There was someone with him. Quaid blinked and looked.

A beautiful creature was leaning over him. She wore a filmy nightgown that was falling open with a readiness that had to be intentional, to reveal portions of her splendid anatomy. She was not the girl of the dream; she was a stunning blond Amazon. His wife, Lori. How could he have forgotten!

“You were dreaming,” she said sympathetically as she reached forward to wipe the sweat from his brow.

He did not answer, distracted by the clear sight of her full breasts within the hanging nightgown. He had of course seen them many times before, but somehow he never got tired of looking. Talk of impressive architecture…

“Mars again?” she inquired solicitously. Her breasts moved as her arm did, as she completed cleaning his face.

He nodded, still upset by the experience, though he was rapidly coming to terms with the current situation. What did the woman of the dream have that Lori didn’t? Brown hair, maybe; nothing else. And Lori wasn’t exactly wearing a space suit.

Suddenly he realized that the Mars-woman’s voice had not been an error in the dream. They had been in space suits, and space suits had intercoms or whatever. He had heard her via his helmet system! It encouraged him to make that connection; it meant that his dream wasn’t quite as farfetched as he had thought.

Lori, mistaking his distraction, started to caress him. Her hand trailed down his neck, and she squeezed the muscle of his shoulder. She liked his muscles, and liked touching them; they were a turn-on for her, and he hardly objected to that.

“My poor baby,” she murmured, stroking his pectoral muscle. “Poor thing, with those bad dreams, those horrible nightmares.” She brought her head down, kissing the crotch of his neck and shoulder in a way that might have been comforting, but was becoming erotic. “Is that better?”

Her lips were moving across his chest, pausing in the region of the nipple. Her eyes angled up to sight on his face. He didn’t want her to stop. “Mm-hmm,” he said.