The Jupiter Weapon Read online

the Jupiter system was to gather his own father'snotebooks and take them back to Earth.

  * * * * *

  Motwick was an irresponsible playboy whom Trella had known briefly onEarth, and Trella was glad to dispense with his company for theremaining three weeks before the spaceship blasted off. She foundherself enjoying the steadier companionship of Quest.

  As a matter of fact, she found herself enjoying his companionship morethan she intended to. She found herself falling in love with him.

  Now this did not suit her at all. Trella had always liked her men talland dark. She had determined that when she married it would be to acurly-haired six-footer.

  She was not at all happy about being so strongly attracted to a manseveral inches shorter than she. She was particularly unhappy aboutfeeling drawn to a man who was a coward.

  The ship that they boarded on Moon Nine was one of the newer ships thatcould attain a hundred-mile-per-second velocity and take a hyperbolicpath to Earth, but it would still require fifty-four days to make thetrip. So Trella was delighted to find that the ship was the _Cometfire_and its skipper was her old friend, dark-eyed, curly-haired JakdaneGille.

  "Jakdane," she said, flirting with him with her eyes as in days goneby, "I need a chaperon this trip, and you're ideal for the job."

  "I never thought of myself in quite that light, but maybe I'm gettingold," he answered, laughing. "What's your trouble, Trella?"

  "I'm in love with that huge chunk of man who came aboard with me, andI'm not sure I ought to be," she confessed. "I may need protectionagainst myself till we get to Earth."

  "If it's to keep you out of another fellow's clutches, I'm your man,"agreed Jakdane heartily. "I always had a mind to save you for myself.I'll guarantee you won't have a moment alone with him the whole trip."

  "You don't have to be that thorough about it," she protested hastily. "Iwant to get a little enjoyment out of being in love. But if I feelmyself weakening too much, I'll holler for help."

  The _Cometfire_ swung around great Jupiter in an opening arc andplummeted ever more swiftly toward the tight circles of the innerplanets. There were four crew members and three passengers aboard theship's tiny personnel sphere, and Trella was thrown with Quest almostconstantly. She enjoyed every minute of it.

  She told him only that she was a messenger, sent out to Ganymede to pickup some important papers and take them back to Earth. She was tempted totell him what the papers were. Her employer had impressed upon her thather mission was confidential, but surely Dom Blessing could not objectto Dr. Mansard's son knowing about it.

  All these things had happened before she was born, and she did not knowwhat Dom Blessing's relation to Dr. Mansard had been, but it must havebeen very close. She knew that Dr. Mansard had invented the surgiscope.

  This was an instrument with a three-dimensional screen as its heart. Thescreen was a cubical frame in which an apparently solid image was builtup of an object under an electron microscope.

  * * * * *

  The actual cutting instrument of the surgiscope was an ion stream. Byoperating a tool in the three-dimensional screen, correspondingmovements were made by the ion stream on the object under themicroscope. The principle was the same as that used in operation ofremote control "hands" in atomic laboratories to handle hot material,and with the surgiscope very delicate operations could be performed atthe cellular level.

  Dr. Mansard and his wife had disappeared into the turbulent atmosphereof Jupiter just after his invention of the surgiscope, and it had beendeveloped by Dom Blessing. Its success had built Spaceway Instruments,Incorporated, which Blessing headed.

  Through all these years since Dr. Mansard's disappearance, Blessing hadbeen searching the Jovian moons for a second, hidden laboratory of Dr.Mansard. When it was found at last, he sent Trella, his most trustedsecretary, to Ganymede to bring back to him the notebooks found there.

  Blessing would, of course, be happy to learn that a son of Dr. Mansardlived, and would see that he received his rightful share of theinheritance. Because of this, Trella was tempted to tell Quest the goodnews herself; but she decided against it. It was Blessing's privilege todo this his own way, and he might not appreciate her meddling.

  * * * * *

  At midtrip, Trella made a rueful confession to Jakdane.

  "It seems I was taking unnecessary precautions when I asked you to be achaperon," she said. "I kept waiting for Quest to do something, and whenhe didn't I told him I loved him."

  "What did he say?"

  "It's very peculiar," she said unhappily. "He said he _can't_ love me.He said he wants to love me and he feels that he should, but there'ssomething in him that refuses to permit it."

  She expected Jakdane to salve her wounded feelings with a sympatheticpleasantry, but he did not. Instead, he just looked at her verythoughtfully and said no more about the matter.

  He explained his attitude after Asrange ran amuck.

  Asrange was the third passenger. He was a lean, saturnine individual whosaid little and kept to himself as much as possible. He was distantlypolite in his relations with both crew and other passengers, and nevershowed the slightest spark of emotion ... until the day Quest squirtedcoffee on him.

  It was one of those accidents that can occur easily in space. Thepassengers and the two crewmen on that particular waking shift(including Jakdane) were eating lunch on the center-deck. Quest pickedup his bulb of coffee, but inadvertently pressed it before he got it tohis lips. The coffee squirted all over the front of Asrange's cleanwhite tunic.

  "I'm sorry!" exclaimed Quest in distress.

  The man's eyes went wide and he snarled. So quickly it seemedimpossible, he had unbuckled himself from his seat and hurled himselfbackward from the table with an incoherent cry. He seized the firstobject his hand touched--it happened to be a heavy wooden cane leaningagainst Jakdane's bunk--propelled himself like a projectile at Quest.

  Quest rose from the table in a sudden uncoiling of movement. He did notunbuckle his safety belt--he rose and it snapped like a string.

  For a moment Trella thought he was going to meet Asrange's assault. Buthe fled in a long leap toward the companionway leading to theastrogation deck above. Landing feet-first in the middle of the tableand rebounding, Asrange pursued with the stick upraised.

  In his haste, Quest missed the companionway in his leap and was corneredagainst one of the bunks. Asrange descended on him like an avengingangel and, holding onto the bunk with one hand, rained savage blows onhis head and shoulders with the heavy stick.

  Quest made no effort to retaliate. He cowered under the attack, holdinghis hands in front of him as if to ward it off. In a moment, Jakdane andthe other crewman had reached Asrange and pulled him off.

  * * * * *

  When they had Asrange in irons, Jakdane turned to Quest, who was nowsitting unhappily at the table.

  "Take it easy," he advised. "I'll wake the psychosurgeon and have himlook you over. Just stay there."

  Quest shook his head.

  "Don't bother him," he said. "It's nothing but a few bruises."

  "Bruises? Man, that club could have broken your skull! Or a couple ofribs, at the very least."

  "I'm all right," insisted Quest; and when the skeptical Jakdane insistedon examining him carefully, he had to admit it. There was hardly a markon him from the blows.

  "If it didn't hurt you any more than that, why didn't you take thatstick away from him?" demanded Jakdane. "You could have, easily."

  "I couldn't," said Quest miserably, and turned his face away.

  Later, alone with Trella on the control deck, Jakdane gave her somesober advice.

  "If you think you're in love with Quest, forget it," he said.

  "Why? Because he's a coward? I know that ought to make me despise him,but it doesn't any more."

  "Not because he's a coward. Because
he's an android!"

  "What? Jakdane, you can't be serious!"

  "I am. I say he's an android, an artificial imitation of a man. It allfigures.

  "Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could stand thegravity of Jupiter, inside a dome or a ship, but what human could standthe rocket acceleration necessary to break free of Jupiter? Here's a manstrong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting up out ofhis chair against it, tough enough to take a beating with a heavy stickwithout being injured. How can you believe he's really human?"

  Trella remembered the thug Kregg striking Quest in the face and thencrying that he had injured his hand on the bar.

  "But he said Dr.