Upon a Sea of Stars

by A Bertram Chandler

  The third officer said, “According to Traffic Control there are no ships in this sector. . . .”

  “Would it be a Rim Ghost?” asked the Captain. “You’re something of an expert on them, Commodore. Would one show up on the M.P.I.?”

  “Conditions would have to be exactly right,” said Grimes. “We would have had to slip into its continuum, or it into ours. The same applies, of course, to any attempt to establish radio communication.”

  “We’ll try that, sir,” said Drakenberg bluntly. Then, to Sanderson, “Line up the Carlotti.”

  The watch officer switched on the control room Carlotti communicator, a miniature version of the main set in the ship’s radio office, which was a miniature version of the huge, planet-based beacons. The elliptical Mobius Strip that was the antenna began to rotate about its long axis, fading into apparent insubstantiality as it did so. Sanderson threw the switch that hooked it up with the Mass Proximity Indicator. At once the antenna began to swing on its universal mounting, turning unsteadily, hesitantly in a wide arc. After its major oscillations had ceased it hunted for a few seconds, finally locked on.

  “Pass me the microphone,” Drakenberg ordered. Then he said, speaking slowly and very distinctly, “Rim Jaguar calling unidentified vessel. Rim Jaguar calling unidentified vessel. Come in, please. Come in, please.”

  There was a silence, broken by Grimes. “Perhaps she hasn’t got M.P.I.,” he suggested. “Perhaps she hasn’t seen us.”

  “It’s a compulsory fitting, isn’t it?” growled the master.

  “For the Federation’s ships. And for ours. But the Empire of Waverley hasn’t made it compulsory yet. Or the Shakespearian Sector.” He got out of his chair, moved to the screen. “Besides, I don’t think that this target is a ship. Not with a blip that size, and at this range. . . .”

  “What the hell else can it be?” demanded Drakenberg.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Grimes. “I don’t know. . . .”

  It hung there against the unrelieved blackness of Rim Space, a planet where no planet should have been, illuminated by a sun that wasn’t there at all. There was an atmosphere, with cloud masses. There were seas and continents. There were polar icecaps. And it was real, solid, with enough mass to hold the ship—her Inertial Drive and her Mannschenn Drive shut down—in a stable orbit about it. An Earth-type world it was, according to Rim Jaguar’s instruments—an inhabited world, with the scintillant lights of cities clearly visible scattered over its night hemisphere.

  All attempts at communication had failed. The inhabitants did not seem to have radio, either for entertainment or for the transmission of messages. Grimes, still in the control room, looked with some distaste at the useless Carlotti transceiver. Until the invention of this device, whereby ships could talk with each other, and with shore stations regardless of range and with no time lag, psionic radio officers had always been carried. In circumstances such as these a trained telepath would have been invaluable, would have been able to achieve contact with a least a few minds on the planet below. Psionic radio officers were still carried by fighting ships and by survey vessels, but Rim Jaguar was neither. She was a merchantman, and the employment of personnel required for duty only upon very special occasions would have been uneconomical.

  She did not carry sounding rockets, even. Grimes, as Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners, had been responsible for that piece of economy, had succeeded in having the regulations amended. He had argued that ships trading only in a well charted sector of space had no need for such expensive toys. It had not been anticipated that an unknown planet—matter or anti-matter?—would appear suddenly upon the track between Mellise and Lorn.

  But the construction of a small liquid fuel rocket is little more than a matter of plumbing, and the Jaguar’s engineers were able to oblige. Her second officer—as well as being the ship’s navigator he specialized in gunnery in the Confederacy’s Naval Reserve—produced a crude but effective homing device for the thing. It was hardly necessary. The range was short and the target a big one.

