Isn’t It Too Big

by Naomi Penn

  “I can’t wait until we step foot on alien soil and that isn’t true anymore.”

  Stern shrugged. “I’ll miss these little talks, but at least my ship will be serviced faster, huh?”

  “You feel free to suit up and show me how it is done,” Dole said.

  “You want me to show you how to do your job, Dole? I can do that.”

  Dole stared at Stern and his sneer turned into a smile. “Care to make it interesting?”

  Stern pointed at Dole’s belly. “You want double rations, if you find the crack and fill it first? Is that it?”

  “Bigger.”

  “You want me to get you laid?”

  Dole took a step back. “What? I’m married.”

  “So was I.” Stern laughed. “If you find the crack and fill it before I can, you get to fill Lt. Spence’s cracks.”

  “What?” Dole held up his hands. “Skyler? What are you talking about?”

  Stern shrugged. “You know another Lt. Spence? Yes, Skyler Spence. All tits and ass. She lost a bet to me earlier and owes me two more pokes. She’d do you once to be clear of the bet, if I offered it.”

  Dole narrowed his eyes. “You’d give up two dates with Skyler Spence to try to prove me wrong?”

  “I don’t think I’ll lose,” Stern said.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “If you lose,” Stern said. “When you lose, you follow my instructions of search patterns for the last months of our flight.”

  Dole rolled his eyes. “Sounds great to me.”

  “And I get a night with your wife,” Stern said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Oh, you were going to take a go at Lt. Spence’s heavenly body, but you’re going to get pissed at me? Crack for crack, Dole. Fair is fair.”

  “My wife would kill me.”

  “Where is she going to go?”

  Dole actually laughed. “Yeah, that’s my point. She’ll make me stay outside the ship for three months.”

  “Well, either way, soon she will be the only pussy you get for the rest of your life unless you think there are some horny aliens on that world covered in nothing, but purple grass that we might have missed. “But possibly one more night with a trim, fit, dirty officer. Unless you know I’m right in which case you should just do it my way and be done with it.”

  Dole stared Stern up and down thinking about him having his way with Skyler Spence and then imagining the same with Constance. Constance’s breasts were not as large as Lt. Spence’s, but Dole’s wife was thick in all the right places. Artificial gravity had been good to her.

  “I want more,” Dole said.

  ***

  Stern tilted his head. “I don’t have any other deals I can call on with the other female crew, Dole.”

  “If I win, I’m off hull duty for the rest of the trip. One of your crew can fill the cracks for practice for the next three years.”

  Stern licked his lips and sighed. “What will you do for three months?”

  “Me? I’ll be recovering from my night with Skyler. Unless you know you’re getting beat.”

  “You’re on, Dole. Suit up.”

  They exited the airlock together. They were both toting a full cold weld kit harnessed onto their suits.

  The commander spoke through the short radio in his helmet to the speakers next to Dole’s ears in his helmet. “Good luck, Dole, or I’ll be stretching your wife out where she won’t be the same again.”

  “Fuck off, Stern.”

  “I think I might have her meet me in the Zero G observation deck. You ever fucked in zero gravity, Dole? They’ll have to rewrite the Kama Sutra for the positions I’ve invented in there.”

  “We should have brought more air filters,” Dole said.

  He started walking down the side of the hull with his mag boots gripping the side with each step. He expected Stern to be following him, but he looked back to see the commander walking up toward the top of the ship. Dole shook his head inside his helmet. He had already searched the top. Stern was wasting his time. Dole starting thinking about fucking Skyler Spence in zero gravity. His suit grew tighter. He thought about Stern doing the same to Constance and the jealousy mixed with the feelings of arousal. Dole walked faster to find the damage first before Stern earned the right to damage his wife all night.

  Dole crisscrossed the belly of the ship. Technically, he was upside down relative to the design of the ship, but from his perspective, the entire universe had twisted over for him. Dole looked out from the ship at the endless universe. The constellations were alien from the ones he had learned as a kid on Earth. They changed every few days at their current space-bending speed.

  At these speeds, time was moving differently for them than the rest of the universe. They were aging slower and if he could see Earth from here, they would be running in fast forward. Three years for them was closer to ten or fifteen on Earth. By the time Stern got back to Earth, what was a six year trip for him would be thirty years from when he left. If they swung too close to a black hole on the way home, it might be closer to fifty.

  Dole and Stern were not men of Earth any longer. Dole was calling an alien world of endless grasslands home soon and Stern was a citizen of space with everyone he used to know on Earth living, aging, and dying without him.

  Dole had memorized the way the stars would look from the surface of the world they would be colonizing. He knew where Earth was on that star chart. The stars from the moving ship changed to fast to learn. He did locate Earth each day he woke up, so that he could spot its direction in space while he walked outside the ship.

