To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga

by A Bertram Chandler

  Down they went, and down . . .

  They came, at last, to the end of a long passageway, closed off by a grilled door, the first that Grimes had seen in the hive. On the farther side of it were six workers, hung about with metal accoutrements. Workers? No, Grimes decided, soldiers, Amazons. Did they, he wondered, have stings, like their Terran counterparts? Perhaps they did—but the laser pistols that they held would be far more effective.

  “Who comes?” asked one of them in the sort of voice that Grimes associated with sergeant-majors.

  “The Princess Shrla, with Drones Brrynn and Drryhr, and Earth-Drone-Captain Grrimes.”

  “Enter, Princess Shrla, Enter, Earth-Drone-Captain Grrimes.”

  The grille slid silently aside, admitting Grimes and the Princess, shutting again, leaving the two drones on its further side. Two soldiers led the way along a tunnel that, by the Earthman’s standards, was very poorly illuminated, two more brought up the rear. Grimes was pleased to note that the Princess seemed to have lost most of her arrogance.

  They came, then, into a vast chamber, a blue-lit dimness about which the shapes of the Queen-Mother’s attendants rustled, scurried and crept. Slowly they walked over the smooth, soft floor—under Grimes’s shoes it felt unpleasantly organic—to the raised platform on which lay a huge, pale shape. Ranged around the platform were screens upon which moved pictures of scenes all over the planet—one of them showed the spaceport, with Adder standing tall slim and gleaming on the apron—and banks of dials and meters. Throne-room this enormous vault was, and nursery, and the control room of a world.

  Grimes’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the near-darkness. He looked with pity at the flabby, grossly distended body with its ineffectual limbs, its useless stubs of wings. He did not, oddly enough, consider obscene the slowly moving belt that ran under the platform, upon which, at regular intervals, a glistening, pearly egg was deposited, neither was he repelled by the spectacle of the worker whose swollen body visibly shrank as she regurgitated nutriment into the mouth of the Shaara Queen—but he was taken aback when that being spoke to him while feeding was still in progress. He should not have been, knowing as he did that the artificial voice boxes worn by the Shaara have no connection with their organs of ingestion.

  “Welcome, Captain Grimes,” she said in deep, almost masculine tones.

  “I am honored, Your Majesty,” he stammered.

  “You do us a great service, Captain Grimes.”

  “That is a pleasure as well as an honor, Your Majesty.”

  “So . . . But, Captain Grimes, I must, as you Earthmen say, put you in the picture.” There was a short silence. “On Brooum there is crisis. Disease has taken its toll among the hives, a virus, a mutated virus. A cure was found—but too late. The Brooum Queen-Mother is dead. All Princesses not beyond fertilization age are dead. Even the royal eggs, larvae and pupae were destroyed by the disease.

  “We, of course, are best able to afford help to our daughters and sisters on Brooum. We offered to send a fertilizable Princess to become Queen-Mother, but the Council of Princesses which now rules the colony insists that their new monarch be born, as it were, on the planet. So, then, we are dispatching, by your vessel, a royal pupa. She will tear the silken sheath and emerge, as an imago, into the world over which she will reign.”

  “Mphm . . .” grunted Grimes absentmindedly. “Your Majesty,” he added hastily.

  The Queen-Mother turned her attention to the television screens. “If we are not mistaken,” she said, “the loading of the refrigerated canister containing the pupa has been completed. Princess Shrla will take you back to your ship. You will lift and proceed as soon as is practicable.” Again she paused, then went on. “We need not tell you, Captain Grimes, that we Shaara have great respect for Terran spacemen. We are confident that you will carry out your mission successfully. We shall be pleased, on your return to our planet, to confer upon you the Order of the Golden Honeyflower.

  “On your bicycle, spaceman!”

  Grimes looked at the recumbent Queen dubiously. Where had she picked up that expression? But he had heard it said—and was inclined to agree—that the Shaara were more human than many of the humanoids throughout the Galaxy.

  He bowed low—then, following the Princess, escorted by the soldiers, made his way out of the throne-room.

