Free Ice Cream and Venom by Kevin Long

engines, and went on their way. A thousand miles away, Vladimir Lyakhov and Valeri Ryumin watched the whole thing from aboard the Soviet space station. They contacted ground control in Kosmogorad, who in turn contacted the KGB, who immediately brought it to the attention of Leonid Brezhnev, who was very interested in the information. Very interested, indeed.
    * * *
    In the cockpit, Crazy Uncle Steve was explaining how the rocket worked, mainly to get close to Susan. Elder Grapeape annoyingly insisted on tagging along.
    "So how come we're not floating anymore?" The missionary asked. His arm was curled up like a chicken wing. Evidently there actually had been some nerve damage from the bullet. It didn't hurt, in fact he couldn't feel anything at all in it, nor could he extend it.
    "We're accelerating. You only float when the ship isn't moving. If we go forward, you fall towards the rear, if we go backwards, you fall towards the front. As long as we keep accelerating at the right rate, we'll keep simulated earth-normal gravity."
    "Won't you run out of fuel pretty quickly that way?" Susan asked, leaning a little too close over Steve's shoulder, and accidentally pressing a breast against his neck.
    "Using normal fuels, yeah, you'd go dry in nothing flat, but because I'm inescapably brilliant, I've figured out a system that gives ridiculous amounts of power for sustained periods of time."
    "Really?"
    "Yeah. I first got the idea back in the fifties when I was reading a book by Dr. Robert Car—"
    "If we keep gravity the whole way, won't we crash into the moon at a hell of a clip?" Susan asked.
    "Yeah, so we won't do that. We'll shut off the engines when we get close to halfway, flip around, start 'em up again, and decelerate at the same rate until we're in lunar orbit. Earth to moon one way, eight hours, spend a couple of hours on the surface sightseeing, we'll have you back home in less than a day. I call it 'trans-linear acceleration.' That's not actually its real scientific name, but I think it's got a catchy ring to it. I got it from 'Salvage One', that Andy Griffith show that Lee was talking about."
    "I thought you said..."
    "Yeah, I was just screwing with him. I do that a lot."
    Just then, Grapeape fainted—perhaps a bit too conveniently—and slumped over on Susan. She reacted almost by reflex, and pushed him away on to another control panel. The ship lurched, and Steve rattled off some fairly rudimentary profanity. "We just dropped some fuel!" he said.
    "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't think, I just reacted..." Susan said, "Did we lose much? Will we have to go back to earth?"
    "Nah, nah, we've got like ten times as much as we need. The engine is hyper-efficient. I just need to re-calculate for the lighter weight.
    * * *
    Lee was in his cabin when the mid-flight turnaround came, reading the instruction manual for Steve's Betamax. There was a knock on the door, and then Susan floated in without waiting. Her hair was untied, her blouse was partially undone, her shoes were off. There was something about the look on her face that made him mildly flustered.
    "I guess I picked a bad day to wear a skirt," she said, and smoothed it down with her hands. Oddly, this had the effect of making it ride up a bit more.
    "Form follows function," Lee said stupidly, breaking the mood, "I'm sorry, I don't know why I just said that."
    "Me neither. Anyway, it just hit me: I'm further away from Earth than any woman has ever been, and I'm probably the youngest person ever in space."
    "Excepting Grapeape"
    "Yeah, well, the youngest woman. It suddenly made me feel all flushed and overwhelmed. I didn't want to be alone." She drifted closer to him. "It's so exciting to be here on your first trip."
    "It's our third," Lee said.
    "Yeah?"
    "First one was two months ago, just orbital, to check things out. Second was a month ago, just before you started working on the farm report, we went out a half million miles just to field-test the engines. This is our