Upon a Sea of Stars (15 page)
Read Upon a Sea of Stars Online
Authors: A. Bertram Chandler
Chapter 3
RIM MAMELUTE
,
as a salvage tug, was already in a state of near-readiness. She was fully fueled and provisioned; all that remained to be done was the mustering of her personnel. Her engineers, pottering around in Rim Runners’ workshop on the spaceport premises, were easily located. The Port doctor was conscripted from his office, and was pleased enough to be pulled away from his boring paperwork. The Port Signal Station supplied a radio officer and—for Rim
Mamelute’s
permanent Mate made it plain that he would resent being left out of the party—Sonya agreed to come along as Catering Officer.
Grimes could have got the little brute upstairs within an hour of his setting the wheels in motion, but he insisted on waiting for Mayhew. In any salvage job, communication between the salvor and the salved is essential—and to judge by the experience of Station 3, any form of electronic radio communication was
out
. He stood on the concrete, just outside the tug’s airlock, looking up at the overcast sky. Sonya came out to join him.
“Damn the man!” he grumbled. “He’s supposed to be on his way. He was told it was urgent.”
She said, “I hear something.”
He heard it too, above the thin whine of the wind, a deepening drone. Then the helicopter came into sight above the high roof of the Administration Building, the jet flames at the tip of its rotor blades a bright, blue circle against the gray sky. It dropped slowly, carefully, making at last a landing remarkable for its gentleness. The cabin door opened and the tall gangling telepath, his thin face pasty against the upturned collar of his dark coat, clambered to the ground. He saw Grimes, made a slovenly salute, then turned to receive the large case that was handed him by the pilot.
“Take your time,” growled Grimes.
Mayhew shuffled around to face the Commodore. He set the case carefully down on the ground, patted it gently. He said, mild reproof in his voice, “Lassie’s not as used to traveling as she was. I try to avoid shaking her up.”
Grimes sighed. He had almost forgotten about the peculiar relationship that existed between the spacefaring telepaths and their amplifiers—the living brains of dogs suspended in their tanks of nutrient solution. It was far more intense than that existing between normal man and normal dog. When a naturally telepathic animal is deprived of its body, its psionic powers are vastly enhanced—and it will recognize as friend and master only a telepathic man. There is symbiosis, on a psionic level.
“Lassie’s not at all well,” complained Mayhew.
“Think her up a nice, juicy bone,” Grimes almost said, then thought better of it.
“I’ve tried that, of course,” Mayhew told him. “But she’s not. . . she’s just not interested any more. She’s growing old. And since the Carlotti system was introduced nobody is making psionic amplifiers anymore.”
“Is she functioning?” asked the Commodore coldly.
“Yes, sir. But . . .”
“Then get aboard, Mr. Mayhew. Mrs. Grimes will show you to your quarters. Prepare and secure for blast-off without delay.”
He stamped up the short ramp into the airlock, climbed the ladders to the little control room. The Mate was already in the co-pilot’s chair, his ungainly posture a match for his slovenly uniform. Grimes looked at him with some distaste, but he knew that the burly young man was more than merely competent, and that although his manner and appearance militated against his employment in a big ship he was ideally suited to service in a salvage tug.
“Ready as soon as you are, Skipper,” the Mate said. “You takin’ her up?”
“You’re more used to this vessel than I am, Mr. Williams. As soon as all’s secure you may blast off.”
“Good-oh, Skip.”
Grimes watched the indicator lights, listened to the verbal reports, aware that Williams was doing likewise. Then he said into the transceiver microphone, “
Rim Mamelute
to Port Control. Blasting off.”
Before Port Control could acknowledge, Williams hit the firing key. Not for the
Mamelute
the relatively leisurely ascent, the relatively gentle acceleration of the big ships. It was, thought Grimes dazedly, like being fired from a gun. Almost at once, it seemed, harsh sunlight burst through the control room ports. He tried to move his fingers against the crushing weight, tried to bring one of them to the button set in the arm rest of his chair that controlled the polarization of the transparencies. The glare was beating full in his face, was painful even through his closed eyelids. But Williams beat him to it. When Grimes opened his eyes he saw that the Mate was grinning at him.
“She’s a tough little bitch, the old
Mamelute
,” announced the objectionable young man with pride.
