Upon a Sea of Stars

by A Bertram Chandler

  Grimes thought, I hope that they aren’t too disappointed. But even Lorn’s better than Limbo . . .

  And so it went on.

  Each of the four remaining dowsers was thoroughly indoctrinated, and by the time that the indoctrination was finished only thirty minutes remained before the posthypnotic command would take effect. Grimes and the others made their way back to the control sphere.

  Mitchell’s officers were in full charge now, and the pilot lights glowed over instrument consoles. With the exception of Grimes, Sonya Verrill and Mayhew, all of Faraway Quest’s people were back aboard their own ship. The Commodore turned to Mitchell. “I’ll leave you to it, Captain. If things work out for all of us, I’ll see you on the Rim.”

  Mitchell grinned. “I hope so, sir. But tell me, are the Rim Worlds as marvelous as your Mr. Mayhew makes out?”

  “You have to make allowances for local patriotism, Captain.”

  “But you needn’t stay on the Rim,” Sonya Verrill broke in. “I am sure that my own Service will be happy to assume responsibility for the settlement of your people on any world of their choice.”

  “The Federation’s taxpapers have deep pockets,” remarked Grimes.

  “That joke is wearing a little thin, John.”

  “Perhaps it is, Sonya. But it’s still true.”

  The Commodore shook hands with Mitchell and then pulled on the gloves of his spacesuit, snapping tight the connections. His helmet on, he watched Sonya Verrill and Mayhew resume their own armor and then, with one of Mitchell’s officers in attendance, the party made its way to the airlock. They jetted across the emptiness to the sleek Faraway Quest, were admitted into their own ship. They lost no time in making their way to the control room.

  And there they waited, staring at the contraption of globes and girders floating there in the nothingness, bright metal reflecting the glare of the Quest’s searchlights. They waited, and watched the control room clock, the creeping minute hand and, towards the end, the sweep second pointer.

  Grimes consulted his own watch.

  Mayhew noticed the gesture. He said quietly, “I’m still in touch. They can see the spark in the darkness now. They can feel the rods stirring strongly in their hands. . . .”

  “I don’t see how it can work,” muttered Renfrew.

  “They got here without your gadgetry, Lieutenant,” Calhoun told him sharply. “They should be able to get out the same way.”

  And then there was nothing outside the viewports.

  Perhaps, thought Grimes, our searchlights have failed. But even then we should see a dim glimmer from her control room ports, a faint flicker from her warmed-up drivers. . . .

  “The screens are dead,” announced Swinton.

  “She made it . . .” whispered Mayhew. “She made it. Somewhere.”

  Chapter 23

  SO IT HAD WORKED for First Captain Mitchell and his Erector Set of an emigrant ship. It had worked for First Captain Mitchell, and so it should work for Faraway Quest and her people. The shanghaied dowser was sleeping in his tank, still dreaming orgiastic dreams, and Mayhew was working on him, entering his mind, trying to introduce the first faint elements of doubt, of discomfort, trying to steer his imaginings away from overpadded comfort to the cold and emptiness of the Limbo between the Universes.

  But it was hard.

  This was a man who had lived in his dreams, lived for his dreams. This was a man whose waking life was, at best, purgatorial—a man who never knew in his own home the sweet smoothness of flesh on flesh, a man who was denied even such simple pleasures as a glass of cold ale, a meal more elaborate than a spoiled roast and ruined, soggy vegetables. This was a man who lived in his dreams, and who loved his dreams, and who had fled to them as the ultimate refuge from an unspeakably drab reality.

  Mayhew persisted, and his whispering voice, as he vocalized his thoughts, brought a chill of horror into the section of the auxiliary motor room in which the tank had been set up. He persisted, and he worked cunningly, introducing tiny, destructive serpents into the fleshly Eden—the tough steak and the blunt knife, the corked wine, the too-young cheese and the rolls with their leathery crusts. . . . The insufficiently chilled beer and the hot dog without the mustard. . . . The overdone roast of beef and the underdone roast of pork. . . .

  Small things, trivial things perhaps, but adding up to a sadistic needling.

