Upon a Sea of Stars

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Anyhow, she arrived in Durban, and bunkered, and sailed. She exchanged visual signals with another ship shortly afterwards. And that was all.

  “Oh, plenty of surface ships did founder, some of them with all hands, and the loss of Waratah was explained away by the theory that she was extremely unstable, and rolled so badly in a heavy swell that she capsized and went down suddenly. But this was not in the loneliness of mid-ocean. This was in soundings, in relatively shallow water, and on a well-frequented shipping route. But no bodies were ever found, and not a single fragment of identifiable wreckage. . . .” He pointed to a lifebuoy in its rack, the white and scarlet paint still bright, gleaming in the beams from Faraway Quest’s searchlights, the black lettering, Waratah, Liverpool, clearly legible. “Even if she had gone down suddenly something would have broken free and floated, something with the ship’s name on it. . . .

  “She was a passenger liner, and so she became better known than a smaller ship would have done, and her name joined that of Marie Celeste on the long list of unsolved ocean mysteries that, even to this day, are occasionally rehashed by journalists as fillers for Sunday supplements. As a matter of fact that wench from the Lorn Argus who was writing up my library said that she was going to do a series called Maritime Mysteries of Old Earth and spent quite a few evenings browsing among my books. . . .

  “But there was Waratah, and there was Anglo-Australian, and there was Cyclops. . . . And there were the ships like Mary Celeste, found drifting in perfect order without a soul on board. . . .

  “Well, I suppose we’ve found out what happened. But how? How?”

  Sonya said, “That analogy of playing on the black keys, and playing on the white keys, and playing in the cracks, was a good one. But as an Intelligence Officer I’ve had to do quite a deal of research into this sort of thing. Oceangoing ships have vanished, but so have aircraft, and so have spacecraft. And there have been many, many cases of the inexplicable disappearances of people—the crew of your Mary Celeste, for example, and the famous man who walked round the horses, and Ambrose Bierce, and . . . and . . .”

  “And?”

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I haven’t cited any modern cases. The trouble, of course, is that Space Travel has given the explainers-away far too easy a time. A ship goes missing on a voyage, say, from Port Forlorn to Nova Caledon, as the Commission’s Delta Eridani did a couple of years back. But Space is so vast, and when you throw in the extra dimensions added by the use of any sort of Interstellar Drive, it’s vaster still. When a ship is overdue, you know as well as I do that any search would be quite useless. And men and women still go missing—but if they go missing on any of the frontier planets there are so many possible causes—usually some hitherto undiscovered life form that’s gobbled them up, bones, boots and all.”

  “Even so, records are kept.”

  “Of course. It takes a small city to house all the Intelligence Department’s files on the subject.”

  They went back into the chartroom. Grimes looked at the desiccated bodies of the Captain and his watch officer, wished that the two men were able to speak to tell him just what had happened. Perhaps, he thought, they would be able to do so. Results, of a sort, had been achieved by that first seance aboard Faraway Quest. He wondered, too, if Todhunter would be able to revive any of Waratah’s people, but he doubted it. In the early days of intersteller expansion a deep freeze technique had been used, but all of those making a long, long voyage in a state of suspended animation had undergone months of preparation before what had been, in effect, their temporary deaths—and in many cases, in far too many cases, the deaths had been all too permanent. It was easy enough to say the words, “Snap-freezing and dehydration,” but the actual technique had never been easy.

  Carefully Grimes examined the Log Book. The pages were brittle, all moisture leeched from them by their centuries of exposure to hard vacuum. He deciphered the crabbed handwriting in the Remarks column. “Mod. beam sea, v. heavy beam swell. Vsl. rolling heavily. O’cast, with occ’l heavy rain and violent thunderstorms. Abnormally bright phosphorescence observed.”

  Thunder and lightning and abnormally bright phosphor-

  escence . . .

  So what?

  He muttered, “The electrical storm may have had something to do with it. . . . And possibly there was some sort of disturbance of the Earth’s magnetic field in that locality, and something just right—or just wrong—about the period of the roll of a steel hull . . .”