“Yes, Mr. Williams,” enunciated Grimes with difficulty. “But there are some of us who aren’t as tough as the ship. And, talking of lady dogs, I don’t think that Mr. Mayhew’s amplifier can stand much acceleration. . . .”
“That pickled poodle’s brain, Skip? The bastard’s better off than we are, floatin’ in its nice warm bath o’ thick soup.” He grinned again. “But I was forgettin’. We haven’t the regular crew this time. What say we maintain a nice, steady one and a half Gs? That do yer?”
One G would be better,
thought Grimes.
After all, those people, whoever they are, are in no immediate danger of falling into the sun. But perhaps even a few minutes’ delay might make all the difference between life and death to them . . . Even so, we must be capable of doing work, heavy, physical work, when we catch them.
“Yes, Mr. Williams,” he said slowly. “Maintain one and a half gravities. You’ve fed the elements of the trajectory into the computer, of course?”
“Of course, Skip. Soon as I have her round I’ll put her on auto. She’ll be right.”
When the tug had settled down on her long chase, Grimes left Williams in the control room, went down into the body of the ship. He made his rounds, satisfied himself that all was well in engine room, surgery, the two communications offices and, finally, the galley. Sonya was standing up to acceleration as though she had been born and bred on a high gravity planet. He looked at her with envy as she poured him a cup of coffee, handing it to him without any obvious compensation for its increased weight. Then she snapped at him, “Sit down, John. If you’re as tired as you look you’d better lie down.”
He said, “I’m all right.”
“You’re not,” she told him. “And there’s no need for you to put on the big, tough space captain act in front of me.”
“If you can stand it . . .”
“What if I can, my dear? I haven’t led such a sheltered life as you have. I’ve knocked around in little ships more than I have in big ones, and I’m far more used to going places in a hurry than you.”
He lowered himself to a bench and she sat beside him. He sipped his coffee, then asked her, “Do you think, then, that we should be in more of a hurry?”
“Frankly, no. Salvage work is heavy work, and if we maintain more than one and a half Gs over a quite long period we shall all of us be too tired to function properly, even that tough Mate of yours.” She smiled. “I mean the Mate who’s on Articles as such, not the one you’re married to.”
He chuckled. “But she’s tough, too.”
“Only when I have to be, my dear.”
Grimes looked at her, and thought of the old proverb which says that there is many a true word spoken in jest.
Chapter 4
THE STRANGE VESSEL
was a slowly expanding speck of light in the globular screen of the Mass Proximity Indicator; it was a gradually brightening blip on
Mamelute’s
radar display that seemed as though it were being drawn in towards the tug by the ever decreasing spiral of the range marker. Clearly it showed up on the instruments, although it was still too far distant for visual sighting, and it was obvious that the extrapolation of trajectory made by Station 3 was an accurate one. It was falling free, neither accelerating nor decelerating, its course determined only by the gravitational forces within the Lorn Star’s planetary system, and left to itself must inevitably fall into the sun. But long before its shell plating began to heat it would be overhauled by the salvage ship and dragged away and clear from its suicide orbit.
And it was silent. It made no reply to the signals beamed at it from
Rim Mamelute’s
powerful transmitter. Bennett, the Radio Officer, complained to Grimes, “I’ve tried every frequency known to civilized man, and a few that aren’t. But, so far, no joy.”
“Keep on trying,” Grimes told him, then went to the cabin that Mayhew, the telepath, shared with his organic amplifier.
The Psionic Radio Officer was slumped in his chair, staring vacantly at the glass tank in which, immersed in its cloudy nutrient fluid, floated the obscenely naked brain. The Commodore tried to ignore the thing. It made him uneasy. Every time that he saw one of the amplifiers he could not help wondering what it would be like to be, as it were, disembodied, to be deprived of all external stimuli but the stray thoughts of other, more fortunate (or less unfortunate) beings—and those thoughts, as like as not, on an incomprehensible level. What would a man do, were he so used, his brain removed from his skull and employed by some race of superior beings for their own fantastic purpose? Go mad, probably. And did the dogs sacrificed so that Man could communicate with his fellows over the light years ever go mad?
“Mr. Mayhew,” he said.
“Sir?” muttered the telepath.
