She handed me the cream and lay down on her front. She was wearing a bikini. I put cream on my hands and started rubbing them along her back, I rubbed it into the back of her neck where her short, big blond hair stopped, leaving it exposed. I rubbed it over her shoulders, smoothing the skin and starting to ma.s.sage her a little. She sighed out loud. The cream smelt good, hot in the sun, and the spicy, musky scent of her body smelt good too. I also sighed.

"You'd better put it everywhere," she suggested, reaching behind and undoing her bikini top.

"It's best to be careful, the way the sun is nowadays. And you are very light," I said. She was too. I looked for the factor on the sun cream but couldn't see any.

"Don't worry, I won't burn in the sun," the beach babe told me.

"You just carry on rubbing that in,"

I didn't need to be told twice. I rubbed cream the length of her back, down the back of her legs to her feet and back up along the inside of her legs. When I reached the top of her thighs she turned over and I saw her b.r.e.a.s.t.s for the first time. I gasped. She had a beautiful body; all curves.

"Well go on, then, handsome. Rub me some more."

I did as I was told, rubbing cream into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, feeling her nipples stiffen, rubbing cream over her chest and stomach until she was well and truly creamed.

"You haven't quite finished, have you?" she said, taking off her bikini bottoms.

I stared. "Are you sure you want me to rub sun cream...there?"

"Oh yes."

"But you don't know what's in it. It might irritate you." I was genuinely concerned. She looked like I was irritating her.

Suddenly I was lying back on the beach towel. I felt a shadow go over me.

"Would you be a darling and rub a little sun cream into my back."

"Of course." I said, getting a deja vu kind of feeling. This was where I came in, wasn't it?

She lay down in front of me and I saw she'd changed. She was deep brown, well toned, and her hair was short, big, black and weaved. I courteously covered her in cream, putting it exactly where she asked me to. Before I knew it we were getting intimately acquainted, her moans falling rhythmically with the crash of the waves. We were making good waves ourselves-she was open and wet, expanding around my hand. I felt good, deep inside her, and I felt my body stretch, enjoying the moment. I felt soft kisses along my back.

"Um-mm," I said aloud, turning my head to the side and seeing my blond friend from before.

"I wanted to join the party," she said. "Do you mind?"

"I don't mind at all," I said. In the blink of an eye I was on my back and the blond woman was moving on top of me. I felt a harness around my waist and pushed up so she could take more of me inside her. She watched me watching her open her mouth and gasp as she moved around. She was taking little breaths, her eyes half closing now and then.

My other lover was kissing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, I could see her nipples were erect, I could see all four of their nipples were erect, and I felt my own leap to attention. Six nipples on a d.y.k.e parade ground. My beautiful dark lover fixed her deep brown eyes on me and kissed me, opening my mouth and exploring me with her tongue. I ran my hand along her body, remembering we had something to finish off. Both women were moving on and over me and I moaned along with them...the hot sun, the crashing waves, two gorgeous women and...something made me think of Carmilla.

No sooner did I think of her then I was lying on top of her, her legs spread out either side of me and my tongue in close contact with her v.u.l.v.a. This seemed a bit forward. Weren't we supposed to play around with sun cream a little? I heard her moaning and sighing and felt her upper body moving, her fingers playing with my hair. After a while it seemed perfectly natural. She tasted wonderful: milky, slightly salty. I licked her like an ice cream cone. When I had nearly nibbled her down I felt a surge of energy run across my tongue and through my mouth, shoot through my chest, and explode somewhere around my c.l.i.toris.

Somehow, like an intergalactic translator or something. I knew this meant she'd come.

I felt the visor being lifted off my face and opened my eyes, blinking in the interior light. Carmilla was sitting beside me like before.

All her clothes looked intact. I looked down at mine. They were unchanged, unopened, undiscarded also. Okay, I told myself, that didn't happen. It was just a test, so they could gauge my s.e.xual responses.

They gave me some kind of stimuli and I made up the rest in my head, like a fantasy. Carmilla can't know what I was thinking. The scenario must be in the virtual reality program and I just put Carmilla in there.

But she doesn't know that. She was just observing me. s.h.i.t. She was observing me. What if I was moaning or breathing heavy? Or worse, what if I was feeling myself up in front of her? I looked again carefully at my flies. No, they're done up. Thank G.o.d.

"Are you okay?" Carmilla was looking at me, concerned. "Your blood pressure's shooting up."

"Oh yes, I'm fine," I muttered. "Just fine. How about you?"

''Oh I'm very well, thank you." Carmilla was smiling. ''That was really very useful. I'd love to continue but I've had a message from the central console room. There's a lot of excitement that you're on board the ship, and Sisters are dying to meet you. It would be unfair of me to keep you here any longer."

Flattery has always been my weakness. Completely pushing out any worries I'd had about my little fantasy, I nodded.

She took me to a meeting room. On the way I asked her, "What is it you want from me?"

"Oh, we just wanted to meet you."

"Why?"

"We like you."

"But you don't know me."

"Well, we like your type. We'd like to get to know you better."

Ignoring the little sweetener, I went on. "What d'you mean my type? Human?"