  “Or possibly,” she said, “there was somebody aboard the ship who was a sort of catalyst. Remember all the dreams, all the premonitory, warning visions, that were experienced just before her disappearance? Perhaps there are people—in fact, our researches hint that there are, and always have been such people—who can slip from one Time Track to another, in many cases quite inadvertently. As well as the records of inexplicable disappearances there are also the records of equally inexplicable appearances—men and women who have turned up from, literally, nowhere, and who have been strangers, lost and bewildered, in a strange world. . . .

  “In our own case, how much was due to Mr. Renfrew’s fancy apparatus and your own tinkering with anti-matter and anti-gravity, and how much was due to the mediumistic powers of your Miss Karen Schmidt?”

  “Could be . . .” he admitted. “Could be . . . It’s a farfetched theory, but . . .”

  “Farfetched?” she scoffed. “Here we are, marooned in this absolute nothingness, and you have the nerve to accuse me of drawing a long bow!”

  “Not quite nothingness,” he corrected her. “The indications are that we may be in a sort of graveyard of lost ships. . . .”

  “And lost people. The unfortunates who, somehow, have missed their footing from stepping to one track to the next . . . As Waratah’s people did.”

  “And as we did.”

  “But we’re lucky enough to have a self-sustaining economy.”

  Grimes broke off the conversation to keep Swinton, back in the control room of Faraway Quest, up to date with what was happening and what had been discovered, including in his report the tentative theories that had been, so far, advanced. The First Lieutenant acknowledged, then said, “I don’t want to hurry you, sir. But Mr. Mayhew informs me that he’s receiving very faint signals from somewhere. It could either be something or somebody extremely distant, or something quite close but transmitting feebly.”

  “So we aren’t alone in the junkyard,” said Grimes. Then, switching frequencies, he succeeded in raising the Second Mate, the doctor and the two engineers, who were still prowling in the bowels of the ship and who were most reluctant to break off their explorations. He ordered them to report to the bridge at once.

  At last they appeared, babbling of pistons and furnaces and boilers and refrigerating machinery, carrying lumps of coal that they had taken from the bunkers. Odd souvenirs, thought Grimes—and decided that if he were able he would acquire something more useful, the books from the library, for example, or the grand piano from the First Class lounge. . . . And with the thought he looked at the long dead Captain and whispered, “It’s not theft. I know you wouldn’t object to making a gift to a fellow shipmaster.”

  “What was that, sir?” asked Jones.

  “Nothing,” snapped Grimes. “Now let’s get back to our own wagon and find out what fresh surprises they’ve cooked up for us.”

  Chapter 16

  ONCE BACK ABOARD HIS OWN SHIP, Grimes went straight from the airlock to the control room, pausing only to take off his helmet. Swinton greeted him with the words, “Mayhew is still picking it up, sir.”

  “Good. Can he get any kind of directional fix on it?”

  “He says not. But you know what Mayhew is like, impossibly vague unless you can nail him down.”

  Grimes went to inspect the screens first of the radar, then of the Mass Proximity Indicator. Both instruments had been reset for extreme long range. Both showed nothing.

  He went to the nearest tele
phone, put out his hand to take the handset from the rack, then changed his mind. He said, “I shall be with Mr. Mayhew if you want me, Commander Swinton.” He made a beckoning nod to Sonya Verrill, who followed him from the control room.

  He knew that it would be a waste of time tapping on the door to the Psionic Radio Officer’s cabin, but did so nonetheless. He waited for a decent interval and then slid the panel to one side, letting himself and Sonya into the room. Mayhew had his back to them; he was strapped in his seat, his body hunched as though it were being dragged from an upright position by a heavy gravitational field. He was staring at the transparent cylinder, nested in its wires and pipes, in which, submerged in the bath of nutrient fluid, hung the small, gray-white mass, obscenely naked, that was the living brain of one of the most telepathic of all animals, a dog, that was the amplifier with the aid of which a skilled telepath could span the Galaxy.

