UP THE SPACE REBELS!
Knud Axel Syrup, chief engineer of the
spaceship Mercury
Girl, sat and drank his
favorite beer and thought about the war he was
desperately anxious to avoid. The planetoid he was stranded on, Grendel, was occupied by a band of fiery Irish
revolutionaries who weren't loading their guns with shamrocks. And once the
Anglians found out about the invasion, they'd make the legendary Donnybrook
seem like a harmless Rugby match.
When Herr Syrup shook up a bottle of brew and
let the foam shoot out of its top, he knew what had to be done to get off
Grendel.
And
so came about a marvelous spaceship, built of beer kegs, bound by gunk,
upholstered with pretzel boxes and powered—for the first time in space travel
history—by the mighty reaction forces of malted brewl
Turn
this book over for second complete novel
Knud Axel Syrup
This
sane Dane only slept with his bicycle on some nights. On the others, he slept
with his spaceship.
Sarmishkidu Von Himmelschmidt
A
Martian by birth and a German by profession, this barkeep had the only pair of
six-legged lederkosen
ever made.
Emily Croft
Dedicated to the classical dance, she didn't
believe in wearing lederhosen—or much of anything* else.
Rory McConnell
The
Auld Sod was the only love of the major's life— until he laid eyes on Emily.
General Scourge-of-the-Sassenach O'Toole
The
commander of the Shamrock Expeditionaries, he was known to his men as S.O.T.S.,
for short.
Thwickhammer
Of a repetitious law firm, he suffered from a
lack of identity.
THE MAKESHIFT ROCKET
by
POUL ANDERSON
ACE
BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
the makeshift bocket
Copyright ©, 1962, by Ace Books, Inc.
Magazine
serial version, copyright, 1958, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
un-man and other novellas
Copyright ©, 1962, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
/
Chapter
1
"Mercury Girl, Black Sphere Line of Anguklukkakok City,
Venusian Imperium, requesting permission to land and discharge cargo."
"Ah.
Yes," said the large red haired man in the visiscreen. "Venusian
ownership, eh? An' what might your registry be?" Captain Dhan Gopal
Radhakrishnan blinked mild brown eyes in some astonishment and said:
"Panamanian, of course."
"Was that your last
port of call?"
"No,
we came via Venus. But I say, what has this to do with-"
"Let me see, let me see." The man
in the screen rubbed a gigantic paw across a freckled snub nose. He was young
and cheerful of appearance; but since when had the portmaster of Grendel—of any
asteroid in the Anglian Cluster—worn a uniform of such blazing green?
"An' might I hear what cargo ye have
consigned locally?" he asked. It was definitely not a Grendelian accent he
had. York? Scotia? No. Possibly New
Belfast. Having maintained his Earthside home for years in Victoria,
B.C., Captain Radhakrishnan fancied himself a student of English dialects.
However—
"A
thousand cases of Nashornbrau Beer and six ten-ton barrels of same,
miscellaneous boxes of pretzels and popcorn, all for the Alt Heidelberg
Rathskeller," he answered. "Plus goods for other ports, of course,
notably a shipment of exo-genetic cattle embryos for Alamo. Those have all been
cleared for passage through intermediate territories."
"Indeed.
Indeed." The young man nodded with a sharpness that bespoke decision. " Tis all right, then. Give us a location signal an'
folly the GCA beam in to Berth Ten."
Captain Radhakrishnan acknowledged and signed
off, adjusting his monocle nervously the while.
Something was not all right. Definitely not. He turned
the console over to the mate and switched the ship's intercom to Engine Room. "Bridge
speaking," he intoned. "I say, Mr. Syrup, have you any notion what's
going on here?"
Knud
Axel Syrup, chief and only engineer of the Mercury Girl, started and looked over his shoulder. He had
been cheating at solitaire. "Not'ing, skipper, yust not'ing," he
mumbled, tucking a beer bottle under a heap of cotton waste. His pet crow Claus leered cynically from a perch on a fuel
line but for a wonder remained silent.
"You
weren't tuned in to my talk with the portmaster chap?"
Herr
Syrup rose indignantly to his feet. He even sucked in his paunch. "I ban
tending to my own yob," he said. "Ban busier dan a Martian in rutting
season. Ven
are de owners going to install
a new Number Four spinor?* Every vatch I got to repair ours again vit' chewing
gum and baling vire.
"When
this old bucket of rust earns enough to justify it," sighed
Radhakrishnan's voice. "You know as well as I do, she's barely paying her
own way. But what I meant to say is, this portrnaster chap. Got
a brogue you could put soles on, y'know, and wearing some kind of uniform I
never saw before."
"Hrn"
Herr Syrup rubbed his shining bald pate and scratched the fringe of brownish
hair beneath it. He blew out his blond walrus mustache, blinked watery blue
eyes, and ventured:' "Maybe he is from de Erse Cluster. I don't t'ink you
ever ban dere; I vas
vunce. It's
approaching con-yunction vit' Anglia now. Maybe he come here and got a
yob."
"But his
uniform—"
"So dey changed de uniform again. Who can keep track of all dése little nations in de
Belt, ha?"
"Mmmm—well,
perhaps. Perhaps. Though I wonder-something dashed
odd, don't y' know— Well, no matter, as you say, no matter, no matter. Got to carry on. Stand by for approach and landing, maneuver to
commence in ten minutes."
"Ja, ja, ja," grumbled
Herr Syrup. He
fetched out his bottle, finished it, and tossed it into the waste chute which
sponged it into space. Before he rang for his deckhand assistant, Mr. Shubbish,
he put a blue jacket over his tee shirt and an officer's cap on his head. The
uniform was as faded and weary as the ship; more so, perhaps, for he made an
effort to keep the vessel patched, painted, and scrubbed.
A long
blunt-nosed cylinder, meteor-pocked, patchplated and rust-streaked from many
atmospheres, the Mercury
Girl departed freefall
orbit and spiraled toward the asteroid. The first thing she lost was an
impressive collection of beer bottle satellites. Next she lost her crew's
temper, for the aged compensator developed a sudden flutter under deceleration
and the men and Martians found their internal gyro-gravitic field varying
sinusoidally between 0.5 and 1.7 Earth
gees.
That
was uncomfortable enough to make them forget the actual hazard it added.
Landing on a terraformed worldlet is tricky enough under the best conditions.
The gyrogravitic generators at its center of mass are not able to increase the
potential energy of the entire universe, but must content themselves with
holding a reasonable atmospheric envelope. Accordingly, their field is so
heterodyned that the force is an almost level one gee for some 2000 kilometers
up from the surface; then, within the space of a single kilometer, the
artificial attraction drops to zero and the acceleration experienced is merely
that due to the asteroid's mass. Crossing such a boundary is no simple task. It
is made worse by the further heterodyning as the spaceship's negative force
interacts with the terraformer's positive pull. When the crew
are, in addition, plagued with unexpected rhythmic variations in their
weight, a smooth transition becomes downright impossible.
Thus
the Mercury Girl soared to boundary altitude, yawed, spun
clear around, bounced a few times, and bucketed her way groundward, shuddering.
She scraped steel as she entered berth, with a screech that set teeth on edge
at Grendel's antipodes, rocked, came to a halt,
and slowly stopped groaning.
"Fanden i hélvedel" roared Herr Syrup at the intercom. "Vat
kind of a landing do you call dat? I
svear de beer is so shook up it explodes! By yumping Yudas—"
"Sacre bleuF
added Claus, fluttering
about on ragged black wings. "Teufelschwantzen und Schwefell Damn, blast, fap!"
"Now,
now, Mr. Syrup," said Captain Radhakrishnan soothingly. "Now,
now, now. After all, my dear fellow, I don't wish to make, ah, invidious
comparisons, but the behavior of the internal field was scarcely what—what I
would expect? Yes. What I would expect. In fact, the cook has just reported
himself ill with, ah, what I believe is the first case of seasickness recorded
in astronautical history."
Herr
Syrup, who had dropped and broken a favorite pipe, was in no mood to accept
criticism. He barked an order to Mr. Shubbish, to rip the guts out of the
compensator in lieu^ of its manufacturer, and stormed up the companionway and
along clangorous passages to the bridge, where he pushed open the door so it
crashed and blew in like a profane
whirlwind.
"My
dear old chap!" exclaimed the captain. "I sayl
Please! What will they think?"
"Vat
vill obscenity who blankety-blank t'ink?"
"The portmaster and, ah, the other gentleman—there." Radhakrishnan pointed at the main viewport
and made agitated adjustments to his turban and jacket. "Most
irregular. I don't understand it. But he insisted we remain inboard until—Dear, dear, do you
think you could get some of the tarnish off this braid of mine before—"
Knud
Axel Syrup stared at the outside view. Beyond the little spacefield was a
charming vista of green meadows, orderly hedgerows, cottages and bowers, a
white gravel road. Just below the near, sharply curving horizon stood Grendel's
only town; from this height could be seen a few roofs and the twin spires of
St. George's. The flag of the Kingdom, a Union Jack on a Royal Stuart field,
fluttered there under a sky of darker blue than Earth's, a small remote sun and
a few of the brightest stars. Grendel was a typical right little, tight little
Anglian asteroid, peacefully readying for the vacation-season influx of
tourists from Briarton, York, Scotia, Holm, New Winchester, and the other
shires.
Or
was it? For the flagstaff over the spaceport carried an alien banner, white,
with a shamrock and harp in green. The two men striding over the concrete
toward the ship wore clover-colored tunics and trousers, military boots and
side-arms. Similarly uniformed men paced along the wire fence or waited by
machine gun nests. Not far away was berthed a space freighter, almost as old
and battered as the Girl
but considerably larger.
And—and—
"Pest og forbandelsel" exclaimed Herr Syrup.
"What?"
Captain Radhakrishnan swiveled worried eyes toward him.
"Plague
and damnation," translated the engineer courteously.
"Eh? Where?"
"Over dere." Herr Syrup pointed. *Dat odder ship. Don't you see? Dere is a gun
turret coupled onto her!"
"Well—I'll
be—goodness gracious," murmured the captain.
Steps
clanging on metal and a hearty roar drifted up to the bridge, together with a
whiff of cool country air. In a few
moments the large redhead entered the bridge. Behind him trailed a very
tall, very thin, and very grim-looking middle-aged man.
"The
top of the momin' to yez," boomed the young one. He attempted a salute.
"Major Rory McConnell of the Shamrock League Irredentist Expeditionary
Force, at your ser-r-r-vicel"
"What?" exclaimed Radhakrishnan. He gaped and lifted his hands. "I mean—I
mean to say, don't y' know, what? Has a war broken out? Or has it? Mean to say,
y know," he babbled, "we've had no
such information, but then we've been en route for some weeks and—"
"Well,
no." Major Rory McConnell shoved back his disreputable cap with a faint
air of embarrassment. "No, your honor, 'tis not exactly a war we're
havin'. More an act of justice."
The
thin, razor-creased man shoved his long nose forward. "Perhaps I should
explain," he clipped, "bein' as I am in command here. 'Tis indeed an act of necessary an' righteous justice we
are performin', after what the spalpeens did to us forty years agone come St.
Matthew's Day." His dark eyes glowed fanatically. "The fact is, in
order to assert the rightful claims of the Erse nation ag'inst the unprovoked
an' shameless aggression of the—pardon me language—English of the Anglian
Kingdom. The fact is, this asteroid is now under
military occupation." He clicked his heels and bowed. "Permit me to
introduce meself. General Scourge of the Sassenach O'Toole, of the Shamrock
League Irredentist—"
"]a,
ja," said
Herr Syrup. He still carried a cargo of anger to unload on someone. "I
heard all dat. I also heard dat de Shamrock League is only a political party in
de Erse Cluster."
Scourge-of-the-Sassenach
O'Toole winced. "Please. Sa-orstat Erseann.'*
"So
vat you ban doin' vit' a private filibustering expedition, ha? And vat has it
got to do vit' us?"
"Well,"
said Major Rory McConnell, not quite at ease, "the fact is, your honors,
I'm sorry to be sayin' it, but ye can't leave here just the now."
"What?"
cried Captain Radhakrishnan. "Can't leave? What
do you mean, sir?" He drew himself up to his full 1.6 meters. "This
is a Venusian ship, may I remind you, of Terrestrial
registry, and engaged on its—er, ahem—its lawful occasions. Yes, that's it,
its lawful occasions. You can't detain usl"
McConnell
slapped his sidearm with a meaty hand. "Can't we?" he asked,
brightening.
"But—look
here—see here, my dear chap, we're on schedule. We're expected at Alamo, don't
y' know, and if we don't report in—"
"Yes.
There is that. Tis been anticipated." General O'Toole squinted at them.
Suddenly he pointed a bony finger at the engineer. "Yezl What might your name be?"
"I ban Knud Axel Syrup of Simmerboelle,
Langeland," said the engineer indignantly, "and I am going to get in
touch vit' de Danish consul at—"
"Mister who?" interrupted McConnell.
"Syrup!" It is a perfectly good Danish name, though like Middelfart it is liable
to misinterpretation by foreigners. "I vill call my consulate on New Vinshester, ja, by Yudas, I vill
even call de vun on Tara in Erse—"
"Teamhair," corrected O'Toole, wincing again.
"You
see," said Radhakrishnan, anxiously fingering his monocle, "our cargo
to Alamo carries a stiff penalty clause, and if we're held up here any length
of time, then—"
"Quietl"
barked O'Toole. His finger stabbed toward the Earthmen. "So 'twas Venus ye
were on' last, eh? Well, as military commandant of this occupied asteroid, I
hereby appoints meself medical officer an' I suspect ye of carryin* Polka Dot
Plague."
"Polka
Dot!" bellowed Herr Syrup. A red flush went up from his hairy chest till
his scalp gleamed like a landing light. "Vy, you spoutnosed son of a
Svedish politician, dere hasn't been a case of Polka Dot in all de Imperium for
tventy-five Eart' years!"
"Possibly,"
snapped O'Toole. "However, under international law the medical officer of
any port has a right an* duty to hold any vessel in quarantine whin he suspects
a dangerous disease aboard. I suspects of Polka Dot Plague, an' this whole
asteroid is hereby officially quarantined."
"But!"
wailed Radhakrishnan.
"I think six weeks will be long
enough," said O'Toole more gently. "Meanwhile yell be free to move
about an'—" "Six weeks here will ruin us!"
"Sorry,
sir," answered McConnell. He beamed. "But take heart, ye're bein'
ruined in a good cause: redressin' the wrongs of the Gaelic race!"
Chapter 2
Fuming
away on a pipe which
would have been banned under any smog-control ordinance, Knud Axel Syrup
bicycled into Grendel Town. He ignored the charm of thatch and tile roofs,
half-timbered Tudor facades, and swinging signboards. Those were for tourists,
anyway; Grendel lived mostly off the vacation trade. But it did not escape him
how quiet the place was, its usual cheerful pre-season
bustie dwindled to a tight-lipped housewife at the greengrocer's and a bitterly
silent dart game in the Crown & Castle.
Occasionally
a party of armed Erse, or a truck bearing the shamrock sign, went down the
street. The occupying force seemed composed largely of very young men, and it
was not professional. The uniforms were homemade, the arms a wild assortment
from grouse guns up through stolen rocket launchers, the officers were saluted
when a man happened to feel like saluting, and the idea that it might be a nice
gesture to march in step had never occurred to anyone.
Nevertheless,
there were something like a thousand invaders on Grendel, and their noisy,
grinning, well-meaning slop-piness did not hide the fact that they could be
tough to fight.
Herr
Syrup stopped at the official bulletin board in the market square. Brushing
aside ivy leaves, the announcement of a garden party at the vicarage three
months ago, and a yellowing placard wherein the Lord Mayor of Grendel invited
bids for the construction of a fen country near the Heorot Hills, he found the
notice he was looking for. It was gaudily hand-lettered in blue and green
poster paints and said: !
Know
all men by these presents, that forty Earth-years ago, when the planetoid
clusters of Saorstat Erseann and the Anglian Kingdom were last approaching
conjunction, 1 the asteroid called Lois by the Anglians but
rightfully known to its Erse discoverer Michael Boyne as Laoighise (pronounced
Lois) chanced to drift between the two nations on its own skewed orbit. An
Anglian prospecting expedition landed, discovered rich beds of praseodymium,
and claimed the asteroid in the name of King James IV. The Erse Republic
protested this illegal seizure and sent a warship to remove the Anglian
squatters, only to find that King James IV had caused two warships to be sent;
accordingly, despite this severe provocation, the peace-loving Erse Republic
withdrew its vessel. The aforesaid squatters installed a powerful gy-rogravitic
unit on Laoighise and diverted its orbit into union with the other planetoids
of the Anglian Cluster. Since then Anglia has remained in occupation and exploitation.
The
Erse Republic has formally protested to the World Court, on the clear grounds
that Michael Boyne, an Erse citizen, was the first man to land on this body.
The feeble Anglian argument that Boyne did not actually claim it for his
nation and made no effort to ascertain its possible value, cannot be
admissible to any right-thinking man; but for forty Earth-years the World
Court, obviously corrupted by Stuart gold, has upheld this specious contention.
Now
that the Erse and Anglian nations are again orbiting close toward each other,
the Shamrock League Irredentist Expeditionary Force has set about rectifying
the situation. This is a patriotic organization which, though it does not have
the backing of its own government at the moment, expects that this approval
will be forthcoming and retroactive as soon as our sacred mission has
succeeded. Therefore, the Shamrock League Irredentist Expeditionary Force is
not piratical, but operating under international laws of war, and the Geneva
Convention applies. As a first step in the recovery of Laoighise, the Shamrock
League Irredentist Expeditionary Force finds it necessary to occupy the
asteroid Grendel.
All
citizens are therefore enjoined to cooperate with the occupying authorities.
The personal and property rights of civilians will be respected provided they
refrain from interference with the lawfully constituted authorities, namely ourselves. All arms and communications equipment must be
surrendered for sequestration. Any attempt to leave Grendel or communicate
beyond its atmosphere is forbidden and punishable under the rules of war.' All
citizens are reminded again that the Shamrock League Irredentist Expeditionary
Force is here for a legitimate purpose which is to be respected. Erin go bragh!
General Scourge-of-the-Sassenach
O'Toole
Commanding Officer, S.L.I.E.F.
per: Sgt. 1/cl Daniel O'Flaherty (New Connaught
O'Flahertys)
"Ah," said Herr
Syrup. "So."
He
pedaled glumly on his way. These people seemed to mean business.
Though
he sometimes lost his temper, Knud Axel Syrup was not a violent man. He had
seen his share of broken knuckles, from St. Pauli to Heliport to Jove Dock; he
much preferred a mug of beer and a friendly round of pinochle. The harbor girls
could expect no more from him than a fatherly smile and a not quite fatherly
pat; he had his Inga back in Simmerboelle. She was a good wife, aside from her
curious idea that he would instantly fall a prey to pneumonia without an itchy
scarf around his neck. Her disapproval of the myriad little nations which had
sprung up throughout the Solar System since gyrogravitics made terra-forming
possible was more vocal than his; but, in a mild and tolerant way, he shared
it. Home's best.
Nevertheless,
a man had some right to be angry! For instance, when a peso-pinching flock of
Venusian owners, undoubtedly with more scales on their hearts than even their
backs, made him struggle along with a spinor that should have been scrapped
five years ago. But what, he asked himself, is- a man to do? There were few
berths available for the aging crew of an aging ship, without experience in the
latest and sleekest apparatus. If the Mercury Girl went
on the beach, so, mostly likely, did Knud Axel Syrup. Of course, there would be
a nice social worker knocking at his home to offer a nice Earthside job—say,
the one who had already mentioned a third assistantship in a food-yeast
factory—and Inga would make sure he wore his nice scarf every day. Heir Syrup
shuddered and pushed his bicycle harder.
At
the end of Flodden Field Street he found the tavern he was looking for. Grendel
did not try exclusively for an Old Tea Shoppe atmosphere. The Alt Heidelberg
Rathskeller stood between the Osmanli Pilaff and Pizen Pete's Last Chance
Saloon. Herr Syrup leaned his bicycle against the wall and pushed through an
oak door carved with the image of legendary Cambrmus.
The
room downstairs was appropriately long, low, and smoky-raftered. Rough-hewn
tables and benches filled a candle-lit gloom; great beer barrels lined the
walls; sabers hung crossed above rows of steins which informed the world that Gutes Bier und junge Weiber sind die besten Zeitvertreiber. But it was empty. Even for midafternoon,
there was something ominous about the silence. The Stuart legitimists who
settled the Anglian Cluster had never adopted the closing laws of the mother
country.
Herr
Syrup planted his stocky legs and stared around. "Hallol" he called.
"Hallo, derel Is you home, Herr Bach-mann?"
It
slithered in the darkness behind the counter. A Martian came out. He stood
fairly tall for a Martian, his hairless gray cupola of a head-cum-torso
reaching past the Earthman's waist, and his four thick walking tentacles
carried him across the floor with a speed unusual for his race in Terrestrial
gravity. His two arm-tentacles writhed incoherently, his flat nose twitched
under the immense brow, his wide lipless mouth made bubbling sounds, his
bulging eyes rolled in distress of soul. As he came near, Herr Syrup saw that
he had somehow poured himself into an embroidered blouse and lederhosen. A Tyrolean hat perched precariously on top of
him.
"AchF he piped. "Wer da?
