So, here is another of my whoppers. I do hope that you all enjoy it. I had hoped to get other work done but this old yarn just kept niggling at the back of my brain and at my age, I have none to spare, jolly good then.

Here are some reading instructions: I write using the Queen’s English and the proper spelling for it. I am sorry that my knowledge of the Queen’s English is inferior but I am endeavouring to get it learnt my best speed. It is my hope to visit the UK to for further education in time. Full stop!

My lethal rapid fire guns lapsed into deadly silence! The minimally sized magazines were empty! Hysteria inundated my mind and soul. I waited to die a horrible death in the cruel teeth of the dreaded enemy. My breaths, sounded like hoarse, hysterical sobbing, and my thin face felt forlornly flushed, my insignificant lips throbbed distressingly. Absolute frenzy ruled my mind; that born of paralyzing, profound terror, and I felt a desperate need to survive just this one instant; no longer; just this instant; let the next one worry about its bloody self I thought. Nothing happened after a few more seconds. Slowly I looked down on the scope. It was blank. Feeling way past undone, I wondered if the display was working?

The cooling fans on the electronics whirred away and the powerful gyros were winding down. It was like waking from a bad dream. I felt as if I’d been in another nightmarish reality and only just returned. My body felt hot and wet from the mental exertion of the last half-minute. Now I felt as if my whole being were going down into a black hole. Presently, I drifted in and out of consciousness as the stimulants oxidized out of my worn out body.

The suction unit in my mouth slurped noisily away, cleaning up the last of the mess, God I hated that thing! My heart was still pounding desperately in my ears. At the time, I was completely unaware that my heart had stopped completely for over a minute after the battle. The Doctors did not tell the pilots this. I'd lost the time and didn't know it.

The stench of my own vomit, rank with bile, wafted up to my nose. The unit fit neatly into my mouth where part of the suction unit extended down my throat to intercept the first part of the bile being expelled from my stomach, but some of the odour somehow always escaped. The unit had evolved through many versions, the designers learning something from each death until it had gotten to this one. It was daunting to wear at first and took a lot of getting used to because ones' gag reflex tried to expel it as soon as the tube was inserted in the pilots' throat. The worst part was that when the fighter was locked down for battle, the part in my mouth inflated, locking it in place. It took a long time before I could control my hysteria. In the first training, we were told to carry a soft foam piece that looked like a banana, and to practice inserting it in our spare moments.

There was no microphone in my helmet. Voice communication was impossible during a battle. While we were waiting to be hauled in, most of us were too incapacitated to speak anyhow. The little cabin did contain a microphone but was only accessible when the suit part unclasped my body. Usually the only ones to use it were the maintenance people.

I could feel the hygiene unit cleansing between my thighs where I’d messed myself. I had gotten so used to being incontinent in battle that I didn't even think about anymore. In engagement, the way we fought; one was fortunate to survive, let alone worry about our bowel habits.

I often asked why they just didn't use robot fighters. The answer I got from the liaison alien was that humans were more suitable to the purpose. I had no idea that the ultimate goal was to capture an enemy Louse alive although the idea would have made sense to him. However the brass knew that if too many of the pilots tried to capture one alive, then the whole force was in danger of being overcome by the Lice. It was a balance so delicate that none of us fully understood it. The Aliens reasoned that perhaps one, which was wounded or stunned, would be the last one of an attacking group. Thus there would be less risk to the whole group involved. Their logic didn’t seem like logic to us, but since they were the one’s who’d shown up with the weapons to help us, we sort of had to do what they said.

It was oblique reasoning, unfamiliar to humans but since these guys, the friendly Aliens had travelled in space for who knows how long, the human brass yielded to their logic.

As I wound down, the sobbing and tears came. The oppression of the fast acting sedative gradually began to wane. The brass had found the stress of battle demanded fast acting, untested IV drugs just to keep us calm enough to fight. I had a permanent PIC line in my arm that led clear up to the Aortic Gallery just outside my heart. Thus any drug delivered would disperse in my body as fast as possible. They'd also found that deaths from pure physiological failure were down since they started using them. The replenishment IV slowly began to catch up with my body’s needs. My life would continue another day or hour, I did not know.

Humans did not know it at the time, but the Aliens knew that their drugs were untested and dangerous to humans and the probability of genetic damage was high. We also did not know that the Aliens had been looking for a particularly, aggressive, ruthless champion to fight the Lice and humans were it. Humans were apparently uniquely suited for this sort of fighting, and the Aliens hoped that we would not turn and destroy them also if we triumphed over the lice. In short, they knew that humans liked to fight and the lustful shedding of blood drove us. We were the barbarians of the known Universe.

I let my silver and white ship tumble for a while; stars circling it on all sides; carrying me, its helpless occupant safely during my recuperation. There was no autopilot to stabilize the fighter. The brass wanted as little as possible to jam or break. I didn't care but had to rest for at least a few moments. Presently I used a few economical movements and stabilised my ship.

Shortly, I felt a nudge from behind. The re-supply carrier, USS Bennett, had captured me and was drawing me in. Due to the various vectors from my initial injection into battle, the thrust of the guns, and the changes in attitude due to my orientation jets, it was felt that it was most economical to not have primary propulsion on our fighters because of the weight. The Alien tractor beams and instrumentation could locate us, orient us, and pull us in far more efficiently. There was much argument for the primary propulsion but the increased velocity of angular target alignment afforded due to the decreased mass of the fighter, eventually won the day. In short, a light object spins more easily than a heavy one.

The suddenness with which we were called into battle rendered space suits useless. We’d have to stay in them all the time. So instead, the designers made the little fighters, really nothing more than a mobile gun platform, into a spacesuit of sorts. The pilots could fit themselves into them in just seconds.

I had just finished High School and was going to be a Literature major in college but the call came, and I had to answer it. This technical detail was beyond me. Had I a choice, I’d be writing poetry. I’d never had the slightest interest in the military, guns, war, or alien invaders. Now, with no control over my destiny at all, I had intimate knowledge of all of them.

With the demand for pilots, it became necessary to use both genders to fill the ranks. Gradually the design of the fighters was adapted to accommodate either sex with minimal fuss. It was a great capitulation for humans to accept that their daughters would die in battle also. Right now, many gender barriers were falling to the will of humanity to survive. It was especially traumatic to Middle Eastern cultures as the men there were totally unused to their women filling such a vital role and often being better at it than the men. The crew aboard the carriers that serviced the fighters were up to 70 years old; older if they could still perform their jobs, and were also both men and women.

When we stood down, and were in a back area, it was common to see the national dress of every nation. I formed a fairly relaxed relationship with a Muslim man that surprised me. Three of his sisters were on the ship too and they’d had to compromise everything in order to fight for survival. Still, when he met his sisters, they observed Hijab.

