Jumpin' Jupiter!

“It'll only be for a couple of days,” the woman assured her husband.

He nodded in understanding even as he held her tight. “I know. You'll be back before we have a chance to miss you, but...”

She snuggled into his warmth. “But?”

“But I really don't want to be alone with the kids that long!” He joked with a fake whine.

She laughed. “Don't worry. I've told them to cause as much trouble as they can while I'm gone.”

His expression darkened. “You would!” He muttered accusingly then groaned. “They're going to keep my on my toes, aren't they?

“Yep,” the woman replied with a grin.

*****

“I'm new here,” a man stated nervously to no one in particular. Several people laughed in response.

“We're all technically new here!” A second man replied with a hint of sarcasm.

“Oh... Right...” The first man muttered in embarrassment.

A new man entered the room, joining the 30 people crowded around a large conference table. He looked around as if assessing each person's character by dint of their appearance. A slight frown indicated that he didn't like what he saw. His uniform indicated that he was a very important person in the military, so it made sense that this bunch of civilians would be outside his comfort zone.

“Listen up,” he commanded abruptly. “You all were chosen to be here for one week. We hope that at the end of the week, you'll have given us that certain something we can't quite figure out, and then you'll all be on your merry way. In the meantime, I expect each of you to act accordingly.”

Previously, about 20 of the people in the room had already known each other, and had chatted away like good acquaintances or even friends. Now, they all scrutinized the 10 unknown people carefully.

The sarcastic man cleared his throat. “Um Sir? We all understand what we're doing here, but what about these people? What kind of clearance do they have, and what is their purpose?”

The important military man practically drilled holes into the man with his eyes as he frowned again. “You are a scientist, Lawrence. One of the most brilliant people to ever work for the government. Can't you figure out for yourself why they are here?”

The frosty look the sarcastic scientist named Lawrence gave the military man told everyone without words that these two had never gotten along. “Yes, but as I am constantly reminded, I should never assume anything unless I am explicitly told to.”

The military man clearly wanted to argue, but couldn't. Instead, he suppressed a frustrated sigh, and answered the question. “You see, Lawrence, these people are also very brilliant – or so I am told. The only difference is that they are regular people. Their job is to bring something different to the table and think outside the box. Therefore, they have the same clearance as everyone here.”

Lawrence nodded slowly, chewing on his lower lip in thought. “I see.”

The military man looked around the room once more, and then returned his gaze to Lawrence. “Good, then get to it!” He turned without even waiting for a response and left the room.

No one dared to speak for almost a full minute, and then a woman started to chuckle softly. “Okay then! I'm Jasna.” She smiled as she directed her attention to Lawrence, who seemed to be in charge, or at the very least understood what was going on here. “Tell me what you want done, and I'll do my best!”

Jasna was a habitually cheerful person. She always wore a smile on her slightly rounded face. Her hair and eyes were a dull brown, but seemed to almost sparkle with a light from deep within her. She was short and chubby, almost plump – just a few hairs shy of being called fat, well clinically anyway. Plenty of rude people called her fat regardless.

Another glance around the room confirmed that most of the people here looked like scientists. They practically wore a uniform of unremarkable clothes covered by lab coats. Some were meticulously well groomed, while others were haphazard, reminiscent of the mad hatter. The 10 “regular” people represented a wide variety of styles. There was a girl who looked like a gang member, a chubby boy who looked like a gaming geek, and a business guru, just to name a few.

Jasna seemed to be the only one eager to get started. The rest all stared at each other, probably wondering what they had gotten themselves into. Lawrence pulled on his hair in frustration until a low extended growl escaped him.

“All right, fine!” He stated decisively. “Here's the deal: We have been brought here by a seemingly benign government agency to work on a highly unique space... ship...” he finished hesitantly.

Jasna laughed. “Okay...”

“No, he's serious,” one of the female scientists confirmed. She twisted a wedding ring around her finger absently, which was clearly a habit of hers when she was thinking. “We've all been working on parts of it for over a year. We only met each other about a month or so ago when the parts were brought together for assembly. We didn't really know what we were working on until then.”

“So... what's the problem?” Jasna wondered curiously.

Almost everyone shrugged helplessly.

“It just doesn't work,” the woman – Mary – finally answered.

“It should!” Lawrence declared resentfully. “There's not a single reason why it won't simply turn on and do what it's supposed to do!”

