Jane’s prophesy came true. In the passage of time – just how much time, she was beginning to lose track – Eleanor made her way up through the hierarchy of the ship and when the old Number One decided to retire, Eleanor stepped into her figurative shoes.
So it was that Eleanor had command on the bridge as they approached a new planet. She alerted the commander on the comms and her image appeared on the screen. She was in her cabin and Jane, who was now permanently living there, was also visible on the screen. Or rather, the back of her head. Grainne was lying back in her sleeping pit and Jane’s head was between her legs. Eleanor still hadn’t got used to the casual attitude to sex on the ship. And now she was seeing her best friend having sex with her boss.
For a moment, Eleanor was unable to speak. Grainne knew what the problem was.
“You’re such a prude, Number One,” she said. “You should be like your friend here and lighten up. Find a lover. I know many crew members have a crush on you. But you didn’t call to talk about your lack of a love life. We’re there, I take it. I’ll be right there.”
The planet visible below them was unknown to the Federation. Jane had been studying the data sent back to the ship by exploratory drones and reported to Grainne and Eleanor at the bridge.
“There is a civilisation, about equivalent to Europe on Earth during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. No great use of steam power, yet. Patriarchal society with women subjugated.”
The images displayed on the screen showed people in heavy layers of clothing. The women were swathed in voluminous skirts, all skin covered apart from the face. Men and women were wearing elaborate hats. No-one was surprised that the inhabitants looked exactly like Earth humans, or, indeed, humans from any of the other hundreds of planets in the Federation. They looked to Eleanor like actors in a film version of Jane Austen where the costume designer was high on drugs.
“OK,” said Commander Grainne. “Let’s pick up a specimen or two. Number One, you’ll lead the away team. Standard procedure.”
Eleanor had never led an away team to an explored planet before, but she had been practising for it for many years.
“Jane, you’re with me,” she said as she left the bridge. Mentally she was assembling a list of other crew members she would need. She sent out messages for them to meet her at the shuttle bay.
The shuttle landed invisibly in agricultural land not far from a large settlement. A small town or a large village, Eleanor thought. It almost made her homesick for Essex. The animals in the fields were not quite cows and horses, and the grain growing was not quite wheat, but it looked similar enough.
They needed to find one or two women who were on their own. They couldn’t very well walk into the village without clothes, not in this society. Why don’t we keep clothes on the ship for things like this, thought Eleanor, although having clothes for all possible styles might not be practical, and it wasn’t as if any of the crew were skilled seamstresses. When Eleanor and Jane were picked up they had been walking home from the pub at night down a country lane. It seemed unlikely, given how women were treated in this society, that they’d find the odd maiden behaving like that here.
They got lucky. There was a river going through the field still some distance from the settlement. And there was a young woman sitting on the bank. She was wearing a bright orange dress. She had removed her bright blue hat and put it on the bank beside her. And that was not all she had removed. Next to her hat were bright pink shoes and a bright lime-green pair of stockings. She was dangling her bare feet in the stream and was holding her dress up to her knees. This was the most bare flesh they’d seen in their studies of the people on this planet.
A daring one, thought Eleanor. She’ll fit in onboard. Eleanor and Jane both had hand weapons that she still thought of as “phasers” although the only setting it had seemed to be “stun”. There had not been much in the way of violence in all the years they’d been serving in the Federation. The odd drunken brawl, the occasional argument over a relationship, but on the whole a spaceship full of naked women was a peaceful place.
Eleanor could not remember anything about when she’d been picked up. It was dark and presumably they’d been approached from behind. Now it was daylight and there was an open field between them and their target. The away team was hiding behind a hedge, almost but not quite like the hedges she knew back in Essex. At her signal, Jane peeked round the foliage and fired her weapon. The woman fell unconscious – into the water.
“Damn, I should have realised that could happen!” exclaimed Eleanor, and dived into the river, which was very cold. The woman’s sodden clothes were dragging her down but she womanhandled her back to the bank and with the help of the others, got her on shore.
They carried her to the shuttle. It was necessary to remove her clothes before they could take her on board, and the pile of wet cloth was stuck into a storage locker. If the woman decided not to join them, then she would be dressed again before being left in the same field with her memory wiped. Eleanor idly wondered if her clothes were still in some forgotten storage locker back on the ship.
Without her clothes, the woman looked more normal to Eleanor. It had been many years since she’d seen someone wearing clothes and nudity was normal to her, clothing was strange. If someone had told her younger self that one day she’d be standing naked on an alien planet helping to strip a kidnap victim, well, she didn’t know what she would have done.
“She’s pretty,” said Jane.
It was the same procedure as when she’d been picked up. The woman was left to recover in an empty cabin after the translation device had been implanted. She was on her own, though. Attempts at getting closer to the village led to them almost being spotted, and they didn’t want to immobilise too many people in the attempt. That would lead to all sorts of problems.
It was Eleanor’s job to go and fetch the newcomer for her interview with Grainne. She was expecting her to be frightened by her surroundings, but she was positively bouncing when Eleanor entered the room.
“Oh, my, you’ve got no clothes on, too,” she said. “Have we been kidnapped by pirates? But you can enter the room, so you must be a pirate, also. An unclothed lady pirate. I’ve read about pirates kidnapping young ladies in books, so they can have their way with them, but the pirates were all men, and all clothed. I wanted to run away to meet a pirate. It would be better than staying at home, waiting for Mama to find a gentleman for me to marry. Are you a pirate? I’ve never seen a lady with no clothes on before. I’ve sometimes looked at myself in a mirror when having a bath, but when my governess has seen me do it, she chastises me. Are you a lady? I do not know the etiquette for conversation with another lady when we both have no clothes on.”
Eleanor finally got a word in to interrupt the flow and asked her to follow. Again, she was all excitement.
“I’ve never gone walking with no clothes on before,” she burbled. “Will any men see me? I’m told men lose control of themselves if they see women with no clothes.”
Then they reached the main corridor and several other members of the crew were there. You could almost hear her jaw drop.
“More ladies with no clothes! I think I like looking at ladies with no clothes on. I would like to stay here for ever.”
Then she looked out the viewport and her jaw dropped again.
As the technology planet did not include radar, it was safe to stay in orbit. She saw her own planet stretched out below her.
“It’s beautiful!” she said. “It’s even more beautiful than you are,” she said to Eleanor.