Jupiter's Reef (14 page)

“Just looking my ship over,” said Alex as he climbed down the scaffold steps. Soon he was standing beside Mary Seventeen at the airlock. “She’s my ship. Going back to Jupiter. They put a package on top of my ship and I was taking a look.”

“Jupiter, huh? I wouldn’t know about that, Mr. Rose,” said the guard, handing Alex’s card back to him. Then his eyes moved to Mary. “You’re one of those clones, right?” he asked.

The other guard was eyeing Mary’s short white hair. “All the high class ones have hair like that. Snow white hair.”

“I’m a Sensor,” said Mary, looking the younger guard in the eye. “I have a job like you. I didn’t ask for these tabs on my head but there they are.” Mary touched her temple where a flat flesh-colored tab stuck firmly.

Her former tabs had been smaller black and orange colored disks. They were the regulation tabs IntraCorp mandated for use in deep-space but Mary hated to wear them. Alex thought of the com tabs as a badge of honor, even though she said they marked her as a clone.

The new tabs were larger but flesh colored, so they blended with her skin. Still, they were two new bumps on her head and in that regard Alex found them a bit unnerving.

Despite the welcome filtering of the surrounding radio static the tabs provided, they didn’t affect Mary’s psi abilities. She picked up Alex’s reaction to them as soon as she put them on. The din of radio waves that hissed in her mind was gone with nothing to fill the vacuum that lingered in her senses. Thus, Mary Seventeen’s inner mind was free to roam at will. Tuned as she was to Alex, she heard his thoughts more clearly than ever. But she couldn’t tell him that.

All Alex knew was that Mary had been moody all day. Still leaning against the ship, she looked the guard up and down. Mary’s psi sense read him easily. He thought of her as a freak whose beauty was created by a genetic engineer, not by nature, and he looked her over as if she was some kind of expensive doll, not a person. She felt his libido surge as he glanced at the contour of her perfect nipples under her blouse, and she heard his inner voice refer to her as a ‘boy-toy’.

Mary threw her head back, calling the leering guard’s attention back to her eyes. She gave him a nasty smile. “How do you feel about those sticks you carry around? They’re so big. Do they ever drag on the ground?”

Alex was already inside
Diver
’s hatch, waiting for Mary.

“Dingers, Mary,” he said looking back at her, then at the guard. “Let’s go, we have work to do.”

Mary didn’t hesitate. She wheeled around and breezed past him into the ship.

“Tell ya what, mates,” said Alex to the guards. “We’ll start over tomorrow. Like this bit didn’t play. As to what we’re doing; well, we’re moving in, if nobody told you. And I’d move your guard post because we’ll be powering up the null-gee drive in an hour or so.”

The older guard stepped to the airlock. “I ... we meant no offense. I mean, I never even saw a clone. They don’t usually come here.”

“Now you know why,” said Alex, closing the hatch. “One hour,” he yelled as the hatch closed.

Alex sealed the hatch and turned around. Mary was standing naked at the com, giggling.

“I guess I was hard on him, huh?” she said.

“To him we’re aliens,” explained Alex, somewhat disarmed by Mary’s nakedness. “Why are you ... um ...”

“Alex,” interrupted Mary. “I think we should fuck until you forget these tabs.”

Alex smiled. Mary was definitely what people called a head-turner. Perfect body. Beautiful face. From the first time they made love, he’d found it impossible to resist her charms. He tried to tell himself that it was her mind that he loved. That was true and her spirit as well, but there was that body of hers for his maleness to contend with.

“We should stick to our plan,” said Alex with a sigh. “Let’s get the null-gee started first.”

“Can’t wait!” Mary grinned devilishly and ran to him with open arms. “I love low-gravity sex.”

Cautiously Alex switched on the power cells and then the computer system. To his surprise the ship was fully functional. He was delighted that the ship’s power was increased a hundred fold. He could see from the vid screen readout that Tony’s newly modified null gee field could reduce their weight much more efficiently and use less energy.

Alex looked at his lap, surprised that he still had an erection.
Was it Mary?
, he wondered.
Or was it the fact that EarthCorp had just souped-up his ship beyond his wildest dreams?

Mary slid naked into his arms just as the null-gee system came on and she squealed in delight as Earth’s gravity faded away. It was as if the anti-grav system was an aphrodisiac. She touched him intimately, urging him to go inside her again.

