Upon a Sea of Stars (36 page)

The Commodore resumed his walk along the beach.

He came to a shallow bay, a crescent-like indentation in the shoreline. There was somebody out there in the water swimming—and by the flash of long, pale arms Grimes knew that it was not a native. Too, there was a pile of clothing on the sand. Grimes quickly stripped. It was a long time since he had enjoyed a swim in the sea. He divested himself of his clothing without embarrassment. Even though he was no longer a young man his body was still compact, well-muscled, had not begun to run to belly. He waded out into the warm salt water.

Suddenly he was confronted by the other swimmer. Only her head and smooth, bare shoulders were visible above the surface. Her eyes and her wide mouth were very dark against the creamy pallor of her face.

“Can’t you read?” she was asking indignantly. “Didn’t you see the notices? This beach is reserved for ladies only.”

Her accent was not a Rim Worlds’ one; it was more Pan-Terran than anything. That would account for her indignation; only on parts of the home planet did the absurd nudity taboo still persist. But this was not the home planet.

Grimes said mildly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He turned to leave the water.

She said, “Don’t run away. We can talk, at this depth, modestly enough.”

“I suppose we can.”

“You’re from the ship, aren’t you? But of course, you must be . . . let me see, now . . . I’ve a good ear for accents, and you haven’t quite lost the good old Terran twangs—Commodore Grimes, would it be?”

“Guilty,” admitted Grimes. He was amused to note either that the tide was going out fast or that this companion had moved closer inshore. Her full breasts were fully exposed now, and there was more than a hint of the pale glimmer of the rest of her below the surface.

She said, “It’s rather a pity that you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“You’re not?” she asked sharply.

“No. I promised Chief Wunnaara that I’d stay to look into this plague of starfish.”

“You promised Wunnaara . . .” Her voice was scornful. “But he’s only a native, and has to be kept in his place. That’s why I insisted on having this beach made private. I hated to think that those . . .
things
were spying on me, leering at me while I was swimming.”

“And what about me, leering and spying?” Grimes asked sarcastically.

“But you’re a Terran—”

“Ex-Terran, young lady. Very ex.”

“—and we Terrans should stick together,” she completed with a dazzling smile.

“I’m a Rim Worlder,” Grimes told her severely. “And so must you be, if you’re employed at the spaceport, no matter where you were born.” He asked abruptly, “And what do you do, by the way?”

“I’m in the met. office,” she said. “Then I shall see you tomorrow,” stated Grimes.

“Good!” Her smile flashed on again.

“I shall be calling in to register a strong complaint,” the Commodore went on.

He attempted to step past the girl, intending to swim out to the first line of breakers. Somehow she got in his way, and somehow both of them lost their balance and went down, floundering and splashing. Grimes got to his feet first, pulled the young woman to hers. He was suddenly conscious, as she fell against him, of the firmness and the softness of the body against his own. It was all very nice—and all a little too obvious. But he was tempted, and tempted strongly. Then, but with seeming reluctance, she broke away from him and splashed shoreward, her slim, rounded figure luminous in the moonlight.

Her voice floated back to him, “I still hope that it’s a pleasant meeting tomorrow, Commodore!”

It was not as unpleasant as it could have been. The girl, Lynn Davis, was second in charge of the spaceport’s meteorological office. By daylight, and clothed, she was still attractive. Her hair was a dark, dull-gleaming blonde and her eyes were so deep a blue as to be almost black. Her face was thin and intelligent, with both mouth and nose a little too pronounced for conventional prettiness. There was a resemblance to Sonya, his wife, that strongly attracted Grimes; more than a physical likeness, it was a matter of essential quality. This, at once, put Grimes on his guard. Sonya had held the rank of commander in the Federation’s Survey Service, and in the Intelligence branch at that. But now Federation and Rim World Confederacy worked together, shared all information, kept no secrets from each other. Even so. . . .

Lynn Davis had all the answers ready.
Rim Kestrel
had been given no information on jet streams and clear air turbulence because there had been a breakdown of radar and other instruments. This, Grimes was made to feel, was
his
fault; the Rim Runners’ Stores Department should have been more prompt in dealing with requisitions for spare parts. “And after all, Commodore,” she told him sweetly, “
you
made the first landing here without any aid at all from the surface, didn’t you?”

