First Command

by A Bertram Chandler

  He went down to the paymaster’s office. Vinegar Nell was there, diligently filling in forms in quintuplicate. He tried to be nice to her, but she had no time for him. “Can’t you see that I’m busy, Commander Grimes?” she asked coldly. “All this work was neglected while we were on Botany Bay.” She contrived to imply that this was Grimes’s fault.

  Then Grimes, as he sometimes did, called in to the wardroom to have morning coffee with his officers. Their manner toward him was reserved, chilly. We were having a good time, their attitude implied, and this old bastard had to drag us away from it.

  So went the day. There was something going on—of that he was sure. He was, once again, the outsider, the intruder into this micro-society, resented by all. And there was nothing he could do about it. (And if there were, should he do it?)

  He was a man of regular habits. In space he required that he be called, by his steward, with a pot of morning coffee at precisely 0700 hours. This gave him an hour to make his leisurely toilet and to get dressed before breakfast. During this time, he would listen to a program of music, selected the previous night, from his little playmaster. It was the steward’s duty to switch this on as soon as he entered the daycabin.

  He awakened, this morning (as he always did) to the strains of music. Odd, he thought. He could not recall having put that particular tape into the machine. It was a sentimental song which, nonetheless, he had always liked—but it was not, somehow, the sort of melody to start the day with.

  Spaceman, the stars are calling,

  Spaceman, you have to roam,

  Spaceman, through light-years falling,

  Remember I wait at home. . . .

  He heard Mullins come into the bedroom, the faint rattle of the coffee things on the tray. He smelled something. Was the man smoking? He jerked into wakefulness, his eyes wide open. It was not Mullins. It was the girl, Sally, who had been his predecessor’s servant. She was not in uniform. She was wearing something diaphanous that concealed nothing and accentuated plenty. One of the thin cigars dangled from a comer of her full mouth. She took it out. “Here you are, Skipper. Have a drag. It’ll put you in the mood.”

  Grimes slapped the smoldering cylinder away from his face. “In the mood for what?” he snapped.

  “You mean to say that you don’t know? Not after your carryings-on with the fat cow on Botany Bay, to say nothing of that scrawny bitch of a paymaster . . . ?” She let her robe drop open. “Look at me, Skipper. I’m better than both of ‘em, aren’t I?”

  “Get out of here!” ordered Grimes. “I’ll see you later.”

  “You can see me now, Skipper.” Her robe had fallen from her. “Take a good look—an’ then try to tell me that you don’t like what you see!”

  Grimes did like it; that was the trouble. The girl had an excellent figure, although a little on the plump side. He thought of getting on to his telephone to demand the immediate presence of both Vinegar Nell and Brabham, then decided against it. Both of them would be quite capable of putting the worst possible construction on the situation. On the other hand, he had no intention of letting things go too far.

  Decisively he threw aside the covers, jumped out of the bed. The girl opened her arms, smiling suggestively. He said, “Not yet, Sally. I always like a shower first.”

  She said, “I’ll wash your back, Skipper.”

  “Good.”

  He pushed her into the shower cubicle before she could change her mind. And would it work? he wondered. On Botany Bay a swim in the warm sea had led to no diminishment of the effects of the smoke of the mutated tobacco—but the sea had always been warm. The shower would not be. When Grimes turned on the water he made sure that she did not see the setting. She screamed when the icy torrent hit her warm skin. Grimes felt like screaming too. He was not and never had been a cold shower addict. She struggled in his arms, even tried to bring her knee up into his crotch. He thought, as he blocked the attack, You’d have a job finding anything!

  She squeaked, “Turn on the hot, you stupid bastard!”

  He muttered, through chattering teeth, “This is hurting me at least as much as it’s hurting you. Now, tell me. What’s all this about?”

  Her struggles were weaker now. The cold water was draining her of strength. She whispered, “If you turn on the hot, I’ll tell you.”

  “You’ll tell me first.”

