Upon a Sea of Stars

by A Bertram Chandler

  And then the place was full of University police, tough men in black tunics who used their clubs quite indiscriminately and herded all those present out into the waiting trucks.

  Quietly, Grimes and the police officer left their observation post and went down the back stairs. Outside the inn they were joined by twelve men—six police and six customs officials, used to searching ships. Their heels ringing on the damp cobblestones, they made their way through the misty night to the riverside, to the quays.

  Kawaroa was ready for sea, awaiting only the pilot and, of course, her master and officers. Her derricks were stowed, her moorings had been singled up, and a feather of smoke from her tall, raked funnel showed that steam had been raised. She was not a big ship, but she looked smart, well maintained, seaworthy.

  As Grimes and his party approached the vessel they saw that somebody had got there ahead of them, a dark figure who clattered hastily up the gangway. But there was no cause for hurry. The ship, with all her navigating officers either in jail or in the hospital, would not be sailing, and the harbor master had already been told not to send a pilot down to take her out.

  There was no cause for hurry. . . .

  But what was that jangling of bells, loud and disturbing in the still night? The engine room telegraph? The routine testing of gear one hour before the time set for departure?

  And what were those men doing, scurrying along to foc’sle head and poop?

  Grimes broke into a run, and as he did so he heard somebody shouting from Kawaroa’s bridge. The language was unfamiliar, but the voice was not. It was Missenden’s. From forward there was a thunk! and then a splash as the end of the severed headline fell into the still water. The last of the flood caught the ship’s bows and she fell away from the wharf. With the police and customs officers, who had belatedly realized what was happening, well behind him, Grimes reached the edge of the quay. It was all of five feet to the end of the still-dangling gangway and the gap was rapidly widening. Without thinking. Grimes jumped. Had he known that nobody would follow him he would never have done so. But he jumped, and his desperate fingers closed around the outboard man-ropes of the accommodation ladder and somehow, paying a heavy toll of abrasions and lacerations, he was able to squirm upward until he was kneeling on the bottom platform. Dimly he was aware of shouts from the fast receding dock. Again he heard the engine room telegraph bells, and felt the vibration as the screw began to turn. So the after lines had been cut, too, and the ship was under way. And it was—he remembered the charts that he had looked at—a straight run down river with absolutely no need for local knowledge. From above sounded a single, derisory blast from Kawaroa’s steam whistle.

  Grimes was tempted to drop from his perch, to swim back ashore. But he knew too much; he had always been a student of maritime history in all its aspects. He knew that a man going overboard from a ship making way through the water stands a very good chance of being pulled under and then cut to pieces by the screw. In any case, he had said that he would find Missenden, and he had done just that.

  Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself erect, then walked up the clattering treads to deck level.

  There was nobody on deck to receive him. This was not surprising; Missenden and the crew must have been too engrossed in getting away from the wharf to notice his pierhead jump. So . . . He was standing in an alleyway, open on the port side. Looking out, he saw the harbor lights sliding past, and ahead and to port there was the white-flashing fairway buoy, already dim, but from mist rather than distance. Inboard there was a varnished wooden door set in the white-painted plating of the ’midships house, obviously the entrance to the accommodation. Grimes opened it without difficulty—door handles will be invented and used by any being approximating to human structure. Inside there was a cross alleyway, brightly illuminated by electric light bulbs in well fittings. On the after bulkhead of this there was a steel door, and the mechanical hum and whine that came from behind it told Grimes that it led to the engine room. On the forward bulkhead there was another wooden door.

  Grimes went through it. Another alleyway, cabins, and a companionway leading upward. At the top of this there were more cabins, and another companionway. And at the top of this . . . the captain’s accommodation, obviously, even though the word on the tally over the door was no more than a meaningless squiggle to Grimes.

  One more companionway—this one with a functional handrail instead of a relatively ornate balustrade. At the head of it was a curtained doorway. Grimes pushed through the heavy drape, found himself in what could only be the chart room, looked briefly at the wide chart table upon which was a plan of the harbor, together with a pair of dividers and a set of parallel rulers. The Confederacy, he remembered, had at one time exported quite large consignments of these instruments to Tharn.