Grimes asked to see the instrument room. He thought that this request disconcerted her—but this was understandable enough. Any officer, in any service, likes to do things his own way and is apt to resent a superior’s intrusion into his own little kingdom, especially when the superior is in a fault-finding mood. But she got up from behind her very tidy desk, led the Commodore out of the office and up a short flight of stairs.

At first glance the compartment looked normal enough; its counterpart could have been found at almost any human-operated spaceport throughout the galaxy. The deviations from the norm were also normal. On many worlds with a lack of recreational facilities the instrument room, with its laboratory and workshop equipment to one side of it, is an ideal place for hobbyists to work. The practice is officially frowned upon, but persists.

There was a tank there, a small aquarium, brilliantly lit. Grimes walked over to it. The only animal denizens were a dozen or so small starfish, brightly colored, spiny little beasts, unusually active. These, unlike their kind on the majority of worlds, seemed to prefer swimming to crawling as a means of locomotion, although they possessed, on the undersides of their limbs, the standard equipment of myriads of suckers.

“And who belongs to these?” asked Grimes.

“Me,” she replied.

“Is marine biology your hobby?”

“I’m afraid not, Commodore. I just keep these because they’re ornamental. They add something to the decor.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Starfish.” He walked to a bench where there was an intricacy of gleaming wire. “And what the hell’s
this
?”

“A mobile,” she told him. “Jeff Petersen, the met. officer, has artistic ambitions.”

“And where is Mr. Peterson?”

“He’s away. The crowd setting up the weather control station on Mount Llayilla asked Captain Stacey for the loan of him.”

“Hmm. Well, I can’t help feeling, Miss Davis, that if you and Mr. Peterson devoted more time to your work and less time to your hobbies you’d give incoming ships far better service.”

She flared. “We never play around with our hobbies in our employer’s time. And there’s so little social life here that we must have something to occupy us when we’re off duty.”

“I’m not denying that, Miss Davis.”

She switched on that smile again. “Why don’t you call me Lynn, Commodore? Everybody else does.”

He found himself smiling in reply. “Why not, Lynn?”

“Isn’t that better? And, talking of social life, I’d like it very much if you came to my place some evening for dinner.” She grinned rather than smiled this time. “I’m a much better cook than Mrs. Stacey.”

That wouldn’t be hard,
thought Grimes. The Port Captain’s wife, as he had learned that morning at breakfast, couldn’t even fry an egg properly.

“Try to keep an evening open for me,” she said.

“I’ll try,” he promised. He looked at his watch. “But I must go. I have an appointment with the Ambassador.”

The Confederacy’s Ambassador was a thin, languid and foppish man. In spite of the disparity in physical appearance he was cut from the same cloth as Captain Stacey. He was one of the barely competent, not quite bad enough to be fired but too lazy and too disinterested to be trusted with any major appointment. He drawled, “I can’t order you not to stay, old man, any more than I can order you to stay. Let’s face it—you pile on a few more G’s (as you spacefaring types put it) than I do. But I still think that you’re wasting your time. The natives’ll have to pull their socks up, that’s all. And tighten their belts for the time being—not that they have any belts to tighten. Ha, ha! You may have been first on this world, Commodore, but you haven’t lived with these people as I have. They’re a lazy, shiftless bunch. They won’t stir a finger to help themselves as long as the Confederacy’s handy to do it for them.”

“And if the Confederacy won’t,” said Grimes flatly, “there’s the Empire of Waverley. Or the Shakespearians. Or the Federation. Even the Shaara might find this planet interesting.”

“Those communistic bumblebees? It might do the Mellisans a world of good if they did take over.” He raised a slim, graceful wrist and looked at his watch. “Old Wunnaara’s due about now. I don’t encourage him—it takes
days
to get the fishy stink out of the Embassy—but he insisted.”

“You could,” pointed out Grimes, “have a room specially fitted for the reception of local dignitaries, something that duplicates, as far as possible, the conditions that they’re used to.”

“You don’t understand, old man. It’s taken me years, literally, to get this shack fitted and decorated the way that it should be. The
battles
I’ve had to fight with Appropriations! It’s all a matter of keeping up a front, old man, showing the flag and all that. . . .”

A smartly uniformed Marine entered the elegant, too elegant
salon
.

“Chief Wunnaara, your Excellency.”

“Show him in, Sergeant. Show him in. And attend to the air-conditioning, will you?”

