Saturn Rukh (8 page)

After more than three months of living in close quarters with each other, the six members of the crew of
Sexdent
had developed a series of patterned behaviors that minimized the conflict of the crew, especially during the early morning. Pete, who hated to get up, was always the last one out of the habitats. He looked around at the hatchdoors. Rod’s and Sandra’s were closed. They were always the first ones up and had already been to the toilets in their nightwear and were back in their habitats getting dressed. As Pete started to crawl down the wall to the facilities deck, Seichi and Chastity crawled up the-wall above him, Seichi in his kimono, and Chastity in her pale blue nightgown with the elastic ankle band. Pete knew that Doc would be in the “gentlemen’s” toilet, which was confirmed by the green light on the “ladies’ “ toilet, so, as he had done practically every day in the past year, he opened the door to the ladies’ and dropped in. He took a quick look at his wrist computer. He’d better hurry. Jeeves would be increasing the capsule rotation shortly.

Fifteen minutes later, everyone was back in their habitats, removing their exercise equipment from the cavity that had been exposed when the bottom panel on their bed had been lowered to make the floor of their habitat. Dual-purpose pieces of equipment, which in real life were spare parts for the life support systems, were called into play as “steps” and “weights” for their daily high-gee exercises. When Jeeves was sure that all were in their habitats and ready, the differential motor around the rotational joint that connected the crew capsule to the fuel module was energized again, and the rotation increased from six rpm to seventeen rpm. A chorus of groans arose from the open habitat hatches and mingled together on the control deck as the gee level in the habitats grew. The pull at the midsection of the habitats was now Earth-normal one gee, while the feet of the crew were at four-thirds gees and their heads were at two-thirds of a gee.

“Right step ... back down ... Left step ... back down ...” intoned Jeeves, taking them through the hour of daily exercises that would keep their bodies from deteriorating in the free fall of space.

~ * ~

Later that morning, over their communal breakfasts of microwaved fruit tarts and coffee, Rod made an announcement.

“Today, Saturn is in opposition—on the opposite side of the sky from the Sun—-which means that the Earth is as close to Saturn as it’s going to get this year—nine AU from Saturn and two AU from us. From now on, as Earth continues in its orbit, it’s going to be moving away from us instead of moving toward us, so the round-trip communication time delay is going to start rapidly increasing from its present half-hour.”

Dan winced inwardly a little at that news. Pamela was already upset about having to wait so long between her question or complaint and Dan’s reply. He was rapidly losing control of the situation at home.

~ * ~

Six months passed. The Earth was now on the opposite side of the Sun from Saturn and
Sexdent.
With the Sun in the way, messages back to Earth had to take a dogleg around the Sun by way of Mars, which added to the round-trip communication delay, making it more than two hours. This was especially hard on Dan.

Pamela and the kids would normally call during breakfast from their home in Houston, telling him about what they did the day before and what they were planning for that day. He would get that message in mid-afternoon, since
Sexdent
was on Zulu Time. He would reply with a message for Pamela about family business, which she would get during her lunchtime. Her reply would come back early in his evening. He would conclude with a message to her and the kids about his day— which they would listen to around the dinner table. They didn’t bother to reply to him then, because their reply would have arrived after he had gone to bed, so they waited until the breakfast session. With the family living the life of millionaires, Junior got a new “Tasmanian Devil” sports car for Christmas, while Helen got her own limousine and a chauffeur to drive it.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Dan, when he heard about the chauffeur. He trusted his daughter, but... He was relieved when the picture of the chauffeur came back. Instead of the young stud that Dan had envisioned, the chauffeur was a matron who looked like her last job was as bailiff in the Criminal Court Building.

~ * ~

The months continued on, with everyone finding their own ways to pass the time. Rod was using the large holoviewport at the pilot’s console to get the full effect of the visuals on the fifty-first level of WARPWORLD, when he sensed- a warm presence behind his head. He froze the action on the game and turned around. Chastity was behind him. Her jumpsuit zipper was at half-mast.

