The Jupiter Theft

In the center of the harlequin expanse was a triangular canyon that plunged to the floor of the world, its sides alive with golden movement. Spanning it, halfway down, was the colossal pin on which the world turned. At the bottom was a rusty floor with a small riddled patch of gray, which he knew to be the honeycomb enclosures of the zoo.

They had come a long way.

And somewhere ahead, in this labyrinth of pipes and struts squeezed between the layers of sky, was the round shadow he’d seen overhead—the convergence of the gigantic wishbone that gripped the turning pin, and an entrance to the miles of hollow shaft that led to the central axis of the ship. Somewhere in that airtight interface would be forgotten ways to get into the shaft. At least, Klein seemed to have found one.

There it was! The low overhead had begun to climb at a shallow angle, and through the forest of eye-dazzling plumbing he could see a curving black wall that had to be the outer boundary of the interchange. Behind the wall would be the reception area where the spiral tubes had dumped him and his captors when he’d first been brought to the ship. He’d never seen it, having lost consciousness before reaching bottom. The Cygnan circulatory system must be immune to merry-go-rounds. But he knew it would be crawling with Cygnan traffic. Surely within that enormous vertical void they would find bypaths and crooked ways.

The humanoids had given up trying to get any closer to the wall. They were ranging back and forth along the perimeter, like good hunting dogs.

Ruiz drew abreast of him, clutching his spear. His face was a sickly gray. The effort was taking its toll. There was crusted blood on the bandage around his head.

“It’ll get easier,” Jameson said. “By the time we get up to the top, we won’t weigh anything.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Ruiz snapped peevishly. “I’ll keep up.”

Jameson looked him over. “How’s the head, Hernando?”

Ruiz grimaced. “Terrible. Like a galloping hangover. The uppers will keep me going for another forty-eight hours.”

“You’re going to come down hard. You’re burning yourself up.”

“It won’t matter after that. There’ll be all the time in the universe to rest.”

Dmitri called: “They’ve found something.”

The four of them wriggled forward on their bellies.

The humanoids were hovering over something huddled on a catwalk leading to the black wall.

“More of Klein’s work,” Ruiz said.

It was the body of a Cygnan, almost split apart by gunfire. A mass of wetly glistening organs spilled out of the hole torn in its body, egg-shaped nodes clinging to a spongy mass of coral-branched tissue. The creature once had mated; the pulped remains of a parasitic male showed within the body cavity. She’d been a maintenance worker; there was a toolbox lying near her a kind of basket with bulbous grips around the edges instead of a handle.

“Still warm,” Dmitri said. “We’re not far behind them.”

“Help me drag the body out of sight,” Jameson said. They wedged it deep within a tangle of pipes.

The humanoids already were sniffing out Klein’s traces near the body. They found a trail and followed it, walking on their knuckles and toes. It led to an unobtrusive opening at the base of the wall. The humanoids made certain there were no Cygnans nearby; then they all made a dash for it.

Inside was what looked like a small repair station. They found lengths of plastic pipe, braces, and odd-looking fasteners stacked haphazardly around the chamber with characteristic Cygnan carelessness. There were also more Cygnan bodies strewn around the place—three of them, their orange blood splattering the walls.

Maggie looked pale. The freckles stood out on her white face. “They’ll be discovered next shift—whenever a Cygnan shift begins,” she said. “There’ll be a hunt, if one hasn’t started already.”

“Easy,” Ruiz said. “There may still be time. It may not dawn on them for a while that Klein’s headed for the hub. He’s just a very dangerous animal loose in the city. And they may not put it all together for a while. How many violent deaths take place in a twenty-four-hour period in a place the size of Dallasworth? The police look at it on a case-by-case basis at first, until somebody decides a maniac is loose.”

“It’s morning back at the zoo,” Dmitri said thoughtfully.

“And the zookeepers are missing,” Ruiz said firmly. “That’s all. There are a lot of exhibits to search—if anybody’s interested in searching right at the start. And the Cygnan sightseers will see an exhibit of these strange creatures called humans, and none of them will know how many are supposed to be in the cage.”

Jameson said, “You’re very comforting, Hernando.”

“What other choice do I have?” Ruiz said impatiently. “Let’s go.”