Sally Kendricks  {MF cons sci-fi) 

Cocooned, mind thoroughly obliterated by the sleep rendering Morpheus of 
cyber space, Sally Hendricks, had she been awake, would have understood that 
she had, for a time, achieved the desirable nirana of complete oblivion.

Sally drowsed, enveloped in the drugs that made systems wide travel 
possible.  Humans had not, despite 200 years of trying, succeeded in finding 
a way around Einsteinian physics that would permit faster than light travel. 
  Efficiency of engines had been raised, permitting manned ships to spend 
longer periods in space, and medical improvements permitted the crews to 
survive longer periods of cyber sleep, and to deal with the disorientation 
that came from periodic awakenings. As a rule, spacehounds used sleepers 
even on the Mars run. It was mandatory on the longer runs, long sleeps 
punctuated by occasional awakenings for food and exercise.  The awakenings 
were necessary to renew crew bodies, since, absent gravity, human muscles 
eventually turned to goo.

Goo, no matter how lovingly imagined or remembered, is not attractive.

Most voyagers found waking hard, and most loathed the combination of aerobic 
and strength building exercises they HAD to perform, under the watchful eye 
of the ship's computer.  Many had tried to find a way around the exercises, 
some going as far as trying to disable the computers.  Central controllers, 
with a madness or a genius seldom seen, had put an end to that.  No 
monitored and controlled exercises?  Then no food.

The choice was pretty simple.  Work and eat; don't work and starve.

>From the machine's point of view, the awakening process was straightforward. 
  Slowly decrease the morpheia pumped into the subject's permanently 
implanted shunt.  Gradually raise the level of stimulant (the originals had 
been programmed to deliver a caffeine derivative, in continuing testimony to 
humankind's love affair with the coffee bean.  No better natural substitute 
had been discovered, and all the synthetics had drawbacks.  Most space 
hounds preferred their Java in a cup, but they needed to be awake enough to 
slurp it.)  Raise the level of ambient lighting, reinitiate HVAC activity, 
and when sensors pronounced the chambers habitable, open the sleepers and 
begin playing wake up announcements.

Simple.  Routine.  Not a problem.  Unless you were one of the sleepers.

Sleepers felt differently.  They liked being asleep.  Science had rigged it 
so that the time asleep was like time under old fashioned anesthesia.  It 
simply didn't exist, or if it did, you didn't remember it.  Spacehounds had 
varied opinions on the effect: some thought it was like regular sleep, 
complete with dreams and their bastard cousins, nightmares, but with memory 
obliterated by amnesiacs added to the drips.  Others thought it was more 
like being dead, and then being resurrected: no memory of the time asleep 
because there WAS no memory.  Either way, the effect was the same.

You heard a pleasant, cultured, earth type female voice telling you it was 
time to wake up.  You tried twisting your head to avoid the light now 
shining through your eyelids, but you turned right into the sidelighting.  
You took a deep breath of way too cold air.  And you were alive again.  
Sitting up took a few more minutes, because the computer didn't release the 
straps tying you down until it was sure you were awake enough to remove the 
drip line, and the monitor tapes, properly.

Screw up with a drip line removal, and you tear out the shunt.  Tear out the 
shunt and there's no way to deliver the meds.  And absent the meds, you 
might spend the next 4 days, weeks, or 40  years in useless wakefulness, 
waiting for port, because there would be no way to put you under. On a run 
to Luna, it was only 3 days.  On the run to Mars, it was 8 months.  Leave 
the system and it could be 40 years.  Occasionally,  in the early days, 
crews had awakened to find the dead body of a comrade, someone in just that 
fix.  Usually, they watched while the others went under, then offed 
themselves.  If the rest of the crew was lucky, they ONLY offed themselves.

Waking up was unpleasant.  Waking up to find a corpse on the floor was a lot 
worse.