  And then there was the blonde who, when she smiled, revealed carious teeth and whose breath was foul with decay, and the voluptuous brunette who, undressed, was living proof of the necessity of foundation garments. . . .

  So it went on.

  The dream, perhaps, had not been a noble one, but it had been healthily hedonistic, with no real vice in it. And now, thanks to Mayhew’s probing and tinkerings, it was turning sour. And now the man Jenkins, fleeing in disgust from the lewd embraces of a harridan in a decrepit hovel, was staggering over a dark, windy waste, oppressed by a sense of guilt and of shame, fearing even the vengeance of the harsh deity worshipped by his unloving wife. He was fleeing over that dark windy waste, tripping on the tussocks of coarse grass, flailing with his arms at the flapping sheets of torn, discarded newspaper that were driven into his face by the icy gusts.

  The cold and the dark . . .

  The cold and the dark, and the final stumble, and the helpless fall into the pit that had somehow opened beneath his feet, and fall into Absolute Nothingness, a negation worse than the fiery hell with which his wife had, on more than one occasion, threatened him.

  The cold and the dark and the absolute emptiness, and the rod of twisted silver wire to which he still clung desperately, the only proof of his identity, the only link with sanity, the only guide back to Space and Time . . .

  The twisted wire, the twitching wire, and the insistent tug of it in his frozen hands, and ahead of him in the darkness the faint yellow spark, but brighter, brighter, golden now, no longer a spark but a fair world hanging there in the blackness, a world of beautiful, willing women, of lush gardens in which glowed huge, succulent fruit, a world of groaning tables and dim, dusty cellars in which matured the stacked bottles of vintage years . . .

  But not Lorn . . . thought Grimes.

  “But not Lorn . . .” echoed Sonya.

  “Lorn is hanging there in the darkness. . . .” Mayhew was whispering. “A fair world, a beautiful world . . . And the divining rod is rigid in your hands, a compass needle, pointing pointing. . . . You can cross the gulf. . . . You can bridge the gulf from dream to reality. . . . Follow the rod. . . . Let the rod guide you, draw you, pull you. . . . Follow the rod. . . .”

  “But where?” interrupted Grimes. “But where?”

  “To Lorn, of course,” whispered Mayhew. And then, “To Lorn? But his dreams are too strong . . .”

  Shockingly the alarm bells sounded, a succession of Morse “A”s.

  Once again—Action Stations.

  Chapter 24

  THERE, TO PORT, was the lens of the Galaxy, and to starboard was the gleaming globe that was Lorn, the great, hourglass-shaped continent proof positive. From astern came the rumble of the gentle blasts fired by Swinton, intent on his instruments, that would put Faraway Quest into a stable orbit about the planet. From the speaker barked an oddly familiar voice, “What ship? What ship? Identify yourself at once.” And at the controls of the transceiver Renfrew made the adjustments that would bring in vision as well as sound.

  “What ship?” demanded the voice. “What ship?”

  From his chair Grimes could see the screens of both radar and Mass Proximity Indicator. He could see the bright and brightening blob of light that gave range and bearing of another vessel, a vessel that was closing fast. She was not yet within visual range, but that would be a matter of minutes only.

  “What ship? What ship?”

  Grimes accepted the microphone on its wandering lead, said, “Faraway Quest. Auxiliary Cruiser, Rim Worlds Confederation Navy. What ship?”

  The voice from the bulkhead spea
ker contrived to convey incredulity with an odd snorting sound. “Faraway Quest? Rim Worlds Confederation? Never heard of you. Are you mad—or drunk?”

  “No,” Sonya Verrill was whispering. “No. It can’t be. . . .”

  Grimes looked at her, saw that her face was white, strained.

  The big screen over the transceiver was alive with swirling colors, with colors that eddied and coalesced as the picture hardened. It showed the interior of another control room, a compartment not unlike their own. It showed a uniformed man who was staring into the iconoscope. Grimes recognized him. In his, Grimes’, Universe this man had been Master of Polar Queen, had smashed her up in a bungled landing at Fort Farewell, on Faraway. Grimes had been president of the Court of Inquiry. And this man, too, had been an officer of the Intelligence Branch of the Survey Service, his position as a tramp master being an excellent cover for his activities. And he and Sonya . . .