Jasna looked at her fellow “regular” people. They looked just as baffled as she did! “Uh... I'm not a rocket scientist. I don't know anything about spaceships. What exactly am I supposed to do?”

Lawrence scrutinized her. She wore an ankle length pink skirt and an almost puritanically modest black blouse. The blouse was made out of cotton with plenty of lacy frills, but the skirt seemed to be made out of yarn. This confused him, and he frowned. Who wears clothing made out of yarn?

He formed a sarcastic expression, but rather than say what was on his mind, he simply shrugged. Mary sighed overly patiently, as if she found his behavior both childish and completely in character for him.

“You're here to help us figure out what's wrong. I assume that the only way to do that is for us to go over everything we know and see if you spot anything we're missing.” She pointed to a row of boxes, and then to a large projection screen. “We'll start with the easier stuff, which you each have a copy of, and then we'll dig a little deeper with a presentation.”

A scientist who had previously been silent until now groaned and buried his face in his arms on the table. “This is going to take so much longer than a week! Just bringing them up to speed on the project will take... I don't know... a month?”

The chubby geeky kid – who was actually at least 20 or 21 and named Matt – grabbed the closest 18 inch cubed box, and looked through it. His eyes widened in surprise, and he inspected the outside of the box. “This has my name on it!”

“Of course it does!” Lawrence snapped. “We were told to make copies of the basic information for each of you. We thought we were going to be consulting with scientists even more highly trained than we are!”

The gang girl – speaking with horribly grating slang – surprised everyone a moment later. She had also started rummaging through the box with her name on it, and now blurted out her most burning question. “You've seriously managed to perfect a crystal drive? Does it operate using subspace, wormholes, or demolecularization?”

The scientists all gaped at her, especially Lawrence. His jaw hung so low that a bird could have flown down his throat.

Jasna shook her head. She hadn't even touched her box yet, but even so, she had an opinion. “Nah, demolecularization alone wouldn't really be helpful. Not for an entire ship, and not across the vast distances of space.”

“I disagree! I think that once the ship was dissolved into digitally encoded data, it would be super simple to send it along like any other signal. It could travel unfathomable distances in practically no time,” the gang girl theorized. Several people had trouble understanding her thick inner city accent, but Jasna was right there with her.

“I totally get what you are saying, but there would have to be a receiver on the other end, or else the signal would just keep going forever until it was either caught or lost cohesion,” Jasna reasoned.

The businessman nodded in agreement. “Plus, you have to think of the distances that it would travel. Even with a receiver waiting to catch it, it would lose bits of information as it went.” He then launched into a complicated math equation that calculated the theoretical distance a digital signal massive enough to contain an entire ship and crew could travel and still arrive on the other side more or less intact – assuming the receiver could use the information it had in order to extrapolate the information that was lost.

“No!” The gamer – Matt – almost shouted from a combination of excitement and frustration. He was the nervous one who had spoken first, and everyone could see how hard it was for him to knowingly place himself in the center of attention. “Stop wasting time guessing and read! They are using a system that sort of combines all three. The ship is supposed to create a field – like subspace – that forms a wormhole and sends a demolecularized signal through it almost instantaneously. It's rather like folding a map to bring the departure and destination points together and then jumping across.”

Lawrence went from shocked to impressed. He hadn't expected these regular people to know what a wormhole was, much less the respective merits of different modes of space travel. He pointed to the gang girl, his expression announcing that he still found her purposely torn jeans and jarringly loud shirt to be repugnant.

“You there, what university did you go to?” He demanded.

“College?! You think I can afford college!” She responded incredulously, and then started laughing. “I have to work three jobs just to support my mom and the rest of her kids! If I went to college – even on grants and scholarships – my family would starve and be tossed out on the streets!”

Lawrence was obviously confused. “You haven't even been to school! Then where on Earth did you learn about demolecularization?!”

“The internet,” the girl – Lana – replied with a tone of duh!

The businessman – Edward – nodded as if this made perfect sense to him. “I may be a financial whiz, but my hobby is astronomy. I love trying to calculate the exact distance between us and just about every star that I can see from my bedroom window. I also read up on information about space travel on the internet as a way to wonder what will happen when these theoretical technologies become real.”

“O...kay...” Lawrence muttered. “So you're all here because you are regular people with an amateur interest in space. I can see that. That makes more sense than just pulling 10 people of the street...”