  On the forward bulkhead of the chart room, and to port, was the doorway leading out to the wheelhouse and bridge. Softly, Grimes stepped through it, out into the near-darkness. The only light was that showing from the compass periscope, the device that enabled the helmsman to steer by the standard magnetic compass, the binnacle of which was sited up yet one more deck, on what had been called on Earth’s surface ships the “monkey island.” There was the man at the wheel, intent upon his job. And there, at the fore end of the wheelhouse, were two dark figures, looking out through the wide windows. One of them, the taller one, turned suddenly, said something in Tangaroan. As before, the voice was familiar but the language was not.

  The question—intonation made that plain—was repeated, and then Missenden said in English, “It’s you! How the hell did you get aboard? Hold it, Commodore, hold it!” There was just enough light for Grimes to see the pistol that was pointing at his midriff.

  “Turn this ship around,” ordered Grimes, “and take her back into port.”

  “Not a chance.” Missenden laughed. “Especially when I’ve gone to all the trouble to taking her out of port. Pity old Dingwall wasn’t here to see it. Not bad, was it, for a bird-brained navigator? And keep your hands up where I can see them.”

  “I’m unarmed,” said Grimes.

  “I’ve only your word for it,” Missenden told him. Then he said something to his companion, who replied in what, in happier circumstances, would have been a very pleasant contralto. The girl produced a mouth whistle, blew a piercing blast. In seconds two burly seamen appeared on the bridge. They grabbed Grimes and held him tightly while she ran practiced hands over his clothing. It was not the first time that she had searched a man for weapons. Then they dragged him below, unlocked a steel door and threw him into the tiny compartment beyond it. The heavily barred port made it obvious that it was the ship’s brig.

  They locked him in and left him there.

  Grimes examined his surroundings by the light of the single dim bulb. Deck, deckhead and bulkheads were all of steel—but had they been of plyboard it would have made no difference: that blasted girl had taken from him the only possession that could possibly have been used as a weapon, his pocketknife. There was a steel-framed bunk, with a thin mattress and one sleazy blanket. There was a stained washbasin, and a single faucet which, when persuaded, emitted a trickle of rusty water. There was a bucket—plastic, not metal. Still, it could have been worse. He could sleep, perhaps, and he would not die of thirst. Fully clothed, he lay down on the bunk. He realized that he was physically tired; his desperate leap for the gangway had taken something out of him. And the ship was moving gently now, a slight, soporific roll, and the steady hum and vibration of the turbines helped further to induce slumber. There was nothing he could do, absolutely nothing, and to lose valuable sleep by useless worry would have been foolish. He slept.

  It was the girl who awakened him.

  She stood there, bending over him, shaking his shoulder. When he stirred she stepped sharply back. She was holding a pistol, a revolver of Terran design if not manufacture, and she looked as though she knew how to use it; and she was one of those women whose beauty is somehow accentuated by
juxtaposition to lethal ironmongery. Yes, she was an attractive wench, with her greenish, translucent skin that did not look at all odd, with her fine, strong features, with her sleek, short-cut blue hair, and her slim yet rounded figure that even the rough uniform could not hide. She was an officer of some sort, although what the silver braid on the sleeves of her tunic signified Grimes could not guess. Not that he felt in the mood for guessing games; he was too conscious of his own unshaven scruffiness, of the aches and pains resulting from his athletics of the previous night and from the hardness of the mattress.

  She said, in fair enough English, “Your Mr. Missenden would see you.”

  “He’s not my Mr. Missenden,” replied Grimes testily. Why did everybody ascribe to him the ownership of the late second officer of Rim Dragon?

  “Come,” she said, making an upward jerking motion of the pistol barrel.

  “All right,” grumbled Grimes. “All right.”

