Chapter 28
THE NEXT MORNING, after a leisurely breakfast in his quarters, Grimes went ashore to the Port Office to make his telephone calls. First he got through to the Duchess, thanking her for a very enjoyable evening and apologizing for any inconvenience that he may have caused. She thanked him for the pleasure of his company and assured him that no great damage had been done to the lilies and told him that his evening clothes, cleaned and pressed, would very shortly be sent out to him. She hoped that she would be seeing him again shortly and asked him to present her best wishes to Mr. Williams and Ms. Granadu.
Then he called Kane.
“Yes, Grimesy-boy? Are you dried out yet?”
Grimes ignored this. He said, “You’re the naval authority on this world, Commodore. I’m asking you if it would be possible for my crew to have any shore leave.”
“It’s a pity that you aren’t at Port Kane, Grimesy. I’ve set up some quite good entertainment facilities there for the privateers. A bar, a cabaret . . . manned—or womanned—by volunteers. It’s surprising how many of the local ladies don’t mind a night’s slumming among the drunken and licentious spacemen. But Port Kane’s a long way from Port Bluewater, isn’t it? Oh, how’s your discharge going, by the way?”
“It isn’t,” said Grimes.
“Too bad. Haven’t you made your mind up yet? If you did, the right way, that is, you and your boys would soon be wallowing in the fleshpots of Port Kane. And you’d be a commodore, like me. Doesn’t that tempt you?”
“Not especially,” Grimes said.
“Stubborn bastard, aren’t you?” remarked Kane. “Face the facts, Grimes. As an owner-master you’re finished—unless you charter your ship and hire your services to me. You don’t like the Hallicheki. (Who does?) Why not turn your dislike into money?”
“I’ll think about it,” said Grimes. “Meanwhile, what about shore leave for my personnel?”
“I’ll fix it,” said Kane. “I’m a spaceman myself and I know what it’s like being stuck aboard the ship when you’re in port.”
***
Grimes called the Schloss Stolzberg.
The face of a pewter-visaged servitor appeared on the screen. Then the Princess put in her appearance. Grimes wondered how it had been that he had thought her dowdy. She had matured—but why should she not have done so? Her blue eyes were far from cold. (Whatever had given him the idea that they were?) She smiled at him from inside the screen.
“John! It was fun last night, wasn’t it?”
“I trust that you suffered no ill effects, Your Highness.”
She laughed. “Shall we forget the titles? I’ll call you John, not Captain. You may call me Marlene. When can you come out to stay with me again?”
“My time is my own,” said Grimes. “I’m owner as well as master.”
Her expression clouded briefly. She said, “At the moment I’m rather tied up. Perhaps after you’ve shifted your ship from Port Bluewater to Port Kane . . .”
He said, “I have to finish discharge first. In any case I still haven’t said that I’m willing to join Drongo Kane’s private navy.”
“But you’ve no option,” she said. “Have you? There is nobody else whom I can trust to look after Ferdinand.”
Grimes winced. “Tell me,” he asked, “why that name?”
“Don’t you like it, John?”
“Frankly, no.”
“It is one that has been in my family, on my mother’s side, for a very long time. Even you will admit that the Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin was illustrious. My Ferdinand—your Ferdinand—is descended from an aeronaut. He is an astronaut.
“Is it not, somehow, fitting?”
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes.