The Jupiter Theft Part 2

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 b.u.mped 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 un.o.btrusive slipbeat: nines against sevens. The European s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mference. 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 s.p.a.ce, and Jameson had been a.s.signed 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 reconst.i.tuted 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-c.u.m-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."

When they reached the security rep's quarters, Caffrey carefully locked the X-ray spy camera away in a cabinet. He indicated a chair. "Sit down, Commander," he said.

Jameson sat down. Caffrey's manner was strangely formal. He was usually a fairly regular guy for a security rep. And this wasn't the comfortable armchair he usually sat in during debriefings. It was a fully equipped interrogation seat, with accessory plugs, ankle and wrist straps, and a head clamp. It tilted and swiveled to give its occupant a sense of psychological helplessness.

"What do you want to know, Ray?" Jameson said.

The security man didn't answer. He pressed a buzzer on his desk.

"It's up to the top bra.s.s, of course," Jameson went on, trying to keep his voice conversational, "but maybe this time we ought to lodge a formal protest. Bugging the lander is one thing, but this time it endangered the mission. If that landing leg had given way when we touched down on Callisto, Li and I could have been killed."

"Don't say anything yet, Commander," Caffrey said.

The door opened and a tall, unsmiling man in gray coveralls came through. Jameson didn't recognize him, but he knew the type. It was some functionary from the Reliability Board.

"This is Commander Jameson, Doctor," Caffrey said.

Jameson looked up at the RB psychologist and said, in a feeble attempt at a joke, "You going to strap me in, Doc?"

"That won't be necessary," the RB man said. There wasn't a trace of humor in his words. "Just grasp those armrests. That's right. Now put your head back against the backrest while I adjust it. That's the way."

He had Jameson hooked up in a few minutes: skin electrodes, blood-pressure cuff, EEG cap, electromyograph, voice a.n.a.lyzer, and the rest of them. They were all plugged into a little averaging computer marked restricted use. He positioned a little device on a rolling stand in front of Jameson's face to record changes in retinal color and pupil size, and sat back, waiting for Jameson to utter the first word.

It was a familiar RB gambit.

Jameson fought back his anger. "You know, I was checked out thoroughly at the start of the project," he said. "Everybody was."

"Nothing to get concerned about, Commander Jameson," the psychologist said soothingly. "You've been working closely with your Chinese counterpart for some time now. This is just a routine att.i.tude test.

Everybody's going to have one."

It was easy for Jameson. He'd grown up as a Guvie brat. He'd been taking tests since his kidcare days: tests to get into the right schools, tests to qualify for government employment and housing and food chits, tests to get into the s.p.a.ce Resources Academy. It got to be second nature. You learned to give them what they wanted.

"You speak Chinese rather well, Commander. Not just the vocabulary-the four tones seem to come naturally to you. Most Westerners have trouble with them."

"I just have a good ear, I guess."

"Do you feel any special affinity for the Chinese?"

He kept his voice carefully neutral "They're okay."

"Li Chen-yung in particular?"

"Li's all right."

"You're not being very responsive, Commander."

"Li's my partner in this exercise. We have to mesh as a team. Our staying alive depends on our trusting each other. Up to a point."

"Up to a point?"

"Yes."

"Hmm." It was impossible for Jameson to read those steely eyes. "Do you feel anger toward Li over the incident with the spy camera?"

"No. Li probably didn't know it was there."

The RB interrogator studied the little hooded screen on his computer. He punched for various readings.

Jameson knew it was showing his anger and resentment. That didn't matter; his feelings would be interpreted as anger toward Li and the Chinese. A little anxiety and resentment about being grilled was normal anyway, no matter how reliable you were.

The questioning took about an hour. It was a fairly standard RB mix, with a new version of the authority-acceptance index and the same tired questions on alcohol and drug dependence he'd been answering for twenty years. It ended with a s.e.xual orientation series, complete with flash holos, a needle sampling his blood, and a very uncomfortable metal codpiece with leads hooked to the computer. So far as he could tell, no drugs were being fed into his bloodstream via the needle, so the test was routine.

