Upon a Sea of Stars

by A Bertram Chandler

  “A pirate.”

  She took a key from a hook by the side of her desk. “Second Mate looks after compass,” she said. “But Second Mate not here. So I do everything.”

  She led the way out into the alleyway, then to a locked door at the forward end of the officers’ accommodation, to a room exactly on the center line of the ship, directly below the wheelhouse. She unlocked and opened the door, hooked it back. From inside came an ammonia-like odor. In the center of the deck was a cage, and in the cage was a bird—a big, ugly creature, dull gray in color, with ruffled plumage. It was obvious that its wings had been brutally amputated rather than merely clipped. Its almost globular body was imprisoned in a metallic harness, and from this cage within a cage a thin yet rigid shaft ran directly upward, through the deckhead and, Grimes knew, through a casing in the master’s day cabin and, finally, to the card of the ocean passage compass. As Grimes watched, Ellevie took a bottle of water from a rack, poured some into the little trough that formed part of the harness. Then from a box she took a spoonful of some stinking brown powder, added it to the water. The bird ignored her. It seemed to be looking at something, for something, something beyond the steel bulkhead that was its only horizon, something beyond the real horizon that lay forward and outside of the metal wall. Its scaly feet scrabbled on the deck as it made a minor adjustment of course.

  And it—or its forebears—had been the only compasses when Grimes had first come to this planet. Even though the Earthmen had introduced the magnetic compass and the gyro compass, this was still the most efficient for an ocean passage.

  Cruelty to animals is penalized only when commerical interests are not involved.

  “And your spares?” asked Grimes.

  “Homeward spare—right forward,” she told him. “Ausiphal compass and one spare—right aft.”

  “So you don’t get them mixed?” he suggested. She smiled contemptuously. “No danger of that.” “Can I see them?”

  “Why not? May as well feed them now.”

  She almost pushed Grimes out of the master compass room, followed him and locked the door. She led the way to the poop, but Grimes noticed that a couple of unpleasant looking seamen tailed after him. Even though the word had been passed that he had given his parole he was not trusted.

  The Ausiphal birds were in a cage in the poop house. As was the case with the Tangaroa birds, their wings had been amputated. Both of them were staring dejectedly directly astern. And both of them (even though dull and ruffled their plumage glowed with gold and scarlet) were females.

  Grimes followed Ellevie into the cage, the door to which was at the forward end of the structure. He made a pretense of watching interestedly as she doled out the water and the odoriferous powder—and picked up two golden tail feathers from the filthy deck. She straightened and turned abruptly. “What you want those for?”

  “Flies,” he lied inspiredly, “Dry flies.”

  “Flies?”

  “They’re artificial lures, actually. Bait. Used for fishing.”

  “Nets,” she stated. “Or explosives.”

  “Not for sport. We use a rod, and a line on the end of it, and the hook and the bait on the end of that. Fishermen are always experimenting with different baits. . . .”

  The suspicion faded from her face. “Yes, I remember. Missenden gave me a book—a magazine? It was all about outdoor sports. But this fishing . . . Crazy!”

  “Other people have said it, too. But I’d just like to see what sort of flies I can tie with these feathers when I get home.”

  “If you get home,” she said nastily.

  Back in his cabin, Grimes went over mentally what he had learned about the homers, which was as good a translation as any of their native name, during his visit to Tharn. They were land birds, but fared far out to sea in search of their food, which was fish. They always found their way back to their nests, even when blown thousands of miles away by severe storms, their powers of endurance being phenomenal. Also, whenever hurt or frightened, they headed unerringly for home—by the shortest possible route, which was a Great Circle course.

  Used as master compasses, they kept the arrowhead on the card of the steering compass pointed directly toward wherever it was that they had been born—even when that was a breeding pen in one of the seaport towns. On a Mercator chart the track would be a curve, and according to a magnetic or a gyrocompass the ship would be continually changing course; but on a globe a Great Circle is the shortest distance between two points.