  It is just three weeks, Terran Standard, from Droomoor to Brooum as the Serpent Class Courier flies. That, of course, is assuming that all systems are Go aboard the said Courier. All systems were not Go insofar as Adder was concerned. This was the result of an unfortunate combination of circumstances. The ship had been fitted with a new computer at Lindisfarne Base, a new Engineering Officer—all of whose previous experience had been as a junior in a Constellation Class cruiser—had been appointed to her, and she had not been allowed to stay in port long enough for any real maintenance to be carried out.

  The trouble started one evening, ship’s time, when Grimes was discussing matters with Spooky Deane, the psionic communications officer. The telepath was, as usual, getting outside a large, undiluted gin. His captain was sipping a glass of the same fluid, but with ice cubes and bitters as additives.

  “Well, Spooky,” said Grimes, “I don’t think that we shall have any trouble with this passenger. She stays in her cocoons—the home-grown one and the plastic outer casing—safe and snug and hard-frozen, and thawing her out will be up to her loyal subjects. By that time we shall be well on our way . . .”

  “She’s alive, you know,” said Deane.

  “Of course she’s alive.”

  “She’s conscious, I mean. I’m getting more and more attuned to her thoughts, her feelings. It’s always been said that it’s practically impossible for there to be any real contact of minds between human and Shaara telepaths, but when you’re cooped up in the same ship as a Shaara, a little ship at that . . .”

  “Tell me more,” ordered Grimes.

  “It’s . . . fascinating. You know, of course, that race memory plays a big part in the Shaara culture. The princess, when she emerges as an imago, will know just what her duties are, and what the duties of those about her are. She knows that her two main functions will be to rule and to breed. Workers exist only to serve her, and every drone is a potential father to her people . . .”

  “Mphm. And is she aware of us?”

  “Dimly, Captain. She doesn’t know, of course, who or what we are. As far as she’s concerned we’re just some of her subjects, in close attendance upon her . . .”

  “Drones or workers?”

  Spooky Deane laughed. “If she were more fully conscious, she’d be rather confused on that point. Males are drones, and drones don’t work . . .”

  Grimes was about to make some unkind remarks about his officers when the lights flickered. When they flickered a second time he was already on his feet. When they went out he was halfway through the door of his day cabin, hurrying towards the control room. The police lights came on, fed from the emergency batteries—but the sudden cessation of the noise of pumps and fans, the cutting off in mid-beat of the irregular throbbing of the inertial drive, was frightening. The thin, high whine of the Mannschenn Drive Unit deepened as the spinning, precessing gyroscopes slowed to a halt, and as they did so there came the nauseating dizziness of temporal disorientation.

  Grimes kept going, although—as he put it, later—he didn’t know if it was Christmas Day or last Thursday. The ship was in Free Fall now, and he pulled himself rapidly along the guide rail, was practically swimming in air as he dived through the hatch into Control.

  Von Tannenbaum had the watch. He was busy at the auxiliary machinery control panel. A fan restarted somewhere, but a warning buzzer began to sound. The navigator cursed. The fan motor slowed down and the buzzer ceased.

  “What’s happened, Pilot?” demanded Grimes.

  “The Phoenix Jennie I think, Captain. Vitelli hasn’t reported yet . . .”

  Then the engineer’s shrill, excited voice sounded f
rom the intercom speaker. “Auxiliary engine room to Control! I have to report a leakage of deuterium!”

  “What pressure is there in the tank?” Grimes asked.

  “The gauges still show 20,000 units. But . . .”

  “But what?” Grimes snapped.

  “Captain, the tank is empty.”

  Grimes pulled himself to his chair, strapped himself in. He looked out through the viewports at the star-begemmed blackness, each point of light hard and sharp, no longer distorted by the temporal precession fields of the Drive, each distant sun lifetimes away with the ship in her present condition. Then he turned to face his officers—Beadle, looking no more (but no less) glum than usual, von Tannenbaum, whose normally ruddy face was now as pale as his hair, Slovotny, whose dark complexion now had a greenish cast, and Deane, ectoplasmic as always. They were joined by Vitelli, a very ordinary looking young man who was, at the moment, more than ordinarily frightened.

  “Mr. Vitelli,” Grimes asked him. “This leakage—is it into our atmosphere or outside the hull?”

