Part 1

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Jungle in the Sky

By Milton Lesser

_The hunters wanted animals that lived on far Ganymede--though not as badly as the animals wanted the hunters._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The big man looked at home among his trophies. Somehow his scowl seemed as fierce as the head of the Venusian swamp-tiger mounted on the wall behind him, and there was something about his quick-darting eyes which reminded Steve of a Callistan fire-lizard. The big man might have been all of them wrapped into one, Steve thought wryly, and there were a lot of trophies.

He was the famous Brody Carmical, and rumor had it he was worth a million credits for each of the many richly mounted heads.

"So you're fresh out of school with a degree in Extra-terrestrial zoology," Carmical grumbled. "Am I supposed to turn cartwheels?"

Steve cleared his throat. "The Placement Service thought you might have a job--"

"I do, I do. That doesn't mean any young pup who comes along can fill it. Ever been off the Earth, Mr. Stedman?"

"No."

"Ever been off the North American continent?"

"No."

"But you want to go galavanting around the Solar System in search of big game. Tell me--do you think they have a Harvard club on every stinking satellite you'll visit? Do you think you can eat beefsteak and drink martinis in every frontier-world dive? Let me tell you, Mr. Stedman, the answer is no."

"Try me, sir. That's all I ask--try me."

"We're not running a school, Mr. Stedman. Either a man's got it or he hasn't. You haven't. Come back in ten years. Ship out around the Solar System the hard way, and maybe we can use you then--if you still remember what you learned about Extra-terrestrial zoology. What in space ever made you study extra-zoo, anyway?"

"I found it interesting," Steve said lamely.

"Interesting? As a hobby, it's interesting. But as business, it's hard work, a lot of sweat, a lot of danger, squirming around on your soft belly in the muck and mud of a dozen worlds, that's what it is. Just how do you think Carmical Enterprises got where they are? Sweat and grief, Mr. Stedman." Carmical yawned hugely and popped a glob of chocolate into his mouth. His fat lips worked for a moment, then his Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

Steve got up, paced back and forth in front of the desk. "I won't take no for an answer, Mr. Carmical."

"Eh? What's that? I could have you thrown out of here."

"You won't," Steve told him calmly. "Maybe I'm just what the doctor ordered, but you'll never know until you try me. So--"

"So nothing! I said this isn't a school."

"They tell me the _Gordak_ leaves on a ten-world junket tomorrow. All I ask is this: let me ship along as the zoology man. Then, if you're not satisfied, you can leave me at your first port-of-call--without pay."

Carmical smiled triumphantly. "You know where we space out for first, Mr. Stedman? Mercury, that's where. I'd love to see a sassy young pup like you set loose on Mercury in one of the Twilight Cities."

"Is it a deal?"

"It sure is, Stedman. It sure is! But I warn you, we'll expect perfection. You'll not have a chance to profit from your own mistakes. You won't have a chance to make mistakes. One slip and you've had it, is that understood?"

"Yes."

"I'm not going, of course," Carmical said, patting his great paunch and saying with the action that he was too old and too fat for space. "But I'll hear all about the way you were stranded on Mercury, among a lot of Merkies and--"

Steve smiled grimly, said: "No you won't. Next time you see me will be after the ten-world junket. Whom do I ask for on the _Gordak_?"

Carmical dialed for a bromo, watched it fizz in the glass, drank it, belched. "T. J. Moore's in charge," he told Steve. "Old T. J.'s a mighty rough taskmaster, Stedman. Don't say you weren't warned."

"Thanks."

"Well, I'll hear about how you were stranded on Mercury," Carmical predicted.

"You'll see me after the ten-world junket," said Steve, and closed the door softly behind him.

* * * * *

Pit-monkeys scurried about the great jet-slagged underside of the _Gordak_, spraying fresh zircalloy in the aft tubes. Spaceport officers were everywhere in their crisp white uniforms, checking cargo, giving terse directives to the crew of the _Gordak_, lounging importantly at the foot of the gangplank.

"Name?" one of them snapped at Steve.

"Stedman."

The man flipped through a list of the expedition's members. "Stedman, huh? I don't see--oh, here it is, in pencil at the bottom. Last minute addition, huh, Stedman?"

"Something like that," Steve admitted.

