Yoko was sleeping soundly, Brendy spread across her lap and Heather licking on her ear, when she became vaguely aware of a feeling of euphoria, like she was floating. It took her a minute to realize that she was floating, just a little off of her bed. The three women had spent several hours there, locked in sapphic pleasure and had drifted into an exhausted sleep. Floating meant something, but she couldn’t recall what it was. Something about spinning, and her head spun lazily, so maybe that was it. It made her happy and she giggled. Everything made her happy now. Happy Yoko, Happy Brendy, Happy Heather, she reflected. Yoko hungry. Maybe Yoko can lick a nozzle.

Rough hands grabbed her and she bolted awake. Someone was putting something over her mouth and nose and she struggled. She smelled something sweet and her head was floating again, higher than her body. Higher than space. Higher than the time barrier. She couldn’t stop giggling.

“Hold still, dammit!” a muffled voice insisted. “I’m trying to save your life.”

She looked up at some sort of one-eyed silver creature, holding a breathing apparatus to her face. Brendy and Heather were floating in the air of her cabin, drifting away from her. Yoko breathed in some more of the sweet gas and felt so very, very good. And so very, very horny.

“C’mon,” the faceless creature with the huge eye said. “Breathe deep. I don’t need you three coherent, I need you completely out of it for the trip. I’ll get you fixed up, but I want you in a REM state when we cross into the cruciform.” It strapped down the gas mask to Yoko’s head, then turned around and began placing one on Heather’s face too. “I’ve only got the two gas devices, so I’ll have to come back for your friend. You two are wearing command rank insignia, so you come first.”

Yoko played quietly with the Captain’s bracelet she was wearing as she drifted in both mind and body. After a minute she blacked out.

James was licking her. She loved that and he was so good at it too. Maybe she’d suck his dick when he was finished. Or maybe not. He loved it and so did she, but she was too sleepy to really do much beyond let him service her wet slit. His tongue felt funny though, like a finger. Maybe he was just diddling her. Naughty boy! She’d have to thank him later. She was glad he came with her to Neptune. Or was it Uranus? No, there’s nothing beyond Saturn, so that must be it. They’re vacationing on Saturn. She shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs. Nobody vacations on Saturn. Just a reseach colony there. Ardeen. Ardeen! Did they make it? She tried to sit up but she was restrained.

Wait a minute, she thought to herself. Why am I thinking so clearly? Where are the other women? “Hello! Is anyone here?” she managed to croak. No answer, but her voice was pretty weak.

She saw an old-style space helmut sitting on a cluttered countertop across from her bed. That must have been the “one-eyed monster” she’d seen. The counter was full of medical equipment, including a hand-held PET scanner that she wished they’d had at the start of the trip. There was a stethoscope, a body scanner, Hodgekins repair kit, a mood stabilizer that looked pretty much drained, and a wide assortment of other medical paraphernalia. It was an odd collection from the past 500 years, including a trepanation device.

She could focus on someone standing with their back to her. Damn, she’s a big one, Yoko thought as she watched the woman hovering over another person on a different bed. The place looked like a makeshift hospital room, with three beds and old fluorescent lights. The woman turned around...

Yoko swallowed hard and gawked in surprise. It was a man! And a damned good-looking one at that. Long, blond hair and a three-day growth a beard. He had a firm chin and a slightly upturned nose. His mouth was in a half-smile. Steady blue eyes studied her intently. “Captain Tani?” he asked. “Are you alright, ma’am?”

“I’m fine,” she said, and her own voice was a little hoarse. “Thirsty though.”

“Sorry,” he said, still staring. “I’ve been busy and you’ve been unconscious. I don’t have the tools for a saline drip, but you could all stand one.” He walked over to a table and poured a glass of water.

“Why am I restrained?” Yoko asked. “And who the hell are you? There are no men on the team list for Huygens Research Center.”

“I’m not with Huygens,” he said. He extended his hand, then realizing that she couldn’t shake it, he retracted it. “I’m not even living on Ardeen. My name’s Holland Richards. Call me Holly. I was here visiting when all this shit broke out.”

“Visiting?” Yoko asked. “Nobody visits Titan. And again, why am I strapped down?”

“I do, he insisted. “My sister’s got a lot of pull. Well, my stepsister.” Holly walked to the foot of the bed and typed in a code. Yoko could suddenly move and she sat up, then immediately fell back down into the bed.

“I wouldn’t move too much at first,” Holly said, handing her the water, which she took. “The gravity here’s twice that of Earth, even with the ant-grav all the way up. After riding six weeks in a grav-rotator, you’re lucky you can breathe without an oxygen mask.”

“Took us two weeks,” Yoko said, sipping the water. She could tell by the taste that it was an electrolyte mix. “The Navy replaced the engines. That’s a Starbuck 850 strapped on to the Iphis.”

Holly whistled. “An 850? Damn, someone was in a hurry to get here. Took me four weeks aboard the Icarus, and it has a Starbuck 810-G. That’s the fastest regular flight in and out of here. It makes the trip twice an Earth year.”

He took off his surgical gloves and tossed them across the room and into a small waste basket. Impressive in the current gravity. He definitely wasn’t part of the Huygens team wearing a green and yellow civilian jumpsuit like he was. His lean frame was lanky and Yoko was drooling. Wow, even if I wasn’t already so horny, I’d be horny.

“Where’s my crew?”

