He said, “All right. I can take a hint. I’m opening the airlock door now.” He pressed the necessary button on the console. He told Tamara, “Get dressed. The Shaara are only glorified insects, but we have to keep up appearances. Put on something with as much gold trimming as possible. And jewelry.” Then again into the microphone, “You will have to wait a few minutes, I’m afraid. We have to do some minor housekeeping before we can receive guests.”
“Do not attempt any treachery, Little Sister. And I warn you that our engineers are standing by to synchronize should you succeed in restarting your interstellar drive.”
They possibly could, too, thought Grimes. With the two ships practically alongside each other Baroom’s spacetime-warper would be the master and Little Sister’s the slave . . . He hurried aft, opened the locker that he was using as a wardrobe, practically threw on to his body the hated gold and purple livery that was a relic of his servitude to the Baroness d’Estang. As he fastened the last button he turned to see Tamara looking at him. She had attired herself in a long robe of dark blue velvet down the front of which sprawled a dragon worked in gold and jewels, its snout practically nuzzling her throat, a gleaming claw over each breast. Rings glittered on her fingers, pendants that were almost miniature chandeliers dangled from her ears. A golden tiara, set with diamonds, was dazzling against the blackness of her hair. He grinned, “You’ll do.”
She grinned, “And so, Grimes, will you. Anybody would think that you were a Galactic Admiral.”
“Now,” he told her, “we put out a fine display of booze and sweetmeats on the table. Those liqueurs of yours . . .”
“Anyone would think,” she said, “that you like the Shaara.”
“I get along with them—when I have to. And I know them, and their weaknesses . . .”
When they had put the liquor and candy on display they went back forward. Looking through the control cab ports Grimes saw that an airlock door was open in the side of the other ship. He said, “We’ve tidied up. You can board now.”
“We are boarding,” came the reply. “The Princess Shree-la and Drones Brrell and Boorrong are on their way . . .”
Through his binoculars Grimes watched three figures, clad in cocoon-like Shaara spacesuits, emerge from the airlock, saw a puff of vapor from the rear of each almost featureless sack.
He said to the girl, “In their ships the captain is a queen. The princesses are her officers. The drones are, more or less, like the marines in our warships. The workers are the engineers and technicians.” He paused. “I notice that the Queen-Captain isn’t sending any workers across. Doesn’t look as though she’s in any hurry to help us to get the drive fixed.”
“Then what does she want?” asked the Superintending Postmistress.
“Loot,” said Grimes bitterly. “She’s a Rogue Queen. She and her swarm are on a flight to try to find a suitable planet on which to settle down and found a new colony. They’ll not be too concerned about the rights of any indigenes who may be in residence. Meanwhile, they snap up anything left lying around. Like us . . .” He paused, watching the three cocoons drawing closer and closer. “And this ship, this pinnace, will represent untold wealth to them. Their instruments will have told them what she’s built of. And they love precious metals—for themselves, not only just for their monetary value.”
“And the liquor? I’ve heard that they . . . er . . . tend to overindulge . . .”
“You heard right. With any luck at all the princess will dip her proboscis into a bottle, and the drones will follow suit. And when they’ve passed out I’ll replace that burned out wire.”
“But the Queen-Captain said that her ship would be able to synchronize temporal precession rates . . .”
“Yes. But I think that I shall be able to set my controls for random precession . . .” He hoped that he would be able to do so. He had seen the technique demonstrated during a Survey Service engineering course for spaceman officers. It involved hooking up the Carlotti antenna with the Mannschenn Drive controls, thereby engendering a sort of unholy mechanical hybrid. “They’re here,” she said.
“They’re here,” he agreed, watching the tell-tale lights on the panel that showed that the airlock was occupied.
From the NST transceiver came the voice of the Queen-Captain. “The princess is in the chamber. You will admit her to your ship, and then, one by one, the drones.”
“Wilco,” replied Grimes briefly.
