Strangers on a Space Elevator

Chad lifted his leg to cross it over the other. That's when he nudged the stranger's foot.

"Sorry," he said.

The woman dismissed the apology with the slightest shake of her head. Then she smiled at something she was reading. That's when he really took notice of her.

He'd seen her before in the supermarket on the Moon. Because of her unusual height, he assumed she had been born there, where the low gravity allowed humans to grow to Amazonian proportions. But now he knew she was an Earthling. Otherwise she wouldn't be on this trip. Moonborns could never go to Earth.

She beamed when she smiled. She had intelligent eyes and her blonde hair was ruffled like she just woke up from a wild night of lovemaking. Of course, he looked just as unmade. There were no showers on the space lift, very little bathroom space, and you usually had to share a cabin with a strange family for three grueling days.

Earthlings living on the Moon had to make the trip back to Earth at least every three months if they wanted to efficiently counter the muscle degradation that occurs in low gravity. Chad always felt that going back to his home planet every couple of months was why he couldn't get completely comfortable on the Moon. Five straight months? Sure. Then he'd be able to acclimate to the dead gray scenery, the curiously sterile and cramped living spaces. Maybe even four months was enough to get used to it. But three? Three months only made what was supposedly his permanent home feel more like an excursion.

"You're a citizen, aren't you?" he asked the woman. "Not just visiting."

"Yeah. Married into it."

"Me, too." He sighed and glanced out the window of the cable crawler. "I might get a little too talkative, so just tell me to shut up if you want. This ride always makes me nervous, you know?"

She put her tablet down and gave him her undivided attention: "Do you want to know a secret?"

"What's that?"

"I'm afraid of heights," she said.

"You're kidding."

"Never been on a plane in my life. Never will be, either."

"We're a hell of a lot higher than any plane right now."

"Yeah, but this is different. It's like, I don't know, I feel safer on this. We're on this long, secure cable that's always attached to Earth..." She paused to find the right words.

"It's like having a lifeline."

"Exactly. And you hear about planes crashing all the time. So far, not one of these have gone down."

"That's true," he said, "but it doesn't mean this one can't."

She smiled. "You're the negative type, are you?"

"I'm a mathematician so I deal a lot with statistics. Flip a quarter three times in a row and it comes up heads all three times. What's the chances of it coming up heads on the fourth flip?"

"Fifty-fifty. That's elementary stuff."

"So apply that logic to the crawler we're on. Given everything a couple of laymen like you and I—"

"I prefer laywoman, actually."

"Right. Given everything we laypeople know, there's only two possible outcomes for the trip we're on. One, we'll land safely and uneventfully. Two, we won't. Since we don't know anything about the construction of this thing or who built it and a number of other factors, all we can really say, statistically, is that there's a fifty-fifty chance we're going to land a-okay."

She really showed her teeth when she laughed. "You are a negative type."

"Hey, just because we don't know of all the factors, it doesn't mean there aren't any positive ones. In reality, there's probably close to a hundred percent chance of us landing if you take everything into consideration. It's all about the perception, really."

"Unless," she said, "there are a number of factors unknown even to the people who could make a claim like that. Faulty o-rings, short circuits... gremlins. For all we know, there's a zero chance."

"And you call me negative. So what do you do for a living?"

"I'm a writer."

"That explains your imagination."

"I don't write fiction."

"What do you write?"

"Mostly web content these days."

"Nice. If I could work from home, I never would have gone to the Moon."

"Then I met Dan. That's my husband. I was up there covering space games and we hit it off, got married, and I've been on the Moon ever since."

"Your husband's an athlete?"

"Tennis player."

"Oh, no shit. Daniel Marvel? Is that 'Dan?'"

She smiled and nodded. "What's your spouse do?"

"My wife's a base technician. She monitors the computers, makes sure we're all getting enough air, stuff like that."

"A technician and a mathematician. Sounds like a match made in heaven."

"Match made on the Moon, at any rate."

The crawler dropped suddenly and the cabin shook. As quickly as it started, it was over.

"Whoa," he said.

"That didn't feel good."

"What was that you were saying about gremlins?"

