First Command (21 page)

He regarded his first lieutenant dubiously. He was a good man, a good officer, and Grimes liked him personally. But if
Southerly Buster
made a landing on Morrowvia he would have to be watched carefully. And—who would watch the watchman? Grimes knew that if he wished to reach flag rank in the Service he would have to curb his propensity for taking sides.

“Mphm,” he grunted. Then, “I’ll leave Control in your capable hands, Mr. Saul. And keep a watchful eye on the M.P.I., Mr. Pitcher. I’m going down to have a few words with Hayakawa.”

Lieutenant Hayakawa was on watch—but a psionic communications officer, as any one such will tell you, is
always
on watch. He was not, however, wearing the rig of the day. His grossly obese body was inadequately covered by a short kimono, gray silk with an embroidered design of improbable looking flowers. Scrolls, beautifully inscribed with Japanese ideographs, hung on the bulkheads, although space had been left for a single hologram, a picture of a strikingly symmetrical snow-capped mountain sharp against a blue sky. The deck was covered with a synthetic straw matting. In the air was the faint, sweet pungency of a burning joss stick.

Hayakawa got slowly and ponderously to his feet. “Captain san . . .” he murmured.

“Sit down, Mr. Hayakawa,” ordered Grimes. The acceleration—now more than two Gs—was bad enough for him; it would be far, far worse for one of the telepath’s build. He lowered himself to a pile of silk cushions. Not for the first time he regretted that Hayakawa had been allowed to break the regulations governing the furnishing of officers’ cabins—but PCOs, trading upon their rarity, are privileged persons aboard any ship.

He settled down into a position approximating comfort—and then had to get up and shift the cushions and himself to another site. From the first one he had far too good a view of Hayakawa’s psionic amplifier, the disembodied dog’s brain suspended in its globe of cloudy nutrient fluid. The view of Mount Fujiyama was much more preferable.

He said, “We have
Schnauzer
on the M.P.I. now.”

“I know, Captain.”

“You would,” remarked Grimes, but without rancor. “And you still haven’t picked up any further . . . emanations from her?”

“No. Her PCO is Delwyn Hume. I have met him. He is a good man. What you called my judo technique worked just once with him. It will never work again.” Then Hayakawa smiled fatly and sweetly. “But I have other news for you.”

“Tell.”

“Southerly Buster,
Captain. Myra Bracegirdle is the CPO.
She
is good—but, of course, we are all good. Her screen is as tight as that maintained by Hume or myself. But . . .

“She is emotional. During moments of stress her own thoughts seep through. She hates the
Buster’s
mate. His name is Aloysius Dreebly. Now and again—often, in fact—he tries to force his attentions on her.”

“Interesting,” commented Grimes. He thought,
This is building up to one of those situations where everybody hates everybody. Mr. Saul hates Captain Kane, although he’s never met him personally. Myra hates Aloysius. The way Maggie’s been carrying on lately I’m beginning to think that she hates
me.
And I doubt very much if Captain Danzellan feels any great affection for Mr. Francis Delamere . . . .
He grinned.
But Frankie loves Tabbie . . . .

He said, “And is
Southerly Buster
bound for Morrowvia?”

“I cannot say, Captain. But she is around. And just before you came in I ‘heard’ Myra Bracegirdle think, “Thank the gods there’re only seven more days to go before we arrive!’ “

And that,
Grimes told himself,
means that she gets there at the same time as us . . . .

He clambered laboriously to his feet, went to Hayakawa’s telephone. He punched, first of all, for Lieutenant Connery’s quarters, but the engineering officer was not there. He called the engine room, and found him.

“Captain here, Chief. Can you squeeze out another half lume?”

“I can’t.” Connery’s voice was sharp. “The governor’s playing up, an’ we’re havin’ to run the Drive on manual control. If I try to push her any more we’ll finish up last Thursday in the middle of sweet fuck all!”

“Can’t you fix the governor?”

“Not without stoppin’ her an’ shuttin’ down. If you want to carry on, it’ll have to wait until we get to Morrowvia.”

“Carry on the way you’re doing,” said Grimes.