"No."

"Lesbian?"

"Of course." She said like there was any doubt.

"So any lesbian. You just wanted to meet an Earth lesbian."

"No. We wanted to meet a butch."

"Oh, that is a bit harder."

We were at a lift. Carmilla lifted her hand and the call b.u.t.ton pad slid down so she could press it.

"So have you met-"

The lift doors opened and two women got out. The two women: the two women in the virtual reality program. Only they weren't virtual, because here they were in front of me. Waving. I broke out in a cold sweat.

"Joe, I think you've already met Neela and Sindan. Neela, Sindan, this is Joe." Carmilla made the introductions.

"Hi," I said in a pitch only dogs could hear.

"Such a high voice," Neela commented, tall and dark and even more beautiful in the flesh.

"Oh she doesn't normally talk like that," Carmilla told her.

"Strange reaction. It must mean something. Maybe they talk like that to women they've had s.e.xual relations with." She considered that. "But then, she didn't speak in that high voice to me,"

Oh no. Not you too. I'd hoped at least that part of it really was a fantasy. I looked at them all looking at me for a while. Then Carmilla broke the freeze-frame.

"Well, we'd better be going. You two aren't coming?"

"No, we're working in the kitchens tonight," Sindan, blond and curvy in a very tight s.p.a.cesuit, said.

Carmilla gestured to me to get in the lift. When the lift doors closed I blurted out, "I thought they were a program. I mean, I thought it was a program and they weren't real."

"Oh. Did you?" Carmilla nodded as if a piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. "I see. How strange. Don't you have s.e.x like that, then?"

''No, not at all. We have it...you know, for real."

Carmilla raised her eyebrows, looking very interested indeed. "Oh, you mean you don't all hook up to the mainframe?"

I shook my head. ''Well...there's the Internet, I suppose, but it's not as....vivid."

''Interesting...I'd like to try that," Carmilla muttered to herself as the lift stopped and the doors opened straight into the meeting room.

Carmilla took me to a seating area and set herself beside me. I thought that might be because of her role as science officer, but I hoped it was because she liked me. Panther-Woman came over from the drinks area with a group of other women, and they settled around us.

''Joe, I thought you might like to meet some more Sisters."

Panther-Woman told me. ''This is Nelax, she's our chief engineer."

I looked with interest at the woman PW pointed to. She was chief engineer. d.a.m.n! She was the most feminine woman I'd ever seen.

Immaculate. She had one of their s.p.a.ce suits on but it was tapered in to show every curve, every fold of her body. Chief engineer! She didn't have a smudge on her. Couldn't imagine her getting her hands dirty. I was getting my head around this concept when I heard another woman laughing. PW introduced me.

"And this is Shira, she's our chief advisor and telepath."

Right. Telepath. Should have known they'd be telepathic. They even knew what I was thinking. I suddenly felt very alone.

''Oh, you don't need to be scared of us," Shira said. "We wouldn't, couldn't harm you."

She had a very compelling voice.

"And I'm Robaki." Another woman cut in. She had obviously got fed up waiting to be introduced. "I'm head of leisure services."

"Would you mind if we ask you some questions?" Carmilla asked.

I shook my head and shrugged.

"Are there many like you on your world?" PW asked me.

"What d'you mean like me?"

"Butch," PW confirmed "In the whole world?"

They nodded. I thought about it. "Well, I can't be sure. I mean, who knows really? I don't think there's millions, maybe there's thousands-in the whole world. Do you include straight women who are butch?"

They looked confused.

"Yeah, I know. It confuses me too. But then not, I suppose, not if you count butch as a gender."

I could see I'd lost them.

"Anyway, masculine women-into women, into feminine women I suppose, looking at you lot-I don't know. How many are you looking for?"

A row of raised eyebrows greeted me.

"Thousands," Nelax volunteered.

"Really," I said. "Thousands, huh?"

"Do you think you could help us?'' Robaki asked.

"Hmm..." I thought about this. Did I really want any other butches in on this?

"Tut tut." Shira mock-frowned at me.

''Can I ask you something?" They nodded. "Where do you come from?" I was thinking this could all be an elaborate hoax and they'd say, "San Francisco."

"Femedom."

"I beg your pardon?" I spluttered.

"Femedom," Carmilla repeated.

I decided it wasn't polite, and definitely not in the interests of galactic relations to tell them what the name of their planet meant in English.

"It means some kind of female contraception," Shira explained.

d.a.m.n! I'd forgotten about her.

"How...quaint." PW dismissed it as an absurdity.

"It took me a while to work out the image in her head." Shira was saying. I stared at her in horror. "All I could see was c.u.n.t and this funny, rubbery-plastic thing wrapped sort of up and inside." I still stared at her in horror. They all looked at me, completely lost for words.

"We've got a lot to learn," Shira said.

"So how come you don't have any butches with you?" I changed the subject.

"Honey, if we had butches we wouldn't be here," Robaki informed me.

"Really." It was my turn to look at them. "You mean you don't have any," I emphasized the word, " any butches at home. Not even one."

They all laughed. And laughed.