Chapter 6
EVEN AFTER A LATE and disturbed night Grimes was inclined to be an early riser. He did not always greet the dawn with a song, however; this was such a non-choral occasion. He ungummed his eyelids, looked up blearily at the golden deckhead. He had omitted to close various doors before retiring and the morning sunlight was streaming through the control cab viewports, was reflected from burnished metal. He groaned softly. He slowly pushed the bed cover down from his body, swung his feet to the deck. He looked across to Fenella Pruin’s bunk. She was still sleeping, her right forearm covering her eyes and most of her face. The rest of her was uncovered. If Grimes had been feeling stronger he would have been sexually stirred by the sight of her naked body, as it was he felt only disgust. In her sluttish posture, with the dark bruises on the skin of her inner thighs, she looked used. And used, moreover, by that fat slob of a Port Captain.
He padded aft to the little galley, switched on the coffee maker. After a second or so he was able to draw a steaming mug of the dark fluid. He added sugar, stirred. He sipped cautiously. He felt a little stronger. He allowed the coffee to cool slightly, then gulped and swallowed.
“Must you make that disgusting noise at this jesusless hour?”
He looked around. Fenella Pruin was sitting up in her bed, glaring at him.
“And you might put something on,” she added. “Your hairy arse isn’t the sort of sight that I like to wake up to.”
Grimes muttered something about pots and kettles.
She ignored this. “And what’s that you’re drinking? Don’t you ever stop stuffing yourself?”
“Coffee.”
“Why didn’t you say so before? Well, you can bring me some. With cream. And sugar. You know how I like it.”
Grimes did know. More than once during the voyage from Bronsonia he had wondered if he were owner-master or cabin steward; the Pruin had been determined to get her—or her employer’s—money’s worth. He made coffee to her requirements, brought it to her. As he handed her the mug he was strongly tempted to slop some of the scalding fluid over her uncovered breasts. She snatched it from him ungraciously and a few drops were spattered on to her stomach.
“You clumsy oaf!” she snarled.
He did not feel obliged to apologise. He left her mopping her belly with the bed cover and went to the minuscule bathroom. After he had showered and depilated and all the rest of it he-walked back to his side of the main cabin, ignoring the way in which she glowered at him. He took a brightly patterned civilian shirt from its hanger in his locker, hesitated between a pair of orange shorts and a kilt in the astronauts’ tartan, gold, blue and silver on black. He decided on the shorts; he was never really happy in a kilt.
“A sight for sore eyes,” she remarked sourly. “You’re making mine sore. Going some place?”
“Probably. Do you want breakfast?”
“Two four minute hen’s eggs, with buttered toast. Orange juice. Coffee.”
There was no please.
“We’re out of fresh eggs but the autochef can do you scrambled eggs or an omelette.”
“Why are we out of fresh eggs?”
“Because I haven’t ordered any stores yet.”
“Why not? In my girlish innocence I assumed that the service in a chartered spaceship would be slightly superior to that in an Epsilon Class tramp.”
“If your friend the Port Captain and the others hadn’t been underfoot all day yesterday . . .”
“If you hadn’t made such a pig of yourself every breakfast time there’d have been some eggs left.”
The bells rang. Somebody was outside the ship seeking admission.
“See who it is!” she snapped.
Grimes went to the airlock, opened both doors. The Port Captain was there. His face was still florid but it was an unhealthy looking flush. His gorgeous uniform looked sleazy. More than ever he looked like the doorman of a brothel rather than a spaceman.
“Morning,” he grunted. “Miss Fenn on board?”
“Where else, Captain McKillick? But come aboard. This is Liberty Hall, you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.”
“You can’t come aboard until I’m presentable,” called Fenella Pruin.
“Miss Fenn’s not dressed yet,” said Grimes.
“That doesn’t worry me,” said the Port Captain, managing a faint leer. “I don’t suppose that it worries you either.”
“It doesn’t,” said Grimes.
