Free Joe Haldeman SF Gateway Omnibus: Marsbound, Starbound, Earthbound by Joe Haldeman Page A

the ship for music. A lot of it was old, jazz and ska and waterbug, or ancient like waltzes and rock, but there was plenty of city and sag.
    Paul and I danced for a while, usually with each other, and I guess I started feeling glamorous, or at least sexy, dominating the captain's attentions. Not that there was much unmarried competition.
    The zero-gee room goes to night-light from midnight till six, conserving power and giving people a reasonably private, or at least anonymous, place to have sex—or romance, but I don't think much of that was going on. There was no real privacy in the sleeping quarters, just a thin partition, which didn't prevent some people from embarrassing the rest of us. But most couples waited and met at one dark end or the other of the zero-gee room.
    At midnight the only others in the zero-gee room were the Manchesters, who left us alone after a bit of obvious yawning and stretching.
    Afterward, we agreed that we both had been sort of time bombs ticking, waiting for the midnight hour. If I hadn't wanted to be "seduced," I could have left while the lights were still on. But there was something desperate going on inside me, that wasn't just sexual desire or curiosity.
    Our whispered conversation had gotten around to virginity, and my sort of in-between status, which I'd never told anyone about. But the booze loosened my tongue. When I was thirteen I was fooling around with a boy who had "borrowed" his sister's vibrator, and in the course of investigating how to use it, he was a little clumsy and popped me. It wasn't very painful, but it was the end of that relationship, right at the playing-doctor stage.
    He didn't go to my school, so I didn't know whether any of the other boys knew about it, but I imagined they could all tell at a glance that I wasn't a virgin anymore. After about a year or so I realized that I still actually was.
    I was unpopular and unattractive, or at least felt like it. Skipped a grade but then got it back after my parents took me out of school for a year to go overseas. They worked in London and Madrid and I went back and forth, learning about enough Spanish to order a Coke in a restaurant.
    From not speaking Spanish it only took a few minutes for the conversation to get about to the difficulties of having sex in space, with lack of privacy being only one of several problems, with the conservation of momentum and angular momentum high on the list. Difficult to describe, so I asked him to demonstrate, with our clothes on, of course.
    That stage didn't last too long. We explored another problem, that of getting at least partially undressed while both of you had to hold on to a handle or go spinning apart.
    We did managed to get our bottoms mostly removed. He looked kind of large, if smaller than my friend's sister's vibrator, but he was slow and gentle. As soon as he got it all the way in, he ejaculated, but we stayed together and he recovered in a few minutes and did it again.
    I'd been prepared for an ordeal, but in fact it was all pretty exciting and fun. I kept losing my grip and he'd swim after me, while I groped for one of the handles. We wound up floating in midair, though, holding each other's shoulders, rotating slowly, and then not slowly.
    I didn't really have an orgasm until later, in the shower, but it was still overwhelming. Floating in space with Paul inside me, and me inside his arms. It took me a long time to fall asleep that night, and I woke up with the feeling still fresh. His face in the twilight, eyes closed, concentrating, and then losing control. And me not a virgin anymore, not even technically.
    * * * *
    It was several days before we could find the privacy to talk about it. We both were in the galley for the last breakfast shift, and I killed some time cleaning up the microwave and prep area until the last people left.
    He said it quickly, almost sotto voce : "Carmen, I'm sorry I took advantage of you."
    "You didn't. I loved it."
    "But you were drinking, and