While he was making up his mind about it, Klein did sneeze, a huge explosive spasm that jerked his otter-slick head back and made his little eyes water. He rubbed a sleeve across his nose and aimed the gun again.
Jameson felt awful. His throat was sore, and there was a weight like cement on his chest. His eyes itched. Behind him he heard Mei-mei coughing.
Klein staggered backward, still trying to aim the gun. In the space of a few seconds, his face had gone puffy and splotched. His nose was running. His eyes were squeezed to tight slits.
Jameson hardly noticed. He was hacking away, and his vision was blurred by tears. His head felt like a balloon.
Klein dropped his helmet. He clawed at his throat and eyes. He seemed to be having some kind of massive histamine reaction. His swollen tongue protruded like a red rubber ball. He made choking sounds. The skin stretched tight across a face that was so distended as to be unrecognizable. He fell over on his back. The dreadful whooping sounds stopped. The hand that had been clawing at his throat went limp. It too was swollen, looking like a blown-up rubber glove.
Jameson’s vision began to clear. The sneezing fits died down. He felt awful. He looked past Klein’s body toward the shadows of the machinery. He detected movement there. The two pink humanoids stepped out from where they had been hiding.
Behind him, Mei-mei gasped. Then he heard her snuffling. Her head sounded as stuffed as his own.
The elfin beings bounced toward him, their silky coats lifting and falling dreamily, in the weak gravity. When at last they stood before him, he could see that the pink gossamer was being ruffled by a breeze. They exuded a cool mintlike smell. He immediately began to feel better.
They plucked at his bonds with clever fingers. He got shakily to his feet and went over to look at Klein’s body.
The skin had stretched so tight over Klein’s face that it had split like an overripe melon. A straw-colored serum oozed out of the cracks. Klein’s features were invisible, buried in the bloated mass.
“Acute anaphylactic shock,” a voice said. “He died of an allergic reaction.”
Jameson looked up. Dmitri was emerging from behind one of the bulky metal boulders. His right arm dangled limply from his shattered shoulder. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he was sniffling. He approached Jameson in a low-gravity shuffle.
“The humanoids?” Jameson asked.
Dmitri nodded. “Evidently they’ve been around us long enough to manufacture human allergens. A whiff of some exotic protein, probably. Unstable molecular structure that breaks down in seconds—just time enough to make the human body go wild activating chymotrypsin enzymes. You were lucky to be ten feet upwind of him. It was just enough to save you.”
“How about you?”
“I was upwind too—and a good deal farther away from our pink friends. The movement of air must have been toward that lock Klein was standing in front of. These little pixies tested the wind first. So that’s what those feathers are good for. They may be cute as kittens, but they’re dangerous carnivores—or their ancestors were. They not only can tranquilize their pray, they can kill it at a distance, with something a lot more deadly than fang or claw.”
“Why didn’t they help us before Ruiz got killed, then?” Jameson said bitterly.
Dmitri tried to shrug, then went white with pain from his shattered shoulder. When he recovered, he said, “We were out in the open. Nothing to hide behind. And there were probably too many of them.”
“Can you stay on your feet a while longer?”
Dmitri nodded. “I took a couple of Hernando’s pep pills. His stuff was at the bottom at the other side, where I fell. They got me all the way here. It was a hell of a climb with one arm, even if I do weigh only a couple of pounds.”
“Can you use your good arm to help me get Klein out of his suit? Time’s running out.”
Dmitri was aghast. “You’re going after them?”
“I’ll have Klein’s machine pistol.”
Jameson tried to pry the gun out of Klein’s bloated hand. The finger was swollen in the trigger guard. Jameson closed his eyes and pulled, but it was no use. The humanoids saw his problem. One of them made excited chipmunk noises and bit the finger off with its needle teeth. It handed the gun to Jameson.
Dmitri was being sick. When he was finally able to talk he said: “I don’t think we’re going to be able to get Klein out of that suit, Tod.”
The humanoids were trying to be helpful. One of them ran and got a butcher knife that Chia’s party had left behind. It cocked its head and stared at Jameson with its enormous violet eyes, then gravely offered him the knife.
Dmitri, his face ashen, said: “You could butcher him inside the suit, take him out in little pieces.”
Jameson said savagely, “And I’d do it if it would get me through that air lock. But the suit would be unusable.” He sniffed the stench leaking from Klein’s neck ring. “In fact, it’s probably unusable now.”
The humanoids had disappeared while they were talking. When Jameson realized that fact, despair hit him like a fist. They’d probably sensed the proximity of Cygnans. It was going to be all over, any minute now. Chia and Yao’s bomb crew must be miles away by now, jetting toward the Jupiter ship. Without hope or purpose, he continued to try to shoehorn the body out of the spacesuit.
Ten minutes later, Dmitri cried, “Look!”
The humanoids were emerging from the recesses of the machinery again. They were herding a single Cygnan between them. The Cygnan acted drunk. It wobbled toward them on rubbery legs, its tail and head raised in a shallow U-shape, waving in befuddled fashion.
“Oh, fine!” Jameson said.
“Wait a minute,” Dmitri said. “They must have something in mind. They’re very bright—brighter than us, I’ll bet—and they want to get off this ship in the worst way.”
They watched the humanoids put the Cygnan through some incomprehensible exercises. The Cygnan seemed very anxious to please.
“Appeasement syndrome,” Dmitri said. “Every social species has them. Baby-biting inhibitions, submissiveness to the pack leader, food-offering to the young or the helpless. Who knows what the Cygnan equivalent is? But our feathered friends know how to trigger the hormones that cause it. And they’ve doped that creature up to the eyestalks, too. All it wants to do is make us all happy.”
The humanoids walked the Cygnan up to the airlock, pulled it open and hopped inside. They showed her Jameson, trying to pry Klein’s body out of the suit. They patted her and caressed her and ran their feathery fingers over her snout and tail, and chattered at her in their piping voices. They weren’t using any approximation of Cygnan language, Jameson could tell, but somehow they were communicating.
The Cygnan, stumbling and falling, managed to get to one of the bulbous housings near the lock. Jameson had assumed they contained some kind of machinery. But at her manipulations, the whole face of the thing opened up.
“A tool locker!” Jameson breathed. “Look, Dmitri, some of those plastic sacks they ferried us here in. And those globular air canisters. And a rack of those broomstick scooters. And the plastic sheaths they wore over their heads and tails.”
“How are you going to use them?” Dmitri said. “You still need a spacesuit.”
One of the little pink creatures was urging Jameson over to the locker. It plucked at his clothing with little quick movements. In a moment of shock, he realized that it was undressing him.
“Don’t be shy,” Dmitri urged. “It has something in mind. Go along with it.”
Jameson turned his back to Mei-mei and dropped his shorts. The humanoid was peeling off his shirt. When he was stripped to the buff, the Cygnan waddled over to him on four unsteady legs, carrying an object shaped like two cones, one large and one small, joined at their narrow ends. It pointed the open end of the small cone at him.