  They may have made a slight noise as they entered; in any case Mayhew turned slightly in his chair and looked at them with vague, unfocused eyes, muttering, “Oh. It’s you.” And then, in a more alert voice, “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Just carry on with what you are doing, Mr. Mayhew. But you can talk, I think, while keeping a listening watch.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “This signal you’ve picked up, can it be vocalised?”

  The telepath pondered, then said, “No, sir. It’s emotion rather than words. . . . It’s a matter of impressions rather than a definite message. . . .”

  “Such as?”

  “It’s hard to put into words, sir. It’s dreamlike. A dim dream within a dream . . .”

  “ ‘And doubtful dreams of dreams . . .’ ” quoted Grimes.

  “Yes, sir. That’s it.”

  “And who, or what, is making the transmission? Is it human? Or humanoid? Or a representative of one of the other intelligent races?”

  “There’s more than one, sir. Many more. But they’re human.”

  Sonya Verrill said, “There’s a chance, John, that there may be some flicker of life, the faintest spark, still surviving in the brains of those people aboard Waratah. What are their dreams, Mr. Mayhew? Are they of cold, and darkness, and loneliness?”

  “No, Miss Verrill. Nothing like that. They’re happy dreams, in a dim sort of way. They’re dreams of warmth, and light, and comfort, and . . .” he blushed “ . . . love . . .”

  “But it could still be Waratah’s people.”

  “No. I probed her very thoroughly, very thoroughly. They’re all as dead as the frozen mutton in her holds.”

  “How did you know that?” demanded Grimes sharply.

  “It was necessary, sir, to maintain telepathic contact with the boarding party. I ‘overheard’ what you were telling the others about Waratah’s last voyage.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Mayhew.”

  “And the only telepathic broadcast from the derelict was made by you and your party, sir. With these other signals I get the impression of distance—and a slow approach.”

  “But who the hell is approaching whom?” exploded Grimes. Then, “I was talking to myself. But we still don’t know at what speed we’re traveling, if we are traveling. When we matched velocities with Waratah did we reverse our original motion, or did we merely come to rest, or are we still proceeding the same way as we were when we fell into this bloody crack?”

  “I’m not a navigator, sir,” said Mayhew stiffly.

  “None of us is, until there’s something to navigate with. But we’re interrupting you.”

  “Not really, sir. This is no more than one of those pleasant dreams you have sometimes between sleeping and waking. . . .” He stiffened. “There’s one coming through a little stronger than the others. . . . I’ll try to isolate it. . . . Yes. . . .

  “There are blue skies, and white, fleecy clouds, and a river with green, grassy banks . . . Yes, and trees . . . And I am sitting by the river, and I can feel the warmth of the sun, and the breeze is bringing a scent that I know is that of new-mown hay . . .” He paused, looked at the others with a wry grin. “And I’ve never seen hay, let alone smelled it. But this is not my dream, of course. Yes. There’s the smell of new-mown hay, and there’s the song of birds in the trees, and my pipe is drawing well, and my rod is perfectly balanced in my hands, and I am watching the—the bait, the fly that I tied myself, drifting on the smooth surface of the stream, and I know that sooner or later a trout will rise to take it, but there is no hurry. I’m perfectly happy where I am, doing what I am, and there’s no hurry . . .

  “But there is. Behind it all, underneath it all, there is a sense of urgency. There’s the guilty feeling, the guilty knowledge that I’m late, that I’ve overslept, and that something dreadful will happen if I don’t wake up. . . .”

  “Odd,” commented Grimes. “Do you know Earth, Mayhew?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you know anything about dry flies?”

  “What are they, sir?”

  “You were talking about tying one just now. They’re a form of bait used by fishermen who do it for sport, not commercially. The really keen anglers tie their own flies—in other words they fabricate from feathers, wire, and the odd Gods of the Galaxy alone know what else, extremely odd—but as long as the trout also think that they look edible, why worry?”

