"We've yet to perfect a system which is safe enough. The body still needs certain things, nutrients and so forth, but we've found that it needs input of different kinds to avoid cell breakdown and rapid ageing." I was catching on, and finished the point. I realised already that the 'bottomless void' feature of my journey to Takanli was, in fact, experimental in nature. It felt good to be a guinea pig, and even better that it had worked.

"Social interactions and being around nature, especially green plants and trees, provides a form of radiation which is entirely irreplaceable. Humanoids in hypersleep for longer than a few weeks awake with seriously adverse side-effects and long-term, often untreatable depression."

Falik nodded. "You can't just lock a human mind away for months. It goes nuts. So, we're going to keep active and I'm sure we'll have loads of fun. Have you seen my pink shirt with the flexiscreen?"

I pulled the shirt from the washer unit and handed it to her. Its screen was showing a Japanese garden. I shook it and it became a beach with crashing surf. Neat trick.

Various dinners, lunches, briefings and other events filled our days. When we weren't at the docks, we met with various dignitaries, including a couple of Council members who had taken a personal interest in the mission and the strange new ambassador. One spoke earnestly to me about the need for peace in the outer rim, ensuring that I understood I had his full support. The sense that deeper political machinations were in play was hard to shake.

Falik and I spent the night before launch making love in our apartment at the peak of Takanli's newest skyscraper. She was attentive and responsive as ever, sucking me in deep and then releasing me to blow on my cock, but I couldn't help letting my mind flit back to the Megaslut Raptor and her soft, muscular pussy. Those breasts. I let the memories flood my mind, which caused my semen to flood violently into Falik's mouth.

"Hmmmm." She licked her lips and swallowed my cum. "You needed that, didn't you?" She relaxed back with me. "I've never known you to come so fast in my mouth. Did I do something better?"

It would be quite horrid to confess to this girl, perhaps the nearest thing I'd had to a proper girlfriend in years, that I had come wonderfully while imagining another being riding my cock, taking it deep within her. I was virtually hard again.

"I just want you a lot tonight. Who knows how busy we're going to be on the cruise."

Falik laughed easily. "Busy? Everyone knows that long cruises are a great time to fuck, relax, eat, sleep and fuck some more. We'll probably hardly see the outside of our cabin", she grinned. "Well, if I get my way we won't."

Our cruiser ride to the orbital station was similar to my first ascent in a Cruiser, but this time the vessel was crammed with people, who filled every seat and buckled in on queue before takeoff. Falik told me that the Cruiser could carry two hundred people and four hundred tonnes of payload to orbit, which would include supplies and equipment for our mission.

The elephant kick of release was as intense as before. Glued back in my seat, almost melting into it with the acceleration, my stomach began a steady rise from somewhere within my balls to somewhere closer to my chin, and then the ride levelled out in only moments. Two minutes to orbit. I would never get over it.

There was some time to cuddle Falik and enjoy the spectacle of the planet laid out beneath us. Massive avenues criss-crossed the landscape, some radiating out of spokes which, I knew, contained the central cities. Lakes were dotted around, but were so heavily ringed with population that there was barely a scrap of land on the planet without buildings. Even the massive national park areas were dotted with towns, spanned by highways or otherwise marred. I asked Falik about it.

"Your planet is facing the same question, I know", she began. "How do you develop to an extent which will support a large population without fouling the nest you live in?" I nodded. However long ago it was now, I remember the Earth being in some trouble. Climate change, and all of that. I wondered briefly how they were getting on.

"We decided that a humanist approach was best. I know that at least one nation on your planet attempted to introduce a population reduction strategy - well, one different from simply killing lots of other humans, I mean - and it failed. We recognised this very early in our development. It is not possible to instruct people not to reproduce. This will only create tensions which we are unwilling to host."

The planet revolved serenely beneath us. "So, how did you manage it? Sustaining a massive population while. How many are down there, anyway?"

Falik laughed. "Depends on what you mean. There are about thirty billion beings, on a planet about twice the size of yours, but we have perhaps nine times the total land area. Your planet can support thirteen billion, but it would struggle because of the way you use your land. We cracked that problem early, as well."

The Cruiser was manouvering gently to orient itself with the docking platform of the station. "We found", Falik explained, "that when supported by a technological level suitable for such a populace, maintaining those beings and catering for their needs becomes a lot easier. For instance, on Earth, you produce food which requires almost a greater amount of resources to produce than calories gained by eating it. This is most inefficient. Replication keeps this balance while providing more than enough food. If you could do that, your population problems would be virtually solved. Resources would no longer be a barrier."

