From WINDSTREAM by Sara Lansing, meet Drs Alex Layton and Mai Ling Reed, on ‘shoreleave’ from the city-sized airship Montgolfier I, visiting with vulcanologists studying an eruption in the Solomon Islands. The party have taken shelter at a resort hotel out of the line of volcanic fallout, among thrillseekers and spectators watching the fire-fountains in the night, but it seems an assassin stalks the scientists. Exhausted, the pair retire for an uneasy night...
Fatigue was a companion now. They had been awake over twenty hours, since the airship had sighted the volcano from hundreds of kilometres out. They soon they took their leave of the vulcanologists and ambled back to their room.
Even now Alex was on her guard, and checked the place carefully before she locked up behind them. It seemed almost funny to take such precautions after daring fate, and Mai Ling found herself laughing for no reason she could name. The mild hysteria took a few moments to settle. She sat on the end of a bed and wrung her hands, a gesture Alex had not seen in years.
“Hey ...” the Australian whispered, putting a hand over Mai Ling’s to still their motion. “Gently, sweetheart. Gently ...”
“Somebody tried to kill us,” Mai Ling replied, just as softly.
“Maybe,” Alex cautioned, sending an arm around her wife. “We can’t be sure. And we knew we were gambling our lives when we decided to swim against the current.”
“I know.” Mai Ling closed her eyes. “It’s easy to be a bold idealist when you’re 60 kilometres up in the sky. Down here, a bullet is very final. And down here is where the politicians live.”
“Not really.” Alex smiled as Mai Ling opened her eyes. “They have their own ivory towers ... their own concerns ... they have very little to do with ordinary people, except at election time. They understand people. That’s what makes them politicians.”
“Alex, are we offering up our lives futilely?” The question was level, quiet, haunted.
Finding an answer took time, but when Alex spoke it was with a sunny smile. “No one can second-guess tomorrow, darling. And no one can play our game better than we ourselves. We wouldn’t have started it if we didn’t think we could finish it as well.” She squeezed Mai Ling’s shoulders. “Remember how we felt when we reached that last flag and looked at the volcano, up close?”
“Oh, yes.” A tiny sparkle glittered behind Mai Ling’s eyes.
“Remember the heat, that wind, the sound of it. Wasn’t that the same adrenalin rush as the first time you stepped out of the ship in a pressure suit, at 65,000 metres?”
“Yes. No different at that level.” The Eurasian girl smiled now. “I know where you’re going with this. You’re saying, enjoy the ride ... feed on the danger. Let it happen, stay on the horse no matter what.”
“Exactly.” Alex let her lips trace Mai Ling’s neck, felt arms go around her back, and in another breath they were grappling with an excitement that had been too long on hold. Bravado could carry them only so far, they were both wanting it badly. The unreality of wagering their lives, the future and the world as they knew it, generated a hot, urgent wanting.
When their lips parted Mai Ling panted, “I need it so bad ...”
They relaxed for a few moments, shrugging out of jumpsuits and underwear, kicking sport shoes across the room, and Alex unzipped her pack to find something. “I had a feeling we might get the chance while we were off the ship, so I brought along our old friend just in case.”
Mai Ling left one lamp burning by the other bed and lay back, panting shallowly, heart pounding. The beat made her small, high breasts quiver as she watched Alex bring out the makings of sex. A silver drawstring bag opened and Alex produced a tube of lubricant, then drew out their double-ended penetrator. The size and form of a generous double-erection, it was molded in softly yielding wine-red plastic, glass-smooth, translucent; and was fitted with elastic straps that fit either of them.
Alex’s hands trembled faintly as she unscrewed the tube and ran a bead of clear gel the length of one erection, and Mai Ling watched with a fascination, ever-fresh, as her partner worked the gel around the dully-gleaming shaft, then put it to her lower lips, found the channel and began to take it in.
