I'm sure I've been MORE nervous in my life, I just couldn't recall WHEN at the moment the countdown reached eight. I heard the ratcheting clank of the hoses separating from the external fuel tank of the shuttle, hoses which had just finished pumping in liquid oxygen to supply the oxidizer for the main engine burn. The main engines themselves were ignited a moment later, shuddering our compartment. The main engines would not actually be fired until launch of course but the shudder was the final sign of imminent blast-off. Only one previous shuttle had been aborted after this point. We were REALLY going up this time.

Two previous delays had scrubbed the launch of Endeavor. One, due to weather, had kept us from even entering the crew compartment. We'd never even donned our bulky spacesuits. The second had occurred fifty-three minutes before launch when a two-dollar fuse (for which the government had probably paid more than a thousand bucks) that regulated power to the crew escape hatch burned out, scrubbing us. This launch signified our last chance to hit our window this month. It looked like it we were finally going to leave the pad this time.

I braced myself in my chair as the countdown reached zero. I braced myself even though I was as strapped in as a man could possibly be. My shoulder and waist restraints were cinched tight enough to break a clavicle or a pelvis had I not been adorned with the eighty-pound space suit. A space suit which, I might add, the ill-fated Challenger crew had found pretty much useless. I had no illusions. If something went wrong, it was my ass. I only hoped it would be quick; so quick I wouldn't even notice it.

"Ignition." I heard in my headset. A moment later the solid rocket boosters were ignited, the main engines were throttled up, and the shuttle leapt off of the pad.

Vibration and incredible noise filled the crew compartment and I was pushed back forcefully in my seat under the effects of three times the force of normal gravity. It (the acceleration, NOT the noise) was less than I'd endured in training in the centrifuge, I'd made it all the way to nine G's before passing out, but it was different all the same, more intense. I knew that this pressure on my body meant I was being blasted off of the earth and into space. It meant that the launch had gone forward. The main engines could be shut down at any time but solid rocket boosters are like fireworks; hell, they ARE fireworks when you come right down to it. Once they are lit, there is no turning them off. They would burn, pushing our little vehicle upward, until they were out of fuel. We were committed.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the mixture of oxygen and nitrogen that came through the breathing system. I closed my eyes, enduring the uncomfortable sensation of acceleration, waiting for it to be over. This was the most dangerous part of a space mission; the part most likely to produce a catastrophic result; the orbital burn. More than a million individual parts had to work perfectly in sync with each other. If one little widget decided to say 'fuck it', we were toast.

I did not even have the luxury of monitoring what was going on as we ascended. I was not a pilot; I was a payload specialist, sitting two seats behind the mission commander. I heard his transmissions in my earpiece but I did not have access to his telemetry. If my ass was about to be obliterated, the last thing I would hope to hear would be 'Houston, I'm reading a failure on... '.

I heard the report of our transitional roll to orbital inclination. I felt the shudder of separation as the SRBs burned out and were ejected. I was particularly nervous during this period. It was about here when the Challenger had gone up.

This all went off without a hitch however. The main engines burned for a few more minutes and then shut off. The acceleration ended, literally lifting a great weight from us, and we were in zero-G. We were in orbit. My lifelong dream had been achieved. I was safely in space, moving at nearly eighteen thousand miles an hour.

"All right guys." Commander Buxely told us over the intercom. He'd flown in space four times before and was therefore a veteran. "Let's get these space suits off."

This was, as I may or may not have mentioned or implied, my first space mission. I'd been an "astronaut" for more than two years but the highest I'd flown before had been my flights on the so-called "vomit-comet", a KC-135 that had been converted for zero gravity training. It was a pathetic simulation of what zero-G was REALLY like I was quickly discovering.

I have a doctorate in orbital dynamics. Though I am assigned to NASA, my actual job it to oversee the development and deployment of infrared detecting geosynchronus spy satellites. Endeavor was tasked, among other things, to launch such a satellite who's purpose was to hover above the Indian Ocean, replacing an outdated satellite that had been there since the late 1980s. The satellite in question could detect the launch of something so small as a SCUD missile by it's infrared plume anywhere in the Eastern Hemisphere of Earth. I'd worked out the proper positioning for the thing in our limited slot of geo orbits and was tasked to oversee its deployment. I'd worked the last twelve years of my life for the moment I was finally shot into orbit around the Earth via highly explosive elements.

I was but one member of a crew of seven on the Endeavor that mission. The spy satellite launch was but one of our tasks. We were also studying solar flares from the sun, the development of chicken embryos in zero gravity, and, as always, the effects of zero-G on the human body.

