A Perfect World
Chapter 12



Ingram and its crew had long since been relieved from station, replaced by
Rellington, another stealth ship. Sampson and the others who had been aboard
Ingram were undoubtedly back on Mars by now, the sailors reacquainting
themselves with their families and friends, the intelligence operatives
working in nice, clean offices in a Triad high rise, analyzing data and
submitting reports. But Julie was still here on Earth, still operating in
the guise of an Agricorp accountant. It had been well over a year now since
she'd splashed down in the ocean off the coast and assumed her new identity
and still there was no end in sight. But at least now, she thought as she
initiated the communications link-up, things would start to happen again.
The last eight Earth months had been an agony of boredom.



"What the fuck's the haps, Julie?" asked the hologram of Cumquat Cypress,
commander of the intelligence contingent aboard Rellington. Cypress was a
no-nonsense woman, 26 years of age, and one of the most experienced field
operatives in the employ of the Martian government. She had been one of the
instructors at the Intelligence Operatives School where Julie had initially
trained, her previous covert missions to Earth legendary even then.



"Same old shit, Cummy," Julie told her. "I'm just sitting in this
Laura-forsaken apartment day after fucking day, sticking my fingers in my
pussy. Then I go home to my official house at night and stick my fingers in
my pussy some more. You know you've been someplace too long when even
masturbation gets boring."



"Well at least you can hang out long enough to get dicked by Scramm every
night," she said, using her best look-on-the-bright-side voice.



"At least there's that," Julie replied, suppressing a sigh. In truth, even
Scramm was getting old. Martians weren't meant to fuck the same person day
after day for more than a year. But there was no point in complaining. She
had a job to do and a cover to maintain, even if her mark was off the planet
at the moment. "So what's the word?"



"The Alberta battle group is well inside the orbit of Earth's moon now. The
lead ships are just finishing up their deceleration burns. Your mark's ship
should be at dock in Departure as scheduled."



"Thank Laura," she sighed. Alberta was the California class superdreadnought
that was the flagship for the armada that had escorted Amanda Hesper, her
team, and-it was suspected-the sub reactor for the WestHem Lemondrop project
to the "research facility" in deep space. Martian intelligence and the
Martian navy had tracked and shadowed the armada ever since it had left
Departure nine months before. Its mission presumably accomplished, the
battle group was now nearly home again.



"Fuckin' aye," Cypress agreed. "Now you can start working her again. As I've
told you before, most of the other contacts we've tried to work on their
Lemondrop team have bombed out. We've gotten a few stitches of information
but no one else is even close to ferreting out anything solid."



"It's nice to know the entire fate of Mars rests on me," she said dryly.
"That does a lot for the old confidence, you know what I mean?"



"You're done a rankin' job so far," Cypress told her. "Everything we
possibly could ask. And it looks like she's managed to maintain her
composure while she was gone. The email you got from her is a very good sign
of that."



Julie nodded. Yes, the email was a very good sign. It had come just the
previous day, the first communication she'd received since Amanda had left
for Edwards Space Base at the beginning of her journey. It was nothing
dramatic or shocking, of course. Just a quick, emotionless message from one
female friend to another, telling her she was back in the neighborhood and
would be home soon and asking how her plants and her house were holding up.
Amanda wouldn't have dared send anything else through a military ship's
computer server. But the very fact that she had communicated at all tended
to support the notion that there had been no more emotional slip-ups during
the trip, nothing to cast suspicion upon Amanda's character. "Hopefully
she'll send me a more meaningful message once she gets to Departure and they
let her have her PC back. My greatest fear is that she's been out there long
enough to lose interest in me."



"Possible, but not likely," Cypress said analytically. "Dr. Mowfat has gone
over all of the reports from Dr. Ming on Ingram. He seems to feel, as Ming
did, that Hesper is really in love with you. True love wouldn't have faded
over a nine month absence. It would have only grown stronger. Especially
since you had time to fully consummate your physical relationship in the
weeks between your first encounter and her departure for deep space."



"Did we ever," Julie said. "I chewed a new hole in her pussy and she damn
near swallowed mine."



"Is she any good at it?" asked Cypress, who was not adverse to a little
girl-girl action when the mood struck her.



"She'll never be as good as a Martian woman," she said. "Or even a Martian
man, for that matter. These people are just too repressed in their
upbringing to let themselves go when they fuck. But I did teach her a thing
or two and she did have some rudimentary skills of her own. She's getting
better."



"So the assignment's not all bad then, is it? You get to teach an Earthling
the way of the Martian."



"Well, I do have to hold myself back a bit as well," Julie said. "I wouldn't
want her to get suspicious about where I learned all of this. That's where
Scramm comes in handy. He helps relieve the tension that develops."



"Yes, I've sampled Scramm a few times myself. I was his training officer,
you know?"



"He told me that," she said.



"A good agent. He actually likes living on Earth, which is a good thing
since he's been here almost three years now."



"Laura forbid I should have to stay here that long," Julie said,
contemplating the horror of being stuck in this place for six of their
years.



"You won't," Cypress assured her. "Whatever the outcome is, you won't be on
assignment any longer than the activation of their Lemondrop reactor. And
our best estimates are less then one Martian year before they have the
construction complete and enough anti-matter manufactured for that to
occur."



"Less than a year? Are we that critical?"



"They've devoted considerably more of their particle accelerator capability
towards anti-matter production than we originally thought they would. They
seem quite desperate to get this reactor active."



"Idiots," Julie said, shaking her head. "They have no idea what they're
playing with. They could very well end up destroying all life in the solar
system."



"They seem to feel this is the only way to save their society. Typical
Earthling thinking. Their entire economy and way of life is on the verge of
collapse because of their greed, mistrust, and contradictions, but instead
of trying to fix that, they try to harm us instead, thinking that will make
the problem go away. In any case, the key word I'm trying to convey to you
is desperate. They are desperate enough to do almost anything with this
reactor, to try anything. We may be able to counter what they try but we
must activate our own reactor before they activate theirs-and we must, we
absolutely must know what they plan to do. Without that knowledge we may
just as well surrender to them."



"I was well-briefed on the stakes we're playing for," Julie told her, a bit
of testiness escaping from her mouth.



"I know, Julie, and forgive me for harping on you. I just wanted to make
sure you knew we're desperate as well, and time is running out on us. You've
got the best chance to get us the knowledge we need so badly but you also
are working under a deadline. It's going to take a lot of confidence on your
target's part to reveal top-secret information to you."



"I'll get the information," Julie vowed. "One way or another, I'll get it."



