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.”
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.”