Wilkommen, mein dear friend, sitzen here and—"
"Gud bevare's," said the engineer, catching his pipe as it
fell from his jaws, "vat's going on here? Vere is old Hans Bachmann?"
"Ach,
he has^ retired," said
the Martian. "I have taken over der
business. Pardon me, I mean I
have der business overgetaken." He stopped in front
of his guest, extending three boneless fingers. "My name is Sarmishkidu. I
mean, Sarmishkidu von
Himmelschmidt. Sit
down make yourself gemütlich."
"Veil, I am Knud Axel Syrup of de Mercury Girl."
"Ah,
the ship what is bringing me mine beer? Or was? Well,
have a drink." The Martian scuttled off, drew two steinsful, came back and
writhed himself onto the bench across the table at which the Earthman had sat
down. "Prosit."
A Martian standing anyone a beer was about the
most astonishing event of this day. But it was plain to see that Sarmishkidu von Himmelschmidt was not himself. His skin twitched as he
filled a Tyrolean pipe, and he fanned himself with his elephantine ears.
"How
did you happen to enter dis business?" asked Herr Syrup, trying to put him more at ease.
"Ach!
I came here last
Uttu-year—Mars-year—on sabbatical. I am a professor of mathematics at
Enliluraluma University." Since every citizen of Enliluraluma has some
kind of position at the University, usually in the math department, Herr Syrup was not much impressed. "At that time this" enterprise was
most lucrative. Extrapolating probabilistically, I induced myself to accept Herr Bachmann's offer of a transfer of title. I invested all my own savings and
obtained a mortgage on Uttu for the balance—"
"Oh,
oh," said Herr Syrup, sympathetically, for not even the
owners of the Black Sphere Line could be as ruthless as any and all Martian
bankers. They positively enjoyed foreclosing. They made a ceremony of it, at
which dancing clerks strewed cancelled checks while a chorus of vice presidents
sang a litany. "And now business is not so good, vat?"
"Business
is virtually at asymptotic zero," mourned Sarmishkidu. "The
occupation, you know. We are cut off from the rest of the universe. And
vacation season coming in two weeks I The Erse do not plan to leave for six
weeks yet, at a minimum—and meanwhile this entire planetoid will have been
diverted into a new orbit off the regular trade lanes— possibly ruined in the
fighting around Lois. In view of all this uncertainty, even local trade has
slacked off to negligibility. Ach, es ist ganz schrecklich! I am ruined!"
"But
if I remember right," said Herr Syrup, bewildered, "New Vinshester,
de Anglian capital, is only about ten t'ou-sand kilometers from here. Vy do dey not send a varship?"
"They
are not aware of it," said Sarmishkidu, burying his flat face in the
tankard. "Excuse me, I mean they do not know what fumblydiddles is here
going on. Before vacation time, we never get many ships here. Der Erses landed
just four days ago. They took ofer der Rundfunk, the
radio, and handled routine messages as if nothing had happened. Your ship was
the first since der invasion."
"And
may be d£ last," gloomed Herr Syrup. "Dey made some qvack-qvack about
plague and qvarantined us."
"Ach, so!" Sarmishkidu passed a dramatic hand over his eyeballs. "Den ve iss
ruined for certain. Dot iss just the excuse the Erses have been wanting. Now
they can call New Winchester, making like they was der
real medical officer, and say the whole place is quarantined on suspicion of
plague. So natural, no one else vill land for six weeks, so they not be
quarantined too and maybe even get sick. Your owners is
also notified and does not try to investigate what has to you happened. So for
six weeks the Erses has a free hand here to do what they want. Und what they
want to do means the ruin of all Grendel!"—
"My captain is still arguing vit' de
Erse general," said Herr Syrup. "I am yust de engineer. But I come
down to see if I could save us anyt'ing. Even if ve lose money because of not
delivering our cargo to Alamo, maybe at least ve get paid for de beer ve bring
you. No?"
"Gott in Himmel! Without
vacation season business like I was counting on, where vould I find the moneys
to pay you?"
"I vas afraid of
dat," said Herr Syrup.
He sat drinking and smoking
and trying to persuade himself that an Earthside job as assistant in a yeast
factory wasn't really so bad. Himself told him what a
liar he was.
The
door opened, letting in a shaft of sun, and light quick steps were heard. A
ferninine voice cried: "Rejoice!"
Herr
Syrup rose clumsily. The girl coming down the stairs was worth rising for,
being young and slim, with a shining helmet of golden hair, large blue eyes,
pert nose, long legs, and other well-formed accessories. Her looks were done no
harm by the fact that—while she avoided cosmetics—she wore a short white tunic,
sandals, a laurel wreath on her head, and nothing
else.
"Rejoice!"
she cried again, and burst into tears.
"Now,
now," said Herr Syrup anxiously. "Now, now, Froeken . . . er, Miss—now, now, now, yust a
minute."
The
Martian had already gone over to her. "That is nicht so bad, Emily," he whistled, standing on tiptentacle to pat her
shoulder. "There, there. Remember Epicurus."
"I
don't care about Epicurus!" sobbed the girl, burying her face in her
hands.
"Outis
epoisei soi barrios cheiras," said Sarmishlddu bravely.
"Well,"
wept the girl, "w-well, of course. At least, I hope so." She dabbed
at her eyes with a laurel leaf. "I'm sorry. It's just that—that—oh,
everything."
"Yes,"
said the Martian, "the situation indubitably falls within the Aristotelian
definition of tragedy. I have calculated' my losses so far at a net fifty
pounds sterling, four shillings and thruppence ha'penny per diem."
Wet,
but beautiful, the girl blinked at Herr Syrup. "Pardon me, sir," she
said tremulously. "This situation on Gren-del, you know. It's so
overwreaking." She put her finger to her hps and frowned. "Is that
the word? These barbarian languages! I mean, the situation has us all
overwrought."
"Ahem!"
said Sarmishlddu. "Miss Emily Croft, may I present Mister, er—"
"Syrup,"
said Herr Syrup, and extended a somewhat engine-grimy hand.
"Rejoice," said the girl politely. "Hellenicheis?"
"Gesundheit," said Herr Syrup.
Miss
Emily Croft stared, then sighed. "I asked if you
spoke Attic Greek," she said.
"No,
I'm sorry, I do not even speak basement Greek," floundered Herr Syrup.
"You
see," said Miss Croft, "I am a Duncanite—even if it does make Father
furious. He's the vicar, you know—and I'm the only Ducanite on Grendel. Mr.
Sarmishkidu—I'm sorry, I mean Herr von Himmelschmidt—speaks
Greek with me, which does help, even though I cannot always approve bis choice
of passages for quotation." She blushed.
"Since
ven has a Martian been talking Greek?" asked the engineer, trying to get
some toehold on reality.
"I
found a knowledge of the Greek alphabet essential to
my study of Terrestrial mathematical treatises," explained Sarmishkidu,
"and having gone so far, I proceeded to leam the vocabulary and grammar as
well. After all, time is money, I estimate ^ny time as being conservatively
worth five pounds an hour, and so by using knowledge already acquired for one
purpose as the first step in gaining knowledge of another field, I saved study
time worth almost—"
"But
I'm afraid Herr von Himmelschmidt is not a follower of the doctrines of-the
Neo-Classical Enlightenment," interrupted Emily Croft. "I mean, as
first expounded by Isadora and Raymond Duncan. I regret to say that Herr von
Himmelschmidt is only interested in the, er," she blushed again,
charmingly, "less laudable passages out of Aristophanes."
"They
are filthy" murmured Sarmishkidu with a reminiscent
leer.
"And,
I mean, please don't think I have any race prejudices or anything," went
on the girl, "but it's just undeniable that Herr von Himmelschmidt isn't,
well, isn't meant for classical dancing."
"No," agreed Herr Syrup after a
careful study. "No, he is not."
Emily cocked her head at him. "I don't
suppose you would be interested?" Her tone was wistful.
Herr
Syrup rubbed his bald pate, blew out his drooping mustache, and looked down
past his paunch at his Number
Twelve boots. "Is classical dancing done
barefoot?" he asked.
"Yesl And vine crowned, in the dew at dawnl"
"I vas afraid of
dat," sighed Herr Syrup. "No, t'anks."
"Well," said the
girl. Her head bent a little.
"But I am not so bad
at de hambo," offered Herr Syrup.
"No, thank you,"
said Miss Croft.
"Vill you not sit down
and have a beer vit' us?"
"Zeus, no!" She grimaced. "How could you? I mean, that awful stuff just
calcifies the liver."
"Miss
Croft drinken only der pure spring vater und eaten der fruits," said
Sarmishkidu von Himmelschmidt rather grimly.
"Well,
but really, Mister Syrup," said the girl, "it's ever so much more
natural than, oh, all this raw meat and—well, I mean if we had no other reason
to know it, couldn't you just tell the Erse are barbarians from that dreadful
stuff they drink, and all the bacon and floury potatoes and—Well, I mean to say, really."
Herr
Syrup sat down by his stein, unconvinced. Emily perched herself on the table
top and accepted a few grapes from a bowl of same which Sarmishkidu handed her
in a gingerly fashion. The Martian then scuttled back to bis own beer and pipe
and a dish of pretzels.
"Do
you know yust vat dese crazy Ersers is intending to do, anyhow?" asked
Herr Syrup.
The
girl clouded up again. "That's what I came to see you about, Mr Sarmishkidu," she said. Her pleasant
lower lip quivered. "That terrible Major McConnell!
The big noisy red one. I mean, he keeps speaking to
me!"
"I
am afraid," began the Martian, "that it is not'in my province
to—"
"Oh,
but I mean, he stopped me in the street just now! He, he bowed and—and asked me
to—Oh, no!" Emily buried her face in her hands trembling.
"To
vat?" barked Herr Syrup, full of chivalrous indignation.
"He
asked me if ... if ... I would
. . . oh . . . would go to
the cinema with
him!"
"Vy, vat is
playing?" asked Herr Syrup, interested.
"How should I know? It certainly isn't
Aeschylus. It isn't even Euripidesl" Emily raised a flushed small
countenance and shifted gears to wrath. "I thought, Mr. Sarmishkidu, I
mean, we've been friends for a while now and we Greeks have to stick together
and all that sort of thing, couldn't you just refuse to sell him whisky? I
mean, it would teach those barbarians a lesson, and it might even make them go
home again, if they couldn't buy whisky, and Major McConnell wouldn't get a
calcified liver."
"Speak
of the diwil!" bawled a hearty voice. Huge military boots crashed on the
stairs and Major Rory McConnell, all 200 redhaired centimeters of him, stalked
down into the rathskeller. "Pour me*a drop of cheer, boy. No, set out the
bottle an' we'll figure the score whin I'm done.. For
'tis happy this day has becomel"
"Don'tl" blazed
Emily, leaping to her feet.
"Aber,
aber that whisky I sell
at four bob the shot," said Sarmishkidu, slithering hastily off his bench.
Major
McConnell made a gallant flourish toward the girl. "To be sure," he
roared, "there's no such thing as an unhappy day wi'
this colleen about. Surely the good God was in a rare mood whin she was borned,
perhaps His favorite littlest angel had just won the spellin' prize, for faith
an' I niwer seen a sweeter bundle of charms, not even on the Auld Sod herself
whin I made me pilgrimage."
"Do
you see what happens to people 'who, who eat meat and drink distilled
beverages?" said Emily to Herr Syrup. "They just turn into absolute
oafs. I mean to say, you can hear their great feet stamping two kilometers
off."
McConnell sprawled onto a bench, leaning
against the table and resting his great feet on the floor at the end of
prodigious legs. He winked at the Earthman. "She's the light darlin' on
her toes," he agreed, "but then she's not just overburdened wi' clothing. Whin I make her me missus, that'll have to be
changed a bit, but for now 'tis pleasant the sight is."
"Your wife?" screamed Emily.
"Why—why—" She fought valiantly with herself. At last, in a prim
tone: "I won't say anything, Major McConnell, but you will find my reply
in Aristophanes, The
Frogs, lines—"
"Here
the bottle is," said Sarmishlddu, returning with a flask labelled Callahan's Rose of Tralee 125 Proof. "Und
mind you," he added, rolling a suspicious doorknob eye at the Erseman,
"when it comes to paying the score, we will make with the analytical
balances to show how much you have getaken."
"So
be it." McConnell yanked out the stopper and raised the bottle. "To the Glory of God an' the Honor of Ireland!" He
caught Herr Syrup's eye and added politely: "Skoal."
The Dane lifted a grudging stein to him. 'Tis
the fine day for celebratin'," burbled McConnell. "I've had the word
from the engineering corps; our new droive unit tests out one hundred percent.
They'll have it ready to go in three weeki."
"Oh!"
gasped Emily. She retreated into a dark comer behind a beer keg. Even
Sarmishkidu began to look seriously worried.
"Vat
ban all dis monkeyshining anyvay?" demanded Herr Syrup.
"Why,
'tis simple enough, 'tis," said the major. "Ye're well aware the rare
earth praseodymium has high value, since 'tis of critical importance to a
geegee engine. Now the asteroid
"Ja,
I have read de
proclamation. But vy did you have to land here at all? If
Erse vants Lois, vy not attack Lois like honest men and not bodder my poor
spaceship?"
McConnell
frowned. '"Tis that would be the manly deed," he admitted. "Yit
the opposition party, the Gaelic Socialists, may their cowardly souls fry in
hell, happen to be in power at home, an' they won't sind the fleet ag'inst
Laoighise; for the Anglians have placed heavy guard on it, in case of just such
a frontal assault, an' that base act of aggression holds our Republic in check,
for it shall never be said we were the first to start a war."
He
tilted the flask to his lips again and embarked on a lengthy harangue. Herr Syrup extracted from
this that the Shamrock League, the other important political party in the
Erse Cluster,
favored a more vigorous foreign policy: though its chiefs would not also have
agreed to an open battle with the Anglian Navy. However,
Scourge-of-the-Sassenach O'Toole was an extremist politician even for the
League. He gathered men, weapons, and equipment, and set out unbeknownst to
all on his own venture. His idea was first to occupy Grendel. This has been
done without opposition; armed authority here consisted of one elderly
constable with a truncheon. Of course, it was vital to keep the occupation
unknown to the rest of the universe, since the Shamrock League Irredentist
Expeditionary Force could not hope to fight off even a single gunboat sent from
any regular fleet. The arrival of the Mercury Girl and
the chance thus presented to announce a quarantine,
was being celebrated up and down the inns of Grendel as unquestionably due to
the personal intervention of good St. Patrick.
As
for the longer-range scheme—oh, yes, the plan. Well, like most terraformed
asteroids, Grendel had only a minimal gyrogravitic unit, powerful enough to
give it a 24-hour rotational period (originally the little world had spun
around once in three hours, which played the very devil with tea time) and an
atmosphere retaining surface field of 980 cm./sec.2. Maintaining
that much attraction, warming up the iron mass enough to compensate for the
sun's remoteness, and supplying electricity to the colonists, was as much as
the Grendelian atomic-energy plant could do.
O'Toole's
boys had brought along a geegee of awesome dimensions. Installed at the center
of mass and set to re-pulsor-beam, this one would be able to move the entire
planetoid from its orbit.
"Move it ag'inst Laoighisel" cried
McConnell. "An' we've heavy artillery mounted, too. Ah, what think ye of
that, me boy? How long do ye think the Anglian Navy will stand up ag'inst a
warcraft of this size? Eh? Ha, ha! Drink to the successful defense of Gaelic
rights ag'inst wanton an' unprovoked aggression!"
"I
t'ink maybe de Anglian Navy vait yust long enough to shoot two, t'ree atomic
shells at you and den land de marines," said Herr Syrup dubiously.
"Shell
their own people livin' here?" answered McConnell.
"No, even the Sassenach are not that grisly. There'll not be a thing they
can do but retire from the scene in all their ignominy. An' faith, whin we
return home wi' poor auld lost Laoighise an' put her
into her rightful orbit with the ither Erse Cluster worlds—"
"I t'ought her orbit vas orig'inally not de same as eider vun of
your nations."
"Exactly, sir. For the first time since the Creation, Laoighise
will be sailin' where the Creator intended. Well, then, all Erse will rise to
support us, the craven Gaelic Socialist cabinet will fall an' the tide of
victory sweep the Shamrock League to its proper place of government an' your
humble servant to the Ministry of Astronautics, which same portfolio
Premier-to-be O'Toole has promised me for me help. An' then ye'll see Erse
argosies plyin' the deeps of space as never before in history—an' me the
skipper of the half of 'eml"
"Gud bevare's," said Herr Syrup.
McConnell
rose with a bearlike bow at Emily,, who had recovered
enough composure' to return into sight. "Of course, Grendel will thin be
returned to Anglia," he said. "But her one finest treasure she'll not
bring home, a Stuart rose plucked to brighten a field of shamrocks."
The
girl lifted a brow and said coldly: "Do I understand, Major,
that you wish to keep me forever as a shield against the Anglian
Navy?"
McConnell
flushed. "'Tis the necessity of so usin' your people that hurts every true
Erse soul," he said, "an' be sure if it were not certain that no harm
could come to the civilians here, we'd never have embarked on the
adventure." He brightened. "An' faith, is it
not well we did, since it has given me the sight of your sweet face?"
Emily turned her back and
stamped one little foot.
"Also
your sweet legs," continued McConnell blandly, "an' your sweet—er—Drink,
Mister Syrup, drink up wi' me to the rightin' of
wrongs an' the succorin' of the distressed!"
"Like me,"
mumbled the engineer.
The girl whirled about. "But people will
be hurt!" she cried. "Don't you understand? I've tried and tried to
explain to you, my father's tried, everyone on Grendel has and none of you
will listen! It's been forty years since our nations were last close enough
together to have much contact. I mean, you just don't know how the situation
has changed in Anglia. You think you can steal Lois, and our government will
swallow a fait
accompli rather
than start a war—the way yours did when we first took it. But ours won't! Old
King James died ten years ago. King Charles is a young man—a fire-eater—and the
P.M. claims descent from Sir Winston Churchill—they won't accept it! I mean to
say, your government will either have to repudiate you and give Lois back, or
there'll be an interplanetary war!"
"I
think not, acushla,
I think not," said
McConnell. "Ye musn't trouble your pretty head about these things."
"I t'ink maybe she ban right," said Herr Syrup. "I ban
in Anglia often times." /
"Well,
if the Sassenach want a fight," said McConnell merrily, "a fight
we'll give them!"
"But
you'll kill so many innocent people," protested Emily. "Why, a bomb
could destroy the Greek theater on Scotia! And all for what?
A little money and a mountain of pride!"
"fa, you ruin my business," croaked
Sarmishkidu.
"And
mine. My whole ship," said Herr Syrup, almost tearfully.
"Oh,
now, now, now, man, ye at least should not be tryin' to blarney me," said
McConnell. "What harm can a six or seven weeks
holiday here do to yez?"
"Ve
ban carrying a load of Brahma bull embryos in ex-ogenetic tanks," said Herr
Syrup. "All de time, dose embryos is
growing." He banged his mug on the table. "Dey is soon fetuses, by
Yudasl Ve have only so much room aboard ship; and it takes time to reash Alamo
from here. If ve are held up more dan two, t'ree veeks—"
"Oh, no!" whispered
McConnell.
"Ja,"
said Herr Syrup.
"Brahma bull calves all over de place. Ve cannot possibly carry dem, and dere is a stiff penalty in our contract."
"Well, now." McConnell looked
uneasy. "Sure, an 'tis sony I am,
an' after this affair has all been settled, if yez wish to file a claim for
damages at Teamhair I am sure the O'Toole government will— Oh, oh." He
stopped. "Where did ye say your owners are?"
"Anguklukkakok
City, Venus."
"Well—"
Major McConnell stared at his toes, rather like a schoolboy caught in the
cookie jar. "Well, now, I meself think 'twas a good thing the
Anguklukkakok Venusians were all converted last century, but truth 'tis,
Jiniral O'Toole is pretty strict an'—"
"I
say," broke in Emily, "what's the matter? I mean, if your owners are—"
"Baptists," said
Rory McConnell.
"Oh,"
said Emily in a small voice. _ McConnell leaped to his feet. One huge fist
crashed on the table so the beer steins leaped. "Well, 'tis sorry I
ami" he shouted. Sarmishkidu flinched from the noise and folded up his
ears. "I've no ill will to anyone, meself, 'tis a dayd done for me
country, an'—an'—an' why must all of yez be tumin' a skylarkin' merry-go into
hurt an' harm an' sorrow?"
He
stormed toward the exit. ^\
"The
score!" thundered Sarmishkidu in his thin, reedy voice. "The score,
you unevaluated partial derivative!"
McConnell
ripped out his wallet, flung a five-pound note blindly on the floor, and went
up the stairs three at a time. The door banged in his wake.
Chapter 3
The
sun was low when Knud
Axel Syrup pedaled a slightly erratic course over the spaceport concrete. He
had given the Alt Heidelberg several hours' worth of his business: partly
because there was nothing else to do but work his way down the beer list, and
partly because Miss Emily Croft-once her tears were dried—was pleasant company,
even for a staid old married man from Simmerboelle. Not that he cared to listen
to her exposition of Duncanite principles, but he had prevailed on her to
demonstrate some classical dances. And she had been a sight worth watching, once he overcame his natural disappointment at
learning that classical dance included neither bumps nor grinds, and found how
to ignore Sarmishkidu's lyre and syrinx accompaniment.
"Dm skal
faa min sofacykel naar jeg doer—" sang Herr
Syrup mournfully. \
"An'
what might that mean?" asked the green-clad guard posted beneath the Mercury Girl.
