Jupiter Project

their underwear.

The saga of Rebecca and Isaac was by now common scuttlebutt, too, so I gave in to Jenny’s questions and told her about it. Now that I thought about the whole thing, it was more funny than embarrassing.

And through it all, I fell an odd hovering presence between Jenny and me. We edged toward the subject slowly, but each of us sensed that the other wanted to talk, talk the way we had before. I found myself agreeing with her. “I’ve felt it, too,” I said quietly. “They don’t want us to get emotionally involved, I guess. So, almost without thinking about it, they’ve set up the Can…”

Jenny finished it for me. “For their age group, not ours.”

“Yeah.”

“A programmed world.”

“And in a way, they’re right,” I said. “This is a damned dangerous place. Ishi…” My voice trailed off.

Jenny said, “When you add all that, on top of all the crap separating men and women already…”

“Yeah. The distrust. The anger.”

“And the just plain awkwardness. But we’ve got to overcome it.”

“How?”

“By being ourselves.” Jenny said.

“It’s hard to be yourself when you’re in a fishbowl.”

“You mean when everybody’s watching.”

“Right.”

“You know…” She smiled a quiet, mischievous smile that I had seen a few times and liked a lot. “It is hard to get any privacy around here. But I know a place.”

“Where?”

“I do some of my chore time in the infirmary. There’s a reserve room, kept stocked with med stations and beds, in case of a major accident. Not many people even know it’s there, we use it so seldom.” She looked at me sideways and bit her lip. A hesitant turn crept into her smile.

“We might get caught.”

“I suppose so.”

I felt an odd electric tingling. A quickening, nervous energy.

To grow, gamble.

What can you say about it? That all the thousands of hours you spent trying to imagine it never prepared you for the real thing. That it really is different from anything else. And that yet in a way it’s like a lot of other things, physical and emotional, all merged and heightened and more intense. You’re clumsy, sure. But there’s something about it that takes you out of yourself and into some other place. And it takes you into the person you’re with.

There’s all that, sure. But mostly it’s a huge, gaudy kind of fun.

When Jenny and I left the infirmary I felt emotions that were new to me. Love, maybe: it’s hard to tell. I know the things you feel when you’re an adolescent are going to change with time, the way everybody and everything does—but still, the warm aura that surrounded us was real, not some kid’s delusion. I wasn’t just feeling the “release of tension” the manuals tell you about, it was more like Jenny and I had been to a place that you can’t get to without something very special happening. Exactly what all that meant, we’d find out in time. For now, it was enough to have been there.

As we ambled along the dimly lit nighttime corridors, I said, “Y’know, it’s funny, how some things are right in front of you and still you don’t see them.”

“Ummm. Such as?”

“I had to be jolted into paying attention. Into taking my nose off the grindstone.”

“Oh?” Jenny arched her eyebrows.

“That stunt of mine, flying out to Satellite Fourteen. The regular Matt Bohles wouldn’t have done that.”

“Probably not.”

“I guess all this—yeah, including my interest in you—started with Ishi.”

She looked at me. “How?”

“Well. I started thinking of these things, you know.”

“But not about me in particular?”

“Well, no, not at first.”

Jenny was looking at me in a funny way. “You mean, it was because Ishi died? Not because of something he said?”

“No, because he died. It… I don’t know, everything seemed different after that.”

“Yes,” she said softly, “it was.”

The next day I did more chore work, lugging sacks of compost. It was the only kind of thing I felt like doing. Halfway through the morning I got a comm call. It was Commander Aarons’ office. They wanted me at a meeting in one hour. I went back to work and mulled it over. Probably a more thorough debriefing of my Satellite Fourteen run, I guessed. ISA would want them to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.

When I got there, all changed into a new suit, there wasn’t anybody I’d expected. No Dr. Kadin, no Mr. Jablons. Commander Aarons’ secretary—a guy I knew from the squash ladder—made me sit and wait. I could hear some loud talking from the inner office; the sealite partitions can only muffle so much. I couldn’t make out who was talking.

A light flashed on the secretary’s console. He told me to go on in.

Sitting in a chair across from the Commander’s desk was Yuri’s father.

“I thought you might be interested in Dr. Sagdaeff’s complaint. He has filed it against you,” Aarons said.

Dr. Sagdaeff said stiffly, “I see no reason why he should be here. This is a disciplinary matter—”

“Oh, it’s more than that.”

I began, “Look, sir. I’d just as soon avoid—”

“No, sit down.” Aarons said. “This is indeed more than a disciplinary matter. State your case, Dr. Sagdaeff.”

Yuri’s father frowned and glanced at me. “Briefly, we all know what this boy did to Yuri. Assault, that is the term, I believe. And the boy risked his own life, and destroyed valuable equipment, in a foolhardy stunt.”

“Hey, there—”

Aarons silenced me with a raised palm. Yuri’s father went on. “However, you are certainly aware that the feeling in the Laboratory runs strongly in favor of this boy. He was, I’ll admit, very fortunate. But that does not erase the offense against my son.”

“Agreed.” Commander Aarons made a steeple of his fingers and peered at them.

“And it is not a trivial offense. Yuri could have been seriously hurt.”

“Perhaps.”

“What is more, my son, by trying to stop this boy, has been made to look like the villain. It appears to me that, even beyond the issue of punishment for the assault, one should consider the harm to my son’s prestige among his co-workers.”

I was seething, but I kept my trap shut. Commander Aarons tapped on his desk top with a pen. “And so…?”

“I ask that, to compensate my son, he be included in the crew which goes to investigate the J-11.”

“What?” I cried. “What can he do that—”

“Quiet.” Commander Aarons shifted forward, putting his elbows on his desk and peering at Dr. Sagdaeff. “Of course, none of this is a coincidence. I am sure you have already learned, Dr. Sagdaeff, that one of the Sagan crew has been injured. A deep cut, from a loading accident. She must be replaced.”

Yuri’s father smiled slightly and nodded.

Aarons glowered. He seemed to get larger. “But to come to me with this case—incredible, sir, incredible. I am not in the business of insuring your son’s reputation. I am not a settler of petty disputes. And I will not be pushed into making assignments on a political basis.”

Yuri’s father twisted his mouth. “I hope you realize what harm this decision can do to your own position, eh?