Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  Oh well, it’s nice having your wife aboard ship with you—but it’s also nice to have a home, complete with wife and children, to come back to. You can’t have it both ways. And most of the time I got ships that never wandered far from Dogtown, and was contented enough as I rose slowly—but not too slowly—through the ranks from Third to Second, from Second to Chief and, finally, from Chief Officer to Master.

  But now, after all these years, I was coming back to the Rim.

  The Dog Star Line ships spend most of the time sniffing around their own backyard, but now and again, they stray. Basset had strayed, following the scent of commerce clear across the Galaxy. At home, on Canis Major, I’d loaded a big consignment of brassards and self-adjusting sun hats for Arcadia. I must find out some time how those brassards sold. They were made with waterproof pockets for smoking requirements, small change, folding money, etc. The Arcadians, who practice naturism all the year round, have always seemed to manage quite well with a simple bag slung over one shoulder.

  At Ursa Major (the Arcadians have a childish love of puns) I filled up with the so-called Apples of Eden, a local fruit esteemed on quite a few worlds. These were consigned to New Maine. And what would one load in Port Penobscot? Need you ask? Smoked and pickled fish, of course, far less fragrant than what had been discharged. This shipment was for Rob Roy, one of the planets of the Empire of Waverley.

  The cargo we loaded on Rob Roy was no surprise either. The Jacobeans, as they call themselves, maintain that their whisky is superior to the genuine article distilled in Scotland. It may be, it may not be; whisky is not my tipple. But the freight charges from the Empire of Waverley to the Rim Confederacy are far less than those from Earth to the Rim.

  So Basset had followed the scent of profit clear from the Dog Star to the Rim, and now it looked as though the trail was petering out. On the other legs of the voyage Head Office, by means of Carlotti radio, had kept me well-informed as to what my future movements would be. On my run from Rob Roy to Lorn they had remained silent. And Rim Runners, my agents on Lorn, had replied to my ETA with only a curt acknowledgement. I didn’t like it. None of us liked it: we’d all been away from home too long.

  Probably I liked it less than my officers. I knew the Rim Worlds; I could think of far nicer planets to sit around awaiting orders.

  We found the Lorn sun without any trouble—not that we should have had any trouble finding that dim luminary. Even if we hadn’t been equipped with the Carlotti Direction Finder, and even if the Rim Worlds hadn’t been able to boast the usual layout of Carlotti Beacons, we’d have had no trouble. There’s the Galactic Lens, you see, and it doesn’t thin out gradually towards its edges; the stars in the spiral arms are quite closely packed. (I use the word “closely” in a relative way, of course. If you had to walk a dozen or so lightyears you wouldn’t think it was all that close.) And then there’s that almost absolute nothingness between the galaxies. Almost absolute. . .

  There’s the occasional hydrogen atom, of course, and a few small star clusters doing their best to convey the impression that they don’t really belong to the galactic family. The Rim Confederacy is one such cluster. There are the Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo, Thule, Eblis and Kinsolving suns. To the Galactic East there’s a smaller cluster, with Tharn, Grollor, Mellise and Stree. To the West there’s a sizeable anti-matter aggregation, with a dozen suns. So, as long as you’re headed in roughly the right direction when you break out of the Lens, you have no difficulty identifying the cluster you want.

  You have the Galactic Lens astern of you. When the Space-Time-twisting Mannschenn Drive is running it looks like an enormous, slowly squirming, luminescent amoeba. Ahead there’s an uncanny blackness, and the sparse, glimmering, writhing nebulosities that are the Rim Suns seem to make that blackness even blacker, even emptier. And that emptiness still looks too damned empty even when the interstellar drive’s shut down and the ship’s back in the normal Continuum.