A Chinese man who’d been a member of the communist party often reflected how different his life was in China, until the day he didn’t come back. It was hell. None of us knew when it would be us. It felt as if we soldiers were being mindlessly fed to a meat grinder. I remembered the public shock when the Aliens had promised not to reduce Earth population below one billion. I thought about that for a few moments. Wow, by the time they were done, would there be enough of humanity to survive?

In my last weeks on Earth, violent behaviour mostly stopped, except for the suicides. There were lots of them until a tranquilizing was released into our drinking water and beverages. Still on Earth, I did not know they’d done that, and we found out by accident after the war.

They’d figured out that the Lice, as we called them were coming from somewhere beyond the constellation Orion, and for the last 22 months we’d been running up that line in search of their planet or origin. We were now 1.2 million light years from Earth, a distance far too great for me to imagine. The Alien space drive was capable of astonishing speeds, but nothing like what the Lice could manage.

Physicians, aided by the aliens worked very hard to find a combination of drugs and food supplements which would best aid the young pilots in the battle for the survival of the human race. At the time, it was a closely guarded secret that the female members of the ranks would go through their terms of service of about two years with less lasting impact than men, allowing for the stress of battle it's self. However, some of the male pilots would suffer severe changes in their physiology, often not reversible. Even if they survived, those who suffered the worst physiological changes were simply listed as killed in action, their fate being unknown to the general public. The present theory about why women did better than men is that the battles were so short and pitched that there really was only time for instinct not planning, but none of that was certain.

I found out years later that there were billions of our stricken soldiers, men and women who lived on garden planets and were cared for by anyone who would do it. Rarely was it family that cared for the stricken, but the Aliens managed to find either human care givers or brought similar races in from other planets to see to it that those who fought were not robbed of their dignity.

I remembered finding out that the races of other planets had not shared equally in our sacrifice but Earth people were chosen because of our ruthless, aggressive tendencies. They judged that we were the only race likely to survive combat contact with the lice. I raged for hours but gradually had to face that in our sacrifice lay honour for it.

Back home, at the time, the gullible public actually thought that the men were given the most hazardous assignments and thus often did not return. The commander of the fighting forces made the decision to not notify Earth high command of the true circumstances, since the ultimate outcome would not change. Scientists were working feverishly to solve the problem with the high mortality rate of the male pilots. This was a situation that had to be fought out in space and in the clinics on shipboard. We had no time to wait for direction from Earth, the distance to which had grown to more than a year away. In time they would, but these first few years of the war effort could not be abandoned for want of a safer method of keeping the pilots alive.

All this retrieval activity occurred without voice radio traffic. We pilots were too worn out to respond so we were gathered like fallen nuts in an orchard. The fighting ships still showing vital signs would be first. Those too heavily damaged or who's pilot's had died because of the stresses of battle were much less urgent. No one was left behind.

Absently I watched as another ship; Eleanor's was captured and drawn in beside mine. She looked calm but weary. This late in the war, once the weapons were depleted, the seat released us, allowing the occupant of the fighter a little free movement. I wanted to wipe my eyes; a scant bit of my pride remained. She turned to look my direction. The emptiness in her eyes told the story of the battle. She'd not cracked this time. She'd be out there with me and the others next battle. When a pilot lost it, they were often not seen again unless they recovered after a few days off. I wondered when I would crack. The horror of the battle still fresh in my mind, I felt a quiver run from the top of my head to my toes.

I realized the seat had unclamped from me. I usually had to fight against it until the release came and wondered if I’d taken damage. I had no instrumentation to indicate that. My only function was to kill or be killed. I took another ravenous gulp of cabin air. It was so good to have that "thing" out of my throat.

In the distance, I could see one of the other fighters with a gaping hole in the bottom. I wondered who it had been. A wave of sympathy flooded through me. A single heartfelt sob escaped my lips. They felt swollen. Perhaps it was just bruising from the air unit. I failed to notice a few hairs on the chest piece, which clamped me while in battle

I felt my ship shudder as it contacted the guide rail and re-entered the launch barrel. In moments I was stopped next to Eleanor. I seemed to get her more than half the time. I was lucky this time. Next time I might get Jerry who'd want to play cards or Glen who'd want to brag or Sheila who'd be aloof. She'd never gotten over bunking with someone else, male or female.

It was simply too time consuming to get the pilots back to assigned "mates". One advantage was that if a pair just didn't get along, they probably wouldn't be together for long. Hopefully no one would get too attached to another person because the next day or hour one of the two could die, perhaps both.

Each pair of ships was berthed around a central break room core in a circular pattern, along with five other pairs. Initially, they'd thought that the pilots could congregate there between missions but the rooms were seldom used except on stand down by any but the maintenance folks. Our central core rotated like the magazine on a revolving pistol and there were dozens of magazines located around the periphery of our carrier.

At the beginning of an action, as we got into our fighters, the carrier went to maximum thrust and began catapulting fighters off on various vectors in front of the direction of travel. The result was that with the exchange of mass for velocity, the carrier was nearly stationary in space by the time all the fighters were launched. Were our circumstances not so desperate, the sight would be fascinating to watch.

Eleanor got out before me but looked tired, we all were. Her haggard smile cheered me somewhat as she stood there waiting for me to untangle myself from the electronics. These battles often only lasted perhaps 15 seconds. The approach to contact could take 30 minutes or so. One time the approach was a scant minute or two. He'd barely had time to get his mind mentally set for battle although he did not know how long the drugs actually needed. Generally the recovery period was a few hours or sometimes days. One never knew how long the break would be until the lice tried again. If another contact were made before they were ready, the next carrier in back of them would take the call.

The telltale clunks and clanks from below my feet told me that the maintenance people were already at work below. My ship would be ready to fly, depending on the damage, usually in a few minutes.

When you encountered the enemy, you fired and twisted and fired and fought as intensely as you could because if you didn't you'd be dead in seconds. They'd rigged cannon, lasers, and missiles in every combination they could think of.

I gazed at Eleanor's emaciated body above the battle skirt she wore. She looked like an undeveloped eight-year-old. If they stood side by side, he'd look just the same. Even my male organs had retracted as if I’d been in very cold water. The Doctors had discovered that a dramatically underweight body withstood the rigors of battle better. Earth side I weighted around 180lbs dressed down for football. Now I hoped I weighed 100.

I stood up and brushed out my battle skirt as I stepped out of the cockpit. The uniforms were all the same. A white Lycra bra top loaded with sensors, and a knee length full skirt. We wore no socks and very thin slippers. I’d put the slippers on as I got out of the craft. The boots we wore in flight were a part of the fighter. No one wore underwear. There was not time to disrobe to change into a suit when the enemy came and no one in their right mind would get into one of these ships and fight like the pilots did if they were unable to link to the ships' machinery. They'd really tried to make the ship/man interface as seamless as possible.

In training, by the time they all got to the ships, each pilot was well aware that haste was of great importance, so any scruples at not wearing underwear or men wearing skirts had disappeared entirely. Some of the more macho made nervous jokes about it but none refused.

