Page 44 of Tempted by Celestial Bodies

She twists around to look at her home planet again, fully risen now like a small blue sun. The other side of the craft must face the true sun, somewhere far beneath her feet. “It is beautiful,” she says. “I’m glad I saw it like this. But I wish…”I wish I could have seen it with him.

“We did not expect you to be angered by it,” the voice says, softly, and for a moment, it sounds familiar.

Her throat catches, a new ache, different from the rest.

She shouldn’t care this much. It was one night. Wasn’t it? How long did she spend in that bed with him, as he found every world-shattering way to make her come, except for one?

You’d be mine…mine forever,he said.No turning back.

I won’t do that to you.

She turns back.

Then she blinks, because the bed has transformed. It’s a shuttle pod of some sort, curving hatch open and waiting, the bedding inside rucked to fit the new shape contained within a gleaming, nacreous carapace. In its cushioned center, neatly folded, she recognizes the t-shirt and shorts she wore when she arrived.

“Um,” she says.

“There is little time. This will take you home.” The command in the voice presupposes her obedience.

“I’m not getting in there.” But she grabs the t-shirt and pulls it over her head. It smells clean and soft, freshly laundered. She lets the sheet drift to the floor.

“You must.” It’s almost gentle, now. “It is the only way.”

Kat stares at the pod. She casts a glance over her shoulder at the pale blue marble hanging in a vast black space. Vertigo seizes her, a disorienting sense that nothing is as it should be, with the Earth above her head, the sky below. The weight of her world presses at the back of her neck, rank and damp as the breath of a great beast, breathing.

She can go home. See her friends, go on with her life. Act like nothing has changed.

But now, in the cold light of morning, it seems thateverythinghas.

He told me he needed me.

If I leave, what happens to him?

“I saidno,”she says, and takes off running.

“Kaitlyn,wait!”

She ignores the voice, racing away from the outward curve of the dome toward the center. This space can’t represent the whole vessel. There has to be a way to go further in.

And thereis.The dome resolves into the whorled head of a descending spiral. A rounded corridor opens before her, curving gently downward into darkness. Blue-green phosphorescence blooms around her, as if the ship lights the way for her, under some obligation still to ensure she doesn’t tumble down a long slope to her death.

“Go back,” the voice entreats, less booming now that it has a smaller space to amplify it. “This place was not made for you. It’s not safe.”

“Oh, shut up,” she snaps, but when she rounds the next corner, the corridor opens up, and her own voice fails her.

Bodies.They line this long, tiered chamber, tens of them, hundreds of them. Each hangs suspended in a glowing blue-green pod, not so different from the one she ran from. Some are human, or at least humanoid with bestial or monstrous features: curled horns, folded leathery wings, scales or fur, tusks or tentacles…but all naked, and allunmistakablymale.

Kat stares, half in horror, half in fascination at the wide array of phallic diversity. Then she shudders. None of these people areawake.It feels wrong to stare at them, hanging there like slabs of meat, no matter how impressive a display of the meat in question.

“We didn’t mean for you to see them. Not like this.” The voice sounds almost worried. Apologetic, even.

She doesn’t know where to look. “Like what?Flaccid? I’m sure it happens to all the…”Say it.She didn’t want to hurt him, when he said that before. Now... “Monsters. No offense.”

For the first time, amusement tinges the disembodied voice. “Of course it must look alarming. We weren’t certain what you liked, so we may have over-prepared.”

“Wait. You’re saying—these are allyou.”

“Yes,” he—it—they say. “You could have had any of these, more than one. All of them. You only had to ask.”

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