  I could tell that my officers were scared by the weird scenery—or lack of it. I was feeling a bit uneasy myself; it was so many years since I’d been out here. But we got used to it after a while—as much as one can get used to it—and here we were at last, dropping down through the upper atmosphere of Lorn. The landing was scheduled for 0900 hours, Port Forlorn Local Time. We couldn’t see anything of Port Forlorn yet, although we had clearance from Aerospace Control to enter and were homing on the radio beacon. Beneath us was the almost inevitable overcast, like a vast snowfield in the sunlight, and under the cloud ceiling there would be, I knew, the usual half-gale (if not something stronger) probably accompanied by rain, snow, hail or sleet. Or all four.

  “How does it feel to be coming home, sir?” asked my Chief Officer sarcastically.

  “My home’s in Canis Major!” I snapped. Then I managed a grin. “If you’ll forgive my being corny, home is where the heart is.”

  “You can say that again, Captain,” he concurred. (He was recently married and the novelty hadn’t worn off yet.)

  I took a last, routine look around the control room, just to make sure that everybody was where he was supposed to be and that everything was working. Soon I’d have to give all my attention to the inertial drive and attitude controls and to the periscope screen; inevitably I’d have to do some fancy juggling with lateral and downthrusts. Rugged, chunky Bindle, the Chief Officer, was strapped in the co-pilot’s chair, ready to take over at once if I suffered a sudden heart attack or went mad or something. Loran, the Second, was hunched over the bank of navigational instruments, his long, skinny frame all awkward angles and the usual greasy black cowlick obscuring one eye. His job was to call out to me the various instrument readings if, for some reason, such data failed to appear on the periscope screen. Young Taylor, the Third, an extraordinarily ordinary looking youth, was manning the various telephones, including the NST transceiver with which we were in communication with Aerospace Control. In most Dog Star Line’s vessels this was the Radio Officer’s job, but I had found that our Sparks, Elizabeth Brown (Betty Boops, we called her) was far too great a distraction. Even when she was wearing a thickly opaque uniform blouse (she preferred ones which were not) her abundant charms were all too obvious.

  We fell steadily, the inertial drive grumbling away in its odd, broken rhythm, healthily enough. We dropped into the upper cloud levels, and at first pearly gray mist alternated with clear air outside our viewports. And then, for what seemed like a long time, there was only dark, formless vapor. The ship shuddered suddenly and violently as turbulence took her in its grip. The changing code of the blips from the radio beacon told me that I was off course, but it was early yet to start bothering about corrections.

  We broke through the cloud ceiling.

  Looking into the screen, stepping up the magnification, I could see that there had been few changes during my long absence. The landscape, as always, was gray rather than green, almost featureless, although on the horizon the black, jagged peaks of the Forlorn Range loomed ominously. There were the wide fields in which were grown such unglamorous crops as beans and potatoes. There was the city, which had grown only a little, with the wind turbine towers and the factory chimneys in the industrial suburbs, each smokestack with its streamer of dirty white and yellow vapour. Yes, it was blowing down there all right.

  And there was the spaceport, a few kilometers from the city. I could see, towards the edge of the screen, the triangle of bright red flashing beacons on the apron. They were well to leeward, I noted, of the only other ship in port. This, I had been told, was Rim Osprey. There would be enough clearance, I thought hopefully, although I wondered, not for the first time, why Port Captains, with acres of apron at their disposal, always like to pack vessels in closely. I applied lateral thrust generously, brought the beacons to the exact centre of the screen.

  At first it wasn’t too hard to keep them there, and then we dropped into a region of freak turbulence and to the observers in the Port Forlorn control tower it must have looked as though we w
ere wandering all over the sky. An annoying voice issued from the NST speaker, “Where are you off to, Captain?”

  “Don’t answer the bastard!” I snarled to Taylor.

  I had control of her again and, as well as maintaining a steady rate of descent, corrected the ship’s attitude. We dropped rapidly and the numerals of the radar altimeter display were winding down fast. I was coming in with a ruddy blush—but that, I had learned years ago, was the only way to come in to Port Forlorn. I said as much to Bindle, who was beginning to make apprehensive noises. “Try to drop like a feather,” I told him, “and you’ll finish up blown into the other hemisphere . . .”

  I heard Loran mutter something about a ton of bricks, but ignored him.

