The Jupiter Plague

11

General Burke checked the points off on his fingers as he made them.

“First,” he said, pushing up his thumb, “we need a military operation, which I trust you will allow me to organize. A small, light force will be the best, I’ll lead it myself…”

“You shouldn’t get personally involved in this,” Sam said.

“Horse apples! I’m responsible for this show and I’ll be just as guilty giving the orders from the front line as I will be from the rear. Plus the fact that I’m getting too desk bound and I’m hard pressed these days to find any reasons at all to get into the shield. So that’s set. Second, we need a medical man along since it’s medical intelligence that we’re after, which will be you. Thirdly, there must be someone who knows something about spaceships, the ‘Pericles’ in particular, who can get us into it and show us around, and there is a natural choice for that job.”

“Stanley Yasumura?”

“Correct. He flew in from California as soon as the ”Pericles’ landed and has been bugging everyone since then — myself included — to be allowed to enter the ship. He was one of the principal designers of the ‘Pericles’ and seems to feel personally responsible for what has happened. I think he’ll come with us, but I’ll talk to him first and sound him out before I give him any details.“

“You can’t use the phone, you’ll be overheard, cut off.”

“We in the military are not without resources, boy. I’ll send Haber up to Yasumura’s hotel with a command transceiver, one of the new ones fitted with a scrambler and wavelength wobbler, they can’t be jammed or eavesdropped. I can handle this part of the operation — will you need any medical kit?”

“No, nothing that I can think of.”

“Good. Then your assignment now is to get some sleep so you’ll be ready for tonight.”

“We can’t wait until then!” As he spoke Sam saw Nita’s face clearly, sick, silent, unmoving. In the rush of events he had pushed the memory away: it returned with doubled impact now. She was dying minute by minute and there was no time to waste.

“We have to wait, Sam, because, aside from the fact that you look like you’ve been on a ten-day drunk and have given up sleeping as a bad habit, what we have to do can only be done after dark. We can’t just walk up to the spacer and climb in.

It’s surrounded by city police who have orders to shoot anyone crossing the wire. Then there is the covering plate and the air lock to go through — and how much chance do you think we would have in daylight? Plus the fact that it will take awhile to set this operation up. So here’s what you do; go into the next room where I have a cot that I use when the work keeps me here. Just take a rest; don’t sleep if you don’t want to, and you will be able to hear everything that goes on in here. You’re going to be no good to us if you’re pooped even before the operation begins.“

Sam could find no holes in the arguments and the sight of the cot reminded him just how tired he was.

“I’ll lie down,” he said, “rest a bit. But I don’t want to sleep.”

Someone had put a blanket over him and through the closed door to the adjoining office came a mumble of voices. Sam jerked awake, sitting up: the room was almost dark and the sky outside the rain-streaked window was murky and gray. He hadn’t wanted to sleep but was glad now that he had — it was going to be a long night. When he opened the door the officers around the desk looked up; General Burke put down a blueprint and turned around in his chair.

“You’re just in time, Sam, I was going to wake you. We’re in the final stages now and it will be dark enough to leave in about an hour. Have you met Dr. Yasumura?”

The circle of soldiers opened up and the small, globular form of the Nisei engineer bounced out, dressed in oversized Army fatigues.

“Hi, Sam, I heard a lot about you.” He- took Sam’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically. “I’ve been trying to see you ever since I got into town, but you were never available.”

“None of the calls reached me, Doctor Yas—”

“Stanley, the name’s Stanley, you’re the doctor around here, Sam. The general has been telling me about the plot to keep us all apart. He sent an armed guard and a fancy radio to my hotel, then got on it and explained what has been happening— I signed on for the duration. His boys had this uniform for me — wrong size naturally — and even an ID card, so I had no trouble getting here. Now you have to tell me, when you were in the air lock did you—”

“Hold it a moment, Yasumura,” General Burke broke in. “Let’s take the whole operation in sequence, it wouldn’t hurt any of us to run through it once more and we want to brief Sam. Then he can give you the technical advice at the end.”

“I just wanted to know—”

“It’ll keep. Sit down, Sam, have a drink and look at this map. See where we are now on Governors Island, right in the top of the Upper Bay? From here we have to cross all of the end of Long Island filled with citizens and cops to reach Kennedy Airport, right?” Sam nodded. “Well, there is an easier and a lot less public way to get there — by water.” He traced the route with his finger.

