The Jupiter Theft

A chime sounded. The drifting men began to settle toward the curving wall as imperceptibly it became a floor. The clutch was matching its spin to that of the station. There was a gentle lurch, and clutch and station mated with a resounding clang that shuddered through the chamber. The row of doors underfoot slid open and the waiting men dropped through. Jameson hurried through with the crowd. He repressed a shiver as he floated past the rubber-gasketed doorframe. The shearing action from a mismatched spin could slice a man neatly in half—but of course it couldn’t happen; the doors wouldn’t open unless the safety locks were firmly engaged.

He sank, feather-light, to the deck, and got a surprise: Caffrey was waiting for him in the reception area.

Jameson tossed the fake bolt head at him. “Here you go, Ray. The latest Chinese contribution to space cooperation.”

Caffrey looked uncomfortable. “I’ll need a report from you,” he said. “Let’s go to my office for a debriefing.”

“Can’t it wait? I’m bushed.”

“Sorry, Commander. You know how it is.”

Jameson grimaced. “Okay. But I can’t add much to what you already saw through my helmet camera.”

He followed Caffrey to a dropcage, bracing his hands against the ceiling as it plunged down its shaft toward the outer rim of the station. Free fall was too slow for the first stage of the trip and too dangerous for the last stages—especially for newcomers. There was one in the cage now, a mousy man in a drab Earthstyle business blouse, who yelped in surprise as he bobbed to the top of the cage and bumped his head. One of the construction men, laughing, pulled him down and warned him about the gradient. Caffrey maintained a tight-lipped silence, his expression discouraging conversation from Jameson. He had the spy camera tucked under his tunic.

They got out at the rim, in the main corridor that circled the station. There was an electric trolley and a carpeted walkway. The carpeting felt luxurious under Jameson’s bare toes. The lighting was soft, and a hidden speaker played an unobtrusive slipbeat: nines against sevens. The European Space Agency did everything up brown for its clients. They kept their big wheel spinning at a comfortable half-g at the rim, which made it easier for people stopping over on their way back from the Moon or Mars to readjust to Earth gravity. The five restaurants were excellent, and the Swiss ran a four-star hotel.

They passed through the American lounge on their way to Caffrey’s office. A clutter of chairs and little tables were arranged around a central well, circled by a low railing, that looked down on the stars. The far wall was a spectacular row of tall, narrow windows that showed the stars streaming slowly by, their flight showing no detectable arc here in this fractional slice of the station’s vast circumference. A couple of dozen off-duty members of the Jupiter crew were there, socializing with construction workers and transients. There were no Europeans there, except for the bartender and a couple of stewards. This part of the wheel was U.S. diplomatic territory for the present.

Mike Berry waved at him from the other side of the room. He was playing a game of low-gravity darts with a rumpled, bearlike man who looked like a construction worker, but actually was the mission geologist, Omar Tuttle. Berry was a physicist, one of the two fusion specialists in charge of the boron drive. He was thin and thirtyish, with unkempt brown hair and a long, homely face animated by boyish enthusiasm. It was his first trip into space, and Jameson had been assigned to him as big brother during his astronaut training.

The moment of inattention cost Berry his point. His dart strayed sideways under the influence of the Coriolis force and missed the target entirely. One of the construction workers heckled him good-naturedly, and Tuttle, sipping his reconstituted beer, smiled in satisfaction.

“Tod…”

It was Sue Jarowski. He’d almost collided with her. She smiled up at him, appealingly gaminelike with her dark, cropped hair and the man’s faded workshirt with pushed-up sleeves she’d borrowed somewhere. Jameson wondered if the shirt were his. He and Sue had spent a couple of sleep periods together, back when the mission personnel were still sorting themselves out, but for some reason they hadn’t seen much of each other since.

“Sue! How goes it?”

She put a hand on his arm. “Are you just going off duty? Why don’t you join Dmitri and me for a drink?”

He looked past her to where Dmitri Galkin, the junior biologist-cum-life-support tech, was sitting on an airpuff, contemplating a lipped cup with some greenish liquid in it. Dmitri met his eye and glanced away, looking miffed.

“I can’t right now, Sue. I’m on my way to Security.”

He shrugged helplessly, and she followed his gaze to where Caffrey was waiting impatiently by the exit.

“Will I see you later?” Sue said. “Why don’t you stop by the lounge when Caffrey’s through with you?”

She gave his arm a squeeze. He smiled back at her.

“I’ll do that.”