6

Seeker
saw nothing at all
of
Southerly Buster
until both vessels were in orbit about Morrowvia, just prior to landing. This was not surprising, as Drongo Kane’s ship had been approaching the planet from the Shakespearian Sector, whilst Grimes had been coming in from Lindisfarne. The angle subtended by these points of origin was little short of 180∞. Furthermore, once Morrowvia itself had come within MPI range the instrument, insofar as bodies of less than planetary mass were concerned, was practically useless. And radar had been useless until the shutting down of the time-space twisting interstellar drive.

There was
Seeker,
hanging in equatorial orbit three hundred miles up from the surface, and below her was Morrowvia, an Earth-type world, but unspoiled. There were blue seas and vast expanses of green prairie and forest land, yellow deserts and polar icecaps as dazzlingly white as the drifting cloud masses. There were snow-peaked mountain ranges, and long, winding rivers, on the banks of which, sparsely scattered, were what seemed to be towns and villages—but from a range of hundreds of miles, even with excellent telescopes, human habitations can look like natural formations, and natural formations like buildings, and telltale industrial smog was altogether lacking.

On the night hemisphere the evidence was more conclusive. There were clusters of lights, faint and yellowish. Said Grimes, “Where there’s light there’s life, intelligent life . . . .”

“Not necessarily,” Maggie Lazenby told him. “There are such things as volcanoes, you know . . .”

“On this hemisphere only? Come off it, Maggie.”

“And
there are such things as luminescent living organisms.”

“So what we’re seeing are glowworm colonies? And what about the reports from our agents on Siluria and Elsinore and Drroomoorr? Would either the Dog Star Line or Drongo Kane be interested in glowworms?”

“They might be,” she said. “They might be.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s high time, Commander Grimes, that you cured yourself of your habit of jumping to conclusions, that you adopted a scientific approach.”

Grimes decided against making some cutting retort. The other officers in the control room were looking far too amused by the exchange. He grunted, then demanded of Lieutenant Saul, “Any sign yet of
Southerly Buster,
Number One?”

“No, sir. Perhaps Mr. Hayakawa . . .”

“I’ve already asked him. As far as his Peke’s brain in aspic and he are concerned, the
Buster’s
maintaining absolute psionic silence.”

“Peke’s
brain?” asked Maggie.

“Can
you
think of any definitely
Japanese
dog at a second’s notice?”

And then a voice came from the NST transceiver. It was a man’s voice, harsh, yet not unpleasant, strongly accented.”
Southerly Buster
to Aero-Space Control.
Southerly Buster
to Aero-Space Control. Do you read me? Over.”

“But there’s not any Aero-Space Control here,” announced Lieutenant Timmins. “We’ve already found that out.”

“Kane knows that as well as we do,” Grimes told him. “But, to judge by his record, he always maintains a facade of absolute legality in everything he does. This fits in.”

“And I suppose,” said Saul, “that he’s already tried to establish communication with the local telepaths, if any, just as we did.”

“Not necessarily. His PCO will have ‘heard’ our Mr. Hayakawa doing just that, and she’ll have learned that Morrowvia is lousy with telepaths, but none of them trained . . . . Oh, they
know
we’re here, in a vague sort of way . . . .”

“
Southerly Buster
to Aero-Space Control.
Southerly Buster
to Aero-Space Control. Do you read me? Over.”

“There she is!” shouted Pitcher suddenly.

There she was, in the radar screen, a tiny yet bright blip. There she was, a new star lifting above the dark limb of the planet, a tiny planetoid reflecting the rays of Gamma Argo.

“If we can see her, she can see us,” commented Grimes. He went to the transceiver, ordered, “Put me on to him, Mr. Timmins.” He said sternly, “FSS
Seeker
to
Southerly Buster.
FSS
Seeker to Southerly Buster.
Come in, please, on audio-visual.”

“Comin’ in,
Seeker,
comin’ in . . .” drawled the voice. There was a swirl of light and color in the little screen, coalescing into a clear picture. Grimes and his officers looked into a control room not unlike their own—even to a weapons control console situated as it would have been in the nerve center of a warship. And this
Southerly Buster
was a merchantman . . . . Drongo Kane calmly regarded Grimes from the screen—bleak yet not altogether humorless blue eyes under a thatch of straw colored hair, in a face that looked as though at some time it had been completely smashed and then reassembled not over carefully. He said, “I see you,
Seeker.
Can you see me?”

