After he cleaned the filter, for macerated cat was one of the few substances the self-clean couldn't cope with, she had offered him a cup of coffee. As she sat across from him, her robe just happened to gape open, beneath the glass table. Seeing that he had noticed, she asked him if he could fix other plumbing troubles; she seemed to have some congestion in another pipe, and perhaps he could open it up for her?
He said, of course, a Maytack repairman, like a Boy Scout, is always willing to help. She led him to her waterbed, and, with a bit of probing with his special tool, he resolved her problem for a while. He told her that this additional work did not include a guarantee of lifetime satisfaction, and suggested that, since she had lost three cats already that year, perhaps she should change her ways. Rather than buy another cat, he suggested, a vibrator might be better.
Jim didn't mean to be callous and cruel, but he was getting tired of such mid-afternoon service calls. It wasn't that Jim minded polishing his tool from time to time, especially when Maytack was paying him to do it, but your average bored housewife is hardly something to remember and fantasize about. Not for someone who spends hours every day, sitting by the phone, watching special pay videos. When you've seen Yvonne van der Kunt and Stephen Studd, the Playperson playmates of the year, last year, perform on demand, larger than life, 3-D, in color, then servicing housewives seems menial work, something less than a viewer has come to expect. Stephen Studd would never ream the pipe for just any old housewife.
Jim's big thrill came when he got a real emergency call. A Maytack Minicruiser, Model 90, at least 72 years old, had lost power on the way to the moon, or so the 911 dispatcher said. Jim called to his toolbox to heel, raced for the door, and jumped into his own, souped-up, Maytack Model 98, an altogether more macho machine.
Clearing the atmosphere, and updating his flight plan with the FAA, Jim kicked in his extra thrust and was soon in pursuit of the crippled minicruiser. It's radar transponder didn't seem to be working, though the comm transmitter must have, to call 911. If the ship was that badly off, Jim figured he'd better wear a pressure suit, just in case. He switched on his infra-red scanner and saw the bright disk of the moon centered in the screen. Searching, he increased magnification until the moon filled the whole screen. Then he saw it, a small dark spot, meaning a cold, an unusually cold, ship.
As he converged on his quarry, consuming obscene amounts of fuel to slow down, the minicruiser loomed larger on his screen. The big parabolic nozzles were, indeed, quite cold, indicating that the engine failure must have occurred some time ago. The cruiser was not moving fast, as it should have been, had its destination been the moon. Rather, it was simply falling, slowly at this distance, toward the moon. As he approached, his radar started getting a skin return. His tracker predicted impact with the moon in fifteen hours, if he did not get it repaired and accelerating, first. His calls on the short-range frequencies bore no fruit. If he called on 911, just to ask if anyone was home, he'd risk a citation from the FAA for improper radio procedures. Slipping slowly over the stricken craft, Jim lowered his fueling pipe. Between the two propulsion elements should be a groove with a coupling receptacle. Yes. Expertly, he slid the end of his probe along the groove, then extended it to strike home. The receptacle gripped his probe, seemed to pull it inward, so his ship lay alongside the other, belly to belly. Should she need it, he could now send several energizing squirts into the seemingly passive Model 90. The lips of his docking port kissed the Model 90's and sealed, first time. Jim put his ship's systems on standby and checked for pressure on the 90's airlock. Artfully, he cycled the conjoined ports and insinuated himself into the other ship.
It was dark. He was about to switch on his helmet light when a pleasant feminine voice spoke. He could hear it through his helmet, there being normal pressure in the cabin. "Please, no lights, not yet," it said.
"Damn," Jim thought to himself, "another bored housewife." Then he said out loud, "I suppose you're not decently dressed."
"Something like that. Why don't you just make yourself comfortable. Take off that awful pressure suit."
"Lady, I know the drill," he said, removing his helmet. "First I fix your Maytack, probably something simple, like resetting the main circuit breaker, which is, by the way, on page 1 of your emergency procedures manual. It will light up and speak to you, if you'll hit the red button near the edge, about eleven o'clock, on the main instrument panel. When the ship is fixed, then you'll ask me to do some other little chore, like open a clogged pipe for you. Am I right?"
"Remarkably perceptive. I am lucky to have found a superior specimen. Tell me, what is your name?"
"James Phipps. You might as well call me Jim."
"Friendly. Cooperative."
"The customer is always right. I aim to please."
"How very nice. I won't have to go through so many explanations, or otherwise convince you to cooperate. Don't worry about the ship. What I want won't take long. But I won't take no for an answer. Do we understand each other?"
"I think so," Jim answered. Slowly, the cabin lights brightened, just enough for Jim to see. For a moment, he was speechless. Before him was a 3-D image of Yvonne van der Kunt, practically naked. She was wearing only a slinky pink teddy. It covered the parts the law required to be covered in public, but it didn't conceal a thing. "Yes," said Jim, "I'll cooperate, if what you want is what I hope you want." The image approached. A hand reached out and stroked Jim's cheek, placed a finger on his lips. It was no image; it was real. Surprised, Jim twitched, and, in zero gee as they were, they slowly separated. "You are not the real Yvonne van der Kunt, are you? That would be too much. What is your real name?"
