“You are acting captain. Put the interests of the ship before those of Mr. Smith. Press the chase. Make use of your weaponry as requisite. You will revert to your normal rank as soon as we are back on board. That’s all.”
Somehow a junior engineer had managed to insert himself into the crowded control room. He elbowed his way toward Grimes. “Sir, Commander Davis told me to tell you that you can start inertial and Mannschenn Drives as soon as you like. He’s been trying to raise you on the intercom, but the line is dead.”
“It’s switched off,” Grimes admitted. “But we’ll get it working again to the engine room. . . .” Daniels had anticipated him, handed Grimes a microphone. “Commodore here, Commander Davis. The remote control panel of the Mannschenn Drive is . . . out of order. You’ll just have to get your instructions by telephone. Good.” He turned to Carnaby. “Get ready to put the ship on the reciprocal heading—straight for The Outsider. We may be a little late for the start of the party, but we should be there before it’s over . . .”
Flandry, Irene and Trafford looked at him with some animosity. “It’s all right for you,” growled the ex-empress. “You’ve got a ship now, and we haven’t.”
“Can you get us back to where we belong?” Flandry asked Clarisse, a little desperately.
“I . . . I don’t know . . .” she admitted. “I’ve never tried sending anybody anywhere before.”
“You’d better try now,” Grimes told her.” Or as soon as we have things sorted out.” He didn’t want Sonya and Flandry in the same ship.
Chapter 26
THE COMMODORE’S QUARTERS still retained the distasteful traces of Druthen’s occupancy, but the cleaning up could wait. Grimes forced himself to ignore the untidiness: no less than his own, but different—the scars left by smoldering cigarette ends on table tops; the sticky rings that showed where slopping over glasses had been set down. Sonya had wanted to do something about it at once, if not before, but Grimes had restrained her. “It is essential,” he said firmly, “that Sir Dominic, Irene, Captain Trafford and Mr. Metzenther be returned to their own ships as soon as possible. . . .”
“And it is equally essential—to me, anyhow—that Ken be brought back here as soon as possible,” Clarisse told him.
“Mphm. I see your point. But first of all both Captain Flandry’s Vindictive and Captain Trafford’s Wanderer must be put in a state of full fighting efficiency, so as to be able to cope with Adler. I would suggest that you deal with Sir Dominic first.”
“Thank you,” said Flandry.
“It will be a pleasure, Captain. Well, Clarisse?”
“I don’t know how it can be done . . .” muttered the girl. “I don’t know if it can be done. . . .”
“Rubbish!” snorted Irene. “If you can pull, you can push. It’s as simple as that.”
“Then why don’t you try it?”
“It’s just not my specialty, dearie. I’m just a rough-and-tough ex-mate out of the Dog Star Line.”
“To say nothing of being a rough and tough ex-empress,” commented Sonya acidly. “Shut up, unless you have something constructive to contribute.”
“What I said was constructive.”
“Like hell it was.”
“Ladies, ladies . . .” murmured Flandry soothingly. Then, to Clarisse. “As I see it, your talent works this way. You’re in the right, drug-induced frame of mind. You paint or draw a picture of whatever animal or person you wish to pull into the trap or ambush, concentrate—and the result is instant teleportation. . . .”
“You’ve oversimplified a little, Dominic, but that’s about it.”
“All right. Now suppose you sketched, to the best of your ability, the inside of my control room aboard Vindictive. . . .”
“I’ve never been aboard your ship, Dominic.”
“But you’ve been inside my mind.”
Oh, thought Grimes. Have you, indeed? But I suppose that a telepath wants more than mere physical contact. . . .
“Yes.”
“This is what I want you to do. You must order from the ship’s doctor whatever hallucinogen it is you need. And then, when you are ready, I’ll visualize the control room of my ship, in as exact detail as possible, and you put it down on paper. . . .”
“And what,” asked Grimes, “if Vindictive’s control room is brought to Captain Flandry, instead of the other way round? I seem to recall a law of physics that I learned as a child: Two solid bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.”
“Let me finish, Commodore. After she has drawn the control room she will put me in it. . . .”
