Spence Johansen’s grinning face filled the little screen.
“Hello there,” he said.
Jade waited for him to go on, knowing that this was either a recorded message or a call from the Earth-Moon area, hours distant even at the lightspeed of video communications.
“Hey, Jade, say something! I’m here. On Titan. Up in the flight lounge. Surprised?”
She nearly dropped the computer again.
“Spence? You’re here? It’s really you?”
“Sure, I just arrived.”
“I’ll be right up!”
Jade tossed the computer onto her bed and dashed for the door, all fatigue forgotten, all the weariness melted away. By the time she tore through the corridors and rode the power stairs up to the flight lounge, Spence already had a pair of tall frosted drinks sitting on the bar, waiting for her.
She threw herself into his arms. Their long passionate kiss drew admiring stares and a few low whistles from the other new arrivals and regulars in the lounge.
“Whatever … how did you … why … ?” Jade had a million questions bubbling within her.
Johansen smiled, almost sheepishly. “Ol’ Jefferson got kind of boring after you went away. I missed you, Jade. Missed you a lot.”
“So much that you came all the way out here?”
He shrugged.
She perched on the bar-stool next to his, ignoring the drink standing before her, all her attention on this man who had traveled across half the solar system. To be with her.
“I missed you, too, Spence.”
“Did you?”
“Enormously.” She suddenly grinned maliciously. “Considering where we are, I might say titanically.”
Spence Johansen threw his head back and laughed a genuine, hearty, full-throated laugh. And Jade knew that she loved him.
She took his big hand in her little one and tugged him off the bar-stool. “Come on,” she said. “There’s so much I’ve got to tell you. Come on to my room where we can be alone together.”
Without another word, Spence allowed the elfin little woman to lead him away.
There is no natural day/night cycle on Titan. Ten times farther from the Sun than Earth is, Saturn’s major moon is always in gloomy twilight, at best. Usually its murky, clouded atmosphere even blots out the pale light from Saturn itself.
The university base kept Greenwich Mean Time. The lights in the windowless base’s corridors and public areas dimmed at 2000 hours and went down to a “night” equivalent at 2200, then came up to “morning” at 0700.
Jade and Spence had no way of knowing the time. He had purposely put his shaving kit in front of the dorm room’s digital clock, so that from the bed they could not see it. The only light in the room was from the video window, which they had set on views of the methane sea up on the surface: shadowy, muted, almost formless.
Jade told Spence about all her discoveries, and the pain that they brought. He seemed utterly surprised when she explained that she was probably Sam Gunn’s daughter.
“Talk about kismet,” he whispered low. “For both of us.”
“If Sam were alive he could give the bride away,” Jade said.
“And then be my best man.” Spence chuckled softly in the shadows. “Just like him to turn the ordinary rules upside down.”
They made love again, languidly, unhurriedly. They slept and then made love once more. And talked. Talked of the past, of the wondrous ways that lives can intertwine, of the surprises and sheer luck—good or bad—that can determine a person’s fate. Talked of the pain one person can inflict on another without even knowing it. Talked of the happiness that can be had when two people click just right, as they had done.
Suddenly a new question popped into Jade’s mind. “How many children do you have?” she asked. “Am I going to be a stepmother?”
In the darkened room she could barely see him shake his head. “Never stayed married long enough to have kids. But now…” His voice drifted into silence.
“I want babies. Lots of them.”
“Me too,” he said. “At least two.”
“A boy and a girl.”
“Right.”
“And then maybe two more.”
He laughed softly. “Maybe we ought to have twins.”
“That would be more efficient, wouldn’t it?”
“Want a big wedding? The main chapel at Selene and all the trimmings?” ]ade shook her head. “I never even thought about it. No, I don’t think I know enough people to invite.”
“My parents are gone, but we could ask your adoptive mother to come up.”
“No!” Jade snapped. “She abandoned me. I haven’t seen her for seventeen years. Let it stay that way.”
“But she’s the only kin you have.”
She peered at the video window, the murky gloom of the methane sea. “I have family. Lots of family. Monica Bianco and Zach Bonner and Felix Sanchez. Frederick Mohammed Malone. Rick Darling. Elverda Apacheta. The owner of the Pelican Bar. They’re my family. They’d come to Selene for my wedding, if I asked them to.”
Spence said, “And here I thought you were an orphan.”
“Not anymore,” Jade answered, surprised at the reality of it. I’m not alone, she told herself. I have friends all across the solar system now. And a man who loves me.
“I’m pretty old for you,” Spence said in the darkness. “Hell, if Sam really is your father, I’m a year or two older than he is.”
“Would you be embarrassed to have a wife young enough to be your daughter?” she asked, half teasing, half fearful of his answer.
“Embarrassed? Hell no! Every guy my age will eat his heart out with envy the minute he meets you.”
Jade laughed, relieved.
“But there’s you to think about,” he said, turning toward her in the bed. “How’re you going to feel, tied to an old fart like me when you’re so young? There’s plenty of stories about old men with young wives….”
“Old stories,” Jade quickly said. “Stories from ancient times. You’re as young and vigorous as Sir Lancelot was, and you’ll stay that way for another thirty or forty years, at least, thanks to modern medicine.”
He propped himself on one elbow and, with his other hand, traced a finger from her lips to her chin, down her throat and the length of her body. Jade felt her skin tingle at his touch.
“Well,” he said, quite seriously, “I’m sure going to keep abreast of all the research going on in the field of aging and rejuvenation.”
Jade burst out laughing and grabbed for him. They made love again and then drifted back to sleep.
It was the phone buzzer that awoke Jade. She blinked once, twice, coming out of the fog, suddenly panicked that she had been dreaming. Then she felt the warmth of Spence’s body next to hers and heard him snoring softly, almost like the purr of a contented cat.
Smiling, she groped in the dark for the oblong box that controlled the wall screen. Without turning on any lights she pecked at the keys until the scene of the methane sea was replaced by bold yellow lettering:
URGENT CALL FROM PROF. GOODMAN.
Jade had to turn on her bedside lamp to see the control wand well enough to tap out the command that put Goodman on the video window without activating the wall camera that would let him see her.
Spence stirred groggily. “Whassamatter?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Goodman was apparently in the communications center, hunched over a technician who was sitting at one of the consoles. Display screens covered the wall behind him, no two of them showing the same picture.
The professor was scowling fiercely. Or was his expression one of fear? Or even utter surprise, shock? Jade could not tell.
“Professor Goodman? This is Jade.”
“Oh!” He jumped back slightly, as if pricked by a hot needle. “There’s no video.”