“Nothing gets in the way of their having sex, huh?” Sabrina said, not really wanting to believe what Fore was telling her.
“Basically, yes,” Fore said. “It developed as a necessity on their home world. Their power is what we are trying to study.”
“But they jumped the gun,” Lyman said, “on the mating part.”
“And smelled up our ship,” Sabrina said.
“Your ship will survive,” Fore said. “I’m more worried about you two.”
“You want to explain what you mean by that?” Lyman said, his voice cold and angry.
Fore nodded. “In a short time the odor will overcome you. You will either suffocate or fall into a very, very deep sleep from which you will never wake up.”
“So we just dump the cargo bay into space,” Lyman said.
Sabrina agreed.
“Have you tried that yet?” Fore said.
“No, but I’m thinking we should.”
“It won’t work,” Fore said. “Take a look at the images from the cargo bay. See the slime covering everything. That’s a protective cocoon the fish create around themselves during this time. Blowing the cargo hatch would do no good, since that slime layer will hold them in place.”
“Wonderful,” Lyman said, staring at the screen and the image of their messed-up cargo bay.
“And how were your people on Daring Three going to deal with this problem?” Sabrina asked.
“They are prepared with environmental suits capable of keeping all outside influences out.”
She glanced over at Lyman, who caught where she was going.
“We have a full environmental suite on this ship,” Lyman said, “built for passengers who couldn’t mingle with our normal air. Would that help?”
“Completely self-contained?” Fore asked.
“Completely,” Lyman said.
They had added in the suite in case they needed to transport any medical patients. They hadn’t had to use it yet other than as a normal passenger room.
“It would keep you alive for a while,” Fore said.
“We can program the auto-pilot to take up a standard orbit when reaching Daring Three,” Lyman said. “Can your people take care of your cargo at that point?”
“We can,” Fore said, “if you give me the information on how to open your cargo bay doors from the outside when your ship arrives. My people will be able to remove the Elucidations to a safe place.”
Sabrina felt even more shivers run up her back. “And just what are we going to be doing in the mean time?”
“Sleeping,” Fore said, his dark eyes not blinking.
“And why would we be doing that?” Lyman asked.
“Because you will have no choice,” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
“How much time do we have?”
“Can you smell anything?”
“Yes,” she said. Clearly Lyman’s attempt to set up a counter-flow of air out of the control room wasn’t doing much good.
“The effects of the Elucidation mating spreads as time goes on,” Fore said, “and becomes far more intense. The quicker you get into that suite, the more chance you have of survival.”
Sabrina had a very clear memory of trying to push toward the cargo bay in that smell. Fore clearly knew what they were dealing with. And there would be time later for making her believe there was such a thing as telepathic fish.
“Got it,” Lyman said.
They both set to work as each minute the smell grew more and more intense.
It took Lyman ten minutes to completely program the auto-pilot for the approach and orbit of Daring Three, then place a back-up program in the computer, plus send Fore the details of how to override all ship’s systems if necessary.
While he was doing that, Sabrina was giving Fore the codes for entering the cargo bay area from the outside, as well as three other hatches, and then she scrounged together some medical supplies and extra food for the environmental room.
The smell was choking the corridor outside the control room when fifteen minutes later Lyman shut and secured the double airlock door to the environmental room, locking them inside.
She sat down on the bed and looked around the small cabin. There was a closet, a sink and bathroom area, a dresser built into the wall, and a large bed. She could almost imagine the sound of the environmental systems behind the wall to the right recycling all their air. They were going to have to be in here for the next twenty-seven hours while the Sweet Adele set its own orbit around Daring Three and strangers boarded her and took off the fused crates.
In her entire life she had never felt so helpless.
Lyman moved over and sat down beside her. “Jailed on our own ship.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And by telepathic alien fish with bad body odor.”
“And too much sex drive,” he said, smiling at her.
“There can never be too much sex drive,” she said.
“Why’d I know you’d say that?” Lyman said, putting his arm around her and holding her.
His body felt wonderful holding her. Until that moment she had not realized just how much this situation had scared her. For some reason, even jailed on their own ship, when in his arms she felt secure. And safe.
They sat like that for a few moments, then Lyman pulled away and headed for the bathroom. She stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The next twenty-seven hours were going to crawl by, that was for sure. She just didn’t believe that they would be forced to sleep the entire way.
A few moments later Lyman lay down beside her and she snuggled against him.
“What are we going to do for twenty-seven hours?” she asked.
“Oh, I have a few ideas,” he said, squeezing her, “for at least as long as we are awake.
She smiled at him, then kissed him hard to let him know she liked at least one of his ideas. And if this kept up, she planned on being awake the entire time.
Then she snuggled against him, feeling safe.
She closed her eyes, trying to make herself relax.
A moment later she was asleep.
And dreaming again.
This time she was alone in her dream, back on the island in the middle of the vast green ocean. There was no smell, no fish, and no Lyman. Just water and sand and palm trees.