  The Commodore swiveled in his chair. He rather prided himself on the note of gentle regret that he contrived to inject into his voice. He said to the woman, “Well, your quest is over. It’s been nice knowing you.”

  She replied, “My quest was over some time ago. It’s nice knowing you.”

  “I’ve got their picture,” Renfrew was saying unnecessarily. “But I don’t think that they have ours yet.”

  “Starfarer to unknown ship. Starfarer to unknown ship. Take up orbit and prepare to receive boarding party.”

  “You’d better go and pretty yourself up,” said Grimes to Sonya. He thought, It’s a pity it had to end like this, before it got properly started even. But I mustn’t be selfish.

  “You’ll be meeting . . . him. Again. Your second chance.”

  “Starfarer to unknown ship. Any hostile action will meet with instant retaliation. Prepare to receive boarders.”

  “Commander Swinton!” There was the authentic Survey Service crackle on Sonya Verrill’s voice. “Stand by Mannschenn Drive. Random precession!”

  “Ay, ay, sir.” The young man flushed. “Ma’am.” Then he swiveled to look at the Commodore. “Your orders, sir?”

  “John!” Sonya’s voice and manner were urgent. “Get us out of here.”

  “No. This was the chance you were wanting, the second chance, and now you’ve got it.”

  She grinned. “A girl can change her mind. I want my own Universe, where there’s only you . . .” She laughed, pointing to the screen. A woman officer had come into Starfarer’s control room, was standing behind the Captain’s chair. He outranked her, but her attitude was obviously proprietorial. “Where there’s only you,” repeated Sonya, “and only one of me . . .”

  “Mannschenn Drive,” ordered Grimes. “Random precession.”

  “Ay, ay, sir,” acknowledged Swinton, and with the thin, high keening of the precessing gyroscopes the screen blanked, the speaker went dead and, on the port hand, the Galactic lens assumed its familiar distortion, a Klein flask blown by a drunken glass blower.

  “Sir,” growled Renfrew, obviously in a mutinous mood, “they could have helped us to get back. And even if they couldn’t, I’m of the opinion that the Rim Worlds under Federation Rule would have been somewhat better than those same planets under your Confederacy.”

  “That will do, Lieutenant,” snapped Sonya, making it plain that she was capable of dealing with her own subordinates. “Both the Commodore and myself agreed upon our course of action.”

  “This was supposed to be a scientific expedition, Commander,” protested Renfrew. “But it’s been far from scientific. Séances, and dowsers . . .” He almost spat in his disgust.

  “You can’t deny that we got results,” muttered Calhoun.

  “Of a sort.”

  Grimes, seated at the table on the platform in the still unreconverted wardroom, regarded the squabbling officers with a tired amusement. He could afford to relax now. He had driven the ship down the warped Continuum in an escape pattern that had been partly random and partly a matter of lightning calculation. He had interrogated Maudsley—the other Maudsley—after the Polar Queen disaster and had not formed a very high opinion of that gentleman’s capabilities as a navigator. And even if this Maudsley were brilliantly imaginative, a ship in Deep Space is a very small needle in a very big haystack. . . .

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “the purpose of this meeting is to discuss ways and means of getting back to our own Space-Time. Has anybody any suggestions?”

  Nobody had.

  “The trouble seems to be,” Grimes went on, “that although the dowser technique works, Mayhew is far too liable to look at his home world through rose-colored spectacles. Unluckily he is the only one among us capable of influencing the dreams of the hapless Mr. Jenkins. No doubt the Rim Worlds are better off, in some respects, under Federation rule than under our Confederacy. Weather control (which is far from inexpensive) for example, and a much higher standard of living. But I’ve also no doubt that the loss of independence has been a somewhat high price to pay for these advantages. And, even you who are not Rim Worlders, would find it hard to get by in a Universe in which somebody else, even if it is you, has your job, your home, your wife.”

  “So—what are we to do?”

  “We still have Jenkins,” contributed Calhoun.

  “Yes. We still have Jenkins. But how can we use him?”

  “And you still have your talent,” said Sonya.

