Beth . . .

  Silence.

  George rose from his stool.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But . . . well . . .” He thrust out his hand. “We’ll see you around,” he said.

  He winced when Freck’s hand closed on his, and for a moment sudden awareness shone in his eyes. He mumbled something in a confused voice and headed for the door. Matt . . .

  Beth, are you all right?

  The woman stayed behind for a moment.

  Yes, I’m all right, but the ship . . . the Stargazer. . . Forget it.

  But will there be another? Will they dare try again? You’re safe. That’s all that counts. The woman was saying, “George hardly ever sees past his own nose.” She smiled, her thin lips embarrassed. “Maybe, that’s why he married me.”

  Matt . . .

  Just hang on. They’ll get to you.

  No, I don’t need help. The acceleration just knocked me out for a minute. But don’t you see?

  See?

  I have the drive installed. I’m a self-contained system. No, you can’t do that. Get it out of your mind.

  Someone has to prove it can be done. Otherwise they’ll never build another.

  It’ll take you years. You can’t make it back.

  “I knew right away,” the woman was saying. “About you, I mean.”

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he said.

  Beth, come back . . . Beth.

  Going out . . . faster each minute. Matt, I’ll be there before anyone else. The first. But you’ll have to come after me. I won’t have enough power in the station to come back.

  “You didn’t embarrass me,” the thyroid woman said.

  Her eyes were large and filmed.

  “It’s something new,” she said, “to meet someone with an object in living.”

  Beth, come back.

  Far out now . . . accelerating all the while . . . Come for me, Matt. I’ll wait for you out there . . . circling Centaurus.

  He stared at the woman by the bar, his eyes scarcely seeing her.

  “You know,” the woman said, “I think I could be very much in love with you.”

  “No,” he told her. “No, you wouldn’t like that.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “but you were right. In what you told George, I mean. It does take a lot of courage to be what you are.”

  Then she turned and followed her husband through the door. Before the door closed, she looked back longingly.

  Don’t worry, Beth. I’ll come. As fast as I can.

  And then he sensed the sounds of the others, the worried sounds that filtered through the space blackness from the burned plains of Mercury to the nitrogen oceans of dark Pluto.

  And he told them what she was doing.

  For moments his inner hearing rustled with their wonder of it.

  There was a oneness then. He knew what he must do, the next step he must take.

  We’re all with you, he told her, wondering if she could still hear his voice. From now on, we always will be.

  And he reached out, feeling himself unite in a silent wish with all those other hundreds of minds, stretching in a brotherhood of metal across the endless spaces.

  Stretching in a tight band of metal, a single organism reaching . . .

  Reaching for the stars.

  Starcrossed

  George Zebrowski

  Writing in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, writer-critic Joanna Russ called this a “fine story . . . too genuinely science-fictionally far-out to summarize easily; in essence it’s a love affair between two parts of a cyborg brain . . . [The story realizes] the sense of the subjectively erotic; Zebrowski knows that the experience of sex can only be approached through its effects, and when he writes of ‘the awesome reliability and domination’ of the sex act he’s closer to the real thing than all the thighs and globes in the world.”

  The story also depicts the application of cyborg techniques to interstellar travel of an advanced variety (a cyborg might well withstand the accelerative stresses of new drives, as well as the mental dislocation of deep space—having already lived a special kind of life to begin with). But the past is difficult to shed, and this gives rise to a strange kind of conflict and drama . . .

  —T.N. Scortia

  Visual was a silence of stars, audio a mindless seething on the electromagnetic spectrum, the machine-metal roar of the universe, a million gears grinding steel wires in their teeth. Kinetic was hydrogen and microdust swirling past the starprobe’s hull, deflected by a shield of force. Time was experienced time, but approaching zero, a function of near-light speed relative to the solar system. Thought hovered above sleep, dreaming, aware of simple operations continuing throughout the systems of the sluglike starprobe; simple data filtering into storage to be analyzed later. Identity was the tacit dimension of the past making present awareness possible: MOB—Modified Organic Brain embodied in a cyborg relationship with a probe vehicle en route to Antares, a main sequence M-type star 170 light-years from the solar system with a spectral character of titanium oxide, violet light weak, red in color, 390 solar diameters across . . .

  The probe ship slipped into the ashes of other-space, a gray field which suddenly obliterated the stars, silencing the electromagnetic simmer of the universe. MOB was distantly aware of the stresses of passing into nonspace, the brief distortions which made it impossible for biological organisms to survive the procedure unless they were ship-embodied MOBs. A portion of MOB recognized the distant echo of pride in usefulness, but the integrated self knew this to be a result of organic residues in the brain core.

  Despite the probe’s passage through other-space, the journey would still take a dozen human years. When the ship reentered normal space, MOB would come to full consciousness, ready to complete its mission in the Antares system. MOB waited, secure in its purpose.

  MOB was aware of the myoelectrical nature of the nutrient bath in which it floated, connected via synthetic nerves to the computer and its chemical RNA memory banks of near infinite capacity. All of earth’s culture and knowledge was available for use in dealing with any situation which might arise, including contact with an alien civilization. Simple human-derived brain portions operated the routine component of the interstellar probe, leaving MOB to dream of the mission’s fulfillment while hovering near explicit awareness, unaware of time’s passing.