  He lifted his hand to the new constellation that included Earth’s sun. He stuck up his thumb to cover the spot. He moved his thumb to look and then covered it again.

  Dole realized he was going to miss looking toward Earth from outside the ship. Maybe it would not be so bad to lose. He thought about Stern flying back to a world with his isotopes which will have left him behind. He sensed the commander’s loneliness. Then, Dole remembered if he lost, Stern would pound Constance while floating around the observation deck.

  He went back to searching the ship.

  Dole worked his way back up the starboard side of the hull. He was approaching the zone he had already searched. He began to realize that he might have missed it the first time and Stern might be right. If Stern was right, Dole might be in trouble. How would he even explain the bet to Constance?

  He ran to the top of the ship and zigzagged his way back toward the engines. If Stern was right, then his only chance was to come from the other direction and hope he found the spot first.

  Dole saw Stern kneeling on the hull and his heart dropped. He approached the commander and saw Stern feeding beads of metal into the crack. Each bead flattened and adhered itself to the ship. In the void of space, two pieces of metal touching would fuse at the molecular level requiring no heat to weld like in an atmosphere.

  “You cheated,” Dole said into the short radio.

  Stern looked up and Dole saw him smiling through the faceplate. “I’m almost done, but you can check the edge of the crack to see that it was meteor and not sabotage like you are apparently accusing, Dole.”

  “You already knew it was here and tricked me into the bet.”

  Stern turned his attention back to the welding. “I told you straight out that I knew how to find it. There is a better, more systematic way to search for damage than what you do. Now, you’ll do it my way. That was the deal.”

  “Fine,” Dole said.

  “After I fill this crack, Dole, I’m going to fill your wife’s. Have her meet me on the ob deck after dinner.”

  “You aren’t serious,” Dole said.

  “Don’t try to back out,” Stern said.

  “I can’t make her do it.”

  ***

  Stern stood from finishing the fix and resecured his gear. Dole had to admit it was good work. “A bet is a bet. Don’t act like you wouldn’t have banged Lt. Spence and sat in
your cabin for the rest of the flight. I expect you to follow through the same way you would have made me.”

  “You can’t make me. You won’t throw me off the ship.” After Dole said it, he became aware that they were standing out in space and no one was there to see. Stern was military trained and in better shape than Dole. This would not go well. Maybe this was his plan all along.

  “No, I won’t,” Stern said. “In fact, I’ll find an excuse to keep you on the ship. You’ve done enough to earn an insubordination charge, I’m sure. That’s enough to get you ruled a danger to the colony. You’ll be brigged for the return voyage. I’ll make you weld for three years home in exchange for food. Then, you face the charges. Right?”

  “What charges? Insubordination?”

  “No, the felonies that got you on this ship.”

  Dole swallowed. “Lots of colonists are forgiven penalties on Earth for signing up for recolonization. My crimes were nonviolent. I’ve been cleared for coming here.”

  “I know everything about you, Dole,” Stern said. “Bank and insurance fraud. I know. But I also know if you break your contract with new charges and return to Earth, you’ll face twenty years. Time of Earth slows down once you land there, remember?”

  “I’m not going to be blackmailed into making my wife your sex slave,” Dole said.

  “Nothing like that,” Stern said. “Just fulfill the bet. One night. In fact, just bring her to the observation deck willing to pay up and we’ll just make it one bang. You’ll both be in your cabin before bedtime.” Stern waved down at the sealed hull. “I work efficiently.”

  Dole said, “The observation deck is public.”

  “I’ll shut it down for repairs and mark the job as yours. You just bring her.”

  “She won’t understand.” Dole whispered.

  Stern walked past Dole toward the airlock. “She has had to forgive your debts and mistakes many times before, Dole. That’s why she is on this ship with you. I don’t know everything about women, but I do know for a certainty that if they will fly across the galaxy with you, they will do most anything else for you too. See you both after dinner.”

  ***

  “I can’t believe you.” Constance snapped again. Dole looked around the corridor and put his hand on her back. She pulled away from his touch, but still walked toward the hatch for the Zero G Observation Deck even though she knew why they were going and what was going to happen. He considered that a small victory at least.

  “I’m sorry. I thought he was bluffing.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “Excuse me,” Dole said as they stopped outside the hatch marked CLOSED FOR REPAIRS.

  “I have forgiven you for everything you put us through and I am sticking by you through everything including this, but I want all the truth. No more lies. Tell me everything you left out about this lost bet.”

  Dole swallowed. “I thought I could beat him and be off outside duty.”

