The Rim Gods
A. Bertram Chandler

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

THE RIM GODS: Copyright ©1968 by A. Bertram Chandler
The four parts of this book appeared individually during 1968 in Galaxy magazine.
"Grimes at Glenrowan" first appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine March-April 1978
"Grimes and the Great Race" first appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine April 1980
"Grimes Among the Gourmets" first appeared in Other Worlds, Void, (Australia), 1978
"Grimes and the Odd Gods" first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction June 1983
Grimes and the Jailbirds" first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction May 1984

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

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ISBN-10: 0-4417-2401-9
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First ebook printing, November 2007

For itchy-footed Susan
Part One: The Rim Gods
"And who," demanded Commodore Grimes, "will it be this time?" He added, "Or what?"
"I don't know, sir, I'm sure," simpered Miss Walton.
Grimes looked at his new secretary with some distaste. There was no denying that she was far more photogenic then her predecessor, and that she possessed a far sweeter personality. But sweetness and prettiness are not everything. He bit back a sarcastic rejoinder, looked again at the signal that the girl had just handed him. It was from a ship, a vessel with the unlikely name of Piety. And it was not a word in some alien language that could mean anything—the name of the originator of the message was Terran enough. Anglo-Terran at that. William Smith. And after that prosaic appellation there was his title—but that was odd. It was not the usual Master, Captain, Officer Commanding or whatever. It was, plainly and simply, Rector.
Piety. . . . Rector. . . . That ship's name, and that title of rank, had an archaic ring to them. Grimes had always been a student of naval history, and probably knew more about the vessels that had sailed Earth's oceans in the dim and distant past than anybody on the Rim Worlds and, come to that, the vast majority of people on the home planet itself. He remembered that most of the ancient sailing ships had been given religious names. He remembered, too, that rector had once been the shipmaster's official title.
So what was this ship coming out to the Rim, giving her ETA, details of last clearance, state of health on board and all the rest of it? Some cog, some caravel, some galleass? Grimes smiled at his own fancy. Nonetheless, strange ships, very strange ships, had drifted out to the Rim.
"Miss Walton . . ." he said.
"Yes, Commodore," she replied brightly.
"This Piety . . . see what details Lloyd's Register has on her."
"Very good, sir."
The Commodore—rugged, stocky, short, iron-gray hair over a deeply tanned and seamed face, ears that in spite of suggestions made by two wives and several mistresses still protruded—paced the polished floor of his office while the little blonde punched the buttons that would actuate the Port Forlorn robot librarian. Legally, he supposed, the impending arrival of the Piety was the port captain's pigeon. Grimes was Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners, the Confederacy's shipping line. But he was also the officer commanding the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve and, as such, was concerned with matters of security and defense. He wished that Sonya, his wife, were available so that he could talk things over with her. She, before her marriage to him, had held the rank of Commander in the Intelligence branch of the Interstellar Federation's Survey Service and, when it came to mysteries and secrets of any kind, displayed the aptitudes of a highly intelligent ferret. But Sonya, after declaring that another week on Lorn would have her climbing up the wallpaper, had taken off for a long vacation—Waverley, Caribbea, Atlantia and points inward—by herself. She, when she returned, would be sorry to have missed whatever odd adventures the arrival of this queerly named ship presaged—and Grimes knew that there would be some. His premonitions were rarely, if ever, wrong.
He turned away from the banked screens and instruments that made his office look like an exceptionally well fitted spaceship's control room, walked to the wide window that took up an entire wall, which overlooked the port. It was a fine day—for Lorn. The almost perpetual overcast was thin enough to permit a hint of blue sky to show through, and the Lorn sun was a clearly defined disk rather than the usual fuzzy ball. There was almost no wind. Discharge of Rim Leopard, noted, seemed to be progressing satisfactorily. There was a blue flare of welding arcs about the little spacetug Rim Mamelute, presently undergoing her annual survey. And there, all by herself, was the ship that Grimes—to the annoyance of his wife—often referred to as his one true love, the old, battered Faraway Quest. She had been built how many (too many) years ago as a standard Epsilon Class tramp for the Interstellar Transport Commission. She had been converted into a survey ship for the Rim Worlds' government. In her, Grimes had made the first landings on the inhabited planets to the Galactic East, the worlds now referred to as the Eastern Circuit. In her he had made the first contact—but not a physical one—with the anti-matter systems to the Galactic West.
And would the arrival of the good ship Piety lead to her recommissioning? Grimes hoped so. He liked his job—it was interesting work, carrying both authority and responsibility—but he was often tired of being a deskborne commodore, and had always welcomed the chance to take the old Quest up and out into deep space again. As often in the past he had a hunch, a strong one. Something was cooking, and he would have a finger in the pie.
Miss Walton's childish treble broke into his thoughts. "Sir, I have the information on Piety. . . ."
"Yes?"
"She was built as Epsilon Crucis for the Interstellar Transport Commission fifty Terran standard years ago. She was purchased from them last year, Terran reckoning, by the Skarsten Theological Institute, whose address is listed as Nuevo Angeles on Francisco, otherwise known as Beta Puppis VI. . . ."
"I've visited Francisco," he told her. "A pleasant world, in many ways. But an odd one."
"Odd? How, sir?"
"I hope I'm not treading on any of your corns, Miss Walton, but the whole planet's no more than a breeding ground for fancy religions."
"I'm a Latter Day Reformed Methodist myself, sir," she told him severely. "And that's not fancy."
"Indeed it's not, Miss Walton." And I'm a cynical, more or less tolerant agnostic, he thought. He went on, "And does Lloyds condescend to tell us the category in which this renamed Epsilon Crucis is now listed? A missionary ship, perhaps?"
"No, sir. A survey ship."
"Oh," was all that Grimes could say.
* * *
Two days later Grimes watched, from his office window, Piety come in. Whatever else this Rector William Smith might or might not be he was a good ship handler. There was a nasty wind blowing across the spaceport, not quite a gale, but near enough to it; nonetheless the ship made a classic vertical descent, dropping to the exact center of the triangle formed by the berth-marker beacons. It was easy enough in theory, no more than the exact application of lateral thrust, no more than a sure and steady hand on the remote controls of the Inertial Drive. No more—and no less. Some people get the feel of ships; some never do.
This Piety was almost a twin to Grimes's own Faraway Quest. She was a newer (less old) ship, of course, but the design of the Epsilon Class tramps, those trusty workhorses of the Commission, had changed very little over the years. She sat there in her assigned berth, a gray, weathered spire, the bright scarlet beacons still blinking away just clear of the broad vanes of her tripedal landing gear. From her stem a telescopic mast extended itself, and from the top of the metal staff a flag broke out, whipped to quivering rigidity by the wind. The Commodore picked up his binoculars through which to study it. It was not, as he had assumed it would be, the national ensign of Francisco, the golden crux anasta and crescent on a scarlet ground; even with the naked eye he could see that. This was a harshly uncompromising standard: a simple white cross on a black field. It must be, decided Grimes, the houseflag of the Skarsten Institute.
The after air lock door opened and the ramp extended from it, and to it drew up the beetle-like cars of the various port officials—port captain, customs, immigration, health. The boarding party got out of their vehicles and filed up the gangway, to where an officer was waiting to receive them. They vanished into the ship. Grimes idly wondered whether or not they would get a drink, and what the views of these Skarsten people were on alcohol. He remembered his own visit to Francisco, as a junior officer in the Federation's Survey Service, many years ago. Some of the religious sects had been rigidly abstemious, maintaining that alcohol was an invention of the devil. Others had held that wine symbolized the more beneficent aspects of the Almighty. But it was hardly a subject worthy of speculation. He would find out for himself when, after the arrival formalities were over, he paid his courtesy call on the ship's captain.
He went back to his desk, busied himself with the paper work that made a habit of accumulating. An hour or so later he was interrupted by the buzzing of his telephone. "Grimes here!" he barked into the instrument. "Commodore Grimes," said a strange voice. It was a statement rather than a question. "This is William Smith, Commodore, Rector of Piety. I request an appointment."
"It will be my pleasure, er, Rector." Grimes glanced at his watch. It was almost time for his rather dreary coffee and sandwich lunch. It was not the sort of meal that one asked visitors to share. He said, "Shall we say 1400 hours, our time? In my office?"
"That will do very nicely, sir. Thank you."
"I am looking forward to meeting you," said Grimes, replacing the handset in its rest. And shall I send Miss Walton out for some sacramental wine? he asked himself.
* * *
William Smith was a tall man, thin, with almost all of his pale face hidden by a bushy black beard, from above which a great nose jutted like the beak of a bird of prey. His eyes under the thick, black brows were of a gray so pale as to be almost colorless, and they were cold, cold. A plain black uniform covered his spare frame, the buttons concealed by the fly front of the tunic, the four bands of black braid on the sleeves almost invisible against the cloth. There was a hint of white lace at his throat.
"I have been told, sir," he said, sitting rigidly in his chair, "that you are something of an expert on the queer conditions that prevail here, on the Rim."
"Perhaps, Rector," said Grimes, "you will tell me first the purpose of your visit here."
"Very well, sir." The man's baritone voice was as cold and as colorless as his eyes. "To begin with, we have the permission of your government, your Rim Worlds Confederacy, to conduct our pressing need of a new Revelation, a new Sinai. . . ."
"A survey, Rector? The Rim Worlds have been very well surveyed—even though I say it myself."
"Not our kind of survey. Commodore. I shall, as you would say, put you in the picture. We of the Skarsten Institute are Neo-Calvinists. We deplore the godlessness, the heresy that is ever more prevalent throughout the galaxy—yes, even upon our own planet. We feel that Mankind is in sore and pressing need of a new Revelation, a new Sinai. . . ."
"And you honestly believe that you will find your Sinai here, out on the Rim?"
"We believe that we shall find our Sinai. If not here, then elsewhere. Perhaps, even, beyond the confines of this galaxy."
"Indeed? But how can I help you, Rector?"
"You, we were told, know more about the odd distortions of the Continuum encountered here than anybody else on these planets."
"Such is fame." Grimes sighed and shrugged. "Very well, Rector, you asked for it. I'll tell you what little I know. To begin with, it is thought by many of our scientists that here, at the very edge of the expanding galaxy, the fabric of time and space is stretched thin. We have long become used to the phenomena known as Rim Ghosts, disconcerting glimpses into alternative universes."
"I believe that you, sir, have personally made the transition into their universes."
"Yes. Once when the Federation's Survey Service requested our aid in the investigation of the Rim Ghost phenomena. No doubt your people have read the Survey Service report."
"We have."
"The second time was when we, the Confederacy, took our own steps to deal with what we decided was a very real menace—an alternative universe in which our worlds were ruled by particularly unpleasant mutants, with human beings in a state of slavery. And then there was Captain Listowel, who was master of the first experimental lightjammer. He tried to exceed the speed of light without cheating—as we do with our Mannschenn Drive—and experienced quite a few different time tracks."
"And tell me, sir, did you or this Captain Listowel ever feel that you were on the point of being granted the Ultimate Revelation?"
"Frankly, no, Rector. We had our bad moments—who in Space, or anywhere else, doesn't?—and anyone who has indulged in time track switching often wonders, as I do, about the reality, the permanence of both himself and the universe about him. For example, I have vague memories of ships that were equipped with only reaction drive for blast-offs and landings and short interplanetary hauls. Absurd, isn't it, but those memories are there. And my wife—I'm sorry you can't meet her, but she's off on a trip—seems to have changed. I have this half recollection of her when she first came out to the Rim, which is there in my mind alongside the real one—but what is real? She was working for the Federation's Intelligence Service then. Anyhow, in one memory she's small and blond, in one she's tall and blonde, and in one she's tall and red-headed, as she is today, Damn it—that's three memories!"
"Women have been known to change their hair styles and colorations, Commodore."
"Right. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she returns with her crowning glory a bright green! But that doesn't explain the coexistent memories."
"Perhaps not." Smith's voice was bitter as he went on. "But it seems such a waste of opportunities. To have been privileged to visit the many mansions of our Father's house, and to come back only with confused recollections of the color of a woman's hair!"
"And quite a few scars, Rector. Physical and psychological."
"No doubt." The man's voice was unpleasantly ironic. "But tell me, sir, what do you know of Kinsolving's Planet?"
"Not much. I suppose that we shall settle it if we're ever faced with a population explosion, which is doubtful."
"I am referring, sir, to the man who appeared there, the Stone Age savage from the remote past."
"Yes, that was a queer business. Well before my time. Nothing like that has happened there in recent years, although there is still an uneasy, brooding atmosphere about that world that makes it undesirable as a piece of real estate. The original theory is that somehow the—the loneliness of the people out here on the Rim, hanging, as it were, by their fingernails over the abyss of the Ultimate Night, became focused on that one particular planet. Now the theory is that the fabric of Time and Space is stretched extremely thin there, and that anything or anybody is liable to fall through, either way. The rock paintings are still in the caves, but there haven't been any new ones and the paint is never wet anymore."
"The Stone Age savage," said Smith, "eventually became a Franciscan citizen, and a Neo-Calvinist. He died at a very ripe old age, and among his effects was the manuscript of his life story. His great-granddaughter presented it to the Institute. It was thought, at first, that it was a work of fiction, but the surviving relatives insisted that it was not. And then I, when I made a voyage to Earth, was able to obtain access to the Survey Service records."
"And so?" asked Grimes.
"So Kinsolving's Planet is to become our new Sinai," Smith told him.
* * *
"You'd better go along, Grimes," Admiral Kravitz told him, "just to see fair play. Anyhow, it's all been arranged. You will be recalled to the active list—pay, etc., as per regulations—and ship out in this Piety of theirs as Rim Worlds' government observer."
"But why me, sir? If I were taking my own ship, if the old Quest were being recommissioned, with myself in command, it'd be different. But I don't like being a passenger."
"You'll not be a passenger, Grimes. Captain—sorry, Rector—Smith has indicated that he'll appreciate having you along as a sort of pilot. . . ."
"In a ship full of sky pilots—and myself a good agnostic!" He saw the bewildered expression on the Admiral's face and explained his choice of words. "In the old days, before there were any real sky pilots, seamen used to refer to ministers of religion as such."
"Did they, now? And what would those tarry-breeked ruffians of whom you're so fond have thought of a captain calling himself 'Rector'?"
"In the early days of sail they'd have thought nothing of it. It was the master's usual title."
"I doubt if anybody'll ever call you 'Bishop,' " remarked the Admiral. "Anyhow, you'll be aboard primarily to observe. And to report. In the unlikely event of anything occurring that will affect Rim Worlds' security you are to take action."
"Me—and what squad of Marines?"
"We could send a detachment of the Salvation Army with you," joked the Admiral.
"I doubt that they'd be allowed on board. As far as I can gather, these Neo-Calvinists are somewhat intolerant. Only on a world as tolerant as Francisco would they have been allowed to flourish."
"Intolerant, yes," agreed Kravitz. "But scrupulously honest. And moral."
"In short." said Grimes, "no redeeming vices."
"Piety lifts ship at 1800 hours tomorrow, Commodore Grimes," said the Admiral. "You will be aboard."
"Aye, aye, sir," replied Grimes resignedly.
* * *
Grimes had never enjoyed serving in a "taut ship" himself, and had never commanded one. Nonetheless, he respected those captains who were able to engender about themselves such a state of affairs. Piety, as was obvious from the moment that he set foot on the bottom of the ramp, was a taut ship. Everything was spotless. Every metal fitting and surface that was supposed to be polished boasted a mirror-like sheen. All the paintwork looked as though it was washed at least twice daily—which, in fact, it was. The atmosphere inside the hull bore none of the usual taints of cookery, tobacco smoke or—even though there was a mixed crew—women's perfume. But it was too chilly, and the acridity of some disinfectant made Grimes sneeze.
The junior officer who met him at the head of the ramp showed him into the elevator cage at the foot of the axial shaft. Grimes thanked him and assured the presumably young man—the full beard made it hard to determine his age—that he knew his way around this class of vessel. A captain, no matter what he calls himself or is called, is always accommodated as closely as possible to the center of control. The elevator worked smoothly, noiselessly, carrying the Commodore speedily up to the deck just below the control room. There, as in his own Faraway Quest, was the semi-circular suite of cabins. Over the door was a brass plate with the title RECTOR.
As Grimes approached this entrance it slid open. Smith stood there and said formally, "Welcome aboard, Commodore."
"Thank you, Rector."
"Will you come in, sir?"
There were other people in the day cabin: a tall, stout, white-headed and bearded man dressed in clothing that was very similar to Smith's uniform; a woman in a longsleeved, high-necked, ankle-length black dress, her hair completely covered by a frilly white cap. They looked at Grimes, obviously disapproving of his gold-braided, brass-buttoned, beribboned finery. They did not get up.
"Commodore Grimes," said Smith. "Presbyter Cannan. Sister Lane."
Reluctantly the Presbyter extended his hand. Grimes took it. He was not surprised that it was cold. Sister Lane nodded slightly in his general direction.
Smith gestured stiffly toward a chair, sat down himself. Grimes lowered himself to his own seat incautiously. He should have known that it would be hard. He looked curiously at the two civilians. The Presbyter was an old edition of Rector Smith. The sister. . . ? She had him puzzled. She belonged to a type that been common enough on Francisco when he had been there—the Blossom People, they had called themselves. They preached and practiced a sort of hedonistic Zen, and claimed that their use of the wide range of drugs available to them put them in close communication with the Cosmic All. Prim she was, this Sister Lane, prim and proper in her form-concealing black, but the planes of her face were not harsh, and her unpainted lips were full, and there was a strange gentleness in her brown eyes. Properly dressed—or undressed—thought Grimes, she would be a very attractive woman. Suddenly it was important that he hear her voice.
He pulled his battered pipe out of his pocket, his tobacco pouch and lighter. He asked, addressing her, "Do you mind if I smoke?"
But it was the Presbyter who replied. "Certainly we mind, sir. As you should know, we are opposed to the use of any and all drugs."
"All drugs?" murmured the woman, with a sort of malicious sweetness. Her voice was almost a baritone, but it could never be mistaken for a male one.
"There are exceptions, Sister Lane," the old man told her harshly. "As you well know."
"As I well know," she concurred.
"I take it," said Grimes, "that nicotine is not among those exceptions."
"Unfortunately," she stated, "no."
"You may leave us, Sister," said Presbyter Cannan. "We have no further business to discuss with you."
"Thank you, sir." She got gracefully to her feet, made a curtsey to Cannan, walked out of the door. Her ugly clothing could not hide the fluid grace of her movements.
"Your Nursing Sister, Rector?" asked Grimes when she was gone.
"No," answered Cannan. And, Who's running this ship? thought Grimes irritably. But evidently the Presbyter piled on more gravs than did the ship's lawful master.
Smith must have noticed the Commodore's expression. "Sister Lane, sir," he explained, "is a member of the Presbyter's staff, not of mine."
"Thank you, Rector." Grimes rewarded him with what was intended to be a friendly smile. "I'm afraid that it will take me some time to get your ranks and ratings sorted out."
"I have no doubt," said Cannan, "that it must be confusing to one who relies upon gaudy fripperies for his authority rather than inner grace."
"Your baggage must be aboard and stowed by now, Commodore," Smith said hastily. He turned to his spiritual superior. "May I suggest, sir, that you and your people retire to your quarters? Liftoff"—he glanced at his watch—"will be in fifteen minutes."
"Very well, Rector." The old man got up, towering over the two spacemen. Smith got up. Grimes remained seated until Smith returned from seeing the Presbyter out.
He said, "I'd better be getting below myself. If you could have somebody show me to my stateroom, Rector."
"I was hoping, Commodore, that you would be coming up to Control for the lift-off."
"Thank you, Rector Smith. It will be my pleasure."
Smith led the way out of his quarters, up the short ladder that brought the two men to the control room. Grimes looked about him. The layout was a standard one: acceleration chairs before which were banks of instruments, screens, meters, chart tank, mass proximity indicator, Carlotti Beacon direction finder. All seemed to be in perfect order, and much of the equipment was new. Evidently the Skarsten Theological Institute did not believe in spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar.
The Rector indicated a chair, into which Grimes strapped himself, then took his own seat. The officers were already at their stations. All those bearded men, thought the Commodore, looked too much alike, and their black-on-black insignia of rank made it hard to tell who was what. But this wasn't his ship, and she had managed to come all the way out from Francisco without mishap.
The departure routine went smoothly enough, with the usual messages exchanged between control room and spaceport control tower. The Inertial Drive started up, and there was that brief second of weightlessness before the gentle acceleration made itself felt. The ship lifted easily, falling upward to the cloud ceiling. Briefly Grimes was able to look out through the viewports at Port Forlorn and at the dreary countryside spread out around the city like a map. And then there was nothing but gray mist outside—mist that suddenly became a pearly, luminescent white and then vanished. Overhead was a steely sun glaring out of a black sky, its light harsh even though the ports were polarized.
There was free fall for a little while, and then the gyroscopes swung the ship's head to the target star. The Inertial Drive came on again, its irregular throbbing beat a bass background for the thin, high keening of the Mannschenn Drive. Ahead, save for the iridescent spiral that was the target sun, there was only blackness. Lorn was to starboard—a vast, writhing planetary amoeba that was falling astern, that was shrinking rapidly. And out to port was the Galactic Lens, distorted by the temporal precession field of the Drive to a Klein flask blown by a drunken glass-blower.
Grimes wondered, as he had wondered before, if anybody would ever come up with another simile. But this one was so apt.
* * *
Grimes didn't like this ship.
She was beautifully kept, efficiently run, and with her cargo spaces converted to passenger accommodation she comfortably housed her crew and all the personnel from the Skarsten Institute. But she was . . . cold. She was cold, and she was too quiet. There was none of the often ribald laughter, none of the snatches of light music that lent warmth to the atmosphere of a normal vessel. There were, he noted, playmasters in all the recreation rooms; but when he examined the spools of the machine in the senior officers' mess he found that they consisted entirely of recordings of sermons and the gloomier hymns. The library was as bad. And, socially, there was complete segregation of the sexes. Deaconesses and sisters were berthed aft, and between them and the male crew and passengers were the storerooms and the "farm."
The food was not bad, but it was plain, unimaginative. And there was nothing to drink but water, and even that had a flat taste. The conversation at table was as boring as the provender. Too, Grimes was annoyed to find out that the Rector did not sit at the head of the board in the senior officers' mess; that place of honor was reserved for the Presbyter. And he talked, almost non-stop, about the Institute's internal politics, with the ship's captain interjecting an occasional quiet affirmative as required. The chief officer, surgeon and purser gobbled their meals in silence, as did Grimes, very much the outsider at the foot of the table. They were served by a young stewardess who would have been pretty in anything but that ugly, all-concealing black, who seemed to hold the domineering old man—but nobody else—in awe.
After the evening meal Grimes made his excuses and retired to his cabin. It was little more than a dogbox, and was a comedown after his suite aboard the Quest. He was pleased that he had brought his own reading matter with him, and pleased that he had exercised the forethought to make provision for his other little comforts. Before doing anything else, he filled and lit his pipe and then, moving slowly and easily through the blue haze of his own creation, unclipped the larger of his cases from its rack, pulled it out and opened it. He was lifting out the shirts that had acted as shock-proof packing for certain breakables when he heard a light tap at his door. He groaned. A passenger is bound by ship's regulations as much as is any crew member. But he was damned if he was going to put out his pipe. "Come in," he called.
She came in. She pulled the ugly white cap off her lustrous brown hair, tossed it on to the bunk. Then she turned back to the door, snapped on the spring lock. She tested its security, smiled, then flopped down into the one chair that the cabin possessed.
Grimes looked at her, with raised eyebrows. "Yes, Sister Lane?" he asked.
"Got a smoke, spaceman?" she growled.
"There are some cigars . . ."he began doubtfully.
"I didn't expect pot. Although if you have any . . . ?"
"I haven't." Then Grimes said virtuously, "In any case, such drugs are banned on the Rim Worlds."
"Are they? But what about the cigar you promised me?"
Grimes got a box of panatellas out of his case, opened it, offered it to her. She took one, accepted his proffered light. She inhaled luxuriously. She said, "All I need now is a drink."
"I can supply that."
"Good on you, Admiral!"
There was the bottle of absolute alcohol, and there was the case with its ranked phials of essences. "Scotch?" asked Grimes. "Rum? Brandy? Or . . . ?"
"Scotch will do."
The Commodore measured alcohol into the two glasses over the washbasin, added to each a drop of essence, topped up with cold water from the tap. She murmured, "Here's mud in your eye," and gulped from hers as soon as he handed it to her.
"Sister Lane," said Grimes doubtfully.
"You can call me Clarisse."
"Clarisse. . . . Should you be doing this?"
"Don't tell me that you're a wowser, like all those Bible-punchers."
"I'm not. But this is not my ship. . . ."
"And it's not mine, either."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"It's a long story, dearie. And if you ply me with liquor, I might just tell it to you." She sighed and stretched. "You've no idea what a relief it is to enjoy a drink and a talk and a smoke with somebody who's more or less human."
"Thank you," said Grimes stiffly.
She laughed. "Don't be offended, duckie." She put up her hands, pulled her hair back and away from her face. "Look at my ears."
Grimes looked. They were normal enough organs—save for the fact that were pointed, and were tufted with hair at the tips.
"I'm only more or less human myself," she told him. "More rather than less, perhaps. You know about the man Raul, the caveman, the Stone Age savage, who was pulled, somehow, from the remote past on Kinsolving's Planet to what was then the present. He was my great-grandfather."
"He was humanoid," said Grimes. "Not human."
"Human-schuman!" she mocked. "There is such a thing as parallel evolution, you know. And old Raul was made something of a pet by the scientists back on Earth, and when he evinced the desire to father a family the finest genetic engineers in the Galaxy were pressed into service. No, not the way that you're thinking. Commodore. You've got a low mind."
"Sorry."
"I should think so. Just for that, you can pour me another drink."
And Grimes asked himself if his liquor ration would last out until his return to Lorn.
"What are you doing here?" he asked bluntly. "In this ship?"
"At this very moment I'm breaking at least ninety-nine percent of the regulations laid down by the Presbyter and enforced by the Rector. But I know what you mean." Her voice deepened so that it was like Grimes's own. "What is a nasty girl like you doing in a nice place like this?"
"I wouldn't call you nasty," said Grimes.
"Thank you, sir. Then stand by for the story of my life, complete and unexpurgated. I'll start off with dear old great-granddaddy, the Noble Savage: He was an artist, you know, in his proper place and time, one of those specialists who practiced a form of sympathetic magic. He would paint or draw pictures of various animals, and the actual beasts would be drawn to the spot, there to be slaughtered by the hunters. He said that it worked, too. I can remember, when I was a little girl, that he'd put on demonstrations. He'd draw a picture of, say, the cat—and within seconds pussy would be in the room. Oh, yes—and he was a telepath, a very powerful transceiver.
"After many years on Earth, where he was latterly an instructor at the Rhine Institute, he emigrated, with his wife and children, to Francisco, where he was psionic radio officer in charge of the Port Diego Signal Station. It was there that he got religion. And with all the religions to choose from, he had to become a Neo-Calvinist! His family was converted with him—and I often wonder how much part his undeniable psychic powers played in their conversion! And the wives of his sons had to become converts, and the husbands of his daughters—yea, even unto the third and fourth generations."
She grinned. "One member of the fourth generation kicked over the traces. Me. From the Neo-Calvinists to the Blossom People was a logical step. Like most new converts I overdid things. Drinks, drugs, promiscuity—the works. The Neo-Calvinists picked me up, literally, from the gutter and nursed me back to health in their sanatorium—and, at the same time, made it quite clear that if I was predestined to go to Hell I should go there. And then, when they checked up on great-grandfather's autobiographical papers, they realized that I was predestined for something really important—especially since I, alone of his descendants, possess something of his powers."
"You mean that you can . . . ?"
There was a violent knocking on the door, and a voice shouting, "Open up! Open up, I say!"
"They know I'm here," muttered Clarisse sullenly. She got out of her chair, operated the sliding panel herself.
Rector Smith was standing outside, and with him was a tall, gaunt woman. She stared at Sister Lane in horror and snarled, "Cover your nakedness, you shameless hussy!"
Clarisse shrugged, picked up the ugly cap from where it was lying on the bunk, adjusted it over her hair, tucking all loose strands out of sight.
"Will you deal with Sister Lane, Deaconess?" asked Smith.
"That I shall, Rector."
"Miss Lane and I were merely enjoying a friendly talk," said Grimes.
"A friendly talk!" The Deaconess' voice dripped scorn. "Smoking! Wine-bibbing! You—you gilded popinjay!"
Smith had picked up the bottle of alcohol, his obvious intention being to empty it into the washbasin. "Hold it!"
Smith hesitated. Unhurriedly Grimes took the bottle from his hand, restoppered it, put it in the rack over the basin.
Then the Rector started to bluster. "Sir. I must remind you that you are a guest aboard my ship. A passenger. You are obliged to comply with ship's regulations."
"Sir," replied Grimes coldly, "I have signed no articles of agreement, and no ticket with the back covered with small print has been issued to me. I am surprised that a shipmaster should have been so neglectful of the essential legalities, and were you in the employ of the company of which I am astronautical superintendent I should find it my duty to reprimand you."
"Not only a gilded popinjay," observed the Deaconess harshly, "but a space lawyer."
"Yes, madam, a space lawyer—as any master astronaut should be." He was warming up nicely. "But I must remind you, both of you, that I do have legal standing aboard this vessel. I am here in my capacity as official observer for the Rim Worlds Confederacy. Furthermore, I was called back to active duty in the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve, with the rank of Commodore."
"Meaningless titles," sneered the Deaconess. "A Commodore without a fleet!"
"Perhaps, madam. Perhaps. But I must remind you that we are proceeding through Rim Worlds' territorial space. And I must make it plain that any interference with my own personal liberties—and the infliction by yourselves of any harsh punishment on Miss Lane—will mean that Piety will be intercepted and seized by one of our warships." He thought, I hope the bluff isn't called.
Called it was.
"And just how, Mr. Commodore Grimes, do you propose to call a warship to your aid?" asked the woman.
"Easily, Deaconess, easily," said Clarisse Lane. "Have you forgotten that I am a telepath—and a good one? While this ship was on Lorn I made contact with Mr. Mayhew, Senior Psionic Radio Officer of the Rim World Navy. Even though we never met physically we became close friends. He is an old friend and shipmate of the Commodore, and asked me to keep in touch to let him know if Commodore Grimes was in any danger."
"And you will tell him, of course," said Grimes, "if you are subjected to any harm, or even discomfort."
"He will know," she said quietly.
"Yes," agreed Grimes. "He will know."
He was familiar with telepaths, was Grimes, having commenced his spacefaring career before the Carlotti direction finding and communications systems began to replace the psionic radio officers with its space- and time-twisting beamed radiations. He was familiar with telepaths, and knew how it was with them when, infrequently, one of them found a member of the opposite sex with the same talents attractive. Until this happened—and it rarely did—they would lavish all their affection on the disembodied canine brains that they used as amplifiers.
Rector Smith was the first to weaken. He muttered, "Very well, Commodore."
"And is this harlot to go unpunished?" flared the Deaconess.
"That's right, she is," Grimes told her.
She glared at him—and Grimes glared back. He regretted deeply that this was not his ship, that he had no authority aboard her.
"Rector Smith . . ." she appealed.
"I'm sorry, Deaconess," Smith told her. "But you have heard what these people have told us."
"And you will allow them to flout your authority?"
"It is better than causing the success of our mission to be jeopardized." He stiffened. "Furthermore, I order you not to lay hands upon Sister Lane, and not to order any of the other sisters to do so."
"And I suppose she's to be free to visit this—this vile seducer any time that she sees fit."
"No," said Smith at last. "No. That I will not sanction. Commodore Grimes claims that I cannot give orders to him, but my authority is still absolute insofar as all other persons aboard this vessel are concerned. Sister Lane will not be ill-treated, but she will be confined to the women's quarters until such time as her services are required."
"The Presbyter shall hear of this," said the woman.
"Indeed he shall. I shall be making my own report to him. Meanwhile, he is not, repeat not, to be disturbed." He added, "And those are his orders."
"Very well, then," snapped the Deaconess. And to Clarisse Lane, "Come."
"It was a good try, Commodore," said the girl, looking back wistfully at her unfinished drink, her still smoldering cigar. "It was a good try, but it could have been a better one, as far as I'm concerned. Good night."
It was a good try, thought Grimes. Period. He had gone as far as he could go without undermining the Master's—the Rector's—authority too much. As for the girl, he was sure that she would not, now, be maltreated, and it would do her no harm to revert to the abstemious routine of this aptly named ship.
"Good night," he said.
"May I have a word with you, sir?" asked Smith when the two women were gone.
"Surely. Stick around, Rector. This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard."
Smith looked, but did not voice, his disapproval of the figure of speech. He shut the door, snapped the lock on. Then, with a penknife taken from his pocket, he made a little adjustment to one of the securing screws of the mirror over the washbasin.
"Bugged?" asked Grimes interestedly.
"Of course—as is every compartment in the ship. But there are speakers and screens in only two cabins—my own and the Presbyter's. His Reverence, I know, took sleeping pills before retiring, but he might awaken."
"I suppose the ladies' showers are bugged, too?" asked Grimes.
A dull flush covered what little of the Rector's face was not hidden by his beard. He growled. "That, sir, is none of your business."
"And what, sir, is your business with me?"
"I feel, Commodore Grimes, that you should know how important that unhappy woman is to the success of our mission; then, perhaps, you will be less inclined, should the opportunity present itself again, to pander to her whims." Smith cleared his throat; then he went on. "This business upsets me, sir. You will know, as you, yourself, were once a shipmaster, how unpleasant it is to have to assert your authority."
"And talking," said Grimes, who had his telepath moments, "is thirsty work."
"If you would be so kind, sir," said Smith, after a long moment of hesitation. "I believe that brandy has always been regarded as a medicine."
Grimes sighed, and mixed fresh drinks. He motioned Smith to the single chair, sat down on the bunk. He thought of shocking the other man with one of the more obscene toasts, but merely said, "Down the hatch." The Rector said, "I needed that."
"Another, Rector Smith?"
"No, thank you, sir."
You want me to twist your arm, you sanctimonious bastard, thought Grimes, but I'm not going to do it. He put the bottle of alcohol and the little case of essences away. "And now," he said, "about Miss Lane. . . ."
"Yes, Sister Lane. As she has told you, she was one of us. But she backslid, and consorted with the fornicators and wine-bibbers who call themselves the Blossom People. But even this was in accordance with the Divine scheme of things. Whilst consorting with those—those pagans she became accustomed to the use and the abuse—but surely the use is also abuse!—of the psychedelic drugs. Already she possessed considerable psychic powers, but those vile potions enhanced them.
"You will realize, sir, that it would have been out of the question for any of our own Elect to imperil his immortal soul by tampering with such powerful, unseen and unseeable forces, but—"
"But," said Grimes, "Clarisse Lane has already demonstrated that she is damned, so you don't mind using her as your cat's-paw."
"You put it very concisely, sir," agreed Smith.
"I could say more, but I won't. I just might lose my temper. But go on."
"Sister Lane is not entirely human. She is descended from that Raul, the Stone Age savage who was brought to Earth from Kinsolving's Planet. Many factors were involved in his appearance. It could be that the very fabric of the Continuum is worn thin, here on the Rim, and that lines of force, or fault lines, intersect at that world. It could be, as the Rhine Institute claimed at the time, that the loneliness and the fear of all the dwellers on the colonized Rim Worlds are somehow focused on Kinsolving. Be that as it may, it happened. And it happened too that, in the fullness of time, this Raul was accepted into the bosom of our Church.
"Raul, as you may know, was more than a mere telepath. Much more. He was a wizard, one of those who, in his own age, drew animals to the hunters' spears by limning their likenesses on rock."
Grimes interrupted. "Doesn't the Bible say, somewhere, that thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?"
"Yes. It is so written. But we did not know of the full extent of Raul's talents when he was admitted into our Fold. We did not know of them until after his death, when his papers came into our possession."
"But what are you playing at?" demanded Grimes. "Just what you are playing at in our back garden?" He had the bottle out again, and the little phial of cognac-flavored essence, and was mixing two more drinks. He held out one of them, the stronger, to Smith, who absentmindedly took it and raised it to his lips.
The Rector said, "Sir, I do not approve of your choice of words. Life is not a game. Life, death and the hereafter are not a game. We are not playing. We are working. Is it not written. 'Work, for the night is coming?' And you, sir, and I, as spacemen, know that the night is coming—the inevitable heat death of the Universe. . . ." He gulped more of his drink.
"You should visit Darsha some time," said Grimes, "and their Tower of Darkness. You should see the huge clock that is the symbol of their God." He added softly, "The clock is running down."
"Yes, the clock is running down, the sands of time are running out. And there is much to be done, so much to be done. . . ."
"Such as?"
"To reestablish the eternal verities. To build a new Sinai, to see the Commandments graven afresh on imperishable stone. And then, perhaps, the heathen, the idolators, will take heed and tremble. And then, surely, the rule of Jehovah will come again, before the End."
Grimes said reasonably enough, "But you people believe in predestination, don't you? Either we're damned or we aren't, and nothing we do makes any difference."
"I have learned by bitter experience," Smith told him, "that it is impossible to argue with a heretic—especially one who is foredoomed to eternal damnation. But even you must see that if the Commandments are given anew to Man then we, the Elect, shall be elevated to our rightful place in the Universe."
"Then God save us all," said Grimes.
Smith looked at him suspiciously, but went on. "It is perhaps necessary that there should be a sacrifice, and, if that be so, the Lord has already delivered her into our hands. No, sir, do not look at me like that. We shall not kill her, neither by knife nor fire shall we slay her. But, inevitably, she will be the plaything of supernal powers when she, on the planet of her ancestral origin, her inherited talents intensified by drugs, calls to Jehovah, the true God, the God of the Old Testament, to make Himself known again to sinful men."
There were flecks of white froth on Smith's beard around his lips, a dribble of saliva down the hair on his chin. His eyes were glaring and bloodshot. Grimes thought, in vino veritas. He said, with a gentleness he did not feel, actuated only by self-interest, "Don't you think that you've had enough, Rector? Isn't it time that we both turned in?"
"Eh, what? When'm ready. But you understand now that you must not interfere. You must not interfere."
"I understand," said Grimes, thinking, Too much and, not enough. He found a tube of tablets in his suitcase, shook one into the palm of his hand. "Here," he said, offering it. "You'd better take this."
"Wha's it for?"
"It'll sweeten the breath and sober you up. It'll be too bad for you if the Presbyter sees the state you're in." And too bad for me, he thought.
" 'M not drunk."
"Of course not. Just a little—unsteady."
"Don't really need . . . But jus' to oblige, y'un-derstan'."
Smith swallowed the tablet, his Adam's apple working convulsively. Grimes handed him a glass of cold water to wash it down. It acted almost immediately. The bearded man shuddered, then got steadily to his feet. He glared at Grimes, but it was no longer a fanatical glare. "Good night, sir," he snapped.
"Good night, Rector," Grimes replied.
When he was alone he thought of playing back the record of the evening's conversations, but thought better of it. For all he knew, Smith might be able to switch the hidden microphone and scanner back on from his own quarters—and the less he knew of the tiny device hidden in the starboard epaulet of his white mess jacket, the better.
He got out of his clothes and into his bunk, switched off the light; but, unusually for him, his sleep was uneasy and nightmare-ridden. He supposed that it was Clarisse Lane's fault that she played a leading part in most of the dreams.
* * *
The voyage wore on, and on, and even as the ever-precessing gyroscopes of the Mannschenn Drive tumbled and receded down the dark infinities, so did the good ship Piety fall through the twisted Continuum. On one hand was the warped convoluted Galactic Lens and ahead, a pulsating spiral of iridescent light against the ultimate darkness, was the Kinsolving sun.
And this ship, unlike other ships of Grimes's wide experience, was no little man-made oasis of light and warmth in the vast, empty desert of the night. She was cold, cold, and her atmosphere carried always the faint acridity of disinfectant, and men and women talked in grave, low voices and did not mingle, and never was there the merest hint of laughter.
Clarisse Lane was not being maltreated—Grimes made sure of that—and was even allowed to meet the Commodore for a daily conversation, but always heavily chaperoned. She was the only telepath in the ship, which, while the interstellar drive was in operation, depended entirely upon the Carlotti equipment for deep space communication. But the Rector and the Presbyter did not doubt that she was in constant touch with Mayhew back at Port Forlorn—and Grimes did not doubt it either. She told him much during their meetings—things about which she could not possibly have known if there had not been a continual interchange of signals. Some of this intelligence was confirmed by messages addressed to Grimes and received, in the normal way, by the ship's electronic radio officer.
So they were obliged to be careful, these Neo-Calvinists. The chosen instrument for their experiment in practical theology was now also an agent for the Rim Worlds Confederacy. "But what does it matter?" Smith said to Grimes on one of the rare occasions that he spoke at length to him. "What does it matter? Perhaps it was ordained this way. Your friend Mayhew will be the witness to the truth, a witness who is not one of us. He will see through her eyes, hear with her ears, feel with every fiber of her being. The Word propagated by ourselves alone would be scoffed at. But there will be credence given it when it is propagated by an unbeliever."
"If anything happens," said Grimes.
But he couldn't argue with these people, and they couldn't argue with him. There was just no meeting of minds. He remembered a theory that he had once heard advanced by a ship's doctor. "Long ago," the man had said, "very long ago, there was a mutation. It wasn't a physically obvious one, but as a result of it Homo Sapiens was divided into two separate species: Homo credulens, those capable of blind faith in the unprovable, and Homo incredulens, those who aren't. The vast majority of people are, of course, hybrids."
Grimes had said, "And I suppose that all the pure Homo incredulens stock is either atheist or agnostic."
"Not so." The doctor had laughed. "Not so. Agnostic—yes. But don't forget that the atheist, like the theist, makes a definite statement for which he can produce no proof whatsoever."
An atheist would have been far less unhappy aboard this ship than a tolerant agnostic like Grimes.
But even the longest, unhappiest voyage comes to an end. A good planetfall was made—whatever they believed, Piety's people were excellent navigators—and, the Mannschenn Drive switched off, the Inertial Drive ticking over just enough to produce minimal gravitational field, the ship was falling in orbit about the lonely world, the blue and green mottled sphere hanging there against the blackness.
The old charts—or copies of them—were out, and Grimes was called up to the control room. "Yes," he told Smith, stabbing a finger down on the paper, "that's where the spaceport was. Probably even now the apron's not too overgrown for a safe landing. Captain Spence, when he came down in Epsilon Eridani, reported creepers over everything, but nothing heavy."
"It is a hundred and fifty standard years since he was here," said Smith. "At least. I would suggest one of the beaches."
"Risky," Grimes told him. "They shelve very steeply and according to our records violent storms are more frequent than otherwise." He turned to the big screen upon which a magnification of the planet was appearing. "There, just to the east of the sunrise terminator. That's the major continent—Farland, it was called—where the capital city and the spaceport were situated. You see that river, with the S bend? Step up the magnification somebody. . . ."
Now there was only the glowing picture of the island continent, filling all the screen, and that expanded, so that there was only the sprawling, silvery S, and toward the middle of it, on either bank, a straggle of buildings was visible.
"The spaceport should be about ten miles to the west," said Grimes.
"Yes," agreed Smith, taking a long pointer to the screen. "I think that's it."
"Then make it Landing Stations, Rector," ordered Presbyter Cannan.
"Sir," demurred Smith, "you cannot put a big ship down as though she were a dinghy."
"Lord, oh Lord," almost prayed the Presbyter. "To have come so far, and then to be plagued by the dilatoriness of spacemen!"
I wish that this were my control room, thought Grimes.
But Piety's crew worked well and efficiently, and in a very short space of time the intercom speakers were blatting strings of orders: "Secure all for landing stations!" "All idlers to their quarters!" and the like. Gyroscopes hummed and whined and the ship tilted relative to the planet until its surface was directly beneath her, and the first of the sounding rockets, standard equipment for a survey expedition but not for landing on a world with spaceport control functioning, were fixed.
Parachutes blossomed in the upper atmosphere and the flares, each emitting a great steamer of smoke, ignited. Somebody was singing. It was the Presbyter.
"Let the fiery, cloudy pillar
Guide me all my journey through. . . ."
Even Grimes was touched by the spirit of the occasion. What if this crazy, this impious (for so he was beginning to think of it) experiment did work? What would happen? What would be unleashed upon the worlds of men? Who was it—the Gnostics?—who had said that the God of the Old Testament was the Devil of the New? He shivered as he sat in his acceleration chair.
She was dropping steadily, was Piety, following the first of her flares. But there was drift down there—perhaps a gale in the upper atmosphere, or a jet stream. The Inertial Drive generators grumbled suddenly as Smith applied lateral thrust. Down she dropped, and down, almost falling free, but under the full control of her captain. On the target screen, right in the center, highly magnified, the cluster of ruins that had been a spaceport was clearly visible, tilting like tombstones in a deserted graveyard, ghastly in the blue light of the rising sun.
Down she dropped, plunging through the wisps of cirrus, and there was a slight but appreciable rise of temperature as skin friction heated the metal of her hull. Smith slowed the rate of descent. The Presbyter started muttering irritably to himself.
There was no longer need for magnification on the screen. The great rectangle of the landing field was clearly visible, the vegetation that covered it lighter in color—eau de Nile against the surrounding indigo—than the brush outside the area. The last of the flares to have been fired was still burning there, its column of smoke rising almost vertically. The growth among which it had fallen was slowly smoldering.
Grimes looked at Smith. The man was concentrating hard. Beads of perspiration were forming on his upper cheeks, running down into his beard. But this was more important than an ordinary landing. So much hinged upon it. And, perhaps, malign (or benign) forces might be gathering their strength to overset the ship before her massive tripedal landing gear reached the safety of the planetary surface.
But she was down.
There was the gentlest of shocks, the faintest of creakings, the softest sighing of shock-absorbers. She was down, and the Inertial Drive generators muttered to themselves and then were quiet. She was down, and the soughing of the fans seemed to make the silence all the more silent.
Presbyter Cannan broke it. He turned in his chair to address Grimes. "Commodore," he asked as he pointed toward a distant peak, a black, truncated cone against the blue sky, "Commodore Grimes, what is the name of that mountain?"
"I . . . I don't know, sir."
"I know." The old man's voice was triumphant. "It is Sinai."
* * *
Had this been any other ship there would have been a period of relaxation. There were wild pigs and rabbits to hunt, descendants of the livestock abandoned by the original colonists. There were the famous caves, with their rock paintings, to visit. But the animals, their fear of Man long forgotten, came out of the undergrowth to stare curiously at the vessel and at the humans who busied themselves around her, opening side ports to allow the egress of the three pinnaces, already stocked with what would be required for the final stages of the expedition. And nobody was remotely interested in the caves.
Grimes managed to see Clarisse Lane. The ship was almost deserted now, so he was able to make his way down into the women's quarters without being challenged and stopped. He found her little cabin, hardly more than a cell. She was not locked in, not restrained in any way. She was sitting in her chair, a somber figure in her black dress, staring into nothingness. Her full lips moved almost imperceptibly as she vocalized her thoughts.
With a sudden start she realized that Grimes was standing before her. She whispered, "I—I was talking to Ken."
"To Mayhew?"
"Yes."
Saying goodbye, he thought. He said, "Clarisse, you don't have to go through with this."
"I am going through with it, Commodore."
"You don't have to," he insisted. "You're in touch with Mayhew. And he'll be in touch with Rim Sword. The Admiral told me that she'd be standing by in this sector. She's probably on her way here now. We can stall off those fanatics until she comes in."
She said, "I'm going through with it."
"But why? Why?"
"Because I want to."
"But you're not really one of them."
"I'm not."
"Sister Lane!" It was the Deaconess. "You asked for a few moments of privacy—and now I find you with this—this lecher! But come. The boat is waiting."
"I'll come with you." said Grimes.
"You will not," snapped the woman. "A place has been reserved for you in the pinnace carrying the Presbyter and the Rector. They had decided that it is meet that an infidel shall witness the handing down of the Law."
Clarisse Lane followed the Deaconess from the cabin. Grimes trailed along behind them. They went down to the main air lock, down the ramp to the overgrown apron, stumbling over the tough, straggling vines on their way to the boats. The sun was dropping fast to the western horizon. There was a hint of chill, a smell of dusk in the still air. There was the scent of growing things, and a faint hint of corruption.
Smith beckoned to Grimes from the open door of the leading pinnace. He made his way slowly toward it, walking carefully. He clambered up the retractable steps into the crowded cabin that stank of perspiration and damp, heavy clothing. He found a seat, wedged between two junior officers.
The door hissed shut. The Inertial Drive generator throbbed and snarled. Grimes could not see out of the ports, but he knew that the boat was airborne, was moving. There was no conversation in the cabin, but a metallic male voice reported from the speaker on the pilot's console, "Number Two following." After a pause a harsh female voice said, "Number Three following."
How long the flight lasted Grimes did not know; he was unable to raise his arm to look at his watch. But it seemed a long time, and it seemed a long time that they sat there after they had landed, waiting for the other boats to come down. But at last the door opened and a thin, icy wind whined through the aperture. The Presbyter was out first, then Smith, and eventually Grimes, in the middle of a huddle of officers and civilians.
The plateau was smooth, windswept, an expanse of bare rock. To one side of it were the three pinnaces, and in front of them the men were drawn up in orderly ranks, with only the Presbyter standing apart. In the middle of the circular area were the women, a ragged huddle of somber black.
Grimes's attention was caught by a blue spark far below, not far from the still gleaming, serpentine river. Had Rim Sword landed? No. It was only the control room windows of Piety reflecting the last rays of the setting sun.
There was a subdued murmuring as the women walked to stand to one side of the men. No, not all the women. Two remained in the center of the plateau. One was the Deaconess, tall and forbidding. The other was the Clarisse Lane. They had stripped her. She was wearing only a kilt cut roughly from the hide of some animal, clothing like that which had been worn by her ancestresses on this very planet. She was shivering and was hugging her full breasts to try to keep out the cold.
Stark, incongruous, an easel stood there, supporting a frame square of black canvas, and there was a battery-powered floodlight to illuminate it. At its foot were pots of pigment, and brushes. Raul, the forefather of this girl, had called animals with his paintings. What would she call? What could she call?
"Drink!" said the Deaconess, her voice rang clear over the thin whine of the bitter wind. "Drink!" She was holding out a glass of something. Clarisse took it, drained it.
Suddenly the sun was gone, and there was only the glare of the floodlight. Overhead was the almost empty black sky, and low to the east was an arc of misty luminescence that was the slowly rising Galactic Lens. The wind seemed to be coming straight from intergalactic space.
The Deaconess stalked over the rocky surface to take her stand beside the Presbyter, leaving the girl alone. Hesitantly Clarisse stooped to the pots and brushes, selected one of the latter, dipped it into paint, straightened, stood before the easel.
She stiffened into immobility, seemed to be waiting for something.
They were singing, then, the black-clad men and women drawn up in their stiff ranks before the pinnaces. They were singing. "Cwn Rhonda," it was, and even Grimes, who had always loved that old Welsh hymn tune, found it hard to refrain from joining in. They were singing, the rumbling basses, the baritones, the high tenors and the shrill sopranos.
Guide, me, oh Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land!
I am weak, but Thou art mighty.
Hold me with Thy powerful hand!
