The Jupiter Plague

14

The Jovian stared out of the screen at the three earthmen, immobile and stolid. Yasumura gasped and unconsciously stepped backward a half step.

“What in Satan’s name is that?” the general asked.

“Look for yourself,” Sam said, pointing to the frost-covered wall. “Heavy supports, thick walls, a very cold pressure container big enough to half fill this compartment…”

“A Jovian!” Yasumura shouted. “They brought one back alive, and an ugly one at that. I didn’t know there was any kind of life on Jupiter…?”

“Obviously there is,” Sam said. “But don’t you have it reversed — about who did the bringing back? All the cables in the ship lead here—and this thing is still alive while every member of the expedition is dead…”

“Can it talk?” the general asked.

“Do the wire correct…” the Jovian’s high-pitched and toneless voice sounded from the speaker. “The talking is impaired…”

“You’re talking fine,” Burke said. “Now you can tell us what you are doing here and how—” He broke off in midphrase and turned to Sam. “This is no accident! Do you think this creature has anything to do with the plague?”

“I think it is responsible for Rand’s disease. I had something like this in mind when I asked you to come here. But would you have come if I suggested we would find that?”

“No, I would have thought you had cracked.”

“So I couldn’t explain to you. But you see — it had to be something like this. Everything about Rand’s disease seems so planned, the timed mutations, the varying hosts, the incurability. If you look at it that way the disease stops being alien and instead is—”

“Artificial!”

“Right. And I think this creature here has had something to do with it. That’s what I mean to find out now.”

“Do the wire correct… the talking is impaired…” the Jovian said.

“The wire will be fixed after you have answered a few questions!” Sam realized that he was shouting; he lowered his voice. “Are you responsible for Rand’s disease, for the sickness here in the city?”

“This is a meaningless…”

“A communication problem,” Yasumura said. “This Jovian has learned English, undoubtedly from the men who manned this ship, but it has to relate the words to things in its own environment, which makes it impossible to get a one to one identity. Be very simple and clear when you ask a question, Sam — try and establish basics and build up from there.”

Sam nodded. “I am a living creature, you are a living creature, do you understand me?”

“I am living…”

“When small living creatures live inside a larger creature and hurt it, it is called a disease. Do you understand?”

“What thing is hurt…?”

“Hurt is not a thing, it is what happens — no, forget hurt for a moment. A disease is when a small creature breaks a big creature. Stops it. This is my arm — you see it — if I have arm-disease from a small creature my arm falls off. If my arm falls off I am hurt. There are other ways small creatures can hurt my body. That is disease. Did you bring the disease that is hurting many people now?”

“I now know a disease is what… do the wire correct the talking is impaired…”

“The creature is being evasive, it won’t tell us the truth,” General Burke said.

Sam shook his head no. “We can’t be sure of that. This last part sounded like it was offering a trade — fix the wires and it will talk. Can you hook up the ones I shot away? We can always cut them again.”

“Take just a second,” the engineer said. He touched the severed ends of the cables to each other lightly, then to the metal deck to see if they were carrying a heavy current. “No sparks so they shouldn’t be lethal — I hope!” He quickly spliced the break in the wires.

“Did you bring the disease that is hurting my people?” Sam asked again. The Jovian pushed out an eye on a stalk to look at something to one side and not visible on the screen, then retracted it.

“Yes…” it said stolidly.

“But why?” Yasumura shouted. “Why did you do a dirty thing like this?”

“A talking has been done… what is a dirty thing?“

“Hold it awhile, Stanley, please,” Sam asked as he pulled the engineer from before the screen. “I know why you’re angry and I don’t blame you, but it’s no help now. This creature doesn’t seem to have any emotions at all, so we’re going to have to control ours.” He turned back to the Jovian. “If you started this disease you must know how to stop it. Tell us how.”

