He heard the hiss that announced Zan Liu long before she made it down the ladder. Her palms controlling the long fall into the Ariadne’s arms with the softest pressure. He watched her land, as a ballet dancer in the lowered gravity, her toes taking in her weight before setting down her heels. The grace of a snowflake. Her jet black hair flowed around for a second longer, falling in slow motion to lay on her shoulders like a silk bolero.

“Were you the one making an RCS adjustment earlier?” He asked.

“Affirmative, Captain Strugatsky.” Answered the pilot, sarcastically.

Who else? She was the only other human on board of the Ariadne, and the only crew member with full access to the ship’s attitude controls. Spinning, she picked up a heavy-looking metal case from the arm’s conveyor belt. He raised an eyebrow.

“From Theseus?” He asked.

Liu nodded wordlessly. The small automated drone Theseus was designed to go back and forth between the mission’s ground habitat on the North pole and the Ariadne in orbit, carrying experiments for analysis. Of course, none of the necessary gear could be found in the leisure area he had consigned himself to. She hopped through the room, it was easier than walking in low grav, carefully laying the case down before sitting next to him on the bolted-down sofa.

“How are you feeling?” She asked softly, looking at the large observation bay in front of them. They could only see as far as the closed metal shutters.

He couldn’t help but feel a tingle of resentment at her concerned tone. When they had started their ejection burn towards Mars, Captain Strugatsky had been a hero. An accomplished sportsman, scientist and engineer, veteran of long stays aboard the International Space Station, the first Russian to set foot on the Moon, soon to be the first Russian to command a Mars mission. A name alongside Gagarin and Tereshkova, flying straight into the History books. Fearless.

But as the Earth grew smaller and smaller from the observation bays, something inside his heart shifted. Ariadne’s rotating arms gave him one third of a G, but that wasn’t enough to find his footing. As it turned out, Earth, the insignificant pale blue dot, was the axel around he revolved.

When she disappeared entirely, he found that endlessness freaked him the fuck out. In the nightmare of every astronaut, Captain Strugatsky started spinning, uncontrollable, into his own mind’s void.

He tried to hide it, as men do. Fortunately for the mission there was no escaping the armada of shrinks at Mission Control, or the biomonitors of Pasiphaë. Confronted, he had the grace to confess. The mission kept on, Weir took command while he kept himself to his bunk and the sofa in the living area, in front of the observation bay he kept forever closed. It didn’t help not to see space. He didn’t need to see the vast ocean of emptiness beyond to know it was and would always be there. Only a few centimeters of alloys and polymers away from sucking the life away from his lungs, boiling his blood, freezing his eyes into their sockets.

“I’m fine.” He lied.

She smiled. He resented that too. Her kind, gentle presence. Liu was a hero in her own right, her star burning brighter than any save the Sun. The youngest member ever in the Ariadne program, she should have been the first Chinese to set foot on Mars. But protocols are protocols. A depressed crew member may never be left alone in space. Her specialty in astrophysics was the least scientifically valuable for a polar exploration mission, so she had to stay up the well to make sure he didn’t just walk out of an airlock. She never complained. He stole from her the chance of a million lifetimes, and she smiled with grace.

“Pasiphaë, would you give use privacy please.” She asked.

“Confirmed.” Obedient, for now at least, the ship’s AI shut down monitoring.

“Do you know what day it is?” Asked Liu.

She looked at him, smiling in a way he had never seen. Nothing of the professional, good-natured humor shared amongst crewmates. Instead, he found in her eyes a sparkling, childlike glee.

“Sol 17?” He answered, puzzled. The mission was to last 40 Martian days before returning home. There was nothing special about sol 17.

“You idiot!” She protested with a princess’ severity. “On Earth.”

After half a second of mental math, her excitement filled him with incredulity.

“Do you even celebrate Christmas in China?”

“We celebrate Christmas in Cal Tech.” She answered, shrouding herself in wounded dignity.

“I’m afraid I don’t have a present for you.” He apologized, with an indulgent smile that might have been sarcasm.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. Plans have been made...” She whispered, taking his arm, nestling closer to him on the sofa like a secretive co-conspirator.

He realized it was the first time he had been that close to anyone, since they left Earth more than six months ago. In a tight space such as the Ariadne, everyone made an effort to keep themselves to strict boundaries. Yet in an instant, the simple touch of her arm under his, her complicit smile phased through those worries. His eyes stopped on her lips, of a supernatural bright red. From up close, he noticed the sparkle of her cheeks was enriched with great care and taste. Astonished, he realized she wore make-up...In Mars orbit, the very idea seemed fantastical.