They were singing, and the girl was painting. With deft, sure strokes she was depicting on the black canvas the figure of a god, white-bearded, white-robed, wrathful. She was painting, and the men and women were singing, and the air was full of unbearable tension and the wind was now howling, tugging at their clothing, buffeting them. But the easel in its circle of harsh light stood steady and the girl worked on. . . .
There was the dreadful crack of lightning close at hand, too close at hand, the crack and the dazzle, and the pungency of ozone, and the long, long streamer of blue fire licking out from above their heads and culminating on the plain far below, at the spaceport.
There was the burgeoning fireball where the ship had been.
There was the dreadful laughter, booming above the frenzy of the wind, and the metallic crash and clatter as the pinnaces, lifted and rolled over the rim of the plateau, plunged to destruction down the steep, rocky mountain slope.
And They were there—the robust, white-bearded deity, a lightning bolt clutched and ready in his right hand, and the naked, seductively smiling goddess, and the other naked one with her bow and her leashed hounds, and she in the white robes, carrying a book, with the owl perched on her shoulder. The lame smith was there, with his hammer, and the sea-god, with his trident, and he with the red beard and the helmet and the body armor and the sword.
Somebody screamed, and at least a score of the men and women had fallen to their knees. But the Presbyter stood his ground.
"Who are you?" he shouted. "Who are you?"
"Little man," the great voice replied, "we were, we are and we always shall be."
Grimes realized that he was laughing uncontrollably and saying, over and over to himself, "Not Sinai, but Olympus! Not Sinai, but Olympus!"
There was another supernal clap of thunder and the dark came sweeping back.
* * *
They sat around in miserable little groups on the bare mountaintop.
The Presbyter was gone, nobody knew where or how, and the Deaconess, and Smith, and perhaps a dozen of the others. It had been a long night, and a cold one, but the sun had risen at last, bringing some warmth with it.
Grimes, in shirt and trousers, stood with Clarrise Lane, who was wrapped in his jacket.
"But what happened?" he was asking. "What happened? What did you do?"
She said, "I . . . I don't know. I suppose that I do have some sort of power. And I suppose that I am, at heart, one of the Blossom People. Our religious beliefs are a sort of vague pantheism. . . . And, after all, the Father of the Gods is very similar in His attributes to the patriarchal gods of later religions. . . ." She looked at the sky. "It's lucky that I'm a telepath as well as being . . . whatever it is that I am. Rim Sword will be here very shortly. I hope it's soon. I have a feeling that when some of our fanatical friends recover they'll be blaming me for everything."
"When they recover," said Grimes. "It will take me along time." He added, "But I don't think you'd better return to Francisco with them."
"Ken," she told him, "has already got the formalities under way that will make me a Rim Worlds citizen."
"The obvious one?"
"Yes."
"And are you going to get married in church?" he asked. "It should be interesting."
"Not if I can help it," she told him.
* * *
And so, in due course, Grimes kissed the bride and, at the reception, toasted the newlyweds in imported champagne. He did not stay long after that. He was too much the odd man out—almost all the other guests were married couples, and such few women as were unattached made little or no appeal to him. He was missing Sonya, still away on her galactic cruise. Somehow he missed her less at home, lonely though it was without her. There was still so much of her in the comfortable apartment: her books, the pictures that she had chosen, the furniture that had been specially designed to her taste.
Having left the party early, he was at his office, at the spaceport, bright and early the following morning. He received, personally, the urgent Carlottigram from Rim Griffon, on Tharn. He smiled as he read it. He had been deskbound for too long, and his recent voyage in the oddly named Piety had aggravated rather than assuaged the itching of his feet. Captain Timms, one of the Rim Runners' senior masters, was due back from annual leave within a few days and, at the moment, there was no appointment open for him. So Timms could keep the chair warm while Grimes took passage to Tharn; the scheduled departure date of Rim Dragon for that planet fitted in very nicely with his plans.
"Miss Walton," he said happily to the rather vapid little blonde secretary, "this is going to be a busy morning. Telephoning first, and then correspondence every which way. . . . To begin with, get me the General Manager. . . ."
Part Two: The Bird-Brained Navigator
Her inertial drive throbbing softly, all hands at landing stations, all passengers save one strapped in their acceleration couches (a sudden emergency requiring the use of the auxiliary reaction drive was unlikely, but possible), the starship Rim Dragon dropped slowly down to Port Grimes on Tharn. The privileged passenger—although in his case it was a right rather than a privilege—was riding in the control room instead of being incarcerated in his cabin. Commodore John Grimes, Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners, said nothing, did nothing that could be construed as interference on his part. Legally speaking, of course, he was no more than a guest in the liner's nerve center; but at the same time he could and did exercise considerable authority over the space-going employees of Rim Runners, made the ultimate decisions in such matters as promotions and appointments. However, Captain Wenderby, Rim Dragon's master, was a more than competent ship-handler and at no time did Grimes feel impelled to make any suggestions, at no time did his own hands start to reach out hungrily for the controls.
So Grimes sat there, stolid and solid in his acceleration chair, not even now keeping a watchful eye on the briskly efficient Wenderby and his briskly efficient officers. They needed no advice from him, would need none. But it was easier for them than it had been for him, when he made his own first landing on Tharn—how many years ago? Too many. There had been no spaceport then, with spaceport control keeping the master fully informed of meteorological conditions during his entire descent. There had been no body of assorted officials—port captain, customs, port health and all the rest of it—standing by awaiting the ship's arrival. Grimes, in fact, had not known what or whom to expect, although his robot probes had told him that the culture of the planet was roughly analogous to that of Earth's Middle Ages. Even so, he had been lucky in that he had set Faraway Quest down near a city controlled by the priesthood rather than in an area under the sway of one of the robber barons.
He looked out of one of the big viewports. From this altitude he could see no signs of change—but change there must have been, change there had been. On that long ago exploration voyage in the old Quest he had opened up the worlds of the Eastern Circuit to commerce—and the trader does more to destroy the old ways than either the gunboat or the missionary. In this case the trader would have been the only outside influence: the Rim Worlds had always, fortunately for them, been governed by cynical, tolerant agnostics to whom gunboat diplomacy was distasteful. The Rim Worlders had always valued their own freedom too highly to wish to interfere with that of any other race.
But even commerce, thought Grimes, is an interference. It makes people want the things that they cannot yet produce for themselves: the mass-produced entertainment, the labor-saving machines, the weapons. Grimes sighed. I suppose that we were right to arm the priesthood rather than the robber barons. In any case, they've been good customers.
Captain Wenderby, still intent on his controls, spoke. "It must seem strange, coming back after all these years, sir."
"It does, Captain."
"And to see the spaceport that they named after you, for the first time."
"A man could have worse monuments."
Grimes transferred his attention from the viewport to the screen that showed, highly magnified, what was directly astern of and below the ship. Yes, there it was. Port Grimes. A great circle of gray-gleaming concrete, ringed by warehouses and administration buildings, with cranes and gantries and conveyor belts casting long shadows the ruddy light of the westering sun. He had made the first landing on rough heathland, and for a long, heart-stopping moment had doubted that the tripedal landing gear would be able to adjust—to the irregularities of the surface.) And there was Rim Griffon, the reason for his voyage to Tharn. There was the ship whose officers refused to sail with each other and with the master. There was the mess that had to be sorted out with as few firings as possible—Rim Runners, as usual, was short of spacefaring personnel. There was the mess.
* * *
It was some little time before John Grimes could get around to doing anything about it. As he should have foreseen, he was a personality, a historical personality at that. He was the first outsider to have visited Tharn. He was responsible for the breaking of the power of the barons, for the rise to power of the priesthood and the merchants. Too, the Rim Confederacy's ambassador on Tharn had made it plain that he, and the government that he represented, would appreciate it if the Commodore played along. The delay in the departure of a very unimportant merchant vessel was far less important than the preservation of interstellar good relations.
So Grimes was wined and dined, which was no hardship, and obliged to listen to long speeches, which was. He was taken on sight-seeing tours, and was pleased to note that progress, although inevitable, had been a controlled progress, not progress for its own sake. The picturesque had been sacrificed only when essential for motives of hygiene or real efficiency. Electricity had supplanted the flaring natural gas jets for house-and street-lighting—but the importation and evolution of new building techniques and materials had not produced a mushroom growth of steel and concrete matchboxes or plastic domes. Architecture still retained its essentially Tharnian character, even though the streets of the city were no longer rutted, even though the traffic on those same streets was now battery-powered cars and no longer animal-drawn vehicles. (Internal combustion engines were manufactured on the planet, but their use was prohibited within urban limits.)
And at sea change had come. At the time of Grimes's first landing the only oceangoing vessels had been the big schooners; now sail was on its way out, was being ousted by the steam turbine. Yet the ships, with their fiddle bows and their figureheads, with their raked masts and funnels, still displayed an archaic charm that was altogether lacking on Earth's seas and on the waters of most Man-colonized worlds. The Commodore, who was something of an authority on the history of marine transport, would dearly have loved to have made a voyage in one of the steamers, but he knew that time would not permit this. Once he had sorted out Rim Griffon's troubles he would have to return to Port Forlorn, probably in that very ship.
At last he was able to get around to the real reason for his visit to Tharn. On the morning of his fifth day on the planet he strode purposefully across the clean, well-cared-for concrete of the apron, walked decisively up the ramp to Rim Griffon's after air lock door. There was a junior officer waiting there to receive him; Captain Dingwall had been warned that he would be coming on board. Grimes knew the young man, as he should have; after all, he had interviewed him for a berth in the Rim Runners' service.
"Good morning, Mr. Taylor."
"Good morning, sir." The Third Officer was painfully nervous, and his prominent Adam's apple bobbled as he spoke. His ears, almost as outstanding as Grimes's own, flushed a dull red. "The Old—" The flush spread to all of Taylor's features. "Captain Dingwall is waiting for you, sir. This way, sir."
Grimes did not need a guide. This Rim Griffon, like most of the older units in Rim Runners' fleet, had started her career as an Epsilon Class tramp in the employ of the Interstellar Transport Commission. The general layout of those tried and trusted Galactic workhorses was familiar to all spacemen. However, young Mr. Taylor had been instructed by his captain to receive the Commodore and to escort him to his, Dingwall's, quarters, and Grimes had no desire to interfere with the running of the ship.
Yet.
The two men rode up in the elevator in silence, each immersed in his own thoughts. Taylor, obviously, was apprehensive. A delay of a vessel is always a serious matter, especially when her own officers are involved. And Grimes was sorting out his own impressions to date. This Rim Griffon was obviously not a happy ship. He could feel it—just as he could see and hear the faint yet unmistakable signs of neglect, the hints of rust and dust, the not yet anguished pleading of a machine somewhere, a fan or a pump, for lubrication. And as the elevator cage passed through the "farm" level there was a whiff of decaying vegetation; either algae vats or hydroponic tanks, or both, were overdue for cleaning out.
The elevator stopped at the captain's deck. Young Mr. Taylor led the way out of the cage, knocked diffidently at the door facing the axial shaft. It slid open. A deep voice said, "That will be all, Mr. Taylor. I'll send for you, and the other officers when I want you. And come in, please, Commodore Grimes."
Grimes entered the day cabin. Dingwall rose to meet him—a short, stocky man, his features too large, too ruddy, his eyes too brilliantly blue under a cockatoo-crest of white hair. He extended a hand, saying, "Welcome aboard, Commodore." He did not manage to make the greeting sound convincing. "Sit down, sir. The sun's not yet over the yardarm, but I can offer you coffee."
"No thank you, Captain. Later, perhaps. Mind if I smoke?" Grimes produced his battered pipe, filled and lit it. He said through the initial acid cloud, "And now, sir, what is the trouble? Your ship has been held up for far too long."
"You should have asked me that five days ago, Commodore."
"Should I?" Grimes stared at Dingwall, his gray eyes bleak. "Perhaps I should. Unfortunately I was obliged to act almost in an ambassadorial capacity after I arrived here. But now I am free to attend to the real business."
"It's my officers," blurted Dingwall.
"Yes?"
"The second mate to begin with. A bird-brained navigator if ever there was one. Can you imagine anybody, with all the aids we have today, getting lost between Stree and Mellise? He did."
"Legally speaking," said Grimes, "the master is responsible for everything. Including the navigation of his ship,"
"I navigate myself. Now."
And I can imagine it, thought Grimes. "Do I have to do everybody's bloody job in this bloody ship? Of course, I'm only the Captain. . . ." He said, "You reprimanded him, of course?"
"Darn right I did." Dingwall's voice registered pleasant reminiscence. "I told him that he was incapable of navigating a plastic duck across a bathtub."
"Hmm. And your other officers?"
"There're the engineers, Commodore. The Interstellar Drive chief hates the Inertial Drive chief. Not that I've much time for either of 'em. In fact I told Willis—he's supposed to run the Inertial Drive—that he couldn't pull a soldier off his sister. That was after I almost had to use the auxiliary rockets to get clear of Grollor—"
"And the others?"
"Vacchini, Mate. He couldn't run a pie cart. And Sally Bowen, Catering Officer, can't boil water without burning it. And Pilchin, the so-called purser, can't add two and two and get the same answer twice running. And as for Sparks . . . I'd stand a better chance of getting an important message through if I just opened a control viewport and stood there and shouted."
The officer who is to blame for all this, thought Grimes, is the doctor. He should have seen this coming on. But perhaps I'm to blame as well. Dingwall's home port is Port Forlorn, on Lorn—and his ship's been running between the worlds of the Eastern Circuit and Port Farewell, on Faraway, for the past nine standard months. And Mrs. Dingwall (Grimes had met her) is too fond of her social life to travel with him. . . .
"Don't you like the ship, Captain?" he asked.
"The ship's all right," he was told.
"But the run, as far as you're concerned, could be better."
"And the officers."
"Couldn't we all, Captain Dingwall? Couldn't we all? And now, just between ourselves, who is it that refused to sail with you?"
"My bird-brained navigator. I hurt his feelings when I called him that. A very sensitive young man is our Mr. Missenden. And the Inertial Drive chief. He's a member of some fancy religion called the Neo-Calvinists. . . ."
"I've met them," said Grimes.
"What I said about his sister and the soldier really shocked him."
"And which of them refuse to sail with each other?"
"Almost everybody has it in for the second mate. He's a Latter Day Fascist and is always trying to make converts. And the two chiefs are at each other's throats. Kerholm the Interstellar Drive specialist, is a militant atheist—"
And I was on my annual leave, thought Grimes, when this prize bunch of square pegs was appointed to this round hole. Even so, I should have checked up. I would have checked up if I hadn't gotten involved in the fun and games on Kinsolving's Planet.
"Captain," he said, "I appreciate your problems. But there are two sides to every story. Mr. Vacchini, for example, is a very efficient officer. As far as he is concerned, there could well be a clash of personalities. . . ."
"Perhaps," admitted Dingwall grudgingly.
"As for the others. I don't know them personally. If you could tell them all to meet in the wardroom in—say—five minutes, we can go down to try to iron things out."
"You can try," said the Captain. "I've had them all in a big way. And, to save you the bother of saying it, Commodore Grimes, they've had me likewise."
* * *
Grimes ironed things out. On his way from Lorn to Tharn he had studied the files of reports on the captain and his officers. Nonetheless, in other circumstances he would have been quite ruthless—but good spacemen do not grow on trees, especially out toward the Galactic Rim. And these were good spacemen, all of them, with the exception of Missenden, the second officer. He had been born on New Saxony, one of the worlds that had been part of the short-lived Duchy of Waldegren, and one of the worlds upon which the political perversions practiced upon Waldegren itself had lived on for years after the downfall of the Duchy. He had been an officer in the navy of New Saxony and had taken part in the action off Pelisande, the battle in which the heavy cruisers of the Survey Service had destroyed the last of the self-styled commerce raiders who were, in fact, no better than pirates.
There had been survivors, and Missenden had been one of them. (He owed his survival mainly to the circumstance that the ship of which he had been Navigator had been late in arriving at her rendezvous with the other New Saxony war vessels and had, in fact, surrendered after no more than a token resistance.) He had stood trial with other war criminals, but had escaped with a very light sentence. (Most of the witnesses who could have testified against him were dead.) As he had held a lieutenant commander's commission in the navy of New Saxony he had been able to obtain a Master Astronaut's Certificate after no more than the merest apology for an examination. Then he had drifted out to the Rim, where his New Saxony qualifications were valid; where, in fact, qualifications issued by any human authority anywhere in the galaxy were valid.
Grimes looked at Missenden. He did not like what he saw. He had not liked it when he first met the man, a few years ago, when he had engaged him as a probationary third officer—but then, as now, he had not been able to afford to turn spacemen away from his office door. The Second Officer was tall, with a jutting, arrogant beak of a nose over a wide, thin-lipped mouth, with blue eyes that looked even madder than Captain Dingwall's, his pale, freckled face topped by close-cropped red hair. He was a fanatic, that was obvious from his physical appearance, and in a ship where he, like everybody else, was unhappy his fanaticism would be enhanced. A lean and hungry look, thought Grimes. He thinks too much; such men are dangerous. He added mentally, But only when they think about the wrong things. The late Duke Otto's Galactic Superman, for example, rather than Pilgren's Principles of Interstellar Navigation.
He said, "Mr. Missenden . . ."
"Sir?" The curtly snapped word was almost an insult. The way in which it was said implied, "I'm according respect to your rank, not to you."
"The other officers have agreed to continue the voyage. On arrival at Port Forlorn you will all be transferred to more suitable ships, and those of you who are due will be sent on leave or time off as soon as possible. Are you agreeable?"
"No."
"And why not, Mr. Missenden?"
"I'm not prepared to make an intercontinental hop under a captain who insulted me."
"Insulted you?"
"Yes." He turned on Dingwall." Did you, or did you not, call me a bird-brained navigator?"
"I did, Mr. Missenden," snarled Captain Dingwall. "And I meant it."
"Captain," asked Grimes patiently, "are you prepared to withdraw that remark?"
"I am not, Commodore. Furthermore, as master of this ship I have the legal right to discharge any member of my crew that I see fit."
"Very well," said Grimes, "As Captain Dingwall has pointed out I can only advise and mediate. But I do possess some authority; appointments and transfers are my responsibility. Will you arrange, Captain, for Mr. Missenden to be paid, on your books, up to and including midnight, local time? Then get him off your Articles of Agreement as soon as possible, so that the second officer of Rim Dragon can be signed on here. And you, Mr, Missenden, will join Rim Dragon."
"If you say so," said Missenden, "Sir."
"I do say so. And I say, too, Mr. Missenden, that I shall see you again in my office back in Port Forlorn."
"I can hardly wait, Sir."
Captain Dingwall looked at his watch. He said, "The purser already has Mr. Missenden's payoff almost finalized. Have you made any arrangements with Captain Wenderby regarding his second officer?"
"I told him that there might be a transfer, Captain. Shall we meet at the Consul's office at 1500 hours? You probably know that he is empowered to act as shipping master insofar as our ships on Tharn are concerned."
"Yes, sir," stated Dingwall. "I know."
"You would," muttered Missenden.
* * *
The transfer of officers was nice and easy in theory—but it did not work out in practice. The purser, Grimes afterward learned, was the only person aboard Rim Griffon with whom the second officer was not on terms of acute enmity. Missenden persuaded him to arrange his pay-off for 1400 hours, not 1500. At the appointed time the purser of the Griffon was waiting in the Consul's office, and shortly afterward the purser and the second officer of Rim Dragon put in their appearance. The Dragon's second mate was paid off his old ship and signed on the Articles of his new one. But Missenden had vanished. All that Griffon's purser knew was that he had taken the money due him and said that he had a make a business call and that he would be back.
He did not come back.
* * *
Commodore Grimes was not in a happy mood. He had hoped to be a passenger aboard Rim Griffon when she lifted off from Port Grimes, but now it seemed that his departure from Tharn for the Rim Worlds would have to be indefinitely postponed. It was, of course, all Missenden's fault. Now that he had gone into smoke all sorts of unsavory facts were coming to light regarding that officer. During his ship's visits to Tharn he had made contact with various subversive elements. The Consul had not known of this—but Rim Runners' local agent, a native to the planet, had. It was the police who had told him, and he had passed the information on to Captain Dingwall. Dingwall had shrugged and growled, "What the hell else do you expect from such a drongo?" adding, "As long as I get rid of the bastard he can consort with Aldebaranian necrophiles for all I care!"
Quite suddenly, with Grimes's baggage already loaded aboard Rim Griffon, the mess had blown up to the proportions of an interstellar incident. Port Grimes's Customs refused outward clearance to the ship. The Rim Confederacy's Ambassador sent an urgent message to Grimes requiring him to disembark at once—after which the ship would be permitted to leave—and to report forthwith to the Embassy. With all this happening, Grimes was in no fit state to listen to Captain Wenderby's complaints that he had lost a first class second officer and now would have to sail shorthanded on completion of discharge.
The Ambassador's own car took Grimes from the spaceport to the Embassy. It was a large building, ornately turreted, with metal-bound doors that could have withstood the charge of a medium tank. These opened as the Commodore dismounted from the vehicle, and within them stood saluting Marines. At least, thought Grimes, they aren't going to shoot me. Yet. An aide in civilian clothes escorted him to the Ambassador's office.
The Honorable Clifton Weeks was a short, fat man with all of a short, fat man's personality. "Sit down, Commodore," he huffed. Then, glowering over his wide, highly polished desk at the spaceman. "Now, sir. This Missenden character. What about him? Hey?"
"He seems to have flown the coop," said Grimes.
"You amaze me, sir." Week's glower became even more pronounced. "You amaze me, sir. Not by what you said, but by the way in which you said it. Surely you, even you, have some appreciation of the seriousness of the situation?"
"Spacemen have deserted before, in foreign ports. Just as seamen used to do—still do, probably. The local police have his description. They'll pick him up, and deport him when they get him. And we'll deport him, too, when he's delivered back to the Confederacy."
"And you still don't think it's serious? Hey?"
"Frankly, no, sir."
"Commodore, you made the first landing on this planet. But what do you know about it? Nothing, sir. Nothing. You haven't lived here. I have. I know that the Confederacy will have to fight to maintain the currently favorable trade relations that we still enjoy with Tharn. Already other astronautical powers are sniffing around the worlds of the Eastern Circuit."
"During the last six months, local time," said Grimes, "three of the Empire of Waverley's ships have called here. And two from the Shakespearean Sector. And one of Trans-Galactic Clippers' cargo liners. But, as far as the rulers of Tharn are concerned, the Confederacy is still the most favored nation."
"Who are the rulers of Tharn?" barked the Ambassador.
"Why, the priesthood."
The Ambassador mumbled something about the political illiteracy of spacemen, then got to his feet. He waddled to the far wall of his office, on which was hung a huge map of the planet in Mercator projection, beckoned to Grimes to follow him. From a rack he took a long pointer. "The island continent of Ausiphal . . ." he said, "And here, on the eastern seaboard, Port Grimes, and University City. Where we are now."
"Yes. . . ."
The tip of the pointer described a rhumb line, almost due east. "The other island continent of the northern hemisphere, almost the twin to this one. Climatically, politically—you name it."
"Yes?"
The pointer backtracked, then stabbed viciously. "And here, well to the west of Braziperu, the island of Tangaroa. Not a continent, but still a sizable hunk of real estate."
"So?"
"So Tangaroa's the last stronghold of the robber barons, the ruffians who were struggling for power with the priests and merchants when you made your famous first landing. How many years ago was it? Hey?"
"But what's that to do with Mr. Missenden?" Grimes asked. "And me?" he added.
"Your Mr. Missenden," the Ambassador said, "served in the navy of New Saxony. The people with whom he's been mixing in University City are Tangaroan agents and sympathizers. The priesthood has allowed Tangaroa to continue to exist—in fact, there's even trade between it and Ausiphal—but has been reluctant to allow the Tangaroans access to any new knowledge, especially knowledge that could be perverted to the manufacture of weaponry. Your Mr. Missenden would be a veritable treasure house of such knowledge."
"He's not my Mr. Missenden!" snapped Grimes.
"But he is, sir. He is. You engaged him when he came out to the Rim. You appointed him to ships running the Eastern Circuit. You engineered his discharge on this world, even."
"So what am I supposed to do about him?"
"Find him, before he does any real damage. And if you, the man after whom the spaceport was named, are successful it will show the High Priest just how much we of the Confederacy have the welfare of Tharn at heart."
"But why me? These people have a very efficient police force. And a man with a pale, freckled face and red hair will stand out like a sore thumb among the natives."
The Honorable Mr. Weeks laughed scornfully. "Green skin dye! Dark blue hair dye! Contact lenses! And, on top of all that, a physical appearance that's common on this planet!"
"Yes," admitted Grimes. "I might recognize him, in spite of a disguise. . . ."
"Good. My car is waiting to take you to the High Priest."
* * *
The University stood on a rise to the east of the city, overlooking the broad river and, a few miles to the north, the sea. It looked more like a fortress than a seat of learning, and in Tharn's turbulent past it had, more than once, been castle rather than academy.
Grimes respected the Tharnian priesthood, and the religion that they preached and practiced made sense to him than most of the other faiths of Man. There was something of Buddhism about it, a recognition of the fact that nothing is, but that everything is flux, change, a continual process of becoming. There was the equation of God with Knowledge—but never that infuriating statement made by so many Terran religions, that smug. "There are things that we aren't meant to know." There was a very real wisdom—the wisdom that accepts and rejects, and that neither accepts nor rejects just because a concept is new. There was a reluctance to rush headlong into an industrial revolution with all its miseries; and, at the same time, no delay in the adoption of techniques that would make the life of the people longer, easier and happier.
Night had fallen when the Embassy car pulled up outside the great gates of the University. The guard turned out smartly—but in these days their function was merely ceremonial; no longer was there the need to keep either the students in or the townsfolk out. On all of Tharn—save for Tangarora—the robber barons were only an evil memory of the past.
A black-uniformed officer led Grimes through long corridors, lit by bright electric bulbs, and up stairways to the office of the High Priest. He, an elderly, black-robed man, frail, his skin darkened by age to an opaque olive, had been a young student at the time of the first landing. He claimed to have met the Commodore on that occasion, but Grimes could not remember him. But he was almost the double of the old man who had held the high office then—a clear example of the job making the man.
"Commodore Grimes," he said. "Please be seated."
"Thank you, your Wisdom."
"I am sorry to have interfered with your plans, sir. But your Mr. Weeks insisted."
"He assured me that it was important."
"And he has . . . put you in the picture?"
"Yes."
The old man produced a decanter, two graceful glasses. He poured the wine. Grimes relaxed. He remembered that the Tharnian priesthood made a point of never drinking with anybody whom they considered an enemy, with nobody who was not a friend in the true sense of the word. There was no toast, only a ceremonial raising of goblets. The liquor was good, as it always had been.
"What can I do?" asked Grimes.
The priest shrugged. "Very little. I told Mr. Weeks that our own police were quite capable of handling the situation, but he said, 'It's his mess. He should have his nose rubbed in it.' " The old man's teeth were very white in his dark face as he smiled.
"Tales out of school, your Wisdom." Grimes grinned. "Now I'll tell one. Mr. Weeks doesn't like spacemen. A few years ago his wife made a cruise in one of the T-G clippers—and, when the divorce came though, married the chief officer of the liner she traveled in."
The High Priest laughed. "That accounts for it. But I shall enjoy your company for the few weeks that you will have to stay on Tharn. I shall tell my people to bring your baggage from the Embassy to the University."
"That is very good of you." Grimes took another sip of the strong wine. "But I think that since I'm here I shall help in the search for Mr. Missenden. After all, he is still officially one of our nationals."
"As you please, Commodore. Tell me, if you were in charge how would you set about it?"
Grimes lapsed into silence. He looked around the office. All of the walls were covered with books, save one, and on it hung another of those big maps. He said, "He'll have to get out by sea, of course."
"Of course. We have no commercial airship service to Tangaroa, and the Tangaroans have no commerical airship service at all."
"And you have no submarines yet, and your aerial coast guard patrol will keep you informed as to the movements of all surface vessels. So he will have to make his getaway in a merchant vessel. . . . Would you know if there are any Tangaroan merchantmen in port?"
"I would know. There is one—the Kawaroa. She is loading textiles and agricultural machinery."
"Could she be held?"
"On what excuse, Commodore? The Tangaroans are very touchy people, and if the ship is detained their consul will at once send off a radio message to his government."
"A very touchy people, you say . . . and arrogant. And quarrelsome. Now, just suppose that there's a good, old-fashioned tavern brawl, as a result of which the master and his officers are all arrested. . . ."
"It's the sort of thing that could easily happen. It has happened, more than once."
"Just prior to sailing, shall we say? And then, with the ship immobilized, with only rather dim-witted ratings to try to hinder us, we make a thorough search—accommodations, holds, machinery spaces, storerooms, the works."
"The suggestion has its merits."
"The only snag," admitted Grimes, "is that it's very unlikely that the master and all three of his mates will rush ashore for a quick one just before sailing."
"But they always do," said the High Priest.
* * *
As they always had done, they did.
Grimes watched proceedings from the innkeeper's cubbyhole, a little compartment just above the main barroom with cunning peepholes in its floor. He would have preferred to have been among the crowd of seamen, fishermen and watersiders, but his rugged face was too well known on Tharn, and no amount of hair and skin dye could have disguised him. He watched the four burly, blue- and brass-clad men breasting the bar, drinking by themselves, tossing down pot after pot of the strong ale. He saw the fat girl whose dyed yellow hair was in vivid contrast to her green skin nuzzle up to the man who was obviously the Tangaroan captain. He wanted none of her—and Grimes sympathized with him. Even from his elevated vantage point he could see that her exposed overblown breasts were sagging, that what little there was of her dress was stained and bedraggled. But the man need not have brushed her away so brutally. She squawked like an indignant parrot as she fell sprawling to the floor with a display of fat, unlovely legs.
One of the other drinkers—a fisherman by the looks of him—came to the aid of beauty in distress. Or perhaps it was only that he was annoyed because the woman, in her fall, had jostled him, spilling his drink. Or, even more likely, he was, like the woman, one of the High Priest's agents. If such was the case, he seemed to be enjoying his work. His huge left hand grasped the captain's shoulder, turning him and holding him, and then right fist and left knee worked in unison. It was dirty, but effective.
After that, as Grimes said later, telling about it, it was on for young and old. The three mates, swinging their heavy metal drinking pots, rallied to the defense of their master. The fisherman picked up a heavy stool to use as his weapon. The woman, who had scrambled to her feet with amazing agility for one of her bulk, sailed into the fray, fell to a crouching posture, straightening abruptly, and one of the Tangaroan officers went sailing over her head as though rocket-propelled, crashing down on to a table at which three watersiders had been enjoying a quiet, peaceful drink. They, roaring their displeasure, fell upon the hapless foreigner with fists and feet.
The police officer with Grimes—his English was not too good—said, "Pity break up good fight. But must arrest very soon."
"You'd better," the Commodore told him. "Some of your people down there are pulling knives."
Yes, knives were out, gleaming wickedly in the lamplight. Knives were out, but the Tangaroans—with the exception of the victim of the lady and her stevedoring friends—had managed to retreat to a corner and there were fighting off all comers, although the captain, propped against the wall, was playing no great part in the proceedings. Like the fisherman, the two officers had picked up stools, were using them as both shields and weapons, deflecting flung pots and bottles with them, smashing them down on the heads and arms of their assailants.
The captain was recovering slowly. His hand went up to fumble inside the front of his coat. It came out, holding something that gleamed evilly—a pistol. But he fired it only once, and harmlessly. The weapon went off as his finger tightened on the trigger quite involuntarily, as the knife thrown by the yellow-haired slattern pinned his wrist to the wall.
And then the place was full of University police, tough men in black tunics who used their clubs quite indiscriminately and herded all those present out into the waiting trucks.
Quietly, Grimes and the police officer left their observation post and went down the back stairs. Outside the inn they were joined by twelve men—six police and six customs officials, used to searching ships. Their heels ringing on the damp cobblestones, they made their way through the misty night to the riverside, to the quays.
* * *
Kawaroa was ready for sea, awaiting only the pilot and, of course, her master and officers. Her derricks were stowed, her moorings had been singled up, and a feather of smoke from her tall, raked funnel showed that steam had been raised. She was not a big ship, but she looked smart, well maintained, seaworthy.
As Grimes and his party approached the vessel they saw that somebody had got there ahead of them, a dark figure who clattered hastily up the gangway. But there was no cause for hurry. The ship, with all her navigating officers either in jail or in the hospital, would not be sailing, and the harbor master had already been told not to send a pilot down to take her out.
There was no cause for hurry. . . .
But what was that jangling of bells, loud and disturbing in the still night? The engine room telegraph? The routine testing of gear one hour before the time set for departure?
And what were those men doing, scurrying along to foc'sle head and poop?
Grimes broke into a run, and as he did so he heard somebody shouting from Kawaroa's bridge. The language was unfamiliar, but the voice was not. It was Missenden's. From forward there was a thunk! and then a splash as the end of the severed headline fell into the still water. The last of the flood caught the ship's bows and she fell away from the wharf. With the police and customs officers, who had belatedly realized what was happening, well behind him, Grimes reached the edge of the quay. It was all of five feet to the end of the still-dangling gangway and the gap was rapidly widening. Without thinking. Grimes jumped. Had he known that nobody would follow him he would never have done so. But he jumped, and his desperate fingers closed around the outboard man-ropes of the accommodation ladder and somehow, paying a heavy toll of abrasions and lacerations, he was able to squirm upward until he was kneeling on the bottom platform. Dimly he was aware of shouts from the fast receding dock. Again he heard the engine room telegraph bells, and felt the vibration as the screw began to turn. So the after lines had been cut, too, and the ship was under way. And it was—he remembered the charts that he had looked at—a straight run down river with absolutely no need for local knowledge. From above sounded a single, derisory blast from Kawaroa's steam whistle.
Grimes was tempted to drop from his perch, to swim back ashore. But he knew too much; he had always been a student of maritime history in all its aspects. He knew that a man going overboard from a ship making way through the water stands a very good chance of being pulled under and then cut to pieces by the screw. In any case, he had said that he would find Missenden, and he had done just that.
Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself erect, then walked up the clattering treads to deck level.
* * *
There was nobody on deck to receive him. This was not surprising; Missenden and the crew must have been too engrossed in getting away from the wharf to notice his pierhead jump. So . . . He was standing in an alleyway, open on the port side. Looking out, he saw the harbor lights sliding past, and ahead and to port there was the white-flashing fairway buoy, already dim, but from mist rather than distance. Inboard there was a varnished wooden door set in the white-painted plating of the 'midships house, obviously the entrance to the accommodation. Grimes opened it without difficulty—door handles will be invented and used by any being approximating to human structure. Inside there was a cross alleyway, brightly illuminated by electric light bulbs in well fittings. On the after bulkhead of this there was a steel door, and the mechanical hum and whine that came from behind it told Grimes that it led to the engine room. On the forward bulkhead there was another wooden door.
Grimes went through it. Another alleyway, cabins, and a companionway leading upward. At the top of this there were more cabins, and another companionway. And at the top of this . . . the captain's accommodation, obviously, even though the word on the tally over the door was no more than a meaningless squiggle to Grimes.
One more companionway—this one with a functional handrail instead of a relatively ornate balustrade. At the head of it was a curtained doorway. Grimes pushed through the heavy drape, found himself in what could only be the chart room, looked briefly at the wide chart table upon which was a plan of the harbor, together with a pair of dividers and a set of parallel rulers. The Confederacy, he remembered, had at one time exported quite large consignments of these instruments to Tharn.
On the forward bulkhead of the chart room, and to port, was the doorway leading out to the wheelhouse and bridge. Softly, Grimes stepped through it, out into the near-darkness. The only light was that showing from the compass periscope, the device that enabled the helmsman to steer by the standard magnetic compass, the binnacle of which was sited up yet one more deck, on what had been called on Earth's surface ships the "monkey island." There was the man at the wheel, intent upon his job. And there, at the fore end of the wheelhouse, were two dark figures, looking out through the wide windows. One of them, the taller one, turned suddenly, said something in Tangaroan. As before, the voice was familiar but the language was not.
The question—intonation made that plain—was repeated, and then Missenden said in English, "It's you! How the hell did you get aboard? Hold it, Commodore, hold it!" There was just enough light for Grimes to see the pistol that was pointing at his midriff.
"Turn this ship around," ordered Grimes, "and take her back into port."
"Not a chance." Missenden laughed. "Especially when I've gone to all the trouble to taking her out of port. Pity old Dingwall wasn't here to see it. Not bad, was it, for a bird-brained navigator? And keep your hands up where I can see them."
"I'm unarmed," said Grimes.
"I've only your word for it," Missenden told him. Then he said something to his companion, who replied in what, in happier circumstances, would have been a very pleasant contralto. The girl produced a mouth whistle, blew a piercing blast. In seconds two burly seamen appeared on the bridge. They grabbed Grimes and held him tightly while she ran practiced hands over his clothing. It was not the first time that she had searched a man for weapons. Then they dragged him below, unlocked a steel door and threw him into the tiny compartment beyond it. The heavily barred port made it obvious that it was the ship's brig.
* * *
They locked him in and left him there.
Grimes examined his surroundings by the light of the single dim bulb. Deck, deckhead and bulkheads were all of steel—but had they been of plyboard it would have made no difference: that blasted girl had taken from him the only possession that could possibly have been used as a weapon, his pocketknife. There was a steel-framed bunk, with a thin mattress and one sleazy blanket. There was a stained washbasin, and a single faucet which, when persuaded, emitted a trickle of rusty water. There was a bucket—plastic, not metal. Still, it could have been worse. He could sleep, perhaps, and he would not die of thirst. Fully clothed, he lay down on the bunk. He realized that he was physically tired; his desperate leap for the gangway had taken something out of him. And the ship was moving gently now, a slight, soporific roll, and the steady hum and vibration of the turbines helped further to induce slumber. There was nothing he could do, absolutely nothing, and to lose valuable sleep by useless worry would have been foolish. He slept.
It was the girl who awakened him.
She stood there, bending over him, shaking his shoulder. When he stirred she stepped sharply back. She was holding a pistol, a revolver of Terran design if not manufacture, and she looked as though she knew how to use it; and she was one of those women whose beauty is somehow accentuated by juxtaposition to lethal ironmongery. Yes, she was an attractive wench, with her greenish, translucent skin that did not look at all odd, with her fine, strong features, with her sleek, short-cut blue hair, and her slim yet rounded figure that even the rough uniform could not hide. She was an officer of some sort, although what the silver braid on the sleeves of her tunic signified Grimes could not guess. Not that he felt in the mood for guessing games; he was too conscious of his own unshaven scruffiness, of the aches and pains resulting from his athletics of the previous night and from the hardness of the mattress.
She said, in fair enough English, "Your Mr. Missenden would see you."
"He's not my Mr. Missenden," replied Grimes testily. Why did everybody ascribe to him the ownership of the late second officer of Rim Dragon?
"Come," she said, making an upward jerking motion of the pistol barrel.
"All right," grumbled Grimes. "All right."
He rolled off the narrow bunk, staggered slightly as he made his way to the washbasin. He splashed water over his face, drank some from his cupped hands. There was no towel. He made do with his handkerchief. As he was drying himself he saw that the door was open and that a seaman was standing beyond it. Any thoughts that he had entertained of jumping the girl and seizing her gun—if he could—evaporated.
"Follow that man," she ordered. "I will follow you."
Grimes followed the man, through alleyways and up companionways. They came at last to the bridge. Missenden was there, striding briskly back and forth as though he had been at sea all his life. In the wheelhouse the helmsman was intent on his own task. Grimes noted that the standard compass periscope had been withdrawn and that the man was concentrating upon the binnacle housing the ocean passage compass. So they still used that system. But why shouldn't they? It was a good one. He looked out to the sea, up to the sky. The morning was calm, but the sun was hidden by a thick, anti-cyclonic overcast. The surface of the sea was only slightly ruffled and there was a low, confused swell.
"Missenden," called the girl.
Missenden stopped his pacing, walked slowly to the wheelhouse. With his dyed hair and skin he looked like a Tharnian, a Tangaroan, and in his borrowed uniform he looked like a seaman. He also looked very pleased with himself.
"Ah, Commodore," he said, "welcome aboard. You've met Miss Ellevie, I think. Our radio officer."
"You'd better tell Miss Ellevie to send a message to the High Priest for me, Mr. Missenden."
Missenden laughed harshly. "I'll say this for you, Commodore, you do keep on trying. Why not accept the inevitable? You're in Tangaroan hands; in fact you put yourself in their—our—hands. The Council of Barons has already been informed, and they have told me that they want you alive. If possible."
"Why?" asked Grimes bluntly.
"Use your loaf, Commodore. First, it's possible that we may be able to persuade you to press for the establishment of trade relations between the Confederacy and Tangaroa. You do pile on quite a few G's in this sector of the galaxy, you know. Or should I say that you do draw a lot of water? And if you play, it could be well worth your while."
"And if I don't play?"
"Then we shall be willing to sell you back to your lords and masters. At a fair price of course. A squadron of armed atmosphere fliers? Laser weapons? Missiles with nuclear warheads?"
"That's for your lords and masters to decide."
Missenden flushed and the effect, with his green-dyed skin, was an odd one. He said to the girl, "That will do, Ellevie. I'll let you know when I want you again." He walked out to the wing of the bridge, beckoning Grimes to follow. When he turned to face the Commodore he was holding a pistol in his right hand.
He said, "Don't try anything. When I was in the navy of New Saxony I was expert in the use of hand guns of all descriptions. But I'd like a private talk. Ellevie knows English, so I sent her below. The man at the wheel may have a smattering, but he won't overhear from where we are now."
"Well?" asked Grimes coldly.
"We're both Earthmen."
"I am, Mr. Missenden."
"And I am, by ancestry. These Tharnians are an inferior breed, but if they see that you can be humiliated—"
"—they'll realize that you aren't the Galactic Superman you set yourself up to be."
Missenden ignored this, but with an effort. He said, "My position in this ship is rather . . . precarious. The crew doesn't trust me. I'm captain, yes—but only because I'm the only man on board who can navigate."
"But can you?"
"Yes, damn you! I've read the textbooks—it was all the bastards gave me to read when I was holed up down in the secret compartment. And anybody who can navigate a starship can navigate one of these hookers! Anyhow . . . anyhow, Commodore, it will be better for both of us if we maintain the pretense that you are a guest rather than a prisoner. But I must have your parole."
"My parole? What can I do?"
"I've heard stories about you."
"Have you? Very well, then, what about this? I give you my word not to attempt to seize the ship."
"Good. But not good enough. Will you also give your word not to signal, by any means, to aircraft or surface vessels?"
"Yes," agreed Grimes after a short hesitation.
"And your word not to interfere, in any way, with the ship's signaling equipment?"
"Yes."
"Then, Commodore, I feel that we may enjoy quite a pleasant cruise. I can't take you down yet; I relieved the lookout for his breakfast. You'll appreciate that we're rather shorthanded—as well as the Old Man and the three mates half the deck crew was left ashore, and two of the engineers. I can't be up here all the time, but I do have to be here a lot. And the lookouts have orders to call me at once if they sight another ship or an aircraft."
"And, as you say, you're the only navigator." The only human navigator, Grimes amended mentally.
The lookout came back to the bridge then, and Missenden took Grimes down to what was to be his cabin. It was a spare room, with its own attached toilet facilities, on the same deck as the captain's suite, which, of course, was now occupied by Missenden. It was comfortable, and the shower worked, and there was even a tube of imported depilatory cream for Grimes to use. After he had cleaned up he accompanied Missenden down to the saloon, a rather gloomy place paneled in dark, unpolished timber. Ellevie was already seated at one end of the long table, and halfway along it was an officer who had to be an engineer. Missenden took his seat at the head of the board, motioned to Grimes to sit at the right. A steward brought in cups and a pot of some steaming, aromatic brew, returning with what looked like two deep plates of fish stew.
But it wasn't bad and, in any case, it was all that there was.
* * *
After the meal Missenden returned to the bridge. Grimes accompanied him, followed him into the chart room, where he started to potter with the things on the chart table. Grimes looked at the chart—a small-scale oceanic one. He noted that the Great Circle track was penciled on it, that neat crosses marked the plotting of dead reckoning positions at four hourly intervals. He looked from it to the ticking log clock on the forward bulkhead. He asked, "This submerged log of yours—does it run fast or slow?"
"I . . . I don't know, Commodore. But if the sky clears and I get some sights I'll soon find out."
"You think you'll be able to?"
"Yes. I've always been good with languages, and I've picked up enough Tangaroan to be able to find my way through the ephemeris and reduction tables."
"Hmm." Grimes looked at the aneroid barometer—another import. It was still high. With any luck at all the anti-cyclonic gloom would persist for the entire passage. In any case, he doubted if Missenden's first attempt to obtain a fix with sextant and chronometer would be successful.
He asked, "Do you mind if I have a look around the ship? As you know, I'm something of an authority on the history of marine transport."
"I do mind!" snapped Missenden. Then he laughed abruptly. "But what could you do? Even if you hadn't given your parole, what could you do? All the same, I'll send Ellevie with you. And I warn you, that girl is liable to be trigger happy."
"Have you known her long?"
Missenden scowled. "Too long. She's the main reason why I'm here."
Yes, thought Grimes, the radio officer of a merchant vessel is well qualified for secret service work, and when the radio officer is also an attractive woman . . . He felt sorry for Missenden, but only briefly. He'd had his fun; now he was paying for it.
Missenden went down with Grimes to the officers' quarters, found Ellevie in her room. She got up from her chair without any great enthusiasm, took a revolver from a drawer in her desk, thrust it into the side pocket of her tunic.
"I'll go now," said Missenden.
"All right," she answered in a flat voice. Then, to Grimes, "What you want to see?"
"I was on this world years ago," he told her.
"I know."
"And I was particularly impressed by the . . . the ocean passage compasses you had, even then, in your ships. Of course, it was all sail in those days."
"Were you?"
Grimes started pouring on the charm. "No other race in the galaxy has invented such ingenious instruments."
"No?" She was beginning to show a flicker of interest. "And did you know, Commodore Grimes, that it was not a wonderful priest who made the first one? No. It was not. It was a Baron Lennardi, one of my ancestors. He was—how do you put it? A man who hunts with birds?"
"A falconer."
"A falconer?" she repeated dubiously. "No matter. He had never been to the University, but he had clever artisans in his castle. His brother, whom he loved, was a—how do you say sea raider?"
"A pirate."
She took a key from a hook by the side of her desk. "Second Mate looks after compass," she said. "But Second Mate not here. So I do everything."
She led the way out into the alleyway, then to a locked door at the forward end of the officers' accommodation, to a room exactly on the center line of the ship, directly below the wheelhouse. She unlocked and opened the door, hooked it back. From inside came an ammonia-like odor. In the center of the deck was a cage, and in the cage was a bird—a big, ugly creature, dull gray in color, with ruffled plumage. It was obvious that its wings had been brutally amputated rather than merely clipped. Its almost globular body was imprisoned in a metallic harness, and from this cage within a cage a thin yet rigid shaft ran directly upward, through the deckhead and, Grimes knew, through a casing in the master's day cabin and, finally, to the card of the ocean passage compass. As Grimes watched, Ellevie took a bottle of water from a rack, poured some into the little trough that formed part of the harness. Then from a box she took a spoonful of some stinking brown powder, added it to the water. The bird ignored her. It seemed to be looking at something, for something, something beyond the steel bulkhead that was its only horizon, something beyond the real horizon that lay forward and outside of the metal wall. Its scaly feet scrabbled on the deck as it made a minor adjustment of course.
And it—or its forebears—had been the only compasses when Grimes had first come to this planet. Even though the Earthmen had introduced the magnetic compass and the gyro compass, this was still the most efficient for an ocean passage.
Cruelty to animals is penalized only when commerical interests are not involved.
"And your spares?" asked Grimes.
"Homeward spare—right forward," she told him. "Ausiphal compass and one spare—right aft."
"So you don't get them mixed?" he suggested. She smiled contemptuously. "No danger of that." "Can I see them?"
"Why not? May as well feed them now."
She almost pushed Grimes out of the master compass room, followed him and locked the door. She led the way to the poop, but Grimes noticed that a couple of unpleasant looking seamen tailed after him. Even though the word had been passed that he had given his parole he was not trusted.
The Ausiphal birds were in a cage in the poop house. As was the case with the Tangaroa birds, their wings had been amputated. Both of them were staring dejectedly directly astern. And both of them (even though dull and ruffled their plumage glowed with gold and scarlet) were females.
Grimes followed Ellevie into the cage, the door to which was at the forward end of the structure. He made a pretense of watching interestedly as she doled out the water and the odoriferous powder—and picked up two golden tail feathers from the filthy deck. She straightened and turned abruptly. "What you want those for?"
"Flies," he lied inspiredly, "Dry flies."
"Flies?"
"They're artificial lures, actually. Bait. Used for fishing."
"Nets," she stated. "Or explosives."
"Not for sport. We use a rod, and a line on the end of it, and the hook and the bait on the end of that. Fishermen are always experimenting with different baits. . . ."
The suspicion faded from her face. "Yes, I remember. Missenden gave me a book—a magazine? It was all about outdoor sports. But this fishing . . . Crazy!"
"Other people have said it, too. But I'd just like to see what sort of flies I can tie with these feathers when I get home."
"If you get home," she said nastily.
* * *
Back in his cabin, Grimes went over mentally what he had learned about the homers, which was as good a translation as any of their native name, during his visit to Tharn. They were land birds, but fared far out to sea in search of their food, which was fish. They always found their way back to their nests, even when blown thousands of miles away by severe storms, their powers of endurance being phenomenal. Also, whenever hurt or frightened, they headed unerringly for home—by the shortest possible route, which was a Great Circle course.
Used as master compasses, they kept the arrowhead on the card of the steering compass pointed directly toward wherever it was that they had been born—even when that was a breeding pen in one of the seaport towns. On a Mercator chart the track would be a curve, and according to a magnetic or a gyrocompass the ship would be continually changing course; but on a globe a Great Circle is the shortest distance between two points.
Only one instinct did they possess that was more powerful, more overriding than the homing instinct.
The sex instinct.
* * *
Grimes had given his word. Grimes had promised not to do certain things—and those things, he knew, were beyond his present capabilities in any case. But Grimes, as one disgruntled Rim Runners' captain had once remarked, was a stubborn old bastard. And Grimes, as the Admiral commanding the navy of the Rim Worlds Confederacy had once remarked, was a cunning old bastard. Sonya, his wife, had laughed when told of these two descriptions of her husband, and had laughed still louder when he had said plaintively that he didn't like to be called old.
Nonetheless, he was getting past the age for cloak and dagger work, mutiny on the high seas and all the rest of it. But he could still use his brains.
Kawaroa's shorthandedness was a help. If the ship had been normally manned he would have found it hard, if not impossible, to carry out his plan. But, insofar as the officers were concerned, the two engineers were on alternate watches, and off-duty hours would be spent catching up on lost sleep. That left Ellevie—but she had watches to keep, and one of these two hour stretches of duty coincided with and overlapped evening twilight. Missenden was not a watchkeeper, but he was, as he was always saying, the only navigator, and on this evening there seemed to be the possibility of breaks appearing in the overcast. There had been one or two during the day, but never where the sun happened to be. And insofar as evening stars were concerned out here on the Rim, there were very, very few. On a clear evening there would have been three, and three only, suitably placed for obtaining a fix. On this night the odds were against even one of the three appearing in a rift in the clouds before the horizon was gone.