"You
shall have my old bicycle ven I die," translated Herr Syrup, always willing to
oblige.
"You shall have my old bicycle ven I
die, For de final kilometer Goes on tandem vif St.
Peter. You shall Jiave my old bicycle ven I die." "Oh," said the guard, rather
coldly.
Herr Syrup leaned his vehicle against the
berth. "Dat is a more modem verse," he explained. "De orig'inal
song goes back to de Tirty Years' Var."
"Oh.'
"Gustavus
Adolphus' troops ban singing it as—" Something told Herr Syrup that his
little venture into historical scholarship was not finding a very appreciative
audience. He focused, with some slight difficulty, on the battered hull looming
above him. "Vy is dere no lights?" he asked. "Is all de crew
still in town?"
"I don't know what," confessed the
guard. His manner thawed; he brought up his rifle and began picking his teeth
with the bayonet. " 'Twas a quare thing, begorra.
Your skipper, the small wan in the dishcloth hat, was argyfyin' half the day wi' General OToole. At last he was all but thrown out of
headquarters an' came back here. He found our boys just at the point of
removin' the ship's radio. Well, now, sir, ye can see how we could not let ye
live aboard your ship an* not see-questrate the apparatus by which ye might
call New
Winchester an' bring the King's bloody
soldiers down on our heads. But no, that poor little dark sad man could not be
reas'nable, he began whoopin' and scream in' for all his crew, an' off he
rushed at the head of 'em. Now I ask ye, sir, is that any way to—"
Knud
Axel Syrup scowled, fished out his pipe, and tamped . it full with a calloused thumb. One could not deny, he
thought, Captain Radhakrishnan was normally the mildest of human creatures; but
he had his moments. He superheated, yes, that was what he did, he superheated
without showing a sign, and then all at once some crucial thing happened and
he flashed off in five steam and what resulted
thereafter, that was only known to God and also the Lord.
"Heigh-ho,"
sighed the engineer. "Maybe someone like me vat is not so excited should
go see if dere is any trouble."
He
lit his pipe, stuck it under his mustache, and climbed back onto his bicycle.
Four roads led out of the spaceport, but one was toward town—so, which of three?—wait
a minute. The crew would presumably not have stampeded quite at random. They
would have intended to do something. What? Well, what would send the whole
Shamrock League adventure downward and home? Sabotage of
their new drive unit. And the asteroid's geegee installations lay down that road.
Herr Syrup pedaled quickly off. Twilight fell
as he crossed the Cotswold Mountains, all of 500 meters high, and the gloom in
Sherwood Forest was lightened only by his front-wheel lamp. But beyond lay open
fields where a smoky blue dusk lingered, enough light to show him farmers'
cottages and hayricks and—and—He put on a burst of speed.
The
Girl's crew were on the road, brandishing as wild an
assortment of wrenches, mauls, and crowbars as Herr Syrup had ever seen. Half a
dozen young Grendelian rustics milled about among them, armed with scythes and
pitchforks. The whole band had stopped while Captain Radhakrishnan exhorted a
pair of yeoman who had been hoeing a wayside cabbage patch and now leaned
stolidly on their tools. As he panted closer, Herr Syrup heard one of them:
"Nay,
lad, tha'll no get me to coom."
"But, that is to say, but!"
squeaked Captain Radhakrish-nan. He
jumped up and down, windmilling his arms. The last dayglow flashed off his
monocle; it fell from his eye and he popped it back and cried: "Well, but
haven't you any courage? All we need to do, don't y' know, is destroy their
geegee and they'll jolly well have to go home. I mean to say, we can do it ten
minutes, once we've overcome whatever guards they have posted."
"Posted wi' machine guns," said the farmer.
"Aye,"
nodded his mate. "An' brass knuckles, Ah'll be bound."
"But
where's your patriotism?" shouted Captain Radha-krishnan. "Imitate
the action of the tiger! Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair
nature with hard-favour'd rage, and all that sort of thing."
At
this point Herr Syrup joined them. "You ban crazy?" he demanded.
"Ah."
Captain Radhakrishnan turned to him and beamed. "The
very man. Come, let's leave .these bally caitiffs and proceed."
"But!"
wailed Herr Syrup.
His
assistant, Mr. Shubbish, nudged him with a tentacle and leered: "I fixed
up a Molotov cocktail, chief. Don't worry. We got it made."
There
was something in the air, a smell which—Herr Syrup's bulbous nose drank deep.
Yes. Irish whisky. The crew must have spent a
convivial afternoon with the spaceport sentries. So that explained why they
were so eager!
"Miss
Croft is right," he muttered. "About whisky, anyhow.
It calcifies the liver."
He pushed his bicycle along the road, beside
Radhakrish-nan's babbling commando, and tried to think of something which would
turn them back. Eloquence was never his strong point. Could he borrow some
telling phrase from the great poets of the past, to recall them to reason? But all that rose into his churning brain was the Death Song of
Ragnar Lodhbrok, which consists of phrases like "Where the swords were whining while they sundered helmets"— and did not seem to fit his present needs.
Vaguely through dusk and a grove of trees, he
saw the terraforming plant. And then the air whirred and a small flyer slipped
above him. It hung for an instant, then pounced low and fired a machine-gun
burst. The racket was unholily loud, and the tracer stream burned like meteorites.
"Oh, my
goodness!" exclaimed Captain Radhakrishnan.
"Wait
there!" bawled an amplified voice. "Wait there an' we'll see what
tricks ye're up to, ye Sassenach omadhauns!"
"Eek," said Mr.
Shubbish.
Herr Syrup ascertained that no one had been
hit. As the flyer landed and disgorged more large Celts than he had thought
even a spaceship could hold, he switched off his bicycle lamp and wheeled
softly back out of the suddenly quiet and huddled rebel band. Crouched beneath
a hedgerow, he heard a lusty bellow:
"An'
what wad ye be a-doin here, where 'tis forbidden to venture by order of the
General?"
"We
were just out for a walk," said Captain
Radhakrishnan, much subdued.
"Sure, sure. With weapons to catch the
fresh air, no doubt."
Herr
Syrup stole from the shadows and began to pedal back the way he came. Words
drifted after him: "We'll jist see what himself has * to say about this
donriybrookin', me lads. Throw down your gear! 'Bout face! March!"
Herr
Syrup pedaled a little faster. He would do no one any good languishing in the
Grendel calaboose and living off mulligan stew.
Not,
he thought gloomily, that he was accomplishing much so far.
The
asteroid night deepened around him. In this shallow atmosphere the stars burned
with wintery brilliance. Jupiter was not many millions of kilometers away, so
whitely bright that Grendel's trees cast shadows; you could see the Galilean
satellites with the naked eye. A quick green moon stood up over the topplingly
close horizon and swung toward Aries—one of the other Anglian
asteroids—spinning with its cluster mates around a common center of gravity,
along a common resultant orbit.
Probably New Winchester itself, maddeningly near. When you looked carefully at
the sky, you could identify other little worlds among the constellations. The
Erse Republic was still too remote to see without a telescope, but it was
steadily sweeping closer; conjunction, two months hence, would bring it within
a million kilometers of Anglia.
Herr
Syrup, who was a bit of a bookworm, wondered in a wry way
what Clausewitz or Halford Mackinder would think of modem astropolitics. Solemn
covenants were all very well for countries which stayed put; but if you made a treaty
with someone who would be on the other side of the sun next year, you must
allow for the fact; There were alliances contingent on the phase of a moon and
customs unions which existed only on alternate Augusts and—
And
none of this was solving a problem which, if unsolved, risked a small but
vicious interplanetary war and would most certainly put the Mercury Girl and the Alt Heidelberg Rathskeller out of
business.
When
he re-entered the spaceport, Herr Syrup met a blaze of
lights and a bustle of men. Trucks rumbled back and forth, loaded with castings
and fittings, sacks of cement and gangs of laborers. The Erse were working around the clock to make Grendel mobile. He
dismounted and walked past a sentry, who gave him a suspicious glare, to the
berth ladder, and so up to the airlock. He whistled a little tune as he climbed, trying to assure himself that no one could prove he
had not merely been out on a spin for his health.
The
ship was depressingly large and empty. His footsteps clanged so loud that he
jumped, which only made matters worse, and peered nervously into shadowed
comers. There was no good reason to stay aboard, he thought; an inn would be
more cheerful and he could doubtless get off-season rates; but no, he had been
a spaceman too long, one did not leave a ship completely unwatched. He
contented himself with appropriating a case of Nashombrau from the cargo—since
the consignee had, after all, refused acceptance—and carried it back to his
personal cubbyhole off the engine room.
Claus the crow blinked wicked
black eyes at him from the bunk. "Goddag," he said.
"Goddag"
said Herr Syrup, startled.
To be courteously greeted by Claus was so rare that it was downright ominous.
"Fanden
hade dig!" yelled
the bird. "Chameau! Go
stuff yourself, you scutl Vaya al Diablo!"
"Ah," said Herr Syrup, relieved. "Dat's more
like it."
He
sat down on the bunk and pried the cap off a bottle and tilted it to his mouth.
Claus hopped down and poked a beak in his coat pocket, looking for pretzels.
Herr Syrup stroked the crow in an absent-minded way.
He
wondered if Claus really was • a mutant. Quite possibly.
All ships carried a pet or two, cat or parrot or lizard or uglopender, to deal
with insects and other small vermin, to test dubious air, and to keep the men
company. Claus was the fourth of his spacefaring line; there had been
radiation, both cosmic and atomic, in his ancestral history. To be sure,
Earthside crows had always had a certain ability to talk, but Claus' vocabulary
was fantastic and he was constantly adding to it. Also, could chance account
for the selectivity which, made most of his phrases pure billingsgate?
Well—there
was a more urgent question. How to get a message to New Winchester? The Girl's radio was carefully gutted. How about making a substitute on the sly,
out of spare parts? No, O'Toole was not that kind of a dolt,
he would have confiscated the spare parts as well, including even the radar.
But
let's see. New Winchester was only some thousands of kilometers off. A
spark-gap oscillator, powered by the ship's plant, could send an S.O.S. that
far, even allowing for the inverse-square enfeeblement of an unbeamed broadcast.
It would not be too hard to construct such an oscillator out of ordinary
electrical stuff lying around the engine room. But it would take a while. Would
O'Toole let Knud Axel Syrup tinker freely, day after day, in the captive ship?
He would not.
Unless,.of course,
there was a legitimate reason to tinker. If there was some other job to be done, which Knud Axel Syrup could pretend to be doing while
actually making a Marconi broadcaster. Only, there
were competent engineers among the Erse. It would be strange if one of them, at
least, did not inspect the work aboard the Girl from time to time. And such a man could not be told that an oscillator
was a dreelsprail for the
hypewangle camit.
So.
Herr Syrup opened another bottle and recharged his pipe. One thing you must say
for the Erse, given a trail of logic to follow, they follow it till the sun
freezes over. Having mulled the question in his mind for an hour or two, Herr
Syrup concluded that he could only get away with building an oscillator if he
was in some place where no Erse engineer would come poking an unwelcome nose.
So what was needed was an excuse to—
Along
about midnight, Herr Syrup left his cabin and went into the engine room.
Happily humming, he opened up the intemal-field compensator which had so badly
misbehaved on the trip down. Hm, hm,*hm, let us see .
.. . yes, the trouble was there, a burned-out
field coil, easily replaced . . . tum-te-tum-te-tum. Herr Syrup installed a
coil of impedance calculated to unbalance the circuits. He shorted out two more
coils, sprayed a variable condenser lightly with clear plastic, removed a
handful of wiring and flushed it down the toilet, and spent an hour opening two
big gas-filled rectifier rubes, injecting them with tobacco-juice vapor, and
re-sealing them. Having done which, he returned to his bunk,
changed into night clothes, and took a copy of Kant's Critique off the shelf to read himself to
sleep.
"Kraa,
kraa, kraa," grumbled Claus. "Bloody foolishness,
damme. Pokker!
Vngah, ungah!"
Chapter
4
Inquiry
in the morning established
that the office of the Erse military commander had been set up in a
requisitioned loft room downtown, above Miss Thirkell's Olde Giftie Shoppe.
Shuddering his way past a shelf of particularly malignant-looking china dogs,
Herr Syrup climbed a circular stair so quaint that he could barely squeeze his
way along it. Halfway up, a small round man coming hastily down caromed off his
paunch.
"I
sayl" exclaimed the small man, adjusting his pince-nez indignandy. He
picked up his briefcase. "Would you
mind backing down again and letting me past?"
"Vy
don't you back up?" asked Herr Syrup in a harsh mood.
"My
dear fellow," said the small man, "the right-of-way in a situation
like this has been clearly established by Gooch vs. Torpenhow, Holm Assizes
2098, not to mention—"
Herr
Syrup gave up and retreated. "You is a
lawyer?" he asked.
"A solicitor? Yes, I have the honor to be Thwickhammer of Stonefriend, Stonefriend,
Thwickhammer, Thwickhammer, Thwickhammer, Thwickhammer, and Stonefriend, of Lincoln's
Inn. My card, sir." The little man cocked his
head. "I say, aren't you one of the spacemen who arrived yesterday?"
"Ja. I vas yust going to see about—"
"Don't
bother, sir, don't bother. Beasts, that's all these invaders are, beasts with
green tunics. When I heard of your crew's arrest, I resolved at once that they
should not lack for legal representation, and went to see this OToole person.
'Release them, sir,' I demanded, 'release them this
instant on reasonable bail or I shall be forced to obtain a writ of habeas
corpus'." Mr. Thwickhammer turned purple. "Do you know I what OToole told me I could do with such a writ? No, you | cannot
imagine what he said. He said—"
"I
can imagine, /a," interrupted Herr Syrup. Since they were now back in earshot of Miss Thirkell and the china dogs, he was
spared explicit details.
"I
am afraid your friends will be held in gaol until the end of the
occupation," said Mr. Thwickhammer. "Beastly, sir.
I have assured myself that the conditions of detention are not unduly
uncomfortable, but really—I must say—1" He bowed. "Good day,
sir."
Miss
Thirkell looked wistfully at Herr Syrup, across the length of her deserted
shoppe, and said: "if you don't care for one of the little dogs, sir, I
have some nice lampshades with 'Souvenir of Grendel' and a copy of Trees printed on them."
"No,
t'ank you yust the same," said Herr Syrup, and went quickly back upstairs.
The thought of what an ax could do among all those Dresden shepherdesses and
clock-bellied Venuses made him sympathize with his remote ancestors' practice
of going berserk.
A
sentry outside the office was leaning out the window, admiring Grendel's young
ladies as they tripped by in their brief light dresses under a fresh morning
breeze. Herr Syrup did not wish to interrupt him, but went quickly through the
anteroom and the door beyond.
General
Scourge-of-the-Sassenach O'Toole looked up from a heap of papers on his desk.
The long face tightened. Finally he clipped: "So there ye are. An' who
might have given ye an appointment?"
"Ja," agreed Herr Syrup, sitting down.
"If
'tis about your spalpeen friends ye've come, waste no
time. Ye'll not see thim released before Laoighise shall be free."
"From de Shannon to de sea?"
"Says the Shan Van Vaughtl" roared
OToole automatically. He caught himself, snapped his mousetrap mouth shut, and
glared.
"Er—" Herr Syrup gathered courage
and rushed in. "Ve have trouble on our ship. De internal compensator has
developed enough bugs to valk avay vit' it. As long as ve is stranded here
anyhow, you must let us make repairs."
"Oh,
must I?" murmured O'Toole, the glint of power in his eye.
"Ja, any distressed ship has got to be let fixed, according to de Convention
of Luna. You vould not vant it said dat you vas a barbarian violating
international law, vould you?"
General
OToole snarled wordlessly. At last he flung back: "But your crew broke the
law first, actm' as belligerents when they was
supposed to be neutrals. I've every right to hold them, accident to their ship
or not, while the state of emergency obtains."
Herr Syrup sighed. He had expected no more.
"At least you have no charge against me," he said. "I vas not
any place near de trouble last night. So you got to let me repair de damage,
no?"
OToole
thrust a bony jaw at him. "I've only your word there's any damage at
all."
"I
knew you vould t'iak dat, so before
I come here I asked your shief gyronios enshineer vould he please to look at
our compensator and check it himself." Herr Syrup unfolded a sheet of
S.L.I.E.F. letterhead from his pocket. "He gave me di6."
OToole squinted at the
green paper and read:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
This
is to say that I have personal inspected the internal field compensator of I/S Mercury Girl and made every test known to man. I certify
that I have never seen any piece of apparatus so deranged. I further certify as
my considered opinion that the devil has got into it and only Father Kelly can
make the necessary repairs.
Shamus
O'Banion CoY,
Eng., S.L.I.E.F.
"Hm," said
OToole. "Well, yes."
"You
realize I must take de ship up and put her in orbit outside Grendel's geegee
field," said Herr Syrup. "I vill need freefall
conditions to test and calibrate my repairs."
"Yesl"
OToole's arm shot out till his accusing finger was almost in the Dane's mustache.
"Let- ye take the ship aloft so ye can sail it clear to New
Winchester!"
Herr
Syrup suppressed an impulse to bite. "I expect you vill put a guard
aboard," he said. "Yust some dumb soldier vat does not know enough
about technics to be of any use to you down here."
"Hm," said OToole. "Hm, hm, hm." He gave the other man a malevolent
glance. "Tis
nothin' but trouble I've
had wi' the lot of yez," he complained, "an'
sure I am in me heart ye're'plottin' to make more. No, I'll not let ye do it.
By the brogans Brian Bora, here on the ground ye stay!"
Herr
Syrup shrugged. "Veil," he said, "if you vant all de Solar
System to know later on how you vas breaking de Lunar Convention and not
letting a poor old spaceman fix his ship like de law says he is entitled to—ja, I guess maybe de Erse Republic does not care vat odder countries t'ink
about its civilization."
"The
devil take ye for a hairsplittin' wretch!" howled O'Toole. "Sit
there. Wait right there, me fine lad, an' if 'tis space law ye want, then space
law yell get!"
His
finger stabbed the desk communicator buttons. "I want Captain Flanahan . .
. No, no, no, ye leatherhead, I mean Captain Flanahan,
the captain of the Shamrock League Irredentist Expeditionary Force's ship Dies I.R.A!"
After an interchange of Gaelic, O'Toole
snapped off the communicator and gave Herr Syrup a triumphant look. "I've
checked the space law," he growled. " 'Tis
true ye're entitled to put your vessel in orbit if that's needful for your
repairs. But I'm allowed to place a guard aboard her to protect our own
legitimate interests; an' the guard is entitled not to hazard his life in an
undermanned ship. Especially whin I legally can an' will take the precaution of
impoundin' all the lifeboats an' propulsive units an' radios off the spacesuits,
as well as the ship's radio an' radar which I have already got. So by the law,
I cannot allow ye to lift with me guardsman aboard unliss ye've a crew iv at least three. An' your own crew is all in pokey, where
I'm entitled to keep them till the conclusion of hostilities! Ha, ha, Mister
Space Lawyer, an' how do ye like that?"
Chapter
5
Herb
Syrup leaned his bicycle against the wall of the
Alt Heidelberg and clumped downstairs. Sarmishkidu von Him-melschmidt hitched
up his leather shorts and undulated to meet the guest. "Grass Gott," he piped. "And what will we have to
drink today?"
"Potassium-40 cyanide on de rocks,"
said the engineer moodily, lowering himself to a bench. "Unless you can find
me a pair of spacemen."
"What
for?" asked the Martian, drawing two mugs and sitting down.
Herr
Syrup explained. Since he had to trust somebody somewhere along the line, he
assumed Sarmishkidu would not blab what the real plan was, to construct a
spark-gap transmitter and signal King Charles.
"Achl"
whistled the innkeeper. "So! So you are actual
trying to do somet'ings about this situation what is mine business about to
ruin." In a burst of sentiment, he cried out: "I salute you, Herr
Syrup! You are such a hero, I do not charge you for
dis vun beer!"
"Tanks,"
snapped the Dane. "And now tell me vere to find two men I can use."
"Hmmm. Now that is somewhat less susceptible to logical analysis."
Sarmishkidu rubbed his nose with an odd tentacle. "It is truistic that we
must axiomatize the problem. So, imprimis, there are no qualified Anglian
spacemen on Grendel at the moment. The interasteroid lines all maintain their
headquarters elsewhere. Secundus, while there are no active collaborationist
elements in the population, the nature of its distribution in n—dimensional
psychomathematical phase space implies that there would be considerable
difficulty in finding suitable units of humanity, dH.
The people of Grendel tend _ to be either stolid farmers, mechanics, und so wetter, brave enough but too unimaginative to see the
opportunities in your scheme, or else tourist-facility keepers whose lives
have hardly qualified them to take risks. Those persons with enough fire and
flexibility to be of use to you would probably lack discretion and might blurt
out—"
"Ja, ja, ja," said
Herr Syrup. "But
dere are still several t'ousand people on dis asteroid. Among dem all dere must
be some ready and able to, uh, strike a blow for freedom."
"I
am!" cried a clear young voice at the door, and Emily Croft tripped down
the stairs trailing vine leaves.
Herr Syrup started.
"Vat are you doing here?" he asked.