"You couldn't pronounce it, so you might as well call me Yvonne. Why don't you let me help you out of that pressure suit?" She moved toward him. He couldn't figure out how she did that, since she didn't push off from anything. He couldn't do a thing but drift, until he came to a wall or hand-hold to stabilize himself. Her fingers flew over his suit, tripping the latches and undoing the zips.
"Wow, you're fast," he said.
"I'm specially trained."
The suit came off and, seemingly only seconds later, his Maytack uniform joined it, floating in free fall in the cabin. "You don't waste time," he said.
"No, I don't. I don't have a lot of time, actually, but you can have all you need, to enjoy me." She ran her fingers lightly along his thigh and up over his belly, pausing en route to see that his functional members were ready for action. They were, for she was lovely, and Jim had, after all, been trained by years of "repairing" things to respond when a Maytack owner was in distress. "I am," she said, "what you call a virgin. I have been instructed in what I'm supposed to do. That is, I'm familiar with the anatomical mechanics, but you will have to help me with the details of technique. Is that all right?"
"Yvonne, am I dreaming this?" She kissed him on the mouth, sucking slightly so that the contact would not push him away. "You can't be real," he said, holding her at an arm's length. "You can't be that beautiful. You can't be a virgin, not at your age. Where are you from?"
"You don't want to make love to me?" she replied.
"Hey, a Maytack repairman has to do what he has to do, and I'm sure I'd enjoy it. But you are something else. I mean, I'm not sure I've been trained to fix what you need fixing."
"You don't do virgins?"
"I didn't say that, though, come to think of it, I don't think I ever have."
"But you are willing to engage in sexual union with me? I'm very concerned that what happens is voluntary on your part."
"I don't understand how a beautiful woman like you can (a) be a virgin. Do you have some awful disease or something? Then, (b) how come you are out here in cis-lunar space in an ancient Maytack, and (c) want to have sex with a stranger you have never met before? Will you explain that? And tell me where you come from."
"If I tell you, will you promise to copulate with me, anyway?"
Jim paused a second, trying to think. It was very difficult. Yvonne was incredibly beautiful. Her face was perfect, with huge eyes and a straight narrow nose, prominent cheekbones, a voluptuous mouth, a halo of long blonde hair which, in weightlessness, made her look like a sunrise. Swelling breasts strained to be out of that teddy, and the nipples were prominent. She had a narrow waist, a trim tum, and shapely hips, a little wider than currently fashionable, covergirlwise, but undeniably womanly, and her tapered legs went on and on. The little pink teddy, trimmed with lace, pulled taut in her crotch, folding inward where her flesh did the same. "Do you promise to be totally honest with me, to answer all my questions?"
"Yes, if you promise to fuck me. Is that the right word?"
"I'll do it, but let's call it making love."
"Agreed. Whatever you say. Do we do it here? Or would you prefer the sleeping cabin?"
"Both." He put his arms around her, necessary in zero gee, and kissed her, passionately. She seemed to be trying to imitate him, but she was convincingly virginal. With one hand, holding her shoulder with the other, for Newton's Third Law cannot be broken, he slipped the top of the teddy downward, letting her breasts pop out in all their monumental splendor. Careful not to let her go, he planted kisses on them both, then tugged at the lower half, until there was some slack at the crotch. He hooked a big toe through a leg hole and, with his hands in her armpits, lifted her out. It clung a bit, around her ankles, but she helped him loosen it, and the teddy sailed across the room until, slowed by air friction, it almost hung in the air of the cabin. Jim hugged her to him, kissing her, mashing his chest against those fabulous breasts, and feeling her pubic hair caress his tender tool. For a long time, he luxuriated in the sensations he felt, an incredible euphoria. He was making love with an Yvonne van der Kunt look-alike! A dream, an at most once in a lifetime experience. "Let's find that bedroom," he whispered, pushing off from the cabin wall in the right general direction.
He wasn't used to zero gee, and even less used to maneuvering with a lovely woman in his arms, so they ended up tumbling in the air, and his head fetched up against the floor with a thump. "Here, let me help," she said. Taking hold of a convenient part of him, which was slender enough to put her fingers around and close to his center of mass, she gracefully towed him toward the sleeping compartment curtain. She was impossibly adroit in zero gee. The curtain dilated, and she pulled him through. "Do you want the lights on?" she asked.
"Sure, I love the look of you." The lights came on, seemingly by themselves.
"What do we do now?" she asked. "You have more experience than I, and I want you to get maximum enjoyment from this." Jim looked around the tiny compartment. The bed seemed in order, the thin restraining nets just the thing to keep them from flying about the room when things got passionate. Jim went hand over hand, using the familiar standard handholds, until he was supine on the bed. "What do I do?" the lovely Yvonne asked, the perfect ingenue.
"Have you ever seen Between Purple Sheets?"
"Yes, I'm familiar with it. They...I tried to mold myself after the actress."