Anyhow, there was Missenden, on the bridge, sextant in hand, the lid of the chronometer box in the chart room open, making an occasional gallop from one wing to the other when it seemed that a star might make a fleeting appearance. Grimes asked if he might help, if he could take the navigator's times for him. Missenden said no, adding that the wrong times would be no help at all. Grimes looked hurt, went down to the boat deck, strolled aft. The radio shack was abaft the funnel. He looked in, just to make sure that Ellevie was there. She was, and she was tapping out a message to somebody. Grimes tried to read it—then realized that even if the code was Morse the text would be in Tangaroan.
He went down to the officers' deck. All lights, with the exception of the dim police bulbs in the alleyways, were out. From one of the cabins came the sound of snoring. He found Ellevie's room without any trouble; he had been careful to memorize the squiggle over her door that meant Radio Officer. He walked to the desk, put his hand along the side of it. Yes, the key was there. Or a key. But it was the only one. He lifted it from its hook, stepped back into the alleyway, made his way forward.
Yes, it was the right key. He opened the door, shut it behind him, then groped for the light switch. The maimed, ugly bird ignored him; it was still straining at its harness, still scrabbling now and again at the deck as it made some infinitesimal adjustment of course. It ignored him—until he pulled one of the female's tail features from his pocket. It squawked loudly then, its head turning on its neck to point at the potent new attraction, its clumsy body straining to follow. But Grimes was quick. His arm, his hand holding the feather shot out, steadied over the brass strip let into the deck that marked the ship's center line. But it had been close, and he had been stupid. The man at the wheel would have noticed if the compass card had suddenly swung a full ninety degrees to starboard—and even Missenden would have noticed if the ship had followed suit. (And would he notice the discrepancies between magnetic compass and ocean passage compass? Did he ever compare compasses? Probably not. According to Captain Dingwall he was the sort of navigator who takes far too much for granted.)
Grimes, before Missenden had ordered him off the bridge, had been able to study the chart. He assumed—he had to assume—that the dead reckoning position was reasonably accurate. In that case, if the ship flew off at a tangent, as it were, from her Great Circle, if she followed a rhumb line, she would miss the north coast of Tangaroa by all of a hundred miles. And if she missed that coast, another day's steaming would bring her into the territorial waters of Braziperu. There was probably some sort of coastal patrol, and even though surface and airships would not be looking for Kawaroa her description would have been sent out.
The rack containing water and food containers was on the forward bulkhead of the master compass room. It was secured to the plating with screws, and between wood and metal there was a gap. Grimes pushed the quill of the feather into this crack, being careful to keep it exactly over the brass lubber's line. He remembered that the male homer had paid no attention to the not-so-artificial lure until he pulled it out of his pocket. Had his own body odor masked the smell of it? Was there a smell, or was it some more subtle emanation? He had learned once that the male birds must be kept beyond a certain distance from the females, no matter what intervened in the way of decks or bulkheads. So . . . ? His own masculine aura . . . ? The fact that he had put the feathers in the pocket that he usually kept his pipe in . . . ?
He decided to leave the merest tip of the feather showing, nonetheless. He had noted that Ellevie went through her master compass tending routine with a certain lack of enthusiasm; probably she would think that the tiny touch of gold was just another rust speck on the paintwork.
He waited in the foul-smelling compartment for what seemed like far too long a time. But he had to be sure. He decided, at last, that his scheme was working. Before the planting of the feather the maimed bird had been shifting to starboard, the merest fraction of a degree at a time, continually. Now it was motionless, just straining at its harness.
Grimes put out the light, let himself out, locked up, then returned the key to Ellevie's cabin. He went back up to the bridge, looked into the chart room. It seemed that Missenden had been able to take one star, but that his sums were refusing to come out right.
* * *
The voyage wore on. It was not a happy one, especially for Grimes. There was nothing to read, and nobody to talk to except Missenden and Ellevie—and the former was all too prone to propagandize on behalf of the Galactic Superman, while the latter treated Grimes with contempt. He was pleased to note, however, that they seemed to be getting on each other's nerves. The honeymoon, such as it had been, was almost over.
The voyage wore on. No other ships were sighted, and the heavily clouded weather persisted. Once or twice the sun showed through, and once Missenden was able to obtain a sight, to work out a position line. It was very useful as a check of distance run, being almost at right angles to the course line.
"We shall," announced Missenden proudly, "make our landfall tomorrow forenoon."
"Are you sure?" asked Grimes mildly.
"Of course I'm sure." He prodded with the points of his dividers at the chart. "Look! Within five miles of the D.R."
"Mphm," grunted Grimes.
"Cheer up, Commodore! As long as you play ball with the barons they won't boil you in oil. All you have to do is be reasonable."
"I'm always reasonable," said Grimes. "The trouble is that too many other people aren't."
The other man laughed. "We'll see what the Council of Barons has to say about that. I don't bear you any malice—well, not much—but I hope I'm allowed to watch when they bring you around to their way of thinking."
"I hope you never have the pleasure," snapped Grimes, going below to his cabin.
The trouble was that he was not sure. Tomorrow might be arrival day at Port Paraparam on Tangaroa. It might be. It might not. If he started taking too much interest in the navigation of the ship—if, for example, he took it upon himself to compare compasses—his captors would at once smell a rat. He recalled twentieth century sea stories he had read, yarns in which people, either goodies or baddies, had thrown ships off course by hiding an extra magnet in the vicinity of the steering compass binnacle. Those old bastards had it easy, he thought. Magnetism is straightforward; it's not like playing around with the tail feathers of a stupid bird.
He did not sleep well that night, and was up on bridge before breakfast, with Missenden. Through a pair of binoculars he scanned the horizon, but there was nothing there, no distant peaks in silhouette against the pale morning sky.
The two men were up on the bridge again after breakfast. Still there was nothing ahead but sea and sky. Missenden was beginning to look worried—and Grimes's spirits had started to rise. Neither of them went down for the midday meal, and it was significant that the steward did not come up to ask if they wanted anything. There was something in the atmosphere of the ship that was ugly, threatening. The watches—helmsmen and lookouts—were becoming increasingly surly.
"I shall stand on," announced Missenden that evening. "I shall stand on. The coast is well lit, and this ship has a good echometer."
"But no radar," said Grimes.
"And whose fault is that?" flared the other. "Your blasted pet priests'. They say that they won't introduce radar until it can be manufactured locally!"
"There are such things as balance of trade to consider," Grimes told him.
"Balance of trade!" He made it sound like an obscenity. Then: "But I can't understand what went wrong . . . the dead reckoning . . . my observed position . . ."
"The log could be running fast. And what about set? Come to that, did you allow for accumulated chronometer error?"
"Of course. In any case, we've been getting radio time signals."
"Are you sure that you used the right date in the ephemeris?"
"Commodore Grimes, as I told you before, I'm a good linguist. I can read Tangaroan almost as well as I can read English."
"What about index error on that sextant you were using?"
"We stand on," said Missenden stubbornly.
Grimes went down to his cabin. He shut the door and shot the securing bolt. He didn't like the way the crew was looking at the two Earthmen.
* * *
Morning came, and still no land.
The next morning came, and the next. The crew was becoming mutinous. To Missenden's troubles—and he was, by now, ragged from lack of sleep—were added a shortage of fresh water, the impending exhaustion of oil fuel. But he stood on stubbornly. He wore two holstered revolvers all the time, and the ship's other firearms were locked in the strong room. And what about the one that Ellevie had been waving around? wondered Grimes.
He stood on—and then, late in the afternoon, the first dark peak was faintly visible against the dark, clouded sky. Missenden rushed into the chart room, came back out. "Mount Rangararo!" he declared.
"Doesn't look like it," said Ellevie, who had come on to the bridge.
"It must be." A great weight seemed to have fallen from his shoulders. "What do you make of it, Commodore?"
"It's land," admitted Grimes.
"Of course it's land! And look! There on the starboard bow! A ship. A cruiser. Come to escort us in."
He snapped orders, and Kawaroa's ensign was run up to the gaff, the black mailed fist on the scarlet ground. The warship, passing on their starboard beam, was too far distant for them to see her colors. She turned, reduced speed, steered a converging course.
The dull boom of her cannon came a long while after the flash of orange flame from her forward turret. Ahead of Kawaroa the exploding shell threw up a great fountain of spray. It was Grimes who ran to the engine room telegraph and rang Stop. It was Ellevie who, dropping her binoculars to the deck, cried, "A Braziperuan ship!" Then she pulled her revolver from her pocket and aimed it at Missenden, yelling, "Terry traitor!" Unluckily for her she was standing just in front of Grimes, who felled her with a rabbit punch to the back of the neck. He crouched, scooped up the weapon and straightened. He said, "You'd better get ready to fight your faithful crew away from the bridge, Missenden. We should be able to hold them off until the boarding party arrives." He snapped a shot at the helmsman, who, relinquishing his now useless wheel, was advancing on them threateningly. The man turned tail and ran.
"You're behind this!" raved Missenden. "What did you do? You gave your word . . ."
"I didn't do anything that I promised not to."
"But . . . what went wrong?"
Grimes answered with insufferable smugness. "It was just a case of one bird-brained navigator trusting another."
* * *
The tidying up did not take long. Missenden's crew did not put up even a token resistance to be the boarding party sent from the warship. Kawaroa was taken into the nearest Braziperuan port, where her crew was interned pending decisions as to its eventual fate. Grimes and Missenden—the latter under close arrest—made the voyage back to University City by air. The Commodore did not enjoy the trip; the big blimp seemed to him to be a fantastically flimsy contraption and, as it was one of the hydrogen-filled craft, smoking was strictly forbidden.
He began to enjoy himself again when he was back in University City, although the task of having to arrange for the deportation of the sullen Missenden back to New Saxony was a distasteful one. When this had been attended to Grimes was finally able to relax and enjoy the hospitality and company of the High Priest and his acolytes, none of whom subscribed to the fallacy that scholarship goes hand and hand with asceticism. He would always remember the banquet at which he was made an Honorary Admiral of the Ausiphalian Navy.
Meanwhile, his passage had been arranged on the Lornbound Rim Cayman, aboard which Missenden would also be traveling on the first leg of his long and miserable voyage home. It came as a surprise, therefore, when he received a personal telephone call from the Honorable Clifton Weeks, the Rim Worlds' ambassador to Tharn. "I hope that you're in no hurry to be getting home, Commodore," said the fat man. Grimes could tell from the Ambassador's expression that he hoped the reverse.
"Not exactly," admitted Grimes, enjoying the poorly concealed play of expressions over the other's pudgy features.
"Hrrmph! Well, sir, it seems that our masters want you on Mellise."
"What for, sir?" asked Grimes.
"Don't ask me. I'm not a spaceman. I didn't open the bloody world up to commerce. All that I've been told is that you're to arrange for passage to that planet on the first available ship. You're the expert."
On what? wondered Grimes. He said sweetly, "I'm looking forward to the trip, Mr. Ambassador."
Part Three: The Tin Fishes
Commodore John Grimes was proceeding homeward from Tharn the long way around—by way of Groller, Stree and Mellise, by the route that he, in the old Faraway Quest, had opened and charted so many years ago.
On all the worlds he was still remembered. On Tharn the spaceport was named after him. In Breardon, the planetary capital of Groller, a huge statue of him stood in Council Square. Grimes had stared up at the heroic monument with some distaste. Surely his ears didn't stand out that much, and surely his habitual expression was not quite so frog-like. He made allowances for the fact that the Grollens, although humanoid, are a batrachian people, but he still inspected himself for a long time in a full-length mirror on his return to the ship in which he was a passenger.
And then Rim Kestrel, in which Grimes had taken passage from Tharn, came to Mellise.
Mellise was a watery world, fully four-fifths of its surface being covered by the warm, mainly shallow seas. The nearest approach to a continent was a long, straggling chain of islands almost coincident with the equator. On one of the larger ones was the spaceport. There was no city, only a village in which the human spaceport personnel and the Rim Confederacy's ambassador and his staff lived. The Mellisans themselves were an amphibious race; like the Earthly cetacea they returned to the sea after having reached quite a high stage of evolution ashore. They could, if they had to, live and work on dry land, but they preferred the water. They dwelt in submarine villages where they were safe from the violent revolving storms that at times ravaged the surface. They tended their underwater farms, raising giant mollusks, great bivalves that yielded lustrous pearls, the main item of export. Their imports were the manufactured goods needed by an aquatic culture: nets, cordage, harpoon guns and the like. They could make these for themselves but, with the establishment of regular trade between themselves and the Confederacy, they preferred not to. Why should an essentially water-dwelling being work with fire and metals when pearl farming was so much more comfortable and pleasant?
Grimes rode down to the surface in Rim Kestrel's control room. Captain Paulus, the ship's master, was nervous, obviously did not like having his superior there to watch his ship-handling. But he was competent enough, although painfully cautious. Not for him the almost meteoric descent favored by other masters. His Inertial Drive delivered a thrust that nearly countered the planet's gravitational pull. The Kestrel drifted surfaceward like a huge balloon with barely negative buoyancy. But Paulus reacted fast enough when a jet stream took hold of the ship, canceling its effect by just the right application of lateral drive; reacted fast again when the vessel was shaken by clear air turbulence, pulling her out of the danger area with no delay. Nonetheless, Grimes was making mental notes. The efficiency of the spaceport's meteorological observatory left much to be desired; Paulus should have been warned by radio of the disturbances through which he had passed. (But he, Grimes, had made his first landing here before there was a spaceport, let alone spaceport facilities. He had brought the Quest down through the beginnings of a hurricane.)
The Commodore looked at the vision screen that showed, highly magnified, what lay aft and below. There were the islands, each one raggedly circular, each one ringed by a golden beach that was ringed, in its turn, by white surf. There was the cloudy green of shallow water, the clear blue of the deeper seas. Inland was the predominant purple of the vegetation.
Yes, it was a pleasant world, Mellise. Even here, out on the Rim, it could have been developed to a holiday planet, rivaling if not surpassing Caribbea. If the Mellisans had been obliged to deal with the Interstellar Federation rather than with the Rim Worlds Confederacy, this probably would have been the case. Grimes, whose first years in space had been as an officer in the Federation's Survey Service, knew all too well that the major Terran galactic power was far more concerned with the rights of other intelligent races in theory than in practice—unless there was some political advantage to be gained by posing as liberator, conservator or whatever.
He could see the white spaceport buildings now, gleaming in the light of the afternoon sun, startlingly distinct against their backdrop of purple foliage. He could see the pearly gray of the apron, and on it the black geometrical shadows cast by cranes and conveyor belts and gantries. He could even see the tiny, blinking stars that were the three beacons, the markers of the triangle in the center of which Rim Kestrel was to land. He wished that Paulus would get on with it. At this rate it would be after sunset by the time the ship was down.
After sunset it was, and the night had fallen with the dramatic suddenness to be expected in the low latitudes of any planet. Overhead the sky was clear and almost empty, save for the opalescent arc that was the upper limb of the Galactic Lens, low on the western horizon. Paulus had ordered all ports throughout the ship opened, and through them flowed the warm breeze, the scents of growing and flowering things that would have been cloyingly sweet had it not been for the harsh tang of salt water. There was the distant murmur of surf and, even more distant, a grumble of thunder.
"Thank you, Captain Paulus," said Grimes formally. "A very nice set-down."
And so it had been. Merchant captains, after all, are not paid to put their ships in hazard.
* * *
Port formalities were few. The Mellisans cared little about such matters as health, customs and immigration regulations. The port captain, a Rim Worlder, took care of all such details for them; and insofar as vessels owned by the Confederacy were concerned there was not even the imposition of port dues. After all, the levying of such charges would have been merely robbing Peter to pay Paul. The rare outside ships—the occasional Interstellar Transport Commission Epsilion Class tramp, the infrequent Empire of Waverley freighter, the once-in-a-blue-moon Shakespearian Sector trader—were, presumably, another matter. They would at least pay port dues.
Grimes sat with Captain Paulus and Stacey, the port captain, in Paulus' day cabin. Cold drinks were on the table before them. The Commodore was smoking his foul pipe, Paulus was nervously lighting one cigarette after another, and Captain Stacey had between his fleshy lips a peculiarly gnarled cigar of local manufacture. It looked as though it had been rolled from dry seaweed, and smelt like it. ("An acquired taste," Stacey had told them. "Like to try one?" They had refused.)
"Only a small shipment of pearls this time," Stacey said. "The pearl fishers—or farmers—are having their troubles."
"Disease again?" asked Paulus.
"No. Not this time. Seems to be a sort of predatory starfish. Could be a mutation. Whether it is or not, it's a vicious bastard."
"I thought, Captain Stacey," said Grimes, "that the people here were quite capable of dealing with any of the dangerous life forms in their seas."
"Not this new starfish," Stacey told him. "It's a killer." He sipped his drink. "The natives knew that you were coming here almost as soon I did, Commodore. Telepathy? Could be. But, sir, you are almost a local deity. Old Wunnaara—he's the boss in these parts—said to me only this morning, 'Grimes Wannarbo'—and a Wannarbo is roughly halfway between a high chief and the Almighty—'will us help. . . .' Really touched by his faith, I was."
"I'm not a marine biologist," said Grimes. "But couldn't you, with your local knowledge, do something, Captain Stacey?"
"I'm not a marine biologist either, Commodore. It takes all my time to run the port."
And I recommended you for this appointment, thought Grimes, looking at the fat man. I thought that this would be an ideal job for anybody as notoriously lazy as yourself. I thought that you couldn't do any harm here, and that you'd get on well with the Mellisans. But you can't do any good either.
"They must produce pearls," stated Paulus, "if they're to pay for their imports. They've nothing else we want."
Nothing else that we want. . . thought Grimes. But the Rim Confederacy is not alone in the galaxy. He said, "Surely, Captain Stacey, you've found out what sort of weapons would be most effective against these things. They could be manufactured back on Lorn or Faraway, and shipped out here. And what about protective netting for the oyster beds?"
"Useless, Commodore," Stacy told him. "The starfish just tear to shreds even the heaviest nets, made from wire rope. As for weapons—poison has always been effective in the past, but not any longer."
"We have to do something to help these people," Grimes said definitely. "And, frankly, not altogether from altrusitic motives. As you should know, both Waverly and the Shakespearian Sector are anxious to expand their spheres of influence. If they can help Mellise and we can't . . ." The unspoken words "you'll be out of a soft job" hung in the air between them.
"They seem to rely upon you to help them, sir," Stacey grumbled.
"And perhaps I can," Grimes told him. "Perhaps I can."
* * *
Perhaps he could—but, as he had said, he was not a marine biologist. Even so, he knew of the parallel evolution of life forms on all Earth-type planets. And in the course of his career he had tangled with unfriendly and hungry beasts on more than a century of worlds; he was still around and the hostile animals were not. Variations on familiar patterns or utterly alien, all had fallen victim to human cunning and human weaponry—and human savagery. Man, after all, was still the most dangerous animal.
He said good night to Stacey and Paulus, told them that he was going outside the ship to stretch his legs. He made his way down to the after air lock, then down the ramp to the smooth, clean concrete of the apron. He walked away from the direction of the administration buildings and the human village, found a path that must lead down to the sea. On either side of it the feathery fronds of the trees rustled in the warm breeze. Overhead, Mellise's single moon, a ruddy globe with an almost unmarked surface, rode high in the sky.
Grimes came to the beach, to the pale, gently shelving stretch of coarse sand beyond which the surf was greenly luminescent. He kicked off his sandals and, carrying them, walked slowly down to the edge of the water. He missed Sonya.
He saw that a black, humanoid shape, outlined by the phosphorescence, was waddling ashore, splashing through the shallows. From its dark head two eyes that reflected the light of the moon stared at Grimes. The teeth glinted whitely in the long muzzle as it spoke. "Meelongee, Grimes Wannarbo." Its voice was like that of a Siamese cat.
"Meelongee," replied Grimes. He remembered that this was the word of greeting.
"You have come back." The English was oddly accented but perfectly understandable. "Yes. I have come back." "You . . . help?"
"I shall try."
The native was close to Grimes now, and the Commodore could smell the not unpleasant fishy odor of him. He could see, too, that he was old; in the moonlight the white hairs about the muzzle and the white patches of fur on the chest were plainly visible.
"You me remember?" There was a short, barking laugh. "No? I was cub when first you come to Mellise, Grimes Wannarbo. Now I am chief. My name—Wunnaara. And you, too, are chief—not of one skyship, but of many. I am chief—but known little. You are chief—but know much."
"The Rim Kestrel lifts tomorrow," said Grimes.
"But you will stay, Wannarbo? You will stay?"
Grimes made his decision. If there was anything that he could do he would be furthering the interests of the Confederacy as well as helping the natives of Mellise. Stacey, it was obvious, would not lift one fat finger. The ambassador, like the port captain, was a no-hoper who had been sent to a planet upon which no emergencies were ever likely to arise. Grimes had not yet met him, but he knew him by repute.
"I will stay," he told the Chief.
"Then I tell my people. There is much to make ready." Wunnaara slipped back into the water, far more silently than he had emerged from it, and was gone.
The Commodore resumed his walk along the beach.
* * *
He came to a shallow bay, a crescent-like indentation in the shoreline. There was somebody out there in the water swimming—and by the flash of long, pale arms Grimes knew that it was not a native. Too, there was a pile of clothing on the sand. Grimes quickly stripped. It was a long time since he had enjoyed a swim in the sea. He divested himself of his clothing without embarrassment. Even though he was no longer a young man his body was still compact, well-muscled, had not begun to run to belly. He waded out into the warm salt water.
Suddenly he was confronted by the other swimmer. Only her head and smooth, bare shoulders were visible above the surface. Her eyes and her wide mouth were very dark against the creamy pallor of her face.
"Can't you read?" she was asking indignantly. "Didn't you see the notices? This beach is reserved for ladies only."
Her accent was not a Rim Worlds' one; it was more Pan-Terran than anything. That would account for her indignation; only on parts of the home planet did the absurd nudity taboo still persist. But this was not the home planet.
Grimes said mildly, "I'm sorry. I didn't know." He turned to leave the water.
She said, "Don't run away. We can talk, at this depth, modestly enough."
"I suppose we can."
"You're from the ship, aren't you? But of course, you must be . . . let me see, now . . . I've a good ear for accents, and you haven't quite lost the good old Terran twangs—Commodore Grimes, would it be?"
"Guilty," admitted Grimes. He was amused to note either that the tide was going out fast or that this companion had moved closer inshore. Her full breasts were fully exposed now, and there was more than a hint of the pale glimmer of the rest of her below the surface.
She said, "It's rather a pity that you're leaving tomorrow."
"I'm not leaving."
"You're not?" she asked sharply.
"No. I promised Chief Wunnaara that I'd stay to look into this plague of starfish."
"You promised Wunnaara . . ." Her voice was scornful. "But he's only a native, and has to be kept in his place. That's why I insisted on having this beach made private. I hated to think that those . . . things were spying on me, leering at me while I was swimming."
"And what about me, leering and spying?" Grimes asked sarcastically.
"But you're a Terran—"
"Ex-Terran, young lady. Very ex."
"—and we Terrans should stick together," she completed with a dazzling smile.
"I'm a Rim Worlder," Grimes told her severely. "And so must you be, if you're employed at the spaceport, no matter where you were born." He asked abruptly, "And what do you do, by the way?"
"I'm in the met. office," she said. "Then I shall see you tomorrow," stated Grimes.
"Good!" Her smile flashed on again.
"I shall be calling in to register a strong complaint," the Commodore went on.
He attempted to step past the girl, intending to swim out to the first line of breakers. Somehow she got in his way, and somehow both of them lost their balance and went down, floundering and splashing. Grimes got to his feet first, pulled the young woman to hers. He was suddenly conscious, as she fell against him, of the firmness and the softness of the body against his own. It was all very nice—and all a little too obvious. But he was tempted, and tempted strongly. Then, but with seeming reluctance, she broke away from him and splashed shoreward, her slim, rounded figure luminous in the moonlight.
Her voice floated back to him, "I still hope that it's a pleasant meeting tomorrow, Commodore!"
* * *
It was not as unpleasant as it could have been. The girl, Lynn Davis, was second in charge of the spaceport's meteorological office. By daylight, and clothed, she was still attractive. Her hair was a dark, dull-gleaming blonde and her eyes were so deep a blue as to be almost black. Her face was thin and intelligent, with both mouth and nose a little too pronounced for conventional prettiness. There was a resemblance to Sonya, his wife, that strongly attracted Grimes; more than a physical likeness, it was a matter of essential quality. This, at once, put Grimes on his guard. Sonya had held the rank of commander in the Federation's Survey Service, and in the Intelligence branch at that. But now Federation and Rim World Confederacy worked together, shared all information, kept no secrets from each other. Even so. . . .
Lynn Davis had all the answers ready. Rim Kestrel had been given no information on jet streams and clear air turbulence because there had been a breakdown of radar and other instruments. This, Grimes was made to feel, was his fault; the Rim Runners' Stores Department should have been more prompt in dealing with requisitions for spare parts. "And after all, Commodore," she told him sweetly, "you made the first landing here without any aid at all from the surface, didn't you?"
Grimes asked to see the instrument room. He thought that this request disconcerted her—but this was understandable enough. Any officer, in any service, likes to do things his own way and is apt to resent a superior's intrusion into his own little kingdom, especially when the superior is in a fault-finding mood. But she got up from behind her very tidy desk, led the Commodore out of the office and up a short flight of stairs.
At first glance the compartment looked normal enough; its counterpart could have been found at almost any human-operated spaceport throughout the galaxy. The deviations from the norm were also normal. On many worlds with a lack of recreational facilities the instrument room, with its laboratory and workshop equipment to one side of it, is an ideal place for hobbyists to work. The practice is officially frowned upon, but persists.
There was a tank there, a small aquarium, brilliantly lit. Grimes walked over to it. The only animal denizens were a dozen or so small starfish, brightly colored, spiny little beasts, unusually active. These, unlike their kind on the majority of worlds, seemed to prefer swimming to crawling as a means of locomotion, although they possessed, on the undersides of their limbs, the standard equipment of myriads of suckers.
"And who belongs to these?" asked Grimes.
"Me," she replied.
"Is marine biology your hobby?"
"I'm afraid not, Commodore. I just keep these because they're ornamental. They add something to the decor."
"Yes," he agreed. "Starfish." He walked to a bench where there was an intricacy of gleaming wire. "And what the hell's this?"
"A mobile," she told him. "Jeff Petersen, the met. officer, has artistic ambitions."
"And where is Mr. Peterson?"
"He's away. The crowd setting up the weather control station on Mount Llayilla asked Captain Stacey for the loan of him."
"Hmm. Well, I can't help feeling, Miss Davis, that if you and Mr. Peterson devoted more time to your work and less time to your hobbies you'd give incoming ships far better service."
She flared. "We never play around with our hobbies in our employer's time. And there's so little social life here that we must have something to occupy us when we're off duty."
"I'm not denying that, Miss Davis."
She switched on that smile again. "Why don't you call me Lynn, Commodore? Everybody else does."
He found himself smiling in reply. "Why not, Lynn?"
"Isn't that better? And, talking of social life, I'd like it very much if you came to my place some evening for dinner." She grinned rather than smiled this time. "I'm a much better cook than Mrs. Stacey."
That wouldn't be hard, thought Grimes. The Port Captain's wife, as he had learned that morning at breakfast, couldn't even fry an egg properly.
"Try to keep an evening open for me," she said.
"I'll try," he promised. He looked at his watch. "But I must go. I have an appointment with the Ambassador."
* * *
The Confederacy's Ambassador was a thin, languid and foppish man. In spite of the disparity in physical appearance he was cut from the same cloth as Captain Stacey. He was one of the barely competent, not quite bad enough to be fired but too lazy and too disinterested to be trusted with any major appointment. He drawled, "I can't order you not to stay, old man, any more than I can order you to stay. Let's face it—you pile on a few more G's (as you spacefaring types put it) than I do. But I still think that you're wasting your time. The natives'll have to pull their socks up, that's all. And tighten their belts for the time being—not that they have any belts to tighten. Ha, ha! You may have been first on this world, Commodore, but you haven't lived with these people as I have. They're a lazy, shiftless bunch. They won't stir a finger to help themselves as long as the Confederacy's handy to do it for them."
"And if the Confederacy won't," said Grimes flatly, "there's the Empire of Waverley. Or the Shakespearians. Or the Federation. Even the Shaara might find this planet interesting."
"Those communistic bumblebees? It might do the Mellisans a world of good if they did take over." He raised a slim, graceful wrist and looked at his watch. "Old Wunnaara's due about now. I don't encourage him—it takes days to get the fishy stink out of the Embassy—but he insisted."
"You could," pointed out Grimes, "have a room specially fitted for the reception of local dignitaries, something that duplicates, as far as possible, the conditions that they're used to."
"You don't understand, old man. It's taken me years, literally, to get this shack fitted and decorated the way that it should be. The battles I've had to fight with Appropriations! It's all a matter of keeping up a front, old man, showing the flag and all that. . . ."
A smartly uniformed Marine entered the elegant, too elegant salon.
"Chief Wunnaara, your Excellency."
"Show him in, Sergeant. Show him in. And attend to the air-conditioning, will you?"
Wunnaara was dressed for the occasion. His ungainly (on dry land) body was clad in a suit of what looked like coarse sacking, and riding high on a complicated harness-like framework was a tank, the contents of which sloshed as he walked. From this tank depended narrow tubes, connected to his clothing at various points. They dripped—both upon the cloth and upon the Ambassador's carpet. A goggled mask, water-filled, covered his eyes and the upper part of his face. The smell of fish was very evident.
"Your Excellency," he mewed. "Meelongee, Grimes Wannarbo, meelongee."
"Greetings," replied the Ambassador, and, "Meelongee," replied Grimes.
"Your Excellency, Grimes Wannarbo has agreed to help. He come with me now, I show him trouble."
"Do you want to go through with this, old man?" the Ambassador asked Grimes. "Really?"
"Of course. Would you know of any scuba outfits on this island? I've already asked Captain Stacey, and he says that the only ones here are privately owned."
"That is correct, Commodore. I could ask the sergeant to lend you his."
"Not necessary, Grimes Wannarbo," interjected the chief. "Already waiting on beach we have ship, what you call submarine."
"Good," said Grimes.
"You'd trust yourself to that contraption?" demanded the Ambassador in a horror-stricken voice. "It'll be one of the things that they use to take stores and equipment down to their farms."
"They work, don't they?"
"Yes, old man. But . . ."
"But I'd have thought, on a world like this, that the Ambassador would have his own, private submarine."
"I'm a diplomat, old man, not a sailor."
Grimes shrugged. He said formally. "With your permission, your Excellency, I shall accompany Chief Wunnaara."
"Permission granted, old man. Don't get your feet wet."
* * *
The submarine had been pulled up on the beach, onto a ramp that had been constructed there for that purpose, that ran from the water to a low warehouse. Apart from its wheeled undercarriage it was a conventional enough looking craft, torpedo-shaped, with a conning tower amidships and rudder and screw propeller aft, with hydroplanes forward and amidships. A wooden ladder had been placed on the ramp to give access to the conning tower. Wunnaara gestured to Grimes to board first. The Commodore clambered up the ladder with a certain lack of agility; the spacing of the rungs was adapted to the Mellisan, not the human, frame. He had the same trouble with the metal steps leading into the submarine's interior.
When he was down in what was obviously the craft's control room he looked about him curiously. It was easy enough to get a general idea of what did what to which; the Mellisans, with no written language of their own, had adopted Terran English to their requirements. There were depth gauges, steering, hydroplane and engine controls, a magnetic compass. Inside an aluminum rather than a steel hull it should, thought Grimes, function quite satisfactorily. What had him puzzled was a bundle of taut bladders, evidently taken from some sea plant. Beside them, in a rack on the bulkhead, was a sharp knife. And he did not quite approve of the flowerpot that was hanging to one side of the steering gear, in which was growing a vividly blue, fernlike plant. He recalled the conversation that he had had with Lynn Davis on the subject of hobbies.
Apart from these rather peculiar fittings the little ship was almost as she had been when built to Mellisan specifications at the Seacraft Yard on Thule: the original electric motors, a big bank of heavy-duty power cells, a capacious cargo hold (now empty) and no accommodation whatsoever. He had noticed, on his way down through the conning tower, that the compartment, with its big lookout ports, could still be used as an air lock.
Wunnaara joined him, accompanied by another native dressed as he was. The younger Mellisan went straight to the wheel, from which all the other controls were easily accessible. Wunnaara asked Grimes to return with him to the conning tower. The upper hatch, he saw, was shut now, but there was an unrestricted view all around from the big ports. And although the lower hatch remained open there was ample room, on the annular platform, to walk around it. Wunnaara yelped some order down through the opening. Slowly at first, then faster, the submarine started to move, sliding astern down the ramp on her wheels. She slipped into the water with hardly any disturbance, and when she was afloat at least half of her hull was above the surface. Electric motors hummed and she backed away from the beach, her head swinging to starboard as she did so. She came around well and easily, and when she was broadside on to the shore, starting to roll uncomfortably in the swell, the coxswain put the engines ahead and the wheel hard over to complete the swing. Then, after surprisingly little fuss and bother, she was headed seaward, pitching easily, her straight wake pearly white on the blue water under the noonday sun.
* * *
A red marker buoy indicated the location of the pearl beds. Quietly, without any fuss, the ship submerged, dropping down below the surface as her ballast tanks were filled. Grimes went back to the control room; always keenly interested in ships—the ships of the sea as well as the ships of space—he wanted to see how this submersible was handled. He was alarmed when, as he completed his cautious descent down the ladder, the coxswain snatched that nasty looking knife from the rack on the bulkhead. But the Mellisan ignored him, slashed swiftly and expertly at one of the seaweed bladders. It deflated with a loud hiss. Behind Grimes, Wunnaara hooted with laughter. When he had the Commodore's attention he pointed to the absurd potted plant hanging almost over the compass. Its fronds had turned scarlet, but were already slowly changing back to blue. Grimes chuckled as he realized what was being done. This was air regeneration at its most primitive, but still effective. These submarines, when built, had been fitted with excellent air regeneration plants but, no doubt, the Mellisans preferred their own. The oxygen released from the bladder brought with it a strong smell of wet seaweed which, to them, would be preferable to the odorless gas produced by the original apparatus.
Grimes watched the coxswain until Wunnaara called him back to the conning tower. He was impressed by the Mellisan's competence. He was doing things that in a human operated submarine would have required at least four men. Could it be, he wondered, that a real sea man must, of necessity, be also a first-class seaman? He toyed, half humorously, with the idea of recruiting a force of Mellisan mercenaries, to be hired out to those few nations—on those few worlds where there was still a multiplicity of nations—which still relied upon sea power for the maintenance of their sovereignty.
Back in the conning tower he forgot his not-quite-serious money-making schemes. The submarine—as he already knew from his inspection of the depth gauges—was not running deep, but neither was she far from the sandy bottom. Ahead, astern and on either side were the pearl beds, the orderly rows of the giant bivalves. Among them worked Mellisans—who, like similar beings on other planets, including Earth, were able to stay under water for a very long time on one lungful of air. Some of them, explained Wunnaara, were planting the irritant in the mantle of the shellfish. Others were harvesting the pearls from mollusks that had been treated months previously. These were taken to the underwater depot for cleaning and sorting and, eventually, would be loaded into the submarine for carriage to the spaceport. But, said the Chief, this would be a poor harvest. . . .
From his vantage point he conned the ship, yelping orders down to the coxswain. Finally they were drifting over a long row of opened bivalves. Considerable force had been employed in this opening, the not typical Mellisan care. They could extract the pearl without inflicting permanent injury upon the creature inside the paired shells; in many cases here the upper valve had been completely shattered. In most cases no more than a few shreds of tattered flesh remained. And in all cases what had been a pearl was now only a scattering of opalescent dust.
Now the submarine was approaching the high wire net fence that had been erected to protect the pearl farm. It looked stout enough to stop a ship of this class—but something had come through it. Something had uprooted metal posts embedded in concrete; something had snapped wire rope like so much sewing thread. It was not something that Grimes was at all keen to meet, not even in the comparative safety of this well-designed and -built submersible.
"You see?" mewed the Chief. "You see, Grimes Wannarbo?"
"Yes. I see."
"Then what do, Grimes Wannarbo? What do?" Under stress, the old Mellisan's English tended to deteriorate.
"I . . . I don't know. I shall have to see some of the starfish. Have you any in captivity, or any dead ones?"
"No. No can catch. No can kill."
There was a steady thumping sound, transmitted through the water, amplified by the hull plating.
"Alarm!" Wunnaara cried. "Alarm! Alarm!" He shouted something in his own language to the coxswain. The submarine changed course, her motors screaming shrilly as speed was increased to full—or a little over. She skimmed over the flat sandy bottom, raising a great cloud of disturbed particles astern of her.
Ahead there was a commotion of some kind—a flurry of dark, almost human figures, an occasional explosion of silvery air bubbles, a flashing of metallic-seeming tentacles, a spreading stain in the water that looked like a frightened horse as she came full astern—and then she hung there, almost motionless, on the outskirts.
There were half a dozen of the . . . things, the starfish, and a dozen Mellisans. Through the now murky water could be seen the wreckage of practically an entire row of the bivalves—shattered shells, crushed pearls, torn, darkly oozing flesh. The odd thing about it all was the gentleness of the marauders. They seemed to be trying to escape—and they were succeeding—but at the same time were avoiding the infliction of serious injury upon the guardians of the beds.
And they were such flimsy things. Or they looked flimsy, as though they had been woven from fragile metallic lace. They looked flimsy, but they were not. One of them was trapped in a net of heavy wire handled by three Mellisans. Momentarily it was bunched up, and then it . . . expanded, and the wires snapped in a dozen places. One of them received a direct hit from a harpoon—and the weapon, its point blunted and broken, fell harmlessly to the bottom.
They were free and clear now, all of them, looking more like gigantic silvery snowflakes than living beings. They were free and clear, swimming toward the breached barrier, their quintuple, feathery arms flailing the water. They were free and clear, and although the Mellisans gave chase there was nothing that anybody could do about them.
"You see?" said the Chief.
"I see," said Grimes.
He saw, too, what he would have to do. He would make his own report, of course, to Rim Runners' head office, recommending that something be done on a government level to maintain the flow of commerce between Mellise and the Confederacy. And he would have to try to persuade that pitiful nong of an ambassador to recommend to his bosses that a team qualified to handle the problem—say marine biologists and professional fishermen from Thule—be sent at once to Mellise. But it would not be at once, of course. Nobody knew better than Grimes how slowly the tide runs through official channels.
But. . . .
What could he, Grimes do? Personally, with his own two hands, with his own brain?
There had been something oddly familiar about the appearance of those giant Astersidea, about their actions. There had been something that evoked memories of the distant past, and something much more recent. What was it? Lynn Davis' gaudy pets in the brightly lit aquarium? They swam, of course, and these giant mutants (if mutants they were) were swimmers, but there the similarity ceased.
"What do, Grimes Wannarbo?" Wunnaara was insistent. "What do?"
"I . . . I don't know," replied the Commodore. "But I'll do something," he promised.
But what?
* * *
That night, back in his room in the port captain's residence, he did his homework. He had managed to persuade Captain Stacey to let him have the files on all Rim Runners' personnel employed on Mellise, and also had borrowed from the Ambassador's library all six volumes of Trantor's very comprehensive Mellisan Marine Life. (Trantor should have been here now, but Trantor was dead, drowned two years ago in a quite stupid and unnecessary accident in the Ultimate Sea, on Ultimo, a body of water little larger than a lake.) Grimes skimmed through Trantor's work first, paying particular attention to the excellent illustrations. Nothing, nothing at all, resembled the creatures that he had seen, although most of the smaller starfish, like the ones he had seen in Lynn Davis' tank, subsisted by making forcible entry into the homes of unfortunate bivalves.
Then he turned to the files.
About half the spaceport employees were true Rim Worlders—born out on the Rim. The other half—like Grimes himself—were not, although all of them were naturalized citizens. Judging from the educational qualifications and service records of all of them, none of them would be capable of inducing a mutation. Grimes had hoped to turn up a biological engineer, but he was disappointed. And biological engineering is not the sort of thing that anybody takes up as a hobby; in addition to the years of study and training there is the quite expensive license to practice to obtain, and the qualifications for that are moral rather than academic or practical. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a permanent fixture in Man's mythology.
Feeling like a Peeping Tom, another permanent fixture, he leafed through Lynn Davis' service record. She was Terran-born, of course. Her real education had been at M.I.T., where she had graduated as a Bachelor of General Physics. After that she seemed to have specialized in meteorology. There had been a spell with Weather Control, North American Continent, and another spell with Weather Prediction, satellite-based. After that she had entered the service of Trans-Galactic Clippers as Spaceport Meteorological Officer. She had seen duty on Austral, Waverly, and Caribbea, all of them planets upon which T-G maintained its own spaceports. From Waverly she had gone to Caribbea—and on Caribbea she had blotted her copybook.
So, thought Grimes, she's a compulsive gambler. She doesn't look like one. But they never do. It was on Caribbea that she had become a regular habitué of the New Port of Spain Casino. She had, of course, worked out a system to beat the wheel—but the system hadn't worked out for her. There had been the unhappy business of the cracking of the T-G cashier's safe, allegedly thiefproof, but (luckily) very few thieves held a degree in Physics. There had been the new banknotes, the serial numbers of which were on record, that had turned up in the safe of the casino's cashier.
After that—the Rim Worlds.
A pity, said Grimes to himself. A pity. But it could have been worse. If she'd gone to Elsinore, in the Shakespearian Sector, where they're notorious for their gambling, she'd really be in a mess by now.
He turned up the file on Peterson. The absentee meteorologist was another ex-Terran, and also had been employed with Trans-Galactic Clippers. Grimes noted with interest that Petersen had spent a few weeks on El Dorado, popularly known as "the planet of the filthy rich." (Grimes had been there himself as a young man, as a junior officer in the Federation's Survey Service.) It seemed that a T-G ship had called there on a millionaires' cruise, and T-G had insisted on sending its own spaceport personnel there in advance.
Women, not money, had been Petersen's trouble. Twice he had been named as correspondent in an unsavory divorce case. If the ladies had not been the wives of prominent T-G executives it wouldn't have mattered so much—but they had been.
There could be a connection, thought Grimes. There could be. Both of them from Earth, both of them T-G. . . . He shrugged away the idea. After all, it had been said that if you threw a brick at random aboard any Rim Runners' ship, the odds are that you will hit an ex-officer of the Interstellar Transport Federation's vessels.
So it went on—case histories, one after the other, that made depressing reading and, insofar as the quite serious crisis on Mellise was concerned, a shortage of both motive and opportunity. But money could be a motive. Suppose, tomorrow, a foreign ship dropped in, and suppose that somebody aboard her said to old Wunnaara, "We'll fix your starfish for you—in return for full trading rights. . . ."
And whatever else I am, thought Grimes tiredly, I'm not a starfish fixer.
He poured himself a stiff drink and went to bed.
* * *
She said, "I hear that you've been looking through the personnel files, John. That wasn't very gentlemanly of you."
"How did you hear?" asked Grimes. "My doing so was supposed to be as secret as the files themselves."
"There aren't any secrets on this bloody planet, in this tiny community." Her face, as she stared at him over her candlelit dining table, was hard and hostile, canceling out the effects of an excellent meal. "And did you find what you were looking for?"
"No."
"What were you looking for?"
"Somebody who's capable of doing a spot of biological engineering."
"Did you find anybody?"
"No, Lynn."
"What about the spaceport quack?"
"Frankly," said Grimes, "I wouldn't go to him with a slight head cold."
"Frankly, my dear, neither would I." She laughed, and her manner softened. "So you're still no closer to solving the Mystery of the Mutated Starfish."
"No."
"Then I'll solve it for you. There was a bad solar flare about a year ago, and our atmospheric radiation count went up no end in consequence. There's the answer. But I'm glad that you stayed on Mellise, John. You've no idea how hungry a girl gets for intelligent company."
"I'm glad that I stayed, Lynn. For personal reasons. But I really wish that I could help old Wunnaara. . . ."
She said, "I don't like His Too Precious Excellency any more than you do, John, but I often feel that he's on the right tack as far as the natives are concerned. Let them help themselves."
He said, "I discovered this world. I feel, somehow, that it's my direct responsibility."
She replied a little bitterly, "I wish that you'd start shedding some of your feelings of responsibility, Commodore. Don't worry so much. Start having a good time, while you can."
And I could, too, he thought. With a quite beautiful, available woman. But. . . .
She said, "It's a wild night. Hurricane Lynn—I named it after me. You aren't walking back to old Stacey's place in this, surely?"
He said, "It's time I was going."
"You'll be drenched," she told him.
"All right. Then go. You can let yourself out."
For a tall girl she flounced well on her way from the little dining room to her bedroom.
Grimes sighed, cursing his retentive memory, his detailed recollection of the reports from all the planets with which Rim Runners traded. But he had to be sure, and he did not wish to make any inquiries regarding this matter on Mellise. He let himself out of the little dome-shaped cottage, was at once furiously assailed by the wind. Hurricane Lynn had not yet built up to its full intensity, but it was bad enough. There were great sheets of driving rain, and with them an explosion of spray whipped from the surface of the sea.
Luckily the spaceport was downwind from the village. Grimes ran most of the way. He didn't want to, but it was easier to scud before the gale than to attempt to maintain a sedate pace. He let himself into the port captain's large house. The Staceys were abed—he had told them that he would be late—but Captain Stacey called out from his bedroom, "Is that you, Commodore?"
"Who else, Captain? I shall be going out again shortly."
"What the hell for?" testily.
"I have to send a message. An important one."
"Telephone it through to the Carlotti Communications Office from here."
"I want to make sure it goes."
Grimes faintly overheard something about distrustful old bastards as he went to his own room, but ignored it.
There was a very cunning secret compartment built into his suitcase. The Commodore opened it, took from it a slim book. Then, with scratch pad and stylus, he worked rapidly and efficiently, finishing up with eleven gibberish groups. He put the book back in its hiding place, pocketed the pad. Then he had to face the stormy night again.
The duty operator in the Carlotti Office was awake, but only just. Had it not been for the growing uproar of the hurricane, penetrating even the insulated walls, he would not have been. He reluctantly put down his luridly covered book and, recognizing Grimes, said, "Sir?"
"I want this to go at once. To my office at Port Forlorn. Urgent." He managed a grin. "That's the worst of space travel. It's so hard to keep track of dates. But my secretary will be able to lay on flowers for the occasion."
The operator grinned back. Judging by the way that he was making a play for that snooty Lynn Davis the Commodore must be a gay old dog, he figured. He said, a little enviously, "Your message will be winging its way over the light-years in a jiffy, sir." He handed the Commodore a signals pad.
Grimes put down the address, transcribed the groups from his own pad, filled in his name and the other details in the space provided. He said, "Let me know how much it is. It's private."
The young man winked. "Rim Runners'll never know, sir."
"Still, I prefer to pay," said Grimes.
He watched the miniature Carlotti Beacon—it was like a Mobius Strip distorted to a long oval—turn on its mounting in the big star tank until it was pointing directly at the spark that represented the Lorn sun. He hoped that the big beacon on the roof of the building was turning, too. But it had to be. If it stopped, jammed, the little indicator would seize up in sympathy. In any case, it was shielded from the weather by its own dome.
The operator's key rattled rapidly in staccato Morse, still the best method of transmitting messages over vast distances. From the wall speaker blurted the dots and dashes of acknowledgment. Then the message itself was sent, and acknowledged.
"Thank you," said Grimes. "If there's a reply phone it through to me, please. I shall be at Captain Stacey's house."
"Very good, sir."
Grimes was relaxing under a hot shower when he heard the telephone buzz. Wrapping a towel around himself, he hurried out of the bathroom, colliding with Captain Stacey.
"It's probably for me," he said.
"It would be," growled Stacey.
It was. It was in reply to Grimes's signal which, when decoded, had read, Urgently require information on solar flares Mellise sun last year local. It said, after Grimes had used his little book, No repeat no solar flares Mellise sun past ten years.
Somebody's lying, thought Grimes, and I don't think it's my secretary.
* * *
Hurricane Lynn, while it lasted, put a stop to any further investigations by Grimes. Apart from anything else, the sea people were keeping to their underwater houses, each of which was well stocked with air bladders and the carbon dioxide absorbing plants. He managed, however, to get back on friendly terms with Lynn Davis—or she with him; he was never quite sure which was the case. He found her increasingly attractive; she possessed a maturity that was lacking in all the other young women in the tiny human community. He liked her, but he suspected her—but of what? It was rather more than a hunch: there had been, for example, that deliberate lie about the solar flares. Grimes, who was an omnivorous reader, was well aware that fictional detectives frequently solved their cases by sleeping with the suspects. He wasn't quite ready to go that far; he had always considered such a modus operandi distinctly ungentlemanly.
Then Hurricane Lynn blew itself out and normally fine weather returned to the equatorial belt. Flying was once again possible, and Petersen came back to the spaceport from Mount Llayilla. Grimes didn't like him. He was a tall, athletic young man, deeply tanned, with sun-bleached hair and startlingly pale blue eyes. His features were too regular, and his mouth too sensual. The filed stories of his past amatory indiscretions made sense. And he was jealously possessive insofar as Lynn Davis was concerned. She's nice, Commodore, was the unspoken message that Grimes received, loud and clear. She's mine. Keep your dirty paws off her.
Grimes didn't like it, and neither did the girl. But the Commodore, now that the storm was over, was busy again. At least once daily he argued with the Ambassador, trying to persuade that gentleman to request the services of a team of marine biologists and professional fishermen. He composed and sent his own report to Rim Runners' head office. And, whenever conditions were suitable, he was out to the pearl beds with Wunnaara, at first in the little submarine and then in a skin diving outfit that the spaceport's repair staff had improvised for him. It was a bastard sort of rig, to quote the chief mechanic, but it worked. There was a spacesuit helmet with compressed air tanks, suitably modified. There was a pair of flippers cut from a sheet of thick, tough plastic. There was a spear gun and a supply of especially made harpoons, each of which had an explosive warhead, fused for impact. As long as these were not used at close range the person firing them should be reasonably safe.
Lynn Davis came into the maintenance workshop while Grimes was examining one of the projectiles.
"What's that, John?" she asked.
"Just a new kind of spear," he replied shortly.
"New—an' nasty," volunteered the chief mechanic, ignoring Grimes's glare. "Pack too much of a wallop for my taste. If you're too close to the target when one o' these goes off, you've had it."
"Explosive?" she asked.
"That's right."
She turned back to Grimes. "Are these safe, John?"
"Safe enough, as long as they're used carefully."
"But against starfish! Like using an elephant gun against a gnat!"
"There are starfish and starfish," he told her. "As everybody on this planet should know by this time."
"You think this will kill them?"
"It's worth giving it a go."
"Yes," she admitted. "I suppose so. . . ." Then, more briskly, "And when are you giving your secret weapon a trial?"
"There are a few modifications to be made," Grimes told her.
"They'll all be ready for you tomorrow morning," said the mechanic. "As promised."
She turned on her dazzling smile. "Then you'd better dine with me tonight, John. If you insist on playing with these dangerous toys there mightn't be another time." She laughed, but that odd, underlying note of seriousness persisted. She went on. "And Jeff will be out of our hair, I promise you that. There's a party on in the Carlotti Operations' Mess, and he never misses those."
"I've a pile of paper work, Lynn," Grimes told her.
"That can wait."
He made his decision. "All right, then. What time?"
"Whatever time suits you; 1800 hours, shall we say? For a few drinks first . . . ?" "Good. I'll be there."
