Stranded Frustrated, Lt. Commander Cade Irons stared at the dimensional gate hanging twenty feet over his head. Too far to jump, particularly from the rocking rubber bottom of his Zodiac raft. Trapped. He was still trapped. He glowered up at the shimmering oval, wavering up there like the sun seen from deep below the water -- a promise of freedom, light, hope . . . far out of reach. He stared so hard and bitterly that he jumped when the white, man shaped object plummeted out of the oval and hit the water ten feet away with a tremendous splash. For a single frozen instant, Cade stared blankly at the patch of ocean still throwing up a plume of water from the impact. Then he dove in. He swam frantically, down, down toward the white fabric sinking below him, toward the arms waving desperately. Reaching down past flailing limbs, he grabbed hold of a fistful of white, then began to kick upwards with all his strength. Cade broke the surface in an explosion of spray, pulled in a hard breath, and hauled the drowning man up with him. Apparently the guy'd had the wit to see he was about to hit the water and had held his breath; Cade heard a sputter, then a desperate, sucking gasp. "You hurt?" he demanded, turning to face the other. "No, just scared to ... Commander!" Cade found himself staring into a pair of wide green eyes and a soft pink mouth that definitely did not belong to a man of any sort. "Lieutenant Hayes?" "Commander Irons!" She grabbed his bare, slick shoulders. "We been looking for you for hours!" He stared at her. "Hours?" According to his count, he'd been missing for two years. "Get in the boat, Lieutenant. You can tell me about it later." Grace Hayes hooked the rubber side of the Zodiac with a slim, muscled arm and hoisted herself inside, then steadied the craft as he climbed in himself. "Where've you been, Commander? We . . . ." She stopped dead. Herfull mouth fell open in an unabashed gape. Cade turned to see what she was staring at with such shocked attention. Low in the sky, three times the size of a harvest moon, the ringed planet hung, looking faint and ghostly in the daylight. At night it would be bright enough to read by. "Where the hell are we?" Cade sighed. "No place like home. Grab an oar, Lieutenant. I'll show you where I'm hanging my hat. If I had a hat." Grace stroked hard with her oar, watching Commander Irons as he did the same. His blond hair hung like a curtain of gold between powerful shoulders, muscles rippling with every stroke. But as tempting as his back was, what really held her attention was that long, flowing hair. Because the last time she'd seen Irons, his hair had been buzzed to a short, thick pelt. She'd last seen him twenty-four hours ago. There was no way in hell the commander's hair could have grown fourteen inches in twenty-four hours. And why were they paddling, anyway? The Zodiac was supposed to have an outboard motor, though it was nowhere to be seen now. Another thing: his uniform, or lack of it. Irons was wearing some kind of skins wrapped around his hips like Tarzan. He'd left the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy the day before in a wet suit. When had he had time to stalk, kill something, and cure its hide? And why take the trouble? Unless more time had passed for him than had back on Earth. Because it was damn sure they were no longer on the mother planet; the alien world she could see overhead made that plain. "How long have you been stranded here, Commander?" she asked. He didn't look around. "Two years. I gather it's been considerably less time than that back on Earth." She winced. "A bit more than twenty-four hours. What the hell's going on, sir?" "Nearest I can determine, that oval hole you fell through is some kind of space-time doorway -- or some such Sci-Fi shit. It appears over that same area roughly once a week..." "Once a week?" She frowned, puzzled. "Sir, why not just jump through and come home? Does it only go one way?" "No, in the beginning I actually stuck my head through once or twice. Unfortunately, it doesn't always lead to Earth. Once I saw a blue sun through it. Needless to say, I didn't poke any body parts in that time." Her eyes widened, sickening images spinning through her mind. "What if the doorway went somewhere like Venus, with a surface temperature that would melt lead and acid pouring from the sky?" He shook his shaggy head, so different from his usual sleek military cut. "Actually it does, a couple of times in its cycle. Then you get vicious ripping winds and poisonous gasses pouring through the door. I'm careful to seek shelter and stay away from the thing when it first appears until I can be sure it's relatively safe. I sure as hell don't put my head through anymore." "I don't blame you. How often does it go to Earth?" He shrugged. "It seems to follow a six month cycle, hitting the same worlds