  “My talent?”

  “Your hunches. And what is a hunch but a form of precognition?”

  “My hunches,” Grimes told her, “are more a case of extrapolation, from the past at that, than of precognition.” And sitting there, held in his chair by the strap, he let his mind wander into the past, was only dimly conscious of the discussion going on around him. He recalled what had happened when Faraway Quest had been drawn into the first of the Alternative Universes before falling into Limbo. He remembered that odd sensation, the intolerable stretching, the sudden snap. Perhaps . . . “Mr. Mayhew!” he said.

  “Yes? Sorry. Yes, sir?”

  “What sort of feeling do you have for this ship?”

  “She’s just a ship.”

  “You don’t, in your mind, overglamorize her?”

  “Why the hell should I? Sir.”

  “Good. Please come with me again to this man Jenkins, the dowser. I want you to take charge of his dreams, the same way that you did before. I want you to lose him in nothingness again, and then to let his talent guide him out of the emptiness back to light and life and warmth.”

  “But you said that my vision of Lorn was too idealistic.”

  “It is. It is. I want you to envisage Faraway Quest.”

  “Us, sir?”

  “Who else?”

  “The cold . . .” Mayhew was whispering. “The cold, and the dark, and the absolute emptiness. There’s nothing, nothing. There’s not anything, anywhere, but that rod of twisted silver wire that you hold in your two hands. . . . You feel it twitch. You feel the gentle, insistent tug of it. . . . And there’s a glimmer of light ahead of you, faint, no more than a dim glow. . . . But you can make out what it is. It’s the pilot lights of instrument panels, red and green, white and amber, and the fluorescent tracings in chart tanks. . . . It’s the control room of a ship, and the faint illumination shows through the big, circular ports. By it you can just read the name, in golden lettering, on her sharp stem, Faraway Quest.”

  And Mayhew went on to describe the ship in detail, in amazing detail, until Grimes realized that he was drawing upon the knowledge stored in the brains of all the technical officers. He described the ship, and he described the personnel, and he contrasted the warmth and the light and the life of her interior with the cold, empty dream-Universe in which the dowser was floating. He described the ship and her personnel—and, Grimes thought wryly, some of his descriptions were far from flattering. But she was Home. She was a little world of men in the all-pervading emptiness.

  She was Home, and Grimes realized that he, too, was feeling the emotions
that Mayhew was implanting in the sleeping dowser’s mind. She was Home, and she was close, and closer, an almost attained goal. She was Home, and Grimes knew that he could reach out to touch her, and he reached out, and felt the comforting touch of cool metal at his fingertips, the security of solidity in the vast, empty reaches of Deep Space. . . .

  She was Home, and he was home at last, where he belonged, and he was looking dazedly at the odd, transparent tank that had appeared from nowhere in the Auxiliary Machinery Room, the glass coffin with a complexity of piping and wiring extruded from its sides, the casket in which floated the nude body of a portly man.

  He turned to Sonya Verrill, and he heard her say, “Your hunch paid off, John.”

  He remembered then. (But there were two sets of memories—separate and distinct. There were the memories of Limbo, and all that had happened there, and there were the memories of a boring, fruitless cruise after the first and only Rim Ghost sighting and the failure to establish even a fleeting contact.) He remembered then, and knew that some of the memories he must cling to, always. They were all that he would have, now. There were no longer any special circumstances. There was no longer the necessity for—how had she put it?—the political marriage of the heads of two potentially hostile tribes.

  He muttered, unaware that he was vocalizing his thoughts, “Oh, well—it was nice knowing you. But now. . . .”

  “But now . . .” she echoed.

  “If you’ll excuse me, sir, and madam,” broke in Mayhew, “I’ll leave you alone. Now that we’re back in our own Universe I’m bound by the Institute’s rules again, and I’m not supposed to eavesdrop, let alone to tell either of you what the other one is thinking.” He turned to the Commodore. “But I’ll tell you this, sir. I’ll tell you that all the guff about political marriages was guff. It was just an excuse. I’ll tell you that the lady has found what she was looking for—or whom she was looking for—and that his name is neither Derek Calver nor Bill Maudsley.”