“Out through the Narrows and the Lower Bay, then east past Coney Island and in through Rock-away Inlet. We pick our way through Jamaica Bay and come ashore on the end of the airport runway where it sticks out into the water.”

“There’s only one thing wrong,” Sam said, tapping the map. “It must be over thirty miles going this way, we’ll be all night in a small boat finding our way through those inlets and marshes.”

“No boat, we use a hoverjeep. With all the equipment we’re taking it will only hold four, but that’s all we need since you, I and Haber can take care of any trouble we run into. All right, we’re at the airport now. Haber flew over it in a chopper earlier today — we found him a legitimate excuse. He took pictures and he kept his eyes open. Haber.”

The lieutenant tapped the map where the shallow water of the bay touched the edge of the airport. “There are no guards here at all, but in the blown-up prints we found ultraviolet trespass alarms and infrared detectors. Getting by them will be no problem. Trouble starts here, around the ‘Pericles,’ more detectors and a barbed-wire fence — patrolled by armed police. The real difficulty will be getting by those police guards without raising the alarm. I assume that they will… that is, we will want to show discretion about injuring them?” He looked up at General Burke, then glanced quickly away.

There was a lengthening silence as the general looked impassively at the map: someone’s shoe scraped as he moved his feet and there was a muted cough.

“We finally come to that, dont‘ we,” General Burke said quietly. “We’ve all fought in a lot of campaigns, with your exception, Dr. Yasumura, and in Some odd corners of the world. The Fifth Airborne is an American division so therefore, in keeping with UN policy, we have never been in active service in North America before. We’ve killed when we had to, when killing was the only way to enforce the peace, and while we have perhaps regretted doing this, we know that many times it has been the only choice. Now we’re serving in our own country and the enemy is a handful of average cops who are just following orders on a dull guard detail. I’m beginning to appreciate the UN dictum of never fighting where you’re recruiting. All right. Keep the safeties on your blackjacks, but if it comes down to a matter of you or the other guy I want it to be you. We have too much at stake here. Is that understood?”

“It may not be that bad,” Sam said. “I’ll bring a pressure hypo of Denilin; it’s a quick-action sedative that will put a man under in seconds.”

“You bring your needle, Sam, and we’ll give you every chance to use it. Let’s hope it works out that way, and if it doesn’t I don’t want any of you to forget what you have to do. We pass the guards, get through the wire and reach the spaceship— then what? How do we get in Dr. Yasumura?”

“Through the air lock, there is no other way. This ship was built to stand up to Jupiter’s gravity and atmosphere and there is very little short of an A-bomb that will make a dent in it.” He picked up the photograph of the “Pericles” made that morning. “The police cut away the ladder when they welded that plate over the lock — do I hear any suggestions how we can get up those twenty feet from the ground?”

There were a half-dozen officers in the room, men from General Burke’s staff, seriously considering the problem of illegal entry of the spaceship. Sam knew that none of them questioned the general’s decision to enter it by force; they just did as they were directed with a loyalty given to few officers. Perhaps they wouldn’t walk off a cliff if the general demanded it, but they would certainly follow him if he went first.

“What’s the hull made of?” a graying captain of engineers asked.

“A specially developed titanium alloy; it contains no iron.”

“Then magnets are out. Our longest folding ladder is just fifteen feet—”

“Then bolt an extension on the end,” General Burke interrupted. “We have very little time left, let’s get on with this. We’re on the ladder now, standing in front of that plate they welded on — how do we get through that?”

“No problem, General,” the engineer said. “You’ll carry one of the portable lasers we use for cutting heavy metal in the field. I understand that plate is made of mild steel, the laser will cut it like butter.”

“Now we’re moving along; we’re in the air lock and that’s where you take over, Dr. Yasumura.”

“I will need tools, a multitester, portable scope and some things like that. I’ve talked this over with your engineers and they’ll give me everything I need. There are only one or two ways that Commander Rand could have disconnected the controls so that the inner door will not open, and once I crack into the control box there I’ll find out and open it up. Once we’re through that door we’ll go through the ship from bow to stern until we find what Rand meant when he wrote sick in ship. And I’ll find the log, see how the ship handled during the landing, the equations—”

“Just try to control your technical enthusiasm until you get there, Yasumura, we’re not in the ship yet. I suggest you get what gear you need from the engineers so it can be loaded into the jeep. Lieutenant Haber will go with you to draw the antidetector units. Sergeant Bennett will get some coffee and sandwiches up here. Dismissed.”

The first troubles came fifteen minutes later.