His eyes wandered, following the laces of silky black hair onto her chin, down her slender neck. Her uniform was a single piece, perfectly fitted from neck to toes. He felt his lips dry up, trying to not notice its tight shape on her eternal legs, and the shallow mounds of her breasts. His eyes stopped on the top of the zipper of her suit. She had left it open on a mere centimeter, yet a single strand of her hair had found its way underneath, against her bare golden skin.

He was perhaps the last man in the solar system to notice that Zan Liu was stunningly beautiful.

“Tell me about your Christmas.” She asked, in a whisper, her breath caressing his neck. “Back in Russia.”

The wave of memories swept on him in ways he didn’t expect. An entire life he thought buried, springing out to life on the tether of her jet eyes.

He told her, about the dacha in Sochi. About mama cooking for hours, so that she had enough to fuel the ravenous hunger of a day out in the freezing mountains. He told her about the fire in the chimney papa always kept going. He told her, about falling asleep on the thick carpet of hide in front of the warm roaring fire, and waking up the morning after in his bed to the smell of chocolate brewing.

She laid her hand on his chest, with infinite tenderness. “Close your eyes.” She asked. “Tell me more.”

He told her about growing up. Of being proud when he got to carry papa’s axe for the first time, as they ventured for a day to find the perfect pine tree. He told her of mountains of different gifts, the years melding together in memory. He told her of skiing with a girl from another dacha downhill. Winter after winter, children turning into teenagers. He told her of frustration, as he waited longer and longer at the bottom of the slopes so she could catch up. He told her of being mean, bringing Alexandra into a path he knew she couldn’t make. She tried her best, then she fell. The teary apologies turned into his first kiss.

“I bet your brought a lot of girls up there?” Liu asked, with a strange laughter in her voice.

No, it had only ever been Alexandra. One day they came back from skiing, and mama and papa had left, for reasons unknown. There was food on the table, and the chimney was roaring strong. On the hide carpet in front of the fire, their kisses changed. As they tore away layer after layer of winter clothing, they found there was a just end to innocence. She desired for his engorging sex no less than he did her ample breasts. They made love first like teenagers, then like animals, then again and again like lovers. Learning of the best of both worlds.

“Were her breasts that big?” Asked Zan. At the edge of his consciousness he could hear her moving. Taking something from the bulky experiment case.

“They really were!” He laughed for himself, with remnants of male pride. He heard her sigh, without understanding why.

He kept talking of what was then his future. The national team, the prestigious university, learning to fly and the fascinating science. Of the blond on his arm, prettier perhaps than she was smart, yet smart enough to worry about being left behind on top of many a slope. Soon they reached their bittersweet end. Papa no longer able to fell a pine. Mama alone in a cold new home. The government destroyed the dacha to make way for the Olympics. He won a medal there and kept dashing forward. He wondered aloud, when he had stopped waiting for Alexandra.

The silence felt peculiar. He had no memories left to evade to. Everything else was about space, the merciless bitch who broke him in the end. He would open his eyes, and around him there would still be nothing but nothingness. Only be the cold harsh space and a planet that killed you just as well. He felt his chest plowed by terror, longing for a single breath he could be certain was not his last.

“Yuri.” Zan spoke first, she had never used his first name before. “Do you trust me?”

He didn’t answer. But her hand laying on his sternum was the only thing alive left in his world, so he nodded instead. The noise that came after should have sent him into shrieking fits of panic. Dozens of thin metals panels being lifted from a bay window. A blinding light falling on the other side of his eyelashes...The emptiness crying relentlessly for every bit of matter in the pressured capsule, inching closer.

But there was also Zan Liu, standing between him and oblivion. Her presence, a hand on his chest and her smell he had never noticed, not unlike lilac. And something new, something raw and ancient. The idea of a kiss, of her body bending gracefully under his hands. Of watching her...Alive.

“You can look.” She said just as he opened his eyes.

If you asked a spacecraft engineer about what happens when you light a fire in space, the answer is always the same. “Death by fire”. Hence, everything aboard the Ariadne was fireproof, and no combustibles were allowed aboard. And yet, here Liu was, holding a tiny, bright flame coming out of a small hissing metal tube into her cupped hands.

“Surprise.” She said softly, with a smile so kind it could warm anything the tiny flame could not. “I’m sorry, this is the best chimney I could come up with in here. I had Hayate rig it up for me before they left for the surface.”