  There was little in the screen now but dirty concrete and the flashing beacons, marking the triangle in the centre of which I was supposed to land—but only when my stern vanes were below the level of the top of the control tower did I step up downthrust. The ship complained and shuddered to the suddenly increased power of the inertial drive.

  I was beginning to feel smug—but what happened then wiped the silly grin off my face. I had been leaning, as it were, into the wind—and suddenly, as we came into the lee of the administration block, there was no longer any wind to lean against. Worse still, there was a nasty back eddy. I reversed lateral thrust at once, of course, but it seemed ages before it took effect. The marker beacons slid right to the edge of the screen, right off it. Then, with agonizing slowness, they drifted back, not far enough. . .

  But we were down. I felt the slight jar and the contact lights came on. I cut the drive. Basset trembled and sighed as she sagged down into the cradle of her tripedal landing gear, as the great shock absorbers took the weight of her. With a steady hand—but it took an effort!—I fished a packet of Caribea panatellas out of my breast pocket, struck one of the long, green cylinders and stuck the unlit end between my lips. (I almost did it the wrong way round, but noticed just in time.) I checked all the tell-tales, saw nothing wrong and ordered quietly, “Make it Finished With Engines.”

  Nobody acknowledged the order. I looked around indignantly. All three officers were staring out through one of the viewports. “Gods! That was close! Bloody close!” the Mate was muttering.

  I stared through that viewport myself. Yes, it had been close. Another meter over towards the administration block and one or other or our stern vanes would have torn down the side of the other ship, ripping her open like a huge can opener. I unsnapped my belt, walked a little unsteadily to join the officers at the viewport. We could look directly into our neighbor’s control room. A junior officer, the shipkeeper, was staring across at us. His face was still white. It had reason to be.

  “Port Forlorn Control to Basset,” came from the speaker of the NST transceiver. “Do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear,” I replied automatically into the microphone.

  “Port Forlorn Control to Basset. You are far too close to Rim Osprey. For your information, she is not a lamppost.” (Funny bastard, I thought.) “You will have to shift. Oh, by the way, you also destroyed two of our marker beacons when you set down. Over.”

  I shrugged. It’s a rare master who hasn’t rubbed out the occasional marker beacon. And, after all, they’re cheap enough. (But Rim Osprey wouldn’t have been cheap if I’d hit her. But I hadn’t hit her. So what?

  Finally, after the ground crew had set out new beacons, I tackled the ticklish job of shifting ship. I managed it with no damage except for a slightly dented vanepad and a long scratch on the concrete apron. (Straight as though drawn with a rule, the Mate remarked. I forgave him, but it wasn’t easy.)

  When we had reberthed to the Port Captain’s approval, Customs and Port Health boarded to clear us inwards. Both officials were quite amazed to find that my place of birth, as shown on the Crew List, was Port Forlorn. They had to say, of course, that I had gone to the dogs. My Agent—Rim Runners’ Port Forlorn Branch Manager—made the same feeble joke. Finally we got down to business. He said, “I’ve nothing for you at the moment, Captain. My last instructions from your Owners were to try to arrange some sort of charter for you locally . . .”

  I told him, rather plaintively, “But I want to go home . . .”

  He replied cheerfully, “But you are home. Lives there a man with soul so dead, and all that. Don’t you have friends or relatives here? And you were in Rim Runners once, weren’t you?”

  “I was,” I admitted.

  “Then you must know Commodore Grimes, our Astronautical Superintendent. He’s in Port Forlorn now, as a matter of fact . . .”

  “The commodore and I didn’t part on the best of terms,” I said carefully.

  “Time wounds all heels,” he told me. “Shall I tell him you’re here?”

  “Perhaps not,” I said.

  “He’ll know anyhow, Captain. He always likes to look through the crew lists of strange ships that come in here.” He laughed. “He could be looking for your name!”

  “I should have changed it when I changed my nationality,” I said. “But I doubt if he’ll want to see me again.”