That something so prominent could glide so swiftly within a living woman’s body never failed to amaze and excite them both. What seemed only moments later, Alex was wiping her fingers and closing velcro about her haunches. She was panting also now, moving carefully as she handled the sensations of the cool, deep presence. She reached down to lubricate the other end, her gleaming, rampant erection. At last she set aside the tube — standing with a flushed face and rigid nipples, presenting an image that confused the sexes in delicious schism — and Mai Ling lay back and spread her arms.
Alex was never more conscious of the difference in size between herself and her partner than when they came together. She had 15 kilos on Mai Ling, and was never so abandoned that she let her weight hurt her partner. She took herself on her arms and waited a beat as Mai Ling spread her legs wide, found the penetrator and eased it into herself. Alex mewled with pleasure as the member filling her moved unpredictably, then she began to bear down gently, twitching her hips.
The lack of tactile feedback made it somewhat guesswork, but she had learned to read, through the walls of her vagina, what was happening at the other end of the plastic shaft, and she eased slowly as Mai Ling arched her back and closed her eyes.
The smaller woman was stretching, stretching to accommodate the member, relaxing from her normal state to one of total arousal. When at last Alex felt her belly smooth against that of her partner, she also relaxed for a few moments.
They began to kiss, mouth exploring mouth, and Alex felt arms around her shoulders, nails that scratched slowly down her back. This was the prelude, and she felt her hips begin to move almost of their own accord. Every thrust into Mai Ling was a thrust into herself: the most incredible duality the mind could imagine, to be both active and receptive in the same motion. She had done something similar with a boyfriend long ago, but this was not a transitory experiment ... this was the very way it was done. Slowly her rhythm built, and Mai Ling panted as her features flushed with pleasure.
The same feelings were bombarding Alex’s brain and body. She felt the warm knot somewhere in her abdomen tensing like a fist ... or, she thought, like a flower awaiting the sun’s touch to open and spread luminous petals throughout her body. But reaching that first blink of sunrise was the mountain they climbed. Her back tensed up with thrusting, and she relaxed for a few moments, rising on her arms and seating deeply inside Mai Ling.
As they rested, Mai Ling reached up to stroke and fondle Alex’s breasts. They were heavier than her own, and swaying deliciously. Then she bent her neck to apply her lips to each hard, pink-brown nipple in turn, sending electric shocks through Alex which made the bigger woman flinch and gasp, driving the penetrator randomly back and forth.
Soon Alex began to thrust again, and felt Mai Ling’s hips rise in return strokes, sending the other member deeper into Alex. Then Mai Ling flung her legs around Alex’s back and dragged their hips together in a firm lock that made them both gasp and shudder. Now thrusting was limited. Mai Ling was making it last longer, and they wrangled breathlessly for minutes more, sweaty and supremely aware of each other’s chemistry.
Closer, closer ... the sun was ready to rise, the trick was making both suns rise together. In the glow of the lamp Alex saw Mai Ling’s features in an open-mouthed grimace of joy as her nervous system approached overload point, her lips dark with the flood of blood that washed out from her inner circulation.
Alex raised the tempo, hitting her peak at the fastest thrust her own body would tolerate. The lubricant was almost spent, friction was firing off nerves throughout her pelvis, and with her great shout of elation the sun broke the horizon. As she felt the heat of its rays, her last hope was that Mai Ling had reached daylight also, then she lost all objectivity and went spinning like a leaf blown on the wind, drifting in the sky for an unknown time.
When Alex blinked into the lamplight she found herself relaxed over Mai Ling, and their hands were entwined She lifted her weight at once, and Mai Ling opened her eyes, her face in the repose that came only after she also had scaled the heights.
“Thank you,” the Eurasian girl whispered, and drew Alex’s head down for one final, sweet kiss of gratitude.