“Yes, Dominic,” whispered Clarisse. “I think it will work. I’m sure it will work.”
“As long as somebody’s sure about something . . .” grumbled Grimes. “Now, I think that we have some neo-mescalin in our medical stores. It was you who insisted that we carry some. . . .”
“That is correct. If you will have it sent up . . .?”
Grimes called the doctor on the intercom, and then Billy Williams in Control. “Commander Williams,” he said, “unless it is a matter of utmost urgency we are not, repeat not, to be disturbed.”
“You won’t be, Skipper. We’re the also-ran in this race—an’ I’m afraid that Adler’s the odds-on favorite! Of course, Vindictive might pip her at the post.”
“We’re trying to insure that she does,” said Grimes, breaking off the conversation.
Slowly, without embarrassment, Clarisse removed her clothing, ignoring Irene’s, “Is that necessary?” and Sonya’s, “You’re only jealous.” She took the small glass of opalescent fluid that Grimes handed her, drained it. In her nudity she was more witch than mere woman. She was . . . untouchable. (But that bastard Flandry hadn’t found her so, thought Grimes.) Her face was solemn, her eyes looking at something very far away. And yet it was Sir Dominic at whom she was looking. At whom? Through whom? Beyond whom?
She was stooping slightly over the table upon which a sheet of paper had been spread, upon which the colored pens had been laid out. With her gaze still intent upon Flandry she commenced to draw with swift, sure strokes. The picture was taking shape: acceleration chairs, consoles, screens, the remote controls of machinery and weaponry, all subtly unlike anything that Quest’s and Wanderer’s people had ever seen before. Different ships, different long splices, thought Grimes, recalling an ancient Terran seafaring proverb. Different universes, different interstellar drives . . .
Tension was building up in the Commodore’s day cabin as the naked Clarisse stared at Flandry in his glittering uniform; as Flandry stared at Clarisse. As far as he was concerned, as far as she was concerned they were alone. Under her weaving hands the sketch was becoming three dimensional, real. Were the lights dimming? Was the irregular beat of the inertial drive, the thin, high whining of the Mannschenn Drive becoming fainter? Was the deathly cold of interstellar space pervading the ship?
There is one law of nature that is never broken—magic notwithstanding: You can’t get something for nothing. A transfer of a solid body across a vast distance was about to take place. Such a transfer, whether by wheels, wings or witchcraft, involves the use of energy. There was energy in many usable forms available within the hull of Faraway Quest. It was being drawn upon.
Grimes stared at the picture on the table. The lights—red, green, blue and amber—on the panels of the consoles were glowing, and some of them were blinking rapidly. The darkness beyond the viewports was the utter blackness of intergalactic space. Something swam slowly into sight beyond one of the big transparencies—the dome-shaped Shaara derelict.
And then . . .
And then there was a man there, standing in the middle of the hitherto deserted control room, the details of his face and figure growing under the witch artist’s flying fingers. It was unmistakably Flandry, and he was stark naked save for his belt and his holstered pistol.
Grimes looked up from the sketch to stare at the emptiness where Flandry had been standing. He was . . . gone.
But not entirely; his uniform, a small bundle of black and gold, of rainbow ribbons, was all that remained of him.
Irene said—was it to Sonya or to Clarisse?—“At least you’ve something to remember him by, dearie.”
Clarisse, her face cold and hard, snatched the sheet with the sketch off the table, screwed it up into a ball, threw it toward the disposal chute. She did not miss. She moved swiftly around the table, picked up the empty uniform, then stuffed it down the chute after the crumpled paper. Grimes made as though to stop her—after all, an analysis of the cloth from which Flandry’s clothing had been cut could have told a great deal about the technology of his culture—then decided against it. He would be able to swap information with Sir Dominic after Adler had been disposed of. Nonetheless, he was sorry that he had not said goodbye properly to the man, thanked him for all his help. (But Flandry had helped himself, in more ways than one. . . .)
The witch girl was ready to resume operations. A fresh sheet of paper was on the table. She said nothing aloud to Metzenther, but the two telepaths must have been in communication. He came to stand beside her, was obviously feeding into her mind the details of Wanderer’s control room. Again the detailed picture grew.