“Sorry, sir, but we can’t get all the equipment into the hoverjeep,” Haber reported.

“Lieutenant, you’re an idiot. Stuff it in, boy— stuff it in!”

“Yes, sir. What I mean is we can’t get in the equipment and four passengers and get the thing off the ground. There just isn’t enough power.”

“We’ll take two jeeps then, and if we can we’ll squeeze in another man to help carry that gear.”

“That will be me, sir,” Sergeant Bennett said.

“Agreed. Get into night fatigues and bring a can of blackface.”

Sodium vapor lights sliced the darkness of the yard, illuminating the falling rain with their crackling blue glow and casting black shadows under the cigar-box bodies of the hoverjeeps that rumbled and whistled noisily as they floated a yard above the ground, supported on the cushion of air blasted downward by their fans.

“Drop them!” General Burke shouted. Like the others of the raiding party he was dressed in black coveralls and dark boots with a black beret pulled low over his hair. Their faces, hands and visible skin were soot-colored, without highlights, stained by the blackface cream.

“Engine warm, tank full, radio and radar tested, sir,” the driver of the first hoverjeep said, switching off and climbing out. “She’ll lift, hover and do full speed with this load you’re carrying.”

“Let’s move then. I’ll drive the lead jeep, Sam and Yasumura come with me. Haber, take the second and the sergeant will ride shotgun for you. Stay close behind me and be ready to turn southwest as soon as we see the docks on the Brooklyn shore. We’re going to start out of here going due east so keep your eye on the compass; I’ll be using radar but the compass is all you’ll have, that and the sight of my rear end going away from you, so don’t get lost. We’re going to put on a bit of a show in case the police are using radar too. There are five copters going out with us and they’ll fly low and we’ll go at maximum altitude so all the blips will merge. When we get in the radar shadow of the shore installations we’ll drop down and cut out while the copters fly around for a while. Any questions? All right then, here we go.”

The whistling of the fans was drowned out as the flight of copters came over, dropping low. The general signaled and all the lights went out at the same moment; watery darkness filled the yard and the hoverjeeps were invisible as they drifted across the ground and slipped down the ramp to the water. The riding lights of the copters vanished into the falling rain, their unseen companions moving beneath them.

“Shore about two hundred yards ahead,” Sam reported, bent over the hooded screen of the radar.

“I can’t see a damn thing,” the general muttered. “No, I’m wrong, there it is.” He touched the switch on the microphone. “Cut in your silencers, be ready to turn—now!”

With the silencers engaged, their speed dropped by a third and the copters rumbled away into the darkness. As the two hoverjeeps turned toward the ocean their passage was marked only by the dimpled water that they floated above and the muttering, muted whistle of their fans. Silent jets of air drove them forward, down the Upper Bay and under the briefly glimpsed lights of the Narrows Bridge and into the Lower Bay and the higher waves of the Atlantic. Once they were well away from the shore the silencers were cut out and they tore through the darkness with racing-car speed. The rain was stopping and through patches in the haze they caught glimpses of a row of lights off on their left.

“What’s that?” General Burke asked.

“Coney Island, the street and boardwalk lights along the shore,” Sam said, squinting at the radar.

“Blast! Just when we could use some filthy weather it has to clear up — what’s that I’m coming to ahead?”

“Rockaway Inlet, it leads into Jamaica Bay. Stay on this course, we’re in the middle of the channel and we have to go under the bridge that crosses it.”

There was no traffic on the bridge that they could see and it appeared to float in midair, vanishing out of sight into the mist in both directions: they drifted under it with muted fans. Ahead lay the wilderness of mudbanks, waterways, swamps and waving cattails that made up the heart of Jamaica Bay. They floated over it, ignoring the marked channels as the hover craft crossed water, reed clumps and mud flats with equal facility. Then the bay was behind them and just ahead was the straight line of the filled land and the lights marking the end of the Kennedy Airport runway. With engines throttled back they drifted up the bank.

“The alarms begin right there at the lights, sir,” Haber’s voice whispered in General Burke’s earphone.

“Put down then, we’ll go the rest of the way on foot.” They dropped like silent shadows and the men climbed out and unloaded the equipment. “Sergeant, you’ve had the most experience with the cheaters; we’ll hold here while you put them in.”

