First Command (47 page)

“I should hope so, Commander Grimes!” huffed Brandt.

“And if you go shooting at anything and everybody, Major Swinton,” went on Grimes, “you’ll be making the good doctor’s job all the harder.” He grinned. “But I don’t think I shall be needing the services of either of you.”

“Then,” said Swinton sourly, “I may as well cancel my orders to Sergeant Washington to provide an escort for the hose parties. Sir.”

“You will do nothing of the kind, Major. There may be dangerous wild animals on this planet. An uninhabited island like this is the very sort of place to find them.”

“Then I and my men have permission to shoot
animals,
sir?”

“Yes!” snapped Grimes, but he was beginning to relent. After all, the major was only doing the job for which he had been trained. He turned to Brandt. “I suppose you’d like some specimens, Doctor? Geological, botanical, and so on?”

“I certainly would, Commander Grimes.”

“Then you have my permission to call for volunteers from such personnel as aren’t already employed. And you, Major, can tell the sergeant to lay on escorts for them as well as for the working parties.”

“I can’t spread the few men I have that thinly, sir.”

“Mphm. Then you and your volunteers, Dr. Brandt, are to stay close to the hose crews at all times. You are not to stray out of sight of the ship. Oh, Number One—”

“Sir?” acknowledged Brabham.

“Pass the word to everybody going ashore that they are to return
at once
if the alarm siren is sounded.”

“Very good, sir. All right to carry on down to get things organized?”

“Yes. Carry on.”

Grimes felt a twinge of envy. He would have liked to have gone ashore himself, to stretch his legs, to feel grass under his feet and sunlight on his skin, to breathe air that had not been cycled and recycled far too many times. But in these circumstances his place was here, in the control room, the nerve center of his ship.

He got up from his chair and tried to pace up and down, like an old-time surface ship captain walking his bridge. But control rooms are not designed for taking strolls in. Swinton and the officer of the watch regarded him with poorly concealed amusement. He abandoned his attempt at perambulation, made his way through the clutter of chairs and consoles to the viewports overlooking the lake.

The working parties, under the bos’n, were running the ends of long hoses out to the water. Brabham slouched along beside them, his hands in his pockets, moodily kicking at tufts of grass. A young steward, one of Brandt’s volunteers, was tap-tap-tapping at an outcrop of chalky rock with a hammer. A stewardess was gathering flowers. Among them, around them, in full battle armor, men walking like robots, were Swinton’s Marines.

Already there was a small party on the beach—young Tangye, three of the junior engineers, and Vinegar Nell. And what were
they
doing? Grimes asked himself. He lifted the binoculars that he had brought with him to his eyes. The, men and the women were undressing. Oh, well, he thought, there was nothing wrong with that; a
real
sunbath after the weeks of unsatisfactory, psychologically speaking, exposure to the rays of the ship’s UV lamps. But surely Brabham should have found jobs for these people.

The idlers were naked now, were sprawling on the fine sand. Grimes envied them. Then Vinegar Nell got up and walked slowly and gracefully into the water. She was followed by Tangye. The junior engineers got to their feet, obviously about to follow the paymaster and the navigator. Grimes growled angrily, ran to the transceiver handling ship-to-shore communication. “Commander Brabham!” he barked.

He saw Brabham raising his wrist radio to his mouth, taking far too long about it, heard, at last, “Brabham here.”

“Get those bloody fools out of the water. At once!” Vinegar Nell was well away from the beach now, swimming strongly. Tangye was splashing after her. The engineers were already waist-deep in the shallows.

“Major Swinton,” ordered Grimes, “tell Sergeant Washington to get his men down to the water’s edge, and to keep their eyes skinned for any dangerous life-forms.” Swinton spoke rapidly into the microphone of his own transceiver, which was hanging about his neck. “Commander Brabham, get a move on, will you?” Grimes went on, into his own microphone.

“Oh, all right, all right.” That irritable mutter was not meant to be heard, but it was.

Brabham was down to the beach at last, had his hands to his mouth and was bawling out over the water. The engineers, who had not yet started to swim, turned, waded slowly and reluctantly back to the sand. But Vinegar Nell and Tangye either would not or could not hear the first lieutenant’s shouts.

“May I, sir?” asked Swinton. There was a nasty little grin under his moustache. “May you what, Major?”

“Order my men to drag them out.”
No,
Grimes was about to say,
no
—but he saw an ominous swirl developing a little way out from the swimmers. “Yes!” he said.

