The Planet of Women

Prologue

Alexei stepped out onto the forest’s edge, lost in thought, and suddenly heard feminine laughter behind him. He spun around and saw, a few metres away, a crowd of naked Amazons. The moment they noticed he’d spotted them, they let out joyful cries and immediately gave chase. He took off running. Fifteen naked Amazons sprinted after him, their breasts swaying from side to side, their shaved pubic areas starkly white against their lower bellies.

Alexei ran very fast, completely naked, even though the jungle closed in on all sides. The green canopy of rustling leaves only let through slanted rays of sunlight in a few places, and those rays spread out like a fan in the bluish haze. The man dodged thorny bushes and vines hanging from the branches in the dim light. Leaping over creeping roots, he hurried to get away from the pursuit, knowing it was incredibly hard to lose the Amazons. He stumbled, fell, rolled onto his back, and, breathing heavily, listened for any sound of pursuit.

Above him, the wind’s roar drowned out the birds’ discordant singing. The air carried the damp breath of the tropical rainforest. Trying not to rustle the fallen leaves, Alexei lifted himself onto his elbows, cautiously peering into the green gloom of the jungle.

“Looks like I got away!” he sighed with relief, thinking that if the Amazons had caught him, they’d have made him have sex with a dozen or more women.

That day, while harvesting passionfruit, the women drank a tincture made from yohimbe bark as an aphrodisiac and launched a full‑blown, wild, unrestrained sexual hunt for men. In this way, they offered a sacrifice to the goddess—not a bloody one, but a sacrifice nonetheless.

In his university archaeology lectures, Alexei had often told his students about lost cities and drawn countless schemes and models of various societies on the blackboard, including the Amazons. He’d explained that a matriarchal system and the Amazons were different concepts: in a matriarchy, the woman is considered the head of the family, as opposed to the patriarchal system. But the Amazons didn’t have men at all, so there was no one for them to dominate except other women.

Now, faced with reality, he didn’t think that way anymore, because they did have men—male slaves, occupying the lowest rung of their social niche, captured during raids on villages and settlements.

Of course, the textbook definitions were correct—but only if you considered them in theory, as pure essences without any impurities.

Back in those days, Alexei often liked to make his students think, to get them to ponder, even to slightly confuse them. Then, all of a sudden, he’d start drawing a scheme with chalk on the board: “Matriarchal system,” with arrows pointing down to the types and forms of societies that belonged to it. Among them, the Amazons occupied a rather modest place, and more arrows led down from them to their various subtypes.

And now, lying beside the plank‑like roots of some giant tree, he asked himself: “Who would’ve thought I’d actually have to deal with Amazons in practice?”

Chapter I
IN SPACE

An oval‑shaped spaceship drifted through the starry gloom of space. It rotated slowly, and in the starlight, the name on its smooth, dark hull glinted: Prometheus. The ship began to roll onto its other side, revealing the observation tower, two stern spires, and four rendezvous system antennas. Until a gaping hole appeared in the hull. With a frayed piece of steel cable protruding from it, the hole slid smoothly and unhurriedly out of sight on the far side of the starship.

Outside, the cold reigned supreme. Inside, under the viewscreens, the control panel still flickered green in the darkness of the main control room. Frost glittered everywhere.

In the farthest hangar, on a planetary lander, stood a sarcophagus encased in ice. Beneath its transparent dome lay a slender, middle‑aged man. Condensed moisture dripped onto his face. The man was asleep. And he was dreaming…

He was flying on a ship and saw himself sleeping in an anabiosis tank. Soft, calm music played. Before him, a red‑and‑blue nebula sparkled. The entire space was strewn with stars. Only the ship, polished to a shine, rushed with a hum through the void, and two stars danced at its stern.

As he drew closer, they transformed into naked girls adorned with jewellery, beginning to dance. Moving their hips in time with the music, they resembled Eastern beauties and kept growing larger and larger. They were now on the starship! They stretched out their delicate, jewel‑encrusted hands, touched the sleeping cosmonaut’s face, and…

Alexei groaned with pleasure, feeling the burning bodies of the girls against him. Through his dream, he heard the wail of the emergency siren. The ship was entering an unknown planetary system.

A huge, ring‑shaped rock mass loomed directly ahead. A whole barrage of stones fell before the ship passed through it. The anti‑meteorite defences activated around the vessel, and space lit up with flashes as fine dust and meteorites struck the antimatter force field.

Soon, a gaseous giant appeared—a huge, striped, crimson sphere with white and rust‑coloured clouds that blocked part of the space on the ship’s port side.

In the direction the ship was heading, at a distance of 779 million kilometres, the local sun blazed brilliantly in the blackness of space. Seven other planets orbited it at varying distances.

