‘If it was fate or destiny that has brought us together, it makes no difference to me, Konrad,’ she said. ‘But if you’re right, and we’re just slaves of some higher force, I don’t want to be free. Not if it robs me of the chance of being with you.’
This single statement broke down the final barrier between the two prisoners.
Konrad and Elsa embraced, but as he motioned to pull away, she clung onto him, her grip around him like a steel ring. She then silently opened the blanket and allowed Konrad to place his arms around her. He felt her bony frame through her uniform and the warmth that radiated from her body. It moved through his own skeletal hands as if he was absorbing Elsa’s unseen radiance; her goodness, perhaps, even her love. He also felt her torso gently rise and fall, a demonstration of the joy she was experiencing.
Lowering his head to hers, they finally kissed. At first, the moment was tender, but soon, as each became more aroused, the kiss transformed into a physical, animal-like embrace. Elsa pulled herself away breathlessly and frantically unbuttoned her ill-fitting tunic to expose her breasts. She then took hold of Konrad’s trembling hands and pressed them around the small mounds of flesh. She used his hands to caress and massage herself until Konrad’s nervousness left him and he was in full control. Like the kiss, the fondling moved from a gentle start to an almost brutal finish as he eagerly took her erect nipples into his mouth. Elsa moaned her appreciation as Konrad feasted upon her body. Soon his hands moved down her heaving breasts and slipped into her loosened trousers, where they explored, his fingers probing between her legs and around her buttocks.
After a few moments, she signalled Konrad to stop while she kicked off the baggy trousers. Undressed, she now pushed him down onto the deck and hungrily pulled him from his prison uniform. Once that was done she straddled him. Her lips lingered upon his, her tongue matching the movement of her hips as she ground her naked body against him. He cupped her buttocks and pulled her even closer, feeling her pubic hair against his. He also felt the welcoming warmth beyond. As a result, all thoughts of the devastation around them, even his dread of the damned spire, disappeared in a dizzying sea of lust.
Alert to his sense of contentment, she stroked his rough stubble and smiled warmly. ‘Did we ever reach this point in those dreams of yours, Konrad?’ She kissed him again.
‘No,’ he breathlessly replied. ‘I was always rudely woken up before we could kiss.’
‘Then I guess there’s no time to waste then…’ Elsa whispered as she helped Konrad penetrate her body.
The sense of freedom, indeed, the sense of elation Konrad felt was overwhelming. All the images of Elsa he had seen – on the alpine mountainside, the chateau, the apartment – each of her radically different appearances appeared before him as she hungrily rose back and forth above him.
Despite the cold atmosphere, sweat started to glisten and roll across Elsa’s heaving chest. Konrad’s hands remained locked around her body, one upon her rolling hips, the other resting around one of her breasts. His grip of both tightened as her excited movements grew in intensity, until finally, the two lovers climaxed together, their bodies now as finely tuned as their minds. They kissed one final time, their lips locked in a long, lingering embrace. The kiss also helped dampen the sound of their joint orgasm.
Spent and exhausted, Elsa collapsed upon Konrad’s chest. Her fingers continued to stroke him, but they slowly ebbed away as she fell into a contented sleep. Konrad, for his part, pulled the shabby blanket back over them to hide their modesty from the freezing atmosphere which drifted as smoothly across the lover’s bodies as each other’s hands.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mesler was blissfully unaware of the lovers as he toiled in the cramped reactor compartment. Except for the glow of his welding equipment and the sweat on his brow, he worked totally alone. For hours he had worked to reset the reactor’s control rods. Immediately after the crash, the reactor’s safety-systems had kicked in and automatically dropped a host of cooling-rods into the heart of the atomic pile to stop any reaction. However, the crash had damaged the motors which should have raised the rods and allowed the reactor to activate once again. Because this had failed, the module had been running on its small bank of batteries, which had now reached the point of exhaustion. But adding to the problem was the fact that half of these precious batteries were damaged too. First, Mesler had reset the cooling-rod motor and successfully reactivated the reactor; its gentle hum, almost imperceptibly through the thick lead-plating, was like the welcome return of an old friend. Now that the reactor was operating again, Mesler turned his attentions to the damaged ring of batteries that encircled the chamber.
Behind the welding-goggles, the exhausted officer felt content and focussed. The work filled his mind totally; the concentration needed to weld the wires into their connections and thread the metal threads into place washed away all his concerns and anxieties. More importantly, his concerns about the spire were also forgotten. Mesler took hold of a length of heavy wire and looped it through the large eye-fitting fixed to the top of the last battery to be repaired.
After he fixed the final cable into place, Mesler flipped off his laser-welder and snapped off the opaque goggles. He wiped his brow with a greasy rag and stepped gingerly between the bulbous canisters towards the short ladder between the sunken pit and the gantry above. The grating beneath his feet was cluttered with smashed couplings and scorched wires, while beneath this debris, the chamber’s bilge smoked and bubbled as a result of being contaminated by the damaged batteries’ acidic contents.
Mesler slung the welding equipment over his shoulder as he mounted the ladder and climbed up onto the rattling gantry. As he pulled himself up, he suddenly slipped and fell forward, knocking the welder from his shoulder. The tool dropped and bounced off the batteries below. The fall triggered the device into the life, its pin-point beam shining in the gloom. But as it hit the bilge’s floor, its protective cowl shattered, freeing the laser-blade within. The previous thin-beam exploded into a wide, blinding sphere, its destructive power now unbridled and rampant. The smashed welder rolled on until it hit the compartment’s curved wall. The white-hot blade burrowed deeply into the bilge’s metal wall, its surface becoming loose and molten.
Mesler dived desperately after the device, but he was too late. The undimmed welder plunged through the molten patch. He braced himself for the inevitable rush of poisonous air, but nothing happened. Instead, all that entered the module was a thin gust of dusty air which cooled the red-hot metal of the hole into a scab-like shell.
The officer frowned. He should have been dead the instant the deadly atmosphere poured inside. Totally perplexed, he reached forward and held his hand in front of the hole and felt a cold breeze across his skin. The air that passed over the hairs on his hands was totally harmless. He clenched his hand and rubbed his apparently unblemished skin.
Mesler quickly clambered to his feet. ‘Everybody to the airlock!’ he shouted as he climbed up the ladder.
Moments later, Blomberg shoved Mesler against the airlock door. ‘Are you out of your goddamn mind?!’
Mesler shook his head. ‘No. No, I’m not, Blomberg.’ He once again reached for the sealed airlock’s controls, but the doctor slapped his hand away and pressed him even harder against the wall.
‘You can’t open that airlock,’ Blomberg cried. ‘It’ll be the death of us all!’
‘I need to open that airlock to prove to you that I’m right. The atmosphere’s breathable!’
Blomberg grabbed Mesler’s out-stretched arm and twisted it violently behind his back. This violent reaction was unsurprising given the circumstance, but even Mesler was surprised by the power of his comrade. It was a power fuelled by desperation and fear. ‘I won’t let you kill us, Mesler,’ Blomberg cried.