By this point, Jasna had finished looking through the papers, and tossed them aside. “These are so dry that my eyes are watering! Why don't you take us to the ship and give us a tour? I bet it'll help way more than trying to cram a bunch of disconnected facts into our brains.”

Mary, the helpful female scientist, shrugged. “Why not? It certainly couldn't hurt.”

*****

Having come up with no brilliant ideas during their tour, Jasna had suggested that they all sleep on it. Literally. She figured that simply being on the ship would keep them focused and thinking about the mechanics and physics of the ship and how it was supposed to work. Again, no one could come up with a good reason not to, so the entire team of 30 officially “moved” into the ship.

They brought their belongings on board, and chose whichever room they wanted – except for the captain's quarters. Those were off limits. The ship was designed for a crew of 100 and 50 passengers. The crew quarters were designed to be shared, but the passenger quarters were like studio apartments. Except they didn't have showers or toilets.

All of the people on the ship had to share one large shower area – which could accommodate 10 people at a time – and several smaller closet-like rooms that contained toilets. This was necessary because extra piping to bring water to each room would add an enormous amount of extra weight to the ship, and take up wall space needed for the extremely complicated network of wires that ran through the entire ship. It also made it so much easier to recycle the gray water from the showers, segregate the black water – i.e. bodily waste – and ensure that the drinking water never even went near either.

At first, it was tense and stressful, but as the days passed, people relaxed and started having fun. Jasna convinced them all that play bred creativity, and that was what they needed most. By the fifth day, no one had solved the problem yet, but they all felt certain that it could be solved. It was simply a matter of thinking up the right idea.

Matt, the gamer boy, asked people to role-play a bit with him. Volunteers each pretended to be different parts of the ship, and they talked to each other as if the parts were all sentient beings working together to make the ship work.

“That's it!” He exclaimed rather suddenly, and then ran off. Since he hadn't explained anything, no one knew whether or not to follow him, so they continued their role-playing until he returned.

Except he didn't return. He ran straight to the engine room and started typing into the computer. A few minutes later, he shouted though no one was around to hear him. “I was right!”

He ran back to the lounge where almost everyone was relaxing as they waited for inspiration to strike.

“They didn't know how to talk to each other!” He announced.

“What are you talking about?” Lawrence wondered.

“I just went to check it out on the engine control computer. The various systems... they'd never been fully programed to work together to do what they were supposed to.” He ran a hand through his hair. “In a house, you connect electricity to each room, and then plug things – appliances and whatnot – into the outlets. You expect them all to work, and so long as there isn't a short in the wiring, they do.”

He held his arms out wide and waved them around to indicate everything. “This ship is very similar. Everything must be connected together by wiring with no shorts, but it also needs to work together in order to function.”

Jasna chuckled softly. “Oh I get it. You all said it yourself within that first hour in the conference room. Each of you had worked on the parts separately and then brought them here to be assembled. Apparently, no one ever thought to check the OS to see if all the components had the ability to work together.”

Lawrence was shaking his head confidently. “No, you're wrong! We all checked and rechecked the programming to make certain that it all worked together.”

Matt shrugged. “Telling it to work together, and making sure that it knows how to are two different things. I just added a program to link all systems. Well, the ones pertaining to the engines anyway. I told them how to work together, and so now they do.”

Lawrence snorted in disbelief. “Fine, let's go prove you right then!” He marched to the bridge, and everyone followed him.

Those who had been trained for it started up the various systems, such as navigation and engine control. The excited chatter died completely when all systems activated. Previously, they'd merely light up but not do anything. Now, all the monitors indicated that the ship was ready to take off.

A couple of the scientists that specialized in computer programming decided to bring up the new program and see for themselves why it worked.

“Holy Mother of... this isn't just any program! In less than five minutes, this kid managed to create a program that would take any one of us a good six months to work out!”

Jasna looked over their shoulders. “Oh wow! I may not know much about math or programming, but even I can tell that's one complicated piece of work!”

Meanwhile, Edward the businessman was busy annoying the woman – named Cassandra – at the navigation console. “I know this is a random simulation, a pre-test test, so to speak, but seriously! Those coordinates wouldn't get us anywhere!”

“Yes they would!” She insisted. “They're the coordinates for Jupiter, see?” She pressed a button that started a program to verify the destination. It took a few moments, but then started blinking red.