"Well, climb aboard."

And then Steve was walking up the gangplank and into the cool metal interior of the _Gordak_. His palms were clammy, and he wondered if any of the crewmen within the ship noticed the sweat beading his forehead. He'd managed to come this far with a surprising degree of objectivity, and only now did reaction set in, causing his heart to beat fiercely and his limbs to grow weak. _That T. J. Moore must have been spawned in hell_, Charlie had said--and now Charlie was dead. Because of T. J. Moore? Indirectly, perhaps, but T. J. Moore was responsible. Or, if you looked at it on a different level, the cut-throat competition between _Carmical Enterprises_ and _Barling Brothers Interplanetary_ was to blame. It didn't matter, not really. Charlie was dead. That alone mattered.

A big man with incredibly broad shoulders, hair the color of flame and a florid face to match it, came stalking down the companionway. Steve said, "I wonder if you know where I can find T. J. Moore."

The giant smiled. "You crew or expedition?"

"Expedition," said Steve, extending his hand: "Steve Stedman's my name."

The hand that gripped his was hard and calloused. "I'm Kevin McGann, boy. Sort of a liaison man between the crew and the expedition, only they call me the Exec to make everything official. Better take some advice--don't look for T. J. now. T. J.'s busy doing last minute things, and T. J. hates to be disturbed. Why don't you wait till after _Brennschluss_, when we're out in space?"

"It can't wait. I've got to see that Moore knows I'm aboard and under what conditions, because I don't want to be thrown off this ship at the space-station. If Moore doesn't like the conditions, Mr. Carmical can be called. But after we blast off it'll be too late."

Kevin McGann shrugged. "It's only advice I gave you, boy. You'll find T. J. down on the third level looking over the cargo holds. Good luck." And McGann took a pipe from his pocket, tamping it full, lighting it and staring with frank, speculative curiosity at Steve. "Stedman, eh?" he mused. "The name's familiar."

"You think about it," said Steve, and made his way toward the third level. Perhaps some of them aboard the _Gordak_ had known Charlie, and McGann, being the Exec, must have been around a long time.

The third was the lowest level of the _Gordak_, or that part of the ship nearest the tubes with the exception of the fission-room itself. Here on the third level were the cages which, in the months that followed, would hold the big game brought within the _Gordak_. But the word cage, Steve realized, can be misleading. A rectangular enclosure, its wall composed of evenly spaced bars--that's a cage. But the bubble-cages of the _Gordak_ were something else again; precisely as the name implied, they were huge bubbles of plastic, complete with remote-controlled airlocks. You could pump in any kind of atmosphere, from Jupiter's lethal methane-ammonia mixture to the thin, oxygen-starved air of Mars, and under any desired pressure, too.

And now on the third level a battery of experts was busy checking the bubble-cages for defects, since a leak _after_ some noxious gas had been pumped into one of the bubbles could mean death for everyone aboard the _Gordak_. Steve stood there nervously for what seemed a long while. He let his gaze rove up and down the third level, but he only saw the coverall-clad technicians checking the bubble-cages. Kevin McGann had said he could find Moore here, but unless Moore zipped on a pair of coveralls himself and joined in the work--which certainly seemed unlikely--then Moore wasn't around.

* * * * *

Someone tapped Steve's shoulder. Startled, he whirled around. A woman stood there, just behind him, staring at him insolently. She was tall, as tall as Steve himself, with her close-cropped blond hair peeking out around the edges of a black cap. She wore what looked to Steve like a glossy black Martian sand-cape which she let fall straight down behind her so that it almost brushed the floor. Under it, she wore a brief pair of shorts, also black, and a halter. She was muscular in that lithe, feminine way which had grown so popular in the twenty-second century--the century which had finally seen women come abreast of men in all sporting activities and surpass them in some which required special grace and lithe-limbed skill.

"I hope you found whatever you're looking for," she said. She spoke with a complete lack of warmth which startled Steve for the second time in a few moments.

She was a beautiful woman, he realized, but she looked so completely incongruous among the coveralled men that Steve found himself whistling softly. "I never expected to find a girl here," he admitted. "Not on this expedition."