I dwelt on this while the pilot steered us in. The station appeared out of the left windows, hovering brilliantly above the lights and patterns of the planet. Various craft were performing the carefully-choreographed ballet of docking with the station, or departing for the surface. One entered lightspeed far beyond the station, the silent, massive boom of its engines accelerating the craft to dizzying speed. I watched, awed, as it roared away without a sound.

Once docked, we filed from the Cruiser into a white reception area. The station was, effectively, a miniature of the massive transit hall I had first experienced on Takanli - thousands of creatures were making their way to and fro. We were collected, whisked through security, and directed to a waiting room with comfortable blue chairs and screens showing news and documentaries. Refreshments appeared and the group sat together.

I lent half an ear to a news report from the outer rim, but there was little to add to what I already knew. Then, I remembered a question from earlier.

"Falik? How is Earth doing?"

She blinked for a second and seemed to think. "There's an intercept station which broadcasts interesting findings from around the Universe. They might have picked something up." She started pressing buttons on a handset which appeared from the sofa. "Here we are."

A menu appeared, with unfamiliar star names and positions. I dredged up the sun's formal name and orbital statistics, and fed them into the screen. We zoomed into the local group of stars and searched for news stories about them.

The local area, being largely devoid of planets, wasn't of much interest. There had been a violent solar storm from an object we called Barnard's Star, about 50 light-years from Earth. The section on my solar system was more complete, and featured a range of articles. I picked a recent one.

It was all going to shit. In the four months I had been away, flooding had began in many coastal cities. A number of Pacific and Indian Ocean islands were completely submerged. People had been killed not by the floods, but in the panic to get away from the sea. Boats had been sunk. Governments had fallen.

There had been some kind of nuclear accident, which was irradiating large swathes of Europe. Many people had fled south, where they put even greater pressure on food resources in Africa and the Mediterranean. Several new wars had begun, with hardline leaderships on both sides promising defeat or death.

"What the fuck is wrong with them?!" I blurted loudly. The room quietened and a few heads turned. I was staring, open mouthed, at the screen. The empaths among them quickly understood, and several came over to read the news with me, commiserating over a spate of bombings, horrendous chemical warfare attacks, and some new, unexplained disease which was ravaging a whole continent. And in the middle, the corporations stood high among the chaos they were creating. Earth was fighting back, and we were in the battle for the long haul.

I ordered a stiff drink and turned off the screen. Falik did her best, reminding me of mankind's amazing ability to produce triumph from disaster, about our ingenuity and genuine charity, our resourcefulness. but even she couldn't put a bright gloss on it. My home was dying, being torn apart. And I was out here.

The very ordinary way in which the boarding was effortlessly carried out made the whole experience easier. It was like waiting in line for a plane at the gate of a major airport, with a few interesting twists. Various beings busied themselves with the business of getting underway, some hovering on board as if levitating, others floating gas-like through the halls. Humanoids like me were restricted to walking onto the interstellar ship, trying to pay attention through the orientation lectures, and finally locating our quarters. I worried briefly that, in her professional capacity, Falik might be given her own room, but we were both relieved to find we were sharing. Cabin space was at a premium anyway, and few beings on the planet were unaware of our relationship. In fact, a quick search at one of the terminals brought up a host of websites about me, my relationships and the various tests I had undergone. There was even a site dedicated to the idea that I was an interplanetary secret agent, tasked with destabilising the social system of Takanli. Others praised my sexual exploits, which were fast becoming legend, with endless video footage to prove it. The highest-rated clip was from the concert orgy right after I arrived. There I was, grinning manically at the hovering camera, up to my balls in a delicious blonde. Falik was in the back of the shot, being pounded by an eight-foot musician with bright blue testicles. Ah, the Internet.

We settled in and started to meet people. Although we could barely feel it, Daedelus was already accelerating, and would achieve a comparatively modest 18 of lightspeed on our outward journey. We had already passed the orbit of Takanli's neighbour planet, and were quickly gaining speed towards the outer rim.

The communal spaces were vast. All along the long, thin core structure of the ship, bulbous modules were attached to afford simply cavernous living and storage spaces. We were carrying millions of tonnes of supplies, water, hydrogen and other consumables, both for ourselves and the places we were to visit. Ten thousand people were crammed into the living spaces which, although huge, were constantly buzzing with activity. Falik and I took a walk around our deck, which rotated constantly around the hub, creating a comfortable 1G environment. There were lounges for reading, surfing the Net or watching movies. There were games areas, with various strange balls, nets and hoops, through which a variety of luminous, hovering beings played a variant of football. Gawping at these strange beings, it took a sudden squeeze of my ass for Falik to regain my attention.

