Dark as Day

21 JUPITER SWINGBY

The outer regions of the solar system are remarkably empty. It is certainly possible to run into another object, particularly when flying through the Asteroid belt, but you have to be freakishly unlucky to do so. And if that other object happens to be a ship, with its own navigational control system, then the chance of collision contains such a string of zeroes after the decimal point that no rational person should worry about it.

Humans are not, of course, particularly rational. Milly’s question of the Level Four Fax aboard The Witch of Agnesi was asked a thousand times an hour, somewhere in the system; but in fact there had never been a collision of two ships whose navigation systems were in working order. The OSL Achilles, outward bound for the Jovian system and Ganymede, crossed the trajectory of The Witch of Agnesi as the latter sped between the Jovian L-4 and L-5 points, and in celestial terms they made a “close approach” of less than two million kilometers. No human on either ship was aware of that fact.

The passengers of the Achilles were increasingly unaware of anything. Janeed had heard that in pre-war times a certain form of group mania infected the passengers of ocean liners. After the first few days nothing in the world existed beyond the ship, while what happened before and after the cruise became utterly irrelevant. A wild series of random courtships and short-lived affairs was the result.

Jan had hardly believed those reports, but now she saw evidence of their truth at first-hand. Colonists were pairing off, and as the ship drove outward toward its rendezvous with Jupiter an air of continuous festivity took over.

Not only the passengers were affected. The ship’s trajectory was computer-controlled, as were most of its on-board systems. The crew had time to relax. Paul Marr was able to devote a more-than-generous amount of time to Janeed. That certainly suited Jan. Within the first two days she had decided that everything she had been told about sex was right, or possibly understated. The more you did it, the more you liked it. The real danger was that you might become an addict. Jan suspected that she might be well on the way.

Occasionally, she would worry about Sebastian. She was seeing less and less of him as the days went by. On the other hand, Valnia Bloom seemed to be with him almost constantly. They spent most of the time hidden away in her private cabin. Jan didn’t think they were engaged in a sexual relationship, but even if they were, so what? Sebastian was a strongly-built and physically mature man in the prime of life. He and Valnia Bloom were as entitled to as good a time as Paul and Jan.

When she had boarded the Achilles, two weeks going on forever ago, Jan had expected to be impatient until the moment she set foot on Ganymede. Now, as that time of arrival came closer, she was loath to leave the ship. She and Paul had vowed that this would not be the end, that they would see each other again. But in reality, how many shipboard romances survived the day of disembarkation?

One major party still lay ahead. Jan had never heard of it before, but Paul explained as they lounged naked one evening in his cabin. The ship was in drive mode, and the two of them were reclining in sybaritic luxury on the most comfortable bed Jan had ever encountered. At the flip of a switch the floor had become soft and yielding, cushioned on the reservoir that contained the Achilles’ ample supplies of water.

She lay on her side, head turned to look across the flat plain of his chest and watch its steady rise and fell as he breathed. He had painted her nude, and when the picture was finished one thing had inevitably led to another.

“Of course the party isn’t necessary,” he said. “It represents a tradition from the earliest days of planetary exploration. The ships at that time all used chemical rockets—”

“Not nuclear?” Jan asked. “They had nuclear energy, you know, even back then.”

“They did, but they’d had bad experiences with it and a lot of people were still scared. So they used chemical rockets.”

“But the effects of chemical rockets on the atmosphere and ionosphere are a lot worse than nuclear. Didn’t they know—”

Paul had his arm around her and he gave her left breast a gentle squeeze. “Are you going to let me tell you about this, or do you want me to roll over and go to sleep?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Go on, I’m listening.”

“The ships used chemical rockets. That’s not totally true, because there were already a few ion drives; but they provided such low accelerations that they were useless for passenger shipping. You can guess what it was like. Everybody was short of delta-vee for everything. They would scrounge, beg, or borrow as much momentum transfer as they could lay their hands on, but space travel was still marginal, all touch-and-go. The first ships to reach Jupiter didn’t have enough fuel to slow into orbit around the planet. If they didn’t do something different, they would arrive, swing past, and shoot away in some other direction. The answer — the only possible answer at the time — was to skim through Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and use air-braking for velocity-shedding.