* * *
He dressed carefully for the dinner party, paying even more attention to the contents of his pockets than to the clothes themselves. He had one of his hunches, and he knew he'd need the things that he was taking from the secret compartment of his suitcase. There was the Minetti automatic, with a spare clip, neither of which made more than a slight bulge in the inside breast pocket of his jacket. There was the pack of cigarillos. (Two of the slim, brown cylinders possessed very special properties, and were marked in such a way that only Grimes would be able to identify them.) Marriage to an Intelligence officer, he thought, has its points. Something is bound to rub off. There was the button on his suit that was a camera, and the other button that was a miniaturized recorder.
On the way from his room to the front door he passed through the lounge where Captain and Mrs. Stacey were watching a rather witless variety program on the screen of their playmaster. The Captain looked up and around, his fat, heavy face serious. He said, "I know that it's none of my business, Commodore, and that you're technically my superior, but we—Lucy and myself—think that you should be warned. Miss Davis is a dangerous woman. . . ."
"Indeed, Captain?"
"Yes, indeed. She leads men on, and then that Jeff Petersen is apt to turn nasty."
"Oh?"
An ugly flush suffused Stacey's face. "Frankly, sir, I don't give a damn if you are beaten up for playing around with a girl young enough to be your granddaughter. But because you're Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners there'd be a scandal, a very nasty scandal. And I don't want one in my spaceport."
"Very concisely put, Captain. But I can look after myself."
"I hope that you can, Commodore. Good night to you."
"Good night, Captain Stacey."
Grimes let himself out. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were beginning to fall into place; his suspicions were about to be confirmed. He smiled grimly as he walked along the narrow street toward the row of neat little bungalows where Lynn Davis lived. Night was falling fast, and already lights were coming on in the houses. From open windows drifted the sound of music. The scene was being set for a romantic—romantic?—assignation.
Lynn Davis met him at her door. She was dressed in something loose and, Grimes noted as she stood with the lamp behind her, almost transparent. She took his hand, led him into her living room, gently pushed him down into a deep chair. Close by it was a tray of drinks, and a dish upon which exotic delicacies were displayed. Real Terran olives—and a score of those would make a nasty hole in the weekly pay of an assistant met. officer. Sea dragon caviar from Atlantia . . . pickled rock frogs from Dunartil . . .
The playmaster was on, its volume turned well down. A woman was singing. It was an old song, dating back to the twentieth century, its lyrics modernized, its melody still sweet with lost archaic lilt.
Spaceman, the stars are calling,
Spaceman, you have to roam . . .
Spaceman, through light-years falling,
Turn back at last to home. . . .
"Sherry, John?" asked Lynn Davis. She was sitting on the arm of his chair. He could see the gleam of her smooth flesh through her sheer robe. "Amontillado?"
He said. "You're doing me proud."
"It's not often I entertain such an important guest as you."
He sipped the wine from the fragile glass she had filled for him. She had measured her own drink from the same decanter. He did not think that there was anything wrong with it—any connoisseur would have told him, indignantly that there was nothing wrong with it—but at the first hint of muzziness he would smoke a cigarillo. . . .
She was leaning closer to him, almost against him. Her robe was falling open in front. She was wearing nothing underneath it. She said, "Aren't you hot? Why not take your jacket off?"
"Later, perhaps." He managed a quite creditable leer, "after all, we've all night."
"Why waste time?" Her mouth was slightly parted in frank invitation. What the hell? thought Grimes, and accepted. Her body was pliant in his arms, her lips on his warm and moist. But his mind, his cold, calculating mind, was still in full command of the situation. He heard the door open softly, heard feet sliding over the thick carpet. He pushed the girl away from him, from the corner of his eye saw her fall to the floor, a delectable sprawl of exposed, gleaming body and limbs.
"So," snarled Jeff Petersen. "So this is what you get up to, Mr. Commodore Dirty Old Man Grimes! What did you promise her, you swine? Promotion and a transfer to a better station?"
Petersen, Grimes noted, was not a slave to this instincts any more than he, Grimes, had been. Superficially his voice was that of the wronged, jealous lover, but there was an artificial quality in his rage.
Grimes said equably, "I can explain. . . ."
"Yes." Petersen was advancing slowly. "You can explain after I've torn off your right arm and beaten your brains out with it."
Suddenly the tiny pistol was in Grimes's right hand. It cracked once, and once only, a sound disproportionate to its dimensions. Petersen halted, staggered, staring stupidly. He swayed on his feet for long seconds and then crashed to the floor, overturning the low table, spilling wine over the sprawling body of the girl. She exploded up from the carpet like a tigress, all teeth and claws. Grimes was hampered by the chair in which he was confined but fought her off somehow. He did not want to use the gun again.
"You bastard!" She was sobbing. "You ruthless bastard! You killed him. And we were careful not to kill—not even the natives!"
"I didn't kill him," Grimes managed to say at last, after he had imprisoned her hands behind her back, after he had clasped her legs between his own. "I didn't kill him. This pistol is loaded with anesthetic needles. He'll be out for twelve hours—no more, no less."
"He's not . . . dead?"
"Do dead men snore?" asked Grimes practically.
"I . . . I suppose not." Her manner changed abruptly. "Well, he asked for it, John, and this time he got it. Poor Jeff." There was little sympathy in her voice. "So . . ."
"So what?"
"So we might as well be hung for sheep as lambs. We might as well have the game as well as the name."
He said admiringly, "You're a cold-blooded bitch, aren't you?"
"Just realistic." She bent her head forward, but it was not to bite. After the kiss Grimes released her. She pulled slowly away from him, walked undulatingly to the door of the bedroom, shedding the torn remnants of her robe as she went.
Grimes sighed, then got up and followed.
* * *
She said, "That was good. . . ."
"It was."
"Stay there, darling, and I'll make us some coffee. We don't want to waste time sleeping."
A sleep, thought Grimes, is just what I would like. The sleep of the just—the just after.
He sprawled at ease on the wide couch, watched her appreciatively as she left him, as she walked gracefully to the door. In the subdued light she was all rosy bronze. In any sort of light she was, as he knew, beautiful. He heard a slight clattering from the kitchenette, imposed upon the still stertorous snores of the hapless Jeff. After a while she came back with a tray on which were a pot and two cups. She poured. "Sugar, darling? Cream?" The steam from the coffee was deliciously fragrant. He reached out for his cup, accidentally? put his fingers on the handle of hers. She gently pushed his hand away. "Mine hasn't sugar," she told him.
"You're sweet enough as you are," he said, asking himself, How corny can you get?
So he took three sips of the coffee that was intended for him, and at once felt the onset of heavy drowsiness, even though there was no warning flavor. He mumbled, "Like a smoke. . . . Would you mind, Lynn? In my pocket . . . on chair . . ."
She reached out to his clothing, produced the packet of cigarillos and his lighter. She, he already knew, did not smoke herself, which was just as well. She handed him the packet. In his condition, in the dim lighting, he could hardly make out the distinguishing mark. He hoped that he had the right one. Here and now, the special effects of the other one would be more spectacular than useful.
She lit the cigarillo for him, smiling condescendingly down at him. He inhaled the smoke, retained it for long seconds before blowing it out. He took one more sip of coffee, than let a dribble of the hot fluid fall on to his naked chest. He was careful not to wince. He mumbled indistinctly, then fell back against the pillows. His right hand, with the little smoldering cylinder between his fingers, fell limply onto his belly. He could smell the acridity of burning body hair, felt the sharp beginnings of pain. With a great effort of will he remained in his relaxed posture.
He heard her mutter, "I should let the old bastard burn, but. . ." Her cool, slim fingers removed the miniature cigar from his hand. He felt very grateful to her.
He heard her dressing, heard her walk rapidly from the bedroom. He heard, eventually, the front door open and shut. He gave her time to get clear of the house.
When he got down from the bed he expected to feel sick and dizzy, with drug and antidote still at war within his system. But he did not, although he was conscious of the minor burns. He dressed rapidly, checked his possessions. He was pleased to find that the Minetti was still in his pocket; probably whatever it was in the coffee was supposed to put him under for a longer period than the anesthetic needle-bullet that he had used on Jeff Petersen.
The street outside the house was deserted. Everybody was indoors, and everybody seemed to be having a party. He grinned. He had had one too. He walked briskly away from the spaceport, in the direction of the beach where he had first met Lynn Davis. The signs that had been affixed to the trunks of trees were a help. By what moonlight there was he could read, PRIVATE. LADIES ONLY. And how would she have managed, he wondered, if the other human ladies on Mellise had shared her views on outdoor nudity?
The beach was deserted. Backing the narrow strip of sand were the trees, and between their boles was undergrowth, affording effective cover. Grimes settled down to wait. He slipped the magazine from his automatic, exchanged it for the other one; the needle-bullets in this one were no more lethal than the first had been, but they differed from them in one or two respects. He took the remaining marked cigarillo from its packet, put it carefully into his breast pocket. This one had a friction fuse.
At last she came, walking barefooted over the sand, her shoes in her left hand, a heavy case in the other. She dropped the shoes, put the case down carefully. She opened it, then pulled out a silvery telescopic antenna to its full extent. She squatted down, making even this normally ungainly posture graceful, appeared to be adjusting controls of some sort. There was a high, barely audible whine.
Something was coming in from the sea. It was not a native. It came scuttling ashore like a huge crab—like a huge, five-legged crab. Then there was another, and another, and another, until two dozen of the beasts stood there waiting. For orders—or programming?
Grimes walked slowly and deliberately out from the shadows, his Minetti in his right hand. He said quietly, "I'm sorry, Lynn, but the game's up."
She whirled grotesquely like a Russian dancer.
"You!" she snarled, making it seem like a curse.
"Yes. Me. If you come quietly and make a full confession I'll see to it that things go easy for you."
"Like hell I will!"
She turned swiftly back to the transmitter, kicking up a flurry of sand. The whining note abruptly changed to an irregular beat. And then the starfish were coming for him, slowly at first, but faster and faster. He swatted out instinctively at the leading one, felt the skin of his hand tear on metal spines. In his other hand was the gun. He fired—almost a full burst. The minute projectiles tore though the transmitter. Some of them, a few of them, were bound to sever connections, to shatter transistors. They did. There was a sputtering shower of blue sparks. The metal monsters froze into immobility.
But Lynn did not. She had her own gun out, a heavier weapon than Grimes's own. He felt the wind of her first bullet. And then, with one of the few remaining rounds in his magazine, he shot her.
* * *
He stood there, looking down at her. She was paralyzed, but her eyes could still move, and her lips, and her tongue. She was paralyzed—and when the drug took hold properly she would feel the compulsion to talk.
She asked bitterly, "How long will this last?"
"Days, unless I let you have the antidote."
She demanded, "How did you know?"
"I didn't know. I guessed, and I added two and two to make a quite convincing and logical four. Suppose I tell you—then you can fill in the details."
"That'll be the sunny Friday!"
"Will it?" Grimes squatted down beside her. "You had things easy here, didn't you? You and Jeff Petersen. Such a prize bunch of nongs and no-hopers, from the Ambassador and the port captain on down. I shouldn't have said that; I forgot that this is being recorded.
"Well, one thing that started to make me suspicious of you, especially, was that lie you told me about the solar flares. I checked up; there are very complete records of all phenomena in this sector of space in my office at Port Forlorn. Then there was the shortage of spares for your equipment—I remembered that the requisitions for electronic bits and pieces have been abnormally heavy ever since you and Mr. Petersen were appointed here. There was that ornamental tank of little starfish—and that so-called mobile almost alongside it. Petersen's hobby. The construction that, I realized later, looked very much like the tin starfish I saw raiding the pearl beds. There was the behavior of these same tin starfish: the way in which they attacked the bivalves with absolute viciousness but seemed very careful not to hurt the Mellisans.
"That tied in with the few weeks that Petersen spent on El Dorado.
"They have watchbirds there, Lynn, and similar semi-robots that function either on the ground or in the water. Animal brains in metal bodies. Absolute faithfulness and obedience to their human masters. As a skilled technician, Petersen would have been able to mingle, to a certain extent, with the gifted amateurs who play around with that sort on El Dorado. He must have picked up some of their techniques, and passed them on to you. You two modified them, probably improved upon them. A starfish hasn't any brain to speak of, so probably you have the entire animal incorporated into your destructive servants. Probably, too, there's an electronic brain built in somewhere, that gets its orders by radio and that can be programmed.
"You were going to recall the local . . . flock, pack, school? What does it matter? . . . tonight, weren't you? For reprogramming. Some preset course of action that would enable them to deal with the threat of spears with explosive warheads. It wouldn't do to have tin tentacles littering the ocean floor, would it? When the Mellisans brought in the evidence even the Ambassador would have to do something about it.
"And, tonight being the night, I had to be got out of the way. Plan A failed, so you switched to Plan B. Correct?"
"Correct," she muttered.
"And for whom were you working?" he asked sharply and suddenly.
"T-G." The answer had slipped out before she could stop it.
"Trans-Galactic Clippers. . . . Why does T-G want Mellise?"
"A tourist resort." She was speaking rapidly now, in obvious catharsis. "We were to destroy the economy, the trade with the Confederacy. And then T-G would step in, and pay handsomely for rights and leases."
"And you and Mr. Petersen would be suitably rewarded. . . ." He paused. "Tell me, Lynn. . . did you enjoy tonight? Between the disposal of Jeff and the disposal of myself, I mean."
"Yes," she told him.
"I'm glad you said that. It makes what I'm going to do a lot easier. I was going to do it in any case; I always like to pay my bills." As he spoke, he pulled the cigarillo from his breast pocket, scratched the friction fuse with his thumbnail. The thing ignited at once, fizzed, ejected a bright blue pyrotechnic star. "I'm letting you go free," Grimes went on, "both of you. You will have to resign, of course, from the Rim Runners' service, but as T-G is your real employer that shouldn't mean any hardship. The records I have made"—he tapped the two buttons of his jacket—"stay with me. To be used, if required. Meanwhile my friends"—he turned to wave to Wunnaara and a dozen other natives who were wading up from the sea—"will dispose of the evidence. The story will be that they, without any outside aid, have succeeded in coping with the starfish plague. You will furnish them, of course, with transmitters like the one you used tonight so that your pets in other parts of the sea can be rounded up."
"Haven't much option, have I?" she asked.
"No."
"There's just one thing I'd like to say. That question you asked me, about my enjoying myself . . . I'm damned sorry this truth drug of yours made me give the right answer."
"I'm not," said Grimes.
* * *
It was nice while it lasted, thought the Commodore, but I'm really not cut out for these James Bond capers, any more than I would be for the odd antics of any of the other peculiar heroes of twentieth century fiction. He filled and lit his pipe—he preferred it to the little cigars, even to those without the built-in devices—and looked out over the blue sea. The sun was warm on his naked body. He wished that Sonya were with him. But it wouldn't be long now.
Part Four: The Last Dreamer
John Grimes was really homeward bound at last.
On both Tharn and Mellise he had been obliged to leave the ships in which he had taken passage when requested by the rulers of those planets to assist them in the solution of rather complicated problems. He had not minded at all; he had welcomed the prospect of action after too long a time as a desk-borne commodore. But now he was beginning to become a little impatient. Sonya, his wife, would be back soon from her galactic cruise and then the major city of Lorn would be—as far as Grimes was concerned—forlorn in name only. He was pleased that Rim Jaguar would be making a direct run from Mellise to Port Forlorn with no time-expanding calls en route. All being well, he would have a few days in which to put things in order prior to Sonya's homecoming.
It promised to be an uneventful voyage—and in deep space uneventful voyages are the rule rather than the exception. Rim Jaguar was one of the more modern units of Rim Runners' fleet, built for them to modified Epsilon Class design. She was well found, well manned and reasonably happy. Grimes was the only passenger, and as Rim Runners' Astronautical Superintendent he was given the run of the vessel. He did not abuse the privilege. He would never have dreamed of interfering, and he made suggestions only when asked to do so. Nonetheless he enjoyed the long hours that he spent in the control room, yarning with the officer of the watch, looking out through the wide viewports at the great, distant Galactic Lens, unperturbed by its weird, apparent distortion, the result of the warped space-time through which the ship was falling. He was Earth-born but, like so many spacemen who had made their various ways to this frontier of the dark, he belonged on the Rim, had come to accept that almost empty sky—the sparsely scattered, unreachable island universes, the galaxy itself no more than a dim-glowing ellipsoid—as being altogether right and proper and, somehow, far more natural than worlds in toward the center.
He was sitting in Rim Jaguar's control room now, at ease in his acceleration chair, his seamed, pitted face and his still youthful gray eyes almost obscured by the cloud of acrid smoke from his vile, battered pipe. He was listening tolerantly to the third officer's long list of grievances; shortly after departure from Mellise he had made it quite plain that he wouldn't bite and also that anything told to him by the ship's people would not be taken down and used as evidence against them.
"And annual leave, sir," the young man was saying. "I realize that it isn't always possible to release an officer on the exact date due, but when there's a delay of two, or even three months . . ."
"We just haven't enough personnel, Mr. Sanderson," Grimes told him, "to ensure a prompt relief. Also, when it comes to appointments I try to avoid putting square pegs into round holes. You know what that can lead to."
"The Rim Griffon business, sir?"
"Yes. Everybody hating everybody, and the ship suffering in consequence. A very sorry affair."
"I see your point, sir, but—" An alarm pinged sharply. "Excuse me."
It was the Mass Proximity Indicator that had sounded off, the only piece of navigational equipment, apart from the Carlotti Direction Finder, that was functional while the Interstellar Drive was in operation. Grimes swiveled his chair so that he could look at the globular tank that was the screen of the device. Yes, there was something there all right, something that had no business to be there, something that, in the screen, was only a little to one side of the glowing filament that was the extrapolation of the ship's trajectory.
Sanderson was speaking briskly into the telephone. "Control Room here, sir. Unidentified object 000 01.5, range 3,000, closing. Bearing opening."
Grimes heard Captain Drakenberg's reply. "I'll be right up, Mr. Sanderson."
Drakenberg, an untidy bear of a man, looked into the screen and grunted. He turned to Grimes. "And what do you make of it, sir?"
"It's something. . . ."
"I could have told you that, Commodore."
Grimes felt his prominent ears redden. Drakenberg was a highly competent shipmaster, popular rather than otherwise with his officers, but at times lacking in the social graces.
The third officer said, "According to Traffic Control there are no ships in this sector. . . ."
"Would it be a Rim Ghost?" asked the Captain. "You're something of an expert on them, Commodore. Would one show up on the M.P.I.?"
"Conditions would have to be exactly right," said Grimes. "We would have had to slip into its continuum, or it into ours. The same applies, of course, to any attempt to establish radio communication."
"We'll try that, sir," said Drakenberg bluntly. Then, to Sanderson, "Line up the Carlotti."
The watch officer switched on the control room Carlotti communicator, a miniature version of the main set in the ship's radio office, which was a miniature version of the huge, planet-based beacons. The elliptical Mobius Strip that was the antenna began to rotate about its long axis, fading into apparent insubstantiality as it did so. Sanderson threw the switch that hooked it up with the Mass Proximity Indicator. At once the antenna began to swing on its universal mounting, turning unsteadily, hesitantly in a wide arc. After its major oscillations had ceased it hunted for a few seconds, finally locked on.
"Pass me the microphone," Drakenberg ordered. Then he said, speaking slowly and very distinctly, "Rim Jaguar calling unidentified vessel. Rim Jaguar calling unidentified vessel. Come in, please. Come in, please."
There was a silence, broken by Grimes. "Perhaps she hasn't got M.P.I.," he suggested. "Perhaps she hasn't seen us."
"It's a compulsory fitting, isn't it?" growled the master.
"For the Federation's ships. And for ours. But the Empire of Waverley hasn't made it compulsory yet. Or the Shakespearian Sector." He got out of his chair, moved to the screen. "Besides, I don't think that this target is a ship. Not with a blip that size, and at this range. . . ."
"What the hell else can it be?" demanded Drakenberg.
"I don't know," admitted Grimes. "I don't know. . . ."
* * *
It hung there against the unrelieved blackness of Rim Space, a planet where no planet should have been, illuminated by a sun that wasn't there at all. There was an atmosphere, with cloud masses. There were seas and continents. There were polar icecaps. And it was real, solid, with enough mass to hold the ship—her Inertial Drive and her Mannschenn Drive shut down—in a stable orbit about it. An Earth-type world it was, according to Rim Jaguar's instruments—an inhabited world, with the scintillant lights of cities clearly visible scattered over its night hemisphere.
All attempts at communication had failed. The inhabitants did not seem to have radio, either for entertainment or for the transmission of messages. Grimes, still in the control room, looked with some distaste at the useless Carlotti transceiver. Until the invention of this device, whereby ships could talk with each other, and with shore stations regardless of range and with no time lag, psionic radio officers had always been carried. In circumstances such as these a trained telepath would have been invaluable, would have been able to achieve contact with a least a few minds on the planet below. Psionic radio officers were still carried by fighting ships and by survey vessels, but Rim Jaguar was neither. She was a merchantman, and the employment of personnel required for duty only upon very special occasions would have been uneconomical.
She did not carry sounding rockets, even. Grimes, as Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners, had been responsible for that piece of economy, had succeeded in having the regulations amended. He had argued that ships trading only in a well charted sector of space had no need for such expensive toys. It had not been anticipated that an unknown planet—matter or anti-matter?—would appear suddenly upon the track between Mellise and Lorn.
But the construction of a small liquid fuel rocket is little more than a matter of plumbing, and the Jaguar's engineers were able to oblige. Her second officer—as well as being the ship's navigator he specialized in gunnery in the Confederacy's Naval Reserve—produced a crude but effective homing device for the thing. It was hardly necessary. The range was short and the target a big one.
The rocket was fired on such a trajectory that it would hit the night side while the ship was directly over the hemisphere. Radar tracked it down to the outer reaches of the atmosphere, where it disintegrated. But it was a normal, meteoric destruction by impact and friction, not the flare of released energy that would have told of the meeting of matter and anti-matter. That was that. The initial reports of the sighting, together with all the relevant coordinates, had already been sent to Lorn; all that remained now was to report the results of the sounding rocket experiment. Grimes was scribbling the message down on a signal pad, and Drakenberg was busy with the preliminaries of putting the ship back on to trajectory, when the radio officer came into the control room. He was carrying three envelopes, one of which he handed to the Captain, giving the two to the Commodore. Grimes knew what their contents would be, and sighed audibly. Over the years he had become too much of an expert on the dimensional oddities encountered out on the rim of the galaxy. And he was the man on the spot—just when he was in a hurry to be getting home.
The first message was from Rim Runners' Board of Management and read, Act as instructed by Admiral Commanding Confederate Navy. The second one was from Admiral Kravinsky. Carry out full investigation of strange planet. Drakenberg, scowling, handed Grimes the flimsy that had been inside his own envelope. Its content was clear enough, Place self and vessel under orders of Commodore Grimes, Rim Worlds Naval Reserve.
"Keep the ship in orbit, Captain," ordered Grimes resignedly.
* * *
A dust mote in the emptiness, Rim Jaguar's number two lifeboat fell toward the mysterious planet. In it were two men only—Grimes and Sanderson, the freighter's third officer. There had been no shortage of volunteers, from the Master on down, but Grimes, although a high ranking officer of the Naval Reserve, was still an employee of a commercial shipping line. To make a landing on an unknown world with horse, foot and artillery is all very well when you have the large crew of a warship to draw upon; should the initial expedition come to grief there is sufficient personnel left aboard the vessel to handle her and, if necessary, to man her weaponry. But insofar as manning is concerned, a merchant ship is run on a shoestring. There are no expendable ratings, and the loss of even one officer from any department means, at least, considerable inconvenience.
Grimes's decision to take only Sanderson with him had not been a popular one, but the young man had been the obvious choice. He was unmarried—was an orphan. He did not have a steady girlfriend, even. Furthermore, he had just completed a period of Naval Reserve training and rather fancied himself a small arms expert.
Rim Jaguar, however did not carry much of an armory. Grimes had with him his own Minetti and one of the ship's laser handguns. Sanderson had one of the other lasers—there were only three on board—and a vicious ten millimeter projectile pistol. There were spare power packs and a good supply of ammunition for all weapons.
The third officer, who was handling the boat, was talkative on the way down. Grimes did not mind—as long as the young man kept his trap shut and concentrated on his piloting as soon as the little craft hit the atmosphere.
"This is a rum go," he was saying. "How do you explain it, sir? All that obvious sunlight, and no sun at all in the sky . . ."
"I've seen worse," Grimes told him. Like, he thought, the series of alternative universes he had explored—although not thoroughly—in that voyage of the Faraway Quest that somebody had referred to as a Wild Ghost Chase. And that other universe, into which he had quite literally blown his ship, the one in which those evil non-human mutants had ruled the Rim. On both of those occasions Sonya had been with him. She should have been with him now—not this lanky, blond, blue-eyed puppy. But that wasn't Sanderson's fault, and in any case Grimes did not think that he would find the young man lacking in any respect.
"I suppose," the third officer rattled on, "that it's all something to do with different dimensions. Here we're at the very edge of the expanding galaxy, and the barriers between continua must be stretched thin, very thin. That planet's popped through into our continuum, but only half through, if you see what I mean. Its primary has stayed put on the other side of the boundary. . . ."
"A fairish hypothesis," admitted Grimes. "It will have to do until we can think of a better one."
And, he told himself, there must be a better one. As far as he knew the difference between the universes were cultural rather than cosmological. There just couldn't be a planet here—or a sun with a family of planets.
"And I wonder what the people are like, sir. Would they be humanoid, do you think, or even human? They must be civilized. They have cities."
Grimes muttered something about plastic jungles.
"Not plastic, sir. They haven't radio, so the chances are that they don't run to chemical engineering. Concrete jungles . . . would that be better?"
Grimes allowed himself to suppose that it might be.
"You couldn't have timed it better, sir. That large town you decided on will be just clear of the terminator when we get down."
In the Federation's Survey Service, thought Grimes, we were drilled so that such timing became second nature. How had that instructor put it? "Make your first landing just west of the terminator, and unless some bastard chases you off you've the whole day to play silly buggers in."
"Better fasten seat belts, sir."
Grimes pulled the webbing taut across his body, snapped shut the buckle. In a boat fitted with Inertial Drive the ride down to the planetary surface should be a smooth one, provided that there was no atmosphere turbulence. But here there was no spaceport control to give information on meteorological conditions. He spoke into the microphone of the transceiver. "Commodore to Rim Jaguar. We are now entering exosphere. So far all in going as planned." He heard Drakenberg acknowledge.
The air below the boat was clear, abnormally so. The lights of the cities were like star clusters. For a brief second Grimes entertained the crazy idea that they were star clusters, that he and Sanderson had broken through into some other time and space, were somehow adrift in regions toward the heart of a galaxy. He looked upward for reassurance. But he did not, through the transparency of the overhead viewport, see the familiar, almost empty Rim sky. The firmament was ablaze with unfamiliar constellations. It was frightening. Had Sanderson, somehow, turned the boat over just as Grimes had shifted his regard? He had not, as a glance at the instrument panel made obvious. He had not—and below were still the city lights, and from zenith to horizon there were the stars, and low to the west was a great golden moon. Astern, the first rosy flush of dawn was in the sky.
His voice unemotional, deliberately flat, Grimes reported his observations to the ship.
* * *
Swiftly the boat fell through the atmosphere, so fast that interior temperature rose appreciably. But Sanderson was a first class pilot and at no time did he allow the speed of descent to approach dangerous limits. Swiftly the boat fell, her Inertial Drive purring gently, resisting but not overcoming the gravitational field that had her in its grip. Through the morning twilight she dropped, and above her only the brighter stars were visible in the pale sky, and below her the land masses were gray-green rather than black, and the city lights had lost their sharp scintillance and were going out, street by street.
It was toward what looked like a park that Sanderson, on Grimes's instructions, was steering, an irregular rectangle of comparative darkness outlined by such lights as were still burning. There were trees there, the men could see as the boat lost altitude; there were trees, and there were dull-gleaming ribbons and amoeboid shapes that looked like water, and featureless patches that must be clear level ground. Bordering the park were the towers of the city—tall, fantastically turreted and, when struck by the first bright rays of the rising sun, shining like jewels in the reflected radiance.
The boat grounded gently on a soft, resilient surface. Grimes looked at Sanderson and Sanderson looked at Grimes, and then they both stared out of the viewports. They had landed in the middle of the park, on what looked like a lawn of emerald green grass, not far from the banks of a stream. There were trees in the foreground, low, static explosions of dark foliage among which gleamed, scarlet and crimson and gold, what were either fruit or flowers. In the background were the distant towers, upthrusting like the suddenly frozen spray of some great fountain, an opalescent tracery against the clear blue sky.
"Open up, sir?" asked the young officer at last.
"Yes," said Grimes. An itemized list of all the precautions that should be taken before setting foot on a strange planet briefly flashed before his mind's eye, but he ignored it. And to wear a spacesuit in this huge, gorgeous garden would be heresy. But not all of his training could be dismissed so easily. Reluctantly he picked up the microphone, made his report to the ship. He concluded with the words, "We're going out, now, to make contact with the natives. You have your instructions, Captain."
"Yes, Commodore Grimes." Grimes wondered why Drakenberg should sound so anxious. "If I don't hear from you again twenty-four standard hours from now, at the latest, I'm to make a report directly to the Admiralty and await their orders." He hesitated, then brought out the final words with some difficulty." And on no account am I to attempt another landing."
"That is correct, Captain Drakenberg. Over."
"Good luck, Commodore Grimes. Over and out."
Sanderson already had both air lock doors open and the cool breeze had eddied gently through the little cabin, flushing out the acridity of hot oil and machinery, bringing with it the scent of flowers, of dew-wet grass. There were birds singing outside and then, faint yet clear, the sound of a great clock somewhere in the city striking the hour. Automatically Grimes looked at his watch, made to reset it and then smiled at his foolishness. He did not know yet what sort of time it was that these people kept.
He was first out of the boat, jumping down onto the velvety turf, joined almost at once by Sanderson. "This is beautiful!" exclaimed the young man. "I hope that the natives come up to what we've seen so far." He added, "The girls especially."
Grimes should have reproved him, but he didn't. He was too busy wondering what it was that made everything, so far, so familiar. He had never seen this world before, or any planet like it, and yet. . . How did he know, for example, that this city's name was Ayonoree? How could he know?
"Which way do we go, sir?" Sanderson was asking.
Which way? The memory, if it was memory, wasn't quite good enough. "We'll follow the stream," he decided.
It was a short walk to the near bank of the little river, along which ran a path of flagstones. The water was crystal clear, gently flowing. On it floated great lily pads, and on one of these sat a huge frog, all gold and emerald, staring at them with bright, protuberant eyes. It croaked loudly.
"It's saying something!" cried Sanderson.
"Rubbish!" snapped Grimes, who was trying to break the odd spell that had been cast over them. But were those words that they could hear?
Follow stream stay in the dream.
Follow stream stay in the dream.
"You!" shouted Sanderson. "What do you mean?"
In reply the batrachian croaked derisively, splashed into the water and struck out slowly for the further shore.
So we follow the stream, thought Grimes. He set off along the path, the young man tailing behind. Suddenly he stopped. There was a tree, gracefully trailing its tendrillike branches almost to the water, to one side of the flagstones, another tree a few yards inshore from it. Between the trunks was a huge, glittering web. There was a spider, too, disgustingly hairy, as large as a man's clenched fist, scuttling toward the center of its fragile-seeming net. And there was an insect of some kind, a confused fluttering of gauzy wings, snared by the viscous strands.
Grimes made to detour around the landward tree. After all, spiders were entitled to a meal, just as he was. Insofar as the uglier sides of Nature were concerned he tried to maintain his neutrality. He did not especially like spiders—but, in all probability, that oversized insect in the web was something even more unpleasant.
Behind him he heard Sanderson cry out, heard the hiss of his laser pistol and felt the heat of the beam that narrowly missed his right ear. The fleshy body of the spider exploded and hung there, tattered and steaming. There was a sickening stench of burned flesh.
Grimes turned angrily on the young man. "What the hell do you think you're doing? For all we know, spiders are sacred on this world!"
"More likely these are!"
Sanderson had pushed past Grimes and, with gentle hands, was freeing the trapped creature. "Look!" he was saying. "Look!"
The Commodore looked. This was not, as he assumed, an insect. It was humanoid, a winged woman, but tiny, tiny. Her lustrous golden hair hung to her waist, and beneath her filmy green robe was the hint of perfectly formed breasts. Her mouth was scarlet and her eyes blue, and her features were perfectly formed. She sat there in the third officer's cupped hands, looking up at him. Her voice, when she spoke, was like the tinkling of a little silver bell.
"Follow stream, and follow river,
"When danger threatens do not quiver;
"Follow stream to Ogre's Keep,
"Wake the Princess from her sleep!"
"What princess?" demanded Grimes.
She turned to glare to him.
"Prince's servitors like you,
"Should only speak when spoken to."
Sanderson was shocked. "This is the Commodore," he said severely to the winged being.
"Commodore, Schmommodore!" she replied sweetly—and then, with hardly a quiver of those impractical looking pinions, was gone.
"So you're promoted," said Grimes dryly. "And I'm demoted."
"All the same, sir, it was absolute sauce on her part." Then he went on a little smugly. "The odd part is that I am a prince. My father was King of Tavistock, until they threw him out."
"And your great-grandfather," said Grimes, "who founded the dynasty, was a semi-piratical tramp skipper. I know the history."
"Do we follow the stream, sir?"
"Yes. It's as good a way to explore this world as any."
* * *
They followed the stream. Through the great park it led them, past enormous beds of fantastic, glowing flowers, through a grove of gaunt, contorted trees. The transition from parkland to city street was abrupt; suddenly there were cobbles underfoot instead of the worn flagstones, and on every hand towered multi-colored buildings, convoluted structures that made nonsense of all the laws of architecture and engineering.
People were abroad now, men and women, a great number of children. They were human enough in outward appearance at least, but there was an oddness about them, an oversimplification of all features, a peculiar blend of stylization and caricature. There was no vehicular traffic, but there were riders—some upon horses, some upon camels, some upon the lizard-like roadrunners indigenous to Tarizeel, some upon beasts that were utterly strange even to the widely traveled Grimes.
The two explorers marched on, ignored by the brightly dressed natives, ignoring them. They should, Grimes knew, have tried to make contact, which would not have been hard. From the scraps of conversation they overheard it was obvious that Anglo-Terran was the language of this planet. They should have demanded to be taken to the king, president or whatever authority it was that ruled this world. But it was not important. What was important was to find the Ogre's Keep, to awaken the sleeping princess. It was as though some outside power had taken control of them. The feeling should have been nightmarish, but it was not. Grimes was oddly grateful that somebody—or something—else was making the decisions that he should have been making.
The stream joined a river, and the path continued along the bank of the larger body of water, taking the two men clear of the city. They walked on steadily, feeling no fatigue, maintaining a brisk pace. They were away from the crowds of the city, met only an occasional pedestrian, and now and again a peasant man or woman pushing a barrow high-laden with produce in to market. One of these latter, a wizened, black-clad crone dragging a little cart fitted with pumpkins, accosted them. Raising high a skinny claw she declaimed in a cracked voice,
"Dare the dragon! Storm the Keep!
"Save us all from endless sleep!"
"The dragon, madam?" inquired Grimes politely.
But she was given no time to answer him. From the cloudless sky crackled a bolt of lightning, dazzling, terrifying, striking the path between her and the two men. She waited, "I didn't say anything! I didn't say anything!" and was gone, scuttling toward the city, the cart bouncing along behind her, a trail of bruised and burst pumpkins in her wake.
"Somebody Up There doesn't like her," remarked Sanderson. Then, brightly, "Do you feel in the mood for dragon-slaying, sir?"
"Why not?" countered Grimes. After all, it would be no more outrageous than any of their other encounters to date. Outrageous? He repeated the word mentally. Where had he got it from? Nothing, so far, justified its use: the frog, the fairy in the spider's web, all the talk of ogres' keeps and sleeping princesses and dragons, it had all been perfectly natural. In any well-regulated world sleeping princesses were there to be awakened, and ogres' keeps to be stormed, and the dragons to be slain. Of course, the way he and the young prince were dressed was all wrong—more like peasants than like knights errant. But that could not be helped. Disguise was allowable.
"Shall we press on, Your Highness?" he suggested.
"Yes, Sir John. No doubt the dragon awaits us eagerly." Sanderson pulled the projectile pistol from its holster, spun it carelessly with his right forefinger through the trigger guard. "Methinks that our magic weapons will prove more efficacious than swords."
"Mehopes that you're right, Your Highness."
"Then come, Sir John. Time's a-wasting."
They walked on—and then, just ahead of them, Grimes saw a pontoon landing dock on the river. There was a ship alongside it, an archaic side-wheel paddle steamer, smoke issuing from its tall funnel. At the shoreward side of the stage was a notice board and on it, in big black letters on a white ground, the sign:
RIVER TRIPS TO OGRE'S KEEP.
HALF A FLORIN. VERY CHEAP.
"Your Highness," said Grimes, "let's take the boat and rest awhile, then face the dragon with a smile."
"Have you the wherewithal, Sir John, to pay the fare agreed upon?"
"I have a pass, Prince Sanderson. And so have you—your trusty gun."
Something at the back of the Commodore's mind winced at the doggerel and cried voicelessly, You're a spaceman, not a character out of a children's book! Grimes almost ignored it, tried to ignore it, but the nagging doubt that had been engendered persisted.
They marched on to the pontoon, their sturdily shod feet ringing on the planking, their weapons drawn and ready. Side by side, but with Sanderson slightly in the lead, they tramped up the gangway. At the head of it stood a man in uniform—and, incongruously, his trappings were those of a purser in the Waverley Royal Mail Line. He held out his hand." Good knights, if you would board this ship, pay passage money for your trip."
"Varlet, stand back! The ride is free for this, the bold Sir John, and me!"
"And here, as you can plainly see," added Grimes, making a meaningful gesture with his Minetti, "is our loud-voiced authority."
"Sir, it speaks loud enough for me," admitted the purser, standing to one side. As they passed him Grimes heard him mutter. "The Royal Mail could not be worse. They never made me speak in verse."
Grimes, who was always at home aboard ships of any kind, led the way down to the saloon, a large compartment, darkly paneled, with black leather upholstery on chairs and settees. At one end of it there was a bar, but it was shut. Along both sides were big windows, barely clear of the surface of the water. There were no other passengers.
Overhead there was the thudding of feet on planking. Then there was a jangling of bells, followed at once by the noise of machinery below decks. From above came the long mournful note of a steam whistle, and then came the steady chunk, chunk, chunk of the paddles. The ship was underway, heading down river. On either side the banks were sliding past, a shifting panorama of forest and village, with only rarely what looked like a cultivated field, but very often a huge, frowning, battlemented castle.
The rhythm of paddles and engines was a soothing one and Grimes, at least, found that it made him drowsy. He lolled back in his deep chair, halfway between consciousness and sleep. When he was in this state his real memories, his very real doubts and worries came suddenly to the surface of his mind. He heard his companion murmur, "Speed, bonny boat, like a bird through the sky. Carry us where the dragon must die."
"Come off it, Sanderson," ordered the Commodore sharply.
"Sir John, please take yourself in hand. Such insolence I will not stand!"
"Come off it!" ordered Grimes again—and then the spell, which had been so briefly broken, took charge again. "Your Highness, I spoke out of turn. But courtesy I'll try to learn."
"My good Sir John, you better had. Bad manners always make me mad. But look through yonder port, my friend. Methinks we neareth journey's end."
Journey's end or not, there was a landing stage there toward which the paddle steamer was standing in. Inshore from it the land was thickly wooded and rose steeply. On the crest of the hill glowered the castle, a grim pile of gray stone, square-built, ugly, with a turret at each corner. There was a tall staff from which floated a flag. Even from a distance the two men could make out the emblem: a white skull-and-crossbones in a black ground. And then, as the ship neared the shore, the view was shut out and, finally, only the slime-covered side of the pontoon could be seen through the window.
The paddle steamer came alongside with a gentle crunch and, briefly, the engines were reversed to take the way off her. From forward and aft there was a brief rattle of steam winches as she was moored, and then there were no more mechanical noises.
The purser appeared in the saloon entrance. "Good knights, you now must leave this wagon. So fare you forth to face the dragon."
"And you will wait till we are done?" asked Grimes.
"We can't, Sir Knight, not on this run.
"Come rain, come shine, come wind, come snow,
"Back and forth our ferries go.
"Like clockwork yet, sir, you should try 'em,
"And even set your wristwatch by 'em."
"Enough, Sir John," said Sanderson, "this wordy wight will keep us gabbing here all night. In truth, he tells a pretty tale—this lackey from the Royal Mail!"
The spell was broken again. "You noticed too!" exclaimed Grimes.
"Yes. I noticed. That cap badge with a crown over the silver rocket." Sanderson laughed. "It was when I tried to find a rhyme for tale that things sort of clicked into place."
Grimes turned on the purser. "What the hell's going on here?" he demanded.
"Alas, Sir Knight, I cannot say. I cannot say?" The young man's pudgy face stiffened with resolution. "No! Come what may . . ."
Whatever it was that came, it was sudden. He was standing there, struggling to speak, and then he was . . . gone, vanished in a gentle thunderclap as the air rushed in to fill the vacuum where he had stood. Then another man stamped into the saloon, in captain's uniform with the same familiar trappings.
"Begone, good knights," he shouted, "to meet your fate! Get off my ship, I'm running late."
"Sir," began Grimes—and then that influence gripped his mind again. He said, "Thank you for passage, sir. Goodbye. We fare forth now, to do or die!"
"Well said, Sir John," declaimed Sanderson. "Well said, my friend. We go—to shape the story's end."
"I hope, good knights, you gallant two," growled the captain, "that story's end does not shape you." He led the way from the saloon up to the gangway.
* * *
They stood on the pontoon, watching the little steamer round the first bend on her voyage up river, then walked to the bridge that spanned the gap between landing stage and bank. Overhead the sky was darkening and the air was chill. The westering sun had vanished behind a bank of low clouds. Grimes, his shirt and slacks suddenly inadequate, shivered. What am I doing here? he asked himself. And then, quite suddenly, Who am I? It was a silly question, and he at once knew how foolish it was. The answer shaped itself in his mind. I am the one they call Sir John, true comrade to Prince Sanderson.
"We forward march," announced the Prince, "my cobber bold, to meet the perils long foretold. Up yonder hill, let us then, to beard the dragon in his den."
"The dragon wastes no time on fuss," remarked Grimes. "He's coming down, and bearding us."
Yes, the beast was coming down, either from the castle or from somewhere else atop the hill. It was airborne—and even in his bemused state Grimes realized that it should never have gotten off the ground. Its head and body were too large, its wings too small, too skimpy. But it was a terrifying sight, a monstrous, batwinged crocodile, its mouth, crowded with jagged teeth, agape, the long, sharp claws of its forefeet extended. It dived down on them, roaring, ignoring the laser beams that the two men directed at it, even though its metallic scales glowed cherry red where they scored hits. It dived down on them—and there was more than mere sound issuing from that horrid maw. The great gout of smoky flame was real enough, and Grimes and Sanderson escaped it only by diving into the undergrowth on either side of the steep path.
The beast pulled out of its dive and flapped away slowly, regaining altitude. The men watched it until it was only a darker speck in the dark sky, then realized that the speck was rapidly increasing in size. It was coming for them again.
Something was wrong, very wrong. In the fairy stories the dragons never kill the heroes . . . but this dragon looked like being the exception to prove the rule. Grimes holstered his laser pistol, pulled out his Minetti. He doubted that the little weapon would be of any avail against the armored monstrosity, but it might be worth trying. From the corner of his eyes he saw that Sanderson had out and ready his heavy projectile pistol. "Courage, Sir John," called the young man. "Aim for his head. We've no cold steel; we'll try hot lead!"
"Cold steel, forsooth!" swore Grimes. "Hot lead, indeed! A silver bullet's what we need!"
"Stand firm, Sir John, and don't talk rot! Don't whine for what we haven't got!"
Grimes loosed off a clip at the diving dragon on full automatic. Sanderson, the magazine of whose pistol held only ten rounds, fired in a more leisurely manner. Both men tried to put their shots into the open mouth, the most obviously vulnerable target. Whether or not they succeeded they never knew. Again they had to tumble hastily off the path just as the jet of flame roared out at them. This time it narrowly missed Grimes's face. It was like being shaved with a blowtorch.
He got groggily to his feet, fumbled another clip of cartridges out of the pouch at his belt, reloaded the little automatic. He saw that Sanderson was pushing a fresh magazine into the butt of his heavy pistol. The young man smiled grimly and said, "Sir John, the ammo's running low. When all is spent, what shall we do?"
"The beast will get us if we run. Would that we'd friends to call upon!"
"Many did give us good advice. If they gave us more it would be nice."
"What of the fairy Lynnimame?"
"And how, Sir John, do you know her name?"
The dragon was coming in again, barely visible in the fast gathering dusk. The men held their fire until the last possible moment—and it was almost the last moment for both of them. Barely did they scramble clear of the roaring, stinking flame, and as they rolled in the brush both of them were frantically beating out their smoldering clothing. The winged monster, as before, seemed to be uninjured.
Suddenly Sanderson cried out, swung to turn his just reloaded pistol on a new menace. It was Grimes who stopped him, who knocked his arm down before he could fire. In the glowing ovoid of light was a tiny human figure, female, with gauzy wings. She hung there over the rough, stony path. She was smiling sweetly, and her voice, when she spoke, was a silvery tintinnabulation. "Prince, your companion called my name. I am the fairy Lynnimame. I am she who, this very morn, from the jaws of the spider foul was torn. I pay my debts; you rescued me. I'll rescue you, if that's your fee."
"Too right it is, you lovesome sprite."
"Then take this, Prince. And now, good night."
She put something into Sanderson's hand and vanished. Before she flickered into invisibility Grimes, by the pale luminosity of her, saw what it was. It was a cartridge case, ordinary enough in appearance except that the tip of the bullet looked too bright to be lead. "A silver bullet!" marveled Sanderson. "A silver bullet. We are saved. He'll play Goliath to my David!"
"Unless you load, you pious prig, he'll play the chef to your long pig!"
Hastily Sanderson pulled the magazine from the butt of his pistol, ejected the first cartridge, replaced it with the silver bullet. He shoved the clip back home with a loud click. He was just in time; the dragon was upon them again, dropping almost vertically. The first lurid flames were gushing from its gaping mouth when the third officer fired. The result was spectacular. The thing exploded in mid-air, and the force of the blast sent Grimes tumbling head over heels into the bushes, with only a confused impression of a great, scarlet flower burgeoning against the night.
He recovered consciousness slowly. As before, when he had dozed briefly aboard the river steamer, he was aware of his identity, knew what he was supposed to be doing. And then Sanderson's words severed the link with reality, recast the spell.
"Arise, Sir John! No time for sleep! We march against the Ogre's Keep!"
* * *
They marched against the Ogre's Keep—but it was more an undignified scramble up the steep path than a march. Luckily the moon was up now, somewhere above the overcast, and its diffused light was helpful, showed them the dark mass of briars that barred their way before they blundered into the thorny growth. Luckily they had not lost their weapons, and with their laser pistols they slashed, and slashed again, and slashed until their wrists ached with fatigue and their thumbs were numb from the continual pressure on the firing studs. For a long while they made no headway at all; it seemed that the severed, spiny tendrils were growing back faster than they were being destroyed. When the power packs in the pistols were exhausted they were actually forced back a few feet while they were reloading. It was Grimes who thought of renewing the attack with a wide setting instead of the needle beams that they had been using at first. The prickly bushes went up with a great whoosh of smoky flame, and the two men scrambled rather than ran through the gap thus cleared, and even then the barbed thorns were clutching at skin and clothing.
Then, with the fire behind them, they climbed on, bruised, torn and weary. They climbed, because it was the only thing to do. At last they were high enough up the hillside to see the castle again, black and forbidding against the gray sky. The few squares of yellow light that were windows accentuated rather than relieved the darkness.
They gained the rock-strewn plateau in the center of which towered the Keep. They stumbled across the uneven surface, making their way between the huge boulders, avoiding somehow the fissures that made the ground a crazy pattern of cracks. From some of these sounded ominous hissings and croakings and gruntings, from some there was a baleful gleaming of red eyes, but nothing actively molested them. And there was a rising wind now, damp and cold, that made a mockery of their rent, inadequate clothing, that whined and muttered in their ears like unquiet ghosts.
But they kept on at a staggering, faltering pace and came at last to the great iron-studded doorway. Barely within Sanderson's reach—and he was a tall man—was a huge knocker, forged in the semblance of a snarling lion's head. The young officer had to stretch to reach it; and as he put his hand to it, it moved of its own accord, emitting a thunderous clangor like an artillery barrage. Boom, boom! Boom, boom! Boom!
Almost as loud were the heavy footsteps that sounded thunderously behind the door. Almost as loud was the deep voice that asked, "Who on this night, so bleak and frore, disturbs the Giant Blunderbore?"
The double doors crashed outward. Standing there, silhouetted against the light, was a human figure. It was all of ten feet tall, and broad in proportion. It looked down at them, its eyes gleaming yellow in the black face, and bellowed, "Enter, Princeling! Enter, Knight! Ye shall be my guests tonight." Then, as the two men drew back, it went on, "Come in, come in! This is Liberty Hall—you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
The lapse from rhymed couplets and the use of an expression that had never failed to annoy him snapped Grimes back to reality. He was Commodore John Grimes, of the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve, not Sir John, and he was supposed to be investigating this crazy planet. But the castle was real enough, as was the giant who loomed there in the open doorway, as were the bruises on his body that still ached, the scratches and burns that still smarted.
"What's the matter?" he asked nastily. "Can't you find a rhyme for 'bastard'? And who are you, anyhow?"
"And who are you? All I know is that you are outsiders, and I'm supposed to stop you. Not that I want to. This damn foolishness has gone on too long. Much too long."
From the sky thundered a great voice, "Blunderbore, your duty's plain! These prying strangers must be slain!"
The giant stared upward, growled, "—you. I've had you, chum, in a big way."
The answer was a sizzling bolt of lightning, a crackling streak of dazzling energy that should have incinerated Blunderbore where he stood. But he caught it with a huge hand, laughed and hurled it back like a flaming javelin, shouting, "Try that on for size, damn you!"
"What's going on?" Sanderson whimpered. "What's going on here?"
"It's a long story," Blunderbore told him.
"It's a story, all right," agreed Grimes. "The city of Ayonoree . . . the Frog Prince . . . the Fairy Lynnimame . . . and you, Blunderbore." Yes, it was all coming back to him, and it was all making a fantastic kind of sense.
"Can you be killed?" Blunderbore was asking.
"I suppose so," said Grimes, conscious of the smart of his wounds. "Yes, I fear so. We're the outsiders. We don't belong in the series, do we? And you and the others go on from installment to installment. . . ."
"Only because we're trapped. But come in. You have to wake the Princess. It's the only way out, for all of us."
The huge man stood to one side as Grimes and Sanderson hurried into the castle. They were barely in time, were almost knocked from their feet by the wind from the crashing volley of great rocks that fell from the black sky. Splinters stung the backs of their legs painfully. Grunting, Blunderbore pushed past them, seized the two sides of the door in his big hands, pulled them shut just as another shower of boulders crashed against the stout, iron-bound timbers. "Hurry!" he shouted. "He's turning nasty!"
