Donald Moffitt - The Jupiter Theft

Jameson’s breath quickened. This was no spaceship interior landscape. He was looking at what could only be the Cygnans’ home planet.

He stared greedily, trying to absorb details.

The buildings cast complicated shadows, washed-out fingers of color that stretched in all directions. It was day, but that yellow sky was almost filled with an enormous ruddy moon, a squashed moon that ballooned from horizon to zenith. There was a slice out of one side. Its outline was fuzzy, its face marbled.

The Cygnan observer panned across the landscape.

There were two suns, low on the horizon. The smaller of the two was a fiercely glaring blue-white hole in the sky. The other was a swollen red giant. But something was wrong with it. It bulged on one side.

As Jameson watched, the traffic in the roadways speeded up, like an animated cartoon. Soon he could see nothing but a blur. The shadows grew like spilled dye. Time-lapse.

The smaller sun moved toward its bloated companion. The red sun swallowed it with a gulp. The shadows merged and deepened.

A Cygnan voice was giving a commentary. Jameson strained to make sense out of the calliope squawks. There were too many abstractions. He caught the word for “mother”—at any rate, the generalized phrase for “progenitor” that seemed to figure so pervasively in Cygnan thought. Something about the Great Mother that swallows her … damn, what was that word? It had the root signifying a relationship. Offspring? No.

The scene changed. The white sun was emerging from the rim of the giant: But the giant itself was moving toward the darkening moon.

The scene changed again. It was night in that strange city. The moon hadn’t moved. It had gone dark, but you could see it as a monstrous silhouette, blotting out the stars. It was outlined by a rim of red fire.

The Cygnan commentator said something incomprehensible that contained the word for “eat.” The red sun emerged from the rim of fire, spilling blood across the moon. As it rose, it disgorged the white sun. The white sun fled from it, widening the gap, casting a brilliant light as it rose higher in the sky.

Jameson drew in his breath. The Cygnans, it seemed, had evolved on a satellite world that always kept the same face turned toward the gas giant that was its primary—a primary that itself circled a double star.

The Cygnan voice trilled ecstatically. Jameson couldn’t follow it. What strange sacraments of eucharist and resurrection would beings like the Cygnans have devised for themselves while they were struggling toward a scientific society?

He grinned wryly. Probably he was just listening to a straightforward astronomical commentary. The Cygnans, after all, called hydrogen something that translated as “mother-of-matter.”

The red sun ate the white sun again, and spat it out. Both rose higher in the sky. Now, as Jameson watched, they merged. The white sun moved across the swollen red disk, its radiance almost wiping it out, flooding the city with cheerful light.

The scene changed—night again, but a different sort of night. The moon was lit. Its monstrous presence loomed over the twisted towers, glowing like hot coals. But now it had a hole precisely in its center; the shadow of the Cygnan world, like the pupil of an enormous eye brooding at its creation.

Jameson was so riveted to the screen that he didn’t notice Augie enter the room. He realized it, too late, when the kitten sprang spitting from his lap and streaked for cover under a low fixture across the room.

The Cygnan attendant advanced on him, belly-low on five legs, holding an electric prod. It hissed at him, motioning him away from the console.

With despair, Jameson glanced at the unfolding scenes on the triple screen. Now a Cygnan lecturer was juggling colored balls in four of its splayed hands. Two of the balls glowed like Japanese lanterns: a big red one and a blue one. The voice was going to explain all about multiple eclipses to the kiddies. And Jameson was going to miss it. Damn!

He slid off the seat and edged along the console wall, trying to put space between himself and the prod. If it touched him, he knew, he was done for.

The Cygnan prowled sideways, keeping parallel with him. It seemed to move sideways as easily and naturally as it moved forward. He’d often seen them move backward for short distances, too, without bothering to turn round, their eyestalks pointed rearward. That gave Augie a decided advantage in the stalking game.

Augie darted at him, feinting with the prod at Jameson’s legs, then darted backward again. The hexapodal creature was holding itself so low that its leathery poncho, half unlaced as usual, dragged on the floor.

Jameson scrambled backward, out of the way, tripping over a low pedestal. Augie immediately pressed the attack. The long, sleek alligator-shape launched itself at him like a harpoon. Desperately Jameson flung himself sideways. Perhaps human reflexes were a match for a Cygnan’s blurring speed after all—at least an elderly Cygnan like Augie. Jameson knew he would have stood no chance whatsoever if there had been more than one of them. But the electric fork just missed contact.

There was a sizzling sound and the smell of scorched plastic. The fork had embedded itself in the padded cushion of a perch. Without stopping to think, Jameson grabbed the handle of the prod just forward of Augie’s grip.

Instantly four or five rubbery paws were grabbing at him. Jameson ignored them. He yanked with all his strength. The Cygnan’s grip was as weak as a child’s. Jameson had the prod. No time to figure out how to use it! He flung the blasted thing away as hard as he could.

Then the Cygnan twisted away like an eel, going after the prod. Jameson made a grab for the clubbed tail and yanked the creature back. Augie uttered a strangled klaxonlike squawk. It turned sinuously, bending double, and struck at him with its long head.

He felt a pain that burned like fire. The creature had managed to get the tip of its abrasive tongue into the meat of his upper arm. Jameson, still keeping a grip on the tail, grabbed with his free hand for one of the fleshy eyestalks and forced the Cygnan’s head back. Augie was thrashing around. Millions of gristly fingers were pawing indiscriminately at Jameson’s wrists and ankles, doing no harm. Jameson shifted position and knelt on the Cygnan’s thick tail. Augie gave a terrible squawk again and shuddered convulsively before going limp.

Jameson had it by two eyestalks now, with his weight on its tail. He seemed to have injured the creature or made it sick. The petals at the tip of the tail were parted slightly, and there was a thick yellow exudate oozing out.

Augie was trembling. It was being careful not to move, to avoid damage to its eyes. Jameson gave a little tug to emphasize the point, then let go with one hand. He reached down, feeling for the poncho’s laces, and pulled a length off. Working quickly, he muzzled the Cygnan, winding the cord around its snout. It was harder than he expected. The Cygnan didn’t have a normal jaw that could be clamped shut, like a terrestrial animal. It could still peel back the edges of its mouth at any point past the encircling cord. Jameson had to do the whole snout up like a mummy, and even then the Cygnan was able to spread the tip apart like a rosebud and show a half inch of that rasplike tongue.

Jameson’s arm was bleeding. There was a little round pit in it about a quarter inch deep. He had a feeling that if he hadn’t jerked away so quickly, it would have gone all the way through to the bone.

With the Cygnan’s head trussed up, Jameson moved swiftly to immobilize the rest of it. Still keeping a grip on an eyestalk with one hand, he pulled the creature’s leathery poncho around backward, trapping its limbs. Then, two-handed, he laced it up in back like a straitjacket.