“They're not going anywhere,” Ruiz said.
“What do you mean?”
“They've forgotten. After six million years, they've forgotten. Their pattern of travel—hopping from star to star—made sense when they started out. They were looking for a new home. They didn't find one they liked soon enough. So after a few thousand years, I imagine, they got used to living in ships. They were safe in the ships. A real world might not be safe. But their pattern of travel persisted. Degenerate societies cling to old habits, just like degenerate organisms.”
“Okay,” Mike said. “Maybe you're right. But I'm still asking why they hang around a system they're not interested in for three thousand years.”
Ruiz looked around at the dappled faces. He sighed. He turned back to Mike. “Maybe they're getting up their courage for the next jump.”
There was a growing murmur in the crowd. Ruiz held up a hand.
“We don't know what it's like to travel between the stars,” he said. “All that empty space must be a terrifying thing. Our own mariners in the ancient world and Middle Ages never braved the open sea, even when they knew their destination. They island-hopped, stayed within sight of land, traveled coastwise from point to point.”
“Scared? After six million years in space?” Mike said. “Minus—how much time for time dilation? You figure it out, but even if they'd come nonstop, it couldn't have saved them more than ten thousand years.”
“That's the point exactly,” Ruiz said. “If they'd covered the ten thousand light-years at—let's say—ninety-eight percent of the speed of light, then time is slowed ... hmm ... fivefold, and they have to spend two thousand years in the empty space between the stars. Even at ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of light-speed, the jump takes them a hundred years. Lifetimes for millions of Cygnans who never get to come in out of the dark! But if they star-hop, then with a year to boost, a year to brake, hmm, a few weeks or months to cover the intervening light-years, then they never have to spend more than three years adrift. Then they spend the next three thousand years or more getting brave enough to do it again.”
A tremulous voice came out of the silver dark: Liz Becqued “Dr. Ruiz, are you saying that we're—that the Cygnans are going to remain here, in this solar system, that long?”
Ruiz shrugged. “There's no reason to assume anything different.”
Maggie turned quickly to Jameson. “I thought you said—”
“Shhh—the old fox knows what he's doing.”
“But—”
Jameson leaned to whisper in her ear. “Something's up with the Chinese. I don't think Ruiz believes they'll do anything precipitous, but he's taking the pressure off anyway. This buys time for the Cygnans.”
Maggie looked around, made sure no one was listening. Everybody was intent on Ruiz. “But what he said about their stopping and staying at almost every star ... that's true?”
“It has to be,” he said with an uneasy glance around. “Either that or they parked somewhere for the whole six million years.”
Maggie wouldn't let go. She seemed agitated. She tugged at his hand. “But you said they're leaving in a few days. Why is this solar system any different?”
Jameson said, “Maybe the Cygnans have finally got their courage back.”
“Tod, answer me!”
“All right. Maybe they're afraid of people. Maybe every once in a while, when they run across a system that looks unhealthy, they grab their hydrogen planet and hightail it out of there.”
“The nuclear bombs we brought with us?”
Jameson glanced around again. “Perhaps. Or whatever else the human race might dream up in the next few thousand years.”
Up on his platform, Ruiz was still talking. “...So perhaps the Cygnans aren't the formidable civilization we thought they were. As Dr. Berry pointed out, even their mass conversion engine might not be beyond our own capabilities in a century or two. We're still developing. They stopped, long ago. They're beginning to look like timid, fearful creatures. But fear can be more dangerous than confidence. We mustn't forget that the Cygnans have great powers, the capacity to do great mischief. So I'd urge us all not to do anything to panic them. Earth is still in a vulnerable position.”
Maggie was nodding in agreement. “Their orbit out of here...” she began.
“Maggie, shut up,” Jameson said. He gave her hand a warning squeeze. Klein was shouldering his way through the crowd, about to pass close to them. There was movement in other parts of the crowd as three or four people tried to maneuver themselves to the forefront to get closer to Ruiz. There was the sound of good-natured protest as people got shoved.
