Day of the Dragonstar (15 page)

She heard herself speak his name softly as they parted briefly to take a breath. “You wanted this, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” he said awkwardly. “But I didn’t know about you . . .”

Becky smiled. “Well, now you do!” She kissed him, and this time her tongue slipped past her lips, probing, teasing. She lay back against the large, smooth rock behind, sinking into the spongy ground cover, and Ian settled down beside her. The expression on his face was one of excitement and fear, and Becky understood how he was feeling—the awkward passion of the very young, or perhaps the very guilty.

No time for guilt now, she thought. Tomorrow we may be dead . . .

Reaching out to the zipper of his jumpsuit, she pulled it down. The fabric peeled away from his bronze skin, the firm pectoral development and taut stomach. As though hypnotized, Becky watched the zipper descend, revealing Ian’s mesh briefs, his swelling penis beneath them. He carefully slipped out of the sleeves of the garment and pulled her close to him, and she let the tight curls of his chest hair tickle her face. He was a very masculine man, hard, firm, sinewy. In that respect he was like Phineas, although he was taller and heavier than her lover.

He kissed her again, longer this time, and with less of the tentativeness of before. He unzipped her jumpsuit with confidence, pausing to tease her softness with a brief touch before continuing, until it was down to its stop just above her pubic mound. As he slipped her jumpsuit away from her shoulders, she felt a new tingle of exhilaration rush through her. God, it had been so
long
wearing these clothes! How good it felt !o be free of them! She undid her brassiere, and let him lift it away from her, as though they were participating in an age-old ritual. She smiled to herself at the thought—perhaps it was just that. To feel her small, firm breasts free from the constraints of the halter, to feel Ian’s touch upon them tenderly, gave her another rush of passion. She could feel her nipples growing hard in the anticipation of his touch, the tingly God-l-can’t-stand-it pleasure of them being moved easily, playfully under the flick of his fingers . . .

And then he was pulling her up, silently gesturing that she get to her feet. Slowly she rose with him, embracing him as the sounds of the primitive world thrushed and hummed around them. She was losing contact with the outside world, the harsh killing world of their prison, falling into the hot whirlpool of desire. Kneeling, Ian unbuckled their LS boots, and she kicked hers away as she stretched out, arching her back, feeling air play upon her wet shining flesh. He put his hands on her waist, sliding them down to her bare hips, and she could feel the surrender of the jumpsuit’s dampness, clinging but falling away from her. In one smooth motion, her panties and the leggings of the suit fell away from her and she stepped out of them.

She was suddenly extremely conscious of her nakedness, not merely to Ian, but to the hostile gaze of the primeval world. It was in itself an exciting sensation. It was a daring, exhilarating gesture. A defiant thing of fear and desire. And now he was standing before her, his own jumpsuit having dropped away, and for a long moment they simply stood staring at each other. First into each other’s eyes, then dropping downward, taking in the raw, primitive beauty of their bodies enveloped in the lush green growth of the jungle.

Ian’s body was shining from the patina of sweat which coated him like a sweet oil. He took his breath in deep gulps, and with each breath, tiny muscles in his chest and neck rippled. He was a beautiful man, and she hoped that he found her body as exciting as she found his. She moved to him and they embraced, and she could feel the hot column of his penis pressing and throbbing against her soft stomach.

Still embracing, they sank once again to the floor of the jungle, feeling the smooth sponginess of the ground cover tickle their bare skin. Insects buzzed and cavorted about them, perhaps excited by the strong emissions of sexual scents they were giving off, but Becky didn’t care.

He ran his index finger down the center of her body, pausing to tease and tantalize until he reached the edge of her pubic hair. She arched her back, raising her mound up to meet his touch, and she could feel her juices overflowing already, running down the crack of her ass. And when he touched her, merely
touched
her there, at the source of her wetness, she exploded, coming so strongly that her vaginal compressions were almost painful. Oh God, it was never like this!

And then he was letting his fingertips lightly dance upon her softest parts, bringing her up and over again. He kissed her there, playing with her lips with his tongue until she simply wanted to die. Time had become a forgotten thing, and she floated in a netherworld of total, endless feeling.

She finally pleaded with him to stop, to enter her and fill her with all of him. Slowly he reacted, again teasing her, only this time with his penis, until finally he was inside her, slipping and sliding without effort, and she felt like a fountain, a geyser of passion and total wetness, total heat.

When he came, she could feel the muscles of his upper arms, which held her, tense like corded rope, straining yet holding back from crushing her. He cried out and the sound seemed to linger in the damp stillness, and Becky lay there savoring it, thinking that Ian Coopersmith was one very beautiful man . .
.

