Captain Tani didn’t get the option to choose her crew. When Towers said “hand-picked” she meant hand-picked by herself, not the Captain. It was a minor breach of protocol, but not something Yoko was going to raise too much of a stink over. She was sure Towers had her reasons.

Her first mate and navigator would be Heather Twelvetrees, a Native American woman and an able officer with whom Yoko had served before. Heather, like Yoko herself, had a genius IQ and was one of the most decorated women in the service. She was tall and thin, with jet-black hair, piercing brown eyes, and a beautiful face. Heather had been a track star at the Academy, and had maintained that sleek runner’s frame, even at 32. She was well-liked, but known for her sarcastic wit.

The engineer would be Brenda “Brendy” Leeson, a beautiful, short black woman built, as Yoko’s grandfather would have said, “like a brick shithouse”. Her career record was checkered at best, with a number of incidents involving sexual harrassment of the women serving under her. The only thing that had kept her from being chucked out of the service was that she too had a genius-level intellect.

The last person on the list shocked Yoko. It was Marla Jones, her old roommate at the Academy. They never really got along and when Marla was assigned to the Medical Corps, Yoko was thrilled with the idea that she’d never have to put up with Marla’s prejudiced attitude again. Marla, like the other women, was also a genius.

The ship, the Iphis, was an old-style grav-rotator, which spun constantly to maintain an artificial gravity within its confines. For a crew of four, the ship would feel like an office building. At one time, there had been a dozen of them in the fleet, but they were phased out as faster ships with the more realistic art-grav were designed and built. The Iphis had been retrofitted with the fastest engine available to get them to Saturn in two weeks, but still, the ship must have been a throw-away for this mission. That indicated that the Navy wanted to make sure it wasn’t losing too much money if the ship never made it back. It was expendable and Yoko wondered if Naval Command felt the same way about the crew.

No one had heard a word from the Ardeen colony on Titan for over a month and the rumors were flying faster than a snowball in a schoolyard in winter. Some said that the whole colony was dead from some dangerous, contageous plague. Other said that African factions unhappy with Earth Gov had taken it over and killed the research team there. Another rumor was that the station had exploded and whoever did it was targeting Mars-Col next. The one theme in all of them was death, and Yoko wasn’t holding out much hope of a smooth mission.

Yoko’s last night on Mars was spent alone in her cabin, drinking. James was gone and she lived alone now. Worst of all, she had no one to blame but herself for that. He was a man, damn it! And men were much prized on Earth, let alone some place as far away as Mars-Col. Her friends all told her how lucky she was to have a real man to conceive a child with and she didn’t have to pay a dime for him. Yoko had three sisters and they all had to use artificial sperm banks to have children. With James, she could have had a child with a real, live man, which gave her a greater chance of having a male child. But Yoko’s “career first” attitude had pretty much torpedoed their relationship. When James walked out to go back to Earth, he’d left behind everything but a note.

Artificial sperm was developed to address the issue of fewer men. The problem with art-sperm was that it was made using female chromosomes. That meant an 85% probability that a male egg wouldn’t fertilize, resulting in a vicious cycle. More women were forced to use it after being unable to find enough males, which led to more female babies who would grow up to find even fewer men in their generation. The female population soared as the males dwindled. Lesbianism was rampant and males so few that attraction to men was considered outside the norm. They were still prized as breeding stock, and a number of women married men without really being attracted to them. Heterosexuality was a fetish and Yoko had no doubt that James was back on Earth, in the wildlife of San Francisco, hustling his ass to kinky, horny businesswomen with the credits or the Euros to afford his strange, wanton services of male sex.

All of her life, Yoko had been called a freak more times than she could count. She wasn’t attracted to women, and she couldn’t help that. Men made her heart beat faster and she had been beautiful and charming enough to have had three boyfriends in her life. She didn’t know many people who had even had one. Now she was going on what she increasingly suspected was a suicide mission to the farthest colony in the system and she’d probably never see her family again or even have a child.