"I'm forced to have the utmost confidence in you," Cypress told her. "Your
mark comes home shortly. Start working on her right away."



"I will," Julie said. "I'll give her a homecoming she won't soon forget."



+++++



Getting personnel and cargo back and forth from orbital platforms and the
planetary surface was much more efficient on Earth than it was on Mars or on
the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The factor that enabled this was the same
factor that had made life possible on Earth in the first place: the thick
oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. The atmosphere allowed for winged flight during
take-off and final landing, which allowed for far less consumption of
hydrogen fuel per trip. This, in turn, allowed much larger payloads to be
transported. More than 800 metric tons of cargo and nearly a thousand
passengers could be taken up or down on each trip.



The Kenfield-Hamiliton Corporation surface-to-orbit lifter was the primary
workhorse for such purposes in WestHem society. The fuselage of this craft
was 230 meters in length with a diameter of 15 meters. Four semi-rocket
engines with a combined thrust of 2500 tons powered it. The civilian version
of the craft was called the KHC-950 and was operated by all of the big three
corporate owned spacelines. The military version, which was operated by the
WestHem Space Naval Forces, was called the SOCL-12.



It was one of the latter that made its fiery entry into the atmosphere on
this day, its destination: Edwards Space Base in the southern California
region. As the shield on the belly of the craft absorbed the tremendous heat
generated by the friction slowing the craft from orbital to atmospheric
flight speed, Amanda Hesper looked out nervously from her window seat on the
upper deck where the passengers were seated. Earthling society was not quite
as safety conscious as Martian society and, as such, two or three surface to
orbit lifters malfunctioned every year, usually with all hands lost, and
usually during reentry. She could see nothing out the window other than the
glowing ionized plasma but she stared anyway, the way a person looks at
something that terrifies them. Gradually, as the craft slowed, the friction
decreased and the plasma disappeared, allowing a view of the Pacific Ocean
some 30,000 meters below. She breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the
whine of machinery. The four huge wings were unfolding from where they had
been tucked against the fuselage, turning the spacecraft from a falling
object to a powered flight machine. They continued to descend, the coast of
California soon coming into view. The huge landing gear unfolded from the
bottom as they banked into the landing pattern over the desert base. They
touched down only ten minutes late, the wheels contacting the pavement of
the landing strip at a speed of 400 kilometers per hour and rolling toward
the cargo terminal eight kilometers away.



Once the spacecraft was secured to the terminal the passengers began to
disembark. Since it was a military flight most of the passengers were naval
personnel returning to Earth for leave. Most, in fact, were the sailors who
had staffed the ships of the Alberta battle group. Amanda and her team did
not talk to them or socialize with them in any way-none of the sailors were
even aware that this group of thirty civilians had even been out in space
with them all of those long months. They grabbed their bags from the
overhead storage bins and made their way into the terminal, gathering in a
group near the far end where transportation to the atmospheric flight
terminal had allegedly been arranged.



The members of her team all talked quietly among themselves as they waited,
none of them including Amanda in their discussions. Though they respected
her greatly for her knowledge and skill as a physicist and a leader, none of
them had much use for her as a friend. Her reputation was of a cold fish,
without humor or warmth. She was, in short, a nerd among nerds. She didn't
mind their perception of her. There were few people she wanted to socialize
with anyway.



She decided it was now safe enough to try to get in touch with the one
person she did want to socialize with. She walked a bit away from the rest
of the team and pulled out her PC, which had been taken from her at the
beginning of her trip for security reasons and which she had gotten back
before leaving Departure. Julie would be at work right now, of course, but,
being an accountant, she could usually take coms from friends as long as
they were brief. Amanda longed to see her lover's face, to hear her voice.
It had been pure torture living without her these last months. What if she
didn't want her anymore? What if she had found someone else? What if...
horror of horrors... she had moved to another house during her absence?



"Com Julie," she told her PC nervously, hoping against hope that the
computer wouldn't tell her that Julie was no longer available for comming.



Her anxiety increased when it took several moments for the connection to go
through. Finally, the screen cleared and a hologram of that beautiful face
appeared above her screen. She couldn't help but smile as she saw it.



"Hi, Amanda," Julie said, offering a slight return smile. "Are you back on
Earth?"



"I'm at Edwards," she said neutrally. "We just got in from Departure."



"It's good to hear from you," Julie said. "I got your email the other day
but there was no way to reply to you. Anyway, your plants are all still
alive and the house hasn't burned down."



"That's good to know," she told her. There were a thousand things she wanted
to ask her lover, a thousand things she wanted to say, but they didn't dare
engage in anything other than normal, politically correct conversation on
the unsecured communication line because there were a thousand places where
the digital signal could be intercepted and eavesdropped on, most notably by
the WestHem government, who had legal authority to scan private coms for
"indecent images or content." All the better to protect the public morals.



"When are you going to be home?" Julie asked her. "Maybe we can have some
tea together after work."



Amanda frowned. "Not until very late," she said. "I'll get back to Livermore
in a few hours but we have a lot of computer work to do"-which meant she had
an extensive debrief session to undergo regarding the installation of the
sub-reactor. Since communication into and out of the Lemondrop site was
forbidden, her boss had received no updates.



"Oh, well that's too bad then," Julie said. "Maybe tomorrow after work
then?"



"Well, my computer work might take awhile," she said regretfully. "I'll be
working late for most of the rest of this month. At some point we'll simply
have to get together, though."



She nodded. "Sounds good, Amanda. It's nice to hear you're back. I'll talk
to you when you can."



"Okay, Julie," she told her. "Thanks for taking care of my house for me."



They discontinued the com and Amanda had to sigh as she lost sight of that
beautiful face. God, she was so horny for Julie. It had been nine long
months since she'd last felt her touch, her lips upon her, had smelled her
feminine odor. And to make matters worse, she had not had access to
pornography of any kind during her trip, not so much as a picture of a
breast in a medical journal. Nor had there been much opportunity to
masturbate, so close were the quarters. The only time she had been able to
accomplish this badly needed method of release had been in the toilet in the
mornings, and even then it had to be quickly done, leaving little
satisfaction. She needed some real sex, a real set of hands on her body, a
real mouth on her skin. She had grown quite addicted to Julie's body in the
short time they'd been able to share together before she left. How many more
days would it be before they could get together? As much as a week? Maybe
more? That was almost as torturous a thought as going on the trip had been
in the first place.



The shuttle arrived a few minutes later to take them to the atmospheric
flight terminal. As they climbed aboard and found their seats her PC began
to vibrate slightly, in short bursts-the signal that a text message had been
received. She felt another burst of excitement. The only person who ever
text messaged her was Julie and, unlike normal coms, text could be sent
undetected and unscanned by anyone, thus assuring their privacy.



