To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga

by A Bertram Chandler

  “With lemon wedges . . .”

  “With mayonnaise . . .” she corrected.

  “All right. Mayonnaise.”

  “And coffee. With sugar, and great dollops of cream . . .”

  “I’ll have beer, myself, even though it is fattening.”

  “We can have beer with, and coffee after . . .”

  The door slid open and Hollister came in. Naked, the telepath looked more like a living skeleton than ever. Grimes regarded him with some distaste and wondered if the psionic radio officer had been eavesdropping. To do so would be contrary to the very strict code of the Rhine Institute—but espers, in spite of their occasional claims to superiority, are only humans.

  He said, “I’m just about cooked, Rosaleen.”

  “So am I, Captain.” She got up from her bench, the perspiration streaming down her still plump body, went through into the shower room. Through the closed door Grimes heard the hiss of the water, her little scream as its coldness hit her. There was the whine of the blowers as she dried off, and then she ran through the hot room on her way back into the solarium.

  “Quite a dish, Captain,” commented Hollister.

  “We,” Grimes told him coldly, “are neither kings nor peasants.”

  He took his own cold shower, and when he stepped out into the gymnasium Rosaleen was gone.

  Dinner that night was as unsatisfying as usual. A clear soup, a small portion of delicious baked fish with a green salad, a raw apple for desert. Grimes, at the head of the table, tried to make conversation, but the Commissioner was in a thoughtful mood and hardly spoke at all. Beadle, Slovotny, Vitelli, and Hollister wolfed their portions as though eating were about to be made illegal, saying little. The four officers excused themselves as soon as they decently could—Slovotny going up to Control to relieve von Tannenbaum for his dinner, Beadle to have a look at the air circulatory system, Vitelli to check up on the Mannschenn Drive. Hollister didn’t bother to invent an excuse. He just left. Von Tannenbaum came down, took his place at the table. He was starting to acquire a lean and hungry look that went well with his Nordic fairness. The Commissioner nodded to him, then patted her lips gently with her napkin. Grimes, interpreting the signs correctly, got up to help her from her chair. She managed to ignore the gesture.

  She said, “You must excuse me, Mr. Grimes and Mr. von Tannenbaum. I am rather busy this evening.”

  “Can I, or my officers, be of any assistance?” asked Grimes politely.

  She took her time replying, and he was afraid that she would take his offer. Then she said, “Thank you, Mr. Grimes. But it is very confidential work, and I don’t think that you have Security clearance.”

  It may have been intended as a snub, but Grimes welcomed it.

  “Good night, Ma’am.”

  “Good night, Mr. Grimes.”

  Von Tannenbaum turned to the serving robot which was waiting until he had finished his meal. “Any chance of another portion of fish, James?”

  “No, sir,” the thing replied in a metallic voice. “Her Excellency has instructed me that there are to be no second helpings, for anybody.”

  “Oh.”

  In sulky silence the navigator finished his meal. Grimes was tempted to include him in the supper party, but decided against it. The fewer people who knew about it the better.

  The two men got up from the table, each going to his own quarters. In his day cabin Grimes mixed himself a drink, feeling absurdly guilty as he did so. “Damn it all,” he muttered, “this is my ship. I’m captain of her, not that cast iron bitch!” Defiantly—but why should he feel defiant?—he finished what was in his glass, then poured another generous portion. But he made it last, looking frequently at his clock as he sipped.

  20:14 . . .

  Near enough.

  He got up, went out to the axial shaft, tried not to make too much noise going down the ladder. He paused briefly in the officers’ flat, on the deck below and abaft his own. Faint music emanated from behind the door of von Tannenbaum’s cabin—Wagner? It sounded like it—and loud snores from inside Beadle’s room. His own air circulatory system could do with overhauling, thought Grimes. Slovotny was on watch, and Hollister, no doubt, was wordlessly communicating with his psionic amplifier, the poodle’s brain in aspic. Vitelli could be anywhere, but was probably in the engine room.

  The V.I.P. suite was on the next deck down. As he passed the door Grimes could hear the Commissioner dictating something, one of the robots repeating her words. That took care of her. Another deck, with cabins for not very important people . . . He thought of tapping on Rosaleen’s door, then decided against it. In any case, she was waiting for him outside the galley.

