The Jupiter Theft

Ruiz walked over to the observation window, an imposing and dignified figure despite his baggy shorts, his knobby joints, the legs twisted by rickets that were his legacy from his childhood in New Manhattan. He looked out at the starry sky and located the Swan. He stared at it a long time, as if he were making up his mind about something.

With a casualness that made the other two gasp, Ruiz turned back to the board and punched in an authorization for the immediate use of the 500-inch Sagan mirror in the Tsiolkovsky crater. Diverting the giant telescope from high-priority projects wasn’t something you did lightly, even if you were the director of Farside Station.

Instantly, a stunning image sprang into life on the photoplastic viewplate. It was truer and richer than the images that had been possible on the obsolete photographic emulsions of the twentieth century. There was no graininess with enlargement. They were seeing, in real time, exactly what the big eye was seeing halfway across the Moon.

There was an illusion of stars swimming across the plate, as electrical potentials changed on the plastic’s surface. The stars halted as the Farside computer locked the telescope into the Polyphemus radio array.

The blue supergiant known as HDE 226868 was plainly visible as a bloated disk, thanks to computer enhancement of thousands of separate millisecond-long exposures. You could even see the pronounced bulge at one side, where its substance was being sucked away by its invisible companion—invisible because black holes swallow their own light, as they swallow everything else.

Ruiz made the computer generate a phantom image derived from radio waves and X-ray scatter. A fuzzy speck of cotton appeared opposite the tip of the bulge. He shifted focus and found another cotton ball halfway between Cyg X-1 and Deneb. Whatever the new source was, it wasn’t part of a binary. He frowned.

Maybury had been busy comparing her first entries on the lightpad with the updated figures on the board. “Dr. Ruiz,” she said in a puzzled tone, “there’s no proper motion that the computer can detect. I know the observational sample is still very small, but the new object seems to have stopped its lateral movement. She hesitated. “That would mean that it’s changed direction twice in the last twenty-eight days.”

The junior astronomy resident snorted. “That’s impossible!”

Nobody paid any attention. Ruiz looked thoughtful. “Mizz Maybury…”

She was way ahead of him. She scribbled a question on her lightpad and read off the answer that appeared a moment later.

“The computer says that both the radio waves and X-ray emissions are blue-shifted,” she said. “It’s been compensating for our benefit.”

“That means that the object is moving toward us,” the resident said brightly.

Ruiz switched off the ghost image and stared intently at the place where it had been. There was nothing visible.

But Deneb jiggled.

The others saw it too. All of a sudden the room was very quiet.

“Mizz, Maybury,” Ruiz said, “will you ask the computer to generate a star chart on this screen? Just the main reference points will do.”

“I’ll do it,” the junior resident offered.

A scattering of white crosses appeared on the screen, canceling out the stars. But Deneb was still there, displaced inward toward the cotton ball.

“It’s bending light, whatever it is,” Ruiz said. “And it’s between us and—”

Angry squawking from the wall communicator interrupted him. He looked up and saw the apoplectic face of Dr. Mackie, the chief astronomer at the Sagan dome.

“Dr. Ruiz!” Mackie sputtered. “I must protest the highhanded manner in which you preempted the schedule of the five-hundred-inch mirror. There are such things as review boards, and I can assure you that—”

“Calm down, Horace,” Ruiz said. “I think you’d better get over here right away.”

Mackie’s truculence faded suddenly. “What have you got?” he said carefully.

“I’m not sure, but I want you in on it. Requisition the courier rocket. If you leave right away, you can be here in an hour.”

As soon as Mackie switched off, Ruiz called Central Communications. “Put this through to the Mars station. Personal, direct to Dr. Larrabee at the Syrtis Major radio observatory. Wake him up if he’s asleep.”

“You’re on, Doctor,” Communications said.

Ruiz spoke rapidly and precisely into the communicator, giving coordinates, explaining the situation in as few words as possible. “…And, Larry,” he finished, “don’t waste time calling me back for a confirmation. Just do it.”

He switched off and settled back in one of the swivel chairs. “How about some coffee while we’re waiting?” he said.