Sergeant Bennett shouldered the heavy equipment pack and crawled forward in the mud, the detector rod held out before him. They could see nothing of his advance and Sam held his impatience under control and tried to keep his thoughts off Nita back there in the hospital dying by degrees. He wished that he had put in the cheaters, though he knew that they must have changed in the ten years since he had last handled one. Trying to picture what Bennett was doing would keep his mind off that hospital bed. The swinging prod cutting a regular arc over the ground, then the twitch of the needle on the glowing dial. Knocking out the infrared detectors wasn’t difficult, as long as you didn’t bang them with the insulation hood when you were dropping it over them at the end of the long rod. The ultraviolet alarms were the tricky ones, first making an accurate reading of the output without cutting the beam in order to adjust the cheater lamp. Then the smooth, continuous motion they had practiced so much, moving the tiny UV generator in front of the pickup so that there was no change in the level of received radiation. Once it was in position you could break the original beam to the photocell because the cheater light was shining into it from a few inches away. Nita, Nita. The minutes stretched out and the air cleared, stars broke through above them. At least there was no moon.

A silent figure loomed up before them and Sam’s hand automatically found the butt of his pistol. It was Sergeant Bennett.

“All in position, sir, a pushover, dead easy. If you’ll all walk behind me single file I’ll take you through the gap.”

They went carefully, one behind the other, treading as lightly as they could with the heavy packs and the ladder. The infrared detectors were ignorant of their passage since their body heat was shielded from the pickups by the insulating covers, and though they cut through the invisible beam of ultraviolet light there was no alarm since the cheater fed its own steady UV source guarding photocell.

“That’s the last of them,” Haber said. “There’s nothing now between us and the guards around the ship.”

“No cover either,” General Burke said, “and the rain has stopped. We’ll stay in the grass here and parallel the runway. Keep low and keep quiet.”

With its attendant rows of lights the wide runway stretched away from them, terminating suddenly in the dark bulk of the spaceship that sprawled across it, blocking it. A few lights on the ground near the ship marked the location of the guarded, barbed-wire fence that ringed it, but there were black gaps in between the lights. The general led them toward the nearest patch of darkness, midway between two of the lights, and they crawled the last hundred yards on their stomachs. They dropped into the mud, motionless, when a slowly plodding policeman appeared in the nearest illuminated circle. He cradled a recoilless.75 submachine gun in the crook of his arm. No one moved as the guard squelched by them, a dimly moving form against the night sky. Only when he had passed through the next circle of light did General Burke issue his whispered instructions.

“Bennett — knock out the detectors and as soon as you do we can cut through the wire. Sam and Haber move toward that light and get ready to take out any cops that come this way. Yasumura, lie still and shut up. Let’s go.”

For Stanley Yasumura this was the worst time, just waiting, unable to do anything as the minutes ticked by. The clifflike bulk of the “Pericles” loomed over him and he tried to study it, but there was little to see. The general and the sergeant were working as a team, neutralizing the different alarms. The other two seemed to have vanished in the darkness and all he could do was lie there, plastered with mud and soaked to the skin, and try not to hear the racing thud of his heart. There was a stir of movement at the far side of the nearest light and another policeman appeared, walking steadily toward the spot where Yasumura lay, approaching with measured, heavy steps. It seemed incredible to Yasumura that the man couldn’t see him lying there, or that he hadn’t heard the rustling movements of the two others working their way toward the barbed wire. And where were the ones who were supposed to be on guard?

In unvoiced answer to his question the two figures rose behind the policeman and closed with him in a silent rush. Haber had his arm about the cop’s neck so that the incipient shout became only a muffled gasp, while Sam held his flailing arm, twisting it so that it was palm up and pressing the nozzle of the pressure hypodermic against the bare skin. There was a brief hissing that blasted droplets of the sedative through the skin into the tissue below. For a few seconds there was a soundless struggle as both men held the policeman’s writhing figure so that he could not raise an alarm or reach the trigger of his gun: then he collapsed and they eased him to the ground.

“That’s fine,” General Burke said, appearing out of the darkness. “Lay him over here and take his weapon; we’re ready to go through the wire. Pick up the ladder and the rest of the gear and follow me.”

“The second strand up from the bottom is carrying a charge,” Sergeant Bennett said, pointing to it where it was stapled to the tall wooden pole; the wire fence stretched ten feet above the ground. “I’ve jumped it with an insulated wire so we can get through, but don’t touch the ends.”

The wire cutter clicked loudly in the night and they eased the cut sections back.

“That’s enough — let’s go,” Burke said when the wire had been cut up to three feet above the ground.

They crawled under, one at a time, passing the packs through the gap before them. Then they were skirting the base of the towering black ship, picking their way over the broken ground and, as they came around the bulge of a gigantic fin, they saw in the light of the distant hangars the still-open outer door of the air lock.