She laughed. "Oh, shut up."

They were, no doubt about it, hitting it off. Lisa had seen him before in the supermarket. She figured he was born on the Moon because of his height. He had dark hair and eyes to match and a strong chin. He wore a hooded black sweatshirt and socks and sandals, a fashion no-no she decided to forgive, considering the circumstances of the trip.

"I guess that's over with," she said.

Right on cue, the crawler plummeted again, only this time it showed no signs of stopping. She looked out the window, saw the cloud-made horizon pushing at the blue sky. She then looked back at her cabinmate, who was looking about their shared space as if something in it held a solution to their problem. Something, Lisa thought, has broken. Some safety device has snapped or something. The crawler's going to plummet to Earth.

We're going to die.

"Is this normal?" she said, her voice broken with fear.

He just looked at her, his eyebrows uneven.

"Is it?" This time her voice cried.

He stood on wobbly legs and crossed the tiny floor which tried to fall out beneath him. He came and sat down beside her. He put one arm around her, laid the other over her legs. She was not the helpless type, but she clung to him and pressed her face against his chest.

"It's not absolute freefall," he said. His voice was so calm it irritated her. "Otherwise we'd be floating right now."

"Shut up," she said.

"Sorry. Like I said, I talk a lot when I get nervous."

Lisa clutched him tighter. It felt so good when he squeezed her back. She opened her eyes and could only see partially through the window past his arm, but she could tell they were descending into the clouds. Soon, the view outside was nothing but a haze of gray.

They didn't say another word to each other. Not until a horrible grinding noise penetrated the cabin. Then the crawler jerked to a stop. Her held breath rushed out of her so quickly it almost sounded like a laugh. Seconds later, the crawler started its journey downwards again, only this time at the appropriate speed.

"All right," he said. "All right, all right." Almost like a mantra. Then: "Are you all right?"

"Yeah."

Lisa lifted her head and looked about the cabin. Everything appeared normal. Then she looked at him. And it was funny what happened next because even as he held her during the fall, all she could think about was Dan and the kids. But that feeling had passed. She kissed the stranger every bit as passionately as he kissed her.

Although Chad had certainly been flirting with the woman, he'd had no intention of following up. He flirted with lots of women—even his wife knew. That's how harmless it was. Even as this woman crawled into his lap and took his face in both hands, he kept telling himself, This is all right. This is okay. It's not like I planned to cheat on my wife today. Ah, hell, this is the twenty-first century, anyway—does kissing even constitute cheating anymore? It's not like I'm going to do her!

Besides, he didn't kiss her first. So it wasn't his fault. Right? Well, she didn't really kiss him first, either. It just all kind of happened, no initiation on anyone's part. Although, she was the one who'd straddled him, and so far he had just laid there like a clueless virgin. He'd been so surprised his arms were wide open, resting on the seats on each side of him. Which, come to think of it, was kind of a cowardly way to go about it, was it not?

So he touched her legs and ran his palms around her outer thighs. As the petting grew more intense, he dared to give her buttocks a squeeze before slipping his hands beneath her sweatshirt. He savored the way her skin felt against his palms and fingertips. He loved the way she arched her back against his touch, the way her body felt as she kind of rocked against him. He kissed along her jawline and his lips found her neck, which he sucked gently, careful not to leave any marks.

After all, they were married. They were married to people who could never come to their home planet. Maybe people who were free to go back and forth as they chose just weren't meant to be with people who were forever stuck in the low gravity of the Moon. For if Moonborns ever came to Earth, they would be crushed by the gravity there. A lung may collapse, bones would easily break. But Moonborns lived longer than humans. Sometimes Chad thought that might be worth the fragility.

She reached behind her back and found his hands with her own. She removed his hands from her body and he thought, Yeah, I guess I was going a little too fast, but then she led his hands to her breasts. He groped her through the silly bra, which had been designed for zero gravity, not appearance. Then he thought, What the hell? And he tore open the Velcro straps on the side of the bra and slipped his hands beneath the cups, at the same time pushing the unaesthetic apparel up and out of the way. His thumbs and forefingers grazed her nipples just before he took two handfuls of her breasts.

