F6: The Marlborough Man in the Moon

"I want see what tastes sweeter. You or the cookie dough. Let me?"

Cassie faltered. They shouldn't cross this line. It was too far. Up to this point she and Rosalind had given in to a boredom fueled blissful make-out sessions, playful touching born out of camaraderie and mutual respect and admiration. Many times a touch on the arm or a lingering look had led them to an amorous rendezvous, but they had both been very conscious of what line not to cross, and had never moved past heavy petting.

But now, hot, a little wet, Cassie didn't care about the line. Truthfully, what was the harm in seeing where things went?

Remembering that night, drowsy and dreamy Cassie's hand went to her own hard nipples, to the wetness between her legs.

The memory moved on, with Rosalind whispering, "Let me, let me, let me" until Cassie had to respond. "Yes," was the only response needed. Yes, yes, yes."

Roz had pushed Cassie back onto the cool plastic kitchen floor and lay atop her. Kissed her again, hard and deep. Then, grinning, she slid the plastic side zipper of Cassie's sleep pants down to mid thigh, and pulled them down her long legs and off.

"You have the most amazing legs. Like vintage photos of ballet dancers. I envy you these legs." Roz ran her hands up Cassie's calves, forced her knees to bend, and slid her fingers down the inside of Cassie's thighs. Goosebumps rose over Cassie's skin, followed by the most delicious tingling that started low in her belly and radiated all the way to her nipples, making them hard. Cassie put her head back and sighed. Closed her eyes. God, they should not be doing this but it felt so good.

She felt the warm circle of Rosalind's mouth on her inner thigh and let out a shuddering breath. That warm circle of lips and tongue moved lower, inch by agonizing inch, until she could feel Roz's warm breath on her achingly engorged sex. Rosalind didn't move for what seemed like forever, just let her breath wash over Cassie, until Cassie wanted to scream in frustration. She tried to stop herself from whimpering, from moving her hips in little circles under Rosalind's face, but she was powerless in the face of Roz's overwhelming lust.

Finally, after a torturous amount of time, Cassie felt the flat of Rosalind's tongue press hard against her, then move in sweet small circles.

"Oh god, finally," she breathed, and clenched her hands in tight fists.

She felt Roz laugh as she moved her tongue to slowly lick through Cassie's delicate folds, from her wet opening, up to her swollen clit. She swirled the tip of her tongue over Cassie's clit, flicked it a few times, and then started over. Slow lick with the flat of her tongue, swirl, flick and back again.

"Mmmm, Doctor Portman, you are so sweet." Rosalind murmured. Cassie could only moan in response, and try to keep her hips from bucking into Roz's face. The rhythm she had going was amazingly intense and Cassie didn't want to ruin it.

Orgasm was near and Cassie was about to let go and give into it when Rosalind changed things up, interrupted her rhythm and kept Cassie on the edge. Roz delicatly tongued Cassie's throbbing wet opening. pushed her tongue in, then out, then rapidly flicked her clit with the very tip of her tongue.

"Oh, god!" Cassie exclaimed. "Ohmygod, Ohmygod ..."

She control her body as she built once more toward orgasm. Her hips bucked up and she spread her legs as wide as she could to give Rosalind as much access as she could.

As Roz used her tongue to keep a relentless circular motion on Cassie's clit, she pushed one finger inside her, stroked upwards in a come hither gesture.

Cassie grasped, cried out, grabbed at Rosalind's upper arms, and then wildly at her own head. The expert maneuvers of Rosalind's tongue matched the stroking of her finger against Cassie's g-spot, and built an incredible pressure to Cassie's insides.

"Oh god, oh fuck!" Cassie wailed, and then clamped a hand over her own mouth. The powerful wave of crushing orgasm pounded into her and shel let herself get swept away. Every muscle tightened as wave after wave moved through her, and she shouted some very bad words against the inside of her hand.

The Captain sat up, ran the back of her hand over her luscious, glistening lips. Smiled broadly as Cassie rolled her legs from side to side, moaning, laughing, still coming down from the aftershocks of the incredible orgasm.

"Wow. Roz, something tells me that was not your first rodeo." Cassie sighed.

"What the hell is a rodeo?" Roz lightly tossed Cassie her sleep pants so she could zip them back on.