Of the seven of us astronauts, only two of us had never been in space before. They were Jackie Yee and myself. Jackie was not really an astronaut. She was not employed by NASA but was a research specialist; a biologist at Harvard. She'd received a few months of NASA training prepatory to being launched with her experiment; which she'd worked six years upon. Jackie was in charge of the chicken embryos. She was THE authority, not just on chickens, but on any kind of poultry you could possibly imagine. She had a Ph.D. in poultry. The chicken doctor, we called her, good naturedly of course; and she'd always taken this well. Eventually her nickname (astronauts LOVE giving each other nicknames) evolved into "CD". By the time of launch we were all calling her this. From her I'd learned more about the life cycle, breeding cycle, and death cycle of chickens than I'd ever hoped to know. She was an accepted, though minor member of our crew. She'd trained with us in the simulators, had gone up with us in the vomit comet, had participated in the pre-launch flight in the F-16s, even taking the stick for a short time in the back seat of the specially modified trainer that Commander Buxely flew. She'd proved to us all that she had a set of balls.

She was my age, thirty-one, and in exquisite shape; a NASA requirement. She was an attractive woman of oriental descent, her family having come to America in the post World War II era. She was childless and twice divorced. As the two "virgin" members of the crew, Jackie and I had bonded during training. On the rare occasions when we, the crew, had time to go out to a bar for a few drinks, Jackie and I used to sit together and talk, sharing our experiences in life. I learned that she had incredible trouble maintaining relationships with men. The problem was that she was almost eerily intelligent; her IQ was nicely above what was considered to be genius. Apparently most men were intimidated by that simple fact. Men don't like women who are smarter than they are.

My own IQ, while up there on the scale, was nowhere near hers. But she never intimidated me. On the contrary, I found conversation with her stimulating and thought provoking (when she wasn't talking about chickens, that is). Her points of view on every issue from the Bill Clinton scandal to the Crisis in Kosovo were well thought-out and well-spoken, full of insight. As the weeks prior to launch went by I found myself infatuated with her.

Like her I was divorced and childless, though I could only claim a single previous spouse. My wife had been a pediatrician that I'd met in graduate school. An attractive woman and a wonderful wife that had simply been unable to adapt to the amount of time I had to spend away from her at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, my previous employer before joining NASA. By the time I'd been picked up as a future astronaut our marriage had been teetering on the brink. The additional time away from home that NASA required had been the final push. My story is not unusual in the ranks of astronauts.

As our training progressed CD and I fell in love with each other. One night, after a particularly drunken barbecue at Coco Beach, we rented a cheap motel and spent the night screwing our brains out. I licked and sucked every inch of her beautiful, shapely body. She licked and sucked every inch of mine in return. We had sex in a variety of positions until nearly two in the morning, at which time we finally fell into an exhausted slumber. The next morning we had a long talk and proclaimed our deep feelings for each other. But we also knew, though we both wished to continue this relationship, that propriety would have to be our God.

NASA, you see, is as prudish and puritan as those seventeenth century New Englanders that used to burn witches at the stake. If they'd heard so much as a rumor that CD and I were sleeping together, or even CONSIDERING such a thing, one or both of us would have been pulled from the mission. Can't have people that are ATTRACTED to each other in a shuttle together, can we? Though we loved each other we had both worked for many years to be put on this mission. We had no intention of fucking that up. Our relationship would be kept secret, at least until AFTER we'd touched down at Cape Kennedy.

We are certainly not the first pair of lovers that have had to work in close proximity to each other while keeping their affections secret. Those that have been through similar situations can, I'm sure, commiserate with me. I can't begin to tell you how frustrating it was to be next to her each day, to have brief, seemingly accidental contact, but to not be able to be alone with her in the way I wished. We did manage SOME encounters together during the final phases of training, but they were few and far between and they were NEVER enough.

To make things worse, CD had a nasty little teasing streak within her. She used to delight in whispering things in my ear during training exercises when we happened to end up next to each other. We would be about to climb into the simulator and she would whisk by me and softly comment, "my pussy is SO wet from looking at the bulge in your shorts that I'm gonna have to rub myself off in my seat". Or as we were enduring a lecture on emergency procedures (the kiss your ass goodbye lectures) she would pass me a note that would read: "I had to fuck a cucumber last night because you weren't there." The note would have been rubbed across her vagina and would be emitting her sexy musk. These teasing gestures were almost more than I could take at times. I remember having to fight down hard-ons on several occasions so that my fellow astronauts, as well as my bosses, and on one occasion, the press, would not have to wonder why there was such a tent in my shorts.

But, thanks to our painful discretion, and despite CD's teasing, we managed to keep our relationship a firm secret from everyone but ourselves. Neither one of us were scrubbed from the mission.