Yoko thought of her first boyfriend, Reggie. She had really loved him, but she was a jealous woman and couldn’t cope with Earth Gov’s ridiculous law that required a virile male to have four wifes in hopes of more male children. That’s why she was so excited to find James piloting a freighter between Earth and Mars-Col. They hit it off immediately and James quit his job to be Yoko’s “kept man”. The four-wife law didn’t apply on Mars, and while she had never admitted, even to herself, that she loved James, she had him all to herself. At least until she screwed it up.

She finished off her last glass of synthohol and lied down in her bed, closing her eyes. Her last thought before sleep claimed her was of James.

“What do you think of him?” Heather Twelvetrees said as they strolled the spacious cooridor of C-Deck of the Iphis. “Structurally, I mean. I’ve never served on one of these old buckets.”

“He’s a good ship,” Yoko said, running a finger along the plastic-covered metal walls as they walked. “I was a junior engineer aboard The Britney Spears when I was fresh out of the Academy, and this ship is almost an exact copy. You’d be surprised how sound these older ships are. They can take a lot of punishment.”

“I hope we can say the same for the crew,” Heather remarked. “I had a long talk with Dr. Jones right before we left. What a bitch.”

Yoko smiled. “What did she say?”

“I’m only telling you this because we’ve served together before and I like you... Is this off the record, Yoko?”

Captain Tani shrugged. “I guess so.”

“She referred to you as ‘Captain Faggot’.”

Yoko stopped dead in her tracks. “Captain Faggot?”

“Her exact words.” Heather looked at the other woman closely. “You’re not going to cry, are you? Cause I really hate that shit.”

Yoko shrugged. “I’ve been called worse. And by better women than Marla Jones.”

“Yeah,” Heather agreed as they started walking again. “She’s got a rep. Word is that she’s such an asshole she was delivered by a proctologist.”

“What about Leeson?” Yoko asked.

“Hit on me two minutes after we met.”

“And?”

“I’m considering it. She’s cute.”

“This isn’t a pleasure cruise, Commander Twelvetrees,” Yoko said. “I don’t need anything going on that’s going to detract from our mission.”

“Which is?”

“I’m on my way now to my cabin to break the seal on my orders. There’s a holodisk in the envelope. As my exec, I’d like you there when I play it.”

“I’ll bring the popcorn.”

The captain’s quarters were amazingly spacious. That’s because a couple of walls had been knocked down, making the cabin as big as three were originally. An updated comm system had been installed and some cosmetic changes made, but it had been done in a hurry; the three original bathrooms were still there.

“At least you have rest stops if you walk from one end to the other,” Heather said, her voice echoing in the sparely-furnished cabin.

“It’s bigger than my grandfather’s farm in Ohio,” Yoko joked as they walked to the desk and the holoplayer. “He’d have loved all of this. It was all sci-fi in his day.”

“You knew your grandfather?” Heather asked. “That’s so cool. There were no men left in my family when I was born. What was he like?”

“Think ‘typical female’ and invert everything you know. Men aren’t like us.”

“That’s what I hear.” Heather paused. “I heard about James, Captain. I’m sorry.”

Yoko shrugged. “It was my fault. I’m not in the mood to get melancholy, Heather. Let’s just play the orders.” She opened the envelope, expecting a few pages of memos, but the papers that had been stuffed into it were all blank. The holodisk slid out with them. Yoko slipped it into the player and a small, 3-D image of Commodore Towers appeared above the laser projector lens on the desk surface.

“Hello, Captain Tani,” the older woman’s holo-image said. “If you’re watching this, you’ve embarked on your mission to Titan. This is going to be a difficult situation to explain and particularly difficult to grasp its far-reaching implications. Let’s start with the last few messages we received from the Ardeen Colony.”

Commodore Helen Towers’ image disappeared to be replaced with a 2-D image of a woman in her mid 30’s, seated behind a desk and wearing a lab coat. She was a very small woman and appeared to have some Chinese ancestry. Her features were partially obscured by large glasses and her straight, black hair framed her round face. “This is Dr. Amanda Richards of Research Lab Theta-One on Ardeen-Col to Dr. Wilma Forrest on Mars-Col. Wilma, we’ve managed to extract the alien artifact from the crash site.”

