The Jupiter Theft Part 9

"General, you're letting your lack of imagination run away with you. This isn't another one of your security problems, like crowd control for doomsday."

"Isn't it?" Harris looked bleak, preoccupied. "No natural force could have slowed that planet from light-speed. You said so yourself. No natural force could have put it into orbit around Jupiter. And what the h.e.l.l melted our camera vehicle? That's one museum I don't intend to let the Chinese visit."

Ruiz was trembling with the effort of controlling himself. "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

The general stood up. His two silent aides got up with him, like twin shadows. "You have a week to get ready, Dr. Ruiz," he said. "You and Maybury get your gear packed and ready to be ferried to Eurostation for transfer. It'll take at least that long to sell the Chinese on the nuclear-bomb crews."

Ruiz was half out of his chair. "Nuclear-bomb crews!" he choked. He made an involuntary move toward Harris, and one of the general's large young men was suddenly in front of him, looking respectful.

The general was halfway to the door, his other aide trotting after him. He paused and turned a distracted face toward Ruiz. "Calm down, Dr. Ruiz," he said in a conciliatory tone. "We won't destroy it unless we have to."

"A week," Maggie said, stretching out in the tub. "A whole week's gone by, do you realize that? We have to report back in twenty-one days."

Jameson turned from the mirror, razor in hand. "You could move into my quarters-have you thought of that? I've got one of the double cabins."

"Doc Lemieux wouldn't like that." She laughed. "She'd probably give us ten demerits on the psych profile. 'Exclusive pair bonding is to be discouraged in the confined environment of a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.' Isn't that what the manual says?"

"Captain Boyle's a good guy. He won't make any trouble for us."

Maggie stood up in the tub and began toweling her hair vigorously. There was a coltish poignance for Jameson in her spindly legs and xylophone ribs and teacup b.r.e.a.s.t.s dusted with freckles. She favored him with a long examination through a fringe of orange lashes, then broke into a wide elastic smile.

"It's an indecent proposal and I accept," she said. "Unauthorized pair bonding and all." She tied the towel into a turban and held out her skinny arms. Jameson put down the humming razor and kissed her.

Still dripping from her bath, she pressed against him, all soft flesh and bony corrugations.

"We'll miss the giant holo ballet," he said.

"No we won't." She pried herself loose. "Now get out of here and let me dress."

Jameson went back to the living room, sealing his s.h.i.+rt with a thumbnail. His gear, grown to a zipbag and two duffles, was leaning against the wall where he'd dumped it. He'd had it sent over from the MacDonald Towers the night before. Maggie had argued that it was silly to go on paying for a room there when he hadn't been back for a week.

He finished dressing, then wandered over to Maggie's curio cabinet. Idly, he picked up one of the plastic bottles and turned it over in his hands. It was a grimy white with a network of fine surface cracks, and he could make out the faded word clorox. He was putting it back when Maggie came into the room, dressed for their outing in a lizard-green dress with a little fringe of ribboned skirt that left her long legs bare.

"That's one of my most valuable pieces," she said. "It goes back over a hundred years. The ones I really like, though, are the ones with all the funny little pump tops that came in in the 1980s after the fluorocarbon scare. Some of them still work."

"What are you going to do with your collection while you're away on the mission?"

She tossed her mop of red hair. "It's going to stay right here. I've made arrangements to put the apartment under seal."

"That sounds expensive. Why don't you put the collection in storage and give the apartment up? We'll be gone a long time."

"You don't understand, Tod." She tossed her head again. "I want to know that everything's waiting for me when I get back. Exactly the same as I left it."

"I think I understand," he said slowly. "I keep a lock-coop myself near the base in Salt Lake. Store a few things there, sleep over sometimes when I want to get away from everything. Big enough for a bunk and an all-san. But it doesn't eat up my pay when I'm away."

"No you don't!" she said impatiently. "You're like everybody else! Most people these days don't own anything but themselves! We're all property of GovCorp!"

"Maggie, you're not going to start all that again?"

"You wouldn't be so complacent if you'd been raised in New England!"

Jameson groaned inwardly. Another argument! "Maggie, that's all over and done with a long time ago,"

he said in an attempt to soothe her.

"Is it?" she said. "You should visit the town I grew up in and see all the old people with napalm burns and missing arms and legs."

"Maggie, it was over before you were born."

"The war might have been over. But not the pacification. I was six years old when that ended. I rememberthat all right!"

"That was a rebellion," he said, unwilling to stir her up. "The government had to put it down."

"It was a war." She gave him a look that dared him to challenge her.

Jameson sighed. They were on dangerous ground. Old pa.s.sions, old political slogans that Maggie had learned secondhand. But they could still get her into trouble. And him too, for not reporting her. New England rebs had gained a pretty good foothold in the Congress since the agony of reunification, but they didn't get promoted too far in Federal jobs unless they demonstrated their reliability.