As we donned our space suits prior to boarding the shuttle before what would turn out to be our launch, CD whisked by me once again. She paused for a brief moment, so brief that I doubt anyone even noticed. In my ear she whispered, "Somehow, some way, I'm going to figure out a way to get your cock in me up there." She blew a quick breath of air in my ear and then moved on. She paused and gave me a saucy smile over her shoulder before turning her attention to the task of suiting up.

I wonder if I am the only astronaut who has ever ridden the boarding elevator with a throbbing hard-on.

Once in orbit it took us nearly an hour and a half to strip out of the spacesuits and stow them in their storage compartments. Beneath them we all wore the standard work outfits, I'm sure you've seen them on TV before, blue shorts, white NASA T-shirts, and deck shoes. What you don't see in those television shots is what is UNDER the clothing. A thin vest with sticky electrodes all over it monitors our heartrate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen saturation level, and skin temperature. This information is sent to the shuttle's communication computer and downlinked, via a series of communication satellites, to Houston where a doctor watches over it (Yes, the government pays a doctor an obscene amount of money to do this). Why they feel the need to do this, I've never been given a satisfactory answer but I knew it would make CD's evil plan somewhat difficult to accomplish without detection. I could just picture the flight doctor down in Houston wondering why two of the crew members, a male and a female, suddenly developed heartrates in the mid one hundreds, respiratory rates in the upper thirties, and a sharp rise in skin temperature. It would certainly be odd enough for him to question it over the communication system. The only time we are not transmitting this information is when we are bathing; which is done with very damp sponges. Though the idea of screwing CD during the mission was exciting I couldn't conceive of both of us being able to shut off our transmitters at the same time. Oh well, she was the genius. Maybe she would think of something. In the meantime, there was weightlessness to enjoy.

Zero gravity. I can not begin to describe what it feels like to be able to float through the air at will, propelling yourself along with gentle pushes against the walls or the various handholds placed throughout the two decks of the crew compartment. Or how strange it is to pull yourself DOWN the ladder between decks, going through the opening headfirst, spinning to horizontal, and then kicking off the ladder to push yourself across the room. The first time I did this I did not push hard enough and stopped halfway across the room, leaving myself stranded in the air with nothing to grab hold of to propel myself. Contrary to popular belief, you do not simply keep going across a room inside of a spacecraft. There is air pressure in there; 15 psi to be exact, and it exerts enough friction to stop your forward momentum. The second time I tried this I kicked too hard, nearly breaking my wrists when I reached the other side. CD had similar problems learning the fine points of moving about the work areas; she racked her head painfully on the ceiling between decks when she pushed upward at the wrong angle. This amused the other astronauts to no end as we went about the initial tasks of setting the shuttle up for work.

The cargo doors were opened (they have to stay open during the entire flight; they are what radiates off our waste heat), the shuttle was rolled over so it's belly was facing the earth, and we began to unpack what needed to be unpacked. CD set up her chicken embryos. I went about the task of unpacking our consumables from lift-off storage to flight storage. The other crewmembers had other tasks to do. Though the crew quarters is a small environment for seven people it was made larger by the absence of gravity. People could pass each other in up and down orientation instead of being limited to side by side. I did notice the curious fact that we all oriented ourselves with our feet towards the floor whenever we were stationary. There is something decidedly unnerving about hovering in what your eyes tell you is an upside-down position.

As we embarked upon our first workday CD's teasing manner did not alleviate in the least. In fact, she became more daring, more brazen. My first indication of this came before lunch. We found ourselves momentarily alone down in the lower deck. She was still working on her embryos, which were set up near the rear of the larger deck. I was working on a fouled CO2 scrubber that the computer had said was malfunctioning. The only other crewmember down there with us was Shellie Angst, the pilot. Her domain was the flight deck of course but she was locked inside the bathroom, dealing with a case of irritable bowels (another common consequence of space flight). The rest of the crew was working on the flight deck at various tasks.

When she called my name, sex and teasing were the last things on my mind. I was concentrating all of my energies upon keeping my grip on the handhold while trying to keep the little screws that held the back of the scrubber motor from floating away from me as they came loose.

"Yeah?" I asked, looking at her. Her face was neutral.

"Can you help me with something for a sec?" She asked.

"Yeah, hang on." I said, removing another screw and then stuffing it in my pocket.

I was amused to find myself looking for a place to set down the cordless screwdriver I was using. You don't HAVE to set anything down in zero-g. When I realized this I simply removed my hand from it and it hovered in the air near the scrubber. I had no reason to believe it would not still be there when I got back. I pushed off the wall and drifted over to her, stopping myself upon arrival by hooking my foot around a rung of the deck ladder.

"What do you need?" I asked.

She gave me her teasing smile, holding up her right index finger. "I was just putting this in my wet pussy." She whispered to me, sliding it between my lips. She was not joking; I could taste her juices on the salty flesh of her digit. My dick immediately sprang upward.