“Just watching ...” said Chastity, smiling cheerfully through lips glistening with recently applied lipstick. “You sure are a good WARPWORLD pilot.”

Normally, seeing that much of Chastity would cause Rod to shut the game down and pay attention to her, but Rod had gone through enough “slam-bam, thank you, sir” experiences with Chastity in the past few months. He had tried to get romantic and stretch things out, but she always wanted to get right down to business. He just smiled back at her, then turned and continued his game. After a while she left. Later she and Pete disappeared into her habitat tube. Knowing what was going on in the tube changed Rod’s mood, and he saved the game before he got careless and got himself killed. He headed for the ladder and climbed down to the galley to refill his coffee squeezer. As his head came level with the habitat hatches, he noticed that Sandra’s hatch was open and she was inside, reading a novel. His eye noticed a short line on her screen that ended in an exclamation point.

“Colonel Montrose!”

~ * ~

After getting his coffee, Rod activated the ship’s library program. Knowing that Jeeves would not tell him what books Sandra had asked for from the library, he had Jeeves search through all the novels for “Colonel Montrose!” It didn’t take long for Jeeves to find it. It was a trashy romance novel set in the Civil War period. Rod skipped through the boring beginnings and got to the bodice-ripping part....

It was a frosty winter’s night in northern Virginia. Ruby Darlington entered her bedroom carrying a candle, closing the door behind her to block out the loud voices of the Yankee officers quartered in her mansion—enjoying the port from the cellars. The servants had a small fire going in her bedroom fireplace. Standing in the shadows beside the fireplace was a tall figure.

“The woods are full of Yankees tonight,
“
said the figure.

“Colonel Montrose!”

The tall figure in the gray uniform stepped into the firelight.

“Excuse me for intruding, Miss Ruby. But I had to see you once again before I head south to take up my new command...”

There was a commotion downstairs. Ruby cracked her bedroom door and listened.

“A Confederate spy has been seen entering the premises. Search the house!“

“I must go,“ said Montrose, putting on his hat and heading for the window.

“Wait!” said Ruby with a restraining hand. “There is one place even a Yankee is gentleman enough not to search. “ She pointed to her curtained bed and he headed for it. Quickly stripping off her dress and undergarments, Ruby slipped into her nightgown and climbed through the bed curtains to await the arrival of the searcher.

Rod started memorizing his lines.

That evening after dinner Rod got Sandra aside.

“The woods are full of Yankees tonight...” he started.

Sandra’s eyes widened in surprise. At first, Rod thought that perhaps he had overstepped his bounds.

“Excuse me for intruding, Miss Ruby…” He started to back away, but Sandra restrained him with a hand. Her face broke into a pleased smile and she patted her hair with both hands as she stepped into her role.

“Colonel Montrose!” she answered. “You have no idea how
long
I have waited for someone like you.”

~ * ~

A month later, Chastity watched in bewilderment from the galley as Rod went up the ladder to bed with Sandra once again. The two were always talking quietly together during the day, as though they were playing a game. It was not that Chastity was jealous—but she did feel left out. The sight of the two disappearing into Rod’s large-diameter habitat brought Chastity twinges of desire. She knew that all she had to do was climb the ladder to where Pete and Seichi were watching sports programs in their habitats and tap on their hatchdoors and those twinges would be soon satisfied, but she desired something new and different. Doc had his back to her, doing maintenance work on something in the life support section. Deliberately lowering her jumpsuit zipper, Chastity floated over behind him and slowly drew the long fingernails of her left hand down Dan’s back. When Dan first felt the fingernails, he twitched his back in annoyance, but as soon as he realized what was going on, he stopped work on the recalcitrant piece of equipment in front of him and arched his back into the caress like a tomcat. As the long scratch came to an end, he slowly turned around, to see two mounds of flesh trying to escape from their constriction. Chastity repeated her stroke on Dan’s back with her left hand as she pulled his chin up with her right hand and planted a warm slow kiss on his upturned face. As their lips finally parted, she murmured, “I understand the fingernail tips feel even better on a bare back. Like to try it?”