Cassie laughed. "It's a cowboy thing."

"What's a cowboy?"

"Never mind. That was amazing. Thank you. Wow. Really."

"My pleasure, completely. I know you're not into the androgyny lifestyle, Cassie, but I have to tell you, when gender doesn't matter, your horizons tend to get ... broadened."

"So I see." Cassie murmured, suddenly shy. "I'll clean up in here. We should probably get some sleep. We have a full day tomorrow of busy work while we speed at the slowest pace ever towards our unknown exploratory planet."

"Now, Doctor, if you've done your homework, and I know you have, you know all there is to know about EP-274. And what we do while we wait? It's not busy work."

"On-ship experiments that have been done a thousand times, on every space flight ever? That we all know the results of before we even board? How is that not busy work?"

"Think about it Cassie." Avery scooped up the abandoned cookie dough wrappers and tossed them into the incinerator. She padded barefoot to the door on her short, muscular legs. Paused and leaned adjacent the threshold. "You are going to be spending 18 months alone on the surface of a desolate planet, doing experiments that you probably already know the results of. With only the sound of my melodious voice for company. Getting through that and not going all batshit takes practice. For both of us. I won't even have the novelty of studying an unexplored planet to keep me occupied. I'll be stuck circling up here with nothing and no one, to do. So we're practicing how to not get crazy."

"Ah. I hadn't thought of that. Good point."

"Mm-hm. That's why I'm the Captain. Good night, Doctor. If you get cold or lonely, you know where to find me." She nodded her head to Cassie and left the room.

So Cassie did her experiments and she and Captain Avery found one another when they got bored or cold or lonely and they kept from going batshit. But now she was six months in to an 18 month mission on this planet all by herself, with only Avery's voice for company. And she got cold. And bored. And lonely. And she learned to program the Relaxation Dome just the way she liked it, in intricate detail of a place full of life and sounds and fire and nature and she called forth a cowboy to keep her ...relaxed. He didn't keep her warm, though. Not really. Not like Rosalind had all those months on the space yacht.

Cassie shifted and turned inside her sleep sack. The fantasy of her memory of that night in the kitchen with Roz had warmed her up considerably. But now she was all aroused with no where to go. Once she was zipped inside her room and the systems were in night mode, there was no leaving again for a specific eight-hour period, unless there was an emergency. And though the thought of Brock was tempting, and the throbbing between her legs called for attention, it couldn't really be called an emergency. Cassie shifted around until she could reach the zipper on the side of her pants. She slid it down, and slid her hand inside. And found the thought that no matter how well she programmed the relaxation dome, her own fingers still gave her more actual pleasure than Brock ever could, mildly depressing.

The next morning after Cassie zipped out of her quarters, warmed up the habitat and got the life support systems going, she sat back at her work station and checked all of her data streams. The soil analysis was just finished with the newest samples, the atmosphere was completely unchanged, as expected, and her seedlings showed no signs of sprouting, so she made notes on how she could change the biomatter to engender a more successful result. Oxygen was the problem. Oxygen was always going to be the problem. How to grow plants in an oxygen poor environment was her main objective while here on EP-274. She had genetically altered several hardy seed samples before departing for the mission, and finding the right combination with the right biomatter additive for the soil makeup on the planet was the tricky part. It was important work, but it was tedious. Her next check was to the preparations for her three-day embarkation towards the mountains to take core samples where the soil might be of a different makeup.

As protocol dictated, the moment Cassie logged into her workstation, Avery was alerted up on the Prodigy, and though she usually gave Cassie some time to get warmed up and start her day, she was required to check in first thing, and at regular intervals.

"Good morning, Dr. Portman. I hope you slept well."

Cassie's memory of what exactly was in her thoughts the night before made her blush, and then thank god immediately that Avery couldn't see her. She cleared her throat.

"Fine, Captain. And you?"

"Now that you mention it. I had some wicked bad dreams. Really weird shit."

"You should stop snacking before bed time."

"It's true that with you down there, and me here all by myself, I have double the snacks to choose from."

"Just save some of that freeze-dried cookie dough for the way home, won't you?" Cassie laughed softly to herself and shook her head the minute the words were out of her mouth. She just couldn't help herself. Maybe those feelings that sparked up last night still lingered.