“No, this says that it would get us close, but not really close enough to see it as anything other than a red ball in the distance. Regular maneuvering engines would take... 18 days to get us to Jupiter from there. Here.” He entered a corrected set of coordinates into the computer.

A moment later, the verification program flashed green.

“You're right,” Cassandra admitted, puzzled. “We had a team of astronomers figure out those coordinates using NASA's information from shuttle missions. Why was it wrong?”

He waved dismissively. “NASA has never released the exact information. They simply released estimates. Estimates will get you close, but I've spent most of my life trying to figure out exactly where other planets are in relation to us.”

Suddenly, a computerized voice started talking to them. “Mission parameters accepted. Launch in 10... 9...”

“What?!!!” Lawrence shrieked. “We can't launch from here! We don't have adequate room nor clearance to go anywhere! Abort!” He yelled at the computer as he frantically pushed buttons and tried to stop the ship from destroying itself and them in this insane launch.

Everyone who had access to a control panel started trying to cancel the launch, but nothing seemed to make any difference. Through the window, they could see that the ship was now hovering but they couldn't feel it moving in the slightest. A hazy distortion started to form in front of the ship, growing ever bigger until it was a shinning, light-filled cloud of sorts.

“2... 1...” The computer finished its countdown and then slowly entered the cloud. A moment later, everything went black, and then it was ever so slightly less black. It was dark, but there were stars to provide a faint light.

“Did we just phase through the building?” Someone asked.

“No...” Lawrence answered uncertainly.

Cassandra the navigation woman covered her mouth with a hand for a moment, and then turned to look at Lawrence. “This says... that we are in orbit around Jupiter...”

“How can we be in orbit around Jupiter and not see it?! It's huge!” A normally non-talkative man demanded in disbelief.

“Here...” the man controlling the maneuvering engines murmured. Slowly, the ship turned, revealing the gas giant.

“Oh. My. God!” The quiet man managed to say, and then passed out.

*****

“Are you sure?” Lawrence questioned. He was uncharacteristicly somber without a trace of sarcasm.

“I'm certain,” the man he consulted confirmed. “The crystal drive is burnt out. There's absolutely no way that it can pop us back home again.”

“I'm adding that to our report,” a different man stated, rapidly typing on a computer console.

“So we're stuck here?” Jasna wondered.

“Not exactly,” the man tinkering with the engines replied. “We still have the regular engines, and they're working just fine. We can fly home.”

“That's great!” Jasna cheered.

“Well yes, but...”

“But?” Jasna asked.

“It's like traveling across the ocean on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. We can only go so fast, and it's going to take a long time.”

“How long?” Lana asked with her inner city accent.

“About five years, give or take.”

“And that's if we push the engines to their limit.”

Everyone was silent for a few moments, their disappointment so thick it was almost tangible. Jasna shook her head and grinned.

“But that's still great news! It could be so much worse after all. We could all be stuck in a WV beetle going 60 miles an hour. It would take about 950 years to get home at that speed! This way, we'll be home while were all still young enough to get on with our lives,” Jasna pointed out.

“That's true,” Edward murmured. “I'll have lost quite a bit of profit, I'm sure, but I can easily recover that.” By this, he referred to his investments that would stagnate while he was gone.

Lana hung her head in something about three shades lighter than despair. “In five years, my family could completely starve to death...”

Jasna squeezed her hand in a silent gesture of comfort.

“Ok... I completed our report and am sending it.”

“What good will that do?” Lana asked morosely.

“It's digital data. It travels to Earth in about a half an hour to an hour. It's like sending them a text message. They'll get it and send back confirmation that they received it. At least this way, our families don't agonize over whether or not we'll ever get back.”

“Too bad we can't just text our loved ones directly,” Jasna joked.

“Actually...” Lawrence murmured pensively. “We can.”

“Seriously?” Jasna asked with interest.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, still uncharacteristicly mild in manner. “The ship was equipped with a super transmitter like the best cell tower ever built. We figured it would be easiest to communicate with each other if we just used our own personal cell phones. We can't call anyone on Earth – the time delay would be over a half an hour, making a call impossible – but we can text. Send and receive messages.”

“Cool!” Jasna exclaimed with a grin. She immediately pulled out her cell phone and gave it a try.

Matt glanced around nervously. “Uh... guys? What about food?”

“Don't worry about that,” Jasna assured him with a smile. “We have enough fresh food to last us a few more days, and then there's a ton of packaged rations.”

