The Jupiter Theft

They exchanged some running cadenzas, too fast for Jameson to follow. Then Tetrachord, still with a couple of arms around Triad, turned to his electronic zither and twisted some frets. A rapid chirping came out of the console. Tetrachord chirped back at it. For some reason the Cygnan had not encoded the question to the ship’s computer. He’d asked someone.

Jameson couldn’t understand the reply. Colloquial Cygnan would always be beyond him.

After a delay, a picture formed on the tripartite screen—another nursery diagram, like the one he’d been shown of the Cygnan travel arrangements. This one showed a series of concentric triangles with a glowing yellow triangle in the center. The Sun and the orbits of the planets! Jameson gulped. Was that how the Cygnans saw circles? It hadn’t been so in the previous projection, but perhaps this was someone’s shorthand sketch or working diagram.

An irritated shrilling came from the console. A small green triangle appeared at the third place from the sun and moved back and forth along its track until it found a place and settled down. The orange triangle representing Jupiter jumped out of its orbit and moved jerkily Sunward. It dragged the yellow line of its orbit with it, opening the triangle into a four-sided evolute of ellipse. The evolute stretched as Jupiter intersected the inner solar system, traced a sharp V around the Sun, and headed out into the depths of space again.

Mercury and Venus jumped in their orbits. The white triangle representing Venus had been set spinning. But Earth had been spared.

“Your planet will be on the other side of the Sun,” Tetrachord said, unnecessarily.

Jameson eased himself down on the Moog’s stool. His knees were trembling. He became aware that he was drenched with sweat.

If he could believe the Cygnans—and if they didn’t decide, from some incomprehensible alien motive, to recompute their line of flight—Earth would be allowed to live.

As long as nothing delayed the Cygnan’s departure.

Chapter 20

The attendant was old. If it had been a human being, Jameson would have said it shuffled. By this time he was familiar enough with Cygnans to know that this one’s characteristic darting body movements were stiffer and slower than Tetrachord’s or Triad’s. Its mottled hide was duller, drier, less glossy. Did older Cygnans outlive their parasites, as terrestrial animals sometimes did? At any rate, there was no sluglike pest hanging from its belly, though Jameson thought he detected an old cicatrix where a tiny bloodsucking head might once have been embedded.

Its name—or at least the sound by which the other Cygnans addressed it—was a buzzing alteration of augmented fourths, so Jameson thought of the creature as Augie.

Augie was sidling warily into the room now on three legs, carrying a pan of greenish gruel in its forward pair of limbs and clutching a two-pronged electric prod in its free middle claw. Augie had never gotten over being afraid of Jameson.

Jameson backed off a little so as not to frighten the little creature. Augie set the pan down on the floor, back arched stiffly and eyestalks scanning in ragged circles. Retreating, the Cygnan got a foot tangled in the leathery double-ended poncho it wore for an apron. It hastily disentangled itself and skittered backward through the rolling disk that served as a door. The crescent opening closed with a thud.

Jameson could almost feel sympathy for the attendant. The poor creature had been saddled with responsibility for the monster from Earth for several days now. Triad and Tetrachord were off on one of their incomprehensible errands. Whenever they were gone, Jameson was kept locked up in a small adjoining chamber.

He looked sourly around at his surroundings. His cell was a narrow wedge crammed with Cygnan junk: dusty oddly shaped containers emptied of their original contents, heaps of pretzel-shaped transparent tubing, a broken three-armed perch. He’d dragged in as much of the looted human stores as was useful: clothing, packaged food, bedding, some miscellaneous furniture and utensils. He was dressed in clean coveralls that were too small for him; the name stitched over the breast pocket said Gifford. He had improvised a shower and sanitary facilities in the narrow corner, and when he was able to get into the main chamber he refilled his perforated jerrycans with water and emptied his makeshift chamber pots into the waste-disposal system. Augie wasn’t much on cleaning up.

Jameson was mute, too, without access to the Moog. Augie made no attempt to understand his whistled arpeggios.

Jameson sighed and took the pan of gruel over to the salvaged table he ate on. It seemed to be mostly shredded wingbean pods and undercooked hamster meat embedded in a starchy mush that the Cygnans had synthesized or adapted from their own chemistry. Sugars and starches must be as basic as DNA. He spooned it into himself as rapidly as possible. The stuff had practically no taste, for which he was grateful.