Sally was awake, still bound, and had several minutes of drowse time before 
she would have to sit up.  She had programmed the computer to play Shubert's 
Death and the Maiden, instead of system logs, during wake up time.  
Something tugged at her memory, some idea in her head where there should 
have been none.  It wasn't possible to remember sleep.  She ignored it in 
favor of the brief luxury of a masturbatory fantasy.  There were only three 
men in her particular galaxy to imagine--her favorite, the one she had 
imagined, named Nolan.  Her first husband, the one who had found someone 
more earthbound during each of her four first short hauls; no one told her 
about the chippies who were sleeping on the sheets, indeed, in the bed that 
her space pay provided.

But Charles had been incautious: he'd forgotten the schedule, and she had 
come into the house to find him and chippie number four (at least, she 
assumed it was number 4) disporting themselves on her carpet.  Sally 
Kendricks had not been forgiving.  She remembered Charles principally as a 
great fuck.  Attentive:  he understood the importance of giving pleasure as 
a preliminary to taking pleasure, and if he was doing it just for the 
sensations, well, Sally hadn't realized it. She thought it had been for 
love.  He wasn't very good material for a masturbatory fantasy.  Too much 
baggage.

And then there had been Phil.  She reached her hand down to her crotch as 
she savored the memory of him.  Sexual encounters among space hounds were 
neither rare, discouraged, nor commented upon.  Frantic sexual couplings in 
the cubicles so thoughtfully provided by the managers of places like 
Dellaurio on Luna, a bar, were the rule, rather than the exception.  But the 
encounter with Phil, when it had finally occurred, had been an exception, 
rather than the rule.  For she had thought it was more than just a hugely 
satisfactory, mutual grope.  It had taken time.

The lover of horses, or so his name had meant in Greek.  Phil had been easy 
going, amiable, and a space hound she'd met in the Dellaurio Lounge one 
layover on Luna.  Lay might be taken to be the key word here.  Experienced.  
That was exactly what he was.  Experienced.  And generous, didn't like a 
short time, and patient, not someone who'd push you up against a bar wall on 
first meeting and have his cock out for inspection on twenty second's 
acquaintance.

Phil enjoyed the chase, and wanted to last.  It was only later that she had 
found out why.  He willing to learn and bend whichever way she wanted.  
Fucking him, when they had finally consummated the relationship, had been 
wonderful.  She remembered sitting on a couch, in one of Dellaurio's cubes, 
his feet on the floor, hers on the couch, his arms around her waist, hers 
around his shoulders.  Minutes expanded to quarter-hours, half hours, as 
they teased and excited and pleasured one another, using their hands, their 
mouths.  She remembered as she had placed her hand on his crotch, massaging 
his cock through the fabric of his flight suit. And he had shyly said "I'm 
not hard yet," with a becoming honesty that was too important to ignore.

"I can take care of that."  She savored the memory of the taste, the  first 
time she had leaned over and taken his cock into her mouth, tickling him on 
the underside with her tongue at first, and later sucking his organ into his 
mouth.

While she was remembering, Sally reached her first climax, grasping  her own 
nipple, continuing the sliding in and out of her other hand on her clit.  
She remembered that Phil hadn't been a pig: while she was sucking, he had 
fumbled with the snap at the top of her flight suit, eventually opening it 
and sliding her zipper down.  Sally had wriggled her hips, helping me to 
slide the jump suit, and the ridiculous lace panties, down over her long and 
shapely legs.  She stood up, pulling him next to her, and put his hands at 
the bottom of her cotton singlet (no brassiere required: absent gravity's 
tug most of the time, there was no sagging to compensate.  Not like her 
earthly sisters. His own suit was off soon after, as he pulled her toward 
him, Phil had leaned back against the couch, pulling her tightly to her, 
hands on her ass, gently spreading her cheeks so that she could feel the 
air, but not moving to impale her.

