“On the other hand,” Sylla licked his vibrissae, “our primates are regarded as quite palatable. Braised, naturally, with just a Hen of celery. Amusing, is it not, First Officer Quent?”
Quent exhaled carefully.
“If you feel so, Mr. Sylla.” He stretched his mouth sideways in a lifelike smile. “Excuse me, I believe I’ll lie down.”
The silence behind him lasted so long he almost wondered about it.
The next fortnight was spent laboriously servicing beacons along Route Leo. The beacons were elderly M20s, which Quent had cursed while navigating from the Adastra. Now he found their trouble lay in the bulky shielding which attracted dust, thus building up electrostatic imbalances that distorted the beacon’s spectrum and eventually its orbit. They had to be periodically cleaned and neutralized. The job required long hours and close cooperation among crewmen. By the fourth and last beacon Quent’s jaw had developed a permanent ache.
“Have you not yet finished, First Officer?”
Quent was clinging awkwardly to the far end of the slippery kinetic bleeder. Above him Sylla wriggled through the beacon grids with the agility of his otter forbears, warping his vacuum line expertly as he went.
“It is clear that the Academy does not contemplate its graduates shall endure the indignity of labor,” Sylla jibed.
“I admit I’m inexperienced in this and not as fast as you are,” Quent said mildly. “Mr. Svensk. Where are you casting that sweep line?”
“As per your request, down,” said Svensk from the far side. “Although it seems senseless.”
“I meant down here—toward me.” Quent took a deep breath. “Not toward the center of gravity of the beacon-ship system. A loose way of speaking, I’m afraid.”
“Lieutenant Quent, sir,” said Pomeroy’s voice from the ship.
“If you wouldn’t mind sir, could you turn your volume down a bit? There seems to be some sort of grinding sound in your speaker and the Greenhill signal is awful weak, sir.”
Greenhill, a colony ship out of Midbase, was running a check on the beacon calibrations as it went by.
Quent swore and snapped off his helmet speaker. A moment later he felt a jerk on his lines and found himself revolving in space two meters from the end of the bleeder. His line had no tension. When he stopped his tumble he saw that Svensk had fouled him with the sweep and was departing over the limb of the beacon. Sylla was nowhere in sight.
“Do you want your life to depend on an octopus?” Quent muttered under his breath. He reached for the speaker switch, then paused. His orbit was decaying. He straightened out and began to breathe measuredly.
The others had gone inboard and unsuited when Quent finally finished clearing the bleeder shaft. In the wardroom he stumbled into Miss Appleby taking a server of food to Imray’s cubicle.
“I want you to know I’m trying,” he told her wearily.
“That’s the spirit, Lieutenant.”
She would make a super admiral’s wife, Quent realized.
The Greenhill confirmed the beacon calibrations and the Rosenkrantz headed out to the Chung Complex. When they came out of drive their screens lit up in glory. The Chung was a cluster of colored suns, warm and inviting after the bleakness of Route Leo.
“Don’t you believe it, sir.” Pomeroy broke the thread of his crochet work against his stained frontals. “I dread this place, I do.” His eyes rolled as he reached for his bulb. “All en-aitches here. Under water, too, most of ‘em, the slimy things. Even Mr. Sylla hates them.”
Despite Pomeroy’s forebodings the first calls passed off with only routine problems of mail and message exchange. The little man continued to follow Quent about, mumbling gloomily. He was also dosing himself with increasing quantities of Leo Lightning whenever he could sneak off the bridge.
“Let Pomeroy tell you, sir,” he grumbled in the night watches, “They’re devils down there. We oughtn’t have any dealings with things like them. Pomeroy knows. Pomeroy’s seen sights no Humans had ought to bear. Worms. Worms is the least of it.” His goatee bobbed over his scrawny adam’s apple. “Worms and worse.”
The Chung orbits continued without troubles other than those provided by Svensk and Sylla—and even these two appeared to be letting up. Quent’s only view of the “worms and worse” was on the ship’s screens. Most of the alien commo officers were aquatic. A few did appear wormlike and two had tentacles. There was one truly repellent squid affair with unidentifiable organs floating around its eye stalks. There was also a rather genial dolphinoid to whom Pomeroy was vitriolic. They were the ones who had required transport for the octopi.
