Fatal Boarding by E. R. Mason Read Free Book Online

you have this subconscious suspicion that you are washing the
same dirt and grime off over and over. I wrapped myself in a short,
brown towel that barely came around my waist, dimmed the lights
low, and collapsed at last into the bed. I pulled a thin,
tan-colored blanket from the hidden compartment in the wall and
settled back. The bourbon was working well. The cabin walls and
ceiling began to loose their definition in the fading room light. I
closed my eyes and hoped I would not dream. I thanked the
unheralded goddess of sleep for providing a temporary escape from
reality.
    The door chime went ‘tong’.
    I pinched at the bridge of my nose and
resisted the urge to scream. "What?"
    The doors popped open, and there stood Nira
Prnca. Her inky black hair was still damp and hung in strands about
her face and shoulders. She had on a loose fitting pair of light
blue coveralls with a slight pink trim and no name tag, the kind
used by the female nursing staff. They were long sleeved, undone at
the cuffs, and unzipped to the chest. She was barefoot. There was a
half-smile locked into her delicate pink mouth. Her pearly dark
eyes had an intimidating look of utter resolve in them. She
strolled into my cabin without saying a word, leaned back against
the desk, and casually looked around.
    "Nira, what the hell are you doing out of
sickbay?"
    She looked me over with an intensity that
made me want to pull the blanket up higher.
    "I'm a big girl now, Adrian. I wasn't being
cared for in the nursery, you know."
    "But they said it was a good four inch
laceration. They said you'd lost a respectable amount of blood,
that you'd be kept off duty for at least four or five days."
    She came to the side of the bed and stared
down at me, her glistening black locks dangling down around her
gentle face. The male radar in me became aware she was wearing
nothing under the coveralls.
    Male perception of the amount of clothes
being worn by any given woman beneath the colorful outer layers is
a finely-tuned sensory skill that borders on clairvoyance. It is a
talent most likely developed the day after the first Neanderthal
lady decided to adorn herself with the ferns and flowers from the
rain forest surrounding her cave. There must be some kind of
special radiant frequencies given off by the more sensuous female
body parts. These subtle, irresistible signals have a certain
debilitating effect on the male mind, to the point he can no longer
pay adequate attention to whatever he happens to be doing at the
time of exposure. So disarming is this phenomena, that some have
been known to pilot their speeding vehicles into immovable objects.
The male can on occasion completely lose the ability to think
rationally. This anesthetizing influence is intensified by the
female by varying and adjusting the sawy, bounce, and pose of her
body. Too deliberate an effort has been known to paralyze the male
completely.
    I snapped myself out of it. "What are you
doing here?"
    "I feel just fine, Adrian dear."
    "Loss of blood can cause feelings of
euphoria, you know. It can make you do things you might not
otherwise."
    "The doctor topped me off, honey. I'm just
fine. Besides, you've used that once already."
    "Look, Nira, this sort of thing happens all
the time. You have a serious near-miss and someone is there to help
you out of it. There's depression and elation afterward. You get to
thinking you owe that person something you really don't. It wears
off after awhile, but you can do something really stupid before it
does, something you regret afterward. There's no bill, Nira. You
don't owe me anything. I was just doing my job. We're not an
item."
    I thought that would be enough insulation,
enough removal. She was one of the most dynamic, successful
individuals I had ever met. The mere suggestion of rejection was
likely to infuriate her. Insincere morality can be one of the best
possible concealments for insecurity. To feign disinterest would
certainly send this beautiful creature