Irene asked. “Would you mind if I kept my clothes on, Clarisse? Public nudism never appealed to me.”
Sonya said, cattily, “I don’t think female nakedness interests her.”
Nor did it. When Irene vanished she left nothing behind—and neither did Trafford nor Metzenther.
And now, at last, Clarisse was working for herself. For the last time the lights dimmed, the temperature dropped, the shipboard sounds were muffled. Grimes looked at the flattering portrait of Mayhew that had appeared, then at Sonya. He said, “I think we’ll see what’s happening topside, my dear.” And, as Mayhew materialized, just as they were leaving, “It’s good to have our ship to ourselves again.”
Chapter 27
THEY HAD THEIR SHIP to themselves again, but she was a ship alone. Far ahead of them now were their allies—allies only as long as it was expedient for them to be so—and their enemies. There was communication still with Faraway Quest II and with Wanderer, by Carlotti radio and through the telepaths. There was no word from Vindictive; but as Irene, Trafford and Metzenther were safely back aboard their own vessel, it could be assumed that Flandry was safely back in his.
Grimes, pacing his control room (three steps one way, three steps the other unless he wished to make complicated detours around chairs and banked instruments) was becoming more and more impatient. For many years he had thought of himself as a man of peace—but in his younger days, in the Federation’s Survey Service, he had specialized in gunnery. If there was to be a fight he wanted to be in it. Apart from anything else, should he not be present at the moment of victory over Adler his prior claim to The Outsider would be laughed at by Irene, by Smith, by Flandry and even by his other self. And his engines were not developing their full capacity.
The emergency shutdown of the Mannschenn Drive had affected the smooth running of that delicate, complex mechanism. It was nothing serious, but recalibration was necessary. Recalibration can be carried out only on the surface of a planet. And even if there had been any planets in the vicinity—which, of course, there were not—Grimes could not afford the time.
So Faraway Quest limped on while, and at last, the reports started coming in from ahead of her. Wanderer thought the Vindictive was engaging Adler. One of the officers aboard Faraway Quest II had broken the code that Adler was using in her Carlotti transmissions to base, and Grimes II reported that Blumenfeld was screaming for reinforcements.
Wanderer and Faraway Quest II were now within extreme missile range of the engagement but had not yet opened fire. To do so they would have to revert to normal space time. Metzenther, aboard Wanderer, reported through Clarisse that he and Trialanne were monitoring the involuntary psionic transmissions of the personnel of both ships presently engaged in the fighting, and that Flandry was emanating confidence, and Blumenfeld a growing doubt as to the outcome of the battle. Each ship, however, was finding it difficult to counter the unfamiliar weapons being used by the other, and each ship was making maximum use of the cover of the derelicts in orbit about The Outsider.
Wanderer had emerged into the normal continuum and had launched missiles.
Faraway Quest II was engaging Adler with long-range laser.
Somebody had scored a direct hit on The Outsiders’ Ship itself. And that was all.
Chapter 28
THE CARLOTTI TRANSCEIVER was dead insofar as Wanderer, Faraway Quest II, and Adler were concerned. There were no psionic transmissions from Wanderer, no unintentional emanations from the crews of the other ships.
What had happened? Had the allies launched their Sunday punch against Adler, and had Adler’s retaliatory Sunday punch connected on all three of them? It was possible, Grimes supposed, just barely possible—but wildly improbable.
“Are you sure you can pick up absolutely nothing?” he demanded of Mayhew and Clarisse. (There are usually some survivors, even when a ship is totally destroyed, even though they may not survive for long.)
“Nothing,” she replied flatly. And then—“But I’m picking up an emanation. . . . It’s more an emotion than actual thought. . . .”
“I get it too,” agreed Mayhew. “It’s . . . it’s a sense of strong disapproval.”
“Mphm. I think that I’d disapprove strongly if my ship were shot from under me,” said Grimes.
“But . . . but it’s not human . . .” insisted the girl.
“Mr. Carnaby,” Grimes barked at his navigator. “What do you get in the MPI? Is The Outsiders’ Ship still there?”
