Produced by Greg Weeks, Jana Srna and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[ Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from "Amazing Science Fiction Stories" March 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible; changes (corrections of spelling and punctuation) made to the original text are listed at the end of this file. ]
THE JUPITER WEAPON
By CHARLES L. FONTENAY
He was a living weapon of destruction--immeasurably powerful, utterly invulnerable. There was only one question: Was he human?
Trella feared she was in for trouble even before Motwick's head droppedforward on his arms in a drunken stupor. The two evil-looking men at thetable nearby had been watching her surreptitiously, and now they shiftedrestlessly in their chairs.
Trella had not wanted to come to the Golden Satellite. It was a squalidsaloon in the rougher section of Jupiter's View, the terrestrialdome-colony on Ganymede. Motwick, already drunk, had insisted.
A woman could not possibly make her way through these streets alone tothe better section of town, especially one clad in a silvery eveningdress. Her only hope was that this place had a telephone. Perhaps shecould call one of Motwick's friends; she had no one on Ganymede shecould call a real friend herself.
Tentatively, she pushed her chair back from the table and arose. She hadto brush close by the other table to get to the bar. As she did, thedark, slick-haired man reached out and grabbed her around the waist witha steely arm.
Trella swung with her whole body, and slapped him so hard he nearly fellfrom his chair. As she walked swiftly toward the bar, he leaped up tofollow her.
There were only two other people in the Golden Satellite: the fat,mustached bartender and a short, square-built man at the bar. The latterswung around at the pistol-like report of her slap, and she saw that,though no more than four and a half feet tall, he was as heavily muscledas a lion.
His face was clean and open, with close-cropped blond hair and honestblue eyes. She ran to him.
"Help me!" she cried. "Please help me!"
He began to back away from her.
"I can't," he muttered in a deep voice. "I can't help you. I can't doanything."
* * * * *
The dark man was at her heels. In desperation, she dodged around theshort man and took refuge behind him. Her protector was obviouslyunwilling, but the dark man, faced with his massiveness, took nochances. He stopped and shouted:
"Kregg!"
The other man at the table arose, ponderously, and lumbered toward them.He was immense, at least six and a half feet tall, with a brutal, vacantface.
Evading her attempts to stay behind him, the squat man began to movedown the bar away from the approaching Kregg. The dark man moved in onTrella again as Kregg overtook his quarry and swung a huge fist like asledgehammer.
Exactly what happened, Trella wasn't sure. She had the impression thatKregg's fist connected squarely with the short man's chin _before_ hedodged to one side in a movement so fast it was a blur. But thatcouldn't have been, because the short man wasn't moved by that blow thatwould have felled a steer, and Kregg roared in pain, grabbing hisinjured fist.
"The bar!" yelled Kregg. "I hit the damn bar!"
At this juncture, the bartender took a hand. Leaning far over the bar,he swung a full bottle in a complete arc. It smashed on Kregg's head,splashing the floor with liquor, and Kregg sank stunned to his knees.The dark man, who had grabbed Trella's arm, released her and ran for thedoor.
Moving agilely around the end of the bar, the bartender stood overKregg, holding the jagged-edged bottleneck in his hand menacingly.
"Get out!" rumbled the bartender. "I'll have no coppers raiding my placefor the likes of you!"
Kregg stumbled to his feet and staggered out. Trella ran to theunconscious Motwick's side.
"That means you, too, lady," said the bartender beside her. "You andyour boy friend get out of here. You oughtn't to have come here in thefirst place."
"May I help you, Miss?" asked a deep, resonant voice behind her.
She straightened from her anxious examination of Motwick. The squat manwas standing there, an apologetic look on his face.
She looked contemptuously at the massive muscles whose help had beendenied her. Her arm ached where the dark man had grasped it. The broadface before her was not unhandsome, and the blue eyes weredisconcertingly direct, but she despised him for a coward.
"I'm sorry I couldn't fight those men for you, Miss, but I justcouldn't," he said miserably, as though reading her thoughts. "But noone will bother you on the street if I'm with you."
"A lot of protection you'd be if they did!" she snapped. "But I'mdesperate. You can carry him to the Stellar Hotel for me."
* * * * *
The gravity of Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth's moon, butthe way the man picked up the limp Motwick with one hand and tossed himover a shoulder was startling: as though he lifted a feather pillow. Hefollowed Trella out the door of the Golden Satellite and fell in stepbeside her. Immediately she was grateful for his presence. The dimlylighted street was not crowded, but she didn't like the looks of the menshe saw.
The transparent dome of Jupiter's View was faintly visible in thereflected night lights of the colonial city, but the lights wereoverwhelmed by the giant, vari-colored disc of Jupiter itself, ridinghigh in the sky.
"I'm Quest Mansard, Miss," said her companion. "I'm just in fromJupiter."
"I'm Trella Nuspar," she said, favoring him with a green-eyed glance."You mean Io, don't you--or Moon Five?"
"No," he said, grinning at her. He had an engaging grin, with even whiteteeth. "I meant Jupiter."
"You're lying," she said flatly. "No one has ever landed on Jupiter. Itwould be impossible to blast off again."
"My parents landed on Jupiter, and I blasted off from it," he saidsoberly. "I was born there. Have you ever heard of Dr. EriklundMansard?"
"I certainly have," she said, her interest taking a sudden upward turn."He developed the surgiscope, didn't he? But his ship was drawn intoJupiter and lost."
"It was drawn into Jupiter, but he landed it successfully," said Quest."He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen equipment wore outat last. I was born and brought up there, and I was finally able tobuild a small rocket with a powerful enough drive to clear the planet."
She looked at him. He was short, half a head shorter than she, but broadand powerful as a man might be who had grown up in heavy gravity. Hetrod the street with a light, controlled step, seeming to deliberatelyhold himself down.
"If Dr. Mansard succeeded in landing on Jupiter, why didn't anyone everhear from him again?" she demanded.
"Because," said Quest, "his radio was sabotaged, just as his ship'sdrive was."
"Jupiter strength," she murmured, looking him over coolly. "You wearMotwick on your shoulder like a scarf. But you couldn't bring yourselfto help a woman against two thugs."
He flushed.
"I'm sorry," he said. "That's something I couldn't help."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. It's not that I'm afraid, but there's something in methat makes me back away from the prospect of fighting anyone."
Trella sighed. Cowardice was a state of mind. It was peculiarlyinappropriate, but not unbelievable, that the strongest and most agileman on Ganymede should be a coward. Well, she thought with a rush ofsympathy, he couldn't help being what he was.
* * * * *
&
nbsp; They had reached the more brightly lighted section of the city now.Trella could get a cab from here, but the Stellar Hotel wasn't far. Theywalked on.
Trella had the desk clerk call a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwickto his home. She and Quest had a late sandwich in the coffee shop.
"I landed here only a week ago," he told her, his eyes frankly admiringher honey-colored hair and comely face. "I'm heading for Earth on thenext spaceship."
"We'll be traveling companions, then," she said. "I'm going back on thatship, too."
For some reason she decided against telling him that the assignment onwhich she had come to
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