  “It—it was just a bet . . . with the other tabbies. An’ the hunks. That—that I’d get in with you, same as I was in with Commander Tallis.”

  “Where did you get the cigar? Out of my safe?”

  “I’m not a thief, Skipper. The—the snip’s lousy with the things. They’ll be worth a helluva lot back on Lindisfarne. You know how people will pay.”

  Grimes shook her. “Anything else?”

  “No, no. Please, Skipper, please. I’ll never be warm again.”

  Gratefully, Grimes adjusted the shower control. He felt at first as though he were being boiled alive. When he was sufficiently thawed he left the cubicle, with the naked girl still luxuriating in the gloriously hot water. He dressed hastily. He phoned up to the control room, got the officer of the watch. “Mr. Farrell, ring the alarm for boat stations.”

  “Boat stations, sir? But—”

  “There’s nothing like a drill at an unexpected time to make sure that all hands are on the ball. Make it boat stations. Now.”

  There was a delay of about three seconds, then the clangor of alarm bells echoed through the ship, drowning out the irregular beat of the inertial drive, the thin, high whine of the Mannschenn Drive. A taped voice repeated loudly, “All hands to boat stations! All hands to boat stations!”

  Sally emerged from the shower cubicle, dripping, her hair plastered to her head. She looked frightened. She snatched up her robe, threw it over her wet body. “Captain, what’s wrong?” she cried.

  “It’s an emergency,” Grimes told her. “Get to your station.”

  In the doorway to the dayroom she almost collided with Brabham on his way in.

  “What’s going on, sir?” demanded the first lieutenant harshly.

  “Sit down,” ordered Grimes. He waited until he was sure that Sally was out of earshot. Then he said, “I gave orders, Commander Brabham, that none of that mutated tobacco, in any form, was to be brought aboard the ship.”

  “You were smoking enough of it yourself on Botany Bay, Captain.”

  “I was. In those circumstances it was quite harmless.”

  “It will be quite harmless at parties back at Lindisfarne Base, Captain.”

  “So you’re in it, too.”

  “I didn’t say so, sir.”

  Grimes snarled. “Did you consider the effects of smoking the muck aboard this ship, with the sexes in such gross disproportion?”

  “Nobody would be so stupid—”

  “You passed that stewardess on her way out when you came in. She’s one of the stupid ones. And now, with all hands at their stations, you and I are going to make a search of the accommodation.”

  “If that’s the way you want it. Sir.”

  They started in the officers’ flat, in Brabham’s cabin. The first drawer that Grimes pulled out was full of neatly packed boxes. And the second.

  “You’re pretty blatant about this, Number One,” remarked Grimes.

  “I hardly expected that the captain would be pawing through my personal possessions with his own fair hands. Sir.”

  “Not only me.”

  “Lindisfarne Base is not a commercial spaceport, Sir. There are no customs.”

  “But the dockyard police exercise the same function,” snapped Grimes. But he knew, as well as Brabham did, that those same dockyard police would turn a blind eye to anything as long as they, personally, profited.

  All the officers, Grimes discovered, had disobeyed his orders, working on the good old principle of What he doesn’t know won’t bother him. Now he did know. Using his master key he went down through compartment after airtight compartment. Stewards and st
ewardesses . . . petty officers . . . Marines . . . general purpose ratings . . . it was even worse than he had thought. In the catering staff’s general room he found butts in the ashtrays. They must, he thought, have enjoyed quite a nice little orgy last night—and he had been pulled in at the tail end of it.

  He and a sullen Brabham rode the elevator up to the control room. Grimes went at once to the intercom microphone. He said harshly, “Attention, all hands. This is the captain speaking. It has come to my attention that large quantities of Botany Bay tobacco are being carried aboard this ship. All—I repeat all—stocks of this drug are to be taken to the after airlock, from which they will be dumped.”

  “You can’t do that, Captain!” expostulated Brabham.

  “I am doing it, mister.”

  “But it’s private property.”