She carefully laid her “chimney” on a small ledge against the observation bay. The pale flame became almost invisible against the white background. His eyes widened. Outside, there was nothing of the colorless darkness of space, not even the deadly red sands of Mars. He was looking upon an endless field of snows, swirling outside the window like a cozy siberian snowstorm. It was the first time the recluse hero had ever seen Mars with his own eyes, and she welcomed him with the sights of home and Sochi.

“I have something for you.” She said, handing him a large black box, wrapped up in ugly, space-proof canvas, with EVA tethers to serve as strings. A million-dollar mockery of a gift.

He untied the priceless nanomaterial, threw it aside like one does mere wrapping paper. Inside was a specimen storage box, a heavy container designed to get material from the surface aboard Theseus. He unclamped it. A chilly white cloud swirled around him, obscuring his vision for an instant as the martian carbonic snow melted on contact with the atmosphere. It is after all what dry ice does. But underneath was a far more breathtaking gift. A tiny little snowball, no more than a few grams, made of grounded ice.

Puzzled, he took it in between two fingers, holding it up in the air to watch it in front of the ice caps. It disappeared on the background of the planet it came from melting in seconds from the heat of his skin. A few drops ran down his wrist. Water from Mars. A long-held dream of mankind, fulfilled and evaporated. Theseus would have to bring more.

His polite, rational brain informed him, that Zan Liu had changed the attitude of the Ariadne so the observation bay would only be square in front of the planet, maneuvering the most advanced ship in the History of mankind so a scared little man could look at the planet’s ice caps. That the snow outside the window wasn’t swirling, nor a storm. The living area itself rotated around the ship to fake gravity. That an insane woman had a crew of the most brilliant minds smuggle ice from another planet into orbit, for a silly little gift.

But there was a much more important part of his brain. This one told him that it was indeed truly Christmas. When else could there be a tiny roaring chimney and a snowstorm outside the window? That he was safe and warm inside his unlikely, billion dollar dacha, and with him even was the most beautiful girl on the planet. Literally.

“Zan...”

She did not let him say anything else.  She leaped onto him with the carefree lightness of a third of a G, landing with her knees on both sides of his thighs. He received her carefully, protective by instinct, yet his hands on her hips now felt a new promise. An entire world to explore. Ever so briefly, her eyes flashed in doubt, in the ultimate moment of sanity before any leap of faith. He pulled her hips, and the girl unleashed herself upon him.

He had no memory of kisses such as this. Nothing of the teenage discoveries, no hopeless calls for the past or adoration. In love like all things she was driven, weaving together purpose and tenderness. Her tongue darted through his lips waiting for no invitation, her hands busy lowering the zipper of her uniform.

As she wiggled out of it, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath, she raised both her wrists together behind her neck, stretching and spreading her hair around with a throaty moan of joy. She offered her nudity without a clue of shame. What he saw was a goddess amongst mortals. Her figure long and unbroken, months of low gravity making her limbs endless, but not ungracious. At eye level, he found something not unlike the night’s sky in her pubis, her dark hair oiled in her wet gleaming back any light into tiny sparkling stars. And as his raised his gaze to look upon her whole, the sunrays, reflected by the snows of Mars, lit her golden skin like a whore or an angel.

As for her eyes, they could have been made of space itself. So dark as to be colorless, leaving only a path for light.

An instant and her tongue was back in between his lips, taking him into an hungry dance. She took both his hands, pressing them against her breasts. She fit right in his large palms, all but the nipples, hardening from modesty into grand brown obelisks. He caught both of them in the creases of his fingers, and closed his hands as firmly as she taught him to kiss.

The girl moaned, carefree. Biting her lower lip, she looked as adorable as she did a slut. He did not let go. She approved.

She opened his zipper from neck to pubis with a voracious grin. Her hand dived in to grab his bloated cock before he even could shuffle his shoulders out of the onesie. For an instant, as his hands rested on her chest, there was only the feeling of her cold fingers wrapped around his burning hot member. He looked outside, at the magical snowstorm, at the tiny chimney on the ledge spitting a transparent flame above her shoulders. Of all her grand designs, she herself was the most sublime. She pulled down his foreskin, and passed a thumb across the bright red head of his cock. Showed him her tongue, mouthing a word as she licked the precum from her finger.

“Mine”.

He answered by raising her, or launching her for it was so easy. Surprised, she laughed, spreading her arms wide to find her balance. He gave her a moment of freefall. She giggled, before with all his strength, he took over gravity. He grabbed her ass, floating in front of him. He pulled her to him, inevitable as a law, burying his tongue deep in her offered pussy. She gasped. Threw her legs around his face, leaving him no world but her gushing sex. He found her clit by taste and shape, and closed on it his lips. He sucked her in, feeling himself no less harsh than the bitch of nothing outside.