  Only one instinct did they possess that was more powerful, more overriding than the homing instinct.

  The sex instinct.

  Grimes had given his word. Grimes had promised not to do certain things—and those things, he knew, were beyond his present capabilities in any case. But Grimes, as one disgruntled Rim Runners’ captain had once remarked, was a stubborn old bastard. And Grimes, as the Admiral commanding the navy of the Rim Worlds Confederacy had once remarked, was a cunning old bastard. Sonya, his wife, had laughed when told of these two descriptions of her husband, and had laughed still louder when he had said plaintively that he didn’t like to be called old.

  Nonetheless, he was getting past the age for cloak and dagger work, mutiny on the high seas and all the rest of it. But he could still use his brains.

  Kawaroa’s shorthandedness was a help. If the ship had been normally manned he would have found it hard, if not impossible, to carry out his plan. But, insofar as the officers were concerned, the two engineers were on alternate watches, and off-duty hours would be spent catching up on lost sleep. That left Ellevie—but she had watches to keep, and one of these two hour stretches of duty coincided with and overlapped evening twilight. Missenden was not a watchkeeper, but he was, as he was always saying, the only navigator, and on this evening there seemed to be the possibility of breaks appearing in the overcast. There had been one or two during the day, but never where the sun happened to be. And insofar as evening stars were concerned out here on the Rim, there were very, very few. On a clear evening there would have been three, and three only, suitably placed for obtaining a fix. On this night the odds were against even one of the three appearing in a rift in the clouds before the horizon was gone.

  Anyhow, there was Missenden, on the bridge, sextant in hand, the lid of the chronometer box in the chart room open, making an occasional gallop from one wing to the other when it seemed that a star might make a fleeting appearance. Grimes asked if he might help, if he could take the navigator’s times for him. Missenden said no, adding that the wrong times would be no help at all. Grimes looked hurt, went down to the boat deck, strolled aft. The radio shack was abaft the funnel. He looked in, just to make sure that Ellevie was there. She was, and she was tapping out a message to somebody. Grimes tried to read it—then realized that even if the code was Morse the text would be in Tangaroan.

  He went down to the officers’ deck. All lights, with the exception of the dim police bulbs in the alleyways, were out. From one of the cabins came the sound of snoring. He found Ellevie’s room without any trouble; he had been careful to memorize the squiggle over her door that meant Radio Officer. He walked to the desk, put his hand along the side of it. Yes, the key was there. Or a key. But it was the only one. He lifted it from its hook, stepped back into the alleyway, made his way forward.

  Yes, it was the right key. He opened the door, shut it behind him, then groped for the light switch. The maimed, ugly bird ignored him; it was still straining at its harness, still scrabbling now and again at the deck as it made some infinitesimal adjustment of course. It ignored him—until he pulled one of the female’s tail features from his pocket. It squawked loudly then, its head turning on its neck to point at the potent new attraction, its clumsy body straining to follow. But Grimes was quick. His arm, his hand holding the feather shot out, steadied over the brass strip let into the deck that marked the ship’s center line. But it had been close, and he had been stupid. The man at the wheel would have noticed if the
compass card had suddenly swung a full ninety degrees to starboard—and even Missenden would have noticed if the ship had followed suit. (And would he notice the discrepancies between magnetic compass and ocean passage compass? Did he ever compare compasses? Probably not. According to Captain Dingwall he was the sort of navigator who takes far too much for granted.)

  Grimes, before Missenden had ordered him off the bridge, had been able to study the chart. He assumed—he had to assume—that the dead reckoning position was reasonably accurate. In that case, if the ship flew off at a tangent, as it were, from her Great Circle, if she followed a rhumb line, she would miss the north coast of Tangaroa by all of a hundred miles. And if she missed that coast, another day’s steaming would bring her into the territorial waters of Braziperu. There was probably some sort of coastal patrol, and even though surface and airships would not be looking for Kawaroa her description would have been sent out.