"Display message," she whispered to her PC.



The screen cleared and showed her what had been sent. As she read it, her
breath hitched and a gush of moisture flooded her sex.



FROM: Julie

SENT: 1522 hrs 03-07-2193



MESSAGE: I can't wait to get my lips on your pussy again!



+++++



Amanda stepped off the commuter train at the stop near her house at 0130 the
next morning. Her eyes were bloodshot with fatigue and jet lag and her body
ached in every joint. Over her shoulder she carried the one bag she had
taken with her on the trip-a bag that contained everything she'd been
allowed to take for a nine-month deployment. The damp wind of early March
blew across her as she made her way down the residential street and she
wondered if she even had the energy to make it home. Why couldn't that
asshole Hentman have let her have just a single day off before the start of
the debriefing? Sure the project was important to WestHem, but it wasn't
that important, was it?



Her heels clacked along the pavement as she turned onto her street and her
house came into view for the first time in nine months. It was dark, of
course, as were all the other houses on the street at this hour of the day.
That included Julie's house next door to hers. She looked at its familiar
outline longingly and with a little depression. She had known it, too, would
be dark, since Julie had to go to her own job later this morning, but a part
of her had still hoped to see a light in the living room, a welcoming sign
that her friend and lover was still awake, perhaps awaiting her arrival. No
such luck.



"Home sweet home," she sighed, shifting her bag from one shoulder to the
other.



She clacked her way up the front walk and put her fingerprint on the pad.
The door slid obediently open, revealing her living room. To her surprise,
it was not completely dark in the room-far from it. Instead a mellow glow
permeated the gloom, generated by the lit candles that had been laid out
across the floor in a trail that led to the hallway.



She stared at this for so long that the door slid shut again, leaving her
still standing out on the porch. Numbly she touched her finger to the pad
again, opening it again. This time she stepped through, her eyes looking at
the gentle flickers of firelight, her nose taking in the scent of vanilla
wax. What was going on here? Why were all these candles lit?



"Julie?" she called, feeling a flicker of excitement inside her as the name
left her lips. Who else would have done such a thing?



But Julie did not answer. No one answered. The candles just continued to
flicker away, beckoning her. Slowly, she put her bag down on the ground and
began to follow the trail. She walked through the living room and into the
hallway, seeing another soft glow coming from the end of it, where the
master bedroom was. She entered her room and saw the candle trail led
through it, into the bathing room. Her oversized tub was here and that is
where the trail finally ended. The tub was filled with steaming water. More
candles had been set around the perimeter of the tub-nearly ten of them-and
all were lit, creating a semi-lightness that was quite romantic. In the
bathwater rose petals were floating.



"Wow," she whispered softly, feeling her heart patter in her chest. In all
her life she had never seen such a thing.



"Welcome home, Mands," a soft voice spoke from the walk-in closet.



She turned towards it and saw Julie standing there, emerging from the small
room. Her hair was down, flowing over her shoulders. She was dressed in a
short camisole that appeared to be made of silk. It was tied loosely at her
waist, allowing most of her bare breasts to show through the gap. Her long,
sexy legs were bare as well and Amanda felt herself becoming wet just at the
sight of them.



"Julie," she said, her eyes taking in the sight of her. "What are you doing
here?"



"I couldn't wait to see you," she said, stepping closer. "I thought I'd give
you a nice welcome home. I figured you would like a nice, hot bath after
spending nine months out in space."



"Oh yes," she said. "A bath would be heavenly. But it's even nicer to see
you. Especially... you know... dressed like that."



"Do you like it?" she said, twirling around to model it for her. As she
moved, the hem lifted up, revealing the briefest flash of her butt cheeks
and the darkness of her pubic hair. She was naked under it! Completely
naked!



"Where... where... did you get that?" she stammered. Such lingerie was quite
illegal under the Public Morals Act.



"On the black market," she said. "I wanted to dress special for you. Do you
think it makes me look fat?"



"No," she said, shaking her head numbly. "You look... well... stunning. Very
beautiful." A tear tracked down her face and a sob suddenly burst from her
mouth, taking her by surprise. "Oh God, Julie, it's so good to see you! I
missed you so much!" She rushed forward, taking her friend in her arms.



"I missed you too, Mandy," Julie told her, hugging her back, planting a
soft, sexy kiss on the side of her neck. And then suddenly, she broke the
embrace, pushing Amanda away from her. "Let's get you in the bath," she
said. "Perhaps a little rub-down is in order. What do you think?"



"Oh yes," Amanda said, her sex now juicing up quite nicely. "That sounds
like a grand idea."



Julie's hands began to move, going to the buttons of Amanda's top, opening
them, undressing her. She removed the top and then the bra, leaving her nude
from the waist up. Amanda was not surprised to see that her nipples were
starkly erect. Julie rubbed her fingers across them playfully, sending
tingles through her body.



"Ohhhh," Amanda moaned, leaning in to kiss her.



"Not yet," Julie told her, dodging the move. "Let's get this bath going
first."



"Okay," she breathed, unable to resist running out her hand to touch Julie's
bare thigh.



"You naughty girl," Julie giggled, pulling back from this touch as well. She
then began to work on Amanda's skirt, undoing the zipper and letting it fall
to the floor.



"How did you know what time I would be home?" Amanda asked. "So you would
have the bath ready?"



"Oh, I have my ways," she replied mysteriously. "Let's just say that someone
gave me a com when you climbed onto the tram in Livermore to come home."



"Someone gave you a com?" she asked. "Who? Was it one of the people in the
station?"



"Something like that," Julie said, tugging on her slip. As she did so she
dropped to her knees to help her get it off, her face right on level with
the crotch of Amanda's pantyhose. With a sexy smile she leaned forward and
kissed her right on the crotch, where the dampness was starting to permeate
through.



"Ohh, uhh," Amanda squealed, feeling pleasure burst through her just at that
simple touch. She quickly forgot all about how her lover might have known
she was nearing home.



"Just a taste," Julie whispered, inserting her fingers into the elastic at
the top of the pantyhose. "I've had dreams about the flavor of your pussy
while you were gone, do you know that?"



"No," she gasped, thrilled, as she always was, with Julie's filthy mouth.



"It's true," she said. "You have the sweetest taste. My tongue is simply in
love with it. And soon I'll be able to taste it from the source again. You
don't mind me keeping you up a little late for that, do you?"



"No," she breathed. "Not at all."



