Donald Moffitt - The Jupiter Theft

Crawling was easy in the low gravity. Their weight, low to begin with, had diminished considerably during their long climb to the roof of the mini-world. But none of them could match the ease with which the humanoids traveled. They prowled ahead on all fours, maintaining the pliant arch-shape that kept their noses close to the girders, sniffing out Klein’s trail.

From up here, Jameson was able to get a feeling for the overall layout of the environmental pod—one of the three pods swinging round the shaft of the ship. For a moment he felt a pang of regret that he would never get to see the other pods. Were they identical to this one? Or had history and jerrybuilt growth over six million years turned them into different countries?

In the center of the harlequin expanse was a triangular canyon that plunged to the floor of the world, its sides alive with golden movement. Spanning it, halfway down, was the colossal pin on which the world turned. At the bottom was a rusty floor with a small riddled patch of gray, which he knew to be the honeycomb enclosures of the zoo.

They had come a long way.

And somewhere ahead, in this labyrinth of pipes and struts squeezed between the layers of sky, was the round shadow he’d seen overhead—the convergence of the gigantic wishbone that gripped the turning pin, and an entrance to the miles of hollow shaft that led to the central axis of the ship. Somewhere in that airtight interface would be forgotten ways to get into the shaft. At least, Klein seemed to have found one.

There it was! The low overhead had begun to climb at a shallow angle, and through the forest of eye-dazzling plumbing he could see a curving black wall that had to be the outer boundary of the interchange. Behind the wall would be the reception area where the spiral tubes had dumped him and his captors when he’d first been brought to the ship. He’d never seen it, having lost consciousness before reaching bottom. The Cygnan circulatory system must be immune to merry-go-rounds. But he knew it would be crawling with Cygnan traffic. Surely within that enormous vertical void they would find bypaths and crooked ways.

The humanoids had given up trying to get any closer to the wall. They were ranging back and forth along the perimeter, like good hunting dogs.

Ruiz drew abreast of him, clutching his spear. His face was a sickly gray. The effort was taking its toll. There was crusted blood on the bandage around his head.

“It’ll get easier,” Jameson said. “By the time we get up to the top, we won’t weigh anything.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Ruiz snapped peevishly. “I’ll keep up.”

Jameson looked him over. “How’s the head, Hernando?”

Ruiz grimaced. “Terrible. Like a galloping hangover. The uppers will keep me going for another forty-eight hours.”

“You’re going to come down hard. You’re burning yourself up.”

“It won’t matter after that. There’ll be all the time in the universe to rest.”

Dmitri called: “They’ve found something.”

The four of them wriggled forward on their bellies.

The humanoids were hovering over something huddled on a catwalk leading to the black wall.

“More of Klein’s work,” Ruiz said.

It was the body of a Cygnan, almost split apart by gunfire. A mass of wetly glistening organs spilled out of the hole torn in its body, egg-shaped nodes clinging to a spongy mass of coral-branched tissue. The creature once had mated; the pulped remains of a parasitic male showed within the body cavity. She’d been a maintenance worker; there was a toolbox lying near her—a kind of basket with bulbous grips around the edges instead of a handle.

“Still warm,” Dmitri said. “We’re not far behind them.”

“Help me drag the body out of sight,” Jameson said. They wedged it deep within a tangle of pipes.

The humanoids already were sniffing out Klein’s traces near the body. They found a trail and followed it, walking on their knuckles and toes. It led to an unobtrusive opening at the base of the wall. The humanoids made certain there were no Cygnans nearby; then they all made a dash for it.

Inside was what looked like a small repair station. They found lengths of plastic pipe, braces, and odd-looking fasteners stacked haphazardly around the chamber with characteristic Cygnan carelessness. There were also more Cygnan bodies strewn around the place—three of them, their orange blood splattering the walls.

Maggie looked pale. The freckles stood out on her white face. “They’ll be discovered next shift—whenever a Cygnan shift begins,” she said. “There’ll be a hunt, if one hasn’t started already.”

“Easy,” Ruiz said. “There may still be time. It may not dawn on them for a while that Klein’s headed for the hub. He’s just a very dangerous animal loose in the city. And they may not put it all together for a while. How many violent deaths take place in a twenty-four-hour period in a place the size of Dallasworth? The police look at it on a case-by-case basis at first, until somebody decides a maniac is loose.”

“It’s morning back at the zoo,” Dmitri said thoughtfully.

“And the zookeepers are missing,” Ruiz said firmly. “That’s all. There are a lot of exhibits to search—if anybody’s interested in searching right at the start. And the Cygnan sightseers will see an exhibit of these strange creatures called humans, and none of them will know how many are supposed to be in the cage.”

Jameson said, “You’re very comforting, Hernando.”

“What other choice do I have?” Ruiz said impatiently. “Let’s go.”

It took them another two days to reach the hub. They were able to climb an average of half a mile per hour in the rapidly diminishing gravity, but they had to stop to hide frequently, whenever the humanoids’ sensitive noses sniffed out the presence of Cygnans. They stopped to sleep twice; Ruiz slept fitfully, hopped up by the stimulants Janet had given him. Jameson scrupulously called a halt for ten minutes every hour to let them rest, and every four hours he made them eat some of their rations and drink some water. They were able to refill their jugs at any number of places where condensation caused by the chill outer walls of the shaft had run into hollows, making respectable pools. Once there was a rainstorm that lasted a half-hour; the interior spaces of the arm were vast enough to cause weather.

Jameson never saw the humanoids eat or drink. During the humans’ rest periods they frequently disappeared, coming back when it was time to play bloodhound again. Jameson never inquired into the reason for the humanoids’ little side expeditions. He prayed fervently that humanoid and Cygnan biochemistry were incompatible, and that the humanoids’ incredible sense of smell was leading them to stores of synthetics they could snack on. If there was anything edible within miles, Dmitri assured him, they would be able to home in on it.

The spaces they traversed were between the outer skin of the folding arm and the yawning central well that contained the corkscrew tubeways. From time to time, with the humanoids to warn him of danger, he cautiously checked their progress by poking a head out of an inner compartment and peering into the dim abyss beyond, where the flashing shapes of Cygnans whizzed through the transparent spirals. They were too far away and moving too quickly to notice him; what he was afraid of was being seen by a Cygnan on one of the nearby adjacent ledges that overhung the chasm. But the humanoids’ sense of smell was infallible.

The Cygnans used the spaces around the core of the arm—but mostly for storage. It could hardly be otherwise, when down became up and up became down every few years. They wouldn’t have wanted to go to the trouble of refurbishing every single cubby and cell. But every mile or two Jameson and his party came across clusters of gimballed containers that were as big as houses. What were they? Low-gravity luxury housing? Factories or biological laboratories? Slums? It was impossible to tell. But some of them had windows, and Jameson gave them a wide berth.