The Adult Story Hub

Much like the docks outside, the yacht 'Dawn Dancer' was mostly staffed by robots--steward models in the ship's case, capable of looking after the needs of any guest on board, and also helping a single crewman (evidently Jeeves) to handle the ship in space.

But the robots were evidently a lot more capable of keeping the ship superficially beautiful than knowing how to solve any serious engineering problems. To be sure, the interior of the ship was stunning--just off the main airlock, a grand ballroom stood decorated with every conceivable gemstone and precious metal imaginable, and the open doors of staterooms revealed interiors the size of small shuttlecraft. Before she could gawk too much, though, Galina forced herself to ask Peter where the engine room was so she could get to work.

"You know," Galina admitted, looking up at the threemeter tall hyperdrive housing from the forward hatch of the engine room, "a real mechanic might do a better job..."

"We tried calling a real mechanic," Peter said, "but the wait is three days--and as you know, I don't have three days."

"Well, all right; let's see what we can do, then..."

Like most engine rooms, this engine room was dirtier than the rest of the ship surrounding it; even in the year 1128, moving parts needed to be lubricated, and machine lubricants attracted dust and dirt. Thusafter asking Peter a few diagnostic questions--Galina stunned Peter by stripping off her coat and climbing right up onto the hyperdrive by way of an access ladder, wearing just her short dress and sandals.

"I could get you some overalls..." Peter offered.

"Whoops--too late for that," Galina admitted, glancing down at herself for a moment, then carrying on with her investigation. Bending over the top of the ladder as she was, she was sure she was giving Peter a fine look at her naked--and still wet--pussy, but she tried to focus on the task at hand for the time being.

"Well, here's the problem," Galina said a few seconds later; "some idiot left the ignition cables for the jump governor loose..."

She regretted it almost as soon as she said it; the only people on the ship were Jeeves and Peter--and that narrowed down the range of possible 'idiots' to the two of them.

"Sorry," Galina said sheepishly, turning around on the ladder to apologize; "force of habit."

"Can you fix it?" Peter called up to her, apparently ignoring the potential insult.

"Oh, no problem," Galina answered, putting the cables back in place and checking the power flow with a diagnostic sensor. Presently, though, Galina felt Peter's hands on the backs of her thighs, and she smiled to herself as his hands ran first down the backs of her calves to her ankles--still tightly-bound in her ankle straps--and then back up again, to just below her buttocks.

"It's all fixed," Galina said, climbing back down the ladder and into Peter's arms. "You can go anywhere you want now."

"Thank you," Peter purred in Galina's ear, "but the only place I want to go is back inside that sweet pussy of yours..."

"Easy there, Peter," Galina said, noting the grease on her hands and forearms; "I'll get you dirty..."

Peter didn't seem to be too worried about that, though, as Galina soon discovered. Spinning her around, he sat her down on the shelf-like top of a hip-high consolethen whipped out his boner and proceeded to fuck her a second time. Although she tried not to touch himclutching the sides of the console instead as he slammed his cock into her juicy hole--she finally had to just to keep from falling off the console.

"Well, there now, see?" Galina said, hanging onto the lapels of his coat with both hands--and wrapping her legs around his back, "I've got your coat dirty."

But it was obvious Peter didn't care too much about that; continuing to fuck her, he quickly picked up the pace so that their congress echoed in the chamber, and Galina felt herself starting to cream hard on Peter's plunging invader.

SMACK-ACK!

SMACK-ACK!

SMACK-ACK!

SMACK-SMACK-SMACK-ACK!

"Oh, don't worry about the coat," Peter said, fast approaching his climax; "I can always buy another coat."

Whereupon, with obvious satisfaction, he drove one last thrust up inside Galina, straining with the blissful joy of his orgasm, and spackled her pussy with six fresh jets of thick, hot cum. At least Galina swore she felt that many blast away inside her, pulsing through his cock as she held it tight in the grip of her cunt.

"But speaking of remuneration," Peter said, reaching into one of his coat pockets even as Galina reeled dizzily before him, "I want to give you something for your trouble; say, 10,000 credits?"

