In Service to a Goddess,
Book Four
Copyright©2003 by Ed Howdershelt
ISBN 1-932693-13-0
Caution: Some Erotic Content
Chapter One
In mid-September, Lab Four announced that they'd discovered what appeared to be an unrecorded asteroid almost six hundred miles wide approaching our solar system from the direction of the Orion star cluster.
There was no panic; it was just another object to be tracked and categorized, so it was given a number and a pet name -- "Little Sheba" -- and studied in order to determine its eventual trajectory through our neighborhood.
Lab Four, being a semi-military US facility, sent its findings up the usual chains of military and civilian command; chains wherein the findings were deftly and efficiently lost enroute because people at the top of the heap didn't want to be bothered with astronomical trivia.
After a week of studying the asteroid, another announcement was made -- this time very quietly and completely bypassing the long chain of command -- that "Little Sheba" had been renamed "Grapeshot" because it wasn't a single solid object.
Someone had noticed what had appeared to be cracks in the asteroid's surface. This had caused a bit of commotion because such things as surface cracks shouldn't have been discernable with the equipment in use.
Other equipment had been aimed at the asteroid and the cracks were discovered to be gaps between huge fragments, some of which were the size of small mountains.
A few days after that discovery -- on Friday -- Dr. Royce Carter read from the summary notes on the table in front of him and carefully delivered the final paragraph to a select group of people in a board room at the White House.
"It has been determined that some of the objects from this debris cluster may intersect Earth's orbital path on October twenty-second."
The assembled military and civilian honchos at the table -- none of whom wanted to comment before the President spoke on the matter -- gave Carter's last words quiet thought as the President pursed his lips, sat back in his chair, and studied a small statue of a bucking rodeo horse on a nearby table for some moments.
"Dr. Carter," he finally said, "Would you care to rephrase that last part of your report?"
"Sir?" asked Carter.
The President leaned forward and slammed his palm flat on the table. He liked making such dynamic gestures; he believed they made everyone jump and listen to him, even people who thought he was a few marbles short in the smarts department.
"Damn it, Carter!" he said, "Don't give me that wussy 'it may intersect' crap! Earth's orbit covers a helluva lot of space. You guys have hardware that could track a pissant through a cornfield in China! Is that stuff gonna hit us or not?"
In truth, only the woman keeping the minutes of the meeting had been startled by the President's outburst. She'd been focused on her note-taking and hadn't seen the too-often used gesture coming. Again.
With an exasperated sigh, she pondered for the umpteenth time how she might inform the President of the United States that he was a jerk without losing her job and her GS rating.
The others tried to look appropriately impressed -- or unimpressed -- according to their real or imagined standings within the current power structure. All eyes fell on Carter.
Carter glanced around the table, sighed, and said, "Next time I'll prepare my own report. Yes, Mr. President. We fully expect that a considerable amount of the debris will impact the Earth, but..."
Raising a hand, the President turned to his Science Advisor and snapped, "Well? What can we do about it?"
Shaking his head, the SA said, "Our missiles aren't up to anything like this. I think our best hope will be the Ladies."
His verbal capitalization of the word 'Ladies' was evident in his almost reverent tone.
The President heard that tone and his gaze narrowed tightly. He didn't care much for the 'Ladies'. They flitted around dressed like strippers and showed off all the time and when he'd called them to the White House to ask them to host a fund-raising dinner, one of them had actually laughed and flown away.
The other one had said she never got involved in politics or religion, then she'd flown away, too, claiming there was an emergency in progress somewhere. They hadn't even waited to be dismissed.
They weren't Christians, either, which galled him to no end. Hell, they weren't even from Earth, although they said their people came from Earth way back when. He'd also heard that they were known bisexuals and maybe even lezzies.
No, sir; he wasn't about to let those godless lesbian superbimbos grab a nickel's worth of credit out of this situation if he could help it. There had to be another way to deal with those goddamned rocks.
Turning to the woman who was taking notes, he said, "Phyllis. Turn that thing off and take a break."
"Sir?"
"You heard me. Outside. Take that stuff with you."
Phyllis glanced around the table, then switched off her recorder and headed for the door as ordered.
Once she was gone, the President stood up, shoved his chair back, and said firmly, "Not good enough, gentlemen. Not at all. We're the most powerful nation on Earth -- our Earth, dammit! -- and we can goddamned well come up with our own solutions to our own problems without the help of a couple of godless alien lesbians."
"Mr. President," said Carter, "This has nothing to do with lifestyles or religion. The ladies may be able to stop or divert most or all of the more dangerous debris. We can't."
Containing his temper, the President growled, "Your attitude really sucks, Carter. You're either with us on this or you're fired."
His use of the word 'us' caused a number of raised eyebrows and questioning looks around the table, which the President noticed. His sharp gaze raked the people at the table.