  The rack containing water and food containers was on the forward bulkhead of the master compass room. It was secured to the plating with screws, and between wood and metal there was a gap. Grimes pushed the quill of the feather into this crack, being careful to keep it exactly over the brass lubber’s line. He remembered that the male homer had paid no attention to the not-so-artificial lure until he pulled it out of his pocket. Had his own body odor masked the smell of it? Was there a smell, or was it some more subtle emanation? He had learned once that the male birds must be kept beyond a certain distance from the females, no matter what intervened in the way of decks or bulkheads. So . . . ? His own masculine aura . . . ? The fact that he had put the feathers in the pocket that he usually kept his pipe in . . . ?

  He decided to leave the merest tip of the feather showing, nonetheless. He had noted that Ellevie went through her master compass tending routine with a certain lack of enthusiasm; probably she would think that the tiny touch of gold was just another rust speck on the paintwork.

  He waited in the foul-smelling compartment for what seemed like far too long a time. But he had to be sure. He decided, at last, that his scheme was working. Before the planting of the feather the maimed bird had been shifting to starboard, the merest fraction of a degree at a time, continually. Now it was motionless, just straining at its harness.

  Grimes put out the light, let himself out, locked up, then returned the key to Ellevie’s cabin. He went back up to the bridge, looked into the chart room. It seemed that Missenden had been able to take one star, but that his sums were refusing to come out right.

  The voyage wore on. It was not a happy one, especially for Grimes. There was nothing to read, and nobody to talk to except Missenden and Ellevie—and the former was all too prone to propagandize on behalf of the Galactic Superman, while the latter treated Grimes with contempt. He was pleased to note, however, that they seemed to be getting on each other’s nerves. The honeymoon, such as it had been, was almost over.

  The voyage wore on. No other ships were sighted, and the heavily clouded weather persisted. Once or twice the sun showed through, and once Missenden was able to obtain a sight, to work out a position line. It was very useful as a check of distance run, being almost at right angles to the course line.

  “We shall,” announced Missenden proudly, “make our landfall tomorrow forenoon.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Grimes mildly.

  “Of course I’m sure.” He prodded with the points of his dividers at the chart. “Look! Within five miles of the D.R.”

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes.

  “Cheer up, Commodore! As long as you play ball with the barons they won’t boil you in oil. All you have to do is be reasonable.”

  “I’m always reasonable,” said Grimes. “The trouble is that too many other people aren’t.”

  The other man laughed. “We’ll see what the Council of Barons has to say about that. I don’t bear you any malice—well, not much—but I hope I’m allowed to watch when they bring you around to their way of thinking.”

  “I hope you never have the pleasure,” snapped Grimes, going below to his cabin.

  The trouble was that he was not sure. Tomorrow might be arrival day at Port Paraparam on Tangaroa. It might be. It might not. If he started taking too much interest in the navigation of the ship—if, for example, he took it upon himself to compare compasses—his captors would at once smell a rat. He recalled twentieth century sea stories he had read, yarns in which people, either goodies or baddies, had thrown ships off course by hiding an extra magnet in the vicinity of the steering compass binnacle. Those old bastards had it easy, he thought. Magnetism is straightforward; it’s not like playing around with the tail feathers of a stupid bird.

  He did not sleep well that night, and was up on bridge before breakfast, with Missenden. Through a pair of binoculars he scanned the horizon, but there was nothing there, no distant peaks in silhouette against the pale morning sky.

  The two men were up on the bridge again after breakfast. Still there was nothing ahead but sea and sky. Missenden was beginning to look worried—and Grimes’s spirits had started to rise. Neither of them went down for the midday meal, and it was significant that the steward did not come up to ask if they wanted anything. There was something in the atmosphere of the ship that was ugly, threatening. The watches—helmsmen and lookouts—were becoming increasingly surly.

  “I shall stand on,” announced Missenden that evening. “I shall stand on. The coast is well lit, and this ship has a good echometer.”

  “But no radar,” said Grimes.