The airlock, he saw was re-pressurized. He opened the inner door. The princess came through into the main cabin, looking like a sheeted ghost out of some old story of the supernatural. Anything at all could have been under the folds of that white shroud. Then the protective garment fell away from her, dropped to her taloned feet. She stood there, a splendid creature, as tall as Tamara, taller than Grimes, regarding the two humans through her glittering, faceted eyes. Her gauzy, iridescent wings hung down her back like a flimsy, bejewelled cloak. Golden filigree gleamed in the rich, chocolate brown fur that covered her body and bracelets of fine gold wire encircled, between every joint, her four slender arms. Her voice box, strapped to her thorax, was also of gold.
“Which of you is the captain?” she asked.
“I am,” said Grimes. “And this is Madam Tamara Haverstock, the Superintending Postmistress of Tiralbin.”
“And your name, Captain?”
“Grimes. John Grimes.”
“We have heard of you.” Although the artificial voice was without inflection Grimes could detect disapproval. He had become involved with an alcoholic Shaara princess some years ago and the news must have gotten around. “Now, please to admit my escort.”
Grimes admitted them. They were smaller than the princess, each about half the size of a grown man. Like her they were lavishly bedecked with personal jewelry. Even their gun-belts and holsters and the butts of their laser pistols were as much ornamental as functional.
“May we offer refreshments, Highness?” asked Grimes politely.
The two drones started towards the laden table; the princess put out two long arms to restrain them. Then she walked slowly towards the display of refreshments. From her complex mouth a long, tubular tongue slowly uncoiled. She dipped it into one of the bottles, that containing the homemade Benedictine. Grimes, watching carefully, saw that the level of liquid fell, at the most, only half a millimeter.
She said tonelessly, “It is a pity that I must do what I must do.” Her orders to the drones were telepathic. They approached the table, picked up the bottles, carried them through to the galley-cum-engine room. Then, with obvious reluctance, they poured the contents into the waste-disposal chute. Grimes wondered what would happen to the algae in the vats—but, of course, all sewage and galley refuse was processed before being used as nutriment for the primitive but especially bred organisms.
“So you do not accept our hospitality,” said Grimes.
“But I do,” replied the princess. She picked up a little fondue in a dainty claw, lifted it to her busy mandibles. “This is quite excellent.”
One big advantage of an artificial voice box, thought Grimes, was that it allowed its possessor to talk with her mouth full.
“I believe,” she went on, “that your interstellar drive is inoperative.”
“It requires only a few minutes’ work, Highness, to make it operational,” Grimes told her. “Work that I am quite capable of carrying out myself.”
“And are you a qualified engineer, Captain?”
“No.”
“Then I strongly advise against any tinkerings, on your part, with that delicate piece of machinery. It would be a pity if this very valuable little ship were hopelessly lost in a warped continuum. Our technicians will put matters to right.”
“I am quite capable of making the necessary repairs,” said Grimes.
“You are not,” stated the princess. “And now I extend to you and your distinguished passenger an invitation to repair aboard Baroom.”
“Thank you,” said
Grimes, “but I regret that we must decline.”
“Perhaps,” said the princess, “I should not have used the word ‘invitation’.”
The drones, Grimes saw, had drawn their pistols. They looked as though they knew how to use them. And they would be bad tempered at being deprived of the free drinks that had been so temptingly displayed.”
“What do you want with us?” Grimes demanded.
“That, Captain, is for the Queen-Captain to tell you if she so decides.”
“Do something, damn you, Grimes!” shouted Tamara. “If you won’t, I will!”
She snatched from the golden belt at her waist something that Grimes had assumed was no more than decoration, that was, in fact, a shin dagger. She sprang towards the princess. One of the drones fired, and she was nursing her scorched right hand, looking down at the hilt that, with a mere centimeter of still-glowing steel protruding from it, had fallen to the deck. The other drone fired. The crystals of her right ear pendant shattered. Blood trickled down her face from a dozen tiny wounds.
Grimes went to her. “We have to do as they say,” he told her. “Even if we did overpower these three pirates their ship would vaporize us in a second.”