  He rolled off the narrow bunk, staggered slightly as he made his way to the washbasin. He splashed water over his face, drank some from his cupped hands. There was no towel. He made do with his handkerchief. As he was drying himself he saw that the door was open and that a seaman was standing beyond it. Any thoughts that he had entertained of jumping the girl and seizing her gun—if he could—evaporated.

  “Follow that man,” she ordered. “I will follow you.”

  Grimes followed the man, through alleyways and up companionways. They came at last to the bridge. Missenden was there, striding briskly back and forth as though he had been at sea all his life. In the wheelhouse the helmsman was intent on his own task. Grimes noted that the standard compass periscope had been withdrawn and that the man was concentrating upon the binnacle housing the ocean passage compass. So they still used that system. But why shouldn’t they? It was a good one. He looked out to the sea, up to the sky. The morning was calm, but the sun was hidden by a thick, anti-cyclonic overcast. The surface of the sea was only slightly ruffled and there was a low, confused swell.

  “Missenden,” called the girl.

  Missenden stopped his pacing, walked slowly to the wheelhouse. With his dyed hair and skin he looked like a Tharnian, a Tangaroan, and in his borrowed uniform he looked like a seaman. He also looked very pleased with himself.

  “Ah, Commodore,” he said, “welcome aboard. You’ve met Miss Ellevie, I think. Our radio officer.”

  “You’d better tell Miss Ellevie to send a message to the High Priest for me, Mr. Missenden.”

  Missenden laughed harshly. “I’ll say this for you, Commodore, you do keep on trying. Why not accept the inevitable? You’re in Tangaroan hands; in fact you put yourself in their—our—hands. The Council of Barons has already been informed, and they have told me that they want you alive. If possible.”

  “Why?” asked Grimes bluntly.

  “Use your loaf, Commodore. First, it’s possible that we may be able to persuade you to press for the establishment of trade relations between the Confederacy and Tangaroa. You do pile on quite a few G’s in this sector of the galaxy, you know. Or should I say that you do draw a lot of water? And if you play, it could be well worth your while.”

  “And if I don’t play?”

  “Then we shall be willing to sell you back to your lords and masters. At a fair price of course. A squadron of armed atmosphere fliers? Laser weapons? Missiles with nuclear warheads?”

  “That’s for your lords and masters to decide.”

  Missenden flushed and the effect, with his green-dyed skin, was an odd one. He said to the girl, “That will do, Ellevie. I’ll let you know when I want you again.” He walked out to the wing of the bridge, beckoning Grimes to follow. When he turned to face the Commodore he was holding a pistol in his right hand.

  He said, “Don’t try anything. When I was in the navy of New Saxony I was expert in the use of hand guns of all descriptions. But I’d like a private talk. Ellevie knows English, so I sent her below. The man at the wheel may have a smattering, but he won’t overhear from where we are now.”

  “Well?” asked Grimes coldly.

  “We’re both Earthmen.”

  “I am, Mr. Missenden.”

  “And I am, by ancestry. These Tharnians are an inferior breed, but if they see that you can be humiliated—”

  “—they’ll realize that you aren’t the Galactic Superman you set yourself up to be.”

  Missenden ignored this, but with an effort. He said, “My position in this ship is rather . . . precarious. The crew doesn’t trust me. I’m captain, yes—but only because I’m the only man on board who can navigate.”

  “But can you?”

  “Yes, damn you! I’ve read the textbooks—it was all the bastards gave me to read when I was holed up down in the secret compartment. And anybody who can navigate a starship can navigate one of these hookers! Anyhow . . . anyhow, Commodore, it will be better for both of us if we maintain the pretense that you are a guest rather than a prisoner. But I must have your parole.”

  “My parole? What can I do?”

  “I’ve heard stories about you.”

  “Have you? Very well, then, what about this? I give you my word not to attempt to seize the ship.”

  “Good. But not good enough. Will you also give your word not to signal, by any means, to aircraft or surface vessels?”

  “Yes,” agreed Grimes after a short hesitation.

