The Jupiter Theft

Jameson then found himself in a clear space, a flock of people wheeling around him like gulls. Suit jets puffed out their glittering motes, and four blue shapes were converging on him. He had time to recognize Yao’s face behind glass, the lean ascetic features drawn back in a rictus. He fired, and the missile officer ran into a hail of little bees that plucked at the material of his suit and turned him into a rag doll. Jameson swiveled and cut the two men flanking Yao into ribbons. Still rotating on his axis, he aimed the machine pistol at the fourth man, coming at him with a glowing soldering iron fed by a cable from a belt pack.

He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

Empty!

He flung the pistol at the man’s helmet. It bounced off. The man kept coming. The tip of the soldering iron shone orange. Jameson wriggled helplessly in emptiness. The broomstick with its vacuole of alien life hung out of reach, slowly twisting. Jameson had no reaction mass, no way to move. He hovered there, waiting for the searing touch of the iron.

And then there was a flash of brilliant light, brief as lightning. The Chinese disappeared below the waist. The torso came tumbling on, the gloved hands clenching and unclenching reflexively in the brain’s last memory of pain. When the half of a man bumped Jameson, the soldering iron was swinging on its tether and he was able to snare it without getting burned.

He twisted his head around and saw the Cygnan broomstick sailing away under the impetus of the burst of light. One of the humanoids must have managed to reach the sliding stud through the yielding membrane and switch it on for the fraction of a second that it was lined up with the attacking Chinese.

They’d chosen sides, all right!

Nobody else seemed to have been touched by the finger of light, but now the broomstick was a hundred yards away and still retreating. The humanoids might be able to turn it on, but they couldn’t aim it. There was another flash of light that only worsened their vector, and then they were falling into endless night.

There was the sparkle of a suit jet, and one of the white suits that had been hanging against the flamboyant backdrop of Jupiter took off after the broomstick. It wasn’t Gifford; Jameson could see him hovering next to one of his Chinese friends. Was it Fiaccone?

He located Chia’s’ small blue suit in the starry space around him. Aiming himself carefully, he shoved as hard as he could at the dreadful thing that was bumping against him. The dismantled torso floated off, and Jameson was coasting with nightmare slowness toward Chia.

Chia let go her grip on Maybury and pointed something at Jameson—the corkscrew-wrapped barrel of a hand-laser. He could see it pulsating with faint light as its flash tubes pumped photons. It would take only a couple of seconds until photon excitation reached the critical point; then a spurt of energetic light was going to drill him clean through.

He floated relentlessly toward her, powerless to change direction. With the light of Jupiter on her, she was limned sharp and clean in his vision. Behind the square visor her face was a blushing peach, distorted by fury. The half-naked apparition before her had ruined her plans, probably beyond salvage. Only five members of the bomb crew were left, without Yao to direct them.

Jameson was but a dozen feet from her now. He wondered if it would hurt.

A thread of violet light stretched past him and winked off. Maybury, floating forgotten behind Chia, had come out of her daze of grief. Or perhaps she had only been waiting. She had Chia’s wrist in a small gloved hand. The laser flashed again. Then Maybury’s other hand in its stubby-fingered gloves was spread over Chia’s faceplate, unscrewing the fastenings. Chia struggled, like an overstuffed doll in her spacesuit, but she couldn’t get her am back far enough to dislodge Maybury. The faceplate blew off and the peachlike face behind it burst with running juices.

Jameson collided with the tangled bodies. Gently he pried Maybury’s hands loose and pried the laser from Chia’s grasp. He gave the body a little push to disengage it, and made Maybury understand that he wanted to keep holding on to her for the use of her suit jets.

No more than fifty feet away, Gifford’s wide form blocked the stars, the screwdriver still clasped in a mittened fist. He was conferring, helmet to helmet, with one of his Chinese allies, his other hand gripping the man’s sleeve. Jameson tensed, waiting to see what the two of them would do. The laser in his hand was very comforting.