Mars is a Dangerous Place

The sensation of calm dissipated as quickly as it had come, and my heart stopped. "No. I won't let you."

She sighed. "Graeme, I love you dearly, but you don't own my body. At the end of the day, I'll do what I think is best for us. For both of us."

"Be realistic. We're going to die no matter what happens. He's never going to give us the password. When he goes, we go."

"Yeah...," she said thoughtfully, "I said the same thing to him. He told me he wants to enjoy himself these last few weeks. But, when he's close to the end, he'll give us the password, stroll out the airlock, and we'll never see him again. You know, die on his own terms."

"Sure he will..."

"I don't have a crystal ball Graeme, but neither do you. The guy's mind is a nasty mess. But there are still bits and pieces of humanity in there. If there's a chance to be had, then I think it's worth taking. And it's my call to make."

* * * * *

That night, we barely slept. I don't think Sharon drifted off at all, for fear of never waking up again.

At one point, I seriously considered driving the hauler into our oxygen tanks. Poof, in a few minutes, or hours at most, this nightmare would be over. We'd all be dead. Andy would be dead. I'd be dead. And... and Sharon would be dead.

And there, I hit that damned roadblock again. When it came right down to it, I wasn't willing to do a thing I knew would seal my wife's death sentence. I couldn't.

By the next morning, we'd all descended into a leaden stupor, lolling around the Hab, barely able to move or think, while the warnings droned on in endless clamor.

Finally around noon, consciousness fading fast, my wife roused herself with a heroic effort of will, and shambled over to Andy. The man was slumped in his command chair, head nodding to chest. Sharon screamed in his ear... pounded his shoulder with her fist... but he didn't stir. Becoming frantic, she raked her fingernails across his bare back, scraping bloody tracks. Pain brought him groggily to his senses.

"You win," she rasped--in a lifeless tone that signaled utter exhaustion, and abject surrender.

He accepted her defeat with a watery smirk. Then, he turned to the console--even now remembering to shield his fingers from view. After fumbling the commands a few times, he managed to fix the settings; and the alarm soon fell silent.

For an interval, the three of us sprawled there, drinking in the sweetening air, waiting for it to restore us. We were all drained, but Sharon looked particularly shattered. I couldn't blame her--along with the physical effects of the poisoned atmosphere, she'd been carrying an immense weight of stress, and probably hadn't slept in two days. Then, add to all that, the daunting thing she'd just agreed to? It was hardly a wonder if her mind sought refuge in oblivion.

After an hour or so, though, Andy rose. I don't know where he got the strength; I still had all the vigor of overcooked linguini. Maybe it was his desperate eagerness to get inside a woman's vagina after long absence. Or maybe it was something more--a strange effect of his tumor, perhaps, that spurred him to burn incandescently in the short time he had left. But however it was, I found myself watching in useless bewilderment as he lifted up from his chair and staggered over to my wife. Grabbing her arm, he dragged her from her seat and hauled her to the table where we ate our meals. "Bend over."

Sharon's legs were unsteady, and she appeared grateful for any surface to lean on. Planting forearms on the tabletop, and setting feet apart in a solid stance, she allowed her head to droop with weariness. In her confusion, I don't think the woman even grasped how vulnerable this made her. I did though: it was painfully visible from where I sat. Posed naked that way, her pliant labia sprang apart easily, so that not only her asshole was exposed, but also her glistening inner pleats, her clit, and--nestled at the center of it all--the shadowy entrance to her reproductive tract. Andy's eyes shone greedily at the sight.

I could have left. Could have crawled away to my cupboard on hands and knees, if nothing else. So why didn't I? I still wonder about that, and sometimes wish bitterly that I had. But I didn't. Maybe it would have felt too much like abandoning Sharon to her fate. Or maybe it would have seemed spineless to sneak off that way--as if the macho thing was to sit there and pretend it didn't affect me. I really don't know what was going on in my head at that moment. But like a deer trapped in the headlights, I stayed and witnessed everything.

Andy was already very erect. (Indeed, ever since Sharon first stripped for him, he'd been hard most of the time.) Spitting copiously on his hands, he stroked that sequoia-like spear of his to lubricate it. Next, without ceremony, he positioned the fat, springy head against my wife's vaginal ring, and edged forward. For one fleeting moment, she held him there--his mounting pressure offset by her natural resistance. Then, with a gentle pop, Sharon's modesty was vanquished. The man was inside her.

