Frontier of the Dark

by A Bertram Chandler

  “So, here you are,” she snapped. “The salvage expert. The way you’ve been carrying on, anybody would think that you’re one of them.”

  “I’ve been doing what has to be done.”

  “Leaving me here, in this … kennel.”

  “You could have lent a hand.”

  “Doing what? The Doralans don’t want me around. There’s muttering going on about Jonahs. And what could I do, anyhow?”

  “You could have lent a hand getting meals to us. That’s in your department.”

  “The ship has a large enough catering staff.”

  “Most of them were out working. With shovels. Fetching and carrying for the engineers. Shifting stores.”

  “So what?”

  “It has to be done, Linda. We want the ship. We want the ship. She’ll be of no use to us the way she is.”

  “You’ll never get her up. Forget about it. Why can’t we carry on the way that we were doing at first? Before too long we’d have this planet to ourselves. There are worse worlds … .”

  “Name one.”

  “There are worse worlds. We can survive here. Breed, even.”

  “Talking of breeding … ”

  He tried to pull her to him.

  “No. I don’t feel like it. I’ve got a headache, cooped up all day in this vile atmosphere.”

  “You could have been outside.”

  “In the rain! Are you mad?”

  “Linda … ”

  “Leave me alone, damn you!”

  So he left her alone.

  He clambered through the hatch in the bulkhead, climbed one of the temporary ladders that had been set up throughout the ship to the axial shaft. Once inside this tunnel he made his way forward. He would talk with the Lady Mother, he thought. He would discuss with her what was yet to be done. He was rather surprised to realize that his conscience was bothering him. He was working for her, with her, and he was enjoying it — but when the job was done, there would have to be the betrayal. But need there be? Perhaps if he told her the truth — not all the truth, but some of it — she would be willing to take Linda and himself to some world upon which they could live out their lives with new identities. After all, if he succeeded in raising her ship for her, she would owe him something.

  So thinking, he walked slowly through the shaft.

  He was aware that somebody had come up into it through one of the side doors.

  It was Carlin.

  “I knew that you were coming this way,” she said. “I want to talk to you. And you look as though you need a drink.”

  She had already been drinking; he could smell the alcoholic sweetness on her breath.

  “Yes, I could use one,” he said.

  “Good. Come with me.”

  He followed her back through the door, dropped into a ring alleyway. They did not have far to go — Carlin walking, himself on his hands and knees, slithering down the slope — to the entrance to her cabin. She had rigged a rope, with knots at intervals, from just inside this doorway to what was now the deck of her quarters. She went down it with an agility that he could not match. He descended clumsily and cautiously.

  Catlike, she made herself comfortable. A mattress and cushions covered most of the concave curvature of what would would be, until the ship was raised, the deck. The liquor cabinet was to one side of this area and easily accessible. Bottles and glasses were out, ready for use.

  He sat down on the soft mattress, looking up at her. She had changed out of her overalls, was wearing her short scarlet gold-trimmed tunic. As on that other occasion when she had entertained him, she had nothing on under it. Alien or not, she was a woman, and available. Linda had made it plain that she was not available.

  She stooped over, her back to him, to pour drinks. He admired the scenery while she was doing so. She straightened, turned, handed him his glass. She sat down beside him, leaned against him. In these circumstances it would have been almost impossible to avoid close physical contact; nonetheless, she seemed to be exaggerating the propinquity induced by the concave curvature of the surface upon which they were sitting. He enjoyed the warmth of her body against his — but …

  But why the uneasiness that he was feeling?

  She raised her glass, said, “Here’s to us, Falsen.”

  “Here’s to us,” he repeated.

  He sipped, cautiously at first. It was not gin this time. It was some golden spirit with which he was unfamiliar, spicy, mellow, yet fiery.

  “We’ve earned this,” she said. “We’re the ones who’re doing all the work. Up here.” She tapped her forehead with the fingers of her free hand. “We’re a good pair. I didn’t think that I could ever like a control-room ornament, but I like you. Between the pair of us we’ll get this big fat cow back on to her flat feet. We’re the ones who count. The others? Pah! The Lady Mother is about as much use as that pampered cat of hers — or that bitch of yours. And where is dear Linda, by the way? Still playing the first-class passenger, not deigning to get her dainty paws dirty while the rest of us are sweating our guts out?”

  “There’s not much that she can do,” said Falsen defensively. “After all, she’s only a purser … .”

  “And as I was saying, Falsen, we’re the ones who count. Me, the engineer. You, the spaceman-navigator. Between us we could take this ship anywhere in the galaxy.” She reached out for the bottle, refilled both glasses. “Mind you, I could manage without you … ”

  “And I without you,” he said stiffly.

  “As long as things didn’t start breaking down,” she said.

  He laughed. “This is a rather pointless sort of conversation, Carlin. After all, we’re all in the same boat.”

  “Some of us are,” she said. “Some of us aren’t. You could be.”

  “What are you driving at?” he demanded.

  “Some of us,” she told him, “are not at all happy about the Lady Mother’s management of this expedition.”

  “I think that she is a very good captain,” said Falsen stiffly.