"I saw your bicycle outside," said
the girl, "and, well, you were so sympathetic yesterday that I wanted
to—" She hesitated, looking down at her small sandaled feet and biting a
piquantly curved lip. "I
mean, maybe you were
spreading pumpernickel with that awful Limburger cheese instead of achieving
glowing health with dried prunes and other natural foods, but you were so nice
about encouraging me to show you classical dance that I thought—"
Herr
Syrup's pale eyes traveled up and down an assemblage of second through fifth
order curves which, while a bit on the slender side of his own preferences, was
far and away the most attractive sight he had encountered for a good many
millions of kilometers. "Ja,"
he said kindly. "I am
interested in such t'ings and I hope you vill show me more —Ahem!" He
blushed. Emily blushed. "I mean to say, Miss Croft, I have seldom seen so
much—Veil, anyhow, later on, sure. But now please to run along. I have got to
talk secrets vif Herr von Himmelschmidt."
Emily
quivered. "I heard what you said," she whispered, large-eyed.
*Tfou mean about making Grendel free?"
asked Herr Syrup hopefully.
His
hopes were fulfilled. She quivered again. "Yes! Oh, but do you think, do
you really think you can?"
He
puffed himself and blew out his mustache. "Ja," I t'ink dere is a chance." He buffed his
nails, looked at them critically, and buffed them some more. T have my
met'ods," he said in his most mysterious accent.
"Oh,
but that's wonderful!" caroled Emily, dancing over to take his arm. She
put her face to his ear. "What can I do?" she breathed.
"Vat? You? Vy, you yust
vait and—"
"Oh, no! Honestly! I mean to say, Mr. Syrup, I know all about spies and, and
revolutions and interplanetary conspiracies and eveiything. Why, I found a
technical error in The
Bride of the Spider and
wrote to the author about it and he wrote back the nicest letter admitting I
was right and he hadn't read the book I cited. There was this old chap, you
see, and this young chap, and the old chap had invented
a death ray—"
"Look,"
said Herr Syrup, "ve is not got any deat' rays to vorry about. Ve have
yust got somet'ing to do vat should not be known to very many folks before ve
do it. Now you run on home and vait till it is all over vit'."
Emily
clouded up. She sniffed a tiny sniff. "You don't think I can be
trusted," she accused.
"Vy, I never said dat,
I only said—"
"You're just like all the rest."
She bent her golden head and dabbed at her eyes. "All of you. You either
call me crazy, and believe those horrible lies about Miss Duncan's private
life, and try to force things on me to calcify my liver, or you—you let me go
on, I mean making a perfect ass of myself—"
"I never said you vas a perfect
ass!" shouted Herr Syrup. He paused and reflected a moment.
"Aldough,"- he murmured, "you do have—"
"—and
laugh at me behind my back, and, and, and, uh-h-h-h!" Emily took her face
out of her hands, swallowed, sniffled, and turned drooping toward the stairs.
"Never mind," she said disconsolately. "Ill go.
I know I bother you, I mean to say I'm sorry I do."
"But—pokker, Miss Croft, I vas only—"
"One
moment," squeaked Sarmishkidu. "Please! Wait a short
interval of time dT, please, I have an idea."
"Yes?"
Emily pirouetted, smiling like sunshine through rain.
"I
think,-" said Sarmishkidu, "we will do well
to take the young lady into our confidence. Her discretion may not be infinite
but her patriotism will superimpose caution. And, while she has not unduly
encouraged any young men of Grendel during the period of my residence here, I
am sure she must be far better acquainted with a far
larger circle thereof than foreigners like you and me
could ever hope to become. She can recommend whom you should approach with your
plan. Is that not good?"
"By
Judas, Ja!" exclaimed Herr Syrup. "I am sorry, Miss
Croft. You really can help us. Sit down and have a glass of pure spring vater
on me."
Emily listened raptly as he unfolded his
scheme. At the end, she sprang to her feet, threw herself onto Herr Syrup's
lap, and embraced him heartily.
"Hoy!"
he said, grabbing his pipe as it fell and brushing hot coals off his jacket.
"Hoy, dis is lots of fun, but—"
"You
have your crew right here already, you old silly,'' the girl told him. "Me."
"You?"
"And Herr von Himmelschmidt, of
course."
Emily beamed at the Martian.
"Eep!" said
Sarmishkidu in horror.
Emily
bounced back to her feet. "But of course!" she warbled. "Of course! Don't you see it? You can't get
really-truly spacemen anyway, I mean a garageman or a chef couldn't help you in
your real work, so why let the secret go further than it has already? I mean,
dear old Sarmishkidu and I could hand you your spanner and your ape wrench and
your abacus or whatever that long thin calculating thing is called, just as
well as Mr. Groggins down at the sweet shop, and if there are any secret
messages, why, we can talk to each other in Attic Greek. And I do make tea
competently, Mum admits it, even though I never drink tea myself because it
tans the kidneys or something, and I can take along some dried apricots and
bananas and apples for myself and won't that terrible Major McConnell be just
furious when he sees how we outsmarted him! Maybe then he will understand what
all that whisky and bacon is doing to his brain, and will stop doing it and
exercise himself in classical dance, because he really is quite graceful,
don't you know—"
"Ooooh!"
said Sarmishkidu. "No, wait, wait, wait, ach, wait just one moment! We are not qualified spacemen anyhow so OToole
does not accept us for a crew."
"I
t'ought dat over," said Herr Syrup, "and checked in de law books to
make sure. In an emergency like dis, de highest ranking officer available, me,
can deputize non-certified personnel, and dey vill have regular spacemen's
standing vile de situation lasts. OToole vill eider have to let me raise ship
vit' you two or else release two of my shipmates."
"Then you will take us along?"
pounced Emily.
Herr
Syrup shrugged. He might as well have a crew worth looking' at.
"Sure," he said. "You is velcome."
Sarmishkidu
rolled his eyes uneasily. "Better I stay on de ground. I got mine business
to look after."
"Oh,
nonsensel" said Emily. "If I go, we just about have to have a Martian
for a chaperone, not that I don't trust Mr. Syrup because he really is a sweet
old gentleman—oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Syrup, I didn't mean to make you wince—well, I
mean to say, of course I'll have to go aboard without letting Father know or he
would forbid me, but why distress the old dear afterward with the thought that
even if I liberated Grendel I compromised my reputation? I mean, he is the
vicar, you know, and it's been hard enough for him, my bringing home Duncanite
teachings from Miss Carruthers' Select School for Young Ladies on Wilberforce.
Though I didn't learn about it in class but from a lecture in the town hall
which I happened to attend, and—And your tavern business, Mr. Sarmishkidu,
isn't worth tuppence if we don't get rid of the Erse before vacation season
begins, so won't you please come, there's a dear, or else I'll ask all my young
men friends never to come in here again."
Sarmishkidu groaned.
i
Chapter
8
Hehh
Syrup halted his bicycle and Herr von Himmel-schmidt untied his tentacles from around the baggage rack. A
small bright sun shone through small bright clouds on Grendel's spaceport, the
air blew soft and sweet, and even the old Mercury Girl looked a trifle less discouraged than usual.
Not far away a truckload of Erse soldiers was bowling toward the geegee site
to work, and however much one desired to throw them off this planetoid, one had
to admit their young voices soared miraculously sweet.
"—Ochone! Ochone! the men of Ulster cry.
Ochonel Ochone! The lords
an' ladies weepin!
Dear,
dear the man that nivver, nivver more shall be.
Hoy, there, Paddy, see the colleen, ah, the brave broight soight iv her, whee-ee-whee-ew!"
The
sentry at the ship berth slanted his rifle across Herr Syrup's path. "Halt,"
he said.
"Vat?" asked the
engineer.
"Or I shoot,"
explained the guard earnestly.
"Vat
is dis?" protested Herr Syrup. "I got a right on my own ship. I got
de General's written permission, by yiminy, to take her up."
"That's
as may be," said the guard, hefting his weapon, "but I've me orders
too, which is that ye're not trusted an' ye don't go aboard till your full crew
an the riprysintative of the Shamrock League is nere."
"Oh,
veil, if dat is all," said Herr Syrup, relieved, "den here comes Miss
Croft now, and I see a Erser beside her too."
Still
trailed by a receding tide of whistles, Emily came with long indignant strides
across the concrete. She bore an outsize picnic basket which her green-clad
escort kept trying to take for her. She would snatch it from him, stamp her
foot, and try to leave him behind. Unfortunately, he was so big that her
half-running pace was an easy amble for him.
Sarmishkidu
squinted. "By all warped Riemannian space," he said at last, "is
that not Major McConnell?"
Herr Syrup's heart hit the
ground with a dull thud.
"Ah,
there, greetin's an' salutations!" boomed the large young man. "An'
accept me congratulations, sir, on choosin' the loveliest crew which iwer put
to sky! Though truth 'tis, she might be just a trifle friendlier. Ah, but once
up among the stars, who knows what may develop?"
"You don't mean you ban our guard?"
choked Herr Syrup.
"Yes.
An' 'tis guardsmanlike I look, eh, what?" beamed Rory McConnell, slapping
the machine pistol and trench knife holstered at his belt, the tommy gun at his shoulder, and the rifle across his
fifty-kilo field pack.
"But you ban needed down here!"
"Not so much, now that we're organized
an* work is proceedin' on schedule." McConnell winked. "An' faith,
when I heard what crew yez would have, sir, why, I knew at once where me real
obligations lay. For 'tis five years an' more that me aged mither on Caer Dubh
has plagued me to marry, that she may have grandchilder to brighten her auld
age; so I am but doin' me filial duty." He nudged Herr Syrup with a
confidential thumb.
When
the engineer had been picked up, dusted off, and apologized to, he objected:
"But does your chief, O'Toole, know you ban doing dis? I t'ought he would
not like you associating vit' us."
"O'Toole is somewhat of a fanatic,"
admitted McConnell, "but he gave me this assignment whin I asked for it.
For ye understand, sir, he is not easy in the heart of him, as long as ye are
in orbit with any chance whatsoever to quare his plans. So 'tis happiest he'll
be, the soonest ye've finished your repairs an' returned here. Now I am
certificated more as a pilot an' navigator than an injineer, but ye, well know
each department must be able to handle the work of t'other in emergency, so I
will be able to give yez skilled assistance in your task. I've enough
experience in geegees to know exactly, what ye're doin'."
"Guk," said
Sarmishkidu.
"What?" asked McConnell.
"I
said, 'Guk,' " answered Sarmishkidu in a chill voice, "which was
precisely my meaning."
"All
aboard!" bawled the Erseman, and went up the berth ladder two rungs at a time.
Emily
hung back. "I couldn't do anything
about it," she whispered, white-faced. "He just insisted. I mean, I
even hit him on the chest as hard as I could, and he grinned, you have to admit
he's as strong as Herakles and if he would only study classical dance to
improve his gait he would be nearly perfect." She flushed.
"Physically, I mean, of course! But what I wanted to say is, shall we give up our plan?"
"No,"
said Herr Syrup glumly, "ve ban committed now. And maybe a chance comes to
carry it out. Let's go." He took his bicycle by the seat bar and dragged
it up into the ship. No Dane is ever quite himself without a bicycle, though it
is not true that all of them sleep with their machines. Fewer than ten percent
do this.
He
had been prepared to pilot the Girl into
orbit himself, which was not beyond his training; but McConnell did it with so
expert a touch that even the transition from geegee field to free fall was
smooth. Once established in path, Herr Syrup jury-rigged a polarity reverser in the ship's propulsive circuits, to furnish weight
again inside the hull. It was against regulations, since it immobilized the
drive; and, of course, it lacked the self-adjustment of a true compensator.
But this was a meteor-swept region, so there was no danger in floating inert;
and, though neither spacemen nor asterites mind weightlessness per se, an attractive field always simplifies work.
No one who has not toiled in free fall, swatting gobs of molten solder from his
face while a mislaid screwdriver bobs off on its own merry way, has experienced
the full perversity of matter.
"Ve
can turn off de pull ven ve vish to test repairs," said Herr Syrup.
Rory
McConnell looked around the crowded engine room and the adjacent workshop. T
envy yez this," he said, with a bare touch of wistfulness. " Tis spaceships are me proper place, an' not all this
hellin' about wi' guns an' drums."
"Er—/a." Herr Syrup hesitated. "Veil, you know,
dere is really no reason to hodder you vit' de yob in here. Yust leave me do it
alone and—hm—ja,"
he finished in a blaze of
genius, "go talk at Miss Croft."
"Oh,
111 be doin' that, all right," grinned McConnell, "but I'd not be
dallyin' about all the time whin another man was laborin'. No, 111 sweat over
that slut of a machine right along wi' yez, Pop."
He raised one ruddy eyebrow above a wickedly blue sidelong glance. "Also,
I'D not be makin' of unsubstantiated accusations, but 'tis conceivable ye
might not work on it yourself at alL at all, if left alone. Some might even
imagine ye— oh—makin' a radio to call bis bloody
majesty. So, just to keep evil tongues from waggin', well retain all
electrical equipment in here, an' here I meself will work an' sleep. Eh?"
He gave Herr Syrup a comradely slap on the back.
"Gott in Himmeir yelped Sarmishkidu from the passageway outside.
"What exploded in there?"
An arbitrary pattern of watches had been
established to give the Mercury
Girl some equivalent of
night and day. After supper, which she had cooked, Emily Croft wandered up to
the bridge while Sarmishkidu was simultaneously, washing the dishes and mopping
the galley floor. She stood gazing out the viewports for a long time.
Only
feebly accelerated by Grendel's weak natural gravity, the ship would take more
than a hundred hours to complete one orbit. At this distance, the asteroid
filled seven degrees of sky, a clear and lovely half-moon, though only approximately
spherical. On the dark part lay tiny twinkles of light, scattered farms and
hamlets, the starlit sheen of Lake Alfred the Great. The town, its church on
the doll-like edge of naked-eye visibility, its roofs making a ruddy blur, lay
serene a bit west of the sunset line: tea time, she thought sentimentally,
scones and marmalade before a crackling fire, and Dad and Mum trying not to
show their worry about her. Then, dayward, marched the
wide sweep of fields and woods under shifting cloud bands, the intense green of
the fens, the Cotswolds and rustling Sherwood beyond. Grendel turned slowly
against a crystal blackness set with stars, so many and so icily beautiful that
she wanted to cry.
When
she actually felt tears and saw the vision blur, she bit her. lip. Crying wouldn't be British. It wouldn't even be
Duncanite. Then she realized that the tears were due to a whiff from Herr
Syrup's pipe.
The
engineer slipped through the door and closed it behind him. "Histl"
he warned hoarsely.
"Oh,
go hist yourself!" snapped the girl. And then, in
contrition: "No, I'm sorry. A bad mood. I just
don't know what to think."
"Ja. I feel I am up in an alley myself."
"Maybe
it's the water aboard ship. It's tanked, isn't it? I mean, it doesn't come
bubbling up from some mossy spring, does it?"
"No."
"I thought not. I guess that's it. I
mean, why I feel so mixed up inside, all sad and yet not really sad. Do you
know what I mean? I'm afraid I don't myself."
"Miss Croft,"
said Herr Syrup, "ve is in trouble."
"Oh. You mean about
Ro—about Major McConnell?"
"Ja. He has taken inventory of everyt'ing aboard.
He has stowed all de electric stuffs in a cabinet vich he has locked, and he
has de key, himself. How are ve going to make a broadcaster now?"
"Oh,
damn Major McConnelll" cried Emily. "I mean, damn him, actuallyl"
"Dere
is a hope I can see," said Herr Syrup. "It vill depend on you."
"Ohl"
Emily brightened. "Why, how wonderful! I mean, I
was afraid it would be so dull, just waiting for you to— And I'm sorry to say
it, but the ship is not very esthetic, I mean there's just white paint and all
those clocks and dials and thingummies and really, I haven't found any books except
things like The
Jovian Intersatellite Pilot With Ephe-merides or something else called Pictures For Men, where the women aren't in classical poses at
all, I mean it's—" She broke off, confused. "Where was I? Oh, yes,
you wanted me to—But that's terrifl I mean, wheel" She jumped up and down,
twirled till her tunic stood out horizontally and her wreath tilted askew, and
grabbed Herr Syrup's hands. "What can I do? Do you want any secret
messages translated into Greek?"
"No,"
said the engineer. "Not yust now. Uh . . . er—" He stared down,
blushing, and dug at the carpet with one square-toed boot. "Veil, you see,
Miss Croft, if McConnell got distracted from vorking on de compensator ... if he vas not in de machine shop vit'
me very often, and den had his mind on somet'ing else ... I could pick de lock on de electrics box and sneak out de
parts I need and carry on vit' our plan. But, veil, first he must be given some
odder interest dat vill hold all his attention for several days."
"Oh,
dear," said Emily. She laid a finger to her cheek. "Let me think.
What is he interested in? Well, he talks a lot about spaceships, he wants to be
an interplanetary explorer when this trouble is over, and, you know, he really
is enthusiastic about that, why, he's so much like a little boy I want to
rumple his hair—" She stopped, gulping. "No. That won't do. I mean,
the only person here who can talk to him about spaceships is yourself."
T
am afraid I am not yust exactly his type," said Herr Syrup in an elaborate
tone.
"I
mean, you can't keep him distracted, because you're the
one we want to have working behind his back," said Emily. "Let me
see, what else? Yes, I believe Major McConnell mentioned being fond of poker.
It's a card game, you know. And Mr. Sarmishkidu is very interested in, uh,
permutations. So maybe they could—"
"I
am afraid Sarmishkidu is not yust exactly his type eider." Herr Syrup
frowned. "For a young lady vat is so mad *vit dat crazy Erser, you ban
spending a lot of time vit' him to know his tastes so veil."
Emily's
face heated up. "Don't you call me a collaborationist!" she shouted.
"Why, when the invaders first landed I put on a Phrygian liberty cap and
went around with a flag calling on all our men to follow me and drive them off.
And nobody did. They said they had nothing more powerful than a few shotguns. As if that made any difference!"
"It
does make some difference," said Herr Syrup placa-tingly.
"But
as for seeing Major McConnell since, why, how could I .help it? I mean, O'Toole
made him the liaison officer for us Grendelians, because even O'Toole must
admit that Rory has more charm. And naturally he had to discuss many things
with my father, who's one of Grendel's leading citizens, the vicar, you know.
And while he was in our house, well, he's a guest even if he is an enemy, and
no Croft has been impolite to a guest since Sir Hardman Croft showed a Puritan
constable the, door in 1657. I mean, it just isn't done. Of course I had to be
nice to him. And he does have a lovely soft voice', and any Duncanite
appreciates musical qualities, and that doesn't make me a collaborator, because
I'd lead an attack on their spaceship this very day if somebody would only help
me. And if I don't want any of them to get hurt, why, I'm only thinking about
their innocent parents and, and sweethearts, and so there!"
"Oh," said Herr Syrup.
His
pipe had gone out. He became very busy rekindling it. "Veil, Miss,"
he said, "in dat case you vill help us out and try to distract de mayor's
mind off his vork, vill you not? It ban your patriotic
duty.
Yust-encourashe-him-in-a-nice-vay-because-he-is-really-in-love-vit'-you-okay?
Good night." And hiding his beet-colored face in a cloud of smoke, Herr
Syrup bolted.
Emily
stared after him. "Why, good heavens," she whispered. "I mean,
actually!"
Her
eyes traveled back to Grendel and the stars. "But that isn't so," she
protested. "It's just what they call blarney. Makros Logos to be exact."
No
one answered her for a moment, then feet resounded in the companionway and a
hearty voice boomed: "Emily, are ye up there?"
"Oh,
dear!" exclaimed the girl. She looked around for a mirror, made do with a
polished chrome surface, and adjusted her wreath and the yellow hair below it.
She must not let a foreigner see an Anglian lady disarrayed, and really, she
regretted not having any lipstick and felt sure that abstention from such
materials didn't represent the true Dun-canism.
Rory
McConnell clumped in, his shoulders brushing the door jambs and his head
stooped under the lintel. "Ah, macushla, I found ye,"
he said. "Will ye not speek for a bit to a weary man, so he can sleep
content? For even the hour or two of testin' I've been able to do today on that
devil's machine has revealed nothin' to me but me own bafflement, an' 'tis
consolation I need."
Emily
found herself breathing as hard as if she had run a long
distance. Oh, stop it! she
scolded. Hyperventilating! No wonder you feel so weak and dizzy.
The
Erseman leaned close. For once he did not grin, he smiled, and it was not fair
that a barbarian could have so tender a smile. "Sure an' I never knew a pulse in
any throat could be that adorable," he murmured.
"Nice
weather we're having, isn't it?" said Emily,
since nothing else came to mind.
"The wither in space is always noice, though perhaps just a
trifle monotonous," quirked McConnell. He came around the pilot chair and
stood beside her. The red hairs on the back of one hand brushed her bare thigh;
she gulped and clung to the chair for support.
After
all, her duty was to distract him. She was certain that even Isadora Duncan,
the pure and serene, would have approved.
McConnell reached out a long arm and switched
off the bridge lights, so that they stood in the soft, drenching radiance of
Grendel, among a million stars. "'Tis enough to make a man believe in
destiny," he said.
"It
is?" asked Emily. Her voice wobbled, and she berated herself. "I
mean, what is?"
"Crossin'
space on this mission an' findin' ye waitin' at the
yonder end. For I'll admit to yez what I've dared say to no one else, 'tis not
important to me who owns that silly piece of ore Laoighise. I went with O'Toole
because a McConnell has never hung back from any brave venture, arragh, how ye
wring. truth from me which I had not ayven admitted to meselfl Oh, to be sure,
I'm proud to do me country a service, but I cannot think 'tis so great an' holy
a deed as O'Toole prates of. So I came more on impulse than plan, me darlin',
an' yet I found me destiny. The which is your own
sweet self."