Only the pilot berths were heated since they wore such brief clothing. The rest of the ship could go below freezing at times. The rest of the crew gained some comfort from the waste heat rejected from the machinery. This, in an effort to save fuel made the ride a sacrifice to all concerned.

It was difficult to imagine that a scant 7 years ago; I was playing on a swing in the back yard when the first attack had come. That day, the people of Earth would meet two different Alien races, and confront a terror so great that all the cultural differences here on Earth would suddenly be irrelevant.

The lice literally devoured a manned Mars's mission in minutes. Everyone was in shock since they'd been airing the mission live at all times on the Internet. Then the attack stopped suddenly, but not before everyone on the craft was dead. In the clear blue sky over earth, huge brown ships became visible in broad daylight. They were all different shapes and vaguely resembled balls of mud. The aliens inhabited small asteroids and flew them around the Galaxy until most of the mass was gone or they became structurally unstable.

It had been the Aliens who had repulsed the attack of the lice. It was a great deal of shock for the human race to absorb but in a few months; men and women of earth were training to fight off the Lice. Their Alien saviors were long thin bipeds who were hairless and wore almost no clothing. The name "Alien" seemed to stick no matter what the politicians said to call them.
The popular notion that man would take hundreds or thousands of years to develop into a space faring race had simply become a silly idea. In actuality it took a single day.

The Lice were generally several feet long and a few feet wide and had a set of jaws with which to crunch through the hulls of any ship. They looked very similar to Lice and thus the name stuck. They really seemed to love Aluminum but could settle for any metallic substance. The lice seemed not to prefer simple Iron. That is one reason the Aliens chose Asteroids with an iron make up or even better, non-metallic.

The Aliens and the human brass were trying to figure out how the Lice got around since their mass or lack of it, seemed to defy the laws of physics. They'd all hoped as they ran up the string of contacts that something would surface that everyone had been missing. There had to be a weak spot.

Now that I was just about 18 years old, I watched it all take place. The Alien beings seemed friendly enough but insisted that if we did not provide humans to help with the fight, they'd simply depart and let the Lice finish us off. The Lice would not hurt the humans, they'd simply take all the metal out of the solar system, thus thrusting humanity back into the Stone Age.

The Aliens didn't need to say anything about the nearly pure Iron/nickel core the Earth had. The implications were obvious.

When an alert sounded, the pilots were no more than a few feet from their craft. It took a toll on these pilots to go from sound sleep to piloting in under a minute but that was the only way to survive out here. The "Lice" as they were called dropped out of warp hopefully a few minutes from the ship and it took everything they could do to fight them off. Their method of propulsion was more advanced than even the aliens' had. Once in a while they'd come into view right on a task force. There'd be no choice but to expel as many of the fighters' rearward as possible and then detonate a huge explosive device, which wiped out the Lice and the forward ships in the task force. It was a horrible tactic to contemplate but necessary to prevent a more horrible death.
One of the objectives of these expeditions was to learn how the Lice traveled and where they came from.
There were 30 ships in the group. Each one of them had thousands of fighters on it. The ships rotated turns in the battle ready mode that way each group stayed in battle only a day or so and then stepped back for hopefully a week of rest.
Eleanor stepped over to me. "Tired?" She asked. She snuggled up close to me. I knew she wanted to do it before she slept. I hoped we’d get the chance to finish. I could feel myself stirring already, though I had no idea where a usable organ came from out of my shrunken junk. These days one did not pass up a chance at a little affection. I seemed to have increasing difficulty with sex and I had just written it off to being tired. Once or twice I'd felt as if my penis "shrunk" but had not had a chance to dwell on it. I was either fighting or sleeping these days.
The quarters were all the same. There were two fighters in a room, a bed in between; some food in a refrigerator at one end and a shower bath at the other. The food was mushy nameless mess of something and the showers were hot but had no soap. I rarely used the toilet while up front. The end of the battle usually depleted my body. Most of the time I didn't even undress to shower. I usually tried to change about every other day. We showered, still dressed and let the drying unit dry them and their clothing. I’d experienced getting into a fighter in wet clothing more than once.

I felt her push me onto the bed. I would perform or she'd make me with drugs. Was it rape? She felt a need and in this environment, there was no time for negotiation. They were locked in an intimate embrace quickly. She expected him to reciprocate with his. She had come in seconds and was winding up for more. He was still winding up.
I’d later find out after the war was over that no male soldier was ever accused of rape again. We all knew what it was like.

I always felt as if I were in a waking dream, never sobering up from all the drugs. Even on stand down it seemed as if I didn't start to feel right until just before we resumed duty.

Lights flashed, and alarms sounded. Eleanor was gone. I found myself stuporously falling into my ship before my mind had shifted gears. Each of my legs went down the control shafts. I quickly lifted my skirt to clear as my butt hit the split seat. A quick pop told him that his penis was in the tube and the suction had started at his ass. Thank God that they had stopped using an actual suction tube in my anus! Little prickles in my thighs told me the drug dispenser was ready, the shunt was connected. I quickly snapped the plug coming from my bra into the medical telemetry cord. In a woman, the bra served two purposes, providing modesty and holding the sensors that detected heart waves and other things. In men, they were told it was simply for the instrumentation. I had no idea that they also served to prolong the time in which any possible breast growth would go undetected.

As soon as the computer sensed the action, the seat began to grow in around me, shielding me from the G forces I would feel in a few seconds. The hated probe was at my lips. I always felt like a helpless captive as the probe snaked down my throat and inflated until the drugs began to take effect. When the battle ended, I would not remember anything but a dull horror.

On my scope I could already see the approaching enemy from the mother ships' feed. I leaned forward and his arms were clamped solidly just as the back of the seat slammed into him. I shoved my face into the shield and the seat clamped to the back of my shaven head. Now completely immobile, I thumbed the ready switch.

The sudden acceleration always made me dump my bowels. As I sighted the enemy, I involuntarily vomited. In rising horror, I saw that there were simply too many of them. I fell into a quivering paralyzed gaze as they approached. The same thing always happened. Suddenly the drugs slammed into me, bringing the deadly calm of a killer ready for battle. The LSD like drug they used would normally cause hallucinations but in my hyper terrorized state it only made me more aware of the surroundings and calmed my body enough to function like a machine. Oddly enough, the LSD, used in this way did not cause flashbacks.

They'd been pursuing the enemy in the only way they could. Rush forward Millions of miles in the direction they'd come out of warp from. They'd hoped that eventually the fleet would run up on a bunch of them about to launch.

About a week ago several ships from our group suddenly departed. The gossip was that headquarters was taking a few from each group for something special. None of us knew what.

The momentum from the launch had sent us thousands of miles in front of the mother ship. I could see the advancing front of Lice. Wait, wait, steady, wait, fire, fire, and fire as I tumbled in a whirlpool of fright, rage, hysteria and laughter fighting feverishly to survive.