"That's right," he said. "I said 'us'. You're all here because I'm in charge. You forget that for one damned minute and you'll be replaced before the next minute is up."
Carter sighed and said, "You can't fire me, sir."
With an angry glare, the President pointed at Carter and said, "But I can make damned sure someone else fires you, and I will. I can also make you disappear until this is over. You got anything else to say, Doc?"
The President fully expected Carter to back down and toe the line. Carter stood up, then shrugged as he spoke.
"Yes. I'll say that making me disappear will accomplish nothing. If you'd let me complete my statement, I'd have told you that the ladies are already planning a mission to deal with the debris. This meeting wasn't a bid for your input or cooperation; it was simply a sharing of information. And now, having shared it, goodbye."
As he'd spoken, Carter had gathered his notes into his briefcase. With a nod to those at the table, he walked out of the room.
The President snatched up the receiver of the phone on the table and punched a button, then snapped, "Stop Dr. Carter. Hold him for questioning."
Carter was stopped before he reached the elevator. Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Andrew Lawrence at Lab Four put down his phone and called his secretary into his office.
"Lydia," he said, "That was General Hodge. Dr. Carter is being held incommunicado at the White House. Is either April or Sara in the building?"
"Sara's on level three. Shall I get her on the phone?"
"Yes, please."
A couple of minutes later there was a quick rap on his open door and he looked up to see Sara striding into his office. She wore her uniform, a minimum of coverage that he'd always thought would have been more appropriate at a beach. His eyes traveled from her toes to her eyes as he waved her to a chair.
After briefing her on Dr. Carter's situation as reported by Gen. Hodge, Dr. Lawrence asked, "What now, Sara?"
"Think a phone call would help?"
"No, not really."
"Then we'll just have to spring him," she said. "Carter'll do more good working here than sitting on his ass in a holding tank. I'll hand a full report on the debris cloud to the media this afternoon and say that Dr. Carter's delivering a briefing at the White House and should be available for comment shortly. That ought to make that goat-roper fundy let him go."
Gritting his teeth slightly, Lawrence said, "I do wish you wouldn't use such terms to describe the President."
Sara chuckled.
"Why not? We're talking about a guy who doesn't believe in evolution and you heard what he said about April and me when he visited Lab Two." Shaking her head, she laughed. "Jeez. He didn't even look to see if the camera light was still on. We should have sued him for slander."
Lawrence stood and paced behind his desk, then leaned on it and asked, "Do you really think we should make this report public? Think of the potential for panic, please."
She shrugged beautifully and said, "April and I are going out there, Andy, and we have almost a month to get the job done. What's the matter? Are you worried screwing up the world's weekend?"
"Well, no, but..."
Sweeping her blonde hair back, Sara stood up and said, "Then put together a dozen media kits, Andy. A full disclosure of the situation, our analysis, and what we're going to do about it. It's ten-thirty now. I'll be back around noon for the kits."
With that, she flew out the door and headed back to level three. Lawrence called Lydia in to make arrangements for the media kits, then went to an early lunch at eleven.
At two in the afternoon the President's Science Advisor held a brief, upbeat press conference in the White House press room with Dr. Carter. The President declined to attend. He claimed other pressing business required his attention, which one reporter questioningly surmised to mean that the President believed that the Earth was in no real danger.
With a thoroughly unnecessary strip-search still fresh in his memory, Carter smiled and said, "Exactly so. The President is aware of all facts in this matter and he appears to have complete confidence in April and Sara. In fact, he said..." appearing to catch himself, Carter glanced at the Science Advisor, then shook his head with a small smile and said, "I'm sorry, everybody. Now I'm talking out of class. I'll just say that -- like so many of us -- the President has some very profound feelings concerning the ladies."
Watching the briefing on TV, the President choked on his coffee at Carter's words and swore mightily as he envisioned unhappy phone calls from his right-wing religious cronies.
Doris and I received word to meet April and Sara later that afternoon on the roof of the Dallas Federal building. As we rode up on the elevator, April and Sara -- who were en route from Lab Four -- mentally linked to Doris and me.
"It's no biggie," said Sara. "Just a bunch of rocks and ice. We'll redirect the worst of it and the whole thing may only take a week if Dr. Varnemann is right about most of it being small stuff."
"That may be a rather conservative estimate," cautioned April. "It looks like a six-hundred-mile-wide cluster of birdshot on the screens. We'll only be going after the dangerous pieces and leaving the rest to burn on atmospheric entry or pass by, but we're still talking about redirecting a helluva lot of stuff."
"How far out is it?" asked Doris.
Sara answered brightly, "Oh, not far. A little beyond Pluto."
Doris ignored Sara's flippant response and asked, "Will you be taking Ed?"
"No," said April. "He's not quite up to extended space travel yet. Maybe next time, okay, Ed?"
