Upon a Sea of Stars (74 page)
Read Upon a Sea of Stars Online
Authors: A. Bertram Chandler
Carefully Grimes belayed it to the base of the binnacle, which fitting seemed to be securely mounted. He went back forward, looked out and down. He called back, over his shoulder, “We have to valve gas . . .”
“Which control?” asked Sonya.
“Oh, the middle one, I suppose . . .”
That made sense, he thought. One of the others might have an effect on the airship’s trim, or give it a heavy list to port or starboard.
And so,
he told himself,
might this one.
He was aware of a hissing noise coming from overhead. The airship was dropping rapidly, too rapidly. “That will do!” he ordered sharply.
“The bloody thing’s stuck!” he heard Sonya call. Then, “I’ve got it clear!”
The airship was still falling, and the drogue made its first contact with the waves—close now, too close below-skipping over them. The line tightened with a jerk and the flimsy structure of the gondola creaked in protest. The ship came round head to wind, and an icy gale swept through the broken window. The ship bounced upward and there was a brief period of relative calm, sagged, and once again was subjected to the atmospheric turbulence.
“Ballast!” gasped Grimes, clinging desperately to the sill. It seemed a long time before anything happened, and then the ship soared, lifting the drogue well clear of the water.
“Got rid . . . of one . . . of our late friends . . .” gasped Farrell.
“Justifiable, in the circumstances,” conceded Grimes grudgingly. “But before we go any further we have to rig a windscreen . . . I saw some canvas, or what looks like canvas, aft . . .”
“How will you keep a lookout?” asked Farrell.
“The lookout will be kept astern, from the engine compartment. That’s the way that we shall be going. Now give me a hand to get this hole plugged.”
They got the canvas over the empty window frame, lashed it and, with a hammer and nails from the engine room tool kit, tacked it into place. Grimes hoped that it would hold. He discovered that he could see the surface of the sea quite well from the side windows, so had no worries on that score. Before doing anything else he retrieved the crumpled chart from the corner into which it had blown, spread it out on the desk, made an estimation of the drift since the last observed position, laid off a course for Drarg Island. Once he had the ship under control he would steer a reciprocal of this course, send Sonya right aft to keep a lookout astern, with Farrell stationed amidships to relay information and orders. First of all, however, there was more juggling to be done with gas and ballast.
Grimes descended cautiously, calling instructions to Sonya as he watched the white-crested waves coming up to meet him. The drogue touched surface—and still the ship fell, jerkily, until the buckets bit and held, sinking as they filled. There was a vile draft in the control room as the wind whistled through chinks in the makeshift windshield.
“All right,” ordered Grimes. “Man the lookout!”
The others scrambled aft, while the Commodore took the wheel. He knew that he would have to keep the lubber’s line steady on a figure that looked like a misshapen, convoluted 7, saw that the ship’s head was all of twenty degrees to starboard off this heading. He applied port rudder, was surprised as well as pleased when she came round easily. He risked a sidewise glance at the altimeter. The needle was steady enough—but it could not possibly drop much lower. The instrument had not been designed for wave hopping.
He yelled, hoping that Farrell would be able to hear him, “If you think we’re getting too low, dump some more ballast!”
“Will do!” came the reply.
He concentrated on his steering. It was not as easy as he thought it would be. Now and again he had taken the wheel of
Sonya Winneck
, just to get the feel of her—but
her
wheel could be put over with one finger, all the real work being done by the powerful steering motors aft. Here it was a case of Armstrong Patent.
But he kept the lubber’s line on the course, his arms aching, his legs trembling, his clothing soaked with perspiration in spite of the freezing draft. He wished that he knew what speed the airship was making. He wanted a drink, badly, and thought longingly of ice-cold water. He wanted a smoke, and was tempted. He thought that the airship was helium filled, was almost certain that she was helium filled, but dared take no risks. But the stem of his cold, empty pipe between his teeth was some small comfort.
Faintly he heard Sonya call out something.
Farrell echoed her. “Land, ho!”
“Where away?” yelled Grimes over his shoulder, his pipe clattering unheeded to the deck.
“Astern! To port! About fifteen degrees!”
Carefully, Grimes brought the ship round to the new course. She held it, almost without attention on his part. There must, he thought, have been a shift of wind.
“As she goes!” came the hail. “Steady as she goes!”
“Steady,” grunted Grimes. “Steady . . .”
How much longer?
He concentrated on his steering, on the swaying compass card, on the outlandish numerals that seemed to writhe as he watched them,
How much longer?
He heard Sonya scream, “We’re coming in fast! Too low! The cliffs!”