Emily's
heart thumped with unreasonable violence. She clasped her hands tightly to her
breast, because one of them had been sneaking toward McConnell's broad paw.
"Oh?" she said out of dry lips. "I mean, really?"
"Yes.
An' sorry I am that our work distresses yez. I can only hope to make amends
later. But trust well have fifty or sixty years for
that!"
"Er, yes," said
Emily.
"What?"
roared McConnell. He spun on his heel, laid his hands
about her waist, and stared wildly down into her eyes. "Did I hear ye say
yes?"
"I . . . I . . . I—No, please listen to
me!" wailed Emily, pushing against his chest. "Let go! I mean, all I
wanted to say was, if you don't really care how this business comes out, if you
really don't think Lois is worth risking a war over and —" She drew a deep
breath and tacked a smile on her face. Now was the time to distract him, as Mr.
Syrup had requested. "And if you really want to please me, R-r-r-ro—
Major McConnell, then why don't you help us right now? Just let us make that
sparky osculator or whatever it is to call New Winchester for help, and
everything will be so nice and—I mean—"
His
hands fell to his sides and his mouth stretched tight. He turned from her,
leaned on the instrument board and stared out at the constellations.
"No,"
he said: "I've given me oath to support the Force to the best of me
ability: Did I turn on me comrades, there'd be worse than hellfire waitin' for
me, there'd be the knowin' of meself for less than a man."
Emily
moistened her hps. There must be some way to distract him, she thought
frantically. That beautiful lady agent in The Son of
the Spider, the
one who lured Sir Frederic Banton up to her apartment while the Octopus stole
the secret papers from his office—She stood frozen among thunders, unable to
bring herself to it, until another memory came, some pictures of an accidental
atomic explosion of Callisto and its aftermath. That sort of thing might be
done to little children, deliberately, if there was a war.
She
stole up behind McConnell, laid her cheek against his back and her arms around
his waist. "Oh, Rory," she said.
"What?"
He spun around again. He was so quick on his feet she didn't have time to let
go and was whipped around with him. "Where are ye?" he called.
"Here,"lhe said,
picking herself up.
She
leaned on his arm—she had never before known a man who could take her whole
weight thus without even stirring—and forced her eyes toward his. "Oh,
Rory," she tried again.
"What do ye mean?" It was a
disquieting surprise that he did not sweep her into his embrace, but stood
rigidly and stared.
"Rory," she laid. Then, feeling
that her conversation was too limited, she got out in a rush of words:
"Let's just forget all these awful things. I mean, let's just stay up here
and, and, and I'll explain about Duncanism to you and, well, I mean don't go
back to the engine room, pleaset"
He said in a rasp: "So 'tis me ye'd be
keepin' up here whilst auld Syrup does what he will in the stern? An' what do
ye offer me besides conversation?"
"Everything!"
said Emily, taking an automatic cue from the beautiful lady agent vs. Sir
Frederic; because her ow» mind felt full of glue and hammers.
"Everything,
eh?"
Suddenly
his arm jerked from beneath her. She fell in a heap. The green-clad body
towered above, up and up and up, and
a voice like gunfire crashed:
"So
that's the game, is it? So ye think I'd sell the honor of the McConnells
for—for—Why, had I known yez for what ye are, I'd not have given yez a second
look the third time we met. An' to think I wanted yez for the mother of me
sons!"
"No," cried Emily. She sat up, hearing herself call like a
stranger across light-years. "No, Rory, when I said everything I didn't
mean everything! I just—"
"Never
mind," he snarled, and went from the bridge. The door cracked shut behind
him.
Chapter 7
Knud
Axel Syrup
paused a moment in the
after transverse corridor. The bulkhead which faced him bore a stencilled KEEP
OUT and three doors: the
middle one directly to the engine room, the right-hand one to the machine shop,
and the left to his small private cabin. These two side chambers also had doors
opening directly on the engine room. It made for a lack of privacy distressing
in the present cloak-and-dagger situation.
However,
the wild Erseman would no doubt be up on the bridge for hours. Herr Syrup
sighed, a little enviously, and went
through the central door.
"Awwrk,"
said Claiis, flapping in from the cabin. "Nom dun nom d'une vache! Schweinhund! Sanamdbichel"
"Exactly,"
said Herr Syrup. He entered the little bathroom behind the main energy
converter and extracted a bottle of beer from a cooler which he had installed
himself. Claus paced impatiently along a rheostat. Herr Syrup crumbled a
pretzel for him and poured a little beer into a saucer. The crow jabbed his
beak into the liquid, tilted back his black head, shook out his feathers, and
croaked: "Gaudea-mus
igitur!"
"You're velcome," said Herr Syrup.
He inspected the locked electrical cabinet. Duplicating a Yale key would call
for delicate instruments and skilled labor. After latching all doors to the
outside, he went into the machine shop, selected various items, and returned.
First, perhaps, a wire into the slot. . . .
The
main door shivered under a mule
kick. Faintly through its insulated metal thickness came a harsh roar:
"Open up, ye auld scut, or I'll crack the outer
hatches an' let ye choke!"
"Yumping
Yupiter," said Herr Syrup.
He
pattered across the room and admitted Rory Mc-Connell, who glared down upon him
and snarled: "So 'tis up to your sneakin' tricks ye are again, eh? Throw a
pretty face an' long legs at me an'—Aaargh! Be off wi'
yez!"
"But," bleated Herr Syrup. "But vas you not
talkin' vit' Miss Croft?"
"I was," said McConnell. " 'Tis not a mistake
I'll make ag'in. Go tell her to save her charms for bigger fools than me. I'm
goin' to sleep now." He tore off his various weapons, laid them beside his
pack, and sat down on the floor. "Git out!" he rapped, fumbling at a
boot zipper. His face was like fire. "Tomorry perhaps I can look at ye wi' out bokin'l"
"Oh, dear," said Herr. Syrup.
"Oh, shucks,"
said Claus, though not in just those words.
Herr
Syrup picked up his miscellaneous tools and stole back into the workshop. A
moment afterward he remembered his bottle of beer and stuck his head back
through the communicating door. McConnell threw a boot at him. Herr Syrup
closed the door and toddled out to make another requisition on the cargo.
Having
done so, he stopped by the saloon. Emily was there, her face in her arms, her
body slumped over the table and shuddering with sobs. At the far end sat
Sarmishkidu, puffing his Tyrolean pipe and making calculations.
"Oh, dear," said
Herr Syrup again, helplessly.
"Can
you console her?" asked Sarmishkidu, rolling an eye in his direction.
"I have endeavored to do so, and am sorry to report absolute failure."
Herr Syrup took a
strengthening pull from his bottle.
"You see,"
explained the Martian, "her noise distracts me."
He
fumed smoke for a dour moment. "I should at least think," he whined,
"that having dragged me here, away from my livelihood and all the small
comforts which mean so much to a poor lonely exile among aliens like myself—sustaining,
heartening consolations which already I find myself in sore need of—namely a
table of elliptic integrals—having so ruthlessly forced me into the trackless
depths of outer space, and apparently not even to any good purposej she would
have the consideration not to sit there and weep at me.
"Dere, dere,"
said Herr Syrup, patting the girl's shoulder.
"Uhhhhh," said
Emily.
"Dere, dere, dere," continued Herr
Syrup.
The
girl raised streaming eyes and sobbed pathetically: "Oh, go to hell."
"Vat happened vit' you
and de mayor?"
A
bit startled, Emily sniffed out: "Why, nothing, unless you mean that time
last year when he asked me to preside at the Ladies' Potato Race, during the
harvest festi— OhI The Major!" She returned her face to her arm.
"Uhhhh-hoo-hoo-hool"
"I gather she tried to seduce him and
failed," said Sar-mishkidu. "Naturally, her professional pride is
injured."
Emily
leaped to her feet. "What do you mean, professional?" she screeched.
"Warum, nothing,"
stammered Sarmishkidu, retreating into a different character. "I just meant your female prides. All
women are females by profession, nicht war? That
is a joke. Ha, ha," he added, to make certain he would be understood.
"And
I didn't try to—to—Oh!" Emily stormed out of the
saloon. A string of firecracker Greek trailed after her.
"Vat is she
saying?" gaped Herr Syrup.
Herr von Himmelschmidt turned pale.
"Please don't to
ask," he said. "I did not know she was familiar with that
edition of Aristophanes." -—
"Helledusse!"
said the engineer moodily.
"Ve ban hashed now."
"Hmmm,"
muttered Sarmishkidu. "It is correct that the enemy is armed and we are
not. Nevertheless, it is an observational datum that there are three of us and
only one of him, and so if we could separate him from his weapons, even
briefly, and—"
"And?"
"Oh.
Well, nothing, I suppose." Sarmishkidu brooded. "True," he said
at last, "one of him would still be equivalent to four or five of
us." He pounded the table with an indignant hand. Since the hand, being
boneless, merely flopped when it struck, this was not very dramatic. "It
is most unfair of him," he squeaked. "Ganging up
on us like that."
Herr Syrup stiffened with
thought.
"XJnlautere Wettbewerb," amplified the Martian.
"Do you know—"
whispered the Dane.
"What?"
"I
hate to do dis. It does not seem right. I know it is not right. But by Yoe,
maybe he ban asleep now!"
The
idea dawned on Sarmishkidu. "Well, 111 be an un-elegantly proven
lemma," he breathed. "So he doubtless is."
"And
for veapons, in de machine shop is all de tools. Like wrenches, hammers, vire
cable—"
"Blowtorches," added Sarmishkidu
eagerly. "Hacksaws, sulfuric acid—"
"No,
hoy, vait derel Just a minute! I don't vant to hurt
him. Yust a little bonk on de head to make him sleep sounder, vile ve tie him
up, dat's all." Herr Syrup leaped erect. "Let's go!"
"Good
luck," said Sarmishkidu, returning to his calculations.
"Vat? But hey! Is you
leaving me to do dis all alone?"
Sarmishkidu
looked up. "Go!" he said in a ringing croak. "Remember the
Vikings! Remember Gustavus Adolphusl Remember King Christian standing by the
high mast in smoke and steam! The blood of heroes is in your veins. Go, go to
glory!"
Fired, Herr Syrup started for the door. He
stopped there and asked wistfully, "Don't you vant a little glory
too?"
Sarmishkidu
blew a smoke ring and scribbled an equation. "I am more the intellectual
type," he said.
"Oh."
Herr Syrup sighed and went down the corridors. His resolution endured till he
actually stood in the workshop, by the glow of a dim night light, hefting a
pipe wrench. Then he wavered.
The
sound of deep, regular breathing assured him that Major McConnell slept in the
adjoining bedchamber. But— "I don't vant to hurt him," repeated Herr
Syrup. "I could so easy clop him too hard." He shuddered. "Or not hard enough. I better make another requisition
on de cargo first. . . . No. Here ve go." Puffing out his mustache and
mopping the sweat off his pate, the descendant of Vikings tiptoed into the
engine room.
Rory McConnell would scarcely have been
visible at all, had his taste in pajamas not run to
iridescent synthesilc embroidered with tiny shamrocks. As it was, his body,
sprawled on a military bedroll, seemed in the murk to stretch on and on,
interminably, besides having more breadth and thickness than was fair in
anything but a gorilla. Herr Syrup hunkered shakily down by the massive red
head, squinted till he had a spot, just behind one ear identified, and raised
his weapon.
There was a snick of metal. The wan light
glimmered along n pistol barrel. It prodded Herr Syrup's nose. He let out a yelp and
broke all Olympic records for the squatting high jump.
Rory
McConnell chuckled. "I'm a sound sleeper when no one else comes sneakin'
close to me," he said, "but I've hunted in too many forests not to
awaken thin. Goodnight, Mister Syrup."
"Goodnight," said
Knud Axel Syrup in a low voice.
Blushing,
he went back to the machine room. He waited lliere a moment, ashamed to return
to his cabin past McConnell and yet angry that he must detour. Oh, the devil
with itl He heard the slow breath of slumber resume. Viciously, he slammed his
tool back into the rack loudly enough to wake an estivating Venusian. The sleeper
did not even stir. And that was the unkindest cut of all.
Stamping
his feet, slamming doors, and kicking panels as lie went by—all without so much
as breaking the calm rhythm of Rory McConnell's lungs—Herr Syrup took the
roundabout way to his cabin. He switched on the light and pointed a finger at
Claus. The crow hopped off the Selected Works of Oehlenschlager and perched on
the finger.
"Claus,"
said Herr Syrup, not quite bellowing, "repeat after me: McConnell is a
louse. McConnell is no good. McConnell eats vorms. On
Friday. McConnell—"
—slept on.
Herr
Syrup decided at last to retire himself. With a final sentence for Claus to
memorize, an opinion in crude language of Major McConnell's pajamas, he took
off his own clothes and slipped a candy-striped nightshirt over his head.
Stretched out in his bunk, he counted herrings for a full half hour before
realizing that he was more awake than ever.
"Satans
ogsad," he
mumbled, and switched on the light and reached at random for a book. It turned
out to be a poetry anthology. He opened
it arid read:
"—The secret
workings of the yeast of life."
"Yudas," he
groaned. "Yeast."
For
a moment Herr Syrup, though ordinarily the gentlest of men, entertained
bloodshot fantasies of turning the ship's iitomic-hydrogen torch into a sort of
science fiction blaster and burning Major McConnell down. Then he decided that
it was impractical and that all he could do was requisition a case of lager and
thus get to sleep. Or at least pass the night watch
more agreeably. He decorated his feet with outsize slippers and padded into the
corridor.
Emily
Croft jumped. "Oh!" she squeaked, whipping her robe about her. The
engineer brightened a little, having glimpsed that her own taste in sleeping
apparel ran merely to what nature had provided.
"Vich is sure better
dan little green clovers," he muttered.
"Oh
. . . you startled me." The girl blinked. "What did you say?"
"Dat
crook in dere." Herr Syrup jerked a splay thumb at the engine room door.
"He goes to bed in shiny payamas vit' shamrocks measled all over."
"Oh,
dear," said Emily. "I hope his wife can teach him —" She skidded
to a halt and blushed. "I mean, if any woman would be so foolish as to
have such a big oaf."
"I doubt it,"
snarled the Dane. "I bet he snores."
"He does not!"
Emily stamped her foot.
"Oh-ho," said
Herr Syrup. "You ban hstening?"
"I
was only out for a constitutional in the hope
of overcoming an unfortunate insomnia," said Miss Croft primly. "It
was sheer chance which took me past here. I mean, nobody who can he there like
a pig and, and sleep when—" She clouded up for a rainstorm. "I mean,
how could he?"
"Veil, but you don't
care about him anyvay, do you?"
"Of course not! I hope he rots, I mean decays. No, I don't actually mean that, you
know, because even if he is an awful lout he is still a human being and, well,
I would just like to teach him a lesson.
I mean, teach him to have more consideration for others and not go right to
sleep as if nothing at all had happened, because I could see that he was hurt
and if he had only given me a chance to explain, I—Oh, never mind!" Emily
clenched her fists and stamped her foot again. "I'd just like to lock him
up in there, since he's sleeping so soundly. That would teach him that other
people have feelings even if he doesn't!"
Herr Syrup's jaw dropped
with an audible clank.
Emily's eyes widened. One small hand stole to
her mouth. "Oh," she said, "is anything wrong?"
"By
yiminy," whispered Herr Syrup. "By jumping
yim-iny."
"Oh, really now, it isn't that bad. I
mean, I know we're in an awful pickle and all that sort of thing, but
really—"
"No.
I got it figured. I got a vay to get de Erser off of our necks!"
^What?"
"Ja,
ja, ja, it is so simple I could beat my old knucklebone brains dat I don't t'ink
of it right avay. Look, so long as ve stay out of de engine room he sleeps yust
like de dummy in a bridge game vaiting for de last trump. No? Okay, so I close
all de doors to him, dere is only tree, dis main vun and vun to my cabin and
vun to de vorkshop. I close dem and veld dem shut and dere he is!"
Emily gasped.
She leaned forward and
Idssed him.
"Yudas
priest," murmured Herr Syrup faintly. His revolving eyeballs slowed and
he licked his hps. "Tank you very kind," he said.
"You're
wonderful!" glowed Emily, brushing mustache hairs
off her nose.
And
then, suddenly: "No. No, we can't. I mean, hell be
right in there with the machinery and if he turns it off—"
"Dat's
okay. All de generators and t'ings is locked in deir shieldings, and dose keys
I have got." Herr Syrup stumped quickly down the hall and into the machine
shop. "His gun does him no good behind velded alloy plating." He
selected a torch, plugged it in, and checked the current. "So.
Please to hand me dat helmet and apron and dose gloves. Don't look bare-eyed at
de flame."
Gently,
he closed the side door. Momentarily he was terrified that McConnell would
awaken: not that the Erseman would do him any harm, but the scoundrel was so
unfairly large. However, even the reek of burning paint, which sent Emily
gagging back into the corridor, failed to stir him.
Herr
Syrup plugged his torch to a drum of extension cord and trailed after her.
"Tum-te-tum-te-tum," he warbled, attacking the main door. "How
does dat old American vork song go? Yohn Henry said to de captain, Veil, a man
ain't not'ing but a man, but before I umpty-tumty-somet'ing-some-t'ing, I'll
die vit' a somet'ing-umpty-tum, Lord, Lord, I'll die vit' a
tiddly-tiddly-poml" He finished the job. "And now to my cabin, and ve
is t'rough."
Emily's
mouth quivered. "I do hate to do this," she said. "I mean, he is
such a darling. No, of course he isn't, I mean he's an oaf, but—not really an
oaf either, he just has never had a chance to—Oh, you know what I meanl And now
he'll be shut away in there, all alone, for days and days and days."
Herr Syrup paused. "You can talk to him
on de intercom," he suggested.
"What?"
She elevated her nose. "That big lout? Let him sit all alonel Maybe then he can see there are other people in the
universe besides himself I"
Herr
Syrup entered his cabin and began to close the inner door.
"McConnell is a
four-lettering love child!" screamed Claus.
"He is not
either!" yelled Emily, turning red.
There
was a stir in the engine-room darkness. "What's all that
racket out there?" complained a lilting basso. "Is it not enough to
break me heart, ye must keep me from the sleep which is me one remain in'
comfort?"
"Sorry," said
Herr Syrup, and closed the door.
"Hey,
there!" bawled McConnell. He bounced off his bedroll. The vibration of it
shivered in the metal. "What's going on?"
"Yust
he down," babbled Herr Syrup. "Go back to sleep." His cracked
baritone soared as he switched on the torch. Sparks showered about him. "Lullahy-y-y and good night, dy-y-y mo-o-o-der's deli-ight—"
"Ah, ha!" McConnell thundered toward the door. "So 'tis
cannin' me ye are, ye treacherous Black-an'-Tanners! We'll see about
that!"
"Look out!"
screamed Emily. "Look out, Rory! It's hot!"
A
torrent of Gaelic oaths, which made Claus gape in awe, informed her that
McConnell had discovered this for himself.
Herr Syrup played the flame up aad down and crosswayg. A tommy gun rattled on the other side, but the Girl, though old, was of good solid construction, and nothing happened but a
nasty spang of ricochet.
"Don't!"
pleaded Emily. "Don't, Roryl You'll kill
yourself! Oh, Rory, be careful!"
Herr
Syrup cut off his torch, slapped back his helmet, and looked with enormous
self-congratulation at the slowly cooling seams. "Dere, now," he
said. "Dat's dat!"
Claus
squawked. The engineer tamed around just in time to see his bunk blankets
spring up in flame.
Emily
leaned against the wall and cried through smoke and fire extinguisher fumes:
"Rory, Rory! Are you all right, Rory?"
"Oh,
yes, I'm alive," growled the voice behind the panels. "It pleases ye
better to let me thirst an starve to death in here
than kill me honestly, eh?"
"Ou ma Dial" gasped the girl. "I didn't think of
that!"
"Yes, yes. Tell it to
the King's marines."
"Just a minute!" she begged,
frantic. "Just a minute and I'll get you.out! Rory, I swear I never—Look
out, I'll have to cut the door open—"
Herr
Syrup dropped the plastifoam extinguisher and clapped a hand on her wrist as
she picked up the torch. "Vat you ban doing?" he yelped.
"I've got to release him!" cried
Emily. "We've got to! He hasn't anything in there to keep him alive!"
Herr
Syrup gave her a long stare. "So you t'ink his life is vort' more dan all
de folk vat maybe get killed if dere is a var,
huh?" he asked slowly.
"Yes
. . . no . . . oh, I don't know!" sobbed the girl, struggling in his
grasp and kicking at his ankles. "We've got to let him out, that's
all!"
"Now vait, vait yust a minute. I t'ought of dis problem
right avay. It is not so hard. Dere is ventilator shafts running all
t'rough de ship, maybe ten centimeters diameter. Ve yust unscrew a fan in vun
and drop down cans of space rations to him. And a can opener,
natural. It vill not hurt him to eat cold beans and drink beer for a
vile. He has also got a
bat'room in dere, and I t'ink a pack of cards. He
vill be okay." "Oh, thank God!" whispered Emily.
