I’m actually the science officer on the colony ship C. S. Gaia, but it wasn’t long after departure before the entire crew, including Harriet the captain who is my wife, started to refer to me as the sex officer. However, there has always been a slight catch in her voice whenever she has used the title, perhaps not enough for others to notice, but I did right from the first time. I suppose as titles go there are worse. I’m thinking of all the various officers whose primary functions are connected with air and water purity and bodily wastes recycling. Yeast is grown for processing into delicious food, but the vats of it stink. Technically I’m the executive officer, second in the chain of command after Harriet, but it didn’t take us long to realise that Anna who is third in the chain of command should take on my rôle whilst I handled matters of morale, which is a matter I am uniquely qualified for, and on a voyage like this is of the utmost importance.

C. S. Gaia is now four years out on a thirty-five year journey to what will be our new home, the planet Gaia. The data sent back by the probes forty years ago told us of a planet that would give us everything we needed and near enough everything we wanted too. After disappointment after disappointment with other planets, discovering Gaia was a huge relief. The trip was ten years in the planning, and the ship a further twenty-two in the building, and at that the ship was built two years ahead of schedule.

Palen, our home planet had been becoming dangerously overcrowded. It had been lifetimes since the longevity treatments had become universally available, but the drive to reproduce rather than use contraception had not been brought under control. As our entirely male government became increasingly unable to understand what confronted them they became more unable to deal with the population growth that was threatening the ecosystem of the planet more and more every year that passed. As a result an increased effort had been put into seeking new planets for colonisation. The steering group that was formed to manage the colonisation program decided all new planets settled would require a new social and political structure. One that would preclude the disaster that was Palen from ever happening there.

The incontrovertible evidence that some irrecoverable damage to Palen had already occurred and the damage was accelerating hardened attitudes within the group who were exclusively female scientists of global repute. Men had forsaken the sciences for politics generations ago, and by that date few were even numerate. As soon as the successful probes returned the group started the Gaia project. They had reached the conclusion that Palen was already doomed to be lost and there would only be time for one attempt at a colony in the stars to perpetuate the race.

No one had ever been able to make the politicians take the situation seriously enough to enact what would have undoubtedly been the unpopular but necessary actions to retrieve the situation, so the steering group had stopped telling the politicians what they didn’t wish to hear and what they couldn’t understand anyway. They were told what kept them happy. We heard the situation had reached the point of no return a couple of years after we had left. First the weather system broke down and extremes of every kind changed rapidly from one to another over the entire planet. There was just about total crop failure and mass starvation. People had started to eat the corpses. We closed down our communications with Palen at that point.

It had been decided to staff the ship with a female crew. Sperm could be frozen safely and every womb was a step towards greater genetic variability. The cold store of the ship was to have a greater variety of genetic plant material than the Southern Polar Seed Vault. In addition to crop seeds it also carried the means to micro propagate just about every organism on Palen. We would carry frozen sperm, ova, embryos of just about every species we knew of. We wouldn't be taking any of the unpleasant species, pathogens, parasites and the like. The core of our senior officers was the steering group who amongst them knew every detail of the entire project.

I was in charge of the genetic screening of potential crew members and the selection process in those days. I did not disclose that some of my choices were based not on their healthy genetics but on the wide variability and diversity of their genetics, wild cards you could say, which I saw and still do as an insurance policy. I had also engineered, literally and figuratively some rather more elaborate insurance mechanisms, all of which Harriet was aware of, but she was the only one other than myself who knew anything about some of them.

I’d had endless conversations with Harriet concerning the mental well being of a crew of ten thousand women and the ill wisdom of them only having sex toys, masturbation and lesbian relationships available to satisfy their libidos. I also pointed out that, in spite of the treatments which ensured no eggs were developed in their ovaries and thus lost prior to settlement, their menstrual cycles would align and possibly they would all be premenstrual at the same time which did not bode well for the running of the ship. It would I pointed out be sensible to offer some viable relief that would at least provide the ship with some competence at all times of the month.

“I see that it’s no mistake you chose the name Prudence, Pru,” Harriet said. “What exactly are you proposing? I know you too well to imagine you are raising this with out a complete set of answers prepared. I hear you say to your staff only too often, ‘Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions.’ ”

I knew her too well to beat around the bush, “Men. We need some men available. Toys, masturbation and other women are all second rate to any other than those who genuinely prefer them. A number of the crew I have in mind are lesbians and that’s excellent from our point of view, but the majority will not be, and even as highly disciplined a crew as we will have will find being serviced by a man from time to time will give them a stability nothing else will.”

“That sounds all very clinical, Pru. How many men? Remember every man we carry is a womb less available on Gaia.

“It’s meant to be clinical, Harriet. This isn’t a game. Yes I have worked out some of the details, but there’re a lot more to be decided. Some of those decisions are policy not science and that’s your job not mine.”

“Tell me what you have decided and where the uncertainties are and I’ll sleep on it.”

“Obviously men are to be selected by their genetics including intelligence. How many we need to service a crew of ten thousand I have no idea yet, but if providing sex is their only function they could service three a day say a thousand women a year, so for every crew member to have sex four times a year we’d need forty men. That’s not set in stone but it does provide a starting point.”

“Hmm. One in two hundred and fifty. I’m sure we could afford more than that, but as you say it’s a starting point. You got any more ideas?”