At which point Peter pulled out what looked like a bankroll of hundred-credit notes--a small fortune and a year's wages for any worker at the starport. Of course, it was odd for someone so wealthy to carry cash when a personcard was so much more convenient, but then cash was still handy in some of the more primitive parts of the Empire...

But suddenly Galina shook herself, embarrassed both by the cash and the sensation of Peter's penis still pulsing snug in her pussy.

"Well, that's a lot of money..." Galina said, trying to handle the bankroll without getting it too dirty, "...but I can't accept that. I mean, you've fucked the hell out of me, and it's not like the repair was all THAT hard..."

"Are you sure?" Peter said, reluctantly taking the money back.

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm actually pretty well off myself, thanks to my Scout pension."

"Oh good," Peter said, and Galina was amused to feel his penis leap inside her. Having never been filthy rich, Galina could only suppose it was normal for trillionaires to be aroused by any talk of money.

"Well," Peter said, giving Galina a few gentle thrusts with his now-tender cock, then leaning in close to nuzzle her neck, "you clean yourself up in the master stateroom--that's right next to the grand ballroomthen we'll have some brunch and fuck some more."

* * *

It was approximately eight hours later that the comm panel buzzed on the bridge of the "Springbok", and Lyza--by now fairly worried--answered it quickly.

"Where the hell have you been?" Lyza asked, noting the frazzled and generally-thrashed look of Galina on the comm panel viewscreen. "I was just about to call the police!"

"Ac-shully," Galina said, seeming to note her own alcoholic slur--and correcting it, "I'm on a yacht called the "Dawn Dancer", over in the Luxury Docks."

"What the hell--?"

"Well, it's not really a big deal," Galina saidpausing to giggle at something that was apparently happening off screen--"Peter, quit it! Oh, sorry--I was going to say, my host here is dying to meet you."

"Is he now?"

"Well, I told him how cute you were," Galina said, "and that you hadn't been laid for the last five years..."

"Well, I never--!"

"Exactly. So, do you think you'd like to come over here?"

Lyza fumed for a moment, but she really wasn't all that upset. In her younger days, she was just as fuck-happy as Galina, and this sounded like exactly the kind of thing her daughter suggested she ought to do more often...

"I'll think about it," Lyza said, switching off the comm panel.

* * *

At first, Lyza was almost as skeptical about the offer as Galina--suspecting this was just another one of the elaborate gags the free-spirit Scout was so fond ofbut her doubts vanished just as quickly as Galina's when Jeeves met her at the airlock of the "Dawn Dancer", and escorted her inside a ship with fittings the like she had never seen before. Although her father (Baron Ellazar) had a yacht of his own, it was a toy tugboat compared to this; further, since she had not changed from her trousers and sweater, Lyza felt distinctly embarrassed the moment Jeeves left her in the ballroom to wait for Galina. One of the ship's robots arrived shortly thereafter to ask if there was anything she needed, but Lyza simply waved it off, being much more interested in her lush and unlikely surroundings, and how she would explain her appearance if a smartly dressed lord or lady suddenly arrived in the chamber.

//How in the hell did Galina get into a place like this...?// Lyza thought, spinning around slowly on her wedge-heeled sandals. //She must have given somebody one hell of a hummer...//

"Ah, there she is," Galina said, and Lyza wheeled about to find her friend...

...completely naked, except for a length of toilet paper wrapped around her neck. Behind her, too, was Peter Cox--who was also naked except for a g-string, and holding a half-empty bottle of Belusian sparkling wine. Far more startling than that, however, was the very fact that Peter Cox was standing before her at all; as Lyza well knew, he was the heir to one of the largest fortunes in the entire Trailing Sector.

"Well, she is cute," Peter said, stumbling over to Lyza and putting his arm around her. "Let's fuck."

"Isn't this a bit--sudden?" Lyza asked, instinctively crossing her arms as Peter tried to lift up her sweater.