***
Dawn was a silver gleam through the blind when Mai Ling stirred. She was cuddled into Alex’s arms; they had a single sheet over them in the warm tropical air, and had slept the rest of the exhausted since they had showered in the early hours. For a moment Mai Ling wondered what had roused her, then she heard hurrying feet, and somewhere an engine was started. Then another ... the grunt of diesels from the marina, and the sudden whine of jets from the helipad.
She stirred, found Alex’s hand around her middle and squeezed it. “Honey, wake up.”
Before Alex blinked awake they heard a heavy tread on the step of their chalet and an urgent knocking.
‘Leblanc’s’ voice was in their ears at once. “Mademoiselles! Doctor Reed, Doctor Layten, wake up!”
Alex sat up at once, raked her hair from her eyes and saw 6.58 on the digital clock. “François, what is it?”
“The wind has shifted again, the hotel is being evacuated!”
The pair were out of bed in a blink. The lamp went on as they groped for underwear and jumpsuits. “We’re coming,” Mai Ling called. “Two minutes!”
“That’s about how long you have!” he replied. “The planes are coming from your airship, we see their lights. Everyone is to be evacuated, north to Anoano!” He rapped on their door to emphasis his point. “Quickly!”
They closed the velcro of their shoes with quickfire movements, threw every lose item into their packs and found hair-ties and sunglasses as they kicked open the door.
The sight that greeted them was incongruous, for it was snowing ... a fine fall of volcanic ash had begun, a blanket of white that settled over palm trees and beach, a bizarre Christmas scene in the tropics. The ash had already coated the swimming pool’s waters, erased the lines of the tennis courts, and was being scuffed away from the decks of boats as they put out of the marina.
The staff were looking after the guests as desperate headcounts were made, and all the while the yellow air-cabs raced up and down the coast to the villages. The plume had left the north end of the island untouched, and the cabs would shuttle people north in a series of rapid jumps.
Meanwhile, the running lights of the Icarus and the Pegasus blinked in the early morning sky, approaching from the airship eleven or twelve kilometres downrange from the hotel. The planes were running in the shadow of the fallout; the rising sun was on the other side of the entire eruption and it would be hours before the west coast saw full daylight.
The girls headed for the helipads and found ‘Leblanc’ and his people lugging gear from a nearby chalet. “What’s the plan?” Mai Ling called over the rumble of engines.
“We’re driving north,” ‘Leblanc’ called back. “It’s safe a few kilometres up the coast, and we need to reestablish our monitoring base, this was always our intention.” He put out a hand and shook with each of them, bobbing his head in an old-fashioned bow of courtesy to ladies. “Safe journey, mademoiselles, and safe tomorrows. This is where out paths part, I’m afraid.” He nodded into the southern sky. “Your carriage awaits!”
Moments later, the two VTOL shuttles from the Montgolfier vectored their wings as they came into the hover. They waited for a cab to clear the airspace, then alighted on the helipad in formation, and their fanjets shut back to a whistling roar.
Alex and Mai Ling saw Brigit in one cockpit, Iryna in the other. The hotel staff had marshalled a line of guests in the access area. Before they could move forward, Brigit used the aircraft’s loud-hailer, a hand at her headset.
“Doctors Reed and Layten first aboard, please. Then we can manage fourteen more on this run. We’ll be back in twelve minutes. From the looks of the fallout two, maybe three more trips is all we have time for. Move it!”
Alex and Mai Ling jogged toward the accessway, slithering a little in pumice underfoot. The air was hot and heavy. The stink of chemicals was starting to burn their noses, and when Alex was snatched sideways into a wire fence she thought Mai Ling had stumbled into her. But Mai Ling had a hand out to haul her back to her feet, and together they passed the line of guests. They ignored the angry shouts, the raised hands and shoving as they were perceived to be queue-jumpers, and ducked through to the pad.
They stepped aboard the Icarus and scrambled into seats, pushing their packs into the stowage bay. Alex hung in her seat, looking back into the bay for a long moment, then turned and closed her harness as fourteen hotel guests were counted off and passed through to the two aircraft.
