The Jupiter Plague

12

The light was on for only a fraction of a second, then vanished as there was a burst of firing from beneath the ship.

“That tears it,” Burke said. “They know we’re here and our time is cut to nothing. Bennett won’t be able to hold them off very long. Get us into the ship, Yasumura…”

Another light came on and at the same instant a line of holes stitched itself across the cloth and death screamed and ricocheted around the compartment as half-inch, armor-piercing slugs clanged off the impenetrable metal of the walls. It lasted less than a second, then there was more firing outside and the light was gone. Darkness enveloped the lock as the battle lamp shattered, and in the sudden silence that followed there was a single, choked-off moan.

A tiny cone of light sprang out from Yasumura’s penlight, sweeping across Lieutenant Haber lying sprawled out on the floor with blood soaking out through the leg of his coveralls. Sam cut the cloth away quickly and began to dress the wound with his first-aid pack.

“Is there anyone else hurt?” he said.

“I’m fine,” the general snapped. “Yasumura— what about you?”

“There is no trouble — listen, we could close the outer port, would that help?”

“Keep us from being shot to death,” Burke grunted, “and buy us some time — now you’re beginning to think.”

“The outer door isn’t a problem,” the engineer mumbled around the light he clutched in his teeth as he swiftly changed the connections in the junction box. “The motor for it is here as are the wires, so—”

A relay sparked as he closed it and there was the loud-pitched whine of an electric motor in the wall.

“It should be closing—” His words were cut off as another burst of firing tore the cloth covering from the opening and a shaft of burning light poured in. This time there was no answering fire from below and the light remained on. They dropped to the floor and saw the massive door outside swinging slowly toward them. More shots boomed out, a continuous fire, but it was aimed at the closing door not at the open lock. Bullets roared against the metal, screaming away in vibrating ricochets and still the door kept moving, coming on until it hit the steel plate over the opening. The plate bent, tore and the motor whined louder in the wall, then suddenly stopped. The plate had buckled and jammed leaving an opening just a few inches wide.

“The circuit breakers blew when the motor overloaded,” Yasumura said.

“It’s good enough.” General Burke stood up. “Now, how do we get the inner door opened? Can we cut through it with the laser?”

“We could — but it wouldn’t do much good. This door is sealed like a bank vault. A motor-powered ring gear inside the door turns pinion gears that drive out three-inch thick bars into sockets in the housing. We can’t cut them one by one.”

“The trouble then,” Sam asked, “is that something is stopping the current from getting to this motor in the door?”

“Yes-”

“Well, couldn’t you cut an opening in the door big enough to reach through and connect the motor to the power pack? Then you could move it as you did the outer door…”

“Sam, you’re wasted in medicine,” Yasumura shouted enthusiastically, “because that’s just what we’re going to do.” He began to draw on the sealed door with a grease pencil. “Here are the bars, the ring gear… and the motor should be about here. If we cut through at this spot we should miss the motor, but be in the central cavity where we can wire into it.”

He threw down the pencil and began to pull the wires from the power pack and to reconnect it. There were more shots from outside, but none of them found the narrow slot of the doorway. The laser buzzed and Yasumura pressed it to the door over the spot he had marked.

It was slow work. The metal of the door was dense and resistant and the laser cut only a fraction of an inch at a time as he worked it in a slow circle the size of a saucer. He finished the circle and went over it again to deepen it. The metal heated and stank. General Burke crawled over to the door, shielded his eyes from the light and tried to see out, then put his gun to his shoulder and fired a burst. He dropped low as the firing was returned and the lock rang like a bell with the impact of the slugs on the massive door.

“They’re bringing up a fire engine with a tower. I scattered them a bit. But they’ll bring it back again or someone will think to use a high-pressure hose and they’ll wash us out of here. How is it coming?”

“I should have cut through by now,” Yasumura gasped, leaning on the laser, “but this metal…” There was a clatter as the plug of metal dropped free.

“Now open it!” Burke snapped and fired another burst through the gap.

It was slow, painful work teasing the plug of metal out of the hole far enough to get a grip on it with a wrench. Sam stood ready, clamped down quickly as soon as he could and pulled the hot cylinder from the hole, throwing it the length of the air lock. Heedless of his smoldering sleeve, Yasumura flashed the light into the opening.

“There it is!” he chortled. “Bang on. Pass me the long-shanked screwdriver and the cables from the power pack.”

Attaching the wires at the bottom of the deep hole was exacting work, made even more difficult by the hot metal that burned into the little engineer’s flesh. Sam could see the angry welts rising on his skin and the way he bit hard on his lip while beads of sweat sprang out on his face.

“Done…” he gasped, and pulled the screwdriver out. “Turn on the power, the motor is hooked up.”

There was an angry whirring buzz from the opening that lasted almost a minute and, when it rose in frequency, Yasumura switched the electricity off. He squinted in through the opening with the light.

“The rods are withdrawn, so let’s see if we can push this thing open!”

They heaved against the door’s unyielding bulk, planting their feet on the deck and straining until their muscles cracked. It didn’t move.

“Once more—” Burke gasped, “and this time give it everything.”

With their lips drawn back from their clenched teeth they strained at the massive door and Haber dragged himself across the floor and struggled up on one leg to add his weight to the effort.

Slowly, with reluctant motion, it moved inward.

“Keep it going…” the general gasped as the gap widened, first a fraction of an inch, then more, until light streamed out and it was big enough to get through. “That’s enough…!”

