The Jupiter Theft

Chapter 29

A necklace of people stretched across the stars. Jameson counted: twenty-seven of them, all holding hands. They’d turned off their thrusters long since. They were falling raggedly toward the spoked wheel of the Jupiter ship a couple of miles away—a circle drawn round a Y, shining with reflected Jupiter light.

He was riding the Cygnan broomstick backward, braking at a reckless quarter g, gripping it with both hands and clamped thighs to keep from sliding down the slender shaft toward the deadly beam of light that fanned out from its business end. The four-foot bubble with the Cygnan and the two humanoids curled inside was snubbed securely to the shaft.

The necklace was mostly blue, with nine white human trinkets spaced along it. Six of them would be the American prisoners, each sandwiched between two guards. That left twenty-one of them to deal with—including Maggie.

He eased down the thrust, matching velocities. The broomstick had only one control, a sliding stud that turned it on and graduated the thrust all the way up to one g. You pointed it where you wanted to go, and you judged your turnover point, by eyeball and by the seat of your pants.

The necklace broke up as he approached, turning into a random swarm, of blue and white manikins. Jameson slid the little flat pistol out of the waistband of his shorts.

He wondered what he looked like to them. He must be a startling figure, bare-chested in airless space, straddling a metal staff with a rainbow bubble shimmering at his back.

Suit jets flared, quick diamond sparkles against blackness, as the drifting shapes used their suit radios to organize themselves. Jameson was acutely aware of his nakedness.

At a quarter mile, Jameson switched off that frightening beam of raw energy. The prisoners were mixed up in the jumble of stuffed figures. He might have drawn his finger of light across his enemies, but the others would have sizzled and fried too. He was going to have to get in among them.

He twisted around, climbing the stick like a fire-pole, one leg twined and one hand gripping to give him maximum freedom of movement. His agility in the skintight sheath would be an advantage. He hadn’t realized it was possible to feel this free in space.

Slowly, slowly, the figures became more distinct, seeming not to move closer but to grow before his eyes. They were a complicated frieze against a spackle of frosty stars, sharp and harshly lit in the clarity of vacuum. He could pick out faces behind faceplates: Chia, her rosebud lips curled, holding Maybury’s upper arm with one hand and with the other fumbling in her toolbelt. Yeh with his big jaw and sloping shelf of brow. A young Chinese fusion tech, looking frightened. Gifford, staring popeyed at him, one mittened hand closing on a screwdriver.

And then he was among them, one bare foot lashing out to kick Gifford away before Gifford, clumsy in his suit, could slash with the screwdriver. A Chinese missile man was swinging at him with a barbed hook, like something moving in a dream. He dodged easily and fired a burst at close range into the broad chest. Klein’s ugly little gun twitched in his hand. He was appalled at what happened then: The spacesuit shredded and bits of the living man inside exploded outward. Jameson’s momentum kept him going. He crashed into Yeh, and instantly the man’s big mitts were closing on the plastic balloon around his head. Jameson ducked out of the way, and before Yeh could grab, a thrust of Jameson’s shoulder had sent him spinning out of the fight.

Another man from the missile crew collided with him. Something gleamed in a mittened fist. Jameson let go of the broomstick, and his left hand found the little safety latch at the man’s air-hose connection. He gave a yank. The stuffed suit twitched and the mittened fist opened up. A sharp little awl drifted away. The body tumbled lazily backward, horror behind its faceplate.

Jameson then found himself in a clear space, a flock of people wheeling around him like gulls. Suit jets puffed out their glittering motes, and four blue shapes were converging on him. He had time to recognize Yao’s face behind glass, the lean ascetic features drawn back in a rictus. He fired, and the missile officer ran into a hail of little bees that plucked at the material of his suit and turned him into a rag doll. Jameson swiveled and cut the two men flanking Yao into ribbons. Still rotating on his axis, he aimed the machine pistol at the fourth man, coming at him with a glowing soldering iron fed by a cable from a belt pack.

He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

Empty!

He flung the pistol at the man’s helmet. It bounced off. The man kept coming. The tip of the soldering iron shone orange. Jameson wriggled helplessly in emptiness. The broomstick with its vacuole of alien life hung out of reach, slowly twisting. Jameson had no reaction mass, no way to move. He hovered there, waiting for the searing touch of the iron.

And then there was a flash of brilliant light, brief as lightning. The Chinese disappeared below the waist. The torso came tumbling on, the gloved hands clenching and unclenching reflexively in the brain’s last memory of pain. When the half of a man bumped Jameson, the soldering iron was swinging on its tether and he was able to snare it without getting burned.

He twisted his head around and saw the Cygnan broomstick sailing away under the impetus of the burst of light. One of the humanoids must have managed to reach the sliding stud through the yielding membrane and switch it on for the fraction of a second that it was lined up with the attacking Chinese.

They’d chosen sides, all right!