“You can say that again!” came the voice from within Little Sister. “Whoever perpetuates that myth about big, strong, virile spacemen wouldn’t know if a big black dog was up him!”
Grimes’ prominent ears reddened, the Port Captain superimposed an angry flush on his normally ruddy complexion. (After all he was—or had been—a spaceman himself.)
But he said, “I like a woman with a little fire in her.”
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes.
“Last night for example . . .”
“Mphm?”
“Never kiss and tell, eh, Captain? I can take a hint. But that dance she did at the Kathouse put the professionals to shame. In fact Katie told her that she’d give her a job if she ever wanted one. It was the business with the bottle and the two wine glasses that really impressed her, though . . .”
Grimes’ active imagination treated him to a series of lubricious mind pictures.
“When you’ve quite finished gossiping like a couple of old women you can come in,” called Fenella Pruin.
***
Not only had she made herself presentable but had actually tidied up the main cabin. Inflatable chairs were set around the collapsible table, on which stood the golden coffee pot and its accessories. She was wearing an ankle length dress of patterned spidersilk, grey on grey, under which it ‘was obvious that she was naked. From the neck down there was nothing at all wrong with her.
“Good morning, Jock,” she said with spurious sweetness. “Coffee?”
“Thank you, Prue.”
“Breakfast?” asked Grimes, whose belly was rumbling.
“I’ve had mine. Such as it was.”
“Well, I’m having mine. Miss Fenn?”
“You mentioned omelets earlier . . . Something savoury if your autochef can manage it.”
Grimes went into the galley to initiate the process of cookery. He could overhear the conversation.
“Last night—or early this morning—I asked Captain Grimes about that world you told me about. New Alice. He didn’t know a thing, of course. Nor did his computer.”
The Port Captain laughed. “Hardly surprising. It’s one of Drongo Kane’s secrets. My guess is that it’s a Lost Colony that he’s keeping to himself.”
“A fine, profitable source of slave labour. Or white slave labour.”
“Not that, Prue. The girls are paid. They aren’t slaves.”
“But they are exploited. I noticed last night that they were in great demand. Of course some men would find those oddly shaped legs of theirs very attractive . . . Do you suppose that they’re mutants? Like those wenches from Heffner with two pairs of breasts . . .”
“Just a stroll down mammary lane,” said Grimes, bringing in the omelets.
“Ha,” said Fenella Pruin. “Ha, bloody ha! I am rolling on the deck in paroxysms of uncontrolled mirth.”
“Ha,” growled Grimes. “Ha, bloody ha.”
“Give me my breakfast and stop the bloody clowning.”
“Actually,” said the Port Captain, adopting the role of peacemaker, “it was rather neat. Mammary lane, I mean. Our genes or chromosomes or whatever—I’m only a spaceman, not a biologist—must hold the memories of all the stages of evolution through which we, as a race, have passed . . .”
“Thanks for the mammary,” said Grimes.
“You get on my tits,” snarled the Pruin.
“But these females with the odd legs,” Grimes persisted, “what sort of hair do they have?”
“Just hair,” the Port Captain told him. “Reddish brown mostly, in the usual places.”
“Mphm.” Grimes admitted that he had been adding two and two to make five. He had been more than half way to the assumption that there was no such world as New Alice, that Drongo Kane was recruiting on Morrowvia. But the description of the exotic wenches in Katy’s Kathouse didn’t fit. Morrowvian women were perfectly formed, although their hair was like a cat’s fur and could be any of the feline colourations, even to tortoiseshell.
Meanwhile Fenella Pruin had wolfed her omelet. She got to her feet, saying, “I’m ready for the road, Jock. Oh, Grimes, fix your front door so that it lets me in. I’m not sure what time I shall be back.”
“I have to record your voice pattern.”
“Then do it.”
After she had spoken into the microphone she said to Grimes, “Why don’t you have a look at Katy’s Kathouse? You seemed interested enough.”
Somehow it was more of an order than a suggestion. She was sniffing out something, something that stank, and he was appointed apprentice bloodhound.