For a long time, Dan considered the proposition. Finally, he gave a sad smile and shook his head. “I’d love to try it, Chass ... but I can’t—”

“I understand,” replied Chastity with a smile. She gave him another kiss—a peck this time—and turned to head up the ladder, zipping up the front of her jumpsuit as she did so. She slept alone that night, just as Dan had done every night for the past year.

~ * ~

They were scheduled to arrive at Saturn exactly one year after they had left Earth’s orbit. The Earth would be back around in its orbit to the point where they had taken off, so the distance to Earth was ten AU. A week before that date, Chastity was at the pilot console, watching the string of numbers that indicated the acceleration and velocity of
Sexdent
with respect to the Sun and Saturn.

“There it goes…” she murmured quietly to herself.

“There goes what?” asked Pete, who was floating around the upper deck sipping a squeezer of coffee.

“The acceleration went through zero,” replied Chastity. “We left Earth going nearly fifty-six klecs. Ever since we left, our acceleration has been negative because of the pull of the Sun, and we have been slowing down as we climbed up out of the Sun’s gravity well. We’re now at thirty-nine klecs. But we just passed over the point between the Sun and Saturn where the gravity influence of Saturn takes over. Our acceleration is now positive as we fall into Saturn’s gravity well and we’re speeding up again. We should be there in about a week.”

Pete came over behind Chastity and looked over her shoulder out the viewport above her console. Saturn was no longer just an orange dot with “handles.” It had grown until it was half as big as the Sun or Luna in the skies of Earth. The rings were nearly broadside toward the Sun and the northern hemisphere of the yellow-orange planet was fully illuminated, for it was “summer” on Saturn.

“How fast will we be going when we get there?” asked Pete, curious.

“Since we’re on a fast-passage track rather than a Hohmann transfer orbit, we’ll be coming at it at almost right angles to its orbital velocity,” said Chastity. “We’ll be meeting it going over forty klecs, and by the time we build up speed diving in over the rings, we’ll be going almost fifty-four klecs. Once again we’ll be the fastest spacecraft in the solar system.”

~ * ~

The next morning, Pete was the last one out of the crew habitats.

“This free fall really feels good after all those gees,” he said, as he pulled himself down the ladder and joined the rest of the crew for breakfast.

“Enjoy it while you can,” said Rod. “Once we get down into Saturn, it’ll be one gee all the time.”

“Not quite one gee,” Sandra reminded him. “Because Saturn is rotating so rapidly, the centrifugal force at the equator cancels out a portion of the gravity, so it’s only ninety-three percent of one gee there, although it gets up to a hundred and twenty percent of Earth gravity at the pole.”

“Any percent of gravity is too much,” complained Pete. “Especially if you have to exercise in it.”

“That’s one thing you
won’t
have to do,” interjected Dan. “We can forget about the compulsory exercise period once we are on Saturn. We’ll get enough exercise just going up and down the ladder while we’re getting our day’s work done. It’ll be just like living on the Earth. That six months we’re going to spend down there at Earth-normal is just what the doctor ordered for your bones and cardiovascular system.”

“It
is
going to be a lot like living on Earth, isn’t it,” said Sandra. “To find the lifeforms, we’ll have to go down to the water cloud level. Then, both the gravity and the temperature will be Earth-surface normal.”

“Like Earth on a cloudy night,” reminded Chastity, “there isn’t going to be much illumination under three layers of clouds this far from the Sun.”

“We will have much illumination from the lights on the reactor complex,” said Seichi. “It will be like being at a baseball park at night.”

“You’re all forgetting the big difference between Saturn and Earth,” said Dan. “The pressure. We’ll be at ten bars.”