Common date 2-45-872.214 14:37

'Why do we still bother with a twenty-four hours clock?' Jan wondered. Certainly it was a leftover from the home planet. Man had proved very adaptable to Persephone's 36 hour day and Boann's 6 hour day. Maybe that was what helped man conquer Home, an ability to live in almost any environment. Funny too, that all of the planet's were still named for Home deities, as if the thousands of gods Mankind had created to explain the incomprehensible universe had followed him out into that universe.

He looked out the visipanel filled with blackness and glittering stars. There were so many stars. But Man had still not run into any other race capable of spaceflight. Of course, we were still exploring and settling a very small sector of a very large galaxy in an even bigger universe. The closest to advanced intelligent life had been those things on the Dog planet. They were called dogs for want of a better term. They built dwellings from mud and sticks, had a language we had managed to learn, though we could never make the sounds. An engineer on the first landing ship had reprogrammed a standard translator by adding the Dog sounds and the box had learned their language so that we could communicate with them.

It turned out their word for us was strange food. Imagine telling the Captain, "Excuse me Sir; their word for us is Strange Food."

"Damn it, rescind that invitation to dinner," the Captain would shout. "And man the guns."

Jan was roused from his maundering, an occupational hazard of spaceflight when all you had to do was look at stars, by his daughter bouncing down the tube. She jumped into the control room and breathlessly hopped over, leaning down so she was at eye level, "Daddy, when are you going to show me celestial navigation?" She batted her eyes as well.

He couldn't help but look at his pretty daughter. If she only knew what she did to him at moments like this? Their colony was on the planet Tyr and it was a cold world. Like all people of the cold, anytime they were warm, off came the clothes. And in a climate controlled craft where the temperature, the humidity, everything was controlled to the percent; there was no reason to wear clothes.

"Holly, celestial navigation isn't something you pick up in five minutes," he said. He liked her name. It reminded him of the North of Home planet. Tyr, being a cold world had been settled largely by Scandinavians fleeing the all embracing governments at home. The government knew everything you did, and taxed it. That wasn't really true, Jan supposed, legally. Everything was owned by the government and they decided how much you could keep of what you had earned. Those who had fled to the stars were determined never to let government get control of their lives again.

"Dad," Holly whined in that voice that drove Jan crazy.

He tacked, "How are your studies for today?"

"Fine," she said, diffidently.

"Central control..." he said into the air.

"Central control ready," an alto voice answered, neither male nor female.

Holly huffed, "I haven't finished, if that's what you want to know."

"Should I ask how much you haven't finished?" he asked her. "How can you expect to learn navigation when you haven't yet completed Analytic Geometry yet alone non-Euclidian Geometry. You can't navigate Einsteinian space without..."

Holly turned in mid sentence and sulked off to her cabin. Jan laughed to himself. He won that round. He watched her cute little butt that so reminded him of her mother. God, he missed her mother. And Holly was her image. Jan had to wonder how much longer he would be winning the arguments with Holly. She was maturing rapidly and her command of logic was sharpening every day. He knew she was soon going to be his intellectual equal. She'd be back ready for him. He turned back to the dark speckled image of the galaxy. Way off there was his star and home.

Jan had taken Holly with him to Nabu, a desert world, since she was too young to remain alone, or so he justified it. He had arranged a trading pact where they would send hard woods, scarce on Nabu, for fruits and luxury products from Nabu. Jan was pleased since the terms of the trading pact favored Tyr, or so he thought. Of course, the trading companies on Nabu were happy with the quality and price of the scarce and therefore valuable wood they would be receiving. They clasped their hands in glee on how they had fleeced this soft off worlder from the snowy planet. Fruit grew everywhere you could transport water, but wood was hard to get.

Inter-world trading was barter at its most basic. There was no money that was good from world to world. Even coin was only as valuable as the metal it was made from. Paper money was for lighting fires. Every trade had to be valued by both sides in their own world view. Weeds on one world were valuable on another.

Jan's thoughts turned back to Holly. She was growing so fast these days. Every day she seemed to be more and more a woman, her hips swelling, her breasts filling, assuming the classic hour glass shape that has so drawn men, from the Minoan godesses to the Venus of Urbino to girlie magazines. He felt his manhood swelling and mentally slapped himself. He had to do that often these days. 'Damn it! Holly is my daughter, ' he remonstrated himself. Jan shook his head to clear the images. Unfortunately for him, it wouldn't be long before the thoughts would be back.

The object of his reflections was back in her cabin, if you could call a one by two meter cubbyhole a cabin, Holly folded out her bed from the wall. She flopped onto it, the gentle gravity allowing her to settle into the cushion. She called out, "My diary."

Like everything else, her diary was actually part of the main AI unit. But instead of master control, a soft young female voice answered, "Diary open at Common date 2-45-872.214 14:52." Then more personably, it said "Hi, Holly. What's going on?"

"It's my stupid dad again. School work, all he thinks of is studying," Holly said irritably. "Why can't he show me how to navigate?"

"What do you want to do?" the diary asked. It wasn't programmed to be a full companion, but it did hold conversations, which helped.

Holly laid back, a dreamy expression on her face. "I guess I want to get married," she said. Holly only knew Tyr and that is what women did on their planet. "What good will Analytic Geometry do me tending the Caribou herd while my husband cuts wood for export? What good will Space Biology do me keeping my house?"

