We spotted a tiny glimmering dot on our left while the Roadhog was making final adjustments with its maneuvering jets. It grew rapidly: a silvery ball sprouting antennas and small attitude jets. It was one of the older satellites, which probably explained why it failed.
Jenny stayed in the shuttle while I coasted across to the satellite. It was basketball-sized, its shiny skin pitted. I pulled out several shelves of circuitry, disconnected the Faraday cup and went back to Jenny.
We both looked over the parts and discussed what to do about them. That’s the advantage of sending out a human being, rather than relying on multiple backup systems—the space around Jupiter is unknown, and no engineer back on Earth can predict what will happen to his pet gadget after a few years of pounding from high-energy electrons, dust and micrometeorites. In jargonese they call it “failure to allow for contingencies.”
We made some repairs on the circuitry. Working in gloves is awkward and even slipping microchip decks snugly into place can be difficult. We both had modified our suits for the work. We had a big flap on the chest that pulled down, revealing a big adhesive patch. Pull the flap down, stick the securing tab on a knee, and there you have half a square meter of microhooks. They’ll hang onto anything until you give it a good tug. If you’ve ever chased a lost thermocouple over a cubic klick of space, because you let go of it for a nanosecond or two, you’d appreciate an adhesive patch. Some techs have them on their arms, legs, every place they can see and reach.
After the standard repairs, I looked at the cup. It was a mess. Intermittent shorts, crappy signal characteristics. I didn’t think much of the design, either. Looked like ancient history. “Maybe we should keep it as it is,” I suggested. “For a museum piece.” Under Jenny’s schoolmarm eye I took it out, worked the replacement in, checked connections, and then ran a few tests on the rest of the oversized silver basketball. Everything looked okay. I coasted back.
“Not bad,” Jenny said. “You only took fifty-three minutes.”
On the long arc back we ate some squeeze-soup and tried to relax. I was tired. There is a kind of tension that comes from carrying out delicate operations in zero-g. Your muscles do far more than is necessary, without your even knowing it. Only later do you feel the aches seep into your joints.
Satellite Fourteen was one of the three satellites that looped in close over the pole, to get readings where the magnetic fields are strongest. We got a good view of the Great White Oval, a mixmaster of colors inside a glaring white swirl. As we watched it Jenny and I started to talk. The grand dance of Jove went on beneath, so vivid and alive you felt as if you could reach out and touch it. Somebody had called it “the greatest found art object in the solar system,” back in the twentieth century. Dead right. God’s palette. And as we stared at the hypnotic technicolor swirl, Jenny and I began to talk, really talk. And what came out was a lot of the things I’d always thought but never said.
I told her about the way the whole social thing looks to me—and to a lot of boys growing up. We’re driven by a big urge—get laid! the hormones sing. But everybody says, no, you’re too young. You’ll get in trouble. You sort of expect your parents and The System to keep saying no—they always do; they’re cautious. So you discount that. But the girls say it, too. That’s because they’ve been sold a bill of goods, just like us. They have everybody wagging fingers at them, saying Watch out! Don’t give in. Don’t even think of giving in. You’re not ready for it, emotionally ready. And you could get pregnant. And they’re right, in a way. Girls pay the bigger price. Their whole growing-up process is filled with fears of things that might happen to them. Boys never have to worry about getting pregnant. Or raped. And suppose you’re a thirteen-year-old girl and you decide you’re going to have sex no matter what anybody says? If you do anything to prevent pregnancy, you’re in trouble. The doctor tells your parents and then they come down on you. And if you don’t see the doctor, then maybe you wind up having a baby or getting an abortion. Some choice, uh?
I could see all that. Girls had it hard. Maybe harder than we did. Or maybe the trouble was just different. Boys had this drive and it seemed powerful as hell. You thought about it all the time.
Jenny said, well, sure, she thought about sex; but not all the time. Maybe for boys it was different. For girls, sex was an expression of something else a lot of the time. Of affection. Or of a sense of self-esteem (I’m a woman; somebody wants me). Or sometimes as a reward to the boy for something. And a girl sees images of women all over the place while she’s growing up—magazines, 3D ads. And they’re all actresses’ pinups, beautifully groomed and busty and leggy. “Most girls get a kind of inferiority complex out of all that,” Jenny said. “So sex gets to be a thing you’re kind of shy of, because compared to those gorgeous women on 3D, you’re not so much. How could any man desire you?”
There were two reactions to this, she murmured, making a sour expression. A girl could go out and try to prove herself—and run all the risks I had been talking about. Or she could just hang back, shy. Neither solution really worked. It just delayed the real problem, which was coming to grips with your own personality, who you really were.
Maybe so, I said, but it seemed to me we all got wounded. After a while of frustration, a guy got to seeing girls as the enemy. They were the ones doing the rejecting, the ones who were holding out. They could come across if they wanted to. So a guy builds up this resentment of women, and he keeps it. Even after he’s got things sort of straightened out, there are always those years when he was a teenager and every hand was turned against what his body told him to do. Walking wounded, yeah. A guy doesn’t forget.
Jenny said softly, “I think I see what you mean. The training we get from our parents and others—it makes us think the other sex is different, an enemy. Sure, maybe they don’t intend it to have that effect. But it does.”
“Right.”
“We’re all victims, then.”
“Yeah. I can understand how things got this way…”
“Especially out here in the Can.”
“Right. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
She nodded solemnly and looked at me. “I don’t either.”
The talk sort of dribbled off. We started to get tired. We buckled in and got some hours of zero-g sleep.
When the bridge of the Can called. I woke up. I felt pretty well rested. The Can was already a glowing dot, spinning patiently.
I jockeyed Roadhog into the bay and we both did the refueling; it was beginning to look like we would make a good team. Most shuttle hops weren’t so long and one operator would do, but on jobs like this one the bridge liked two pilots along.
I felt good. It seemed like something to celebrate, so I invited Jenny for a drink—a real one, not a milkshake.
I unsuited, went through the ’fresher—ever smell someone who’s been working in a space suit for over thirteen hours?—and waited for Jenny in the tube outside the women’s area. I had planned on taking her to the small officer’s bar on one of the outer levels, where a big 3D screen gives views of Earth and I thought we wouldn’t meet anyone we knew. It was 20:00 hours, ship’s time, well past the cocktail hour.
I had just leaned against the wall when Zak came loping along, panting.
“I figured you’d be here,” he gasped. “Want—wanted to catch you.”