THE PHONE AT
Doctor Mikaela Lindstrom’s desk rang with a strident sound of urgency. Looking up from her proofreading of an annual report to. the Board of Directors, she answered the phone with a distracted air.

“Hello?”

“Mikaela?” asked the very familiar voice.

“Yes, what is it, Matte?” She could detect a tension in his voice, even though he had only spoken her name. It was as though she could feel the nervous energy in the silence of the phone line.

“I’ve got to talk to you . . .” said the male voice. “I’ve got something to tell you, so that . . . so that you won’t be too shocked when you get home tonight . . .” The man paused to suck in a desperate-sounding breath.

Mikaela’s’ warning sensors immediately went off in her mind. She and Matte had not been getting along terribly well lately, and he was a high-strung, dramatic artist-type, who had several times threatened suicide since they’d met. Her heart began beating at double-time and her hands were instantly perspiring.

“Matte! What’s wrong? What is it?”

“I had to do it, Mikaela . . . I couldn’t stand it any longer!”

“Matte, stop this obscure talking! What is the matter? What’re you talking about?!” She fought to keep panic from creeping into her inflection.

“AII right, I’m sorry, Mikaela, but this is hard for me to explain.” There was a long pause, and she could hear the flare of a match, of a cigarette being ignited, drawn upon, and exhaled. She decided that she would wait him out. “After you left for work this morning,” he finally continued, “I had some friends come over. They helped me. They helped me to move my things out. I’m leaving, Mikaela. I’ve got to get away from you . . .”

The words poured out of him in a rush and struck her with the force of a physical blow. Something was forming a lump in her throat, threatening to cut off her breath. “Oh, Matte . . .” she heard herself saying. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me what you were thinking? What you wanted to do? . . . Where are you now?”

“l
couldn’t
tell you,” he said sadly. “I was afraid of having another scene, Mikaela. I can’t take any more of that kind of thing. Staying up into the middle of the night, crying jags, making up when we both know that everything was not settled . . . I just had to get out!”

“Where are you, Matte? Do you want to meet somewhere and we can talk about it?”

“No, no meeting . . . no talking. Not now anyway. I’m at a friend’s house, but I don’t want to tell you where. I . . . I don’t want to see you for a while, Mikaela. It’s just too hard for me to handle.”

She paused and took a deep breath. “Did you take
everything?”
It was a stupid question, but it had just come out of her.

“Yes. One of my friends brought a truck . . .”

“Listen, Matte, I know that it’s been hard for us,” she said, not thinking of what she would say next. “We’re so different, you know . . .”

“The difference between art and science,” he said with a half-hearted laugh. Then a pause before continuing. “Look, Mikaela, I really don’t want to talk about it right now . . . I just want to be alone for a while. I’ve got some thinking to do. I just didn’t want you to come home tonight and find all my stuff cleaned out, find the apartment . . . like it is now. I just couldn’t do that to you . . .”

Her impulse was suddenly to lash out at him, to attack him for pulling such a noble bit at the end. He runs off like a rat escaping a sinking ship, and then he tries to make it seem he’s doing me it favor by calling to warn me!

But she said nothing like that. She too was weary of the relationship, the tempestuous nature of their lives together. She was too cool and rational, and he was too sensitive, too explosive.

“All right, Matte, if that’s what you feel you must do, I certainly can’t stop you. I’m shocked, but not really surprised, I guess. There were some things about us that were very good, but I know there were other things that were quite bad. Perhaps you are right to do this thing. Perhaps you are the stronger of the two of us. I would probably have let it drag on indefinitely.”

He sighed on the other end of the line. “The sex, Mikaela. The sex was good, but that was all. He laughed mockingly. “Despite what the rest of the world might think, we Swedes don’t live on sex alone, right?”

Mikaela could say nothing. She listened to the fidgeting silence at the other end of the line.

“I think I’d better go, Mikaela. Good-bye . . .”

“Will I see you again?” she asked, but the connection had already been broken. She replaced the receiver to its cradle, and stared at the papers on her desk—for an instant her mind was a total blank. No thoughts. Only feelings. Feelings of loss, of disorientation. Pain.

The door to her office opened and her secretary peeked in. “I’ve got those articles you wanted Xeroxed, Doctor Lindstrom. Do you need anything else before I go to lunch?”

Mikaela continued to stare at the clutter on her desk “No thank you,” she said softly. “That will be fine for now.”

The door closed and Mikaela was alone again. Alone. The word flared brightly in her mind. She would go home to her apartment and find it defiled, Parts of it ripped out forcibly and the empty spaces looking like open wounds. She was a strong-willed woman, and although she had deep feelings and strong convictions, she sometimes had difficulty showing them. It was shyness more than being aloof or condescending, but in social situations, she was quiet and not very effusive in her warmth or eagerness to entertain.