"Good questions," prompted the Diary as was its duty.

Holly lay back and imagined a man between her legs as she was doing so often these days. Almost all buildings on Tyr were one room affairs, easier to keep warm through the long Tyrian winter. Holly had a bunk near the rafters, to stay warmer, while her parents had a bed lower. She could look down and watch them easily. Even before the winds of change began to tear through her body, she had been avid in watching her parents coupling. Then, her mother had become separated from the other women while tending the herds, a storm had blown in and she had become disoriented and lost. Before they could find her, she had frozen. Pioneer worlds are cruel worlds.

Now Holly was the woman of the house. Her eyes closed as her hand lay on her belly. She began to see an image, a man above her, moving into her. She gasped as her hand touched her most sensitive places. Her hand insinuated itself between her legs, stroking her. The image became stronger, the man making love to her. Holly moaned as the diary remained discretely silent, recording as it was programmed to do.

Holly was now caught up in her fantasy, moaning and crying aloud as the stranger made love to her. He seemed familiar now as she seemed to be looking down from above as she had watched her parents. She felt the climax coming and cried out. As she reached her peak, she could see her face and above her it was her father, just as he had been above her mother ... It was her father making love to her. In surprise she called out, "Daddy..." as she climaxed, moaning and crying out in her pleasure.

Tyr, being a pioneering world didn't have many laws or customs, other than cooperation and let others be. There were simply too many challenges for everyone. That meant everyone did what they were capable of. If a boy could work, he did. If he could support a wife, he married. If a girl wanted to marry, she did. There wasn't any silly age of majority; you did what you could as soon as you could.

Tyr still had a small population. While child parent marriage would be considered unusual, by custom rather than law, inter-family marriage would scarce cause most to look the other way. Cousins married all the time. Villages were small and scattered and generally populated by extended family groups. When a boy felt the hankering and looked around, eligible females were either sisters or cousins most likely.

The pioneers had been screened for dangerous recessives. Frankly, most Tyrians were better off marrying a cousin or a sibling than they would have a stranger from Home. They didn't carry bad gene matches. On the way from Home, they had eliminated all viruses. Sickness on this cold planet was almost unknown. When Jan and Holly set out, they had to go through an extensive preparation of injections and treatments so they wouldn't bring back a Pandora's Box of diseases from off world.

All products brought down to the surface were either exposed to the vacuum of space which would crack even the toughest virus protein coating, or if they couldn't be exposed, they were irradiated upon landing. The Tyrians were determined to keep off world diseases off their world.

"Central control," the AI unit announced itself.

Jan sat up and answered, "What is it?"

"The diary unit has recorded an anomaly, Sir. We though it best to bring it to your attention."

Jan was now at a loss. He hated the idea of listening in on his daughter's diary. But why had central control suddenly become concerned? "Anomaly?" he asked.

"Yes sir. Diary unit recorded unknown and possibly troubling sound pattern," the unit said.

That was easier, Jan thought. He wouldn't listen to her diary, just the troubling pattern. "Please play the troubling pattern," he commanded the unit.

"Playing," the unit said.

Jan listened to the recording. He couldn't figure out exactly what he was hearing, immediately. Then the pattern evoked strange feelings in him and he began to recognize the sounds. "Is this Holly?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," the unit answered.

But this sounded like a ... He had to admit to himself it sounded like a woman masturbating. During their sex play he had watched Holly's mother do this and it had sounded just the same. The breathing became rapid and the moans stronger. Jan felt his own cock swell in response. Could Holly be touching herself? No, she was too young. But what was this then?

That's when Jan heard his daughter's voice, thick with lust moaning out the word he never would have expected in this circumstance, "Daddy." Jan was stunned. There was no doubt from the thick lust in that voice what was occurring. But why would she be saying Daddy?

"End of recording anomaly," Central control said.

Jan cleared his throat, "Central control, look up female masturbation."

There was the briefest pause, then it came back, "Indexed and categorized as female masturbation. Anomaly clarified."

The words hung in the air, anomaly clarified as if that solved it all. Jan couldn't ignore those words after that so off hand indexing of his daughter's behavior. Female masturbation. Daddy? Jan felt the urge in his body. He looked down to see his shaft erect and pulsing with need, the reddened tip wet with pre-cum discharge, his balls pulled up against his body, heaving with desire to empty themselves.

Jan quickly bolted to his cabin, lay back, took his cock in hand, and in seconds was close to cumming. He hadn't tried, but the image flooding his mind was of Holly, little Holly, masturbating in her bed. That was all it took for him to loose torrents of cum.

Dinner was distinctly uncomfortable. Jan couldn't address what he had learned about with Holly. Holly was also troubled by the images she had during her session. Why had she been seeing her dad in her mind? Her trouble was that she had few other men to fill her fantasy life. The kinds of entertainment common on the industrial worlds hadn't yet made it to Tyr. They still had books, paper books. If she hadn't been traveling with her father on one of the colony's few ships, she would be doing her study from books instead of the Central Control.

So the number of men in her life was few and the greatest number of them were married. It didn't take long before a boy married and set up his own house. Holly counted the number of eligible bachelors and couldn't fill up one hand. Of those few, she wasn't much impressed with any. It shouldn't be a surprise that Holly found the most eligible man to be the one she already loved, her father. But there was no possible way Holly could bring this up, even if she could have fully articulated her feelings, which she couldn't. So she fumbled around with her food.