“I think we should pimp you out, honey. Those Japanese guys I mentioned, they’d pay you fistfuls of filthy lucre just to watch you and me get it on. Then there’s the women who’d kill for half an hour with you. Oh and then there’s the men. You’d be set for life, and then some. That’s even before you start talking about floor shows and interviews and guest appearances –”
“Glory, I just want to spend time with you and do some research.” He cradled her to him in the single cabin of the small ship. They were still undecided on a name for it; this topic proved to be the source of their first full scale quarrel. If she could have made him sleep on a sofa, she would have, but mixing gas giant inhabitants with zero gee and the lack of sofas kind of put a damper on that idea.
“I know, sweetie, but it’s fun to think about.” She rolled over and let her back snuggle into his blazing heat. It was bliss having a furnace for a boyfriend, even though it meant wearing a sweater whenever not snuggling. “I guess interstellar trade and transport will have to be good enough.”
“Good enough? Glory, the possibilities! On every journey we’ll get to run a whole new survey on the intervening interlacing magnetic fields. And the observations I could do with respect to gravity! Oh, but Glory, even without that, I could study the stars forever. Over and over, every trip, mapping them out and getting their spectrums and plotting their courses … it would be bliss.”
“You are so funny. Astronomy isn’t your field.”
“On my world, astronomy wasn’t anyone’s field. We couldn’t see the stars. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Would you really want me to waste that lifetime in studios and hotel rooms making pornographic three-vees and being ‘pimped out’?”
“No, sweetie. I said I was kidding. But I can’t help it if I’m proud of you.”
“As your sex slave.”
“As my scientist! As my hero! Francis, you saved the world!”
“Oh no, Glory. You saved the world. I just came to pick up my girlfriend.”
“You smooth talker.”
“State of the art; made in Japan.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. Come on to bed.”
“There is no bed.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” She scritched him delightfully along the top of his tentacle skirt, and he started to hum.
“Oh, yes. Let’s!”