“The theory was simple and fully understood for more than a century. Doing it, and getting it exactly right, was another matter. The Ashkenazy went in too deep and never came out. The Celandine erred in the other direction. It skipped in, skipped out, and left the Jovian system completely.”

His voice had gradually slowed and deepened. Jan squeezed the little roll of fat at his waist. “You’re supposed to be telling me about some big party we’ll be having, not zoning out on me. Are you drifting off?”

“I am not. I’m thinking how much easier we have it than the original explorers. The Celandine crew members were tough, and braver than you can believe. I’ve heard their recordings. They sent back data on the Jupiter magnetosphere until they were on the last drips of oxygen, then they all signed off as casually as if they were going out together for an early dinner. A dip into the Jovian atmosphere used to be a life-or-death proposition. Now it’s just a game. Jupiter’s atmospheric depth profile is mapped to six figures. The atmospheric swingby is a tradition and a good excuse for a party, but it is absolutely and totally unnecessary.”

“Like crossing the line.” She saw Paul’s forehead wrinkle. After sex he always seemed a little bit brain-dead. “In the old days of Earth-sailing ships, crossing the equator was a bit dodgy. The region around the equator was called the Doldrums, where the winds would fall away to nothing for days or weeks at a time. The ship would sit becalmed, in extreme heat, with no one aboard knowing if they would live long enough to catch a saving wind. Then steamships came along, and crossing the equator offered no special danger. But a ceremony called ‘Crossing the Line’ lived on. There were high jinks on board the cruise ships; parties and ritual shaving — not just of people’s heads, either — and silly ceremonies involving King Neptune.”

“It’s King Jove on the Jupiter flyby, but the rest of it sounds much the same.” Paul turned to look at Jan. “Look, I know it sounds stupid and it really is stupid, but as first officer I’m stuck with it. You don’t have to go along.”

“Are you kidding? Paul, there’s no way I’d miss this. If I had been there in the old days crossing the equator, I’d have been whooping it up like nobody’s business. My question is, can you as first officer take part in all the fun, or is it considered too undignified?”

“Define ‘too undignified.’ I suppose there are limits, but they’re pretty broad. On the last Jupiter atmospheric flyby, two months ago, the chief engineer dressed himself in a baboon suit. He had cut a piece out of the back. His ass was bare, and painted blue, and he said he was selling kisses. But I didn’t hear of any takers.”

“Captain Kondo permitted this?” Jan had trouble imagining the captain, short, stocky, and immensely dignified, participating in the brawl that Paul was describing — or even allowing it.

“Captain Kondo remained in his quarters throughout the party. He does that on every Jupiter swingby. His view is that what he does not see, he is not obliged to report.”

“And you? What did you do?”

“Last time? I was lucky enough to be on duty, running the ship — someone has to. Officers on duty are not permitted to join in the general wildness. This time, no such luck. I’ll be assigned to passenger service. My official responsibility — as stated in ships’ orders — is ‘to offer and provide to passengers any form of legal pleasure that they desire.’ You have no idea what some people ask for.”

“I’ll tell you what they’d better not ask for. When does this party start?”

“Not for awhile.”

“But when?”

“We’re lying here nice and cozy, and you want to worry about time? Ten hours from now, give or take. Is that close enough?”

Jan snuggled closer and blew across his chest. She liked to watch the fair hair stir and his nipples tighten. “It will do. Ten hours should be more than enough to think of something to do. Something legal. Something you’re not allowed to refuse…”

As the time drew nearer, Jan wasn’t so sure. She knew what she wanted, but Paul had a certain native prudishness and delicacy. He liked to wash at once after lovemaking, while Jan preferred, as she had told him to his mild disgust, “to wallow and steep in it for hours and hours.” Afterplay, with the smell and feel of male sexuality, had not lost its novelty and appeal, and Jan was not sure that it ever, would.

