I repeated the process on her ankles, then gagged her to stop the insane conversation, and put her in her bunk.
Then I turned out the lights and crawled into my own.
It never occurred to me that there were dozens of things she could cut herself loose with, just lying around the compartment.
I awoke and threw my arm up from sheer instinct. I grabbed something soft, and half-heard a metallic clatter behind my head. There was a weight on top of me, and then the weight and I were on the floor, locked together with the blanket between us.
Full consciousness was slow in coming, in spite of the shock of the activity. It seemed better, somehow, to just stay in that halfway state and enjoy it without knowing why. Finally, gradually, it penetrated that these were "the motions" that we were going through, but that we were not just "going through the motions."
This was for real.
A nasty question followed the thought: if this was for real, why did she keep wriggling and twisting all the time? The answer was close behind. She never had been able to hold still when her husband held her.
It seemed ages before we both realized how unsatisfactory it was to be separated by that blanket, and released each other and lay apart, with the blanket half on me and half on her. After more ages, I got up and turned on the lights. There were certain formalities that really should be observed.
While I pulled on the outer skin of my spacesuit—I wouldn't be outside long enough to need any more—Helene quietly picked out the large wrench she'd dropped at the head of my bunk, and put it back in the case it had come from.