The giant led the way across the flagstoned floor, to the far end of the enormous, gloomy hall. He staggered as he ran—and with cause. The very earth was growling beneath their feet, and each successive tremor was more violent than the last. From above came a crash of toppling masonry.
The air was thickening. Tendrils of yellow fog clutched at the running, stumbling men, and the writhing mist had substance. Half-seen, evil faces leered at them, distorted visages that were all teeth and dull-gleaming eyes. Vaporous claws reached out for them, solidifying as they did so. Behind Grimes Sanderson screamed, and the Commodore stopped and turned, slashing with his laser at the gelatinous obscenity that had the young officer in its grip. It piped shrilly as it disintegrated, stinking sulfurously.
"Hurry!" Blunderbore was still shouting. "Hurry!"
The stone floor was crackling underfoot, heaving and buckling, and from the high, vaulted ceiling ominous groans resounded. The castle could not withstand this punishment for long. The flaring torches were going out and there was a strong smell of escaping gas. Then, as a chance spark reignited the explosive mixture, there was a fiery blast that almost finished the destructive work initiated by the earthquake.
Almost finished.
But Blunderbore and the two spacemen were still on their feet, somehow, and there were still walls around them, although crumbling and tottering, and over their heads the last stone arch still held, despite the torrential rain of rubble that was clattering upon and around it. Ahead of them was the great fireplace, into which the giant jumped without stooping. Then he bent slowly and fumbled among the dead ashes, and straightened even more slowly, the muscles of his naked back and arms bulging and glistening. He grunted as he came erect, holding before him an enormous slab of stone. He cast it from him—and the noise of its fall and its shattering was lost amid the general uproar.
Under the slab was a spiral stairway, a helix of rusty iron running down, and down, down to murky depths where an eerie blue glimmer flickered. The prospect was not an inviting one; how long would the walls of the shaft withstand the incessant tremors? Even so, the fire was yet to come, whereas the frying pan was becoming hotter and hotter. Great sheets of flame from the ruptured gas mains were shrieking across the ruined hall, and through them crashed increasingly heavy falls of debris. And the writhing phantasms were back, multiplying in spite of the geysers of burning, exploding gas, coalescing, solidifying, piping and tittering. They were insubstantial no longer; their claws and their teeth were sharp.
"Down with you!" bellowed Blunderbore. "Down with you! It's the only way!"
"You lead!" gasped Grimes, using his laser like a sword, slashing at the half-materialized things that were closing in upon them.
"No . . . I'll hold . . . them off. . . ." The giant had wrenched the great iron spit from its sockets on either side of the fireplace, was flailing away with it, grunting with every stroke. Tattered rags of ectoplasm clung to its ends, eddied through the smoke- and dust-filled air.
Grimes paused briefly at the head of the spiral staircase, then barked to Sanderson, "Come on!" He clattered down the shaking treads, his left hand on the outer guard rail, his pistol clenched in his right fist. The central column seemed to be trying to tie itself into a knot, but it held, although the steps were canting at odd angles. The walls of the shaft were starting to bulge inward.
Grimes ran—down, down, round, round—keeping his footing in spite of the earthquake shocks, in spite of his increasing dizziness. He ran, and after him ran the third officer. Up there above Blunderbore was still fighting; his joyous bellowing came rolling down on them like thunder, loud even above the clangorous destruction of the Ogre's Keep.
Down, down. . . .
Grimes staggered on, forcing his legs to move, to go on moving, taking great gasps of the damp, fetid air. Something barred his way, something long and serpent-like, with absurdly small forelegs, with curved poison-fangs and a flickering black tongue. The Commodore tried to stop, tried to bring his pistol up to a firing position, but could not. His impetus carried him on. Then he was through the monster; its body offered no more resistance than wet tissue paper.
Down, down. . . .
It was more of a fall than a run.
It was a fall.
Grimes thudded gently into something thick and soft, lay sprawled on the soft bed of moss, breathing in great, painful gulps. Slowly he became aware of his surroundings: the cave, lit by a soft, rosy radiance with no apparent source, the opalescent colonnades of stalactite and stalagmite, the tinkling, glittering waterfalls. He focused his attention upon his immediate vicinity. The Prince was still with him, was himself slowly stirring into wakefulness. Sir John knew where he was. This was the Witch's Cave, the home of the wicked Melinee.
She was standing over them, a tall woman, white of skin, black of hair, vividly red of mouth, clad in a robe of misty gray. In either hand she held a crystal goblet, bedewed with condensation. She murmured, "Rest you awhile, good knights and true, and pray accept this cooling brew."
Sanderson reached greedily for the vessel she held out to him—and Grimes, firing from his supine position, exploded it into a spray of splinters and acrid steam.
"It's not the mess," protested Sanderson, "but it's the waste! I never even got a taste!"
"Prince, had we quaffed the witch's wine," Grimes told him, "it would have turned us into swine."
Melinee laughed, a low, throaty gurgle. "You know too much, too much by far. But you'll be more fun the way you are." She looked at Sanderson as she said this. The invitation in her black eyes, her parted scarlet lips, was unmistakable.
The young officer reacted. He got gracefully to his feet, took a step toward the witch. He said gallantly. "Who needs wine when you're around, beautiful?"
"Careful!" warned Grimes.
"Have we been careful so far, sir? We've been collecting all the kicks—it's time that we got our paws on some of the ha'pence." Then, to the woman, "Isn't there somewhere around here a little more private?"
She smiled. "My bower, behind the waterfall . . ."
"Sanderson! I order you to keep away from this female!"
"I give the orders around here, old man," said Melinee sweetly. "This is my cave, and whatever your rank may be it means nothing as long as you're on my property." She turned again to Sanderson. The filmy robe was already slipping down from one smooth shoulder and it was obvious that she was wearing nothing underneath it. "Come," she murmured.
The admonitory voice boomed from the roof of the cavern. "Melinee, you forget yourself!"
"I don't!" she shouted. "I'm remembering myself. I'm a real person, not a character in some stupid children's fairy story! If you can't write adult fiction, buster, I'm taking charge of the plot. I'm supposed to be stopping these men from going any further, aren't I? Then shut up and let me do it my way!"
"Melinee!"
"That's not my name, and you know it." She turned again to Sanderson. "Don't be shy, spaceman. I'll show you just how wicked a wicked witch can be!"
"Mr. Sanderson!" Grimes's voice crackled with authority. "Leave that woman alone!"
The young man stood there, obviously thinking mutinous thoughts but not daring to express them. The woman stood there, looking at him, a contemptuous little smile curving her full lips. And then she turned, began to walk slowly and gracefully toward the waterfall. Her robe was almost transparent.
"Melinee!" The voice from the roof expressed entreaty as well as anger. And why, Grimes asked himself suddenly, should I be on his side? He said aloud, but quietly, "All right, Mr. Sanderson. Go with her."
Sanderson shook his head bewilderedly. "First you tell me not to, and now you say that I can. . . . After all, we are on duty."
"Go with her," repeated Grimes. It was more of an order than a suggestion. "But, sir . . ."
"Damn it all, when I was your age I didn't have to be told twice."
The Wicked Witch called over her shoulder, "Do as the nice man says, darling."
The third officer made a sort of growling noise deep in his throat, glared defiantly at the Commodore, then started after the woman. She had reached the shimmering curtain of the waterfall, was passing through it. As she turned to look back through the rippling transparency Sanderson quickened his pace. Grimes chuckled, pulled from his pocket the battered pipe that somehow had survived unbroken, filled it, then ostentatiously used his laser pistol as a lighter. It was a dangerous trick, but an impressive one.
From beyond the cascade came the sound of a crooning female voice. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" Then there was a crash of splintering glass and a scream. "No! No! You can't do that to me! I'll fix you! I'll fix you, you . . . you fairy story-teller!"
Melinee burst back into the main cavern. She was shaking with murderous fury. "Look!" she yelled. "Look what that bastard did to me!"
Grimes looked. Sanderson looked. "But—" the latter started to say. Grimes interjected hastily, "It's shocking!" He was lying—as the mirror must have done.
"Come on!" she snarled. "This joke's gone on quite long enough!"
* * *
She led the way into her bower, through the curtain of falling water. As Grimes passed through it he heard behind him the clatter of falling stalactites, felt the brief wave of scalding heat as the waterfall flashed into steam. But it was too late to harm him, and the others were well clear.
On the far wall of the bower was the mirror—or what had been the mirror. Now it was only an elaborately molded golden frame set into the rock face. Melinee scrambled through it, ignoring the sharp edges that ripped her robe from hip to ankle. Sanderson followed her, then Grimes. The tunnel beyond it was unpleasantly organic in appearance, a convoluted tube, with smooth and pinkly glistening walls, winding, pulsing underfoot, writhing.
Melinee ran on, sure-footed. Somewhere she had lost her sandals, had probably used one of them to smash the lying, libelous looking-glass. The men, in their shoes, slipped and slithered, but they kept up with her. Down they went, and down, losing all sense of direction, losing their footing, putting hands out to steady themselves against smooth, warm walls that shrank away from the touch. Down they went, and down, gasping in the hot air, suddenly conscious that the red-glowing walls were steadily contracting. Soon there would be no going any further ahead, and no turning back.
They were crouching, and then they were slithering on their bellies. Grimes, who had passed Sanderson while it was still possible, while there was still freedom of movement, suddenly found his way blocked, realized that the crown of his head was pressing against the soles of Melinee's bare feet. Faintly her voice came back to him. "We're there . . . at the air lock. But . . . I don't know how to open it. . . ."
"I . . . I have to crawl past you . . ." gasped Grimes. Then, urgently, "Make yourself small, woman! Breathe out!"
"I'll . . . try."
Like an earthworm in its tunnel—but with far less agility, far less speed—the Commodore edged forward. Somehow he managed to get both arms ahead of his body, clutched filmy fabric and the firm flesh beneath. He heard her give a little scream, but he ignored it. Cloth tore, and then he had a firm grip on her waist, just above her hips. His face was over her heels, and then pressing down on her ankles. Somehow he was still able to draw an occasional breath. His nose was sliding—but slowly, slowly—up the valley between her calves. He hunched his back, and the resilient wall above him gave a little.
He grunted as he wriggled forward. Somehow he negotiated her buttocks; then his fingers were on her shoulders. He pulled himself ahead, more rapidly now. He spat out a mouthful of hair, then slid his hands along her upreaching bare arms. And then there was metal, blessedly hard and solid to the touch—and touch was the only sense that he and to guide him.
Was this an air lock door? He did not know; he had only her word for it. And if it were, indeed, an air lock door, was it of the standard pattern? It had to be; otherwise the situation was utterly hopeless. Cramped as he was, Grimes could never get his laser pistol out of its holster—and even if he could its employment in this confined space might well prove fatal to himself and the others.
His fingers groped, scrabbled, feeling nothing at first but smooth, seamless metal. He had almost given up hope when he found what he was looking for: the neat little hole, large enough to admit a space-gloved digit. He had to squirm and contort himself to get his hand to the right angle. Under him Melinee whimpered a little, but did not complain.
The tip of his index finger crept over the faired rim of the hole, pushed into it, at first encountering nothing at all and then, after what seemed an eternity, smooth plastic. Grimes pushed, felt the surface give. He maintained the pressure, relaxed it, pushed again, and again, making "O" in Morse Code—"O" for "Open."
He heard the faint whir of machinery, a noise that suddenly became louder. The inward opening door almost took his finger with it. And then he was in the air lock, closely followed by Sanderson.
Melinee had vanished.
* * *
Slowly Grimes and Sanderson walked through the silent, the too silent alleyways of the ship, fighting the lassitude that threatened to close down upon them, forcing their way through air that seemed to possess the viscosity of cold treacle. But they were not alone. In their ears—or in their minds?—sounded the croaking voice of the Frog Prince, the tinkling soprano of the Fairy Lynnimame, the husky whisper of Melinee. "You must not give in. You have come so far; you must not give in. Waken the Princess. Waken the Princess." And there was Blunderbore's urgent muttering, and the faint voices of the River Queen's captain and purser. "Wake the Princess. Wake the Princess."
They stumbled on, weakening, through the gelid air, the internal atmosphere that didn't even smell right, that didn't smell at all, that lacked the familiar taints of hot oil and machinery, of tobacco smoke and women's perfume, the clean, garden scents of the hydroponics deck. They staggered on, through alleyways and up companionways, fighting every inch of the way, sustained somehow by the fairytale characters whom they had encountered.
And Grimes knew what was wrong, knew the nature of the stasis that must, soon, make them part of itself, unless they reached the Mannschenn Drive room in time. He had read of, but had never until now experienced, the almost impossible balance of forces, the canceling out of opposing temporal precession fields that would freeze a ship and all her people in an eternal Now, forever adrift down and between the dimensions. That had been one of the theories advanced to account for the vanishing, without trace, of that Waverley Royal Mail liner ten standard years ago—the ship aboard which the writer Clay Wilton had been a passenger.
Grimes could remember, vividly, the blurb on the dust jacket of the book that he had bought as a present for the small daughter of a friend. "The last of the dreamers," the author had been called. He had skimmed through it, had laughed at the excellent illustrations and then, to his amazement, had been gripped by the story. It was about a world that never was and was never could be, a planet where sorcery was everyday practice, where talking animals and good fairies and wicked witches interfered in the affairs of men and women.
"You are beginning to understand," whispered Lynnimame.
There was the door ahead of them, with MANNSCHENN DRIVE in shining metal letters above it. The door was closed, stubborn; it would not yield. Human muscles were powerless against the stasis; human muscles with strength flowing into them from outside, somehow, were still powerless. The handle snapped off cleanly in Grimes's hand.
"Let me, sir," Sanderson was saying. "Let me try."
The Commodore stepped slowly to one side, his motions those of a deep-sea diver. He saw that the young man had his laser weapon out of its holster, was struggling to raise it against the dreadful inertia.
He pressed the firing stud.
Slowly, fantastically, the beam of intense light extruded itself from the muzzle, creeping toward that immovable door. After an eternity it made contact, and after another eternity the paint began to bubble. Aeons passed, and there was a crater. More aeons dragged by—and the crater was a hole. Still Sanderson, his face rigid with strain, held the weapon steady. Grimes could imagine that luminous, purple worm crawling across the space from the door to the switchboard. Then Sanderson gasped, "I can't keep it up!" and the muzzle of the pistol wavered, sagged until it was pointing at the deck.
We tried, thought Grimes. Then he wondered, Will Wilton add us to his permanent cast of characters?
Suddenly there was sound again—the dying, deepening whine of a stopped Mannschenn Drive unit, of spinning, processing gyroscopes slowing to final immobility. Like a bullet fired from a gun deflected after the pulling of the trigger, the laser beam had reached its target. There was sound again: fans, and pumps, the irregular throbbing of the Inertial Drive, and all the bubble and clamor of a suddenly awakened ship. From bulkhead speakers boomed a voice, that of the captain of the river steamer. "Whoever you are, come up to the main saloon, please. And whoever you are—thank you."
* * *
Grimes sprawled comfortably in an easy chair, a cold drink ready to hand. He had decided to stay aboard this ship, the Princess of Troon, having persuaded her captain to set trajectory for Lorn. After all, he was already ten years late—a few more weeks would make very little difference. During the voyage the Commodore would be able to question the Princess' personnel still further, to work on his report. He was keeping young Sanderson with him. Drakenberg had not been at all pleased when deprived of the service of a watch officer, but the Commodore piled on far more G's than he did.
Already Grimes was beginning to wonder if his report would be believed, in spite of all the corroborative evidence from the personnel of both ships, Rim Jaguar and Princess of Troon. He recalled vividly the scene in the passenger liner's main saloon when he and Sanderson had made their way into that compartment. The stasis must have been closed down while everybody was at dinner; dishes on the tables were still steaming.
They had all been there: the frog-like Grollan, the old lady who had been the peasant woman encountered on the towpath, the pretty fragile blonde whose name should have been Lynnimame, but was not; all of them looking like the characters in the illustrations to the Clay Wilton books. And there was the big—but not all that big—Negro, who was a physicist, not an ogre and the captain, and the purser. There was the beautiful woman who could have been the model for the Melinee in the pictures and who was, in fact, Mrs. Wilton. There were other officers, other passengers, and among them was Clay Wilton himself. He had the beginnings of a black eye, and a trickle of blood still dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Ship's staff had formed a protective cordon about him, but made it quite obvious that this was only because they had been ordered to do so.
After the first excitement there had been the conference, during which all concerned tried to work out what had happened, and why. Blundell, the big physicist—it had been hard not to think of him as Blunderbore—had said, "I've my own ideas, Commodore Grimes. But you, sir, are the recognized authority on Rim phenomena. . . ."
Grimes was flattered, and tried not to show it. He made a major production of filling and lighting his pipe. After he had it going he said, "I can try to explain. The way I see it is this. The ship went into stasis, and somehow drifted out from the Waverley sector toward the Rim. And out here, at the very edge of the expanding galaxy, there's always an . . . oddness. Time and space are not inclined to follow the laws that obtain elsewhere. Too, thought seems to have more power—physical power, I mean—than in the regions more toward the center. It's all part and parcel of the vagueness—that's not quite the right word—of . . . of everything. We get along with it. We're used to it.
"Look at it this way. You were all frozen in your ever-lasting Now, but you could still think, and you could still dream. And who was the most expert dreamer among you? It had to be Clay Wilton; after all, his publishers refer to him as 'the last of the dreamers.' Mr. Wilton dreamed out the story that he was working on at the time when your Mannschenn Drive went on the blink. Then he dreamed of the next story in the series, and the next, and the next. . . . Somehow a world shaped itself about his dreams. Out here, on the Rim, there must be the raw material for the creation of new galaxies. Somehow that world shaped itself, a solid world, with atmosphere, and vegetation, and people. It was real enough to register on all Rim Jaguar's instruments, even though it vanished when this ship came out of stasis. It was real enough, but, with a few exceptions, the people weren't real. They were little more than mobile scenery. The exceptions, of course, were those characters drawn from real life. And they led a sort of double existence. One body here, aboard the ship, and another body on the surface of that impossible planet, dancing like a puppet as Mr. Wilton manipulated the strings. Toward the end, the puppets were getting restive. . . ."
"You can say that again, Commodore," grinned Blundell.
"Yes, the puppets were getting restive, and realized that they, too, could become puppet-masters, could use Mr. Sanderson and myself to break the stasis. And, at the same time, Mr. Wilton was trying to work us into his current plot." Grimes turned to the writer. "And tell me, sir, did you intend to kill us?"
"Nobody dies in my stories," muttered the man. "Not even the baddies."
"But there has to be a first time for everything. That dragon of yours was far too enthusiastic. And so was your destruction of Blunderbore's castle."
"I'd gotten kind of attached to the place, too," grumbled the physicist.
"I meant no harm." Wilton's voice was sullen.
"Don't you believe him!" flared Mrs. Wilton—Melinee, the Wicked Witch. "He has a nasty, cruel streak in him, and only writes the sweetness and light fairy-tale rubbish because it makes good money. But that trick of his with my mirror will be grounds for divorce. Any judge, anywhere, will admit that it was mental cruelty."
"But what did you do to me?" demanded the weedy little man, taking a pitiful offensive. "You destroyed my world."
But did we? Grimes was wondering. Did we?
Sanderson and the fragile little blonde had come into the small smoking room, had not noticed him sitting there; they were sharing a settee only a few feet from him.
"The really fantastic thing about it all, Lynnimame—I like to call you that; after all, it was your name when I first met you. You don't mind, do you?" Sanderson was saying.
"Of course not, Henry. If you like it, I like it."
"Good. But as I was saying, the really fantastic thing about it all, the way that I fitted into old Wilton's story, is that I am a prince. . . ."
"But I think," said Grimes coldly as he got up from his chair, "that the Wicked Witch will be able to vouch that you're not a fairy prince."
And would they all live happily ever after? he wondered as he made his way to his cabin. At least he was finally on his way home.

Grimes At Glenrowan
 
Captain Chandler reports that he wrote his first story after meeting John W. Campbell, the late, great editor of Astounding/Analog SF, during WWII. During the war years, the author became a regular contributor to the SF magazines, but almost dropped out of the field when he was promoted to Chief Officer in the British-Australian steamship service. His second wife, Susan, encouraged him to take up writing again; the Rim Worlds and the Rim Runners series is a result.

Commodore John Grimes of the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve, currently Master of the survey ship Faraway Quest, was relaxing in his day cabin aboard that elderly but trustworthy vessel. That morning, local time, he had brought the old ship down to a landing at Port Fortinbras, on Elsinore, the one habitable planet in orbit about the Hamlet sun. It was Grimes's first visit to Elsinore for very many years. This call was to be no more—and no less—than a showing of the flag of the Confederacy. The Quest had been carrying out a survey of a newly discovered planetary system rather closer to the Shakespearian Sector than to the Rim Worlds and Grimes's lords and masters back on Lorn had instructed him, on completion of this task, to pay a friendly call on their opposite numbers on Elsinore.
However, he would be seeing nobody of any real importance until this evening, when he would attend a reception being held in his honour at the President's palace. So he had time to relax, at ease in his shipboard shorts and shirt, puffing contentedly at his vile pipe, watching the local trivi programmes on his playmaster. That way he would catch up on the planetary news, learn something of Elsinorian attitudes and prejudices. He was, after all, visiting this world in an ambassadorial capacity.
He looked with wry amusement into the screen. There he was or, to be more exact, there was Faraway Quest—coming down. Not bad, he admitted smugly, not bad at all. There had been a nasty, gusty wind at ground level about which Aerospace Control had failed to warn him—but he had coped. He watched the plump, dull-silver spindle that was his ship sagging to leeward, leaning into the veering breeze, then settling almost exactly into the centre of the triangle of bright flashing marker beacons, midway between the Shakespearian Line's Oberon and the Commission's Epsilon Orionis. He recalled having made a rather feeble joke about O'Brian and O'Ryan. (His officers had laughed dutifully.) He watched the beetle-like ground cars carrying the port officials scurry out across the grey apron as the Quest's ramp was extruded from her after airlock. He chuckled softly at the sight of Timmins, his Chief Officer, resplendent in his best uniform, standing at the head of the gangway to receive the boarding party. Although only a reservist—like Grimes himself—that young man put on the airs and graces of a First Lieutenant of a Constellation Class battlewagon, a flagship at that. But he was a good spaceman and that was all that really mattered.
After a short interval, filled with the chatter of the commentator, he was privileged to watch himself being interviewed by the newsman who had accompanied the officials on board. Did he really look as crusty as that? he wondered. And wasn't there something in what Sonya, his wife, was always saying—and what other ladies had said long before he first met her—about his ears? Stun's'l ears, jughandle ears. Only a very minor operation would be required to make them less outstanding, but . . . He permitted himself another chuckle. He liked him the way that he was and if the ladies didn't they had yet to show it.
The intercom telephone buzzed. Grimes turned to look at Timmins's face in the little screen. He made a downward gesture of his hand towards the playmaster, and his own voice and that of the interviewer at once faded into inaudibility. "Yes, Mr. Timmins?" he asked.
"Sir, there is a lady here to see you."
A lady? wondered Grimes. Elsinore was one of the few worlds upon which he had failed to enjoy a temporary romance. He had been there only once before, when he was a junior officer in the Federation's Survey Service. He recalled (it still rankled) that he had had his shore leave stopped for some minor misdemeanor.
"A lady?" he repeated. Then, "What does she want?"
"She says that she is from Station Yorick, sir. She would like to interview you."
"But I've already been interviewed," said Grimes.
"Not by Station Yorick," a female voice told him. "Elsinore's purveyors of entertainment and philosophy."
Timmins's face in the little screen had been replaced by that of a girl—a woman, rather. Glossy black hair, short cut, over a thin, creamily pale face with strong bone structure and delicately cleft chin . . . a wide, scarlet mouth . . . almost indigo blue eyes set off by black lashes.
"Mphm," grunted Grimes approvingly. "Mphm . . ."
"Commodore Grimes?" she asked in a musical contralto. "The Commodore Grimes?"
"There's only one of me as far as I know," he told her. "And you?"
She smiled whitely. "Kitty, of Kitty's Korner. With a `K'. And I'd like a real interview for my audience, not the sort of boring question-and-answer session that you've just been watching."
"Mphm," grunted Grimes again. What harm could it do?, he asked himself. This would be quite a good way of passing what otherwise would be a dull afternoon. And Elsinore was in the Shakespearian Sector, wasn't it? Might not he, Grimes, play Othello to this newshen's Desdemona, wooing her with his tall tales of peril and adventure all over the Galaxy? And in his private grog locker were still six bottles of Antarean Crystal Gold laid aside for emergencies such as this, a potent liquor coarsely referred to by spacemen as a leg-opener, certainly a better loosener of inhibitions than the generality of alcoholic beverages. He would have to partake of it with her, of course, but a couple or three soberups would put him right for the cocktail party.
"Ask Mr. Timmins to show you up," he said.
* * *
He looked at her over the rim of his glass. He liked what he saw. The small screen of the intercom, showing only her face, had not done her full justice. She sat facing him in an easy chair, making a fine display of slender, well-formed thigh under the high-riding apology for a skirt. (Hemlines were down again, almost to ankle length, in the Rim Worlds and Grimes had not approved of the change in fashion.) The upper part of her green dress was not quite transparent but it was obvious that she neither wore nor needed a bust support.
She looked at him over the rim of her glass. She smiled. He said, "Here's to Yorick, the Jester . . ."
She said, "And the philosopher: We have our serious side." They sipped. The wine was cold, mellow fire.
He said, "Don't we all?"
"You especially," she told him. "You must be more of a philosopher than most men, Commodore. Your interdimensional experiences—"
"So you've heard of them . . . Kitty."
"Yes. Even here. Didn't somebody once say, 'If there's a crack in the Continuum, Grimes is sure to fall into it—and come up with the Shaara Crown Jewels clutched in his hot little hands.'?"
He laughed. "I've never laid my paws on the Shaara Crown Jewels yet—although I've had my troubles with the Shaara. There was the time that I was in business as an interstellar courier and got tangled with a Rogue Queen—"
But she was not interested in the Shaara. She pressed on, "It seems that it's only out on the Rim proper, on worlds like Kinsolving, that you find these . . . cracks in the Continuum. . . ."
Grimes refilled the glasses saying, "Thirsty work, talking. . . ."
"But we've talked hardly at all," she said. "And I want you to talk. I want you to talk. If all I wanted was stories of high adventure and low adventure in this universe I'd only have to interview any of our own space captains. What I want, what Station Yorick wants, what our public wants is a story such as only you can tell. One of your adventures on Kinsolving. . ."
He laughed. "It's not only on Kinsolving's Planet that you can fall through a crack in the Continuum." He was conscious of the desire to impress her. "In fact, the first time that it happened was on Earth . . . ."
She was suitably incredulous.
"On Earth?" she demanded.
"Too right," he said.
* * *
I'm a Rim Worlder now [he told her] but I wasn't born out on the Rim. As far as the accident of birth is concerned I'm Terran. I started my spacefaring career in the Interstellar Federation's Survey Service. My long leaves I always spent on Earth, where my parents lived.
Anyhow, just to visualise me as I was then: a Survey Service JG Lieutenant with money in his pocket, time on his hands and, if you must know, between girlfriends. I'd been expecting that—What was her name? Oh, yes. Vanessa. I'd been expecting that she'd be still waiting for me when I got back from my tour of duty. She wasn't. She'd married—of all people!—a sewage conversion engineer.
Anyhow, I spent the obligatory couple of weeks with my parents in The Alice. (The Alice? Oh, that's what Australians call Alice Springs, a city in the very middle of the island continent.) My father was an author. He specialised in historical romances. He was always saying that the baddies of history are much more interesting than the goodies—and that the good baddies and the bad goodies are the most fascinating of all. You've a fine example of that in this planetary system of yours. The names, I mean. The Hamlet sun and all that. Hamlet was rather a devious bastard, wasn't he? And although he wasn't an out and out baddie he could hardly be classed as a goodie.
Well, the Old Man was working on yet another historical novel, this one to be set in Australia. All about the life and hard times of Ned Kelly. You've probably never heard of him—very few people outside Australia have—but he was a notorious bushranger. Bushrangers were sort of highway robbers. Just as the English have Dick Turpin and the Americans have Jesse James, so we have the Kelly Gang. (Australia had rather a late start as a nation so has always made the most of its relatively short history.)
According to my respected father this Ned Kelly was more, much more, than a mere bushranger. He was a freedom fighter, striking valiant blows on behalf of the oppressed masses, a sort of Robin Hood. And, like that probably-mythical Robin Hood, he was something of a military genius. Until the end he outwitted the troopers—as the police were called in his day—with ease. He was a superb horseman. He was an innovator. His suit of homemade armour, breast and back-plates and an odd cylindrical helmet—was famous. It was proof against rifle and pistol fire. He was very big and strong and could carry the weight of it.
It was at a place called Glenrowan that he finally came unstuck. In his day it was only a village, a hamlet. (No pun intended.) It was on the railway line from Melbourne to points north. Anyhow, Ned had committed some crime or other at a place called Wangaratta and a party of police was on the way there from Melbourne by special train, not knowing that the Kelly gang had ridden back to Glenrowan. Like all guerrilla leaders throughout history Kelly had an excellent intelligence service. He knew that the train was on the way and would be passing through Glenrowan. He persuaded a gang of Irish workmen—platelayers, they were called—to tear up the railway tracks just north of the village. The idea was that the train would be derailed and the policemen massacred. While the bushrangers were waiting they enjoyed quite a party in the Glenrowan Hotel; Kelly and his gang were more popular than otherwise among the locals. But the schoolmaster—who was not a Kelly supporter—managed to creep away from the festivities and, with a lantern and his wife's red scarf, flagged the train down.
The hotel was besieged. It was set on fire. The only man who was not killed at once was Kelly himself. He came out of the smoke and the flames, wearing his armour, a revolver (a primitive multi-shot projectile pistol) in each hand, blazing away at his enemies. One of the troopers had the intelligence to fire at his legs, which were not protected by the armour, and brought him down.
He was later hanged.
* * *
Well, as I've indicated, my Old Man was up to the eyebrows in his research into the Ned Kelly legend, and some of his enthusiasm rubbed off on to me. I thought that I'd like to have a look at this Glenrowan place. Father was quite amused. He told me that Glenrowan now was nothing at all like Glenrowan then, that instead of a tiny huddle of shacks by the railway line I should find a not-so-small city sitting snugly in the middle of all-the-year-round-producing orchards under the usual featureless plastic domes. There was, he conceded, a sort of reconstruction of the famous hotel standing beside a railway line—all right for tourists, he sneered, but definitely not for historians.
I suppose that he was a historian—he certainly always took his researches seriously enough—but I wasn't. I was just a spaceman with time on my hands. And—which probably decided me—there was a quite fantastic shortage of unattached popsies in The Alice and my luck might be better elsewhere.
So I took one of the tourist airships from Alice Springs to Melbourne and then a really antique railway train—steam-driven yet, although the coal in the tender was only for show; it was a minireactor that boiled the water—from Melbourne to Glenrowan. This primitive means of locomotion, of course, was for the benefit of tourists.
When I dismounted from that horribly uncomfortable coach at Glenrowan Station I ran straight into an old shipmate. Oddly enough—although, as it turned out later, it wasn't so odd—his name was Kelly. He'd been one of the junior interstellar drive engineer officers in the old Aries. I'd never liked him much—or him me—but when you're surrounded by planetlubbers you greet a fellow spaceman as though he were a long-lost brother.
"Grimes!" he shouted. "Gutsy Grimes in person!"
[No, Kitty, I didn't get that nickname because I'm exceptionally brave. It was just that some people thought I had an abnormally hearty appetite and would eat anything.]
"An' what are you doin' here?" he demanded. His Irish accent, as Irish accents usually do, sounded phoney as all hell.
I told him that I was on leave and asked him if he was too. He told me that he'd resigned his commission some time ago and that so had his cousin, Spooky Byrne. Byrne hadn't been with us in Aries but I had met him. He was a PCO—Psionic Communications Officer. A Commissioned Teacup Reader, as we used to call them. A trained and qualified telepath. You don't find many of 'em these days in the various merchant services—the Carlotti Communications System is a far more reliable way of handling instantaneous communications over the light-years. But most navies still employ them—a telepath is good for much more than the mere transmission and reception of signals.
So, Kelly and Spooky Byrne, both in Glenrowan. And me, also in Glenrowan. There are some locations in some cities where, it is said, if you loaf around long enough you're sure to meet everybody you know. An exaggeration, of course, but there are focal points. But I wouldn't put the Glenrowan Hotel—that artificially tumbledown wooden shack with its bark roof—synthetic bark, of course—in that category. It looked very small and sordid among the tall, shining buildings of the modern city. Small and sordid? Yes, but—somehow—even though it was an obvious, trashy tourist trap it possessed a certain character. Something of the atmosphere of the original building seemed to have clung to the site.
Kelly said, using one of my own favourite expressions, "Come on in, Grimes. The sun's over the yardarm."
I must have looked a bit dubious. My onetime shipmate had been quite notorious for never paying for a drink when he could get somebody else to do it. He read my expression. He laughed. "Don't worry, Gutsy. I'm a rich man now—which is more than I was when I was having to make do on my beggarly stipend in the Survey Service—may God rot their cotton socks! Come on in!"
Well, we went into the pub. The inside came up to—or down to—my worst expectations. There was a long bar of rough wood with thirsty tourists lined up along it. There was a sagging calico ceiling. There was a wide variety of antique ironmongery hanging on the walls—kitchen implements, firearms, rusty cutlasses. There were simulated flames flickering in the glass chimneys of battered but well-polished brass oil lamps. The wenches behind the bar were dressed in sort of Victorian costumes—long, black skirts, high-collared, frilly white blouses—although I don't think that in good Queen Victoria's day those blouses would have been as near as dammit transparent and worn over no underwear.
We had rum—not the light, dry spirit that most people are used to these days but sweet, treacly, almost-knife-and-fork stuff. Kelly paid, peeling off credits from a roll that could almost have been used as a bolster. We had more rum. Kelly tried to pay again but I wouldn't let him—although I hoped this party wouldn't last all day. Those prices, in that clipjoint, were making a nasty dent in my holiday money. Then Spooky Byrne drifted in, as colourless and weedy as ever, looking like a streak of ectoplasm frayed at the edges.
He stared at me as though he were seeing a ghost. "Grimes, of all people!" he whispered intensely. "Here, of all places!"
[I sensed, somehow, that his surprise was not genuine.]
"An' why not?" demanded his burly, deceptively jovial cousin. "Spacemen are only tourists in uniform. An' as Grimes is in civvies that makes him even more a tourist."
"The . . . coincidence," hissed Spooky. Whatever his act was he was persisting with it.
"Coincidences are always happenin'," said Kelly, playing up to him.
"Yes, Eddie, but—"
"But what?" I demanded, since it seemed expected of me.
"Mr. Grimes," Spooky told me, "would it surprise you if I told you that one of your ancestors was here? Was here then?"
"Too right it would," I said. "Going back to the old style Twentieth Century, and the Nineteenth, and further back still, most of my male forebears were seamen." The rum was making me boastfully talkative. "I have a pirate in my family tree. And an Admiral of the Royal Navy, on my mother's side. Her family name is Hornblower. So, Spooky, what the hell would either a Grimes or a Hornblower have been doing here, miles inland, in this nest of highway robbers?" Both Kelly and Byrne gave me dirty looks. "All right, then. Not highway robbers. Bushrangers, if it makes you feel any happier."
"And not bushrangers either!" growled Kelly. "Freedom fighters!"
"Hah!" I snorted.
"Freedom fighters!" stated Kelly belligerently. "All right, so they did rob a bank or two. An' so what? In, that period rebel organisations often robbed the capitalists to get funds to buy arms and all the rest of it. It was no more than S.O.P."
"Mphm," I grunted.
"In any case," said Kelly, "your ancestor was so here. We know. Come home with us an' we'll convince you."
So I let those two bastards talk me into accompanying them to their apartment, which was a penthouse atop the Glenrowan Tower. This wasn't by any means the tallest building in the city although it had been, I learned, when it was built. I remarked somewhat enviously that this was a palatial pad for a spaceman and Kelly told me that he wasn't a spaceman but a businessman and that he'd succeeded, by either clever or lucky investments, in converting a winning ticket in the New Irish Sweep into a substantial fortune. Byrne told him that he should give some credit where credit was due. Kelly told Byrne that graduates of the Rhine Institute are bound, by oath, not to use their psionic gifts for personal enrichment. Byrne shut up.
The living quarters of the penthouse were furnished in period fashion—the Victorian period. Gilt and red plush—dark, carved, varnished wood heavily framed, sepia-tinted photographs—no, not holograms, but those old flat photographs—of heavily bearded worthies hanging on the crimson-and-gold papered walls. One of them I recognised from the research material my father had been using. It was Ned Kelly.
"Fascinating," I said.
"This atmosphere is necessary to our researches," said Byrne. Then, "But come through to the laboratory."
I don't know what I was expecting to see in the other room into which they led me. Certainly not what first caught my attention. That caught my attention? That demanded my attention. It was, at first glance, a Mannschenn Drive unit—not a full sized one such as would be found in even a small ship but certainly a bigger one than the mini-Mannschenns you find in lifeboats.
[You've never seen a Mannschenn Drive unit? I must show you ours before you go ashore. And you don't understand how they work? Neither do I, frankly. But it boils down, essentially, to gyroscopes precessing in time, setting up a temporal precession field, so that our ships aren't really breaking the light barrier but going astern in time while they're going ahead in space.]
"A Mannschenn Drive unit," I said unnecessarily.
"I built it," said Kelly, not without pride.
"What for?" I asked. "Time Travel?" I sneered.
"Yes," he said.
I laughed. "But it's known to be impossible. A negative field would require the energy of the entire galaxy—"
"Not physical Time Travel," said Spooky Byrne smugly. "Psionic Time Travel, back along the world line stemming from an ancestor. Eddie's ancestor was at Glenrowan. So was mine. So was yours."
"Ned Kelly wasn't married," I said triumphantly.
"And so you have to be married to father a child?" asked Byrnes sardonically. "Come off it, Grimes! You should know better than that."
[I did, as a matter of fact. This was after that odd business I'd gotten involved in on El Dorado.]
"All right," I said. "Your ancestors might have been present at the Siege of Glenrowan. Mine was not. At or about that time he was, according to my father—and he's the family historian—second mate of a tramp windjammer. He got himself paid off in Melbourne and, not so long afterwards, was master of a little brig running between Australia and New Zealand. He did leave an autobiography, you know."
"Autobiographies are often self-censored," said Byrne. "That long-ago Captain Grimes, that smugly respectable shipmaster, a pillar, no doubt, of Church and State, had episodes in his past that he would prefer to forget. He did not pay off from his ship in Melbourne in the normal way. He—what was the expression?—jumped ship. He'd had words with his captain, who was a notorious bully. He'd exchanged blows. So he deserted and thought that he'd be safer miles inland. The only work that he could find was with the Irish labourers on the railway."
"How do you know all this?" I asked. "If it's true—"
"He told me," said Byrne. "Or he told my ancestor—but I was inside his mind at the time. . . ."
"Let's send him back," said Kelly. "That'll convince him."
"Not . . . yet," whispered Byrne. "Let's show him first what will happen if the special train is, after all, derailed. Let's convince him that it's to his interests to play along with us. The . . . alternative, since Grimes showed up here, is much . . . firmer. But we shall need—did need?—that British seaman Grimes, just as George Washington needed his British seaman John Paul Jones . . . ."
"Are you trying to tell me, " I asked, "that the squalid squabble at Glenrowan was a crucial point in history?"
"Yes," said Kelly.
I realised that I'd been maneuvered to one of the three chairs facing the Mannschenn Drive unit, that I'd been eased quite gently on to the seat. The chair was made of tubular metal, with a high back, at the top of which was a helmet of metal mesh. This Kelly rapidly adjusted over my head. The only explanation that I can find for my submitting so tamely to all this is that Spooky Byrne must have possessed hypnotic powers.
Anyhow, I sat in that chair, which was comfortable enough. I watched Kelly fussing around with the Mannschenn Drive controls while Byrne did things to his own console—which looked more like an aquarium in which luminous, insubstantial, formless fish were swimming than anything else. The drive rotors started to turn, to spin, to precess. I wanted to close my eyes; after all, it is dinned into us from boyhood up never to look directly at the Mannshchenn Drive in operation. I wanted to close my eyes, but couldn't. I watched those blasted, shimmering wheels spinning, tumbling, fading, always on the verge of invisibility but ever pulsatingly a-glimmer . . . .
I listened to the familiar thin, high whine of the machine . . . .
That sound persisted; otherwise the experience was like watching one of those ancient silent films in an entertainments museum. There was no other noise, although that of the Drive unit could almost have come from an archaic projector. There were no smells, no sensations. There were just pictures, mostly out of focus and with the colours not quite right. But I saw Kelly—the here-and-now Kelly, not his villainous ancestor—recognisable in spite of the full beard that he was wearing, in some sort of sumptuous regalia, a golden crown in which emeralds gleamed set on his head. And there was Byrne, more soberly but still richly attired, reminding me somehow of the legendary wizard Merlin who was the power behind King Arthur's throne. And there were glimpses of a flag, a glowing green banner with a golden harp in the upper canton, the stars of the Southern Cross, also in gold, on the fly. And I saw myself. It was me, all right. I was wearing a green uniform with gold braid up to the elbows. The badge on my cap, with its bullion-encrusted peak, was a golden crown over a winged, golden harp . . . .
The lights went out, came on again. I was sitting in the chair looking at the motionless machine, at Kelly and Byrne, who were looking at me.
Kelly said, "There are crucial points in history. The 'ifs' of history. If Napoleon had accepted Fulton's offer of steamships . . . just imagine a squadron of steam frigates at Trafalgar! If Pickett's charge at Gettysburg had been successful . . . If Admiral Torrance had met the Waverley Navy head on off New Dunedine instead of despatching his forces in a fruitless chase of Commodore McWhirter and his raiding squadron.
"And . . . .
"If Thomas Curnow had not succeeded in flagging down the special train before it reached Glenrowan.
"You've seen what could have been, what can be. The extrapolation. Myself king. Spooky my chief minister. You—an admiral."
I laughed. In spite of what I'd just seen it still seemed absurd. "All right," I said. "You might be king. But why should I be an admiral?"
He said, "It could be a sort of hereditary rank granted, in the first instance, to that ancestor of yours for services rendered. When you're fighting a war at the end of long lines of supply somebody on your staff who knows about ships is useful—"
"I've looked," said Spooky Byrne. "I've seen how things were after the massacre of the police outside Glenrowan. I've seen the rising of the poor, the oppressed, spreading from Victoria to New South Wales, under the flag of the Golden Harp and Southern Cross. I've seen the gunboats on the Murray, the armoured paddlewheelers with their steam-powered Gatling cannon, an' the armoured trains ranging up an' down the countryside. An' it was yourself, Grimes—or your ancestor—who put to good use the supplies that were comin' in from our Fenian brothers in America an' even from the German emperor. I've watched the Battle of Port Phillip Bay—the English warships an' troop transports, with the Pope's Eye battery wreakin' havoc among 'em until a lucky shot found its magazine. An' then your flimsy gasbags came a-sailin' over, droppin' their bombs, an' not a gun could be brought to bear on 'em . . . ."
"Airships?" I demanded. "You certainly have been seeing things, Spooky!"
"Yes, airships. There was a man called Bland in Sydney, somethin' of a rebel himself, who designed an airship years before Ned was ever heard of. An' you—or your ancestor—could have found those plans. You, in your ancestor's mind, sort of nudgin'—just as Eddie an' meself'll be doing our own nudgin' . . . ."
I wasn't quite sober so, in spite of my protestations, what Spooky was saying, combined with what I had seen, seemed to make sense. So when Kelly said that we should now, all three of us, return to the past, to the year 1880, old reckoning, I did not object. I realised dimly that they had been expecting me, waiting for me. That they were needing me. I must have been an obnoxious puppy in those days—but aren't we all when still wet behind the ears? I actually thought of bargaining. A dukedom on top of the admiral's commission . . . the Duke of Alice . . . ? It sounded good.
Kelly and Byrne were seated now, one on either side of me. There were controls set in the armrests of their chairs. Latticework skeps, like the one that I was wearing, were over their heads. The rotors started to spin, to spin and precess, glimmering, fading, tumbling, dragging our essences down the dark dimensions while our bodies remained solidly seated in the here and now.
* * *
I listened to the familiar thin, high whine of the machine . . . .
To the babble of rough voices, male and female . . . . To the piano-accordion being not too inexpertly played . . . . An Irish song it was—The Wearin' Of The Green . . . . I smelled tobacco smoke, the fumes of beer and of strong liquor . . . . I opened my eyes and looked around me. It was real—far more real than the unconvincing reconstruction in the here-and-now Glenrowan had been. The slatternly women were a far cry from those barmaids tarted up in allegedly period costume. And here there were no tourists, gaily dressed and hung around with all manner of expensive recording equipment. Here were burly, bearded, rough-clad men and it was weapons, antique revolvers, that they carried, not the very latest trivoders.
But the group of men of whom I was one were not armed. They were labourers, not bushrangers—but they looked up to the arrogant giant who was holding forth just as much as did his fellow . . . criminals? Yes, they were that. They had held up coaches, robbed banks, murdered. Yet to these Irish labourers he was a hero, a deliverer. He stood for the Little Man against the Establishment. He stood for a warmly human religion against one whose priests were never recruited from the ranks of the ordinary people, the peasants, the workers.
Mind you, I was seeing him through the eyes of that ancestral Grimes who was (temporarily) a criminal himself, who was (temporarily) a rebel, who was on the run (he thought) from the forces of Law and Order. I had full access to his memories. I was, more or less, him. More or less, I say. Nonetheless, I, Grimes the spaceman, was a guest in the mind of Grimes the seaman. I could remember that quarrel on the poop of the Lady Lucan and how Captain Jenkins, whose language was always foul, had excelled himself, calling me what was, in those days, an impossibly vile epithet. I lost my temper, Jenkins lost a few teeth, and I lost my job, hastily leaving the ship in Melbourne before Jenkins could have me arrested on a charge of mutiny on the high seas.
And now, mainly because of the circumstances in which I found myself, I was on the point of becoming one of those middle class technicians who, through the ages, have thrown in their lot with charismatic rebel leaders, without whom those same alleged deliverers of the oppressed masses would have gotten no place at all. I—now—regard with abhorrence the idea of derailing a special train on the way to apprehend a rather vicious criminal. That ancestral Grimes, in his later years, must have felt the same sentiments—so much so that he never admitted to anybody that he was among those present at the Siege of Glenrowan.
But Ned Kelly . . . . He was in good form, although there was something odd about him. He seemed to be . . . possessed. So was the man—Joe Byrne—standing beside him. And so, of course, was John Grimes, lately second mate of the good ship Lady Lucan. Kelly—which Kelly?—must have realised that he was drawing some odd looks from his adherents. He broke the tension by putting on his famous helmet—the sheet-iron cylinder with only a slit for the eyes—and singing while he was wearing it. This drew both laughter and applause. Did you ever see those singing robots that were quite a craze a few years back? The effect was rather similar. Great art it was not but it was good for a laugh.
Nobody saw the schoolmaster, Thomas Curnow, sneaking out but me. That was rather odd as he, fancying himself a cut above the others making merry in the hotel, had been keeping himself to himself, saying little, drinking sparingly. This should have made him conspicuous but, somehow, it had the reverse effect. He was the outsider, being studiously ignored. I tried to attract Kelly's attention, Byrne's attention, but I might as well just not have been there. After all I—or my host—was an outsider too. I was the solitary Englishman among the Australians and the Irish. The gang with whom I'd been working on the railway had never liked me. The word had gotten around that I was an officer. The fact that I was (temporarily, as it happened) an ex-officer made no difference. I was automatically suspect.
But I still wanted to be an admiral. I still wanted to command those squadrons of gunboats on the Murray River, the air fleet that would turn the tide at Port Phillip Bay. (How much of my inward voice was the rum speaking, how much was me? How much did the John Grimes whose brain I was taking over ever know about it, remember about it?)
I followed Curnow, out into the cold, clear night. The railway track was silvery in the light of the lopsided moon, near its meridian. On either side, dark and ominous, was the bush. Some nocturnal bird or animal called out, a raucous cry, and something else answered it. And faint—but growing louder—there was a sort of chuffing rattle coming up from the south'ard. The pilot engine, I thought, and then the special train.
Ahead of me Curnow's lantern, a yellow star where no star should have been, was bobbing along between the tracks. I remembered the story. He had the lantern, and his wife's red scarf. He would wave them. The train would stop. Superintendent Hare, Inspector O'Connor, the white troopers, and the black trackers would pile out. And then the shooting, and the siege, and the fire, and that great, armoured figure, like some humanoid robot before its time, stumbling out through the smoke and the flame for the final showdown with his enemies.
And it was up to me to change the course of history.
Have you ever tried walking along a railway line, especially when you're in something of a hurry? The sleepers or the ties or whatever they're called are spaced at just the wrong distance for a normal human stride. Curnow was doing better than I was. Well, he was more used to it. Neither as a seaman nor as a spaceman had I ever had occasion to take a walk such as this.
And then—he fell. He'd tripped, I suppose. He'd fallen with such force as to knock himself out. When I came up to him I found that he'd tried to save that precious lantern from damage. It was on its side but the chimney was unbroken, although one side of the glass was blackened by the smoke from the burning oil.
And the train was coming. I could see it now—the glaring yellow headlight of the leading locomotive, the orange glow from the fireboxes, a shower of sparks mingling with the smoke from the funnels. I had to get Curnow off the line. I tried to lift him but one foot was somehow jammed under the sleeper over which he had tripped. But his lantern, as I have already said, was still burning. I hastily turned it the right side up; only one side of the chimney was smoked into opacity. And that flimsy, translucent red scarf was still there.
I lifted the lantern, held it so that the coloured fabric acted as a filter. I waved it—not fast, for fear that the light would be blown out, but slowly, deliberately. The train, the metal monster, kept on coming. I knew that I'd soon have to look after myself but was determined to stand there until the last possible second.
The whistle of the leading locomotive, the pilot engine, sounded—a long, mournful note. There was a screaming of brakes, a great, hissing roar of escaping steam, shouting . . . .
I realised that Curnow had recovered, had scrambled to his feet, was standing beside me. I thrust the lantern and the scarf into his hand, ran into the bushes at the side of the track. He could do all the explaining. I—or that ancestral Grimes—had no desire to meet the police. For all I—or he—knew they would regard the capture of a mutineer and deserter as well as a gang of bushrangers as an unexpected bonus.
* * *
I stayed in my hiding place—cold, bewildered, more than a little scared. After a while I heard the shooting, the shouting and the screaming. I saw the flames. I was too far away to see Ned Kelly's last desperate stand; all that I observed was distant, shadowy figures in silhouette against the burning hotel.
Suddenly, without warning, I was back in my chair in that other Kelly's laboratory. The machine, the modified Mannschenn Drive unit, had stopped. I looked at Byrne. I knew, without examining him, that he, too, had . . . stopped. Kelly was alive but not yet fully conscious. His mouth was working. I could just hear what he was muttering; "It had to come to this." And those, I recalled, had been the last words of Ned Kelly, the bushranger, just before they hanged him.
I reasoned, insofar as I was capable of reasoning, that Kelly and Byrne had entered too deeply into the minds of their criminal ancestors. Joe Byrne had died in the siege and his descendant had died with him. Kelly had been badly wounded, although he recovered sufficiently to stand trial. I'd been lucky enough to escape almost unscathed.
