The Journal Entries

Outside the large window, a starship was coming into view. The Ille Pendoro was far too large to actually dock with the station, but if we got her close enough she could use the SDisk network. For one thing, it helped alleviate the need to do any dangerous vacuum dancing, that time when ships of that size are linking together by tenuous and structurally dubious umbilici. "We have SDisk network integrity. The Ille Pendoro can transport its cargo directly to the receiving bay."

"Hello, Pendoro," Baler said. "Is anyone listening?"

"We're here, we're here."

The personnel Sdisk glowed for a moment. Standing on it was a lovely fem Vulpin. I bowed. "I'm pleased to meet you again, Fezzik. We met in 997, I believe. The Interstellar Conference on Micromagentic Engineering."

For a moment, shock ran across her face. "You remember that?"

"It was only thirty years ago. Hard to forget," I mentioned as the Sdisk glowed again. This time, a Mustela Lutra stood there. "Hello, Doctor Baker."

"Vatare'!" The way he said it bothered me only a moment, as he hopped over to where I stood, reached out and took my hand. "Good to meet you at last. I must admit to having been concerned although I see now that my crewmates' fears were most unfounded."

"No," I disagreed. "They were not." Fezzik and Baker both looked up, alarmed. "We had not resolved the question when you made your announcement. Truth to tell, it hadn't even ocurred to us the way it had to you. You galvanized us, made us think about our policy. We've decided to go with saving them. We're ready for that, now. Thanks to you guys." Baker looked relieved; Fezzik looked doubtful. "Okay, let's get your charges over here. You say we have four possible?"

"Two probables. If anyone can save the other two, I'm sure you can. They are Sandahl Hai, Erroll Veray, Darch Danchlerri, and Thaif Onerom. The first two are the most probables."

"Let's get to work."

---

I don't really want to write about the next four days. I stayed out of the way for most of it.

It started with a comprehensive review of what Fezzik and Baker knew was supposed to be pumping through their veins compared to what was really in there now. I was again struck amazed by the miracle that any of them seemed recoverable. In cryo, you cannot heal. Damage is accumulative without any chance of remission until normal cell biology is restored.

After two days of study, it was decided to try and bring the first one out. Onerom didn't even make it to a drained tube; the telepaths pronounced him dead on arrival. The same thing was true of Danchlerri, but after the resuscitation his heart stubbornly refused to stop beating.

I grit my teeth for a moment. "He's strong." I swore quietly. "Doesn't know when to give up."

"He's physically in prime shape," said Baker. "In his case, it's the soft tissues of the eyes and brain that took the most damage. Freezing started at that end of the tube. But his brain stem seems to be relatively intact and is still sending out the right signals."

"Great. A body-builder with cranial freezer burn." I sighed. "Full restore on everything. We'll find something to put into that skull." I looked down into the operating room, and then at the monitor where the last two were waiting patiently. A Mustela telepath wandered between them, listening quietly. We were rapidly using up our contingent of Cutter psi on this one issue.

The decision was to bring Erroll out next. He was physically in better shape than Sandahl, but his tube wasn't. Although we had long ago swapped out most of the components in the tubes with local equivalents, we didn't know what kind of microscopic damage had been going on inside him in all that time. Baker, bless his heart, had cooked up a batch of nanotech blood scrubbers that were cleaning the microscopic flecks of metal from both of their blood vessels, but still, the big issue was getting him back on the road to healing.

Much to everyone's surprise, Erroll came out of the tubes without much complaint. Although physically not the strongest of the four, he was still in the best overall medial condition. He didn't even require cardiac support. In less than four hours, he was lying in a Pendorian suspension tube, held in a near-comatose state while we fed him and kept him warm and allowed his body to begin the healing process on its own.

Sandahl, on the other hand, was another matter. Most of us watched while Nance and P'nyssa worked like mad. By the end of the fourth evening, they both had SD/IV cuffs around their arms, pumping life support into them in ever-increasing doses while a talented young femSatryl named Chisai watched over them like a mother hen. The operating room was packed with at least nineteen people.