She pulled the pantyhose down and worked them off her legs, leaving her
nude. She then stood back up, her hands going to Amanda's shoulders. She
stroked her softly there and then steered her toward the tub. "Inside," she
told her. "Let the water relax you. And then I'll do a little relaxing of my
own."



The hot water felt divine as she submerged herself in it. It seeped into her
pores, easing the tension from her day of travel and debriefing. God, it was
so nice to be back in her own home instead of the cramped cabin aboard the
Alberta, or the even more cramped quarters at the Lemondrop facility. There
had been no baths in either place, just lukewarm showers twice a week. And
there had certainly been no Julie to rub her shoulders for her, to caress
her, to love her.



"Ahhhhh," she sighed as Julie's hands went to work on her in earnest. They
squirted body wash on her exposed skin and rubbed gently, soaping her up,
rubbing in circles from her shoulders down to her back and then,
deliciously, around to the front, to her breasts. "Oh yes," she moaned as
the fingers worked over her nipples, pinching them and twisting them with a
delicious pressure.



"My pussy is dripping for you right now," Julie whispered in her ear, her
tongue licking just behind the earlobe. "I can't wait to feel you touching
me, licking me. Have you missed my pussy as much as she's missed you?"



Amanda was not capable of coherent speech, she was so aroused. She moaned
deeply in the back of her throat and then attacked Julie's mouth with her
own, jamming her tongue between her lips, seeking out her lover's tongue.
This time Julie did not deny her the pleasure. She returned the kiss
passionately, her hands now going lower, beneath the water line, seeking and
finding the center of her pleasure zone.



"Oh God, Julie... Oh God!" Amanda cried as Julie's fingers plunged inside
her and began to move in and out. This was not a tender act at all, but a
purely lustful finger-fuck designed to draw a sharp, rapid orgasm from her
body. It was a design that worked admirably. Within seconds Amanda felt the
pleasure explode within her, her pelvis rocking up and down, splashing
bathwater and soggy rose petals to the floor.



"Why don't you get out of the tub now?" Julie asked her, her voice husky
with desire.



"Yes," Amanda responded, standing, letting the water drip from her. "I think
that's a good idea."



They moved quickly to Amanda's bed, Julie pushing her nude, still wet body
down on the comforter. She opened her camisole, revealing her nakedness, and
let it drop to the floor. She eased up onto the bed, straddling Amanda's
thighs, her own legs spread, her sex wet and dripping. The odor of her
arousal was thick about her, making Amanda's mouth water.



"I think I need a little work first," Julie said, easing forward, sliding
her wetness over Amanda's crotch, and then up onto her belly. Soon she
worked it all the way forward, so it was hovering over Amanda's mouth. "Fuck
me with your mouth," she told her. "I'm so tired of using my fingers all the
time."



With a growl of yearning, Amanda pulled her down, slathering her tongue all
over those wet lips, reveling in the tart taste, the sharp smell of feminine
musk. She licked her up and down, back and forth, plunging her tongue in and
out of the slit, lashing the clitoris, even delving down low, to the
puckered anus, utilizing all of the pleasure-giving techniques her friend
had taught her prior to their parting. It wasn't long before Julie was
coming, her pelvis mashing up and down almost painfully atop Amanda's face,
her cries of ecstasy echoing through the room.



With the edge taken off their lust, they went slower now, cuddling together,
pressing their nude bodies against each other, their hands and fingers
stroking up and down, their lips kissing mouths and necks and ears. They
worked themselves up gradually to a frenzy of desire, taking nearly thirty
minutes before Julie finally suckled an erect nipple between her lips,
before her fingers probed once more between Amanda's very wet vaginal lips.
 From there, Julie worked her mouth downward, kissing every square millimeter
of Amanda's flesh between her nipples and her vagina, but avoiding that most
erotic of zones and continuing even lower, onto the legs. She worked her way
down to the feet, sucking and tonguing each toe before kissing her way back
up, moving along the inner leg, the inner thigh, before finally reaching the
heavenly gates and driving her tongue inside.



"Ohhhhhhh, yessss!" Amanda screamed to the room as she felt that touch on
her. "I love you, Julie! God, how I love you!"



Julie stopped her licking just long enough to tell Amanda she loved her too.
She then got right back to work, giving pleasure to her. She wouldn't stop
until Amanda was a quivering mess, sweaty and panting from multiple orgasms.



+++++



They slept together, both of them drifting off into a contented sleep after
satiating their lust. The computer woke them up just before sunrise, little
more than two hours after they had drifted off. Amanda was groggy and out of
sorts from sleep deprivation, wanting nothing more than to remain cuddled
with her lover in a naked embrace.



"Are you sure you have to go in today?" Julie asked with a yawn. "I'll call
in sick if you do. We'll spend all morning in bed and then I'll make you
breakfast."



Amanda groaned. "You don't know how tempting that is," she said with sharp
regret. "But I can't. I have to finish the debriefing from my... uh...
mission. They'll get suspicious if I don't come in. I don't want to have
them scrutinizing me. Especially not now."



Julie kissed her softly on the cheek. "I can't believe what you have to put
up with working there," she said. "They'll be suspicious for taking a sick
day?"



"I'm one of the few female physicists at Sythro involved in the project
we're working on. You know how men feel about us women these days."



"Yeah," she grunted. "I know how they feel." She sighed, nuzzling her face
against Amanda's bare shoulder. "I guess this project you're working on must
be pretty important, huh?"



"You know I can't talk about it," she said lightly. "That's why they gave me
a top secret security clearance."



"I know," she said. "I just get curious sometimes. Not that I understand
what you physicists do or anything. I bet it's a secret military weapon.
Something we'll be able to use to finally beat those EastHem fascists and
maybe even take Mars back from those horrible greenies. Am I close?"



"No," Amanda said. "It's not a weapon. It's something a lot more complex
than a weapon."



"But it'll help us liberate those greenies on Mars?" she asked. "Can you at
least tell me that?"



"Yes," she said, feeling only the slightest pang of guilt at this technical
violation of her secrecy oath. After all, Julie was her lover, and she was
an accountant. It wasn't like the information was going to go anywhere, was
it? "It's something that will help us liberate the greenies from that
horrible government. And the best part is, no one will have to die doing it.
That's why I have to go in."



"I see," Julie said thoughtfully. "Well I guess I'd better let you get ready
then." She brightened. "But first, maybe just one more little kiss."



"Oh Julie, I don't have time," she said, knowing of course that Julie was
not talking about a kiss on the lips-at least not the ones on her face.



"There's always time," Julie whispered, moving her lips over Amanda's
shoulder and then to her nipple. By the time she sucked the nipple into her
mouth Amanda was lost in the sensation. She gladly opened her legs for her
lover when she began to move lower on her body.



