The Jupiter Theft

Another contractile spasm squeezed the Cygnan, squashing her. When it passed, the three eyestalks fixed on Jameson again, and the mouth centered among them opened like a pitcher plant. “Give me the little brother.”

“No. You must help me leave.”

“You are a wrongness. Like the other two-legs.”

Jameson had no time to decide what that meant, because the Cygnan was fumbling among her pouches. She extracted a short curving instrument that looked like a section of thick gold bracelet with little wheels set along its edges.

“Watch out!” somebody yelled. “It may be a weapon.”

“I don’t think so,” Jameson said. “I think it’s a key.”

Triad dragged herself over to the gate. The humans made way for her. She clamped the gold bangle on the thick disk that contained the lock mechanism. The curves matched, and the wheels fit into a pair of grooves that ran around the outer rim.

She whistled, a complex roulade of chromatic phrases, and the section of bracelet crept along the grooves under its own power, or power provided from within the lock mechanism. It disappeared under the edge of the disk, and the whole wagon-wheel-sized assembly lifted. The gate slid open smoothly.

Jameson reached underneath and retrieved the device. “For opening cages from the inside,” he said. “The animals could never figure out how to use it.”

Everybody had shrunk away from the opening as if it were dangerous. Nobody seemed anxious to leave. Jameson turned to Dmitri. “Put it down. Gently.”

Dmitri set the squamous little creature down on the floor of the cage. It humped its broad back. The sucking tube that was its head waved from side to side, seeking. It homed in on Triad and pulled itself along on its feeble legs, like an injured beetle.

Ruiz spoke up for the first time. Under the bandaged head, some color had returned to his lined face. “They couldn’t reproduce at their one-gravity acceleration, could they? No population growth until their ships are coasting or parked.”

Jameson nodded at him. “No. And if we ever get back home, we can tell them the Cygnans won’t be interested in settling on Earth, either.”

The tiny male had reached Triad. It crawled blindly over the surface of her body. Her hide twitched. As Jameson watched, the tightly wrapped petals of the structure that looked like her tail parted and unpeeled. They spread all the way open like a blooming orchid. The little parasite crept inside like a bee looking for nectar, squeezing past the inward-pointing spines that, like a lobster trap, would prevent it from ever leaving again.

Cygnans did mate for life. Even when their inamorata was dead.

The petals of the tail closed tight again. There was only a drop of thin orange serum trembling at the tip. The rippling contractions of Triad’s tubular body died away and stopped. The rings of muscle relaxed. She lay limp and unmoving.

Jameson rubbed his knuckles over his eyes. He felt tired. It had been a long day for everybody.

“Some of you pick her up and get her out of sight in one of those tents,” he said. “Go easy with her. And I’ll want a detail to get the body of the other Cygnan out of sight. I don’t know how long it will be before other Cygnans come to check, but if they don’t see anything obvious, it may buy us some time.”

Captain Hsieh drafted some volunteers and got Tetrachord’s headless body inside the compound. They wrapped it in one of the precious blankets and covered it with rubble.

Jameson looked up at the winding observation tubes, frosty in the subdued light. In not too many hours, they would be filled with sightseeing Cygnans.

He turned to face the others. “All right,” he said. “Who’s going with me?”

Chapter 26

“Here’s all the food I could get together,” Liz Becque said apologetically. “And there’s about three gallons of drinking water in those cans and jugs. You couldn’t carry much more than that. You’ll have to depend on finding water along the way.”

Jameson examined the supplies spread out across the pokes that Liz had improvised from squares of sheeting. It included all the canned and packaged food that Klein had overlooked, and some pressed bars of a fish- and-wingbean pemmican that she’d made from the leftover supper rations.

“You may not get fed in the morning,” he warned. “Triad won’t be in any shape to get the zoo routine back to normal.”

“It’s all right. We’ll go hungry tomorrow. It’s the least we can do.”

Jameson began to tie up the bundles. He became aware of Omar Tuttle standing nearby, shuffling his big feet.

“I’m sorry, Tod,” Omar said. “I’d go with you, but I’d better stay and look after Liz. The baby could come any time.” He avoided meeting Jameson’s eyes.

“Okay,” Jameson said. “Don’t worry about it.” He went on tying up the bundles, and after awhile Omar went away.

He couldn’t blame Omar. He’d told them all himself that there was little chance of catching up with Klein before the alerted Cygnans intercepted him, or of doing anything useful if he did. Klein had a small army with him. Armed.

“Don’t go, then,” Beth Oliver had said reasonably. “Let the Cygnans catch them. You’ll only make things worse for us.”

Pierce had said: “All you’ll accomplish is to be brought back here anyway, and that’s if you’re lucky. Nobody shoots zoo animals. But you shoot mad dogs that are running around loose.”

Janet Lemieux had said: “We need you here, Tod, Captain Boyle’s going to need somebody to back him up. Otherwise the Chinese will control things. And you’re the only one who can talk to the Cygnans.”

What it all boiled down to was that everybody had an excuse for not going. Pierce, sheepishly displaying the arm broken during capture. Liz with her indisputable pregnancy. Omar, with his surrogate pregnancy. Janet, who was needed by Boyle and who soon would be needed by Liz…

But dammit, he could have used some help!

None of the Chinese, of course, would even consider going along. Chia had made herself unquestioned authority of the Chinese contingent for as long as she was aboard the Cygnan ship. Bring her back, and you’d committed an act of lese majeste for which you’d suffer when she started running things again. And back here at the zoo, two factions were already shaping up: Captain Hsieh’s followers and the regrouped forces of Tu Juechen. Neither of the principals would willingly leave the field to the other, and none of the followers would desert the standard; it was important to be on the winning side early in the game.

For that matter, if Klein were brought back alive there could be a clash about constituted authority among the Americans. Klein carried the baton of the Reliability Board, and all of them, Jameson included, to some degree had been conditioned to its touch.

Except perhaps Ruiz.

Jameson looked across to where Ruiz was waiting for him. The old man was standing straight and tall, too proud to let anyone see him leaning against the wall. The bandage around his head was already askew where he had been fooling with it. His fierce hawklike profile was turned away. He’d bullied Janet into giving him the stimulants he’d need to keep him going.

“Medical supplies are short, Dr. Ruiz,” she had told him.

“Boyle and I are your only patients at the moment, and Boyle doesn’t need them.”

Janet had bit her lip. “You ought not to be doing anything strenuous. You certainly have a concussion, and you may even have a fracture under that cut scalp.”

In the end she’d given in. Then it had been Jameson’s turn.

“You’ll slow me up, Doctor,” he said bluntly.

“I’ll keep up with you. If I don’t, you can leave me behind. You’ll be no worse off.”