The first kiss was tentative, just a soft brushing of the lips. The second involved the tips of their tongues. The third was much deeper and Kaela moaned. Zach moaned and his hand snaked up to fondle her breast.

“Mmm, that feels good,” Kaela whispered. Zach pulled her into his lap and she cupped his face in her hands. “Nobody’s ever done that to me before.”

“So you’re telling me you’ve never made love?” he asked.

“Never,” she admitted with a blush. “I’ve never even been this far, and I have no idea if I’m doing it right or not.”

“Anything you do will be right,” he reassured her. “Don’t worry about it, Kaela, there’s no hurry. It’s not like you’re going anywhere tomorrow.”

Kaela sat on the couch and held a pillow to her chest. She bit her lip and prepared to do as she was told in spite of the fearfulness welling up in the pit of her stomach.

“Be careful,” she told him.

“I will,” he promised as he went out the door.

* * * * *

The captain strode in as if he owned the place. “I am Captain Davis, and I want all your cargo loaded onto my ship. And one more thing, I want the tasty little bitch I just saw you with on Ralona.”

Kaela Sutton opened her eyes and looked around. The room was blurry, as if she were looking through water, and for a few moments this confused her. She had been told seventy years ago that waking from hypersleep was not unlike being reborn. The longer you slept, the longer it would take for you to readjust to your body and your surroundings. Since she could barely feel her limbs and lifting her head made her dizzy, so far she felt that must be the case.

Why was this man being so rude to her? She expected better treatment than this as a paying passenger. Groggily she sat up and rubbed at her eyes, but the blur didn't go away. She ran her hands over her body out of curiosity and found  she had lost weight.

One of the cryo-pods nearby still hissed steam as it was superheated to thaw the person inside. Kaela's face felt the heat as she sat there, and the steam seemed to help her eyesight clear a bit.

A loud buzzer sounded as the pod split open and an inert form appeared. Cryo-techs scooped her out of the pod and laid her on a recovery bed with a heating blanket just like the one Kaela herself had been under.

"Put this on," the man commanded, tossing some sort of clothing her way. Kaela took the small blue jumpsuit and managed to stuff herself into it. She was barely able to zip it closed. The shoes that went with it were three sizes too big and flopped as she stood to test them out.

They stepped out of the ship and traversed a long moving walkway. The sky was a pale green outside the dome, and lightning bolts frequently broke the monotony of the pale mass of clouds that was otherwise unending. On the streets, people milled around shoulder to shoulder and crowded each other for dominance. They pushed and shoved and shouted, and hardly anyone just stood there and let the slow pace of the walkway take them where they were going.

She heard the familiar hum of the electrocars flocked together on the streets like they would in New York back on Earth, but Kaela couldn't see any shops or offices in the shapeless mass of buildings that flanked the endless stretch of roadway. Everything looked like the same dull gray metal and lacked the character of a city that wasn't built all at once. New York this place was not.

Tedrona was supposed to be an earthlike world with only a few buildings and plenty of fields with growing plants. There should be no dome, no green atmosphere weighing down on it. Kaela took a deep breath to steady herself, but it didn’t calm her racing heart. She felt sweat break out on her forehead that had nothing to do with the brisk pace the man had set.

Finally they came to a place called The Captain's Lounge. It didn't look any different from all the other buildings except for neon signs in the window reminiscent of taverns and bars back home.

Her escort led her inside and stopped at a table laden with succulent foods and fine wines. Kaela's stomach rumbled just from the sight of it. A tall, portly, opulent man sat at the table and let out a loud burp as she stopped before him.

Even though they were among the richest passengers on board, they had never met the captain before the flight and there should be no reason to meet him now. They had been told  they would just be dropped off at a cryo-facility, still in their pods.

But Kaela had been defrosted on board the ship and now seemed to be on a planet with a non-breathable atmosphere. This was nothing like what she was told to expect when she was thawed out.

She approached the table with some trepidation, especially when she noticed  her parents weren't even there. Something was wrong, and she wanted to know what it was.

"Well then, let's get right to the point," he said. "I am Captain Isaacs. I am the proud owner of the Andromeda, the starship you just arrived here on. I’ve been transporting people to and from Earth on a regular basis for over a hundred years, and I’ve never had a stowaway in all that time, until now.”

“Stowaway?” gasped Kaela. She couldn’t believe this man was accusing her of such a thing. If her mother had been here to hear it, she would have laid into him but good.

“I don't know who you are or where you wanted to go, but my ship is on the way back to Earth, and it's booked solid."

"What? Why, I'm Kaela Sutton, of course." Her heart dropped right into her feet. "And I'm wondering just exactly where I am. And where are my parents? You haven't left them in the wrong place too, have you?"

"Are you saying I don't know who I am?" Kaela demanded. She placed her hands on her hips and glared at the men. What was the matter with these people? Couldn’t they see that there had been some kind of mistake? "I can't believe you would be so stupid. You people have obviously given my parents some other girl. They're probably worried sick about me, and who knows what the poor girl you foisted on them will think. I demand that you take me back to them at once."

"I already told you, little girl, my ship is booked solid, and it's headed for Earth," the captain insisted.

"Well, I'm not. I'm supposed to be on Tedrona." Kaela's heart beat so fast she thought she was going to faint. She had never been so angry or so frightened in her life.

"But surely my parents paid for me when you dropped off the wrong person," Kaela insisted. "As a matter of fact, I'm quite certain they paid for our passage before we even boarded. Besides, I shouldn't owe you a penny. It's you who should be paying me, for passage back to my parents. It's all your fault I'm in this mess."

"Then I suppose we'll just have to call it even." He took a long drag on his cigar and blew the smoke right into Kaela's face.

"Hey, aren't those things illegal?" She coughed.

"Only on ten thousand planets," he told her. "Vedona isn't one of ’em."

"Let me guess. You've brought me to a planet full of miscreants. Only the worst planets allow smoking, so this must be one of them," she huffed. "Sir, this is an outrage. I demand to know what you're going to do about this. Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?"

"You can't be serious! You brought the daughter of a wealthy agriculturalist to some planet she isn't even supposed to be on, and now you want her to go ask for indigent aid? What's the matter with you? Do you have any idea what my mother would say if she knew I went and asked for a handout? She would probably disown me. Trust me on this one —you don't know what she's like," Kaela said. "Not that it matters since it looks like it's highly unlikely she's ever going to see me again anyway."

"I'm sure that you have a lot more to say on the issue, but I don't have the time to listen to it. It's not my problem, and to tell you the truth, I wouldn't make an effort to bother with you even if it was." The captain put on his hat and stood to go. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have no more time to waste on you. My ship is about to take off. Have a nice life."