At the electric jolt of that first probing incursion, her body jerked in surprise, and a gasp escaped her parted lips. Raising her head, the woman gazed over at me with a mystified, questioning expression. It was as if, with her mind still clouded by oxygen deprivation and fatigue, she didn't fully get what was happening. As if she couldn't quite understand where these new sensations were coming from, and thought I was somehow responsible for them, or could explain them to her. But I had nothing to offer.

Slowly and patiently, Andy snaked his monstrous appendage deeper into Sharon's canal. At the same time, leaning down slightly and reaching around her abdomen, he pressed his fingers against her pussy and began massaging it, tracing out a steamy, rhythmic, circular motion.

The woman was so stunned and off-balance, that she couldn't even grasp the need to gird her mind against him--let alone actually marshal up such a defense. And that left biology free to run its course. Carried along by the steady rock of his pelvis, the reflexive fidget of her own hips, and the waves of arousal bubbling up from her crotch, Sharon's cunt instinctively dampened and slackened and opened itself to him. My scandalized eyes could only watch while his swollen, veiny, cherry-red pole disappeared inside her... encountering, after that brief initial hitch, not the slightest hindrance.

At length, Andy landed home, nestling up solidly against the backs of her thighs. Sharon had accepted every last inch of him--willingly enough, if perhaps not with the full benefit of her faculties. Still fingering her clitoris possessively, the man glanced up to catch my eye. The look he gave me then was cold and calculated. It told just how much he enjoyed being balls-to-the-wall inside my wife. How much it excited him to have me sitting there, impotent, while he stuffed and stretched her genitals out with his cock. How glorious it felt to wrest such an incomparable prize from me.

And then, when he had drunk every bit of satisfaction he could from my humiliation, Sharon's rapist straightened up, dug his fingers into her haunches, and set to fucking her in earnest.

For endless minutes, I was reduced to a mere spectator at my wife's debasement. Powerless to intervene, while the bastard's thick, scarlet shaft pistoned efficiently in and out between her buttocks, and his scrotum slapped up against her nub. Her flesh wobbled each time he pounded into her--hair tossing, torso shaking, and dangling teats set to knock and sway with every ravenous thrust.

Before long, her face grew flushed, pupils dilated, shoulders hunched. Mindlessly, she started pressing her ass back against her assailant--punctuating his every stab with a lascivious twist of her hips. And then, soon enough, her jaw dropped open, and soft, sensuous, inarticulate whimpers began to escape her lips. It was obvious that the raw stimuli bombarding her brain were fast becoming overwhelming, irresistible.

As these sounds of bestial pleasure began spilling out of her, Sharon once again met my gaze with that pensive, cow-eyed stare. She still couldn't entirely make sense of what was being done to her. But in some mushy, shapeless way, she knew it wasn't right--knew she shouldn't be responding to it in the way she was. So, vaguely and wordlessly, she tried to convey her regret for what had happened thus far, and beg forgiveness for what was about to happen next...

Then, at last, the impulses became too powerful for her nerves to contain any longer. Her eyelids fluttered and squeezed shut; and her head jerked back. Powerful, surging tremors began to wrack her frame; and harsh, guttural moans of fulfillment started roiling up from her chest. I slumped low, submerged beneath an ocean of shame and gall. I knew how to read the signs. The asshole had brought my wife to orgasm.

It was a mere physical response, I tried to tell myself--elicited by the simple friction of skin on skin, and lacking any higher motives of love or attachment or ardent desire. But that was no consolation at all. The fact was that for the span of those frozen, unendurable moments, Sharon was lost to me. Raised out of our plane of existence by the euphoria she experienced. Elevated to that state of rapture by the penetration and thrust of another man. Unconscious that I even existed.

And Andy knew it, too--knew that her body had given itself over to him; knew that she now lay hovering at the peak of female receptivity. So, with a snarl of pure animal triumph, he pressed ahead to join her. Butt tightening, groin smashing up against her ass, sperm-laden testicles shuddering with darwinian eloquence, he allowed himself to tip over the edge.

