Lust from Space!

As long as they weren't horny, they discovered, the plants didn't try to guide them, which allowed them to get some pretty good measurements. They even marked on their new map where dim plants were, just in case. Climbing out of the hole, into the dome, and then out of the dome, the girls made their way back to the canoe in the predawn light. When they'd rowed halfway to shore, Sara, string into the sky, signaled to Lucy and they stopped the boat. Lucy knew what her sister was going to say, and said it first: "I thought time was supposed to be frozen."

Lucy pondered the situation a bit more. "I wonder," she said, trailing off.

"Hey," Lucy said. Even with her newfound love for her sister, she didn't have the patience to wait for Sara to come to some epiphany. "You wanna take a dip?"

"I don't know," Sara said, still half lost in thought.

"Hey," Lucy said, snapping her sister back to reality. "You just spent the last few hours teaching me. Why don't I teach you a few things? We both know I'm a better swimmer."

Sara agreed, and the girls stripped off their clothes and carefully climbed overboard, leaving their belongings in the boat. With the sky beginning to brighten, the water had begun to turn from ink black to midnight blue to almost clear. They figured that there was ten feet of visibility underwater. Sara wasn't a horrible swimmer; she had passed the merit pin test, and could tread water for an hour and swim a mile without stopping, but Lucy was better. Their mother, Maggie, had always teased that she was part seal. Practically from the day she was born, before she could even walk, Lucy was perfectly at home in the water. And now that she was developing into a fine young woman, she could swim twice as long, dive twice as deep, and do it all twice as fast as anyone in her family. Don had encouraged her to join the swim team, but Lucy said no. To her, swimming was all just fun, and "giving her talent structure," as their father had said, would have taken the joy out of it.

"How do you do that?" Sara asked, when her sister dove under and popped back up seemingly instantly about ten yards away.

"Easy," Lucy said. "It's all rhythm and waves. Like dancing, a little." Sara was an expert at climbing trees, running up mountains, and finding her way when she was lost. To the tomboy older sister, dancing hadn't really been a priority. Lucy saw the blank expression in her sister's eyes. "Right..." she said, "well, um, oh! I know." Lucy reached below and cupped her hand over her Sara's pussy. For a second, the older girl stopped kicking and began to sink. When Lucy slipped a finger into her, she was still so sensitive from earlier that her body convulsed like a whip in order to get away from the stimulation. Sara nearly popped all the way out of the water. "See?" Lucy asked, as her sister sputtered. "Did you feel that motion?"

Sara made the motion again, with the same result. "How am I supposed to do that a bunch of times in a row?" she asked.

"Well," Lucy said, "it's a bunch of smaller versions of that. Just make sure to do them one right after another." As Lucy coached, Sara tried again and again, eventually moving away from the jerky, orgasmic whipping, and into a smoother, ribbon-like fluttering. By the time she had begun to tire herself out, she had begun feeling far more comfortable in the water than she ever had. Of course, she would never be as smooth or fast as her sister.

When she came up for air after her last jaunt, she was instantly aware of the silence around her. Around her, the only disturbances in the glassy water were the boat and her own wake. Lucy was gone. "Lucy?" Sara called. "Lucy?" Nothing. Sara swam to the other side of the boat. No one on the other side. Panic started to set in. She looked down, but couldn't see past ten feet below her. She began treading water furiously, trying to bring more of her body above the surface so she could see farther. Again, nothing. Sara's breathing had become rapid and ragged from fear and worry, but she forced herself to become quiet and still in the hopes of hearing something, anything that would give her a clue. Nothing.

Suddenly, Sara was yanked under, just barely gasping in a breath before the water surrounded her. Down she went until she was about ten feet under. When she looked down, she saw Lucy's face grinning back at her. She tried to slap that face, but only ended up spinning herself around. Lucy swam to meet her again, and planted a kiss on her lips. The burning in Sara's lungs disappeared for a second. Lucy motioned downward with a finger. Sara looked down and saw only the dark bottom of the lake, some ten murky feet below. She shrugged her shoulders. Lucy motioned her downward, and Sara pointed at her lungs and mouth. Lucy nodded, but made a pinching gesture for "just a little bit." Sara let herself sink farther until the bottom came more into focus. When she'd a had a moment to evaluate, Lucy waved her up, and the girls surfaced, Sara sucking in air and sputtering.