She put her hps close to the door and called:
"Did you hear that, Rory? Well send you food through the ventilator. And
don't worry about it being just cold beans. I mean, I'll make you nice hot
lunches and wrap them well so you can get them intact. I'm not a bad cook,
Rory, honesdy, I'll prove it to you. Oh, and do you
have a razor? Otherwise I'll find one for you. I mean, you don't want to come
put all bristly —I mean—oh, never mind!"
"So,"
rumbled the prisoner. "Yes, I heard." Suddenly he shouted with
laughter. "Ah, 'tis sweet of yez, darlin', but it won't be needful. Yell be releasin' me in a day or two at the most."
Herr
Syrup started and glared at the door. "Vat's dat?" he snapped.
"Why, 'tis simple 'tis. For the
lifeboats are down on Gren-del, an' even the propulsive units of every
spacesuit aboard, not to speak of the radio an' radar, an' the spare electrical
parts is all in here with me. An' so, for the matter of it, is
the engines. Ye can't get the King's help, ye
can't even get back to ground, without a by-your-leave from me. So I'll expect
ye to open the door in as few hours as it takes for
that fact to sink home into the square head of yez. Haw, haw, haw!"
"Det var some fanden," said the engineer. "What?"
"De
hell you say. I got to look into dis." Herr Syrup scurried from the
cabin, his nightgown flapping about his hairy shanks and the forgotten fire
extinguisher still jetting plasti-foam on the floor behind him.
"Oh, dear." Emily wrung her hands. "We just don't
have any luck."
McConnell's
voice came back: "Never mind, macushla, for I heard how ye feared for me
life, an' that at a moment whin ye thought ye'd the
upper hand. So 'tis humbly I ask your pardon for all I said earlier this night.
'Twas a good trick ye've played on me now, even if it did not work, an' many a
long winter evenin' we'll while away in after years a-laughin' at it."
"Oh, Rory!"
breathed Emily, leaning against the door.
"Oh, Emilyl"
breathed McConnell on his side.
"Rory!" whispered
the girl, closing her eyes.
The unnoticed plastif oam
crept up toward her ears.
Chapter
8
Sarmishkidu
slithered into the Number
Three hold and found Herr Syrup huddled gloomily beneath one of the enormous
beer casks. He had a mug in one hand and the tap of the keg in the other. Claus
perched on a rack muttering: "Damn Rory McConnell. Damn anybody who von't
damn Rory McConnell. Damn anybody who von't sit up all
night damning Rory McConnell."
"Oh,
there you are," said the Martian. "Your breakfast has gotten
cold."
"I
don't vant no breakfast," said Herr Syrup. He
tossed off his mug and tapped it full again.
"Not even after your
triumph last watch?"
"Vat
good is a triumph ven I ain't triumphant? I have sealed him into de engine
room, jo, vich is to say ve can't move de ship from dis orbit. You see, de
polarity reverser vich I installed on de geegee lines, to 'give us veight, is
in dere vit' him, and ve can't travel till it has been taken out again. So ve
can't go direct to New Vinshester ourselves. And he
has also de electrical parts locked up vit' him."
"I
have never sullied my mathematics with any attempt at a merely practical
application," said Sarmishkidu piously, "but I have studied
electromagnetic theory and it would appear upon integration of the Maxwell
equations that you could rip out wires here and there, machine the bar and
plate metal stored for repair work in the shop, and thus improvise an
oscillator."
"Sure,"
said Herr Syrup. "Dat is easy. But remember, New Vinshester is about ten
t'ousand kilometers avay. Any little laboratory model powered yust off a
220-volt line to some cabin, is not going to carry a broadcast dat far. At
least, not vun vich has a reasonable shance of being noticed dere in all de
cosmic noise. I do have access to some powerful batteries. By discharging dem
very quick, ve can send a strong signal: but short-lived, so it is not likely
in so little a time dat anyvun on de capital asteroid is listening in on dat
particular vavelengt'. For you see, vit'out de calibrated standards and meters
vich McConnell has, I cannot control de freqvency vich no vun of New
Vinshester's small population uses or is tuned in on."
He
sighed. "No, I have spent de night trying to figure out somet'ing, and all
I get is de answer I had before. To make an S.O.S. dat vill have any measurable
shance of being heard, ve shall have to have good cable, good impedances, meters and so on—vich McConnell is now sitting on. Or else
ve shall have to run for a long time t'rough many unknown freqvencies, to be
sure of getting at least vun vich will be heard; and for dat ve shall have to
use de enshine room g'enerator, vich McConnell is also sitting on."
"He is?" Sarmishkidu brightened.
"But it puts out a good many thousands of volts, doesn't it?"
"I vas speaking figurative, damn de luck." Herr Syrup put the beer mug to his hps,
lifted his mustache out of the way with a practiced forefinger, and bobbed his
Adam's apple for a while.
Sarmishkidu folded his walking tentacles and
let down his bulbous body. He waggled his ears, rolled his eyeballs, and
protested: "But we can't give up yetl We just
can't. Here iss all dis beautiful beer that I could sell at fifty percent profit,
even if I have the pretzels und popcorn free. And what good is it doing?
Nonel"
"Oh,
I vouldn't say dat," answered Herr Syrup, a trifle blearily, and drew
another mugful.
"Dis lot has too much
carbonation for my taste," he complained. "You t'ink I ban an
American? It makes too much head."
"That's
on special order from me," confided the Martian. "In the head is the
profit, if one is not too generous in scraping it off."
"You
is got too many arms and not enough soul," said
Herr Syrup. "I t'ink for dat I let you clean out my cabin. It is got full
vit' congealed plastifoam. And to make a new fire extingvisher for it, vy, I
take a bottle of your too carbonated beer and if dere is a fire I shake it and
take my t'umb off de mout' and—Of course!" mused Herr Syrup, "could
be you got so much CO2 coming out, I get t'rown backwards."
"If
you don't like my beer," said Sarmishkidu, half closing fcis eyes,
"you can just let me have the stein you got."
"Action and reaction," said Herr
Syrup.
"Hm?"
"Newton's t'ird
law."
"Yes, yes, yes, but what relevance does
that have to—" "Beer. I shoot beer out de front end of de bottle, I get tossed on my can."
"But you said it was a bottle." "Ja,
ja, ja, ja—"
"Weiss'
nicht wie gut ich dir bin?" sang the Martian.
"I
mean," said Herr Syrup, wagging a solemn finger, "de bottle is a kind
of rocket. Vy, it could even—it could even—"
His
voice ground to a halt. The mug dropped from his hand and splashed on the
floor.
"Beerslayer!" screamed Claus.
"But
darlin'," said Rory McConnell into the intercom, "I don't like dried
apricots."
"Oh,
hush," said Emily Croft from the galley. "You've never been healthier
in your life."
"I feel like I'm rottin' away. Not
through the monotony so much, me sweet, whilst I can be hearin' the soft voice
of yez, but the only exercise I can get is calisthinics, which has always
bored me grievous."
"True,"
said Emily, "all those fuel pipes and things don't leave much room for
classical dancing, do they? Poor dear!"
"I'd trade me mother's brown pig for a
walk in the rain wi' yez, macushla."
"Well,
if you'd only give us your parole not to make trouble, dear, we could let you
out this minute."
"No,
ye well know the Force has me prior oath an' the Force I'll fight for till 'tis
disbanded either through victory or defeat. An' how long will it take the auld omadhaun Syrup to realize 'tis him has been defayted?
I've lain in here almost a week be the clock. I hear noises day an' night from
the machine room, an' devil a word I can get of what's goin' on. Let me out,
swateheartl I bear no ill will. I'll kiss the pretty hps of ye an' we'll all go
down to Grendel an' say nothin' about what's happened. Save of course that I've
won the loveliest girl in the galaxy for me own."
"I
wish I could," sighed Emily. "How I wish itl 'O Dion who sent my heart mad with love!' "
"Who's this
Dion?" brisded Major McConnell.
"Nobody
you need worry about, dear. It's only a quotation. Translated,
naturally. But what I mean to say is, Mr. Syrup and Mr. Sarmishlddu have
so much to take care of and it won't be long now, I swear it won't, just
another day or two, they say, and then their project will be over and they
can—Ohl I promised not to tell! But what I mean, dear, is that I'll stay behind
and I'm not supposed to let you out immediately, maybe not for still another
day, but I'll look after you and make you nice lunches and—Yes," said
Emily with a slight shudder, "there won't even be any more dried fruit in
your meals, because I've run out of what there was; in fact, for days now I've
been giving it all to you and eating corned beef and drinking beer myself, and
I must admit it tastes better than I remembered, so if you insist on calcifying
your fiver after we're married, why, I suppose I'll have to also, and actually,
darling, I don't know anyone who I'd rather calcify my fiver with. Really."
"What
is all this?" Rory McConnell stepped back, his big frame tensing. "Ye
mean they've not just been putterin' about, but have some plan?"
"I
mustn't tell! Please, beloved, honestly, I've been sworn to absolute secrecy,
and now I must-go. They need me to help too. I have been installing pipe lines
and things and actually, dear, it's very exciting. I mean, when I use a welding
torch I have to wear a helmet very much like a classical dramatic mask, so I
stand there reciting from the Agamemnon as
if I were on a real Athenian stage, and do you know, I think when this is all
over and we're married and have our own Greek theater in the garden I'll
organize a presentation of the whole Orestes trilogy—in
the original, of course—with welding outfits. 'Bye nowl" Emily blew a kiss
down the intercom and pattered off.
Rory
McConnell sat down on a generator shield and began most furiously to think.
Chapter
9
The
first beer-powered
spaceship in history rested beneath a derrick by the main cargo hatch.
It was not as impressive as Herr Syrup could
have wished. Using a small traveling lift for the heavy work, he had joined
four ten-ton casks of Nashombrau end to end with a fight framework. The taps
had been removed from the kegs and their bungholes plugged, simple
electrically-controlled Venturi valves in the plumb center being substituted.
Jutting on orthogonal axes from each barrel there were also L-shaped exhaust
pipes, by which it was hoped to control rotation and sideways motion. Various
wires and shafts, their points of entry sealed with gunk, plunged into the
barrels, ending in electric beaters. A set of relays was intended to release
each container as it was exhausted. The power for all this —it did not amount
to much—came from a system of heavy-duty EXW batteries at the front end.
Ahead
of those batteries was fastened a box, some two meters square and three meters
long. Sheets of plastic were set in its black-painted sides by way of windows.
The torso and helmet of a spacesuit jutted from the roof, removably fastened in
a screwthreaded hatch cover which could be turned around. Beside it was a small
stovepipe valve holding two self-closing elastic diaphragms through which tools
could be pushed without undue air loss. The box had been put together out of
cardboard beer cases, bolted to a light metal frame and carefully sized and
gunked.
"You
see," Herr Syrup had explained grandly, "in dis situation, vat do ve
need to go to New Vinshester? Not an atomic motor, for sure, because dere is
almost negligible gravity to overcome. Not a nice streamlined shape, because ve
have no air hereabouts. Not great structural strengt', for dere is no strain
odder dan a very easy acceleration; so beer cardboard is strong enough for two,
t'ree men to sit on a box of it under Eart' gravity. Not a fancy t'ermostatic
system for so short a hop, for de sun is far avay, our own bodies make heat and
losing dat heat by radiation is a slow
process. If it does get too hot inside, ve can let a little vater evaporate
into space t'rough de stovepipe to cool us; if ve get chilly, ve can tap a
litde heat t'rough a coil off de batteries.
"All
ve need is air. Not even much air, since I is sitting
most of de time and you ban a Martian. A pair of oxygen cylinders should make
more dan enough; ja, and ve vill need a chemical carbon-dioxide
absorber, and some dessic-cating stuffs so you do not get a vater vapor drunk.
For comfort ve vill take along a few bottles beer and some pretzels to, nibble
on.
"As
for de minimal boat itself, I have tested de exhaust velocity of hot, agitated
beer against vacuum, and it is enough to accelerate us to a few hundred
kilometers per hour, maybe t'ree hundred, if ve use a high enough mass ratio.
And ve vill need a few simple navigating instruments, an ephemeris, slide rule,
and so on. As a precaution, I install my bicycle in de cabin, hooked to a
simple home-made generator, yust a little electric motor yuggled around to he
run in reverse, vit' a rectifier. Dat vay, if de batteries get too veek ve can
recharge dem. And also a small, primitive oscillator
ve can make, short range, ja, but able
to run a gamut of frequencies vit'out exhausting de batteries, so ve can send
an S.O.S. ven ve ban qvite close to New Vinshester. Dey hear
it and send a spaceship out to pick us up, and dat is dat."
The
execution of this theory had been somewhat more difficult, but Herr Syrup's
years aboard the Mercury
Girl had made him a
highly skilled improviser and jackleg inventor. Now, tired, greasy, and
content, he smoked a well-earned pipe as he stood admiring his creation.
Partly, he waited for the electric coils which surrounded the boat and tapped
the ship's power lines, to heat the beer sufficiently; but that was very nearly
complete, to the point of unsafeness. And partly he waited for the ship to
reach that orbital point which would give his boat full tangential velocity
toward the goal; that would be in a couple of hours.
"Er
. . . are you sure we had better not test it first?" asked Sarmishkidu
uneasily.
"No,
I t'ink not," said Herr Syrup. "First, it vould take too long to fix up an extra barrel. Ve been up here a veek or
more vit'out a vord to Grendel. If O'Toole gets suspicious and looks t'rough a
telescope and sees us scooting around, right avay he sends up a lifeboat full
of soldiers; vich is a second reason for not making a test flight."
"But, well, that is,
suppose something goes wrong?"
"Den
de spacesuit keeps me alive for several hours and you can stand vacuum about de
same lengt' of time. Emily vill be vatching us t'rough de ships's telescope, so
she can let McConnell out and he can come rescue us."
"And
what if he can't find us? Or if we have an accident out of
telescopic range from here? Space is a large volume."
"I
prefer you vould not mention dat possibility," said Herr Syrup with a
touch of hauteur.
Sarmishkidu shuddered. "The
things that an honest businessman has got to—Donnerwetter! Was 1st das?'
The
sharp crack was followed by an earthquake tremble through girders and plates.
Herr Syrup sat down, hard. The deck twitched beneath him. He bounced up and
pelfed toward the exit. "Dat vas from de sternl" he shouted.
He
whipped through the bulkhead door, Sarmishkidu toiling in his wake, and up an
interhold ladder to the axial passageway. Emily Croft had just emerged from the
galley, a frying pan in one hand and an apron tied around her classic peplum.
"Oh, dear," she cried, "I'm sure Rory's cake has fallen. What
was that noise?"
"Yust
vat I vould like to know." The engineer flung himself down the corridor.
As he neared the stem, a faint acrid whiff touched his nose. "In de engine
room, I am afraid," he panted.
"The
engine—Roryl" shrieked the girl.
"Comin',
macushla," said a cheerful voice, and the gigantic red-thatched shape
swung itself up from the after compan-ionway.
Rory McConnell hooked thumbs in his belt,
planted his booted feet wide, and grinned all over his smoke-blackened snub
face. Herr Syrup crashed to a halt and stared frog-eyed. The Erseman's green
tunic hung in rags and blood trickled from his nose. But the soot only made his
teeth the more wolfishly white and his eyes the more high-voltage blue, while
his bare torso turned out to carry even thicker muscles than expected.
"Well,
well, well," he beamed. "An' so here we all are ag'in. Emily, me
love, I ask your humble pardon for inny damage, but I couldn't wait longer for
the sight of yez."
"Vat
have you done?" wailed Herr Syrup.
"Oh,
well, sir, 'twas nothin'. I had me cartridges, an* a can opener an' me teeth
an' other such tools. So I extracted the powder, tamped it in an auld beer
bottle, lay a fuse, fired me last shot to light same, an' blew out one of them
doors. An' now, sir, let's have a look at what ye been doin' this past week,
an' then I think it best we return to the cool green hills of Grendel."
"Ooooh,"
said Herr Syrup.
McConnell
laughed so that the hall rang with his joy, looked
into the stricken wide gaze of his beloved and opened his arms. "No so much as a kiss to seal the betrothal?" he said.
"Oh . . . yes . . . I'm sorry,
darling." Emily ran toward him. "I am sorry," she choked, burst into tears, and clanged the frying pan
down on his head.
McConnell staggered, tripped on his boots,
recovered, and waltzed in a circle. "Get awayl" screamed Emily.
"Get away!"
Heir
Syrup paused for one frozen instant. Then he flung out a curse, whirled, and
pounded back along the corridor. At the interhold ladderhead he found
Sarmishkidu, puffing along at the slow pace of a Martian under Terrestrial gee.
"What has transpired?" asked Sarmishkidu.
Herr
Syrup scooped him up under one arm and bounded down
the ladder. "Heyl" squealed the Martian. "Let me go! Bist du ganz geistegestSrt? What do you mean, sir? Urush nergatar shalmu ishkadant This instant! Versteh'st du?"
Rory
McConnell staggered to the nearest wall and leaned on it for a few seconds. His
eyes cleared. With a hoarse growl, he sprang after the engineer. Emily stuck a
shapely leg in his path. Down he went.
"Please!"
she wept. "Please, darling, don't make me do this!"
"They're gettin' awayl" bawled
McConnel. He got to his feet. Emily hit him with the frying pan. He sagged back
to hands and knees. She stooped over him, frantically, and kissed the battered
side of his head. He lurched erect. Emily slugged him again.
"You're being
cruel!" she sobbed.
The
bulkhead door closed behind Herr Syrup. He set the unloading controls. "Ve
ban getting out of here," he panted. "Before de Erser gets to de
master svitch and stops every-t'ing cold."
"What Erser?"
sputtered Sarmishkidu indignantly.
"Ours." Herr Syrup trotted toward the beer boat.
"Oh,
that one!"
Sarmishkidu hurried after him.
Herr
Syrup climbed to the top of his boat's hull and lifted the space armor torso.
Sarmishkidu swarmed after him like a herpetarium gone mad. The Dane dropped the
Martian inside, took a final checkaround, and lowered himself. He screwed the
spacesuit into place and hunched, breathing heavily. His bicycle headlamp was
the only illumination in the box. It showed him the bicycle itself, braced upright
with the little generator hitched to its rear wheel; the pants of his space
armor, seated on a case of beer; a bundle of navigation instruments, tables,
pencils, slide rule, and note pad; a tool box; two oxygen cylinders and a CO2-h20 absorber unit with an electric blower, which
would also circulate the air as needed during free fall; the haywired control
levers which were supposed to steer the boat; Sarmishkidu, draped on a box of
pretzels; and Claus, disdainfully stealing from a box of popcorn which Herr
Syrup suddenly realized he had no way of popping. And then,
of course, himself. It was rather cramped quarters.
The
air pump roared, evacuating the chamber. Herr Syrup saw darkness thicken
outside the boat windows, as the fluoro light ceased to be diffused. And then
the great hatch swung ponderously open, and steel framed a blinding
circle of stars.
"Hang on!" he yelled.
"Here ve go!"
The
derrick scanned the little boat with beady photoelectric eyes, seized it in
four claws, lifted it, and pitched it delicately through the hatch, which
thereupon closed with an air of good riddance to bad rubbish. Since there was
no machine outside to receive the boat, it turned end for end, spun a few
meters from the Mercury
Girl, and drifted along in
much the same orbit, still trying to rotate on three simultaneous axes.
Herr
Syrup gulped. The transition to weightlessness was an outrage, and the stars
ramping around his field of view didn't help matters. His stomach lurched.
Sarmishkidu groaned, hung onto the pretzel box with all six tentacles, and
covered his eyes with his ears. Claus screamed, turning end for end in midair,
and tried without success to fly. Herr Syrup reached for a control
lever but didn't quite make it. Sarmishkidu uncovered one sick eye long enough
to mumble: "Bloody blank blasted Coriolis force." Herr Syrup clenched
his teeth, caught a mouthful of mustache, grimaced, spat it out, and tried
again. This time he laid hands on the switch and pulled.
A cloud of beer gushed frostily from one of
the transverse pipes. After several rather unfortunate attempts, Herr Syrup
managed to stop the boat's rotation. He looked around him.
He hung in darkness, among blazing stars.
Grendel was a huge gibbous green moon to starboard. The Mercury Girl was a long rusty spindle to port. The
asteroid sun, small and weak but perceived by the adaptable human eye as quite
bright enough, poured in through the spacesuit helmet in the roof and bounced
dazzingly off his bare scalp.
He
swallowed sternly, to remind his stomach who was boss, and began taking
navigational sights. Sarmishkidu rolled a red look "upward" at Claus,
who clung miserably to the Martian's head with eyes tightly shut.
Herr
Syrup completed his figuring. It would have been best to wait a while yet, to
get the maximum benefit of orbital velocity toward New Winchester; but
McConnell was not going to wait. Anyhow, this was such a slow orbit that it
didn't make much difference. Most likely the factor would be quite lost among
the fantastically uncertain quantities of the boat itself. One would have to
take what the good Lord sent. He gripped the control levers.
A
low murmur filled the cabin as the rearmost beer barrel snorted its vapors into
space. There was a faint backward tug of acceleration pressure, which mounted
very gradually as mass decreased. The thrust was not centered with absolute
precision, and of course the distribution of mass throughout the whole
structure was hit-or-miss, so the boat began to pick up a spin again. Steering
by the seat of his pants and a few primitive meters, Herr Syrup corrected that
tendency with side jets.
Blowing white beer fumes in all directions,
the messenger boat moved slowly along a wobbling spiral toward New Winchester.
