The Broken Cycle

by A Bertram Chandler

  Oh, well, he thought philosophically as the acceleration pushed him down into the padding, at least we're giving the mattresses a good test. I don't suppose that they'll be used again . . . . A long boat voyage is the very least of my ambitions.

  Skink thundered up through the atmosphere and, at last, the drive was cut. Grimes and his two companions remained in their couches until trajectory had been set, until the high keening of the Mannschenn drive told them that they were on their way to intercept the derelict.

  Chapter 5

  Skink was not a happy ship.

  The average spaceman doesn't mind his captain's being a bastard as long as he's an efficient bastard. Frankie Delamere was not efficient. Furthermore, he was selfish. He regarded the vessel as his private yacht. Everything had to be arranged for his personal comfort.

  Skink was an even unhappier ship with the passengers whom she was carrying. To begin with, Delamere seemed to be under the impression that the medieval droit du seigneur held good insofar as he was concerned. Una did her best to disillusion him. She as good as told him that if she was going to sleep with anybody—and it was a large if—it would be with Grimes. Thereupon Frankie made sure that opportunities for this desirable consummation were altogether lacking. Some of his people, those who respected the rank if not the man, those who were concerned about their further promotion, played along with the captain. "One thing about Delamere's officers," complained Grimes, "is that they have an absolute genius for being where they're not wanted!"

  Apart from sexual jealousy, Delamere did not like Grimes, never had liked Grimes, and Grimes had never liked him. He could not go too far—after all, Grimes held the same rank as did he—but he contrived to make it quite clear that his fellow Lieutenant Commander was persona non grata in the courier's control room. Then—as was his right, but one that he was not obliged to exercise—he found totally unnecessary but time-consuming jobs for the members of the boarding party, snapping that he would tolerate no idlers aboard his ship.

  He, himself, was far from idle. He was working hard—but, Grimes noted with grim satisfaction, getting nowhere. He was always asking Una Freeman up to his quarters on the pretext of working out procedures for the interception of the derelict—and there he expected her to help him work his way through his not inconsiderable private stock of hard liquor. Grimes had no worries on this score. Her capacity for strong drink, he had learned, was greater than his, and his was greater than Delamere's. And there was the black eye that the captain tried to hide with talcum powder before coming into the wardroom for dinner and—a day or so later—the scratches on his face that were even more difficult to conceal. Too, Una—on the rare occasions that she found herself alone with Grimes—would regale him with a blow by blow account of the latest unsuccessful assault on the body beautiful.

  Grimes didn't find it all that amusing.

  "The man's not fit to hold a commission!" he growled. "Much less to be in command. Make an official complaint to me—after all, I'm the senior officer aboard this ship after himself—and I take action!"

  "What will you do?" she scoffed. "Call a policeman? Don't forget that I'm a policewoman—with the usual training in unarmed combat. I've been gentle with him so far, John. But if he tried anything nasty he'd wind up in the sick bay with something broken . . . ."

  "Or out of the airlock wrapped up in the Survey Service flag . . ." he suggested hopefully.

  "Even that. Although I'd have some explaining to do then."

  "I'd back you up."

  "Uncommonly decent of you, Buster. But I can look after myself—as Frankie boy knows, and as you'd better remember!"

  "Is that a threat?"

  "It could be," she told him. "It just could be."

  * * *

  For day after day Skink fell through the immensities, through the Continuum warped by the temporal precession field of her Mannschenn Drive. As seen from her control room the stars were neither points of light nor appreciable discs, but pulsing spirals of iridescence. For day after day the screen of the mass proximity indicator was a sphere of unrelieved blackness—but Delamere's navigator, an extremely competent officer, was not worried. He said, "If the F.I.A. mathematicians got their sums right—and I've heard that they're quite good at figuring—Delta Geminorum is still well outside the maximum range of our MPI."

  "Damn it all!" snarled his Captain. "We're wasting time on this wild goose chase. We should be well on our way to Olgana by now, not chauffeuring the civilian fuzz all round the bleeding Galaxy!"

  "I thought you liked Miss Freeman, sir," observed the navigator innocently.

  "Keep your thoughts to yourself, Lieutenant!"

  "If my sums have come out right, we should pick up the derelict at about 0630 hours, ship's time, tomorrow."

  "Your sums had better come out right!" snarled Delamere.

  * * *

  Reluctantly, Delamere asked Grimes up to the control room at the time when the first sighting was expected. He made it plain that he did so only because the other was to be in charge of the boarding operations. He growled, "You're supposed to be looking after this part of it. Just try not to waste too much of my time."

  "Your time," said Grimes, "belongs to the Survey Service, as mine does. And it's all being paid for with the taxpayer's money."

  "Ha, ha."

  "Ha, ha."

  The officers, and Una Freeman, looked on with interest. Una remarked that having two captains in the same control room was worse than having two women in the same kitchen. The watch officer, an ensign, sniggered. Either a very brave or a very foolish young man, thought Grimes.

  "And where's your bloody derelict, Mr. Ballantyre?" Delamere snarled at his navigator. "I make the time coming up to 0633."