"It's over and done with," Jameson repeated uncomfortably. "Maggie, when it comes to that, I had a great-grandfather who was killed in the Kansas City explosion."

"You still don't understand." She turned sorrowful blue eyes on him. "You're just one of those people that GovCorp uses to fill in its blanks with."

"Look," he said, feeling his temper rise. "If you're going to keep blaming me for ancient history, maybe we'd better call this whole thing off. I can always move back to the MacDonald Towers."

"You just don't scan it, do you," she asked. "I feel sorry for you, Tod."

"All right!" he said angrily. "If that's the way you want it!" He moved to his stack of belongings against the wall and shouldered the duffle bags.

"Tod," she began, starting toward him. The vid phone chimed. Jameson stepped aside, out of pickup.

Maggie said, "Don't go yet," and pressed theWho b.u.t.ton. No picture appeared on the screen. The set continued to chime.

"It's somebody with a who override," she said worriedly. "It must be a high-priority call." She pressed the Accept b.u.t.ton.

The screen lit up with a picture of a jowly man holding up a s.p.a.ce Resources Agency dispatcher badge.

"MacInnes," he said without preamble, "you've been ordered to report to the Jupiter s.h.i.+p at once. All leaves are canceled. A cab will be at your residence in thirty minutes to take you to the Dallasworth shuttleport. Is Commander Jameson with you?"

"Well..." She looked uncertainly toward Jameson.

He took a step into pickup range. "I'm here," he said.

"Fine, Commander," the dispatcher said. "Do you have any luggage at the MacDonald?"

"No."

"Good. You can take the cab with MacInnes."

"What's this about?" Jameson said. "I still have three weeks to go on my leave."

"I can't tell you that, Commander," the dispatcher said. "There'll be a briefing aboard s.h.i.+p."

"Can you at least tell me if-"

"That's all, Commander," the dispatcher said, and clicked off.

Maggie had disappeared into the bedroom. He found her throwing things into a small zipbag. The green dress was crumpled carelessly in a corner. She was wearing a loose one-piece travel suit with elastic cuffs at wrist and knee.

"Need any help?" he said.

"No. I've been ready for a year. I just have to call building security before we leave and tell them to put the apartment under seal."

"Can I leave my stuff here?"

"I suppose you'd better." She gave him a canny look. "We're not coming back, are we."

"Not till we've been to Jupiter and back," he said. "It looks like the mission's on. And there's been some kind of change in it."

Chapter 9.

"Here they come now," Captain Boyle said.

Jameson looked out the port. It took him a moment to focus on what the captain was peering at, and when he did, it was sharp with the clarity of s.p.a.ce despite the quarter-mile distance. It looked like a string of widely s.p.a.ced pearls stretched out horizontally, held taut by the s.p.a.cesuited bosun's mates at either end. Two more attendants were riding scooters above and below the long tether.

"Good G.o.d!" Jameson said. "Don't they have s.p.a.cesuits?"

"I'm told they do," the captain said dryly. "But they haven't been trained to use them yet. Something to occupy us on the long outward trip, eh?"

Jameson shook his head wonderingly. "Rescue b.a.l.l.s! They stuffed them into rescue b.a.l.l.s! Skipper, we can't nursemaid a bunch of beginners like those! Not when they'll be working with dangerous materials outside the s.h.i.+p and in zero-g conditions! It'd compromise the safety of the s.h.i.+p."

"We're not going to nursemaid them, mister," Boyle said. "We're going to instruct them in the presence of their executive officer and stay away from them. Those are the orders."

"Captain, that's crazy! You can't let a bunch like that wander around unsupervised! There's too much trouble they can get into!"

"Look lively now! They're here!"

There was a b.u.mp outside that sent a tiny s.h.i.+ver through the spinlock antechamber. Jameson, sweating in his full-dress greens, drew himself up in an approximation of a formal stance, hands clasped behind his back, feet spread, one toe hooked surrept.i.tiously under a baseboard projection to keep himself from drifting away. The spin for the entire s.h.i.+p had been stopped for several days now so the additional modules could be bonded to the rim without having workers and materials fly off into s.p.a.ce. The trim of the s.h.i.+p had been altered by the new, awkwardly placed ma.s.s, and the computers were working overtime to s.h.i.+ft weights and balance the new stresses.

Kay Thorwald, the second officer, was floating in parade position just beside the captain, her large jaw set firmly, her formidable bust swollen to semiglobular shapes in the absence of gravity, her wide mannish shoulders held back squarely. Like Jameson, she'd been tapped as one of the execs to help Captain Boyle pipe the nuclear-bomb crews aboard.

