Catch the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  * * *

  We all had to stand out on the field in a cold drizzle while the Presidents of Faraway, Ultimo and Thule made their farewell speeches. We were drawn up in a rather ragged line behind Captain Grimes, dapper in uniform, very much the space captain. The ex-policemen, the Marines, were a little to one side, and made up for what we lacked in the way of smartness. At last the speechmaking was over. Led by Grimes we marched up the ramp to the airlock, went at once to our blasting-off stations. In the control room Grimes sat chunkily in his acceleration chair with Lawlor, his Chief Officer, to one side of him. My own chair was behind theirs, and at my side was Gavin, one of the astronomers from Ultimo, who was on the ship's books as Third Officer.

  Reports started coming in. "Interplanetary Drive Room—manned and ready!" "Interstellar Drive Room—manned and ready!" "Hydroponics—all secured!" "Steward's store—all secured!"

  "Mr. Wilberforce," ordered Grimes, "request permission to proceed."

  I spoke into the microphone of the already switched on transceiver. "Faraway Quest to Control Tower, Faraway Quest to Control Tower. Have we your permission to proceed?"

  "Control Tower to Faraway Quest. Permission granted. Good luck to all of you!"

  Gavin was counting aloud, the words carried through the ship by the intercom. "Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight. . . Seven . . ." I saw Grimes's stubby hand poised over the master firing key. "Six . . . Five . . . Four . . ." I looked out of the nearest viewport, to the dismal, mist shrouded landscape. Faraway was a good world to get away from, to anywhere—or, even, nowhere. "Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Fire!"

  We lifted slowly, the ground falling away beneath us, dropping into obscurity beneath the veil of drifting rain. We drove up through the low clouds, up and into the steely glare of Faraway's sun. The last of the atmosphere slipped, keening shrilly, down our shell plating and then we were out and clear, with the gleaming lens of the Galaxy to one side of us and, on the other, the aching emptiness of the Outside.

  For long minutes we accelerated, the pseudo-gravity forcing us deeply into the padding of our chairs. At last Grimes cut the Drive and, almost immediately, the thunder of the rockets was replaced by the high, thin whine of the ever-precessing gyroscopes of the Mannschenn unit. The Galactic Lens twisted itself into an impossible convolution.

  The emptiness Outside still looked the same.

  * * *

  That emptiness was with us all through the voyage.

  Star after star we circled; some had planetary families, some had not. At first we made landings on all likely looking worlds, then, after a long succession of planets that boasted nothing higher in the evolutionary scale than the equivalent to the giant reptiles of Earth's past, we contented ourselves by making orbital surveys only. Peter succeeded in talking Grimes into entrusting him with the task of deciding whether or not any planet possessed intelligent life—and, of course, cities and the like could be spotted from space.

  So we drove on, and on, settling down to a regular routine of Interstellar Drive, Interplanetary Drive, Closed Orbit, Interplanetary Drive, Interstellar Drive, Interplanetary Drive . . . Everybody was becoming short-tempered. Grimes was almost ready to admit that the odd pieces of flotsam falling now and again to the Rim Worlds must have come from Outside and not from somewhere else along the Rim. Had our purpose been exploration as a prelude to colonisation we should have felt a lot more useful—but the Rim Worlds have barely enough population to maintain their own economies.

  Only Peter Morris maintained a certain calm cheerfulness. His faith in his hunch was strong. He told me so, more than once. I wanted to believe him but couldn't.

  Then, one boring watch, I was showing Liddell, one of the astronomers, how to play three dimensional noughts and crosses in the Tri-Di chart. He was catching on well and I was finding it increasingly hard to beat him when suddenly, the buzzer of the intercom sounded. I answered it. It was Peter, speaking from his Psionic Communications Room.

  "Ken!" he almost shouted. "Life! Intelligent life!"

  "Where?" I demanded.

  "I don't know. I'm trying to get a rough bearing. It's in towards the Lens from us, that much I can tell you. But the bearing doesn't seem to be changing."

  "No parallax?" asked Liddell. "Could it be, do you think, a ship?"

  "It just could be," I said doubtfully.

  "Ken, I think it's a ship!" came Peter's voice. "I think that they, like ourselves, have Psionic Radio . . . Their operator's vaguely aware of me, but he's not sure . . . No—it's not he . . . It's a woman; I'm pretty certain of that . . . But it's a ship all right. Roughly parallel course, but converging . . ."

  "Better tell old Grimy," I suggested, hastily clearing the noughts and crosses lattice from the Tri-Di chart. To Liddell I said, "I'm afraid Peter's imagining things. Not about the ship—she's probably a stray Survey vessel—but about the female operator. When psionic radio first started we used to carry them, but the average woman telepath is so unintelligent that they were all emptied out as soon as there were enough men for the job."

  "It could be an alien ship," said Liddell.

  "It could be, but it's not," I said. "Unless, of course, it belongs to one of the alien races with whom we've already made contact. It could be a Shaara vessel—that would account for Peter's female telepath. The Shaara are social insects, and all the work is done by the females."

  Captain Grimes came into the control room. He looked almost happy. "Contact at last," he said.