  She whispered, “I was afraid you’d change your mind, Captain.”

  “Not bloody likely.”

  He led the way into the spotless—thanks to the industry of the robot servitors—galley. He was feeling oddly excited. It reminded him of his training cruise, when he had been a very new (and always hungry) cadet. But then there had been locks to pick . . .

  He opened the door of the tinned food storeroom, ran his eye over the shelves. He heard Rosaleen gasp. “New Erin ham . . . Carinthian sausage . . .”

  “You’ll have Atlantan sardines, my girl, and like ‘em . . . Ah, here we are . . . A can each?”

  “Two cans.”

  “All right. Here you are. You can switch on the toaster while I rummage in the bread locker . . .”

  He thrust the cans into her eager hands, then collected bread, butter and seasonings. He tore open the wrapper of the loaf, then put the thick slices on the rack under the griller. The smell of the cooking toast was mouth-watering—too mouth-watering. He hoped that it would not be distributed throughout the ship by the ventilation system. But the Commissioner’s overly efficient robots must, by this time, have put the air out-take filters to rights.

  One side done . . . He turned the slices over. Rosaleen asked plaintively, “How do you work this opener?”

  A metallic voice replied, “Like this, Miss Rosaleen—but I forbid you to use it.”

  “Take your claws off me, you tin bastard!”

  Grimes turned fast. Behind him the toast smoldered unheeded. His hands went out to clamp on the wrists of the robot, whose own hands gripped the girl’s arms. The automaton ignored him. If it could have sneered it would have done so.

  “Mr. Grimes! Rosaleen!” The Commissioner’s voice was hard as metal. In her all-grey costume she looked like a robot herself. “Mr. Grimes, please do not attempt to interfere with my servitor.” She stood there, looking coldly at the little group. “All right, John, you may release Miss Rosaleen. But not until Mr. Grimes has taken his hands off you. And now, Mr. Grimes, what is the meaning of this? I seem to have interrupted a disgusting orgy. Oh, John, you might extinguish that minor conflagration and dispose of the charred remains.”

  “Supper,” said Grimes at last.

  “Supper?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Rosaleen and I were about to enjoy a light snack.”

  “A light snack? Don’t you realize the trouble that went into working out suitable menus for this ship?” She paused, looking at Grimes with an expression of extreme distaste. “Legally, since your superiors, in a moment of aberration, saw fit to appoint you to command, you may do as you like aboard this vessel—within limits. The seduction of my maid is beyond those limits.”

  “Seduction?” This was too much. “I assure you that . . .”

  “I was not using the word in its sexual sense. Come, Rosaleen, we will leave Mr. Grimes to his feast. He has to keep his strength up—although just for what I cannot say.”

  “Ma’am!” The girl’s face was no longer soft, her voice held a compelling ring. “Since you use that word—it was I who seduced the captain.”

  “That hardly improves matters, Rosaleen. The commanding officer of a warship, even a very minor one, should not allow himself to be influenced by a woman passenger.”

  “You said it!” snapped
Grimes. This could mean the ruin of his career, but he had been pushed too far. “You said it, Mrs. Dalwood. I should never have let myself be influenced by you. I should never have allowed your tin dieticians to run loose in my galley. I should have insisted, from the very start, on running my ship my way! Furthermore . . .” He was warming up nicely. “Furthermore, I doubt if even your fellow Commissioners will approve of your ordering an officer to spy on his captain.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Grimes.”

  “Don’t you, Mrs. Dalwood? Who put you wise to this little party in the galley? Who would have known about it, who could have known about it but Hollister? I shouldn’t like to be in your shoes when the Rhine Institute gets my report on my psionic radio officer. They’re no respecters of admirals and their female equivalents.”

  “Have you quite finished, Mr. Grimes?” With the mounting flush on her cheeks the Commissioner was beginning to look human.

  “For the time being.”