in succession. It's been to Earth four times thus far. Unfortunately, once it formed underwater on the other side, so I couldn't get through because there were several tons of ocean rushing this way. Another time it popped in back home several hundred feet up, making for a damn long fall if I'd been stupid enough to jump. Which I wasn't, thank you. And sometimes it forms here where I simply can't get to it, this last time being an example." She listened uneasily. "So basically, we're stuck here for at least another six months, possibly more." He turned to look over his shoulder at her. "That's about the size of it." She fell into an appalled silence. They landed the raft on a section of smooth, white beach. Grace eyed her surroundings cautiously, but they actually appeared no different from Earth; green foliage, blue sky, white sand. Looking at one particular tree, she frowned. "Isn't that a palm?" "Yeah, we have a lot of those. This planet is so similar to Earth, anything that comes through that doorway has a good chance of making it. As a result, we've got a sizable population of earth birds, fish, animals, and vegetation from airborne seeds. Which is a damn good thing. Otherwise I'd have starved long ago." He gestured with a broad, powerful hand. "There are some other life forms here too, but I wouldn't recommend eating them; none of the earth predators do, which means they're probably poisonous to us. Though the fur and horns and teeth can be usable .... Let's pull the raft up where the tide won't get it." She helped him drag the heavy raft away from the ocean and lash it to a tree. "Think any other humans have come through?" He hesitated a long moment. "I have found remains. Single skeletons. Apparently one person would sometimes get stranded here and never find his way back. I'll admit, I've wondered if I'd end up the same way." Grace shuddered. "Ugly way to die. Nobody to even bury you." He didn't answer, but his expression was so grim she knew that had been a very real fear of his. Irons had made his camp in a cave set in the side of a cliff. They had a hike to get there, followed by a rock climb that was less than enjoyable in Grace's slick, wet leather shoes. Finally she clawed her way over a lip of the cliff face to stare into the cave's black opening. Irons scrambled past her and immediately began striking a flint to light one of the lamps hanging from the cave ceiling. Following, Grace saw they were made from hollow gourds. "What kind of oil is that?" "Fish." Catching up a short stick, he began to light the other lamps from the flame in the first. Looking around, Grace saw that he'd been busy in the last couple of years. Along with the gourd lamps, there were several large woven baskets, clay jars, spears, bows and arrows. A big pallet took up a sizable section of floor space. Irons noticed her looking at it. "It's a pile of furs covered with a tarp from the boat," he explained. "In the jars I've got dried fruit and meats. Back through there," he nodded at a dark rear opening in the cave, "is a spring I use for water and bathing." She looked up hopefully. "Spring? Bathing?" Her white uniform was drying, sticky with sea water. Grace badly wanted a bath. He grinned. "I'll light a lamp for you. You can bathe and wash your uniform while I try to find you something dry to wear." Preferably a something that had an actual top to it, she thought, following his massive bare back into the next chamber of the cave. The spring he'd spoken of, Grace saw when he'd lit the lamp, was a wide, dark pool. "It's pretty deep on the other side," he told her, "but I think you can stand on this end without being underwater." "Sounds good." She waded in while Irons turned and went back into the main chamber. Watching his tight, muscled behind as he walked away, Grace thought there were definitely worse people to be stranded with for six months -- if he was interested in her. Irons had always seemed a little hostile back on the Kennedy, though he'd been pretty civil here. Then again, considering that he'd been stranded for two years, he was probably starved for human companionship. Not to mention sex, said a sly voice in the back of her mind. It was, Grace admitted silently as she stripped off her uniform, an intriguing thought. She'd had more than one erotic fantasy about Commander Irons, SEAL and old-school Navy man who saw no place for women on an aircraft carrier. True, he'd been a real sonofabitch to her on more than one occasion, but there was something about him that appealed to her darker side. Maybe it was the diameter of his biceps. Or maybe it was the size of the bulge she'd seen in his trunks at the base swimming pool .... Grace shook her head hard. Entertaining thoughts like that was NOT a good idea until she knew how Irons saw the situ...
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