Norman Spinrad 
Void Captain’s Tale 

Welcome aboard the sex-drive void ship . . .Captain Genro commands the giant spaceship Dragon Zephyr — on board are ten thousand passengers in electrocoma, a smaller number of conscious passengers eagerly utilising the ship’s dream chambers — and a Pilot.In the context of space travel, the Pilot is merely a biological component in the machine. Always a woman, her function is to launch the ship into the Jump by means of a cosmic orgasm. She is a pariah, shunned by all.Void Captain Genro should never even have spoken to his Pilot, let alone tried to embark on a relationship with her. When he did so, the result was every space traveller’s nightmare.A Blind Jump into the Void . . .