"CD, Jesus!" I said as she withdrew the finger. I cast a nervous glance at the bathroom door where I could clearly hear Shellie grunting and farting over the vacuum noise of the "solid waste relief tube".

"I just thought you'd like to know." She said, reaching out and giving my dick a quick squeeze through my shorts, making my hard-on even stiffer. She looked in my eyes. "Somehow," She told me again, "I'm going to have you up here. Count on it."

I couldn't help but smile back. If there were a way to do it, she would figure it out.

Over the next two days a routine was established. We worked more than twelve hours a day at various tasks that were both related to our specialty and in the category of general housekeeping. My specialty was the satellite, which would not be deployed until the third day of the mission. I checked and rechecked its programming, fuel status, engine status, and a thousand other things about its future operation. My housekeeping duties included changing the CO2 scrubbers when they became saturated and monitoring the consumables. CD worked on her chicken embryos most of the time, monitoring things about their development that I could not even fathom and transcribing the results. She seemed pleased about whatever she was finding. Her housekeeping tasks involved making sure the solid and liquid waste dumps were made at the proper times. We were rarely alone together for any length of time, but on those few occasions that we were, she never failed to steal a quick kiss, or grab my cock for an instant, or put my hand on one of her breasts, allowing me to squeeze it, or, on one memorable occasion, thrusting my hand down the front of her shorts, allowing me to finger her wet pussy for about fifteen seconds before someone started coming down the ladder.

After that encounter I'd excused myself to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Floating there eight inches above the floor I picked up the liquid relief tube and clipped on my personal urine attachment. I pushed the initiation button and the vacuum came to life. I pushed down my shorts and hauled out my stiff, rigid, much in need of relief dick. I began stroking it, the image of CD's wet pussy against my finger in the front of my mind. I imagined sinking the object I now held in my hand (my cock, not the relief tube) into that wetness. Within thirty seconds I was shooting a pent-up load into the mouth of the tube where it was sucked down into the bowels of the shuttle, eventually to be discharged into space by CD during her routine housekeeping duties.

Feeling much better, more relaxed than I'd been the entire mission in fact, I shut off the vacuum, stowed my attachment back in it's proper place, and pulled my shorts back up. I cleaned my hands and opened the door, floating back out into the crew quarters. CD was giving me a knowing smile as I emerged. Since no one was paying me any attention at the moment, I drifted over her way.

"I just jacked off in the bathroom while I was thinking about fucking you." I whispered at her as I drifted by.

Her face blushed red, showing me that she could dish it out but she couldn't take it.

From above me my last name was barked out, making me jump a little. It was Buxely's voice.

"Yeah Bux?" I yelled upwards.

"Come on up here a minute." He told me.

CD and I exchanged a quick, nervous glance. "On my way." I said, pushing towards the ladder and maneuvering my way upward.

The flight deck was my favorite place to be during the mission. It was the nerve center of the shuttle, the place where all of my instruments were, and it offered an absolutely inspiring view of the earth nearly three hundred miles below us. As I emerged I took a quick glance outside, despite my slight nervousness about what Bux was calling me upstairs about, I couldn't help it. We were on the daylight side of the planet I saw, and I was able to identify the West Coast of South America far below.

I dragged my eyes away from the view when Bux waved me over to an unoccupied corner near the left side. Shellie was in the pilot's seat, monitoring shuttle systems. The communications officer was sitting next to her, looking at me with a knowing grin that I didn't care for in the least. The hydraulics specialist, Dan Freeling, was lost in a world of his own, working at a screen that showed the status of his beloved hydraulic robotic arm; the arm which would lift my satellite into orbit. I pushed myself over to Bux, stopping neatly by putting my foot against the wall when I got there.

He stared at me for a moment, his face expressionless. "You okay?" He asked me.

I blinked. "Sure." I told him carefully. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He chewed on his lip for a second and then said, "Houston just reported that you had a momentary surge in your heartrate, temperature, and respiration. They said it shot up alarmingly for a minute." He paused. "I notice you were in the head when this happened."

Holy shit! Did they know I'd just jacked off in there? I knew that actually performing coitus would be detected but it had not occurred to me for an instant that simply whipping off would push up my baseline values. I thought quickly. "I had uh... some stomach cramps in there." I told Bux. "They passed."

"Uh huh." He replied, obviously not believing me. "Well let me give you a little advice virgin." He said. "We all get 'uh stomach cramps' up here from time to time if you know what I mean. I would suggest that you time your stomach cramps a little more carefully if you don't want the entire control center knowing about them. Personally, when I get 'uh stomach cramps', I get them just before my workout period; after I've reported impending exercise to Houston but before I've actually begun to do it." He grinned. "That way they don't think anything unusual about the sudden rise in values that the 'uh stomach cramps' produce. You get me?"