"What's the matter, are you old fashioned? This is the twenty-second century, the enlightened century, remember? There's nothing a girl can't do if she sets her mind to it. A recent survey shows that forty-percent of the homemakers in the U.S.N.A. are men, sixty percent women. Okay, it's only logical that some of the remaining forty percent of females have some tough jobs, too."

"I read the books of the feminist movement," Steve assured her. "But it's going to take a lot to convince me of that. Me and a lot of other people, I suspect."

"Is that so, Mr. Smart-guy? Are you a member of the expedition?"

"Yes."

"Well, anytime you want to hustle down to the gym with me and go a few rounds, let me know."

"Are you serious?"

"Of course I'm serious."

"Well," Steve said, deciding to change the subject and feeling utterly ridiculous about the whole conversation, "let's forget it. I was looking for T. J. Moore."

The woman smiled coldly. "That's me. I'm T. J. What do you want?"

"I--uh--_what_? You're T. J.? You--a girl?"

"Will you please hurry with whatever you want to tell me? I haven't got all day."

"My name's Stedman." Steve felt his composure returning. The fact that T. J. Moore was a woman didn't make any difference. But unconsciously, Steve regarded her as a member of the weaker sex, and a large chunk of her fearsome reputation vanished because of it. "I wonder, if Mr. Carmical contacted you--"

"He sure did, Stedman."

"Good, then we can--"

"Maybe you think it's good. I think it stinks. Listen, Stedman, maybe you think you can pull the wool over my eyes like you did over Brody Carmical--but you can't. He didn't recognize your name, I did. No kid brother of Charlie Stedman's going to make trouble for me because he thinks I was responsible for his brother's death."

"I didn't say--"

"You didn't have to say. I can see it in your face. But get this straight, Stedman. Your brother died on Ganymede three years ago--of natural causes, that is, if you can call some of the local fauna 'natural causes'. He worked for _Barling Brothers Interplanetary_, so I guess the rivalry between them and us didn't help. But no one killed him."

"I didn't say--"

"Is that all you can say, 'you didn't say?' Try to tell me why you came aboard the _Gordak_; go ahead, try."

"I'm an expert in Extra-terrestrial zoology, and you needed one. Mr. Carmical hired me."

"I know that. But I guess I also know a thing or two which Brody Carmical doesn't. All right, Stedman. You come as far as Mercury. But one slip, just one slip--"

"Okay, T. J.," Steve said, almost jauntily. "I'll watch my step."

"I'm the _Gordak_'s captain. You'll call me that. Captain--is it clear?"

"No," said Steve, and laughed. The ten-world junket would be a hard, driving, gruelling ordeal come what might, and he wouldn't kowtow to T. J. Moore, male or female, here at the beginning. "No," he said again, forcing the laughter out. "This isn't a military ship, so you won't impose any arbitrary discipline on me."

The woman laughed too, but it was more effective. "I won't, won't I? Once we leave Earth, Stedman, everything we do is dangerous. Everything. I've got to have full authority, every order obeyed at the drop of a hat. Understand?"

"No."

The woman removed the black cap from her head, and Steve noticed, not without surprise, that her pale blond hair wasn't close-cropped after all. It had been piled up inside the cap, and now it spilled down loosely about her shoulders. Smiling, she dropped the cap to the floor. "Pick it up," she said.

"Are you kidding? I'm an expert on Extra-terrestrial zoology. That's what Mr. Carmical hired me for. If you want that hat picked up, better do it yourself." Vaguely, Steve wondered if Charlie had met the woman those final days on far Ganymede, had fought with her tooth and nail for some priceless specimen--and lost, with no witness but the bleak, desolate topography of the Jovian moon.

The woman turned away from him, called: "LeClarc! LeClarc, come here."

* * * * *

One of the coveralled figures approached them, a thick-thewed man whose muscular strength couldn't be hidden by the baggy clothing. Not as tall as Steve or the woman, he was broad of shoulder and thick through the chest. He had a dark face and deep-set black eyes, and a thin scar ran the length of his right cheek, from eye to chin. "Yes, Captain?"

"Stedman here is new. He questions my authority. I wondered if you'd like to work him over some--"

"A pleasure," growled the stocky, gnarled Frenchman, and swung his right fist up in a quick, blurring motion.