Would Paul cooperate? He would certainly have no chance to wash for awhile if he did. On the other hand, Jan was hearing more and more talk of previous swingby parties and they sounded like a case of anything goes. Paul might have trouble holding onto his dignity, even if Jan were not around.

Meanwhile, preparations for the party were in full swing. The point of closest approach to Jupiter, when the Achilles would make its deepest penetration into the Jovian atmosphere before racing out again for its rendezvous with Ganymede, would take place in a little more than three hours. Before that, an early dinner must be served and done with, so that the big dining room could be emptied and decorated for the party. So far as Jan could tell, the dining room would merely serve as a focal point for festivities — passengers and crew would be living it up in every part of the ship, except for the prohibited area aft that contained the crew quarters and the drives.

The little service robots had been allowed to make a jump-start on their duties. When the gong for dinner sounded over the ship’s general communications system, Jan went along to the dining room and found it already half full and the tables decorated. Fresh flowers, somehow preserved since the Achilles left Earth orbit, perfumed each table, and each place-setting contained some special item chosen to match the background of whoever sat there. Jan looked for her own place, and found on the table a small replica of the Global Minerals’ platform on which she had worked for more than ten years.

She went quickly around the room, searching for Sebastian’s name card, and found a similar replica on the table in front of his seat. He also had something extra. At the place where he would, be sitting Jan saw a small globe on a support stand. It was maybe five centimeters across, and when Jan looked closely she realized that it was not, as she had assumed, an Earth globe. The little sphere was Saturn, and as she watched -the cloud patterns moved across the planet’s face. This, for a guess, was a special present to Sebastian from Valnia Bloom.

Jan returned to her own table. As she was sitting down she saw Sebastian and Valnia enter together. Valnia looked worried — did she ever look anything different? — but Sebastian gave Jan a smile and a wave. He seemed different, older and more poised. His face was thinner and his expression more focused, and for the first time in her life Jan saw a mature man of thirty-five. Whatever Valnia Bloom was doing certainly appeared to be working. Jan smiled back and gave Sebastian a thumbs-up. They were less than a day away from Ganymede, and only a few weeks from their final destination at the weather station on Saturn’s minor moon, Atlas.

She stood up, with the idea of going across to talk to Sebastian, but at the same moment Captain Kondo arrived at her table. He gave a nod of greeting and waved his hand to indicate that she should not stand up on his behalf.

That had not been Jan’s intention, but rather than explaining she sat down again. “I’m a little surprised to see you here, Captain,” she said. “I rather thought that you would — well…”

“Would certainly not be present?” Captain Kondo did not smile, but there was a definite twinkle in his eye. “Have no fear, Ms. Jannex, as soon as dinner is over, and well before flyby, I will be on my way out of here.”

“I gather you do not enjoy such things.”

“I would not say that. Perhaps I worry that my somber presence would dampen the gaiety of others. Or, who knows? Perhaps I might find myself carried away, and indulge in activities which I would later regret.”

The captain was in a more playful mood than Jan had ever seen him. Apparently no one onboard was immune to the party atmosphere. It gave Jan hope that Paul would go along with what she had in mind. She saw him at the far side of the room, preparing to sit down at a table distant from hers.

No matter. She did not propose to make her suggestion during dinner, with other passengers around, and certainly not in the presence of Captain Kondo.

The dining room filled early, without any of the usual late stragglers. The food was exceptional in both its quality and its variety. Jan saw some from Earth, some from the Ganymede and Callisto deep farms, and even a few exotics from Mars. One item she did not recognize at all, but suspected it had been grown on the warm-blooded vegetation lattices of Saturn’s moon, Tethys. The diners, dressed except for the crew in their elaborate party best, paid little attention to the food. Their minds were already moving on past dinner. The instant of closest approach to Jupiter would be signaled by bells all over the ship’s communication outlets. That moment lay less than two hours away.

