The Jupiter Theft

Grogan growled again and left with a curious gait. No one would comment on it unless they wanted a flattened nose. Li came over. “Schedule’s shot to hell,” he said. “I’ll go over the report with you when you feel up to it.”

“Thanks, Li,” Jameson said. “Excuse me. Hsieh hsieh, Tongzhi.”

“Don’t overdo it, buddy,” Li said with a quick grin, and left.

Jameson swung his legs over the side of the cot and stood up. “Where’re my shorts, Doc?” he asked.

Brough said, “Get the hell back on that bed. You’re not leaving here till I run a couple of tests.”

“Can’t wait, Doc,” Jameson said, padding over to the locker near the entrance flap. “I’ve got to see the captain.”

Captain Boyle was unhelpful. “File your complaint if you like,” he said stiffly. “But I won’t recommend Klein’s transfer.”

“Captain,” Jameson said, just as stiffly, “Klein almost killed me. And on top of that, he’s a damn bad stores exec.”

“He’ll learn.”

“Learn, hell! At whose expense? It’s going to be a long trip, Captain. You know we can’t afford baggage like Klein. What’s he doing here? What strings did he pull?”

“I won’t discuss it further, Commander,” Boyle said.

“All right, Captain, if that’s the way you want it. But I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

He turned to go. Boyle touched his arm. “Tod…” he said. He seemed uncomfortable about something.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’d help you if I could. But I’ll give you a piece of advice instead. Don’t file that complaint. It won’t do any good, and the people down below don’t like static.”

“Thanks for the advice, Captain,” Jameson said. “You’ll find the complaint on your desk in the morning.” His eyes held Boyle’s for a moment, and he walked out.

Sue was coming down the passageway, a sheaf of reports in her hand. She was wearing a duty tabard over her shirt and shorts, unbelted and flapping open at the sides. “How are you feeling?” she said. “I stopped down at Sickbay when I got off, but you’d already left.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “If my ears would stop ringing.”

“That Klein!” she said. For a moment her face flushed.

“Hey, don’t take it personally!”

“I can’t help it! I know that … that…” Her voice dropped, and she looked nervously around the corridor. “Captain Boyle was on the beam to Earth, raising ten different kinds of hell. I put the calls through. But he didn’t get anywhere with those stonewallahs at Mishcon! He was furious!”

He looked at her. Her chest under the tabard was rising and falling fast. “You bunking with the Giff tonight?” he said evenly.

She laughed. “No. He’s still sampling. I think it’s Beth Oliver at the moment.”

“Make room for a broken-down spacie? I’ve still got three days till Earth leave.”

“Any time, Tod,” she said. They squeezed hands, and she took her reports through to the captain’s quarters.

The shirt-sleeved young flight controller sat at his console, his finger poised above the firing button. He hesitated, then lifted the finger to a position in front of his face and studied it with undisguised admiration.

“This little pinkie’s worth a half billion newbucks, do you realize that?” he said with simulated awe. “That’s what it’s gonna cost the government a couple of seconds from now. Do you, think it knows? Can fingers think?”

“Come on, Bedford, quit clowning,” the controller next to him said. “Push the damn button and get it over with. The course alteration’s all plugged in. I don’t wanna have to ask for a recomp.”

“Ah, brief moment of glory!” Bedford said theatrically, and stabbed at the red button.

Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen until the radio signal reached the vicinity of Jupiter, some forty-plus minutes from now: And they wouldn’t know if it had worked for another forty-plus minutes, when the telemetry data struggled all the way back.

There wasn’t much to do until then, so the dozen men on the team leaned back in their swivel chairs, sipped coffee, and traded desultory conversation.

The officials gathered in the glass booth at the rear of the room were more agitated. Shevchenko, the astronomer whose program was being superseded, was staring at the screen; looking grim. Beside him, the administrator for the Space Resources Agency, Harrison Richards, was biting his aristocratic lip as he watched half a billion dollars of his budget go down the drain for a project that hadn’t been in the year’s estimates. The deputy administrator, Fred Van Eyck, bespectacled and neat in crisp gray business pajamas, was nursemaiding a group of VIP’s from Washington, keeping them occupied and harmless with babytalk about the technical details of the mission. But there was sweat glistening on his high-domed forehead.