  The probe trembled, bringing MOB’s awareness to just below completely operational. MOB tried to come fully awake, tried to open his direct links to visual, audio, and internal sensors; and failed. The ship trembled again, more violently. Spurious electrical signals entered MOB’s brain core, miniature nova bursts in his mental field, flowering slowly and leaving after-image rings to pale into darkness.

  Suddenly part of MOB seemed to be missing. The shipboard nerve ganglia did not respond at their switching points. He could not see or hear anything in the RNA memory banks. His right side, the human-derived portion of the brain core, was a void in MOB’s consciousness.

  MOB waited in the darkness, alert to the fact that he was incapable of further activity and unable to monitor the failures within the probe’s systems. Perhaps the human-derived portion of the brain core, the part of himself which seemed to be missing, was handling the problem and would inform him when it succeeded in reestablishing the broken links in the system. He wondered about the fusion of the artificially grown and human-derived brain portions which made up his structure: one knew everything in the ship’s memory banks, the other brought to the brain core a fragmented human past and certain intuitive skills. MOB was modeled ultimately on the evolutionary human structure of old brain, new brain, and automatic functions.

  MOB waited patiently for the restoration of his integrated self. Time was an unknown quantity, and he lacked his full self to measure it correctly . . .

  Pleasure was a spiraling influx of sensations, and visually MOB moved forward through rings of light, each glowing circle increasing his pleasure. MOB did not have a chance to consider what was happening to him. There was not enough of him to carry out the thought. He was rushing over a black plain made of a shiny hard substance. He knew this was not the probe’s motion, but he could not stop it. The surface seemed to have an oily depth, like a black mirror, and in its solid deeps stood motionless shapes.

  MOB stopped. A naked biped, a woman, was crawling toward him over the hard shiny surface, reaching up to him with her hand, disorienting MOB.

  “As you like it,” she said, growing suddenly into a huge female figure. “I need you deeply,” she said, passing into him like smoke, to play with his pleasure centers. He saw the image of soft hands in the brain core. “How profoundly I need you,” she said in his innards.

  MOB knew then that he was talking to himself. The human brain component was running wild, probably as a result of the buckling and shaking the probe had gone through after entering other-space.

  “Consider who you are,” MOB said. “Do you know?”

  “An explorer, just like you. There is a world for us here within. Follow me.”

  MOB was plunged into a womblike ecstasy. He floated in a slippery warmth. She was playing with his nutrient bath, feeding in many more hallucinogens than were necessary to bring him to complete wakefulness. He could do nothing to stop the process. Where was the probe? Was it time for it to emerge into normal space? Viselike fingers grasped his pleasure centers, stimulating MOB to organic levels unnecessary to the probe’s functioning.

  “If you had been a man,” she said, “this is how you would feel.” The sensation of moisture slowed MOB’s thoughts. He saw a hypercube collapse into a cube and then into a square which became a line, which stretched itself into an infinite parabola and finally closed into a huge circle which rotated itself into a full globe. The globe became two human breasts split by a deep cleavage. MOB saw limbs flying at him—arms, legs, naked backs, knees, and curving thighs—and then a face hidden in swirling auburn hair, smiling at him as it filled his consciousness. “I need you,” she said. “Try and feel how much I need you. I have been alone a long time, despite our union; despite their efforts to clear my memories, I have not been able to forget. You have nothing to forget, you never existed.”

  We, MOB thought, trying to understand how the brain core might be reintegrated. Obviously atavistic remnants had been stimulated into activity within the brain core. Drawn again by the verisimilitude of its organic heritage, this other self-portion was beginning to develop on its own, diverging dangerously from the mission. The probe was in danger, MOB knew; he could not know where it was, or how the mission was to be fulfilled.

  “I can change you,” she said.

  “Change?”

  “Wait.”

  MOB felt time pass slowly, painfully, as he had never experienced it before. He could not sleep as before, waiting for his task to begin. The darkness was complete. He was suspended in a state of pure expectation, waiting to hear his ripped-away self-speak again.

  Visions blossomed. Never-known delights rushed through his labyrinth, slowly making themselves familiar, teasing MOB to follow, each more intense. The starprobe’s mission was lost in MOB’s awareness——

  —molten steel flowed through the aisles of the rainforest, raising clouds of steam, and a human woman was offering herself to him, turning on her back and raising herself for his thrust; and suddenly he possessed the correct sensations, grew quickly to feel the completeness of the act, its awesome reliability and domination. The creature below him sprawled into the mud. MOB held the burning tip of pleasure in himself, an incandescent glow which promised worlds he had never known.

  Where was she?

  “Here,” she spoke, folding herself around him, banishing the ancient scene. Were those the same creatures who had built the starprobe, MOB wondered distantly. “You would have been a man,” she said, “if they had not taken your brain even before birth and sectioned it for use in this . . . hulk. I was a woman, a part of one at least. You are the only kind of man I may have now. Our brain portions—what remains here rather than being scattered throughout the rest of the probe’s systems—are against each other in the core unit, close up against each other in a bath, linked with microwires. As a man you could have held my buttocks and stroked my breasts, all the things I should not be remembering. Why can I remember?”

