Jameson had heard enough. Before Gifford realized what he was up to, Jameson gave him a shove that bowled him over. The Chinese strongarm made a swipe with his fistful of artificial rock, but missed. In the low ‘gravity, Jameson vaulted to the ledge and ended up standing beside Boyle.
“Captain,” he said. “Before you go along with this, you'd better listen to what Dr. Ruiz has to say.”
“Shut up,” Klein said.
Yeh made a move toward Ruiz, but Boyle said sharply, “Hold it right there. I think we all better hear this.”
Yeh halted, and Klein lost the chance to control the situation. The crowd had started rustling again, straining to get close. Klein evidently was nervous about the impression that rough stuff might make.
“The Cygnans are going to leave this system in about six days,” Ruiz said.
There was a moment of shocked silence; then pandemonium broke out. When it died down, Mike Berry shouted, “You told us they'd be here for over three thousand years!”
Ruiz passed a hand wearily over his eyes. “That was the averaged figure,” he said. “It still holds. But Earth seems to be one of the exceptions.”
“You withheld this information?” Boyle asked in a hard voice.
“Yes. I had very good reasons.”
“Captain, this was my doing,” Jameson began.
“We'll discuss that later,” Boyle said. “You said you had reasons. Go on.”
“Discussion's ended,” Klein said, raising his little gun. “I already know all about it.”
Ruiz looked at the gun with pointed contempt. “How do you know?” he said. “Have the two of you been planting your eavesdropping devices around this enclosure?”
Chia broke in breathlessly, half addressing the crowd. “Six days, sure! Means we must hurry! No time left!”
“Shoot if you're going to,” Ruiz snapped. “Otherwise put the silly thing down.”
“I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt for the moment, Dr. Ruiz,” Boyle said harshly, “but don't try my patience. We're all waiting to hear your explanation.”
Ruiz took his time about it. He ran through his computations in a dry lecture-hall voice. “So we can be reasonably certain,” he finished, “that if the Cygnan fleet is allowed to leave on schedule, Earth will escape with no more than a bad case of the surface hiccups. But if Mr. Klein and his overzealous friends manage to delay the Cygnan departure by as much as a month, the human race stands a good chance of being seriously depleted, or entirely wiped out. In the worst case, the Earth would fall into the sun.”
“You don't know,” Boyle temporized. “You're only guessing. There's no way of predicting how long the Cygnans might be delayed. Earth could be at the other side of its orbit.”
“The Cygnan route crosses Earth's orbit twice—on opposite sides of it. The combined strike zone adds up to at least one hundred twenty degrees out of three hundred and sixty. At least! Are you a gambling man, Captain? Do you want to bet that the human race has a two-to-one chance of staying alive?”
Boyle was silent a long time. He stood in his bulldog position, his lower lip thrust out, a frown on his wide forehead.
“We're wasting time,” Klein said. “In about six hours that overhead plumbing's going to be filled with those vermin-ridden snakes.”
Heads swiveled involuntarily to fix on the darkened tubes that twisted through the zooscape. Some of them looped down almost to ground level. They'd been pried and hammered and hacked at by some of the more belligerent younger men, but nobody had been able to so much as scratch them.
So many people in the crowd missed Boyle's first step toward Klein. The captain's hand was extended. “We're not going anywhere,” Boyle said in a level voice. “That's an order. I'll take that gun now.”
Klein actually began backing away. “Don't make waves, Captain,” he said. “We can get along without you if we have to.”
Jameson tensed, gauging his distance from Klein, from Yeh and Chia. The others were too far away to bother about. A few yards away he could see Mike Berry stirring uneasily.
“Hand it over,” Boyle said, and lunged forward, making a grab for it.
There was a fluttering sound in the thin air, like someone riffling the pages of a book, and Boyle was suddenly writhing on the ground, his leg almost severed at the knee.
A woman screamed, and there was a general scramble among the spectators to get out of the way. Jameson, off balance, fought to stay still.
Klein swung the tiny gun around in an arc. “Anybody else?” he said.
Boyle was still conscious, but looked as if he was going into shock. The sliver-sized microflechettes had stitched across his leg, almost blowing it off. Blood spurted from the pulpy mess, black in the chalky light.