My heart rate rose to over 200. I knew I’d stop breathing. I could feel my eyes dilate. A normal person would be unconscious or paralyzed but not us pilots. In less than a minute, I would lose 5 lbs. or so.

The echo of a huge clunk resonated in my mind as I returned to consciousness. It was like waking up after a disturbing coma. “What was that?”

From looking at the battle timer, my ammunition was gone in 14 seconds this time. “Shorter than usual”, I thought. There were three rounds in the forward cannon. That malfunction puzzled me, but with no targets in sight I didn't feel like wasting the ammo. Suddenly the seat unclamped. This time I didn't cry but just felt icy calm. I sat looking around waiting for the pickup. Hundreds of fighters streaked past my ship. The battle must be continuing as it frequently did. Sometimes it was a few minutes and then it would stop just as suddenly as it came.

I felt disturbed and uneasy. Though I did not know it at the time, the close proximity of a Louse had caused the program in his onboard computer to dose Sam with a different combination of mind-altering drugs this time.

I was hyper aware and tensed for battle, but not clamped in.

I could see flashes of fire in the distance as the battle continued to rage.

A slight movement off to my right caught my eye. A louse was calmly munching on another ship, trying to break into the cockpit I thought. I had never seen one live before. I kicked the manoeuvring thrusters to turn the cannon toward the Louse. It hadn't seen my ship moving. If I weren't careful I’d hit the other fighter. Somehow I had to knock the louse free with one shot and kill it with the other two.

The other ship was rolling a little. The terrified pilot was looking at me, knowing what had to be done. He was rolling the ship to present a better target. The first shot went off.

“OH GOD, I missed.”

The second glanced off; the third knocked the louse free but left it very much alive and dangerous. It spun out of control for just a moment and then began to move toward my own ship. I couldn't see what allowed it to move about though there seemed to be a bit of distortion around it as it moved.

Responding instinctively, I slammed the thrusters hard over hurling my ship into a sickening spin. Just as I was almost in the clutches of the Louse, the cannon spun around and hit it soundly in the body. It went motionless, stunned or dead, I could not tell. Still spinning, the computer kept selecting views of the situation until it found one of his ship and the Louse from the other ship. The other pilot moved in close as Sam stopped the wild spin.

Sam looked at his cabin pressure gauge. He was worried about a leak because of the impact of hitting the louse. It seemed to be holding.

They watched anxiously as the creature hung in front of them motionless. It became clear to Sam it was not dead. He could see what looked like the expanding and contracting of breathing. What was there out there to breathe? It didn't move however. It must be stunned.

I knew the others on the mother ship had watched this encounter and now knew as much as I did. My rescue would come as quickly as possible. I could not know it at the time but this one little action would be the beginning of the reversal for mankind. Command had been trying to capture a live louse and now a freak accident and providence had made it happen.

In my cabin, a tiny speaker squawked, “Hold still young Sam, I do think that you have bagged one of the buggers”. The voice sounded like an elderly man, but it sounded kind and calm. I really needed calm.

Sudden dimming in the light caused me to look for the cause. The mother ship was approaching at full thrust. As it came abeam of me it suddenly engaged reverse thrusts at an intensity that I had never witnessed. I was amazed and thankful, they'd hurried. They had used up a whole day's fuel in a very few minutes in a frenzied effort to imprison the louse before it regained consciousness. A specially designed carrier was moved out and the Louse was thrust into it. When they were very sure the Louse was secure, my ship was retrieved but not to the usual pod anchor but into a hangar.

As I climbed out of my slightly damaged ship, my arm brushed up against a little spine stuck in the side of the sheet metal gun cover. It produced a deep cut in my forearm. "Ouch, that hurt!" I cried out. One of the maintenance guys told me to get to the infirmary.

It took several butterfly bandages and some wound sealant to stop the bleeding. Later they found the quill was from the body of the Louse they'd captured. I developed a low fever from the cut. It became red and slightly swollen for a few days and then gradually got better. The Doctor was puzzled about it but they would not realize the significance of it for over 2 years and in a very startling way.

A frantic debriefing followed. In a room with a window on the Louse and its container, I could see them working to learn as much as they could as fast as possible. Through the bars, suddenly the Louse began to become indistinct until one of the scientists stunned it again with something I did not understand. Not being a technical person, I did not know that this one time when the louse had tried to use its primary propulsion in the view of the scientist's instrumentation had indirectly provided the information to save humanity.

Defying the laws of known Physics, the Lice used a method of transport that relied upon brain waves and was generally effortless. Once understood, this one incident would open up space to almost completely uninhibited exploration by both the Aliens and humans. Sure they'd still have to understand temporal variation, multi-dimensional shift, cosmic storms and so much more but the huge amount of mass previously thought necessary would no longer be needed. The difficulty would be in moving things along with the person.

In the future, the propulsion on a vessel would be a relatively large mass of living cybernetic “brain material” that could be taught or programmed to think in a certain way. This material was not made in great repulsive and environmentally damaging factories, but “grown in dark places like Mushrooms. The Aliens understood this very quickly and dozens of them, in space suits and in a matter of days used artificially made propulsion units to scout the origin of the Lice.

I didn’t understand what was going on, and was stunned by the frenetic activity on the ship. In my leisured, I was thinking of poetry. Then they sent me to the closest thing to a room I’d seen in months to get some rest. Eleanor was already there. She looked really frightened.

"Sam, what are you doing here?" She asked.

"I got lucky and stunned a Louse. They have it in a container studying it right now. They asked me all sorts of questions and then sent me down here to get some rest."

"They just pulled my ship into the hangar and then sent me up here." She said. "They didn't even say what the reason was."

Eleanor looked blue with cold and then I suddenly realized I was cold chilled from not having a coat.

I was really tired and stepped into the shower. Eleanor was suddenly beside me, washing my back. In a half-hour, both of us were sleeping soundly, naked for the first time in months. We had every blanket under the bed spread over us.

I wakened feeling as if I had a hangover and then remembered what we had been doing for the last weeks since the last action. I got up to get some water, relieve myself and got back into bed. It must have been another several hours when Eleanor's thumping around in the bath wakened me again.

I lay there relaxing as I watched her move about in there. She had just showered but not dressed yet. In spite of her near anorexia, her form was unmistakably that of a woman. Her hair was about the same length as mine. In this war there was no such thing as a feminine cut. Everyone had the same haircut, but mine and Eleanor’s had grown just slightly longer than a half inch.

We had wasted away until we weighed close to the same. Her breasts had all but disappeared from the near starvation diet. I found himself idly touching my own breasts. It was a pleasant sensation and they were a bit tender.