“I’m a broadminded man, sir,” Pomeroy told Quent that night. “Tolerant, Pomeroy is. I put up with ‘em.” He hiccuped. “No choice. Pomeroy’s sunk low. I don’t deny it. But them things down there—” He shuddered and hitched closer confidentially. “They think they’re as good as Humans, sir. Just as good as you, or better. What’ll happen when them things decides they wants to come in the Force, sir? Expect a Human to take orders from a worm?” His bloodshot eyes bored anxiously into Quent’s.
“Mr. Pomeroy. In case you are under the impression that I share my father’s views on Non-Humans in the Space Force, you are mistaken.”
“That’s right, sir, you’re a tolerant man too, sir. But a person can’t help wondering—”
“Kindly wonder to yourself in the future, Mr. Pomeroy,” Quent said coldly. “For your information, I am fully in favor of the integration program. If a being is a competent spacer, I don’t see that his personal appearance enters in.”
Pomeroy closed his mouth and turned back to his board in offended silence. Presently he paid a prolonged visit to the wardroom and returned, wiping his mouth. For several watches he spoke only when Quent addressed him.
At the last Chung stop they picked up a short-range freight shuttle whose jockey needed a lift to Farbase. The jockey was a smaller version of Svensk. They got his shuttle stowed without mishap and the Rosenkrantz went into drive for the long run out to Farbase. Quent’s eyebrows began to unknot.
The run was made in comparative peace, for Quent. Svensk and the freighter pilot bankrupted each other at some exotic topological game, while Sylla occupied himself with trying to key a poetry-scanning function into the computer. Imray grew increasingly taciturn and spent long hours in his cubicle. Sometimes Quent would hear him in a rumbling argument with one of the others. Quent devoted himself to a discreet inspection of the ship’s wiring and managed not to upset Morgan. Things seemed to be settling down.
This impression strengthened when they got to Farbase. They exchanged the mail and off-loaded the freight shuttle with surprising dispatch. Pomeroy actually changed his shirt. He and the others set off to call on another peebee, the Jasper Banks, which was there en route to a long distance job. Miss Appleby went after the depot officer who had promised her a set of Chung pearl glasses for herself and a case of fish-eggs for the mess. The small, bleak station offered Quent no diversion. He decided to go out and check over the exterior antennae.
He was suiting up when he heard the others coming back onboard. He climbed to the bridge to find them preparing to take off.
“Call Appleby,” Imray grunted curtly. “We go now.”
The next leg was to the sector rim colonies of Goldmine, Tunney, and Sopwith. The ship lifted off with scarcely another word exchanged by its officers. And as soon as they were in drive Imray left the bridge.
The short run to Goldmine was made in thickening silence. Imray stayed in his cubicle. The others seemed on edge. Only Pomeroy had anything to say—he kept pestering Appleby for reports on Imray’s health.
“He says his heart bothers him but he won’t let me use the medical analyzer,” she informed them. “His appetite’s good, though.”
“He’s due to retire soon, sir.” Pomeroy shook his head.
Imray did not appear on the bridge at Goldmine. When they were on course for Tunney he called Quent to his cabin.
&
nbsp; “Is no good,” he said hoarsely as soon as Quent’s head came through the sphincter. The ursinoid’s muzzle looked haggard and his fur was staring.
“You take over, son.” He gestured feebly, dislodging an empty server.
“Sir, I think you should let Miss Appleby bring the medikit.”
Imray groaned.
“For old age, medicals can nothing do. Little pills I try. No good.”
“We’ll turn back to Farbase hospital.”
“What they do? Torture me only. I know. With my people—goes quick. You captain. I tell Morgan mind you.”
“You’re ordering me to take over as acting captain, sir?”
Imray nodded, his little eyes roving feverishly.
“But—”
“No but. You captain.”
Imray’s eyes closed and his breathing became noisy.
Quent studied him, scowling.
“Yes, sir,” he said slowly. “I’ll have Pomeroy patch you into the record log.”
One of Imray’s eyes glinted briefly and closed again.