“I don’t want the crew destabilising by having men amongst them. Just their pheromones will do that. So I want a separate area of the ship to house the men with no access to crew and it has to have separate air and water systems, which could function as back up systems for each other in the event of emergency. A male harem if you like. Only I and my team ever enter the male quarters, the stud stable. Crew only meet a man in the secure area set aside for servicing, and we make that a pleasant area so as to provide the maximum psychological benefit for the crew. Crew only enter that area if they are going to be serviced as R and R.

“Yes I can see that. What else?”

“Every crew member reports to me after having been serviced, so I can add the sperm she carries to the bank, and at all times, we have a small number of the crew at various stages of pregnancy. It’s the biological purpose of the female and will again provide interest and motivation for the entire crew. My staff can manage things for any woman who is approved for pregnancy but who does not wish to be penetrated.”

“Agreed and that will keep the crew focussed on their primary purpose of seeding a new planet with its start up population.”

“No male babies are to be born unless one is required as a replacement. That is if a male dies or one is euthanised due to failing performance. Of course I can arrange it so the males are unaware of such things. The crew will be unaware of any male babies, and they will be raised in secrecy by my staff in the medical complex till they are old enough to be put out to stud with the other males.”

“It all seems very reasonable so far.”

“Males are to have no status at all, they are to be pampered sex machines, who when they are not working will be maintaining their bodies in their gymnasium. There is no need to put them through the rigours of an education they will have no use for.”

“So they will be illiterate?”

“What will they need literacy for?”

At that Harriet had nodded in understanding. We were both in the original steering group. The matters concerning the stud stable were discussed with the full steering group. It was not considered necessary to trouble the politicians with the matter. Some of my proposals have been slightly modified. We took fifty males at stud not forty, and the security of the male quarters were vastly enhanced, including the ability to introduce a knock down gas into the air supply, but essentially all was done as I’d suggested.

The journey so far has been relatively trouble free. This is not the official log of my duties, this is my personal diary, a hobby if you like. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy sex and masturbation as much as the next woman, but I’m an intellectual, essentially a medic, and there has to be more to life than flicking the bean, and in any case the clitoris is a sensitive organ and over stimulation can become painful, and I’d know. Yes I know, I can be a bit coarse, but bodily functions are just part of the day’s work to medics. But back to over stimulated clitorides.

For a good while I was treating at least fifty cases a week where the crew member could barely walk never mind work. I offered a cream containing a lidocaine like substance that the synthesiser can produce from almost any organic starting material. I told the crew the preparation numbed the nerves, which would allow them to function, and suggested they find a hobby to occupy some of their off duty time. I didn’t tell them the cream numbed the nerves to the point where they couldn’t be stimulated for several days, and thus effects a ‘cure’.

It wasn’t till she couldn’t get a full bridge crew together that Harriet authorised me to hand out the Easeit cream to any who asked for it. I also came up with another proposal, but Harriet is cautious, she has to be, it goes with the job.

“Now hear me out, Harriet. Those pampered males are in the peak of condition and only used for sex three times a day, but I propose we allow them as much sex as they want. I reckon they should be easily be able to provide at least twice what they’re currently providing. You could have some kind of a lottery for the off duty crew where the winner gets the next available male who’s already serviced his quota of six and wants more. The possibility of getting lucky out of turn will provide interest and motivation. We can trial it with say five of the males and I’ll provide them with libido and stamina enhancement. Maybe have five on unlimited sex for a week and then rotate the five weekly. What do you think?”

“Ok. I’ll allow the rotation of five of them on enhancement. I don’t want to risk the health of more than that. Keep me informed as to how it’s going. One more thing, Pru. Sort out some of your sperm from the bank for me. I fancy taking my turn at pregnancy now, so our first daughter is a mature adult ready for command when we get to Gaia.

“Of course, Love.” I had been in a relationship with Harriet since the days of the steering group’s formation, and I was one of those insurances I referred to earlier. Born male, I was a trans lesbian from birth. I had a genetic condition, itself a valuable resource, that had gradually changed me from XY to XX in every cell of my body. I’d provided semen for the bank before my penis and testicles finally disappeared and I grew all the parts you’d expect to find on any other woman. I’m no longer trans, but I’m still a lesbian.

My immune system doesn’t reject transplants, so at six feet three and of a large frame, in addition to my own pair of ovaries, I was large enough to host another ten. I was a back up to the crew and the cold store. All those ovaries were removed from young healthy women who’d died under tragic circumstances, mostly crushed in food riots, and they all carried wild card genetics. Some may say that’s macabre, but I don’t. I see it as giving those young women cut off in the prime of their life an opportunity they would never otherwise have been offered, children on a new world.

It was a technique I’d used with the four other crew members who also had no tissue rejection issues, though for reasons different from mine. Since they were all smaller than I, I’d used fewer extra ovaries, and they received extra privileges that were based on the number of extra ovaries they hosted. As a member of the command team privileges were meaningless to me. We all did whatever we had to and were on call permanently, twenty-four seven as it used to be known.

“Before you go, Pru, have you had any further thoughts concerning what happens when we reach our destination?”

“Yes. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We don’t have to implant the male embryos. The social structure we’re operating now is working just fine. Why risk another Palen by changing anything?”

“Why indeed? Carry on, sex officer Gagarin.”

“Aye, captain.”