I'm not at all proud of what I did then. I just got up and left them—the dead man, his semi-conscious cousin. I got out of there, fast. When I left the Glenrowan Tower I took a cab to the airport and there bought a ticket on the first flight out of the city. It was going to Perth, a place that I'd never much wanted to visit, but at least it was putting distance between me and the scene of that hapless experiment, that presumptuous attempt at tinkering with Time.
I've often wondered what would have happened if I'd left Curnow to his fate, if I hadn't stopped the train. The course of history might well have been changed—but would it have been for the better? I don't think so. An Irish Australia, a New Erin, a Harp in the South . . . New Erin allied with the Boers against hated England during the wars in South Africa . . . New Erin quite possibly allied with Germany against England during the First World War . . . The Irish, in many ways, are a great people—but they carry a grudge to absurd lengths. They have far too long a memory for their own wrongs.
And I think that I like me better as I am now than as an Hereditary Admiral of the New Erin Navy in an alternate universe that, fortunately, didn't happen.
* * *
She said, "Thank you, Commodore, for a very interesting story." She switched off her trivoder, folded flat its projections, closed the carrying case about it. She got to her feet.
She said, "I have to be going."
He looked at the bulkhead clock, he said, "There's no hurry, Kitty. We've time for another drink or two." He sensed a coldness in the atmosphere and tried to warm things up with an attempt at humour. "Sit down again. Make yourself comfortable. This ship is Liberty Hall, you know. You can spit on that mat and call the cat a bastard."
She said, "The only tom cats I've seen aboard this wagon haven't been of the four-legged variety. And, talking of legs, do you think that I haven't noticed the way that you've been eyeing mine?"
His prominent ears reddened angrily but he persisted. "Will you be at the cocktail party tonight?"
"No, Commodore Grimes. Station Yorick isn't interested in boring social functions."
"But I'll be seeing more of you, I hope . . . ."
"You will not, in either sense of the words." She turned to go. "You said, Commodore, that the Irish have a long memory for their own wrongs. Perhaps you are right. Be that as it may—you might be interested to learn that my family name is Kelly."
When she was gone Grimes reflected wryly that now there was yet another alternate universe, differing from his here-and-now only in a strictly personal sense, which he would never enter.
Grimes and the Great Race
 
Here's another in Captain Chandler's stories of the Rim Worlds—this from a series of Commodore Grimes's reminiscences of his days in the Survey Service . . . .
"I didn't think that I'd be seeing you again," said Grimes.
"Or I you," Kitty Kelly told him. "But Station Yorick's customers liked that first interview. The grizzled old spacedog, pipe in mouth, glass in hand, spinning a yarn . . . . So when my bosses learned that you're stuck here until your engineers manage to fit a new rubber band to your inertial drive they said, in these very words, 'Get your arse down to the spaceport, Kitty, and try to wheedle another tall tale out of the old bastard!' "
"Mphm," grunted Grimes, acutely conscious that his prominent ears had reddened angrily.
Kitty smiled sweetly. She was an attractive girl, black Irish, wide-mouthed, creamy-skinned, with vivid blue eyes. Grimes would have thought her much more attractive had she not been making it obvious that she still nursed the resentment engendered by his first story, a tale of odd happenings at long-ago and far-away Glenrowan where, thanks to Grimes, an ancestral Kelly had met his downfall.
She said tartly, "And lay off the Irish this time, will you?"
Grimes looked at her, at her translucent, emerald green blouse that concealed little, at the long, shapely legs under the skirt that concealed even less. He thought, There's one of the Irish, right here, that I'd like to lay on.
With deliberate awkwardness he asked, "If I'm supposed to avoid giving offense to anybody—and you Elsinoreans must carry the blood of about every race and nation on Old Earth—what can I talk about?"
She made a great show of cogitation, frowning, staring down at the tips of her glossy green shoes. Then she smiled. "Racing, of course! On this world we're great followers of the horses." She frowned again. "But no. Somehow I just can't see you as a sporting man, Commodore."
"As a matter of fact," said Grimes stiffly, "I did once take part in a race. And for high stakes."
"I just can't imagine you on a horse."
"Who said anything about horses?"
"What were you riding, then?"
"Do you want the story or don't you? If I'm going to tell it, I'll tell it my way."
She sighed, muttered, "All right, all right." She opened her case, brought out the trivi recorder, set it up on the deck of the day cabin. She aimed one lens at the chair in which Grimes was sitting, the other at the one that she would occupy. She squinted into the viewfinder. "Pipe in mouth," she ordered. "Glass in hand . . . Where is the glass, Commodore? And aren't you going to offer me a drink?"
He gestured towards the liquor cabinet. "You fix it. I'll have a pink gin, on the rocks."
"Then I'll have the same. It'll be better than the sickly muck you poured down me last time I was aboard your ship!"
Grimes's ears flushed again. The "sickly muck" had failed to have the desired effect.
My first command in the Survey Service [he began] was of a Serpent Class Courier, Adder. The captains of these little ships were lieutenants, their officers lieutenants and ensigns. There were no petty officers or ratings to worry about, no stewards or stewardesses to look after us. We made our own beds, cooked our own meals. We used to take turns playing with the rather primitive autochef. We didn't starve; in fact we lived quite well.
There was some passenger accommodation; the couriers were—and probably still are—sometimes used to get VIPs from Point A to Point B in a hurry. And they carried Service mail and dispatches hither and yon. If there was any odd job to do we did it.
This particular job was a very odd one. You've heard of Darban? No? Well, it's an Earth-type planet in the Tauran Sector. Quite a pleasant world although the atmosphere's a bit too dense for some tastes. But if it were what we call Earth-normal I mightn't be sitting here talking to you now. Darban's within the Terran sphere of influence with a Carlotti Beacon Station, a Survey Service Base, and all the rest of it. At the time of which I'm talking, though, it wasn't in anybody's sphere of influence, although Terran star tramps and Hallichek and Shaara ships had been calling there for quite some time. There was quite a demand for the so-called living opals—although how any woman could bear to have a slimy, squirming necklace of luminous worms strung about her neck beats me!
She interrupted him. "These Hallicheki and Shaara . . . non-human races, aren't they?"
"Non-human and non-humanoid. The Hallicheki are avian, with a matriarchal society. The Shaara are winged arthropods, not unlike the Terran bees, although very much larger and with a somewhat different internal structure."
"There'll be pictures of them in our library. We'll show them to our viewers. But go on, please."
The merchant captains [he continued] had been an unusually law-abiding crowd. They'd bartered for the living opals but had been careful not to give in exchange any artifacts that would unduly accelerate local industrial evolution. No advanced technology—if the Darbanese wanted spaceships they'd have to work out for themselves how to build them—and, above all, no sophisticated weaponry. Mind you, some of those skippers would have been quite capable of flogging a few hand lasers or the like to the natives but the Grand Governor of Barkara—the nation that, by its relatively early development of airships and firearms, had established de facto if not de jure sovereignty over the entire planet—made sure that nothing was imported that could be a threat to his rule. A situation rather analogous, perhaps, to that on Earth centuries ago when the Japanese Shoguns and their samurai took a dim view of the muskets and cannon that, in the wrong hands, would have meant their downfall.
Then the old Grand Governor died. His successor intimated that he would be willing to allow Darban to be drawn into the Federation of Worlds and to reap the benefits accruing therefrom. But whose Federation? Our Interstellar Federation? The Hallichek Hegemony? The Shaara Galactic Hive?
Our Intelligence people, just for once, started to earn their keep. According to them the Shaara had dispatched a major warship to Darban, the captain of which had been given full authority to dicker with the Grand Governor. The Hallicheki had done likewise. And—not for the first time!—our lords and masters had been caught with their pants down. It was at the time of the Waverley Confrontation; and Lindisfarne Base, as a result, was right out of major warships. Even more fantastically the only spaceship available was my little Adder—and she was in the throes of a refit. Oh, there were ships at Scapa and Mikasa Bases but both of these were one helluva long way from Darban.
I was called before the Admiral and told that I must get off Lindisfarne as soon as possible, if not before, to make all possible speed for Darban, there to establish and maintain a Terran presence until such time as a senior officer could take over from me. I was to report on the actions of the Shaara and the Hallicheki. I was to avoid direct confrontation with either. And I was not, repeat not, to take any action at any time without direct authorization from Base. I was told that a civilian linguistic expert would be travelling in Adder—a Miss Mary Marsden—and that she would be assisting me as required.
What rankled was the way in which the Admiral implied that he was being obliged to send a boy on a man's errand. And I wasn't at all happy about having Mary Marsden along. She was an attractive enough girl—what little one could see of her!—but she was a super wowser. She was a member of one of the more puritanical religious sects flourishing on Francisco—and Francisco, as you know, is a hotbed of freak religions. Mary took hers seriously. She had insisted on retaining her civilian status because she did not approve of the short-skirted uniforms in which the Survey Service clad its female personnel. She always wore long-skirted, long-sleeved, high-necked dresses and a bonnet over her auburn hair. She didn't smoke—not even tobacco—or drink anything stronger than milk.
And yet, as far as we could see, she was a very pretty girl. Eyes that were more green than any other colour. A pale—but not unhealthily so—skin. A straight nose that, a millimeter longer, would have been too big. A wide, full mouth that didn't need any artificial colouring. A firm, rather square chin. Good teeth—which she needed when it was the turn of Beadle, my first lieutenant, to do the cooking. Beadle had a passion for pies and his crusts always turned out like concrete . . . .
Well, we lifted off from Lindisfarne Base. We set trajectory for Darban. And before we were halfway there we suffered a complete communications black-out. Insofar as the Carlotti deep space radio was concerned I couldn't really blame Slovotny, my Sparks. The Base technicians, in their haste to get us off the premises, had botched the overhaul of the transceiver and, to make matters worse, hadn't replaced the spares they had used. When two circuit trays blew, that was that.
Spooky Deane, my psionic communications officer, I could and did blame for the shortcomings of his department. As you probably know, it's just not possible for even the most highly trained and talented telepath to transmit his thoughts across light years without an amplifier. The amplifier most commonly used is the brain of that highly telepathic animal, the Terran dog, removed from the skull of its hapless owner and kept alive in a tank of nutrient solution with all the necessary life-support systems. PCOs are lonely people; they're inclined to regard themselves as the only true humans in shiploads of sub-men. They make pets of their horrid amplifiers, to which they can talk telepathically. And—as lonely men do—they drink.
What happened aboard Adder was an all-too-frequent occurrence. The PCO would be going on a solitary bender and would get to the stage of wanting to share his bottle with his pet. When neat gin—or whatever—is poured into nutrient solution the results are invariably fatal to whatever it is that's being nourished.
So—no psionic amplifier. No Carlotti deep space radio. No contact with Base.
"And aren't you going to share your bottle with your pet, Commodore?"
"I didn't think that you were a pet of mine, Miss Kelly, or I of yours. But it's time we had a pause for refreshment."
We stood on for Darban [he continued]. Frankly, I was pleased rather than otherwise at being entirely on my own, knowing that now I would have to use my own initiative, that I would not have the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty peering over my shoulder all the time, expecting me to ask their permission before I so much as blew my nose. Beadle, my first lieutenant, did try to persuade me to return to Lindisfarne—he was a very capable officer but far too inclined to regard Survey Service Regulations as Holy Writ. (I did find later that, given the right inducement, he was capable of bending those same regulations.) Nonetheless, he was, in many ways, rather a pain in the arse.
But Beadle was in the minority. The other young gentlemen were behind me, all in favour of carrying on. Mary Marsden, flaunting her civilian status, remained neutral.
We passed the time swotting up on Darban, watching and listening to the tapes that had been put on board prior to our departure from Lindisfarne.
* * *
We gained the impression of a very pleasant, almost Earth-type planet with flora and fauna not too outrageously different from what the likes of us are used to. Parallel evolution and all that. A humanoid—but not human—dominant race, furry bipeds that would have passed for cat-faced apes in a bad light. Civilized, with a level of technology roughly that of Earth during the late nineteenth century, old reckoning. Steam engines. Railways. Electricity, and the electric telegraph. Airships. Firearms. One nation—that with command of the air and a monopoly of telegraphic communications—de facto if not entirely de jure ruler of the entire planet.
The spaceport, such as it was, consisted of clearings in a big forest some kilometers south of Barkara, the capital city of Bandooran. Bandooran, of course, was the most highly developed nation, the one that imposed its will on all of Darban. Landing elsewhere was . . . discouraged. The Dog Star Line at one time tried to steal a march on the competition by instructing one of their captains to land near a city called Droobar, there to set up the Dog Star Line's own trading station. The news must have been telegraphed to Barkara almost immediately. A couple of dirigibles drifted over, laying H.E. and incendiary eggs on the city. The surviving city fathers begged the Dog Star line captain to take himself and his ship elsewhere. Also, according to our tapes, the Dog Star Line was heavily fined shortly thereafter by the High Council of the Interstellar Federation.
But the spaceport . . . just clearings, as I have said, in the forest. Local airships were used to pick up incoming cargo and to deliver the tanks of "living opals" to the spaceships. No Aerospace Control, of course, although there would be once a base and a Carlotti Beacon Station had been established. Incoming traffic just came in, unannounced. Unannounced officially, that is. As you know, the inertial drive is far from being the quietest machine ever devised by Man; everybody in Barkara and for kilometers around would know when a spaceship was dropping down.
And we dropped in, one fine, sunny morning. After one preliminary orbit we'd been able to identify Barkara without any difficulty. The forest was there, just where our charts said it should be. There were those odd, circular holes in the mass of greenery—the clearings. In two of them there was the glint of metal. As we lost altitude we were able to identify the Shaara vessel—it's odd (or is it?) how their ships always look like giant beehives—and a typical, Hallicheki oversized silver egg sitting in a sort of latticework egg cup.
We came in early; none of the Shaara or Hallicheki were yet out and about although the noise of our drive must have alerted them. I set Adder down as far as possible from the other two ships. From my control room I could just see the blunt bows of them above the treetops.
We went down to the wardroom for breakfast, leaving Slovotny to enjoy his meal in solitary state in the control room; he would let us know if anybody approached while we were eating. He buzzed down just as I'd reached the toast and marmalade stage. I went right up. But the local authorities hadn't yet condescended to take notice of us; the airship that came nosing over was a Shaara blimp, not a Darbanese rigid job. And then there was a flight of three Hallicheki, disdaining mechanical aids and using their own wings. One of the horrid things evacuated her bowels when she was almost overhead, making careful allowance for what little wind there was. It made a filthy splash all down one of my viewports.
At last the Darbanese came. Their ship was of the Zeppelin type, the fabric of the envelope stretched taut over a framework of wood or metal. It hovered over the clearing, its engines turning over just sufficiently to offset the effect of the breeze. That airship captain, I thought, knew his job. A cage detached itself from the gondola, was lowered rapidly to the ground. A figure jumped out of it just before it touched and the airship went up like a rocket after the loss of weight. I wondered what would happen if that cage fouled anything before it was rehoisted, but I needn't have worried. As I've said, the airship captain was an expert.
We went down to the after airlock. We passed through it, making the transition from our own atmosphere into something that, at first, felt like warm soup. But it was quite breathable. Mary Marsden, as the linguist of the party, accompanied me down the ramp. I wondered how she could bear to go around muffled up to the eyebrows on such a beautiful morning as this; I was finding even shorts and shirt uniform too heavy for a warm day.
* * *
The native looked at us. We looked at him. He was dressed in a dull green smock that came down to mid-thigh and that left his arms bare. A fine collection of glittering brass badges was pinned to the breast and shoulders of his garment. He saluted, raising his three-fingered hands to shoulder level, palms out. His wide mouth opened in what I hoped was a smile, displaying pointed, yellow teeth that were in sharp contrast to the black fur covering his face.
He asked, in quite passable Standard English, "You the captain are?"
I said that I was.
He said, "Greetings I bring from the High Governor." Then, making a statement rather than asking a question, "You do not come in trade."
So we—or a Federation warship of some kind—had been expected. And Adder, little as she was, did not look like a merchantman—too many guns for too small a tonnage.
He went on, "So you are envoy. Same as—" He waved a hand in the general direction of where the other ships were berthed. "—the Shaara, the Hallicheki. Then you will please to attend the meeting that this morning has been arranged." He pulled a big, fat watch on a chain from one of his pockets. "In—in forty-five of your minutes from now."
While the exchange was taking place Mary was glowering a little. She was the linguistic expert and it was beginning to look as though her services would not be required. She listened quietly while arrangements were being made. We would proceed to the city in my boat, with the Governor's messenger acting as pilot—pilot in the marine sense of the word, that is, just giving me the benefit of his local knowledge.
We all went back on board Adder. The messenger assured me that there was no need for me to have internal pressure adjusted to his requirements; he had often been aboard outworld spaceships and, too, he was an airshipman.
I decided that there was no time for me to change into dress uniform so I compromised by pinning my miniatures—two good attendance medals and the Distinguished Conduct Star that I'd got after the Battle of Dartura—to the left breast of my shirt, buckling on my sword belt with the wedding cake cutter in its gold-braided sheath. While I was tarting myself up, Mary entertained the messenger to coffee and biscuits in the wardroom (his English, she admitted to me later, was better than her Darbanese) and Beadle, with Dalgleish, the engineer, got the boat out of its bay and down to the ground by the ramp.
* * *
Mary was coming with me to the city and so was Spooky Deane—a trained telepath is often more useful than a linguist. We got into the boat. It was obvious that our new friend was used to this means of transportation, must often have ridden in the auxiliary craft of visiting merchant vessels. He sat beside me to give directions. Mary and Spooky were in the back.
As we flew towards the city—red brick, grey-roofed houses on the outskirts, tall, cylindrical towers, also of red brick, in the centre—we saw the Shaara and the Hallicheki ahead of us, flying in from their ships. A Queen-Captain, I thought, using my binoculars, with a princess and an escort of drones. A Hallichek Nest Leader accompanied by two old hens as scrawny and ugly as herself. The Shaara weren't using their blimp and the Hallicheki consider it beneath their dignity to employ mechanical means of flight inside an atmosphere. Which made us the wingless wonders.
I reduced speed a little to allow the opposition to make their landings on the flat roof of one of the tallest towers first. After all, they were both very senior to me, holding ranks equivalent to at least that of a four-ring captain in the Survey Service, and I was a mere lieutenant, my command notwithstanding. I came in slowly over the streets of the city. There were people abroad—pedestrians mainly, although there were vehicles drawn by scaly, huge-footed draught animals and the occasional steam car—and they raised their black-furred faces to stare at us. One or two of them waved.
When we got to the roof of the tower the Shaara and the Hallicheki had gone down but there were a half-dozen blue-smocked guards to receive us. They saluted as we disembarked. One of them led the way to a sort of penthouse which, as a matter of fact, merely provided cover for the stairhead. The stairs themselves were . . . wrong. They'd been designed, of course, to suit the length and jointure of the average Darbanese leg, which wasn't anything like ours. Luckily the Council Chamber was only two flights down.
It was a big room, oblong save for the curvature of the two end walls, in which were high windows. There was a huge, long table, at one end of which was a sort of ornate throne in which sat the High Governor. He was of far slighter stature than the majority of his compatriots but made up for it by the richness of his attire. His smock was of a crimson, velvetlike material and festooned with gold chains of office.
He remained seated but inclined his head in our direction. He said—I learned afterwards that these were the only words of English that he knew; he must have picked them up from some visiting space captain—"Come in. This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
"I was wondering," said Kitty Kelly coldly, "just when you were going to get around to saying that."
"He said it, not me. But I have to use that greeting once in every story. It's one of my conditions of employment."
And where was I [he went on] before I was interrupted? Oh, yes. The Council Chamber, with the High Governor all dressed up like a Christmas tree. Various ministers and other notables, not as richly attired as their boss. All male, I found out later, with the exception of the Governor's lady, who was sitting on her husband's right. There were secondary sexual characteristics, of course, but so slight as to be unrecognizable by an outworlder. To me she—and I didn't know that she was "she"—was just another Darbanese.
But the fair sex was well represented. There was the Queen-Captain, her iridescent wings folded on her back, the velvety brown fur of her thorax almost concealed by the sparkling jewels that were her badges of high rank. There was the Shaara princess, less decorated but more elegant than her mistress. There was the Nest Leader; she was nowhere nearly as splendid as the Queen-Captain. She wasn't splendid at all. Her plumage was dun and dusty, the talons of the "hands" at the elbow joints of her wings unpolished. She wore no glittering insignia, only a wide band of cheap-looking yellow plastic about her scrawny neck. Yet she had her dignity, and her cruel beak was that of a bird of prey rather than that of the barnyard fowl she otherwise resembled. She was attended by two hen officers, equally drab.
And, of course, there was Mary, almost as drab as the Hallicheki.
The Governor launched into his spiel, speaking through an interpreter. I was pleased to discover that Standard English was to be the language used. It made sense, of course. English is the common language of Space just as it used to be the common language of the sea, back on Earth. And as the majority of the merchant vessels landing on Darban had been of Terran registry, the local merchants and officials had learned English.
The Governor, through his mouthpiece, said that he welcomed us all. He said that he was pleased that Imperial Earth had sent her representative, albeit belatedly, to this meeting of cultures. Blah, blah, blah. He agreed with the representatives of the Great Space-faring Powers that it was desirable for some sort of permanent base to be established on Darban. But . . . but whichever of us was given the privilege of taking up residence on his fair planet would have to prove capability to conform, to mix . . . . (By this time the interpreter was having trouble in getting the idea across but he managed somehow.) The Darbanese, the Governor told us, were a sporting people and in Barkara there was one sport preferred to all others. This was racing. It would be in keeping with Darbanese tradition if the Treaty were made with whichever of us proved the most expert in a competition of this nature . . . .
"Racing?" I whispered. In a foot race we'd probably be able to beat the Shaara and the Hallicheki, but I didn't think that it was foot racing that was implied. Horse racing or its local equivalent? That didn't seem right either.
"Balloon racing," muttered Spooky Deane, who had been flapping his psionic ears.
I just didn't see how balloon racing could be a spectator sport—but the tapes on Darban with which we had been supplied were far from comprehensive. As we soon found out.
"Balloon racing?" asked Kitty Kelly. "From the spectators' viewpoint it must have been like watching grass grow."
"This balloon racing certainly wasn't," Grimes told her.
The Darbanese racing balloons [he went on] were ingenious aircraft: dirigible, gravity-powered. Something very like them was, as a matter of fact, invented by a man called Adams back on Earth in the nineteenth century. Although it performed successfully, the Adams airship never got off the ground, commercially speaking. But it did work. The idea was that the thing would progress by soaring and swooping, soaring and swooping. The envelope containing the gas cells was a planing surface and the altitude of the contraption was controlled by the shifting of weights in the car—ballast, the bodies of the crew. Initially, positive buoyancy was obtained by the dumping of ballast and the thing would plane upwards. Then, when gas was valved, there would be negative buoyancy and a glide downwards. Sooner or later, of course, you'd be out of gas to valve or ballast to dump. That would be the end of the penny section.
I remembered about the Adams airship while the interpreter did his best to explain balloon racing to us. I thought that it was a beautiful case of parallel mechanical evolution on two worlds many light years apart.
The Queen-Captain got the drift of it quite soon—after all, the Shaara know airships. Her agreement, even though it was made through her artificial voice box, sounded more enthusiastic than otherwise. The Nest Leader took her time making up her mind but finally squawked yes. I would have been outvoted if I hadn't wanted to take part in the contest.
There was a party then, complete with drinks and sweet and savoury things to nibble. The Shaara made pigs of themselves on a sticky liqueur and candy. Spooky Deane got stuck into something rather like gin. I found a sort of beer that wasn't too bad—although it was served unchilled—with little, spicy sausages as blotting paper. Mary, although she seemed to enjoy the sweetmeats, would drink only water. Obviously our hosts thought that she was odd, almost as odd as the Hallicheki who, although drinking water, would eat nothing.
They're nasty people, those avians. They have no redeeming vices—and when it comes to real vices their main one is cruelty. Their idea of a banquet is a shrieking squabble over a table loaded with little mammals, alive but not kicking—they're hamstrung before the feast so that they can't fight or run away—which they tear to pieces with those beaks of theirs.
After quite a while the party broke up. The Nest Leader and her officers were the first to leave, anxious no doubt to fly back to their ship for a tasty dish of live worms. The Queen-Captain and her party were the next to go. They were in rather a bad way. They were still on the rooftop when Mary and I, supporting him between us, managed to get Spooky Deane up the stairs and to the boat.
None of the locals offered to help us; it is considered bad manners on Darban to draw the attention of a guest to his insobriety. We said our goodbyes to those officials, including the interpreter, who had come to see us off. We clambered into our boat and lifted. On our way back to Adder we saw the Shaara blimp coming to pick up the Queen-Captain. I wasn't surprised. If she'd tried to take off from the roof in the state that she was in she'd have made a nasty splash on the cobblestones under the tower.
And I wasn't at all sorry to get back to the ship to have a good snore. Spooky was fast asleep by the time that I landed by the after airlock and Mary was looking at both of us with great distaste.
"I'm not a wowser," said Kitty Kelly.
"Help yourself, then. And freshen my glass while you're about it."
Bright and early the next morning [he went on, after a refreshing sip] two racing balloons and an instructor were delivered by a small rigid airship. Our trainer was a young native called Robiliyi. He spoke very good English; as a matter of fact he was a student at the University of Barkara and studying for a degree in Outworld Languages. He was also a famous amateur balloon jockey and had won several prizes. Under his supervision we assembled one of the balloons, inflating it from the cylinders of hydrogen that had been brought from the city. Imagine a huge air mattress with a flimsy, wickerwork car slung under it. That's what the thing looked like. The only control surface was a huge rudder at the after end of the car. There were two tillers—one forward and one aft.
Dalgleish inspected the aircraft, which was moored by lines secured to metal pegs driven into the ground. He said, "I'm not happy about all this valving of gas. You know how the Shaara control buoyancy in their blimps?"
I said that I did.
He said that it should be possible to modify one of the balloons—the one that we should use for the race itself—so as to obviate the necessity of valving gas for the downward glide. I prodded the envelope with a cautious finger and said that I didn't think that the fabric of the gas cells would stand the strain of being compressed in a net. He said that he didn't think so either. So that was that, I thought. Too bad. Then he went on to tell me that in the ship's stores was a bolt of plastic cloth that, a long time ago, had been part of an urgent shipment of supplies to the Survey Service base on Zephyria, a world notorious for its violent windstorms. (Whoever named that planet had a warped sense of humour!) The material was intended for making emergency repairs to the domes housing the base facilities. They were always being punctured by wind-borne boulders and the like. When Adder got to Zephyria it was found that somebody had experienced a long overdue rush of brains to the head and put everything underground. There had been the usual lack of liaison between departments and nobody had been told not to load the plastic.
Anyhow, Dalgleish thought that he'd be able to make gas cells from the stuff. He added that the Shaara would almost certainly be modifying their own racer, using the extremely tough silk from which the gas cells of their blimps were made.
I asked Robiliyi's opinion. He told me that it would be quite in order to use machinery as long as it was hand-powered.
Dalgleish went into a huddle with him. They decided that only the three central, sausage-like gas cells need be compressed to produce negative buoyancy; also that it would be advisable to replace the wickerwork frame enclosing the "mattress" with one of light but rigid metal. Too, it would be necessary to put a sheet of the plastic over the assembly of gas cells so as to maintain a planing surface in all conditions.
Then it was time for my first lesson. Leaving Dalgleish and the others to putter around with the still unassembled balloon I followed Robiliyi into the flimsy car of the one that was ready for use. The wickerwork creaked under my weight. I sat down, very carefully, amidships, and tried to keep out of the way. Robiliyi started scooping sand out of one of the ballast bags, dropping it overside. The bottom of the car lifted off the mossy ground but the balloon was still held down by the mooring lines, two forward and two aft. Robiliyi scampered, catlike, from one end of the car to the other, pulling the metal pegs clear of the soil with expert jerks. We lifted, rising vertically. I looked down at the faces of my shipmates. Better him than us, their expressions seemed to be saying.
Then we were at treetop height, then above the trees, still lifting. Robiliyi scrambled to the rear of the craft, calling me to follow. He grabbed the after tiller. The platform tilted and above us the raft of gas cells did likewise, presenting an inclined plane to the air. We were sliding through the atmosphere at a steep angle. I wasn't sure whether or not I was enjoying the experience. I'd always liked ballooning, back on Earth, but the gondolas of the hot air balloons in which I'd flown were far safer than this flimsy basket. There was nothing resembling an altimeter in the car; there were no instruments at all. I hoped that somewhere in the nested gas cells there was a relief valve that would function if we got too high. And how high was too high, anyhow? I noticed that the underskin of the balloon, which had been wrinkled when we lifted off, was now taut.
Robiliyi shouted shrilly, "Front end! Front end!" We scuttled forward. He pulled on a dangling lanyard; there was an audible hiss of escaping gas from above. He put the front-end tiller over and as we swooped downward we turned. The treetops, which had seemed far too distant, were now dangerously close. And there was the clearing from which we had lifted with Adder standing there, bright silver in the sunlight. But we weren't landing yet. We shifted weight aft, jettisoned ballast, soared. I was beginning to get the hang of it, starting to enjoy myself. Robiliyi let me take the tiller so that I could get the feel of the airship. She handled surprisingly well.
We did not return to earth until we had dumped all our ballast. I asked Robiliyi what we could do if, for some reason, we wanted to get upstairs again in a hurry after valving gas. He grinned, stripped off his tunic, made as though to throw it overboard. He grinned again, showing all his sharp, yellow teeth. "And if that is not enough," he said, "there is always your crew person . . . ."
We landed shortly after this. Robiliyi reinflated the depleted cells from one of the bottles while Beadle and Spooky collected ballast sand from the banks of a nearby brook.
Then it was Mary's turn to start her training.
"Mary? Was she your crew, your co-pilot, for the race?"
"Yes."
"But you've impressed me as being a male chauvinist pig."
"Have I? Well, frankly, I'd sooner have had one of my officers. But Mary volunteered, and she was far better qualified than any of them. Apart from myself she was the only one in Adder with lighter-than-air experience. It seems that the sect of which she was a member went in for ballooning quite a lot. It tied in somehow with their religion. Nearer my God to Thee, and all that."
Well [he went on], we trained, both in the balloon that Dalgleish had modified and in the one that was still as it had been when delivered to us. The modifications? Oh, quite simple. A coffee-mill hand winch, an arrangement of webbing that compressed the three central, longitudinal gas cells. The modified balloon we exercised secretly, flying it only over a circuit that was similar in many ways to the official, triangular race track. The unmodified balloon we flew over the actual course. The Shaara and the Hallicheki did likewise, in craft that did not appear to have had anything done to them. I strongly suspected that they were doing the same as we were, keeping their dark horses out of sight until the Big Day. The Shaara, I was certain, had done to theirs what we had done to ours—after all, it was a Shaara idea that we had borrowed. But the Hallicheki? We just couldn't guess.
* * *
And we trained, and we trained. At first it was Robiliyi with Mary or Robiliyi with myself. Then it was Mary and I. I'll say this for her—she made good balloon crew. And I kidded myself that she was becoming far less untouchable. In that narrow car we just couldn't help coming into physical contact quite frequently.
Then the time was upon us and we were as ready as ever we would be. On the eve of the Great Day the three contending balloons were taken to the airport. The Shaara towed theirs in behind one of their blimps; it was entirely concealed in a sort of gauzy cocoon. The Hallicheki towed theirs in, four hefty crew hens doing the work. There was no attempt at concealment. We towed ours in astern of our flier. It was completely swathed in a sheet of light plastic.
The racers were maneuvered into a big hangar to be inspected by the judges. I heard later, from Robiliyi, that the Nest Leader had insinuated that the Shaara and ourselves had installed miniature inertial drive units disguised as hand winches. (It was the sort of thing that they would have done if they'd thought that they could get away with it.)
We all returned to our ships. I don't know how the Shaara and the Hallicheki spent the night but we dined and turned in early. I took a stiff nightcap to help me to sleep. Mary had her usual warm milk.
The next morning we returned in the flier to the airport. It was already a warm day. I was wearing a shirt-and-shorts uniform but intended to discard cap, long socks, and shoes before clambering into the wickerwork car of the balloon. Mary was suitably—according to her odd lights—dressed but what she had on was very little more revealing than her usual high-necked, longsleeved, long-skirted dress; it did little more than establish the fact that she was, after all, a biped. It was a hooded, long-sleeved cover-all suit with its legs terminating in soft shoes. It was so padded that it was quite impossible to do more than guess at the shape of the body under it.
Young Robiliyi was waiting for us at the airport, standing guard over our green and gold racer. Close by was the Shaara entry, its envelope displaying orange polka dots on a blue ground. The Shaara crew stood by their balloon—the pilot, a bejeweled drone, and his crew, a husky worker. Then there were the Hallicheki—officers both, to judge from the yellow plastic bands about their scrawny necks. The envelope of their racer was a dull brown.
On a stand, some distance from the starting line, sat the Governor with his entourage. With him were the Queen-Captain and the Nest Leader with their senior officers. The judges were already aboard the small, rigid airship which, at its mooring mast, was ready to cast off as soon as the race started. It would fly over the course with us, its people alert for any infraction of the rules.
Two of the airport ground crew wheeled out a carriage on which was mounted a highly polished little brass cannon. The starting gun. I kicked off my shoes, peeled off my socks, left them, with my cap, in Robiliyi's charge. I climbed into the flimsy car, took my place at the after tiller. Mary followed me, stationed herself at the winch amidships. She released the brake. The gas cells rustled as they expanded; we were held down now only by the taut mooring lines fore and aft. I looked over at the others. The Shaara, too, were ready. The Hallicheki had just finished the initial dumping of sand ballast.
One of the gunners jerked a long lanyard. There was a bang and a great flash of orange flame, a cloud of dirty white smoke. I yanked the two after mooring lines, pulling free the iron pegs. Forward Mary did the same, a fraction of a second later. It wasn't a good start. The forward moorings should have been released first to get our leading edge starting to lift. Mary scrambled aft, redistributing weight, but the Shaara and the Hallicheki, planing upwards with slowly increasing speed, were already ahead.
Almost directly beneath us was Airport Road and in the middle distance was the railway to Brinn with the Brinn Highway running parallel to it. I can remember how the track was gleaming like silver in the morning sunlight. To the north, distant but already below the expanding horizon, was the Cardan Knoll, a remarkable dome-shaped hill with lesser domes grouped about it. We would have to pass to the west and north of this before steering a south-easterly course for the Porgidor Tower.
Shaara and Hallicheki were racing neck and neck, still climbing. I was still falling behind. I brought the dangling mooring lines inboard to reduce drag. It may have made a little difference, but not much. Ahead of us the Shaara balloon reached its ceiling, compressed gas and began the first downward glide. A second or so later the Hallicheki reduced buoyancy to follow suit. I looked up. The underskin of my gas cells was still slightly wrinkled; there was still climbing to do.
The last wrinkles vanished. I told Mary to compress. The pawls clicked loudly as she turned the winch handle. Then we scuttled to the front end of the car. I took hold of the forward tiller. We swooped down, gathering speed rapidly. The farm buildings and the grazing animals in the fields were less and less toylike as we lost altitude. I steered straight for an ungainly beast that looked like an armour-plated cow. It lifted its head to stare at us in stupid amazement.
I didn't want to hit the thing. I sort of half ran, half crawled aft as Mary released the winch brake. We lifted sweetly—no doubt to the great relief of the bewildered herbivore. I looked ahead. The opposition were well into their second upward beat, the Hallicheki soaring more steeply than the Shaara. But taking advantage of thermals is an art that every bird learns as soon as it is able to fly; there must be, I thought, a considerable updraught of warm air from the railroad and the black-surfaced Brinn Highway. But the higher the Hallicheki went the more gas they would have to valve, and if they were not careful they would lose all their reserve buoyancy before the circuit was completed.
The Shaara reached their ceiling and started their downward glide. The Hallicheki were still lifting, gaining altitude but losing ground. I couldn't understand why they were not gliding down their lift. And I was still lifting. Then I saw that, ahead, the Hallicheki had at last valved gas and were dropping. I pulled to starboard to avoid them. It meant putting on some distance but I daren't risk a mid-air collision. The Hallicheki had wings of their own and could bail out in safety. Mary and I hadn't and couldn't.
But there was no danger of our becoming entangled with the Hallicheki. They had put on considerable speed during their dive and were swooping down on the Shaara balloon like a hawk on its prey. They were directly above it—and then, although they were still well clear of the ground, were rising again. A failure of nerve? It didn't fit in with what I knew of their psychology. But ballast must have been dumped and it would mean an additional soar and swoop for them before rounding the Cardan Knoll.
And I was gaining on them.
But where were the Shaara?
Mary seemed to have read my thought. She said, "They're in trouble."
I looked down to where she was pointing. Yes, they were in trouble all right. They had lost considerable altitude and the car of their balloon was entangled with the topmost branches of a tall tree. The drone and the worker were tugging ineffectually with all their limbs, buzzing about it. But they would never get it clear. They'd lost all their lift. The sausage-like gas cells were limp, more than half deflated.
But that was their worry. We flew on. Ahead, the Knoll was getting closer. I pulled over to port to pass to the west'ard of the brush-covered domes. The Hallicheki were already rounding the Knoll, lost briefly to sight as they passed to north of it. Then I was coming round to starboard in a tight, rising turn. I didn't realise until it was almost too late that the slight, northerly breeze was setting me down onto the hill; I had to put the tiller hard over to try to claw to wind'ard. The deck of our car just brushed the branches of a tree and there was a clattering, screeching explosion of small, flying reptiles from the foliage. Luckily they were more scared of us than we were of them.
Ahead, now, was the railway to Garardan and the Garardan Road. Beyond road and railway was the Blord River and, far to the southeast, I could see the crumbling stonework of the Porgidor Tower. Over road and railway, I reasoned, there would be thermals but over the river, which ran ice-cold from the high hills, there would be a downdraught. . . Yes, there were thermals all right. The Hallicheki were taking full advantage of them, going up like a balloon. Literally. What were they playing at? Why weren't they gliding down the lift? And they were keeping well to starboard, to the south'ard of the track, putting on distance as they would have to come to port to pass to north and east of the tower.
I looked astern. The judges' airship was following, watching. If the Hallicheki tried to cut off a corner they'd be disqualified.
I kept the Porgidor Tower fine on my starboard bow; whatever the Hallicheki were playing at, I would run the minimum distance. And then, as I was lifting on the thermals over the railway, I saw that there was some method in the opposition's madness. There were more thermals over the power station on the west bank of the river and I had missed out on them.
* * *
Swoop and soar, swoop and soar. Compress, decompress. Our muscles were aching with the stooped scrambles forward and aft in the cramped confines of the car. It must have been even worse for Mary than for me because of the absurdly bulky and heavy clothing that she was wearing. But we were holding our own, more than holding our own. That thermal-hunting had cost the Hallicheki their lead.
Then there was the Porgidor Tower close on our starboard hand, with quite a crowd of spectators waving from the battered battlements. And we were on the last leg of the course, over boulder-strewn bushland, with the twin ribbons of the Saarkaar Road and Railway ahead and beyond them the river again, and beyond that the mooring masts and hangars of the airport.
Swoop and soar, swoop and soar . . . .
I swooped into the thermals rising from the road and the railway so that I could manage a steep, fast glide with no loss of altitude. I began to feel smugly self-congratulatory.
But where were the Hallicheki?
Not ahead any longer. All that they had gained by their use of thermals was altitude. They were neither ahead nor to either side, and certainly not below, where the only artifact visible was a little sidewheel paddle steamer chugging fussily up river.
Then there was the anticipated downdraught that I countered with decompression.
Suddenly there was a sharp pattering noise from directly above and I saw a shower of glittering particles driving down on each side of the car. Rain? Hail? But neither fall from a clear sky.
* * *
Mary was quicker on the uptake than I was. "The Hallicheki," she shouted. "They dumped their ballast on us!"
Not only had they dumped ballast on us, they'd holed the gas cells. Some of the viciously pointed steel darts had gone through every surface, dropping to the deck of the car. If we'd been in the way of them they'd have gone through us too. Razor-sharp, tungsten tipped (as I discovered later). So this was what had happened to the Shaara racer . . . .
"Ballast!" I yelled. "Dump ballast!"
But we didn't have any to dump. I thought briefly of the mooring lines with their metal pegs but the ropes were spliced to the pins and to the structure of the car. And I didn't have a knife. (All right, all right, I should have had one but I'd forgotten it.) Then I remembered my first flight with Robiliyi and what he had told me when I'd asked him what to do when there was no ballast left to dump. I stripped off my shirt, dropped it over the side. It didn't seem to make much difference. I sacrificed my shorts. I looked up. All the cells were punctured and three of them looked as though they were empty. But the planing surface above them must still be reasonably intact. I hoped. If only I could gain enough altitude I could glide home. Forgetting the company that I was in I took off my briefs, sent the scrap of fabric after the other garments.
I heard Mary make a noise half way between a scream and a gasp.
* * *
I looked at her. She looked at me. Her face was one huge blush.
I felt my own ears burning in sympathy.
I said, "We're still dropping. We have to get upstairs. Fast."
She asked, "You mean . . . ?"
I said, "Yes."
She asked, her voice little more than a whisper, "Must I?"
I said that she must.
But you could have knocked me over with a feather when her hand went to the throat of her coveralls, when her finger ran down the sealseam. She stepped out of the garment, kicked it overside. Her underwear was thick and revealed little; nonetheless I could see that that fantastic blush of hers suffused the skin of her neck and shoulders, even the narrow strip of belly that was visible. That will do, I was going to say, but she gave me no time to say it. Her expression had me baffled. Her halter came off and was jettisoned, then her remaining garment.
I'll be frank. She wouldn't have attracted a second glance on a nudist beach; her figure was good but not outstanding. But this was not a nudist beach. A naked woman in an incongruous situation is so much more naked than she would be in the right surroundings. She looked at me steadily, defiantly. Her blush had faded. Her skin was smoothly creamy rather than white. I felt myself becoming interested.
She asked, "Do you like it?" I thought at first that she meant the strip show that she had put on for me. She went on, "I do! I've often thought about it but I had no idea what it would really be like! The feel of the sun and the air on my skin . . . "
I wanted to go on looking at her. I wanted to do more than that—but there's a time and a place for everything and this was neither. It could have been quite a good place in other circumstances but not with a race to be flown to a finish.
I tore my eyes away from her naked body—I heard a ripping noise, but it was only one of the rents in the envelope enlarging itself—and looked around and up and down to see what was happening. Mary's supreme sacrifice was bringing results. We were lifting—sluggishly, but lifting. And so, just ahead of us, were the Hallicheki. The gas cells of their balloon were flabby and wrinkled; they must have squandered buoyancy recklessly in their attacks on the Shaara and ourselves. And then I saw one of the great, ugly brutes clambering out of the car. They were abandoning ship, I thought. They were dropping out of the race. Then I realised what they were doing. The one who had gone outboard was gripping the forward rail of the car with her feet, was beating her wings powerfully, towing the balloon. Legal or illegal? I didn't know. That would be for the judges to decide, just as they would have to make a decision on the use of potentially lethal ballast. But as no machinery was being used, the Hallicheki might be declared the winners of the race.
What else did we have to dump? We would have to gain altitude, and fast, for the last swoop in. The hand winch? It was of no further use to us. It was held down to the deck of the car only by wing nuts and they loosened fairly easily. We unscrewed them, threw them out. We were rising a little faster. Then there were the shackles securing the downhaul to the compression webbing. Overboard they went. The winch itself I decided to keep as a last reserve of disposable ballast.
High enough?
I thought so.
I valved gas—for the first and only time during our flight—and Mary and I shifted our weight forward. We swooped, overtaking the crawling, under tow, Hallicheki balloon. We were making headway all right but losing too much altitude. The winch would have to go.
It was insinuated that my jettisoning it when we were directly above the Hallicheki was an act of spite. I said in my report that it was accidental, that the Hallicheki just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right time. I'll not deny that we cheered when we saw the hunk of machinery hit that great, flabby mattress almost dead centre. It tore through it, rupturing at least four of the gas cells. The envelope crumpled, fell in about itself. The two hen officers struggled to keep the crippled racer in the air, ripping the balloon fabric to shreds with their clawed feet as their wings flapped frenziedly. Meanwhile we were going up like a rocket.
The Hallicheki gave up the attempt to keep their craft airborne. They let it flutter earthwards, trailing streamers of ragged cloth. They started to come after us, climbing powerfully. I could sense somehow that they were in a vile temper. I imagined those sharp claws and beaks ripping into the fabric of our balloon and didn't feel at all happy. We didn't have wings of our own. We didn't even have parachutes.
It was time for the final swoop—if only those blasted birds let us make it. There was no need to valve any more gas; the rents in the fabric of the gas cells had enlarged themselves. We shifted our weight forward. Astern and overhead I heard the throbbing of engines; it was the judges' airship escorting us to the finish line. The Hallicheki wouldn't dare to try anything now. I hoped. My hope was realized. They squawked loudly and viciously, sheared off.
Overhead, as I've said, there was the throbbing of airship engines—and, fainter, the irregular beat of an inertial drive unit. Adder's atmosphere flier, I thought at first, standing by in case of accidents. But it didn't sound quite right, somehow. Too deep a note. But I'd too much on my plate to be able to devote any thought to matters of no immediate importance.
We swept into the airport, steering for the red flag on the apron that marked the finish. We were more of a hang glider now than a balloon but I knew somehow that we'd make it. The underside of the car brushed the branches of a tree—to have made a detour would have been out of the question—and a large section of decking was torn away. That gave us just the little extra buoyancy that we needed. We cleared the spiky hedge that marked the airport boundary. We actually hit the flagpole before we hit the ground, knocking it over. Before the tattered, deflated envelope collapsed over us completely we heard the cries of applause, the thunder of flat hands on thighs.
It was quite a job getting out from under that smothering fabric. During the struggle we came into contact, very close contact. At least once I almost . . . Well, I didn't. I'm not boasting about it, my alleged self-control, I mean. There comes a time in life when you feel more remorse for the uncommitted sins—if sins they are—than for the committed ones.
At last we crawled out of the wreckage. The first thing we noticed was that the applause had ceased. My first thought was that the natives were shocked by our nudity and then, as I looked around, saw that they were all staring upwards. The clangor of the strange inertial drive was sounding louder and louder.
We looked up too. There was a pinnace—a big pinnace, such as are carried by major warships—coming down. It displayed Survey Service markings. I could read the name, in large letters, ARIES II. Aries' number-two pinnace . . . Aries—a Constellation Class cruiser—I knew quite well. I'd once served in her as a junior watch-keeper. She must still be in orbit, I thought. This would be the preliminary landing party.
The pinnace grounded not far from where Mary and I were standing. Or where I was standing; Mary was on her hands and knees desperately trying to tear off a strip of fabric from the ruined envelope to cover herself. The outer airlock door opened. A group of officers in full dress blues disembarked. Captain Daintree was in the lead. I knew him. He was a strict disciplinarian, a martinet. He was one of the reasons why I had not been sorry to leave Aries.
He glared at us. He recognised me in spite of my non-regulation attire. He stood there, stiff as a ramrod, his right hand on the pommel of his dress sword. I still think that he'd have loved to use that weapon on me. His face registered shock, disbelief, horror, you name it.
He spoke at last, his voice low but carrying easily over the distance between us.
"Mr. Grimes, correct me if I am wrong, but your instructions, I believe, were merely to maintain a Terran presence on this planet until such time as an officer of higher rank could take over." I admitted that this was so.
"You were not, I am certain, authorised to start a nudist club. Or is this, perhaps, some sort of love-in?"
"But, sir," I blurted, "I won the race!" Even he could not take that triumph from me. "I won the race!"
"And did you win the prize, Commodore?" asked Kitty Kelly.
"Oh, yes. A very nice trophy. A model, in solid gold, of a racing balloon, suitably inscribed. I have it still, at home in Port Forlorn."
"Not that prize. It's the body beautiful I mean. The inhibition-and-clothing-shedding Miss Marsden."
"Yes," said Grimes. "She shed her inhibitions all right. But I muffed it. I should have struck while the iron was hot, before she had time to decide that it was really Beadle—of all people!—whom she fancied. He reaped what I'd sown—all the way back to Lindisfarne Base!
"When you get to my age you'll realise that there's no justice in the Universe."
"Isn't there?" she asked, rather too sweetly.
Grimes Among The Gourmets
Commodore Grimes, although he hated to admit it even to himself, was coming to look forward to the visits paid by Kitty Kelly to his ship. Faraway Quest was immobilised at Port Fortinbras, on Elsinore, and would remain so until such time as her engineers were able to effect repairs to the old vessel's inertial drive. Originally an Epsilon Class star tramp, built for the Interstellar Transport Commission, she had been obsolescent when she entered the service of the Rim Worlds Confederacy. Her main propulsive machinery was hopelessly out of date and engineroom spares were not easily procurable. New eccentrics—but conforming to a long outmoded design—were being fabricated in Rim Runners' workshops in Port Forlorn, on Lorn. Nobody was busting a gut on the job. Meanwhile the venerable Quest, her future employment a matter of no great urgency, stayed put.
Shortly after the Rim Worlds survey ship's arrival at Port Fortinbras, Grimes had been interviewed by Kitty Kelly of Station Yorick. He had been inveigled into spinning her a yarn about one of his adventures during his younger days in the Federation Survey Service, which she had recorded. It had been broadcast on her Kitty's Korner tri-vi programme and Station Yorick's viewers had lapped it up. She had been told to wheedle more tall stories out of the crusty old spacedog. Grimes had not been at all displeased to learn that most of his crew now watched, and enjoyed, Kitty's Korner.
This day she had told him that she would, if it suited his convenience, be calling aboard at a later time than usual. He suggested that she take dinner with him before the recording session. She was pleased to accept the invitation.
Grimes's paymaster—who was also the ship's catering officer—was Miss Keiko Otoguro. Learning that the commodore would be dining with his guest in his day cabin she asked him if she could serve one of the traditional meals of her ancestral people. She told him that she had been for a ramble along the seashore and had collected various seaweeds that would be suitable for the menu that she had in mind. Grimes assented happily. He had always loved exotic foods. And, he thought and hoped, a sumptuous repast laid on especially for the beautiful, blue-eyed, black-haired Kitty Kelly might soften her attitude towards him. (He had already tried the "candy is dandy but liquor is quicker" approach but it hadn't worked.)
So Kitty Kelly was sitting in an easy chair in the commodore's day cabin, displaying her excellent legs. Grimes, seated facing her, was admiring the scenery. Both were sipping large pink gins.
She said, "I enjoy a meal aboard a ship now and again, even though autochefs tend to make everything taste the same."
"Not necessarily," he told her. "A lot depends upon how much imagination is employed in the programming and upon what spices are available. But the dinner that we shall be enjoying is not from the autochef. My paymaster prepared it with her own fair hands . . ."
There was a light tap at the door. Miss Otoguro entered the cabin, carrying a lacquered tray with bottles, glasses and tiny porcelain cups. She was followed by two stewardesses with larger trays upon which the food had been set out. There was just enough room on the big coffee table for the meal and the drinks.
She uncapped a bottle of cold beer, poured into two glasses. Then, from a gracefully shaped porcelain bottle, she filled two of the little cups.
She said formally, "Dinner is served, Commodore-san."