Lawrence laughed with actual humor. His shock was fading, and he was starting to revert to his normal behavior. “That's the only good thing about this whole mess. They had planned to send an actual crew out to who knows where the moment we fixed the ship, and so they provisioned it for a rather lengthy voyage.”

An hour later, they received a reply to their situation report. Once all the political and military double speak was sorted through, their basic instructions came down to: Come home, and try to fix the crystal drive along the way.

*****

The stranded 30 people – 20 men and 10 women – had a massive amount of free time, and nothing to do. The crystal drive was deemed unrepairable until they got back to Earth. The gamer, Matt, scoured the information about what happened, and realized that it was essentially another computer programing error, and worked on fixing it. Other than that,there wasn't really any work to do, and nothing to entertain them except the handful of books they'd brought with them, so they started talking to each other and hanging out as a group.

Ironically, their favorite two pastimes were arguing – er debating – just about everything, and role-playing. When she wasn't debating or acting, Jasna had a one pound skein of yarn that she'd crochet into something, only to unravel it and start over whenever she grew bored with the pattern.

They all took turns just sitting on the bridge just in case the autopilot malfunctioned or some other emergency occurred. About two weeks into their unexpected journey, Jasna approached the bridge quietly. She was wearing her pink skirt and black blouse again because no one had more than two or three outfits so they all had to wash and rewear their clothing far more frequently than they wanted to.

“God!” A man named Dave roared in frustration. “I haven't gone this long without getting laid since I lost my virginity!”

Matt blushed. It was just the two of them on the bridge, so he felt a tiny bit comfortable admitting: “I haven't gotten laid ever.”

“Never?!” Dave asked incredulously.

Matt shook his head.

“Well good luck losing it here,” Dave wished sympathetically. “None of the women seem open to the idea of casual sex.”

“I thought you were with Mary,” Matt opined.

Dave shook his head. “Believe me, I'd love to get with her, but she's married. Haven't you ever noticed her twist that ring around her finger almost constantly?”

“Now that you mention it, I have,” Matt replied.

“Lana is definitely not married, but a roundabout conversation with her revealed that she considers her virginity more precious than all the gold in Fort Knox,” Dave lamented.

“I didn't think gangsters were your type,” Matt remarked.

“All women are my type!” Dave insisted.

“All of them?” Matt parroted.

“Yep, even Jasna. I actually kind of like the way her chubbiness softens her curves. She was also blessed with a large rack!” Dave extolled.

Matt blushed again. “I noticed...”

“But she's the most... I don't know... unapproachable of them all! She doesn't wear a wedding ring, but she sits by herself like a lonely old housewife wearing her prudishly prim clothes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she was from an Amish family. How could a man possibly ask her for a bit of casual sex?”

Matt shrugged with an expression that it was all Greek to him. “Even if she were a promiscuous slut or a prostitute, I still wouldn't know how to ask that!”

Dave laughed.

Matt was quiet for a minute. “Well, since you aren't with Mary, I feel better about telling you this. I think she's been disappearing with Lawrence for a bit at least once a day.”

“Seriously? Mary?!” Dave asked, suddenly hopeful that he might have a chance with her after all.

Jasna stopped hiding just down the hall, and calmly walked into the bride. “I'm here to take over for a while, if you want.”

Matt jumped guiltily, but Dave gave no indication that they just finished a highly inappropriate conversation about her.

Matt shook his head. “Nah, I'm actually reading through the programming and trying to see if there're anymore discrepancies. “

Dave chuckled. “I think this ship is an excellent example of the classic cliché... too many cooks in the kitchen.”

Jasna laughed. “Or in other words, there were so many people working on parts of the ship that no one was really working on the entire ship!”

Dave nodded.

Jasna shrugged. “Well, if you don't need me to take over here, then I think I'll try going to bed. I've never been able to sleep at night, and now it's like we're stuck in an eternal night, so I tend to be wide awake almost constantly! It's annoying actually...”

Dave nodded. “I'm the same. Hey... how would you like to play a game of chess in the lounge?”

Jasna made a show of thinking this over. “Maybe... chess isn't really my game, but I do know how to play.”

“There's nothing else to do, so why not learn to play it like a pro?” Dave wondered.

“Sure,” Jasna replied politely.

“Later Matt!” He called out with a quick wave.