The “Life Search” program kicked in.

Chapter II
THE COSMONAUT’S AWAKENING

The starship hovered above the planet, surrounded by the blue glow of its atmosphere. It began to drift slowly over a vast supercontinent, its video cameras scrutinising the surface, which was covered with brown mountain peaks. Only when cities appeared on one of the coastal areas, amidst the green vegetation, did a radio‑controlled probe detach from the starship, and atmospheric data began to crawl slowly across the onboard computer’s monitors.

The air was breathable. After some time, the planetary lander began its descent.

Alexei woke up to intense cold and the sound of the sea surf—his beard had grown thick over the long years of sleep. Opening his eyes, he climbed out of the anabiosis tank, tearing the nutrient tubes off himself, and fell onto the cool metal floor, rubbing his body with his hands.

There was no flight suit on the chair.

Through the transparent dome, against the backdrop of the evening sky, he could see the sandy shore and the dark‑blue sea with golden reflections shimmering on its surface. Sharp, pointed reefs rose from the depths, bathed in a pinkish light.

The planet strongly resembled Alexei’s homeworld—except that the birds, soaring and shrieking like seagulls, were equipped with jaws.

One of them flew low over the dome, staring at the cosmonaut with bulging black eyes and screeching horribly, revealing a row of needle‑sharp teeth.

Alexei recoiled from the glass. He needed to find clothes.

“The robots must’ve put it in the wardrobe,” he thought. “Damn it! I forgot to cancel that command again! Now I have to go looking for it…”

Getting to his feet, he limped into the next compartment. As the tingling in his muscles gradually subsided, he finally found his flight suit and put it on. He took a crate of food from the fridge and carried it into the control room. Sitting down in the pilot’s seat in front of the console, he opened a few cans—and grimaced: all the food had turned into icy lumps.

Setting it aside, the cosmonaut began tapping his fingers on the holographic keys of the onboard computer.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Two hundred and fifty million years have passed since you entered anabiosis,” the machine replied in a feminine voice.

“What happened?”

“Hyperdrive malfunction: the accelerator unit is damaged.”

“What are my coordinates?”

“Due to the failure of the navigation system, it is impossible to determine the exact coordinates of the ship’s location.”

Rising from the chair, Alexei began pacing the control room nervously. The thought that he was forever cut off from his world filled him with horror. He felt an icy chill run down his spine. Looking at the viewscreen, the cosmonaut shuddered. The flying creatures were still screeching and darting around.

It should be noted that back in Alexei’s time, a time machine had been invented, and time‑travel technology had begun to be actively used in space engineering because it made virtually any point in space accessible. You could cover a distance of ninety billion light‑years in just three months. That’s where anabiosis came in handy.

Incidentally, this planet could be Earth in the future—Alexei considered that possibility. Because back in his time, an attempt had been made to transfer local fauna from the distant past into the future, not to mention the successful back‑and‑forth time transfers of people. His starship was programmed to return to Earth in case of any malfunctions. Although it was also possible that he simply hadn’t made it to Earth and had landed somewhere along the way on a planet in another star system, whose local life forms still had a long evolutionary path ahead of them—from sharp‑toothed birds to modern seagulls. There were plenty of theories to be made.

“I’ll try to think logically,” Alexei decided. “Okay, I’ve landed on a habitable planet. I have a weapon…”

The cosmonaut picked up his blaster and connected it to the charging unit, noting the multicoloured lights running along the grip. “Everything’s fine,” he thought. “Now I need to check the multi‑core processor. Why isn’t it functioning?”

Pondering the cause of the malfunction, Alexei headed to the radio room. He removed the control panel and plugged in the indicator.

“Just as I thought!” he whispered. “It’s burned out!”

Covered in time‑dust while printing on the 100D printer, Alexei replaced the burnt component and configured the holographic “artificial intelligence” program so that it wouldn’t switch on immediately, but gradually and discreetly, so as not to overwhelm him with robotic humour right after this awakening.

Approaching the control panel, he touched the switch—and a three‑dimensional map of the surrounding area appeared in the air, showing every minute detail.

Not far from the landing site, on a plateau, rose a beautiful, unfamiliar city surrounded by a medieval fortress.

“Wow!” Alexei exclaimed, spotting two pretty women guarding the fortress entrance.

After tidying himself up, the cosmonaut took a shower, shaved, and changed into clean underwear. Just in case, he also gave himself vaccinations against local microbes; while he’d been in anabiosis during the landing, the onboard computer had analysed the planet’s microflora and created the vaccines.

Descending into the airlock, he activated all the protection systems and used the radio key to open the entry hatch. A faint rustle of wind sounded. Fresh air blew into the cosmonaut’s face, carrying the salty scent of the sea, sand, and rotting seaweed.