Alex wanted to test the ship but knew there would plenty of time for that. What mattered most was that they would have little privacy in the weeks ahead. He closed his eyes and surrendered to Mary’s embrace.

4
Before the scaffolding could come down, there were modifications that needed finishing. The polyceramic hull was being coated with a biologically neutral material, and several new memory packs were being added to the computer.

Alex and Mary’s second day back aboard
Diver
was about to end when Tony arrived with a strange contraption. It looked like a long tube in a metal framework. Tony called it his ‘pad’. He told them he was just dropping it off and wasn’t staying.

But stay he did. Alex, who had spent most of the day studying data chips that explained
Diver
’s new gear, was mentally exhausted. He made the mistake of asking Tony what the pad was for. Rather than tell Alex, Tony felt compelled to demonstrate. A minute later Tony’s contraption unfurled into a brightly colored one-person tent. He said it would help with the privacy issue and insisted that Mary and Alex get inside to see how nifty it was.

“Nifty, indeed,” said Alex. “And you’re planning to have it up all the time. To live in it?”

“Of course I am,” said Tony. “This is where I’ll keep my stuff.”

Mary laughed. “But we’ll all be stumbling over it.”

“No problem,” said Tony with a confident smile. “When we’re weightless I can stick it to the ceiling of the cabin. That way–”

“No,” interrupted Alex.

“No, what?” asked Tony.

“No way!” said Alex. “We can’t have that thing in the middle of the cabin for the whole trip.”

“But I can fold it up, stow it away.”

“You don’t need a tent, Tony,” said Mary. “The bathroom has a door and Alex made some snap-up curtains that makes the bath area even more private. Your tent will just be unnecessary weight.”

Though Tony looked dejected, he didn’t argue. Soon he left
Diver
carrying his package.

After the hatch closed, Alex shook his head. “What a shame,” he said. “Tony was in such a good mood, I hated to spoil it.”

“I know,” agreed Mary. “I’ve never seen him happy.”

“Probably never will again, either. I hope he doesn’t hold it against me, though.”

As Alex might have expected, the matter of Tony’s pup tent didn’t drop. The next morning, Alex and Mary were awakened by a phone call from Stubbs. Alex felt perfectly at home putting Stubbs’ image on the twin digital screens that covered the cockpit windows. But he forgot the phone was set to two-way vidcon. Mary was standing naked in the hallway near the bathroom when the call came in. Stubbs’ expression alerted Alex and he disconnected the cabin monitor.

“I’m sorry, Professor,” said Alex. “We’re not presentable yet.”

“I understand,” said Stubbs. “Sorry for the intrusion, Mary. Can’t say I minded ...”

“What can I do for you today, Professor?” said Alex in a loud voice.

“To begin with call me Harry.”

“Okay. What’s shakin’, Harry? We’re feelin’ like we’re in a fishbowl, I guess.”

Mary walked to the front of the cabin already dressed in a blue flightsuit.

“Hi, Professor Stubbs,” she said. “Did we get our peekees today?”

“Mary!” said Alex. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Stubbs didn’t seem to hear them. He was already quoting a document he’d received.

“Spaceguard notification came. Solar flares are expected in a week. If we wait it could be months. If we go we’ll be racing the bowshock of the solar storm anyway. This bodes to be a whopper. There have been four solar quakes. The eruptions are just starting but it looks like ...”

“Won’t that damage the
Houston
?” Alex scrambled to dress in his own flightsuit, hastily snatched from the top of the coverall bin.

As Alex dressed his elbow hit the disconnect pad on the dash. When he re-established the connection, Stubbs was still talking. “... Spaceguard is more worried about the Lagrange point colonies and the Great Telescope. The
Houston
is shielded, but it’s still staying in Earth’s shadow.”

“That’s what polycer is for,” said Alex.

“You better go tomorrow,” said Stubbs. “Or the day after that.”

“Finally,” said Alex. “Make that tomorrow. I’m getting annoyed with Tony already.”

“He spoke to me about the tent,” said Stubbs after a moment’s hesitation. Alex clenched his jaw, anticipating a fight. “I laughed like hell,” said Stubbs. “Where did he come up with that?”

Alex and Mary were both dressed and seated in the pilots’ chairs. Mary was playing with a towel, throwing it in the air and watching it unfurl in the lowered gravity. Alex switched on the cabin camera again. The screen came on just as Stubbs was picking his nose.

Alex and Mary watched, smiling for a moment, then Alex decided they’d had their revenge.