“If no one else comes to take over later on, come look for me,” Jasna offered. “Provided it's not the rare time I'm sleeping, I'd be happy to give you a break.”

Matt nodded, and waved at them.

Dave chattered on and on about the finer points of chess until he realized that they had made a couple of turns that led in the opposite direction of the lounge.

“Are you lost?” He teasingly asked.

“No,” Jasna answered with a smile. “This is my room. Would you like to come in for a bit?”

“Uh...” Dave hesitated. It felt entirely too good to be what he was hoping for, so he firmly squashed his suddenly rampant lust. “Sure.”

Jasna closed the door behind them once they were inside her room. “I wish I had a snack or something to offer you, but all I have is a jug of water.”

“That's okay, I'm not thirsty.”

“I see,” Jasna murmured, studying him intently.

“What?” Dave wondered self-consciously.

“I was just wondering if I should wait for you to kiss me or if I should just –”

Dave cut her short by pulling her close and devouring her mouth. Jasna whispered a soft moan, and then thoroughly explored his mouth as he explored hers. His hands remained in the relative safety of the nape of her neck because permission to kiss was not the same thing as permission to grope her. Her hands clutched the back of his shirt, and for a long time, they did nothing else.

Jasna pulled back abruptly, and looked around her room. It was one of the passenger cabins, but even so, there wasn't much to it; just a bed, bookshelf, and a small table with a single chair. She didn't want him to think she wanted to progress straight to the end by pushing him onto the bed, so she started slowly unbuttoning her blouse.

“Let me help you with that,” he offered eagerly, and she let him. He spent a good ten minutes fondling her bountiful breasts. Massaging them and sucking on them.

Jasna moaned in pleasure, enjoying the way his touch made her tingle. Eventually, she started tugging on his shirt as a signal for him to remove it. He complied, and then inhaled a small gasp of surprise as she unzipped his pants, pulled them down, and then covered his short hard shaft with her mouth. It fit easily, and she was able to suck on it vigorously.

“Wait,” he begged. “If you continue, I'm going to cum, and I don't want to yet.”

Jasna leaned back and looked up at him.

He grinned wolfishly. “If you take off your skirt, I'll lick you until you scream with orgasm.”

Jasna nodded, and slowly slid her skirt to the floor. This action revealed an old-fashioned pair of bloomers, which she quickly pushed to the floor along with her panties.

Dave laughed. “Cute!”

Jasna shrugged with a flirty smile. She stepped backwards towards her bed, beckoning him to come closer. He followed her eagerly, licking his lips in anticipation.

She sat on the bed and then shifted so that she was on her back with her legs open. Her knees were bent and her feet were flat on the bed. She watched him stare at her wet opening for a moment – as if he couldn't quite believe this was happening – before kneeling next to the bed in front of her.

He lowered his head into position, and then loudly sniffed her. “You smell so good,” he murmured. A moment later, he pressed his face into her, lightly probing her with his tongue.

True to his word, he licked, sucked, and worshiped her until she was screaming into her pillow. Her back curved as her body shook, and she completely forgot how to breathe.

Dave shifted until he was laying on top of her, and then greedily sucked on her breasts for a moment before nuzzling her neck. He chuckled deviously – deciding to talk dirty to her – and then whispered in her ear. “Can I stick my hard dick into your juicy pussy?”

She nodded, tossing her pillow aside now that she no longer sounded like a badly off-key opera singer. He didn't move, but stared at her pointedly. She smiled, and suppressed a small sigh. “Yes. Please pound my pussy with your hard dick.”

“Dirty talk is not your cup of tea, is it?” He asked with a grin.

“No,” she admitted with a laugh.

“Oh well,” he shrugged, and then entered her with a single confident thrust.

“Uh!” She grunted happily. He started out slowly, but continued to increase in speed until it felt like he was trying to win a race. Jasna gasped or grunted with every thrust, clutching him to her tightly. He didn't last very long, but Jasna didn't mind. He had seen to her pleasure first, so it didn't matter to her if he couldn't make this a marathon. Besides, she was starting to feel sleepy.

Dave finished pumping her full, and then snuggled up to her. “Do you mind if I sleep here for a bit?”

She hummed uh-uh to indicate that she didn't mind, already half asleep herself.

“Damn! I should have pulled out,” Dave chastised himself. “I'm so used to using condoms that I completely forgot.”