Wunnaara was dressed for the occasion. His ungainly (on dry land) body was clad in a suit of what looked like coarse sacking, and riding high on a complicated harness-like framework was a tank, the contents of which sloshed as he walked. From this tank depended narrow tubes, connected to his clothing at various points. They dripped—both upon the cloth and upon the Ambassador’s carpet. A goggled mask, water-filled, covered his eyes and the upper part of his face. The smell of fish was very evident.

“Your Excellency,” he mewed. “
Meelongee,
Grimes
Wannarbo, meelongee.
”

“Greetings,” replied the Ambassador, and,
“Meelongee,”
replied Grimes.

“Your Excellency, Grimes
Wannarbo
has agreed to help. He come with me now, I show him trouble.”

“Do you want to go through with this, old man?” the Ambassador asked Grimes. “Really?”

“Of course. Would you know of any scuba outfits on this island? I’ve already asked Captain Stacey, and he says that the only ones here are privately owned.”

“That is correct, Commodore. I could ask the sergeant to lend you his.”

“Not necessary, Grimes
Wannarbo
,” interjected the chief. “Already waiting on beach we have ship, what you call submarine.”

“Good,” said Grimes.

“You’d trust yourself to
that
contraption?” demanded the Ambassador in a horror-stricken voice. “It’ll be one of the things that they use to take stores and equipment down to their farms.”

“They work, don’t they?”

“Yes, old man. But . . .”

“But I’d have thought, on a world like this, that the Ambassador would have his own, private submarine.”

“I’m a diplomat, old man, not a sailor.”

Grimes shrugged. He said formally. “With your permission, your Excellency, I shall accompany Chief Wunnaara.”

“Permission granted, old man. Don’t get your feet wet.”

The submarine had been pulled up on the beach, onto a ramp that had been constructed there for that purpose, that ran from the water to a low warehouse. Apart from its wheeled undercarriage it was a conventional enough looking craft, torpedo-shaped, with a conning tower amidships and rudder and screw propeller aft, with hydroplanes forward and amidships. A wooden ladder had been placed on the ramp to give access to the conning tower. Wunnaara gestured to Grimes to board first. The Commodore clambered up the ladder with a certain lack of agility; the spacing of the rungs was adapted to the Mellisan, not the human, frame. He had the same trouble with the metal steps leading into the submarine’s interior.

When he was down in what was obviously the craft’s control room he looked about him curiously. It was easy enough to get a general idea of what did what to which; the Mellisans, with no written language of their own, had adopted Terran English to their requirements. There were depth gauges, steering, hydroplane and engine controls, a magnetic compass. Inside an aluminum rather than a steel hull it should, thought Grimes, function quite satisfactorily. What had him puzzled was a bundle of taut bladders, evidently taken from some sea plant. Beside them, in a rack on the bulkhead, was a sharp knife. And he did not quite approve of the flowerpot that was hanging to one side of the steering gear, in which was growing a vividly blue, fernlike plant. He recalled the conversation that he had had with Lynn Davis on the subject of hobbies.

Apart from these rather peculiar fittings the little ship was almost as she had been when built to Mellisan specifications at the Seacraft Yard on Thule: the original electric motors, a big bank of heavy-duty power cells, a capacious cargo hold (now empty) and no accommodation whatsoever. He had noticed, on his way down through the conning tower, that the compartment, with its big lookout ports, could still be used as an air lock.

Wunnaara joined him, accompanied by another native dressed as he was. The younger Mellisan went straight to the wheel, from which all the other controls were easily accessible. Wunnaara asked Grimes to return with him to the conning tower. The upper hatch, he saw, was shut now, but there was an unrestricted view all around from the big ports. And although the lower hatch remained open there was ample room, on the annular platform, to walk around it. Wunnaara yelped some order down through the opening. Slowly at first, then faster, the submarine started to move, sliding astern down the ramp on her wheels. She slipped into the water with hardly any disturbance, and when she was afloat at least half of her hull was above the surface. Electric motors hummed and she backed away from the beach, her head swinging to starboard as she did so. She came around well and easily, and when she was broadside on to the shore, starting to roll uncomfortably in the swell, the coxswain put the engines ahead and the wheel hard over to complete the swing. Then, after surprisingly little fuss and bother, she was headed seaward, pitching easily, her straight wake pearly white on the blue water under the noonday sun.