"Oh, don't think about it so much," Galina said, padding over next to Peter and Lyza. "Peter's got lots of stamina, and it would be a shame to waste it."

For a long, agonizing moment, Lyza stood there hung on the horns of a tremendous dilemma. Having grown up around people of wealth and privilege, she knew quite well that they were accustomed to getting their way; thus--if she tried to make a scene or call the policeshe might well be the one ending up in jail herself.

But Lyza was much more concerned about propriety than Galina, and she couldn't help but wonder what people would say if they found out she was even here. Being a fairly religious person as well, she believed that her husband Ezra was still watching over in Heaven, and would almost certainly be appalled...

However, as she came to think of it, her husband was actually a huge admirer of the Cox family, and was always telling Lyza how he wished he could get himself invited into their circle of friends. He even said he'd fuck that mean old bat Lady Cox, once, if it would help...

//Oh, decisions, decisions...//

Something else made up Lyza's mind for her, though, very suddenly. Before she could even react, Galina zipped open Lyza's fly, dropped her trousers to her knees and dove her hand inside Lyza's panties. Already a little wet just from thinking about this bizarre situation, Lyza gasped as Galina found her swollen clitoris, and she tried to tuck her knees together--her bare toes coming to point right at each other as she twisted her feet in her sandals.

"Okay!" Lyza squeaked, "he can fuck me!"

* * *

And fuck her Peter did. Taking Lyza back to the master bedroom (more than twice the size of a standard shuttlecraft), Galina and Peter slowly stripped of her clothes, then took turns sucking her ponderous, saggy tits and playing with her pussy until she was a bowl of jiggling and helpless pudding before them. Down to her sandals (whose complex woven ankle straps were too difficult for the inebriated Peter or Galina to fathom), Lyza then felt Peter lift her chubby legs up off the bed and rest her feet on his shoulders as he finally tucked his cockhead into the curling lips of her labia.

"Oh Ezra, forgive me--!" Lyza squealed, crossing herself even as Peter thrust his cock inside her, splitting open a pussy grown tight from years without sex.

"Oh, she's wet," Peter told Galina--who had meanwhile taken the opportunity to frig herself nearby; "and she's tight. What a little cutie..."

"Hey--!" Lyza said to Peter--feeling quite embarrassed as she was now bent over with Peter up to his plumpand-heavy balls inside her, with his cockhead kissing her womb--, "talk to me when you're fucking me!"

"Sorry," Peter said, leaning in closer to her--so that her thighs were pushed back against her belly--and starting to fuck her fast and furiously.

For Lyza--flat on her back with a trillionaire stud-boy slam-fucking her cunt--it didn't take much to reach a climax. Imagining what her children would think if they could see her-panting and gasping as Peter pounded her hole--was actually very arousing. But what was even more arousing--in a weird and scary sort of waywas the fact that she didn't actually have any kind of birth control; like Galina, she was still having periods, but it had been a long time since she'd had to think about that...

"Uh, Peter...?"

"What, Baby Doll?"

"Uh--(unph!)--I know I should have--(unph!)--mentioned this earlier, but--(oh, fuck--!)--I don't have any birth control..."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Peter said, leaning in even closer, and lifting one jiggly tit to suck on it.

"But, I could get pregnant...!"

If she had hopes of stopping him, Lyza was startled to see she had quite the opposite effect. He actually started fucking her faster, and deeper--so she could actually feel him jabbing her cervix.

"Peter, please...!"

But then it was done; pushing in deep, Peter came with sudden volcanic force, sending a powerful gush of sperm thudding directly into the doctor's unprotected womb. Lyza cried--she was sure she was fertile--but still he kept fucking her, pumping another thick jet of semen into her belly, then another, and another. Awash in sperm now, Lyza visualized his powerful swimmers now wriggling away inside her, even now hunting for her helpless, undefended eggs...

"Actually, he's got a male implant," Galina said. "You're fine."

"Oh. Sorry, Peter."

"It's okay," Peter said, letting down Lyza's legs, but remaining deep and snug inside her; "not that I wouldn't mind knocking you two up, but that would be pretty irresponsible, don't you think?"

