Donald Moffitt - The Jupiter Theft

But ahead of him, no more than fifty feet from where he sat, was the rotating bushing that contained the spinlocks and to which the three main spokes of the wheel were attached. He looked up and saw the great revolving circle he would be living in for the next year, as it swept steadily past the stars twice every minute. Here and there on the facing rim he saw little squares of light: illuminated ports. The ship would be ablaze with them when it began its outward journey.

“Come on, buddy,” Li’s voice said in his ear. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

Reluctantly Jameson dragged his eyes away from the stupendous moving archway above him. The whirling steel face in front of him was grinding away like a titan’s mill, its flailing arms as thick around as the first moon rocket had been. Jameson shuddered at the thought of the mass and momentum behind that motion. It made him feel like a fly clinging to a power-turbine housing. He turned away from it and crawled along a guiderail toward the plastic blister covering the lander.

Mothballing the lander was slow work. You couldn’t open the sack to look for the various small items you needed, because everything tended to float out at once; instead you had to feel around inside through an inverted sleeve, and with gloves on it was hard to trace the shapes of different objects. After an hour of it, Jameson and Li were getting impatient—and careless. Li was inside the blister when it happened. Jameson was outside, floating about two feet above the surface. He had just let go of his handhold so he could use both hands to get a tube of epoxy out of the sack.

Just at that moment there was a fluttering hiss inside his helmet as his number one air tank ran out and the switchover cycle to number two began.

And then he got a kick in the back.

He grabbed wildly for his handhold as he started to tumble, but he was too late. The jet of escaping air had nudged him a foot out of reach. It might as well have been a mile.

He was cartwheeling out of control. He hadn’t bothered with suit jets, for this job. Neither had Li. The valve of his number two tank was wide open and shooting him through space like a rocket. Before he could reach around behind him to try to do something about it, he had a new problem.

He was being squirted in a looping path toward the churning maw of the ship’s hub. An enormous metal arm swept past his vision. The entire mass of the wheel itself, a quarter of a million tons, was concentrated at the end of it.

There was no way he could stop himself. Helplessly he watched the next arm swoop down on him. With luck, it would barely miss him, and then, ten seconds later, the third spoke would bat him with the full momentum of the ship and slam him into the massive bushing that contained the spinlocks.

They’d have to scrape him off with butter knives.

Desperately he flicked out the sack he was holding. If he let go, was there enough mass inside it to push him in the opposite direction? Not a chance, with his inertia.

Instead he hung on. The sack curled itself around the descending spoke. There was a jolt that almost tore his arm off, and then he was sailing outward. The outer rim of the ship flashed by him. He saw a lighted port with a face behind it. The ship seemed to shrink. A minute later it was a child’s top, spinning in the void, and he was soaring up into eternal night. The air was gone from his helmet. He closed his eyes to save them, there was a fire in his chest as he sucked on vacuum, and then all his consciousness gathered itself into a single bright dot that shrank the way the ship had done. There was time to think that Li, still inside the lander pod, probably didn’t know yet what had happened, and if he did know there was nothing he could do about it, and then all the time was gone, along with the rest of that bright dot.

The light was too bright on his eyelids. He had the world’s worst headache. He was naked between clean sheets. There was weight on him, about two-thirds Earthweight, and he could smell ship’s air. He opened his eyes and sat up. He immediately regretted it. A heavy liquid seemed to be sloshing around inside his head.

“That’s a beautiful pair of bloodshot eyes,” a voice said.

It was Doc Brough. He was leaning over the narrow cot, a plump, sandy-haired man in shorts and a shirt with the tail hanging out. This was a cubicle in the ship’s infirmary. Over by the canvas wall, Li was standing next to Grogan. They both looked uncomfortable.

“You can thank those two,” Brough went on. “Comrade Li saw you sailing out to never-never land. Another minute and you’d have been invisible. They might have located you with radar in a day or two. Chief Grogan was just coming out of the outside lock with a couple of fresh scooter charges. He saw Li waving and pointing over by the lander pod. He didn’t even wait to put the charge in the scooter. He just jetted himself after you, riding the tank and steering by the seat of his pants. Damn lucky he didn’t cook his thighs and wherewithal. He’ll be walking gingerly a few days; I’ll tell you. Shared his air with you on the way back and got you right down here. Don’t worry, you aren’t a vegetable. You weren’t breathing space for more than a minute or two.”

Grogan lumbered over to the bed and took a wide-legged stance. “Anybody ever teach you to check your valves? he growled. “One arm of your T-valve was shut off tight. You vented your whole number two tank through the pressure-relief valve. And the safety came loose—wasn’t screwed in right.”

“Thanks, Chief,” Jameson said.

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.”