“Ballast!” yelled Grimes.
Farrell had not waited for the order, already had the trap in the cabin deck open, was pushing out another of the dead Esquelians, then another. The deck lifted under Grimes’s feet, lifted and tilted, throwing him forward onto his now useless wheel. A violent jerk flung him aft, breaking his grip on the spokes.
After what seemed a very long time he tried to get to his feet. Suddenly Sonya was with him, helping him up, supporting him in his uphill scramble toward the stern of the ship, over decking that canted and swayed uneasily. They stumbled over the dead bodies, skirting the open hatch. Grimes was surprised to see bare rock only a foot or so below the aperture. They came to the engine room, jumped down through the door to the ground. It was only a short drop.
“We were lucky,” said Grimes, assessing the situation. The airship had barely cleared the cliff edge, had been brought up short by its dragline a few feet short of the Carlotti beacon.
“Bloody lucky!” Farrell said. “Some Execs would have opened fire first and waited for orders afterward . . .”
His Executive Officer flushed. “Well, sir, I thought it might be you.” He added, tactlessly, “After all, we’ve heard so many stories about Commodore Grimes . . .”
Farrell was generous. He said, “Excellent airmanship, Commodore.”
“Seamanship,” corrected Grimes huffily.
Sonya laughed—but it was with him, not at him.
The voyage between Esquel and Tallis, where the King and his entourage were disembarked, was not a pleasant one. Insofar as the Terrans were concerned, the Esquelians stank. Insofar as the Esquelians were concerned, the Terrans stank—and that verb could be used both literally and metaphorically. Commander Farrell thought, oddly enough, that the King should be humbly grateful. The King, not so oddly, was of the opinion that he had been let down, badly, by his allies. Grimes, on one occasion when he allowed himself to be drawn into an argument, made himself unpopular with both sides by saying that the universe would be a far happier place if people did not permit political expediency to influence their choice of friends.
But at last, and none too soon,
Star Pioneer
dropped gently down to her berth between the marker beacons at Tallisport, and the ramp was extended, and, gibbering dejectedly, the Esquelians filed down it to be received by the Terran High Commissioner.
Farrell, watching from a control room viewport, turned to Grimes and Sonya. He said thankfully, “My first order will be ‘Clean ship.’ And there’ll be no shore leave for anybody until it’s done.”
“And don’t economize on the disinfectant, Jimmy,” Sonya told him.
The Rub
SLOWLY GRIMES
awakened from his nightmare.
It had been so real, too real, and the worst part of it was always the deep sense of loss. There was that shocking contrast between the dreary life that he was living (in the dream) and the rich and full life that he somehow knew that he should be living. There was his wife—that drab, unimaginative woman with her irritating mannerisms—and that memory of somebody else, somebody whom he had never met, never would meet, somebody elegant and slim, somebody with whom he had far more in common than just the physical side of marriage, somebody who knew books and music and the visual arts and yet evinced a deep appreciation of the peculiar psychology of the spaceman.
Slowly Grimes awakened.
Slowly he realized that he was not in his bedroom in the Base Commander’s quarters on Zetland. He listened to the small, comforting noises: the irregular throbbing of the inertial drive, the sobbing of pumps, the soughing of the ventilation system, the thin, high whine of the Mannschenn Drive unit. And there was the soft, steady breathing of the woman in the bed with him. (That other one snored.)
But—such was the impression that his dream had made upon him—he had to be sure. (All cats are gray in the dark.) Without too much fumbling he found the stud of the light switch on his side of the bed. His reading lamp came on. Its light was soft, subdued—but it was enough to wake Sonya.
She looked up at him irritably, her lean face framed by the auburn hair that somehow retained its neatness, its sleekness, even after sleep. She demanded sharply, “What is it, John?”
He said, “I’m sorry. Sorry I woke you, that is. But I had to be sure.”
Her face and voice immediately softened. “That dream of yours again?”
“Yes. The worst part of it is knowing that
you
are somewhere, somewhen, but that I shall never meet you.”
“But you did.” She laughed with him, not at him. “And that’s your bad luck.”
“My good luck,” he corrected. “
Our
good luck.”
“I suppose that we could have done worse . . .” he admitted.
Grimes was awakened again by the soft chiming of the alarm. From his side of the bed he could reach the service hatch in the bulkhead. He opened it, revealing the tray with its silver coffee service.
“The usual?” he asked Sonya, who was making a lazy attempt to sit up in bed.
“Yes, John. You should know by this time.”
Grimes poured a cup for his wife—black, unsweetened—then one for himself. He liked sugar, rather too much of it, and cream.