She moaned into his ear and turned her head so he would kiss the other side of her neck. She was eating him up and he wanted nothing more than to do the same for her. God, he would consume her if he could. He needed this and he could tell she needed this, too. They hadn't said a word in five minutes, but there had been so much they told each other, so much he learned about her husband and his failure to satisfy her. She stopped kissing him and rested her forehead on his shoulder.

"God," she said.

Uh oh, he thought. She's coming to her senses. Then she looked up at him and he saw her eyes. She'd been crying the entire time. Was it good that she was crying? Was it bad? He wasn't good at figuring out women. Even so, he was pretty sure her tears weren't the sad kind.

Lisa loved Dan, she really did, but she realized as she held and got held that there was something better than love, something more powerful.

Understanding. And for all the Hallmark cards and soap operas in the world, understanding was better than love. Complete and utter acceptance. How could a Moonborn ever truly understand an Earthling?

They caught each other's eyes again. They laughed. This is crazy, his eyes said. But there was no remorse. He lifted her and she locked her legs around his waist. She'd been so tired from the gradual return to Earth's gravity, but now he revitalized her, and apparently she did that for him, too, considering he was holding her entire weight. He sat her down on the bench and kissed her belly. Whereas she normally guided Dan's face away from that area, she wove her fingers into her new lover's hair.

Chad kept daring himself to go farther and farther, to see how much this stranger would let him get away with. She hadn't stopped him yet. He pulled the waistband of her sweatpants down and kissed her all the way down to her pubic area, secretly breathing through his nose to take in her scent. On the Moon there were no salons, and therefore nowhere to get a good waxing. He never minded the mostly untrimmed bush his Moonborn wife sported, but that Lisa was so surprisingly kempt down there offered a contrast he was more than willing to accept. She had obviously shaven a few weeks prior to this unexpected romp and the result was blonde hair that was short but not short enough to be prickly. He wanted to inhale this woman as soon as possible and despite his good manners urging him to keep it slow and classy, he extended the tip of his tongue awkwardly past the barrier of her pants and grazed her clit.

"Oh my God," she said, weaving her fingers further into his hair.

He hooked the waistband with his fingers and pulled her pants down just below her butt cheeks. He kissed her through her lace panties, then brought his head back up to kiss her on the mouth. He slid up into the seat beside her, rubbing his hand against her inner thigh. His free arm wrapped behind her. She squeezed her legs together, not because she wanted him to stop, but because she couldn't stand it anymore.

The tip of her tongue parted his lips and found the tip of his tongue. He could literally feel his heart pounding.

"Touch me," she whispered, writhing against the inside of his arm.

He ran his hand farther between her legs and teased the skin between her panties and the crook of her leg. She arched her back and spread her legs open farther. One of her hands found his leg, but she didn't tease him the way he had. She ran her hand up his leg and took a handful of his cock through the fabric of his pants. Chad sighed in relief. His cock didn't just feel unreasonably hard in her hand, it felt warm and slightly moist with precum. He hadn't been driven this crazy since he was a blue-balled high school student.

Reciprocating, his fingers pulled her panties to the side. His knuckles lightly touched her lips and he couldn't believe how ready she was. He ran a finger along her slit and found the clitoris.

The way she moved when he pushed that particular button served as a reminder that the thrill was gone with his wife. Nothing could salvage that, but this... this was perfect. He let his finger slip inside her and rubbed his thumb around her clit. She broke free from their lip lock and moaned into his ear, her cheek pressed against his. His lips found her neck again and he nibbled on it softly. He let another finger join the first one and he fingered her as his mouth found one of her nipples. Within her fist his pants had formed around his cock and she was effectively giving him a handjob.

"That feels so fucking good," she said, practically blurting it, and her teeth chomped down on the back of his shirt so that she could stifle her cries of pleasure.

He went for her other breast, circling the nipple with his tongue before wrapping his lips around it. He loved sucking her tits, tasting her skin. Neither one of them had a shower since the trip began. Had this woman been his wife, a shower would have been a prerequisite to making love.

But these two lovers did not care. The inhibitions they felt with their spouses weren't a concern with strangers.