  The rocket was fired on such a trajectory that it would hit the night side while the ship was directly over the hemisphere. Radar tracked it down to the outer reaches of the atmosphere, where it disintegrated. But it was a normal, meteoric destruction by impact and friction, not the flare of released energy that would have told of the meeting of matter and anti-matter. That was that. The initial reports of the sighting, together with all the relevant coordinates, had already been sent to Lorn; all that remained now was to report the results of the sounding rocket experiment. Grimes was scribbling the message down on a signal pad, and Drakenberg was busy with the preliminaries of putting the ship back on to trajectory, when the radio officer came into the control room. He was carrying three envelopes, one of which he handed to the Captain, giving the two to the Commodore. Grimes knew what their contents would be, and sighed audibly. Over the years he had become too much of an expert on the dimensional oddities encountered out on the rim of the galaxy. And he was the man on the spot—just when he was in a hurry to be getting home.

  The first message was from Rim Runners’ Board of Management and read, Act as instructed by Admiral Commanding Confederate Navy. The second one was from Admiral Kravinsky. Carry out full investigation of strange planet. Drakenberg, scowling, handed Grimes the flimsy that had been inside his own envelope. Its content was clear enough, Place self and vessel under orders of Commodore Grimes, Rim Worlds Naval Reserve.

  “Keep the ship in orbit, Captain,” ordered Grimes resignedly.

  A dust mote in the emptiness, Rim Jaguar’s number two lifeboat fell toward the mysterious planet. In it were two men only—Grimes and Sanderson, the freighter’s third officer. There had been no shortage of volunteers, from the Master on down, but Grimes, although a high ranking officer of the Naval Reserve, was still an employee of a commercial shipping line. To make a landing on an unknown world with horse, foot and artillery is all very well when you have the large crew of a warship to draw upon; should the initial expedition come to grief there is sufficient personnel left aboard the vessel to handle her and, if necessary, to man her weaponry. But insofar as manning is concerned, a merchant ship is run on a shoestring. There are no expendable ratings, and the loss of even one officer from any department means, at least, considerable inconvenience.

  Grimes’s decision to take only Sanderson with him had not been a popular one, but the young man had been the obvious choice. He was unmarried—was an orphan. He did not have a steady girlfriend, even. Furthermore, he had just completed a period of Naval Reserve training and rather fancied himself a small arms expert.

  Rim Jaguar, however did not carry much of an armory. Grimes had with him his own Minetti and one of the ship’s laser handguns. Sanderson had one of the other lasers—there were only three on board—and a vicious ten millimeter projectile pistol. There were spare power packs and a good supply of ammunition for all weapons.

  The third officer, who was handling the boat, was talkative on the way down. Grimes did not mind—as long as the young man kept his trap shut and concentrated on his piloting as soon as the little craft hit the atmosphere.

  “This is a rum go,” he was saying. “How do you explain it, sir? All that obvious sunlight, and no sun at all in the sky . . .”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Grimes told him. Like, he thought, the series of alternative universes he had explored—although not thoroughly—in that voyage of the Faraway Quest that somebody had referred to as a Wild Ghost Chase. And that other universe, into which he had quite literally blown his ship, the one in which those evil non-human mutants had ruled the Rim. On both of those occasions Sonya had been with him. She should have been with him now—not this lanky, blond, blue-eyed puppy. But that wasn’t Sanderson’s fault, and in any case Grimes did not think that he would find the young man lacking in any respect.

  “I suppose,” the third officer rattled on, “that it’s all something to do with different dimensions
. Here we’re at the very edge of the expanding galaxy, and the barriers between continua must be stretched thin, very thin. That planet’s popped through into our continuum, but only half through, if you see what I mean. Its primary has stayed put on the other side of the boundary. . . .”

  “A fairish hypothesis,” admitted Grimes. “It will have to do until we can think of a better one.”

  And, he told himself, there must be a better one. As far as he knew the difference between the universes were cultural rather than cosmological. There just couldn’t be a planet here—or a sun with a family of planets.

  “And I wonder what the people are like, sir. Would they be humanoid, do you think, or even human? They must be civilized. They have cities.”

  Grimes muttered something about plastic jungles.

  “Not plastic, sir. They haven’t radio, so the chances are that they don’t run to chemical engineering. Concrete jungles . . . would that be better?”