  "Suppose they are aliens," said the astronomer, "and suppose they open fire on us . . . What then?"

  "By the time people get around to building interstellar ships," said Grimes, "they've lost the habit of wanting to fight strangers."

  "Sometimes," I said.

  "Switch on the Matter Proximity Indicator," he said.

  I did so, peered into the globe that was its screen.

  * * *

  "There's something . . ." I said. "Red 085, ZD 093 . . ."

  "A little astern," murmured the Old Man. "Range?"

  I manipulated the controls carefully. "Twenty thousand—and closing. Relative bearing not altering."

  "Liddell," said the Captain. "You're an astronomer, a mathematician. What are the odds against this? With all the immensity of Space around us we have two ships approaching on collision orbits. The other ship is using a similar Drive to ours—she must be. If her rate of temporal precession were more than one microsecond different from ours she would not register on our screens, and there'd be no risk of collision. What are the odds?"

  "Astronomical," replied Liddell drily. "But I'll tell you this, although you must, by this time, have come to the same conclusion. There's a Law of Nature that you'll not find in any of the books, but that is valid just the same. If a coincidence can happen, it will."

  "I'll buy that," said Grimes.

  Peter's voice came from the squawk box. "I've established contact. She's an alien ship, all right. She belongs to some people called the Lowanni. She's a trading vessel, analogous to one of our Beta Class ships. Her captain wishes to know if he may close us to make contact."

  "Tell them yes!" almost shouted Grimes. "Mr. Willoughby—sound the General Alarm. I want all hands at stations. Damn it, this is just what we've been hunting for! Neighbors along the Rim . . ."

  I sounded the Alarm. The ship hummed like a disturbed beehive as one and all hastened to their stations. The reports began coming in; "Rocket Drive manned and ready . . . Electronic Radio Office manned and ready . . . Surgeon and Bio-Chemist standing by for further instructions . . ." The Chief and Third Officers, together with the other astronomer, pulled themselves into the already crowded control room.

  It seemed only a matter of minutes—although it was longer—before the alien ship was within telescopic range. Just a little silvery dot of light she was at first, hard to pick up against the gleaming convoluted distortion of the Galactic Lens. And then, slowly, she took shape. There was little about her appearance that was unusual�
��but any spaceship designed for landings and blastings off through an atmosphere must, of necessity, look very like any other spaceship.

  Meanwhile, our Electronic and Psionic Radio departments were working together. I still don't know how Peter Morris and his opposite number in the alien ship managed to sort out details of frequency and all the rest of it, but they did. It may be, of course, that mathematics is the universal language—even so, it must have been quite a job for the two telepaths to transmit and receive the electronic technicalities.

  They came into the Control Room then—Peter Morris and Sparks. Sparks busied himself with the big intership transceiver, twisting dials and muttering. Peter whispered occasional instructions.

  * * *

  The screen came to life. It showed the interior of a control room very like our own. It showed a group of people very like ourselves. They were in the main slimmer, and their features were more delicate, and their ears had pointed tips, but they were human rather than merely humanoid.

  One of them—his black-clad shoulders were heavily encrusted with gold—said something in a pleasant tenor voice. The girl standing beside him seemed to be repeating what he was saying; her lips moved, but no sound came from them.

  "Captain Sanara says, 'Welcome to the Dain Worlds,' " said Peter.

  "Tell him, 'Thank you,' " said Grimes.

  I saw the girl in the alien ship speak to the Captain. She must, I thought, be their P.R.O. I remembered, suddenly, what Peter had told me of those dreams of his before we left Faraway. She was a little too tall, and a little too slim, and her golden hair had a greenish glint to it. Her small ears were pointed at the tips . . . And she has a wide, generous mouth, I thought, and in spite of the severity of her uniform she's all woman . . . I looked at Peter. He was staring into the screen like a starving man gazing into a restaurant window.

  Shortly thereafter it became necessary for the two ships to cut their interstellar drives—alterations of course are impossible while the Drive is in operation, and an alteration of course there had to be to avert collision. During the operation the image on the screen blurred and wavered and, at times, vanished as the two rates of temporal precession lost their synchronisation. Peter, I could see, was on tenterhooks whilst this was taking place. He had found, thanks to an utterly impossible coincidence, his woman; now he dreaded losing her.

  He need not have worried. Grimes was an outstanding astronaut and, in all probability, the alien Captain was in the same class. The other ship flickered back into view just as the Galactic Lens reappeared in all its glory. Our directional gyroscopes whined briefly, our rockets coughed once. Through the port I saw a short burst of pale fire at the stern of the alien—then we were falling through space on parallel courses with velocities matching to within one millimetre a second.

  * * *

  Time went by. Through the telepaths the two Captains talked. We heard about the Dain Worlds, whose people were relative newcomers into Deep Space. We heard about their social and economic systems, their art, their industries. As we listened we marvelled. These people, the Lowanni, were our twins. They thought as we did and acted as we did, and their history in most ways paralleled our own. I knew what Grimes was thinking. He had made up his mind that the Rim Worlds had far more in common with these aliens than with the crowded humanity at the Galactic Centre. He was thinking of more than trade agreements, he was thinking in terms of pacts and treaties.

