Somewhere in the Rigel 14/4/7 Sector she suddenly appeared outside the viewport. The navicom would indicate exactly where, because I uttered an exclamation and a question: "Great heavens! What's that?" The first part was appropriate, as I was, from the point of view of my planetary starting-point, celestially situated. The second part might equally have been, "Who is that?" Because out there, against the interstellar darkness, there seemed to be a female human being, a naked female human being, a glowing naked female human being.
This was, of course, impossible. No naked human being could live in that near-absolute zero vacuum. So I could not be seeing it, her. Clearly, or obscurely, she was a fantasy fostered by several weeks alone in my little skiff. More likely this was the test I had been sent out to undergo. It was not surprising, then, that she was waving to me and smiling. It was also not surprising if this were the case, that she was changing colour, from white-skinned through deepening browns to a black so black she almost disappeared. But that must confirm that she was an illusion, because human beings, even if able to survive naked in space, do not change colour.
Of course, my theological studies had included St Simon Stylites, tortured atop his pillar by visions of tempting women. Perhaps this was a test of my ability to crush within me the effects of the sight of a naked woman, whatever her hue, especially one as downright beautiful as this one. She was also, now, slowly altering her pigment, to a rich dark green. Her hair, everywhere, also changed, and a luxuriant lime-green pubic bush was certainly arresting. She was, too, slowly turning, bringing into view a generous and wonderfully shaped green posterior.
And it was at that moment that she first spoke. Of course she did not use her mouth, as I would never have heard ordinary speech, uttered in a vacuum and having to pass through the viewport. She spoke inside my head, but I heard it in a breathy soprano. "Would you like me to come in?".
As a well-brought up young man I felt I should answer, even though I was all the more certain that she was, if not a fantasy, a siren, a dangerous entity able to use my own mind and senses to allure and destroy me. But there were no shipmates to tie me to the mast, and I would still hear her even if I were blindfolded and my ears were plugged . Even as I formulated this conclusion she continued, "If I were dangerous I could surely breach your craft with or without your permission. After all, I must have powers unknown to you to manifest like this."
This seemed logical, but rather added to my apprehension, and I said nothing, though it was evident that whatever I thought she would know.
"Would it help if I looked like this?" she said in my head, and she metamorphosed into a portly grey-haired elderly man in a business suit carrying a cloth-wrapped stick, which I recognised from viewing of ancient film as an umbrella.
"No, it makes no difference, does it? And you'd really rather I looked like this," and in a few seconds she was again naked, female and this time honey-coloured, except for her eyes which were huge and entirely golden-irised around the pupils.
After a few more seconds she looked down at her breasts, enormous, swaying with her movements, nipples protruding ten centimetres from darker brown, extensive aureoles.
I followed her gaze and as I watched the nipples slowly turned into tiny erected cocks. She brought the forefingers and thumbs of both hands up to those penipples and squeezed. They ejaculated, squirting honey-coloured liquid sixty centimetres or so onto the outside of the viewport. This, too, was naturally impossible. Any fluid emptied into space would freeze at once. But there it was, running in viscous streamlets down the viewport, until she sent out a long, long tongue and licked it clean.
This astonishing feat left me breathless and in a state like drunkenness, my fears not so much banished as becoming part of a mounting excitement. What more could this amazing creature, real or my own projection, do? She immediately answered this unspoken, but mentally formulated, question, for, approaching the viewport even closer, till her lower belly and upper thighs filled it, she caused her luxuriant now blonde puss-fuzz to riffle as if in a breeze. The vulval cleft opened a little and the clitoris came into view. And began to grow, lengthening and thickening, tracking down her left leg, swelling and throbbing, its head turning this way and that, snakelike, as if seeking something, and developing a urethral opening. Then it slid between the labia and half of it disappeared up the pink-edged vagina. Bent into a semi-circle it stroked in and out, a little bent piston in a cylinder. After half a dozen probings it withdrew and squirted a large blob of thick goo onto a thigh, then slowly thinned and retracted till it was back at the top of the cleft. The ejaculate was swiftly absorbed into the muscle.
"Can you imagine how it would be to make love with me?" she asked, her voice seeming now to be sounding throughout my body, not least in my now erect penis.
Even though there was no need for me to speak I needed, in my curious desire to be courteous, ask, "Can you breathe air?"
She laughed, a rich, buzzing along my nerves. Obviously she could use or ignore the atmosphere in the craft. It was a silly question, though polite. "I will open the outer hatch," I told her aloud, "and when you are sealed in the lock I will open the inner one."
She clearly knew that already, and I felt reassured that she had, with equal courtesy, waited to be invited, when she could probably have entered easily enough without the mechanism. At the same time I wondered not just who, or what, she was, but why she would want to display to and have contact with me at all. What would so incredible a creature want with a human doctoral sociotheological student undergoing his qualifying fieldwork examination?
Of course she could read this question as I pondered it and answered as she entered the airlock, "We live to give and take pleasure, with whom and where we can. And you might even learn something."
As the airlock closed and filled with atmosphere I asked aloud, "Does that always mean sex?" During the moments the airlock took to equalise she answered in my head, "No, it can involve almost anything, from sharing visions to philosophical disputation, musical improvisations to theoretical mathematics, whatever be the preoccupation." Then the inner lock opened and she entered, but now different again. She was a slender, elderly lady in a dark grey jacket and long skirt, a "suit," again recognised from old films. Her white hair was gathered in a pleat behind her head, and she had dark stockings and shiny black pumps.
Obviously she had raided my mental store of ancient stereotypes of school teachers, down to the pale complexion and the eyeglasses clamped on the bridge of an aquiline nose.
To my amused surprise she offered me a chilly, long-fingered hand to shake and said in a sharp-toned, precise accent, "I think we should talk about this before going any further."
I indicated the only chair, before the console and bowed. She sat, carefully smoothing down the modest skirt. I sat on the end of the bunk.
We were, I realised, talking with lips and tongue, as she said, fixing me with a stern look through the pince-nez (that was what those things were called so long ago!), "You must be sure what you think and feel if you follow your desires, because whatever happens will be shaped by your wishes, conscious or otherwise." She paused expectantly.
"You mean, if I want you to turn into a fat matron in a corset and beat me with whips that would happen?"
"Yes," she said, "Though I know that would not actually be your chosen activity."
