He limped away to join the crowd of spacesuited figures clustered around the air lock. Was one of those bulky blue dolls Maggie? She’d have had a time squeezing into Mei-mei’s suit, even with all the slack that a Chinese spacesuit provided. The Chinese, egalitarians all, didn’t believe in custom fitting, but there were limits.
Jameson tested his bonds. There was no give to them. But what was the use of getting loose anyway? He felt close to despair. They’d be gone—in minutes now. They’d already got through the hardest part of their obstacle course. The Cygnans, even if searching for them, had no idea precisely where they were. Now all they had to do was cross fifty miles of space on their suit jets. How long would it take them? An hour? They’d be spotted, of course. With luck they’d be halfway across by then. Then it would take time for the Cygnans to organize a pursuit. It wouldn’t take long to get the missiles in firing order. They wouldn’t even bother to compute orbits, probably. Just aim them, with a proximity fuse or a radio signal. The Cygnans would snuff them out in short order, of course. But the damage would be done. How long would it take the Cygnans to repair the damage done by just one 100-megaton bomb? They’d have to jettison what was left of a pod, maybe even evacuate a whole ship if the central drive was damaged, and resettle a population of millions.
What had Ruiz said? A delay of a month in the Cygnans’ departure would surely break up Earth’s crust, flood it with radiation, tear it out of its orbit, as the Cygnans sailed past with their Jovian trophy. And that would be by mere oversight! With ten million of their sisters murdered, they might decide to do that very thing on purpose!
Jameson watched helplessly as the first group filed into the air lock, which could hold four or five people at a time.
The air lock was simplicity itself. The Cygnans were profligate with their air, just as they were with other people’s hydrogen. There was no lock mechanism, no vacuum pump. You grabbed a handle on that round door and pulled it toward you manually. It slid forward like a desk drawer on three greased shafts. You had to duck under one of the shafts to get inside, but that didn’t bother Cygnans. Attached to the back end of the shafts was another circular door. Once you were inside the lock, you pushed on it and squeezed through the outer opening into space. When the outside door was projecting out into vacuum, the inner disk sealed the cylindrical lock. When the inner door was pulled inward, as it was now, the outer door stopped up the shaft.
Nobody could possibly goof and leave both doors open at once. If you were polite, you pushed the door shut when you were outside. But, knowing Cygnans, Jameson doubted that they bothered. They just left it for the next fellow.
One of the Chinese was pushing on the door now, sealing the people inside. He kept going, another six feet into the round metal tunnel, waited a minute, then pulled the door back out. It didn’t seem to take much effort.
The next load included a couple of prisoners in American spacesuits. Jameson wondered who they were. Kiernan was one of them, from the bantam size of the suit. The other was a woman—Sue Jarowski or Kay Thorwald. It wasn’t Maybury. She was being half supported by Klein’s girl friend, Smitty, while Fiaccone screwed her helmet on.
Jameson struggled for a better position. Nobody paid any attention to him. He felt a faint breeze on his face and the nape of his neck; there was a movement of air toward the lock. It probably leaked around the edges—more Cygnan sloppiness. He was sitting more or less facing the lock, a little beyond the place where it stuck out of the bulkhead, obliquely facing the rearward jumble of gigantic clockwork and the shadowed ramp up over the ridge that had allowed Klein to take him by surprise. All he could hope for was that some Cygnan maintenance worker might come through there, past the boulderlike protuberances embedded in the floor, in time to set off an alarm.
But it was already too late for that. They were all gone now, except for a final group of five and Klein, who was just getting into his spacesuit. He evidently was going to leave last so that he could guard the rear with his machine pistol. If a Cygnan were to happen along, Klein would simply cut her down and be out the lock a minute later.
Mei-mei was pleading with them. She’d been stripped to her underwear. Her low-slung figure looked dumpier than usual in a coarse cotton singlet and baggy drawers. Maggie had taken the long-john liner the Chinese wore under their quilted spacesuits; Jameson couldn’t help thinking that she was going to have cold wrists and ankles out there.
“No!” Jameson heard Chia say loudly. “Go and wait with the Jameson person and do not bother me any more. You are ordered to stay here. The People’s Coalition will rescue you in due course.”
“Wo p’a te!” the girl wailed. “I am afraid!”
“You are stupid and counterrevolutionary!” Chia said. “The star-worms will not hurt you. They will take you back and put you with the others.”
Mei-mei started whimpering again. Chia raised a dainty hand and gave her a ringing slap across the face. “Go! Do you want to be punished for social contradiction?”
Tears running down her pudgy face, Mei-mei slunk toward him and squatted down a few feet away. She shot him a venomous glance. Her underwear wasn’t very clean. Jameson didn’t envy Maggie her hour in the commandeered spacesuit and liner.
Chia and the four in her party filed into the cylindrical barrel of the air lock, stooping under the extended shafts. One of them was an American—Smitty. Klein shoved on the round manhole cover and sealed the barrel. A moment later, as somebody inside pushed the outer lid, the thick disk slid inward another six feet and stayed there.
Klein sauntered over, his helmet tucked under his arm and the machine pistol dangling at his side. He surveyed Jameson, ignoring the Chinese girl.
“I’m going to enjoy this, Jameson,” he said. “You’ve given me a lot of trouble.”
“I thought you promised Maggie you’d let me stay alive.”
“That Privie bitch! I had to keep her quiet. She’ll be making out her own report when we get back. And they’ll be debriefing the rest of them for months.”
“But now there aren’t any witnesses.”
“Right. Except. Butterball here.”
“You don’t have to shoot her. Nobody on this ship is ever going to see Earth again.”
“She’s just a slimy ChiCom. I wish I could kill them all.”
Mei-mei had just figured out what they were talking about. She began backing away on all fours. “No, no!” she wailed. “Comrade Chia say—”
“Shut up!” Klein ordered.
Jameson raised himself on one elbow. “Listen, Klein—”
“You shut up too. I don’t like you, Jameson. You know you got me a reprimand on my record when you complained to Boyle at the beginning of the mission? When I get back I’m going to be a hero. The man who saved Earth from the Cygnans. I’ve got it all figured out. You and Ruiz say the Cygnans are planning to leave the solar system. I believe you. But not about it being dangerous if they’re delayed. You just want to protect your slimy worm friends. Well, when they start moving out of the system, everybody is going to think it was because they got a taste of a couple of nukes. And I’ll be the man who did it!”
“You’ll never see Earth, you damned fool! It won’t be there when you get there!”
Klein wasn’t bothering to listen. He raised his flat little weapon and moved back about ten feet so he wouldn’t get his suit splattered with blood.
Jameson wanted to sneeze.