Bodies of Light Read online

  It was difficult to focus when she was terrified. She shut her eyes, trying to concentrate on the calculations.

  All at once, she felt something behind her, despite the insulating layers of the pressure suit. Her eyes flew open. She jerked, trying to look backwards. The sudden motion altered her trajectory, sending her parallel to the ship’s motion.

  What? She gunned her jets, working against the momentum.

  Strong arms clasped her waist. “Do not worry, Christine.” The familiar voice came from behind her. She twisted around to see the silver-haired god from her dream. He offered her a glorious smile as he somehow propelled her in the direction of the ship.

  “You’re safe now,” said the other voice. Christine knew before she turned that she’d find the stocky, bronze-skinned man at her side. He took her arm, swaddled as it was in the multi-layered pressure suit, as though to guide her progress.

  It was only then that she realised that neither man wore any sort of protective garments. Their limbs were sheathed in some clinging, reflective material that showed every detail of their magnificent physiques. Their faces were unmasked. Their heads were bare. In the vacuum of space!

  “How…? What’s going on?” she cried, assuming they could hear her despite her helmet. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “We’re here for you, love,” the heavier man answered. “To take care of you.”

  “In this case, to save you,” added Silver-Hair. Alyn. That was the name he’d used in her dream. Sure enough, they’d brought her back to the open airlock. Alyn pushed her in first, then followed. The burnished man—Zed was his name, right?—brought up the rear. He flipped the switch to close the outer hatch. Pressurisation commenced immediately.

  As soon as levels reached something near normal, before the inner door activated, Christine tore off her helmet. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “You were out in space without suits, without helmets! How is that possible?”

  The airlock spiralled open. Christine stumbled out, almost collapsing on to the bench that paralleled the wall. She didn’t resist as Alyn and Zed stripped off her pressure suit and stored it away. She just sat there, shaking her head, not believing her eyes.

  “I thought I dreamed you,” she whispered. “Am I still dreaming? Am I dead?”

  Alyn crouched at her feet and grinned up at her. “You definitely look alive to me.”

  Zed seated himself beside her, his arm around her shoulders. He nuzzled at her neck, sending tiny shivers down her spine. “You’re certainly still warm…” He rested his palm over her pubis and brushed a finger through her cleft. “Wet, too…”

  Languid desire threatened to overwhelm her once again. Christine pushed it away. Springing to her feet, she backed towards the opposite wall. “No! Don’t try to distract me! I need answers!”

  “What you need is love,” murmured Alyn. He took a step in her direction, but Zed’s hand on his shoulder made him pause.

  “I understand,” said the darker man, sounding serious for once. “You’re a woman of great intelligence. A scientist. You are bothered by the unexplained.”

  “Damn right I am,” she replied. “So—explain yourselves!”

  “What do you think?” Alyn’s voice was gentle. “Do you have any theories?”

  Christine looked from one to the other. Each was perfect in his unique way. Alyn’s grace, Zed’s power—they were practically unearthly. How had they made their way to the ship, without a vehicle of their own? How had they survived outside, without suits or helmets?

  They might be figments of her imagination, but their bodies felt as solid as her own. She could smell them, a paradoxical mix of spring flowers and autumn leaves. She knew if she ran her hand over Zed’s swelling muscles she’d feel the warmth of skin under his thin garment. She guessed that if she gave in to her desire and pressed her lips to Alyn’s ripe mouth she’d taste some intricate bouquet of flavours, far too complex to be imaginary.

  Perhaps the whole ship was an illusion, along with all her memories and sensations. She knew that electro-stimulation research was making rapid progress back on Earth. But she didn’t think it had reached this level, where selective electrical impulses piped into the brain could create a complete, consistent, tangible world.

  So what were the alternatives? Angels? Alyn and Zed certainly fit the bill physically, but if angels were this horny she was sure the stories people told about them would be very different.

  Or aliens? Could Alyn and Zed be creatures from another world?