  “And this ship is the property of the Federation Survey Service. We are all the property of the Service, and are bound to abide by its regulations. See that my orders are carried out, Commander Brabham.”

  “But—”

  “Jump to it!”

  “You’ll do the jumping, Commander Grimes!” It was Swinton who spoke. He had entered the control room unnoticed. He was carrying a twenty-millimeter projectile pistol, a nasty weapon designed for use inside a ship, its slug heavy and relatively slow moving, incapable of penetrating the shell plating or bulkheads of a ship. But it would make a very nasty mess of a human body.

  “Swinton! Put that thing down!”

  “Are you going to try to make me, Commander Grimes?”

  Grimes looked at Brabham and the watch officer. Brabham said, “We’re all in this, Captain. Almost all of us, that is. This business of the cigars pushed us past the point of no return.”

  “Mutiny?” asked Grimes quietly.

  “Yes. Mutiny. We owe the Survey Service nothing. From now on we’re looking after ourselves.”

  “You must be mad,” Grimes told him. “The moment Lindisfarne gets word of this there’ll be a fleet out after you.”

  “The Sparkses are with us,” said Swinton. “There’ll be no word sent out on Carlotti radio. As for that drunken bum Flannery—the first thing I did was to smash that dog’s brain in aspic of his. Without his amplifier he’s powerless.”

  “He’ll never forgive you,” said Grimes.

  “The least of my worries,” sneered Swinton.

  “And just what do you intend to do?” Grimes asked quietly. If he could keep them talking there was a chance, a faint chance, that he might be able to grab that weapon.

  “Return to Botany Bay, of course,” said Brabham.

  “You bloody fool!” snarled Swinton.

  “Why?” asked the first lieutenant calmly. “Dead men tell no tales.”

  “And even Botany Bay has laws and policemen,” remarked Grimes.

  “Do you think we haven’t thought of that?” Brabham demanded. “We intend to loaf around a bit, and make our return to Botany Bay after an interval that should correspond roughly to the time taken by a voyage to Lindisfarne and back. Our story will be that you were relieved of your command on return to Base and that I was promoted.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” said Grimes. “You’ll have Brandt to convince as well as the colonists.”

  “Oh, we’ll polish our story until it gleams while we’re cruising. We’ll make it all as watertight as a duck’s down.”

  “Down to the airlock!” ordered Swinton, gesturing with his pistol.

  “Better do as the major says,” came a deep voice from behind Grimes.

  He turned. Sergeant Washington had come into the control room, and two other Marines with him. They were all armed.

  So, he thought, this was it. This was the end of the penny section. His famous luck had at last deserted him. In any ship but this one there would be a fair number of loyalists—but whom could he count on in Discovery! Poor, drunken, useless Flannery, his one weapon, his ability to throw his thoughts across the light-years, destroyed with the killing to his psionic amplifier? Perhaps he was dead himself. He had never been popular with his shipmates. Dr. Rath, perhaps—but what could he do? Plenty, maybe—but nothing in time to save Grimes. And who else?

  He tensed himself to spring at Swinton, to wrest the pistol from his grasp before it could be fired. Perhaps. It would be suicidal—but quicker and less painful than a spacewalk without a suit. Or would it be? He realized the truth, the bitter truth, of the old adage, While there’s life, there’s hope. Perhaps he hadn’t run out of luck. Perhaps something, anything, might happen between this moment and the final moment when, locked in the cell of the airlock chamber, he realized that the air was being evacuated prior to the opening of the outer door.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m coming.”

  “You’ll soon be going,” Brabham quipped grimly.

  Chapter 32

  There was a crowd by the airlock—Langer, the bos’n; Mullins, who had been Grimes’s steward; the little slut Sally; MacMorris and several of his juniors; the radio officers. They made way for Grimes and his escorts, raised an ironic cheer. There were two men already in the chamber, facing the leveled pistols of Swinton’s Marines with pitiful defiance. One, surprisingly, was Dr. Rath; the other was Flannery. The PCO was bleeding about the face and one of his eyes was closed. No doubt he had made a vain attempt to save his macabre pet from destruction. The doctor looked, as always, as though he were on his way to a funeral. And so he is, thought Grimes with gallows humor. His own.