Mai Ling caught her eye and knew something was wrong, but as they held on for the copilot to check that all harnesses were closed, and seal up the hatch, Alex shook her head faintly.
Later, was her message. She had no intention of telling Mai Ling here and now that a bullet had just gone through her backpack.
Fatigue was a companion now. They had been awake over twenty hours, since the airship had sighted the volcano from hundreds of kilometres out. They soon they took their leave of the vulcanologists and ambled back to their room.
Even now Alex was on her guard, and checked the place carefully before she locked up behind them. It seemed almost funny to take such precautions after daring fate, and Mai Ling found herself laughing for no reason she could name. The mild hysteria took a few moments to settle. She sat on the end of a bed and wrung her hands, a gesture Alex had not seen in years.
“Hey ...” the Australian whispered, putting a hand over Mai Ling’s to still their motion. “Gently, sweetheart. Gently ...”
“Somebody tried to kill us,” Mai Ling replied, just as softly.
“Maybe,” Alex cautioned, sending an arm around her wife. “We can’t be sure. And we knew we were gambling our lives when we decided to swim against the current.”
“I know.” Mai Ling closed her eyes. “It’s easy to be a bold idealist when you’re 60 kilometres up in the sky. Down here, a bullet is very final. And down here is where the politicians live.”
“Not really.” Alex smiled as Mai Ling opened her eyes. “They have their own ivory towers ... their own concerns ... they have very little to do with ordinary people, except at election time. They understand people. That’s what makes them politicians.”
“Alex, are we offering up our lives futilely?” The question was level, quiet, haunted.
Finding an answer took time, but when Alex spoke it was with a sunny smile. “No one can second-guess tomorrow, darling. And no one can play our game better than we ourselves. We wouldn’t have started it if we didn’t think we could finish it as well.” She squeezed Mai Ling’s shoulders. “Remember how we felt when we reached that last flag and looked at the volcano, up close?”
“Oh, yes.” A tiny sparkle glittered behind Mai Ling’s eyes.
“Remember the heat, that wind, the sound of it. Wasn’t that the same adrenalin rush as the first time you stepped out of the ship in a pressure suit, at 65,000 metres?”
“Yes. No different at that level.” The Eurasian girl smiled now. “I know where you’re going with this. You’re saying, enjoy the ride ... feed on the danger. Let it happen, stay on the horse no matter what.”
“Exactly.” Alex let her lips trace Mai Ling’s neck, felt arms go around her back, and in another breath they were grappling with an excitement that had been too long on hold. Bravado could carry them only so far, they were both wanting it badly. The unreality of wagering their lives, the future and the world as they knew it, generated a hot, urgent wanting.
When their lips parted Mai Ling panted, “I need it so bad ...”
They relaxed for a few moments, shrugging out of jumpsuits and underwear, kicking sport shoes across the room, and Alex unzipped her pack to find something. “I had a feeling we might get the chance while we were off the ship, so I brought along our old friend just in case.”
Mai Ling left one lamp burning by the other bed and lay back, panting shallowly, heart pounding. The beat made her small, high breasts quiver as she watched Alex bring out the makings of sex. A silver drawstring bag opened and Alex produced a tube of lubricant, then drew out their double-ended penetrator. The size and form of a generous double-erection, it was molded in softly yielding wine-red plastic, glass-smooth, translucent; and was fitted with elastic straps that fit either of them.
Alex’s hands trembled faintly as she unscrewed the tube and ran a bead of clear gel the length of one erection, and Mai Ling watched with a fascination, ever-fresh, as her partner worked the gel around the dully-gleaming shaft, then put it to her lower lips, found the channel and began to take it in.
That something so prominent could glide so swiftly within a living woman’s body never failed to amaze and excite them both. What seemed only moments later, Alex was wiping her fingers and closing velcro about her haunches. She was panting also now, moving carefully as she handled the sensations of the cool, deep presence. She reached down to lubricate the other end, her gleaming, rampant erection. At last she set aside the tube — standing with a flushed face and rigid nipples, presenting an image that confused the sexes in delicious schism — and Mai Ling lay back and spread her arms.