  “That’s right,” said Zed, nodding as though she’d spoken aloud. “We knew you’d work it out.”

  “But—but you look so human!”

  Alyn came to her side and led her back to the bench. She sank down, too astounded to resist. Seating himself beside her, he stroked her hair with gentle fingers, then turned her face to his. She could feel his breath on her cheeks.

  “We deliberately adopted these forms to make you feel more comfortable, sweet.” His lips captured hers. Christine moaned into his mouth, then feebly pushed him away.

  “What do you really look like?” She searched their eyes. “Tentacles and bug-eyes?”

  Zed took her other hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed the palm, then ran his hot, wet tongue between her fingers. She squirmed, feeling as though he was licking the cleft of her sex instead. “Something like that,” he answered finally. “You shouldn’t worry about it, though.” Still holding her hand, he curled her fingers around the stiff rod of flesh jutting up between his thighs. Somehow his flimsy clothing had evaporated. His cock was a super-heated bar of steel. “We won’t hurt you, Christine, I promise.”

  Christine remembered her ‘dream’, the glory of being stretched by two hard cocks simultaneously. She wondered why she was not embarrassed. When she squeezed Zed’s erection, he swelled further. Her pussy clenched in anticipation and moisture began to coat her thighs.

  Alyn bent to suck her nipple through her T-shirt. The rigid knot felt as though it was about to explode.

  “Touch him too,” Zed instructed and Christine complied. Alyn’s cock was longer and thinner than Zed’s but at least as hard—and equally naked.

  “What’s going on?” she murmured, as Zed claimed her mouth and Alyn slipped his eager fingers into her trousers. Her mind recoiled at the notion of having sex with non-humans. Her body, however, had no such qualms.

  “We’re making love to you,” said Alyn, easing off her clothing.

  “We’re fucking you,” added Zed, biting her nipple until she screamed. “That’s the most important reason that we’ve taken these human forms. So we can make you come.”

  Chapter Four

  Symbols danced before Christine’s eyes, rainbow-hued Greek and Latin characters, subscripts and superscripts. Schrödinger’s equation waltzed with Vernon’s reformulated field expressions. The de Broglie wave function shimmered in and out of focus as it transitioned through various eigenstates.

  Feynman’s path integral slithered through her consciousness. Constants slotted in and out of matrices. Four-dimensional graphs appeared in graceful rotation, displaying successive three-dimensional views.

  It was all so clear. The necessary transformations were obvious. The mathematical notations reassembled themselves into intricate patterns that Christine immediately grasped. The solution was surprising but beautifully simple.

  Triumph filled her. She understood at last how to twist the universe and unlock the gates to other dimensions. Joy suffused her spirit like pure light. Humanity was saved, saved from its own stupid errors.

  A touch woke her. The equations fled, along with her comprehension. She opened her eyes to find Zed bent over her, shaking her shoulder and looking concerned.

  “Why didn’t you let me sleep? I saw it—the way to bend space and make faster-than-light travel possible. Now it’s gone.” She sat up, shaking her head, and glared at the stocky extraterrestrial.

  “You were moaning and thrashing around o
n the bed. Almost like convulsions. We were worried.”

  “In any case, you’ve been asleep for thirteen hours,” Alyn added. In two strides he crossed the floor of Christine’s tiny quarters and seated himself on the bunk beside her.

  “Thirteen hours?” She searched her memory. The pictures it provided made her blush. Alyn’s platinum-crowned head buried between her damp thighs. Zed’s massive erection bobbing in her face. She recalled the salty taste of him, the silk of his skin sliding over her tongue, the metallic tang of his cum. She remembered writhing against Alyn’s mouth as he devoured her pussy. And there was more, much more—endless moments of shameful delight, pinned between them, Zed’s cock buried in her cunt while Alyn’s slender organ plundered her ass.