Four Marines plunged into the lake.
They
were safe enough. Full battle gear has been described, variously, as armored tanks on legs, as battle cruisers on legs and, even, as submarines on legs. They streaked out toward Vinegar Nell and Tangye, boiling wakes astern of them as they actuated their suit propulsion units. Two of them converged on the paymaster, two on the navigator. There was a flurry of frail naked limbs among the ponderous metal-clad ones. Ignominiously the swimmers were dragged to the shore, carried out onto the dry land. It looked like a scene from somebody’s mythology, thought Grimes, watching through his powerful glasses—the naked man and the naked woman, in the clutches of horrendous scaly monsters.

“Have them brought up here,” he said to the major.

He assumed that they would be allowed to dress, but he did not give any orders to that effect, thinking that such would be unnecessary. He should have known better. Vinegar Nell, in a flaming temper, was splendid in her nudity. Tangye, with his unsightly little potbelly, was not. Tangye was thoroughly cowed. Vinegar Nell was not.

“I demand an explanation, Captain!” she flared. “
And
an apology. “Was it you who ordered these”—she gestured with a slim, freckled arm toward the armored Marines—”enlisted men to attack me?”

“To save you,” said Grimes coldly, “from the consequences of your own stupidity.” He grinned without humor. “Your job is to provide meals for the personnel of this vessel, not for whatever carnivores are lurking in the lake.”

“Ha!” she snorted. “Ha!” She brushed past Grimes to stand at the viewport. “What carnivores?”

The surface of the water was placid again. But there had been something there.

“Sir!” called the officer of the watch suddenly, “I have a target on the radar. Bearing 047. Range thirty kilometers. Bearing steady, range closing.”

“Sound the recall,” ordered Grimes. He went to the intercom. “Captain here. Mr. Flannery to the control room. At once.”

Chapter 18

Flannery came into the control room,
trailing a cloud of whiskey fumes, as Vinegar Nell and Tangye were hastily leaving. He guffawed, “An’ what’s goin’ on, Captain? An orgy, no less!”

“Out of my way, you drunken bum!” snarled the paymaster, pushing past him.

Grimes ignored this. Vinegar Nell and Tangye would keep until later, as could the junior engineers who had followed their bad example. Looking out through the ports he saw that the last members of the shore parties were almost at the foot of the ramp, with Sergeant Washington and his Marines chivying them like sheepdogs. But the end of one hose had been placed in the lake; there was no reason why the pump should not be started. He told the officer of the watch to pass the order down to the engine room.

“Ye wished for me, Captain?” the telepath was asking.

“Yes, Mr. Flannery. Something, some kind of flying machine, is approaching.”

“Bearing 047. Range twenty. Closing,” reported the OOW.

“It must be an aircraft,” went on Grimes. “The mountains cut off our line of sight to the sea. Could you get inside the minds of the crew? Are their intentions hostile?”

“I’ll do me best, Captain. But as I’ve told ye an’ told ye—these people must be the lousiest telepathic transmitters in the entoire universe!”

“All hands on board, sir,” reported Brabham, coming into the control room. “Shall we reel in the hoses?”

“No. I’ve already told the engineers to start pumping. If I want to get upstairs in a hurry I shall be using the rockets, and I’ll want plenty of reaction mass. But you can retract the ramp and close the after airlock door.” Tangye—clothed, sheepish—made a reappearance. “Pilot, put the engines—inertial drive
and
reaction drive—on standby. Warn the chief that I may be wanting them at any second.”

“Range fifteen. Closing.”

Grimes raised his glasses to his eyes and looked along the 047 bearing. Yes, there it was in the sky, a black spot against a backdrop of towering, snowy cumulus. An aircraft, all right—but what sort of aircraft? Friendly or hostile? And how armed?

“All possible weaponry trained on target, sir,” reported Swinton.

“Thank you, Major. What do you have to report, Mr. Flannery?”

“I’m tryin’, Captain, indeed I’m tryin’. T’is like lookin’ for truth at the bottom of a well full o’ mud. The odd thought comes bubblin’ up through the ooze—an’ then it bursts, like a bubble, when I try to get ahold of it. But—but I’m gettin’ somethin’. They’re a bit scared—an’ why shouldn’t they be? They’re a bit scared, but they’re determined. They mayn’t look much like us—but they’re
men.
”

“Range ten. Closing.”

“Ship buttoned up, apart from the hoses,” reported Brabham.

“All engines on standby,” said Tangye. “Enough reaction mass in the tanks for limited use.”

“How limited?” demanded Grimes testily.

“He didn’t say, sir. But the pump is still sucking in water.”

“They’re comin’ on,” muttered Flannery, “although they’re not likin’ the idea of it at all, at all. But—but they—they trust? Yes. They trust us, somehow, not to swat ‘em down out o’ the sky like flies.”