As the final course was being served, Captain Kondo stood up. Crew members, scattered around the room, had obviously been waiting for this moment. They hushed their neighbors as the captain turned, so that he could take in everyone in the crowded dining room.

He raised his glass, and tiny bubbles glistened and winked in the bright overhead lights. “To all of you,” he said, “and to your new and successful life as part of the Outer System. Ladies and gentlemen, you are the future. Work hard, live well, be happy and fertile, and I hope that someday I will meet each of you again.”

Glasses were raised, the toast was echoed and drunk. Moments later, as conversation around the room resumed, Captain Kondo nodded to his table companions and quietly left. Jan felt the subtle change in atmosphere. It said, “Captain’s gone. Party time!”

She had been careful not to eat too much. She hoped that Paul had done the same. For what she had in mind, she did not want an overstuffed and lethargic companion.

He had moved away from his original table and she searched the room for him. He was standing over by the far wall. Unlike the passengers, the crew were not in party-dress. He looked terrific in his white uniform. It was no surprise to Jan to see that Paul was surrounded by half a dozen brightly-clad women.

All the passengers were moving around now, impeding the progress of the robotic servers who were doing their best to clear the tables and move them into storage. The whole dining room was to be an open surface available for music, conversation, and dancing. Jan edged her way through. A couple of meters away from Paul she went to stand by the wall, and waited.

It took a few minutes, but eventually he was alone and drifted over toward her. He said, “An excellent dinner, don’t you think?”

It was a neutral remark. He knew that tonight she had something unusual in mind, but neither his face nor his manner revealed that. He was making Jan take the initiative, not exactly playing hard-to-get but giving her full freedom to make suggestions.

Jan said, in just as calm and formal a voice, “Closest approach to Jupiter will happen in an hour or so.”

He glanced at his watch. “An hour and three minutes.”

“I’ve heard it said that the captain and the second in command of a ship like this have keys that will open or close any of the locks.” Jan was staring away across the room, as though the conversation might be a little boring to her. Inside, she was tingling. “Is that true?”

“Quite true. We have to be able to deal with any sort of emergency. That would be impossible if parts of the ship were inaccessible.” He glanced at Jan. “By the way, I should mention that there will be an engineer aft with the Diabelli Omnivores, if they happened to be somehow on your mind.”

“They weren’t.” She turned to face him. “Paul, there is an observation port right at the front of the ship. Do you know it?”

“Given my position on this ship, that’s almost an insult. Come on, Jan. Of course I know it. I’ve been there dozens of times.”

“How would you like to go there again — with me? I want you to lock the door, so that nobody else can get in.” She reached out her hand and placed it flat against his chest. The white uniform was cool to her touch, but she could feel the beat of his heart. “And then” — she was nervous, breathless — “I want us to stay there. I want to make love during the Jupiter swingby. I want to reach orgasm exactly when we are at the point of closest approach to the planet.”

“My God. You don’t ask for much, do you?” But his eyes were alive with speculation. “I was trained as an engineer. An engineer is always allowed some kind of operating tolerances. When you say exactly at swingby minimum distance — how close do we have to get?”

“You would know that better than me. But I want the bells in the ship and the bells inside me ringing at the same time.”

He stood for a moment, thoughtful. Then he nodded. “It might be possible. But before we start, I need five minutes to pay my respects to a couple of other passengers. Head forward, just as far as the bend in the corridor, and wait for me — and don’t get friendly with anyone else. We have a date in the forward observation chamber. If anyone asks what you will be doing, say it is a project of the highest priority.”

Jan nodded, stepped away from Paul as if she were bidding him a polite good evening, and walked toward the dining room exit. Her legs felt wobbly, which was ridiculous — that’s how your legs were supposed to feel after, not before.

She was almost out of the room when the fresh-faced young sailor approached her. He had traveled Earth’s southern oceans before deciding to try the Outer System, and they had spoken about the sea life several times. He had seemed interested in Jan, and now he was smiling.