“We can see you now, Professor Stubbs,” said Alex. “What have you got up there? One of Tony’s tents?”

Stubbs looked back at them, unflapped by Alex’s comment.

“There you are,” he said. “I told Tony that he’d have to use the fold-up seats for sleeping like everyone else. I told him to talk to Johnny. He said curtains would provide adequate privacy. Within reason, that is. I mean, you’re all adults. I mentioned that he’s limited to a hundred pounds of gear. Personal gear. And that we are all bound to that limit. It’s your ship, Alex, but I think we should all stick to the same rules.”

It was too early in the morning to sift through details. Alex walked to the service wall and dialed a coffee. On the manifest he listed it as Item #1 on the food service prep roster. He merrily punched in the number and had his coffee in a few seconds. The squeezer popped out of the wall. Alex picked it up and examined it.

“Kona,” he said, sampling it.

Stubbs watched with interest as Alex returned to the pilot’s seat sucking on squeezer.

“I assume the rest of the provisions meet with your liking?” said Stubbs. “I hope you don’t use them up before you leave.”

“Dingers, Harry,” said Alex. “You sound like my mother! Don’t worry about the provisions. I rerouted the framis spigot on the Krinistat and stuck in some Kona grind I bought at the spaceport. Just a tweak in the water feeder and ...”

Mary was brushing her short white hair.

“Alex, you did no such thing! Harry, I’m sorry,” she said, scowling at Alex. “I have no idea why he’s acting so stupid this morning.”

Alex had a strange sense of humor. And sometimes it got him in trouble.

She recalled that on their first meeting, when she mentioned being a clone, he actually said, straight-faced: “So you joined the circus?” The memory seemed funny now, but at the time she lost some sleep trying to figure out what he’d meant. She had decided that it was just another derogatory remark aimed at her kind and dismissed him immediately.

The next time she saw him he was leaning over her asking if she was okay.

It was at a bar on Io; the Third Rock Cafe at the Patera Mining Colony, to be exact. She had gone into the bar, needing some water to take a booster pill. It was late, and she’d just finished six weeks of deep space duty in total weightlessness and was struggling with Io’s gravity. Her stumbling footwork attracted two IoCorp managers who had been drinking at the bar. They recognized her as a clone and in their drunkenness, thought she was drunk.

She remembered their cheerful faces, then a hand on her ass. She’d protested. The older man had called her a tease and touched her breasts. Mary had begged them to stop.

They didn’t stop. The other man was rubbing her back, talking soothingly to Mary as if she were an animal. She had protested louder, but the bartender and the other patrons had ignored her.

She recalled pulling away; then the sound of ripping fabric. Then there was a thump and the man’s hand wasn’t on her any more. He was lying on the floor and his friend was running from the bar.

Alex was there, holding his hand out. “Help you home, miss?” he’d said. “They won’t bother you any more, I’ll make sure of that.”

Despite Alex’s kindness she still remembered his remark about clowns. When she got to know him better she learned that Alex joked with people because he liked them. She realized that he also respected everyone equally. How he had come to be that way was a mystery, but even then Mary knew she never wanted to leave his side.

“Awwww Mary, my love.” said Alex now. “Why’d you have to ruin it? I had ol’ Harry going.”

“Going? Going where?” asked Stubbs.

“My coffee story,” said Alex.

“I have some, thanks,” said Harry Stubbs with a wink. “Well, I’d best be doing some conferencing. We launch in twenty four hours, yes? Is that correct?”

The screen went black for a second, then another one came in. One at a time, all the members of the crew checked in via vidcom.

It was noon before the last caller, Johnny Baltadonis, hung up. Everyone expressed concern about the coming solar storm. They worked hard for several hours amending flight plans and calibrating the computer with Spaceguard codes. Outside, the work on the hull continued.

That night, Mary and Alex decided to spend the night at the hotel while the work was being completed. The refitting would go on all night, or as Stubbs put it, “until it’s done.”

A cool breeze tugged at their light garments as they walked out to the waiting military hovercar. Mary covered her bare shoulders with her hands and looked up at the clear night sky. The gravity didn’t seem so difficult to manage, and she mused that she was just getting used to mother Earth and now she had to leave it. “Look up, Alex,” she said. “Stars, and not through glass!” Then she looked at Alex strangely and started gasping for air. Alex pushed her into the car and asked the driver to head for the hospital.