Upon a Sea of Stars (7 page)
Read Upon a Sea of Stars Online
Authors: A. Bertram Chandler
Chapter 12
FARAWAY QUEST
fell through the nothingness, drifting from nowhere to nowhere, a tiny bubble of light and heat and life lost in an infinite negation. Her electronic radio apparatus was useless. And Mayhew, the Psionic Radio Operator, crouched long hours in his cabin, staring into vacancy and listening, listening. He resorted to drugs to step up the sensitivity of both himself and the dog’s brain that was his organic amplifier, but never the faintest whisper from Outside disturbed the telepath’s mind. And the work went on, the laborious calculations that, even with the ship’s computers fully employed, took days, longer in the programming than in the actual reckoning. There were so many variables, too many variables. There were so many unknown quantities. There were too many occasions when the words
Data Insufficient
were typed on the long tapes issuing from the slots of the instruments.
And Grimes, albeit with reluctance, held himself aloof from the activity. He said to Sonya, “Why keep a dog and bark yourself?” But he knew that he, at least, should be free to make decisions, to take action at a second’s notice if needs be. He was grateful that the woman was able to keep him company. She, like himself, could not afford to be tied down. She was in command of the Survey Service personnel and directly subordinate to the Commodore insofar as the overall command of the expedition was concerned. And there were administrative worries too. Tempers were beginning to fray. The latent hostility between members of different services, and between members of different departments, was beginning to manifest itself. And as Grimes knew full well, unless something happened soon there would be other worries.
They were castaways, just as surely as though they had been the crew and passengers of a ship wrecked on some hitherto undiscovered planet. There were thirty of them: eight Survey Service officers, twenty-two Rim Worlds Naval Reservists. Of the thirty, eight were women. As long as this had been no more than a voyage—not a routine voyage, to be sure, but a voyage nonetheless—sex had not been a problem. As long as all hands were fully occupied with mathematical work and, eventually, the modifications of the Mannschenn Drive, sex would not be a problem. But if every attempt to escape from the crack in Time failed, and if the ship were to drift eternally, a tiny, fertile oasis in a vast desert of nothingness, then something would have to be done about it. Spacemen are not monks, neither are spacewomen nuns.
“We may have to face the problem, Sonya,” said Grimes worriedly as the two of them, cautiously sipping bulbs of Dr. Todhunter’s first experimental batch of beer, talked things over.
She said, “I’ve already been facing it, John. The disproportion of the sexes makes things awkward. Oh, I know that in one or two cases it doesn’t matter—my own Sub-Lieutenant Patsy Kent, for example. But even if she doesn’t draw the line at polyandry, there’s no guarantee that her boyfriends will take kindly to it.”
He said, “We may be crossing our bridges before we come to them, if we ever do come to them. But that’s one of the things that a commanding officer is paid for. It looks as though we may have to devise some workable system of polyandry. . . .”
“Include me out,” she said sharply. “By some people’s standards I’ve led a far from moral life, but I have my own standards, and they’re the most important as far as I’m concerned. If the microcosmic civilization aboard this ship degenerates to a Nature red in tooth and claw sort of set-up, then I’m looking after Number One. The best bet will be to become the private, personal popsy of the Old Man of the tribe.”
He looked at her carefully as she sat there in the armchair, contriving to loll even in conditions of Free Fall. She was wearing uniform shorts and her smooth, tanned legs were very long, and her carelessly buttoned shirt revealed the division between her firm breasts. He looked at her and thought,
The Old Man of the tribe
. . .
But it’s a figure of speech only. I’m not all that old.
He said drily, “I suppose that rank should have its privileges. And if I’m the Old Man of
my
tribe, then you’re the Old Woman of yours.”
She said, “You flatter me, sir.”
He said, “In any case, all this talk is rather jumping the gun. Your Mr. Renfrew and my own bright boys may come up with the answer.”
She said, “They may not—and a girl has to look after herself.”