"I don't know what you looked like before, but you certainly look like Yvonne van der Kunt now," he said, almost reverentially. "Let's re-enact the climactic scene, where they are on the yacht, anchored off Belize. This bed is similar, isn't it? Of course, there's the problem of zero gee."
"No problem. You want the dialog, too?"
"Why not? I'll call you Wanda, if I can remember to."
She seemed to fly toward him, burying her face in his crotch. "Oh, Creighton, I love (slurp, slurp) the taste of you."
"Oh, Wanda," he responded, as he caressed her buttocks, "you do good things to me."
The original scene took 23 minutes. The recreation, without the benefit of editing and with a few "retakes," took 45. Breathing heavily, Jim stretched out and said, "Oh, Yvonne, you make a wonderful Wanda." He fingered his side, just below his ribs. There was a numb place. When he looked, there seemed to be a thin, pink line, almost like a scar. "Yvonne, have you ever seen Martha Makes Mars?"
"Yes, but haven't you had enough? I have."
"With you, I could never get enough, though it might take some of your special attention to sharpen my tool right now. Give me half an hour, and I'll be ready again." He cupped one perfect breast in his hand, idly thumbing the nipple. His other hand stroked her inner thigh, where a slight stickiness was trophy of his manhood.
"We contracted to perform sexual union. We did. Why do it again?"
"Why do it the first time? You went to a great deal of effort to get me here. Why? Where are you from?"
She sighed and pulled away from him, sitting astride his legs in the cramped cubicle. Only the net draped across them held her there; there was no weight on his legs. Jim reached out and played with her, tickling her inner thigh, twirling the damp hairs into little cones, running his finger up and down her slippery groove. "Yes," she said, "I promised to answer your questions. I am not from Earth. You would call me an alien or an extraterrestrial." In his contented state, Jim did not mind at all. He was curious why she did not respond with contractions, as she had before, when he probed her receptacle. "I am a construct perhaps you might even say a cyborg, patterned after a female depicted in your electromagnetic transmissions."
"OK, I'm not prejudiced, just because you are not human. Interspecies sexual contact is not unknown, just not talked about. Shepherds have their sheep. Some women keep dogs. A psychiatrist I heard of used to fuck his pet goose. Dolphins, they're a randy lot. I heard about a female graduate student, marine biology, who had an affair with a bottlenose dolphin. Well, not really an affair, sort of mutual masturbation in a big aquarium tank. So, even though I've never done it before, I'm not shocked or anything. But why?"
"We want to make contact with Earth, with its people. We have studied you for a long time, learned your languages from short-wave broadcasts, what you call TV."
"Why not just land and announce yourselves?"
"It's not that simple. We don't know what your reaction would be. Much of your TV, admittedly fiction, has the Air Force or Army attacking alien spacecraft. We obtained an ancient Maytack and staged an emergency to lure someone to contact us. We thought it would be better to make first contact in, so to speak, neutral territory, under somewhat pleasant conditions, so there would be at least one human who wasn't prejudiced against us, who might be able to tell the authorities that he has met us, and we are friendly."
"That seems reasonable. I'll be happy to tell them about you, though they might not believe me. What would you have done if a woman had come, instead of a man?"
"We were prepared for that eventuality. And I am certain, when the time comes to tell the authorities, that they will believe you. You will be able to show them one of us."
"You are coming back to Earth with me?"
"No. Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. I cannot go. I am not representative of my species. I look too human."
"Well, how about one of your regular kind, then. I'd be happy to introduce them. I'd probably be on network TV, get invited to the White House, get a fat book contract. Yeah."
"In our normal form, our immune systems would react too strongly to substances in your Earth environment. No, we will need your cooperation to overcome that. Here, we want you to have these." She sprang from his lap, so fast his finger went pop as it extracted from her receptacle. She returned with two large plastic sacks. Though weightless, they were obviously massive, and several objects with square corners stretched the plastic from within. "This is for you. I am given to understand you can live comfortably with this, without having to work for Maytack. That will give you time to serve our emissary."
"What is it?"
"Oh, gold, of course. Isn't that how you Earth people measure wealth? If you invest it and live off the income, you should be able to afford all you will need."
"Maytack doesn't allow its repairmen to accept gratuities. Nothing substantial. Nothing you can't eat, drink, or screw on the spot."
"So quit your job with Maytack. You can afford it."
"That's great, but I don't understand.
Why do you need me, then, to serve your
emissary?"
"In order for our emissary to withstand Earth's antigens without violent responses, sickness, it is necessary that she grow up in an Earthly environment from the earliest stages of development. She will need a father to care for her and teach her Earth ways, Earth language, feed her Earth food and expose her to Earth diseases, so that she will be at home on your planet. Then, when she is mostly grown, we will take her for a while, to complete her education. You may regard the gold as prepaid child support payments."
"Hey, Yvonne, I don't know if I'm prepared to do all this. Is it too late to back out?"
"Yes, Jim. You agreed to copulate with me. You did it your way. I did it mine. It's too late to back out now, Jim. You are pregnant."