“But the contract . . .” She was actually weeping, from pain or humiliation, or both. “The contract . . . The parcel mail . . .”
“It won’t be the first time in the history of Man,” said Grimes, “that the mail’s been late or has never arrived at all.”
He should not have been surprised when the open palm of her uninjured hand almost knocked his head off its shoulders.
Chapter 11
UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYES of the three Shaara they divested themselves of their finery—and much good had it done them!—climbed into their longjohns and then their spacesuits. The one that Tamara put on had belonged to the Baroness. She had told Grimes, “You may as well keep it. You may be carrying a passenger some time. And, all too probably, you’ll be getting into a situation where life-saving equipment is essential . . .”
“You will leave the ship first, Captain,” said the princess. “And then your passenger. You will assist her to make the jump.”
“Did you ever try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs?” asked Grimes. It was obvious that no passenger could make a space jump without guidance.
“I do not understand,” said the princess. “But do not delay any further. Go. I shall be quite capable of operating your simple airlock controls.”
Grimes sealed his helmet. The suit radio was working; he could hear Tamara’s ragged breathing. He checked the seals of her spacesuit then made his way to the airlock. The inner door closed behind him. He watched the needle of the pressure gauge on the bulkhead drop to zero. The outer door opened. He clambered from the chamber into the emptiness, being careful to keep a grip on one of the recessed handholds. Little Sister was still accelerating and if he cast adrift too soon he would follow a weird trajectory relative to her and might well expend all the reaction mass in his suit propulsion unit trying to get back.
The outer door closed.
While he was waiting for it to open again he looked across to the Shaara ship, a huge, menacing hulk against the starry blackness. All her lights were on, making it easy to see her. That inside the open airlock door was green, slowly flashing.
Tamara emerged from Little Sister.
She whispered, and even the distortion of the helmet phones could not hide the shakiness of her voice, “I’ve never done this before.”
Grimes said, “And I don’t make a habit of it.”
And another voice—the princess aboard the pinnace? The Queen-Captain aboard Baroom?—ordered, “Do not delay. Make the jump.”
“Hang on to me,” said Grimes. “You’ll have to let go of the hand-holds first.”
And that latter went for him too. He realized that Little Sister was falling up away from him. He got his left arm around her and both her arms went about his body. He could see her face through the transparency of her helmet. She was very pale, and blood was still oozing from the cuts on her cheek. He was lucky, he thought. Looking over her space suited shoulder he could see that he was lined up for the flashing green light. With his left hand he thumbed the button of the propulsion unit at his waist. He felt the not-quite-violent nudge at the small of his back as the miniature rocket fired. Had neither ship been accelerating he would have cut the drive at once, completing the journey under free fall. But in these circumstances he was obliged to maintain his own personal acceleration.
Deceleration would be the problem, although not an insuperable one.
He said, “Hang on to me.”
She muttered, “I somehow can’t see myself letting go . . .”
He took his right arm from about her shoulders. The grip of her arms about him tightened at once. With his right hand he found the propulsion unit control at her left side and was thankful that the Baroness had spared no expense in the equipping of her yacht; the space suit gloves were of the very latest—and most costly—pattern, with fingertip sensors. Had it not been so he might never have found the button in time.
He made a slight adjustment of trajectory so that he was now aiming for a lighted port ahead of the airlock door. The Shaara ship was big now, very big, an artificial planetoid hanging in the void.
Now!
He released the pressure on his own firing button and, simultaneously, pressed the one on Tamara’s suit. He was expecting the sudden pressure of deceleration; she was not. He heard the air whoosh explosively from her lungs.
And they were in the green-lit chamber, still moving fast but not dangerously so. By the time they made contact with the inner door they had slowed almost to a halt.
They thudded against the metal surface. He cut the drive of Tamara’s suit. They dropped the few centimeters to the deck.
He said, “You can let go now.”
She let go.