  "It's been showing in the screen, sir, at extreme range, for the last three minutes. Just the merest flicker, and not with every sweep, but a ship's a small target . . . ."

  Pushing his officers rudely aside Delamere went to the MPI, staring down into the sphere of blackness. Grimes followed him. Yes, there it was, an intermittently glowing spark, at green eighty-three, altitude seventeen negative.

  "Extrapolate, please, Mr. Ballantyre," he said.

  "This is not your control room, Mr. Grimes," said Delamere.

  "But I am in charge of the boarding operations, Mr. Delamere," said Grimes.

  "All right, if you want to be a space lawyer!" Delamere went off in a huff—not that he could go very far—and slumped down in one of the acceleration chairs.

  Ballantyre extrapolated. From the center of the screen a very fine gleaming filament extended, and another one from the target. It was obvious that the two ships would pass each other many kilometers distant.

  "Mphm." Grimes produced his pipe, filled and lit it.

  "I don't allow smoking in my control room," growled Delamere.

  "I'm in charge now, as you, yourself, have admitted. And I always wear a pipe when I'm engaged in shiphandling."

  "Let the baby have his dummy!" sneered the other.

  Grimes ignored this. He said to Ballantyre, "You know this ship better than I do. Adjust our trajectory so that we're on a converging course, and overtaking . . . ."

  The navigator looked inquiringly at his captain, who growled, "Do as the man says."

  The Mannschenn Drive was shut down, but the inertial drive remained in operation. There were the brief seconds of temporal disorientation, with distorted outlines and all colors sagging down the spectrum, with all the shipboard sounds echoing oddly and eerily. Grimes, looking at Una, realized that he was—or would be, sometime in the not too distant future—seeing her naked. This made sense of a sort. Flashes of precognition are not uncommon when the interstellar drive is started up or shut down. But she was not only completely unclothed, but riding a bicycle. That made no sense at all.

  Gyroscopes rumbled, hummed as the ship was turned about her short axes, as the adjustment to trajectory was made. In the screen the extrapolated courses looked as Grimes
desired them to look. "Mphm. Very good, Mr. Ballantyre. Now—chase and board!"

  "I'm afraid I can't lend you any cutlasses, Grimes," said Delamere sardonically. "Or did you bring your own with you?"

  "Might I suggest, Lieutenant Commander, that we not waste time with airy persiflage? After all, you were the one who was saying how precious his time is . . . ."

  Again there was temporal disorientation as the Mannschenn Drive was restarted. Grimes hoped for another glimpse of the future Una, but was disappointed. The only impression was of an intensely bright white light, too bright, almost, to be seen.

  Grimes left things very much in the hands of Delamere's navigator. The young man obviously knew just what he was doing. With a minimum of fuss he got Skink running parallel with Delta Geminorum, with both actual speed and temporal precession rates exactly synchronized. With the synchronization the derelict was visible now, both visually and in the radar screen. At a range of five kilometers she could be examined in detail through the big, mounted binoculars, their lenses sensitive to all radiation, in the courier's control room. She looked innocent enough, a typical Delta Class liner of the Interstellar Transport Commission, floating against a background of blackness and the shimmering nebulosities that were the stars. She seemed to be undamaged, but an after airlock door was open. The pirates, thought Grimes, hadn't been very well brought up; nobody had taught them to shut doors after them . . . .

  "I'll take over now," said Delamere. "After all, this is my ship, Lieutenant Commander."

  "Oh, yes, I'd almost forgotten," said Grimes. "And what are your intentions, Lieutenant Commander?"

  "I'm going to make things easy for you, Grimes. I'm going to lay Skink right alongside Delta Geminorum."

  Just the sort of flashy spacemanship that would appeal to you, thought Grimes.

  "Are you mad?" asked Una Freeman coldly.

  Delamere flushed. "I'm not mad. And you, Miss Freeman, are hardly qualified to say your piece regarding matters of spacemanship."

  "Perhaps not, Commander Delamere. But I am qualified to say my piece regarding bomb disposal."

  "Bomb disposal?"

  "Yes. Bomb disposal. If you'd bothered to run through the report I gave you to read—and that Commander Grimes did read—you would know that there is a fully armed thermonuclear device still aboard that vessel. Unluckily none of the pirates who were arrested and brain-drained knew much about it. We did learn that the signal to detonate it was sent shortly after the pirate had returned safely to their own ship—but, for some reason, nothing happened. Nobody was at all keen to return aboard Delta Geminorum to find out why . . . . That bomb, Commander, is a disaster waiting to happen. It is quite probable that the inevitable jolt when you put your vessel alongside the derelict would be enough to set it off."

  "So what do you intend to do?" asked Delamere.

  "I suggest that you maintain your present station on Delta Geminorum; Commander Grimes and I will take a boat to board her. Then I shall defuse the bomb."