  “Then let me tell you, Lieutenant, that whatever secrets Lieutenant Hollister may have learned about you are still safely locked within his mind. If you had been reading up on the latest advances in robotics—which, obviously, you have not—you would have learned that already psionic robots, electronic telepaths, are in production. This has not been advertised—but neither is it a secret. Such automata can be recognized by the little gold knob on top of their skulls . . .”

  The robot John inclined its head towards Grimes, and the golden embellishment seemed to wink at him sardonically.

  “You tin fink!” snarled the spaceman.

  “I am not a fink, sir. A fink is one who betrays his friend—and you were never a friend to me and my kind. Was it not in this very vessel, under your command, that Mr. Adam met his end?”

  “That will do, John!” snapped the Commissioner.

  “I still resent being spied upon!” almost shouted Grimes.

  “That will do, Lieutenant!”

  “Like hell it will. I give you notice that I have resigned from the Survey Service. I’ve had a bellyful of being treated like a child . . .”

  “But that is all that you are.”

  “Captain,” Rosaleen was pleading. “Please stop it. You’re only making things worse. Mrs. Dalwood, it was my fault. I swear that it was . . .”

  “Anything that happens aboard my ship is my fault,” insisted Grimes.

  “From your own mouth you condemn yourself, Lieutenant. I am tempted, as a Commissioner, to accept your resignation here and now, but I feel . . .” Her features sagged, the outlines of her body became hazy, the grey of her costume shimmered iridescently. “Leef I tub . . .” She was her normal self again. “But I feel . . .” Again the uncanny change. “Leef I tub . . .”

  This is all I need . . . thought Grimes, listening to the sudden, irregular warbling of the Manneschenn Drive, recognizing the symptoms of breakdown, time running backward and déjà vu. He had another vision—but this time he was not an elderly Survey Service Lieutenant; he was an even more elderly Rim Runners Third Mate. They’d be the only outfit in all the Galaxy that would dream of employing him—but even they would never promote him.

  The thin, high keening of the Drive faded to a barely audible hum, then died as the tumbling, ever-precessing gyroscopes slowed to a halt. From the bulkhead speakers came Slovotny’s voice—calm enough, but with more than a hint or urgency. “Captain to Control, please. Captain to Control . . .”

  “On my way!” barked Grimes into the nearest speaker/microphone. “Carry on with emergency procedure.”

  “All hands secure for Free Fall. All hands secure for Free Fall. The inertial drive will be shut down in precisely thirty seconds.”

  “What is happening, Mr. Grimes?” demanded the Commissioner.

  “It should be obvious, even to you.”

  “It is. Just what one could expect from this ship.”

  “It’s not the ship’s fault. She’s had no proper maintenance for months!”

  He pushed past the women and the robot, dived into the axial shaft. The greater part of his journey to Control was made in Free Fall conditions. He hoped maliciously that the Commissioner was being spacesick.

  At least neither the Commissioner nor her robots had the gall to infest the control room. Grimes sat there, strapped into the command seat, surrounded by his officers. “Report, Mr. Vitelli,” he said to the engineer, who had just come up from the engine room.

  “The Drive’s had it, Captain,” Vitelli told him. A greenish pallor showed through the engineer’s dark skin, accentuated by a smear of black grease. “Not only the governor bearings, but the rotor bearings.”

  “We have spares, of course.”

  “We should have spares, but we don’t. The ones we had were used by the shore gang during the last major overhaul, as far as I can gather from Mr. McCloud’s records. They should have been replaced—but all that’s in the boxes is waste and shavings.”

  “Could we cannibalize?” asked Grimes. “From the inertial drive generators?”

  “We could—if we had a machine shop to turn the bearings down to size. But that wouldn’t do us much good.”

  “Why not?”

  “The main rotor’s warped. Until it’s replaced the Drive’s unusable.”

  Beadle muttered something about not knowing if it was Christmas Day or last Thursday. Grimes ignored this—although, like all spacemen, he dreaded the temporal consequences of Mannschenn Drive malfunction.

  “Sparks—is anybody within easy reach? I could ask for a tow.”

  “There’s Princess Helga, Captain. Shall I give her a call?”

  “Not until I tell you. Mr. Hollister, have you anything to add to what Mr. Slovotny has told me?”