"This is a remarkable place", I felt the need to whisper. Falik kissed me and we wandered off together into the miles of unexplored spaces.

Dinner that night was a modest party thrown by the Captain, a gruff, old humanoid who seemed to have been travelling the system since he was a boy. Falik and I sat at his table, a shining, metal disc supported by red, fibrous strands which emanated from the floor like plants. I asked him about the shakedown cruises before we left.

"Usual procedure", he offered, swigging from a silver goblet. "We want to make sure the engines will run well, that the crew know their jobs." He even spoke with a slightly 'Ancient Mariner' accent. All he was missing was the white beard and pipe.

"Is this your first voyage to the outer rim?" Falik asked across the table. Her feet had been massaging mine for much of the dinner, and I was distracted from my space calamari ("reared in zero g for more taste and less toxins", read the menu) by the need to will my raging erection back to silence. It didn't listen particularly well.

"I was born on Bephra, the ninth planet, and my father had a space haulage company moving people and minerals around the moons. I just fell into the profession, if you want to know. Easy money, a bit of sight-seeing, and girls in every port!" He congratulated himself on this witticism with a hearty thigh-slap and more gulps from his goblet. The silver was tarnishing. I wondered for a second whether he had traded it for an Earth goblet, some piece of treasure from a Medieval wreck. Thoughts of home wouldn't do now.

"What kind of other teams are on the flight?" I asked, mainly to switch my focus away from Earth and her problems.

The Captain finished chewing a large mouthful of grey meat. "Scientists", he muttered, "some diplomatic types like you too", more chewing, "and some artist troupe who want to write a play about the situation there." He washed down the meat with his goblet which, I noticed, seemed not to require re-filling. "Hey, you should get them to tag along with you. They'll make you famous!"

Falik and I exchanged a glance. "Well, Captain, thanks for the advice, but I think we've both achieved enough notoriety already."

The dinner broke up and various couples vanished into the cavernous modules, or sat around with drinks. I noticed the Raptor sipping a long-glassed cocktail by one of the windows, staring out at space. Falik was in a discussion about our first planetary fly-by, trying to persuade the Captain to let us off there, for only a few hours. It didn't seem to be going well.

"Hi stranger", the Raptor purred, turning away from the window to give me a steamy gaze. "I was hoping to catch you alone." She smiled sexily. "I've missed you." She reached forward to run her hand down my crotch. I angled away so that no-one could see. "Hmmm. I think he wants some company tonight."

I began, "I can't. Falik doesn't know that we. " She brought a finger to her lips to quieten me. And then licked it seductively.

"Don't worry about her. Give her one of these, in her drink or in her vagina if you want." A sly smile as she handed me the red pill. "She'll drop right off to sleep with no side-effects, and wake up feeling great. Then, come to Storage 14 and you can fuck my brains out."

She stroked my cock again and leaned forward quickly to run her tongue up its length, through the fabric. I nearly came there and then. "Go now, and we'll finish this later." She turned back to the window and sipped her cocktail.

Falik was bidding the Captain goodnight. "He says he'll think about it, and maybe send a recommendation message to the Council. Friends of his on the surface want to meet us, to talk about assisting in the negotiations by offering free transport for every delegate and press team. They have a shuttle business on the 5th planet and we could link up with them there. Are you OK?"

Falik had noticed my distraction. "Yeah, honey. Free rides for everyone?" She nodded, slightly uncertain. "What do they want in return?"

She sighed. "You're not going to believe this. They want us to host a debate show on live TV, to air some opinions before the negotiations start. You know, with a chairman and two panels." She was thinking. "Question Time?"

The old BBC politics show slowly emerged to the forefront of my mind and suggested itself as an answer. The journey was lengthy, on crowded avenues of thought and information, but it made it. "Gotcha. Yeah, why not? I'm pretty much the solar system's leading man on the dispute. What do they want us to do?"

Falik grinned slightly, shyly. "Well, we are both chairs of the debate, responsible for grilling one of the teams and generally keeping order. An audience of undecideds will watch the debate, then vote at the end. And. the team who wins get to undress you, kiss you and shag the life out of you, there in the studio, live on Extra-Planetary Television."

I stared at her. "What?"

"They've just installed booster stations for the signal, so it can reach over seventy systems. They've started to measure their target markets in hundreds of trillions." I stared at her all over again.

"And every penny of profit is invested in charitable projects, infrastructure and education. They are the main source of all funding in this part of the Galaxy." I realised fairly early on that I knew this already, but the welcome reminder of this outstanding and novel idea was always one I enjoyed.