“I see you,” snapped Grimes.

“Identify yourself, please,
Seeker.
Can’t be too careful once you’re off the beaten tracks, y’know.”

“Grimes,” said the owner of that name at last. “Lieutenant Commander in command of FSS
Seeker,
Survey Vessel.”

“Pleased to meet you, Commander Grimes. An’ what, may I ask, brings you out to this neck o’ the woods?”

“You mayn’t ask. That’s Federation business, Captain Kane.”

The pale eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “So you know me, Commander! Well, well. Such is fame.”

“Or notoriety . . .” murmured Maggie Lazenby.

“Did I hear the lady behind you say somethin’?” inquired Kane.

Grimes ignored this. “What are your intentions, Captain Kane?” he demanded.

“Well, now, that all depends, Commander Grimes. Nobody owns this world ‘cepting its people. I’ve asked if I could make a landing, but got no reply. I s’pose you heard me. But nobody’s told me not to land . . . .”

“What are your intentions?” demanded Grimes again.

“Oh, to set the old
Buster’s
arse down onto somethin’ safe an’ solid. An’ after that . . . Fossick around. See what we can buy or barter that’s worth liftin’. There’re some spacemen, Commander—an’ I’m one of ‘em—who have to
earn
their livin’s . . . .”

“It is my duty—and the way that I earn
my
living—to afford protection to all Federation citizens in deep space, interplanetary space, in planetary atmospheres and on planetary surfaces,” said Grimes, with deliberate pomposity.

“You needn’t put yourself out, Commander.”

“I insist, Captain. After all, as you said, one can’t be too careful when off the beaten track.”

Kane’s lips moved. Grimes was no lip-reader, but he would have been willing to bet a month’s salary that grave doubts were being cast upon his legitimacy—and, were this a less tolerant day and age, his morals. “Suit yourself,” said Kane aloud. “But you’re only wastin’ your time.”

“I’m the best judge of that.”

“Suit yourself,” growled Kane again.

Meanwhile,
Seeker’s
inertial drive had stammered into life and the ship was both slowing and lifting under the application of thrust, being driven into a powered, unnatural orbit so that
Southerly Buster
could pass beneath her.

“I thought you’d be landing first,” complained Kane.

“After
you,
Captain,” Grimes told him politely.

And just where would Kane be setting his ship down? If
Seeker
had arrived by herself Grimes would have adhered to orthodox Survey Service practice—a dawn landing at the terminator, with the full period of daylight for the initial exploration. And should it be considered safe to establish contact with the indigenes at once, a landing near to an obvious center of population.

Kane had never been an officer in the Survey Service, but he had done his share of exploring, had made first landings on planets upon which he had been the first man to set foot. Slowly, steadily
Southerly Buster
dropped through the atmosphere, with
Seeker
following a respectable distance astern. All
Seeker’s
armament was ready for instant use; Grimes had no doubt that the other ship was in a similar state of readiness.
Corgi’s
people had been hospitably treated on Morrowvia—but this was a large planet, probably divided among tribes or nations. Even though all its populace shared a common origin there had been time for divergence, for the generation of hostilities.

Down dropped
Southerly Buster
—down, down. Down dropped
Seeker,
her people alert for hostile action either from the ground or from the other ship. Grimes let Saul handle the pilotage; this was one of those occasions on which the captain needed to be able to look all ways at once.

Down dropped the two ships—down, down through the clear morning air. Kane’s objective was becoming obvious—an expanse of level ground, clear of trees, that was almost an island, bounded to north, west and south by a winding river, to the east by a wooded hill. To north and west of it were villages, each with a sparse sprinkling of yellow lights still visible in the dawn twilight. It was the sort of landing place that Grimes would have selected for himself.

Then the viewscreen, with its high magnification, was no longer necessary, and the big binoculars on their universal mounting were no longer required. And the sun was up, at ground level, casting long shadows, pointing out all the irregularities that could make the landing of a starship hazardous.

Kane was down first, setting
the Buster
neatly into the middle of a patch of green that, from the air at least, looked perfectly smooth. Saul looked up briefly from his controls to Grimes, complaining. “The bastard’s picked the best place. . . .”