Cl.u.s.tered against the opposite wall was the Chinese delegation, spruced up for the occasion in fas.h.i.+onably wrinkled blue cotton Mao jackets and baggy trousers. Captain Hsieh was in the middle, a chunky, smallish man with a round, pedantic face, hands held stiffly at his sides, straining to stretch his spine. His first officer; Yeh Fei, was at his left. Yeh was a big, hulking fellow with a sloping shelf of forehead and a lantern jaw. The third member of the welcoming committee was Tu Jue-chen, the new Struggle Group leader sent up from Earth. As unacknowledged political officer, she carried more clout than Captain Hsieh. She was a terrifying harpy with hollow cheeks, malicious monkey-eyes, and a mouth crowded with big square teeth.

All three of them were wearing the round badges that showed a stylized representation of Lady Ch'ang-o ascending to the Moon with the help of the antigravity pill she'd stolen from her husband. The three-thousand-year-old legend had been the symbol of the Chinese s.p.a.ce program since their first manned flight, in the 1980s.

The red warning light winked out as the lock was pressurized, and the latch in-the center of the door spun round. The hatch swung open. A man in Army fatigues emerged in an apish crouch that probably was his conception of how to move about in no-g conditions. He had a small round head covered with short blond stubble, and very wide shoulders. The leaf on his lapel said he was a major.

Grogan, still in his s.p.a.cesuit but with his helmet off, was hovering helpfully just behind him. Behind Grogan Jameson could make out the shape of one of the bosun's mates extracting a ruffled-looking noncom from a collapsed rescue ball. There was a lot of activity inside the lock. They'd probably squeezed a third of the bomb crew inside. The rest presumably were bobbing around outside in their inflated b.a.l.l.s while the other bosun's mate held on to the tether.

"Welcome aboard, Major," Boyle said. Across the chamber, Captain Hsieh nodded his head just perceptibly; as protocol dictated, and echoed Boyle.

The major saluted smartly-too smartly-and got himself into trouble. Behind him, Grogan shot out a big meaty paw and grasped his upper arm to keep him in contact with the deck.

"Hollis," the man said, flus.h.i.+ng. "Major Dexter B. Hollis, in command of Special Nuclear Strike Group Lambda One, reporting."

Before one of the Chinese could object, Boyle said, "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you for your sidearm, Major. No firearms allowed aboard."

Hollis stared at the captain a moment. A knot of muscle worked at the hinge of his jaw. Finally he said, "I'm under independent orders, Captain. You know that."

Boyle held out his hand. "And I'm in command of this s.h.i.+p, Major. Along with Captain Hsieh here. Your command comes under our authority in everything concerning the safety of the s.h.i.+p. There's no use for a handgun here. Hand it over."

Tu Jue-chen was watching expectantly, her monkey eyes bright. Hollis glanced at her and shrugged. He unbuckled the heavy gun belt and gave it to Boyle.

"Thank you, Major," Boyle said. "I'll give you a receipt for that. It'll stay in my safe. You'll get it back at the end of the voyage."

The bomb crew began to file out of the lock, big unfriendly-looking men with hard-bitten faces, shuffling awkwardly in their Velcro socks. They all had specialist ratings, patches with an eagle clutching a missile in one claw sewn to their sleeves. All of them looked miserable from their fetal confinement in the three-foot rescue b.a.l.l.s, and one of them had a uniform covered with vomit; the trip across from Eurostation must have been pure h.e.l.l for him, but he was keeping his head up and his jaw tight.

"I can have one of our officers show this group down while we're waiting for the rest of your men,"

Boyle said to the major. "They're welcome to use the crew facilities to clean up-we've got a few more amenities than in the prefab modules they've a.s.signed to you-and we've got coffee and refreshments waiting for them in the lounge."

"We'll go directly to our own quarters, Captain," Hollis said tightly. "Thanks anyway. I'll wait here until they're all inside. I'll keep them together, and I'll see that they stay out of the main part of the s.h.i.+p except on official business."

"It's going to be a long trip," the captain said. Those prefab modules are cramped."

"We'll manage," Hollis said. "And we'll stay out of your way."

The antechamber was filling up with the second group. A couple more of the men had been sick on the way over, and the aroma in the enclosed s.p.a.ce was getting a little hard to take. Hollis watched through narrowed eyes as his men tried to shape up in a military manner. He'd turned his back pointedly after the initial introductions.

Grogan sidled up next to Jameson. "What d'you think of those apes?" he said in a low tone.

"I don't like it," Jameson said. "Twenty-four additional men cooped up with us for a year and a half. It changes the ratio of men to women to about two to one. There's going to be trouble, you can count on it.

I just hope none of those men goes prowling for Chinese women, that's all."

"You don't have to worry, Commander," Grogan said sardonically. "They brought along a girl with them."

"A girl?" Jameson said incredulously. "One girl for the bunch of them? What the h.e.l.l is the Army up to?

That's right out of the dark ages, like the sort of thing they were trying after the first Mars expedition!"

"You should see her, Commander," Grogan said. "A real tough cookie. Wearing specialist's stripes, too.

Some specialty, huh?"