The Jupiter Theft

by Donald Moffitt

  Ruiz shifted on his haunches. With his starved bony body and the rags around his loins, he looked like some Indian sadhu. “He means that we've got to be sacrificial lambs.”

  “Maggie,” Jameson said urgently, “in nine days a Jupiter-sized mass is going to sail across Earth's orbit and past the Sun on its way out again. What's left of Jupiter plus the virtual mass of the probe they're using to move it. Most of the mass will still be there—they won't have used up all that much at a speed of only...” He floundered.

  “Less than four hundred kilometers a second,” Ruiz supplied.

  “They'll miss Earth itself by a wide margin both times,” Jameson continued. “Even so, there'll be gravitational effects, but they'll be mild.”

  “A slight increase in our normal earthquake activity,” Ruiz said sardonically. “Some bad weather. No more than a few hundred thousand people killed. A fractional adjustment in Earth's orbit, of interest chiefly to astronomers and farmers.”

  Jameson took Maggie by the shoulders. “But if we do anything to delay the Cygnans—by a month, a week, maybe even a few days—they'll have to find a new exit slot. And that time, Earth might not be so lucky.”

  “We're going to squeak by,” Ruiz said bleakly. “But it might interest you to know that a difference of a month would get us brushed by Jupiter's radiation belt, among other things. Of course, at a distance like that, death by radiation would be academic. Gravitational effects would do the job—break up the crust, scour the continents with the oceans, and tumble us toward the sun.”

  “If Jupiter still has a radiation belt,” Maybury said shyly.

  “Oh, it'll still be there. There'll still be a forty-thousand-mile ball of metallic hydrogen inside to generate a magnetic field. And the wind from the Sun will be a lot stronger.”

  Jameson said, “So you see, Maggie, we don't want to precipitate anything. Like it or not, we leave with the Cygnans.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “We'll have plenty of time later to think about how to take over the ship, all eighty or ninety of us.”

  She shook off his grip. “Maybe you're right,” she said. “But it's not up to the two of you to make that kind of decision. Captain Boyle's in charge.”

  “And Captain Hsieh,” he reminded her.

  She flushed. “And we ought to put it in his hands.”

  Jameson was losing patience with Maggie. He'd had a lot of practice at it on Earth and during the trip out. “I thought you were the one who was always lecturing me about being a good little Guvie robot, kowtowing to authority! Maybe you got through to me, Maggie! This is too important to take chances with. Dr. Ruiz and I are taking the responsibility.”

  Maggie's manner softened. “All right,” she said. “But Boyle's not one of those brainless government stonewallahs. Maybe he's all spit and polish, but he's human. You can trust him.”

  “I trust him. I trusted him with my life. But I'm not going to lay this one in his lap.”

  “Tod—”

  “There are too many crazies in the command structure. Did you hear what Yao asked me about the nukes? My God, what if they got it into their heads to try to take some kind of action against the Cygnans? They couldn't succeed, of course, but they might get the Cygnans annoyed with Homo sapiens. One little fly-by with that drive of theirs on, and they could cook the whole. Earth down to the bottom of the lithosphere.”

  Ruiz said, “If they succeed in getting one of their bombs off, it would be worse. They couldn't destroy a whole ship, of course—it's thirty miles between components. But they could kill a couple of million Cygnans and damage one of the ships. It would take them months to repair damage, transfer population. Delay the Cygnans’ departure.” He shrugged. “Good-bye Earth.”

  “So you see, Maggie,” Jameson said, “it's up to us.”

  “No,” Ruiz said. He looked straight at Maggie. “It's up to Mizz MacInnes.”

  Maggie bit her lip. “I can't help thinking about all these people.” She waved a thin arm at the scattered figures on the artificial landscape. “Condemned to spend the rest of their lives as exhibits in a ... a menagerie. Without even a chance to have any say about it.”

  “I know, Maggie,” Jameson said.

  “Think about fourteen billion people on Earth without any say in it, M-Maggie,” Maybury said in a very small voice.

  Maggie was silent. “We're being very arrogant about all this, aren't we,” she said finally.

  “Yes,” said Jameson.

  She gave him one of the blinding smiles that made him love her. “God help the four of us if our cagemates ever find out,” she said.