"Yeah, sure," I said. "The next time an interplanetary disaster is heading straight for us, ya'll just gimme a holler. Have your people get with my people, and like that."
"Oh, don't pout," said April. "You'll be far more useful as a link-nexus on Earth."
"Yeah," said Sara. "And you two won't be too worn out to help us unwind when we get back."
Doris said, "I believe that was innuendo, Ed."
"Hm. Could be. Kinda sounded like it, didn't it?"
Doris unlocked the roof exit door and we stepped out of the elevator and into the hot Texas sunshine.
"I can't help worrying," she said aloud.
"We can't help worrying, Doris. We know that those ladies are almost indestructible, but..."
"Yeah... 'but'. What did she mean by 'yet'?"
I gave her a big grin and said, "You should drop by the lab more often, ma'am. Sara's lab rats think that the effects of the ladies' enhancement process may be cumulative. We get another tiny dose every time we nibble April or Sara, and they now think that using our new abilities makes them multiply, even if they'll never quite match the ladies' abilities." I sighed and added, "Oh, well; retrofits like us have to take what we can get, I guess."
Doris grinned back at me. "Well, hell, Ed. I guess maybe I can live with that little drawback."
Maybe ten minutes passed before two tall, stunning blondes settled to the roof next to us. My eyes lingered here and there as they reached up to straighten their hair. Sara grinned and flicked her eyebrows at me as she struck a pose. April smacked her butt.
"I'm gonna miss you ladies," I said. "Where's your luggage?"
"Luggage?" asked Doris.
"Suitcase nukes," said Sara. "Twenty of them. We'll be too far out to recharge quickly with sunlight, so we'll use the nukes to blast rocks and recharge on the fly."
April said, "We didn't want to waste energy hauling them, so we bundled them and threw them in the right direction a few days ago. Now we'll pick up a full charge near the sun, slingshot around it to build up speed without losing energy to acceleration, and we'll collect the nukes on the way."
A long round of hugs and kisses and well-wishings later, April and Sara lifted back into the sky. A few miles above us they went hypersonic and a double clap of thunder announced the ladies' imminent departure from Earth.
The ladies left our link open as they ascended. We saw what they saw as they streaked upward and out of the atmosphere.
You've seen it, too, on TV and in movies; the receding Earth and the stars against the approaching blackness of space as the atmosphere thins to nothing.
The only difference was the speed of their passage. It took the ladies less than a minute to reach near-Earth space. A fountain of thin air was dragged outward after them that slowly fell back and re-merged with the atmosphere.
Once the ladies were in open space, they really poured on the speed. The eyes that provided Doris and me the view of space turned toward the sun and as we watched the sun seemed to grow larger by the second.
I figured the ladies were just going to do a solar flyby, but instead they entered a low solar orbit that actually placed them within the fringes of the sun's corona. April's mental voice filled the silence of space as we watched.
"Enjoying the view, guys? We're going to top off the tanks before we head out."
"Yeah! Tank-topping!" Sara laughed, reading extra meaning into every phrase, as usual.
Tanks, indeed. Hm. Well, they both had really nice tanks...
"I heard that," said Sara.
"Good," I said. "Then you know what I think of your tanks."
"Well, tank you very much, sir."
Joking aside, Doris and I were awestruck by the view, to say the least.
"Big flare ahead!" Sara seemed to yell through our link, "Let's go through it!"
As April and Sara tunneled through the arching solar flare we could see what they saw and feel it like a hot bath. We also felt them hungrily soak up what seemed to be vast amounts of the energy it provided.
"Don't get drunk on that stuff," said Doris.
The words and music of Madonna's 'Ray of Light' suddenly filled our minds as if we were standing in a dance club, surrounded by blaring speakers.
April laughingly said, "She always sings in the shower."
Sara turned up the volume a tad in response.
The women circled the sun once more, then powered into space, swung back, and slung themselves around the sun. They ended up traveling just under light speed on a course that would intercept the debris cluster without taking them too near any of the planets in the solar system.
Unless one of the ladies focused her attention on something in particular, the only view for the next few days would be the blackness of space sprinkled liberally with stars. While that would be interesting for a while, I didn't envy them the rest of the trip.
Some minutes after leaving the sun April said she wanted to close the link and we thanked them for the show by sending them another round of hugs and kisses.
I asked Doris, "You ready to go back downstairs yet?"
Doris just looked at me for a moment and shook her head as she said softly, "No. Not yet. Just when I think I'm getting used to these linkups... Something like this happens... Wow!"
Nodding, I pulled a couple of folding lounge chairs from the stairwell. Once our semi-official rooftop confabs had become fairly routine, it had been decided that some thought should be given to creature comforts, so I'd spent a few agency bucks on weatherproof furniture at a pool-supply store.
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