She loved her work in paleontology, and had been a spectacular student, researcher, and author as her young career had taken her quickly to an upper echelon position with the Institute for Biological and Paleontological Research. Before she had begun her thirtieth year, she was respected throughout the academic world as an authority on prehistoric life, particularly the dinosaurs. Her career and her future were assured, but she wished that her personal life had even half the signs of such stability.

Although she was not afraid of men, or sex, or any of the binding commitments that a one-to-one relationship demanded, she had been unable to find the right person with whom to share her life and interests. Her latest attempt had been Matte Elster, a twenty-eight-year-old abstract painter, who had met with only limited success in the whirlwind competitive circle of the European avant-garde. He would have never admitted it, but her success and
his
failure in their chosen fields was one of the largest problems in their faltering relationship. Male ego, thought Mikaela, it was such a fragile and precious thing, and yet the world seemed to run on wheels that were greased with it.

There came to her a feeling of terrible emptiness, and she knew that she didn’t want to go home and face the physical emptiness of her apartment. She wanted to run away. Away from everything. Her job, her duties, her friends. It was a desperate feeling that was stronger than she had ever felt before. Whenever this happened, and it had happened several times before, she came to realize an important facet of herself—each time a little more emphatically. The most important thing in her life was not her research, her success, and her security. It was a far simpler thing, but far more difficult to attain—the love and respect of someone intimate.

Shaking her head, she cut off the daydreams and returned her attention to the papers on her desk. She wondered if she would have the strength to get through the day, through the dull busy-work of the annual report to the Institute’s heavyweights.

The phone rang suddenly, and she paused before answering it, thinking that it might be Matte, calling to say that he had reconsidered, that he was sorry. She considered what she would say to him, and whether it was all worth it in the long run.

“Hello,” she said tentatively. “This is Mikaela Lindstrom.”

She did not usually answer so formally, but she wanted Matte, if it
was
Matte, to see that she was business-as-usual.

“Doctor Lindstrom, this is Christopher Alvarez. I am one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the IASA—the International Aeronautics and Space Administration.”

Mikaela was surprised to hear the crisp tones of the old gentleman on the line. She was familiar with his name, but had never met him. She was confused and could not imagine what such a high international figure would be calling her for. “Yes, Mr. Alvarez, what can I do for you?”

“Quite a bit, I hope, Doctor. Something has come up which is a very sticky problem for us here at the Administration and we may be needing your expertise. I have already cleared this with your superiors at the Institute, and all I now require is your acceptance of the mission.”

Mikaela cleared her throat. “Mission? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Quite simply, Doctor Lindstrom, we would like to have you on the next shuttle to our Lunar Base of Operations at Copernicus.”

“You mean on the
moon?
You want to fly me to the moon?” Mikaela almost laughed as she mentally recalled the old love song of the same words. In light of what had just happened in her personal life, it sounded even more absurd. But still she was shocked and mystified by the proposition.

“Yes, indeed, Doctor. We are assembling a team of specialists in various fields, and yours is one that will be vital to the success of the mission. I am afraid that I cannot say anymore on the telephone, because of security requirements, I’m sure you understand.”

“Oh yes, of course . . .”
The moon! They want me to go to the moon!

“Well then, if you are interested in my somewhat mysterious offer, I would like you to be in our Headquarters Building in Brussels tomorrow morning at 10:00 A.M. We will be having a briefing session at that time, at which point you may officially accept or decline our offer. Can I count on seeing you there?”

She paused, brushing a wisp of blond hair from her face. Things were happening so fast that she was not thinking correctly. Her curiosity was raised to the
n
th power and now she could do nothing but accept, believing that everything had indeed been approved by the Directors of the Institute. She told Mr. Alvarez as much, and he promptly ended the conversation, sounding very pleased with it all.

Mikaela replaced the receiver and again her mind was a confusing whirlpool of thoughts. Swiveling in her chair, she looked out the window of her office, which overlooked the city of Stockholm. She looked past the modern office buildings and intrusive geometric shapes to the island in Lake Malaren where the picturesque, old part of the city remained placid and punctuated by tile rising spires of stone cathedrals. Such a beautiful city, she thought, and how different it would be on the rnoon.

Could she withstand the claustrophobic lifestyle? Perhaps. Could she pass up such an opportunity—a chance to do exactly what her less rational side desperately wanted, that is, to
get away
from everything? No. It did not matter what the IASA wanted with her; she would go to their meeting and she would accept their offer. Better that she simply leave everything for a while. Restructure her feelings and her priorities, and start over. After all, she thought, I am young and attractive; it’s not the end the world.

Smiling for the first time that morning, she picked up the phone and dialed the Director’s Office. It was time to make some of her intentions public.