"That's..." Sara began still gasping for air, "that's ... that's the same stuff the walls in the caverns are built from."

"Notice anything else?" Lucy asked. Sara shook her head. "Nothing growing on it."

"So?" Sara was still disoriented and had trouble putting it together.

"It's new," Lucy said. "Aside from the mud and whatever, it's smooth, I've been in swimming pools with dirtier bottoms."

"Huh," said Sara. "I wonder."

Lucy splashed her playfully in the face. "Wonder somewhere else, nerd," she teased. "We need to get back."

The girls swam the boat the rest of the way to shore and got dressed on the dock. As they hiked back through the woods, Lucy wrung out her blonde hair and asked, "How are we going to do this for the next few days and not get caught?"

"Very, very carefully," Sara said, stopping. She looked her sister in the eyes and caressed her cheeks, saying, "Lucky, you and I figured out that we're hot for each other."

"Putting it lightly," Lucy said, smiling.

Sara smiled back. "But, babe," she said, "we had to get over a serious taboo to do it."

"It probably helps that we can't get each other pregnant, too," said Lucy.

"Sure," said Sara. "Point is: I don't think mom and dad would be thrilled to find out, you know?"

"Yeah," Lucy said. "I know. So, what, we just keep sneaking out at night? When are we going to sleep?"

"During the day, I guess," Sara said.

"Sara," Lucy said, taking her sister's hand from her cheek and holding it. "What happens when dad asks why you're tired? You know we can't lie to him. He's got that weird sixth sense."

"I don't know," Sara admitted. "But I'll think of something."

Fortunately, they didn't have to think of anything right away. When they got back, their parents' tent was still zipped up. The girls snuck back into their own tent, stripped off their clothes again, and got under the blankets together, falling asleep almost as soon as their heads hit their pillows.

Around noon, they woke. Sara thought it odd that their parent hadn't woken them for breakfast, but was just happy to have slept. When they crawled out of their tent, they saw that their parents' tent was still zipped. Lucy looked at Sara, grinning. "I heard them going at it the other night," she whispered. "Maybe they had a long night last night, too."

"Maybe," Sara said, unconvinced. Her father was an early riser no matter the situation. At the very least, he would have started the campfire to get some water for coffee boiling. The ashes from the previous evening were cold. Lucy saw Sara stirring the ashes with a stick and knew what her sister was thinking.

"Just in case they are naked," Lucy said, pulling a coin from her pants pocket, "let's flip to see who opens the tent. I call heads." She flipped it into the air, caught it. Heads. "Oh, well," she sighed. Lucy approached the tent, grabbed the zipper, and took a deep breath. Unzipping the flap halfway, the younger girl poked her head in. Withdrawing, she unzipped it all the way. Empty. "Huh," she said. "Where do you suppose they went?"

"I don't know," Sara said, thinking. "But I bet they were gone before we got back."

The girls decided to wait an hour or so before searching, in case their parents had simply gone on a hike or down to the lake to wash. In the meantime, Sara started the campfire and made breakfast. As they ate, Sara spread out the map they had drawn on a stump, brushing it flat with her hands. Lucy stopped chewing, and Sara nearly spit out her tea. In the dim light of the corridors, focusing on each individual wall and plant as they went along, they hadn't noticed the shape of the place as a whole. A circle. They looked at the side view Sara had sketched up after she took into account the ramps and ladders they had seen or used.

"Sara," Lucy said with a mouthful of bacon. "Remember when you said you thought the tree in the dome was an SOS, or whatever?"

"Yeah," said Sara, knowing where her sister was going.

"I know it sounds crazy to say it, but this looks an awful lot like a flying saucer," Lucy said.

"I'm just glad I wasn't the only one who thought so," Sara said. "And you know how the tree has been lighting up? I wonder what happens when it's fully charged."

"I guess we have our work cut out for us," said Lucy, smiling and putting an arm around her sister.

"I guess so!" Sara said.

At the end of the hour, they began to worry. Another hour passed, and with no sign of their parents, the girls decided they should start looking. Sara suggested that they look through their parents' tent to see what they had taken with them, if anything, in order to find out where they might have gone. At first, it didn't look good. Neither backpack was gone, but both pairs of boots were missing. If they had planned to just go down to the lake, Maggie would have just worn her sandals. Clearly, they had planned on going somewhere rugged, but hadn't planned on going for long.