Holly indicated the two other beds, where Heather and Brendy were stretched out. “Still napping. I’ve been masterbating all of you about every two hours or so. It seems to help.”

“I won’t even go there at the moment,” Tani said. “Where’s Jones?”

“Who?”

“Dr. Marla Jones. She made the trip with us.”

“I checked the ship’s roster when I boarded him,” Holly said. “You three are the only ones listed.”

“Noooo,” Yoko insisted. “We were four leaving Mars. Jones sort of disappeared, but she’s probably still on the ship.”

“I hope not,” Holly said. “I released the space docker and let the Iphis drift away.”

“You did what?!“ Yoko bolted upright in the bed again and immediately regretted it. She dropped back into the mattress. “What’s wrong with the gravity? Titan’s mass is only 80% more than Earth’s moon.”

“We’re not on Titan,” Holly said, sitting in a chair which creaked under his weight. “We’re on the surface of Saturn.”

“Holly? What the hell’s going on?” Yoko asked. “Everything you’ve told me so far makes no sense. Why would a woman I’ve known for ten years and just spent two weeks hating not show up on the ship’s roster? And why did you throw away our ride out of this dump? And why am I not an airhead?”

“That last one’s easy,” Holly said, grinning. “Lithium.”

“Lithium?”

“Treats bipolar disorder. If you think lithium’s rare on Earth, you should try mining for it here. Ain’t gonna happen.”

“We’ve been taking quetiapine,” Yoko said. She was tired and the extra gravity wasn’t helping.

“Quetiapine?” Holly asked. “What idiot made that decision? Quetiapine’s not very good against standard bipolar disorders, let alone what’s happening here. It was junked for that in the early 21st Century. Works better for psychotic episodes. You might just have well been taking sugar pills.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“Last I checked. It’s not like the diploma’s going to expire.”

Yoko sighed and lied down. “Maybe quetiapine’s all Dr. Jones had available.”

“Bullshit,” Holly said. He tried to lean back in the chair but the heavier gravity wouldn’t let him. “Old ships like that have an abundance of lithium.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most of the data backup systems in those rustbuckets use lithium-ion batteries. It’s a simple process to extract it. But I’m sure even a half-assed med lab has enough lithium for a crew of three... or four.”

“Still don’t believe me about Marla Jones, huh?” Yoko asked. She yawned.

“I just go with what I see with my eyes and the ship’s log system.”

“The log system?” Yoko closed her eyes.

“Sure. I grabbed all the data I could get my hands on, which wasn’t much with the time I had, but I snagged the logs. You three were pretty much out of it for most of the trip, and I may sell the videos on Sol-Net. Porn sites pay good money for real shit.”

“Fun-nee,” Yoko said. She yawned again. “Are you telling me you didn’t see a fourth woman on any of the logs?”

“I saw the three of you pretending that there was someone there: talking to her and acting like she was responding, but I didn’t see anyone besides you three on the videos.”

That’s weird, Yoko thought, then drifted off to sleep.

Marla scurried into an alley and hid in the shadows, behind some refuse cans. She stared out at the cooridor beyond and watched women walking back and forth. There weren’t a lot of people on Ardeen-Col, but there were enough to blend in with. They were all walking around in groups, mostly pairs, with their hands all over one another. They giggled and walked in anything but straight lines. Every woman she’d seen so far was out of it.

Still, someone was following her, she just knew it, and she wasn’t going to let Yoko Tani’s little friends get their hands on her, oh no. Those faggots were everywhere! And she knew that Heather and Brendy had fallen under Yoko’s spell. They were all having sex together. She’d turned them into man-loving faggots too. Well, she wasn’t going to do it to Marla Jones. Besides, she had a job to do.

Marla flipped open her wrist two-way. “Hey Brandy,” she whispered. “Are you there?”

“This is Brandy,” came the reply. “Where are you, baby?”

“C-level. What do they do here?”

“That’s the food-prep floor, mostly. Just stay out of the Huygens Center and you’ll be fine. When can we meet up?”

“Let me get my bearings,” Marla insisted. “Do you still have the artifact?”

“No, I sold it on Sol-Net,” Brandy said sarcastically. “Of course I still have it, stupid. Are you sure you’re taking enough lithium?”

Marla grabbed her wrist with the two-way unit to stop it from shaking. “Yeah, but I told you about me and lithium. I’m definitely having a reaction. I had to hole up in my quarters for most of the trip here. I didn’t want the others to clock to my behavior.”

“Imagine the reaction you’d be having without it,” came Brandy’s voice. “Just don’t go off of it. We have to get the artifact off of the colony as soon as possible. Then lithium won’t be an issue.”

“I think the faggots are after me,” Marla choked. “There’s a lot of them on Ardeen-Col.”

“Marla, baby,” Brandy chided her. “That’s the lithium talking. You know that.”

“Maybe,” Marla whispered, rubbing her sweating face. “But I told you that Tani’s a pole-muncher. And she’s hypnotized the others. They’re all pole-munchers now.”

“Whatever,” Brandy said. “When this is all over, baby, we can hide out in a Mars hotel room and you can tell me all about it. In the meantime, we need to get together and figure out how we’re going to leave this place. That asshat Holly threw the Iphis away so we’d have no way to bugger.”

“I’ve got another way out,” Marla said, watching all of the pole-munchers going past her alley. “Leave that to me.”