  Swinton painfully jabbed Grimes in the small of the back with his pistol. “Inside, you!” he snarled. Grimes tried hard to think of some fitting, cutting retort, but could not. Probably he would when it was too late, when there was no air left in his lungs to speak with.

  “Inside, bastard!”

  That pistol muzzle hurt. With what little dignity he could muster Grimes joined the two loyalists, then turned to face his tormentors. He said, reasonably, “I don’t know why you hate me so much.”

  “Because you’ve achieved everything that we haven’t,” growled Brabham. “Lucky Grimes. But throughout your service career you’ve committed all the crimes that we have, and got away with them, while our promotions have been blocked. You’re no better than us. Just luckier, that’s all. I’ve always prayed that I’d be around when your luck finally ran out. It seems that the Odd Gods of the Galaxy have seen fit to answer my prayers.” He turned to MacMorris. “Chief, what about shutting down the time-twister? We can’t make any changes in the mass of the ship with the Mannschenn Drive running.”

  So you thought of that, commented Grimes to himself. A pity.

  Suddenly there was a commotion at the rear of the crowd. Vinegar Nell, followed by Tangye, was forcing her way through, using her sharp elbows vigorously. So she wants to be in at the kill, thought Grimes bitterly.

  She demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “What does it look like?” asked Brabham.

  She snapped, “I’ll not stand for murder!”

  “Now, isn’t that just too bad?” drawled Swinton. “Perhaps you’d like to take a little spacewalk yourself. Just as a personal favor we’ll let you do it in your birthday suit.”

  One of the Marines put an eager hand out to the neck of her shirt. She slapped it away, glared at the man. “Keep your filthy paws off me, you ape!” Then, to Swinton and Brabham, “You can’t touch me!”

  “Why not?” demanded the major.

  “Try to use your brains—if you have any. How many people aboard this ship are trained as ecologists?” She pointed at Dr. Rath. “You’re about to dispose of one of them. And that leaves me. Without me to take care of the environment you’d all be poisoned or asphyxiated long before you got back to Botany Bay.” She added nastily, “And with me you could still meet the same fate if I had good reason not to feel happy.”

  Swinton laughed. “I think, Miss Russell, that I could persuade you to cooperate. After all, such persuasion is part of my traini
ng.”

  “Hold on,” put in Brabham. After all he, with all his faults, was a competent spaceman, was keenly aware that the blunder, intentional or otherwise, of one key technician can destroy a ship. He asked the paymaster, “What proposals do you have regarding the disposition of the . . . er . . . prisoners? You realize that we can’t take them back to Botany Bay. Not when Grimes and that fat cow of a mayor are eating out of each other’s hands.”

  “Mr. Tangye will tell you,” she said.

  “Well set them adrift in a boat,” stated the navigating officer.

  “Are you quite mad, Tangye?” demanded Brabham.

  “No, I’m not. We’re in no great hurry, are we? We have time on our hands, time to waste. It’ll be less than an hour’s work to remove the Carlotti transceiver and the mini-Mannschenn from whichever boat we’re letting them have.”

  “And the inertial drive,” added Brabham thoughtfully.

  “Hardly necessary. How far will they get, even at maximum acceleration, even with a long lifetime to do it in, on inertial drive only?”

  “You’ve forgotten about Flannery,” objected Swinton.

  “We haven’t,” Vinegar Nell assured him. “Without his horrid amplifier he couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag.”

  “Murder,” admitted Brabham suddenly, “has never been my cup of tea.”

  “Or mutiny?” asked Grimes hopefully, but everybody ignored him.

  “It has mine,” asserted Swinton, far too cheerfully.

  “I say, give the skipper an’ his pals a chance!” shouted Sally.

  “I second that,” grunted Langer.