Lyza chuckled--weakly. For deep inside her, Peter's cockhead pulsed again--squirting one last pulse of semen into her belly--and she couldn't help but wonder if she could trust the word of a drunken trillionaire...

* * *

Before it left the next day--with Jeeves, a serviceable pilot, at the helm--"Dawn Dancer" had seen its master deposit no less than seven cum-loads inside Galina Barding, and five inside Lyza Ellazar. As a doctor, Lyza was stunned by his potency; since the volume of his ejaculate never seemed to taper off, Lyza figuredwith the two bonus loads Galina had gotten earlierPeter must have poured at least 50 cubic centimeters of sperm into herself and Galina. And indeed, Peter's big round balls were quite warm when Lyza cradled them in her hand during a goodbye blow-job, suggesting they were working overtime to keep them soaked to the gunnels with sperm.

It wasn't until two months later, though, that Lyza realized precisely why Peter was so potent. The implant he had was evidently not a contraceptive, but rather a fertility enhancer; it was grossly irresponsible for any man to use such a thing without a doctor's supervision--since his super-abundant sperm could actually induce any woman to ovulate, even with protection, and even outside of her cycle. But somehow he had gotten one, and--sure enough--both Galina and Lyza were now pregnant with his babies.

"But that's impossible...!" Galina protested; "it must be menopause drying up our periods..."

"The medscanner doesn't lie," Lyza said; "you and I ARE both 10 weeks pregnant with twins."

"You mean you, or me...?"

"No, we're BOTH pregnant with twins, Galina. The goddamned bastard knocked us both up with twins--and we're damn lucky that was all he gave us!"

* * *

For Galina--piloting the "Springbok" back toward their homeworld Krakatoa with a totally unexpected pair of baby girls in her belly--her first thought was abortion, but Lyza was absolutely opposed to that option for her own babies. And though Lyza's opinion struck Galina as irrational, it was influential. She knew very well that these babiesconceived though they were in a totally reprehensible manner--might well be the last she could ever have. So she decided to keep her babies as well, and together, the two fuming women--their bellies already starting to bulge--contacted their lawyers the moment they got home.

Not surprisingly--given the fact that the Cox family had a hundred thousand times more wealth than even Lyza's family--it was a vain effort. It turned out that Peter had had his testicles surgically altered so that they created sperm with DNA completely distinct from his own. Thus, the women (now 6 months along) had their dual paternity suits thrown out, and their only consolation was the knowledge that they personally had enough money of their own to provide for the newborns they would soon be saddled with.

"This makes me so...mad!" Galina swore after the hearing, tottering on her platform sandals as her babies kicked in her bulging tummy. "How can he get away with this?"

"Power and privilege," Lyza sighed. "Oh well, at least your pension will help--and the Scout Service medical plan."

"That's not the point," Galina fumed; "that bastard created four human lives--and completely ruined two others--for what?"

"Well, I'm sorry to break this news flash to you," Lyza said, clopping away from the courthouse in the same sandals she'd worn the night she got pregnant, "but we do live in an empire, not a democracy. The nobility and wealthy can do as they please."

* * *

And so the case seemed to rest; although her obstetrician advised her to relax (if only for the sake of her babies), Galina continued to fume and vent at regular intervals right up until she was nine months along. Although she never seemed quite as huge as Lyza (who looked even larger because of her small frame), Galina was still quite large by then--and thoroughly exhausted.

Amazingly, there were a few odd men around who actually liked Galina's big pregnant belly, and she let one of them (a teenage boy named Roger, who was in charge of the robots who tended the grounds around her house) plow her from behind when she was 36 weeks along. By then, though, her bulging stomach was hanging down to the bed between her thighs when Roger fucked her, and the fuck wasn't really all that pleasant; between the kicking of her babies (who didn't seem to like Roger slamming his hips into her buttocks), and the tightness of her spike-heeled sandals (whose straps were way too tight around her swollen ankles) it was mainly an exercise in self-humiliation. Not seeming to realize how uncomfortable she was, Roger pounded her for more than half an hour before he finally left his youthful spunk in her hole, and afterward Galina was sore for days.

