He reached an intersection. Down the cross-corridor, to both the left and right, numerous doors led to crew quarters. He checked for the number of Amina’s cabin on a directory mounted on the wall, and confirmed its location down the corridor to the right. He turned in that direction and hurried on.

What Harriman had told his chief engineer earlier, back in Enterprise’s cargo hold, had been no exaggeration: he’d been looking forward to this time with Amina—to anytime with Amina—for quite a while. They hadn’t been together since their week on Pacifica a year ago; although his crew believed he’d been there the entire month he’d been away from Enterprise,he’d actually spent the first three weeks on the Devron II mission.

Since they’d become involved, this had been the longest period during which they had spent no time together. They’d sent missives and messages to each other often, and after Enterprisehad been posted to Foxtrot Sector, they’d actually been able to speak to each other in real time on several occasions. They had even seen each other in person once or twice, but because of Enterprise’s rigorous schedule along the Neutral Zone, only briefly, and only as part of their Starfleet duties.

Harriman reached the door to Amina’s quarters and stopped. The sounds of his steps continued on for a second or two and then faded to silence, as though swallowed up by the corridor. He tugged at the base of his red uniform jacket, straightening it, then lifted a hand to the epaulet on his right shoulder, making sure that it was secured properly. Satisfied, he reached for the door signal. His heart raced. He felt like a schoolboy, arriving to collect his date for the prom.

A moment later, the door panel slid open with a soft rush of air. Inside sat a small room that belonged unmistakably to Amina. Harriman stepped inside, his gaze drawn to the wall directly across from him, to a mounted copy of an immigration certificate to the Martian Colonies. He’d seen the document before, and knew that it helped to tell the story of Amina’s grandmother’s grandmother, the first of her forebears to leave Earth. Next to the certificate hung a poem, a sonnet entitled “For Now and Ever”; Harriman had written it for Amina just six months into their relationship.

The wall lay covered by those objects and others—by artwork; by small, semicircular shelves laden with numerous and varied artifacts; but mostly by framed photographs. Harriman saw Amina’s parents at the party their children had thrown to celebrate the couple’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. He saw her siblings—a brother and three sisters—two of whom he’d met, and two of whom he’d only ever seen in pictures. Amina’s beautiful, smiling face peeked out from a few of the prints, but the images were mostly of others, of those people who meant something special to her. He saw himself, in his Starfleet Academy graduation picture—a painfully thin boy from thirty years ago that he barely remembered anymore—and in a shot taken with Amina in Jennita, atop a cliff overlooking the sea’s magical sapphirine waters.

“Captain John Jason Harriman the Second,” said a silky voice to his left, “are you just going to stand there, or are you going to say hello?” The words carried the faint hint of French pronunciation—Amina hailed from the Republique de Côte d’Ivoire, in Africa—an accent Harriman had always found exotic and romantic. Despite her mellifluous tones, though, Amina somehow still managed to express her strength and confidence, two characteristics that he had always found most appealing in her.

Harriman turned. Amina stood there in a gold silk dress, the plush fabric accentuating the beauty and sheen of her dark chocolate skin. Sleeveless, with a pleated skirt that reached to the middle of her calves, the dress had been one she’d worn in Jennita when they’d gone out dancing, the skirt lifting and twirling spectacularly as she spun, her movements lively and graceful. Her straight, jet black hair framed her lovely features, curling inward slightly as it caressed the tops of her shoulders. She was radiant.

“Amina,” Harriman said, his voice catching as he spoke the name of this woman he adored—and had missed—so much. He crossed the room in two strides, sent his arms around the small of her back, and hugged her tightly to him. Her arms encircled his shoulders—she stood slightly taller than he did—and embraced him back. He loved the feel of her long, lithesome body against his; they fit well together.

Harriman pressed his lips against Amina’s neck and kissed her, taking in the sweet, wispy scent of her flesh. In an instant, the months of separation fell away, the yearning undertone of their many letters to each other now a remote memory only. The rightness of their relationship, their essential need to be together despite the millstone of physical distance that often kept them removed from one another, asserted itself once more. It had always been like this, from the very beginning. They parted only because of necessity—she had her career, he had his—and whenever they rejoined, whatever emotional hardships they had endured crumbled into dust.

“Amina,” he said again, and he pulled back so that he could look into her eyes. Her green irises, flecked with grains of hazel, seemed to peer back at him with as much love as he himself felt. She looked good, her skin smooth and lustrous. Lines imprinted into her face along the sides of her mouth revealed a person who laughed easily and often, but did not add to the years in her appearance. At forty-eight, Amina could have passed for a woman in her early thirties, although the dignity and self-assurance with which she carried herself conveyed her maturity.

“I missed you, John,” she said, softening the first letter of his name to a zhsound.

“I missed you,” he said. He leaned in toward her, and their lips met, gently at first, and then in a harder, more passionate kiss. Harriman felt a fire with this woman as he had felt with no other.

When they parted this time, Harriman took a few steps away, looking around the room. There wasn’t much to the place. Amina stood beside a half-wall that divided her quarters in two. Behind her sat a bed and a built-in dresser in a small sleeping area, too small to have been comfortably enclosed. Past the bed, a closed door no doubt led to a bathroom. In this section, a desk—topped with a computer-and-communications interface—and two chairs filled at least a third of the floor space. Still, as spartan as the accommodations were—save for Amina’s adornments—Harriman was certain that these quarters, the commander’squarters, were the largest on the outpost. By comparison, his cabin on Enterpriseseemed lavish.

“This place is…” Harriman started, and then searched for an adjective to adequately express his thoughts. “This place is very much you,” he finally settled on, referring to Amina’s penchant for taking and keeping photographs.

“You mean the pictures,” she said, clearly in tune with him. “All my albums are back in Aboisso with Mère and Père.” Though they traveled a great deal, Amina’s parents still kept a home in the African harbor city. “Starfleet didn’t give us a lot of storage space out here,” she said.

“That’s all right,” Harriman told her. “There’s still plenty of room for both of us.”

“Oh?” she asked, in apparent mock surprise. “Are you planning to move in?”

“Ask me again,” Harriman said seriously, moving to her again and taking her upper arms in his hands, “and I’ll never leave.”

“Oh, certainly, Mr. Starship Captain,” she teased, reaching over and brushing the tips of her fingers through the hair at the side of his head. “Mr. Warp Factor Nine, Mr. Ten Thousand Light-Years, Mr.—”

“How about Mr. Sasine?” he interrupted quietly.

“Is that a proposal?” she asked, smiling. In the eight years they’d been together, they’d each asked the other to marry countless times. The answers had always been yeses, and yet they had never progressed beyond that, had never discussed actually having a wedding. For his part, Harriman could not imagine pledging such vows and then saying farewell as Amina returned to whatever base she commanded and he returned to Enterprise.And yet—