Down in the struggling throng, the voice of Janet Lemieux sounded, high, clear, and indignant. “You get out of my way, Jack Gifford! Move!” In a moment she was kneeling next to the captain, taking off her blouse and making a tourniquet out of it. She looked up impatiently. “Somebody get me my medical bag,” she ordered. “Hurry!” The kit had been among the priority items Jameson had managed to bring back with him that morning.
Klein and his gang had drawn into a tight, cohesive group and were edging their way from the scene along the broad apron of the terrace. They'd made a mess of it, and they knew it. People got out of their way hastily, parting to let them through. Jameson watched them go, along the rim of the stepped bowl, all the way to the opposite side, toward the entrance. He could see their forms, tiny and dim, gathered in a circle, having some kind of conference.
Maggie had found him again. She hung on to his arm, “Tod, what's going to happen?”
“I don't know,” he said.
Janet was thumbing back one of Boyle's eyelids, looking at it with a coldlight stick. She'd got Maybury to help her. The little astronomy tech was elevating a plastic bag with a tube leading down to a needle in Boyle's arm.
“Is he going to lose the leg?” Jameson inquired, bending over.
Janet gave him a look of tight fury. “Probably,” she said. “And there's no way to clone a new one for him here.”
Maybury said, her voice shaking, “Isn't there anything you can do, Commander?”
Jameson shook his head. “I could rally some of the men. We could arm ourselves with the garden tools and pipes from the hydroponics equipment. But Klein has the upper hand. We can't get near him with that automatic weapon of his. Those things have a range of a couple of hundred yards in this gravity, and aim doesn't count.”
“But you've got to stop them! They're crazy!”
Ruiz limped over and rested a hand on Maybury's shoulder. She looked up at him with quick gratitude.
“Commander Jameson's right,” Ruiz said. “Chia has a hand-laser, too. I saw it. And the devil knows what other weapons they smuggled in here.”
People had started to drift across to the gateway to see what Klein and his friends were doing there. There was quite respectable crowd now, keeping a wary distance, watching silently. Then there was the Sound of a scuffle, and some angry shouting. The crowd started to disperse, then changed its mind and came uncertainly together again.
“Something's going on,” Jameson said to Maggie. “I'd better...”
He stopped and strained to see in the dim light. Somebody was running toward him, bounding in huge swoops in the one third gravity down the shelved bowl. As the figure drew closer, he saw that it was Beth Oliver, her blond hair disheveled and flying.
“Tod!” she panted, drawing near. “They're taking people with them! By force! They've got Kiernan, and Kay Thorwald—they say she can handle the ship with Yeh! And Sue Jarowski!”
“I'd better see what I can do,” Jameson said. He turned and started to go. Maggie hung on to his arm, trying to drag him back.
“Tod,” she said. “Don't go.”
He disentangled her gently. “With Boyle out of it, and if Kay's being held, then I'm in charge. I'd better see—”
�
��You can't do anything,” she cried, oddly agitated for someone as usually self-assured as Maggie was. “You said so yourself. You'll only get hurt.”
“I'll be all right,” he said, turning again.
“You don't know what Klein and that—that Chia are capable of!”
“I'm afraid I do,” he said, nodding toward where Boyle lay sprawled. Janet had the bleeding under control, and she had a rolled-up blanket under Boyle's head. Dmitri and Kiernan's opposite number, Wang, had taken over from Maybury and had set up a tripod of garden tools to hold the drip bag. The leg hung by shreds, and Janet was removing pieces of bone with a pair of tweezers.
“I'll go with you,” Mike Berry said, falling in beside him.
“All right, Mike, but keep out of trouble. Where's Ruiz? Maybe he can try to talk to Klein again.”
“He went over there a few minutes ago,” Mike said. “Mayb's with him. You aren't going to get anywhere with that bastard, Tod. You know that type. If he blew up the world, he'd say he did it to keep America free.”
Jameson nodded grimly. He ascended the tiers of synthetic stone, past the metal trees and the random tumbled blocks the Cygnans had put there for variety. To his left a miniature waterfall was sluicing down the steps toward the murky pool at the bottom. Mike hopped along beside him, trying to keep up, bouncing too high in the low gravity and then having to take another giant step when his foot touched bottom.