He murmured, more to himself than to her, “I wish that there were some other reason for your . . . proposition.”
She laughed, but tremulously, “And do you really think that there’s not, John?”
“But these are exceptional circumstances,” he said. “I know your reasons for embarking on this expedition. There were two men in your life, in our own Continuum, and you lost both of them. You’re hoping to find what you lost.”
“And perhaps I have found it. We’ve been cooped up in this tin coffin together long enough now. I’ve watched you, John, and I’ve seen how you’ve reacted to emergencies, how you’ve kept a tight rein on your people without playing the petty tyrant. They all respect you, John, and so does my own staff. And so do I.”
He said, a little bitterly, “Respect isn’t enough.”
“But it helps, especially when respect is accompanied by other feelings. It would help, too, if you were to regard me, once in a while, as a woman, and not as Commander Verrill, Federation Survey Service.”
He managed a grin. “This is so sudden.”
She grinned back. “Isn’t it?” And then she was serious again. “All right. I don’t mind admitting that the jam we’re in has brought things to a head. We may never get back again—either to our own Continuum or to any of the more or less parallel ones. We may all die if one of our bright young men does something exceptionally brilliant. But let’s ignore the morbid—or the more morbid—possibility. Just suppose that we do drift for a fair hunk of eternity on our little, self-sustaining desert island. As you know, some of the old gaussjammers have been picked up that have been adrift for centuries, with the descendants of their original crews still living aboard them. . . .
“Well, we drift. You’re the boss of your tribe, I’m the boss of my smaller tribe. Our getting together would be no more than a political alliance.”
He said, “How romantic.”
“We’re rather too old for romance, John.”
“Like hell we are.”
He reached out for her, and she did not try to avoid him.
He reached out for her, and as he kissed her he wondered how long it was since he had felt a woman’s lips—warm, responsive—on his.
Too long,
he thought. And how long was it since he had felt the rising tide of passion and let the softly thunderous breakers (her heart and his, and the combined thudding loud in his ears) bear him where they would? How long since he had felt the skin—firm, resilient, silken-soft—of a woman, and how long since the heat of his embrace was answered with a greater heat?
Too long . . .
“Too long . . .” she was murmuring. “Too long . . .” Then was silent again as his mouth covered hers.
And outside the cabin was the ship, and outside the ship was the black nothingness. . . .
But there was warmth in the cabin, and glowing light, a light that flared to almost unendurable brilliance and then faded, but slowly, slowly, to a comforting glow that would never go out, that would flare again, and again. There was warmth in the cabin and a drowsy comfort, and a sense of security that was all wrong in these circumstances—and yet was unanswerably right.
Grimes recalled the words of the medium—or the words of the entity that had assumed control of her mind and body.
“Through the night and through the nothingness you seek and you fall . . .”
And he and Sonya had sought, and they had found.
They had sought, and they had found—not that for which they were seeking—or had they? She had been seeking a lover, and he? Adventure? Knowledge?
But all that was worth knowing, ever, was in his arms. (He knew that this mood would evaporate—and knew that it would return.)
She whispered something.
“What was that, darling?”
She murmured, “Now you’ll have to make an honest woman of me.”
“Of course,” he replied. “Provided that the Federation taxpayers kick in with a really expensive wedding present.”
She cast doubts on his legitimacy and bit his ear, quite painfully, and they were engaged in a wrestling match that could only have one possible ending when the alarm bells started to ring.
This time their curses were in earnest, and Grimes, pulling on his shorts, hurried out of the cabin to the control room, leaving Sonya to follow as soon as she was dressed.
But it made no sense, he thought, no sense at all—Action Stations in this all pervading nothingness.
Chapter 13
GRIMES,
whose quarters were immediately abaft the control room, was in that compartment in a matter of seconds. He found there young Larsen, the Third Mate, and with him was Sub-Lieutenant Patsy Kent, of the Survey Service. Larsen flushed as he saw the Commodore and explained hastily, “Miss Kent was using the computer, sir . . .”