“Great dinner, and I bet it’s going to be a great party. Are you lined up for anything special?”

“I’m afraid I am.” Jan pulled a face. “You know, Sebastian Birch and I will be going on to Saturn, to work on the Atlas weather station. I’ve been asked to study Jupiter’s cloud patterns as we are making our atmospheric entry and withdrawal, in preparation for what we’ll be doing at Saturn.”

“That’s a bit much, isn’t it? On a party night.” He looked disappointed, and said as he turned away, “But if it’s your job, I guess you have no choice but to do it.”

“I suppose I don’t.”

Jan made her escape as quickly as possible. As she went to wait at the bend in the corridor she had a new thought. Suppose the young sailor decided that she would like company during the cloud observations? He might come to the forward chamber, and discover that a quite different form of entry and withdrawal was taking place.

When Paul at last appeared, making a final farewell comment over his shoulder, her first words were, “When we’re in the observation chamber and the door is locked, no one else can get in. Can they?”

“Only the captain. And the chance that Eric Kondo will run the gauntlet from all the way aft to all the way forward, with a high-grade party going on everywhere in between, is a flat zero unless he thinks the ship is in danger. Why? Who else are you expecting?”

Jan explained about the sailor from Earth as they went forward. Paul laughed, and said, “You know what sailors are. They know there’s a port in every girl. But if he can enter the chamber when the door is locked, he will have earned anything he gets.”

It was clear why Paul was so confident as soon as they entered the observation chamber and he locked the door. Jan had taken no notice of locks before, but this one seemed substantial and complex.

“Proprietary experiments were performed in here a couple of times,” Paul said. “But so far as I know, it will be a first for this particular experiment.”

He switched off the chamber lights and turned Jan to face forward. “Before we become distracted by anything else, take a look. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

The cloud-torn face of Jupiter filled half of the all-around observation port. Jan moved to the window and stared out. She felt overwhelmed. It was twilight at this location on Jupiter. The Achilles was close to the top of the atmosphere, racing forward for its planetary rendezvous. The ship would penetrate only the tenuous upper layers before skipping out again, but Jan could already feel — or imagine — a change in her weight caused by the deceleration.

She watched, fascinated, as they sped across gigantic puffy white thunderheads, or stared down into dark gas chasms wide and deep enough to swallow any of the inner planets. She caught sunlit gleams of orange and purple, and once a far-off bolt of green lightning. For the first time in her life she had a faint comprehension of what clouds and cloud patterns might mean to Sebastian.

She stood and stared for a timeless period, until at last Paul tapped her on the shoulder. He said softly, “I don’t want you to feel that I am in any way rushing you, but it is less than twenty minutes to the point of closest approach. If you really want to ring your bell…”

“All my bells.” As they gently and carefully undressed each other, Jan looked around the interior of the observation chamber. She had not thought things through in enough detail. The floor of the room was cold, hard plastic. There were two chairs, but one of them was thin and angular and bolted down. The other chair was hinged, so that it would swing to follow the line of the ship’s acceleration. It was also padded and probably comfortable, but if either she or Paul sat down in it the geometry would be completely wrong for close body coo-tact.

Paul didn’t seem concerned with practical matters. His attention was wholly on Jan’s body, touching and kissing and nuzzling her. Finally she pushed herself away, held him by the shoulders, and said, “Paul, that feels wonderful. But, I mean, how?”

“How?” He sounded puzzled. “I was thinking the usual way, unless you have different ideas. We’ve done this before in free-fall.”

“But this won’t be free-fall. We’ll decelerate — we are already doing it. Don’t you hear the wind?”

Jupiter’s thin upper atmosphere, rushing past at many kilometers a second, was already producing a thin shrill whistle on the outer skin of the Achilla.