He watched the outer door shut. On a dial on the bulkhead a little yellow light began to move slowly clockwise. It stopped, changed to red. The chamber was repressurized.
The inner door opened. Beyond it a princess was standing in a dimly, ruddily illuminated alleyway, towering above a half dozen drones. These latter swarmed over Grimes and the woman, hustling them out of the airlock. Two shrouded figures brushed past them, looking and moving like competitors in a sack race with large bags over their heads as well as covering the lower parts of their bodies. The door closed after them.
Workers, thought Grimes. Two technicians to make up the prize crew . . .
The princess lifted the claws at the ends of her two forearms up to her head, made a twisting motion. Grimes understood the gesture, unsealed his helmet.
The Shaara officer said, “You will follow me to the queen.”
***
The air inside the Shaara ship was warm, too warm, and laden with smells that were not quite unpleasant. There was a cloying sweetness intermixed with frequent hints of acidity. There was the acridity of hot machinery and the subdued hammering of the inertial drive, the thin, high whine of the Mannschenn Drive that the Shaara manufactured under license for use in their vessels, having found it more reliable than their own dimension warping device—which Grimes had heard described by a Terran engineer as ‘a pigknot of pendulums’. In a human ship the sounds of voices, laughter, music would have drifted through the alleyway, the combination of tunnel and spiral staircase. Here there was only a subdued humming, vaguely ominous. Luckily there were no obstructions underfoot; the lighting was too dim for human eyes.
Up they climbed, up, up, and round and round, the princess in the lead, the armed drones surrounding Grimes and Tamara. Up, up . . . And then they came into a huge, hemispherical chamber, more a conservatory than the captain’s quarters aboard a spaceship. Moss covered was the deck and every pillar was entwined with broad-leaved vines, the darkness of the foliage relieved by huge, fleshy flowers. Grimes wondered briefly what it would have looked like in normal (to him) lighting; as it w
as the leaves were almost black and the blossoms glowed a sickly pink.
In the middle of this compartment was the queen-captain. Flabby, obese, she reclined in a sort of hammock slung between four pillars, sprawling among huge cushions. Two princesses stood by her, and a quartet of workers, as tall as their officers but with much broader bodies, fanned her with their wings.
“Captain Grimes,” said the queen.
Grimes wondered whether or not to salute, decided to do so. Perhaps the capture of his passenger and himself was not piracy but only the result of some sort of misunderstanding.
Perhaps.
Nonetheless, he brought his hand up to his helmet.
“Captain Grimes; Superintending Postmistress Haverstock. You understand, Captain, and Superintending Postmistress, that your lives are forfeit. Always it has been the way with our people, long before we flew into Space, that any organism so hapless as to be in the path of our swarms has died.”
“Royal Highness,” said Grimes stiffly, “we were not in the path of your swarm. Your ship would never have passed close to mine if you had not made a deliberate alteration of trajectory.”
“I should not have made an alteration of trajectory if you had not attracted attention to yourself,” said the flat, mechanical voice.
“Even so,” said Grimes, “I demand that Madam Haverstock and I be returned to our ship and allowed to proceed on our voyage.”
“You demand, Captain? Only those with sting may demand.”
“The Survey Service has sting.”
“From what I have heard, Captain Grimes, I do not think that the Survey Service, even if it knew of your predicament, would lift a claw to save you. But you will not be killed at once. I may find uses for you and your companion. Go.”
Telepathic orders were given and the swarming drones hustled the two humans from the Presence.
Chapter 12
THEY WERE HERDED through a maze of dimly lit tunnels, down ramps that were too steep for human comfort, towards, Grimes thought, the stern of the great ship. Suddenly the princess, who was leading the party, stopped. Four workers appeared as though from nowhere and speedily divested the humans of their spacesuits. To have resisted would have been futile. No attempt was made to strip them of their longjohns, not that it much mattered. The Shaara, although addicted to jewelry, did not wear clothing and the nudity or otherwise of their prisoners meant nothing to them.
Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III Page 5