"Ha!" Lucy said, suddenly amused. "Look at this." The younger girl had started going through their mother's backpack. From it, she had pulled a star chart, complete with complex equations written in their mother's hand. "I had no idea mom was such a nerd!"

"Neither did I," Sara said. Opening their father's pack, Sara found mostly obvious stuff: an extra multitool, flint and steel, two extra pairs of socks, extra flashlight batteries, and a pack of cigarettes. "This is weird," she said. "I didn't know dad smokes."

"He doesn't," Lucy said. "I'm sure of it." Sara have her a skeptical look. "Believe me," she insisted. "I'm good with people, remember?"

"Hey," Sara said, starting to sort through his things more urgently. "There's stuff missing. His flashlight's gone. And his gun." Don always brought his pistol with him on camping trips, just in case they got trapped. In a pinch, he'd taught Sara a long time ago, they could hunt for food with it, or even use the bullets' gunpowder to start a fire. So he'd taken it with him. A precaution? What did he expect to run into on such a short hike?

"Well, it looks like he left some bullets behind, so he's not planning a massacre," Lucy joked, pulling a box of cartridges from her mother's pack.

"Those aren't dad's," Sara said.

"I know they were in mom's pack, but-"

"No, no," Sara corrected her. "Those can't be dad's bullets. His is a .45. Those are nine millimeter."

"What?" Lucy asked, looking at the box. "Nine-M-M," she read aloud. "So?"

"Believe me," she said in the same tone of voice her sister had used regarding the cigarettes. Last month, Don had taken her to the shooting range and let her fire a .22 pistol. His, he'd said, would be too much for her as a beginner. She'd really liked it, and he'd promised to take her back. Reaching down into her father's pack, she found it and pulled it out: a different box of cartridges. She handed it to Lucy.

"Point-four-five," Lucy read aloud again. "Does mom own a gun?"

"Does dad smoke?"

"Sara," Lucy began, worried. "You don't think they're going to shoot each other, do you?"

Sara laughed out loud. Lucy still looked worried. "No, Lucky," she said, still chuckling. "I don't think they're going to shoot each other. But they might shoot us if they knew we were going through their stuff." Lucy gave her a frightened look. "Kidding," she said. "I was kidding."

The girls started packing up their parents' bags, paranoia from the new discoveries prompting them to put everything back exactly as it had been. When Sara picked up the cigarettes to put them back in the pack, Lucy told her to stop. "Don't you notice that?"

"What?" Sara asked.

"The weight," Lucy said, taking the box from her, and shaking it. "And no rattle."

"It could be full," Sara suggested.

"Then why's it unwrapped?" Lucy asked.

"I'm not even going to ask you how you thought of that," Sara said.

Lucy flipped the top of the box back, revealing a small, solid gray box. Gingerly removing it from the cigarette box, Lucy gasped first, followed by Sara. Both girls had seen enough movies to know what this was. "A remote control," Lucy said.

"With one button," Sara finished the thought. "Something tells me it's not for the garage door."

"Are we really saying that dad brought a bomb camping?"

"I am, at least," Sara said.

"OK," Lucy said, shrugging. "So much weird stuff has happened since we came out here, I just had to make sure. So, what, he's just out there somewhere blowing something up?"

"Not without this," Sara said, opening the back of the remote. "And not without these," she added, taking the batteries out of it and putting them in her pocket. She slid the powerless remote back into the cigarette box, and the box back into their father's pack. "I think we should try to find the bomb."

"Uh, Sara," Lucy said, hesitantly, twirling a finger through her hair. "I think I might know where it might be."

Bear bags were what her father called the canvas bags he hung from the branches of trees. Sara had been off on her first trip through the woods when her father hung them, but Lucy had been there. She pointed to the one she had seen him put food in. The other she had only seen him raise, and looking at it now, they realized how heavy it must be. The branch that supported it bowed grimly. "Bingo," Sara said.

They hadn't had much time to examine it when they heard their parents crashing through the bushes. At Sara's urging, the girls quickly returned to the campfire and sat. "What are we going to do?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know," Sara said. "We don't even know what they're up to. Just pretend like everything's normal until we can find out."

Lucy grinned at her sister. "Leave that part to me," she said. "I'll get some answers."