  “No, sir.” The telepath’s deep-set eyes were smoldering with resentment, and for a moment Grimes wondered why. Then he realized that the man must have eavesdropped on his quarrel with the Commissioner, had “heard” Grimes’ assertion that he, Hollister, had carried tales to Mrs. Dalwood. I’m sorry, Grimes thought. But how was I to know that that blasted robot was a mind-reader?

  “I should have warned you, sir,” admitted Hollister. The others looked at Grimes and Hollister curiously. Grimes could almost hear them thinking, Should have warned him of what?

  “Princess Helga . . .” murmured Grimes.

  “Light cruiser, Captain,” Slovotny told him. “Royal Skandian Navy.”

  “And is the Federation on speaking terms with Skandia?” wondered Grimes audibly. He answered his own question. “Only just. Mphm. Well, there’s no future—or too bloody much future!—in sitting here until somebody really friendly chances along. Get the Princess on the Carlotti, Sparks. Give her our coordinates. Ask her for assistance. Perhaps her engineers will be able to repair our Drive, otherwise they can tow us to the nearest port.”

  “Shouldn’t we report first to Base, Captain?” asked Slovotny.

  Yes, we should, thought Grimes. But I’m not going to. I’ll put out a call for assistance before Her Highness shoves her oar in. After that—she can have a natter to Base. He said, “Get the signal away to Princess Helga. Tell her complete Mannschenn Drive breakdown. Request assistance. You know.”

  “Ay, Captain.” Slovotny busied himself at his Carlotti transceiver. The pilot antenna, the elliptical Mobius strip rotating about its long axis, quivered, started to turn, hunting over the bearing along which the Skandian cruiser, invisible to optical instruments, unreachable by ordinary radio—which, in any case, would have had far too great a time lag—must lie.

  “Locked on,” announced the radio officer at last. He pushed the button that actuated the calling signal. Then he spoke into the microphone. “Adder to Princess Helga. Adder to Princess Helga. Can you read me? Come in, please.”

  There was the slightest of delays, and then the swirl of colors in the little glowing screen coalesced to form a picture. The young woman looking out at them could have been Princess Helga (whoever she was) herself. Sh
e was blue-eyed, and hefty, and her uniform cap did nothing to confine the tumbling masses of her yellow hair.

  “Princess Helga to Adder. I read you loud and clear. Pass your message.”

  “Complete interstellar drive breakdown,” said Slovotny. “Request assistance—repairs if possible, otherwise tow. Coordinates . . .” He rattled off a string of figures from the paper that von Tannenbaum handed him.

  The girl was replaced by a man. He should have been wearing a horned helmet instead of a cap. His eyes were blue, his hair and beard were yellow. He grinned wolfishly. He demanded, “Your Captain, please.”

  Grimes released himself from his own chair, pulled himself into the one vacated by Slovotny. “Lieutenant Grimes here, Officer Commanding Courier Ship Adder.”

  “Captain Olaf Andersen here, Lieutenant. What can I do for you?”

  “Can your engineers repair my Drive?”

  “I doubt it. They couldn’t change a fuse.”

  “What about a tow to Dhartana?”

  “Out of the question, Captain. But I can take you in to my own Base, on Skandia. The repair facilities there are excellent.”

  Grimes weighed matters carefully before answering. Skandia, one of the small, independent kingdoms, was only just on speaking terms with the Interstellar Federation. At the very best the Skandians would charge heavily for the tow, would present a fantastically heavy bill for the repair work carried out by their yard. (But he, Grimes, would not be paying it.) At the worst, Adder and her people might be interned, could become the focus of a nasty little interstellar incident, a source of acute embarrassment to the Survey Service. And so, Grimes asked himself mutinously, what? That Promotion List had made him dangerously dissatisfied with his lot, the Commissioner had strained what loyalties remained to the breaking point. The Commissioner . . .

  “What exactly is going on here?” she asked coldly.

  So she was getting in his hair again.

  “I’m arranging a tow,” Grimes told her. “The alternative is to hang here . . .” he gestured towards the viewports, to the outside blackness, to the sharp, bright, unwinking, distant stars . . . “in the middle of sweet damn all, thinking more and more seriously of cannibalism with every passing day.”