Suddenly, her back straightened up and she pulled her shirt completely off. She reached behind her and tore off the remaining Velcro straps which had been holding the silly space bra above her breasts. She then pulled her legs beneath her and stood on her knees beside Chad. She fumbled with the zipper of his shorts. Chad, who'd been slightly turned to face her, rolled back into a more orthodox sitting position. He glanced down and was somewhat embarrassed by the precum that had managed to soak through the fabric and make a spot on his pants.

She reached into his pants, found his cock with her thumb and forefinger, and pulled it out. It sprang into the open and the cabin's cool air made for a surprisingly sensuous contrast against his warm skin. She smiled at the sight of him. He thought the one dimple that formed on her face was so, so cute. He was only vaguely aware that he was groping one of her tits as it hung from the horizontal angle of her body. At this point, he would normally warn his wife of the precum so that she wouldn't complain when she put it in her mouth—she hated that taste. But he only got to have sex with his wife in the dark, where she couldn't see the precum. This woman: she could see it and didn't seem to care.

Lisa leaned down and propped herself on the seat beside the man on her elbows. First, she looked at his dick, impressed with the number of inches that protruded past her fist. She was so horny then, so recklessly possessed by a primal urge to be as intimate as possible with the stranger. She moistened her lips with her tongue and pushed her mouth over the head of his dick. She had hoped her spit would wash the precum away, but when her tongue made contact with the faint, salty taste, she was inexplicably turned on by it. This man made her want to be as dirty as possible.

And the man was vocal. She liked that. He moaned loudly. Sometimes when she performed the act on Dan, she couldn't even tell if he was enjoying it or not. The stranger lightly touched the back of her head, but he didn't push, he didn't force. He was incredibly gentle, but firm in all the right places. This was evidenced when she felt him slide his hand down her panties and finger her again. She could feel her wetness, inside and out, and although his fingers caused her to lose focus—which in turn made the blowjob all the more sloppy—she could tell he was enjoying it more and more. She decided to let herself go.

Completely.

She couldn't imagine being on all fours on the couch beside Dan, sucking him as he fingered her. That just wasn't his style. He wasn't nearly as thoughtful and, until now, she thought that kind of athleticism was a thing of her past. She wasn't entirely sure what the stranger was doing down there, how he seemed to fill her with his fingers and stimulate her clit at the same time, but she found herself reaching behind her and shoving her panties down farther near her knees. She spread her legs as far as her underwear would allow. She thought the stranger was cute in the sly way he tried to hide himself tasting her on his fingertips. And when his fingers returned, they were wetter with his saliva, which, in combination with her own wetness, drove her crazy.

His cock was so big, her jaw tired quickly. She straightened up again, clumsily removed her panties. Then she threw one leg over his lap and lowered herself against his cock. It laid over, against his belly, and she dragged her lips up and down his shaft. He reached behind her and firmly took her ass into his hands. The lovers kissed again, holding nothing back. As silly as it might have previously seemed to her post-teenage self, Lisa loved humping his cock, loved the way it provided such a taboo pressure against her clit.

And then it happened. Neither one of them guided it in. She had been so wet and he had been so hard, it just kind of slipped in. She hesitated, halfway down on it. She hadn't expected to fuck him, but, technically, it had already happened.

What was the point in stopping now?

"Jesus," the stranger said, surprised.

"I know."

He grabbed her waist and pulled her closer, sinking himself deeper inside her. He jabbed her G-spot and she let out the loudest, longest moan ever. It felt so good it almost hurt. She forgot how good sex felt under the influence of Earth gravity. Earth gravity meant natural weight, which more importantly meant friction. Her clit was rubbing against the stranger in a way that would be impossible on the Moon. She ground against him, savoring the way his cock felt inside her.

"Don't come inside me," she said.

"I won't."

Chad reached down between them and unbuttoned his already unzipped shorts. Despite the weakness he felt from Earth's gravity, which was much stronger than that heavy feeling people get when they climb out of a pool, he managed to lift his hips against the woman's weight just enough to push his shorts down. When he did so, his cock pushed into the woman farther and she screamed.