  “What else?”

  “He offered me sex with Skyler Spence, if I won too.”

  Constance narrowed her eyes at Dole. “Unbelievable, Dole. Did she even know you were betting our asses over metal work?”

  “I don’t think so. Stern has her for two … payments and was going to reduce it to one with me, if I won.”

  “So you were trying save her, huh?” Constance rolled her eyes.

  “No, truth is I was being selfish and made another gamble that pulled us both down again.”

  Dole looked down. Constance put her hand on the side of his face and kissed him on the mouth. “I forgive you again.”

  “Thank you, Constance.”

  She pinched his earlobe and he yelped. “I still might make a bet with a service robot one day to stick something in one of your holes, so watch out.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They opened the hatch and stepped through. As it closed behind them, they felt the weight leave them and they floated up toward the commander looking up through the plastic dome around them. He was only wearing shorts and a tee shirt.

  Constance’s shirt billowed out and Dole was able to see the shape of her breasts free of gravity. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Dole thought Stern could see the same view from above and he wasn’t looking at the stars anymore.

  “Welcome. I’m glad you came.”

  “This is a one time deal,” Constance said. “There will be no more threats of my husband for the remainder of this trip for any reason. There will be no repeat performances. I am off the table for all future bets and so is my husband’s cock and any of your bitches’ pussies. Are we clear?”

  “Crystal.” Stern smiled.

  “I am doing this, we’ll have sex, and I’ll make you cum, but I’m not your whore,” Constance said. “You don’t get to do anything to me that I don’t want done. No means no and I don’t have to say it twice. I will eject your dick into space, if you try anything outside my rules. Got it?”

  “I do,” Stern said.

  Dole turned in the air and swam against the air particles toward the hatch. “I’ll meet you back at our cabin.”

  “Like hell,” Constance said.

  Dole stopped and twisted. His head was pointed toward the hatch, so the dome looked like a curved floor and his wife and the commander looked like they were upside down. “What?”

  “This is your bet,” she said. “You lost it. Watching this happen is part of your punishment. So get comfortable.”

  “You want me to watch?” Dole said.

  “Fine by me.” Stern said. He took off his shirt showing his rippled chest and abs. He balled it and tossed it through the air like an errant meteor.

  Constance took off her shirt showing her hovering breasts. Stern whistled. She tossed it the other direction. “You can start by fetching those. Get to work, Dole. Everyone on the ship does his job and right now this is yours. And before you get it in your head that this might turn into a threesome, it won’t. You are off sex until we are on the planet.”

  Dole swam toward Stern’s shirt through the air. “You can’t be serious. That’s three months.”

  “Three months if I don’t slow down the ship,” Stern said.

  “You deserve to be punished,” Constance said.

  Dole caught the tee shirt and it smelled like him. Dole decided he liked the faint scent of pigs in the air a bit more. His feet touched the dome and he kicked off to cross over faster.

  When he looked, he saw his wife jerk down Stern’s shorts off his feet in the air. His cock was rock hard and sticking out like a rocket ready to launch. Dole was good with estimates of length from his line of work. Stern had to be twelve inches if he was an inch. Dole could get six inches on his best day. Stern was at least three times thicker than Dole too.

  Constance was floating away, so she grabbed hold of Stern’s cock and pulled herself back toward him. He moaned and licked his lips. Constance tossed the shorts down past her feet. “Get those too, Rambler Gambler.”

  Dole continued across the deck toward his wife’s shirt. As he stretched out to grab it, she cupped Stern’s balls and slid her mouth down over the head of his cock. She kept going further and further down without stopping. Dole didn’t even know she could do that.

  He grabbed her shirt and pulled himself along the deck plate toward where the shorts had landed and started floating back up again.

  Stern put his hand on the back of Constance’s head and trust. She gagged and pulled off. Droplets of spit floated away. “Don’t do that. Don’t grab my head.”

  “Okay, sorry,” Stern said. “It’s more than you are used to, I’m guessing.”

  She looked down past Stern’s balls at Dole under her. “I can take it.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself. I don’t want you throwing up in here or anything,” Stern said.

  “Is that a challenge? You don’t think I can swallow this cock?”

  ***

  Stern laughed. “I’m good at reading people. I think you can, but I’m not sure you wi
ll. You don’t want my balls on your chin, I’m guessing.”

  “You don’t know shit about what I want or like,” she said.

  He shrugged as they twisted in the air with Constance gripping his balls and slick cock.

  He said, “This is the biggest cock you will ever see for the rest of your life. Enjoy it while you can before it goes back to Earth.”

  Dole saw something change on her face. He was floating toward them, but grabbed the holes in the deck plates to stay below them.