Paul shook his head. “It won’t quite be free-fall, but close to it. We’ll feel a weak force — a small fraction of a gee — pushing us toward the outer wall of the chamber. I was thinking that with me like this” — he drifted across to flatten his back against the broad curve of the observation window, pulling her with him — “and you facing me, with your legs around me, like this… if you think it won’t work, I’m ready to prove otherwise.”

He was already doing so. Jan, her chin resting on his shoulder and her forehead just a few centimeters away from the transparent window, felt the nerve-tingling thrill of the first moment of entry. It would work, and it was working. Her own weight, slight but perceptible, pressed them closer together. The cloud-racked face of the planet flashed past her, and as Paul moved deeper inside her she felt thunderheads within rearing up to rival those from Jupiter’s turbulent depths.

Paul whispered in her ear, “Three more minutes.” She had no idea how he knew that. She nodded, kept her eyes open, and concentrated on catching the wave. It was going to work perfectly. She had wondered if such a thing were possible — had been half-convinced that it was impossible — but in just another minute or two… her legs were tightening, her eyes closing, her mouth opening, all the muscles of her lower body moving to their own internal rhythm.

And then, suddenly — too soon, much too soon — the bells of the ship’s communication system rang out. Paul gave a final spasmodic thrust and pushed Jan away from him.

“No,” she gasped. “Not yet. Keep going, Paul — another minute. Keep going!”

He slipped out, wriggled from under her, and dived toward the other side of the chamber. Jan cried out, “Paul, you can’t—” The ship’s bell was still ringing, and it sounded wrong. “What are you doing?”

“Not closest approach.” He switched the lights on in the observation chamber and she saw him, naked and still erect, over by the door. He was working desperately at the lock. “Hull integrity alarm. Number Three Hatch — some drunken lunatic — this fucking cipher—”

He snarled in triumph, jerked the door open, and swung through. He was still stark naked. Jan, her heart pounding and her head dizzy, shaking as though abandoned at the top of a roller coaster, followed. She had no idea where Number Three Hatch might be, but the absolute urgency in Paul’s voice overrode everything else. She followed him without any thought of clothing.

Amazingly, the corridor as far as she could see was filled with noisy people. They were cheering and waving, celebrating a Jupiter closest approach which had not yet happened. A man and a woman, half-undressed, leaned against each other. They were laughing. As Jan pushed past them, the woman said in a tipsy voice, “That’s right, sweetie, go get him. Lots of good mileage left in him, I could see that.”

Paul, five meters ahead, had swung open another door and thrown himself through. Jan, following more slowly, entered the chamber at the exact moment when a second set of bells rang out. These sounded a different note and were less strident than the ones that had interrupted them in the observation chamber. This was the moment of Jupiter closest approach — and the feeling in the pit of Jan’s stomach was a universe away from orgasm.

The room she entered contained one of the Achilles’ exit points. The inner airlock already stood open. Paul was grappling with a heavily-built dark figure floating by the outer one. Two safety catches on the lock had already been thrown. If the last one were freed, air from inside the ship would rush out, low-pressure hydrogen from Jupiter’s upper atmosphere would replace it, and she, Paul, and the other man would all die.

Jan kicked off hard from the wall and sped headfirst across the chamber. Paul had the man around the neck and was trying to pull him backwards, but he had no way to exert leverage. The man ignored Paul completely and went on fiddling obsessively with the third catch on the lock.

Jan didn’t know how to fight, especially in micro-gravity. As she came close she grabbed the man’s right forearm, pulled herself toward it, and sank her teeth into the fleshy part of his thumb.

He gave a loud “Ow!” and released his hold on the catch. The struggling trio spiraled away in mid-air, Paul still trying to throttle the bulky stranger. Jan lost her bite, but still held the arm. Three other people, two of them crew, burst into the chamber. As they wrestled the man to the floor, she saw his face.

It was Sebastian.

“I feel that I, not Sebastian Birch, must bear full responsibility for all that happened.”

Dr. Valnia Bloom sat in the small medical center of the OSL Achilles. Her red hair was drawn back and hidden by a tight white skull-cap. With her thin lips, chalk-pale countenance, and haunted eyes, she resembled a living skeleton.