“Still there, sir. And, as far as I can make out, only four vessels in orbit about her. . . . There could be a cloud of wreckage.”
Possibly a couple of the derelicts, thought Grimes. Possibly Adler, or Wanderer, or the other Quest, or Vindictive. Possibly a large hunk blown off The Outsiders’ Ship herself. Possibly anything.
He said, “We will stand in cautiously, proceeding under Mannschenn Drive until we are reasonably sure that it is safe to reenter normal space time. Meanwhile, Mr. Hendrikson, have all weaponry in a state of instant readiness. And you, Major Dalzell, have your men standing by for boarding operations. Commander Williams, see that the boats are all cleared away.”
“What is a killer ape?” asked Clarisse suddenly.
“This is hardly the time or place to speculate about our probable ancestry!” snapped Grimes.
“I am not speculating, Commodore. It is just that I picked up a scrap of coherent thought. It was as though a voice—not a human voice—said, ‘Nothing but killer apes.’”
“It’s a pity we haven’t an ethologist along,” remarked Grimes. And where was Maggie Lazenby, the Survey Service ethologist whom he had known, years ago, whom he knew, now—but when was now?—as the other Grimes, captain of the other Faraway Quest? Where was Grimes? Where was Irene? Where was Flandry? He didn’t worry about Blumenfeld.
He went to look at the MPI screen. It was a pity that it showed no details. But that large, rapidly expanding blob of luminescence must be The Outsider; those small sparks the derelicts. Carnaby said, in that tone of voice used by junior officers who doubt the wisdom of the procedures of their superiors, “We’re close, sir.”
“Yes, Mr. Carnaby. Mphm.” He took his time filling and lighting his pipe. “All right, you may stand by the intercom to the engine room. Stop inertial drive. Half-astern. Stop her. Mannschenn Drive—stop! Mr. Hendrikson—stand by all weapons!”
And there, plain beyond the viewports, was The Outsider, coldly luminescent, unscarred, not so much a ship as a castle out of some fairy tale told when Man was very young: with towers and turrets, cupolas and minarets and gables and buttresses, awe-inspiring rather than grotesque. And drifting by, tumbling over and over, came one of the derelicts, the Shaara vessel aboard which the conference had been held. It had been neatly bisected, so tha
t each of its halves looked like one of those models of passenger liners in booking agents’ display windows, cut down the midship line to show every deck, every compartment.
“We will continue to orbit The Outsider,” said Grimes. “We will search for survivors.”
“Commodore,” said Mayhew. “There are no survivors. They are all . . . gone.”
“Dead, you mean?”
“No, sir. Just . . . gone.”
Chapter 29
THEY WERE . . . gone. Wanderer and Adler, Faraway Quest II and Vindictive. They were gone, without a trace, as though they had never been. (But had they ever been?) There was wreckage in orbit about The Outsider—the shattered and fused remains of the Dring cruiser: a whirling cloud of fragments that could have come only from that weird, archaic and alien ship that had never been investigated, that would never now be investigated. And Grimes’ flag, the banner of the Rim Worlds Confederacy that he had planted on The Outsiders’ Ship, was gone too. This was a small matter and was not noticed until, at last, Grimes decided to send away his boarding party. Until then the search for survivors had occupied all his attention.
Faraway Quest had the field to herself.
“We will carry on,” said Grimes heavily, “with what we came out here to do.” And his conscience was nagging him. Surely there was something that he could have done for Flandry, for Irene, for the other Grimes. All of them had helped him. What had he done to help them? What had he done to help Maggie? But space was so vast, and space time, with its infinitude of dimensions, vaster still; and the lost ships and their people were no more than microscopic needles in a macrocosmic haystack. Too, he told himself, some clue to their fates might be found within that enormous, utterly alien hull.
So it was that Grimes, suited up, stood in the airlock of the Quest with Sonya and Williams and Major Dalzell. The Outsider had . . . permitted the ship to approach much closer than she had before; there would be no need to use the boats for the boarding party. The door slowly opened, revealing beyond itself that huge, gleaming construction. It looked neither friendly nor menacing. It was . . . neutral.
Gateway to Never (John Grimes) Page 26