“Alien?” Heather asked.

“Shhh.”

“We’re not sure what it is,” Dr. Richards continued. “Rachel thinks it’s alive, but Nora insists that it’s a device. We’re getting evidence that they’re both right and I can’t tell you how exciting a find this is. Brandy Norquist is on our staff and she’s one of the premier alienologists in the service. Even she’s stumped. You’ll find images and data attachments with this video and I’ll update you again tomorrow. Say ‘hello’ to your kids for me. Richards out.”

The scene flickerd for a minute, then Dr. Richards reappeared. She smiled a little. “This is Dr. Amanda Richards of Research Lab Theta-One on Ardeen-Col to Dr. Wilma Forrest on Mars-Col. Wow, you’re not gonna believe this, Wilma. I was right. That little sucker is both alive and a machine. Imagine a machine you could accidentally kill if you do the wrong things to it. That’s what we’re dealing with here, and Norquist is pushing for us to shut down and turn it over immediately to Earth Gov. I was all ‘no way’ cause we’ve never had an alien anything before and she’s like ‘way’, so we’re going to fight this out.” The image of the Chinese woman giggled. “I’ll fill you in later, dude. Kiss the kids for me. Amanda out.”

Yoko and Heather looked inquisitively at each other. “That was a little weird,” Heather remarked.

The image flickered again and Dr. Richards reappeared, smiling at the camera. She looked a little spacy and her lab coat buttons weren’t matched to the proper holes. “Mandy to Wilma. Hey, girlfriend. We got, like, the alien-thingy on the table and we were all trying to decide what to do with it, when Brandy just grabbed it and ran. That girl is so rude, y’know? Anyway, we’re combing the... the... colony-place trying to find her ass. You wouldn’t believe how many places there are to hide in this dump. All seven of us...” she frowned. “No, six of us. I can’t really count Brandy, can I? Anyway, we’re all looking for that bitch and when we find her it’s gonna get messy. I’ll get back to you when I got a mo. Smoochies! Byeeeeee.” Dr. Richards waved at the camera like a drunken teenager in a ‘Girls Gone Wild’ video.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Yoko whispered.

“Yeah,” Heather replied. “I saw that movie too.”

Amanda Richards appeared yet again on the screen. Her lab coat and her blouse were both open, exposing her small breasts to the camera. She’d lost her glasses somewhere along the way and the look on her face was even more vapid than the last time, if that was humanly possible. “Willllllma, I’m hooooome!” she shouted and giggled. “I love that cartoon!” She squirmed a little and moaned. “Anyways, Rachel sends her love.” A hand popped up from beneath the desk and waved at the camera. “Rachel is so fuckin’ good with her tongue, y’know? Truth is, we never did find that slut Brandy and we’ve all kinda given up looking. She’s really good at hide-n-seek. But we’re... oh gawd, yeah! Right there, Rach! We’re all real busy here, so I’ll, like, report back if anything changes.... Shit, baby! So tweak yer own nips for me, Wilma, and I’ll, like, ttyl, right? Buenos Noches!”

Commodore Towers reappeared. “Question and answer time, Tani.”

“What’s the capitol of Iowa?” Heather asked. Yoko poked her in the side.

“I’m not programmed for that response,” Commodore Towers’ image said.

Heather grinned. “I love it when they do that.”

Yoko rolled her eyes. “Why didn’t you send a battleship to deal with this?”

“We did,” Towers replied. “We sent the Farragut. All hands were lost along the way.”

“What?!” Yoko said in shock. “Why? What happened?”

“Someone opened an airlock and sucked everything out of the ship, including the bridge crew,” Towers answered.

“Why would someone do a damned fool thing like that?” Heather asked.

“Here’s the last transmission we got from the Farragut,” Towers said.

