"Come to me after", my wrist comm buzzed discretely. It was the captain. I shot her an acknowledging glance with the tiniest of winks. It wasn't as easy as it sounds, because I was slung over the electrical engineer's shoulder, being carted off, presumably to his quarters. My long hair hung wildly as I bounced slowly up and down in that rude position, my lace chemise babydoll teddy inevitably riding up to display my lace knickers pulled up between my prominent bottom cheeks, pointing high in the air.
Now, the relative gravity on the moon's surface is about a sixth of Earth's sea level gravity, so it wasn't uncomfortable to be lifted and carried around in this way. It did make the bouncing motion a much slower and almost comical effect, compared to doing the same thing on Earth. But the boys all enjoyed the show, so who was I to argue? I did make some obligatory squeals, like, "Ooh, you big brute! How dare you?", pounding ineffectively on his back as he proceeded, apparently unaware of my beatings, toward the dorms. And all the other men laughed along.
And so did the captain, if just a polite chuckle. This was what she said she wanted when she included me in the mission. "Good for morale", she had said. We had been moonside for a week, and she seemed happy with my performance so far.
It was a hot summer's early afternoon back on earth when I arrived for my appointment to see Captain Jamison of Spacer Industries Mining Operations. Her office was in a series of low buildings surrounded by concrete pavement and car parks on the western end of a sprawling Spacer Industries complex in which there seemed barely to be a single tree, plant, or flower. I had dressed fairly formal, in a black pencil skirt, white blouse tucked in, stockings, and mid-height heels (I don't feel confident walking in really high heels, especially in such a constrictive skirt). My hair was back and up in a tight bun. I felt the neat, tidy, efficient look was going to be what I was after.
I was barely on time, as I had trouble locating the building. The instructions I had were "Office 12, Building C2/F, Zone 3", but the signage in the campus was terrible, and very confusing. It was almost impossible to find someone to ask, because the heat of the sun was unbearable outdoors, so everyone had apparently retreated to air conditioning, but I finally cornered someone and managed to get to the building. Of course, as soon as I stepped out of my air-conditioned car into the oppressive heat and heavy humidity, the wick started to burn on my outfit retaining it's sharp look. It ran out before I even found the correct entrance to the building, so I was starting to perspire, my blouse was sticking and drooping, and my stockings were getting icky. I had no time to find a bathroom and freshen up, however, as I had under a minute to find "Office 12". Besides, the temperature inside the building wasn't much lower than outside, anyway.
To give you an idea, it was at the end of a hallway in between offices 7 and 9, for no reason I was able to discern. But having hunted it down, I was knocking at the door right on time. I could feel my blouse clinging to my shoulder blades.
"Come," a woman's voice called from inside. I took a deep breath, cursing the hot weather for ruining my outfit, and opened the door.
I was stunned to find, in the tidy office, a woman probably in her forties, her coveralls open, and stripped off down to her waist, leaving her in a singlet with visible bra straps. The windows were wide open. It was no cooler in the office.
"Aircon's on the blink," she absently informed me. "You're the professor? Doctor Kingston, I presume?" she half grinned at her own little joke, which obviously would have worked better if my name was Livingston. She motioned me to sit in a simple chair opposite her desk, "So you wanna go to the moon?"
I had responded to an invitation posted at my university. A mining team was interested in taking a research officer with them, as part of the partnership between Spacer Industries and the university.
I began my long-rehearsed presentation, but only managed a couple of sentences. "Look, to be honest, I don't give a fuck what you're researching," was a signal, I thought, that the meeting was probably not going the right way. I had begun talking about my application to join her moon mining expedition by explaining why I wanted to go. It was so that I could research cosmic and solar radiation in space, but she shut me down dismissively without hearing more than the title of the research project.
The strong-featured captain looked sort of Nordic. She wasn't especially tall, though taller than I am, but she exuded physical power. She was athletic. Her straw blonde hair was caught up in a loose bun, and even with her weathered complexion, or perhaps even because of it, she projected an air of maturity, with distinct echoes of younger rockstar beauty, and an absence of pretense.
I stopped talking, thinking perhaps I had offended her or something. It was hard to think, because I was overly hot, sticky, and deeply regretting the decision to wear stockings. I waited for her to explain, mindful that at least one strand of slick hair had slipped from its bonds to droop down the side of my face, and a bead of sweat was starting to edge down it. I felt like some sort of cartoon snowman, just melting away under her authoritative presence.
She regarded me for a long moment.
"You seem nice," she opined. I was half convinced this was intended as a compliment, but only half. Maybe less. "What's your relationship status?"
