The Jupiter Plague

“I don’t think it’s much good for shooting germs. Come on, all of you in here and bring the equipment.”

They handed it in through the opening, then Sam helped Haber to his feet and passed him through to Burke before squeezing past the door himself.

“Look at that,” Yasumura said, pointing to a jagged, smoke-stained opening in the wall of the corridor. “That’s where the junction box for the air-lock controls used to be. There must have been a charge of explosive in there — it would have been simple enough for Rand to rig that with a time fuse. But why…?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Burke said. “Haber, you’re not so mobile, so stay here as rear guard and see to it no one gets in to bother us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dr. Yasumura, I imagine the control room would be the best place to look for anything— will you lead the way?”

“Down this connecting corridor, there’s an elevator that goes directly there.”

He went first and their footsteps echoed loudly in the empty ship. They walked warily, looking into every doorway they passed, cautious although they did not know why.

“Hold it,” Yasumura said, and they stopped instantly, guns swinging to the ready. He pointed to a thick insulated wire that crossed the floor of the corridor before them, emerging from a jagged hole in one wall and vanishing into the other. “That cable, it wasn’t here when the ship left Earth.”

Sam knelt and looked at it closely. “It seems normal enough, from the ship’s supplies I imagine. The ‘Pericles’ was on Jupiter for almost two years; this must be a modification of some kind that they made there.”

“I still don’t like it,” the engineer said, glaring at the heavy wire suspiciously. “There are cableways between decks, they could have run it there. Better not touch it now, I’ll take a closer look at it later.”

The destroyed junction box for the air lock seemed to be the only damage that had been done to the ship: the atomic pile was still in operation, the electrical current was on and the air fresh, though it had the canned odor of constant recycling. When they rang for the elevator its door slid open at once.

“The control room is right up top, in the nose of the ship,” Yasumura said, pressing the button. As the elevator hummed up the shaft the tension increased with every passing instant, a spring being coiled tighter and tighter. When the door slid open both Sam and the general had their guns raised and pointed without being aware of it; they stepped out. Some of the tension ebbed as they saw that the domed chamber was as empty of life — or death — as it had been when they had first looked at it on the phone screen in the air lock.

“What the devil is that?” Yasumura asked, pointing to a foot-square metal box that was welded to the deck against the back wall. “Another new installation since the ship left — I wonder what it is for?”

It was a crude cube made of ragged-edged metal sheets welded together with a wide and irregular bead. Small cables emerged from holes in its sides and a larger, wrist-thick cable came up from the top and vanished through a jagged gash cut into the wall. They traced the smaller cables and found that they ran to the control boards, most of them to the communication equipment. Sam stood in front of the control chairs and faced out into the room.

“That’s interesting,” he said. “I didn’t think I had seen these cables or the box before when I used the phone to look in here — and I didn’t. It may be just an accident, but none of them is visible from where I’m standing — right in front of the pickup for the phone.”

“Something even more interesting,” Yasumura said, pointing. “All of the communicators, long wave, FM, everything — they’re all turned on.”

General Burke turned slowly, his eyes following the converging wires back to the box, to the heavy cable that ran up the hole in the wall and vanished. “I think we had better take a look and see where that big cable goes to,” he said.

“What about the ship’s log?” Sam asked. “There should be something about the disease there, or there may be other records.”

“They’ll keep for the moment,” the general said, starting toward the door. “I want to find out first just what is going on with all these wires and connections. Come on.”

The next compartment was banked with navigation instruments and the cable writhed across the floor like a dead serpent, then plunged through a cracked opening in the plastic panel of the far wall. They tracked it through two more compartments before it dived through a small doorway and down the spiral steps in the tunnel beyond. Another cable looped down from the ceiling and joined it: both vanished out of sight below.

“This is an emergency stairwell,” Yasumura said. “It runs the length of the ship.”