Jupiter

Almost.

Grant stood there, ignoring his crewmates alongside him, and felt an odd tremor begin to pulse through his legs. Unlike anything he’d ever sensed before. No, not just along his legs. His entire body seemed to be vibrating, humming inside like a plucked string of a bass viol. He stared down at his hands. They looked steady, not shaking at all, yet inside he felt as if he were quivering like a man hit by a seizure.

He closed his eyes and realized that it wasn’t he who was vibrating, it was the fusion generator, deep in the core of the ship, reverberating with the power of transforming matter into energy, fusing atomic nuclei together to extract their hidden might, converting the blinding radiation into electrical power that raced along the ship’s wiring like blood pulsing through arteries and veins. Grant could feel the throbbing, relentless force of this man-made star buried behind layers of dense shielding as it powered the universe that was their ship. He wanted to reach out his hand and let his fingers touch that glowing hot plasma; he could virtually hear the thunder of its endless blaze.

It was like music, like a symphonic orchestra playing in his mind, in his body, along every nerve, every blood vessel. The electrical currents racing through the ship tingled like a thrillingly beautiful cadenza, endless, eternal, glorious.

The propulsion system was shut down, more’s the pity. Grant wanted to sense it, to connect with it, to feel the drive and force of raw energy hurtling out of the ship’s thruster vents, pushing them forward, onward.

Dimly he heard a voice. He ignored it. This was too much pleasure to allow anything to distract him from it. The whole ship’s electrical systems were part of him. I am the ship! Grant thought. We are one. It’s pure delight. Ecstasy! It’s like being a god.

“Are you all right?”

He forced himself to open his eyes, saw Zeb peering at him worriedly.

“I’m fine,” Grant said. And he meant it. He’d never felt so … so alive in all his life.

“It can be a powerful feeling,” O’Hara said. Grant turned his head and saw that she too looked concerned. “Don’t let it sweep you away now.”

He nodded. Yes, I’ve got to be careful. It is powerful. Overwhelming. Better than sex. Better than drugs. They were right. It’s enough to sell your soul for.

“Are we ready to return to work?” Krebs’s sour voice cut through Grant’s excitement.

“Yes, Captain,” he said sharply.

“Very well. Now we will go through the separation and ignition simulation once again.”

But this time, Grant realized, this time we’ll be connected to the ship. I’ll feel the electrical currents. I’ll power up the thrusters. I’ll move the ship with my own will.

DEPARTURE

I am the ship.

Grant had never felt so powerful and excited in his entire life. When Krebs called a halt to their simulations exercise he didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to disconnect from the ship. Let’s go on, he urged silently. Let’s power it up for real and get going. Let me feel what it’s like to dive through those clouds and into the Jovian sea.

“I said disconnect, Mr. Archer! Now!”

Krebs’s hard, demanding voice cut into him like a whip. With enormous reluctance, Grant did what the others had already done: reached to the console and clicked off his linkage to the ship’s electrical and propulsion systems.

It felt like a lobotomy. One moment he had all the power of a miniature star pulsing through him, part of him, as intimately interwoven into his consciousness as his awareness of his own identity. Then with the click of a switch it was all gone; he was a solitary weak hairless ape again, alone, isolated from the rest of the universe.

He had to blink several times before he realized that the others were unplugging the fiber-optic leads from the electrodes in their legs. Feeling a sullen resentment rising within him, Grant yanked the fibers from his legs one by one. The loose ends floated lightly, bobbing gently in the perfluorocarbon as if beckoning to him. When he was finished he activated the spring that pulled the fibers back into their slim storage rack and snapped shut the door that covered them.

“The simulation is completed,” Krebs said. “Now we all sleep. When we return to duty, no more simulations. The mission begins in five hours and fourteen minutes.”

The four crew members drifted back toward the catacombs and their coffin-sized berths. Krebs remained on the bridge, floating up near the overhead, fitting a communications headset over her bald skull.

“Doesn’t she ever sleep?” Karlstad whispered.

Muzorawa whispered back, “She must.”

“But when?”

The captain was already deep in discussion, presumably with Dr. Wo.

“Well, now,” O’Hara said to Grant, with a smile that looked a bit forced, “how did you like being linked?”

Grant realized he was breathless. It took him several tries to make his voice work. “Overpowering,” he said at last.

“Yes, ’tis that, isn’t it?”

Karlstad butted in, “When do we link with each other like that?” He leered at O’Hara. “That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

She frowned at him. Muzorawa said, serious as usual, “You must be wary of being overwhelmed by the experience. It is extremely powerful, but you must not allow it to overcome your judgment.”

“That’s right,” O’Hara said. “We’re here to run the ship, not to invent some new form of depravity.”

Karlstad smirked. “All work and no play isn’t good for you.”

Muzorawa floated between him and O’Hara. “Egon, the first mission was wrecked, possibly because one of its crew allowed the sensations of linking with the ship to overwhelm his judgment.”

“Or her judgment,” Karlstad said, nodding toward Krebs, still floating in the bridge, deep in discussion with Dr. Wo.

There was absolutely no privacy in the catacombs: nothing but a bare, confined common area so small and tight that the four of them could hardly fit into it together. Their shelflike berths took up one side of it, the hatch to the bridge the other.

“I’ve got to get into a fresh outfit,” O’Hara announced, and she began to strip off her tights.

Grant couldn’t help staring. Karlstad grinned wolfishly and asked, “Do you need any help, Lane?”

“Grow up, won’t you!”

He shrugged and began taking off his own tights.

“Yes, we should put on clean clothes,” Muzorawa agreed.

Grant was surprised that he felt no physical arousal at the sight of O’Hara’s naked body. Yet his breath quickened, his mind raced. She was slim, with small breasts and slender hips, totally hairless, but still this was a naked woman with smooth creamy skin and beautiful green eyes less than an arm’s length from him. He felt embarrassed more than anything else, especially when Zeb and Egon peeled off their tights. Neither of them was aroused, either, Grant saw.

Without a word he ducked into his bunk, pulled the privacy screen shut, and started wriggling out of his own tights. The fresh clothes were in a locker out in the common area, he knew. So was the recycler for the old tights. He decided to wait until the others were in their berths and asleep before venturing out again.

You’re being silly, he told himself. Silly and prudish. There’s nothing sinful about any of this. Your sex drive has been practically eliminated by the surgery. It’s like looking at a painting of a nude.

Yes, said another voice in his mind. But you enjoyed looking at her. The most important sex organ in the human body is the brain, and you took pleasure in seeing her naked body. That’s sinful.