For those with vivid imaginations. Also for those who want to prove NASA wrong. You can do it in zero gravity! You just have to know how…

***

She’d had enough. Morganna Grey’s body screamed, her taste buds hungered; she needed to be heard, fed, and adored. Somehow being in orbit around an alien world made stepping out of her timid skin easier, unleashing something just as wild and unknown as the planet visible from the space station’s port-side windows. Far from home and beyond the boundaries of her normal reality, she felt like a different person—almost like an alien herself, relying on and responding strictly to her most primal needs.

Having slept, eaten, bathed, and groomed, Morganna’s last and strongest need was sex. Sex seemed like it was everywhere, calling out to her. It was written on the brass wall plates with the station’s model number: PEN-15. Penis. Sex mocked her each time she looked down on the planet below: Phornic-8. Fornicate. Sex beckoned every time she thought of her sole companion on the station, the rest of the minimal crew having gone to explore the plethora of life on Phornic’s Earth-like surface.

“Captain?” Morganna closed the door behind her as she entered the cramped equipment bay, gripping the railing to pull herself along in the zero-gravity environment. Raymond Meyers was crouched near the floor, busily pressing buttons and failing to shift his gaze to respond. She hated that. By now she deserved some basic eye contact.

His voice was the wrong kind of hard, uptight and guarded while remaining polite. “What does my first officer require?”

Morganna’s toes pushed off the wall, propelling her body forward through the air. She grabbed a handgrip on the ceiling to Raymond’s left, slowing her momentum. She floated above him, watching him flip a sheet of paper and press another button with his thumb. The console sprang to life, spitting CO2 readings, oxygen levels, and fuel status in a symphony of data.

“Look at me, Captain.”

He didn’t. He almost never did. In the early days of their service together, she’d thought he was too formal or task-oriented for niceties. She’d seen him struggle with more than a quick glance in her direction, and he’d take hesitant steps back when in her presence, leading Morganna to think he disliked her. But over time she realized it must be something else; he had no trouble communicating eye to eye with any other members of their crew. It wasn’t until she’d felt his piercing stare on her back and caught his quiet observation from her peripheral vision that she understood. Raymond only looked at her when he thought she wouldn’t notice, and not in the way a superior officer regarded someone from his team; it was the way a man looked at a woman.

Raymond grabbed a tethered wrench and brought it close to his task to adjust a pressure gauge. “If it’s not pressing, let me be.” A grunt and turn...

Protocol