He had been a great lover.  Too bad he'd been such a louse as a human being. 
  Sally remembered wrapping  her arms around his neck, and kissing him, 
urging him as his fingers played with the lips of her cunt. He had gotten 
her wet very quickly, pushing her back onto the couch, he kneeled at her 
feet, gently spread her knees apart, and dove between her legs.   Sally had 
been lukewarm to the idea at first: worse than lukewarm.  Charles had ruined 
mouth music for her by the unforgivable sin of gagging and spitting and 
commenting unfavorably on her scent.  Phil had worked on her though--their 
layovers coincided every 4 months, physio time.  The first time they'd met, 
back in the Dellaurio Bar, had been just talk.  Comparing vehicles: he had 
done two long hauls and was now on the Mars run, back every 4 months.  The 
second meeting had started with dinner, then gone on to someplace more 
private, with urgings (Sally had been more than willing) and touching, but 
no consummation.  This was their third meeting.  She had finished her 
contract on the Antarctica shuttle run, and was transferring to the much 
more lucrative trans-Jovian run.  Not cargo this time, but astronomical 
investigation.  Earthly scientists were interested in the planet, but not 
enough to tolerate the dead time, or the shunt, or the danger.

She was.  Their orbits would still coincide every 8 months or so.  Phil had 
spoken gravely about the possibility of "consummating" their relationship.  
The way he spoke was so old-fashioned that she had to restrain herself from 
laughing.  But the way he made love was anything but old, or fashioned.  
Eventually she had consented to his tongue cleaning the juices from her 
swollen lips, then sliding inside searching out her clit, flicking it 
ferociously while she gasped and moaned out her orgasm.   He slid two 
fingers inside her, slowly pumping them in and out. Her hips matched the 
rhythm of his fingers. Her head thrashed from side to side. I slid my little 
finger down her crack and toyed with her anus. Her hips bucked violently up 
against his face, arched completely off the couch.  He sucked hard at her 
clit and whipped it from side to side with the tip of my tongue. She 
screamed as her orgasm crashed through her.

She could still recall his asking, rather politely, if she were receptive.  
Sally had been pretty far gone, and hadn't realized to what until he slid 
out from between her legs, kneeling on the rug.  He pulled her off
the couch, and she pushed him down on the floor, her legs straddling him as 
she would a horse, reaching her hand to grip his cock and guide it to the 
lips of her pussy, teasing herself, pleasuring herself, occasionally taking 
his hand and putting it to her breast, leaning forward to whisper filthy 
suggestions. She sat back slowly, riding his cock, grinding herself against 
him, and laughing delightedly.
"My pattern is lots of little ones."  As if he couldn't have guessed.  
"Every time I move I start having little orgasms.”  And Phil let that go on, 
occasionally slowing her rhythms with his hands on her hips, so that he 
could last.

Eventually, he pulled her down tightly to his chest and rolled over so that 
she was on her back.  He raised up on his knees so that he was looking down 
at her, really looking at her, positioned so that a shaft of light gleamed 
on his hard, upright, throbbing red cock.  Sally remembered reaching for 
him, his shoulders with one hand, his penis with another, using the tip to 
pleasure herself yet again, before she guided him into her cunt, and 
gradually losing awareness of everything except sensation as he slid slowly 
in and out of her,  savoring the hot, silky sensation. Phil had bent down 
and captured her nipple between his teeth, urging her on to one final 
orgasm, one with him inside, before giving her two quick hard thrusts, and 
collapsing on her as he shot his hot white cum into her cunt.

Afterward they had laid together, a tangle of arms, legs and pheromones, 
until it had been time for him to report back to his truck.   It had been a 
great fuck.  Simply the best of her life.

It had turned out to be the only  time.  When she had cycled back from her 
first TransJovian run, she'd learned that he'd left SpaceFerries and gone 
back to earth.  No message, no forwarding address.

Phil's great love was of the chase.  And once he had caught his prey, he 
made sure that she enjoyed the time he provided.  But then he lost interest. 
  Sally was only half way to Jupiter on her second run.  It would be months 
more before she would rotate back to Luna.  And she wondered whether he was 
actually worth finding.  Probably not.

The eroticism of her fantasy had faded fully, and she had already heard the 
catches form her safety harness unlock.

Time to get up, get dressed, check the logs, drink some near-caff, and hit 
the exercise machines.