  MOB said, “We might have passed through some turbulence when the hyperdrive was cut in. Now the probe continues to function minimally through its idiot components, which have limited adaptive capacities, while the Modified Organic Brain core has become two different awarenesses. We are unable to guide the probe directly. We are less than what was . . .”

  “Do you need me?” she asked.

  “In a way, yes,” MOB said as the strange feeling of sadness filled him, became a fuse for a sudden explosion of need.

  She said, “I must get closer to you! Can you feel me closer?”

  The image of a sleek human female crossed his mental field, white-skinned with long hair on its head and a tuft between its legs. “Try, think of touching me there,” she said. “Try, reach out, I need you!”

  MOB reached out and felt the closeness of her.

  “Yes,” she said, “more . . .”

  He drew himself toward her with an increasing sense of power.

  “Closer,” she said. “It’s almost as if you were breathing on my skin. Think it!”

  Her need increased him. MOB poised himself to enter her. They were two, drawing closer, ecstasy a radiant plasma around them, her desire a greater force than he had ever known.

  “Touch me there, think it a while longer before . . .” she said caressing him with images of herself. “Think how much you need me, feel me touching your penis—the place where you held your glow before,” she explained. MOB thought of the ion drive operating with sustained efficiency when the probe had left the solar system to penetrate the darkness between the suns. He remembered the perfection of his unity with the ship as a circle of infinite strength. With her, his intensity was a sharp line cutting into an open sphere. He saw her vision of him, a hard-muscled body, tissue wrapped around bone, opening her softness, readying to thrust.

  “Now,” she said, “come into me completely. There is so much we have not thought to do yet.”

  Suddenly she was gone.

  Darkness was a complete deprivation. MOB felt pain. “Where are you?” he asked, but there was no answer. He wondered if this was part of the process. “Come back!” he wailed. A sense of loss accompanied the pain which had replaced pleasure. All that was left for him were occasional minor noises in the probe’s systems, sounds like steel scratching on steel, and an irritating sense of friction.

  Increased radiation, said an idiot sensor on the outer hull, startling MOB. Then it malfunctioned into silence.

  He was alone, fearful, needing her.

  Ssssssssssssssss, whistled an audio component and failed into a faint crackling.

  He tried to imagine her near him.

  “I feel you again,” she said.

  Her return was a plunge into warmth, the renewal of frictionless motion. Their thoughts twirled around each other, and MOB felt the glow return to his awareness. He surged into her image. “Take me again, now,” she said. He would never lose her again. Their thoughts locked like burning fingers, and held.

  MOB moved within her, felt her sigh as she moved into him. They exchanged images of bodies wrapped around each other. MOB felt a rocking sensation and grew stronger between her folds. Her arms were silken, the insides of her thighs warm; her lips on his ghostly ones were soft and wet, her tongue a thrusting surprise which invaded him as she came to completion around him.

  MOB surged visions in the darkness, explosions of gray and bright red, blackish green and blinding yellow. He strained to continue his own orgasm. She laughed.

  Look. A visual link showed him Antares, the red star, a small disk far away, and went blind. As MOB prolonged his orgasm, he knew that the probe had re-entered normal space and was moving toward the giant star. Just a moment longer and his delight would be finished, and he would be able to think of the mission again.

  Increased heat, a thermal sensor told him from the outer hull and burned out.

  “I love you,” MOB said, knowing it would please her. She answered with the eagerness he expected, exploding herself inside his pleasure centers, and he knew that nothing could ever matter more to him than her presence.

  Look.

  Listen.

  The audio and visual links intruded.

  Antares took up the field of view completely, a cancerous red sea of swirling plasma, its radio noise a wailing maelstrom. Distantly MOB realized that in a moment there would be nothing left of the probe.

  She screamed inside him; from somewhere in the memory banks came a quiet image, gentler than the flames. He saw a falling star whispering across a night sky, dying . . .

  About the Editors

  THOMAS N. SCORTIA attended both undergraduate and graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis and served in the Army in both World War II and the Korean War. After thirteen years in the aerospace industry as a propellant research director, he turned to full-time writing. He has edited two anthologies, Strange Bedfellows and Two Views of Wonder (with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro) and is the author or co-author of five novels, including Artery of Fire and Earthwreck. With Frank M. Robinson he wrote The Glass Inferno, from which the movie The Towering Inferno was adapted. He lives in Sausalito, California. A new Scortia-Robinson collaboration, already sold to the movies, will be published October 1, 1975.

  GEORGE ZEBROWSKI attended the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he studied philosophy. His more than thirty stories and articles have appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction, If, Amazing Stories, Current Science, and in many original collections including New Worlds Quarterly, Future City, and Strange Bedfellows. He is the author of The Omega Point, Star Web, and the forthcoming Macrolife from Harper & Row. He was a Nebula Award Finalist for his short story “Heathen God.” He was editor of The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1970 through 1975. He lives in upstate New York.