  “Outside, sir.”

  “Good. In that case . . .” Grimes made a major production of filling and lighting his battered pipe. “Now I can think. Mphm. Luckily I’ve not used any reaction mass this trip, so we have ample fuel for the emergency generator. Got your slipstick ready, Pilot? Assuming that the tanks are full, do we have enough to run the inertial and interstellar drives from here to Brooum?”

  “I’ll have to use the computer, Captain.”

  “Then use it. Meanwhile, Sparks and Spooky, can either of you gentlemen tell me what ships are in the vicinity?”

  “The Dog Star Line’s Basset,” Slovotny told him. “The cruiser Draconis” added Deane.

  “Mphm.” It would be humiliating for a Courier Service Captain to have to call for help, but Draconis would be the lesser of two evils. “Mphm. Get in touch with both vessels, Mr. Deane. I’m not sure that we can spare power for the Carlotti, Mr. Slovotny. Get in touch with both vessels, ask their positions and tell them ours. But don’t tell them anything else.”

  “Our position, sir, is . . . ?”

  Grimes swiveled his chair so that he could see the chart tank, rattled off the coordinates, adding, “Near enough, until we get an accurate fix . . .”

  “I can take one now, Captain,” von Tannenbaum told him.

  “Thank you, Pilot. Finished your sums?”

  “Yes.” The navigator’s beefy face was expressionless. “To begin with, we have enough chemical fuel to maintain all essential services for a period of seventy-three Standard days. But we do not have enough fuel to carry us to Brooum, even using Mannschenn Drive only. We could, however, make for ZX1797—Sol-type, with one Earth-type planet, habitable but currently uninhabited by intelligent life forms . . .”

  Grimes considered the situation. If he were going to call for help he would be better off staying where he was, in reasonable comfort.

  “Mr. Vitelli,” he said, “you can start up the emergency generator. Mr. Deane, as soon as Mr. von Tannenbaum has a fix you can get a message out to Basset and Draconis . . . “

  “But she’s properly awake,” Deane muttered. “She’s torn open the silk cocoon, and the outer canister is opening . . .”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” barked Grimes.

  “The Princess. When the power went off the refrigeration unit stopped. She . . .” The telepath’s face assumed an expression of rapt devotion. “We must go to her . . .”

  “We must go to her . . .” echoed Vitelli.

  “The emergency generator!” almost yelled Grimes. But he, too, could feel that command inside his brain, the imperious demand for attention, for . . . love. Here, at last, was something, somebody whom he could serve with all the devotion of which he was, of which he ever would be capable. And yet a last, tattered shred of sanity persisted.

  He said gently, “We must start the emergency generator. She must not be cold or hungry.”

  Beadle agreed. “We must start the emergency generator. For her.”

  They started the emergency generator and the ship came back to life—of a sort. She was a small bubble of light and warmth and life drifting down and through the black immensities.

  The worst part of it all, Grimes said afterwards, was knowing what was happening but not having the willpower to do anything about it. And then he would add, “But it was educational. You can’t deny that. I always used to wonder how the Establishment gets away with so much. Now I know. If you’re a member of the Establishment you have that inborn . . . arrogance? No, not arrogance. That’s not the right word. You have the calm certainty that everybody will do just what you want. With our Establishment it could be largely the result of training, of education. With the Shaara Establishment no education or training is necessary.

  “Too, the Princess had it easy—almost as easy as she would have done had she broken out of her cocoon in the proper place at the proper time. Here she was in a little ship, manned by junior officers, people used to saluting and obeying officers with more gold braid on their sleeves. For her to impose her will was child’s play. Literally child’s play in this case. There was a communication problem, of course, but it wasn’t a serious one. Even if she couldn’t actually speak, telepathically, to the rest of us, there was Spooky Deane. With him she could dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

  “And she did.”

  And she did.

  Adder’s officers gathered in the cargo compartment that was now the throne-room. A table had been set up, covered with a cloth that was, in actuality, a new Federation ensign from the ship’s flag locker. To it the Princess—the Queen, rather—clung with her four posterior legs. She was a beautiful creature, slim, all the colors of her body undimmed by age. She was a glittering, bejeweled piece of abstract statuary, but she was alive, very much alive. With her great, faceted eyes she regarded the men who hovered about her. She was demanding something. Grimes knew that, as all of them did. She was demanding something—quietly at first, then more and more insistently.