Steve didn't have time to parry it. The blow caught him flush on the mouth and jarred his teeth, sent him crashing back against the wall where he slid down slowly until he was sitting on the floor. Groggily, he got to his feet, wiping his bloody lips with the fingers of one hand. LeClarc, chuckling, hit him once more before he could quite pull himself together. The right hand slammed against his stomach this time, driving the wind from his lungs.

He started to fall, but he clawed at LeClarc's middle as he went down, and held on. Still chuckling, LeClarc cuffed him about the ears almost playfully, but the open-palmed blows stung him and sent wild rage coursing through his blood. Clearly, that was the idea. LeClarc was enjoying himself--but LeClarc wanted him to fight back.

Steve got a hand up in front of his body, palm up, and drove it against the Frenchman's chin. He felt the neck snap back sharply, heard the sudden click as LeClarc's teeth met with savage force. Bellowing, the Frenchman came at him again, fighting southpaw and bringing a roundhouse left from back behind his body.

But Steve's wind had returned and now he sobbed air in great gulps. He ducked the wild swing and found the Frenchman wide-open, pounded lefts and rights to the man's midsection. LeClarc, stunned now, brought his guard down. Steve was in no hurry. He chased the dazed LeClarc around an ever-widening circle, was dimly aware that the other technicians had stopped their work to watch. He jabbed with his left hand, covering the olive face with purple welts. He held the right cocked but did not throw it. Soon, though, he could hear the other technicians--who probably liked a good brawl--muttering. The idea, as they saw it, wasn't to cut LeClarc up completely but instead, to win swiftly.

Shrugging, Steve realized that the anger he felt for the woman had blinded him, and after that, he unleashed his right hand, felt the searing contact with LeClarc's jaw, saw a couple of teeth clatter off the wall as the Frenchman's mouth flew open. Sagging first at the knees, then the waist, LeClarc fell to the floor and huddled there inertly.

Steve turned to the woman, spoke out of fast-swelling lips. "You're the Captain and I only work here, Teejay," he made the initials sound like a name. "So I'll take your orders--provided they make sense. That one about the cap didn't. If you want it picked up, you'd better stoop for it yourself."

Not looking back, he climbed the stairs toward the second level, wiping his bloody lips with a handkerchief.

* * * * *

It was Kevin McGann who showed him around the _Gordak_ after _Brennschluss_. Newton's second law of motion carried the ship forward through the near-vacuum of space now, and it would continue that way, plowing ahead at seven miles per second until it was caught and slowed by the space-station's gravity. There the bunkers would be reloaded with slow-fission plutonium for the long dash sunward to Mercury.

" ... and through there you'll find the fission-room," Kevin was saying. "That's about the size of it, boy. But I warn you to keep away from the fission-room as long as that red light is blinking. Everything inside gets pretty hot, and there's enough radiation to kill an army unless the shields are up. Even then, I'd recommend a vac-suit."

"I'll remember that," Steve said, lighting a cigarette.

"Word gets around a ship like the _Gordak_ pretty fast. I didn't see your fight with LeClarc, but I sure heard enough about it. There's only one man aboard ship who can beat the Frenchman in a fair fight, and--"

"You?" Steve wanted to know. But it was hardly a question. It looked to him like Kevin could take on two LeClarcs with no trouble at all.

"Yes, boy. Me. But now there are two of us, and you've made yourself an enemy. LeClarc doesn't forget easy, so you'd better be on your guard."

"I'll remember that, too," said Steve, laughing. "But it looks like you keep warning me about something all the time, Kevin. Why?"

"You're Charlie Stedman's kid brother, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, but how did--"

"How did I know, boy? It's written all over your face, and Charlie may have been with _Barling Interplanetary_, but a lot of us knew him. Charlie was the best, boy."

"Thanks. Kevin, how did Charlie die?"

The giant shrugged eloquently. "I don't know. It was T. J. who found him out on Ganymede. She was out tracking an anthrovac, and you don't track anthrovacs in crowds. Well, it seems Charlie had landed for Barling, and Charlie had the same idea."

"He never told me Teejay was a woman, but he said once she must have been reared in hell."