  “Loyal, aren’t you?” she sneered. “In your book the spaceman branch of the service can do no wrong. Or the space woman branch, or the spaceperson branch. The Lord’s Anointed, as I’ve heard engineers refer to you while I was doing my course at your Antarctic Academy. But there are other loyalties.”

  “Such as?” he asked curiously. “Such as?”

  “Does the fact that you have made love to me mean nothing?” she asked.

  Why should it mean more? he wondered. He suppressed a chuckle. If chance copulations engendered loyalty, then this quality would, as far as he was concerned, be spread extremely thinly over many worlds and ships.

  It was her turn to laugh.

  “Just a wolf,” she said. (A wolf? How much did she know?) “A typical Terran wolf. On our world, where the male sex is kept under proper control, we don’t have such animals. But I met plenty of them on Earth. Even so, we have — to use your peculiar euphemism — slept together. As your first Doralan, I must occupy a special niche in your murky memory.”

  “That’s it. We aren’t even members of the same species.”

  “More importantly, we aren’t members of the same sex. That’s one of the reasons why I want you. One of the reasons.”

  “There are others?”

  “Yes. You are a qualified, and presumably skilled, navigator.”

  “There are qualified and skilled navigators of your own race aboard this ship. The Lady Mother. Prenta … ”

  “But what if their authority is stripped from them?”

  He stared at her. She was more than half drunk, he thought, and talking wildly. What was the old saying? “When the wine is in, the wit is out … .” Yet her words were not slurred, and furthermore, she was talking with fluent ease in a language not her own.

  “What if their authority is stripped from them?” she repeated.

  Shocked (but why should he, of all people, feel shock?) he asked, “Mutiny? Are you contemplating mutiny?”
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  “Mutiny? Whatever gave you that idea, Falsen? I’m no expert on the regulations governing your space service, but I know something of our own laws. Should a captain display extreme incompetence, she may be superceded by a committee of her senior officers.”

  “Oh? To begin with, I don’t think that she has been incompetent.”

  “What about the mess that we are in now?”

  “You asked the question, I shall answer it. This mess is directly due to a breakdown of the machinery for which you are directly responsible.”

  “This is an old ship, Falsen, as you well know. Things are liable to break down at any moment, as the Lady Mother well knows. By making the landing approach that she did, she left herself no options and did not have time to use emergency reaction drive.”

  “All right. You may, you just may, be right. But you will still have your navigator, who’s also next in line for captain. Prenta.”

  “Prenta!” she spat.

  “What about Pansir?”

  “Her in charge of a spaceship? Don’t make me laugh, Falsen.”

  “All right, all right. Just suppose that your officers’ revolt, since you don’t like the word mutiny, comes off — whom do you see as captain?”

  “Me, of course.”

  “You?”

  He thought that she was going to strike him, her fingers clawed, but she held herself back with a visible effort.

  “Why not?” she demanded. “I can command. I could even navigate after a fashion, although I’d like to have somebody more skilled than I to do it for me.”

  He said, “Yes, it would be rather embarrassing if you missed your home planet on the return journey.”

  “Who said anything about returning to Dorala?” she asked.

  He stared at her.

  “Who said anything about returning to Dorala?” she repeated. “Some of us aboard this ship are tired of the policy of our rulers, tagging along behind your mighty Federation like … like little dogs, grateful for the Federation’s leftovers, such as this almost uninhabitable planet. We should strike out on our own, find our own worlds for colonization. Even found a colony … ”

  “And you have founding fathers, as well as founding mothers, aboard this ship,” murmured Falsen, as much to himself as to her.

  “Yes. We have. I know that you know. Garbill told me that you found him. Some of us wanted to … dispose of you and Linda before you could tell the Lady Mother, but I thought that the time would come when we should need you.”

  “Oh. And what if I tell her now? About the plot, about everything?”

  “You will not, Falsen. I am sure that your story about how you and Linda came to be marooned on this world is not a true one, that you wish to return to Earth even less than we wish to return to Dorala. I offer you a chance to come with us, as navigator, to become a founding father of a new, biracial colony yourself.”

  “You must be drunk,” he said harshly.

  She smiled at him blearily — but there was a dangerous hardness under her soft expression.

  “My tongue has been loosened,” she said. “That I admit. But I am still in control, full control.”

  Suddenly she was perspiring profusely, sweat running in rivers down her face, soaking her hair. The efflux of fluid from the pores of her skin darkened her scarlet tunic almost to black. An acrid sweetness tainted the air.

  “I was drunk,” she said. “Now I am not. I know what I have been saying. My offer to you — and to Linda, if you must have her — still stands. And I warn you, Falsen, do not tell anybody, anybody, not even that bitch of yours. Of course, if you should blab to the Lady Mother, I doubt very much that she would believe you. After all, you are the outsider, the alien. Would she take your word against that of one of her most trusted senior officers?”

  He said, “I must tell her.”

  “Then you’ll not live long.”

  He laughed inwardly. It would take more than the combined efforts of Carlin and all her supporters to kill him. Unless they knew — but how could they?

  “In any case,” she went on, “you cannot tell her until the ship has been raised. Until that time we must all work together.”

  He said, “I make no promises.”