Yoko and Heather both recognized Captain Jenna Hart of the Farragut, sitting haphazardly in her command chair, grinning like a fool. She had on her tunic, but it was obvious that her pants were off and she was playing with herself in full view of the camera! “Hey, Helen-baby,” Hart said, giggling. “We’re, like, almost to Titan and woman alive, am I horny! I could fuck a lieutenant across the nav console with a dildo... And I think I just did.” She held up a long, green, bullet-shaped cylinder and waved it.

A nude young woman appeared from the lower right of the screen and looked at the camera and waved. “Hiiiii! She means me,” she giggled, then disappeared again.

“Anyway,” Captain Hart continued, “we’ll have this wrapped up in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, then the girls and I are going on a little shore leave.”

“Shore leave, yaaaaay!” came another woman’s voice, off-screen. “I know the way!”

Someone walked from one side of the bridge to the other, behind the captain. After a few seconds, a computer voice said “Warning, Airlock Breached.” The last coherent image was of Captain Jenna Hart looking to her left, toward the airlock, and smiling before she, two crew-women and anything that wasn’t nailed down, flew quickly from left to right and completely off-screen. The bridge was silent for a few seconds before the image disappeared to again be replaced by Commodore Towers.

“As I said, that’s the last we heard. Hart’s reports were a gradual slide into insanity, culminating in the unsettling video you just saw. Apparently, whatever this is can affect anything within millions of miles of Titan and the closer you get, the less intelligence you have. You four are the absolute brightest the Navy has to offer. We’re hoping that you’ll retain enough intelligence to get to Titan and either reason with or kill that alien machine/creature hybrid, which seems to be the cause of this.”

“What if it’s not?” Yoko asked. “It could just be a coincidence that they found the alien artifact at the same time that this weird situation came up.”

“That’s a possibility,” Towers’ image agreed, “and we’ve considered it, but our original hypothesis seems the most likely.”

“What’s the likelyhood that once this thing is shut down, we’ll regain our intelligence?” Heather asked.

“Unknown,” Towers replied. “I’m sorry, ladies, but this could be a one-way trip to idiocy.”

“You know,” Yoko snapped, rubbing her forehead. “Navy procedure requires you to ask for volunteers for hazardous missions, explaining the consequences.”

“As I said,” Commodore Towers stated, “Special dispensation for a special mission. Whatever this... this stupidity-field is, it’s spreading. It’ll affect Mars-Col within the year and Earth a few months after that. We’ll all be horny, babbling idiots.”

“What’s to stop me from turning this ship around and letting you send someone else on this damn mission?” Yoko asked.

“Your flight is pre-programmed and locked in, Captain Tani,” Towers said. “Whatever you do, you’re going to Titan, so as long as you’re in the neighborhood, you might as well run this little errand for us.”

“You’re a real bitch, Commodore! You know that?” Yoko snapped.

“I’m not programmed for that response,” Commodore Towers’ image said. “A copy of this dialogue will be sent to Mars-Col for official records. Towers out.” The little image of Commodore Helen Towers blinked off.

“If we get out of this alive,” Heather said, “I’m kicking her ass all the way back to Earth.”

“Heather, get with Jones and Leeson and make sure every airlock is coded so you have to pass some sort of intelligence test to open it. Seal off every dangerous section of this ship. I want the whole place babyproofed within the next 10 hours. If we’re all going to be bimbos by the time we get there, let’s do everything we can to avoid killing ourselves in the process.”

“So we just do what Towers wants us to do?” Heather asked. “I don’t like being her puppet.”

“Neither do I,” Yoko agreed, “but like most puppets, we don’t have much choice. That’s what being a puppet means. After we make this ship idiot-proof, we’ll explain what’s going on to Dr. Jones. Maybe there’s something that can be done medically to prevent us turning out like those poor bastards on the Farragut or Ardeen-Col.”

“We’ll explain it to Jones?” Heather asked. “What about Leeson? Doesn’t she have a right to know?”

“We’ll deal with what Leeson does and doesn’t know later,” Yoko said. “Right now, let’s get busy. I have no idea how long we have before we’re all a bunch of drooling, sexual deviants, and we have a lot to do.”