Sister Sue lifted from Port Woomera, driving up into the cloudless, blue, late afternoon sky. As members of the crew, Shirl and Darleen were among those in the control room; as first trip cadets their only duty was to keep well out of the way of those doing the work. Up and out drove the old ship, up and out. Soon, far to the south, the glimmer of the Antarctic ice could be discerned and, much closer, there was a great berg with its small fleet of attendant tugs, being dragged and nudged to its last resting place, its dying place, in the artificial fresh water harbor at the mouth of the Torrens River.
The sky darkened to indigo and the stars appeared, although the bright-blazing sun was still well clear of the rounded rim of the Earth. In the stern vision screen the radar altimeter display totted up the steadily increasing tally of kilometers. There were the last exchanges of messages between Aerospace Control and the ship on NST radio. It was a normal start to a normal voyage. (But, thought Grimes, sitting in his command chair, his unlit pipe clenched between his teeth, for him a normal voyage was one during which abnormality was all too often the norm. And, not for the first time, Damien was expecting him to stick his neck out and get it trodden on.)
Earth was a sphere now, a great, glowing opal against the black velvet backdrop of space.
"Escape velocity, sir," announced Harald Steerforth.
"Thank you, Mr. Steerforth," said Grimes.
"Clear of the Van Allens, sir," reported the second officer.
"Thank you, Mr. Kershaw. Ms. Suzuki, make to all hands 'Stand by for free fall. Stand by for trajectory adjustment.' "
He heard the girl speaking into her microphone, heard, from the intercom speakers the reports from various parts of the ship that all was secured. Using the controls set in the broad armrest of his chair he shut down the inertial drive. There was an abrupt cessation of vibration and a brief silence, broken almost at once by the humming of the great gyroscopes around which Sister Sue turned, hunting the target star. Grimes' fingers played on the control buttons, his face upturned to the curiously old-fashioned cartwheel sight set at the apex of the transparent dome of the control room. The pilot computer could have done the job just as well and much faster—but Grimes always liked to feel that he was in command, not some uppity robot. At last the tiny, bright spark was in the exact center of the concentric rings, the convergence of radii. It did not stay there for long; there was allowance for Galactic Drift to be made.
At last Grimes was satisfied.
"Stand by for initiation of Mannschenn Drive," he ordered.
"Stand by for initiation of Mannschenn Drive," repeated Tomoko Suzuki.
In the Mannschenn Drive room the gleaming complexity of rotors came to life, spinning faster and faster, tumbling, processing, fading almost to invisibility, warping the very fabric of Space-Time about themselves and about the ship, falling down the dark dimensions . . . .
The temporal precession field built up and there was the inevitable distortion of perspective, with colors sagging down the spectrum. Not for the first time Grimes experienced a flash of prevision—but, he knew, it was of something that might happen. After all, there is an infinitude of possible futures and a great many probable ones.
But he saw—and this was by no means his first such experience—a woman. It was nobody he knew—and yet she seemed familiar. She was clad in a dark blue, gold-embroidered kimono, above which her heavily made-up face was very pale. Her glossy, black hair was piled high on her head. She could almost have been a Japanese geisha from olden times . . . .
Tomoko? Grimes wondered.
No, she was not Tomoko.
He could see her more clearly now. She was bound to a stake, around which faggots were piled. He saw a hand, a human hand, apply a blazing torch to the sacrificial pyre. There were flames, mounting swiftly. There was smoke, swirling about and over the victim.
There was . . . .
There was the instantaneous reversion to normality as the temporal precession field was established. Grimes tried to shake the vision from his mind.
"Stand by for resumption of inertial drive," he ordered.
"Stand by for resumption of inertial drive," repeated Tomoko into her microphone.
From below came the muted arrhythmic thumping. Somewhere a loose fitting rattled. Grimes unsnapped his seat belt, took his time lighting and filling his pipe.
"Set normal Deep Space watches," he said to the chief officer. "Mr. Kershaw can keep the first one. Please join me in my day cabin for a drink before dinner, Mr. Steerforth. We've a few things to discuss." "Thank you, sir."
"I take it," said Grimes, speaking over the rim of his glass, "that Admiral Damien has put you into the picture."
"Of course, sir."
"What do you know about Ms. Perkins? Or should I say Lieutenant Commander Perkins?"
"I've worked with her before, sir. I knew that she'd been planted in your ship some time ago. She's highly capable, masquerading as being highly incapable." Then Steerforth actually laughed. "Mind you, sir, I've often wondered if her masquerade is a masquerade . . . . Perhaps, like you, she's a sort of catalyst. Things just happen when she's around."
"Can she make them happen on demand?" asked Grimes.
"Usually," said Steerforth.
"Mphm. But tell me, Mr. Steerforth, just how many undercover agents has Admiral Damien planted aboard my ship?"
"Well, sir, there's you, for a start. And myself. And Ms. Perkins. And those two alleged officer cadets . . . ." After a couple of drinks he was becoming more human. "For all I know that clockwork toy of yours might even be one! Tell me, is she really intelligent? Or is she just an example of very clever programming on somebody's part?"
"We are all of us the end products of programming," Grimes told him.
"To a point, sir. To a point. But as well as the programming there's intuition, imagination, initiative . . . ."
"I think," said Grimes, "that Seiko possesses at least two of those qualities."
The dinner gong sounded.
The two men finished their drinks, went down to the wardroom to join the other off duty officers.
Grimes had been half expecting soul food but what Ms. Clay provided was a fine example of Creole cookery. This was not to everybody's taste but Grimes enjoyed it.