“Never mind that. What is the emergency?”
The officer gestured towards the globe of darkness that was the screen of the Mass Proximity Indicator. “I . . . I don’t know, sir. But there’s something. Something on our line of advance.”
Grimes stared into the screen.
Yes, there was something there. There was the merest spark just inside the surface of the globe, and its range . . . The Commodore flipped the switch of the range indicator, turned the knob that expanded a sphere of a faint light from the center of the screen, read the figure from the dial. He muttered, “Twelve and a half thousand miles . . .” and marveled at the sensitivity of this new, improved model. But the target could be a planetoid, or a planet, or even a dead sun. Somehow he had assumed that it was another ship, but it need not be. Twelve and a half thousand miles, and
Faraway Quest’s
initial velocity before proceeding under Interstellar Drive had been seven miles a second . . . (But was it still? Where was a yardstick?) Contact in thirty minutes, give or take a couple or three . . . But there should be ample time to compute the velocity of approach . . .
The others were now in the control room: Swinton, and Jones, the Second Mate, and Renfrew. And Sonya. He could smell the faint, disturbing perfume of her and he asked himself,
What am I doing here?
He stared at the spark of light, brighter now, and closer, with a certain resentment.
Come off it, Grimes,
he thought in self-admonishment,
it’s years since you were rosy-cheeked, snotty, sulking hard because a call to duty interfered with your very first date. . . .
“Your orders, sir?” Swinton was asking politely, yet with a touch of urgency.
“Action Stations was sounded, and Action Stations it is. I take it that the laser projectors and the missile launchers are closed up?”
“They are, sir.”
“Good. Mr. Jones, please work out velocity of approach and estimated time of contact. Mr. Renfrew, please use the Carlotti gear for the purpose for which it was originally invented and try to initiate radio communication. Mr. Larsen, get on the blower to Mr. Mayhew and shake him up. Tell him that there’s something ahead—a ship? a planet?—and that I want to know if it has a crew, or a population.” Then, to Swinton, “I shall be going below for a few seconds, Commander. If anything happens you will know where to find me.”
He dropped down the axial shaft to his day cabin, went through to his lavatory cubicle and hastily tidied himself up. He dressed rapidly, but with care. If this were to be a first contact with some alien race he would, at least, try to look the part that he was playing, that of leader of an expedition of Earthmen into the Unknown. He snared an undergarment of filmy crystal silk that was drifting in the air currents, stowed it hastily in a convenient drawer. It was just possible that he would be entertaining guests shortly.
Then, back in the control room, he received the reports of his officers.
Faraway Quest
, they told him, was closing the target at twelve miles a second. (So
it
, whatever
it
was, was not hanging motionless in Space. Or was it?) It had now been picked up by the radar, and the indications were that it was a metallic structure, not overly large. Neither electronic nor psionic radio had been able to establish contact.
So . . .
So it was a dead ship, a vessel that years—or centuries—ago had fallen out of its own continuum, a ship whose crew had died, or whose descendants were no longer able to operate any of the machinery except what was essential for the maintenance of life? Or was it a ship in fighting trim manned by possibly hostile beings with itchy trigger fingers, maintaining a cautious silence until the
Quest
was within range of the homing missiles, the flickering laser beams?
The Commodore went to the telephone, pressed the selector stud. “Mr. Mayhew. We are closing the target. Do you hear anything?”
“No, sir.”
“The target appears to be a ship. Suppose that her Captain has ordered radio silence, what then?”
“Any unshielded mind must radiate, sir. Only trained telepaths can establish and maintain an effective shield, but even then there is leakage, a gabble of scraps of nonsense verse, meaningless mathematical formulae and the like.”
“So you think that there’s nothing living there, Mayhew?”
“I’d bet on it, sir.”