After that, the two of them writhed in a blissful, intertwined dance of climax--while I remained alone, shut out. And I couldn't pretend I didn't know what was happening there, at the center of their shared ecstasy. The raw, clinical horror of it sent a black chill sinking through my bowels. That neanderthal was ejaculating in my wife.

She was protected, obviously--IUDs were mandatory for female crew members--and logically, I suppose I should have taken some comfort from that. But I'd long since left the realm of logic behind. Only days earlier I'd seen him drench Sharon with cum, so I knew what he was capable of. Now, the primordial male lurking in my brain stem couldn't help but visualize what was going on inside her. In my mind's eye, I saw how that unnatural phallus of his reached in to touch her at her very core; how each sloppy, pearly surge of semen gushed through her cervix; how the stuff seeped and pooled and stained her womb with the marks of his ownership; and how her reproductive organs drank it in, gulping it hungrily toward her ovaries.

Finally, after an eternity had passed, he appeared spent, and his body quieted. Sharon remained impaled on his cock; but, with stimulation diminished, she too descended from her high. Her energy was more depleted than ever, and she let herself collapse onto the table, chest heaving as she sucked in air. For a while longer they remained conjoined, Andy gazing at me the whole time. A self-satisfied leer played on his lips, and I knew that he continued to savor the feel of his dick in my wife's cunt--saturated, now, with the heat and potency of their mingled fluids.

He did eventually pull free, and flopped down into his chair--organ throbbing slightly, still dreadfully erect and red and slick. In its absence, Sharon's vagina gaped wide: transformed by ill-use from an artful feminine mystery, to a bawdy, undiscriminating black hole. Even as I watched, big, milky blobs of seminal fluid began to well up there--bubbling and dripping from her opening, and running messy down the inside of her legs, as if to flaunt her degradation.

Gravity reasserted itself, and Sharon began to ooze off the tabletop--giving the distinct impression that Andy's penis had been the only thing pinning her there. Soon she was splayed out on the floor, and began crawling toward our bunk, spattering a trail of sticky white droplets behind her. It was a pitiful sight, and I did what I could to help: rising to half-lift her from the ground, and guiding her faltering legs the rest of the way to our sanctuary.

Shielded from view at last, we hid away to lick our wounds. All our emotional and physical reserves were gone, entirely used-up--and in a surprisingly short amount of time, we had both drifted off into disquieted slumber.

* * * * *

We must have slept about 16 hours; and when we finally stirred, Sharon appeared much restored.

Neither of us was in a hurry to emerge from the berth, however--whether to get cleaned up, to forage for something to eat, or for any other reason. Instead, my wife pulled out a package of disposable wipes and started dabbing at the patches of dried cum on her thighs. "I'm sorry you had to see that," she said, looking down at her work instead of meeting my eyes.

"So... you remember?" I probed gingerly. "Everything...?"

"I mean, I wasn't exactly lucid at the time--but I can piece it together now, pretty much."

"Fucking cocksucker took advantage of you. You wouldn't have done it if you'd been in your right mind."

She glanced up at me with piercing blue eyes, and weighed her words carefully. "Well--the man's been taking advantage of both of us for days now. Holding this sword over our head to get what he wants. And now we know for sure that he isn't bluffing. So... if that's what it took to keep us alive? Certainly I would have done it. I told him I would."

I felt like I couldn't breathe. "But you're not going to again, right? Not after that..."

Her gaze was solicitous. "You know I love you Graeme. If it was my choice, of course I wouldn't do it again. You're the one I've chosen... But, right now, I need you to be realistic. For the next few weeks, or months, you're just going to have to, uh... share me, I guess. I can't be only with you. I need to keep giving him a reason to live."

What about my reason to live? "Don't do it..."

Her eyes teared up. "Please hon, don't make this harder for me than it already is. It won't be forever."

All my hurt and anger had to be poured out on someone, and she was the only one there. "If that's how little you think of me, then fine--let him fuck your brains out. Have a blast." I rolled over to face away from her.

Sharon's fingers brushed my shoulder; and for a few minutes she tried cajoling me. "Come on, Graeme, don't be like that. Talk to me..." Then, after a bit, I could sense her mental shrug. She'd tried. Done her best. Rising, she left the compartment; and before long I heard the clatter of breakfast dishes, and the hum of her voice in conversation with Andy. They didn't speak loudly enough for me to make out the words.

