Gateway to Never (John Grimes)

by A Bertram Chandler

  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 were 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 Carib 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 metre 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 neighbour’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 lamp-post.” 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 hither. 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. (Goodbye, 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 emphasizing the title. “I had some business with Run 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 savouries 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 humour 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.

  “I’ll try. What is it?”

  “I’ve always rather suspected, sir, that you were instrumental in getting me that berth in Sobraon. After all, Captain Servetty didn’t have to take me, of all people. And he must have known why I was . . . available . . .”

  “He did know, Captain. He asked me if he should sign you on. I told him that you had the makings of a good officer, but that he’d have to keep a close eye on you.”

  I said, “If I hadn’t been such a self-centered puppy I’d have known that you were still getting over the Discovery business . . .”

  He said, “Let’s forget about it, shall we? It was all so long ago, and so very far away . . .” Suddenly he looked old, then recovered, equally suddenly, his appearance of ageless strength. “Goodnight, Captain Rule.” Our handshake, this time, was really sincere. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Wrapping his rather flamboyant cloak about his stocky figure he strode down the ramp, ignoring the wind and the rain, let himself into his squat, ugly little ground car, and then was gone in a flurry of spray.

  “That Commodore Grimes isn’t anything like the ogre you made him out to be,” said Sara Taine when she brought me in my tea tray the next morning. “I’m looking forward to seeing him again. What time will he be coming aboard?”

  I said severely, “He’s married. Very happily, I believe.”

  She frowned. She had one of those thin, serious faces, under sleek, gleaming black hair, on which a frown sits rather well. She complained, “All the attractive men in my life are married. You, and Peter Bindle, and now your old pal Commodore Grimes . . .”

  “What about the engineers?” I asked her. “What about the second and third mates? Or the Quack?”

  “Them!” she snorted, then grinned softly, “If I wasn’t such a good friend of Jane’s . . .”

  “Don’t tempt me, Sara. The way this voyage is dragging on I shouldn’t require so very much tempting.”

  She had been sitting on the bed, sipping her own cup of tea. She got up, moved to a chair. “That will do, Captain Rule. As I’ve said, Jane and I are good friends. I want us to stay that way. But it is a pity that she has such archaic ideas about sex, isn’t it?” She put her cup back on the tray with a clatter, got up and went out of the bedroom, leaving me to deal alone with the business of getting up to face the day.

  Showered and dressed I made my way down to the wardroom for breakfast. There were no absentees; the doctor had insisted that each of us take a neutralizer tablet before retiring. As you know, they’re very effective—but by the time you need them you’re in such a state you can’t be bothered to take them. That’s one of the beauties of having a party aboard ship; you have your own medical practitioner on hand to prescribe as required . . .

  Canvey, the interstellar drive engineer, asked what everybody else was intending to ask. He got in first. “Was that only a social call last night, Captain, or did Commodore Grimes have any information about our next loading?”

  And then Terrigal, reaction drive engineer, stated rather than asked, “He’s coming aboard again this morning, isn’t he?”

  I told them, “The Commodore is Rim Runners’ astronautical superintendent, not their traffic manager.”

  “But he still piles on a lot of gees, doesn’t he?” said Canvey.

  “I suppose he does,” I admitted. I helped myself liberally from the dish of Caribbean tree-crab curry on the table, hoping that it would taste as good as it looked and smelled. (It did. Sara was as good a cook as she was a purser, and even the most sophisticated autochef—which ours wasn’t—gives of its best only when imaginatively programmed.) I asked, “How is the crab holding out, Sara?”

  “It isn’t,” she said. “This is the last of it.”

  “I tried to make a tissue culture,” put in Dr. Forbes, who was bio-chemist as well as medical officer, “but it died on me . . .” He looked more like a professional mourner than ever as he imparted the bad news.

  “Then I hope they send us home by way of Caribbea,” I said.

  “So there is a chance of our getting home,” persisted Canvey. He was one of those little, gray, earnest men who always seem to be persisting.

  “I’ll believe it when we crunch down in Dogtown,” said Porky Terrigal glumly, making sure of his second helping of the fragrant curry.

  “You must have heard something, Captain . . .” went on Canvey.

  “I’m just the master,” I told him. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”

  Breakfast over, I went back up to my quarters. Bindle brought me a morning paper; somebody in Rim Runners’ dock office had been thoughtful enough to send copies on board. I lit a cigar, skimmed through it. It was deadly dull. (Other people’s local rags are always dull—but this, The Port Forlorn Confederate, had been my local rag once . . .) I noted that Basset was listed in the shipping information column as having arrived. I noted, too, that the date of her departure was given as “indefinite”. I knew that already.

  I read that the Confederacy’s Department of Tourism was thinking about reestablishing the holiday resort on Eblis. I read about the Burns Night party that had been thrown by the ambassador of the Empire of Waverley. Obviously he couldn’t have been waiting for our consignment of Waverley scotch. I read about the Rim Rules football match between the Port Forlorn Pirates and the Desolation Drovers. I found it hard to raise any interest in the account of the game. Even when I had been a Rim Worlder myself I hadn’t been all that keen, and on most of the worlds of the Sirian Sector, the game is Old Association, the only
real football. Finally I found the crossword. It wasn’t one of the cryptic variety, just a collection of absurdly simple clues that a retarded child of five could have solved in four minutes. It only took me three and a half.

  There was a knock at the door. I threw the paper aside, got out my chair to welcome Commodore Grimes.

  He took the seat I offered him, pulled out of his pocket an ancient and battered pipe that looked as though it was the very one that he had always smoked when I last knew him. It smelt like it, too. Sara Taine came in with a tray of coffee things. She seemed disposed to hang around with flapping ears, and looked hurt when I told her, “That will be all, thanks, Sara.”

  Grimes said, “Quite comfortable quarters you have, Captain Rule.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Basset and her sister ships are an improvement on the Commission’s basic Epsilon design. We have our own yards now in the Sector, of course, and build our own vessels . . .”

  “Passenger accommodation?” he asked.

  “I can take a dozen, in single-berth cabins. More if people are willing to double up.”

  “Mphm.” He looked at me through the cloud of acrid smoke that he had just emitted. I countered with a smokescreen of my own. “Mphm. You know, of course, that we have our own Survey Ship, Faraway Quest . . .”

  “I’ve heard of her, sir.”

  “Well, the Quest’s out of commission. Will be for some months yet. Oh, she’s old, I admit, but even I didn’t know that there were so many things wrong with her until she came up for Survey . . .” He relit his pipe, which had gone out, using one of the archaic matches that he still affected. “You know Kinsolving’s Planet, of course?”