  "All right," growled Delamere at last. "All right. Mr. Ballantyre, maintain station on the derelict." He turned to his First Lieutenant. "Mr. Tarban, have Lieutenant Commander Grimes' boat ready for ejection." He added, addressing nobody in particular, "I don't see why I should risk one of my boats . . . ." He addressed Grimes. "I hope you enjoy the trip. Better you than me, Buster!"

  "I have the utmost confidence in Miss Freeman's abilities, Frankie," Grimes told him sweetly.

  Delamere snarled wordlessly.

  Una Freeman said, "You're the expert, John—for the first part of it, anyhow. Shall we require space-suits?"

  "Too right we shall," said Grimes. "To begin with, Mr. Tarban has probably evacuated the atmosphere from the after hold by now. And we don't know whether or not there's any atmosphere inside the derelict or if it's breathable. We'd better get changed."

  Before he left the control room he went to the binoculars for the last look at the abandoned liner. She looked innocent enough, a great, dull-gleaming torpedo shape. Suddenly she didn't look so innocent. The word "torpedo" has long possessed a sinister meaning.

  Chapter 6

  Everything was ready in the after hold when Grimes and Una got down there. The lashings had been removed from the boat and its outer airlock door was open. The inertial drive was ticking over, and somebody had started the mini-Mannschenn, synchronizing its temporal precession rates to those of the much bigger interstellar drive units in Skink and Delta Geminorum. A cargo port in the ship's side had been opened, and through it the liner was visible.

  "She's all yours, sir," said the First Lieutenant.

  "Thank you," replied Grimes.

  Delamere's irritated voice came through the helmet phones, "Stow the social chit-chat, Mr. Tarban. We've wasted enough time already!"

  "Shut up, Frankie!" snapped Una Freeman.

  Grimes clambered into the boat, stood in the chamber of the little airlock. Una passed up a bag of tools and instruments. He put it down carefully by his feet, then helped the girl inboard. He pressed a stud, and the outer door shut, another stud and the inner door opened.

  He went forward, followed by Una. He lowered himself into the pilot's seat. She took the co-pilot's chair. He ran a practiced eye over the control panel. All systems were GO.

  "Officer commanding boarding party to officer commanding Skink," he said into his helmet microphone, "request permission to eject."

  "Eject!" snarled Delamere.

  "He might have wished us good luck," remarked Una.

  "He's glad to see the back of us," Grimes told her.

  "You can say that again!" contributed Delamere.

  Grimes laughed as nastily as he could manage, then his gloved fingers found and manipulated the inertial drive controls. The little engine clattered tinnily but willingly. The boat was clear, barely clear of the chocks and sliding forward. She shot out through the open port, and Grimes made the small course correction that brought the liner dead ahead, and kept her there. She seemed to expand rapidly as the distance was covered.

  "Careful," warned Una. "This is a boat we're in, not a missile . . . ."

  "No back seat driving!" laughed Grimes.

  Nonetheless, he adjusted trajectory slightly so that it would be a near miss and not a direct hit. At the last moment he took the quite considerable way off the boat by applying full reverse thrust. She creaked and shuddered, but held together. Una said nothing, but Grimes could sense her disapproval. Come to that, he had his own disapproval to contend with. He realized that he was behaving with the same childish flashiness that Frankie Delamere would have exhibited.

  He orbited the spaceship. On the side of her turned away from Skink the cargo ports were still open. It all looked very unspacemanlike—but why bother to batten down when the ship is going to be destroyed minutes after you have left her? She hadn't been destroyed, of course, but she should have been, would have been if some firing device had not malfunctioned.

  He said, "I'll bring us around to the after airlock. Suit you?"

  "Suits me. But be careful, John. Don't forget that there's an armed bomb aboard that ship. Anything, anything at all, could set it off."

  "Yes, teacher. I'll be careful, very careful. I'll come alongside so carefully that I wouldn't crack the proverbial egg." He reached out for the microphone of the Carlotti transceiver; at this distance from the courier, with Mannschenn Drive units in operation, the N.S.T. suit radios were useless. He would have to inform Frankie Delamere and his own officers of progress to date and of his intentions. With his chin he nudged the stud that would cause the faceplate of his helmet to flip open. His thumb pressed the transmit button. And then it happened.

  Aboard the ship, for many, many months, the miniaturized Carlotti receiver had been waiting patiently for the signal that, owing to some infinitesimal shifting of frequencies, had never come. The fuse had been wrongly set, perhaps, or some vibration had jarred it from its original setting, quite possibly the shock initiated by the explo
sion of either of the two warning bombs. And now here was a wide-band transmitter at very close range.

  Circuits came alive, a hammer fell on a detonator, which exploded, in its turn exploding the driving charge. One sub-critical mass of fissionable material was impelled to contact with another sub-critical mass, with the inevitable result.

  As a bomb it lacked the sophistication of the weaponry of the armed forces of the Federation—but it worked.

  Grimes, with the dreadful reality blinding him, remembered his prevision of the light too bright to be seen. He heard somebody (Una? himself?) scream. This was It. This was all that they would ever be. He was a dead leaf caught in the indraught of a forest fire, whirling down and through the warped dimensions to the ultimate, blazing Nothingness.