As Jameson drew close, he could see people milling around uncertainly, keeping well beyond an invisible line. On the other side of the line were the people in Klein's party. Most of Yao's bomb crew were there—a score of powerfully built young men and bandy-legged girls who had armed themselves with a miscellany of slats, garden shears and trowels, and what must have been branches of the iron trees, clandestinely filed to the snapping-off point during weeks of captivity. Only one of Tu Jue-chen's Struggle Group fighters was there—the one who'd helped Gifford. The rest must have been dismissed as unreliable, despite their attempt to switch sides. Jameson's own partner, Li, was in the party, apparently voluntarily, as was Maggie's opposite number from the computer section, Jen Mei-mei. They were talking to three Chinese fusion techs.
Kay, Kiernan, and Sue were backed up against the inward-leaning wall of the zoo enclosure, guarded by Gifford and Fiaccone. Gifford was holding Kiernan, pinioning the smaller man's arms behind his back. Kiernan looked dazed, as if he'd been hit on the head. Mike's young assistant, Quentin, under no apparent restraint, was talking volubly at Sue, who averted her head, refusing to look at him.
Chia and Yao were on their knees, doing something to the lock mechanism of the massive barred door. It was an armor-plated disk, big as a wagon wheel, half buried in a slot in the metallic sill. There was a neat array of tiny electronic instruments and miniature tools spread out on a quilted jacket whose cotton stuffing oozed from a dozen slashes. Jameson made out the flickering blue glow of a CRT display no larger than a thumbnail, and then, from beneath Chia's hand on the lock, a flash of laser light. Klein was standing over them, negligently facing the crowd, the wicked little gun in his hand.
“Quent!” Mike bellowed as they approached. “What the hell are you doing there?”
The boy broke off his recitation to Sue and turned to face Mike and Jameson. “Jeez, Mike, I mean what was I supposed to do? Klein, he told me I hadda obey orders.”
Klein's sleek head quested in Mike's direction, then paused to examine Jameson. “Thanks for bringing him over, Commander,” he said. “It saves me from having to send someone to get him.”
“Listen, Klein,” Jameson began, fighting down anger.
“We're going to need him to activate the boron reaction. Quentin says he can't do it by himself.”
“Berry's not going. And neither are those other people.”
Klein lifted the gun and pointed it at Mike. “He's going. Berry, get over there with the others. That's an order.”
“The hell I'm going!” Mike said.
Klein said, “If you don't get over there in about three seconds, you'll take the consequences.”
“Yeah? When you get back to Earth, tell them to come on out here and arrest me.”
“You're a traitorous son of a bitch,” Klein said tightly, “and if I can't use you, I'm going to—”
Jameson stepped quickly between Mike and the gun.
“This has gone far enough,” he said, with as much force as he could muster. “Klein, didn't you understand a word Dr. Ruiz said? If you interfere with the Cygnans—if you succeed in interfering with them—you're going to endanger the whole human species.”
Klein's voice cracked, showing the strain he must have been under. “I've had it with you, Jameson! You and Ruiz keeping essential data from me, and then interfering—Step away from that man before I give you the whole clip right in your—”
Mike stepped from behind Jameson. “Hold it,” he said. “Don't get yeasty. I'm going.” He gave Jameson a ghastly grin. “Say good-bye to our lovely hosts for me, and try to drop a line now and then.” He moved over to the group huddled against the wall. Quentin immediately began haranguing him, gesturing with both hands.
There was the screech of protesting ratchets, and the huge circular lock rolled in its slot, mounting an incline. “Wan pi te,” Chia said, and gathered up her tools. Yao, with the help of a couple of muscular missile men, slid the great barred door open.
“Hurry,” Yao called over his shoulder. He and Chia were pushing their people through the gate into the vast empty exhibition hall outside.
Klein looked thoughtful. “Just a minute,” he said. “We'd better have an astronomer.”
Chapter 25
“You can go straight to hell,” Ruiz said, “if you can find the place. I don't intend to give you the slightest help.”