  She said, “But I am making threats.” She stood up, steadily, and stripped off her sodden tunic. Under it she was naked. She went on, “I had intended that we would … make love? Yes, those words will have to do. But now I am sober and the very idea disgusts me. Get out, Falsen, back to your Linda. Have a good night’s sleep so that you’re ready for a hard day’s work tomorrow.”

  He looked up at her. Now that she had spurned him, he was wanting her very badly. Suddenly he reached out, caught her ankle, tugged sharply. She fell and, with a speed that surprised even himself, he rolled over on top of her. Her claws ripped his shirt, scored his back. She tried to bring her knees, her feet up under his belly but he somehow forced her legs apart. Her sweat-slippery body writhed beneath him. In spite of her hostility, he knew that she was ready, as ready as he was, readier. She was unclothed; his shorts were still on, his erect penis straining at the material. But he needed his hands to hold her, to restrain her, to prevent her from doing more damage to him than she had done already.

  One of her hands drove down to his groin and he flinched, expecting that she would savagely maul his genitals. But it was the sealseam that was the target for her fingers, that fell open, releasing his thrusting organ. He was into her, held closely to her by her arms and legs, imprisoned inside her by those tightly gripping, kneading protrusions.

  Then, explosively, implosively, it was over.

  He rolled off her, out of her.

  They sprawled side by side on the damp mattress.

  She asked lazily, “Has that helped you to make up your mind, Falsen?”

  “I … I don’t know.” He was trying hard to be honest. “Perhaps … if you can take the ship without bloodshed, killing … ”

  She smiled smugly.

  “I would never shed the blood of my own kind, Falsen.” And where does that leave me? he wondered. But should Carlin attempt to shed his blood she would have a surprise coming.

  She said, “You had better leave now. I would like you to sleep here with me, but there are those who would not approve.”

  You can say that again, he thought.

  • • •

  “Where have you been?” demanded Linda. “What’s happened to you? Your shirt, torn to shreds … And those scratches on your back … ”

  “That bloody Pondor,” he lied. “He jumped me.”

  “And did he piss all over you? You stink.“ She wrinkled her nostrils. “No. It’s not him, not tomcat. But … ”

  “I must have rubbed against something,” he said.

  CHAPTER 30

  The next morning it was still raining.

  Nonetheless the work went ahead, the reassembling of the inertial-drive unit. Like huge worker bees going about their business, the mini-innies flew into and out of the hole that had been cut in the shell plating, on each outward journey carrying in their clawed appendages components of the machine.

  Prenta had succeeded in getting two of the little helicopters, the ones that had escaped damage in the crash, out of their stowage. Pansir was busy. There was the second airship carried by the space vessel to be gotten ready for flight, this one only a small nonrigid, little more than an assemblage of gasbags with a skeletal car. Grumbling to herself, annoyed at being taken away from what she considered more important work, Carlin had made the necessary modifications to the hydrogen-fusion power generator so that it now delivered a flow of helium as well as electricity for lights, machines and essential services.

  Everybody, thought Falsen, was busy except himself. And, of course, Linda. He walked around outside the fallen ship, enjoying the feel of the warm rain on his naked torso, the moistness that squelched up between the toes of his bare feet. He accompanied the Lady Mother as, cloaked and hooded, she made her rounds of the vari
ous activities.

  She expressed concern for his well-being.

  “Are you not cold, Mr. Falsen, wearing only those shorts? I realize that your uniform is no longer wearable, but the ship’s seamstress would be able to run up something suitable.”

  “She’s probably doing something much more important, Gracious Lady. Isn’t she working for Pansir?”

  The captain laughed. “Oh, I suppose that the airship has rather higher priority than a new shirt for you, but there is no need for you to get wet. Should you not be keeping the Lady Linda company?”

  Linda, thought Falsen, had made it quite plain that his company was not high on her list of priorities. She did not know what he had been doing with Carlin but she suspected. She had told him, “If I didn’t know what you really are, I’d say that you were a two-legged tomcat. Get out of here and don’t come back until the rain has washed the stink off you!”

  Yet he was loyal to her, as he had to be. In the final analysis he had no option.

  He said, “It is very stuffy inside the ship.”

  “Once she has been raised, the life-support systems will work properly.” They paused by the tent under which Carlin and her engineers were working; the Lady Mother raised her voice to make herself heard above the racket of the mini-innies. “I really don’t know how we should have managed without you, Mr. Falsen.”

  “You’d have managed,” he said. “After all, spacemanship is no more than just doing the obvious thing.”

  “Spacewomanship,” she corrected with a smile. “But this, since it was your idea, is spacemanship.”

  From many people, thought Falsen, this would have been insincere flattery. Somehow, from the Lady Mother, it was not. All right, all right, he had slept with Carlin, now inside the tent bossing her juniors as they fitted part to part, as they maneuvered the mini-innies in the confined space to lift the heavier components into position. He may have slept with Carlin, yet he felt no affection for her, never could do so. But the Lady Mother … For one of his kind conscience was an expensive luxury; nonetheless, he possessed one. It was troubling him now, nagging him about the immorality of giving with one hand and taking away with both.