Again in need of relief, I got up and headed for the bathroom, intending to usher Eleanor out. As I stood besides her, waiting for her to acknowledge me, I was entirely taken aback at the fact that we looked almost the same in the mirror. She hadn't entirely lost her breasts and I had grown ones that were for all practical purposes just like hers. I'd developed aureoles, which were nearly like hers. The impression lasted only a second but it got me thinking in a muddled state. My sexual desire was much less than normal and I was thinking that it was due to the fatigue and all the stress. As I looked down between my own legs I was shocked to see that my junk had shrunk even more than before and now was much smaller than I remembered. And where had the little tufts of hair gone. I quickly stood and looked into the mirror. The soft matt of hairs on my chest were gone also!

Eleanor was over by the bed dressing in her now clean bra and skirt. Mine was laid out on the bed. My head was in a whirl. Was Eleanor looking at me strangely? Nearly hysterical, I sat down on the bed with my eyes full of tears. I’d been so full of drugs for months that my thinking still did not feel normal; like my old self. Little did I know at the time that I was not myself and would never be myself again. Changes in my body brought on by the Alien drugs used to help keep me alive and coping with the continuously unspeakable situation that we were all thrust into would run to a conclusion that had I fully understood, I may not have survived.

Eleanor came round the bed and seated herself next to me. "What's the matter, Sam?" She said. I could see the worry in her face or was it pity.

"My body, it's changing.” I felt so lost and bewildered.

"I have to see the Doctor." I felt so lost and empty, what was I going to do? I hoped that I was not dying. I wanted to marry Eleanor. “Eleanor, I was hoping to ask you to marry me if we survived and um if you were interested”.

“Oh Sam, that might be a long way off. I can’t think about that right now, or I will crumble and not be able to do this”.

She looked as though she could cry at any moment. I had arrived for his first tour of combat almost 14 weeks ago. In another 2 weeks they'd move to the rear for yet another rest and some other carrier would take their place.

“Sammy, I’ll go with you to see the Doctor. We’ll see what is wrong.”

Eleanor was out on her third tour. She'd seen so many pilots die she could no longer count them. She no longer became close to the others, but she did her best to meet her own needs and to help anyone she could. Some of the other pilots had become aloof and withdrawn. Eleanor wasn't like that. She knew that Sam was smitten with her, and if she allowed herself to think about after the war, Sam was a definite possibility for a Husband.

"Sam, I think that is the reason God put me here with you. Sure you're here to debrief on the louse but I'm here to help you cope with the changes in your body that you would not have noticed until we rotated out for a rest."

I looked over at Eleanor with tears in my eyes. This whole invasion and attack by the Lice, the arrival of the Aliens felt like too much change and made me feel crazy, yet I knew that every other human alive had some of the same feelings. I wondered what would become of us all.

"This is going to be bad isn't it?" My face was so screwed up that Eleanor began to laugh.

"This is no laughing matter and you know it." I said.

I also knew that people under as much stress as they were, laughed at the strangest things; things that under normal circumstances would be socially inappropriate. As I finished, my voice cracked like an adolescent. I was clearly losing my composure.

. "Oh no, my voice, it's changing too!"

"Sam, they had no idea that this would happen when we left Earth. As a matter of fact it didn't until they began using that chemical which prevents your heart from starting again after a battle. Not many know it but the heart takes such a beating during battle that they started stopping it for a minute afterward to allow the toxins which cause you to die to oxidize in the blood stream. It takes only a minute but that simple procedure keeps you alive." She said. "It's sort of like letting the fizz go out of pop." She said. She was obviously trying to add some humor to the situation.

So, Sam, I am sorry to be the one to have to tell you, but in about 15% of the male pilots, there is a reversal of gender. We talked for quite a while, long enough for the other fighters to be sent out three more times. Both Eleanor and I felt guilty about it, but I knew that I could not fight right now and Eleanor confirmed it.
“Sammy, I am not allowing you out of my sight right now. I talked with the Lt on duty and he feels that you did something special in capturing that Louse and he wants me to take care of you.”

“Both of us cried, Eleanor in sympathy for me, and I cried, well I didn’t know why, but I wept and did it a lot to help me calm down.”

“They turned me into a woman. Thanks a lot. They've ruined my life, Eleanor. What am I going to do? What will my parents think? What will my friends think?" I couldn’t take it and again I began to weep noisily.

"Sam don't go jumping to conclusions. The Doctor told me that in about 20% of the cases men revert back to their old gender once they stop taking the drugs. Some are sterile and some seem to be normal. We haven't seen what the children develop into yet."

I cried off and on for the rest of the afternoon and then having become fully cried out, simply went to bed.

The next morning, the doorbell wakened me. Eleanor had gone out to the Cafeteria and gotten locked out. "Well, sleepy head, do you feel any better today?" She said cheerily.

"I guess so. A little better I think." He said. He sounded weak and vulnerable. "Eleanor, will you stay with me and help me with all this?"

"Sam, I'll stay as long as you want me and they let me."

That wasn't really much of a commitment but that is all she could offer.

Eleanor coaxed me to get up and to go to the cafeteria to eat with her. Then we made a visit to sick bay. The Doctor there, while he seemed rushed, actually sat down with Sam and Eleanor and went over some of the options with him. In short, the number one priority was that they keep fighting the Lice.

The Doctor remarked that the captured louse, their first one, had yielded some startling revelations and that the forces could make some really valuable changes to their equipment. He also thought that a better FTL drive could come out of all this too. The scientists working on the Louse had confirmed the FTL drive it had wasn't a drive at all. It was a matter of brain waves in the radically different, alien physiology. It was all too simple. Could all this be true? Once again Occam’s razor seemed to be true or in this case a variation of it. We didn’t need huge generators and coils.

I agreed to return to with my ship with Eleanor and finish out my cycle. The Doctor had promised to help me much more during the rest cycle.

11 weeks later, the Louse problem was greatly reduced and a much smaller force was having astounding results with weapons modified as a result of Sam’s capture of that one Louse.

As it turned out, the test in sick bay was an easy test but one which provided me with heart-breaking news. I would not revert to a male. And, I would probably develop into a fully functioning female. So, in a sense I would be totally normal.

I felt lost and dismayed. Eleanor had also survived the cycle and was sticking by me faithfully. Actually she'd gotten a broken arm in a collision with a piece of asteroid but it was mending nicely.

“But Eleanor, I wanted to marry you and have a family together! I don’t know what to do now!” I lay on my bed and sobbed, went to sleep sobbing and woke up wet with tears. They offered me drugs to calm me down.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage with drugs by now?” I screamed at the Psychiatrist.