  Christine remembered it all, far more clearly than her fast-evaporating dream of quantum inspiration. Her body remembered, too. Her quadriceps ached as though she’d done ten kilometres on the treadmill. Her inner thighs were tacky with her juices and pleasantly sore. When she shifted to support her back against the bulkhead, little twinges of pain recalled the outrageous sensation of being stretched and filled in both her orifices. Fresh moisture pooled in her cleft despite her determination to stay aloof.

  “I guess you two wore me out.” She twisted out of Zed’s grasp, still bitter about losing the revelation from her dream.

  “That’s part of it,” Alyn replied, trying to capture her hand. She snatched it away. “I suspect it is also a side-effect of your time in stasis. The stress from your mishap outside the ship may also have had an impact.”

  “So how do you feel now?” asked Zed, stroking his half-erect penis. “We missed you, while you were sleeping.”

  Christine tried to feel annoyed by the alien’s apparently insatiable interest in sex. He was so beautiful, so hard and hungry-looking, so male, that she lost the battle.

  “Rested. Starved. And not for sex,” she added, noting Alyn’s cock was also swollen. “No more sex until I’ve eaten. And until you’ve given me some answers.”

  * * * *

  “Do you eat? Human food, I mean.” Christine looked up from the salad she was assembling from hydroponic lettuce and freeze-dried carrots and tomatoes. Alyn and Zed lounged around the table, observing her every move. The standard coveralls she’d insisted they don did little to hide their strength and grace, but at least she didn’t have to be distracted by their straining erections.

  “We do not need food, but we can eat if we wish,” Alyn replied.

  “Want some of this?” The notion of satisfying her hunger while they watched made her a bit uncomfortable.

  “You should conserve your supplies,” said Zed.

  “Why should I bother? What difference does it make, whether I die in two weeks or two months?” She planted herself in one of the chairs and took a defiant bite out of her soy-cheese sandwich, then speared a lettuce leaf and thrust it into her mouth.

  “Do not speak that way. All life is precious. Yours is especially so, to us.” Alyn’s voice was musical and soothing.

  “And why is that? Why are you here?” Christine folded her arms and leant on the table. “Who are you? If you’re from some other planet as you say, how did you get here? What happened to your ship? It’s time for you to tell me the truth. The whole story.”

  Zed and Alyn exchanged glances. Alyn gave a barely perceptible nod. Zed placed both hands, palms down, upon the table and stared at them for a moment before commencing.

  “Our home planet is located in what you call the Alpha Cygni system—nearly two thousand light years from your planet.” He looked up when Christine gasped.

  “That far! So you must…you must have trans-lightspeed travel!”

  Zed nodded. “Our race has known how to bend space time for centuries.”

  Christine sprang from her chair, reached across the table and seized his wrists. “Oh, Zed! Please, you’ve got to explain it to me!” The brawny alien turned to his companion with a vaguely desperate expression on his handsome features.

  “We are not physicists, Christine,” said Alyn. “But we will share what we can. Please allow us to tell our story in our own way, however.”

  “I’m sorry.” She settled back into her seat. “It’s just that…never mind. Please, continue. So you came here from Alpha Cygni. What happened to your ship?”

  “It, um, it was destroyed in a collision, as it emerged from hyperspace. Vaporised in an instant.”

  “A collision?” Christine spoke slowly, already guessing what was to come.

  “The probability of some other matter occupying the warp exit point is infinitesimal—but non-zero,” Alyn added. “We were extremely unlucky.”

  “The breach. It was you. Your ship…”

  “Yes,” whispered Zed. Once again he could not meet her eyes.

  “You’re responsible…” Christine thought of the nineteen bodies entombed in the non-functional suspension capsules. She tried to summon her anger, but could muster only a deep sorrow. “The crew…”

  “We are truly sorry, Christine.” Alyn’s face was grave. “It was, of course, an accident, but, yes, we are to blame for the deaths of your fellow travellers. Also for the fact that your ship is so far from its intended destination. The cataclysm ripped a hole in the space-time continuum and pushed you—all of us—through.”

