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I went to find my towel. I dried off fast and whipped the towel around my body as though I were trying out to be a matador. Varus was less hurried as he strode to get his towel.
I wrung water from my hair. "I don’t know what’s going on here. It’s got to be something in the air to make us do this."
"It has nothing to do with the air." His voice lost its sandpaper sultriness. It was replaced by something pensive and heavy, as though deep thoughts weighed his mind.
I dressed while I waited for him to share. When he didn’t, I went on. "Wherever we go next, promise me we won’t let this happen again."
"I won’t kiss you or take another shower with you, if that’s what you want, but I can’t control my body’s physical response to you." He zipped his pants. He was going down, but the zipper was struggling to keep the fabric closed.
"Yeah, but we can control if we touch each other, if we kiss." I resisted the instinct to avert my eyes. I wanted to be firm. "It’s not necessary to exchange DNA anymore."
"You want us to be, what did you say, like a bee and flower pollen again?"
"Exactly. I help you in one way. You help me in other. Simple." I opened up my toiletry kit and slathered leave-in conditioner on my hair.
He listened and watched, fascinated by what I was doing. "I should have been more considerate. When I kissed you in the woods, I wasn’t thinking entirely about your survival."
"Shame on you."
"I’m sure my next dose of serum was heavy on your mind when I tilted your head back for a kiss."
"Touché," I pinned my hair in a hastily-braided bun so the wet ends wouldn’t keep getting caught in my jacket collar and drive me crazy. "Let’s do a raincheck. Let’s agree to put this all behind us for now and focus on getting out of here."
He put his worn shoes on. Water droplets dotted his bare chest. "I must learn more about these rainchecks but very well. I accept this invisible form of social currency to redeem later."
I gathered Varus knew more about human culture than he cared to let on. I saw the mischievous glint in his eyes and decided it best to drop the subject. "Let’s check the weather."
I opened the door to the showers. Steam drifted outside in the cool hallway. Varus ventured out first.
"The meteor shower stopped." He looked out the window in the hall.
"Now’s our chance." I grabbed my knapsack and gave him the other bag of supplies to carry.
We hightailed it from the halls to the emergency deploy dock. Our footsteps echoed in the halls as we clambered towards our only means of getting off this far-flung mudball. I heard skittering and light screeching coming from the vents.
"I don’t like that sound." Varus’s fangs descended.
"I don’t even want to know." I picked up the pace to reach the pod. Once at the dock, I slammed my palm against the panel on the wall to open the hatch. The ceiling parted in half as small meteor rocks and other debris tumbled into the interior.
The skittering in the vents grew louder. I sprinted towards the pod and pressed the button to lift the door. Varus watched me and copied my action to get the door open on the other side. We threw the bags of supplies in the back.
I climbed into the cockpit and strapped myself in. As I started the ignition, I heard a sharp hiss coming from the entrance to the room. "Varus, watch out." I pointed to a duo of three-foot long juvenile lizards. Smaller hatchlings started to come from the vents in a mass of tails and claws.
The room got hotter. I saw Varus step towards the door, heat waves radiating off him. The lizards all backed away, hissing in fury. Once they were a good distance away, Varus turned and got into the pod. He pulled the door down as the first of the lizards came scrambling towards us, claws tearing into the metal of the room floor.
"This better work." I started the jets. The pod shook as the jet turbines on the sides and under the vehicle gave us lift. The lizards shrank back again from the heat and flame while we remained suspended ten feet in the air.
"Here goes something, I hope." I pulled up on the steering column. The engine throttled before it hummed. Then we gained more lift until we breached the open escape hatch. I pulled up once more before I pushed the column forward. Then we were off.
The turbines sent us shooting above the trees and away from the Mission Flyer. I didn’t let up until the pod ascended higher into the sky, through the murky clouds and into Treoid 5’s stratosphere. Only the beautiful starry darkness of space awaited us.
We made it. We escaped the dwarf planet. What was next was anyone’s guess.