Sam eased the wounded lieutenant back to the deck as Burke slid cautiously through the gap with his gun pointed before him. He lowered it and laughed brusquely.

“I don’t think it’s much good for shooting germs. Come on, all of you in here and bring the equipment.”

They handed it in through the opening, then Sam helped Haber to his feet and passed him through to Burke before squeezing past the door himself.

“Look at that,” Yasumura said, pointing to a jagged, smoke-stained opening in the wall of the corridor. “That’s where the junction box for the air-lock controls used to be. There must have been a charge of explosive in there — it would have been simple enough for Rand to rig that with a time fuse. But why…?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Burke said. “Haber, you’re not so mobile, so stay here as rear guard and see to it no one gets in to bother us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dr. Yasumura, I imagine the control room would be the best place to look for anything— will you lead the way?”

“Down this connecting corridor, there’s an elevator that goes directly there.”

He went first and their footsteps echoed loudly in the empty ship. They walked warily, looking into every doorway they passed, cautious although they did not know why.

“Hold it,” Yasumura said, and they stopped instantly, guns swinging to the ready. He pointed to a thick insulated wire that crossed the floor of the corridor before them, emerging from a jagged hole in one wall and vanishing into the other. “That cable, it wasn’t here when the ship left Earth.”

Sam knelt and looked at it closely. “It seems normal enough, from the ship’s supplies I imagine. The ‘Pericles’ was on Jupiter for almost two years; this must be a modification of some kind that they made there.”

“I still don’t like it,” the engineer said, glaring at the heavy wire suspiciously. “There are cableways between decks, they could have run it there. Better not touch it now, I’ll take a closer look at it later.”

The destroyed junction box for the air lock seemed to be the only damage that had been done to the ship: the atomic pile was still in operation, the electrical current was on and the air fresh, though it had the canned odor of constant recycling. When they rang for the elevator its door slid open at once.

“The control room is right up top, in the nose of the ship,” Yasumura said, pressing the button. As the elevator hummed up the shaft the tension increased with every passing instant, a spring being coiled tighter and tighter. When the door slid open both Sam and the general had their guns raised and pointed without being aware of it; they stepped out. Some of the tension ebbed as they saw that the domed chamber was as empty of life — or death — as it had been when they had first looked at it on the phone screen in the air lock.

“What the devil is that?” Yasumura asked, pointing to a foot-square metal box that was welded to the deck against the back wall. “Another new installation since the ship left — I wonder what it is for?”

It was a crude cube made of ragged-edged metal sheets welded together with a wide and irregular bead. Small cables emerged from holes in its sides and a larger, wrist-thick cable came up from the top and vanished through a jagged gash cut into the wall. They traced the smaller cables and found that they ran to the control boards, most of them to the communication equipment. Sam stood in front of the control chairs and faced out into the room.

“That’s interesting,” he said. “I didn’t think I had seen these cables or the box before when I used the phone to look in here — and I didn’t. It may be just an accident, but none of them is visible from where I’m standing — right in front of the pickup for the phone.”

“Something even more interesting,” Yasumura said, pointing. “All of the communicators, long wave, FM, everything — they’re all turned on.”

General Burke turned slowly, his eyes following the converging wires back to the box, to the heavy cable that ran up the hole in the wall and vanished. “I think we had better take a look and see where that big cable goes to,” he said.

“What about the ship’s log?” Sam asked. “There should be something about the disease there, or there may be other records.”

“They’ll keep for the moment,” the general said, starting toward the door. “I want to find out first just what is going on with all these wires and connections. Come on.”

The next compartment was banked with navigation instruments and the cable writhed across the floor like a dead serpent, then plunged through a cracked opening in the plastic panel of the far wall. They tracked it through two more compartments before it dived through a small doorway and down the spiral steps in the tunnel beyond. Another cable looped down from the ceiling and joined it: both vanished out of sight below.

“This is an emergency stairwell,” Yasumura said. “It runs the length of the ship.”

Only tiny glow tubes illuminated the steps as they wound their way down, deeper and deeper into the spaceship. Other cables came in through open doorways or through ragged holes cut in the metal wall until there were more than a dozen spiraling down with them, sprawling across the steps. Then the end came, suddenly, as they walked around the turn of the steps where all the cables bunched together and ran out through an open door.

“What’s out there?” the general asked, “at this level.”

Yasumura frowned at the stenciled number on the wall, then counted off on his fingers: he looked surprised. “Why — there’s nothing here, we’re in the fuel levels. There should be nothing but tanks out there, empty tanks, the fuel here would have been used up on the outward flight.”

They eased out through the door, stepping carefully over the tangle of cables, and faced the white wall into which the cables dived.

“That shouldn’t be here!” the engineer said.

There was a chill in the air and Sam leaned over and ran the muzzle of his gun along the wall, knocking off a spray of fine ice crystals. Massive, crudely formed girders ran from the wall to the frame of the ship. There was an ordinary TV phone fixed to the wall above the spot where the cables entered. Yasumura pointed at it.

“That phone shouldn’t be here either; there’s no phone station at this point. And the number is blank—”

Sam stepped by him and turned the phone on, but the screen remained dark.

“You’re going to talk to me whether you want to or not,” he said, then waved the others to stand back. Before they could stop him, or even knew what he was doing, he had sighted his gun and fired a short burst at the outer edge of the bundle of cables. The bullets screamed away and two of the insulated cables jumped and were severed.

The phone hummed and the screen came to life.

The Jovian looked out at them.