He stepped over one couple grappling on the deck: a greying older man with a compact, solid-looking body and a big hefty woman with dark skin and golden hair. Lawler thought vaguely that he might have known them once; but, as before, no names came. Beyond them a small bright-eyed man flitted by alone, and then there was another couple locked in a close embrace, the man huge and muscular, the woman lithe, youthful, vigorous.
“You!” came a voice from the shadows. “Here!”
She was sprawled below the bridge, beckoning to him, a sturdy broad-bodied woman with a flat-featured face, orange hair, a sprinkling of reddish freckles on her face and breasts. She was shiny with sweat, breathing hard. Lawler knelt by her and she drew him down and gripped him between her thighs.
“Give it to me! Give it to me!”
He slipped easily inside her. She was warm and lathered and soft. Her arms enfolded him. She crushed him down against her heavy breasts. His hips moved in urgent thrusts. It was quick, wild, fierce, a hard grunting moment of rut. Almost as soon as he began to move, Lawler felt the walls of her hot moist passage quivering and tightening on him in deep, steady spasms. He could feel the impulses of pleasure running along her nerve-channels. That was confusing, that he should be feeling what she was feeling. An instant later came his spurting response, and he could feel that in a double way too, not only his sensations but hers as she received his fluid. That too was very strange. It was difficult to tell where his consciousness left off and hers began.
He rolled away from her. She reached for him, trying to pull him back, but no, no, he was on his way. He wanted another partner now. That single throbbing moment hadn’t been nearly enough to ease the need that drove him. It might be that nothing could. But perhaps he could find the tall slender one next, or else that robust young sleek-limbed one who seemed to be overflowing with vital energies. Or even the big dark-skinned one with the golden hair. It made no difference which one. He was insatiable, inexhaustible.
There was the slender one, by herself once more. Lawler started toward her. Too late! The hairy thick-bodied man with fleshy breasts like a woman’s seized her and claimed her. Off they went into the darkness.
Well, the big one, then—Or the young one—
“Lawler!” a man’s voice said.
“Who’s that?”
“Quillan! Here! Here!”
It was the angular man, the man who seemed to have no flesh. He came out from behind the place where the water-strider was stowed and took hold of Lawler’s arm. Lawler shook him off. “No, not you—it’s not a man that I’m after—”
“Neither am I. Nor a woman, either. Good lord, Lawler! Have you all gone crazy?”
“What?”
“Stand here with me and watch what’s going on. This lunatic orgy.”
Lawler shook his head muzzily. “What? What? Orgy?”
“You see Sundira Thane and Delagard going at it over there? Kinverson and Pilya? And look, look, there’s Neyana, moaning for it like a madwoman. You’ve just finished with her yourself, haven’t you? And already you want more. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Lawler clutched his loins. “I feel—pain—here—”
“It’s something out of the sea that’s doing it to us. Affecting our minds. I feel it too. But I’m able to control myself. Whereas you—the whole crazed lot of you—”
Lawler had great difficulty understanding what the bony man was telling him. He began to move away. Now he saw the big golden-haired woman wandering the deck, looking for her next partner.
“Lawler, come back!”
“Wait—later—we can talk later—”
As he shambled toward the woman a slender dark male figure moved past him, calling out, “Father-sir! Doctor-sir! I see it! Over here, over the side!”
“What do you see, Gharkid?” the angular one called Quillan asked.
“A big limpet, Father-sir. Attached to the hull. It must be sending out some chemical—some drug—”
“Lawler! Come look at what Gharkid’s found!”
“Later—later—”
But they were merciless. They went toward him and took him by the arms, one gripping him on each side, and marched him toward the rail. Lawler peered over. Here the sensations were far more intense than anywhere else on board: Lawler felt a deep rhythmic thrumming along his backbone, a stupefying pounding in his groin. His balls tolled like bells. His rigid penis trembled and jerked upright, pointing at the stars.
He fought to clear his brain. He could barely comprehend what was happening.
A thing invading the ship, driving everybody crazy with lust.
Names returned to his mind and he matched them with faces and forms. Quillan. Gharkid. Resisting the force. And those who hadn’t: he and Neyana, Sundira and Martello, Sundira and Delagard. Kinverson and Pilya. Felk and Lis. On and on in an unending change of partners, a feverish dance of pricks and cunts. Where was Lis? He wanted Lis. He had never wanted her before. He had never wanted Neyana either. But he did now. Now, Lis, yes. And then Pilya, finally. Give her what she’s been after this whole voyage. And Sundira after that. Get her away from loathsome Delagard. Sundira, yes, and then Neyana again, and Lis, and Pilya—Sundira, Neyana, Pilya, Lis—fuck till dawn—fuck till noon—fuck till the end of time—
“I’m going to kill it,” Quillan said. “Hand me that gaff, Natim.”
“You don’t feel its force?” Lawler asked. “You’re immune?”
“Of course I’m not immune,” the priest said.
“So your vows—”
“It isn’t the vows that are holding me back. It’s simple fear, Lawler.” To Gharkid Quillan said, “The gaff should just about reach. Hang on to my legs so I don’t go overboard.”
“Let me do it,” Lawler said. “My arms are longer than yours.”
“Stay where you are.”
The priest pulled himself up on the rail and wriggled down the outer side of the hull. Gharkid grabbed his legs. Lawler steadied Gharkid. Looking down, Lawler saw something that looked like a bright yellow plaque perhaps a metre across clinging to the ship just above the water-line. It was flat and circular with a little puckered dome in its centre. Quillan reached down as far as he could and stabbed at it. Again. Again. A tiny spurt of blue fluid rose like a feeble little fountain from the creature’s back. Another poke. The creature quivered convulsively.
Lawler felt the pain in his loins beginning to ease.
“Hold me tighter!” Quillan called. “I’m starting to slip!”
“No, Father-sir. No!”
Lawler clamped his hands around Quillan’s upturned ankles. He felt the priest’s body go taut as he bent away from the ship, reached downward, drove the gaff home with a short hard thrust. The thing clinging to the ship rippled wildly along its fleshy perimeter. Its colour darkened to a deep green, then to a morbid black; sudden writhing ridges arose in its soft flesh; it drew itself up and fell back into the sea and was swept off into the ship’s wake.
Almost at once Lawler felt his mind throw off the last of its fog.
“My God,” he said. “What was it?”
“A limpet is what Gharkid called it,” said Quillan. “Stuck to the ship, dousing us all with wild pheromones.” He was quivering as though released from some unbearable tension. “Some of us were able to fight it. Some weren’t.”
Lawler looked updeck. Everywhere naked people were wandering slowly about, looking dazed, like newly awakened sleepers. Leo Martello stood beside Neyana, staring at her as if he had never seen her before in his life. Kinverson was with Lis Niklaus. Lawler’s eyes met Sundira’s. She seemed stunned. Her hand brushed again and again across her flat bare belly in an anguished scrubbing motion, as if to rub away the impress of Delagard’s flesh against her own.