A welcome relief from two months of the yawning black of deep space, the magical colours of the Rainbow nebula filled the upper deck porthole of Carlo's sleek black freighter. He was still far too far away to see the Rainbow itself but the signal from the hotel's deep space beacon was unfaltering on the deck's instrument panel. The signal faithfully guided the truck in like a benign tractor beam, pulling Carlo towards much craved human contact and luxurious five-star comfort.
Carlo knew the big station would be within visual range in a few hours and he'd commence his final approach for docking a few hours after that. He couldn't wait to get his feet on 'dry land' though. He had the service 'bot pull up his reservation details and transmit his projected arrival time to the check-in desk. He tingled with anticipation when a moment or so later, the confirmation pinged back along with the coordinates of his parking point and room number.
The truck streaked through the void like a vast black eel jetting through the lightless depths of an icy ocean. The silence and precision of its passing belied the furious reactions that raged within its A-matter drive. Complex technology hauled the enormous armoured freighter along at cataclysmic speeds.
Standing on the deck with his arms folded on his chest, Carlo watched the colours of the nebula brighten as it drew closer. Though he reckoned there were still six hours or so before mooring, as if it his preparation would speed his arrival he decided to make himself presentable for human company. Leaving the deck, he walked towards his room.
Carlo already knew what he wanted to wear -- 20th century motorbike leathers. He loved to swagger menacingly up to the door of Bar Spectrum, clothed in the heavy studded jacket, big steel-capped boots and shiny black trousers. He undressed and appraised his naked body in the mirror beside his bed.
He was still young at thirty eight, a bloody good eighty or ninety years left in him yet or so claimed the GP at his last annual check-up. His broad tanned six foot four frame reflected solidly back at him. Fierce blue eyes beamed intensity from beneath the mass of blonde ringlets that drove women and boys alike to spontaneous divestment. He hadn't shaved in a while and traces of a reddish-brown streaked his face and chest.
Corded muscle straddled and girdled his powerful frame and more reddish brown curls amassed between his legs as if crowding about the celebrity presence of his enormous penis as it slept nestled on his scrotal sack between his plum-sized balls. His voluminous foreskin comfortably concealed his shapely purple glans. There was no doubting Carlo was an impressive specimen though he himself could never really see it.
After donning white boxer-shorts, a black T-shirt and his beloved leathers, he left his boots by the door to his room and headed on black-socked feet back to the deck for coffee and an apple doughnut, enjoying the tickle of the clean silk on his perineum as he walked.
Standing on deck in the kitchenette alcove, he rubbed his hands together eagerly as the coffee grinder's harsh grumble drowned out the quiet hum of the instruments and atmosphere control. The fragrance of jinovian coffee filled the air. Carlo sniffed the beloved aroma with reverence. Divine-tasting and exceedingly high in caffeine and traces of other rare stimulants, the beloved beans contained the essence of Carlo's favourite drink.
Jinovia was a mysterious planet and one that was close to Carlo's heart. Every shot of espresso blasted from the workings of his antique machine brought nostalgic memories of the time he had spent on the planet years ago before he'd met Gregg.
He loved to coast through daydreams of the vastly varying terrain he had explored on the mystical world. In his mind, he floated over the countless miles of picture-postcard beaches on the coasts of the main continent. He fondly glided inland above acres of dreamy lush rain-forest, beautiful resorts hidden beneath the enormous spreading canopies.
He'd flown a rented craft over the stark icy mountain-ranges bounded by snowy foothills and vast impassable reaches of frozen tundra on the permanent dark side of the planet. He'd been moved by the stark un-inhabitability of the landscape in the wind-whipped gloom beneath him, an eternal winter locked in by a never-ending night. How it had contrasted with the light side! Finally, his memory would alight fondly on the jinovian ghosts themselves.
Jinovia's rare horizontal axis had allowed these remarkable creatures to evolve. Bathed in perpetual warm daylight near the sub-tropical landmass close to the equator where eternal daylight met ever-lasting night, the distant ancestors of the water ghosts had harnessed the water around them to strange and spectacular effect.
A single jinovian ghost consisted of a massive chain of identifiably distinct microbes, operating as a single life-form. Each complex unit manipulated a body of water and used it to form a larger body-mass. The water-ghosts could change a dog-sized mass of water to ice, liquid or steam or any combination of the three in a split second, appearing as spectres of steam, creaking columns of ice or eerily disembodied masses of water flowing over the ground leaving no moisture to mark their passage.
The microbes fed carnivorously on any life-form they were able to envelop and digest. Their energy requirements were exceedingly high and they were voracious and opportunistic feeders.
Carlo had seen footage that dated back to the planet's first settlement almost a million years ago from the planet's archives -- the awful water mask, the desperately clawing hands, the weakening struggles, the last few ghastly twitches, the time-lapse sequence showing the grizzly absorption of the flesh over hours and finally the sated ghost pouring itself away into the forest, thousands of engorged pink oily beads of stored energy clearly visible throughout the aqueous form. Nothing like welcoming the tourists, had been his only sober thought at the time. These days, human fatalities were a thing of the past -- humans knew the creatures better now -- and in the last millennium, the two species had begun to trade.
The creatures could be trained to apply their unique mastery of water to human flesh. Massage therapy across the galaxy had been revolutionised by the training of the water-ghosts and the jinovian spas were unequalled galaxy-wide. But the inevitably spin-off from the spas was what interested Carlo most in the jinovian water ghosts.
Many a time, Carlo had indulged himself in the jinovian brothels. If you knew the right people -- and Carlo did -- you would leave your resort whenever you felt the urge and make your way to a nondescript alleyway in one of the small towns set among the trees. There would be an ordinary looking door with a curling symbol near the bottom. If you knew no differently, you'd think it was just a scratch on the aging woodwork but if you were wiser, your pulse would quicken with excitement and you would hastily knock.
The door would swing open and a human attendant would greet you. You would be wordlessly ushered to the reception desk where the receptionist would take your money and your audio-visual preferences. You would follow the gesture of the receptionist down a hall to one of the numerous adjoining white tiled room dimly lit in black light and pink and you would go in, shut the door, sit on the bed provided and eagerly strip off. You would then lie on your back, tossing your clothing in a corner. Your video would begin on the ceiling and your cock would be hard with anticipation.
One or two fragrant, steamy spectres would quickly materialise beside your bed, pouring from the aquarium built discretely beneath the mattress. The ghosts would thicken into balls of water and move on to the bed, one swirling about your ankles, another on your chest in a delightful mixture of warm steam, warm water and tiny crystals of ice, forming and sublimating as they touched your skin.
