The Jupiter Theft

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 with the Cygnans. If they don’t have the empathy, we’ll make up for it. They’re going to learn a thing or two about human beings, too. We won’t stay zoo animals forever. We’ll breed—we’ve always been good at that. Too good. In another six-million years, who knows? Maybe there’ll be a new partnership out there among the stars—the descendants of free-living flatworms existing side by side in technological symbiosis with the descendants of parasitic roundworms.”

The tranquilized Cygnan finally put the plastic sheath over Jameson’s head and inflated it from one of the globular canisters. It was a tight fit, rather like a stocking mask, but it stretched. The canister stuck between his shoulder blades with an adhesive disk. A simple transparent hose connection, part of the sheath, plugged in to it. There was no provision for removal of wastes; Jameson suspected that the sheath was selectively permeable to heavier gas molecules. A careful squirt around the neck of the sheath sealed it to him.