Quent withdrew into the shaft of the Rosenkrantz. His first command. All the knots which had been smoothing from his face came back, tighter than before.
The others accepted the situation without comment, beyond Sylla’s sarcastic use of his new title. Morgan, too, proved as good as Imray’s word. He continued silent but during the maneuvers at Tunney the energies were flawless. Quent’s frown deepened.
He took to roaming the ship at odd hours, sleeping little and poorly. They were now at the farthest leg of their patrol, running along the sector rim to Sopwith. On their starboard the Galaxy was unpatrolled and largely unknown. Quent spent hours at the scanners. He had seen wild space before from the bridge of the mighty and virtually invulnerable Adastra. From a peebee with four small rockets and only meteor shielding it looked decidedly wilder. Quent dreamed of nucleonic storms and got up to check over the sensors again.
Toujours j’entends la mer qui fait du bruit,
Triste comme l’oiseau seule…
Quent groaned and pulled the cocoon flaps over his ears to shut out the mechanical drone from the bridge. Sylla was making the computer translate poetry into his native Ter-French. Presently the droning was replaced by incomprehensible wrangling.
Quent sighed and jackknifed out of his cocoon. It was nearly his shift and they would be coming into Sopwith soon.
In the shaft he found Pomeroy backing out of Imray’s cubicle, bulb in hand.
“How is he, Mr. Pomeroy?”
The little man wagged his head, bleary eyed, but said nothing.
In the wardroom Miss Appleby was setting out fresh smoked ham she had wangled at Tunney.
“Just coffee, thank you,” Quent told her.
She smiled sympathetically at the standing furrow in his brow and vanished back to her storerooms.
Quent took his coffee up to the bridge, relieving Svensk and Sylla, and settled wearily to hear a data tape. Pomeroy straggled into his cubby and began to doze. In the wardroom the other two continued to argue fitfully.
Suddenly Pomeroy sat up.
“Sopwith, sir. Seems to be a bit of trouble.”
“What type of trouble, Mr. Pomeroy?”
“Too early to tell yet, sir. Mostly noise.”
Sopwith was a Non-Human affiliated planet whose native name was Szolphuildhe. The native race was described as small, timid, pinkish in color, bipedal, and probably bisexual, with a fibers-and-ceramics technology. It was Human habitable but no Humans lived there.
“Sounds like they been attacked by a band of marauding monsters,” Pomeroy reported presently. “Says they came in a sky-boat—wait a minute, sir.” He squinted, listening. “About them monsters, sir. Appears like they’re Humans.”
“Humans?”
“That’s how the kinks describe ‘em, sir. Like us.”
“What are they doing to the ki—to the Sopwithians?”
“Seems they’re eating ‘em, sir.”
“Eating them, Mr. Pomeroy?”
Pomeroy nodded. Quent leaned over the shaft and called Svensk. When the saurian’s big head appeared, Quent asked, “What Human spacers could have landed here and attacked the natives or—ah—exploited them as food?”
Svensk’s raised his eye membranes reflectively.
“Possibly you refer to Drakes?”
“What are Drakes?”
“The Drakes, as they call themselves, are a band of Humans, strength unknown, base unknown, possessing not less than five spaceships, who maintain themselves by sporadic raids upon shipping and colonies,” Svensk creaked. “Until recently reported only in Sector Ten, they—”
“One of our little sector problems,” Sylla grinned. He bounded to his console and began to polish his claws. “Quite beneath the notice of the Academy.”
“Navigator, a sensor orbit, please. Mr. Svensk, let’s pick up the location of that vessel as soon as possible. Mr. Pomeroy, ask them where that sky-boat is, how big it is, how many attackers, and what weapons.”
The Sopwith commo officer believed that the ship had come down somewhere northeast of the port city. It was bigger and brighter than the sun, carrying at least five hands of monsters. They spouted burning flames which made no noise.
“That’s thirty of ‘em,” said Pomeroy. “As to their weapons, Drakes would have lasers, flame-throwers, grenades, and maybe a rocket-launcher or two, groundside. Them kinks don’t know ships or weapons, sir. Flinging stones is about it, with them.”
They still had not located the alien ship when the Sopwith city area went into night. The Sopwith commo officer on the ground was growing balky.