  “And your word not to interfere, in any way, with the ship’s signaling equipment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, Commodore, I feel that we may enjoy quite a pleasant cruise. I can’t take you down yet; I relieved the lookout for his breakfast. You’ll appreciate that we’re rather shorthanded—as well as the Old Man and the three mates half the deck crew was left ashore, and two of the engineers. I can’t be up here all the time, but I do have to be here a lot. And the lookouts have orders to call me at once if they sight another ship or an aircraft.”

  “And, as you say, you’re the only navigator.” The only human navigator, Grimes amended mentally.

  The lookout came back to the bridge then, and Missenden took Grimes down to what was to be his cabin. It was a spare room, with its own attached toilet facilities, on the same deck as the captain’s suite, which, of course, was now occupied by Missenden. It was comfortable, and the shower worked, and there was even a tube of imported depilatory cream for Grimes to use. After he had cleaned up he accompanied Missenden down to the saloon, a rather gloomy place paneled in dark, unpolished timber. Ellevie was already seated at one end of the long table, and halfway along it was an officer who had to be an engineer. Missenden took his seat at the head of the board, motioned to Grimes to sit at the right. A steward brought in cups and a pot of some steaming, aromatic brew, returning with what looked like two deep plates of fish stew.

  But it wasn’t bad and, in any case, it was all that there was.

  After the meal Missenden returned to the bridge. Grimes accompanied him, followed him into the chart room, where he started to potter with the things on the chart table. Grimes looked at the chart—a small-scale oceanic one. He noted that the Great Circle track was penciled on it, that neat crosses marked the plotting of dead reckoning positions at four hourly intervals. He looked from it to the ticking log clock on the forward bulkhead. He asked, “This submerged log of yours—does it run fast or slow?”

  “I . . . I don’t know, Commodore. But if the sky clears and I get some sights I’ll soon find out.”

  “You think you’ll be able to?”

  “Yes. I’ve always been good with languages, and I’ve picked up enough Tangaroan to be able to find my way through the ephemeris and reduction tables.”

  “Hmm.” Grimes looked at the aneroid barometer—another import. It was still high. With any luck at all the anti-cyclonic gloom would persist for the entire passage. In any case, he doubted if Missenden’s first attempt to obtain a fix with sextant and chronometer would be successful.

  He asked, “Do you mind i
f I have a look around the ship? As you know, I’m something of an authority on the history of marine transport.”

  “I do mind!” snapped Missenden. Then he laughed abruptly. “But what could you do? Even if you hadn’t given your parole, what could you do? All the same, I’ll send Ellevie with you. And I warn you, that girl is liable to be trigger happy.”

  “Have you known her long?”

  Missenden scowled. “Too long. She’s the main reason why I’m here.”

  Yes, thought Grimes, the radio officer of a merchant vessel is well qualified for secret service work, and when the radio officer is also an attractive woman . . . He felt sorry for Missenden, but only briefly. He’d had his fun; now he was paying for it.

  Missenden went down with Grimes to the officers’ quarters, found Ellevie in her room. She got up from her chair without any great enthusiasm, took a revolver from a drawer in her desk, thrust it into the side pocket of her tunic.

  “I’ll go now,” said Missenden.

  “All right,” she answered in a flat voice. Then, to Grimes, “What you want to see?”

  “I was on this world years ago,” he told her.

  “I know.”

  “And I was particularly impressed by the . . . the ocean passage compasses you had, even then, in your ships. Of course, it was all sail in those days.”

  “Were you?”

  Grimes started pouring on the charm. “No other race in the galaxy has invented such ingenious instruments.”

  “No?” She was beginning to show a flicker of interest. “And did you know, Commodore Grimes, that it was not a wonderful priest who made the first one? No. It was not. It was a Baron Lennardi, one of my ancestors. He was—how do you put it? A man who hunts with birds?”

  “A falconer.”

  “A falconer?” she repeated dubiously. “No matter. He had never been to the University, but he had clever artisans in his castle. His brother, whom he loved, was a—how do you say sea raider?”