“Ladder!” the general hissed, and Haber stood it up beneath the door and switched it on. The two small motors, with their power packs, were built into the bottom of the legs; they whined softly and the ladder extended until the top touched just below the lock. Sam had shouldered the heavy-duty batteries and converter unit that powered the laser that Yasumura carried and, while the others steadied the ladder, he followed the engineer to the air lock.

“Plug this in,” Yasumura whispered, and handed the end of the cable to Sam. The laser was a milk-bottle-sized tube with a flaring, bell-shaped mouth that automatically spaced the output lens at the correct distance from the work while it shielded the operator’s eyes from the fierce light. He put the open end against the large sheet of half-inch steel that had been welded over the lock and switched on the power. It hummed loudly, too loudly in the quiet night, and when he moved it along slowly a black line appeared in the steel: there was the acrid smell of burned metal.

The laser cut steadily and surely, marking a yard-wide circle in the covering plate. Yasumura didn’t complete the circle; when it was almost finished he made an adjustment on the laser, then did the last few inches at the bottom. This time the intense beam of monochromatic light did not cut the steel, heating it instead to a cherry red. He turned off the laser and pushed his shoulder against the plate. The ladder swayed and Sam reached up and braced the engineer’s legs. Yasumura tried again and slowly the heated hinge bent and the disk of metal leaned inward; he climbed higher and put more weight on it until it was bent almost parallel with the inside floor. He stepped carefully over the still-hot edge and vanished inside.

“Up we go,” General Burke said, and Haber started slowly up the ladder under the weight of the heavy pack of equipment.

“If you please, sir,” Sergeant Bennett said, “I think I can do more good right here on the ground. If any police come by, I might be able to keep them quiet — the doctor gave me his hypodermic. You need all the time you can get.”

Burke hesitated only a fraction of a second. “You’re right, Bennett. Rear guard and take care of yourself, no foolish chances.”

“Yes, sir.” He saluted and moved off toward the opening in the wire.

When the general climbed through the hole in the covering plate he had to brush aside the heavy folds of blackout cloth that the others were fixing across it, and once he was inside the edges were sealed and the battle lamp turned on. They blinked in the sudden light and Yasumura hurried over to the control panel, rubbing his hands together happily. The airlock controls were dead, just as they had been when Sam first tried them, so the engineer began at once to remove the covering panel.

“Is this the phone you used?” the general asked.

“It’s the one,” Sam said, and began running through the numbers. They were connected to compartment after compartment, all empty just as before.

“No signs of anyone, or any kind of disturbance,” Burke said, scratching at his blackened jaw. “Try the control room again. Nothing there either. This is a puzzler, Sam.”

There was a muffled clang and they turned to see that Yasumura and Haber had lowered the heavy plate to the floor, exposing the interior of the junction box. The engineer probed with a circuit tester, then probed again. He shorted two terminals with the jaws of a pliers and the frown deepened on his forehead.

“That’s strange,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be any power through this box at all. I can’t understand it. Maybe Rand rigged some kind of device inside the ship to break all the current past the inner door once he had opened the outer one. A timing device of some kind, perhaps.”

“You mean that you can’t open the door?” Burke snapped.

“I didn’t say that, it’s just difficult…”

“What about the power pack from the laser, will that give you enough current for what you need?”

“Of course! I’m eight kinds of idiot for forgetting that. It’s more than we need, in fact I’ll have to cut down the—”

His voice broke into a mumble as he opened the power pack and changed connections quickly, then ran two wires from it to the open junction box on the wall.

“Here goes!” he said as he closed a relay with an insulated screwdriver.

Nothing happened.

General Burke’s voice crackled like sheet lightning. “Well — can you open it or can’t you?”

“It should be opened now — but it’s not, something has been disconnected inside the ship.”

“Then forget the electricity; isn’t there any other way through that door — or maybe the wall?”

“You have to understand the construction of this ship, General. Since this air lock was designed to be opened to the Jovian atmosphere, it is just as strong as the rest of the hull. The inner lock is thick as a bank-vault door and twice as tough.”

“Are you trying to tell me that — after all we have done to get here — that you can’t get us into the bloody ship?”

From somewhere outside there came the sudden hammer of a machine gun and the clang of bullets on the hull. Even as they were turning, a light was focused on the opening they had cut in the metal, a beam strong enough to show through the thick weave of the blackout cloth.