I don't know if I've ever watched them work so hard. Nance is a powerpath-- as he once said, "useless unto himself"-- but in a supporting role, he can make medical telekinetics like P'nyssa perform miracles. She must have spent much of the hours with him pressed up against her back while her hands reached into Sandahl physically and rearranged his insides. She used scalpels and sutures as much as her own talent. His voice calmly dictated for the record what he saw. "Some sort of filtering body, like the liver. Yes, I believe in the medical texts that organ there was identified as a slayn and acts as a saline level regulator..." It took fourteen hours of total work before Sandahl was in his own tube, his lower half encased in a soft, metallic bag that pretended to be his body cavity.

To nobody's surprise, both Nance and P'nyssa passed out.

---

She slept through much of the next day, as did Nance. By tradition, we put them in the same bed and allowed them to stay in contact while they slept. As far as anyone's ever been able to determine, nothing terrible happens if powerpaths and those they assist aren't allowed to recover together, but it seems to be a good arrangement all around. Besides, one thing I know is that ever since P'nyssa found Nance, she's been reluctant to work with other powerpaths. "There's something about his power," she told me once, "That just feels right to me. I can't describe it. It's like when you find the perfect music to write code to."

"Ken?" Dave announced. "P'nyssa has awakened. She asked me to call for you."

"Thanks." I put my PADD down and wandered out of my domicile, down the hallway, and a left. I palmed the lock.

"Who cooked up this color scheme?" I asked no one in particular, looking around at the awful, blue-white color of everything. The room was laid out as a flat, white, almost sterile-looking room, with a low square bed set in the center. "I've seen better in cheesy sci-fi movies."

P'nyssa turned over slowly. "I don't care what the color of the walls are," she muttered, smiling. "Come here."

I sat down on the bed next to her, looking dubiously at the unconscious lump next to her. "Sleep well?"

"No," she groaned. "I still feel terrible. Eyes are all itchy."

"That's the stimulants. I'm sorry," I said. "Want something for them? Water?"

She pointed to a bottle by the bed. "I got some already." She reached out with her tens and wrapped them around me. "I just wanted you."

I leaned over and fell ungraciously beside her. "Well, you have me then."

"Mmm-hmm." She sighed softly. "I dreamed about you. Something about you in a uniform, fighting with some llerkin against a giant machine. Didn't make much sense."

I chuckled. "Your dreams have so much plot to them sometimes. I wish I had dreams that complicated."

"You just dream about sex and genecode."

"Guilty as charged," I said. She lay down against the pillows and stretched her flexible tentacles up to the roof, groaning softly as she did so. Her back arched, pushing her comfortably moderate breasts against the white sheets, smoothing the cloth and emphasizing her charms. "Murr," I said, softly.

"I thought you weren't attracted by breasts," she joked.

"Says who? Besides, I'm attracted by you." I kicked my house slippers off and slipped under the sheets. I felt her soft body through my clothes. "Mind if I undress?"

"It would be nicer than your wearing clothes into bed." I took that as a 'yes' and threw my shirt and pants across the room with a couple swift tosses. Her soft mittens were on me as soon as I was naked. "Oh, yes. Much better."

I grinned. "You feel better too." I love the soft caress of her fur against me. The familiar tilt of her pelvis against my own when we lay one atop another reminded me how long we'd been together, how long we'd known each other, how long it had been since we had first found where we fit. I wrapped my arms underneath her and held her to me. "You know, you scare me when you faint like that."

"Part of the job." She turned her head to look at the still-sleeping lump next to us. "Hope he's okay, too."

"I'm sure he is," I said, leaning down to kiss her.

She wasn't ready for the kiss. Her body got stiff for a second, then eased when she realized what I wanted. Her kiss wasn't very strong and I figured she was still weak from the day before. But she moaned when I kissed her, and that told me what I wanted to know. "You're not getting... excited... are you?" I teased.

"Mmm-hmm," she said. "I can feel you getting hard."

I hadn't noticed that, but now that she mentioned it, I did have a bit of an erection. "You're tired."

"So?" she asked. "Make love to me, my love."

