Around midnight Yohanna and Ivan decided to go back to Ivan's temporary accommodation for some privacy. Relationships moved quickly on Moon Terminus, because space travellers never knew when they would see each other again and hastened to deepen their bonds in order to explore their compatibility.
Their lovemaking was mind-blowing, and Yohanna floated in a dreamy haze of satisfaction afterwards. "What do you do for a living?" she asked lazily.
"I'm a hydroponic technician," Ivan replied.
"There is plenty of work for your type if you would consider sticking around here for a while," Yohanna said.
"Would you like that?" Ivan inquired.
"Oh yes," Yohanna affirmed. "I think we need to give this thing a go."
"So do I," Ivan agreed.
He stretched out a muscled arm and pulled his remote logging device from the bedside table. Signing into the Spacetek system, the hydro-technician quickly selected a shift at the Moon Base hydroponics farm. Yohanna was right - there was plenty of work to be had for a qualified agriculturalist.
Another flick of the touch-screen and he had resigned from his position on the freighter.
"They would be rearranging the crew before their next voyage anyway." Ivan observed. "Many space personnel work the ship merely to get themselves from one planet to another."
That was exactly what Peyton had done to get from Mars to Earth-Moon. Yohanna reflected. She pushed a guilty thought aside. Her cousin would be all alone in their quarters.
"I'm all yours," Ivan said, showing Yohanna his new timetable.
"And I'm yours," Yohanna said, giving Ivan a kiss.
Such informal commitments were the closest many space personnel got to marriage. If the relationship worked out and they were together long enough, they could register the bond and make it legal.
Yohanna fell asleep and woke up hours later to find that she was due to go on shift. Her carefully set alarm would have beeped and woken Peyton back in the apartment, not her. There was no time to return to her accommodation, so she hurried straight to customs, grateful for the spare uniform stored in her locker.
(Sci-fi illustration generated using AI Photo Editor v.4.0 (ChatGPT-based creative tool from OpenAI), with creative direction by the author.)
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