  Even so, trade was not to be sneezed at.

  They talked, the two Captains. They discussed an interchange of gifts, of representative artifacts from both cultures. It was when they got to this stage of the proceedings that they struck a snag.

  "There are," said our Doctor coldly, "such things as micro-organisms. I would point out, Captain, that it would be suicidal folly to allow an alien to board this ship, even if he kept his spacesuit on. He might carry something that would wipe all of us out—and might carry something back with him that would destroy both himself and all his shipmates."

  Peter broke in. "I've been talking with Erin," he said.

  "Erin?" asked the Old Man.

  "That's her name, sir. She's the alien P.R.O. We've decided that the exchange of artifacts is necessary, and have been trying to work out a way in which it would be carried out without risk. At the same time, it means that both parties have a guinea pig . . ."

  "What do you mean, Mr. Morris?"

  "Let me finish, sir. This ship, as you know, has only one airlock, but carries more boats than is necessary. Listra—the ship out there—has the normal complements of boats for a vessel of her class but has no less than four airlocks, two of which are rarely used. This is the way we've worked it out. One of our boats, and one of Listra's airlocks, can be used as isolation hospitals . . .

  "I can handle a boat, sir, as you know, compulsory for every nonexecutive officer in the Commission's service to hold a lifeboatman's certificate. The idea is this. I take the boat out to midway between the two ships, carrying with me such goods as we are giving to the aliens. Erin comes out in her spacesuit, bringing with her what the aliens are giving us. Then she returns to her ship, and I bring the boat back to this ship. She will remain in the airlock, as I shall remain in the boat, until such time as it is ruled that there is no danger of infection . . ."

  * * *

  I looked at the screen. I saw that the slim, blonde girl was talking earnestly to Captain Sanara. I saw other officers joining in the discussion. I looked back from the screen to Captain Grimes. His dark, mottled face was heavy with misgivings. I heard him say, "This could be suicide, Mr. Morris."

  "It could be, sir—but so could coming out on an expedition like this. And you know as well as I do that very few alien micro-organisms have been found that are dangerous to Man. All that it means, essentially, is that Erin and I will have to do our jobs in rather uncomfortable conditions from now on."

  "Why you, and why Erin?"

  "Because we're the telepaths. Suppose, for example, you send a tube of depilatory among the other goods to be exchanged. Erin's people might think that it's toothpaste, or mustard, or . . . or anything at all but what it is. When we're together in the boat we can explain things, talk things over. We'll get more ground covered in half an hour together than we should in half a week, talking ship to ship . . ."

  "You've got it all worked out, haven't you?" grumbled Grimes. "But on a job of this sort it's foolish to discourage an enthusiastic volunteer . . . Well, I suppose that the rest of you had better start collecting artifacts. Books, and tools, and instruments, samples of our food and drink . . ."

  "You mean it's all right, sir?" asked Peter, his face suddenly radiant.

  "Mr. Morris, if this were a commercial vessel I'd never allow one of the officers to take such a risk. If you like you can tell that girl that I take a dim view of her Captain for allowing her to take the risk . . ."

  "She doesn't think of it that way."

  "Doesn't she? Then she should."

  "Can I get ready, sir?"

  "You can. Don't forget to brush your hair and wash behind the ears—after all, you have acting temporary ambassadorial status."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Peter vanished from the control room as though he had added teleportation to his other talents. Grimes sighed and looked at the screen, looked at the radiant girl who was, obviously, thanking her Captain. He sighed again and demanded, of no one in particular, "Who said it?"

  "Who said what?" asked the Chief Officer.

  "Journeys end in lovers' meetings," said Grimes.

  It was all so obvious, even to non-telepaths.

  * * *

  I was in the boat with Peter shortly before he blasted off.

  I said, "You seem pretty certain."

  "Of course I'm certain. And she was lonely too, just as I have been. Among her people they have a similar set-up to ours, but in reverse. With them it's usually the male telepath who's an unattractive, mindless clod. This chance encounter means a lot to both o
f us."

  "She's an oxygen breather?" I asked. "You're sure of that? I mean, if she comes in here and takes off her helmet and our atmosphere poisons her . . . I don't want to be pessimistic, but I believe in facing facts."

  "She's an oxygen breather," Peter assured me. "She eats food very like ours. (I hope she likes chocolates—I've got some here). She drinks alcoholic liquor in moderation. She smokes, even. She can try one of our cigarettes and I'll try one of hers . . ."

  "You've found out a lot in a short time, haven't you?"

  "Of course I have. That's my job—and hers. But I'll have to ask you to leave me, Ken. I've got a date."

  "Are you sure you wouldn't like me to come along?"

  "Not bloody likely!" he snapped.

  "All right, then. And all the best of luck."

  "Thanks," he said.

  I stood by the blister until I felt the shock of his blasting off, until the red READY light changed to green, showing that he was out and clear. I made my way back to Control. I joined the group at the port watching the little spacecraft coasting out and away from us, watched her take up a position roughly midway between the two ships.