  But what?

  Veneration? Worship?

  “She hungers,” stated Deane.

  She hungers . . . thought Grimes. His memory was still functioning, and he tried to recall what he knew of the Shaara.

  He said, “Tell her that her needs will be satisfied.”

  Reluctantly yet willingly he left the cargo compartment, making his way to the galley. It did not take him long to find what he wanted, a squeeze bottle of syrup. He hurried back with it.

  It did not occur to him to hand the container to the Queen. With his feet in contact with the deck he was able to stand before her, holding the bottle in his two hands, squeezing out the viscous fluid, drop by drop, into the waiting mouth. Normally he would have found that complexity of moving parts rather frightening, repulsive even—but now they seemed to possess an essential rightness that was altogether lacking from the clumsy masticatory apparatus of a human being. Slowly, carefully he squeezed, until a voice said in his mind, Enough. Enough.

  “She would rest now,” said Deane.

  “She shall rest,” stated Grimes.

  He led the way from the cargo compartment to the little wardroom.

  * * *

  In a bigger ship, with a larger crew, with a senior officer in command who, by virtue of his rank, was a member of the Establishment himself, the spell might soon have been broken. But this was only a little vessel, and of her personnel only Grimes was potentially a rebel. The time would come when this potentiality would be realized—just as, later, the time of compromise would come—but it was not yet. He had been trained to obedience—and now there was aboard Adder somebody whom he obeyed without question, just as he would have obeyed an Admiral.

  In the wardroom the officers disposed of a meal of sorts, and when it was over Grimes, from force of habit, pulled his pipe from his pocket, began to fill it.

  Deane admonished him, saying, “She wouldn’t like it. It taints the air.”


  “Of course,” agreed Grimes, putting his pipe away.

  Then they sat there, in silence, but uneasily, guiltily. They should have been working. There was so much to be done about the Hive. Von Tannenbaum at last unbuckled himself from his chair and, finding a soft rag, began, unnecessarily, to polish a bulkhead. Vitelli muttered something about cleaning up the engine room and drifted away, and Slovotny, saying that he would need help, followed him. Beadle took the dirty plates into the pantry—normally he was one of those who washes the dishes before a meal.

  “She is hungry,” announced Deane.

  Grimes went to the galley for another bottle of syrup.

  So it went on, for day after day, with the Queen gaining strength and, if it were possible, even greater authority over her subjects. And she was learning. Deane’s mind was open to her, as were the minds of the others, but to a lesser degree. But it was only through Deane that she could speak.

  “She knows,” said the telepath, “that supplies in the Hive are limited, that sooner or later, sooner rather than later, we shall be without heat, without air or food. She knows that there is a planet within reach. She orders us to proceed there, so that a greater Hive may be established on its surface.”

  “Then let us proceed,” agreed Grimes.

  He knew, as they all knew, that a general distress call would bring help—but somehow was incapable of ordering it made. He knew that the establishment of a Hive, a colony on a planet of ZX1797 would be utterly impossible—but that was what she wanted.

  So Adder awoke from her sleeping state, vibrating to the irregular rhythm of the inertial drive and, had there been an outside observer, flickered into invisibility as the gyroscopes of the Mannschenn Drive unit precessed and tumbled, falling down and through the warped continuum, pulling the structure of the ship with them.

  Ahead was ZX1797, a writhing, multi-hued spiral, expanding with every passing hour.

  It was von Tannenbaum who now held effective command of the ship—Grimes had become the Queen’s personal attendant, although it was still Deane who made her detailed wishes known. It was Grimes who fed her, who cleansed her, who sat with her hour after hour in wordless communion. A part of him rebelled, a part of him screamed soundlessly and envisaged hard fists smashing those great, faceted eyes, heavy boots crashing through fragile chitin. A part of him rebelled—but was powerless—and she knew it. She was female and he was male and the tensions were inevitable, and enjoyable to one if not to the other.