I felt a little uncomfortable thinking about having sex next to Nance-- I consider waking someone up to be incredibly rude. But P'nyssa seemed determined and Nance seemed dead to the world. She parted her legs enough to let me settle between them, my erection poking at her private places, trying to find its way in. When I finally did find the right furrow to follow, it wouldn't go in. "Mmm.. I'm dry."

"I can help with that," I said, sliding downwards. Eating P'nyssa is something of an obsession with me. Her cunt is small. Not "tight" as some would think it, but small. From her prepuce to perineum is a very compact distance.

I kissed at her lips once, twice, and then watched as her cunt just opened up for me like a flower. Under the dense and crossed-over thickets of blue fur that hide her loveliness I saw glints of the purest pink I have ever seen in my life. It's like the inside of a delicate seashell. And she tastes like heaven. Especially after the first few minutes.

I like to lick all of her, but she prefers me to concentrate on her clitoris. I settled into a comfortable and familiar pattern of licking around her clit. It hardened and came out to play, accompanied by the first reluctant moan, her admission from her lips that she was getting ever more hot. For P'nyssa, self-control is a serious issue. She rarely wants to admit that I can take it away from her-- especially with just a kiss. A long kiss, but a kiss nonetheless.

I pressed my lips around her clit, pushing down, pushing it out to my tongue, which greedily flickered over it. Her body tensed noticeably as the first waves of pleasure started to really flow through her. I licked two fingers and slid them inside her. "Ohhh.... You know."

"Mmmm..." I agreed with her. I tried to press upwards, against her g-spot, but her pelvic bone right there is larger than average, making the actual spot hard to reach. It didn't seem to matter, though. Her body got hotter as I pressed my mouth to her clit harder. I wanted her to come. She wanted to come.

Her mittens brushed me out of the way just long enough for her to tug on her outer lips, pulling upwards and letting me directly at her clit. When my tongue touched down again, she went rigid, her body winding up. I could feel it in her belly; her cunt clamped down on my fingers. Her knees drew up into the air from the tension, and then she trembled, shaking the bed hard as she came, writhing against the bedsheets.

"Oh, wow..." She tried to say more, but she needed to catch her breath as well. I barely gave her that time as I rose up to face her and press my cock to her cunt. Now she was wet enough to receive me. "Oh, yes," she sighed as I slid into her. She wrapped her arms around my back and held onto me as I just had my way with her. It was something we both wanted right then-- she would have told me otherwise.

She lifted her legs, letting me get a deeper angle, a stronger hit. Her arms held onto mine as I lifted myself up to look down between our two contrasted bodies. Her large breasts shook up and down as I pushed myself into her and withdrew. My pubic bone slammed into hers with a soft, thudding sound that pounded loud in my ears. That might have been my heartbeat. She felt so good, her cunt holding onto me in a way so familiar. My body knew it meant pleasure, and pleasure was what we gave one another. I could feel my cock tingling, getting ready to release.

It seemed to take a long time for me to come, though. That tingling would rise, subside, rise again. Her voice made soft moans in my ears as I felt it rise again, rise fast and strong, and suddenly I knew I was going to come this time. What I was doing now would make it happen so I didn't change my pace. Her cunt sucked me in and let me go, in and out, and I could feel the soft textures of her tunnel caressing my cock, bringing me closer to orgasm. I couldn't hold it back and I didn't try, ducking my head down to press my mouth to the pillows and muffle my roar of pleasure as I came.

Dizzily, I lifted myself up and looked down at her. "Better?"

"'M tired again," she muttered, smiling at me. "Better."

"Go back to sleep, then."

"I'd like that," she said. I slid out of her with a delicious tingle, then slowly eased myself out of bed.

"G'night, P'nyssa. Take care of Nance."

"I will." She was already drifting back into slumber. I kissed her on the cheek. As I walked out, I looked back on the two sleeping forms lying in bed together and thought about how vulnerable and innocent they looked. I realized just how much I missed all this. Pendorians are innocent in so many ways. They come from such a culture of abundance, such a notion that together they will provide, that there is no fear. Not as scarcity cultures, like the one Erroll and Sandahl came from, know it. I hoped they never learned-- and I hoped Erroll's people would learn from us.

I went back out to check on the progress of our two survivors.