I thought about the TV show. "Well, virtually the whole population has already seen my tackle on the Net, so why should some extra exposure be a problem?" Falik chuckled. She seemed relieved that I was warming to the idea.

"What's the big deal with this transport?" The delegates would all have their own vehicles, and inter-planetary travel was getting cheaper all the time.

"Its symbolic. An olive-branch. It also means that our transport teams get to pick up the delegates, so that they don't turn up in massive Battlecruisers and get nasty if the debate doesn't go their way. Just ratchets down the tensions a bit, levels the playing field." Falik was starting to sound like Question Time. I briefly wondered if this was a massive wind-up.

"Sure, fuck it. If the Captain lets us, we should do it."

Falik frowned slightly. "Well, there is one other thing. The Captain says we can go, and he'll fly us down there himself, if you sleep with his wife."

My jaw dropped slightly. Falik did not seem happy with the idea, but her enthusiasm for the mission was enormous. "What do you think about that?" I asked. She shrugged.

"Why not? Another notch on the bedpost. She might be a blonde beauty." I raised a finger at her, just slightly.

"Now you're doing it! This sounds a lot like jealousy to me!" I grinned at her to hide my slight distaste at this hypocrisy. She was soon smiling back.

"I'm sorry." She collected herself. "You are free to fuck, finger, ball, bugger, shaft and shag whom you may wish. And I may do the same, but I don't choose to do so very often. And this is simply because you're the best fuck in the Solar System."

Emerging from the shower and heading to dinner, Falik and I agreed to split up for the evening and meet some people. This was partially to learn more about the system and the dispute, but also just for the fun of being out among people. We were both pretty famous, and the other travellers were curious about us.

One elderly scientist, who introduced himself as a Tempero-Paleantologist, grilled me about Earth and the life forms there. After a few minutes' conversation, it emerged that it was he who had originally ordered my capture and transport to Takanli from Earth. I gulped a little at this bold confession.

"And." I hesitated. "Are you aware of the impact of this decision on my life?" I wanted to know. The scientist, who wore a neon name-tag with 'Garlidan' on it, thought for a moment before answering in a slow, even tone.

"Yes, we considered that. You see, we weighed up every variable we could find, and decided after a lengthy period of study that bringing you here would eventually be shown to have enhanced your life, not ruined it." I looked at him as he chose just the right words. "Your friends and family will probably all be long gone by the time you return, if you choose to. Your planet, as we have seen, has undergone dramatic changes. You will be quite out of place when you return, and even given the amazing experiences you've had, there's no guarantee anyone will believe you." He sighed slightly. "We have given you the heaviest of burdens."

"But also the greatest of honours", I felt the need to retort. "Look at my body now! And the places I have been, people I'm getting to know." I thought of Falik. Then the Raptor. "Amazing people, who I would never have otherwise met." Garlidan smiled and patted my shoulder.

"We knew you were a good choice. An open mind. So important." I warmed at the praise. He was disarmingly easy to talk to, despite his enormous role in the way my life had changed, as if he was capable of an empathy and an understanding of my desires like none I'd ever seen."

"Are you a member of the council?" I asked, slightly brazenly.

He sighed again, more deeply. "I was. There was a shift in the power base, and. Well, some of my views were never that popular."

We ordered fruit drinks which were mildly syrupy and tremendously refreshing. "There was a lot more politics in Takanli back then, you see", he hunched over the bar slightly, cradling his juice. "More parties, more diffuse points of view. Quite nice, really, compared to the rubber stamp parliament we have now. If the leaders were ever to make a mistake, there could be real trouble from the people but. with the clairvoyance research, and how they're able to predict anything major in the works."

It began to sound like a dictatorship, but one governed by wise, compassionate beings with a weather eye on the future. And the place was thriving.

"This was why you were brought here", he explained, more rapidly. "A group of us knew that the only way to improve our systems of government was to increase the levels of emotion. Look at the vibrant, argumentative democracies you have on your planet. Real parliamentary debate, real leaning from one direction to another, real reactions to events. Not the clued-in, logical thinking of this government. Something more." he struggled for the word. "More human."

Falik hoved into view, flanked by three members of what looked like the Inter-Planetary Wrestling Federation team. They were huge. She looked to be having a great time. I looked at my watch.

After my discussion with Falik earlier, it was no trouble to slip off to Storage 14 and wait for the Raptor. I floated through the zero-G section towards the massive module, each one packed with strapped-down equipment and boxes. She was waiting behind a glider with gleaming silver wings. She wore only a skimpy bra and a black thong. Her skin gleamed in the starlight from the windows.