“It was at my suggestion,” she went on, “that Sebastian agreed to have a series of treatments using selected psycho-tropic drugs. In our work together over the past weeks, I became convinced that his obsession with planetary atmospheres and their cloud patterns derives from some deep-seated compulsion, either natural or one implanted at an early age. We had been moving backward in time, seeking the site of his earliest memories. This afternoon we came to the time when his memory had been modified by the team that discovered him roaming and helpless in Earth’s northern hemisphere. In an effort to reverse or bypass that block, I administered a second dose. Sebastian had been tolerating the treatment well, with no apparent side effects or post-session abnormalities of behavior. At dinner this evening he seemed his usual self, though perhaps more restrained than the others at our table. That was not difficult, since everyone else was euphoric, and I regarded Sebastian’s poise as the sign of an increasing maturity that matched his actual age. I must admit that I too was in an elevated mood, and when Sebastian disappeared shortly after dinner I thought nothing of it. I assumed that he had gone to join a party somewhere else on the ship. Whereas…”

She gestured to the unconscious body on the bed next to her. Sebastian lay in a deep sleep.

Captain Kondo, standing at the end of the bed, looked to Jan and Paul Marr — both now dressed in conventional if somewhat rumpled clothing.

“Did you or anyone else knock him out, either with a blow or with the use of a sedative?”

Paul and Jan shook their heads.

“And you were with him continuously,” Captain Kondo went on. He was both unrumpled and unruffled. “You were with him from the time that you overpowered him by the Number Three Hatch until he was brought here?”

Paul coughed and said, “Ah — not quite all the time. Two other crew members watched him for a few minutes. But they assured me that they did not touch him in any way while I was gone. He simply became unconscious, and they were afraid to do anything that might affect his condition.” Paul did not add that in those few minutes he and Jan had hurried to the forward observation chamber, where they had dressed as quickly as possible without worrying about the fine details of their appearance.

Captain Kondo slowly nodded. “There will of course be a full investigation of this incident when we reach Ganymede. For the moment, I wish you to say nothing to any of the passengers. I will ask the same of the others who were present in the Number Three Hatch.” He hesitated. “I was about to add that I would make a general statement, reassuring all passengers that the Achilles remains in a safe and spaceworthy condition. However, it is my sense that such an action on my part is quite unnecessary. The vast majority of the passengers are under the misapprehension that alarm bells, naked passengers and crew in a high state of physical arousal” — his eyes flicked from Jan to Paul. He knew! — “unarmed physical combat, and the towing of an unconscious person along a corridor to the ship’s medical center, constitute nothing more than a normal and reasonable element of a Jupiter swingby ceremony. I believe it best if they remain with that impression. Mr. Birch will of course be held under continuous close observation, for which I will now make arrangements.”

He turned, apparently about to leave. Jan blurted out, “But what will this mean? Will Sebastian and I be allowed to continue on to Saturn? Do we — will we — I mean, is there a chance that we will be sent back — back to Earth?

“You need have no fear on that score. You have been accepted into the service in the Outer System, and such acceptance cannot be revoked. You will not be returned to Earth. However, I am less sure that you will be permitted to proceed to Saturn.” Captain Kondo raised an eyebrow toward Valnia Bloom. “I also think it likely that Dr. Bloom will choose to go with you wherever you are, at least for some initial period of time.”

Valnia Bloom came to life. Her skeleton head nodded vigorously. “Of course. I caused this to happen. It is my responsibility to remain with Sebastian until I learn exactly what I did to him.”

“That seems reasonable and appropriate. Let me add, we will dock on Ganymede in approximately six hours. I hope that you will find some agreeable diversion — or, at the very least, a respite from your immediate worries and concerns — during the remainder of what has been by far the most unusual Jupiter swingby of my career.”

Captain Kondo nodded formally to the little group. “And now, I bid you a very good night.”