Alex was never more conscious of the difference in size between herself and her partner than when they came together. She had 15 kilos on Mai Ling, and was never so abandoned that she let her weight hurt her partner. She took herself on her arms and waited a beat as Mai Ling spread her legs wide, found the penetrator and eased it into herself. Alex mewled with pleasure as the member filling her moved unpredictably, then she began to bear down gently, twitching her hips.
The lack of tactile feedback made it somewhat guesswork, but she had learned to read, through the walls of her vagina, what was happening at the other end of the plastic shaft, and she eased slowly as Mai Ling arched her back and closed her eyes.
The smaller woman was stretching, stretching to accommodate the member, relaxing from her normal state to one of total arousal. When at last Alex felt her belly smooth against that of her partner, she also relaxed for a few moments.
They began to kiss, mouth exploring mouth, and Alex felt arms around her shoulders, nails that scratched slowly down her back. This was the prelude, and she felt her hips begin to move almost of their own accord. Every thrust into Mai Ling was a thrust into herself: the most incredible duality the mind could imagine, to be both active and receptive in the same motion. She had done something similar with a boyfriend long ago, but this was not a transitory experiment ... this was the very way it was done. Slowly her rhythm built, and Mai Ling panted as her features flushed with pleasure.
The same feelings were bombarding Alex’s brain and body. She felt the warm knot somewhere in her abdomen tensing like a fist ... or, she thought, like a flower awaiting the sun’s touch to open and spread luminous petals throughout her body. But reaching that first blink of sunrise was the mountain they climbed. Her back tensed up with thrusting, and she relaxed for a few moments, rising on her arms and seating deeply inside Mai Ling.
As they rested, Mai Ling reached up to stroke and fondle Alex’s breasts. They were heavier than her own, and swaying deliciously. Then she bent her neck to apply her lips to each hard, pink-brown nipple in turn, sending electric shocks through Alex which made the bigger woman flinch and gasp, driving the penetrator randomly back and forth.
Soon Alex began to thrust again, and felt Mai Ling’s hips rise in return strokes, sending the other member deeper into Alex. Then Mai Ling flung her legs around Alex’s back and dragged their hips together in a firm lock that made them both gasp and shudder. Now thrusting was limited. Mai Ling was making it last longer, and they wrangled breathlessly for minutes more, sweaty and supremely aware of each other’s chemistry.
Closer, closer ... the sun was ready to rise, the trick was making both suns rise together. In the glow of the lamp Alex saw Mai Ling’s features in an open-mouthed grimace of joy as her nervous system approached overload point, her lips dark with the flood of blood that washed out from her inner circulation.
Alex raised the tempo, hitting her peak at the fastest thrust her own body would tolerate. The lubricant was almost spent, friction was firing off nerves throughout her pelvis, and with her great shout of elation the sun broke the horizon. As she felt the heat of its rays, her last hope was that Mai Ling had reached daylight also, then she lost all objectivity and went spinning like a leaf blown on the wind, drifting in the sky for an unknown time.
When Alex blinked into the lamplight she found herself relaxed over Mai Ling, and their hands were entwined She lifted her weight at once, and Mai Ling opened her eyes, her face in the repose that came only after she also had scaled the heights.
“Thank you,” the Eurasian girl whispered, and drew Alex’s head down for one final, sweet kiss of gratitude.
***
Dawn was a silver gleam through the blind when Mai Ling stirred. She was cuddled into Alex’s arms; they had a single sheet over them in the warm tropical air, and had slept the rest of the exhausted since they had showered in the early hours. For a moment Mai Ling wondered what had roused her, then she heard hurrying feet, and somewhere an engine was started. Then another ... the grunt of diesels from the marina, and the sudden whine of jets from the helipad.