Avery chuckled over the comm. "Oh, don't worry. I've got several special treats saved up just for you."

"Well, aren't you sweet." Cassie teased.

"If I remember correctly, you're the sweet one."

Cassie blushed again.

"Ok, Captain Avery, I'm setting the com to record and we can get down to business."

The next hour was spent synching their systems and going through the business of the day. After that Avery logged off and went about her own business aboard the Prodigy.

About midday Cassie started receiving texts messages from Roz, asking her to check the com system. She was having trouble getting through. Cassie tried from her end but got nothing. Not even static, just silence.

After brainstorming over text, they signed off and each began their troubleshooting protocol. Dusk came more quickly on this planet than on Earth, and when the light began to dim they were no nearer to solving the com problem. And there seemed to be a new one.

Avery typed: Hey, doc. Check your cameras again for me will you? And the window while you're at it. I'm getting those heat shimmers on my video feed again.

"That's weird." Cassie muttered to herself. Six months on planet with absolutely no glitches, and now two in two days? They had to be related.

She checked her own live video feed from the outside and saw nothing. But, when she checked the windows, there was something that wasn't there when she looked yesterday.

"Damn." She cupped her hands around her face and peered out of her clear plastic windows. There, about thirty yards out, in a semi-circle, just like Avery and said, were several, five or six it was hard to tell in the dimming light, patches of shimmering air, for lack of a better word. Like back home when the air was so hot it lay like a blanket on the asphalt, and wavered when the light hit it in just the right way.

Cassie tilted her head in back and forth to check her field of vision, dimmed the lights inside the habitat, and turned the seldom used lights outside the habitat on. None of these measures had any effect on the shimmers. They remained constant. It was the oddest thing. Perhaps it was an effect of the passing moon that hadn't been picked up by the cameras before, but other than that she had no real theories.

She typed back to Captain Avery: I don't see them on the video feed, but now I see them out the windows. I could get suited up and perform an OM, get a closer look.

Avery: Negative. No outside maneuvers in the near dark. That's an order. Let's check again tomorrow, maybe it's some weird trick of the light, the phase of the moon, something. It can't be a coincidence that we're experiencing these glitches all at once.

Portman: My thoughts exactly. Copy. Negative on the OM. I'm breaking for dinner. Over and out.

Avery: Copy that.

Cassie treated herself to one of her more exotic freeze dried meals. Four cheese macaroni and cheese. In the military they called these little foil wrapped squares of deliciousness MREs, Meals Ready to Eat. Cassie was prepared to tell them from great authority that none of these meals were ready to eat. Not by a long shot. It took significant creativity, and lots of salt and pepper, to make any of these meals palatable. But, as she told herself at every mealtime, she was a fucking astronaut exploring a new planet. If she had to put up with some less than savory dinner fare, so be it.

After eating she went right back to the windows, peered out at the gloomy dusk, searched for the shimmers of air in the distance. It was too dark to see clearly, even if she turned on the exterior lights. A lot of the surrounding rock and some of the soil had a significant amount of metals in them, and tended to relate the light back at her when the exteriors were on. It was best to save energy whenever she could, regardless. A visual recheck would have to wait until morning.

She called up the outside camera feed on her computer screen, but still saw nothing. No shimmers, nothing but the rock and the soil and the mountains in the distance. She mused on her mission, to attempt to find a biomatter additive that would allow the soil to oxygenate, so that plants, tree, eventually crops, could be grown on this planet. It was a challenge and one she enjoyed, but she couldn't help but wonder why they were bothering to send a scientist like her, with a mission like this, and not a climatologist. An atmospheric expert. It seemed pointless to figure out how to grow green things when the air wasn't breathable.

Curious, she pinged Avery on the comm. She assumed the problem had been fixed when Avery answered over the comm and not through text.

"Hey Avery, nice to hear your voice again."

"Ditto. I got old school up here, shut down the comm system, and then turned it back on. Worked like a charm. What's up?"

"So far as you know, do they have climatologists working back home to make this air breathable?"

"Say what now?"

"I just mean, I love my job, and this mission is my life. I am thrilled to be here, and to eat out of foil shrink wrapped foil packets for as long as it takes. Let's just be clear on that."

"Is this conversation going somewhere, Doctor?"