Soon the room was filled once more with the sounds of feminine love. By the
time the orgasm began to burst through her body, Amanda had nearly forgotten
the little lapse of security she had just displayed. But Julie hadn't. True,
it was information that was almost useless, doing nothing more than
confirming what the Martian intelligence service already knew, but it was a
piece of information Amanda shouldn't have shared nonetheless. And Julie
knew that now that the crack in the secrecy oath had been opened, it would
get wider with time-hopefully wide enough in a short enough amount of time
for her to learn what so desperately needed to be learned.



+++++



The MSS Roachclip was a proud ship, owned and operated by the Martian
government, as was every other vessel that flew under the Martian flag
(although there was no actual Martian flag for them to fly). It was a
well-designed, ultra- modern fusion drive ship capable of sustaining
acceleration at a full 2Gs for 24 hours, which, in turn, allowed it to
cruise at a velocity of nearly six million kilometers per hour and cover
interplanetary distances in a matter of a few days or weeks, depending on
which planets were being visited and what their current alignment was.
Roachclip was nearly a kilometer in length with a beam of 150 meters,
although, like any interplanetary ship, the propellant tanks where the
liquid hydrogen was stored took up fully fifty percent of its length. Though
the Martian Navy operated the ship it was not a ship of war. The only
weapons it was outfitted with were the anti-meteor lasers that all space
faring vessels possessed. Nor was it a merchant ship, designed to haul
Martian food to Earth and the Earth colonies. Roachclip was a luxury
vacation cruise vessel, one of a fleet of 25 that the Navy's Pleasure
Department operated as part of their mission to provide entertainment to
those Martians who wanted to spend their vacation periods this way.



Roachclip was near the top of the line as far as cruise ships went,
surpassing even the EastHem cruisers that catered to the wealthy of London
and Berlin and Paris. With berthing for 3200 passengers and 1800 crew
members, it was outfitted with four swimming pools, ten restaurants, twelve
virtual reality holographic simulation rooms, and, of course, eight fully
equipped botch clubs, including a special zero-G room for those partial to
(and capable of) such maneuvering. Roachclip had left its berth at Triad
Naval Base twelve days before with a full complement of happy, paying
Martian passengers and was now at anchor at the orbiting metropolis of
Whiting City, 2000 kilometers above the cratered surface of Rhea, second
largest moon of the planet Saturn.



Ken and Slurry Frazier, happy newlyweds who had been joined in legal Martian
matrimony eight hours before Roachclip's departure from Triad, were the
occupants of cabin 3807 on the starboard side of the ship, their luxurious
honeymoon suite a wedding present from Karen and Jacob Valentine. The cabin
was small, as shipboard accommodations tended to be, but it contained just
about every amenity a vacationing person might desire. There was a
self-serve wet bar, a small sitting room with real leather furniture, a
sunken hot tub next to the bathroom, and a holographic surround sound
entertainment system on the far wall. All of this was crammed tastefully
into 300 square meters of living space.



It was 0600 hours aboard the ship and Ken-awakened by the room computer as
requested the night before-was just emerging naked from the king-sized bed.
He put his feet on the carpeted floor and yawned, feeling a straining in his
bladder and a mild ache in his head, both remnants of the intoxicant use
from the previous night when he and Slurry had given the zero-G botch club a
whirl. He went into the bathroom, relieved his bladder, and then stepped
into the shower to wash the sweat and bodily secretions from his skin. He
was going to be in close quarters with other people today and wanted to make
sure he was clean.



After toweling off he emerged back into the main room of the cabin to find
his bride awake and sitting up in bed, her bare breasts on display above the
synthetic silk sheet that covered the rest of her body. The expression on
her face was not a happy one and Ken knew it wasn't from the early hour or
the intoxicant hangover. They were experiencing the first disagreement of
their marriage and the issue had been far from resolved upon their
retirement the night before.



"Good morning, Slurry," he told her, walking over to the bed and leaning
down to kiss her.



She gave him a slight peck, about as chaste as a kiss could be in Martian
culture. "Morning," she mumbled, frowning. "So you're really going?"



"I'm really going," he said with a sigh. "I told you that last night. This
is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I can't turn down a chance to go diving
into Saturn's atmosphere. That was something no one even dreamed of doing in
my day."



"Maybe because you can die doing it," she said.



Ken turned away from her, shaking his head in wonder at her
overprotectiveness while she shook her head in wonder at his recklessness.
What they were dealing with was a major clash of societal attitudes as to
what did and did not constitute unacceptably hazardous behavior.



The planet Saturn-a gas giant like Jupiter-was the source of the hydrogen
fuel Mars used for its military vehicles, its surface to orbit craft, and as
propellant for its spacecraft. This hydrogen was gathered from the upper
reaches of Saturn's atmosphere by special spacecraft that actually dived
down into the cloud tops and scooped it into holding tanks for transport
back to Whiting City, where it would be refined into pure form and shipped
back to Mars aboard huge tanker ships. The pilots of these hydro-divers, as
they were called, were widely regarded as mentally deranged, even suicidal
by the safety conscious Martians. Hydro-divers not only had to slow to
sub-orbital speed around an unforgiving planet, but they had to actually
make contact with the atmosphere at the blistering velocity of 108,000
kilometers per hour. Once in the atmosphere, they were beyond help if
something went wrong. And inside the atmosphere there was quite a lot that
could go wrong. The intense radiation emanating from the planet effectively
blinded any radar signals and made radio communications spotty and
unreliable. There were pockets of unstable air that could rip a spacecraft
apart at that velocity. There were bolts of lightening a thousand times as
powerful as those found on earth, lightening that could burn through the
protective shielding and the insulation of a hydro-diver and fry every
electronic system, rendering it flightless. Of course the Martians, being
Martians, had eliminated every hazard they possibly could for the pilots of
these craft, achieving a safety record considerably better than their
EastHem and WestHem counterparts who flew their own hydro-divers into
Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere, but there was still a component of random
chance and unpredictability involved. Hydro-diver pilots occasionally died
doing their job-a grand total of twelve of them since Saturn atmospheric
mining had begun five years after the last shots of the Martian Revolt.



To Ken, this was not a significant number, especially considering that ten
to twenty hydro-dives were made each and every day of each and every week.
This made for one catastrophic crash for every 100,000 or so dives. In his
time, more people had died on Earth each day in car crashes, or gas station
robberies, or just walking down the street minding their own business. But
to Slurry, who had been socialized to have the screaming horrors at the
thought of an accidental death and who lived in a culture where one of the
prime directives was to eliminate the mere possibility of being killed
before your time was up, these odds were not high enough for her husband to
take the risk. There was a one in one hundred thousand chance he would
perish in a ball of fire in the turbulent clouds of Saturn and that was
simply too much to contemplate.