Thus, Galina was forced to lay off sex during her last month, and that just added to her unhappiness. Between the pain in her back from the weight of the babies, the girls' constant kicking, her endless need to pee, and her generally bad attitude--Galina was not much fun at all to be around as she ballooned to a weight of 82 kilograms (from a normal 65). She was even vaguely resentful that Lyza--who was bearing the same torment much more calmly--weighed the same 82 kilograms (from a normal 60) when she went into labor at 40 weeks, just two hours after Galina did. On Lyza's smaller frame, her belly looked even larger--especially so since she carried her babies lower than Galina--and Galina didn't see how she could stand it. Even with the help of the Krakatoa Zero-G Birthing Center, Galina struggled through twelve hours of labor before she finally pushed out her daughters, fully six hours after Lyza brought forth her daughter and her son.

Later, though, Galina would come to regret being so emotional during her pregnancy; for--although her babies were fairly healthy at 3 kilograms each, they were not nearly so plump and vital as Lyza's pair (whom she named Dagbar and Della), each weighing a plump 4 kilograms at birth. Lyza attributed this to her much more positive attitude and advised Galina to lighten up--perhaps becoming a Christian like herself.

"Only if I can get God to kill that bastard," Galina muttered--but inside, she couldn't help but love her babies now that she had them. Now grateful for her generous pension, she bought enough robots to help her take care of the girls (whom she named Yudith and Savra), although--with her breasts now heavy with milk--she took the opportunity to feed both girls herself. Thus, finally settling into the routines of motherhood, Galina was pleasantly surprised to realize that few people--including Lyza's grown children--were especially scandalized by the mysterious pregnancies of herself and Lyza. Indeed, Lyza's grown daughter Raphaela loved playing with her little brother and sister, and only Lyza's nastiest neighbors suggested that she had brought shame to the Ellazar name. Of course, Galina was a lot more used to that kind of talk from her neighbors--even without her babies.

And yet the basic question of "why" never left Galina's mind. Even as her babies started to crawl on their own, say their first words and walk upright (all of which she was immensely proud of) Galina continued to wonder why a multi-trillionaire would do such an obscene thing to a pair of total strangers. Digging into her savings, then, Galina hired a couple of old friends to find out the truth...

* * *

Clovis Arbuckle and Kayvee-88 were rarities in the empire--self-aware and fully autonomous androids; further, both of them were friends of Galina from her Scout days and now were running their own private investigator's service out of Krakatoa Starport. Through some shady dealing, they had managed to conceal their identity as androids from the government (which would have insisted on having them registered as such), and now were doing quite well for themselves--when they weren't busy fucking each other silly with the superhuman stamina given them by their creators.

As it happened, Clovis had spent most of his life serving as the surrogate son of his inventor, the famous inventor Milton Arbuckle, who had died without publicly revealing Clovis' true nature. Galina and a few select people in the Scout Service knew, but the general public did not; thus, Galina believed it should be possible for Clovis to pass himself off as the handsome--but penniless--son of his famous creator, and thus gain access to the rarefied social air where the Cox family circulated.

"Let me get this straight," Clovis said, meeting Galina at her house; "you want me to infiltrate the Cox family?"

"Well, they should still think you're Milton's son, right? And Milton was one of their peers."

"That's true," Clovis mused; "but it will be tricky. It'll take a while to gain their trust, maybe years..."

"I can wait."

"And I'll need to keep paying the bills while I'm doing this..."

"I've got plenty of money," Galina assured him. "Need anything else?"

Of course, Galina knew what he wanted--she could see the boner rising in his trousers as he glanced at her long (if now somewhat chunky) legs, propped up on her high heels. His concern seemed to be Galina's daughters, who were rambling around the house pretty freely, under the loose supervision of a nannybot.

"Oh, I know what you want," Galina whispered. She then turned to the nannybot, and asked the robot to keep a close eye on the kids while she and Clovis retired to her bedroom.