  After the Cygnans turned the sky off, Jameson and Maggie lay side by side on their strawlike bedding for a long time without speaking, holding hands across the intervening space but otherwise not touching. They were a little apart from the others, in a shallow angle where one of the terrace shelves bent around the outer wall of the enclosure. The people who were still moving around tacitly gave them a wide berth, as they did all the other scattered couples. It was dim but not dark, with a pale luminescence that was a fair imitation of starlight. The Cygnans had instituted a terrestrial day-night cycle here. Some hundred yards away, somebody had built a small fire, probably with dried vines, and there was a small group around it softly singing folk songs. Somewhere in the dimness Jameson heard a woman moan as if in pain.

  “Some of them are pretty shameless about it,” Maggie said. “Klein and that Smitty girl from the bomb crew. As soon as the lights are out—bang! Ugh, disgusting! I'll say this for your friend Ruiz and his little assistant—nobody's ever caught them at it.”

  “Maggie!

  “All right, I'm a cat. But I hope you can persuade the Cygnans to let us have our birth-control pills. We're starting to have pregnancies. Four so far.”

  “I know. I saw Liz Becque.”

  “Oh, that. That one got started in the ship. The others don't show yet. Want to know who they are?”

  “No.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I know, Tod. Life in the zoo's going to be hard enough. When you talk to the Cygnans, tell them humans need privacy.”

  Chapter 23

  Three days passed before Jameson managed to talk to his keepers.

  The first morning, in the artificial dawn before the human section of the zoo opened up to Cygnan visitors, the steaming basins of slop were wheeled in by Augie and an unfamiliar Cygnan who limped along tripod-fashion on what looked like a half-regenerated leg. Augie held the silent ring of humans at bay with a wide-mouthed neural gun while the crippled Cygnan unloaded. When they finished, they backed off warily and locked the barred gate after them. Jameson, in the forefront of the crowd, a space cleared around him, warbled his fractured Cygnan in vain. Augie didn't appear to notice that he was trying to communicate. Jameson wondered if Augie could even tell him apart from the other humans.

  “Nice try, Commander,” Captain Boyle said. “Don't get discouraged. We'll have another chance later.”

  Jameson got in line with the rest while the distribution committee, supervised by Liz Becque and her Chinese counterpart, ladled the stuff out. When it was his turn, Liz said cheerfully: “There'll be an ounce of fish with supper tonight. Kiernan says there's enough to go around. If the Cygnans give you access to our stores, see if you can bring back some spices, will you? And some of the canned fruit.”

  The next day went no better. Augie was absent. The lame Cygnan assisting Triad seemed preoccupied. Jameson whistled and gestured in vain. Finally he took a chance and moved forward a few steps. The lame Cygnan shrilled a warning. Triad swiveled a serpentine head around, the three eye polyps around her mouth pointed in his direction. Encouraged, he took another few steps. The next thing he knew was the agony of sensory dissociation. When things swam back into focus, the Cygnans were gone. Boyle and Gifford were helping him to his feet. He was shaking with reaction and with a residual jangle of the nerves. He felt like an old man. Several other people who had been too close to him had been caught
by the modulated field generated by the crippled Cygnan's weapon. Jameson wasn't too popular with them the rest of the day.

  The third day, Triad and Tetrachord served the rations together. They both wore aprons. Jameson revised his assessment of them. They weren't even the head zookeepers, just the ones in charge of the sector that included humans and humanoids and Jovians and other creatures the Cygnans lumped together. They had Augie for an assistant, but they had a help problem.

  Jameson whistled for their attention. Surprisingly, he got it at once. They whistled a few meaningless phrases back at him and went about their business. Jameson persisted. He repeated over and over again that he wanted to talk. The Cygnans had an argument. Triad won, and the next thing Jameson knew, they were motioning him away from the other humans.

  As he passed through the gate, a cheer went up from the crowd. He could hear jolly voices behind him.

  “Hey, Commander, bring back some booze if you can...”

  “How about a load of frozen steaks?”

  “Don't forget toilet paper...”

  Back in the Cygnans’ cluttered quarters, Jameson was made to wait in the center of the floor while they sent the lame assistant out for the Moog. The place seemed more disorganized than last time. It was stuffy, and there was a strange sour odor hanging in the air.