He replied with equal formality, "Thank you, Paymaster-san," then added, "there's no need for you to play Mama-san, Keiko. We can help ourselves."
She smiled but there was a hint of disappointment in her voice as she said, "As you please, Commodore."
When she and the girls had left Grimes said, "She has very old-fashioned ideas about the proper place of women in the universe. But she's not a Rimworlder by birth. She was brought up on Mikasa . . ."
Kitty was looking at the meal laid out on her tray.
"But this is beautiful. . ." she whispered. "Like flowers . . . It looks too good, almost, to eat. . ."
"Keiko's specialty," he told her. "Only for very honoured guests."
He raised his saki cup in a silent toast. She raised hers, sipped. She made a grimace.
"But this is warm . . ."
"That's the way it should be served."
"Oh. I think I'll stick to beer. And didn't your Miss Keiko forget knives and forks?"
Grimes picked up his ivory chopsticks, used them to mix mustard with the soy sauce in a little bowl. He then picked up what looked like a pink and white and green blossom with the implements, dipped it in the sauce, brought it to his mouth. He chewed and swallowed appreciatively.
She watched him, tried to follow suit. She did not manage too badly. Then her lips twisted in revulsion. She swallowed with an effort.
"Raw fish!" she exclaimed.
"Of course. With boiled rice, and seaweed . . ."
"I'm sorry," she said, "but I can't eat this. It looks pretty but it tastes like what it really is."
"But it's sushi. . ."
"I don't give a damn what it's called."
It was just as well that materials for making snacks were to hand in Grimes's refrigerator. With any luck at all Miss Otoguro would never know that the feast which she had so lovingly prepared had been devoured by only one person. (And even if she ever did find out all that would really matter to her was that the commodore had enjoyed it.)
* * *
The stewardesses had cleared away the debris of the meal and Kitty Kelly set up her recorder, one lens trained on Grimes, the other upon herself.
"Carry on drinking saki," she ordered. "That bottle and the tiny cup will look interesting . . . Now—and I promise you that this isn't for broadcasting unless you agree—isn't it true that your nickname when you were in the Federation Survey Service was Gutsy Grimes?"
His prominent ears flushed. "Yes, it is true. I admit that I've always liked my tucker. But I'm a gourmet rather than a gourmand. The meal that we've just enjoyed is proof of that."
"That you've just enjoyed, you mean."
"All right. I enjoyed it."
"Do you always enjoy exotic foods?"
"Almost always."
"Can you recall any occasion in your long career upon which exotic foods played a big part, Commodore?"
Grimes grinned. He put down his saki cup, picked up his pipe, slowly filled and lit it. He said, through the acrid, wreathing cloud, "As a matter of fact I can . . ."
"It was (he said) when I was captain of the Survey Service's census ship Seeker. I'd been given a sort of roving commission, checking up on human colonies in the Argo sector. Also I'd been told to show the flag on one or two inhabited planets with whose people, even though they weren't human, strictly speaking, the Federation wanted to keep on friendly terms. Spheres of influence and all that. Even though the Interstellar Federation was—and still is—the Big Boy, other, smaller spacefaring powers wanted to be Big Boys too. The Duchy of Waldegren, for example. The Empire of Waverley . . ."
"And now," she interrupted him, "the Rim Worlds Confederacy."
"We," he said stiffly, "have no Imperial ambitions."
"Spoken like a true Rimworlder, even though you were once a Terrie."
All right, all right, so I was a Terrie then (he went on). I held the rank of lieutenant commander in the Federation Survey Service. I was captain of FSS Seeker, one of the census ships. I was counting noses and, at the same time, showing the flag. I'd been ordered to do this latter on Werrississa, the home planet of a non-human civilisation.
Not that the Werrississians are all that non-human. There are, in fact, some far-fetched theories to the effect that Werrississa was colonised from Earth by some pre-Atlantean culture. The resemblances between them and us do seem to be too close to be accounted for by parallel evolution—but, given enough time, evolution can come up with anything. And, although sexual intercourse is possible between humans and Werrississians, such unions are always sterile.
What do they look like, you ask? To begin with, they're tall, the adults, male and female, running to two metres and up. They're slender, although their women are subtly rounded in the right places. They're wide-mouthed but thin-lipped. Their noses tend to be aquiline. Their eyes are huge, like those of some nocturnal mammals on Earth and other worlds. Hair colouring? From black through brown through gold to silver, but that silver is no indicator of age. Long, slender hands and feet, four digited.
Clothing? Except for occasions when working gear is required, translucent, ankle-length robes, usually white, are worn by both sexes. Sandals tend—or tended when I was there—to be ornate. Both sexes wear jewellery—rings, ear-clips, bracelets, anklets.
They regard outsiders—rightly so, in many cases—as uncultured barbarians. They set great value on face. They attach great importance to etiquette. Their highest art form is cookery.
 * * *
"For you," she said, "a paradise."
"It would not have been for you," he told her, "after the way in which you turned up your nose at that excellent dinner." "Do they like their food raw too ? " she asked.
* * *
Seeker being a survey ship proper rather than a warship (he went on) she carried quite an assortment of scientists. Men dressed as spacemen, as the saying goes. Women dressed as spacewomen. Commissioned ranks, of course. One of them was Dr.—or Commander—Maggie Lazenby. She outranked me, although I was still the captain. She was my tame ethologist. She was supposed to be able to tell me what made alien people tick.
Shortly after we set down at the spaceport just outside Wistererri City she gave me a good talking to. She was good at that. "These are people," she said, "who were civilised while we were still living in caves."
"So how come," I asked, "that they'd only gotten as far as the airship when we made our first landings on this world in our interstellar vessels?"
"Civilisation and advanced technology," she told me, "do not necessarily go together. But these," she continued, "are a very civilised people. Perhaps too civilised. There's a certain rigidity, and too great a tendency to regard all outworlders as uncultured barbarians. In matters of dress, for example. We tend to be casual—even in uniform unless it's some sort of state occasion. Short-sleeved shirts, shorts—and for women very short skirts. Luckily you received the local dignitaries in full dress, with all your officers, including myself, attired likewise. But I couldn't help noticing the horror with which the City Governor and his entourage regarded the stewardesses who brought in the refreshments . . ."
"They were correctly and respectably dressed," I said.
"By our standards. And on my home world nudity wouldn't have caused so much as a raised eyebrow." (Maggie came from Arcadia, where naturism is the accepted way of life.) "But I'm not running around naked here. And you and your crew are not going to run around half naked when you go ashore. Arms and knees, female as well as male, must, repeat must, be covered."
"But it's summer. It's hot."
"A good sweat will get some of your fat off," she said.
So . . . When in Rome, and all that. But I didn't like it. My crew didn't like it, even after I'd explained the reason for my order. But it wasn't too bad for the women. Maggie went into a huddle with the paymaster—oddly enough she was, like Miss Otoguro, in this ship, of Japanese origin—and between the pair of them they cooked up a shoregoing rig based on the traditional kimono, made up from extremely lightweight material. Miss Hayashi looked very attractive in hers. Maggie looked odd at first—to my eyes, anyhow—but I had to admit that it suited her; the green, silky cloth matched her eyes and was an agreeable contrast to her red hair . . .
* * *
"You seem to have had quite a crush on this Maggie," commented Miss Kelly.
"Mphm. Yes."
* * *
So there was shore leave. The male personnel suffered; even the nights were uncomfortably warm and nowhere was there air-conditioning. The ladies, in their filmy but all-concealing dresses, flourished. For daytime excursions Yoshie Hayashi issued parasols and also, for all occasions, paper fans. Oh, we could have used the parasols, and the fans too, but neither, somehow, seemed masculine. And we sweated. By the Odd Gods of the Galaxy, how we sweated! Official banquets are bad enough at any time but they're absolute purgatory when you're wrestling with unfamiliar eating irons and literally stewing inside a dress uniform.
"The eating irons?"
You've seen me using chopsticks—but the Werrississians use a sort of single chopstick. They come in three varieties. There's what is, in effect, just a sharp-pointed skewer, quite good for spearing chunks of meat or whatever. Then there's a long handled affair with a sort of small, shallow spoon on the end of it. You can eat a bowl of soup with the thing, but it's a long process and, if you hold it properly, unless you have a very steady hand most of the fluid food finishes up in your lap. And the last one's a real beauty. At the end of it is an auger with a left-handed thread. And it's used only for a very special dish.
You didn't like Keiko's sushi. It's just as well that she didn't prepare sashimi for us. It's also raw fish, but even more so, if you know what I mean. You don't? Well, the fish is only stunned, not killed, before being prepared. While you're picking the bite-sized pieces off the skeleton it comes back to life and twitches its fins and looks at you . . . I came quite to like it while I was stationed on Mikasa Base for a while; the junior officers' mess, where I took most of my meals, specialised in a traditionally Japanese cuisine. So, having eaten and enjoyed sashimi, I was quite able to cope with leeleeoosa. It's a sort of thick worm. Alive and wriggling. The skin's rather tough and rubbery but it tends to dissolve when you chew it, this process being initiated by the sauce, mildly acid in flavour, into which you dip it.
So you have these . . . worms swimming around in a bowl of tepid water. You select your next victim. You jab, then twist left-handed. You dip in the sauce, bring it to your mouth and chew. The flavour? Not bad. Rather like rare steak, with a touch of garlic.
Fortunately I'd been able to get in some practice before the first official dinner at which leeleeoosa was served. Maggie had done her homework before we came to Werrississa. She, like me, enjoyed exotic foods. The ship's artificers, acting on her instructions, had run up a few sets of working tools. Of course, we weren't able to test our skills on real live and wriggling leeleeoosa until after we'd set down and Miss Hayashi had been able to do some shopping. But we'd sort of trained on sukiyaki, the strips of meat bobbing around in boiling water made a fair substitute for the real thing. It was the lefthanded thread on the skewer that took the most getting used to.
Then HIMS William Wallace, one of the big ships of the Navy of the Empire of Waverley, dropped in. Her classification was more or less—more rather than less—of our Constellation Class battle cruisers. Her commanding officer was Captain Sir Hamish McDiarmid, Knight of the Order of the Golden Thistle &c, &c and &c. Like me, he was showing the flag. His flag. He had a far bigger ship to wear it on. But she was a warship, not a survey ship. She was long on specialists in the martial arts but short on scientists. Ethologists especially. Nonetheless, I was to discover later, he had done some research into local lore before inflicting his presence on the Werrississians.
But national pride influenced him. The kilt, in a variety of tartans, is worn throughout the Empire on all occasions, by both men and women, with uniform and with civilian clothing. Longish, heavy kilts are for winter, short, lightweight kilts are for summer. Traditionally nothing is worn under these garments—all well and good when they're long and heavy but liable to offend the prudish when they're short and light.
Not that the Werrississians were prudish. It was just that, as far as they were concerned, there were things that are done and things that just definitely aren't done. They were prepared to tolerate outworlders and their odd ways but they didn't have to like them when such odd ways were offensive. I was grateful to Maggie for her good advice. Here was (comparatively) little, lightly armed Seeker whose people were happily conforming, and there was the huge William Wallace whose men strode arrogantly along the avenues of the city flaunting their bare knees—and more on a breezy day. They realised that the natives liked us while thinking that they were something that the cat had dragged in in an off moment. They resented this. They openly jeered at our women in their long gowns, carrying their parasols, calling them Madam Butterfly. I heard that they were referring to me as Lieutenant Pinkerton . . .
* * *
"Who were they, when they were up and dressed? " asked Kitty.
"Two characters in an opera who were dressed more or less as we were dressed," said Grimes. "Very unsuitably—as far as Pinkerton was concerned—for the climate."
* * *
But, as I said, Sir Hamish had done some research before his landing on Werrississa. I learned later that he had earned quite a reputation as a gourmet. He had even been known to sneer at the Waverley national dish, the haggis. He had, as I had done, insisted that all his people familiarise themselves with local dishes and eating implements. They even carried their own working tools with them, tucked into their sporrans, when they went ashore. It was reported to me by some of my officers, who had dined in the same restaurants, that the William Wallace personnel were quite skilful with these, even with the skirroo, the implement used when eating leeleeoosa. Yet it wasn't enough. They might eat like civilised people but they dressed like barbarians. We both ate and dressed properly.
And yet we were all members of the same race, whereas the Werrississians, for all their similarities, weren't. There had to be some fraternisation between the two crews. I invited Sir Hamish to take lunch with me aboard Seeker—and, unlike some people whom I will not name, he thoroughly enjoyed his sushi. He told me that he was planning a dinner aboard William Wallace for local dignitaries and would be pleased if I would attend together with three of my senior officers. I was happy to accept the invitation. Then—we'd had quite a few drinks and were getting quite matey—I asked him if he'd be serving haggis, piped in the traditional way. He wasn't offended. He laughed and said, "Not likely, Grimes. I ken well that you people are putting on a big act o' being civilised while we're just hairy-kneed barbarians. But I'll demonstrate that, when it comes to civilised living, we're as good as anybody. It'll be a Werrississian menu, prepared by my chefs . . ."
"Dress?" I asked.
"Formal, o' course. Ye'll be wearin' your dinner uniforms. We'll be wearin' ours. An' we'll be cooler than you'll be—from the waist down, anyhow. My private dining room will have to conform to local ideas of comfort, temperaturewise . . ."
I was rather sorry then that I couldn't back out, but it was too late. Later, when I passed the word around, nobody was keen to accompany me. At last Maggie said that she'd come to hold my hand. The other two victims were MacMorris, my chief engineer, and Marlene Deveson, one of the scientists. A geologist, as a matter of fact. Not that it matters.
Then the Big Day came round. Or the Big Night. We met in the air-conditioned comfort of my day cabin for a drink before walking the short distance to Sir Hamish's ship. We were all tarted up in our best mess dress, tropical. It would still be too hot for comfort with the white bum-freezer over the starched white shirt, the long, black trousers. The two ladies were slightly better off, with high-collared, epauletted, long-sleeved shirts only on top of their ankle-length black skirts. At least they were not required to wear jackets. Maggie looked good, as she always did, no matter what she was or wasn't wearing. Marlene looked a mess. She was a short girl, fat rather than plump. Her round face was already sweaty. Her hair, greasily black, was a tangle. Two of her shirt buttons had come undone.
We allowed ourselves one small whisky each. Sir Hamish would be serving Scotch and it wouldn't do to mix drinks. Then Maggie made a check of Marlene's appearance, frowned, took her into my bathroom to make repairs and adjustments. When they came out shirt buttons had been done up and hair combed and brushed into a semblance of order.
We took the elevator down to the airlock, walked slowly down the ramp. William Wallace was a great, dark, turreted tower in ominous silhouette against the city lights. (Sir Hamish did not believe on wasting money on floodlighting, even when he was showing the Thistle Flag.) It was a hot night. I'd started perspiring already. I had little doubt that the others were doing likewise. We made our way slowly across the apron. The heat of the day was beating up from the concrete.
We climbed the ramp to William Wallace's after airlock. The Imperial Marine on duty—white, sleeveless shirt over a kilt with black and red tartan, sturdy legs in calf-length boots—saluted smartly. I replied. Inside the chamber we were received by a junior officer, clad as was the Marine but with black and gold tartan and gold-braided shoulder boards on his shirt. More saluting. We were ushered into the elevator, carried swiftly up to Sir Hamish's suite.
He received us personally. He looked very distinguished. From the waist up he was dressed as I was—although he had more gold braid on his epaulettes than I did, more brightly ribboned miniature medals on the left breast of his mess jacket. And he was wearing a kilt, of course, summer weight and length, in the Imperial Navy's black and gold tartan. His long socks were black, with gold at the turnover. There were gold buckles on his highly polished black shoes.
And he, I was pleased to see, was feeling the heat too. His craggy face under the closely cropped white hair was flushed and shining with perspiration. But he was jovial enough.
He exclaimed, "Come in, come in! This is Liberty Hall. Ye can spit on the mat an' call the haggis a bastard!"
"Are ye givin' us haggis, then, sir?" asked MacMorris eagerly.
"No. 'twas just an expression of your captain's that I modified to suit my ship. We don't carry tabbies in the Waverley Navy."
Both Maggie and Marlene gave him dirty looks.
* * *
"Tabbies?" asked Kitty Kelly.
"In the old days of passenger carrying surface ships on Earth they used to call stewardesses that. Today all female spacegoing personnel, regardless of rank or department, are called tabbies. But not to their faces."
"I should hope not."
* * *
We were the first guests to arrive. We were taken into Sir Hamish's sitting room—he had quarters that would have made a Survey Service admiral green with envy—introduced to his senior officers, plied with excellent Scotch. Then the young officer who had received us on board ushered in the native guests. There were six of them, three male and three female. They looked pale wraiths. They accepted drinks from the mini-kilted mess steward although they regarded his hairy knees with distaste. Rather pointedly they made polite conversation only with those of us from Seeker, we were properly dressed even though our hosts were not. Their command of standard English was quite good.
A skirling of bagpipes came over the intercom. I assumed that it was the mess call. I was right. Sir Hamish led the way into his dining room. The long table, with its surface of gleaming tiles, each with a different tartan design, was already set. Sir Hamish's artificers had done him proud, were doing us all proud. At each place were the native eating utensils in polished bronze—slup, splik and skirroo. There were the bronze wine flasks, the cups made from the same alloy. There were place cards, with names both in English and the flowing Werrississian script.
Sir Hamish took the head of the table, of course, with a local lady on his right and her "social function husband" on his left. (The Werrississians have a multiplicity of wives and husbands—mates for all occasions.) I sat below the native woman and Maggie below the man. Then another native couple, then Marlene and MacMorris, then the last Werrississian pair. Below them was the covey of Imperial Navy commanders—(E), (N), (C), (S) and (G)—all looking rather peeved at having to sit below the salt.
Sir Hamish's mess waiters were well trained, efficient. They were drilled in local customs. First they poured each of us a goblet of the sweet, sticky wine—it was, as it should have been, at room temperature but I'd have preferred it chilled—and there was a round of toasts. We toasted the Emperor James XIV of Waverley, whose gold-framed, purple-draped portrait was on the bulkhead behind Sir Hamish's chair. The gentlemen toasted the ladies. The ladies toasted the gentlemen. We all toasted our host. By this time it was necessary to bring in a fresh supply of the bronze flasks. Unluckily it was still the same sickly but potent tipple. I looked rather anxiously at MacMorris. He didn't have a very good head for drinks and was liable after only one too many to insist on dancing a Highland fling. But I needn't have worried about him. He was a Scot more than he was a Terran and it was obvious that he, aboard a warship owned by the only essentially Scottish spacefaring power, was determined to be on his very best behaviour. It was an effort but he was capable of making it. The toasting over, he was taking merely token sips from his cup.
I looked at Marlene. I knew little about her drinking capacity and behaviour. What I saw worried me. She was downing goblet after goblet of the wine as fast as the steward could refill them. Her hair was becoming unfixed. The black, floppy bow at the neck of her shirt was now lopsided. One button on the front of the garment was undone.
The first course came in.
I've forgotten its native name but it was, essentially, bite-sized cubes of meat, fish, vegetables and other things coated in a savoury batter and deep fried. For these we used the spliks, the long, sharp skewers. The Werrississian guests made complimentary noises and, as was their custom, ate rapidly, their implements clicking on the china plates with their thistle pattern. Sir Hamish and his officers ate almost as fast and so did we Seeker people—with the exception of Marlene. It seemed to me that about half of her meal was going on to the table and the other half on to her lap, and from there to the deck. I was very sorry that Maggie wasn't sitting beside me instead of opposite. Had I been next to her I could have whispered to her, begged her to do something, anything, about her fellow scientific officer before she disgraced us.
The table was cleared but the spliks were left for use on the next course. This consisted of cubes of a melon-like fruit rolled in a sort of aromatic sugar. To my great relief Marlene seemed to have regained control of herself and succeeded in putting at least seventy five percent of the sweet morsels into her broad mouth, although by this time her lipstick was smeared badly.
Plates and spliks were removed by the attentive stewards. Goblets—where necessary—were refilled. I looked imploringly at Sir Hamish; surely he must realise that Marlene had had enough to drink, more than enough. He looked at me. There was a sardonic expression on his craggy face that I didn't like at all. I looked at Maggie. She knew what was passing through my mind. I could read her expression. It said, What can I do about it?
Plashish was next—a sort of clear soup, with shreds of something like cheese floating in it, served in shallow bowls. We all plied our slups, the long-handled spoons, holding them as we had been taught, by the very end of the shaft. All? No, there was one exception. Marlene, of course. She did try, I admit, but gave it up as a bad job. Then she lifted the bowl to her mouth, with two hands, and lapped from it . . .
The William Wallace people were trying to look even more shocked than their native guests but I knew that the bastards were glorying in the discomfiture of the Sassenachs. Us. And Sir Hamish—may the Odd Gods of the Galaxy rot his cotton socks!—was looking insufferably smug. He had shown the Werrississians that even though the representatives of Waverley insisted on wearing their own native dress they could comport themselves at table far more decently than the minions of Terra. And the Werrississians? They were gravely embarrassed. Their complexions had faded from the usual pale cream to an ashy grey. They were obviously avoiding looking at Marlene.
The plashish course was over. The leeleeoosa was (were?) brought in—the deep bowls of lukewarm water in which the meaty worms were swimming, the smaller bowls of sauce. I daren't look at Marlene to see how she was managing. I was having my own troubles, anyhow. So was Maggie. So was MacMorris. We'd practised enough with skirmos—both aboard Seeker and in restaurants ashore—but somehow our acquired skill seemed to have deserted us. We'd stab, and make contact with our prey, and twist—yet every time our intended victims would wriggle free. But Sir Hamish and his people were eating as expertly as the Werrississian guests . . .
It was Maggie first who twigged what was wrong. She stared at me across the table. She raised her left hand with forefinger extended, made a circular motion. I finally realised what she was driving at. The skirroos at our places, those long, bronze augers, had right-handed threads. I impaled one of the tasty worms without trouble then, dipped it in the sauce, brought it up to my mouth, chewed. I felt that I'd earned it. MacMorris, as befitting an engineer, had made the discovery himself. He was eating fast and happily.
I looked down and across the table at Marlene. She was having her troubles. I tried to catch her attention but she was concentrating too hard on her bowl of leeleeoosa. She had her skirroo in both hands. She brought it down like a harpoon. She must have driven the point through the tough, rubbery skin of a worm by sheer force. She lifted it out of the bowl. She didn't bother to dip it in the sauce but brought the wriggling thing straight up to her open mouth. If it had made the distance it wouldn't have mattered, but . . . It slipped off the end of the skirroo. It fell on to Marlene's ample bosom. It found the gap in her shirt front where the gilt button had come undone. It squirmed into the opening.
Marlene screamed. She jumped to her feet, oversetting her leeleeoosa bowl. There were worms everywhere. Maggie guessed her intentions but did not reach her in time to stop her from ripping off her shirt. She was wearing nothing under it. Her breasts were her best feature, but they were big. It seemed as though somebody had launched a couple of Shaara blimps into Sir Hamish's dining room.
The Waverley officers stared appreciatively. The Werrississians, male and female, covered their eyes with both hands. Sir Hamish got to his feet, glared at me—but I knew that this was a histrionic display put on for the benefit of his native guests.
"Commander Grimes," he said, "you and your officers have abused my hospitality and gravely embarrassed my other guests. You will please leave my ship. I shall be vastly obliged if you never set foot aboard her again."
"Sir Hamish," I said to him, "none of this would have happened if our places had been set with the correctly left-hand-threaded skirroos."
He said, "I thought that I was doing you a favour. All my people have found it far easier to use right-handed skirroos of our own manufacture."
And so we slunk off William Wallace in disgrace, what little dignity remaining to us dissipated by the tussle that we had with Marlene to stop her from stripping completely; she was convinced that one of the spilled worms had wriggled from the floor up her leg.
Back aboard Seeker we almost literally threw the fat, drunken girl into her cabin. MacMorris—whose mind was reeling under the shock of having been thrown off a Scottish ship—went to his quarters to sulk and to console himself with whisky.
Maggie came up to my flat to console me. We held a post mortem on the disastrous evening. We'd thought that we, playing along with the local prudery regarding dress while the Waverley crew flaunted their short kilts, had made ourselves the most favoured aliens. But Sir Hamish had turned the tables on us. Of course, Marlene's strip act had been an unexpected bonus to him.
So that was that. I had to carry the can back, of course—after all, I was the captain. My popularity rating with the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty sank to what I thought must be an all time low.
* * *
"If you had the sense to stick to civilised food," said Kitty Kelly, "that sort of thing would never happen . . . But I don't know much about the Galaxy outside the Shakespearian Sector. This Werri-whatever-it-is . . . I suppose that it's now well and truly inside the Waverley sphere of influence."
Grimes laughed. "As a matter of fact it isn't. I heard that after we'd left Sir Hamish and his senior officers were invited to a very genteel garden party thrown by no less a dignitary than the Grand Coordinator. It was a windy day. They should have had sense enough to wear their winter weight kilts . . .
"It was the Shaara, of all people, who got a foothold (talonhold?) on Werrississa. After all, you don't expect a really alien alien to have the same nudity taboos, the same table manners, as you do. We humans are so like the Werrississians that every difference was exaggerated."
"Just as differences between members of the same species are," she said. "Some like raw fish and seaweed. Some don't."
Grimes and the Odd Gods
Faraway Quest, the Rim Worlds Confederacy survey ship, was still berthed at Port Fortinbras, on Elsinore. She was still awaiting replacements for the rotors of her outmoded inertial drive unit. More than once, in strongly worded Carlottigrams, Commodore Grimes had requested, demanded almost, that he be allowed to put the repairs in the hands of one of the several local shipyards. Each time he received a terse reply from the Rim Worlds Admiralty's Bureau of Engineering which, translated from Officialese to English, boiled down to Father knows best. He unburdened his soul to the Rim Worlds ambassador on Elsinore.
"Can't you do something, Your Excellency?" he asked. "There's my ship been sitting here for weeks now. My crew's becoming more and more demoralized . . . ."
"As well I know, Commodore," the ambassador agreed. "You've some hearty drinkers aboard your vessel, and when they drink they brawl. Perhaps you could stop the shore leave of the worst offenders . . . ."
"And have them drinking and brawling aboard the Quest? Or, if I really put my foot down, slouching around in a state of sullen sobriety? There's only one thing to do. Get them off this bloody planet and back where they belong, back to their wives and families or, in the case of the tabbies, to their boyfriends."
"Some of your female personnel are even greater nuisances than the men," said the ambassador.
"You're telling me. But as an ambassador, Your Excellency, you pile on far more Gs than a mere commodore, a commodore on the reserve list at that. Can't you do something?"
"I've tried, Grimes. I've tried. But it's all a matter of economics. The Confederacy just does not have the funds in any bank in the Shakespearean Sector to pay for a major repair and replacement job. Those rotors will have to be manufactured on Lorn, and then carried out here in whatever ship of the Rim Runners fleet is due to make a scheduled call to Elsinore . . . ."
"And meanwhile," the commodore said, "there are mounting port dues. And the wages that everybody aboard Faraway Quest is getting for doing nothing. And the three square meals a day, plus snacks, that all hands expect as their right. And . . . ."
"I'm a diplomat, Grimes, not an economist."
"And I'm just a spaceman. Oh, well. Theirs not to reason why, and all that. And now I'll be getting back to my ship, Your Excellency."
"What's the hurry, Commodore? I was hoping that you would stay for a few drinks and, possibly, dinner."
"I have an appointment," said Grimes.
The ambassador laughed. "Another interview for Kitty's Korner? I always watch that program myself. And I've heard that Station Yorick's ratings have improved enormously since Miss Kelly persuaded you to treat her viewers and listeners to your never-ending series of tall tales."
"Not so tall," growled Grimes.
"Perhaps not. You have had an interesting life, haven't you?"
An hour or so later, in his sitting room aboard the old ship, Grimes and Kitty Kelly were enjoying the simple yet satisfying meal that had been brought to them by one of the stewardesses. There were sandwiches constructed from crisply crusty new bread, straight from Faraway Quest's own bakery, and thick slices of juicy Waldegren ham, the flavor of which derived from the smoldering sugar pine sawdust over which the meat had been smoked. (Almost alone among the ship's personnel, Grimes liked this delicacy; that was a good supply of it in the ship's cool stores. He was pleased that Kitty, hitherto inclined to be an unadventurous eater, enjoyed it, too.) There was a variety of cheeses—Ultimo Blue, Aquarian Sea Cream, and Caribbean Pineapple and Pepper—altogether with assorted pickles and the especially hot radishes that Grimes had insisted be cultivated in the ship's hydroponic farm. There was Australian beer—some while ago Grimes had done a private deal with the master of a Federation star tramp not long out from Earth—served in condensation-bedewed pewter pots.
Nibbling a last radish with her strong while teeth, Kitty slumped back in her chair. Grimes regarded her appreciatively. As she always did, she was wearing green, this time a long, filmy, flowing dress with long, loose sleeves. Above it, the food and the drink had brought a slight flush to the normal creamy pallor of her face, a healthy pallor, set off by the wide scarlet slash of her lips. Below her black glossy hair, this evening braided into a sort of coronet, her startlingly blue eyes looked back at Grimes.
She murmured, "Thank you for the meal, Commodore. It was very good."
He asked, "And will you sing for your supper?"
She said, "You're the one who's going to do the singing." She looked at the bulkhead clock. "It's almost time that we got the show on the road again. And what are you going to talk about tonight? Your adventures as a pirate?"
"Not a pirate," he corrected her stiffly. "A privateer."
"Who knows the difference? And who cares? Or what about when you were governor general of that anarchist planet?"
"Too long a story, Kitty," he said. "And too complicated. By All the Odd Gods of the Galaxy, there never were, before or since, such complications!"
She said thoughtfully, "That . . . that oath you often use . . . By All the Odd Gods of the Galaxy . . . Did you ever get tangled with any of these Odd Gods?"
He told her, "I'm an agnostic. But . . . there have been experiences."
She got up from her chair, went to the case containing her audiovisual recorder, opened it, pulled out the extensions with their lenses and microphones.
She said, peering into the monitor screen. "Yes, that's it. Pipe in one hand, tankard in the other . . . And now, talk."
"What about?"
"The Odd Gods, of course. Or, at the very least, One Odd God."
He said, "Oh, all right. But I must get my pipe going first."
* * *
As you know (he started at last), I left the Federation Survey Service under something of a cloud after the Discovery mutiny. For a while I was yachtmaster to the Baroness Michelle d'Estang, an El Doradan aristocrat, and on the termination of this employment she gave me the yacht's pinnance, which was practically a deep-space ship in miniature, as a parting gift. I called her—the pinnance, not the baroness—Little Sister and set up shop as Far Traveler Courier Services. I'd carry anything or anybody anywhere, as long as I got paid. There would be small parcels of special cargo. There would be people waiting to get to planets well off the normal interstellar trade routes.
It was a living.
I didn't make a fortune, but there was usually enough in the bank to pay port's dues and such and to keep me in life's little luxuries. It was lonely for quite a lot of the time but, now and again, there were passengers who were pleasant enough company . . . Yes, female ones sometimes, if you must know. But it was the female ones who usually got me into all kinds of trouble. Mphm.
Well, I'd carried a small parcel of urgently needed medical supplies to a world called Warrenhome—no, the inhabitants weren't descended from rabbits but the name of the captain who made the first landing was Warren—where they were having some sort of plague. A mutated virus. After I'd made delivery and received the balance of the payment due to me, I lost no time in placing the usual advertisements in the usual media. I decided that I'd wait around for a week and then, if nothing came up, get off the planet. There was talk that that virus, a nasty one, might mutate again.
Luckily (I thought at the time) I didn't have long to wait for my next job. I returned to Little Sister, after a yarn with the Port Captain, just before any usual lunchtime. I saw that a tall woman was approaching the airlock door from the opposite direction to myself. She was dressed in severe, ankle-length black with touches of white at throat and wrists. On her head was an odd sort of hat, black, with a wide, stiff brim. The skin of her strong-featured face was white; even the lips of her wide mouth were pale. Her eyes were a hard, steely blue.
She stated rather than asked, "Captain Grimes."
Her voice was deep for a woman, resonant.
I said, "I have that honor, Miz . . . ?"
She said, "You may call me Madame Bishop."
I asked, "And what can I do for you, Miz Bishop?"
She said coldly, "Bishop is my title, Captain Grimes, not my surname. I understand that you are seeking employment for yourself and your ship. I shall employ you."
I let us both into the ship, seated her at the table in the cabin while I went through into the little galley. I asked her what she would like to drink. She told me coldly that she would appreciate a glass of water. I brought her one, and a pink gin for myself. She looked at this disapprovingly. I pulled out my pipe and filled it. She as good as ordered me to put it away. It wasn't so much the words that she used but the way in which she said them. But I had been learning, ever since I set up in business for myself, that the customer is always right. I put my pipe back in my pocket.
She asked, "How soon can you lift ship, Captain Grimes?"
I said, "As soon as I've paid on my bills and cleared outwards."
"Today?"
"Yes."
She asked, "Are you capable of making the voyage to Stagatha?"
I'd never heard of that world, but Little Sister was capable of going just about anywhere in the galaxy. I told her yes.
"What will be the single fare for one passenger?"
I couldn't answer this at once. I didn't know where Stagatha was or how far it was from Warrenhome. I asked her to wait while I switched on the playmaster. She told me that she did not approve of frivolous entertainment. I told her that the playmaster screen served as the read-out for Little Sister's computer and library bank. I don't think she believed me until the requested data began to appear.
In a short while I had all the information required. The voyage would take six weeks. Then there were all the various expenses accruing over this period—depreciation, insurance, consumption of stores, the salary that I—as owner—was paying to myself as master. And so on, and so on. After all, I had to show a profit. I told her how much I should be asking.
She said, "We are not a rich church, Captain Grimes, but we are not a poor one. And has it not been written that the laborer is worthy of his hire?" She allowed herself the merest hint of a smile. "Too, you are the only laborer available at this moment of time."
"Is this voyage a matter of some urgency?" I asked.
"The Lord's work is always urgent," she told me.
And so it was that I contracted to carry Bishop Agatha Lewis, of the Church Of The Only Salvation, from Warrenhome to Stagatha.
* * *
He paused, looking down into his now-empty tankard. Kitty refilled it for him, refilled her own.
She said, "So far we haven't had any Odd Gods. These Only Salvation people seem to have been just another nut cult, probably with their own translation of the Christian Bible slanted to make it fit their own beliefs."
He said, "Even without special translations you can interpret the Bible in a very wide variety of ways, find in it Divine Authority for just about every aberration of which the human race is capable. But the Church Of The Only Salvation did have its own Bible. Bishop Lewis gave me a copy. I tried to read it but the writing was appallingly bad. As far as I'm concerned there is only one Bible. The King James version."
* * *
After she was gone, to get herself organized, I made myself a sandwich lunch and tried to get more information about Stagatha from the library bank. It was an Earth-type planet with about the same proportion of land to water. The inhabitants were humanoid. I've often wondered why there are so many humanoid, as near as dammit human, races throughout the galaxy. Was there some Expansion, from Somewhere, before the dawn of history? But on every world there is the evolutionary evidence that cannot be denied that Man descended from lower life forms. Or is there some Divine Plan?
But I'm just a spaceman, not a philosopher.
There were photographs of typical Stagathans. These could have been taken on practically any beach on Earth or any Man-colonized planet. The males were, to all outward appearances, well-endowed (but not abnormally so) men. The females tended to be busty, but firm-breasted. The only thing odd was that these photographs had been taken in the streets of a Stagathan town, not at a seaside resort. I finally got around to looking at the vehicles and buildings in the background. Electric cars (I thought). Dwellings, offices, shops—but nothing over one story and everything with a flat roof.
And that was all. There was no trade with other worlds, no exports, no imports. There had been very little contact with outsiders since the first landing by Commodore Shakespeare, that same Commodore Shakespeare after whom your Shakespearean Sector was named. Every so often some minor vessel of the Survey Service would drop in, just showing the flag and for rest and recreation. But why, I wondered, should the Church Of The Only Salvation be interested in the planet?
But I had things to do. Bills to pay, outward clearance to be obtained and all the rest of it. Not much was required in the way of stores; my tissue culture vats were in good order and I could program the autochef to turn out quite fair imitations of Scotch whiskey and London gin. Flour I needed, and fresh eggs, and a few cases of the not-too-bad local table wines. Regarding these, I based my order on what I regarded as normal consumption by two people for the duration of the voyage. I could have cut that order by half . . . .
I made my pre-liftoff checks. Everything was in order, as it almost always was. She was a reliable little brute, was Little Sister. When I was walking around the outside of her, just admiring her, a small motorcade approached from the spaceport gates. There were four archaic-looking ground cars, black-painted, steam-driven, each emitting a thick cloud of dirty smoke from its funnel. From the first one Bishop Agatha Lewis disembarked, followed by half a dozen men and women, dressed in plain black and with broad-brimmed black hats like the one she was wearing. The men were all heavily bearded. Similar parties got out from the other three cars.
I walked up to the she-bishop and threw her a smart salute. She did not quite ignore me, but her curt nod was of the don't-bother-me-now variety. She made no attempt to introduce me to the assembled elders and deaconesses and deacons or whatever they were. Oh, well, I was only the captain. And the owner. I was only a space-going cabbie. I went back inside the ship to sulk.
Before long an elderly woman, followed by four men, carrying between them two heavy trunks, came in. She asked me, quite politely, "Where do we put these?" I showed them. The men went back outside.
She sat down at the table, noticed the tea things that I had not cleared away yet after my afternoon break.
She asked, in a whisper, "Do you think that I might have a cup, Captain?"
I made a fresh pot and, with a clean cup, brought it in to her. I could hear some sort of hymn being sung outside, one of those dreary ones all about the blood of the lamb and so forth.
She murmured, as she sipped appreciatively, "We shall all miss the dear bishop. But we, the synod, decided that she would be the right and proper person to send to Stagatha." She helped herself to a chocolate biscuit, crunched into it greedily. "Surely the similarity of the names is no coincidence. There was a St. Agatha, you know. Not that we approve of the Popish church and their beliefs." She poured herself more tea, added cream and was generous with the sugar. "Yes. We shall all of us miss the dear bishop—although, perhaps, her interpretation of the Word has been a mite too strict."
I said, "I still haven't been told why Bishop Lewis is going to Stagatha."
She said, "I thought that you knew. It is because those unhappy people, on that world, are living in a state of darkness, are brands to be plucked from the burning. We heard about it from a spaceman, a young fellow called Terry Gowan, one of the engineers aboard the Cartographer, a Survey Service ship. Would you know him?"
I said that I didn't. (It is truly amazing how so many planetlubbers have the erroneous idea that everybody in Space, naval or mercantile, knows everybody else.)
"A very nice young man. A religious young man. His ship set down here a few weeks after a visit to Stagatha. One of our people went on board her with books and pamphlets. The only one of the crew who was interested was Terry. He came to our prayer meetings. He talked about Stagatha. He brought us audio-visual records that he had taken. We were shocked. Those people, as human as you and me, going about completely . . . unclothed. And their heathen religion! Do you know, they worship their sun . . . ."
I didn't see much wrong with that. After all, sun-worship is logical. And as long as you don't go to the horrid extreme of tearing the still-beating hearts out of the breasts of sacrificial virgins, it has much to recommend it. The sun, after all—your sun, Earth's sun, Stagatha's sun, anybody's sun—is the source of all life. And there are Man-colonized planets, such as Arcadia, where naturism is a way of life, although the Arcadians don't quite make a religion of it.
"None of the other churches," the old lady went on, "has sent a missionary to Stagatha. But somebody has to . . . ."
"And Bishop Lewis was your obvious choice," I said.
"Why, yes," she almost laughed.
I was beginning to like the old dear. She had told me, as plainly as she could, that dear Agatha was being kicked upstairs. Literally.
Suddenly she stiffened and with a swift motion pushed her half-full teacup across the table so that it was in front of me. She was just in time. Bishop Lewis came into the cabin and stood there, staring down at us suspiciously.
She asked, "Why are you still here, Sister Lucille?"
The old lady got to her feet and bowed deferentially and said, "I was just keeping Captain Grimes company while he had his tea, Your Reverence. And I was telling him about our work."
"Indeed?" Her voice was very cold. "Since when were you one of our missioners. Sister Lucille?"
That business with the teacup had been a fair indication of which way the wind was blowing, but I made sure.
I asked, "Would you care for tea, Madame Bishop? I asked Sister Lucille to join me, but she refused."
"As she should have done, Captain Grimes, and as I shall do. Nowhere in Holy Writ are such unclean beverages as tea or coffee mentioned. Members of our Church are forbidden to partake of them."
And that was that.
* * *
He paused for refreshment, sipping from his newly filled tankard.
Kitty asked, "And what about wine? That's mentioned quite a few times."
"Yes," said Grimes. "Noah planted a vineyard and then made his own wine after he ran the Ark aground on Mount Ararat. Then he got drunk on his own tipple and the Almighty did not approve."
"But, in the New Testament, there's the story of the wedding feast and the water-into-wine miracle."
"According to Bishop Agatha, and according to her Church's own translation of the Bible, that wine was no more than unfermented fruit juice."
* * *
I'll not bore you (he went on) with a long account of the voyage out to Stagatha. It was not one of the happiest voyages in my life. On previous occasions, when carrying a female passenger, I found that familiarity breeds attempt. Mutual attempt. But there just wasn't any familiarity. At nights—we maintained a routine based on the twenty-hour day of Warrenhome—the portable screen was always in place, dividing the cabin into two sleeping compartments. Once we were out and clear and on the way, I put on my usual shirt-and-shorts uniform and Her Reverence ordered me—ordered me, aboard my own ship—to cover myself decently. Smoking was forbidden, except in the control cab with the communicating door sealed. Meals were a misery. I regard myself as quite a fair cook and can make an autochef do things that its makers would never have so much as dreamed of, but . . . Boiled meat and vegetables for lunch, the same for dinner. Breakfast—boiled eggs. No ham or bacon, of course. The wine that I had stocked up with went almost untouched; I just don't like drinking it during a meal while my companion sticks to water. And she soon went through the ship's stock of orange juice—she liked that—leaving me with none to put with my gin.
She had brought her own supply of tapes for the playmaster, mainly sermons of the fire-and-brimstone variety and uninspiring hymns sung by remarkably untuneful choirs. Some of those sermons were delivered by herself. I had to admit she had something. She was a born rabble rouser. Had she been peddling some line of goods with greater appeal than the dreary doctrines of her freak religion, she might have finished up as dictator of a planet rather than as the not-very-popular boss cocky of an obscure sect. Might have finished up? But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I dutifully read the Bible, in that horridly pedestrian translation, which she had given me. I did not think that I should ever become a convert. Unluckily, I was rather low on reading matter of my own choice—books, that is—and my stock of microfilmed novels I could not enjoy because of her continuous monopoly of the playmaster.
Anyhow, at last the time came when I stopped the Mannschenn Drive unit and Little Sister sagged back into the normal Continuum. There were the usual phenomena, the warped perspective and all that, and (for me) a brief session of déjà vu. I saw Agatha Lewis as a sort of goddess in flowing black robes, brandishing a whip. It frightened me. And then things snapped back to normal.
I had made a good planetfall. We were only two days' ran from Stagatha and made our approach to the world, under inertial drive, from north of the plane of ecliptic. There was no need for me to get in radio touch with Aero-space Control. There wasn't any Aero-space Control. As far as I could gather from the information in my library banks, Entry Procedure for just about every known planet in the galaxy, one just came in, keeping a sharp lookout for airships, selected a landing place, and landed. It all seemed rather slipshod, but if the Stagathans liked it, who was I to complain?
The planet looked good from Space. Blue seas, green and brown land masses, relatively small polar ice-caps. There was very little cloud except for a dark and dirty-looking patch of dense vapor that practically obscured from view most of a large island almost on the equator. I studied it through the control cab binoculars and could see flickers of ruddy light within it. It could only be Stagatha's only active volcano. According to Survey Service accounts, it was unnamed and regarded with a sort of superstitious horror. Nobody ever went near it. Looking down at it I thought that I could understand why. Even from a great distance I got the impression of utter ugliness.
Whenever possible, when making a landing on a strange planet with no spaceport facilities, I adhere to Survey Service standard practice, timing my descent from close orbit to coincide with sunrise. That way every irregularity of the ground is shown up by the long shadows. Agatha Lewis had told me to set the ship down as close as possible to one of the cities. Not that there were any real cities, just largish country towns, most of them on the banks of rivers, set among fields and forests.
So I dropped down through the early-morning sky, feeling the usual sense of pleasurable anticipation. I enjoy shiphandling and, too, this to me would be a new and almost certainly interesting world. But I wasn't as happy as I should have been. She insisted on coming into the control cab with me, which meant that I was not able to smoke my pipe.
My own intention had been not to pass low over the town. Inertial drive units are noisy—to anybody outside the ship, that is—and it would be, I thought, stupid to annoy the citizenry by waking them before sparrowfart. But Agatha Lewis insisted that I make what I considered to be the ill-mannered approach. As it turned out, I needn't have worried about disturbing the sleep of the natives. But I did interrupt their dawn service. They were in the central plaza, all of them—men, women, and children—wearing their symbolic black cloaks that they threw aside as the first rays of the rising sun struck through between and over the low buildings. They stared up at us. We stared down. The bishop hissed in disgust at the sight of all that suddenly revealed nakedness.
She . . . she snarled, "Now you know why I have come to this world. To save these poor sinners from their utter degradation."
I said, "They didn't look all that degraded to me. They were clean, healthy. Quite attractive, some of them . . . ."
"But their heathen worship, Captain Grimes! The baring of their bodies . . . ."
I said, "If God had meant us to go around without clothes we'd have been born naked."
* * *
"Ha, ha," interjected Kitty Kelly.
"You're as had as she was," Grimes told her. "She didn't think that it was very funny either. But it shut her up. I was able to land Little Sister in peace and quiet."
"And then you got your gear off and went to romp with the happy nudists, I suppose."
"Ha, ha. Not with her around."
* * *
So I landed in the middle of this grassy field. Well, it looked like grass, and some odd-looking quadrupeds were grazing on it until we scared them off with the racket of the inertial drive. I made the routine tests of the atmosphere, not that it was really necessary as the Survey Service had already certified it fit for human consumption. I opened up both airlock doors. Bishop Agatha was first out of the ship. She stood there, in her stifling black clothing, glaring disapprovingly at the sun. I joined her. The fresh air tasted good, was fragrant with the scent of the grass that we had crushed with our set-down, with that of the gaudy purple flowers decorating clumps of low, green-blue foliaged bushes.
I thought that whether or not she approved, I was going to wear shirt-and-shorts rig while on this planet. I didn't know for how long I should have to stay; the agreement was that I should wait until the mission was well established and, at intervals, send reports to Warrenhome by means of my Carlotti radio. I couldn't get through directly, of course. The messages would have to be beamed to Baniskil, the nearest planetary Carlotti station, and relayed from there. After I was gone, Agatha would have to wait for the next Survey Service ship to make a call—which might be a matter of months, or even years—before she could make further contact with those who had been her flock.
Anyhow, we stood there in the sunlight, the warm breeze, myself enjoying the environment, she obviously not. We did not talk. We watched the small crowd walking out from the town. As they grew closer, I could see how like they were to humans—our kind of humans—and how unlike. Their faces had eyes and nose and mouth, but their ears were long, pointed, and mobile. The hair on their heads was uniformly short and a sort of dark olive green in color. There was a complete absence of body hair. Their skins were golden brown. There was a something . . . odd about their lower limbs. (Their ancestors, I discovered later, had been animals not dissimilar to the Terran kangaroo.) But they all possessed what we would regard as human sexual characteristics. Apart from necklaces and bracelets and anklets of gold and glittering jewels, they were all of them naked.
Their leader, a tall man with a strong, pleasant, rather horselike face, walked up to me, stiffened to what was almost attention and threw me quite a smart salute with his six-fingered hand. Obviously he was not unused to dealing with visiting spacemen and, even though he himself went naked, knew the meaning of uniforms and badges of rank.
He said, in almost accentless Standard English, "Welcome to Stagatha, Captain."
I returned his salute and said, "I am pleased to be here, sir."
This did not suit the lady bishop. She was the VIP, not myself. She said a few words in a language strange to me. I was not entirely surprised. I knew that each night during the voyage she had retired to her bed with a slutor—a sleep tutor. She must, somehow, have obtained the necessary language capsules from that visiting Survey Service ship, Cartographer. I should have made some attempt myself to learn the language—but linguistically I'm a lazy bastard and always have been. Wherever I've gone I've always found somebody who could speak English.
The Stagathan turned to Agatha Lewis and bowed. Despite his lack of clothing it was a very dignified gesture. She returned this salutation with the slightest of nods. She went on talking in a harsh, angry voice. He grinned, looked down at himself and gave a very human shrug. She went on talking.
He turned to me and said, "For you I am very sorry, Captain. Now we go."
They went.
After I had gazed my fill upon a fine selection of retreating naked female buttocks, I turned to the bishop and asked, "What was all that about, Your Reverence?"
She looked at me very coldly and said, "I was telling these heathen, in their own language, to cover their nakedness."
I said, greatly daring, "They are dressed more suitably for this climate than we."
She said something about lecherous spacemen and then returned to the ship. I followed her. I busied myself with various minor chores while she opened one of the large trunks that had been put aboard before we left Warrenhome. She seemed to be unpacking. It was clothing, I noticed, that she was pulling out and spreading over the deck. She must be looking, I thought, for something cool to wear during the heat of the day. The next time I looked at her she was stowing a quantity of drab raiment into a large backpack.
When she was finished she said, "We will now go to the city, Captain Grimes."
"We haven't had lunch yet," I told her.
"Doing the Lord's work, according to His bidding, will be nourishment enough," she told me. "Please pick up the bag that I have packed and follow me."
"Why?" I demanded.
"It is essential," she said, "that we arrive in the central square prior to the noon service."
"Why?"
"It is not for you to question the Lord's bidding."
I said that I was a spaceship pilot, not a porter. She said that as long as I was on the payroll of her Church I was obliged to do as she required. I wasn't sure of the legality of it all but . . . After all, I had to live with the woman. Anything-for-a-quiet-life Grimes, that's me. I did, however, insist that I dress more suitably for the expedition than in what I was wearing at the time—long trousers, shirt, necktie, and uniform jacket. I went into the shower cubicle with a change of clothing and emerged in short-sleeved, open-necked shirt, kilt, and sandals. She glared at me.
"Are you going native, Captain?"
"No, Your Reverence. I have changed into suitable shore-going civilian rig."
"You are not to accompany me dressed like that."
"Then hump your own bluey," I told her.
She didn't know what I meant, of course, so I had to translate from Australian into Standard English.
"Then carry your own bag," I said.
She didn't like it but realized that if we wasted any more time in argument we should be late for the noon service. She swept out of the ship with me, her beast of burden, plodding behind. It was too hot a day to be encumbered with a heavy backpack but, at least, I was less uncomfortable than I should have been in formal uniform.
In other circumstances I should have enjoyed the walk—that springy, almost-grass underfoot, the tuneful stridulations of what I assumed to be the local version of insects, occasional colorful flights of what I assumed to be birds but later discovered to be small, gaudy, flying mammals.
But I was unable to loiter. Her Reverence set the pace, and a spanking one it was. That woman, I thought, must have ice water in her veins, to be able to stride along like that while wearing all that heavy, body-muffling clothing. We came to the boundary of the field, to a dirt road, to the beginnings of the houses. There were people abroad, coming out of the low buildings, setting off in the same direction as the one that we were taking. There were men and women and children. They looked at us curiously—as well they might!—but not in an unmannerly fashion. They were dressed—undressed—for the climate. Her Reverence was suitably attired for a midwinter stroll over a polar icecap.