There was no particular reason for it, which made it all the more insulting.

The RB man folded up his instruments and left. Jameson swabbed electrode paste off his forearm with an alcohol-soaked gauze pad. "Finished with me?" he asked Caffrey in a level voice. "Or did you want to do that debriefing?"

Caffrey flushed. "No, you can go now."

The lounge had emptied out somewhat by the time Jameson returned. Sue was sitting alone at one of the little plastic tables surrounding the central floor well. There was no sign of Dmitri. Jameson drew himself a beer and joined her.

"What was that all about?" she said.

"Reliability test." He grimaced. "Some arbee I never saw before. I guess they're worried about my getting contaminated, working with Li." He drained half his beer and slammed the mug down too hard.

The pinkish brew sloshed over the lip of the mug and splashed on the table.

"They've got to be careful," she said reasonably.

"They can be so careful that they'll endanger the mission. The way Li's people almost did."

She looked around uneasily, "You shouldn't talk like that, Tod. Someone might misinterpret what you said about endangering the mission."

"Dammit!" he flared. "I'm no Rad! They ought to know that by now. I had my first arbee screening when I was only six years old, when GovCorp transferred my father to another city. I went to Federal schools from kindergarten on. It's fragging humiliating to be treated like some Privie slob who might have a nuke hidden up his sleeve!"

"My father came from the Private Sector," she said quietly.

He covered her hand with his. "I'm sorry," he said contritely. "I didn't mean that. I've got PriSec blood in my own veins, a couple of generations back. Everybody does."

"I know," she said wryly. "We're the salt of the Earth. At least that's what the government keeps telling us."

She gave him a warm smile. He held on to her hand. He'd forgotten how pretty she was. The two of them had meshed well during their brief experiment together during the early days of mission training. It had been the policy of the s.p.a.ce Resources Agency to balance the s.e.xes ever since the scandal of the second Mars mission, early in the century. It was the only sensible way to deal with the inevitable tensions. Even the Chinese paired their crew members, though for public consumption they made much of "comradeship" and "Socialist chast.i.ty."

Neither he nor Sue was attached at the moment if you didn't count Dmitri. He leaned across the table, her hand warm in his. Her dark eyes looked expectantly at him. "Sue..." he began.

"Hey, we're not interrupting anything, are we?"

He turned his head and saw Mike Berry standing there, a broken-nailed clump of fingers around a pink beer, the other hand resting on Maggie MacInnes's shoulder.

Maggie was a computer tech, a lean, freckly woman with an impertinent nose and carroty hair worn a little too long for s.p.a.ce. She wasn't wearing anybody's shirt, just issue shorts and an improvised crisscrossed halter that tied behind her neck, baring skinny shoulder blades. Her rangy figure made Sue look a little chunky. Jameson didn't know Maggie very well, but after he and Li finished their current schedule of EVA exercises they would be working with Maggie and her counterpart, Jen Mei-mei, plotting orbits and landing approaches.

"No," he said reluctantly. "Have a seat."

Sue un.o.btrusively pulled her hand away from Jameson's. She smiled a greeting and pushed over to make room.

Berry kicked a couple of airpuffs over, and he and Maggie plumped down on them. "I hear you've got the security types buzzing, old chum," he said.

Jameson looked up, surprised. "How'd you hear that?"

"Oh, word gets around." Berry hunched over, looking conspiratorial. He brushed his hair forward and narrowed his eyes, in an uncanny imitation of the RB interrogator Jameson had just left. "What's that?" he said. "You say this Commander Jameson wants us to lodge a protest with the Chinese over their spy camera? Impossible!"

Jameson laughed. "Mike, you ought to be on holovision."

Berry held up a hand. He changed his body language and became Caffrey, frozen-faced and wary.

