The Jupiter Theft

claw.”

“Why didn’t they help us before Ruiz got killed, then?” Jameson said bitterly.

Dmitri tried to shrug, then went white with pain from his shattered shoulder. When he recovered, he said, “We were out in the open. Nothing to hide behind. And there were probably too many of them.”

“Can you stay on your feet a while longer?”

Dmitri nodded. “I took a couple of Hernando’s pep pills. His stuff was at the bottom at the other side, where I fell. They got me all the way here. It was a hell of a climb with one arm, even if I do weigh only a couple of pounds.”

“Can you use your good arm to help me get Klein out of his suit? Time’s running out.”

Dmitri was aghast. “You’re going after them?”

“I’ll have Klein’s machine pistol.”

Jameson tried to pry the gun out of Klein’s bloated hand. The finger was swollen in the trigger guard. Jameson closed his eyes and pulled, but it was no use. The humanoids saw his problem. One of them made excited chipmunk noises and bit the finger off with its needle teeth. It handed the gun to Jameson.

Dmitri was being sick. When he was finally able to talk he said: “I don’t think we’re going to be able to get Klein out of that suit, Tod.”

The humanoids were trying to be helpful. One of them ran and got a butcher knife that Chia’s party had left behind. It cocked its head and stared at Jameson with its enormous violet eyes, then gravely offered him the knife.

Dmitri, his face ashen, said: “You could butcher him inside the suit, take him out in little pieces.”

Jameson said savagely, “And I’d do it if it would get me through that air lock. But the suit would be unusable.” He sniffed the stench leaking from Klein’s neck ring. “In fact, it’s probably unusable now.”

The humanoids had disappeared while they were talking. When Jameson realized that fact, despair hit him like a fist. They’d probably sensed the proximity of Cygnans. It was going to be all over, any minute now. Chia and Yao’s bomb crew must be miles away by now, jetting toward the Jupiter ship. Without hope or purpose, he continued to try to shoehorn the body out of the spacesuit.

Ten minutes later, Dmitri cried, “Look!”

The humanoids were emerging from the recesses of the machinery again. They were herding a single Cygnan between them. The Cygnan acted drunk. It wobbled toward them on rubbery legs, its tail and head raised in a shallow U-shape, waving in befuddled fashion.

“Oh, fine!” Jameson said.

“Wait a minute,” Dmitri said. “They must have something in mind. They’re very bright—brighter than us, I’ll bet—and they want to get off this ship in the worst way.”

They watched the humanoids put the Cygnan through some incomprehensible exercises. The Cygnan seemed very anxious to please.

“Appeasement syndrome,” Dmitri said. “Every social species has them. Baby-biting inhibitions, submissiveness to the pack leader, food-offering to the young or the helpless. Who knows what the Cygnan equivalent is? But our feathered friends know how to trigger the hormones that cause it. And they’ve doped that creature up to the eyestalks, too. All it wants to do is make us all happy.”

The humanoids walked the Cygnan up to the airlock, pulled it open and hopped inside. They showed her Jameson, trying to pry Klein’s body out of the suit. They patted her and caressed her and ran their feathery fingers over her snout and tail, and chattered at her in their piping voices. They weren’t using any approximation of Cygnan language, Jameson could tell, but somehow they were communicating.

The Cygnan, stumbling and falling, managed to get to one of the bulbous housings near the lock. Jameson had assumed they contained some kind of machinery. But at her manipulations, the whole face of the thing opened up.

“A tool locker!” Jameson breathed. “Look, Dmitri, some of those plastic sacks they ferried us here in. And those globular air canisters. And a rack of those broomstick scooters. And the plastic sheaths they wore over their heads and tails.”

“How are you going to use them?” Dmitri said. “You still need a spacesuit.”

One of the little pink creatures was urging Jameson over to the locker. It plucked at his clothing with little quick movements. In a moment of shock, he realized that it was undressing him.

“Don’t be shy,” Dmitri urged. “It has something in mind. Go along with it.”

Jameson turned his back to Mei-mei and dropped his shorts. The humanoid was peeling off his shirt. When he was stripped to the buff, the Cygnan waddled over to him on four unsteady legs, carrying an object shaped like two cones, one large and one small, joined at their narrow ends. It pointed the open end of the small cone at him.

“What’s it going to do?” Jameson asked uneasily.

“Don’t worry,” Dmitri replied. “It loves you.”

There was a violent hiss, and Jameson felt the shock of something cold on his body. The Cygnan was spraying him with some foaming liquid.

It scooted round and round him, spraying every square inch of his body methodically, all the way up to his chin. It made him lift both feet, one after the other, and did the soles. It paid special attention to the crevices between the toes. Then it sprayed him all over again, with more personal attentions that would have made him blush if the Cygnan had been human. The stuff made all his cuts and scrapes sting. He stood there, feeling foolish, covered with bubbles from neck to foot. In seconds, the bubbles began to collapse. He felt unpleasantly sticky for a few moments, as if he’d been coated with molasses. Then the stings and hurts on his back faded and disappeared. The stuff hardened on the surface of his body, forming a transparent rubbery membrane that showed every mole and freckle. You couldn’t tell the film was there, except for the fact that it gave his skin a silvery cast, like scar tissue, and plastered down his body hair. On a Cygnan’s mottled hide, it would have been entirely invisible.

“So this is why the Cygnans didn’t need spacesuits,” he said.

“A spray-on spacesuit?” Dmitri said admiringly.

“Why not? What’s the function of a spacesuit, except to seal in an atmosphere, regulate temperature, and pressurize the surface of the body so that blood vessels won’t rupture? If Cygnan skin works anything like ours, it’s already a gas-tight membrane and an efficient temperature-regulating system. Except for a breathing mask, all you really need is’ a kind of support hose for the entire body.”

“Why didn’t the Space Resources Agency ever develop some kind of a stretch suit, then?”

“Too hard to get into. It would have to be some kind of shrink plastic that could only be used once. A spray- on’s the perfect disposable!”

“Tod, that thing could kill you! You don’t know if that membrane’s permeable to moisture! I don’t even know if Cygnans sweat!”

“I’ll have to take that chance, Dmitri.” Jameson flexed his arms and legs. The membrane stretched over his joints like a second skin. “I don’t feel overheated. I’m going to trust the Cygnans. I’m betting that the stuff conserves just the right amount of body heat and transmits the rest to maintain a balance.”

The Cygnan was earnestly trying to fit a plastic bag over his head. He waved her off while he stepped back into his shorts, less for modesty than for the built-in support they provided. Human anatomy needed a bit more help than the Cygnans’ smooth contours did.

Jameson turned to Dmitri. “Dmitri, I—”

“I know. I’d only be in the way. Don’t worry about me, Tod. I’ll stay here with Mei-mei until the Cygnans come along and put us back in the zoo. It won’t be a bad life for an exobiologist. It’s a fascinating opportunity, actually.”

He grimaced, then carefully sat down. The pain of his smashed bones was getting through to him, despite the pills.

“Janet will set that for you when you get back. Can you hold on till then?”

Dmitri nodded. “Sorry I can’t help. Sorry I flubbed it up on the ridge with my little hatchet, too.”

Jameson laughed. “You’ve more than made up for it. Thanks.”

Dmitri looked thoughtful. “There’ll be a lot for me to do here. We’re going to have to learn how to get along