The girl moaned easily, and loudly too. She put her palm against her lips to cry her ecstasy. An ocean of vacuum lay between them and the nearest humans, and she worried about the noise. His mouth distorted, a smile in her cunt. He closed his teeth and sucked her clit through and through. Feeling every nerve pulsing between his lips. She let go of the futile pretense of discretion, swearing things he didn’t understand, caressing his hair as he soothed the bruised endpoint of her pleasure with long lashes of the tongue.

He had more taste for the soup of her juices and his saliva, he realized, than for liters of the waters of Mars.

He worked on her, with the relentless competence that had made his fame. Every moan sending a rewarding jolt into his spine. Her swearing weakening, she started to let go. The less coherent the slut, the prouder the hero. Not everything of that man was gone. Under the most extreme pressure, he could still notice her breath and heartbeat. He matched then broke the rhythms of her lust, his tongue turning every hope of respite into a new wave of burning pleasure. Her legs unlocked, dangling by his side, her arms spread wide behind her in the cascade of her hair. He thought to have her trust, held up only by his hands and his tongue deep in her. He looked, hoping to find her a puppet of ecstasy. On her face, he found all of the pleasure he wished. And a gleam of malice he did not expect.

She squared her heel on the back of the sofa and pushed. They flew across the Ariadne, crashed together on the reinforced glass of the bay window, sending the live flame of her dangerous chimney to fly, who knows where. Suddenly in his eyes, there was only the death beyond. At orbital speeds, illusions fade quickly. Underneath them he could see the curvature of Mars. The entire absence of space could be guessed not far and very far behind. The plow in his chest, forgotten an instant, returned to tear him apart with unbearable dread.

Her hand laid on his cheek, turning his eyes into hers. She kissed him with a new vigor, a new desperate generosity. They kept their eyes open as their tongues found and held onto each other. From so close her narrow eyes turned into a sea of jet. But the absolute dark was no empty space. Instead, he saw in her a new endlessness of love. Her gift had melted, her illusion dispelled, but still she was there.

He would not be free of fear, he knew. But it would never be the same.

“Yuri.” She whispered. “Make love to me.”

Her legs and arms wrapped around him, as he raised her against the flimsy window. They exhaled, into each other’s mouths, looking into each other’s eyes, when the fat head of his member made its way deep into her sex. For an instant she didn’t moan, filled with desire she had lost her breath, as surely as she would have in the vacuum of space. Her shoulders, her neck, her back arched against the glass, her whole body pushing back fearlessly to bring herself deeper onto him. May they break through it and die, she didn’t care. It was a lover's time.

She sighed in delightful agony, welcoming more. As he reached her deepest, they shared a tempo of stillness. Together in all possible ways. Her smile turned into decisive wickedness.

“I love you.” She said. She looked above her shoulders, into the void, her profile drawing stark against the red rising sun. “Now fuck me. Like we’re about to die.”

When she spoke, he found that nothing else mattered but her body bent in throes. Both of their worlds collapsed together into a single point, the most primal manner of lust, coming in deep from the black hole at the very center of every mammal’s brain. Her moans turned into cries, into pleas for more and further. His bent her to his needs, and she welcomed them as her own. Because they were. Everything for more of the searing heat of his cock tearing through her body. One more inch, one more mad thrust. The cold bitch outside forgotten, for theirs was the world of the living.

Not so long after, there was silence in the Ariadne, broken only by the thorough humming of the ship's recyclers. A single orbit had passed. As Yuri looked through the window, the ice caps of Mars whizzed below. There was no Siberia, no snow storm. Even a child should have known that the anemic ice and carbonic snow, striated in valleys of deep red sand, were as russian as the palm trees of Trinidad. He had turned off the little chimney too. Christmas, perhaps, was over.

But there was a girl sleeping alongside him, her heads on his thighs. She was peaceful, breathing deep, and looked a most decadent slut. Her pubis a mess of dark hair misshaped by wild tongue lashes. Her legs spread wide to rest her raw cunt, leaking a trail of wet and his seed onto the sofa’s canvas. The smooth golden skin around her nipples reddened by the marks of his fingers and teeth. The drying cum all over her cheeks made a comical mess, ruining her foundation, melting it onto smeared lipstick. His fat little spent cock rested cozy against her slender neck.

He knew by then, that his true home would forever be wherever she was. 

Zan Liu woke up with a mischievous smile, bursting with love.

“Merry ChristMars!” She said with a shining laugh.