“As far as electronic radio is concerned, that ship is dead.”
“Dead?” repeated Mayhew in a thin whisper.
“Then you think that there’s nobody alive on board her?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I told you before we started that Lassie’s not a well dog. She’s old, Commodore. She’s old, and she dreams most of the time, almost all of the time. She . . . she just ignores me. . .” His voice was louder as he defended his weird pet against the implied imputation that he had made himself. “It’s just that she’s old, and her mind is getting very dim. Just vague dreams and ghostly memories, and the past more real than the present, even so.”
“What sort of dreams?” asked Grimes, stirred to pity for the naked canine brain in its glass cannister.
“Hunting dreams, mainly. She was a terrier, you know, before she was . . . conscripted. Hunting dreams. Chasing small animals, like rats. They’re good dreams, except when they turn to nightmares. And then I have to wake her up—but she’s in such a state of terror that she’s no good for anything.”
“I didn’t think that dogs have nightmares,” remarked Grimes.
“Oh, but they do, sir, they do. Poor Lassie always has the same one—about an enormous rat that’s just about to kill her. It must be some old memory of her puppy days, when she ran up against such an animal, a big one, bigger than she was. . . .”
“H’m. And, meanwhile, nothing from the ship.”
“Nothing at all, sir.”
“Have you tried transmitting, as well as just maintaining a listening watch?”
“Of course, sir.” Mayhew’s voice was pained. “During Lassie’s lucid moments I’ve been punching out a strong signal, strong enough even to be picked up by non-telepaths. You must have felt it yourself, sir.
Help is on the way.
But there’s been no indication of mental acknowledgement.”
“All we know about the ship, Mayhew, is that she seems to be a derelict. We don’t know who built her. We don’t know who mans her—or manned her.”
“Anybody who builds a ship, sir, must be able to think.”
Grimes, remembering some of the unhandier vessels in which he had served in his youth, said, “Not necessarily.”
Mayhew, not getting the point, insisted, “But they must be able to think. And, in order to think, you must have a brain to think with. And any brain at all emits psionic radiation. Furthermore, sir, such radiation sets up secondary radiation in the inanimate surrounding of the brain. What is the average haunt but a psionic record on the walls of a house in which strong emotions have been let loose? A record that is played back given the right conditions.”
“H’m. But you say that the derelict is psionically dead, that there’s not even a record left by her builders, or her crew, to be played back to you.”
“The range is still extreme, sir. And as for this secondary psionic radiation, sir, sometimes it fades rapidly, sometimes it lingers for years. There must be laws governing it, but nobody has yet been able to work them out.”
“So there could be something . . .”
“There could be, sir. And there could not.”
“Just go on trying, Mr. Mayhew.”
“Of course, sir. But with poor Lassie in her present state I can’t promise anything.”
Grimes went along to the galley. He seated himself on the bench, accepted the cup of coffee that Sonya poured for him. He said, “It looks, my dear, as though we shall soon be needing an Intelligence Officer as well as a Catering Officer.”
“Why?” she asked.
He told her of his conversation with Mayhew. He said, “I’d hoped that he’d be able to find us a few short cuts—but his crystal ball doesn’t seem to be functioning very well these days . . . If you could call that poodle’s brain in aspic a crystal ball.”
“He’s told me all about it,” she said. “He’s told everybody in the ship all about it. But once we get the derelict in tow, and opened up, we shall soon be able to find out what makes her tick. Or made her tick.”
“I’m not so sure, Sonya. The way in which she suddenly appeared from nowhere, not even a trace on Station 3’s M.P.I. beforehand, makes me think that she could be very,
very
alien.”
“The Survey Service is used to dealing with aliens,” she told him. “The Intelligence Branch especially so.”
“I know, I know.”
“And now, as I’m still only the humble galley slave, can I presume to ask my lord and master the E.T.C.?”
“Unless something untoward fouls things up, E.T.C. should be in exactly five Lorn Standard Days from now.”
“And then it will be
Boarders Away!
” she said, obviously relishing the prospect.
“Boarders Away!” he agreed. “And I, for one, shall be glad to get out of this spaceborne sardine can.”
“Frankly,” she said, “I shall be even gladder to get out of this bloody galley so that I can do the real work for which I was trained.”