"I'm not gonna die, Slurry," Ken told her as he pulled on a pair of shorts
and a fresh half shirt. "I know the risks involved and to me, they're
acceptable. The chance to do something like this overrides the miniscule
chance of death. I just can't turn down an offer to go hydro-diving on
Saturn. Don't you understand that? You, who've studied us twentieth century
freaks all of your life?"



That placated her the tiniest bit. Yes, she did understand the twentieth
century drive to find excitement, to participate in dangerous activities,
particularly among the males. This was, after all, a culture that had thrown
themselves out of aircraft and relied on nothing but a piece of fabric to
break their fall. They had built huge roller coasters and strapped
themselves inside just to feel the thrill of high G-force maneuvering and
momentary weightlessness. They had strapped on air tanks and descended
beneath the oceans just to look around. They had climbed mountains and
glaciers and large rocks using only the most rudimentary of safety
equipment. They had ridden at breakneck speed on two-wheeled motorized
vehicles on crowded freeways and surface streets. "Yes," she allowed, making
sure that not the slightest hint of approval penetrated her voice. "I just
wish we would never have gone to the Laura damned bar the other night. If we
would've just gone botching on the ship we never would've met that pilot."



"Coulda, woulda, shoulda," Ken said, throwing a twentieth century phrase at
her. "But we did go that night and we did meet Carrie and she did invite me
to go along with her. And as I recall, you didn't mind the part before she
invited me along, did you?"



"Oh, shut the fuck up," Slurry said, a grin unwillingly coming to her face
at the mention of Carrie. Yes, that had been quite a night. That had been
their first day in port at the legendary Whiting City and they had been
wandering around the orbiting city-home to half a million Martians who
wanted to live in a place even more liberal than Eden-when they came across
a small intoxicant club near the space port. There they met Carrie Slaw-a
twelve-year-old hydro-diver pilot who was looking for some new people to
hook up with. And hook up they had. They had gone back to Carrie's spacious
50th floor residence and spent the night fucking and sucking each other in a
variety of combinations and positions. It was only afterward, while relaxing
naked on her couch and smoking scented cigarettes, that the talk had turned
to the specifics of each other's professions. Finding out that Ken was a
Hummingbird pilot, she had invited him to accompany her on her next run if
he was of a mind. She had made the offer semi-jokingly of course. The
hydro-diver pilots were well aware of what the rest of Martian society
thought of them. But to the surprise of Carrie and especially Slurry, Ken
had immediately accepted. And thus had begun the argument.



"I promise I'll be okay, Slurry," Ken told her as he slipped his feet into
his moccasins.



"You can't promise something like that," she pouted. "You have no control
over whether that ship is going to be the one in one hundred thousand that
will crash so it's not within your power to enforce such a promise."



"True," he said. "But I promise anyway. I'll see you tonight."



"If you die," she threatened as he went out the door into the passageway,
"I'm never going to forgive you. You know that, don't you?"



"I know," he said, blowing her a kiss. A moment later he stepped through the
door, letting it close behind him.



It took him ten minutes to work his way through the passageways and
staircases and get off the ship. It was another fifteen-minute walk through
the streets of Whiting City to the base facility from which the hydro-divers
deployed. He arrived exactly on time, as was the Martian custom, and found
Carrie Slaw at the entrance gate waiting for him, as promised. She was a
tall, slightly chubby woman of primarily African ancestry. Her skin was very
dark, about as dark as could be found in Martian culture and, as was common
among the ranks of hydro-divers, she had several tattoos decorating her
upper arms and stomach, all done in sharply contrasting white ink.



"What the fuck's the haps, Ken?" she asked, stepping forward and giving him
a friendly kiss of greeting-which, among Martians, meant she slid her tongue
into his mouth and swirled it around his three or four times while squeezing
his ass.



"I'm ready to dive into some hydrogen," he said after giving her some tongue
and a few squeezes of the ass in return.



"Well let's get it on then," she told him. "I'm glad you decided to come.
Not many people are crazy enough to go for a ride with us. I kinda thought
Slurry was gonna talk you out of it. She seems a very sensible girl."



"She tried," Ken said. "But I just had to check this out."



She put her finger on the security computer screen that guarded the
entrance. "You're as crazy as we are," she said. "Crazier even. We at least
get paid to do this."



As had happened time and time again since Ken was awakened, he found himself
astounded by the difference between how things were done by Martians and by
how they had been done in his day. In his day, had a person volunteered to
accompany a team embarking upon what was considered the most dangerous job
in the society, he would have been required to sign liability release forms,
to undergo some sort of safety class, and to have his approval forwarded
through a thick haze of bureaucracy designed to find a reason why he
shouldn't go. None of that happened in this culture. He was simply taken to
the pilots' ready room and a notation was made in the flight manifest.



"That's in case we fireball," Carrie explained, using the term the pilots
used for a catastrophic failure of the ship. "They'll know you were on the
ship and can account for you."



"Nice to know," Ken said, feeling a slight hint of fear now at the thought
of what he was about to do.



The ship itself was quite large-half a kilometer long with a beam of 50
meters-but the hydrogen tanks occupied the vast majority of that space. The
smaller of the two tanks was for the propellant the ship would use to make
the half-million kilometer trip and then return. The other tank, which was
eight times as large, was currently empty. It would hold the hydrogen the
ship would gather during its run. The crew compartment of the ship was
comparatively tiny, hardly visible when the ship was viewed as a whole. It
sat amidships, on top of the collection tank, and was nothing more than a
two-seat flight deck and a small restroom. Thirty meters back from the
flight deck was the navigation and early warning probe, which would separate
from the ship and stay safely above the atmosphere during the diving run to
provide guidance to the pilot by means of a 400 kilometer, hair thin strand
of fiber optic cable encased in heat proof casing. This was an innovation
developed by Martian engineers to help protect the hydro-diver pilots by
alerting them to potentially dangerous atmospheric disturbances in their
path. It was one piece of technology the Martians had offered to share with
their EastHem and WestHem counterparts in the interest of protecting their
hydro-diver pilots as well but both of those entities had deemed the
improvement too costly to manufacture, install, and maintain on their
privately owned ships. And so both EastHem and WestHem continued to lose
five to ten hydro-diver pilots every one of their calendar years, a ratio
that was deemed an acceptable loss.