Ruiz had a debate going with young Dmitri Galkin. Dmitri was going on ponderously about fear and aggression in gray lag geese. “The mechanism of redirected behavior...” he was saying.
Klein had reached the front of the crowd. With a lithe movement he vaulted the final terrace and sprang to his feet in front of Ruiz.
“That's enough talk,” Klein said. He faced the crowd. “Everybody listen to me!”
Dmitri started forward. “Now just a minute,” he began.
“I said shut up!” Klein said. He gave Dmitri a shove that sent him sprawling. Dmitri was saved from toppling over the edge of the step by two or three people who caught him and propped him on his feet. There was a growl from Omar Tuttle, who let go of Liz and started forward. Omar stopped in mid-stride.
Klein was standing in a little cleared space where Ruiz and the ship's officers had backed off from him. He was waving a flat, ugly object whose silhouette was unmistakable, even in the dim light. How he had obtained it was a puzzle.
It was a gun.
“All right,” Klein said. “Everybody calmed down?”
He stood rocking on the balls of his feet, the gun held dangling at his side. He looked remote and feral, with the narrow face and the sleek ferret head and the oversize arms meaty as thighs, sticking out of the chopped-off sleeves.
The packed throng was silent except for the whisper of shuffling feet. Nobody moved.
“Better,” Klein said. “I'm taking command of all American personnel here under the provisions of the National Security Act and the authority vested in me by Articles 42b, 46a, and subsections C and D.” He delivered the words in a mechanical, singsong tone. “I am officially identifying myself as a special surveillance officer of the Reliability Board, with full authority over all SRA employees for the duration of this emergency.”
“An arbee fink!” Omar spat. A murmur went through the crowd.
Klein flinched, but stood his ground. “Full compliance with my lawful orders is enjoined on this group under penalties of the Act. I will deputize such persons as I deem suitable. I will be assisted in these endeavors by security personnel attached to the Chinese crew under treaty provisions between the United States and the People's Republic.”
Little Chia Lan-ying was making her way to Klein's side, followed by the hulking form of Yeh Fei.
“Hear me,” she said stridently. “I am cultural officer of She-hui pu, the Social Affairs Department, and chief loyalty fighter here. Comrade Yeh knows this. Remember the Four Bigs! Grasp the Revolution! Obey the People!”
The Chinese contingent looked at one another uneasily and began to draw together in little groups. One of Tu Jue-chen's people nodded vigorously and shouted, “Grasp the Revolution! Obey the People!” The cry was taken up by others.
Jameson said angrily to Maggie: “Caffrey and Tu weren't enough. They had to send types like those to keep an eye on us!”
He started forward. Maggie grabbed his sleeve. “Wait.”
Several more people emerged from the boundary of the crowd and formed a loose phalanx around Klein and Chia. Jameson recognized the spare, lean form of Yao Hu-fang and one of the members of his bomb crew. One of the maintenance engineers, Fiaccone, was there with some kind of pipe in his hand. Gifford took his place with the group, bouncing and clowning around, his clasped hands raised above his hea
d like a boxer.
“The Giff?” Jameson said. “I don't believe it!”
“He's a true-blue,” Maggie said. “If Klein told him the government wanted him to lift both feet at once, he'd hang there in the air until he was told to come down.”
Captain Boyle stepped forward. “Where did you get that gun?” he said gruffly to Klein.
Klein looked him over coolly. “All right, Captain, I'll tell you,” he said. “The chamber was inside the heel of a pair of my boots. The grip was in the other heel. The barrel was the handle of my safety razor. The spare clips were stacked in the bottom two thirds of a bottle of aftershave lotion, under a false reservoir. I was able to retrieve it this morning, thanks to Commander Jameson, along with the rest of the equipment concealed in my kit.”
Boyle stuck out a big hand. “Give it here, mister,” he said.