  Grimes allowed himself to suppose that it might be.

  “You couldn’t have timed it better, sir. That large town you decided on will be just clear of the terminator when we get down.”

  In the Federation’s Survey Service, thought Grimes, we were drilled so that such timing became second nature. How had that instructor put it? “Make your first landing just west of the terminator, and unless some bastard chases you off you’ve the whole day to play silly buggers in.”

  “Better fasten seat belts, sir.”

  Grimes pulled the webbing taut across his body, snapped shut the buckle. In a boat fitted with Inertial Drive the ride down to the planetary surface should be a smooth one, provided that there was no atmosphere turbulence. But here there was no spaceport control to give information on meteorological conditions. He spoke into the microphone of the transceiver. “Commodore to Rim Jaguar. We are now entering exosphere. So far all in going as planned.” He heard Drakenberg acknowledge.

  The air below the boat was clear, abnormally so. The lights of the cities were like star clusters. For a brief second Grimes entertained the crazy idea that they were star clusters, that he and Sanderson had broken through into some other time and space, were somehow adrift in regions toward the heart of a galaxy. He looked upward for reassurance. But he did not, through the transparency of the overhead viewport, see the familiar, almost empty Rim sky. The firmament was ablaze with unfamiliar constellations. It was frightening. Had Sanderson, somehow, turned the boat over just as Grimes had shifted his regard? He had not, as a glance at the instrument panel made obvious. He had not—and below were still the city lights, and from zenith to horizon there were the stars, and low to the west was a great golden moon. Astern, the first rosy flush of dawn was in the sky.

  His voice unemotional, deliberately flat, Grimes reported his observations to the ship.

  Swiftly the boat fell through the atmosphere, so fast that interior temperature rose appreciably. But Sanderson was a first class pilot and at no time did he allow the speed of descent to approach dangerous limits. Swiftly the boat fell, her Inertial Drive purring gently, resisting but not overcoming the gravitational field that had her in its grip. Through the morning twilight she dropped, and above her only the brighter stars were visible in the pale sky, and below her the land masses were gray-green rather than black, and the city lights had lost their sharp scintillance and were going out, street by street.

  It was toward what looked like a park that Sanderson, on Grimes’s instructions, was steering, an irregular rectangle of comparative darkness outlined by such lights as were still burning. There were trees there, the men could see as the boat lost altitude; there were trees, and there were dull-gleaming ribbons and amoeboid shapes that looked like water, and featureless patches that must be clear level ground. Bordering the park were the towers of the city—tall, fantastically turreted and, when struck by the first bright rays of the rising sun, shining like jewels in the reflected radiance.

  The boat grounded gently on a soft, resilient surface. Grimes looked at Sanderson and Sanderson looked at Grimes, and then they both stared out of the viewports. They had landed in the middle of the park, on what looked like a lawn of emerald green grass, not far from the banks of a stream. There were trees in the foreground, low, static explosions of dark foliage among which gleamed, scarlet and crimson and gold, what were either fruit or flowers. In the background were the distant towers, upthrusting like the suddenly frozen spray of some great fountain, an opalescent tracery against the clear blue sky.

  “Open up, sir?” asked the young officer at last.

  “Yes,” said Grimes. An itemized list of all the precautions that should be taken before setting foot on a strange planet briefly flashed before his mind’s eye, but he ignored it. And to wear a spacesuit in this huge, gorgeous garden would be heresy. But not all of his training could be dismissed so easily. Reluctantly he picked up the microphone, made his report to the ship. He concluded with the words, “We’re going out, now, to make contact with the natives. You have your instructions, Captain.”

  “Yes, Commodore Grimes.” Grimes wondered why Drakenberg should sound so anxious. “If I don’t hear from you again twenty-four standard hours from now, at the latest, I’m to make a report directly to the Admiralty and await their orders.” He hesitated, then brought out the final words with some difficulty. “And on no account am I to attempt another landing.”