Nobody else seemed to have been touched by the finger of light, but now the broomstick was a hundred yards away and still retreating. The humanoids might be able to turn it on, but they couldn’t aim it. There was another flash of light that only worsened their vector, and then they were falling into endless night.

There was the sparkle of a suit jet, and one of the white suits that had been hanging against the flamboyant backdrop of Jupiter took off after the broomstick. It wasn’t Gifford; Jameson could see him hovering next to one of his Chinese friends. Was it Fiaccone?

He located Chia’s’ small blue suit in the starry space around him. Aiming himself carefully, he shoved as hard as he could at the dreadful thing that was bumping against him. The dismantled torso floated off, and Jameson was coasting with nightmare slowness toward Chia.

Chia let go her grip on Maybury and pointed something at Jameson—the corkscrew-wrapped barrel of a hand-laser. He could see it pulsating with faint light as its flash tubes pumped photons. It would take only a couple of seconds until photon excitation reached the critical point; then a spurt of energetic light was going to drill him clean through.

He floated relentlessly toward her, powerless to change direction. With the light of Jupiter on her, she was limned sharp and clean in his vision. Behind the square visor her face was a blushing peach, distorted by fury. The half-naked apparition before her had ruined her plans, probably beyond salvage. Only five members of the bomb crew were left, without Yao to direct them.

Jameson was but a dozen feet from her now. He wondered if it would hurt.

A thread of violet light stretched past him and winked off. Maybury, floating forgotten behind Chia, had come out of her daze of grief. Or perhaps she had only been waiting. She had Chia’s wrist in a small gloved hand. The laser flashed again. Then Maybury’s other hand in its stubby-fingered gloves was spread over Chia’s faceplate, unscrewing the fastenings. Chia struggled, like an overstuffed doll in her spacesuit, but she couldn’t get her am back far enough to dislodge Maybury. The faceplate blew off and the peachlike face behind it burst with running juices.

Jameson collided with the tangled bodies. Gently he pried Maybury’s hands loose and pried the laser from Chia’s grasp. He gave the body a little push to disengage it, and made Maybury understand that he wanted to keep holding on to her for the use of her suit jets.

No more than fifty feet away, Gifford’s wide form blocked the stars, the screwdriver still clasped in a mittened fist. He was conferring, helmet to helmet, with one of his Chinese allies, his other hand gripping the man’s sleeve. Jameson tensed, waiting to see what the two of them would do. The laser in his hand was very comforting.

The helmets came apart. Gifford still was steadying himself with a grip on his friend’s arm. Then, with a swift, savage motion, he plunged the screwdriver into the belly of the man’s suit. Jameson couldn’t tell immediately if it had penetrated. Gifford reversed his grip and smashed the weighted handle of the screwdriver into the Chinese faceplate. He kept hammering until the visor went frosty. The blue suit had become floppy. Gifford held the screwdriver up, letting Jameson see it, then tossed it away.

Jameson nodded.

Gifford swam over to another white suit, which had to be Fiaccone, and the two of them went over to get Smitty. Jameson could tell that it was Smitty because he could see a glint of golden hair inside the helmet; it had come undone, filling the bowl. They all put their helmets together for a minute, conferring. Then they waved their hands outward toward Jameson in the universal gesture.

Other white suits were drifting toward Jameson on short bursts of thruster: the prisoners; nobody among the remaining ten Chinese was bothering to keep any of them under guard. One of the Americans—an undersized suit that had to contain Kiernan—had gotten hold of some kind of floating tool, and he was shaking it threateningly in the direction of the Chinese. It must have massed considerable because Kiernan was bobbing up and down at the end of the handle almost as much as the tool was.

The clustered Chinese had turned to watch something. Jameson looked in the same direction.

A pencil of light was drawn against the frosty void—the broomstick coming back. The American who had chased it was bringing it back. Jameson could see the white doll-like figure hunched over the shaft. The bubble with its curled-up Cygnan and fetal humanoids was still snubbed in place.

The figure, swung the shaft under, climbing for a moment on a pillar of fire, then did a complete backflip, rising on arms and legs like a jockey. The searing beam of light traced a large circle around the scattered swarm of people, then died out as most of the riders’ forward velocity was canceled.

It had been an expert braking maneuver.

It also had been an object lesson.

The Chinese went into a quick conference by radio. Jameson could tell they were talking by the amount of nodding and gesturing that went on.

The broomstick rider drifted in Jameson’s direction, using suit jets to damp out the remaining momentum. As he came close, Jameson saw that it was Mike Berry, with a big grin on his face.

The Chinese finished their discussion. They made ostentatious palms-outward gestures and floated over to join the Americans. What was left of the Jupiter expedition was united again.

A last blue-clad figure, awkward in a spacesuit that was too small a fit, had been left behind. That would be Maggie in her borrowed suit. After a moment, she followed. She had nowhere else to go.