I got up and left his office crying only to confront two very tough looking corps men. “It’s best if you come with us Sam.”
My days at the Doj suddenly came back and they were both laying on the floor before I even knew what was happening. Then I rounded on the Shrink.
“You son of a bitch, you were going to haul me off and abuse me some more.” I advanced on him only to find his side arm pointing at me.
“You puny little coward! Shoot me now or I’m going to stick that thing where the sun don’t shine”. I started to move, but Eleanor grabbed me.
“Sammy, he is not worth it. Come with me now and we’ll go speak with the Chaplain”.
I was ready to kill the man, but Eleanor’s care for me made all my anger crumble and I realised that punishing the idiot would just ruin my own life worse than it already had. He was a target because he was there when I now knew that the drugs that kept me alive in my combat rotation were the ones that caused my transformation.
“She just saved your life! Next time learn how to use that thing. The safety is still on.” The last was an anguished sob. Eleanor got me back to our cabin and then called for the Chaplain. Oddly, it did not take long and thank God, he got there just before the Marines. The Chaplain exchanged a muffled word or two with them and they left.
He introduced himself as Chaplain Mercer. As we talked he seemed surprised at Eleanor’s call.
“When the attack by the Lice happened and then the Aliens showed up, many people felt that it discredited all of religion. Those left are truly the faithful.”
“Well my older brother spent two years out on the Mission field before the lice attacked. He’d only been back for a few months and then shipped out to fight the Lice. He died very early in the fighting, before all the drugs were developed”
“Both Eleanor and the Chaplain expressed sympathy for the fact that I’d lost my brother so soon. Over the next few hours, as we all talked, they convinced me that it was not the end of the world even if it felt like it for me.”

One of the things they normally did on the rest cycle was to go on leave on one of the Alien planet ships or to a nearby class M planet. This time no planet was available so they did leave on one of the larger Alien planet ships which had been shadowing them. It was nearly the size of Earth's moon.

“I was fast becoming a female and a beautiful one to boot. Eleanor had done a lot to teach me about my new role. The Alien planet ship carried many humans on it. It was well stocked with human amenities. Eleanor knew she would find enough clothing to get me, Samantha a start in my new role.”

The original orders called for their group to stand down for 30 days. Me, Eleanor and the rest of their group, 34 of the original 50 pilots in all had a chance to rest, sleeping all night, most nights. The brass still did not allow us to gain much weight since Headquarters did not know when we would be called back into action for sure, insinuating that our leave could be cut short at any time.

Still each of the women gained enough weight for some to start mensing and develop, or redevelop breasts. Eleanor also helped Samantha with the purchase of clothing, makeup and hygiene items. About half way through the month, all the women were a bit cranky. It was easy to see who the "new" women were because they acted like they had invented cramps.
“Go way leave me alone”.
“Sammy, this happens to all of us and sometimes the first one is really hard, baby”.
“Eli, my tummy hurts so much and I’m sick and food tastes awful and that pad is so yukky”.
“I know baby, but they were out of the tampons. I’m sorry”.
Eleanor loved me and crawled in beside me to cuddle and comfort me. It helped so much, and I wondered what I would do if she were not there. The Psych people had figured out that providing a companion to us new women greatly decreased the suicide rate. That should have been really obvious but in the heat of battle operations it had not occurred to anyone.

It was a surprise to Eleanor that they'd all been allowed to gain enough weight for them to start again. She didn't realize that their stand down could perhaps be much longer than originally thought. There had been developments in the war that could change a great deal.

The new weapons were making it practical to simply use mostly carrier based cannon to kill the Lice and in a few weeks the fighters were mostly unnecessary, except for planetary patrol. The new power plants were small enough to be put on fighters and lots of them were converted to other jobs.
The carriers were detecting the Lice as soon as they began to appear, and were able to create what resembled black holes in their midst, destroying them with almost no loss of life.

Eleanor knew Samantha would do OK when one day they were eating lunch at one of the little restaurants off the dining area of the Alien ship. A group of soldiers walked past. Samantha stopped in mid bite of her salad and said, "Isn't he a hunk?" It seemed to take a moment for it to register with the both of them when Eleanor began to giggle.

"What are you laughing about?"

"Oh, nothing, I think you are going to do just fine." Eleanor said. In a minute I began to flush. Then a single tear formed in one of my eyes.

"Well, I do have a life to live." I didn't sound angry or resentful. It was simply a statement. I’d finally realised that out of my family I had been the lucky one. My Brother, Colin and I would not meet again until the Celestial Kingdom.
“Eleanor, promise me that we’ll always be friends and live close together? I mean really promise me? I don’t know what I would do if I lost track of you.”
“Sammy, you and I are like sisters. We’ve been through so much, don’t you worry. I was talking with some of the fresh pilots that just arrived. The gossip is that the war will be over really soon. They say that Earth seems so empty now. The estimated population is down to around 2 billion, which is  ¼ of what it was. There are vacant houses everywhere. They are shutting down a lot of the power plants and other infrastructure because there is no need for them and no one to run them.
One of the women told me that all the street lights are off at night and there is just no one around to commit crime. Those that did were sent to battle, so everyone left is on their best behaviour. She says that farmers are crying for help, but that much of the economy is on a trade basis now. Rumour has it that the Aliens are distributing new technology that will make much of our present industry simply unnessessary.”
“I know Eleanor, I was talking with one of the Aliens that was eating breakfast this morning and they seem very happy to have found humans. They have fought the Lice for nearly 3000 years, and much of their civilisation and many others have been destroyed. He or she said, I can’t tell them apart, that they are going to give Earth a lot of help to get us stable again. They’ve already been to Earth and removed all Atomic weapons and the equipment to make them.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a coming out party of sorts. The Aliens and the Brass wanted to thank the pilots for their sacrifice in a way that would underscore their unconditional acceptance. They knew that the recognition would help them to heal in a small way from the entire trauma. It would also possibly help the ones most affected adjust to their new roles. Samantha had no idea that one of the "new woman" pilots upon returning to earth had been murdered because some red neck thought of her as a faggot. There had been other less severe incidents so the leaders knew they must do something to put a stop to this activity.
Sam, Eleanor and what was left of the group on her carrier had returned to Earth a few weeks ago. The change was so astonishing. The freeways were almost vacant, and the police patrolled only for motorists in distress. There were vacant cars everywhere so the two chose a new Toyota right off the lot and started traveling around. They started in Portland, where Eleanor’s family used to live, but both of them were still in space crewing one of the huge supply ships.

In a most astounding turn of events, the President came on National, (now world TV) (pun intended), wearing the same outfit which Samantha and Eleanor had worn in combat. He gave a moving speech and finished by saying all humans should accept the newly female pilots as one of their own.

Within days, huge numbers of men and women began sporting the same outfit as a gesture of support for those who'd made the ultimate sacrifice for mankind. Fortunately it was June and not too chilly for those who lived in the Northern Hemisphere. Those in the south wore capes or coats or whatever they had.

