a thing about this.
Yasmin was obviously much more interested in the glowing mushroom things.
Shoulders relaxing, I studied the cavern again. “This is a new one for me. Not entirely sure how I feel about it.”
“I know how I feel about it,” she said, stretching her arms high above her head. “I feel fantastic. I don’t think I’d realized how much I’d been struggling to breathe out there.” She grimaced. “Unfortunately, it’s not like we can just stay here, dining on lumpy fish and trying to figure out what makes everything glow.”
“That would be terrible, wouldn’t it,” I said, forcing myself not to think about a quiet, domestic life with her. Maybe one that didn’t involve being marooned in this bizarre cavern on an uninhabited moon.
But maybe something else.
“Solving how to get out of here can wait until tomorrow,” I decided. “No idea what time it is, but we should think about setting up a camp.” My jaw tightened, thinking about those tracks in the sand this morning. “I’d feel better if we had some sort of security set up.”
Yasmin smiled. “I think I know just the place.” Taking my hand, she led me back to the section of the cavern that had been divided up by the hanging vines into a series of small chambers.
She touched one of the vines and it made the same high-pitched tinkling sound. “Think you’d hear that, even in your sleep? Because I can hear it just fine and I know for certain your senses are sharper than mine.”
I nodded, looking at the spot she’d picked out. A good-sized, relatively flat floor, surrounded by layers of the curtaining vines, some so long they pooled onto the ground. “I don’t see how anything would come through without brushing against those things. Good call.”
“I even have a plan for bedding,” she said with a grin. “Let’s see how carefully you can wield that stabbing pole of yours.”
Leaving the “bedroom”, we crossed the cavern. Other than the lapping water of the lake, it was eerily silent. Finally we stopped, and I stared at the giant fungus Yasmin pointed to, eyes shining happily.
I took a step back. “You want to sleep on that thing?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Just touch it.” She stroked the mushroom, and suddenly, inappropriately, I felt my own shaft stiffen.
“Or at least,” she continued, “I want to dissect it a bit, see if we can take the outer layers off, use it for padding like you did with the seats of my runner.”
Never mind.
“I really wish I had time to make a few more sensors,” I grumbled, for the twentieth time regretting every component that had been lost in the earthquake. “Everything is glowing madly, and with our luck, it’s probably radioactive or something, but how do we know that?”
Yasmin turned in a circle, her arms spread wide. “If all of this is glowing due to radioactivity, sleeping on a mushroom is the least of our worries.”
True.
The permasteel slid through the soft flesh of the mushroom easily, and as Yasmin carefully pulled the outer layer off, I sliced the thick membranes, unrolling it till it made something approaching a mattress.
“I haven’t decided yet if this makes the list of top ten experiences,” I told her as we ferried the pieces back to the vined area. “Maybe I should be keeping a list of strange things, instead of things to do again.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and continued making up our mushroom bed.
I was definitely not telling my brothers about this.
I didn’t even like mushrooms, even if most of the replicator stock on ships was either fungi or algae.
Mushrooms were just strange.
“I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the light,” Yasmin finally said, when everything was finally arranged to her satisfaction. “But I think we can manage.”
Then she turned to me and wrapped her arms around my neck gently, pressing her body against mine, driving out any thoughts other than pleasure at her touch and hunger for more.
“I think it’s time I let you know it wasn’t anything to do with oxygen deprivation.”
Her face upturned towards mine, I didn’t need the low light to let me see the sparkle in her eyes, or catch the flick of her pink tongue on her full lips.
Just her touch was enough to bring that fire back into a raging inferno.
I bent my head and breathed that sweet scent in deeply. “When I saw you half naked out there in the sun, I thought I had lost my mind,” I