“I shall be rather sorry when this voyage is over,” said Sonya. “Jimmy is doing us well. We shouldn’t be pampered like this in an
Alpha
Class liner.”
“After all, I am a Commodore,” said Grimes smugly.
“Not in the Survey Service, you aren’t,” Sonya told him.
In that dream, that recurring nightmare, Grimes was still an officer in the Federation’s Survey Service. But he had never gotten past Commander, and never would. He was passing his days, and would end his days, as commanding officer of an unimportant base on a world that somebody had once described as a planetwide lower middle class suburb.
“Perhaps not,” Grimes admitted, “but I pile on enough Gees to be accorded V.I.P. treatment aboard a Survey Service ship.”
“
You
do? I was under the impression that it was because of me that Jimmy let us have the V.I.P. suite.”
“Not you. You’re only a mere Commander, and on the Reserve list at that.”
“Don’t be so bloody rank conscious!”
She took a swipe at him with her pillow. Grimes cursed as hot coffee splashed onto his bare chest. Then, “I don’t know what your precious Jimmy will think when he sees the mess on the sheets.”
“He’ll not see it—and his laundrobot won’t worry about it. Pour yourself some more coffee, and I’ll use the bathroom while you’re drinking it.” Then, as she slid out of the bed, “And go easy on the sugar. You’re getting a paunch . . .”
Grimes remembered the fat and slovenly Commander of Zetland Base.
Commander James Farrell, the Captain of
Star Pioneer
, prided himself on running a taut ship. Attendance at every meal was mandatory for his officers. As he and Sonya took their seats at the captain’s table, Grimes wondered how Farrell would cope with the reluctance of middle watch keepers aboard merchant vessels to appear at breakfast.
All of
Star Pioneer
’s officers were here, in their places, except for those actually on duty. Smartly uniformed messgirls circulated among the tables, taking orders, bringing dishes. Farrell sat, of course, at the head of his own table, with Sonya to his right and Grimes to his left. At the foot of the table was Lieutenant Commander Malleson, the Senior Engineering Officer. There was little to distinguish him from his captain but the badges of rank. There was little to distinguish any of the officers one from the other. They were all tall young men, all with close-cropped hair, all with standardized good looks, each and every one of them a refugee from a Survey Service recruiting poster.
In my young days,
thought Grimes,
there was room for individuality
. . . He smiled to himself.
And where did it get me? Oh you bloody tee, that’s where.
“What’s the joke, John?” asked Sonya. “Share it, please.”
Grimes’s prominent ears reddened. “Just a thought, dear.” He was saved by a messgirl, who presented the menu to him. “Nathia juice, please. Ham and eggs—sunny-side up—to follow, with just a hint of French fries. And coffee.”
“You keep a good table, Jimmy,” Sonya said to Farrell. Then, looking at her husband, “Rather too good, perhaps.”
“I’m afraid, Sonya,” Farrell told her, “that our meals from now on will be rather lacking in variety. It seems that our Esquelian passengers brought some local virus aboard with ‘em. The biologists in the first survey expeditions found nothing at all on Esquel in any way dangerous to human life, so perhaps we didn’t take the precautions we should have done when we embarked the King and his followers. Even so, while they were on board their excretory matter was excluded from the ship’s closed ecology. But after they were disembarked on Tallis the plumbing wasn’t properly disinfected . . .”
Not a very suitable topic of conversation for the breakfast table,
thought Grimes, sipping his fruit juice. “So?” asked Sonya interestedly.
“So there’s been a plague running its course in the ‘farm.’ It’s just been the tissue culture vats that have been affected, luckily. We could make do indefinitely on yeasts and algae—but who wants to?” He grinned at Grimes, who was lifting a forkload of yolk-coated ham to his mouth. “Who wants to?”
“Not me, Captain,” admitted Grimes.
“Or me, Commodore. The beef’s dead, and the pork, and the chicken. The quack says that the lamb’s not fit for human consumption. So far the mutton seems to be unaffected, but we can’t even be sure of that.”
“You’ll be able to stock up when we get to Port Forlorn,” said Grimes.
“That’s a long way off.” Farrell looked steadily at Grimes as he buttered a piece of toast. “I’ve a job for you, Commodore.”
“A job for
me
, Commander Farrell?”
“Yes, you, Commodore Grimes. By virtue of your rank you represent the Rim Worlds Confederacy aboard this vessel. Kinsolving’s Planet, although no longer colonized, is one of the Rim Worlds. I want to put down there.”