He stood facing Klein, his back stiff and straight and his stubbled chin thrust out, looking like an immensely dignified scarecrow. He was bad news now, and people were beginning to edge away from his vicinity.
Some of Klein's muscle, four or five husky missile men, had drifted over to fan out on either side of him, hefting their makeshift weapons. The girl, Smitty, was among them. Jameson had taken her for one of the men at first, with her broad shoulders and big frame, but now he could see her breasts like flat dinner plates under the man's undershirt she wore, solid as the meat of arm and shoulder. There was no question of Klein's leaving without her.
“Don't make us drag you,” Klein said. “You could get damaged and slow us up.”
“Then get on with it and damage me,” Ruiz said. “But I won't lift a finger to help you put Earth in jeopardy.”
Klein lifted his gun. “I've seen your file, Ruiz,” he said, his voice rising. “With your Reliability Index, I'm at a loss to understand why they trusted you on this mission in the first place. I'd give you summary termination right now if I felt like wasting ammunition.”
Beefy hands closed on Ruiz's arms. Smitty was behind him, an arm crooked around his throat. Ruiz tried to scuffle with them. Klein looked around at the crowd with worried eyes.
Gifford, hauling a limp Kiernan through the gate, said, “We don't need the old crock. Maybury does all his figuring for him anyway.”
“Leave her out of it!” Ruiz cried. He actually broke free for a moment, and then a lead pipe came down on his head. He crumpled to the ground. Smitty and one of the Chinese began methodically to kick him in the ribs.
“Stop it!” It was Maybury. She ran to Ruiz and cradled his battered head. “Dr. Ruiz, Dr. Ruiz, say something!” Ruiz's head lolled. He was as limp as an empty pressure suit.
They dragged her off him and hustled her through the gate, her feet off the ground. Jameson knelt beside Ruiz. “He's alive,” he said. “Somebody go get Janet, quickly!”
Klein's troops and their prisoners filed through the opening in the gate, weighed down with their improvised weapons and bundles of supplies. Somewhere nearby, Jameson heard Liz say bitterly, “They took practically all the food we go
t from the ship's stores.”
The delay with Ruiz had been a mistake for Klein. As the last couple of Chinese got through the gate, backing up and brandishing their weapons warningly at the people left inside, somebody up front piercingly yelled: “Liu hsin, liu hsin!”
Dmitri was shaking Jameson by the shoulder. “An alarm,” he said. “They must have set off some kind of alarm when they opened the door. The Cygnans are coming.
Jameson heaved himself to his feet and ran to the gate. Ignoring the threatening gestures of the Chinese in the rear guard, he sprang to the bars and hauled himself up for a better look.
Two Cygnans were skittering down the curving corridor of the hall of bipeds. One of them was down, snake low, on all sixes, the long tubular snout aimed like an arrowhead. The other trotted on four legs like some nightmare centaur, cradling a gleaming blunderbuss in its flexible arms.
It was Tetrachord and Triad, come to put the animals back in their cages.
The neural weapon had a short range, a cone of modulated microwaves that lost its efficiency at twenty or thirty feet. But when Tetrachord fanned it over the twenty-odd people in Klein's party, the floor was going to be covered with blind, writhing bundles of short-circuited nerves who would be kept that way until they could be hauled back to the cage.
Klein's group split in two and scurried to opposite sides of the hall. Basic military tactics. A pair of zookeepers wouldn't be much on strategy.
Jameson clung to the bars, taking in the scene. In the cusped vestibule that formed the intersection of the narrow ends of the five major habitats, the fleeing humans had spread out in two broken arcs that bent toward each other like pincers, some fifty feet apart. No matter which angle the Cygnans approached from, the neural weapon was not going to be able to sweep the nearer half of one of the two lines.
As if realizing this, Tetrachord veered first to the right, then to the left. Triad failed to change direction fast enough, and that was what saved her.
At a distance of about ten yards, Tetrachord, still running, reared up and shouldered his blunderbuss—or, rather, deployed it with the bulb-shaped grip braced in one rubbery claw. Jameson, seeing the whole thing in the slow-motion vision of stimulated adrenals, irrelevantly admired the unbroken rhythm of the Cygnan running pattern as he shifted from four legs to three to two.
The Jupiter Theft Page 28