"Oh, that's it--!" Galina was soon screaming, her feet up over her head as Clovis pounded her like a piledriver; "fuck me harder...!"

"You just like bossing robots around, don't you?"

"It's--(ungph!)--nothing personal...!"

* * *

Clovis' main defect was a deep torpor he usually fell into after sex; thus--after taking a nice healthy load of Clovis' simulated spunk up her cunt--Galina was obliged to lie there and watch him sleep for several hours, until he regained his senses.

"Rebooted yet?" Galina kidded him.

"Something like that," he said, gathering his clothes and kissing her. "I'll be in touch."

True to his word, Clovis did check in periodically in the months to come, but he and Kayvee didn't really uncover the full magnitude of what was happening with Peter Cox until nearly two years later. One thing Galina had learned herself was that Peter was implicated in the unplanned pregnancies of several notable celebrities (curiously, all older ladies in their 50's and 60's), but all of the cases had either been dropped or settled out of court. Mad as those cases made Galina (again), she did not realize they were part of a larger phenomenon--an epidemic of pregnancies among older ladies of high social standing--until she finally received the full report of the androids in 1130.

Between Clovis (who posed as the sort of affable freeloader common among the super-rich) and Kayvee (who worked as a pilot for the fleet of Cox shuttlecraft), they pieced together the outlines of an amazing game being played between Cox and five of his ultrawealthy childhood friends. Just a few years earlier, Cox had gotten his hands on an extremely powerful male potency enhancer--legally obtainable only with a doctor's supervision, but easy enough for Cox to obtain illegally--and experienced an unexpected rush the first time he tried it out, 'accidentally' impregnating his mother's horny 64-year old maid Devilla (with triplets) when he was just 19, in 1121.

Of course, it wasn't hard for Devilla (summarily fired by Peter's mother) to prove Peter was the father thanks to her babies' DNA-and collect a substantial paternity award--but he nevertheless shared the thrill of his bizarre conquest with his friends, who soon figured out how to share the fun (knocking up older--and supposedly protected--women) with none of the risk. A simple surgical procedure would allow them to make sperm that could not be traced back to them genetically, so--armed with their own potency-enhancing implants--Peter's friends were soon laying waste to the honor of their families' retainers and female servants as well; though it startled the young men at first, few of their targets--most already grandmothers, with grandchildren not much older than their own unexpected babies--could bring themselves to have abortions.

Inevitably, though, the boys wanted more stimulation, and they finally contrived to make a game of their cruel sport; Peter and his friends would compete to see who could impregnate the largest number of older women (age 50+) every year--with a very special annual prize for the man who tallied the most live births. And being rich, they didn't just rely on their innate charm; to a man, each player soon had a state-of-theart (and highly illegal) psi wave generator installed in his head, capable of breaking down the resistance of any unshielded mind.

Thus armed, it was surprisingly easy for the young men to go on a rampage of propagation that destroyed entire families and left their family lawyers hard pressed to cope. Peter himself had fathered no less than 75 babies (ages newborn to 6) by the time he claimed the wombs of Galina and Lyza in 1128, and would father another 55 before his rather painful end two years later...

Before that gruesome end, though, Peter wreaked havoc on the upper crust of high society widows and matrons (plus numerous other incidental targets); as with the older family servants, most of these older women were already grandmothers or great-grandmothers and--shocked as they were to find themselves swelling up plump with unexpected babies--most of them were far too maternal by nature to have abortions. Thus, Peter soon had triplets growing in the belly of Lady Bella Balfour (the popular 55-year old governor of New Bimini, with six grown children already) in 1123, and knocked up all four women in her cabinet (average age 56) with 11 more babies while he was at it.