“Why?” asked Grimes.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Commodore, but I understand that the original settlers introduced Earth-type flora and fauna, some of which have not only survived, but flourished. It’s not the flora that I’m interested in, of course—but I’ve heard that there are the descendants of the original rabbits, pigs, cattle and hens running wild there.”
“No cattle,” Grimes told him. “And no hens. Probably the pigs did for ‘em before they could become established.”
“Rabbit’s a good substitute for chicken,” said Farrell.
“Jimmy,” reproved Sonya, “I do believe that you like your tummy.”
“I do, Sonya, I do,” said the young man.
“And so do I,” said Lieutenant Commander Malleson, who until now had been eating in dedicated silence.
“But I don’t like Kinsolving,” grumbled Grimes. “And, in any case, we shall have to get permission to land.”
“You will get it, John,” said Sonya firmly.
Later that ship’s morning, Farrell discussed the proposed landing on Kinsolving with Grimes and Sonya.
“Frankly,” he told them, “I’m glad of an excuse to visit the planet. Not so long ago the Survey Service released a report on the three expeditions, starting off with that odd wet paint affair . . .”
“That was over a hundred and fifty years ago,” said Grimes.
“Yes. I know. And I know, too, that you’ve been twice to Kinsolving—the first time as an observer with the neo-Calvinists, the second time in command of your own show . . .”
“And both times,” admitted Grimes, “I was scared. Badly.”
“You don’t frighten easily, Commodore, as well I know. But what actually did happen? The official reports that have been released to the likes of us don’t give much away. It was hinted—no more, just hinted—that the neo-Calvinists tried to call up the God of the Old Testament, and raised the entire Greek pantheon instead. And you, sir, attempted to repeat the experiment, and got tangled with a Mephistopheles straight out of Gounod’s
Faust
.”
“Cutting extraneous cackle,” said Grimes, “that’s just what did happen.”
“What I’m getting at, Commodore, is this. Were your experiences objective or subjective?”
“That first time, Commander, the neo-Calvinists’ ship,
Piety
, was destroyed, as well as her pinnaces. Their leaders—the Presbyter, the Rector, the Deaconess and thirteen others, men and women—completely vanished. That was objective enough for anybody. The second time—I vanished.”
“I can vouch for that,” stated Sonya.
“But you came back. Obviously.”
“More by luck than judgment.” Grimes laughed, without humor. “When you do a deal with the Devil it’s as well to read the small print.”
“But at no time was there any actual physical harm to anybody.”
“There could have been. And we don’t know what happened to the neo-Calvinist boss cockies . . .”
“Probably being converted to hedonism on Mount Olympus,” said Sonya.
“But we don’t know.”
Farrell grinned. “And aren’t those very words a challenge to any officer in the Survey Service? You used to be one of us yourself, sir, and Sonya is still on our Reserve list. Kinsolving is almost directly on the track from Tallis to Lorn. I have a perfectly valid excuse to make a landing. And even in these decadent days . . .” He grinned again at the Commodore . . . “my Lords Commissioners do not discourage initiative and zeal on the part of their captains.”
Reluctantly, Grimes grinned back. It was becoming evident that Farrell possessed depths of character not apparent on first acquaintance. True, he worked by the book—and had Grimes done so he would have risen to the rank of Admiral in the Survey Service—but he was also capable of reading between the lines. A deviation from his original cruise pattern—the evacuation of the King and his supporters from Esquel—had brought him to within easy reach of Kinsolving; he was making the most of the new circumstances. Fleetingly Grimes wondered if the destruction of the ship’s fresh meat supply had been intentional rather than accidental, but dismissed the thought. Not even he, Grimes, had ever done a thing like that.
“Later,” said Farrell, “if it’s all right with you, sir, we’ll go over the official reports, and you can fill in the gaps. But what is it that makes Kinsolving the way it is?”
“Your guess is as good as anybody’s, Commander. It’s just that the atmosphere is . . . odd. Psychologically odd, not chemically or physically. A terrifying queerness. A sense of impending doom . . . Kinsolving was settled at the same time as the other Rim Worlds. Physically speaking, it’s a far more desirable piece of real estate than any of them. But the colonists lost heart. Their suicide rate rose to an abnormal level. Their mental institutions were soon overcrowded. And so on. So they pulled out.
“The reason for it all? There have been many theories. One of the latest is that the Kinsolving system lies at some intersection of . . . of stress lines. Stress lines in
what?
Don’t ask me. But the very fabric of the continuum is thin, ragged, and the dividing lines between
then
and
now
,
here
and
there
,
what is
and
what might be
are virtually nonexistent . . .”