  “And whose fault is that?” flared the other. “Your blasted pet priests’. They say that they won’t introduce radar until it can be manufactured locally!”

  “There are such things as balance of trade to consider,” Grimes told him.

  “Balance of trade!” He made it sound like an obscenity. Then: “But I can’t understand what went wrong . . . the dead reckoning . . . my observed position . . .”

  “The log could be running fast. And what about set? Come to that, did you allow for accumulated chronometer error?”

  “Of course. In any case, we’ve been getting radio time signals.”

  “Are you sure that you used the right date in the ephemeris?”

  “Commodore Grimes, as I told you before, I’m a good linguist. I can read Tangaroan almost as well as I can read English.”

  “What about index error on that sextant you were using?”

  “We stand on,” said Missenden stubbornly.

  Grimes went down to his cabin. He shut the door and shot the securing bolt. He didn’t like the way the crew was looking at the two Earthmen.

  Morning came, and still no land.

  The next morning came, and the next. The crew was becoming mutinous. To Missenden’s troubles—and he was, by now, ragged from lack of sleep—were added a shortage of fresh water, the impending exhaustion of oil fuel. But he stood on stubbornly. He wore two holstered revolvers all the time, and the ship’s other firearms were locked in the strong room. And what about the one that Ellevie had been waving around? wondered Grimes.

  He stood on—and then, late in the afternoon, the first dark peak was faintly visible against the dark, clouded sky. Missenden rushed into the chart room, came back out. “Mount Rangararo!” he declared.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” said Ellevie, who had come on to the bridge.

  “It must be.” A great weight seemed to have fallen from his shoulders. “What do you make of it, Commodore?”

  “It’s land,” admitted Grimes.

  “Of course it’s land! And look! There on the starboard bow! A ship. A cruiser. Come to escort us in.”

  He snapped orders, and Kawaroa’s ensign was run up to the gaff, the black mailed fist on the scarlet ground. The warship, passing on their starboard beam, was too far distant for them to see her colors. She turned, reduced speed, steered a converging course.

  The dull boom of her cannon came a long while after the flash of orange flame from her forward turret. Ahead of K
awaroa the exploding shell threw up a great fountain of spray. It was Grimes who ran to the engine room telegraph and rang Stop. It was Ellevie who, dropping her binoculars to the deck, cried, “A Braziperuan ship!” Then she pulled her revolver from her pocket and aimed it at Missenden, yelling, “Terry traitor!” Unluckily for her she was standing just in front of Grimes, who felled her with a rabbit punch to the back of the neck. He crouched, scooped up the weapon and straightened. He said, “You’d better get ready to fight your faithful crew away from the bridge, Missenden. We should be able to hold them off until the boarding party arrives.” He snapped a shot at the helmsman, who, relinquishing his now useless wheel, was advancing on them threateningly. The man turned tail and ran.

  “You’re behind this!” raved Missenden. “What did you do? You gave your word . . .”

  “I didn’t do anything that I promised not to.”

  “But . . . what went wrong?”

  Grimes answered with insufferable smugness. “It was just a case of one bird-brained navigator trusting another.”

  The tidying up did not take long. Missenden’s crew did not put up even a token resistance to be the boarding party sent from the warship. Kawaroa was taken into the nearest Braziperuan port, where her crew was interned pending decisions as to its eventual fate. Grimes and Missenden—the latter under close arrest—made the voyage back to University City by air. The Commodore did not enjoy the trip; the big blimp seemed to him to be a fantastically flimsy contraption and, as it was one of the hydrogen-filled craft, smoking was strictly forbidden.

  He began to enjoy himself again when he was back in University City, although the task of having to arrange for the deportation of the sullen Missenden back to New Saxony was a distasteful one. When this had been attended to Grimes was finally able to relax and enjoy the hospitality and company of the High Priest and his acolytes, none of whom subscribed to the fallacy that scholarship goes hand and hand with asceticism. He would always remember the banquet at which he was made an Honorary Admiral of the Ausiphalian Navy.