She moved to the edge of the water, looking down at her reflection in the glass-like surface. She was naked. Again her hair was long, her waist narrower, and her nose shorter. When they got out of this fish mess, she was going to have to grow her hair long. Clearly these dreams were telling her she wanted it that way.
There wasn’t much she could do about her hips though. Or her nose.
“Nice ass.”
She turned around to see Lyman standing naked behind her.
“You fell asleep as well?”
“Seems that way,” he said. He glanced around. “I like this island better without the smelly fish.”
“Yeah, me too,” she said, moving up to him and pressing her naked body against his.
If this was a dream, it was the best-feeling dream she had ever had. His body hardened against her, his skin seemed to almost melt into hers. Every inch of her skin felt alive under his touch.
His hand went to her breasts, stroking them, making them feel wanted and cared for, then moved to her crotch.
At his first touch the orgasm overwhelmed her as she lost herself in the movement of his fingers.
Back and forth, back and forth.
The orgasm was small and sharp and wonderful, like a sampling taste before a big meal.
Behind them the waves started to roll up on the beach, lapping at the sand, matching the movements of his hand and the pulses of her orgasm.
After her mind cleared, she kissed him hard, letting him hold her up as the ocean calmed.
Then she took him by the hand and led him back toward one of the palm trees where a blanket lay covering the sand. Even in her dreams she was being practical not wanting
sand in places where sand shouldn’t be.
She pushed him down on the blanket and started kissing him, first on his lips, then his neck, then his chest, then his stomach, then his hard penis.
Above them the clouds rolled over, rumbling and boiling like angry watchers as she brought him, and herself, nearer and nearer.
After what seemed like only a few moments, yet at the same time was just the right amount of foreplay, a full hurricane pounded down on the island, whipping the waves up over them, snapping off the palm trees, yet never touching them on the blanket.
She could feel he was about to come, so she intensified her actions with her mouth on him, and her own hand on herself.
As his first explosion filled her, she had her second orgasm.
The wind picked up the island, spinning it through the air over the ocean as wave-after-wave of orgasm shook them both.
On the blanket she could feel nothing but the pleasure of her own orgasm, and her husband’s pulsing hardness.
The moment seemed to last for hours and hours, all wrapped into the seconds, confused as all time is in dreams.
Finally the island dropped back to the water and she crawled up and lay beside him, stroking his chest softly. He held her, not letting her go, making her feel safe and warm and cared for.
“I like this dream,” she said to him.
“I like to dream with you,” he said.
He rolled her over on her back and knelt between her legs. The waves on the ocean around them had just begun to calm when he slid inside her, pushing her down into the blanket and sand with all his weight.
Suddenly a massive wave crashed over them both as she lost herself in the feel of his hardness inside her.
He filled her with life, with energy, with desire.
The wave pulled them off the island and under the water, letting them float to the soft ocean floor as he kept pushing into her, then pulling almost all the way out, then pushing in again.
Above them the storm raged, but the ocean protected them, made them feel safe and secure and together as they made love.
She could feel her husband’s movements getting more insistent, and at the same time another orgasm was building for her as well.
Under them the floor of the ocean pushed them upward, closer to the storm raging just above the surface.
Lyman moved faster and faster, pumping into her.
She met his every thrust, pushing back, harder and harder.
Until finally she was coming again, even harder and more intensely than before.
The ocean bottom shoved them into the storm, thrusting them into the air, up through the clouds, and into the intense blackness of space.
The pulsing of her orgasm matched Lyman’s.
All the stars around them pulsed with her orgasm.
Bright.
Dim.
Bright.
Dim.
The orgasm lasted and lasted, seemingly for all time.
Galaxies crashed, and then were reborn around them.
Stars went nova, new systems were formed.
Finally, as the universe cooled and their orgasms faded, they spun back toward the ocean planet. They dropped onto the island, landing on the beach, on the blanket next to the calming ocean.
She looked up into her husband’s face and had nothing to say. What could you say after sex so great that the Big Bang paled in comparison?
He moved off her and lay down on the blanket. “That was nice.”
“Nice?” she asked, looking over at his smiling face. He was clearly teasing her.
“You want to see nice, try this,” she said. She climbed on him, straddling his hard penis, letting it sink inside her once again, only this time she was in control. And she would take him to parts of the universe neither of them could ever imagine, even in this dream.
She started to move on him, her gaze locked on his, when suddenly he vanished.
She was empty, kneeling on the blanket.
“Lyman!” she shouted, the panic filling her heart.
“Sabrina!”
She could hear his voice, but it seemed like it came from a long distance away.
She stood and looked out over the glass-calm surface of the ocean. Why had he left her? Where had he gone?
“Sabrina!”
His voice carried over the water.
“Wake up!”
The ground shook and then she realized the dream was about to end. She didn’t want it to end, but she had to see what Lyman wanted. Then they could come back. They had plenty of time before they reached Daring Three.