“The talking is not complete…”

“I don’t know what you mean by talking and I don’t care.” The hatred of this creature that Sam had been containing broke through at last, he swung his gun up. “You saw what this gun can do, the way it tore up those wires, it can do the same thing to you, tear you up, tear up that tank you are in, tear you to pieces…”

“Stop it, Sam!” the general snapped, and pushed Sam’s hand away from the trigger. The Jovian stared out at them, unmoved in any way that they could see. “You can’t frighten that thing, you said yourself it has no emotions the way we know them, maybe it isn’t even afraid of dying. There has to be another way to get to it—”

“There is,” Sam said, pulling himself from the general’s grasp. “We have already found out one thing it doesn’t like — having those wires cut — so maybe we should cut a few more.”

The general jumped forward, but Sam was faster. He spun on his heel and the gun hammered out a torrent of slugs that howled away, ricocheting and tearing holes in the walls, chewing their way through the massed cables: electricity arced and spat and the shots boomed deafeningly in the enclosed space. Burke tore the gun from him just as he let up on the trigger.

“That stirred the beast up!” Yasumura pointed to the screen. The Jovian was writhing, turning back and forth while its eyestalks swung about jerkily.

“The talking is not complete… the many wires are not complete…”

“The many wires and the damned talking and everything are going to stay not complete until you give us what we want!” Sam leaned forward until his face almost touched the screen. “Give us what we need to stop your disease.”

“The talking is not complete…”

“Sam, let me fix the wires, you may kill the thing…”

“No, I won’t — it doesn’t look uncomfortable, just unhappy. All the wires we traced came from the radio and television pickups; they are feeding the Jovian information of some kind, that must be what it means by the talking. And the talking is not going to be complete until it helps us. Do you hear that?” he shouted into the screen. “The talking is not complete. Give me what I want then I will fix the wires. Give it now.”

The Jovian stopped moving and the eyestalks withdrew until the head was just wrinkled slits again. “You shall… must shall*… complete the wires…”

“After I get it.”

“Complete…”

“After!”

His shout echoed away down the metal compartment and was followed by silence. They stared at each other, man and alien, or more correctly alien and alien — for this is what they were to each other. Alien, meaning different, alien meaning unknown. They faced each other in silent communication for the choice had been clearly stated by both of them and there was nothing more to be said until one or the other of them decided to act.

“Sam…” Yasumura started forward, but General Burke’s fingers clamped onto his arm and whipped him back.

“Let him be,” the general muttered. “He’s laid it out clear and simple and I’m glad he did it because I don’t know if I would have had the guts to.”

“After!” Sam shouted into the silence and raised his gun again toward the cables, over half of which had been cut by the last burst.

The Jovian slid sideways and vanished from the screen.

“What is it up to?” Yasumura asked as he rubbed away some of the sweat that was dripping into his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Sam said grimly, “but I’m going to hurry it up.”

He held his hand out to the general who reluctantly passed back the gun. Sam fired a short burst that cut two more of the electric cables. An instant later there was a booming that jarred the wall above the phone screen.

“Get back!” Burke shouted and hit Yasumura with his shoulder, knocking him aside.

With a rending screech something came through the solid metal of the wall and crashed to the deck. A screaming of released pressure tore at their ears and from the hole came a jet of frigid gas that filled the space around them with clouds of burning vapor. As they drew back the roaring jet cut off and the vapor swirled and dissipated. They looked down at the foot-long, gray cylinder that had cracked open when it hit the metal flooring, disclosing another cylinder inside made of some mottled and purple substance. This was rotting and falling away as they watched, giving off an intense odor of ammonia that drove them away from it. There was a lemon-yellow layer inside this, then still another — all of them melting and dropping to pieces under the corrosive attack of the earth’s air.

This seething process lasted for almost three minutes and at some moment during this time the Jovian reappeared on the screen but no one noticed it. When the pool of liquid on the floor ceased bubbling there remained only a waxy, translucent cylinder the size of a six-inch length of broomstick. Sam used his gun barrel to roll it from the puddle and bent over to examine it more closely. When it moved he saw that it was hollow with quite thin walls and seemed to be filled with a liquid.

“The talking is will be complete… do the wires correct.