Chapter
10
"Oh
dabling, dearest,
beloved," wept Emily, dabbing at Rory McConnell's head, "forgive
mel"
"I love yez too," said the Erseman,
sitting up, "but unliss ye'll stop poundin' in me skull I'll have to lock
yez up for the duration."
"I promise ... I promise . . . oh, I couldn't bear itl Sweetheart—"
Emily clutched his arm as he rose—"can't you let them go now? I mean,
they've gotten clean away, you've lost, so why don't we wait here and, well I
mean to say, really."
"What do you mean to
say?"
Emily blushed and lowered her eyes. "If
you don't know," she said in a prim voice, T shall certainly not tell
you." McConnell blushed too.
Then,
resolutely, he started toward the bridge. The girl hurried after him. He flung
back: "Tell me what it is they're escapin' in, an' maybe I'll be ready to
concede hon'rable defeat." But having been informed, he only barked a
laugh and said, "Well, an' tis a gallant try, 'tis, but me with a regular
spaceship at me beck can't admit the end of the game. In fact, me dear, I'm
sorry to say they haven't a Plutonian's chance in hell."
By
that time he was in the turret, sweeping the skies with its telescope. It took
him a while to find the boat, already it was a mere speck in the gleaming dark.
He scowled, chewed his hp, and muttered half to himself:
'Twill
take time to extract the polarity reverser, an' me not
a trained engineer. By then the craft will be indeed hard to locate, if I went
on down to Grendel to get help, 'twould take hours to reach the ear of himself an' assimble a .crew, if I know me Erse lads. An'
hours is too long. So—I'll have to go after our friends there alone. Acushla, I
don't think ye'll betray their cause if ye fix me a sandwich or six an' open me
a bottle of beer whilst I work."
McConnell
did, in fact, require almost an hour to get the geegee repulsors to repulsing
again. With the compensator still on the fritz, that put the ship's interior
back in free fall state. He floated, dashing the sweat from his brow, and
smiled at Emily. "Go strap yourself in, me rose
of Grendel, for I may well have to make some sharp maneuvers an' I wouldn't be
bruisin' of that fair skin—Damn! Git away!"
That was addressed to the sweat he had just
dashed from his brow. Swatting blindly at the fog of tiny globules, he pushed
one leg against a wall and arrowed out the door.
Up
in the turret again, harnessed in his seat before the pilot console, he tickled
its controls and heard the engines purr. "Are ye ready, darlin'?" he
called into the intercom.
"Not
yet, sweetheart," Emily's voice floated back. "One moment,
please."
"A
moment only," warned McConnell, squinting into the telescope. He could not
have found the fleeing boat at all were it not for the temporary condensation
of beer vapor into a cloud as expansion chilled it. And all he saw was a tiny,
ghostly nebula on the very edge of vision. To be sure, knowing approximately
what path the fugitives must follow gave him a track; he could doubtless always
come within a hundred kilometers of them that way; but—
"Are ye ready, me
sugar?"
"Not yet, love. Ill be with you in a jiffy."
McConnell
drummed impatient fingers on the console. The Mercury Girl swung gently around Grendel. His head still
throbbed.
"Da-a-a-arlin'I Time's
a-wastin'! Well be late!"
"Oh,
give me just a sec. Really, dearest, you might remember when we're married and
have to go out someplace a girl wants to look her best, and that takes time, I
mean dresses and cosmetics and so on aren't classical but I guess if I can give
up my principles for you so you can be proud of me and if I can eat the things
you like even if they aren't natural, well, then you can wait a little while
for me to make myself presentable and—"
"A
man has two choices in this universe," said McConnell grimly to himself,
"he can remain celibate or he can resign himself to spendin' ten per cent
of his life waitin' for women."
He
glared at the chronometer. "We're late already!" he snapped.
"I'll have to run off a different approach curve to our orbit an'—"
"Well,
you can be doing it, can't you? I mean,
instead of just sitting there grumbling at me, why don't you do something
constructive like punching that old computer or whatever it is?"
McConnell
stiffened. "Emily," he said through thinned hps, "are ye by any
chance stallin' me?"
"Why, Rory, how could you? Merely
because a girl has to-"
He calculated the required locus and said,
"Ye've got just sixty seconds to prepare for acceleration." "But Rory!" "Fifty seconds." "But I
mean to say, actually—" "Forty seconds."
"Oh, right-o, then. And I'm not angry with you, love, really I'm
not. I mean, I want you to know a girl admires a man like you who actually is a
man. Why, what would I do with one of those awful 'Yes, dear' types, they're
positively Roman! Imperial Roman, I mean. The Republican Romans were at least
virile, though of course they were barbarians and rather hairy. But what I
meant to say, Rory, is that one reason I love you so much—"
After
about five minutes of this, Major McConnell realized what was going on. With an
inarticulate snarl he stabbed the computer, corrected his curve for time lost,
punched it into the autopilot, and slapped down the main drive switch.
First
the ship turned, seeking her direction, and then a Terrestrial gravity of
acceleration pushed him back into the chair. No-reason to apply more; he felt
sure that leprechaun job he was chasing could scarcely pick up one meter per
second squared, and matching velocities would be a tricky enough business for
one man alone. He saw Grendel swing past the starboard viewport and drop
behind. He applied a repulsor
field forward to loll some of his present speed, simultaneously giving the ship
an impulse toward ten-thirty o'clock, twenty-three degrees "high." In
a smooth arc, the Mercury
Girl picked up the trail
of Herr Syrup and began to close the gap.
"Ah,
now we'll end this tale," murmured Rory McConnell, "an' faith, ye've
been a worthy foeman an 'tis not I that will stint ye
when we meet ag'in in some friendly pub after the glorious redemption of Gaelic
La—Oops!"
For
a horrible moment, he thought that some practical joker had pulled the seat out
from under him. He fell toward the floor, tensing his gluteal muscles for the
crash . . . and fell, and fell, and after a few seconds realized he was in free
fall.
"What
the jumpin' blue hell?" he roared and glared at the control board meters,
just as the lights went out.
A
thousand stars leered through the viewport. McConnell clawed blindly at his
harness. He heard the ventilator fans sigh to a halt. The stillness became
frightful. "Emily!" he shouted, "Emily, where are ye?"
There was no reply. Somehow he found the intercom switch and jiggled it. Only
a mechanical clicking answered; that circuit was also dead.
Groping
and flailing his way aft, he needed black minutes to reach the engine room. It
was like a cave. He entered, blind, drifting free, fanning the air with one
invisible hand to keep from smothering in his own unventilated exhalations, his
heartbeat thick and horrible in his ears. There should be a flashlight clipped
somewhere near the door—but where? "Mother of God!" he groaned.
"Are we fallen into the devil's fingers?"
A
small sound came from somewhere in the gloom. "What's that?" he bawled.
"Who's there? Where are ye? Speak up before I^beat the bejasus out of yez,
ye—" and he went on with a richness of description to be expected when
Gaelic blood has had a checkered career.
"Rory!"
said an offended feminine voice out of the abyss. "If you are going to use
that kind of language before me, you can just wipe your mouth out and not come
back until you are prepared to say it in Greek like a gendeman! I mean,
really!"
"Are ye here? Darlin', are ye here? I
thought—" "Well," said the girl, "I know I promised not to
hit you any more, and I wouldn't, not for all the world, but I still have to do
what I can, don't I, dear? I mean, if I gave up you'd just despise me. It
wouldn't be British." "What have ye done?"
After a long pause, Emily said in a small
voice: "I don't know."
"How's that?"
snapped McConnell.
"I
just went over to that control panel or whatever it is and started pulling
switches. I mean to say, you don't expect me to know what all those things are
for, do you? Because I don't. However," said
Emily brightly, "I can parse Greek verbs."
"Oh . . . no!" groaned McConnell.
He began fumbling his way toward the invisible board. Where was it, anyhow?
"I
can cook too," said Emily. "And sew. And I'm awfully fond of
children."
Herr Syrup noted on his crude meters that the
first-stage beer barrel was now exhausted. He pulled the switch that dropped it
and pushed himself up into the spacesuit to make sure
that that had actually been done. Peering through the helmet globe, he saw that
one relay had stuck and the keg still clung. He popped back inside and told
Sarmishkidu to hand him some sections of iron pipe through the stovepipe valve;
this emergency was not unanticipated. Clumsy in gauntlets, his fingers screwed
the pieces together to make a prod which could reach far aft and crack the
empty cask loose.
It
occurred to him how much simpler it would have been to keep his tools in a box
fastened to the outer hull. But of course such things only come to mind when a
model is being tested.
He
stared aft. The Mercury
Girl was visible to the
unaided eye, though dwindling perceptibly. She still floated inert, but he
could not expect that condition to prevail for long. Well, a man can but try.
Herr Syrup wriggled out of the armor torso and back into the cabin. Claus was
practicing free-fall flight technique and nipping stray droplets of beer out
of the air; sometimes he collided with a drifting empty bottle, but he seemed
to enjoy himself.
"Resuming
acceleration," said Herr Syrup. "Give me a pretzel."
Suds gushed from the second barrel. The boat
wobbled crazily. Of course the loss of the first one had changed its spin
characteristics. Herr Syrup compensated and plowed doggedly on. The second cask
emptied and was discharged without trouble. He cut in the third one.
Presently Sarmishkidu crawled "up"
into the spacesuit. A whistle escaped him.
"Vat?" asked Herr
Syrup.
"There—'behind
us—your spaceship—und it is coming ver-dammten fasti"
Having
strapped his fiancee carefully into the acceleration chair beside his own, Rory
McConnell resumed pursuit. He had lost a couple of hours by now, between one
thing and another. And while she drifted free, the Girl had of course orbited well off the correct track. He had to get back on
it and then start casting about. For a half
hour of strained silence, he maneuvered.
"There!" he said
at last.
"Where?" asked
Emily.
"In the
"scope," said McConnell. His ill humor let up and
he squeezed her hand. "Hang on, here we
go. I'll have thim
back aboard in ten minutes." The hazy cloud
waxed so fast that he revised his estimate
upward. He had too much velocity; it would be
necessary
to overshoot, brake, and come back-Then crashl clang-ng-ngl His teeth jarred together. For a
moment, his heart paused and he knew naked fear.
"What was that!*" asked Emily.
He
hated to frighten her, but he forced out of suddenly stiff and sandy Hps:
"A meteor, I'm sure. An* judgin' from the sound of it, 'twas big an' fast
enough to stave in a whole compartment." You could not exactly roll your
eyes heavenward in free space, but he tried manfully. "Holy St. Patrick,
is this any way to treat your loyal son?"
He
shot past the wallowing beer boat at kilometers per second, falling free while he
ripped off his harness. "The instruments aren't showin damage, but belike
the crucial one is been knocked out," he muttered. "An' us with no engine
crew an' no deckhands. I'll have to go out there meself to check. At least this
section is unharmed." He nodded at the handkerchief he had thrown into the
air; when the ventilators were briefly turned off, it
simply hung, borne on no current of leakage. "If we begin to lose air
elsewhere, sweetheart, there'll be automatic ports to seal yez off, so ye're
all right for the next few hours."
"But
what about you?" she cried, white-faced now that she understood.
"What about you?"
"Ill
be in a spacesuit." He leaned over and kissed
her. "'Tis not the danger that's so great as the
delay. For some-thin' I'll have to do, jist so acceleration strain don't pull
the damaged hull apart. I'll be back when I can, darlin'."
And
yet, as he went aft, there was no sealing bulwark in his way, nowhere a wind
whistling toward the dread emptiness outside. Puzzled and more than a little
daunted, Rory McConnell completed his interior inspection in the engine room,
broke out his own outsize space armor from his pack, and donned it: a slow,
awkward task for one man alone. He floated to the nearest airlock and let
himself out.
It
was eerie on the hull, where only his clinging bootsoles held him fast among
streaming cold constellations. The harshness of undiffused sunlight and the
absolute blackness of shadow made it^hard to recognize anything for what it
was. He saw a goblin and crossed himself violently before realizing it was
only a lifeboat tank; and he was an experienced spaceman.
An houM search revealed no leak. There was a dent in the bow which might or
might not be freshly made, nothing else. And yet that meteor had struck with
such a doomsday clang that he had thought the hull might be torn in two. Well,
evidently St. Patrick had been on the job. McConnell returned inside,
disencumbered himself, went forward, reassured Emily, and began to kill his
unwanted velocity.
Almost two hours had passed before he was
back in the vicinity of the accident, and then he could not locate the fugitive
boat. By now it would have ceased blasting; darkly painted, it would be close
to invisible in this black sky. He would have to set up a search pattern and—He
groaned.
Something drifted across his telescopic field
of view. What the deuce? He nudged the spaceship closer, and gasped.
"Son of a—"
Hastily, he switched to Gaelic.
"What is it, light of
both my eyes?" asked Emily.
McConnell
beat his head against the console. "A couple of hoops an' some broken
staves," he whimpered. "Oh, no, no, no!"
"But what of it? I mean, after all, when you consider how Mr. Syrup put that boat
together, well, actually."
"That's
just it!" howled McConnell. "That's what's cost me near heart
failure, plus two priceless hours or more an'— That
was our meteor! An empty beer barrel! Oh, the ignominy of
it!"
Chapter
11
Herr
Syrup stopped the exhaust of his fourth-stage keg
and leaned back into weighdessness with a sigh. "Ve better not accelerate
any more," he said. "Not yust now. Ve vill need a little
reserve to maneuver later on."
"Vot
later on?" asked Herr von Himmelschmidt sourly. "I don't know vy der
ship shot on past us, but soon it comes back und den ve iss maneuvered into
chail."
"Veil,
meanvile shall ve pass de time?" Herr Syrup took a greasy
pack of cards from his jacket and riffled them suggestively.
"Stop riffling them suggestively!"
squealed Sarmishkidu. "This is no time for idle amusements."
"Vat else is it a time for?"
"Well
. . . hmmm . . . no, not that. . . Perhaps . . . no . . . Shilling ante?"
At
the end of some four hours, when he was ahead by several pounds sterling in
I.O.U's and Sarmishkidu was'whistling like an indignant bagpipe, Herr Syrup
noticed how dim the light was getting. The gauge showed him that the outside
batteries were rather run down also. Everything would have to be charged up
again. He explained the situation. "Do you vant first turn on de bicycle
or shall IP" he asked.
"Who, me?" Sannishladu wagged a languid ear. "Whatever gave you the idea
that evolution has prepared my race for bicycle riding?"
"Veil...
I mean . .. dat is—"
"You
are letting your Danishness run away with you."
"Satan
i helvedeF muttered
Herr Syrup. He floated himself into the saddle, put feet to pedals, and began
working.
"And
de vorst of it is," he grumbled, "who is
ever going to believe I crossed from Grendel to New Vinshester on a
bicycle?"
Slowly,
majestically, and off-center, the boat picked up an opposite rotation.
"There
they bel" cried Rory McConnell. "Oh dear," said Emily Croft.
The
beer boat swelled rapidly in the forward viewport. The weariness of hour upon
hour, searching, dropped from the Erseman. "Here we gol" he cried
exultantly. "Tantivy,
tantivy, tantivyl"
Then,
lacking radar, he found that the human eye is a poor judge of free-space
relationships. He buckled down to the awkward task of matching speeds.
"Whoops!"
he said. "Overshot!" Ten kilometers beyond,
he came to a relative halt, twisted the cumbersome mass of the ship around, and
approached slowly. He saw a head pop up into the spacesuit helmet, glare at him,
and pop back again. Foam spouted; the boat slipped out of his view.
McConnell
readjusted and came alongside, so that he looked directly from the turret at
his prey. "He hasn't the acceleration to escape us," he gloated. Tfl
folly each twist an' turn he cares to make, from now until—" He stopped.
"Until
we get to New Winchester?" asked Emily in a demure tone.
"But—I mean to say—but!" Major McConnell bugged tired eyes at the
keg-and-box bobbing across the stars.
"But I've overhauled them!" he
shouted, pounding the console. "I've a regular ship with hundreds of times
their mass an'. . . an'. . . they've got to come
aboard! It isn't fair!"
"Since
we have no wireless, how can you inform them of that?" purred the girl.
She leaned over close and patted his cheek. Her gaze softened. "There,
there. I'm sorry. I do love you, and I don't want to tease you or anything, but
honesdy, don't you think you're becoming a bit of a bore on this subject? I
mean, enough's enough, don't you know."
"Not
if ye're of Erse blood, it isn't." McConnell set his jaw till it ached.
"I'll scoop 'em up, that's what I will!"
There
was a master control for the cargo machinery in the engine room, but none on
the bridge. McConnell unstrapped himself, shoved grimly "down" to the
hold section, pumped out the main hatch chamber and opened the lock. Now he had
it gaping wide enough to swallow the boat whole, and—
Weight
came back. He crashed into the deck. "Emily!" he bellowed, picking
himself up with a bloody nose. "Emily, git away from them controls!"
Three
Terrestrial gravities of acceleration were a monstrous load on any man. He
took minutes to regain the bridge, drag himself to the main console, and slap
down the main drive switch. Meanwhile Emily, sagging in her chair and gasping
for breath, managed a tolerant smile.
When
they again floated free, McConnell bawled at her: T love yez more than I do me
own soul, an' ye're the most beautiful creature the cosmos will ever see, an'
I've half a mind to turn yez over me knee an' paddle ye raw!"
"Watch
your language, Rory," the vicar's daughter reproved. "Paddle me
black and blue, if you please. I mean, I don't like double-entendres."
"Ah,
be still, ye blitherin' angel," he snarled. He swept the sky with a
bloodshot telescope. The boat was out of sight again. Of
course.
It
took him half an hour to relocate it, still orbiting stubbornly on toward New
Winchester. And New Winchester had grown noticeably more
bright.
"Now we'll see what we'll see,"
grated Major McConnell.
He accelerated till he was dead ahead of the
boat, matched speeds—except for a few K.P.H. net toward him which he left for
his quarry—and spun broadside to. As nearly as he could gauge it, the boat was
aimed directly into his open cargo hatch.
Herr Syrup applied a quick side jet, slipped
"beneath" the larger hull, and continued on his way.
"Aaaarghl"
Tiny flecks of foam touched
McConnell's hps. He tried again.
And
again.
And
again.
"It's
no use," he choked at last. "He can slide past me too easy. The wan
thing I could do would be to ram him an' be
done—Arragh, hell have him, he knows I'm not a murderer."
"Really,
dear," said Emily, "it would all be so simple if you would just give
up and admit he's won."
"Small chance of that!" McConnell brooded for a long minute. And
slowly a luster returned to his eyes. "Yes. I have it. The loadin' crane.
I'll have to jury-rig a control to the bridge, as well as a visio screen so I
can see what I'm doin'. But havin' given meself that much, why, I'll approach
ag'in with the crane grapple projectin' from the hatch, reach out, an' grab
hold!"
"Rory," said
Emily, "you're being tiresome."
"I'm
bein' Erse, by all the saints!" McConnell rubbed a bristly red jaw. "Tis hours 'twill take
me, an' him fleein' the while. Could ye hold us alongside, me
only one?"
"Me?"
The girl opened wide blue eyes and protested innocently. "But darling,
you told me after that last time to leave the controls alone, and I admit I don't
know a thing about it. I mean, it would be unlawful for me to try piloting,
wouldn't it, and possitively dangerous. I mean to say, meden pratto."
"Ah,
well, I might have known how the good loyal heart of yez would make ye a bloody nuisance. But either give me your word of honor
not to touch the pilot board ag'in, or I must break me own heart by tyin' yez into that chair."
"Oh,
I promise, dear. I'll promise you anything within reason."
"An'
whatsoever ye don't happen to want is unreasonable. Yes." Rory McConnell
sighed, kissed his lady love, and went off to -work. The escape boat blasted
feebly but steadily into a new orbit—not very different, but time and the pull
of the remote sun on an inert ship would show their work later on.
General Scourge-of-the-Sassenach O'Toole
lifted a gaunt face and glared somberly at the young guardsman who had finally
won through to his office. "Well?" he clipped.
"Beggin' your pardon,
sir, but—"
"Salute
me, ye good-for-nothin' scut!" growled O'Toole. "What kind of an army
is it we've got here, where a private soldier passin' the captain in the street
slaps his back an' says, 'Paddy, ye auld pig, the top of the mornin' to yez an'
if ye've a moment to spare, why, 'tis proud I'll be to stand yez a mug of dark
in yon tavern'—eh?"
"Well,
sir," said the guardsman, his Celtic love of disputation coming to the
fore, "I say 'twas a fine well-run army of outstandingly high morale.
Though truth to speak, the captain I've been saddled with is a pickle-faced son
of a landlord who would not lift his hat to St. Bridget herself, did the dear
holy colleen come walkin' in his door."
"Morale,
ye say?" shouted O'Toole, springing from his chair. "Morale cuts both
ways, ye idiot! How much morale do ye think the officer's corps has got, or I
meself, when me own men name me Auld S.O.T.S. to me face, not even both-erin'
to sound the initials sep'rit, an' me havin' not touched a drop in
all me life? I'll have some respect hereabouts, be-gorra, or know the reason
why!"
"If
ye want to know the reason I can give it to ye, General, sir, ye auld maid in
britches!" cried the guardsman. His fist smote the desk. " 'Tis just the sour face of yez, that's the rayson,
an' if ye drink no drop 'tis because wan look at yez would curdle the poteen in
the jug! Now if ye want some constructive suggistions for improvin' the
management of this army—"
They
passed an enjoyable half hour. At last, having grown hoarse, the guardsman bade
the general a friendly good day and departed.