Jasna murmured sleepily. “Oh well, I'm due to have my period any day now, so it doesn't matter. Besides... I'm borderline infertile.”

“That's good,” Dave mumbled, his head resting on her shoulder with his mouth close enough to her neck that he could lick her if he wanted.

There was no morning, and no schedule to dictate their sleep patterns, but they both woke up just a few hours later.

“Thank you,” Dave praised her with a kiss. “I really needed that!”

“Me too,” Jasna responded with a grin.

“I'm going to grab a bite to eat,” Dave informed her. “Care to join me?”

Jasna shook her head. “Uh-uh, I'm going to go take a shower. It's easier to keep my clothes clean if I keep my body clean.”

He nodded in understand. “Okay. Well... see you later then.”

“See ya,” she returned with a smile.

After he left, Jasna pulled on her fluffy, full-length, crocheted bathrobe, and then walked to the shower room. Considering that 30 people had to share the showers, it was surprising how often no one was in there. For safety reasons, at least half of the women showered together every time, posting a sign warning the men to keep out.

Jasna listened for a moment, and hearing nothing, peeked into the shower room. It appeared empty until she walked completely inside it. She gasped almost silently in surprise.

“Sorry,” Lawrence apologized from the corner. “I just got here. You'll either have to wait for me to finish, or shower with me.” His tone stated that he didn't believe in a million years that she'd ever consider showering with him.

Jasna smiled vaguely and shrugged. She tossed her robe onto one of the benches that theoretically shouldn't get wet even if all 10 showers were running. Without paying much attention at all to Lawrence or his naked body, she picked an empty shower, and fiddled with the controls until it was the perfect temperature for her.

Lawrence softly walked up behind her, wrapped one arm around her waist, and then pulled her into his body. “You shouldn't tease a man like this,” he whispered in her ear. “It's been much longer than we've been on this ship since I last had sex, and I'm not sure if I can control myself.”

He released her and stepped back to send her a clear message that he actually wasn't going to get inappropriate with her despite his implied threat. Jasna still had her back to him, but she turned her head to look him in the eyes. Deliberately, she stepped her feet apart, and placed her hands on the wall. Water from the showerhead poured down her hair and back.

“That looks suspiciously like an invitation,” Lawrence remarked.

“It is,” Jasna stated in confirmation.

Lawrence hesitated for only a moment before accepting her invitation. He placed his hands over hers while he sucked on her neck, and then grabbed her hips to steady her while he slowly worked his way inside her.

Jasna moaned, wiggling her hips to help him. “Wow,” she breathed reverently. “You feel a bit bigger than I am used to.”

He chuckled. “My ex-wife used to tell me I was hung like a horse.”

“Mmm,” she murmured, rocking into him. He reached between her legs, and quickly located her clitoris. Rubbing it made her shiver deliciously.

The longer he continued to rub her, the tighter she got. Soon, he was groaning into her neck.

“Oh you're so tight right now! I'm not going to be able to last much longer,” he warned her.

“That's okay,” she whispered, almost unable to speak. Her whole body started shaking, and she bit her flabby biceps in order to muffle her squealing. Lawrence copied her action by biting her other shoulder as he groaned throatily. His fingers dug into her hips, and he held her firmly steady as he remained buried as deeply as possible. She could feel him pulsing, and it seemed like he poured gallons into her.

He stopped groaning, and then panted softly. “Heh... it seems like it had really built up since I last had sex.”

“How long has it been?” Jasna wondered curiously.

“It's been almost a year since my divorce, and we hadn't had sex for a couple of months prior to that, so quite a long time,” he answered as he pulled out of her.

She turned to face him. “Don't you masturbate?” She asked, idly stroking his shaft, the water washing him clean.

“Not really. I'm normally too busy trying to solve a problem.”

“Such as why the ship wasn't working,” Jasna stated in understanding.

He nodded.

She laughed softly. “Not me. I masturbate almost every day. Sometimes more than once.”

He chuckled suggestively. “Next time, try asking me to lend a hand.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” Jasna grinned, letting her hands roam his body, using washing him as an excuse to thoroughly grope him.

He returned the groping – er washing – and soon they were both clean.

Jasna slipped her robe back on and waved goodbye as she exited the shower room. “Hmm...” she mumbled to herself. “I think I'll be able to sleep some more.” Sure enough, her bed felt almost comfortable as she slipped back into it, and she was out like a light in no time.

Go To Part II