  Jameson looked at his keepers hanging from their perches. Tetrachord seemed sluggish. The parasite dug into his belly was more bloated, like an engorged tick. Triad didn't look too well either. She kept twitching her budlike tail nervously. Were the Cygnans sick?

  The Moog was brought in by a couple of straining Cygnan laborers who dumped it on the floor and left, giving Jameson a wide berth. Jameson went eagerly to it. He opened the telescoping legs and turned on the power supply. The instrument looked battered. Some of the keys weren't working, and the power was low.

  It took fifteen minutes of effort to make the Cygnans understand. He told them that the health of the humans depended on their having access to food supplements till they got a garden growing in the enclosure. He clinched it by saying that with a few human artifacts to work with, they could give zoo visitors a more approximate view of terran life.

  When they returned Jameson to the enclosure, a reception committee was waiting. Boyle said, “Well?”

  Jameson looked at the ring of faces: Boyle, Hsieh, Kay Thorwald, Tu Jue-chen. Beyond, a ragged assortment of men and women were straining to hear.

  “I can bring two people with me to load up. They can't spare the personnel. The Cygnans will check each item. Nothing that can be used as a weapon or for escape attempts, nothing dangerous to the ecology of the spaceship, like yeasts or algae. We get food, clothing, limited building materials, some personal items. They pretty well stripped the ship.”

  Tu Jue-chen sucked an invisible lemon. “Two people—no good.”

  “One Chinese, one American,” Boyle said.

  “With Jameson, two Americans. Must have two Chinese.”

  Jameson said, “They won't let me take three people. They were clear about that. And we'd better get moving before they change their mind. I don't know how many trips we'll be allowed.”

  “Two Chinese,” Tu Jue-chen insisted.

  Jameson left her arguing with Boyle and went to eat the breakfast that Liz Becque had saved for him. Liz, hovered over him while he was eating it. She had a list of foodstuffs to give him. She saw him looking at her belly.

  “Two months to go, Tod,” she said ruefully. “Omar and I were careless. Then I kept it a secret until it was too late for one of Doc Brough's retrogenesis pills. God, I wanted that child! I knew it would be the end of my career in the Space Resources Agency, but I didn't care! Now it's going to be the first baby born in a Cygnan zoo.”

  “Born among the stars, Liz,” Jameson said. “We've got a human society going in this starship. Ninety of us, with our own personal ecology. Neolithic man got started in communities far smaller than that. There's eternity ahead of us. Anything can happen.”

  Liz gave him a brave smile. “A primitive tribe, are we? Homo dum anima...”

  He looked at her blankly. “Dumb animals? Now, Liz...”

  “It's a stupid pun. A Latin proverb: Dum anima est, spes esse... while there's life, there's hope.” Abruptly she burst into tears and walked away.

  Boyle was climbing down the gray steps toward him, Kay, and the two Chinese following. They had Klein and Chia Lan-ying, the Chinese stores exec, in tow.

  “Here's your two porters, Commander,” Boyle said. “You'd better get moving.”

  Jameson looked doubtfully at Chia Lan-ying. She was a lovely thing, with rosy cheeks and huge eyes almost hidden by dense bangs. She looked tiny and frail next to Klein.

  “Maybe you'd want to send comrade Yeh or one of the men,” he said. “We want to move stuff as fast as possible.”

  Tu Jue-chen drew her simian brow into a network of angry V's and said, “You will not fool me. Comrade Chia is in charge of supplies.”

  Jameson sighed and gave it up.

  Chia proved to be a deft and efficient worker, darting through the moldering piles of goods and finding useful items and helping Klein and Jameson load them on the circular dolly with three ball-bearing wheels that the Cygnans had provided. Jameson had to admit that she was a better choice than Yeh; muscles weren't that important in the low gravity anyway.

  Klein tried his patience, though. He kept goofing off to prowl through the scattered stuff from the cabins when he was supposed to be helping Jameson wrestle the heavy stuff like food lockers and fish tanks onto the dolly. Jameson was about to say something when he saw Klein stiffen, then pounce on something in one of the jumbled piles.

  “My duffle,” he said sullenly when Jameson came up behind him. “And some of my other stuff.”