  “Oh, God!” Christine buried her face in her hands. How bitterly ironic—the crew of the poor, sub-light Archimedes wiped out by a warp ship!

  A gentle hand stroked her tangled hair. “You understand now, why we are here? Why we must take care of you? Rescue you? Love you?” The pain was obvious in Zed’s voice.

  “We will bear the burden of this tragedy forever, Christine.” Alyn’s wiry arm encircled her shoulders. He pressed his warm body against hers and she half-expected some sexual overture, but he just held her tight while sobs racked her chest and tears trickled down her cheeks. “We will all bear it together.”

  For the first time since her awakening from suspension, Christine wept. She wept for Ravin and Amber and the rest of the brave souls who had sacrificed their lives for the sake of humanity. She wept for herself, lost, alone, a bitter failure, her last chance to redeem herself shattered by the blind randomness of the universe. She even wept for Alyn and Zed, sensing how terrible it must be to carry the weight of such guilt.

  Christine cried until there were no more tears—until her eyes were on fire and her throat was like sandpaper. All the while, the two alien men cradled her in their arms, supporting her, soothing her without words.

  Finally, she raised her head and pinned them with her red-rimmed eyes. “We’ve got to bury them.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Zed agreed.

  “Come on.” She headed for the suspension bay, not waiting to see if they’d follow.

  It was difficult work, wrestling the inert bodies of the crew out of the pods and into pressure suits—difficult both physically and emotionally. The three of them tackled the grim task as a silent, well-coordinated team. No words seemed to be required. Nineteen times they hoisted an unwieldy corpse and carried it through the corridors to the airlock. Nineteen times they watched as a suited figure was ejected from the Archimedes to spin helplessly in space. By the time the last of her former crewmates had been consigned to the vacuum, Christine was completely exhausted.

  “I need to send a message to Earth,” she told Alyn and Zed, her voice flat with fatigue. She stumbled into her quarters and collapsed on her bunk. The two men followed her.

  “You need to rest,” Zed replied. “You can barely walk.”

  “I need to report their deaths.”

  “Do it later,” said Alyn. “Now you should relax. Lie back and let us take care of you.” He unzipped her coveralls.

  Christine giggled, suddenly light-headed, as his fingertips brushed her bare skin. She didn’t have the energy to protest. “I guess you’re right. Given that the message won’t arrive for forty years, a few hours’ delay won’t matter.”

 
“That’s our darling,” Zed murmured. She stretched out naked on the mattress, letting the tension drain from her limbs. For a moment he hovered above her, then he rolled into the space between her and the bulkhead. Aligning his nude body to hers (When had he stripped off his own clothes?), he captured her in his arms, careful not to push her off the narrow bunk. Once again she expected sex—his fingers tweaking her nipples or dabbling between her thighs—but despite the hard lump she felt prodding her hip, he made no move to seduce her.

  The bed wouldn’t fit the three of them. Alyn dragged the plastifoam chair from the desk to the bed and sat down beside her, holding her hand. “Rest, lovely one. Let it all go. We’ll be here for you when you wake. Always.”

  The last thing Christine noticed as she drifted off was that he, too, was naked and erect.

  * * * *

  She slept without dreams, cradled in sweet oblivion. Awareness returned gradually: scents of new-mown grass and fresh-baked bread reminding her of Earth; a rich voice humming an unfamiliar melody; warm flesh pressed against her bare skin. As she became conscious of her body and surroundings, the warmth grew, dancing along her arms and legs, hovering at her breasts and belly, diving into the moist gap between her thighs.

  Christine opened her eyes. She lay in her bunk, on her back. Zed curled against her left side, his body wedged between her and the wall. Alyn had somehow managed to find enough space to stretch out along her right. He had extracted the safety harness from its hatch on the bulkhead, pulled it over their bodies and fastened it to the edge of the bed. The elastic web, intended to keep the occupant from floating off the mattress, effectively sealed the three of them into the narrow bunk.