Samantha of course knew nothing of this chain of events. She knew only that she was going to appear for the first time in the general public wearing a dress. It was not to be simply a little skirt but a full, floor length skirt and strapless top with a little bolero jacket. It was to become the formal version of a Space Pilot's uniform definitely not intended for use while on duty. Samantha felt as if the attention showered on her took away from the recognition all the other pilots should get. Eleanor explained to her that after release from duty, many of the male and genetic female pilots could return to their normal lives while Samantha and those like her could not. Feeling very self-conscious, Samantha finally agreed to attend and behave herself. Otherwise, Eleanor jokingly told her she could attend bound and gagged. Samantha sounded really insulted and huffed her way to the door like a four-year-old but she behaved.

Samantha had clung to Eleanor like a child the last weeks and sat next to her at the banquet. But after the dinner when the dancing started, Eleanor was quickly asked to dance. Samantha felt nervous and left out. She was starting to think she should not have come. She was just starting to stand up to leave when a voice said, "Would you like to dance?"

Samantha not expecting anyone to talk to her, jumped back startled but when she looked for the source of the question, she gasped with delight. It was that same young ensign who she'd admired in the mall when she was with Eleanor. She remembered Eleanor's instructions about holding the gown up with one hand. It was so long that she'd have tripped almost immediately. He put his hand out to lead her to the floor, something she was not accustomed to. Samantha had not expected the sensation when she placed her hand in his and she almost swooned when he gripped it gently. She felt herself blushing fiercely as he led her out there. Her lips were throbbing and looking down her breasts was making themselves known in a very assertive way. She acquiesced meekly when he began to draw her body in close to his. It was one way to hide her throbbing nipples. Samantha wished she had worn something thicker to hide her embarrassing predicament.

Looking into her face, he told her that she looked really nice tonight. Surprised, Samantha looked into his deep blue eyes. When he talked to her, she felt unable to look away. He talked to her for what seemed like hours while they danced. Once in a while they would stop to rest.

Nervous, Samantha greedily accepted any wine offered to her.
They talked about everything in the world; did he like children; what did he want to do when the war was over; and so many other things. In two hours, Samantha felt like she’d known John all her life.
None of them noticed a slight aftertaste in the wine the Aliens had provided. None of them would ever suspect. With the critical imbalance in the male/ female ratio in the human race, the Aliens knew they needed a little help.
He took me out onto the viewing deck set in the side of Hotel in Salt Lake City. With almost no street lighting, the heavens were beautiful; the edge of the Milky Way marched slowly across the night sky as if it were calling this man, John, and I together. My heart was pounding. My whole body was betraying me. I knew I mustn't but helplessly knew if he kissed me, I could not stop him. Besides I felt attracted to him like no other time in my life! Distracted for a moment, I thought of the battles and the many times I'd not known if I would survive. The remembrance of it made me shiver for a moment. It felt so strange I thought, when I was still in High School, I felt strongly attracted to girls and would go as far with one as she would allow. Now I was the pursued. As Sam I had the power of attack but as Samantha I had the power of resistance that felt all too feeble. This was a strange yet delicious feeling.

She felt him drawing her close to him, turning her like a little doll. She could not breathe and felt her very loins crying out for him to take her and possess her. What was going on? She had never experienced anything like this before. It was overwhelming her.

As he bent to face her, he began to pull her face toward him. Samantha tried to speak but her voice would not work. A little squeak was all that came out. She felt his lips touch hers and suddenly she gave in. What an experience, Samantha was not sure she could live.

When he finished, she was hanging from his arm. What! He'd stopped! “Sir, you aren’t stopping now!” She thought! She found herself attacking him like a lioness. She shamelessly threw her arms around his neck and pulled herself up until her feet were a foot off the floor. By this time he'd gotten back into the act and was smashing her breasts against his chest.

It was a much-disheveled couple, which walked back onto the dance floor a few minutes later. Some of the couples were giggling quietly when they saw them. They were one of the last few couples to leave the hall that night.

When Samantha wakened in the morning, she could not remember a thing. She'd had so much Champaign that she'd blacked out. She was completely naked though. Her clothes were all over the apartment. Well, she though, at least I'm in the right room. She looked around for him but she was alone. Sadly she reflected as she tried to sit up. Her head was throbbing. A knock at the door and then it opened suddenly. Eleanor's beaming face popped through the crack.

"Hi there, sleepy head", She said.

Her voice sounded truly happy for the first time since she'd met Samantha. "You were really a hand full to put to bed last night. I finally had to send John home. He was a bit crocked too." She said. She sounded really amused.

"You mean John didn't sleep here last night?" I was shocked. "I don't know if I should be happy he spared my virginity or sad that he didn't find me appealing?"

"No, dear, he found you very appealing. He is absolutely smitten with you. And now that we all have a future, we will all see where this leads." Eleanor said. Her voice sounded cheery and mysterious.

"What do you mean, have a future." Samantha demanded.

"Samantha, you haven't heard, have you? Well, you couldn’t you were still sleeping off the effects of drunken debauchery. It seems that group which was pulled out a when we were still in our combat cycle, used the new FTL gadget the scientists built to run a group right up the Lice's tail pipe. The only trouble is when they got there; all they found was this giant stockpile of all kinds of metals orbiting around a Sun. It forms a multi-coloured ring around the Sun there. It seems that the original race died out from some mysterious plague. All that was left was their crop of automatic biological robots that'd been wrecking the Galaxy for almost 3000 years. There was a control centre on one of the planets inside the ring. They were supposed to go out, get metal and return it to home. That is exactly what they kept on doing even after their builders were dead." She finished.

"You mean John really likes me?" Samantha said. She sounded worried.

Eleanor looked at Samantha for a moment. "I guess you are a woman now." She said. "He's absolutely bonkers over you, silly goose!" She said, her voice dripping with sarcasm and mirth.

I had not realized that the really nice boys who really like you don't screw you the first time they meet you. Here I was an adult young lady with no experience at all.

“OMG, what am I going to do Eli, I have never dated, and don’t know a single thing about boys?”

“Well, duh, but you were one, so you have some idea how they think at least!”

“I’m afraid Eli, what am I going to do?”

“Well, I danced with a dozen guys but none of them did a thing for me. There were just too many other women there and it felt like I was part of a pack of wolves.”

“Gosh, I didn’t notice that, and no one bothered us.”

“Well, silly, I don’t know if you realised it but you were the prettiest girl there, even including me, you silly cow!”

“Eli, what will happen if I have made a mistake and he doesn’t love me?”

Later that year, I became Mrs Samantha Greene. Eleanor was maid of honor. To honour us, all the rest of the brides' maids were new women.

During the war, the population of Earth had sagged to 1.6 billion, nearly mid 1800 levels. About  ¾ of the dead were men due to two factors, one being that men in this combat situation were less survivable, and lots of men returned as women. It now meant that  ¾ of the marriageable people were women.

It was tacitly decided that consenting women could share a man in Marriage, but no more than 3 women per man. There were lengthy rules to meet to protect the women. For example, no 14 year old girls marrying 50 year old guys. Abuse of women was rendered even less likely because most of these women had been in combat and would brook no nonsense from some old pervert.

