He felt a trickle of sweat slip down from his temple, down his jaw, down his neck. The droplet was absorbed into the collar of his black T-shirt. He flexed his fingers against the grating, feeling the strained digits ache with renewed circulation.

Thank god whatever funky shit that was going down with D´Argo was dulling the Luxan´s olfactory senses. Otherwise...

Well, otherwise, Crichton knew he´d be one *dead* hyu-mahn.

He heard the heavy steps of the Luxan recede and scrabbled down another access shaft. Days, he´d been doing this. He thought. A few arns back, he´d managed to sneak into the galley and snag some food cubes. The only thing he´d managed to eat since D´Argo started tripping hard core.

And man, did Crichton have to pee.

“Pilot?” Nothing. “Pilot!”

“Yes, John Crichton?”

“Location?”

“Of Ka D´Argo? His current location is Tier 9.”

“D´you think I have time to answer the call of nature, Pilot?”

“I´m afraid I don´t understand, John Crichton.”

John gave a breathy chuckle and wiggled himself through a particularly narrow junction. Man, he must have put on some muscle since he´d been aboard Moya...running from crazed Peacekeepers and angry Luxans would probably do that to a guy.

“Just wondering if I have time to, you know, urinate, Pilot. It´s getting kinda urgent.”

“Ah. Yes. There is a unit one tenth of a metra to your right, John Crichton.”

“Thanks, Pilot.” John clicked off his comm unit and bear-crawled on all fours to the appropriate exit. A DRD beeped at him helpfully as he slid out into one of Moya´s corridors.

A quick zip later, and John was easing the painful ache in his bladder.

“Fastest piss in the West,” Crichton mumbled to himself, climbing back into the access shafts that were too small for the Luxan to stomp through.

It had been one of those weeks where he felt like he was living in a video game. A really weird, three dimensional, technicolor, and *alien* video game. And someone had neglected to give him the rule book. Hell, he didn´t know if there *were* rules.

“Hey, Pilot.”

“Yes, John Crichton?”

John cracked a grin at Pilot´s tinny tenor as he scrabbled around in the semi-darkness. Pilot always seemed to address him by his full name, as if he were a Johncrichton. Instead of just John Crichton, hopelessly lost astronaut.

“D´you know what *exactly* is up with D´Argo? Like, why he suddenly hates my guts and wants to splatter ‘em against Moya´s bulkhead?”

“The others are calling it Luxan Hyper Rage.”

“Yeah, well, I hold *that* to be kinda self-evident,” Crichton grunted. He turned around another bend and continued to crawl aimlessly. “What I want to know is *why*.”

“I´m...not sure. Zhaan and Aeryn see it as some sort of territorial behavior,” Pilot answered. He sounded distracted.

“Territorial behavior,” Crichton muttered, pausing in the tunnel. What the hell? “Huh. Does that mean, like, uh, he has to dominate?” Crichton remembered his gratefully empty bladder and grinned at the thought of D´Argo taking a leak all over the ship to mark his territory with his scent. The Luxan had been pretty touchy since that Scorvian freak had led him around by his hormones. If Luxans had hormones like he knew them.

“I believe that is a part of it, yes.”

“What else do you know, Pilot?”

“Moya´s data stores are not complete concerning Luxan mating habits--”

Whoa.

“Did you say *mating* habits?” John spluttered, banging the crown of his head against the corrugated ceiling of the access shaft.

“Yes,” Pilot said. “It appears that a trigger to the Luxan Hyper Rage is a non-submissive male in an adult male Luxan´s territory.”

“So what-what am I supposed to do, here, Pilot? Roll over and show him my belly?” Crichton demanded.

“I do not know, John Crichton.”

John swore and rubbed at the bump on his head, recalling that Pilot wasn´t exactly a sexual creature. He was bonded with Moya. What did Pilot know about boinking the opposite gender?

Or the same gender.

God damnit. Since he´d blasted into this part of the universe, John had been hunted, beaten, locked up, shot at...

Crichton started to tick them off on his other hand: he´d had alien creatures in his face, in his spine, down his pants...

Well, gee. What was one more groping alien to him?

John settled down mid-tunnel and began rubbing at his temples with his index fingers.

Man, he didn´t even know how Luxans had sex.

It wasn´t the first time he´d been curious about Luxan physiology. That whole bit with Matala the Molester had gotten him to thinking about D´Argo´s orifices. For hearing. Not for *that*. Of course, there *was* Aeryn´s comment about ‘mivonks´. Whatever those were.   

John groaned and smacked himself in the forehead, feeling the sweat there against his dirty palm.

He needed a shower.

He didn´t need an angry, lust-filled Luxan on his ass. John was definitely not ready for that. He´d been groped a plenty since he´d joined Moya´s crew and it was still making his head whirl.

Sex between humans had been bad enough, trying to decide between male and female, wondering what each would be like. If he would be stereotyped. He´d basically settled on the female back on Earth because it was easier. But hey, he was a guy. He liked sex. Who was giving it to him didn´t matter so much as whether it *felt* good.

John had the suspicion that a severely pissed-off Luxan in full dominant mode would *not* feel good.

“Well, big guy, you´re just gonna have to sweet-talk me if you want it,” John muttered, wedging himself in the tunnel and settling down to wait the Luxan out.

He was going to hide. For as long as it took. John didn´t care if Aeryn laughed at him.

Just because he was a guy didn´t mean he was easy.

Well, not *that* easy.   

fin