Klein lifted the gun slightly, not pointing it anywhere in particular. “It's a very compact piece of ordnance,” he said conversationally, “barely three eighths of an inch through the grip, but it's fully automatic. It'll fire under any conditions—no lubricants, just a double-chain fluorocarbon film bonded to the moving parts. It's designed for riot control. It fires a stream of explosive microflechettes, one hundred rounds to a clip. It could cut a man in half.”
“You'd have to be crazy to take a thing like that aboard a spacecraft,” Boyle rumbled. “Hand it over.”
“Captain Boyle,” Klein said. “You are hereby directed to render all assistance and cooperation to an authorized agent of the Reliability Board under the directive governing the conduct of officials in the employ of GovCorp.”
Boyle continued to look Klein in the eye until Klein averted his gaze slightly. Then, with a contemptuous glance at the slim, squarish weapon, he dropped his outstretched hand and stood, legs apart, with his hands clasped behind his back.
“What is it you have in mind?” Boyle asked.
Klein looked around at the group clustered on the broad ledge behind Boyle: Kay Thorwald and Captain Hsieh, Ruiz and Maybury and Dr. Chu, with Mike Berry pressing forward to hear. He looked over at the silent and attentive crowd. Then he said, “Captain, perhaps we'd better go to the far side of the enclosure with one of the Chinese representatives and discuss it there.”
“Spit it out, mister,” Boyle said. “We're all waiting to hear.” He stood fast, solid as a rock.
Chia said, “We will need volunteers. Go on, you say it.”
Reluctantly Klein said, “We're going to carry out our contingency orders.”
“What are you talking about?” Boyle said.
“Major Hollis and his men are dead—in the line of duty. But Deputy Commander Yao's men are capable of carrying out the mission. It coincides with their own orders.”
“Nuke the Cygnan ships? You're insane. You'd never even make it to the air lock of this tin can we're in, let alone cross empty space to our own ship!”
“You're wrong, Captain. Loyalty Officer Chia and I have worked it out very carefully. We've reconnoitered the immediate area personally, on our outing with Commander Jameson. We've spent weeks interrogating every member of the crew as to their recollections of the layout of the enemy ship—many of them were conscious or semiconscious when they were brought in—and we've pieced together an escape route. You yourself drew such a map, if you recall. We'll want that too, by the way.”
Jameson flinched as he listened to Klein. So that was why the man had been so friendly, so inquisitive about his experiences in Cygnan territory!
Boyle growled, “There's fifteen miles to cover—uphill—before you even get, to the hub of the ship. And the areas as densely populated as Hong Kong.”
“The Cygnans don't like to travel across open spaces. There are service routes. If we encounter any of the enemy, we're armed. Captain, it's no different from crossing any other enemy territory. I was a counterguerrilla during the Baja uprising—”
“A fine piece of butchery that was, Boyle said curtly.
“I don't like your attitude, Captain,” Klein said.
“You're not required to, Mister Klein. You were giving me the information I'll need to evaluate your plans. Get on with it.”
The encircling crowd listened neutrally to the exchange, jockeying for position. Jameson managed to force his way to the forefront, Maggie at his back. His further progress was blocked by a grinning Gifford.
“Sorry, Commander,” Gifford said. A muscular young Chinese from the Struggle Brigade was backing him up with a fist wrapped around a chunk of the cementlike terrace material.
“You're flirting with mutiny, Giff,” Jameson said.
“Nothin's happened yet,” Gifford said. “In the meantime, why don't you just stay put.” He gave Jameson a friendly wink.
Up on the next ledge Klein was saying: “I don't have to do this, Captain, but I could use your help, so I'll tell you. Our chances are reasonable. We've got weapons and we can get more. Between Chia and me, we've got a full range of electronic surveillance equipment we brought aboard as buttons, zippers, uniform tabs, and the like. We can drop spy-eyes and acoustic detectors to guard our rear, and we have subminiaturized mobile probes we can send ahead for reconnaissance.” He was holding something invisibly small out in his palm to show Boyle.