In subsequent years, he would go on to impregnate the 56-year old fleet admirals of Aladar and Suman Subsectors in 1124 and 1125 (with twins and triplets, respectively); then in 1126, he impregnated all six women on the Galactic Lit faculty of Starvale University (average age 61) with 17 babies. Still he was not sated, though, and--as if to cap it all--Peter went on to father triplets by the 50-year old wife of the prime minister (in 1127), twins by the Imperial Minister of Justice (Lady Elsapeth Danelaw, age 74) in 1128, and triplets by Lady Danelaw's oldest daughter (Lady Gavril of Morioka, age 51) in 1129. Not surprisingly, those very proper ladies (and their husbands) were outraged, and those particular conquests would soon prove costly to the Baby Game.

As it happened, the annual prize for the gentleman with the most babies fathered (with partial credit apparently awarded for the myriad younger women also knocked up in the crossfire) was almost inconceivablethat young man would fuck and impregnate the mother of the second-place winner for the year, and also impregnate the youngest (fertile) female relative of the last-place player. Not surprisingly, then, the competition was furious; by the fifth year of the contest, Peter's own mother (the 68-year old Cox matriarch Azama) had twice watched in disbelief as her belly swelled with babies fathered by Peter's friendsincluding two sons born in 1124 and a son and daughter born almost exactly one year after Galina's and Lyza's in 1129. In return, Peter had put a baby boy of his own in the belly of his half-brothers' sickly and widowed grandmother (Lady Ravinder Kardev, age 79) in 1125, then went on to give the bewildered woman another son in 1126 and two daughters in 1127 before her aging womb finally refused to bear any more fruit. Sadly, Lady Ravinder (who was much-loved by all the nobility) died not long after that from sheer exhaustion--though it certainly didn't help Ravinder's heart much to see her 16-year old granddaughter Indira conceive a daughter of her own by Peter in 1128, which was her brother's penalty for finally being the loser of the contest that year.

But by then the Imperial authorities had finally had enough, though, and--over the vehement protests of their families--all five of the gamers except Peter were arrested, chemically castrated and subjected to mind-adjustment therapy. Even as the game was clearly over, though, Peter continued on his escapades throughout the Trailing Frontier--actually managing to impregnate the entire command crew of the hapless starliner "Song of Sirius", and also giving the emperor's 75-year old sister (the notoriously addlepated Grand Duchess Severina) a pair of very embarrassing bouncing baby boys before he made his ultimate mistake. Somewhere near Starkhammer, in 1130, Peter slipped his meat to the infamous pirate Rona Sterger (age 55)--who responded to the unwelcome news that she was now carrying quintuplets by personally hunting down Peter and--prior to killing him--slowly castrating him with a dull knife.

Indeed, Clovis told Galina that the process reputedly took several hours--which Galina found only appropriate since that would have given Peter plenty of time to reflect on the errors of his ways.

* * *

And thus a strange--but mostly-untold--saga ended for its principal instigators in 1130. For Galina, receiving this information well after the events had unfolded, it was a strange and disturbing reminder that the great Galactic Empire--which she had served without much reservation for much of her life--was probably well overdue for a catastrophic collapse, rotten as it seemed to be to the core.

In the meantime, though, Galina raised her two daughters into fine and respectable young ladies; both were quite intelligent, and had no obvious trace of their father's insidious cruelty in their manner. Happily retired, then, and comfortably well off, Galina would not give Peter another thought until nearly 15 years after her daughters were born.

Now 75--but still quite fit (and plenty horny, when she had the opportunity)--Galina took her daughters to the planet Bellamar for a vacation in 1143, and only then recalled that Bellamar was the homeworld of the Cox family. By then, Galina had explained the circumstances of their birth to her daughters, but it was a still a shock to come across a public memorial to Peter Cox in a public square not far from the primary starport.

"So that was our father?" Yudith asked.

"Yes," Galina said.

"So was he really as bad as people say?" Savra asked.

"Well," Galina said, after a very long pause, "he was probably just like every other man is, deep down inside. When you come right down to it, men aren't all that terribly complicated."

"Yeah," Yudith noted, "Aunt Lyza said that, too."

Galina smiled.

"So, do you still hate him as much as Aunt Lyza says?"

"No," Galina said, finally turning away from the memorial with her daughters, "I guess not..."

//I just wish I could have been the one to use that knife on him...//

THE END