Jupiter

He heard O’Hara slither into the berth next to his; nothing between them but a thin plastic partition. He sensed her stretching out on the bunk, still naked, absolutely hairless. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to drive the image out of his mind.

“What do you think of her?” It was Karlstad’s voice, whispering outside his berth.

“The captain?” Muzorawa’s deeper voice replied.

“Right.”

“What about her?”

“Do you think she’s ever going to sleep?”

“Yes, of course. She takes her responsibilities very seriously.”

Grant remembered his earlier conversation with Zeb, when he’d brought up the possibility that Krebs might be a suicidal Zealot.

Karlstad asked, “Have you noticed the way she gives you the fish-eye? As if she doesn’t recognize you.”

“Yes, it is strange,” Muzorawa agreed.

“Gives me the creeps.”

“As long as she does her job properly we have nothing to complain about.”

“Maybe you don’t,” Karlstad replied, still whispering, “but I don’t like it, not one microbit. She’s weird. I think she’s crazy.”

For several heartbeats Muzorawa said nothing. At last he replied, “Get some sleep. We’re going to need all our energy in about five hours.”

“Engage the linkage,” commanded Krebs.

Grant clicked the switch that energized the fiberoptic links to the chips implanted in his legs. He closed his eyes as he felt the thrumming power of the ship’s fusion generator vibrating within him, warming him, filling him with sensations he had never felt before linkage. He had a blazing man-made star within him. The electricity it generated was pulsing through him, the ship’s wiring was his own nervous system, the ship’s conduits were his own arteries and veins.

He could sense the vibrations of the life-support fans circulating the perfluorocarbon liquid through the ship’s living space; each light and display screen on the bridge’s consoles was like an extension of his fingers. He felt the ship’s sensors powering up, peering into the space outside the hull like searchlights from an ancient lighthouse sweeping a stormy seacoast.

It took a concentrated effort of will to open his eyes and recognize that he was standing in front of his console on the bridge, feet anchored in the floor loops, flanked by Muzorawa and O’Hara, Karlstad on O’Hara’s other side, Krebs floating behind him.

O’Hara was at the communications console, with its multiple touchscreens staring at her like the eyes of a spider. Wo’s chunky, intense face filled the central display screen.

“… automated separation sequence begins in fifteen seconds,” the director was saying.

“Fifteen seconds,” Krebs repeated, her voice flat, unemotional. If separating from the station and launching Zheng He into Jupiter’s clouds excited her, she hid it completely.

Grant licked his lips. The computer’s synthesized voice began the final minute of countdown.

“Power and propulsion?” Krebs asked needlessly. She could see Grant’s screens as easily as he could himself.

“Power and propulsion all green,” he said.

“Life support?”

“In the green,” said Karlstad.

“Communications?”

“Communications normal,” O’Hara replied.

“Sensors?”

“All sensors on and functioning,” reported Muzorawa.

“We are ready for separation and launch,” Krebs said to Wo’s image.

Precisely at that moment the computer’s voice announced, “Automated separation sequence initiated. Separation in thirty seconds … twenty-nine …”

The seconds stretched endlessly. Grant stood there, aware that he was breathing a cold, slimy, oxygenated liquid but no longer caring about that. The ship was coming alive, electrical currents racing through all its systems now, the propulsion units starting up, pumps beginning to stir, the electrons in the powerful superconducting coils singing their eternal hymn of perpetual motion, ceaseless devotion to their task.

“Full internal power,” Krebs said.

“Ten seconds,” announced the computer.

Grant could feel the magnetohydrodynamic channels stirring into life, preparing to take the star-hot plasma exhaust from the fusion generator and accelerate it through the ship’s thruster tubes. Along his nerves Grant felt the trembling thrill of anticipation.

The clamps and bolts that held Zheng He to the station opened like a dozen faces breaking into smiles. Grant broke into a smile himself. We’re free, he knew. We’re on our own now.

“Ignition.”

The plasma thrusters started softly, gently. Grant felt their strength as if it were his own arms reaching out and lifting a heavy burden. As the thrust built up, his strength multiplied, tripled, quadrupled. He was stronger than any mere human could ever be, stronger than Sheena, stronger than a whole tribe of gorillas, he was lifting the entire ship, hurling it with fine purposeful power and precision, flinging it away from the station and down into the waiting clouds of Jupiter.

Better than sex? This was better than life! I can rev up the thrusters to full power and blast this ship past Jupiter in an eyeblink. I can push us out to the stars! To the farthest edge of the universe! Grant knew he had all the power of the universe throbbing inside him, superhuman energy, the strength and power of a god.

That surge of arrogance snapped him back to reality. Pride goeth before a fall, he heard his father’s voice in his mind. All this power, all this sensation of godlike strength, is a trap, a snare, a temptation to the kind of hubris that has hurled many a good man into eternal damnation. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity …

He stood trembling before his console, trying to regain control of himself, battling to keep the enormously seductive power of this illusion from deceiving him. It’s an electronic mirage, he told himself. You are nothing more than a man who is linked electronically to the machinery of this ship. Control yourself.

Still, he trembled.

Is this what wrecked the first mission? Grant asked himself. Is this linkage so overwhelming that someone ran amok with the ship’s systems? He had touched a place in his own mind where he had wanted to run wild with the plasma thrusters, tear away all restraints, push full throttle just for the sheer joy of power. Yes, he realized now. And if I’d done that, I would have killed us all.

Still he trembled, but now it was with the understanding of the enormous dangers that dwelled within his own mind, his own soul. It’s the age-old war, he realized, the never-ending struggle between responsibility and pleasure, between good and evil. This ship is simply a new battlefield in that eternal war. As long as we’re human, the war goes on.

But for an instant, Grant knew, he had been more than human. He still was. He still felt the pulsing power of the ship’s generator and plasma thrusters, they were still a part of him.

I am the ship.

Power requkes responsibility, he told himself. Extreme power requkes extreme care.

BOOK IV

Why dost Thou stand afar off, O Lord?