  * * *

  Oddly enough—or not so oddly—nobody went ashore that day. The weather was partly to blame; shortly after our final berthing a cold driving rain had set in.

  Too, all the way to Lorn I’d been telling everybody how drab and dreary the Rim Worlds are, and they must have at least half-believed me.

  And then, after dinner that night, a little party started in the wardroom. We were all relaxing after the voyage and we had a few drinks, and a few more, and then . . . You know how it is. And, as always, we finished up in full voice, singing our Company’s anthem.

  All the big outfits have one, usually some very old song with modern words tacked on to the antique melody. In the Waverley Royal Mail they have their own version of Fly, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing. In TG Clippers it’s one of the ancient Terran sea chanteys, Sally Brown. (Way, hey, roll and go!) Rim Runners have a farewell song from some old comic opera. (Good-bye, I’ll run to find another sun/Where I may find! There are hearts more kind than the ones left behind . . .)

  And ourselves, the Dog Star Line? The choice is obvious.

  “How much is that doggy in the window?

  (Arf! Arf!)

  “The one with the great big glass eyes . . .

  “How much is that doggy in the window?

  “I think she looks ever so nice

  “I don’t want a Countess or a Duchess,

  “I don’t want an Empress with wings . . .”

  (This, of course, a dig at the Waverley Royal Mail Line.)

  “I don’t want an Alpha or a Beta . . .”

  (The two biggest classes of ship in the Interstellar Transport Commission.)

  “Or any of those fucking things!”

  “How much is that doggy in the window?

  (Arf! Arf! Arf!)

  “The one with the Sirius look,

  “How much is that doggy in the window?

  “Please put my name down in her book!”

  We were all happily arfing away, with a few yips and bow-wows, when the Mate noticed a visitor standing just outside the wardroom door. “Come in, come in!” he called. “This is Liberty Hall! You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard! But . . .”

  We took the cue and roared in unison, “Beware of the dog!”

  “That last,” remarked a voice, familiar after many a year, “makes a very welcome new addition.”

  I turned slowly in my chair to look at him. At first I thought that the old bastard hadn’t changed a bit.

  Then I saw that his hair was gray now, matching his eyes, and that his face had acquired a few new wrinkles. Otherwise it was as it always had been, looking as though it had been hacked rather than carved out of some coarse textured stone and then left out in the weather. His ears were the same prominent jug handles of old.

  “Don’t let me interrupt the party, Captain Rule,” he went on, slightly emph
asizing the title. “I had some business with Rim Osprey, and then I thought that I’d call aboard here to see you. But it can wait until the morning.”

  I got to my feet, extended a slightly reluctant hand. He shook it. “Good to have you aboard, sir,” I said in the conventional manner. “Will you join us in a small drink?”

  He grinned. “Well, if you twist my arm hard enough . . .”

  I introduced him around and found him a chair. If he was bearing no malice—and he had far more reason to than I did—then neither was I. He was very soon completely at home.

  Betty Brown—wearing one of her transparent shirts and a skirt that was little more than a pelmet—and Sara Taine, my Purser, sat—literally—at his feet, getting up now and again to bring him savories or to freshen his drink. I didn’t get that sort of service. I thought resentfully, and this was my ship . . . He had a fine repertoire of songs and stories, far more extensive than any of ours. Well, he should have done. He had been around so much longer.

  At last he raised his wrist and looked at his watch. He said, “Thank you for the party, but I must be going . . .”

  “The night’s only a pup, Commodore,” Bindle told him.

  “It was a bitch of a night when I came aboard,” he replied, “and probably still is. Raining cats and dogs . . .” He laughed. “Your Dog Star Line brand of humor seems to be catching . . .”

  “Just one more before you go? One for the road?” urged the Mate.

  “No. Thank you. I don’t want to find myself in the doghouse when I get home. Goodnight, all. Goodnight. Goodnight . . .”

  I saw him down to the after airlock.

  He told me, “I’ll be seeing you in the morning, Captain Rule, if it is convenient.”

  “Would you mind answering a question before you go, sir?” I asked him.