Chapter III
THE ROAD TO THE CITY

Stepping onto the surface, Alexei heard the hatch close behind him at the top of the ramp. He waited a moment longer, watching as the armour plating on the sides of the disc‑shaped lander covered the transparent dome. Only then did he hurry towards the grassy hill, noticing that it had grown much darker around him.

Climbing the rise, sinking knee‑deep into the dark‑blue grass, the cosmonaut couldn’t hold back a cry of admiration: before him, spread out in the gloomy light, lay a mountain valley. To the left, where the shore curved, overgrown with bushes and palm trees, a mysterious city rose on the plateau. In the deepening twilight, the golden domes of the towers glowed mysteriously.

Swaying with weakness, Alexei looked around. He knew that the slightest carelessness on an alien planet could cost him his life. But his desire to see something new was so strong that he started walking along the hilltop. The sun, framed by a blood‑red sunset, had already sunk halfway below the sea horizon, and the first stars appeared in places on the evening sky, slightly veiled by a thin haze of clouds. A smile crossed the cosmonaut’s face: up there in orbit, his ship was drifting. His ship!

Gradually, the slope grew steeper, and the grass underfoot gave way to rocky ground. Here, between the cliffs, a steep descent began; the entire shore below was drowned in rustling greenery.

The cosmonaut stopped and took off his pressure helmet, because in this situation, he needed to start building immunity to the local microflora. The breeze blowing from the sea gently touched his hair. Alexei sighed. He stood above the palm trees, now shrouded in shadow, behind which he could see a strip of sandy beach and the sea—mysterious, shimmering with the lingering colours of the crimson horizon.

“Freedom, space,” the cosmonaut thought, and slowly walked down the hill.

About a kilometre from the city, a wisp of campfire smoke rose above the shore. Alexei nearly jumped in surprise. Tearing the binoculars from his chest, he pressed his eyes to the lenses.

Palm trees, sand, and sea flickered in the viewfinder until four girls in swimsuits appeared on the graduated greenish scale. They stood beside a horse, on which lay a bound man.

The image adjusted. In the left corner of the screen, numbers bounced—the distance to the target was 385 metres. The electronic ear activated.

The cosmonaut froze, listening to the hiss of the decoder. Laughter reached his ears. Another girl ran out of the water. She wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. Her wet body glistened in the fading sunlight.

Alexei looked away, turning his gaze to the golden path of sunlight shimmering across the water almost to the horizon. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the girls slowly walking away.

“Hey, hey! Where are you going?” Alexei cried out, stretching out his hand in a questioning gesture.

Dashing down the slope, the cosmonaut scuffed his boots against the rocky surface. Small stones tumbled down…

Running out onto the beach, Alexei hurried along the undulating water’s edge towards the campfire.

When he reached the fire, which hissed and crackled on the seashore, he stopped. A torn cloak lay on the sand, along with a few empty tin cans.

“Looks like the girls went that way,” Alexei thought, examining the spot.

Nick (that was the name of his pressure helmet) unexpectedly spoke up:

“I don’t like any of this. It’s weird.”

“What exactly?” the cosmonaut asked.

“They tied that guy up for some reason.”

“Maybe he was drinking prohibited drinks or did something wrong,” Alexei suggested with a smile. “Come on, we’re already running late.”

…The cosmonaut walked so fast that he soon began to catch up with the girls, steadily closing the distance. Nick, who had been preparing his brain for contact all this time, reported:

“Knowledge exchange process completed! Proceed!”

And Alexei, suddenly sounding as if he’d spoken the native tongue his whole life, shouted:

“Beautiful ladies! Please, wait!”

He stopped in front of them. The girls exchanged glances.

“Who are you?” one of them asked sharply. “Why aren’t you following proper etiquette?”

“I made an emergency landing on your planet and I’m not familiar with your customs,” he replied. “So, please forgive me if I unintentionally offended you in any way…”

Alexei fell silent. Only now did he notice how beautiful the girls were. Their swimsuits were made of scale‑armour. Their legs were clad in leather boots.

“Real Amazons!” he thought, involuntarily filled with admiration. His gaze slid to their waists, where a sword hung on each of them. He sighed and continued:

“Could you point me in the direction of the city? Or perhaps you’re heading that way, and we could continue together?”

“First time I’ve ever heard of a man wanting to go to the city!” the red‑haired girl said, shaking her head in bewilderment. “What should we do.

“He’ll probably find his way on his own,” said the other stranger. “We won’t have to drag him along… Alright, let’s go.”

And they set off towards the plateau, where the golden domes of the city’s towers shimmered faintly through the dusky gloom at its edge.