“He says the monsters are coming in again,” Pomeroy reported. “Listen.”
The voder gabbled wildly, gave out a string of shrieks and cut off.
“That’s it, sir. He’s taken off. Well, there’ll be no business here. We’d better log up the report and get on.”
“Mr. Svensk, what’s that field like?” asked Quent thoughtfully.
The lizard was absorbed in his sensor adjustments.
“Mr. Svensk. Is that field usable?”
Svensk reared up. “Very primitive.” He shrugged.
“Navigator,” Quent said icily. “Landing trajectory to field, please.”
Three pairs of eyes rounded on him.
“Landing?” Sylla licked his chops. “The acting captain is perhaps unaware that patrol boats do not—”
“I’ve inspected our system, Mr. Sylla. It’s fully operational. In case you’re concerned, my training has included the landing of comparable craft.”
“But sir,” protested Pomeroy, “What about Morgan? He don’t like going planetside, sir.”
Quent glanced at the voders and cleared his throat.
“Mr. Morgan, there is an emergency on this planet and we must land. I count on your cooperation. Mr. Sylla, is that course ready?”
“Set,” snapped Sylla through his teeth.
Quent engaged the auxiliaries and started to code in the autopilot. As he touched it the familiar din cut loose from the voder.
“Mr. Morgan.” Quent rapped the speaker. “Stop that racket. We must land, do you understand? I’m taking us down!”
To the din was added a crackling sputter and the lights jumped. Svensk dived for his computer leads.
“Stop that, Morgan. Stop it. I’m going to land or I’ll crash the ship. Hear that—you’ll crash us.”
“In the name of the Path,” Imray roared from the shaft. “What?”
“It’s our duty to land, sir,” Quent said. “Emergency on the planet.”
Imray burst onto the bridge, paws over his ears. He stared at Quent.
“I’m committing us.”
Quent slammed the manual override.
Imray grabbed up his speaker.
“Morgan—Morgan, boy, it’s me.” Imray’s voice sank to a huge croon. “Be good boy, Morgan—down we must go. I swear you, for little minute only—ship it wi
ll not hurt. Morgan! You hear, Morgan? Morgan boy, listen Imray—ten meters superconductors I get you. Beautiful.”
The uproar dwindled to a mewling in Imray’s speaker.
“You let us go down nice, Morgan, vernt?”
Silence. Imray clapped his fist to his chest and his head slumped.
“Is too much, son,” he wheezed and retreated down the shaft.
“Counting to autopilot,” said Sylla. Quent coded feverishly as deceleration grabbed them. On the screens the arid, undistinguished planet whirled closer.
The autopilot took hold unceremoniously and spiraled them in, shaken but right side up. When the roil cleared they looked across a moonlit field to a cluster of sheds around the antennae rig. There were no lights.
“They’ve all sloped off, sir,” said Pomeroy. “Nothing we can do here till morning.”
“Mr. Pomeroy, you speak the native language,” said Quent. “I will meet you at the cargo lock. Have the sled ready.”
“But sir—”
“Mr. Svensk, am I correct that we need no special masks or suiting on this planet?”
Svensk gave a sighing exhalation.
“No need,” he croaked.
They followed Quent in silence while he broke out two field kits and two ballistic hand lasers. At the cargo lock he opened both ports and ordered Pomeroy into the sled.
“Lieutenant Sylla, you will take over the ship. One of you will be on the bridge at all times. If we’re not back by sunrise, make what investigation you can without endangering the ship. If you can’t help us without hazard to the ship, lift off at once and signal the facts to Farbase. Understood?”
Sylla’s eyes were popping.
“Understood, Acting Captain!” He sketched a salute.
Svensk watched in silence, his bony head folded to his shoulders in the gravity.
Quent launched the sled out into the moonlight. The country below was flat scrubland gashed by a few dark arroyos, now dry. The “city” was a huddle of hivelike buildings with a central plaza. Quent hovered by a torch-lit structure, a shrine. Nothing moved.
“No damage visible so far. We’ll go down and talk to the chief.”
“Be careful, sir,” Pomeroy warned uneasily.
Meet Me at Infinity Page 4