“I hope you’re right.” He snapped orders to the First Lieutenant. “Commander Swinton, take the controls, please. Match velocities with the target and maintain a range of one mile.”
“Ay, ay, sir.” And then Swinton, seating himself in the Master Pilot’s chair, was snapping his own orders, his manner assured and competent, in startling contrast to his usual callow youthfulness.
Grimes, strapped into a convenient acceleration chair, watched the young man appreciatively. He heard the whine of the stabilizing gyroscopes and felt the vibration as the ship was turned end for end—and it was odd for this maneuver to be carried out without, as a visual accompaniment, the drift of stars (even the few, faint stars of the Rim) across the viewports. And then, relatively speaking, the target was astern—astern, but still closing rapidly.
Faraway Quest’s
rocket drive coughed briefly, and coughed again. The target was still closing—but slowly, slowly.
For the last time there was the subdued rumble of the rockets, the gentle pressure of deceleration, and Swinton announced, not without pride, “Target abeam, sir. Velocities matched. Range one-point-oh-five of a mile.”
Grimes swiveled his chair so that he could look out of the viewports. And outside there was nothing but blackness.
In a matter of seconds the probing beam of the searchlight found the target.
It was a ship, but no ship such as any of those in the control room had ever seen. There was a long hull that looked as though the conventional torpedo shape had been sliced in two longitudinally. At one end of it there was what looked like an assemblage of control surfaces. Grimes, out of his chair and monopolizing the huge mounted binoculars, studied it carefully. There was a rudder, and there were two screw propellers. It could be, he thought, a lightjammer, similar to the ones that he himself had designed, capable of being handled in a planetary atmosphere like an airship. But the rudder was too small, and those propellers were too heavy and had too coarse a pitch to be airscrews.
But there were the lofty masts, one forward and one aft, protruding from the flat deck . . . But that would be an unusual, and not very practicable arrangement of spars to carry a lightjammer’s suite of sails. . . . And between the masts there was a structure, white-painted, that looked more like a block of apartments, complete with balconies, than part of a ship. Roughly in the middle of this there was another mast. . . . No, decided Grimes, it wasn’t a mast, it was too thick, too short. It, too, was white-painted, but with a black top, and carried a design in blue. Grimes studied it carefully, decided that it was supposed to be some sort of grapnel or anchor.
He relinquished the binoculars to Sonya Verrill. When she had had time to study the weird derelict he asked, “Well, Commander, what do
you
make of it?”
She replied doubtfully, “It
could
be a lightjammer, sir. But all those ports . . . It’d be hard enough to make a thing like that watertight, let alone airtight. . . .”
“H’m. But those ports seem to be on one half of the hull only, the half with all the odd superstructures . . . Like half a ship, and half—something else . . .”
“After all, sir,” put in Swinton, who had been studying the thing with a smaller pair of binoculars, “there’s no reason why a spaceship should be symmetrical. As long as it never has to proceed through an atmosphere it can be any shape at all that’s convenient.”
“True, Swinton. True. But if that thing’s designed for Deep Space only, why those screw propellers? Aerodynamically speaking it’s a hopeless mess, and yet it’s equipped for atmospheric flight. . . .”
“But is it?” queried Sonya Verrill. “Those absurdly heavy screws with their fantastically coarse pitch . . .”
“But where’s the planet?” asked Swinton.
“Come to that,” countered Grimes, “where’s
our
planet?” He added, “Who knows what odd combinations of circumstances threw us here, dropped us into this crack in Time? Who knows what similar combinations have occurred in the past?” And then, in a whisper, “But we’re such a long way from Earth . . .”
“Are we?” asked Renfrew. “Are we? What does the word ‘dimension’ mean in this dimensionless Limbo?”
“So I could be right,” said Grimes.
“What are you driving at, John?” demanded Sonya Verrill.
“I’d rather not say, yet. It’s too fantastic.” He turned to his First Lieutenant. “I’ll leave you to hold the fort, Swinton. I shall take away the boarding party.”