We came to the central square. It was paved with marble slabs but, breaking the expanse of gleaming stone, were beds of flowering bushes and fountains in the spray of which the sun was making rainbows. In the middle of the square was a tall obelisk, surrounded by concentric rings of gleaming metal—brass? gold?—set in the marble. Hard by this was a tripod made of some black metal from which was suspended a huge brass gong. A tall, heavily muscled man—I'll call him a man, at any nude resort on Earth or any Terran colony world the only glances that he would have attracted would have been admiration—naked apart from his ornaments of gold and jewels, was standing by the tripod, holding, as though it were a ceremonial spear, a long-handled striker with leather-padded head. A woman—and she was truly beautiful—was sitting cross-legged, all her attention on the slow, almost imperceptible shortening of the shadow cast by the obelisk.
She turned to the man by the gong, uttered one short word. His muscles flexed as he raised the striker, brought the head of it, with a powerful sweeping motion, into contact with the surface, radiant with reflected sunlight, of the great brass disc.
A single booming note rolled out and the people, from streets and alleys, came flooding into the plaza. They were marching rather than merely walking, dancing rather than marching, and the clashing of their glittering cymbals was not without an odd, compelling rhythm. They were unclothed (of course), all of them—the men, the women, and the children—although bright metal and jewels glowed on glowing, naked flesh. They formed up into groups, all of them facing inwards, towards the central obelisk. The . . . the timekeeper was standing now, arms upraised above her head. She was singing, in a high, sweet voice. It was not the sort of noise that normally I should have classed as music, the tonality was not one that I was accustomed to, the rhythms too subtle, but here, in these circumstances, it was . . . right. The man at the gong was accompanying her, stroking the metal surface with the head of his striker, producing a deep murmuring sound. And all the people were singing.
I didn't need to understand the words to know that it was a hymn of praise.
"What are you standing there for?" demanded the she-bishop.
"What else should I do?" I countered.
She snarled wordlessly, literally tore the backpack from my shoulders. She opened it, spilled the drab heap of secondhand clothing onto the marble paving. Close by us were children, about twenty in this group, who, until now, had been ignoring us. Her Reverence snatched up a rust black dress, forced it down over the body of a struggling, bewildered little girl. "Can't you help?" she snarled at me. By the time that she got her second victim clothed, the first one was naked again and running to the timekeeper, the priestess, bawling with fright and bewilderment.
Things started to happen then.
I was unarmed, of course, with not so much as a stungun on low power. Contrary to so many space stories the toting of firearms by spacemen, merchant spacemen especially, on other people's planets is not encouraged. It didn't take long for two hefty wenches to immobilize me, one on each side of me, both of them holding me tightly. I could do nothing but watch as four men seized Agatha, threw her down to the paving and, despite her frenzied struggles, stripped her. A knife gleamed and I yelled wordlessly—but it was being used as a tool, not a weapon, to slice through cloth and not through skin. Her long body, revealed as the last of underwear was slashed away, was disgustingly pallid. It needn't have been. She could have made use of the UV lamps every time that she had a shower during the passage out, as I had done. She was pallid and she was flabby, physically (at least) far inferior to those who were punishing her for her act of . . . sacrilege. Yes. Sacrilege. They held her there, in the blazing noonday sunlight, while the rags of her clothing were gathered up, and those other rags, those donations of used clothing with which she had tried to clothe the happily naked.
There was that pile of drab, tattered cloth and there was that big lens, a great burning glass, that was brought to bear upon the rubbish, concentrating upon it the purifying rays of the sun. There was the acrid smoke, and then the first red glimmer of smolder, and then flames, almost invisible in the strong sunlight.
And all the time Agatha was writhing and screaming, calling out not in Standard English but in the Stagathan language that she had learned. What she was saying I did not know, but it sounded like (and probably was) curses.
The bonfire died down.
A man whom I recognized as the leader of the party that had come out to the ship strode up to me. His face was grave.
"Captain," he said, "take this woman from here. She has insulted our God."
I said lamely, "She means well."
He said, "The path of the Mountain We Do Not Name is paved with good intentions."
My two captors released me.
The four men holding Agatha Lewis's wrists and ankles let go of her. She stumbled to her feet and stood there in that classic pose, one arm shielding her breasts, the other hand over her pudenda. With a younger, more shapely woman the attitude would have been prettily appealing; with her it was merely ludicrous. Her face was scarlet with humiliation. But it wasn't only her face. And it wasn't only humiliation. It was sunburn.
* * *
Kitty said, "When you mentioned the gleam of a knife I thought that you were going to tell us that Bishop Agatha suffered the same sort of martyrdom as Saint Agatha. Her breasts were cut off."
Grimes said, "I know. I did some checking up. There was so much odd parallelism about the whole business. But my Agatha suffered no worse than severely frizzled nipples. Very painful, I believe. I lent her my shirt for the walk back to the ship but, by that time, it was too late."
* * *
So we got ourselves back to the ship (he continued) with Her Reverence in a state of shock. It had all been such a blow to her pride, her prudery, her own kind of piety. The pyschological effects were more severe than the physical ones, painful as those most obviously were. And she had to let me apply the soothing lotions to her body. Oh, she hated me.
Once she was muffled up in a robe, wincing as every slightest motion brought the fabric into contact with her inflamed breasts, I said, "It is obvious, Your Reverence, that you are not welcome here. I suggest that we get off the planet."
She said, "We shall do no such thing."
She wanted her bunk set up then and the privacy screen put in position. I busied myself with various small tasks about the ship, trying not to make too much noise. But I needn't have bothered. I could hear her; the partition was not soundproof. First of all she was sobbing, and then she was praying. It was all very embarrassing, far more so than her nudity had been.
Late in the afternoon she came out. As well as a long, black robe, she was wearing her wide-brimmed hat and almost opaque dark glasses. She walked slowly to the airlock and then out onto the grassy ground. I followed her. She stood there, staring at the westering sun. Her expression frightened me. Rarely have I seen such naked hate on anybody's face.
"Your Reverence," I said, "I am still of the opinion that we should leave this world."
"Are you, an Earthman, frightened of a bunch of naked savages?" she sneered.
"Naked, perhaps," I said, "but not savages." I pointed almost directly upwards to where one of the big solar-powered airships, on its regular cargo and passenger run, was sailing overhead. "Savages could never have made a thing like that."
"Savagery and technology," she said, "can coexist. As you should know."
"But these people are not savages," I insisted.
"You dare to say that, Captain Grimes, after you witnessed what they did to me, the messenger of God."
"Of your God. And, anyhow, you asked for it."
Even from behind her dark glasses her eyes were like twin lasers aimed at me.
"Enough," she said coldly. "I would remind you, Captain Grimes, that you are still my servant and, through me, of the Almighty. Please prepare to lift ship."
"Then you are taking my advice?"
"Of course not. We shall proceed forthwith to the Mountain That Is Not Named."
Oh, well, if she wanted to do some sight-seeing, I did not object. Tourism would get us into far less trouble (I thought) than attempting to interfere with perfectly innocent and rather beautiful religious rituals. Quite happily I went back into the ship, straight to the control cab, and started to do my sums or, to be more exact, told the pilot-computer to do my sums for me. Little Sister, although a deep-space ship in miniature, was also a pinnace quite capable of flights, short or long, within a planetary atmosphere. She joined me as I was studying the readouts, looking at the chart and the extrapolation of the Great Circle course.
"Well," she asked.
"If we lift now we can be at Nameless Mountain by sunrise tomorrow, without busting a gut."
"There is no need to be vulgar, Captain. But sunrise will be a good time. It will coincide with their dawn service."
I didn't bother to try to explain to her the concept of longitudinal time differences and, in any case, possibly some town or city was on the same meridian as the volcano—but then, of course, there would be other factors, such as latitude and the sun's declination, to be considered. So I just agreed with her. And then, with the ship buttoned up, I got upstairs.
It was an uneventful flight. I had the controls on full automatic so there was no need for me to stay in the cab. Too, according to the information at my disposal, there was very little (if any) traffic in Stagatha's night skies. The sun ruled their lives.
We were both of us back in the control cab as we approached the volcano. She was looking disapprovingly at the mug of coffee from which I was sipping. I hoped sardonically that she had enjoyed the glass of water with which she had started her day. Outside the ship it was getting light, although not as light as it should have been at this hour. We were flying through dense smoke and steam, with visibility less than a couple of meters in any direction. Not that I had any worries. The three-dimensional radar screen was showing a clear picture of what was below, what was ahead. It was not a pretty picture but one not devoid of a certain horrid beauty. Towering, contorted rock pinnacles, evilly bubbling lava pools, spouting mud geysers . . . . The ship, still on automatic, swerved to steer around one of these that was hurling great rocks into the air . . . .
I said, "We're here."
She said, "We have yet to reach the main crater rim."
"The main crater rim?" I repeated.
"You're not afraid, Captain, are you? Didn't you tell me that this ship of yours can take anything that anybody cares to throw at her?"
"But . . . An active volcano . . . One that seems to be on the verge of blowing its top in a major eruption . . . ."
"Are you a vulcanologist, Captain?"
So we stood on, feeling our way through the murk. There was more than volcanic activity among the special effects. Lightning writhed around us, a torrent—flowing upwards or downwards?—of ghastly violet radiance that would have been blinding had it not been for the automatic polarization of the viewports. And ahead was sullen, ruddy glare . . . No, not glare. It was more like a negation of light than normal luminosity. It was the Ultimate Darkness made visible.
Little Sister maintained a steady course despite the buffeting that she must be getting. And then she was in clear air, the eye of the storm as it were. We could see things visually instead of having to rely upon the radar screens. We were over the vast crater, the lake of dull, liquid fire, the semi-solid, dark glowing crust through cracks in which glared white incandescence. In the center of this lake was a sort of island, a black, truncated cone.
"Set us down there," she said.
"Not bloody likely," I said.
"Set us down there."
She was standing now and her hand was on my shoulder, gripping it painfully. And . . . And . . . How can I describe it? It was as though some power were flowing from her to me, through me. I fought it. I tried to fight it. And then I tried to rationalize. After all, the metal of which Little Sister was built, an isotope of gold, was virtually guaranteed to be proof against anything. If anything should happen to her I could go to her builders on Electra and demand my money back. (Not that my money had paid for her in the first place.) Joke.
I had the ship back on manual control. I made a slow approach to the central island, hovered above it. I had been expecting trouble, difficulty in holding the ship where I wanted her, but it was easy. Too easy. Suspiciously easy.
I let her fall, slowly, slowly, the inertial drive just ticking over. I felt the faint jar, a very faint jar, as she landed on the flat top, the perfectly smooth top of the truncated cone.
She said, "Open the airlock doors."
I tried to protest but the words wouldn't come.
She said, "Open the airlock doors."
I thought, And so we fill the ship with stinking, sulfurous gases. But the internal atmosphere can soon be purified.
On the console before me I saw the glowing words as I actuated the switch. INNER DOOR OPEN. OUTER DOOR OPEN.
She was gone from behind me, back into the main cabin. I got up from my chair, followed her. She was going outside, I realized. She should have asked me for a spacesuit; it would have given her some protection against the heat, against an almost certainly poisonous atmosphere. Some of this was already getting inside the ship, an acridity that made my eyes water, made me sneeze. But it didn't seem to be worrying her.
She passed through both doors.
I stood in the little chamber, watching her. She was standing on the heat-smoothed rock, near, too near to the edge of the little plateau. Was the silly bitch going to commit spectacular and painful suicide? But I was reluctant to leave the security—the illusory security?—of my ship to attempt to drag her to safety. No, it wasn't cowardice. Not altogether. I just knew that she knew what she was doing.
(If I'd known more I should have been justified in going out to give her a push!)
She stood there, very straight and tall, in black silhouette against the dull glow from the lake of fire. Her form wavered, became indistinct as a dark column of smoke eddied about her. Still she stood there while the smoke thinned, vanished. It was as though it had been absorbed by her body.
But that was impossible, wasn't it?
She walked back to the airlock. The skin of her face seemed to be much darker than it had been—but that was not surprising. It seemed to me—but that must have been imagination—that her feet did not touch the surface over which she was walking.
She said as she approached me, "Take me back to the city."
I obeyed. No matter what her order had been, no matter how absurd or dangerous, I should have obeyed. When first I had met her I had been conscious of her charisma but had learned to live with it, to distrust it and to despise it. Now neither distrust nor contempt would have been possible.
We got upstairs.
No sooner were we on course than the volcano blew up. The blast of it hit us like a blow from something solid. I wasn't able to watch as I was too busy trying to keep the ship under some sort of control as she plunged through the fiery turbulence, through the smoke and the steam and the fiery pulverized dust, through the down-stabbing and up-thrusting lightning bolts.
And, through it all, she was laughing.
It was the first time that I had heard her laugh.
It was an experience that I could well have done without.
* * *
"I need some more beer," he said, "to wash the taste of that volcanic dust out of my throat. After all the years I still remember it." She refilled his mug, and then her own. "Did the dust get inside your ship?" she asked. "It got everywhere," he told her. "All over the entire bloody planet."
* * *
We set down in that same field where we had made our first landing. According to the chronometer it wanted only an hour to local, apparent noon, but the sky was overcast. The air was chilly. She ordered me to open one of her trunks. In it was a further supply of the cast-off clothing that she had brought from Warrenhome. And there were books. Bibles, I assumed, or the perversion of Holy Writ adopted by Her church. I opened one but was unable, of course, to read the odd, flowing Stagathan characters.
I filled a backpack with the clothing. While I was so doing she took something else from the trunk. It was a whip; haft and tapering lash were all of three meters long. It was an evil-looking thing.
We left the ship. She took the lead. I trudged behind. As she passed one of the flowering bushes, its blossoms drab in the dismal gray light, she slashed out with the whip, cracking it expertly, severing stems and twigs, sending tattered petals fluttering to the ground.
We walked into the city.
We came to the central square, with the obelisk (but it was casting no shadow), the great gong (but it was now no more than an ugly disk of dull, pitted metal), the celebrants and the worshippers.
But there was nothing for them to worship. The sky was one, uniform gray with not so much as a diffuse indication of the position of the sun. The people were all, as they had been at that other service, naked but now their nudity was . . . ugly. A thin drizzle was starting to fall, but it was mud rather than ordinary rain, streaking the shivering skins of the miserable people.
The priest standing by the gong, the man with the striker, was the first to see us. He pointed at us, shouting angrily. He advanced towards us, still shouting, menacing us with his hammer. Behind him others were now shouting, and screaming. They were blaming us for the dense cloud that had hidden their god from sight.
She stood her ground.
Suddenly her lash snaked out, whipped itself around the striker and tore it from the priest's hands, sent it clattering to the mud-slimed marble paving. It cracked out again, the tip of it slashing across the man's face, across his eyes. He screamed, and that merciless whip played over his body, drawing blood with every stroke.
And She was declaiming in a strong, resonant voice, with one foot planted firmly upon the squirming body of the hapless, blinded priest, who had fallen to the ground, laying about her with the whip.
Even then, at the cost of a few injuries, they could have overpowered her, have taken her from behind. But the heart was gone from them. Their god had forsaken them. And She . . . She was speaking with the voice of a god. Or was a god speaking through her? She was possessed. The black charisma of her was overpowering. I opened the backpack and began to distribute the cast-off clothing. Hands—the hands of men, women, and children—snatched the drab rags from me eagerly. And there was something odd about it. It seemed as though that backpack were a bottomless bag. It could never have held sufficient clothing to cover the nakedness of a crowd of several thousand people. Sometime later, of course, I worked things out. Converts must have gone back into their homes for the ceremonial black robes that they doffed at the dawn service and resumed at sunset. But, even so . . . How could those robes have assumed the appearance of, say, ill-cut, baggy trousers? Imagination, it must have been. Even though I could not understand what she was saying, I was under the spell of Her voice.
And it frightened me.
I felt my agnosticism wavering.
And I like being an agnostic.
Oh, well, at a time of crisis there is always one thing better than presence of mind—and that is absence of body.
I left her preaching to the multitude and walked back to the ship. I did worse than that. When I was back on board I collected everything of hers, every last thing, and lugged it out through the airlock on to a plastic sheet that I spread on the wet grass, covered it with another sheet.
And then I lifted off.
After all, I had done what I had contracted to do. I had carried her from Warrenhome to Stagatha (and the money for her fare had been deposited in my bank). I had stayed around until she had become established as a missionary. (Well, she had, hadn't she?)
I broke through that filthy overcast into bright sunlight. I began to feel less unhappy. I looked down at Stagatha. The entire planet, from pole to pole, was shrouded with smoke, or steam, or dust or—although this was unlikely—just ordinary cloud.
I wondered when their god would next show himself to the Stagathans and set course for Pengram, the nearest Man-colonized planet, where I hoped to be able to find further employment for Little Sister and myself.
* * *
"I don't think much of your Odd Gods," said Kitty Kelly. "After all, sun-worship is common enough. And so are evangelists of either sex who preach peculiar perversions of Christianity and are charismatic enough to make converts. But I would have expected you to behave more responsibly. To go flying off, the way you did, leaving that poor woman to her fate . . . ."
"Poor woman? I was there, Kitty. You weren't. Too, I haven't finished yet."
* * *
I'd almost forgotten about Stagatha (he went on) when, some standard years later, I ran into Commander Blivens, captain of the survey ship Cartographer. I'd known Blivens slightly when I was in the Survey Service myself. Anyhow, I was at Port Royal, on Caribbea, owner-master of Sister Sue, which vessel had started her life as one of the Interstellar Transport Commission's Epsilon Class star tramps, Epsilon Scorpii. (She finally finished up as the Rim Worlds Confederacy's survey ship Faraway Quest. Yes, this very ship that we're aboard now.) But to get back to Blivens . . . I was in the Trade Winds Bar with my chief officer, Billy Williams, quietly absorbing planter's punches when I heard somebody call my name. I couldn't place him at first but finally did so.
Then, for a while, it was the usual sort of conversation for those circumstances. What happened to old so-and-so? Did you hear that thingummy actually made rear admiral? And so on.
I got around to asking Blivens what he was doing on Carribea.
"Just a spell of rest and recreation for my boys and girls," he told me. "And for myself. At one time I used to regard a rather odd but very human world called Stagatha as my R & R planet. The people as near human as makes no difference. Sun worshippers they were, happy sun worshippers. Unpolluted atmosphere, solar power used for everything. And not, like this overpriced dump, commercialized.
"But it's ruined now."
"How so?" I asked him.
"They've changed their religion. Some high-powered female missionary decided to save their souls. I suppose that some money-hungry tramp skipper carried her from her own planet, Warrenhome, to Stagatha. Somebody should find out who the bastard was and shoot him. And then, really to put the tin hat on things, there was a catastrophic volcanic eruption which threw the gods alone know how many tons of dust into the upper atmosphere and completely buggered the climate. So there was a switch from solar power to the not-very-efficient burning of fossil fuels—and still more airborne muck to obscure the sunlight.
"The missionary—the Lady Bishop, she called herself—called aboard to see me. She scared me, I don't mind admitting it. You'll never guess what her staff of office was. A dirty great whip. She demanded that I release one of my engineer officers to her service. The odd part was that she knew his name—Terry Gowan—and all about him. And Mr. Gowan seemed to know of her. It made sense, I suppose. He was one of those morose, Bible-bashing bastards himself. And, apart from the Bible in some odd version, his only reading was books on the engineering techniques in use during the Victorian era on Earth. He used to make models, working models, of steam engines and things like that.
"I gave him his discharge—which, as a Survey Service captain, I was entitled to do. You know the regulation. Should a properly constituted planetary authority request the services of a specialist officer, petty officer or rating for any period, and provided that such officer, petty officer or rating signifies his or her willingness to enter the service of such planetary authority, and provided that the safe management of the ship not be affected by the discharge of one of her personnel with no replacement immediately available, then the commanding officer shall release such officer, petty officer or rating, paying him or her all monies due and with the understanding that seniority shall continue to accrue until the return of the officer, petty officer or rating to the Survey Service.
"Anyhow, I don't think that anybody aboard Cartographer shed a tear for Gloomy Gowan, as he was known, when he was paid off. And he, I suppose, has been happy erecting dark, satanic mills all over the landscape for Her Holiness."
"And so everybody was happy," I said sarcastically.
"A bloody good planet ruined," grumbled Blivens.
A few more years went by.
Again I ran into Blivens—Captain Blivens now—quite by chance. He was now commanding officer of the Survey Service base on New Colorado and I had been chartered by the Service—they often threw odd jobs my way—to bring in a shipment of fancy foodstuffs and tipples for the various messes.
I dined with Blivens in his quite palatial quarters.
He said, towards the end of the meal, "You remember when I last met you, Grimes . . . I was captain of Cartographer then and we were talking about Stagatha . . . ."
"I remember," I said.
"Well, I went there again. For the last time. Just one of those checking-up-showing-the-flag voyages that I had to make. But there wasn't any Stagatha. Not anymore. The sun had gone nova. And as there hadn't been a Carlotti station on the planet no word had gotten out . . . ."
The news shocked me.
All those people, incinerated.
And I couldn't help feeling that I was somehow responsible.
But it was just a coincidence.
Wasn't it?
* * *
"Of course it was," said Kitty Kelly brightly.
"Was it?" whispered Grimes. And then: "For I am a jealous God . . . ."

Grimes and the Jailbirds
In which Commodore Grimes (whose last appearance here was in "Grimes and the Odd Gods" June 1983) takes on a temporary job—shipping supplies to a prison satellite—with unusual consequences . . .
"Have you ever, in the course of your long and distinguished career, been in jail, Commodore?" asked Kitty Kelly after she had adjusted the lenses and microphones of her recording equipment to her satisfaction.
"As a matter of fact I have," said Grimes. He made a major production of filling and lighting his pipe. "It was quite a few years ago, but I still remember the occasion vividly. It's not among my more pleasant memories . . . ."
"I should imagine not," she concurred sympathetically. "What were you in for? Piracy? Smuggling? Gunrunning?"
"I wasn't in in the sense that you assume," he told her. "After all, there are more people in a jail than the convicts. The governor, the warders, the innocent bystanders . . . ."
"Such as yourself?"
"Such as myself."
* * *
It was (he said) when I was owner-master of Little Sister. She was the flagship and the only ship of Far Traveler Couriers, the business title under which I operated. She was a deep-space pinnace, and I ran her single-handed, carrying small parcels of special cargo hither and yon, the occasional passenger. Oh, it was a living of sorts, quite a good living at times, although, at other times, my bank balance would be at a perilously low ebb.
Well, I'd carried a consignment of express mail from Davinia to Helmskirk—none of the major lines had anything making a direct run between the two planets—and I was now berthed at Port Helms waiting for something to turn up. The worst of it all was that Helmskirk is not the sort of world upon which to spend an enforced vacation—or, come to that, any sort of vacation. There is a distinct shortage of bright lights. The first settlers had all been members of a wowserish religious sect misnamed the Children of Light—it was founded on Earth in the late twentieth century, Old Reckoning. Over the years their descendants had become more and more wowserish.
The manufacture, vending, and consumption of alcoholic beverages were strictly prohibited. So was smoking—and by "smoking" I mean smoking anything. There were laws regulating the standards of dress—and not only in the streets of the cities and towns. Can you imagine a public bathing beach where people of both sexes—even children—are compelled to wear neck-to-ankle, skirted swimming costumes?
There were theaters, showing both live and recorded entertainment, but the plays presented were all of the improving variety, with virtue triumphant and vice defeated at the end of the last act. I admit that some of the clumsily contrived situations were quite funny, although not intentionally so. I found this out when I laughed as a stern father turned his frail, blonde daughter, who had been discovered smoking a smuggled cigarette, out into a raging snowstorm. Immediately after my outbreak of unseemly mirth, I was turned out myself, by two burly ushers. Oh, well, it wasn't snowing, and it was almost the end of the play, anyhow.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the local customs authorities had not done their best to make sure that visiting spacemen conformed to Helmskirkian standards whilst on the surface of their planet. They inspected my library of playmaster cassettes and seized anything that could be classed as pornographic—much of it the sort of entertainment that your maiden aunt, on most worlds, could watch without a blush. These tapes, they told me, would be kept under bond in the customs warehouse and returned to me just prior to my final lift-off from the Helmskirk System. They impounded the contents of my grog locker and even all my pipe tobacco. Fortunately, I can, when pushed to it, make an autochef do things never intended by its manufacturer, and so it didn't take me long to replenish my stock of gin. And lettuce leaves from my hydroponics minifarm, dried and suitably treated, made a not-too-bad tobacco substitute.
Nonetheless, I'd have gotten the hell off Helmskirk as soon as the bags of express mail had been discharged if I'd had any definite place to go. But when you're tramping around, as I was, you put your affairs into the hands of an agent and wait hopefully for news of an advantageous charter.
So Messrs. Muggeridge, Whitelaw, and Nile were supposed to be keeping their ears to the ground on my behalf, and I was getting more and more bored, and every day doing my sums—or having the ship's computer do them for me—and trying to work out how long it would be before the profit made on my last voyage was completely eaten up by port charges and the like. For the lack of better entertainment I haunted the Port Helms municipal library—at least it was free—and embarked on a study course on the history of this dreary colony. Someday I shall write a book—The Galactic Guide to Places to Stay Away From . . . .
The fiction in the library was not of the variety that is written to inflame the passions. It was all what, during the Victorian era on Earth, would have been called "improving." The factual works were of far greater interest. From them I learned that the incidence of crime—real crime, not such petty offenses as trying to grow your own tobacco or brew your own beer—on Helmskirk was surprisingly high. Cork a bottle of some fermenting mixture—and any human society is such a mixture—too tightly and the pressures will build up. There was an alarmingly high incidence of violent crime—armed robbery, assault, rape, murder.
I began to appreciate the necessity for Helmskirk's penal satellite, a smallish natural moon in a just under twenty-four-hour orbit about its primary. Not only was it a place of correction and/or punishment for the really bad bastards, but it also housed a large population of people who'd been caught playing cards for money, reading banned books, and similar heinous offenses. If I'd been so unfortunate as to have been born on Helmskirk, I thought, almost certainly I should have been acquainted with the maze of caverns and tunnels, artificial and natural, that honeycombed the ball of rock.
As the days wore on I'd settled into a regular routine. The morning I'd devote to minor maintenance jobs. Then I'd have lunch. Before leaving the ship after this meal, I'd make a telephone call to my agents to see if they'd anything for me. Then I'd stroll ashore to the library. It was a dreary walk through streets of drably functional buildings, but it was exercise. I'd try to keep myself amused until late afternoon, and then drop briefly into the agents' office on the way back to Little Sister.
Then the routine was disrupted.
As I entered the premises, old Mr. Muggeridge looked up accusingly from his desk, saying, "We've been trying to get hold of you, Captain."
I said, "I wasn't far away. I was in the municipal library."
"Hmph. I never took you for a studious type. Well, anyway, I've a time charter for you. A matter of six local weeks, minimum."
"Where to?" I asked hopefully.
"It will not be taking you outside the Helmskirk System," he told me rather spitefully. "The prison tender, the Jerry Falwell, has broken down. I am not acquainted with all the technical details, but I understand that the trouble is with its inertial drive unit. The authorities have offered you employment until such time as the tender is back in operation."
I went through the charter party carefully, looking for any clauses that might be turned to my disadvantage. But Muggeridge, Whitelaw, and Nile had been looking after my interests. After all, why shouldn't they? The more I got, the more their rake-off would be.
So I signed in the places indicated and learned that I was to load various items of stores for the prison the following morning, lifting off as soon as these were on board and stowed to my satisfaction. Oh, well, it was a job and would keep me solvent until something better turned up.
* * *
It was a job, but it wasn't one that I much cared for. I classed it as being on a regular run from nowhere to nowhere. The atmosphere of Helmskirk I had found oppressive; that of the penal satellite was even more so. The voyage out took a little over two days, during which time I should have been able to enjoy my favorite playmaster cassettes if the customs officers had seen fit to release them. But rules were rules, and I was not leaving the Helmskirk System. And the moon, which was called Sheol, was very much part of it.
On my first visit I did not endear myself to the prison governor. I'd jockeyed Little Sister into a large air lock set into the satellite's surface and then left my control room for the main cabin. I opened the air lock doors and then sat down to await whatever boarders there would be—somebody with the inevitable papers to sign, a working party to discharge my cargo, and so on and so forth. I was not expecting the ruler of this tiny world to pay a call in person.
He strode into the ship, a tall man in dark gray civilian clothes, long-nosed, sour-featured, followed by an entourage of black-uniformed warders. "Come in, come in!" I called. "This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
He said, "I do not see any cat. Where is the animal? The importation of any livestock into Sheol is strictly contrary to regulations."
I said, "It was only a figure of speech."
"And a remarkably foul-mouthed one." He sat down uninvited. "I am the governor of this colony, Mr. Grimes. During each of your visits here you will observe the regulations, a copy of which will be provided you. You will be allowed, should time permit, to make the occasional conducted tour of Sheol so that you may become aware of the superiority of our penal system to that on other worlds. There will, however, be no fraternization between yourself and any of our inmates. There will be no attempt by you to smuggle in any small luxuries. One of the officers of the Jerry Falwell made such an attempt some months back. He is now among our . . . guests, serving a long sentence."
"What did he try to smuggle in?" I asked.
"It is none of your business, Mr. Grimes. But I will tell you. It was cigarettes that he had illegally obtained from a visiting star tramp. And I will tell you what he hoped to receive in exchange. Mood opals. And the penalty for smuggling out mood opals is even greater than that for smuggling in cigarettes."
* * *
"What are mood opals?" asked Kitty.
"Don't you know? They were, for a while, very popular and very expensive precious stones on Earth and other planets, especially the Shaara worlds. The Shaara loved them. They weren't opals, although they looked rather like them. But they were much fierier, and the colors shifted, according, it was said, to the mood of the wearer, although probably it was due to no more than changes in temperature and atmospheric humidity. They were found only on—or in, rather—Sheol. They were actually coprolites, fossilized excrement, all that remained of some weird, rock-eating creatures that inhabited Sheol and became extinct ages before the colonization of Helmskirk. The mood opals became one of Helmskirk's major moneymaking exports. They were never worn by anybody on Helmskirk itself, such frivolity as personal jewelry being illegal."
"How come," asked Kitty, "that we've never seen mood opals here? Most Terran fads drift out to this part of the Galaxy eventually."
"There aren't any mood opals anymore," Grimes told her. "It seems that the polishing process, which removed the outer crust, exposed the jewels to the atmosphere and to radiation of all kinds. After a few years of such exposure, the once-precious stones would crumble into worthless dust."
* * *
Well (he went on), that was my first visit to Sheol. Naturally it sparked my interest in the mood opal trade. I suggested to my agents that they try to organize for me the shipment of the next parcel of precious stones to wherever it was they were going. But the Interstellar Transport Commission had that trade tied up. Every six months one of their Epsilon-class freighters would make a very slight deviation during her voyage from Waverly to Earth, and it was on Earth—in Australia, in fact—where the opal polishers plied their trade. I pointed out that it was only a short hop, relatively speaking, from Helmskirk to Baroom, the nearest Shaara colony world, Surely, I said, the Shaara could polish their own mood opals. But it was no-go. They always had been polished in some place called Coober Peedy, and they always would be polished in Coober Peedy, and that was that.
Meanwhile, I made friends among the warders on Sheol. Some of them were almost human. Their close association with the quote, criminal, unquote classes had rubbed off much of the arrogant sanctimoniousness so prevalent on the primary. There was one—Don Smith was his name—whom I even trusted with one of my guilty secrets. He would share morning coffee, generously spiked with the rum that I had persuaded the autochef to produce, with me. When there was any delay between the discharge of the cargo I had brought and the loading of the mood opals that I should be taking back, he would take me on conducted tours of the prison.
There were the hydroponic farms, where most of the workers were women, some of them, despite their hideous zebra-striped coveralls, quite attractive. Some of them, and not only the attractive ones, would waggle their hips suggestively and coo, "Hello; spaceman! I'll do it for a cigarette!" And Don would grin and say, "They would, you know. I can arrange it for you." But I refused the offer. I didn't trust him all that much. Besides, my stock of cigarettes—which I kept aboard only for hospitality and not for my own use—had been impounded by the blasted customs.
There were the workshops, where convict labor, all men, assembled machines at whose purpose I could do no more than guess; I haven't a mechanical mind. There was the printery and there was the bookbindery. I was invited to help myself from the stacks of new books, but I did not take advantage of the offer. Collections of sermons of the hellfire-and-damnation kind are not my idea of light reading to while away a voyage. There was the tailor's shop, where both warders' uniforms and convicts' uniforms were made. There were the kitchens and there were the messrooms. (The prison officers' food was plain but wholesome; that for the convicts, just plain, definitely so.) There were the tunnels in which the mood-opal miners worked. It was in one of these that I was accosted by a man with dirt-streaked face and sweat- and dust-stained coveralls.
"Hey, Skipper!" he called. "How about my hitching a ride in your space buggy away from here? I can make it worth your while!"
I stared at him. I didn't like the cut of his jib. Under the dirt that partially obscured his features was a hard viciousness. He had the kind of very light and bright blue eyes that are often referred to as "mad." He looked as though he'd be quite willing to use the small pickax he was holding on a human being rather than on a rock.
I decided to ignore him.
"Stuck-up bastard aren't you, Skipper. Like all your breed. You deep-spacers think yourselves too high and mighty to talk to orbital boys!"
"That will do, Wallace!" said Don sharply.
"Who's talking? You're not in charge of this work party."
"But I am." Another warder had come up. He was holding one of the modified stun guns that were the main weaponry of the guards; on the right setting (or the wrong setting, if you were on the receiving end) they could deliver a most painful shock. "Get back to work, Wallace. You're nowhere near your quota for the shift—and you know what that means!"
Apparently Wallace did and he moved away. Don and I moved on.
"A nasty piece of work," I said.
"He is that," agreed Don, "even though he is a spaceman like yourself."
"Not too like me, I hope."
"All right. Not too like you. He got as high as mate of the Jerry Falwell, and then he was caught smuggling cigarettes and booze in and mood opals out. If only the bloody fool had done his dealing with the right people and not with the convicts! I suppose that it's poetic justice that he's serving his time here as an opal miner."
I supposed that it was.
And then we wandered back to Little Sister, where, after half an hour or so, I loaded two small bags of mood opals—in their rough state they looked like mummified dog-droppings—and embarked a couple of prison officers who were returning to the primary for a spell of leave. Although they were (a) female and (b) not unattractive, they were not very good company for the voyage.
My next trip back from Sheol to Helmskirk I had company again. Unexpected company. For some reason I decided to check the stowage in the cargo compartment; there was a nagging feeling that everything was not as it should be. This time there were no mood opals, but there were half a dozen bales of clothing, civilian work coveralls, that had been manufactured in the prison's tailor's shop. At first glance nothing seemed amiss. And then I saw a pool of moisture slowly spreading on the deck from the underside of one of the bales. Aboard a ship, any kind of ship, leaking pipes can be dangerous. But there were no pipes running through and under the deck of the compartment; such as there were were all in plain view on the bulkheads, and all of them were intact.
Almost I dipped my finger into the seepage to bring it back to my mouth to taste it. Almost. I was glad that I hadn't done so. I smelled the faint but unmistakable acridity of human urine.
I went back to the main cabin, to my arms locker, and got out a stun gun and stuck it into my belt. And then, very cautiously, I unsnapped the fasteners of the metal straps holding the bale together. The outer layers of folded clothing fell to the deck. I stepped back and drew my stun gun and told whoever it was inside the bale, in as stern a voice as I could muster, to come out. More layers of clothing fell away, revealing a sort of cage of heavy wire in which crouched a young woman. She straightened up and stepped out of the cage, looking at me with an odd mixture of shame and defiance.
She said, "I shouldn't have had that last drink of water, but I thought that I should half die of thirst if I didn't . . . ." She looked down at the sodden legs of her civilian coveralls and managed an embarrassed grin. "And now I suppose, Captain, that you'll be putting back to Sheol and handing me over."
I said, "I can hand you over just as well at Port Helms."
She shrugged. "As you please. In that case, could I ask a favor? The use of your shower facilities and the loan of a robe to wear while my clothes are drying . . . I have to wash them, you know."
I thought, You're a cool customer. And I thought, I rather like you.
Despite her ugly and now sadly bedraggled attire, she was an attractive wench: blonde, blue-eyed, and with a wide mouth under a nose that was just retrousse enough, just enough, no more. She had found some way to tint her lips an enticing scarlet. (The women convicts, I had already learned, used all sorts of dyes for this purpose, although cosmetics were banned.) And I remembered, too, all the fuss there'd been about taking showers and such, all the simpering prudery, when I had carried those two women prison officers.
So I let her use my shower and hang her clothes in my drying room, and lent her my best Corlabian spider silk bathrobe, and asked her what she would like for dinner. She said that she would like a drink first and that she would leave the ordering of the meal to me.
It was good to be having dinner with a pretty girl, especially one who was enjoying her food as much as she was. The autochef did us proud, from soup—mulligatawny, as I remember—to pecan pie. The wines could have been better; an autochef properly programmed can make quite a good job of beer or almost any of the potable spirits, but as far as, say, claret is concerned, is capable of producing only a mildly alcoholic red ink. Not that it really mattered on this occasion. Everything that I gave my guest to eat and drink was immeasurably superior to the prison food—and, come to that, streets ahead of anything that could have been obtained in any restaurant on Helmskirk.
After the meal we relaxed. I filled and lit my pipe. She watched me enviously. I let her have one of my spare pipes. She filled it with my shredded, dried, and treated lettuce leaf tobacco substitute. She lit it, took one puff, and decided that it was better than nothing, but only just.
"Thank you, Captain," she said. "This has been a real treat. The drinks, the meal, your company . . . ." She smiled. "And I think that you've been enjoying my company, too . . . ."
"I have," I admitted.
"And won't you feel just a little bit remorseful when you turn me in after we arrive at Port Helms? But I suppose that you've already been in touch with the authorities by radio, while I was having my shower, to tell them that you found me stowed away . . . ."
I said, "I'll get around to it later."
Her manner brightened. "Suppose you never do it, Captain? I could . . . work my passage . . . ." The dressing gown was falling open as she talked and gesticulated, and what I could see looked very tempting—and I had been celibate for quite a while. "Before we set down at Port Helms, you can put me back in the bale. The consignees of the clothing are members of a sort of . . . underground. They have helped escaped convicts before."
"So your crime was political?"
"You could call it that. There are those of us, not a large number but growing, who are fighting for a liberalization of the laws—a relaxation of censorship, more freedom of thought and opinion . . . . You're an off-worlder. You must have noticed how repressive the regime on Helmskirk is."
I said that the repression had not escaped my notice.
"But," she went on, "I do not expect you to help me for no reward. There is only one way that I can reward you . . . ."
"No," I said.
"No?" she echoed in a hurt, a very hurt, voice.
"No," I repeated.
Oh, I'm no plaster saint, never have been one. But I have my standards. If I were going to help this girl, I'd do it out of the kindness of my heart and not for reward. I realize now that I was doing her no kindness. In fact, she was to tell me just that on a later occasion. A roll in the hay was just what she was needing just then. But I had my moments of high-minded priggishness, and this was one of them. (Now, of course, I'm at an age when I feel remorse for all the sins that I did not commit when I had the chance.)
She said, "People have often told me that I'm attractive. I would have thought . . . . But I can read you. You're a businessman as well as a spaceman. You own this little ship. You have to make a profit. You're afraid that if it's discovered that you helped me, you'll lose your profitable charter. Perhaps you're afraid that you'll become one of the inmates of Sheol yourself, like Wallace . . . ."
"I never said that I wasn't going to help you," I told her. "But there are conditions. One condition. That if you are picked up again, you say nothing about my part in your escape."
When she kissed me, with warm thoroughness, I weakened—but not enough, not enough. And before the sleep period I rigged the privacy screen in the main cabin, and she stayed on her side of it and I stayed on mine. The next "day"—and I maintained Port Helms standard time while in space—she dressed in her all-concealing coveralls, which were now dry, instead of in my too-revealing bathrobe. We had one or two practice sessions of repacking her in the bale. And before long it was time for me to repack her for good—as far as I was concerned.
And I made my descent to the apron at Port Helms.
* * *
There was, of course, something of a flap about the escape of a prisoner from Sheol. The authorities, of course, knew that if she had escaped, she must have done so in Little Sister—but I was in the clear. The ship was under guard all the time that she was berthed in the air lock. Too, there was a certain element of doubt. In the past convicts had hidden for quite a while in unexplored tunnels, and some had even died there. Convicts had been murdered by fellow inmates and their bodies fed into waste disposal machinery.
And then Evangeline—that was her name—was picked up, in Calvinville. She had been caught leaving pamphlets in various public places. She was tried and found guilty and given another heavy sentence, tacked on to the unexpired portion of her previous one. She kept her word insofar as I was concerned, saying nothing of my complicity. She even managed to protect the clothing wholesalers to whom her bale had been consigned. Her story was that this bale could be opened from the inside, and that after her escape from it, at night, she had tidied up after herself before leaving the warehouse.
Inevitably, I got the job of returning her to incarceration. (The repairs to the prison tender Jerry Falwell were dragging on, and on, and on.) She was accompanied by two sourpussed female prison officers returning to Sheol from planet leave. These tried to persuade me—persuade? Those arrogant bitches tried to order me—that during the short voyage there should be two menus, one for the master, me, and the warders, and the other, approximating prison fare, for the convict. I refused to play, of course. The poor girl would eat well while she still had the chance. But there were no drinks before, with, or after meals, and I even laid off smoking for the trip.
And so I disembarked my passengers and discharged my cargo at Sheol. I'd not been able to exchange so much as a couple of words with Evangeline during the trip, but the look she gave me before she was escorted from the ship said, Thanks for everything.
So it went on, trip after trip.
Then it happened. I was having an unusually long stopover on Sheol, and my friend, Don Smith, suggested that I might wish to see, as he put it, the animals feed. I wasn't all that keen—I've never been one to enjoy the spectacle of other people's misery—but there was nothing much else to do, and so I accompanied him through the maze of tunnels to one of the mess halls used by the male prisoners. Have you ever seen any of those antique films about prison life made on Earth in the latter half of the twentieth century? It was like that. The rows of long tables, covered with some shiny gray plastic, and the benches. The counter behind which stood the prisoners on mess duty, with aprons tied on over their zebra-striped coveralls, ladling out a most unsavory-looking—and -smelling—stew into the bowls held out by the shuffling queue of convicts. The guards stationed around the walls, all of them armed with stun guns and all of them looking bored rather than alert . . . . The only novel touch was that it was all being acted out in the slow motion imposed by conditions of low gravity.
Finally, all the convicts were seated at the long tables, their sluggishly steaming plastic bowls—those that were still steaming, that is; by this time, the meals of those first in the queue must have been almost cold—before them, waiting for the prison padre, standing at his lectern, to intone grace. It was on the lines of: For what we about to receive this day may the Lord make us truly thankful.
As soon as he was finished, there was a commotion near the head of one of the tables. A man jumped to his feet. It was, I saw, Wallace, the ex-spaceman.
"Thankful for this shit, you smarmy bastard?" he shouted. "This isn't fit for pigs, and you know it!"
The guards suddenly became alert. They converged upon Wallace with their stun guns out and ready. They made the mistake of assuming that Wallace was the only troublemaker. The guards were tripped, some of them, and others blinded by the bowls of stew flung into their faces. Their pistols were snatched from their hands.
"Get out of here, John," said Don Smith urgently. He pulled me back from the entrance to the mess hall. "Get out of here! There's nothing you can do. Get back to your ship. Use your radio to tell Helmskirk what's happening . . . ."
"But surely your people," I said, "will have things under control . . . ."
"I . . . I hope so. But this has been brewing for quite some time."
By this time we were well away from the mess hall, but the noise coming from it gave us some idea of what was happening—and what was happening wasn't at all pleasant for the guards. And there were similar noises coming from other parts of the prison complex. And there was a clangor of alarm bells and a shrieking of sirens and an amplified voice, repeating over and over, "All prison officers report at once to the citadel! All prison officers report at once to the citadel!"
Don Smith said, "You'd better come with me."
I said, "I have to get back to my ship."
He said, "You'll never find the way to the air lock."
I said, "I've got a good sense of direction."
So he went one way and I went another. My sense of direction might have served me better if I had not been obliged to make detours to avoid what sounded like small-scale battles ahead of me in that maze of tunnels. And the lights kept going out and coming on again, and when they were on kept flickering in an epilepsy-inducing rhythm. I'm not an epileptic, but I felt as though I were about to become one. During one period of darkness I tripped over something soft, and when the lights came on found that it was a body, that of one of the female prison officers. Her uniform had been stripped from the lower part of her body, and it was obvious what had been done to her before her throat had been cut. And there was nothing that I could do for her.
At last, at long, long last, more by good luck than otherwise, I stumbled into the big air lock chamber in which Little Sister was berthed. There were people standing by her. The guards, I thought at first, still at their posts. Then the lights temporarily flared into normal brightness, and I saw that the uniform coveralls were zebra-striped. But I kept on walking. After all, I was just an innocent bystander, wasn't I?
Wallace—it had to be he—snarled, "You took your time getting here."
"What are you doing here?" I demanded.
"What the hell do you think? But we wouldn't be here now if we could get your air lock door open."
"And suppose you could, what then?"
"That, Skipper, is a remarkably stupid question."
I looked at Wallace and his two companions. I looked at the sacks at their feet. I could guess what was in them. The lights were bright again, and I saw that the other two convicts were women—and that one of them was Evangeline. She looked at me, her face expressionless.
"What are you waiting for, Skipper?" almost shouted Wallace.
I'm playing for time, I thought, although I hadn't a clue as to what I could do with any time I gained.
Wallace shot me with his stun gun. It wasn't on the Stun setting but one that which gave the victim a very painful shock, one that lasted for as long as the person using the gun wished. It seemed to be a very long time in this case, although it could have been no more than seconds. When it was over, I was trembling in every limb and soaked in cold perspiration.
"Want another dose, Skipper?" Wallace demanded.
"You'd better open up, Captain," said Evangeline in an emotionless voice. She was holding a gun, too, pointed in my direction. So was the other woman.
So what could I do? Three, armed, against one, unarmed.
There was more than one way of getting into Little Sister. The one that I favored, if the ship was in an atmosphere, was by voice. It always amused guests. And it worked only for me, although I suppose that a really good actor, using the right words, could have gained ingress.
"Open Sesame," I said.
The door slid open.
And while Wallace and the woman whom I didn't know had their attention distracted by this minor miracle, Evangeline shot them both with her stun gun.
"Hurry," she said to me, throwing the sacks of mood opals into the air lock chamber. "Lend a hand, can't you?"
No, I didn't lend a hand, but I accompanied her into the ship. I used the manual air lock controls to seal the lock. I went forward to the control cab, my intention being to try to raise somebody, anybody, on my radio telephone to tell them what had been happening—and to try to find out what was still happening.
She said, from just behind me, "Get us out of here, Captain."
I asked, "Do you expect me to ram my way out of the air lock chamber?"
She said, "Wallace's men have taken over the air lock control room. If they hear my voice and see my face in their telescreen, they'll open up."
"But there's also a screen," I said, "that gives a picture of the air lock chamber. They must have seen what happened outside the ship, when you buzzed Wallace and the girl."
"Very luckily," she said, "that screen got smashed during the fight when we took over the control center."
She'd seen me operate the NST transceiver when I was making my approach to Port Helms the voyage that she'd stowed away. She got it switched on—the controls were simple—without having to ask for instruction except for the last important one.
"What channel do I call on?"
"Hold it," I said. I had acquired quite a dislike for Wallace but had nothing against his girlfriend. "The air's going to be exhausted from the chamber before the outer doors open."
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that . . . ."
I activated the screens that showed me what was going on outside the ship. (From the control cab our only view was forward.) I saw that Wallace was just getting groggily to his feet, assisted by the girl, who must have made a faster recovery that he had. I spoke into the microphone that allowed me to talk to anybody outside the hull.
"Wallace," I said, "get out of the chamber, fast! It's going to open up—and you know what that means!"
He did know. He raised his right hand and shook his fist. I saw his mouth forming words, and I could guess what sort of words they were. Then he turned from Little Sister and made for the door leading into the interior of Sheol at a shambling run, with the girl trailing after. No women and children first as far as he was concerned.
"Channel six," I told Evangeline. "Evangeline here," I heard her say. "We're all aboard, and the stones. Open up."
"We're relying on you to spend the money you get for the stones where it will do the most good! I hope Wallace can find his way to the nearest Shaara world, where there'll be a market and no questions asked!"
"We'll persuade Grimes to do the navigating."
"Are you taking him with you?" I was annoyed by the lack of interest and regretted, briefly, having allowed Wallace to escape from certain asphyxiation. "Stand by. Opening up. Bon voyage."
But opening up took time. The air had to be exhausted from the chamber first. How long would it take Wallace to reach the control center? From my own controls I had a direct view overhead. At last I saw the two valves of the air lock door coming apart, could see the black sky and the occasional star in the widening gap. I had Little Sister's inertial drive running in neutral and then applied gentle thrust. We lifted, until we were hovering just below the slowly opening doors.
Was there enough room?
Yes, barely.
I poured on the thrust and we scraped through, almost literally. And just in time. In the belly-view screen I saw that the doors were closing again, fast. Wallace had reached the control center just too late.
And I kept going.
* * *
"Back to Helmskirk," said Kitty Kelly, "to hand that poor girl back to the authorities. They must really have put the boot in this time."
"I said," Grimes told her, "that I kept on going. Not to Port Helms. To a Shaara world called Varoom, where we could flog those stones with no awkward questions asked. I considered that I owed far more loyalty to Evangeline than to the Helmskirk wowsers."
"But what about those prison guards under siege in their citadel? Didn't you owe them some loyalty?"
"One or two of them, perhaps," he admitted. "But what could I have done? And, as a shipmaster, my main loyalty was to my ship."
"But you could have carried reinforcements, police, from Port Helms to Sheol."
"In Little Sister? She was only a pinnace, you know. Aboard her, four was a crowd. Too, there was one of the Commission's Epsilon-class tramps in port. She could be requisitioned as a troopship."
"But that time charter, Commodore . . . weren't you tied by that?"
"Oddly enough, no. The original six weeks had expired and it was being renewed week by week. At the time of the mutiny it was due for renewal."
"And the girl. Evangeline. Did you dump her on that Shaara planet?"
"Of course not," said Grimes virtuously. "I was rather too fond of her by that time. After we sold the jewels, I carried her to Freedonia, a colony founded by a bunch of idealists who'd take in anybody as long as he or she could claim to be a political refugee. I'd have liked to keep her with me, but there were too many legal complications. She had no papers of any kind, and the authorities on most planets demand documentation from visitors, crew as well as passengers. I got into enough trouble myself for having left Helmskirk without my Outward Clearance."
"And during your wanderings, before you got to Freedonia, did you lose your priggish high-mindedness?"
He laughed reminiscently. "Yes. I did let her work her passage, as she put it. And I accepted, as a farewell gift, quite a substantial share of the mood opal money."
She said, not admiringly, "You bastard. I'd just hate to owe you a favor."
"You've got it wrong," Grimes told her. "I took what she offered because I owed her one."