Again, Kevin shrugged. "It's open to question, boy. I don't like T. J., but I like working for her. You take a man like LeClarc, he'll die for T. J. All she'd have to do is ask him, and he'd die. You see, boy, big game hunters don't come any smarter. Trouble is, T. J. knows it and flaunts it. Also, she's a woman but she's strong as a man and knows that, too. She dares you to fight her every step of the way, and it takes a big man to--"

"I thought you said Charlie was the best!"

"And I still do. But a man's got to have some flaws. Maybe he couldn't take T. J. and had to let her know. The same thing happened to you, after only five minutes. The gals have won their spurs in every field which was strictly masculine a hundred years ago. Men tend to resent that, especially when a talented woman like T. J. let's them know it, and no bones about it. So, that's T. J."

"Yeah," said Steve, frowning. "That's Teejay."

"What's the trouble, boy?"

"I've got to find out what happened to Charlie, that's all. But Teejay's going to be a problem."

"The grandmother of all problems, you mean. With all of that, though, she can still be all female when she wants to be. Maybe Charlie fell for her--"

"Charlie falling for that cheap, no good--"

"Careful, boy. She's my Captain, and a good one. I wouldn't ship out on the _Gordak_ if I didn't think so. Careful." Then Kevin smiled. "You'll learn, in time. Anyway, Charlie was a good-looker and attractive to the girls, he was romantic--so maybe T. J. fell for him, too. Then they had a parting of the ways and--"

"Sure!" Steve exploded. "Sure, they fell in love or something only Charlie forgot to mention in any of his letters she was a woman. You're barking up the wrong tree, Kevin."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm only talking off the top of my head, boy. But it's worth considering." Kevin jabbed a thick finger against his calloused palm. "What I'm getting at is this, whether they made love or not, I don't think T. J. would kill anyone out of cold blood."

"I'll think about it," said Steve, and then a whistle shrilled through the length of the ship. They were nearing the space-station, half as far from Earth as Luna, and deceleration came upon them gradually and would continue to increase until they all had to bed down in the accel-hammocks for landing.

Unexpectedly, Teejay herself was checking in the members of the expedition as their two-hour stop over at the station drew to an end. As he approached her along the gangplank, Steve looked down and saw the station-men wheeling the small but tremendously heavy plutonium bunkers under the ship, each compact unit weighing a couple of tons with its concrete shielding.

"Well, Stedman," said the woman, the broad black sand-cape wrapped around her completely now, as if only the members of her crew had the right to see what lay beneath it, "I see you've never watched a ship getting ready for blast off."

"That's right," Steve admitted. "First trip out."

"You want some pretty sound advice? I'd suggest you stay here at the station and wait for the first Earthbound ship."

"Thanks," said Steve. "But Mr. Carmical hired me at least as far as Mercury, so that's where I'm going."

Teejay grinned. "You're a plucky kid, Stedman. All right, Mercury it is--but LeClarc can do the honors when it's time to see you off the _Gordak_ for good. He doesn't exactly like you, Stedman."

"I've been told that."

"All right, move along. There's a whole line of men I've got to check in behind you."

A plucky kid, Steve thought, and laughed. She'd called him that, although he knew she'd probably have a hard time matching his twenty-five years. Well, she'd spent her life in space and on the frontier worlds. Maybe that did make a difference.

Five minutes later, they blasted clear of the space-station on an orbit that would intersect the Mercurian ellipse at perihelion. From there, the _Gordak_ would visit Venus, Mars, the planetoid Ceres, the four large Jovian moons, Titan and Uranus. Ten worlds in all the hunters would touch on--and each world would offer up its native fauna for the _Brody Carmical Circus_. Steve wondered if there'd be trouble with _Barling Brothers Interplanetary_. There generally was. But then he smiled without mirth, for the chances were he'd never get beyond the first landing on Mercury, anyway.

* * * * *

There were fifty men in the _Gordak_'s crew and another thirty-odd in the expedition, and a space ship being the complicated, labyrinthine device that it is, it wasn't too strange that Steve failed to encounter LeClarc until immediately before landing on Mercury. Then the _Gordak_'s deceleration tubes had cut in and Steve found the most readily available accel-hammock in the general lounge. The Frenchman was stretched out on the cushions three feet from him.

LeClarc said, "This will be a terrible, hot place."

"I know. At perihelion, Mercury's not much more than thirty million miles from the sun." If the Frenchman wanted to bury the hatchet, fine.