I was taken aback. I blinked and quickly thought about this odd question. After consideration, I figured it was possibly important to ask this because the assignment was for a three-month stay on the moon. "I... I'm not... um..., no attachments," I figured this would be the information she was after.
"Hmm," she responded, apparently not having all the information she was really after. "You're very pretty, though. No boyfriends at all? Are you sure?"
It was a strange line of questioning, and I didn't know how to be comfortable with it. I reminded myself that, from the captain's perspective, it was kinda relevant to find out what someone's personal life was like. How many boyfriends did she think I should have?
"Well, I was going out with this guy for almost a year, but a couple of months ago I finally sort of moved on...," I paused, hoping this was enough.
"Ugh, boys, amirite?" she leaned forward for extra rapport with a twinkling eye, and I smiled, partly with relief that I didn't have to go further into the whole breakup story, and partly because for the first time she was engaging with me as a human.
She sat back in her seat again and resumed her previous air of surveying me, as if calculating something.
"Forget it," she finally announced. "It's not something you'd be up for. Thanks for coming, though. Good luck with your research."
She started moving a couple of pieces of paper on her desk as if expecting me to leave. But I really wanted this. I didn't know why she was rejecting me. I stayed seated, fighting back the sense that I was being ridiculous.
"But I have references," I squeaked in objection. I cursed my stupid voice for leaping up three octaves, exposing my emotion. I pressed on, thrusting my references across her desk.
She didn't look up, just glanced at them, then pushed my references out of her way, with a grunt, and continued her fiddling around with other things. I felt like the little boy being rejected by Willy Wonka after the factory tour. I was crashing and burning.
I really needed this break, though. It would mean publishing a paper that would be the envy of all my peers. My ears started glowing, then my cheeks. I started to build up some righteous indignation. I smacked my hand on her desk, and as authoritatively as I could, declared, "I bloody well am 'up for' it".
At this, she looked up.
And I froze, meeting her gaze, hoping I had her attention, fearing I was about to feel her wrath.
She stared at me with piercing blue eyes.
I kept my poise for a few moments, but then started to crumble. I withdrew my hand back into my lap. I broke off the staring competition, aware that I had failed. She had won. I muttered an apology, and began gathering my things.
As I fussed around, trying to get organized quickly so that I could leave before starting to cry, she reached across her desk to grab a photo frame which had been facing her. She spun it around so that I could see it, and tapped the top of it, continuing to stare at me with an ambiguous, but intense expression.
"You see this? This is my crew," she said levelly.
I looked at the picture. There were six men in Spacer Industries uniformed coveralls, huddled with an apparent brotherly collegiality, and the captain stood beside them. Everyone was at ease and smiling or laughing.
"Oh," I said, not sure if I was about to get shouted at. "They seem nice."
"You see? You think that because you're nice. That's what I'm talking about," she cryptically countered, maintaining the same intense glare. Now I felt like Ferris Bueller's sister, stared at with menacing intensity by Charlie Sheen's character.
"Umm... I, ok," I fumbled a dumb response. My face now featured sweat not just from the environmental conditions, but also from my own anxiety. My whole blouse was dampened, my stockings were torturing me, and my legs were held tightly against each other, trapping and building up their heat, by the narrow, long pencil skirt. Increasingly, whisps of hair were sliding free from my bun and falling around my face, providing a course of rivulets of sweat to drip down from my head.
Tapping the picture again, she continued, "What do you suppose happens when you take six young men like this away, living close-quarters far from home, for months at a time?"
This seemed like a test. I thought very hard, trying to second-guess what she wanted to hear, "They... would probably become very tight knit?" I ventured uncertainly.
She shook her head and sighed, flopping back in her seat.
"Listen. This tour will be my thirteenth to the moon base. I've learned a lot in that time. The most important of which is," she leaned forward again for emphasis. "Young men are impossible to work with when they're all full of cum."
I blinked, trying to figure out if she had said what I thought I heard. I tried to be as ambiguous as I could, encouraging her to continue explaining, "Oh?"
"Yeah. 'Oh', indeed! My earlier tours were hard. I found myself constantly coming down hard on the guys, no pun intended, and that's bad for morale, which is bad for productivity. And my bonuses are all about productivity, see? I needed a circuit breaker. I needed a new strategy. So do you know what I did?" she waited expectantly for me to guess.
I was at a loss. I shook my head in defeat, prompting a new set of sweaty droplets to course down their their hairy little highways, their dishevelled downpipes, their follicular funiculars.
