Physicist Dr. Christine Monroe has
devoted her lonely life to research on hyper-space travel. Her continued
failure leads her to sign on to the Archimedes, a sub-light-speed mission aimed
at establishing a colony in the Sirius-B system. Waking from suspended
animation, she discovers that the ship is wildly off course and the rest of the
crew are dead due to equipment failure.
At first she thinks the two virile
strangers who show up on the ship are figments of her imagination - erotic
hallucinations created by isolation and stress. However, Alyn and Zed are
solid, real, and ready to sacrifice their lives for the strong woman they’ve
found stranded in deep space. As her ship begins to disintegrate, Christine
must choose between the planet she was sent to save and the two aliens she’s
come to cherish.
Note: This book was previously published by
Totally Entwined. This new edition has been revised and re-edited.
When I began writing
Bodies of Light, originally published in an anthology of space-themed
romance, I tried, as I usually do, to put a different spin on the tale. Love
scenes usually occur in the physical world, but what if you’re making love to
beings without bodies? What if you encountered aliens who were pure energy?
Could a human woman love such creatures? Could they return that love? And if
so, how would they express it in a realm where matter was not relevant?
These are the
questions I explore in Bodies of Light. Nearly a century ago, Einstein
demonstrated that matter and energy were inter-convertible. An entity composed
of energy could take on material form, creating a body out of the light that
was his fundamental nature so that he could express physical love. Perhaps,
though, this experience would be far less satisfying than connecting and
exchanging unadulterated erotic energy.
This realization
lies at the heart of my heroine’s journey into an unlimited universe.
Read an excerpt (PG)
The alarm buzzed in Christine’s ears like an angry wasp. Electric
current crackled along her skin, goading her long-dormant nerves into
responsiveness. Her attempt to inhale turned into a racking cough as her body
expelled the last traces of fluid from her lungs. Her eyes flickered open. Dim
as it was, the blue-tinged light within the suspension pod made her head pound.
Her limbs felt weighted with lead. She tried to wiggle her fingers. They
were stiff, as though encrusted with rust. The gel that cradled her gradually
warmed. As it did, her joints grew more flexible. Little by little the pod
thawed her long-immobile body.
As soon as she could lift her arm, she groped for the release switch.
Her movements were clumsy and slow. The curved hatch over her face slid back,
exposing her to the cooler air outside. Goosebumps rose on her bare skin. She
pulled the tubes from her arms and pushed aside the tangle of cables strapped
around her brow. When she struggled to sit up, a wave of dizziness crashed over
her. She waited for the vertigo to subside.
The fog in her brain thinned a bit. She remembered where she was—the
Archimedes, en route to Sirius 2. Had they arrived, then? Listening closely,
she heard nothing but her own breathing.
The suspension bay was located near the center of the ship in order to
protect it from possible meteor damage to the hull. There were no viewports. It
hardly mattered. Christine was a physicist, not an astronomer or a pilot. Even
if she could have seen the stars, she couldn’t have read them. She needed to
get to the bridge, to figure out how far they were from their destination and
whether it was time to revive the rest of the crew.
She swung her legs out of the coffin-like suspension capsule and took a
stab at standing. Her knees buckled when she transferred her weight, leaving
her slumped on the rubber-clad floor. Her head swam. When her vision cleared,
she tried again. This time she managed to stay upright although she had to lean
on the capsule for support.
Christine took a deep breath. She felt the strength returning gradually
to her body. Her skin was slimy with residue from the nutrient gel that had
nourished her inanimate form during the months —or was it years?—since the ship
had departed.
At point-nine lightspeed, the maximum velocity of which the Archimedes
was capable, the journey to the Sirius cluster should have taken almost
thirteen years. Was that long wait really over? It had seemed like the blink of
an eye. A kind of rosy haze hung in her mind, a sense of peace and well-being,
but she couldn’t remember any details about her time in stasis.
She surveyed the nineteen other capsules arranged around the perimeter
of the bay. She seemed to be the only one the ship had awakened. She stumbled
over to the closest pod—Ravin Conter, the xenobiologist and her assigned
partner—and peered in through the curved glass. She could just make out his
rugged features, pale and composed.
Something wasn’t right, though. Her thoughts still disordered by the
transition, it took her ten seconds to put her finger on the problem. The
capsule should have been lit from within by the same low-intensity blue as her
own had been. However, there was no interior illumination. Only the ambient
light of the bay made Ravin’s face visible.
“Ravin!” she cried. Her voice woke hollow echoes in the metal-walled
chamber. The vital sign indicators on the control panel were blank. She keyed
the emergency revival sequence into the controls on the top of the pod. Nothing
happened. There was no power running to
the capsule. It was dead, and so, it was obvious, was the person within.
“No!”
She stared at Ravin’s naked form, cradled in blue-green gel and twined
in wires and hoses. How could he be dead? What had happened? Christine whirled
around to check the next capsule—Amber Stone, ship’s doctor and the closest
thing she had to a friend. Like Ravin’s, Amber’s pod was dark and unresponsive.
Fighting down her panic, Christine examined the remaining suspension
capsules. All appeared to have malfunctioned. All the occupants lay in darkness
within, perfectly-preserved corpses.
“No, no—please, no!” she keened, sinking to her knees in the center of
the room. “Oh, please…” Her eyes burned as tears welled up for the first time
in years.
She had not really been close to anyone on the Archimedes—she and Ravin
had been paired solely on the basis of genetic and psychological
compatibility—but she had liked and respected them all. They’d had the courage
to volunteer for Earth’s first interstellar mission, to risk their lives for
the future of humanity. Hell, they’d fought hard for the opportunity, beating
the hundreds of other candidates. They’d endured the two years of grueling
preparation. They’d climbed willingly into the suspension capsules knowing they
wouldn’t emerge for years—if ever. Each had left his or her life on Earth
behind, well aware that the odds of the mission succeeding were small and that,
even if it did succeed, they could never return.
Now they were gone and, with them, all hope of establishing a colony. The mission was a failure—one final failure in the long series that had been her life.
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