“Ha!” barked Swinton, hunched eagerly over his fire control console.

“Watch it, Major!” warned Grimes sharply.

“Range five. Closing.”

Grimes studied the thing in the visual pickup screen, which gave far greater magnification than his binoculars. It looked like a big balloon, with a car hanging from the spherical gas bag. But a balloon would never be capable of that sort of speed. Then the thing turned to make a circuit of the valley, presenting its broadside to the human observers. The shape of it made sense—a long, fabric-covered torpedo with a control cabin forward, a quartet of engine pods aft. The outlines of frames and longerons were visible through the covering.
A rigid airship,
thought Grimes.
A dirigible.

“They’re havin’ a good look at us,” said Flannery unnecessarily. “They know that we’re from . . . outside.”

The airship flew in a circle with
Discovery
at its center, maintaining its distance but well within the range of the spaceship’s weaponry. Perhaps its crew, knowing only the capabilities of their own artillery, thought they were out of range.

“Another target,” reported the officer at the radar. “Bearing 047. Range thirty-five. Closing.”

“Holdin’ the first one’s hand, like,” volunteered Flannery.

Swinton, tracking the dirigible within visual sight, complained, “The bloody thing’s making me dizzy.”

“It’s stopped,” said Brabham. “No. It’s turning. Toward us.”

Toward, or away? wondered Grimes. Yes, toward it was.

“They’ve made their minds up,” whispered Flannery. “They’re thinkin’—may the Saints preserve ‘em!—that there’s no harm in us.”

The airship drove in steadily. On its new course it would pass directly over
Discovery.
It approached with a stately deliberation. Then, suddenly, from the gondola, a half dozen relatively tiny objects fell in succession.

Swinton cried out—in exultation, not fear. And Flannery screamed, “No! No!” Grimes, belatedly recognizing the falling things for what they were, shouted, “Check! Check! Check!” But the major ignored the order to hold his fire. The slashing, stabbing beam of his laser was a ghostly, almost invisible sword. Each of the falling bodies exploded smokily, even as the parachutes started to blossom above them, and as they did so there was the deafening rattle of
Discovery’s
forty millimeter battery and a torrent of bright tracer. The airship disintegrated, her twisted, black skeleton in brief silhouette against the fireball of blazing hydrogen. The blast rocked the spaceship on her landing gear and a strip of burning fabric drifted down across her stem, blotting out the control room viewports with writhing blue and yellow flames.

“You bloody pongo murderer!” screamed Flannery, beating at the major with his fists.

“Call this lunatic off me,” shouted Swinton, “before I have to kill him!”

Grimes grabbed the telepath by the shoulder, yanked him away from the Marine. He said, trying to keep his voice under some sort of control, “You bloody murderer, Swinton. You’ll face another court-martial when we get back to Base!”

“I saved the ship!” Swinton was on his feet now. “I saved your precious ship for you. I call upon you all as witnesses. That was a stick of bombs.”

“Bombs don’t explode the way those bodies did,” said Grimes coldly. “But living flesh does, when a laser beam at wide aperture hits it. The parachutes were just starting to open when you killed the poor bastards wearing them.”

“Parachutists, then,” admitted the major. “Paratroopers.”

“Emissaries,” corrected Flannery. “Comin’ in peace, wantin’ to make our acquaintance. An’ didn’t they just, you murtherin’ swine?”

“Target number two,” said the officer at the radar in a shaky voice, “bearing 047. Range twenty, opening. Twenty-one, opening . . . twenty-two . . . twenty-three.”

“They know now what to expect from Earthmen,” said Flannery bitterly.

Chapter 19

There had been
an unfortunate misunderstanding, and men had died because of it, but Grimes was still responsible for the safety of his own ship, his own crew. He ordered that the replenishment of essential air and water be resumed as soon as the wreckage of the dirigible was cleared from around
Discovery.
He allowed Brandt, assisted by a squad of Marines, to pick over the charred remains of the airship and her hapless people—a filthy, gruesome task but, viewed cold-bloodedly and scientifically, a most useful one. One of the least badly damaged bodies—it did not look as though it had ever been a living, sentient being, but it exuded the sickly smell of death—was brought on board for dissection at some later date. The other corpses were interred in a common grave, marked by an almost intact four-bladed wooden airscrew. “We’ll try to show these people that we’re civilized,” growled Grimes to the giant, black sullen Sergeant Washington, who had been ordered to take charge of the burial and who had protested that his men weren’t gravediggers. “Although it’s rather late in the day for that.”