With that thought she opened her eyes.
Lyman was staring down at her, smiling. Beside him stood a strange man she didn’t know wearing a protective suit of bright silver.
“Good,” the man said. “She’s going to be all right.” He turned and keyed in a com-link. “All clear.”
“Am I still dreaming?” she asked, her throat dry.
“No, you’re not,” the man said, smiling at her.
“We’re in orbit over Daring Three,” Lyman said. “We made it!”
“And the fish?” she said, sitting up with Lyman’s help. Every muscle in her body seemed to ache.
“Being taken off the ship now,” he said. “But we had to be awake to make sure we weren’t taken with them.”
“Taken with them?” she asked.
The man nodded. “I’m sure Mr. Fore will explain it to you when he arrives. Something about your minds being lost.”
“Nice of him to mention that possibility,” she said.
The guy in the silver suit laughed.
“So we were asleep and dreaming for twenty-seven hours?” She couldn’t believe that was possible.
“Yeah,” Lyman said. “Strange, huh? But wonderful.” He smiled at her, a twinkle in his eye. Clearly he had had the same dream.
She could still feel the beach, the wonderful sex, the exploding orgasms. She leaned in and kissed her husband as hard as she could. She wanted him to crawl up inside her, to take them both back to the dream.
He kissed her back, hard and passionately, the real feeling of him now even more wonderful than the dream.
The man in the silver suit laughed. “I’ll excuse myself now,” he said. “The effect of the dream will fade with time.”
Lyman broke the kiss and turned to the man standing in the doorway. “How long?”
“A few hours,” the man said.
“Time enough,” Lyman said.
She couldn’t agree more. “Pull that door closed behind you.”
The man in silver nodded. “Will do. Just no sleeping until we get the Elucidations to the surface.”
They both laughed.
“Trust me,” she said. “Sleeping is the farthest thing from our minds.”
As the man in the silver suit pulled the door closed, she turned back to her husband and gave him a long, hard, kiss that was the start of a wonderful adventure in sex, time, and space.
Two hours later, as they lay there in each other’s arms, she asked, “You ever thought of getting an aquarium for the ship?”
His laughter started them both all over again.
Since this issue has all sorts of new features in it, including some sex in science fiction, I figured why not continue to be strange. So I have decided to include my Fiction River stories, one per issue, until I catch up to Fiction River. From that point, it will be one every other month.
I am proud of the stories I had in Fiction River and I wanted them to be here as well as the months go along. “The Lost Riddle” came from the very first volume, Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds.
Poker Boy finds himself taken by his boss, Stan the God of Poker, to Reno on a surprise mission for the team of superheroes. But little did they know that the puzzle wasn’t the mission, but something far stranger.
THAT LOST RIDDLE
A Poker Boy Story
OUT OF THIN AIR I heard Stan, the God of Poker say, “Knock, knock.”
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It wasn’t a bad joke. It was how he asked to come into my private doublewide trailer up in the woods in Oregon. It seems that when Stan teleported, he couldn’t just drop in outside and then use the door to actually knock on. But he was a God, and my boss, so I supposed he could do just about anything he wanted, even make bad “knock-knock” sounds in thin air in my living room. I was only Poker Boy, a lowly superhero. Not much I could say about it.
I pushed aside the cold fried chicken I had been eating while sitting on my old green couch and watching the evening news out of Portland. “Come on down.”
Stan appeared beside my couch and glanced around, shaking his head. He always did that when he came here. He just didn’t understand why someone with as much money as I had (and as many superpowers) would keep an old, 1970s-furnished doublewide trailer in the Oregon Coastal Mountains, even if it was within a half mile of a casino.
It was the green couch and chair and shag carpet that did it for most people, not counting the fake wood paneling on the wall. I figured if I waited long enough the styles would come around.
The last time Stan had come here he suggested I put a felt painting of dogs playing poker on the wall. I was considering it.
My girlfriend and sidekick, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, couldn’t figure out why I liked this place either, now that she knew how much money I really did have. I discovered I had a vast amount when Patty made me go through it and lay it all out for her. I hadn’t bothered to total it in a decade. I just kept adding to it.
Even though I could afford a couple dozen mansions, I liked this old place, even though Patty said it smelled of faint mold and pine trees. It reminded me of my early days as a poker player and superhero. The old furniture and funky smell sort of kept me grounded. I said that to Patty once and she just shook her head and muttered something about how the place kept me actually in the dirt.
Needless to say, we spent most nights in her wonderful and very large apartment in Las Vegas, furnished with the best and most modern furniture, thick carpet, and views of Las Vegas that were tough to beat.
I usually only came up here while she was working and I was waiting for a tournament to start. Instantly jumping from Las Vegas to the mountains of Oregon was one of the many advantages of being able to teleport.
Smith's Monthly #5 Page 2