* * * * *

In the days that followed, I stayed in the Hab--lying in my dismal closet cubbyhole nearly all the time. I was depressed, and told myself I wasn't up to facing the bleak solitude of Mars. But that wasn't really what kept me in the module. No, what I wanted was for Sharon to feel my presence. If she intended to give herself over completely to Andy, spreading her legs every time he said jump, then I didn't want her to get off lightly, or to make it easy for her. I wanted her to know I was there, and to burn with the guilt and shame of it.

I couldn't help but hear them together. Eating a meal, maybe, or doing some work, or taking care of the chores and minor crises that came with life on Mars. A lot of the time, they were simply talking. I don't know about what; but from their tone of voice, the tension that had enveloped the Hab seemed lifted considerably. Far too often, their give-and-take sounded friendly to my ears. Cordial, even.

And then there were the... other times. Times when the creak of furniture told that he was taking my wife bent over a chair, or lying beneath him on one of the fold-out bunks. Times when he let loose an exultant roar that declared he was inseminating her. Times when her purrs and moans spilled out too insistently to be fully suppressed...

I should have marched straight out there and killed him, right? That's what a real man would have done? Maybe so. There's no doubt in my mind that I could have done it. I may not be a cold-blooded executioner or sadistic inquisitor--but by this point, righteous anger boiled hot in my veins.

More than once during those endless days, the rage became too much for me, and I rose to my feet, gripping my length of pipe tightly, heart thudding with murderous intent. But even through my fury, I couldn't shake the thought of what would come afterward. A day or two of slow death, during which I'd have to face Sharon's sad, disapproving eyes. Eyes that would blame me for her demise, and curse me for having thrown away her sacrifices. And I'd die knowing she was right--that I had dragged her down with me. So... in the end my fingers would unclench, the weapon would clatter to the floor, and I'd slump back down onto my miserable mattress.

When nighttime arrived, Sharon was mine again, to whatever extent I chose to have her. She'd bring in a tray of food and beg me to eat. "Graeme, I hate to see you like this. You need to take care of yourself. You know this is only temporary. He doesn't have that long left."

Most of the time I didn't engage. I was too angry at her, and it hurt too much. But I recall one occasion when I couldn't stop myself from lashing out. As usual, she'd spent the entire day in the main living space with Andy, naked as a jaybird. They'd chatted and laughed, and I knew they'd had intercourse at least twice. Then, when she finally retired to our bed for the night (toting a plate of rehydrated pork-chop and mashed potato for me), I saw that her pussy was entirely shaved--rosy-pink softness of labia and clitoris exhibited shamelessly to the world.

"What the hell is that!? Another of his majesty's demands?"

"Wha--?" she asked vaguely, then caught the direction of my eye. "Oh, well, I guess he did suggest it. And I figured, why not?"

She'd never gone bald down there before; and until that moment, I don't think I even had a preference, one way or another. But now--the idea that she'd done such an intimate thing just to please him? It was poison to me.

And it was bigger than that, too. It was her offhand attitude about the whole thing that really got me thinking. I was suddenly aware of how relaxed and centered my wife appeared these days. Thriving, almost. And if I remembered back to when that prick had first begun throating her, the contrast was stark and disturbing. Back then, she'd been tense and overwrought. This Sharon seemed almost a different person.

The only thing left in my heart was bile, and now I let it fly. "Yeah--why the hell not. Why shouldn't you do a little something like that for the guy who's done so much for you. After all, Sharon, getting fucked by Andy really does seem to suit you. I can't think when I've seen you so happy."

She reddened, and a wounded expression came over her face. "Graeme, please don't talk to me like that. It seemed like a small thing, and simpler to go along with it--that's all. I'm not enjoying any of this. Truly."

"Your recent behavior tells me otherwise."

She faltered, at a brief loss for words. When she spoke, her voice was soft and reflective. "Look, I can see why you think that. I guess things have gotten easier for me, in a way. I mean, now we know he's not just hot air, right? That uncertainty's gone--I know this is the right call. Plus, when I was taking him in my mouth like that? Really deep, all the time? That was exhausting. Now that we're, um... you know... yeah, it's easier. And there's a kind of comfort in routine, too, I suppose, even if it's not a routine you'd choose... But sweetheart, none of that means..."