She stirred, found Alex’s hand around her middle and squeezed it. “Honey, wake up.”
Before Alex blinked awake they heard a heavy tread on the step of their chalet and an urgent knocking.
‘Leblanc’s’ voice was in their ears at once. “Mademoiselles! Doctor Reed, Doctor Layten, wake up!”
Alex sat up at once, raked her hair from her eyes and saw 6.58 on the digital clock. “François, what is it?”
“The wind has shifted again, the hotel is being evacuated!”
The pair were out of bed in a blink. The lamp went on as they groped for underwear and jumpsuits. “We’re coming,” Mai Ling called. “Two minutes!”
“That’s about how long you have!” he replied. “The planes are coming from your airship, we see their lights. Everyone is to be evacuated, north to Anoano!” He rapped on their door to emphasis his point. “Quickly!”
They closed the velcro of their shoes with quickfire movements, threw every lose item into their packs and found hair-ties and sunglasses as they kicked open the door.
The sight that greeted them was incongruous, for it was snowing ... a fine fall of volcanic ash had begun, a blanket of white that settled over palm trees and beach, a bizarre Christmas scene in the tropics. The ash had already coated the swimming pool’s waters, erased the lines of the tennis courts, and was being scuffed away from the decks of boats as they put out of the marina.
The staff were looking after the guests as desperate headcounts were made, and all the while the yellow air-cabs raced up and down the coast to the villages. The plume had left the north end of the island untouched, and the cabs would shuttle people north in a series of rapid jumps.
Meanwhile, the running lights of the Icarus and the Pegasus blinked in the early morning sky, approaching from the airship eleven or twelve kilometres downrange from the hotel. The planes were running in the shadow of the fallout; the rising sun was on the other side of the entire eruption and it would be hours before the west coast saw full daylight.
The girls headed for the helipads and found ‘Leblanc’ and his people lugging gear from a nearby chalet. “What’s the plan?” Mai Ling called over the rumble of engines.
“We’re driving north,” ‘Leblanc’ called back. “It’s safe a few kilometres up the coast, and we need to reestablish our monitoring base, this was always our intention.” He put out a hand and shook with each of them, bobbing his head in an old-fashioned bow of courtesy to ladies. “Safe journey, mademoiselles, and safe tomorrows. This is where out paths part, I’m afraid.” He nodded into the southern sky. “Your carriage awaits!”
Moments later, the two VTOL shuttles from the Montgolfier vectored their wings as they came into the hover. They waited for a cab to clear the airspace, then alighted on the helipad in formation, and their fanjets shut back to a whistling roar.
Alex and Mai Ling saw Brigit in one cockpit, Iryna in the other. The hotel staff had marshalled a line of guests in the access area. Before they could move forward, Brigit used the aircraft’s loud-hailer, a hand at her headset.
“Doctors Reed and Layten first aboard, please. Then we can manage fourteen more on this run. We’ll be back in twelve minutes. From the looks of the fallout two, maybe three more trips is all we have time for. Move it!”
Alex and Mai Ling jogged toward the accessway, slithering a little in pumice underfoot. The air was hot and heavy. The stink of chemicals was starting to burn their noses, and when Alex was snatched sideways into a wire fence she thought Mai Ling had stumbled into her. But Mai Ling had a hand out to haul her back to her feet, and together they passed the line of guests. They ignored the angry shouts, the raised hands and shoving as they were perceived to be queue-jumpers, and ducked through to the pad.
They stepped aboard the Icarus and scrambled into seats, pushing their packs into the stowage bay. Alex hung in her seat, looking back into the bay for a long moment, then turned and closed her harness as fourteen hotel guests were counted off and passed through to the two aircraft.
Mai Ling caught her eye and knew something was wrong, but as they held on for the copilot to check that all harnesses were closed, and seal up the hatch, Alex shook her head faintly.
Later, was her message. She had no intention of telling Mai Ling here and now that a bullet had just gone through her backpack.