When their parents came careening back into the campsite, the girls knew everything was not normal. Lucy subtly laid a hand on Sara's knee, signaling her to follow the younger girl's lead. Both their parents were a mess, Don more so. He limped and had an arm thrown around Maggie's shoulders as she half carried him to the campfire. Both of them were scratched and battered. Maggie's sunny, ever-so-slightly curly blonde hair was a wild tangle. As she set her husband down in front of the fire, Lucy let out a worried cry. "Daddy! What happened?! Where were you?! We were so worried!" She began to weep hysterically. Sara tried to follow, but ended up just looking haunted. Instead, she tried to play the responsible big sister and hugged Lucy close.

As she muffled the younger girl's fake sobs with her shoulder, she regarded her parents with as much worry as she could muster. "We woke up and you were gone," she said, injecting anger into her voice. "For hours! Did you even think to leave a note?"

"Hey!" snapped her mother. "Can't you wait? Your father's hurt!"

Don waved her off. "It's OK," he said, clearly suffering a great deal of pain. "It's OK. We meant to be back much earlier, but then this happened." He motioned to his leg. His pants were ripped, exposing his muscular leg, which now looked like someone had used it as a piñata.

"Is..." Lucy said, sniffling, "is it broken?"

"No, darling," Don said, gently, his breath ragged. "I'll be fine. I think I just twisted something. I need to stay off of it for a while and let it heal." Sara looked at the leg incredulously. He had not 'just twisted' anything, but she believed that nothing was broken.

"Where were you guys?" she asked.

"We went up the mountain a ways," Maggie said. "We wanted to see the sunrise."

"We hadn't done that in a long time," Don added. "It was beautiful."

"Very romantic," their mother said with a taut smile. "Until a loose rock gave way and he fell into a ravine."

"Oh, gosh!" Lucy cried. "That's horrible!"

"Where are your packs?" Sara asked, knowing her dad expected her to notice.

Don smiled proudly. "If only we'd taken you," he said, "we might have given it a second thought. But we really thought we were just going for a stroll."

"You must be thirsty," Lucy said, hopping up and fetching one of the many gallon jugs of water they had brought.

Dan and Maggie replenished themselves and, as the evening set in, Sara cooked some dinner over the campfire. While Sara busied herself with the food, she listened as Lucy subtly began to drag information out of their parents. It was amazing. The girl was a prodigy when it came to getting what she wanted. As the night wore on, and they all ate dinner, Lucy never seemed to ask a single question, and yet little bits of information began to build up. There was never any direct talk of what their parents were up to; Lucy, in her brilliance, was instead painting for Sara a very clear picture of what they hadn't been doing. For one thing, they clearly hadn't been out on a romantic jaunt. He also hadn't fallen down a ravine. Even Sara noticed that one. If he had, more than just his leg would be hurt, but as it was, the rest of him seemed a little battered, but fine overall. The whole story they'd told seemed full of holes, and more importantly, they seemed afraid of something-very afraid.

By the time dinner was finished and Sara had cleaned up, Don and Maggie looked spent. Lucy asked innocently if they wanted to roast marshmallows, but their father declined. Their mother, too, said that maybe they should wait for the next night and that she and their father were going to turn in early, but that the girls were welcome to stay up. Lucy looked sullen, and said that, no, it was OK, that she understood. Their mother kissed them both on the forehead and helped their father into the tent. Sara elbowed Lucy sharply in the ribs when the flap was fully zipped up. When Maggie had kissed Lucy goodnight, she'd seen her younger sister peering down their mother's shirt. Sara made a silent gesture that communicated this, accompanied by an 'are you mad?' look. Lucy snickered as quietly as she could, leaned over and kissed Sara, sucking her sister's lower lip as she pulled back. Sara smiled and rolled her eyes. Her sister really was a fire starter. She mouthed the words, "You're a menace," and Lucy pointed to herself mouthing, "Who, me?"

After the fire had died, leaving only cherry-red embers, the girls decided to go to bed. In their tent with the flap zipped, they stripped down and crawled under the blankets together. This time it was Sara who kissed first, and when she felt her sister press against her, she caressed the girl's back, feeling muscles relax under her touch. She moved her hand up to the back of Lucy's neck and massaged, over time working her fingers through her hair and against her head. Lucy let out a pleasured breath and kissed back harder. In the dark, Sara looked into her sister's eyes and felt confused passion start to transform into more than just sisterly love. Eventually, the girls drifted off to sleep wrapped in each other's arms.