Muslims readily adapted to the idea of multiple wives and eventually it spread throughout the world. Though, it was later agreed that the population of the Earth would not be allowed to exceed 3 billion souls. The Aliens shared so much knowledge with humans, and now it was clearly seen that overpopulation and pollution would eventually leave Earth as an uninhabitable ball of mud.

Amazingly, cases of PTSD were rare and minor because the drugs used in combat caused the pilots to not remember most of their experiences. The Aliens were a “great help” in the debriefing of the combatants. Some asserted that the Aliens were manipulating the human race, and in the view of many, it was high time that mankind abandon our aggressive and war like ways. The Aliens freely shared their knowledge and in time, most scientists and doctors knew the details. The children born after the war were genetically different from their parents, and were much less aggressive, and prone to violence. Our children were also much more compassionate and loving. They were not fearful of other races or beings, since they would grow up with all races on earth mixing freely and Alien races that could manage Earth’s atmosphere and gravity conditions came for frequent visits. They also extended open invitations to humans to visit them.

Remember that nasty cut Sam got off the spine from the Louse? When Samantha's first little girl became about 3, she suddenly began moving herself from one place to another by some sort of levitation. Later Samantha learned to follow her. In time the doctors would learn how to give every human the virus from the Lice which made that possible. Until then, humans had relied on crude little bio electronic devices. In several years, most roads became overgrown with weeds. In fact, the asphalt pavement was seen to be fouling the water ways and farm land, so it was not uncommon to come upon machinery chomping up roads, separating the components, depositing the gravel in one place and injecting the petroleum back into the bowels of the earth where it should have remained in the first place.

The Transgendered used to go through great torment and often spent their life savings trying to get their bodies to match what their brains told them. Now all that was usually resolved in early childhood through the use of some simple drugs developed in the first space war.

Also gone was the stigma of one set of clothing for men and another for women. In this post war society, one could wear whatever they chose. Samantha and John came to the mutual agreement that he would wear the pants and she would wear no pants, ever. Other women did whatever they wanted to.
“John, I just feel like I have been through so much battle and seen so much carnage that now that the war is over, I want to just want to immerse myself in something else entirely. With this new body, I want to raise babies, cook your meals, and keep you happy. It would seem pointless to go through the trouble of becoming a woman to go on doing men things. I wasn’t interested much in them as a youth, and I am most certainly not at all now.”

“Eleanor, you live next door to us, in the shadow of the Wallowa Mountains. Have you ever thought of marriage?”

“In other circumstances I would, but I want to live near you, and a husband might drag me off to the other side of the world. We’ve been through so much that it is like we are part of each other. We were lovers and shared our deepest feelings and hardships. I still love you in your new state, though physically you are not as attractive as you once were.”

“Eli, John and I have been talking and we don’t want to lose you. There is talk of forcing women to carry babies to help the population recover.’

“I know and it worries me. I am a woman, not some herd animal.”

“Well, as I said, John and I were talking and we were wondering if we could all um join?”

“You mean polygamy? I mean that is OK for others but I don’t want to spoil our love with the tension of sharing a husband. Remember Samantha, you and I used to sleep together and make love when we did not know if we would live, even for the next hour”.

Later, at dinner, Eli was strangely absent, and did not return to her home to sleep. This was not like her, and it worried me. John had seen how close Eleanor and I had become, and much to my surprise, he had been searching for a way to include her in our lives forever.

“John, I am worried about Eleanor. She wasn’t in last night and I have not seen her today.”

“Samantha, I have been thinking a lot about Eleanor and you. I have some regard for her. Why don’t you stay here with Annie, and I will try to find her?”

“Mommy, Daddy, I know where Aunty Eli is.”

“You do darling? How do you know that?” I was puzzled.

“I just know. She is up the creek by the big water falls.”

I looked at John with a questioning expression, and his was the same. We had no idea how our daughter was doing this, but we knew not to discard what she said.

“Sammy, please stay here, I want to search for her because I should be the one to find her. Am I to assume that this marriage between us is to put her on an equal footing as you? Is she to be as valued as you and Annie? She needs to feel that she is as valued as any of the rest of us. Before all this transformation happened to you, she had given her heart to you, and now she is confused. She wanted to marry a man and look at you now. Sure, you think that you are the same person, but we both know that you are changed and in many ways think so differently than you did before. How could any of us get through the war and not be changed at least somewhat”

John continued, “Samantha, I was fortunate because I only went through one rotation and the first week of another before they pulled us out and returned us to Earth. If I had known you before, I do not know if we would be married now. And over the months I have gathered that you and Eleanor were lovers, and though you have changed, her love for you did not. In our present circumstances, with the male population being so reduced, she has given up on ever finding a husband. She is strong, sturdy and pleasing to the eye, but certainly not the beauty that you are.”

I started to protest but the look on his face told me something, so I relented and stayed home with Annie. So far it had mostly been Eli and I talking about her becoming a sister wife with me, but we had not involved John much at all. He heard our conversations and sometimes made short comments, but perhaps to her he did not really want her. Suddenly, I understood. Perhaps Eleanor wanted to be courted a little. Perhaps she felt insecure, and wanted John to express at least some love for her. John knew how close Eli and I were and perhaps felt they both felt somewhat left out. We all knew that the new male gene arrangement had made men generally less aggressive, but it also made them more loving and even possessive. There were good days ahead for humanity.

“Ok Johnny, I’ll stay here and let you go court her.” I smiled knowingly at him.

His meaningful grin told me more than a whole book could.

It was far into the next day when John and Eleanor appeared at the door to our home. I could tell from John’s smile and the rosy glow of Eleanor’s cheeks that she’d gotten the assurances from John that she wanted. She wasn’t walking any differently, so I was fairly sure that her virtue remained intact. It wasn’t about religion, or God or anything it was about self-respect.

“Eleanor, John, I have been so concerned for both of you.

“Sure Sammy but if I am going to be living here, I want to help you in the kitchen.”

“I hadn’t been going to ask until they were ready to talk about it, but when I felt John pull us all together in a three way hug, I had my answer.”

“Oh, goody, my mommies and daddy are all here together. Eli, are you finally going to live with us?”

“Annie darling, would you like that?” Eleanor asked.

“My little four year old daughter smiled sweetly and purposefully nodded her head up and down.”

In post war Earth, we had not gotten around to sorting the concept of God out. None of the evangelical dispensationalisim had turned out to be true. So, it remained for each of us to sort out our own feelings. John had been a Mormon from the south of Utah, I had been an evangelical that converted to Islam, and Eleanor had not given much thought to the whole God bit.
There were family traditions that John was used to so Eleanor and I decided to follow his lead unless we had reservations.

Life was very good now. Though there had been a rumour that the Aliens were recruiting for an action on the other side of the Galaxy.