Carrie and Ken boarded the ship, entering through an airlock on the
starboard side. Ken looked around in interest as they moved to the control
seats. The cockpit contained no flight controls, only a large, interactive
computer screen that was used to navigate and control the vessel. There was
a large window to the outside-an actual window and not a digital image
screen. The bow of the ship stretched out before them, its surface dirty and
scarred. The target of their trip-Saturn-could be seen shining beautifully
before them, taking up nearly twenty degrees of the visible sky. Up this
close the planet's atmospheric bands appeared in varying shades of yellow
and the signature rings were visible only as a thin edged lined along the
equator. Still, Ken found himself staring in fascination at the sight-as he
had done on numerous occasions from the stateroom window aboard Roachclip
since their arrival. His fear at the mission before them was nearly
forgotten as he considered that he would soon be seeing that planet from a
much closer viewpoint.



"Go ahead and grab a seat," Carrie told him, pointing him toward the right
side chair.



"Right," Ken said, sitting down. He saw that, unlike most spacecraft seats,
this one had a seatbelt, and not just any seatbelt, but a four-point
harness.



"You don't have to put it on now," Carrie explained when he asked about it.
"Just when we make the run. Every once in a while we'll hit really violent
turbulence and it'll knock out the inertial damping system. We'll be pulling
3G's in the atmosphere and the climb out, so you'll wanna be restrained in
case that happens."



"I see," he said, the nervousness coming back a little.



The ground crew had already activated the fusion reactors and filled the
propulsion system tank with fresh liquid hydrogen from the base's huge
storage tanks. Carrie ran through a ten minute pre-flight check and then
requested clearance to leave the berth and head for the departure corridor.
Permission was granted and a minute later she activated the maneuvering
thrusters on the side of the ship and began to ease away from the dock. It
took almost twenty minutes before they were far enough away from Salinous
and in the proper alignment to begin their main engine burn.



"HD-707, ready for burn," Carrie told the flight controller when all systems
were go.



"Fuckin' aye," replied the controller. "Light your shit up when ready. Catch
your ass when you get back, if you don't fireball that is."



"Lightin' my shit up," Carrie said, pushing the initiation button.



The fusion engines came to life at full thrust, imparting a hum and a slight
vibration to the cockpit. The instrumentation screen told Ken they were now
accelerating at three times the force of gravity-or, in other words, picking
up speed at the rate of almost thirty meters per second.



"We'll accelerate at 3G's for 61 minutes," Carrie told him. "That will have
us traveling about 380,000 kilometers per hour. We'll idle the fusion drive
at that point and coast for ninety minutes. Then we'll turn around and
decelerate at 3Gs to Saturn's orbital speed. That's 120,000 KPH. We'll look
for a relatively smooth section of the atmosphere and then decelerate again,
to just below sub-orbital speed. Then we'll release the probe, put our nose
forward and drift on down into the atmosphere. Once we make contact, we put
on the engines and match our speed to the probe to keep it from ripping
free."



"How long will the run take?"



"About 30 minutes to fill the collection tank. Another ten or fifteen to
pull back out into space. We'll finish our circle around the planet and then
light up the engines again and head for home."



"As simple as that, huh?"



"As simple as that," she confirmed with a smile.



"And you do this twice a week?"



"Not a bad workweek, is it?" she asked. "That leaves five full days for
intoxicants, botching, and fucking."



"And what do you do on vacation?" he wanted to know.



She laughed. "I go to Mars and visit my family and live like a respectable
Martian."



Saturn continued to grow bigger before them, soon taking up almost the
entire field of view. It disappeared when they turned their ass toward it to
begin the deceleration burn. The sight of the ringed planet was replaced by
an awe-inspiring view of four of its moons drifting before them. Beyond
this, Jupiter could be seen along the ecliptic and beyond that, Mars,
glowing like a red blotch. Ken stared at these sights for the longest time,
still amazed that he was more than a billion kilometers from Mars and Earth,
riding in a fusion spacecraft traveling faster than anything ever conceived
in his day. And even this ship, this hydro-diver that made a trip of more
than half a million kilometers in a few hours, was moving at only a fraction
of the speed that Roachclip had been moving at the top of its acceleration
cycle.



They came in past the rings of the planet; close enough for Ken to see the
individual ice chunks of which they were composed. They were pulled by
gravity into a low orbit, less than 100 kilometers above the cloud tops.
Carrie oriented the ship so it was level, but facing backward. No longer
could the entire planet be made out from their perspective. It was now as if
they were above a pale yellow ocean stretching off in all directions. There
was a horizon now, razor straight, dividing Saturn from the blackness of
space around it.



"We're above a pretty smooth stretch now," Carrie said, her fingers pushing
buttons on the screen. "Starting the de-orbit burn."



She burned the engines at full thrust for ten minutes and then shut them
off.



"Deploying the probe," she said, pushing a few more buttons.



A whir of machinery sounded as the housing opened and the probe was kicked
loose. It was equipped with its own maneuvering thrusters and they began to
fire, pushing it upward. It flew off above them, soon disappearing from
sight. Carrie monitored telemetry and Doppler radar images it sent back-most
of which made no sense to Ken-and seemed to like what she was seeing.



"Okay," she said.  "Still looking good.  We're heading in."



They dropped lower and lower, though it was hardly noticeable by looking out
the window. Carrie used the maneuvering thrusters to turn the ship so it was
facing forward.



"Atmospheric contact in about 20 seconds," she said. "Engines are on
computer assist compensation mode."



"What's that?" Ken wanted to know.



"That means they'll fire on their own to compensate for the atmospheric drag
that will be trying to slow us down. If we slow down too much, the probe
will run out of cable and rip free. We'll also have to burn the engines a
lot longer to get back out. Of course the trade off is that friction and
heat increases, but the ship can take it."



"That's good to know," he said.



"Go ahead and buckle up your harness now," she directed, reaching for her
own. "I've never had an inertial damper failure before, but I'd hate to have
to clean your brains off the windshield if it happened today."



"Right," Ken said, grabbing the harness and pulling it over his head. He
clipped it into place and pulled it as tight as possible.



In a way, the initial contact with the atmosphere was anti-climatic. As far
as Ken could see, nothing happened. He had been expecting a jolt and a flare
of heat from the nose of the ship. That did not occur. The only actual
evidence that they were no longer in vacuum was the speed indicator, which
began to tick slowly downward, and the hull temperature indicator, which
began to tick slowly upward. The engines did not even kick in to compensate.



"We're at the very top of the atmosphere right now," Carrie explained. "It's
still kind of thin. Wait till we drop down a little lower, then things will
start to get exciting."