"Why impossible?" Instantly he was the RB man again. "Because then the Chinese would lodge a protest withus , over the holo scanner we planted in their dormitory. It's a fair exchange.They don't find out about our boron engine, andwe don't find out about their s.e.x lives."

Maggie was laughing too, but Sue looked uncomfortable.

"But when did you meet-" Jameson began.

"You weren't alone, old chum. They're doing everybody. Doctor Von Hotseat just arrived this morning on the Earth shuttle. Tuttle's in there with him now. If you want to know, they started with me, while you were still floating around outside. Wanted to know if I believed in the free exchange of scientific information and all that."

"See," Sue said to Jameson. "I told you not to take it personally."

Berry raised a bushy eyebrow. "What's this?"

"Oh, I was just sounding off about Security," Jameson said. He took a swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Maggie spoke up. "I know what you mean. I never thought I'd get approved for this mission at all. They rescreened me twice. I even had to sign a braindip release."

Jameson wasn't surprised. Maggie spoke with an unmistakable Yankee tw.a.n.g. People were more tolerant these days, but when Jameson had been growing up there still had been a lingering bitterness over all the ugliness of the New England Secession, and the loss of so many occupation troops during the pacification. Of course, it had been tough on the New Englanders and eastern Canadians too; particularly the use of nukes. It couldn't have been easy for Maggie, getting this far in the s.p.a.ce program. Since reunification, New Englanders and Canadian annexees were theoretically ent.i.tled to full citizenship with all its rights, but there was always that coded notation in their pa.s.sbooks. There were far fewer restrictions on the children and grandchildren of the Russian refugees of the 2010's.

Sue changed the subject diplomatically. "Look!" she said. "I've never seen Jupiter so bright!"

Jameson looked down into the stars. The splendid gem that was Jupiter had just come into view in the gla.s.sed, rail-encircled well set into the carpeted floor of the lounge. It drifted slowly past as the great wheel of the s.p.a.ce station turned majestically on its axis. Of all the points of light visible, it was the most brilliant.

The four of them watched it in silence until it disappeared almost beneath their feet. A minute later, the window was full of Earth, blue and dazzling against the threadbare fabric of the night. Beneath the swirling clouds he could make out the brownish outlines of the continents, the elephant wrinkles of mountain chains, the patches of lucent green at the poles, where the Arctic wastes had been planted in snow rice. It all seemed familiar and comforting and close.

"What do you suppose we'll find when we get there?" Maggie said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

Jameson knew what she was feeling. It got to you every once in a while, that moment of strangeness when you caught a glimpse of that distant spark and realized it was aplace . That you were actually going to go there across that enormous dark gulf, with a hundred members of your species, in a fragile hollow ring of drawn metal and spun plastic foam.

Maggie was looking directly at him. He saw her shiver.

"On Io," Berry said, "sulfur and sodium. On Callisto, lots of pebbles. What else?"

"Why not life?" Sue said. "No, wait minute, listen! After all, Callisto's got an atmosphere of sorts, and it's far enough from Jupiter so that it doesn't get the same dose of radiation as the other three Galilean satellites. Dmitri says that, given ammonia frost and evaporate salts, and the existence of molecular hydrogen..."

In a few moments the four of them were having the usual animated argument about life on the Jovian moons-life on Jupiter itself. It was the major after-hours pastime of the entire Jupiter crew, Americans and Chinese alike. Soon it would be settled once and for all.

"... I see a giant lipid, floating in a pool of methane," Berry was saying, stroking his scraggly beard and peering into his beer as if it were a crystal ball. He had an exaggerated gypsy accent. "A very complex molecule, like chicken fat. No, no, it's not a lipid after all! It's a lipoprotein, in a cloud of sulfur! It's saying 'Earth-man beware...'"

Jameson stopped listening. He was staring into the bowl of stars at his feet. Earth was gone. Jupiter swung into view again among the wheeling stars. It was clear and steady-bright, and it was half a billion miles away.

Maggie said it for him. She caught his eye across the table and said, "It's a long way down, isn't it."