The Jupiter Theft

The lock cycled again. Hollis waited long enough to make sure that his group was complete, then herded them in twos and threes toward the lift shaft, where a noncom stoically shepherded them to an assembly point at the rim. It took Jameson a moment to pick out the girl. She was as big and tough-looking as the men, dressed in the same shapeless fatigues, but her cheeks were shiny-smooth and she had a thick braid of blond hair hanging down her back. Then they were gone, Grogan and the bosun’s mates with them, leaving nothing but a smell of sweat and stale vomit behind.

The new astronomer came aboard later that day. His name was Ruiz, and he looked a little old for space, but he handled himself well in no-g. They hadn’t subjected him to the indignity of a rescue ball; he looked too brittle for that, and he was a VIP. He was ferried over from Eurostation in a small passenger gig with an assistant, a grave dark-eyed little girl named Maybury who somehow looked familiar.

She saw Jameson looking at her and said at once, “It was the Eurostation-Texas shuttle a couple of weeks ago, Commander. We were seatmates.”

“Of course. You were wearing a poncho, and you were on your way to Nevada.” He shook hands with the two of them. Ruiz had the knack, but the girl’s feet lost contact, and Jameson had to discreetly plant her again.

Boyle and Captain Hsieh were off somewhere for a meeting with the fusion engineers, making preparations for engine start-up. After Yeh Fei and Tu Juechen had stiffly completed their share of the formalities, and Kay Thorwald had excused herself and disappeared, Jameson volunteered to get Ruiz and Maybury settled.

“Just stay close to a wall and don’t move too abruptly and you’ll be all right,” he said. “There are cords strung along the corridors, and those socks they gave you will stick to the fuzzy strips along the floors. If you do find yourself floating in the center of a compartment, out of reach, don’t get panicky. Air currents will eventually send you drifting up against a surface.”

“Or some friendly passerby will bounce himself off of us, eh?” Ruiz said.

Jameson smiled appreciatively. “Oh, you’ve spent some time in free fall, then? I know you both were stationed on the Moon, but…”

“I put in almost two years at the old L-5 orbital observatory when I was a young man,” Ruiz said. “They spun the living quarters, but I spent my working days in the cage. Big warehouse of a place. Even a small fraction of a g, of course, would have made the big mirror sag out of all usefulness. It was made by stretching a film of molten Merlon across a hundred-meter hoop in the first place, and it was less than a millimeter thick at the center.”

“How about you, Mizz Maybury?” Jameson said. “Have you spent much time in free fall?”

“No,” she responded. “That is, except in the Moon shuttle. But of course you spend most of your time belted in your seat, and they have the flight attendants taking care of you and everything.”

“You’re doing very well,” Jameson said charitably. “At any rate, you’ll only have to put up with it for a few more days. We’ll-be putting on spin as soon as we’re sure the new modules are fastened securely. After that, we’ll have two thirds of a g all the way—except for a few hours during engine start-up, as a safety precaution.”

At that point they all had to crowd themselves against the corridor wall as one of Grogan’s angels came sailing toward them, halfway-between floor and ceiling, a bundle of plastic struts cradled in his hairy forearms.

“Sorry, Commander,” he said as he shot past; Jameson had to duck the end of a strut. They turned to watch the man. His line of flight was a chord that intersected the shallow upward curve of the corridor, and at the last possible moment, when his chin seemed about to scrape the floor, he gave an expert push of one foot, like the flick of a goldfish’s tail, and launched himself on a new chord toward the invisible ceiling beyond.

“I’ll never be able to do that,” Maybury said ruefully.

“He shouldn’t be doing it either,” Jameson said. “It’s against the safety rules.”

“How long will we be accelerating?” Ruiz said as they continued walking.

“A bit over two weeks,” Jameson said. “By that time we’ll have reached about a hundred and sixty kilometers per second. Then we coast, for four months, turn the ship’s long axis around, and decelerate for another couple of weeks. We’ll reach Jupiter in five months, thanks to the new boron engine.”

“And you’re going to spin the ship during acceleration and deceleration? Won’t that complicate our sense of up and down?”