She was right. Things quickly became more exciting. As the hydrogen and
helium atmosphere got thicker, the speed indicator and the hull temperature
began to move faster and faster. The front of the ship began to glow pink
and then red. Strange sounds began to fill the cockpit-the creaking and
popping of metal, the shuddering of components. As they slowed further, the
engines lit back up, with minimal thrust at first but slowly adding power as
they dropped lower. The speed indicator stopped its downward spiral and
steadied on a reading of 32 kilometers per second. The ship continued to
drop and soon the entire vessel was shaking violently, although the inertial
damper kept Ken and Carrie from feeling it. The engines became a roar of
thrust. The pink glow from the nose turned to a fiery haze of red plasma
that streaked over the ship and obscured all views from the windshield.



"This is exciting," Ken said, a tremor in his voice, his hands clenched in
fear. This, he knew, was where every Martian hydro-diver who had been lost
had met his or her fate, during the high-friction period.



"Isn't it?" Carrie said, a bit of tension in her voice for the first time.
Ken saw that she was scared as well, although not of anything happening at
the moment, just of the unpredictable portion of her flight. "The probe is
showing an area of category 4 turbulence ahead. I'm gonna maneuver clear of
it." She pushed a few buttons and Ken watched the indicator on the screen as
the maneuvering thrusters fired, pushing them to the west about three
degrees.



"How bad is category 4?" Ken asked.



"The scale goes up to 8, so it probably wouldn't have hurt us," she
answered. "We would've been jolted around a bit and it would've made a lot
of noise. But there's no sense subjecting ourselves to it if we don't have
to, right?"



"Right," he agreed.



"We hydro-divers aren't completely insane," she said, taking a moment to pat
his leg affectionately. She then turned her attention back to the
instruments. "Okay, the air is thick enough here. Time to get the job done.
I'm opening the scoop now so we can start filling the tank. The engines are
gonna kick up quite a bit as soon as I do. The scoop increases our drag by
about 25%. It's also gonna make the ride a little bumpier-at least for the
ship."



There was a whir of machinery and then a roar as the engines increased to
three-quarters thrust. The noise of creaking metal and banging machinery
parts increased considerably, so that normal conversation in the cockpit was
difficult. The collection tank readout on the screen came to life, showing
how much atmospheric gas had been sucked up. As he watched, it moved slowly
to 1% and kept climbing, reaching 2% in about twenty seconds.



In all, it took just under thirty minutes for the tank to reach 100%
capacity. During that time Carrie maneuvered the ship twice to go around
atmospheric disturbances or electrical storms in their path. Once the tank
was full she shut the scoop and then pointed the nose of the ship upward.
The engines increased to full throttle and they clawed their way out of the
atmosphere. The fiery plasma they were creating petered out slowly and then
died completely. The hull temperature began to return to normal. The view
out the window was restored, showing once again the pale yellow ocean of
Saturn's surface. Exactly 53 minutes after making first contact with the
atmosphere, they were safely back in space again.



"And that's how Mars gets its fuel," Carrie told him with satisfaction as
the probe began to retract back towards the housing.



"I have to say," Ken told her, "you hydro-divers deserve every credit they
pay you, and you really are insane."



+++++



He got back to Roachclip at 1930 that evening, just in time to catch the
early dinner seating in the main dining room. He showered, put on fresh
clothes, and met Slurry-who had been on a tour group visiting Rhea City on
the surface of the moon-at their assigned table. She was still obviously
upset with him over his decision to accompany Carrie on her run, but was
also quite glad he had made it back safely.



"Was it worth it?" she asked him as they sucked up their pre-dinner
bonghits.



"It scared the living shit out of me," he told her. "But it was also one of
the most exhilarating things I've ever done."



She nodded. "But was it worth it?" she repeated. "The next time someone asks
you to do some dumb-ass dangerous thing, are you going to think twice about
it?"



He sighed. "It depends on what the dumb-ass dangerous thing is," he said. "I
didn't consider that to be dangerous, Slurry, even though you did. And if
someone else offers me a chance to do something similar and the odds are
about the same... yes, I'll probably do it."



She shook her head in bewilderment, but a small smile came to her face
nonetheless. "I guess that's what I get for marrying a crazy-ass twentieth,
huh?"



"I guess it is," he told her, reaching over and squeezing her hand.



Dinner that night was roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. As was all the
food on the cruise ship, it was mouth-watering delicious. They consumed
every last bite, even ordering seconds before settling down for their desert
of bread pudding. While waiting for their server to bring it out their talk
turned back to another issue they had been mulling over since deciding to
get married-that of children.



"Are you sure you want to have them right away?" Ken asked. "I mean, I want
to raise a child just as much as you do, but isn't it somewhat of a Martian
tradition to wait a few years after marriage and enjoy each other's company
alone first? Don't you want to do that?"



"Is that what you want?" she asked him, sipping from her third glass of
white wine.



"It doesn't really matter to me," he said honestly. "Although I've fathered
multiple generations of Martians, I've never got to actually experience
being a father, if you know what I mean. I'm kind of looking forward to the
experience. But are you ready to become a mother? You're going to be
starting your new job when we get back. Don't you want to get settled in a
little before you have a child?"



"I just don't see a reason why we should wait," she said. "We can work our
schedules so that one of us is always home with the baby and still have time
to spend together. We both want kids, so is there really a point in delaying
it for a few years? I really love children and I want one of my own, I want
to have a family."



As much as he loved her, as long as he had known her, Ken was still
mystified at times by Slurry's attitude and behavior. At times, she was pure
Martian, like with her concern with his hydro-diving trip. But at other
times, she was just as impulsive and unthinking as a twentieth century
resident, like with her children obsession. "I want to have a family too,"
he told her. "And if you really want to start one right away, that's fine
with me."



"Good," she said. "It's settled then. We can get the ship's doctor to remove
our reproductive blocks tonight. That way, we'll be fertile by this time
next month, and..."



"But..." he interjected.



She frowned. "There's always a but."



"No, not much of a but," he said. "What I was going to suggest, was how
about we wait until we get back, let you get settled into your new job for
at least a month before we go to the doctor and get the reproductive blocks
removed."



"A month?" she said, distressed.



"That way, you'll at least have the basic routine of the place down. If you
still feel this strongly about having a child after a month, then we'll do
it. That's not unreasonable, is it?"



She obviously wanted to say that it was unreasonable, but she couldn't quite
bring herself to. "I suppose," she finally allowed.



"Then it's settled," he said, leaning across the table and giving her a
kiss. "We have nothing but time, don't we?"



"Nothing but time," she agreed.