"I'm just wondering why I'm working hard to solve the soil problem when there is a pretty substantial breathing problem happening down here."

"Hunh. Are you just ruminating, or are you looking for a serious answer?"

"Do you have a serious answer?"

"Well no, not really. I'm just the pilot, after all. What I do know is that the atmosphere of EP-274 is made up of a mixture of toxic, known gasses. And the atmosphere was detectable using our satellites and probes, so it was a known entity before they ever send us here. So I'm pretty sure they could mock up a replica atmosphere in a lab somewhere and work on at home without having to send another expensive, foil dinner eating astronaut doctor. However, the makeup of the soil, the rocks and the core, the presence of water or ice, or the lack thereof, could not be certain or studied without actual physical samples. So ... here we are."

"Wow. That was pretty thorough. You've been thinking about this?"

"Not really. I'm just bored, so I've been reading a lot from the Space Administration's archives, purposes of past missions, failures, successes, things like that. I believe this planet is part of the system wide group of planets being explored for terra-forming options — that hopefully will not be needed for a very long time."

"Yeah, Mother Earth though, we've not been treating her right and she's getting kind of pissy with us."

"So true, so true. Some of these missions though, the failed ones? Such a heartbreak when that much training, and resources and lives even, go to waste in such a spectacular fashion."

Cassie scrolled through her cameras one more time, but she still didn't see anything.

"Avery? Check your video feed one more time will you? I'm getting nothing here, but I never did. You see anything?"

"Negative, Cassie. No strange shimmering air at the moment."

Cassie pulled up the data stream for her experiments and let them roll for a few minutes. Everything looked 5x5.

"How far back in the archives did you go? I read a lot about aborted missions, or technical difficulties that caused a mission to have to turn around, or scrap part of their mission objective, but I don't remember hearing about any loss of life."

"This was pretty far back, Twenty years or so ago. One of the first missions to explore the possibilities of terra-forming earth-like planets reachable by ion drive. There were four members of the crew, and they by all accounts completed their mission. Explored their planet successfully. Compiled loads of data. But on the way home, something happened. One of the crew members who had been on planet snapped, and killed the rest of the crew, then himself."

"Jesus, Roz, nice bedtime story."

"Here's the thing though. That crew was all men. Not to pass judgement on the dead, but women are far more adaptable to this kind of work. It's a scientific fact."

"Were there any records? Of that failed mission? Did they know why the guy went crazy?"

"A lot of the report is redacted. But the conclusion seems to be PTSD. Or a symptom of being alone on surface for so long. His little man brain just couldn't take it."

"Roz, god, you're so callous."

Captain Avery chuckled over the com.

"We get enough, 'oh they can't handle it, they are just women' and I can't crack a little dumb guy joke?"

Cassie smiled. "It's just ... The pressure out here is immense. It's lonely. It changes you. Whatever happened on that ship ... who knows? It could have been us."

"No, it can't be us. It would never be us. Women don't react to stress that way. We're internalizers. More likely to commit suicide than murder. At least, that's what Dr. Shapiro said. And you were personally hand picked by Dr. Shapiro for being most likely to withstand the duress of this kind of mission. So you know, no worries."

"Well gosh, Captain Avery. Thanks for sharing. I feel so much better now."

Avery laughed again. "Go to sleep, Doctor. I'm tired."

Cassie smiled to herself. "Copy that, Captain. Doctor Portman, out."

The next morning Cassie checked in with Avery and got to work checking her seeds and analyzing data. She was making headway on culturing a new form of soil biomatter, and became so immersed in her work that it was lunch before she thought to get eyes on the alleged outside anomaly.

"Captain Avery, Cassie here." She set the conversation to record.

"Copy, Cassie."

"How does your video feed look? I'm going to do another eyes-on check in a minute."

"My feed looks normal. What about yours?"

Cassie called up the outside camera feed on her monitors. Everything looked normal.

"Feed looks 5-by. I'm going to check the window."

"Copy. Standing by."

Cassie walked to her "front door" window and looked out to where she had seen the mysterious air shimmers before. She expected to see nothing, the same scene her cameras were showing her, but that wasn't the case. She did see the semi-circle of air shimmers about 30 yards out. She again tilted her head, changed the lights, to see if she could determine what was causing the phenomenon. But no matter what she did, the shimmers did not change.