The Jupiter Theft

fellow.

One of the Chinese was pushing on the door now, sealing the people inside. He kept going, another six feet into the round metal tunnel, waited a minute, then pulled the door back out. It didn’t seem to take much effort.

The next load included a couple of prisoners in American spacesuits. Jameson wondered who they were. Kiernan was one of them, from the bantam size of the suit. The other was a woman—Sue Jarowski or Kay Thorwald. It wasn’t Maybury. She was being half supported by Klein’s girl friend, Smitty, while Fiaccone screwed her helmet on.

Jameson struggled for a better position. Nobody paid any attention to him. He felt a faint breeze on his face and the nape of his neck; there was a movement of air toward the lock. It probably leaked around the edges—more Cygnan sloppiness. He was sitting more or less facing the lock, a little beyond the place where it stuck out of the bulkhead, obliquely facing the rearward jumble of gigantic clockwork and the shadowed ramp up over the ridge that had allowed Klein to take him by surprise. All he could hope for was that some Cygnan maintenance worker might come through there, past the boulderlike protuberances embedded in the floor, in time to set off an alarm.

But it was already too late for that. They were all gone now, except for a final group of five and Klein, who was just getting into his spacesuit. He evidently was going to leave last so that he could guard the rear with his machine pistol. If a Cygnan were to happen along, Klein would simply cut her down and be out the lock a minute later.

Mei-mei was pleading with them. She’d been stripped to her underwear. Her low-slung figure looked dumpier than usual in a coarse cotton singlet and baggy drawers. Maggie had taken the long-john liner the Chinese wore under their quilted spacesuits; Jameson couldn’t help thinking that she was going to have cold wrists and ankles out there.

“No!” Jameson heard Chia say loudly. “Go and wait with the Jameson person and do not bother me any more. You are ordered to stay here. The People’s Coalition will rescue you in due course.”

“Wo p’a te!” the girl wailed. “I am afraid!”

“You are stupid and counterrevolutionary!” Chia said. “The star-worms will not hurt you. They will take you back and put you with the others.”

Mei-mei started whimpering again. Chia raised a dainty hand and gave her a ringing slap across the face. “Go! Do you want to be punished for social contradiction?”

Tears running down her pudgy face, Mei-mei slunk toward him and squatted down a few feet away. She shot him a venomous glance. Her underwear wasn’t very clean. Jameson didn’t envy Maggie her hour in the commandeered spacesuit and liner.

Chia and the four in her party filed into the cylindrical barrel of the air lock, stooping under the extended shafts. One of them was an American—Smitty. Klein shoved on the round manhole cover and sealed the barrel. A moment later, as somebody inside pushed the outer lid, the thick disk slid inward another six feet and stayed there.

Klein sauntered over, his helmet tucked under his arm and the machine pistol dangling at his side. He surveyed Jameson, ignoring the Chinese girl.

“I’m going to enjoy this, Jameson,” he said. “You’ve given me a lot of trouble.”

“I thought you promised Maggie you’d let me stay alive.”

“That Privie bitch! I had to keep her quiet. She’ll be making out her own report when we get back. And they’ll be debriefing the rest of them for months.”

“But now there aren’t any witnesses.”

“Right. Except. Butterball here.”

“You don’t have to shoot her. Nobody on this ship is ever going to see Earth again.”

“She’s just a slimy ChiCom. I wish I could kill them all.”

Mei-mei had just figured out what they were talking about. She began backing away on all fours. “No, no!” she wailed. “Comrade Chia say—”

“Shut up!” Klein ordered.

Jameson raised himself on one elbow. “Listen, Klein—”

“You shut up too. I don’t like you, Jameson. You know you got me a reprimand on my record when you complained to Boyle at the beginning of the mission? When I get back I’m going to be a hero. The man who saved Earth from the Cygnans. I’ve got it all figured out. You and Ruiz say the Cygnans are planning to leave the solar system. I believe you. But not about it being dangerous if they’re delayed. You just want to protect your slimy worm friends. Well, when they start moving out of the system, everybody is going to think it was because they got a taste of a couple of nukes. And I’ll be the man who did it!”

“You’ll never see Earth, you damned fool! It won’t be there when you get there!”

Klein wasn’t bothering to listen. He raised his flat little weapon and moved back about ten feet so he wouldn’t get his suit splattered with blood.

Jameson wanted to sneeze.

While he was making up his mind about it, Klein did sneeze, a huge explosive spasm that jerked his otter-slick head back and made his little eyes water. He rubbed a sleeve across his nose and aimed the gun again.

Jameson felt awful. His throat was sore, and there was a weight like cement on his chest. His eyes itched. Behind him he heard Mei-mei coughing.

Klein staggered backward, still trying to aim the gun. In the space of a few seconds, his face had gone puffy and splotched. His nose was running. His eyes were squeezed to tight slits.

Jameson hardly noticed. He was hacking away, and his vision was blurred by tears. His head felt like a balloon.

Klein dropped his helmet. He clawed at his throat and eyes. He seemed to be having some kind of massive histamine reaction. His swollen tongue protruded like a red rubber ball. He made choking sounds. The skin stretched tight across a face that was so distended as to be unrecognizable. He fell over on his back. The dreadful whooping sounds stopped. The hand that had been clawing at his throat went limp. It too was swollen, looking like a blown- up rubber glove.

Jameson’s vision began to clear. The sneezing fits died down. He felt awful. He looked past Klein’s body toward the shadows of the machinery. He detected movement there. The two pink humanoids stepped out from where they had been hiding.

Behind him, Mei-mei gasped. Then he heard her snuffling. Her head sounded as stuffed as his own.

The elfin beings bounced toward him, their silky coats lifting and falling dreamily, in the weak gravity. When at last they stood before him, he could see that the pink gossamer was being ruffled by a breeze. They exuded a cool mintlike smell. He immediately began to feel better.

They plucked at his bonds with clever fingers. He got shakily to his feet and went over to look at Klein’s body.

The skin had stretched so tight over Klein’s face that it had split like an overripe melon. A straw-colored serum oozed out of the cracks. Klein’s features were invisible, buried in the bloated mass.

“Acute anaphylactic shock,” a voice said. “He died of an allergic reaction.”

Jameson looked up. Dmitri was emerging from behind one of the bulky metal boulders. His right arm dangled limply from his shattered shoulder. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he was sniffling. He approached Jameson in a low-gravity shuffle.

“The humanoids?” Jameson asked.

Dmitri nodded. “Evidently they’ve been around us long enough to manufacture human allergens. A whiff of some exotic protein, probably. Unstable molecular structure that breaks down in seconds—just time enough to make the human body go wild activating chymotrypsin enzymes. You were lucky to be ten feet upwind of him. It was just enough to save you.”

“How about you?”

“I was upwind too—and a good deal farther away from our pink friends. The movement of air must have been toward that lock Klein was standing in front of. These little pixies tested the wind first. So that’s what those feathers are good for. They may be cute as kittens, but they’re dangerous carnivores—or their ancestors were. They not only can tranquilize their pray, they can kill it at a distance, with something a lot more deadly than fang or