Five
minutes later there was a scuffle in the anteroom. A
sentry's voice yelped, "Ye can't go in there to himself without an
appointment!" and the guardsman answered, "An appointment I've had,
since the hour before dawn whin I first came an' tried to get by the
bureaucratic lot of yez!" and the scuffle got noisier and at last the
office door went off its hinges as the guardsman tossed the sentry through it.
"Beggin' your pardon, sir," he
panted, dabbing at a bruised cheek and judiciously holding the sentry down with
one booted foot, "but I just remembered why I had to see yez."
"Ye'll
go to the brig for this, ye riotous scum!" roared O'Toole. "Corp'ril of the guard! Arrest this man!"
"That
attitude is precisely what I was criticizin' earlier," pointed out the
soldier. *"Tis officers like yez what takes all the fun out of war. Why,
ye wall-eyed auld Fomorian, if ye'd been in charge of the Cattle Raid of
Cooley, the Brown Bull would still be chewin' cud in his meaddy! Now ye listen
to me—"
As four freshly arrived sentries dragged him
off, he shouted back: "All right, then! If ye re goin' to be that way
about it, all right an' be damned to yez! I won't tell ye
my news! I won't
speak a word of what I saw through the tellyscope just before sunrise—or failed
to see—ye can sit there in blithe ignorance of the Venusian ship havin'
vanished from her orbit, till she calls down the Anglian Navy upon yez! See if
I
I |
n
For
a long, long moment, General Scourge-of-the-Sassen-ach O'Toole gaped out at
Grendel's blue sky.
I
Chapter 12
Spent, shaking with lack of sleep and sheer
muscular weariness, Rory McConnell weaved through free fall toward the bridge.
As he passed the galley, Emily stopped him. Having had a night watch of rest,
she looked almost irritatingly calm and beautiful. "There, there,
love," she said. "Is it all over with? Come, I've fixed a nice cup of
tea." "Don't want any tea," he growled.
"Oh, but darling, you mustl Why, you'll waste away. I swear you're already just skin and bones .
. . oh, and your poor dear hands, the knuckles are all rubbed raw. Come on,
there's a sweetheart, sit down and have a cup of tea. I mean, actually you'll
have to float, and drink it out of one of those silly suction bottles, but the
principle is the same. That old boat will keep."
"Not
much longer," said McConnell. "By now, she's far closer to the King
than she is to Grendel."
"But
you can wait ten minutes, can't you?" Emily pouted. "You're not only
neglecting your health, but me. You've hardly remembered I exist. All those
hours, the only thing I heard on the intercom was swearing. I mean, I imagine
from the tone it was swearing, though of course I don't speak Gaelic. You will
have to teach me after we're married. And ni teach you Greek. I understand there is a certain affinity between the
languages." She rubbed her cheek against his bare chest. "Just as there is between you and me . . . Oh, dear!"
She retired to try getting some of the engine grease off her face.
In
the end, Rory McConnell did allow himself to be prevailed upon. For ten
minutes only. Half an hour later, much refreshed, he mounted to the bridge and
resumed acceleration.
Grendel
was little more than a tarnished farthing among the stars. New Winchester had
swelled until it was a great green and gold moon. There would be warships in
orbit around it, patrolling—McConnell dismissed ^the thought and gave himself
to his search.
After
all this time, it was not easy. Space is big and even the largest beer keg is
comparatively small. Since Herr Syrup had shifted the plane of his boat's orbit
by a trifle—an hour's questing confirmed that this must be the case—the volume
in which he might be was fantastically huge. Furthermore, drifting free, his
vessel painted black, he would be hard to spot, even when you were almost on
top of him.
Another hour passed.
"Poor
darling," said Emily, reaching from her chair to rumple the major's red
locks. "You've tried so hard."
New
Winchester continued to grow. Its towns were visible now, as blurred specks on
a subtie tapestry of wood and field and ripening grain; the Royal Highroad was
a thin streak across a cloud-softened dayface.
"He'll
have to reveal himself soon," muttered McConnell from his telescope.
"That beer blast is so weak—"
"Dear
me, I understood Mr. Sarmishkidu's beer was rather strong," said Emily.
McConnell
chuckled. "Ah, they should have used Irish whisky in their jet. But what I
meant, me beloved, was that in so cranky a boat, they could not hope to hit
their target on the nose, so they must make course corrections as .they approach
it. And with so low an exhaust velocity, they'll need a long time of blastin' to—Hoy! I've got html"
The
misty trail expanded in the viewfield, far and far away. McConnell's hands
danced on the control board. The spaceship turned about and leaped ahead. The
crane, projecting out of the cargo hatch, flexed its talons hungrily.
Fire burst!
After
a time of strangling on his own breath, McConnell saw the brightness break into
rags before his dazzled eyes. He stared into night and constellations.
"What the devil?" he gasped. "Is there a Sassenach ship nearby?
Has the auld squarehead, a gun? That was a shot across our bows!"
He
zipped past the boat at a few kilometers' distance while frantically scouring
the sky. A massive shape crossed his telescopic field. It grew before his eyes
as he stared—it couldn't be— "Our own ship!" choked McConnell. "Our own Erse ship."
The
converted freighter did not shoot again, for fear of attracting Anglian
attention. It edged nearer, awkwardly seeking to match velocities and close in
on the Mercury Girl. "Get away!"' shouted McConnell.
"Get out of the way, ye idiots! 'Tis not meself ye want,
'tis auld Syrup, over there. Git out of me way!"
He avoided imminent collision by a wild backward spurt.
The realization broke on him. "But how
do they know 'tis me on board here?" he asked aloud.
"Telepathy?"
suggested the girL fluttering her lashes at him.
"They
don't know. They can't even have noticed the keg boat, I'll swear. So 'tis us
they wish to board an'—Get out of the way, ye son of a Scotchman I"
The
Erse ship rushed in, shark-like. Again McConnell had to accelerate backward to
avoid being stove. New Winchester dwindled in his viewports.
He
slapped the console with a furious hand. "An' me lackin' a radio to tell
'em the truth," he groaned. "I'll jist have to orbit free, an' let
'em lay alongside an' board, an' explain the situation." His teeth grated
together. "All of which, if I know any one thing about the Force's high
command, will cost us easy another hour."
Emily
smiled. The Mercury
Girl continued to recede
from the goal.
"I t'ink ve is in good broadcast range
now," said Herr Syrup.
His
boat was again inert, having exhausted nearly all its final cask. New
Winchester waxed, already spreading across several degrees of arc. If only some
circling Navy ship would happen to see the vessel; but no, the odds were all
against that. Ah, well. Weary, bleary, but justifiably triumphant, Herr Syrup
tapped the oscillator key.
Nothing happened.
"Vere's de
spark?" he complained.
"I don't know," said Sarmishkidu.
"I thought you would." "Bloody hell!" screamed Claus.
Herr Syrup snarled inarticulately and tapped
some more. There was still no result. "It vas okay ven I tested back at de
ship," he pleaded. "Of course, I did not dare test much or de Ersers
might overhear, but it did vork. Vat's gone crazy since?"
"I
vould suggest that since most of the transmission apparatus is outside by the
batteries, something has worked loose," answered Sarmishkidu. "We
could easily have jarred a wire off its terminal or some such thing."
Herr
Syrup swore and stuffed himself up into the space-suit and tried to see what
was wrong. But the oscillator parts were not accessible, or even visible, from
this position: another point overlooked in the haste of constructing the boat.
So he would have to put on the complete suit and crawl back to attempt repairs;
and that would expose the interior of the cabin, including poor old Claus, to
raw space—"Oh, Yudas," he said.
There
was no possibility of landing on New Winchester; there never had been, in fact.
Now the barrel didn't even hold enough reaction mass to establish an orbit. The
boat would drift by, the oxygen would be exhausted,
unless first the enemy picked him up. Staring aft, - Herr Syrup gulped. The
enemy was about to do so.
He
had grinned when he saw the two Erse-controlled ships nudge each other out of
sight. But now one of them, yes, the Girl herself,
with a grapnel out at the side, came back into view.
His
heart sagged. Well, he had striven. He might as well give up. Life in a yeast
factory was at least life.
No, by heavenl
Herr Syrup struggled back into the box.
"Qvickl" he yelled. "Give me de popcoml" "What?" gaped Sarmishkidu.
"Hand
me up de carton vit' popcorn t'rough the valve, an' den give me about a minute
of full acceleration forvard."
Sarmishkidu
shrugged with all his tentacles, but obeyed. A quick pair of blasts faced the
boat away from the approaching ship. Herr Syrup's space-gauntleted hand closed
on the small box as it was shoved up through the stovepipe diaphragm, and he
hurled it from him as his vessel leaped ahead.
The
popcorn departed with a speed which, relative to the Girl, was not inconsiderable. Exposed to vacuum, it exploded from its
pasteboard container as it gained full, puffy dimensions.
Now one of the oldest space
war tactics is to drop a mass of hard objects, such as ball bearings, in the
path of a pursuing enemy. And then there are natural meteors. In either case,
the speeds involved are often such as to wreak fearful damage on the craft.
Rory McConnell saw a sudden ghasdy vision of white spheroids hurtling toward
him. Instinctively, he stopped forward acceleration and crammed on full thrust
sideways.
Almost,
he dodged the swarm. A few pieces did strike the viewport. But they
did not punch through, they did not even crater the
tough plastic. They spattered. It took him several disgusted minutes to realize
what they had been. By that time, the Erse ship had come into view with the
plain intention of stopping him, laying alongside, and
finding out what the devil was wrong now. When everything had been straightened
out, a good half hour had passed.
"Dere is for damn sure no time to fix de
oscillator," said Herr Syrup. "Ve must do vat ve can."
Sarmishkidu
worked busily, painting the large pretzel box with air-sealing gunk. T trust
the bird will survive," he said.
"I t'ink so," said Herr Syrup. "I t'row him and de apparatus avay as hard as I can.
Ve vill pass qvite close to de fringes of de asteroid's atmosphere. He has not
many minutes to fall, and de oxygen keeps him breat'ing all dat vile. Ven de
whole t'ing hits de air envelope, dere vill be enough
impact to tear open de pretzel box and Claus can fly out."
The boat rumbled softly, blasting as straight
toward New Winchester as its crew had been able to aim. It gave a feeble but
most useful weight to objects within. Sarmishkidu finished painting the box and
attached a tube connecting it with one of the oxygen flasks.
"Now,
den, Claus," said Herr Syrup, "I have tied a written
message to your leg, but if I know you, you vill rip it off and eat it as soon
as you are free. However, if I also know you, you vill fly straight for de
nearest pub and try to bum a beer. So, repeat after me: 'Help! Help! Invaders on Grendel.' Dat's all. 'Help!
Help! Invaders on Grendel.' "
"McConnell is a skunk,"
said Claus.
"No, nol 'Help! Invaders on Grendel.' "
"McConnell
cheats at cards," said Claus. "McConnell is a teetotaller. McConnell
is a barnacle on de nose of society. McConnell—"
"No, no, nol"
"No, no, no!"
echoed Claus agreeably.
"Listen,"
said Herr Syrup after a deep breath. "Listen, Claus. Please say it. Yust say, 'Helpl Help! Invaders on
Grendel.'"
"Nevermore," said
Claus.
"We had best
proceed," said Sarmishkidu.
He stuffed the indignant crow into the box
and sealed it shut while Herr Syrup got back in the spacesuit: including, this
time, its pants. And then, having aerated himself enough to stand vacuum for a while, Sarmishkidu unfastened the armor from
the hatch cover. Herr Syrup popped inboard. Air rushed out. Herr Syrup pushed
the oxygen cylinder, with Claus' box, through the hole.
New Winchester was so close it filled nearly
half the sky. Herr Syrup made out towns and farms and orchards, through fleecy
clouds. He sighed wistfully, shoved the tank from him as hard as he could, and
watched it dwindle. A moment afterward, the asteroid itself began to recede; he
had passed peri-New Winchester and was outward bound on a long cold orbit.
"So,"
said Herr Syrup, "let de Erse come pick us up." He realized he was
talking to himself: no radio, and anyhow Sarmishkidu had curled into a ball.
There was no point in resealing the cabin—the other oxygen bottle was long exhausted.
"I never t'ought de future of two
nations could depend on vun old crow," sighed Herr Syrup.
Chapter
13
"Tsk-Tsk-Tsk," said Rory McConnell. "An' your
radio didn't work after all?"
"No," wheezed Heir Syrup. He was still a little blue around the nose.
It had been a grim wait of many hours, crouched in the spinning wreckage of his
boat; his suit's air supply had been low indeed when the Mercury Girl finally came to him.
"An' ye say your poor
auld bird was lost as well?"
"Blown
out ven de gasket blew out dat I told you of." Herr Syrup accepted a cigar
and leaned his weary frame gratefully back against the gymbal-swung
acceleration bench in the saloon. There was still no functioning compensator
and the Mercury
Girl, with an Erse crew
aboard, was pacing back to Grendel at a quarter gee.
"Then
all your trouble was for nothin'P" McConnell did not gloat; if anything,
he was too sympathetic.
T guess so," Herr Syrup answered rather bleakly, thinking
of Claus. No doubt the crow would look at once for human society; but what was
he likely to convey except a string
of oaths? Too late, the engineer saw that he should have put some profanity
into his message.
"Well,
ye were a brave foe, an' 'tis daily I'll come by Grendel gaol to cheer
yez," said McConnell, clapping his shoulder.
"For I fear the General will insist on lockin' yez up for the duration. He
was more than a little annoyed, I can tell yez; he was spittin' rivets. He
wanted for to leave you drift off to your fate, an' we had quite an argument
about it, wherefore I am now just another private soldier in the ranks."
McConnell rubbed his large knuckles reminis-cendy. "However, I won me
point. Himself went back hours ago in t'other ship, but he let me stay wi' this one and pick yez up. But I dared not go close to
the Anglian capital, but must wait until ye had orbited so far away that no
chance Navy ship would see us an' get curious. An' so long a delay
meant ye were hard to find. We were almost too late, eh, what?"
"Ja,"
shuddered Herr Syrup. He
tilted the proffered bottle of Irish to his lips.
"But
all's well that ends well, even though 'twas said by an Englishman,"
chuckled McConnell. He squeezed Emily's hand. She smiled mistily back at him.
"For I'll regain me auld rank as soon as the swellin' in the General's eye
has gone down so he can see how much I'm needed. An' then 'twill be time to
effect the glorious redemption of Laoighise, an' then, Emily, you an' I will be
wed, an' then—Weill" He coughed. She blushed.
"Ja,"
snorted Sarmishkidu.
"Good ending, huh? With my business ruined, und me in jail, und maybe a
war started, and that dummkopf of a Shalmuannusar claiming
he proved the sub-unitary connectivity theorem before I did, as if publishing
first had anything to do with priority—Hal"
"Oh, dear," said
Emily compassionately.
"Oh, darlin',"
said McConnell.
"Oh,
sweetheart," cooed Emily, losing interest in Sarmishkidu.
"Oh, me little turtle
dove," whispered McConnell.
Herr Syrup fought a strong
desire to retch.
A
bell clanged. McConnell stood up. "That's the signal," he said.
"We've come to Grendel an' I'll be wanted on the bridge.
'Twill be an unendin' few minutes till I see
yez ag'in, me only one."
"Goodbye, my beloved," breathed the
girl. Herr Syrup gritted his teeth.
Her
manner changed as soon as the Erseman had left. She leaned over toward the
engineer and asked tensely: "Do you think we succeeded? I mean, do
you?"
"I
doubt it," he sighed. "In de end, only Claus vas left to carry de
vord." He explained what had happened. "Even supposing, he does
repeat vat he vas supposed to, I doubt many people vould believe a crow dat has
not even been introduced."
"Well—" Emily bit her hp. "We
tried, didn't we? But if a war does come—between Rory's
country and mine. Nol I won't think about
it!" She rubbed small fists across her eyes.
Uncompensated
forces churned Herr Syrup on his seat. At last they quieted; the engine mumble
died; a steady one gee informed him that the Mercury Girl was again berthed on Grendel. "I'm going
to Rory," said Emily. Almost, she fled from the saloon.
Herr
Syrup puffed his cigar, waiting for the Erse to come take him to prison.
The first thing he would do there, he thought dully, was sleep for about fifty
hours . . . He grew aware that several minutes had passed. Sarmishkidu sat
brooding in a spaghetti-like nest of tentacles. The ship had grown oddly quiet,
no feet along the passageways. Shrugging, Herr Syrup got up, strolled out of
the saloon and down a corridor, entered the open main passenger airlock and
looked upon the spacefield.
The cigar dropped from his
mouth.
The
Erse flag was down off the staff and the Anglian banner was back. A long,
subdued line of green-clad men shuffled past a heap of their own weapons.
Trucks were bringing more every minute. They trailed one by one into a military
transport craft berthed nearby, accompanied by hoots and jeers—and an
occasional tearful au revoir—from the Grendeiian townspeople,crowded
against the port fence. A troop of redcoats with bayoneted rifles was urging
the prisoners along, and the gigantic guns of H.M.S. Inhospitable shadowed the entire scene.
"Yudas priest!"
said Herr Syrup.
He
stumbled down onto the ground. A brisk young officer surveyed him through a monocle,
sketched a salute, and extended an arm. "Mr. Syrup? I understand you were
aboard. Your crow, sir."
"Hell
and damnation!" said Claus, hopping from the Anglian wrist to the Danish
shoulder.
"Pers'nally,"
said the young man, "I go for falcons."
"You come!"
whispered Herr Syrup. "You come!"
"Just
a short hop, don't y* know. We arrived hours back. No resistance,
except—er—" The officer blushed. "I say, don't look now, hut that
young lady in the, ah, rather brief costume and, er, passionate embrace with
the large chappie
—d'
you know anything about 'em? Mean to say, she claims she's the vicar's daughter
and he's her fiance and she goes where he goes, and really, sir, I jolly well
don't know whether to evacuate her with the invaders or give him a permit to
remain here or, or what, damn!"
Herr
Syrup stole a glance. "Do vatever seems easiest," he said. "I
don't t'ink to dem it makes mush difference."
"No. I suppose
not." The officer sighed.
"How
did you find out vat vas happening here? Did de crow really give somevun my
messaged'
"What message?"
"Go sputz
yourself!" rasped Claus.
"No, not dat
vun," said Herr Syrup quickly.
"My
dear sir," said the officer, "when a half-ruined oxygen bottle, with
the name Mercury
Girl still identifiable
on it, lands in a barley field . . . and we've been wirelessed that that ship
is under quarantine ... and then when
this black bird flies in a farmer's window and steals a scone off his tea table
and says, ah, uncomplimentary things about one Major McConnell . . . well, really,
my dear chap, the farmer will phone the police and the police will phone Newer
Scotland Yard and -the Yard will check with Naval Intelligence and, well, I
mean to say it's obvious, eh, what, what, what?"
"Ja" said Herr Syrup weakly. "I suppose
so." He hesitated. "Vat you ban going to do vit' de Ersers? Dey vas pretty decent, considering. I
vould hate to see dem serving yail sentences."
"Oh,
don't worry about that, sir. Mean to say, well, it's a bally embarrassing
situation all around, eh? We don't
want to admit that a band of half-cocked extremists stole one of our shires
right out from under our noses, so to speak, what? We can't suppress the fact,
of course, but we aren't exactly anxious to advertise it all over the Solar
System, y' know. As for the Erse government, it doesn't want trouble with us—
Gaelic Socialists, y' know, peaceful chappies—and certainly doesn't want to
give the opposition party a leg up; so they won't support this crazy attempt in
any way. At the same time, popular sentiment at home won't let 'em punish the
attempt either. Eh?
"Jolly ticklish situation. Delicate. All we can do is ship these fellows home with our
compliments, where their own government will doubtless give 'em a talking to
and let 'em go. And then, very much on the Q.T., I'm jolly well sure the Erse
Republic wül pay whatever damage claims there are. Your
own ship ought to collect a goodly share of that, eh, what?"
By
this time Sarmishkidu von
Himmelschmidt had
reached the foot of the ladder. "I'll have you know I have thousands of
pounds in damages comingl" he whistled in outrage. "Maybe
millions! Why, just the loss of business during occupation, at a rate of
easy five hundred pounds a day—let's call it a t'ousand pounds a day to put it
in round figures—dot adds up to—"
"Oh,
come now, old chap, come now. Tut-tut!" The officer adjusted his monocle.
"It isn't all that bad. Really it isn't, don't y' know. After all, even if
nothing is done officially, word will get around. People will come in jolly old
floods to see that place where all this happened. I'll wager my own missus
makes me vacation here this season. Cloak and dagger stuff, excitin', all that
sort of piffle, eh, what, what? Why, it'll be the busiest tourist season in
your history, by Jove."
"Hmmmm." Sarmishkidu stroked his nose thoughtfully. A gleam waxed in one bulging
eye. "Hmmm. Yes. The atmosphere
of international intrigue; sinister spies, double agents, beautiful females
luring away secret papers. Yes, the first place on Grendel to fumish that kind of atmosphere will —Hmmm. I must make some
alterations, I see. To hell with Gemütlichkeit. I want my tavern to have an uncertain reputation. Yes, that's it,
uncertain." He drew himself up and flourished a dramatic tentacle.
"Gentlemen, you are now looking upon the proprietor of der Alt Heisenberg
Rathskeller!"