug for some respite. However; she wanted to begin despinning the two asteroids as soon as possible so that she could take them under tow. She allowed her crew only half an hour to drink, sip food syrup and rest before she cracked the whip on them again.

The tug's cargo included an enormous spool with a heavy tow cable along with umbilicals for power and fluid transfer that were over two dozen kilometers long. Six of the convicts maneuvered the spool into position at the top of the teardrop shaped containment bag for the minor moonlet. They then unreeled the tow cable and umbilicals from the spool until they could access the other ends. Those ends were pulled over to the top of the teardrop shaped containment bag that enveloped the primary asteroid. The inmates then secured a second, much shorter umbilical for power and fluid transfer between the tug and the processor of the containment bag for the secondary asteroid.

Dagny utilized attitude jets to carefully pull away from the secondary asteroid as she gradually reeled out a few hundred meters of umbilical as well as tow cables from the tug's winches. The cables drew taunt. The tug was orbiting the primary asteroid at the same angular rate as the secondary asteroid. However; the gravitational pull at the greater distance was less. The tug's orbital velocity was also greater. The tug was actually revolving around the primary asteroid at greater than orbital velocity. The tug was exerting force on the secondary asteroid. The tug began to gradually pull the secondary asteroid into a higher orbit. As the secondary asteroid was gradually pulled into a higher orbit, it to was effectively revolving around the primary at slightly greater than orbital velocity as well.