  “That is correct, Captain Drakenberg. Over.”

  “Good luck, Commodore Grimes. Over and out.”

  Sanderson already had both air lock doors open and the cool breeze had eddied gently through the little cabin, flushing out the acridity of hot oil and machinery, bringing with it the scent of flowers, of dew-wet grass. There were birds singing outside and then, faint yet clear, the sound of a great clock somewhere in the city striking the hour. Automatically Grimes looked at his watch, made to reset it and then smiled at his foolishness. He did not know yet what sort of time it was that these people kept.

  He was first out of the boat, jumping down onto the velvety turf, joined almost at once by Sanderson. “This is beautiful!” exclaimed the young man. “I hope that the natives come up to what we’ve seen so far.” He added, “The girls especially.”

  Grimes should have reproved him, but he didn’t. He was too busy wondering what it was that made everything, so far, so familiar. He had never seen this world before, or any planet like it, and yet. . . How did he know, for example, that this city’s name was Ayonoree? How could he know?

  “Which way do we go, sir?” Sanderson was asking.

  Which way? The memory, if it was memory, wasn’t quite good enough. “We’ll follow the stream,” he decided.

  It was a short walk to the near bank of the little river, along which ran a path of flagstones. The water was crystal clear, gently flowing. On it floated great lily pads, and on one of these sat a huge frog, all gold and emerald, staring at them with bright, protuberant eyes. It croaked loudly.

  “It’s saying something!” cried Sanderson.

  “Rubbish!” snapped Grimes, who was trying to break the odd spell that had been cast over them. But were those words that they could hear?

  Follow stream stay in the dream.

  Follow stream stay in the dream.

  “You!” shouted Sanderson. “What do you mean?”

  In reply the batrachian croaked derisively, splashed into the water and struck out slowly for the further shore.

  So we follow the stream, thought Grimes. He set off along the path, the young man tailing behind. Suddenly he stopped. There was a tree, gracefully trailing its tendril-like branches almost to the water, to one side of the flagstones, another tree a few yards inshore from it. Between the trunks was a huge, glittering web. There was a spider, too, disgustingly hairy, as large as a man’s clenched fist, scuttling toward the center of its fragile-seeming net. And there was an insect of some kind, a confused fluttering of gauzy wings, snared by the viscous strands.

  Grimes made to detour a
round the landward tree. After all, spiders were entitled to a meal, just as he was. Insofar as the uglier sides of Nature were concerned he tried to maintain his neutrality. He did not especially like spiders—but, in all probability, that oversized insect in the web was something even more unpleasant.

  Behind him he heard Sanderson cry out, heard the hiss of his laser pistol and felt the heat of the beam that narrowly missed his right ear. The fleshy body of the spider exploded and hung there, tattered and steaming. There was a sickening stench of burned flesh.

  Grimes turned angrily on the young man. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? For all we know, spiders are sacred on this world!”

  “More likely these are!”

  Sanderson had pushed past Grimes and, with gentle hands, was freeing the trapped creature. “Look!” he was saying. “Look!”

  The Commodore looked. This was not, as he assumed, an insect. It was humanoid, a winged woman, but tiny, tiny. Her lustrous golden hair hung to her waist, and beneath her filmy green robe was the hint of perfectly formed breasts. Her mouth was scarlet and her eyes blue, and her features were perfectly formed. She sat there in the third officer’s cupped hands, looking up at him. Her voice, when she spoke, was like the tinkling of a little silver bell.

  “Follow stream, and follow river,

  “When danger threatens do not quiver;

  “Follow stream to Ogre’s Keep,

  “Wake the Princess from her sleep!”

  “What princess?” demanded Grimes.

  She turned to glare to him.

  “Prince’s servitors like you,

  “Should only speak when spoken to.”

  Sanderson was shocked. “This is the Commodore,” he said severely to the winged being.

  “Commodore, Schmommodore!” she replied sweetly—and then, with hardly a quiver of those impractical looking pinions, was gone.