“And then?” Boyle said. “How do you get across to our ship?”
“It's less than a hundred miles away, according to Yeh. He got a look through an outside port when they had him sequestered. We can make it on suit jets, and our suits are right outside in that warehouse section.”
“What's to keep the Cygnans from coming after us?”
Jameson heard the “us” and didn't like it. Was Boyle starting to take all this seriously? “Captain, he called out.
Boyle paid him no attention Gifford and the Chinese strongarm made a warning gesture.
Klein waved his flat little pistol. “We'll keep them busy with a few nuclear bombs. Then they won't have time to worry about us.”
Boyle shook his head authoritatively. “We'd be sitting ducks. It would take hours to get the boron reaction going, even if our engines are still undamaged, and in the meantime—”
Chia leaned past Klein. “We have thought of that. We will have Comrade Li with us. He can use the Callisto lander to get us moving. The chemical engines will fire immediately.”
Klein nodded. “And the automatic probes by themselves provide enough thrust to break us out of Jupiter orbit and start us coasting sunward. We checked with Gifford.”
Boyle stared at his feet for a while, his hands clasped behind his back. Finally he lifted his head. “You seem to have thought it all out. I don't think the odds are good, but we're duty bound to escape if we can. Captain Hsieh and I will be in command, of course. I'll take your weapon. We can't order everyone to go with us—it's going to be a farfetched gamble—but I imagine a majority of the crew will elect to take the chance—”
“Hsieh will not go,” Chia hissed. “He is traitor. Comrade Yeh can operate ship with you.”
“Captain,” Klein said softly. “You don't understand the situation. We can only take essential personnel. The bomb crew and a minimum number to get the ship back in operation. Any more will slow us down.”
From the crowd, Omar Tuttle shouted: “What happens to the rest of us? Scientific personnel and the like? We stay here and get nuked with the Cygnans?”
Klein's otter head jerked around, trying to identify the speaker. “We won't bomb this pod of the ship,” he said smoothly. “We can cripple the ship with a low-yield bomb in the drive section, placed fifteen or more miles down the shaft. With any luck you can stay alive until Earth can rescue you. In the meantime you'll all be no worse off than you are now.”
“Crud!” a peppery voice yelled. “It'd take years to get up another Jupiter expedition. What the hell do you think the Cygnans will be doing all that time? And then what? You think the crew is going to fight a billion Cygnans hand to hand and get us out alive? We're stuck here and we'd better
make the best of it!”
Klein located the voice. “You're one of the ones who's coming with us, Kiernan. You'll be needed to reestablish a shipboard ecology.”
“The hell I am! I'm needed right here!”
“You'll shut up and obey orders!” Klein snapped. “Or I'll have you up on Reliability Board charges when we get back!”
Kiernan started to say something, then thought better of it as Fiaccone appeared next to him with a length of pipe. People had started to edge away from Kiernan, leaving a clear space around him, Jameson noted wryly. They didn't want to get involved. Mention of the Reliability Board had done that, though Earth was half a billion miles away. You had that kind of prudence embedded in your bones when you grew up working for GovCorp.
Not Boyle, though. “Mr. Kiernan has a point,” he said deliberately. “Let's not raise any false hopes. Those who stay behind will stay for good, unless Earth gets some kind of communication going with the Cygnans.”
He turned to Klein. “And we're not going to jeopardize their safety by initiating hostile action. I want that clearly understood. This is an escape attempt, not a military action. The decision to attack these aliens with nuclear weapons is one that can only be made on Earth. You couldn't do anything except antagonize the creatures. How many missiles do you think you could get off before they retaliated? And how any missiles do you think would get to their targets when they can match velocities freehand on those broomsticks of theirs?”
“I don't know,” Klein admitted. “But we can inflict as much damage on the enemy as we can before we leave.”
The Jupiter Theft Page 27