  “Show it to the Cygnans before you load it,” Jameson said. He wasn't going to make an issue about Klein's personal possessions; maybe the man would get down to work now that he had found them. “We can't take a chance on trying to sneak contraband past them.”

  He'd already caught Klein attempting to pocket somebody's jackknife. The Cygnans frowned on anything that might be used as a weapon, though Jameson had gained a dispensation for safety razors when he explained their use.

  “Just some clothes and toilet articles,” Klein said, his sallow face closed.

  Jameson saw brushes, a shaving kit, Klein's heavy gum-soled boots, some crumpled garments, a pocket chess set, some fancy bottles. He gestured at a silver flask.

  “All the liquor goes into the common store,” he said.

  “Just aftershave lotion,” Klein said. He unscrewed the cap. “Here, take a sniff.”

  “That's not necessary,” Jameson began, but Klein was already holding the flask under his nose. “Okay, come on, let's get those blankets loaded.”

  A cheer went up every time they pushed a loaded dolly through the gate. There were lots of willing hands to help them unload and send them back again. They worked steadily for almost two hours before the Cygnans put a stop to it.

  Visiting hours were about to begin.

  There was a celebration that night after the sky went dark and the observation tubes had emptied of their flitting six-legged shapes. Boyle and Hsieh had agreed that some of the liquor and joints could be doled out for a party. They could hardly have stopped it. A boost in morale was badly needed.

  Jameson sat with his back against a slab of terrace, his belly comfortably full of the meal Liz Becque and the Chinese nutritionist had served up from the precious store of packaged foodstuffs he'd brought back. It had been a brilliant approximation of a man han feast, complete with green noodles pressed from Cygnan mash. There had been reconstituted beer and wine, and a joint for every five people, and there was a great tub of punch contrived from fruit-juice concentrates and five squandered gallons of grain alcohol. It would be back to synthetic rations tomorrow, Jameson knew, but for now everybody was happy.

  Maggie's head stirred on his shoulde
r. “Look at them,” she said lazily. “I wonder if they'd be having such a good time if they knew the Cygnans were going to start moving Jupiter in six days.”

  Jameson looked around uneasily, but nobody was within earshot.

  “I know,” Maggie said. “It's our guilty little secret.”

  “Let ’em be happy while they can,” he said, squeezing her hand.

  In the dilute silver light, the great terraced bowl of the enclosure had lost its drabness. He could see the pale outlined figures standing around or sprawled in conversational groups, Chinese and Americans mingling. Over by the bar, a tank cover on trestles, Liz and Chia were ladling out the punch. Behind a subdued babble of voices there was the dreadful wail of a harmonica and the easy accompaniment of the guitar he'd managed to bring back for Mike Berry. Across, on the upper slope, he saw an unsteady couple heading toward a makeshift pup tent devised from a sheet and cordage, early as it still was. A number of such improvised privacy screens had been set up throughout the enclosure since they had brought back bedding.

  Ruiz was holding forth a couple of levels down. He'd been giving an informal briefing to Boyle and Hsieh of what he'd deduced since Jameson had found him a lightpad with stored mathematical tables and astronomical data. A small crowd had grown around him. It now numbered about twenty.

  “Hi, Tod, can you come over here for a minute?” They were waving for him.

  Jameson groaned and got to his feet. He'd been through it all a dozen times already.

  “Give the man a drink.” Somebody put a cup of warm beer into his hand. There was a friendly thump on his back as he pushed his way through the crowd, dragging Maggie.

  “Is Dr. Ruiz kidding, Tod? Is this really what those walking worms showed you?”

  Ruiz's lightpad was passed hand to hand until it reached Jameson. A glowing blue diagram had been scratched on its obsidian surface.

  Jameson studied the sketch. At the center was a circle with a narrow ellipse around it, like a sketch of Saturn and its rings seen almost head on. It was the Jovian planet at the center of the Cygnans’ travel arrangements, with a representation of the orbit of the robot probe that siphoned off hydrogen and turned it into kinetic energy. The Jovian's battle-scarred moon was sketched in directly above the Jovian-probe system. Ruiz had drawn a lopsided circle to indicate its orbit. Below the moon, between the moon and the Jovian, was a circle of five small dots representing the Cygnan spaceships rotating around their common center of gravity. Their common orbit around, the moon was indicated by an oval outline.