  “So,” said Sonya, “we have a nostalgic dry fly fisherman from Earth, who’s dreaming about his favorite sport, marooned, like ourselves, in this crack in Time-Space. Or Space-Time. But, for all we know, we may be picking up this dream from Earth itself. Dimensions are meaningless here. After all, there’s Waratah . . .”

  “She’s had a long time to drift,” said Grimes. “But go on, Mr. Mayhew.”

  “He’s drifted back into the happy dream,” murmured Mayhew. “He’s not catching anything, but that doesn’t worry him.”

  “And can you isolate any of the others?” asked the Commodore.

  “I’ll try, sir. But most of them are about long, timeless days in the air and the warm sunshine . . . There is a man who is swimming, and he turns to look at the girl beside him, and her body is impossibly beautiful, pearl-like in the clear, green water. . . . And there is a woman, sitting on velvet-smooth grass while her sun-browned children play around her . . .

  “But they’re getting closer, whoever they are. They’re getting closer. The dreams are more distinct, more vivid. . . .

  “The air is thin and cold, and the hard-packed snow is crunching under my heavy, spiked boots. It seems that I could reach out now to touch the peak with my ice-axe. . . . It’s close, close, sharp and brilliantly white against hard blue sky. . . . There’s a white plume steaming from it, like a flag of surrender. . . . It’s only snow, of course, wind-driven snow, but it is a white flag. It’s never been conquered—but in only a few hours I shall plant my flag, driving the spiked ferrule deep into the ice and rock . . . They said that it couldn’t be done without oxygen and crampon-guns and all the rest of it, but I shall do it. . . .”

  “It would be quite a relief,” remarked Sonya, half seriously, “if somebody would dream about a nice, quiet game of chess in a stuffy room with the air thick with tobacco smoke and liquor fumes.”

  Grimes laughed briefly. He said, “I have a hunch that these are all hand-picked dreamers, hearty open air types.” The telephone buzzed sharply. He reached out, took the instrument from its rest. “Commodore here . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . Secure all for acceleration and prepare to proceed on an interception orbit.”

  Chapter 17

  OUTSIDE THE VIEWPORTS there was nothing but blackness, and the old steamship was no more than a spark of light, a dimming ember in the screens of radar and Mass Proximity Indicator. A gleaming bead threaded on to the glowing filament that was the extrapolation of Faraway Quest’s orbit was the new target, the ship that had drifted in from somewhere (nowhere?) on a track that would have carried her all of a thousand miles clear of the Quest had she not been picked up by the survey ship’s instruments.
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  Grimes and his officers sat in their chairs, acceleration pressing their bodies into the resilient padding. Swinton, as before, had the con, and handled the ship with an ease that many a more experienced pilot would have envied. At a heavy four gravities Faraway Quest roared in on her interception orbit and then, with split second timing, the rockets were cut and the gyroscopes brought into play, spinning the vessel about her short axis. One last brief burst of power and she, relative momentum killed, was herself drifting, hanging in the emptiness a scant mile clear of the stranger.

  The searchlights came on.

  Faraway Quest’s people stared through the ports at the weird construction, only Grimes evincing no surprise. Her appearance confirmed his hunch. She was an affair of metal spheres and girders—a small one, its surface broken by ports and antennae, a large one, with what looked like conventional enough rocket lifecraft cradled about its equator, then another small one, with a nest of venturis protruding from the pole like a battery of guns. There were no fins, no atmospheric control surfaces.

  Swinton broke the silence. “What the hell is that?”

  “I suggest, Commander, that you take a course in the history of astronautics. That is a relic of the days of the First Expansion, when Man was pushing out toward the stars, without any sort of reliable interstellar drive to cut down the traveling time from centuries to weeks.” He assumed a lecture room manner. “You will observe that the ship was not designed for blasting off from or landing on a planetary surface; she is, in fact, a true spaceship. She was constructed in orbit, and stores and personnel were ferried up to her by small tender rockets—quite possibly those same tenders that are secured about the central sphere.