Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  He applied lateral thrust, brought the bull’s eye of the stern vision screen exactly midway between the lights of the two cities, held it there. As on past occasions he was forgetting that he was a prisoner acting under duress, at gunpoint. He was beginning to enjoy himself. He had a job to do, one demanding all his skills.

  Bronson Star fell.

  Her skin was heating up but not—yet—dangerously so. She was maintaining her attitude—so far, but once she was in the denser atmospheric levels she would be liable to topple. In a properly manned ship Grimes would have had officers watching instruments such as the radar altimeter, the clinometer, external pressure gauge and all the rest of them while he concentrated on the actual pilotage. Now he was a one-man band. All that his companions in the control room were good for was pointing their pistols at him.

  Bronson Star fell.

  The air inside the ship was becoming uncomfortably warm and the viewports were increasingly obscured by upsweeping incandescence. But the stern vision screen was clear—and in it, quite suddenly, appeared a tiny, red-glowing spark, a little off-center.

  Inertial drive again, lateral thrust, sustained, fighting inertia . . . The ship responded sluggishly but she did respond, at last. Grimes was sweating but it was not only from psychological strain: It was no longer warm in the control room; it was hot and becoming hotter.

  “You’ll burn us all up!” screamed Paul.

  “Be quiet, damn you!” snarled Lania.

  Bronson Star fell.

  The radar altimeter read-out on the stern vision screen was a flickering of numerals almost too rapid to follow. The beacon light was still only a spark but one of eye-searing intensity—or was the smarting of Grimes’ eyes due only to the salt perspiration that was dripping into them?

  Bronson Star started to topple.

  Lateral thrust again. The ship groaned in every member as she slowly came back to the vertical relative to the planetary surface.

  Grimes realized that somebody else had come into the control room.

  “General!” shouted a voice—that of Major Briggs? “General! The men are roasting down there! They’ll be in no state to fight even if they’re still alive when we land!”

  The troop decks, converted cargo holds, would not be as well insulated as was the accommodation, thought Grimes. They must be ovens . . .

  “General! You must stop before we’re all incinerated!”

  “Captain Grimes,” ordered Mortdale at last, “you may put the brakes on.”

  Easier said than done, thought Grimes. But to slow down at this altitude would be safer than carrying out the original plan. He could apply vertical thrust gradually—but, even so, it must sound to those in the countryside below the ship as though all the hammers of hell were beating in the sky. And what of the planet’s defenses? Were military technicians sitting tensely, their fingers poised over buttons?

  Had they already pushed those buttons?

  In the screen the figures presented by the radar altimeter were no longer an almost unreadable flicker. The rate of descent was slowing yet there was not—nor would there be for a long time—any appreciable drop in temperature. But the thermometer had ceased to rise and only an occasional veil of incandescent gases obscured the viewports.

  Grimes increased vertical thrust. The ship complained, trembled. Loose fittings rattled loudly. Relative to the surface below her Bronson Star was now almost stationary.

  “Drop her again!” ordered Mortdale.

  That made sense. It might possibly fool a computer; it almost certainly would fool a human gunlayer.

  The hammering of the inertial drive abruptly ceased. Again the ship fell—but there was no burgeoning flower or flame in the sky above her, where she had been.

  A suspicion was growing in Grimes’ mind. This landing—apart from the problems of ship handling—was all too easy. Intelligence works both ways, and there are double agents. But he said nothing. If the general knew his job—and what had he been in the old Royal Army? a second lieutenant?—he would be smelling a rat by now.

  The altimeter was unwinding fast again and, in the screen, that solitary beacon was blindingly bright.

  1,000 . . . 900 . . . 800 . . . 700 . . .

  Vertical thrust again. No matter who else might want Bronson Star in one piece Grimes most certainly did.

  600 . . . 550 . . .

  Still too fast, thought Grimes.

  500 . . . 450 . . .

  He increased vertical thrust.

  430 . . . 410 . . . 390 . . .

  “Get us down!” snarled Lania. “Get us down, damn you!”

  Free fall again, briefly. Then full vertical thrust. Again Bronson Star shook herself like a wet dog as the inertial drive hammered frenziedly.

  10 . . . 5 . . . 3 . . . 1 . . .

  It was not one of Grimes’ better landings. The ship sat down hard and heavily with a bone-jarring jolt. Had the great vanes of her tripedal landing gear not been equal to the strain she would surely have toppled, become a wreck. The shock absorbers did not gently sigh; they screamed.

  “Airlocks open!” ordered Mortdale. “Ramps out!” Then, to Paul, “You, Your Highness, will lead the invasion. A hovertank, in which you will ride, carries your personal standard.”

  “I should stay here, in headquarters,” said Paul weakly.

  “You must show your flag, Highness. And your face.”

  “It is just as well,” said Lania, “that his flag doesn’t match his face. We don’t want to surrender before we’ve started.”

  “Somebody has to keep guard over Grimes to make sure that he doesn’t try anything,” persisted Paul.

  “It won’t be you,” said Lania.

  “Major Briggs has his orders,” said the general.

  Chapter 15

  GRIMES WAS HUSTLED down to his quarters by Briggs and two sergeants, locked in. He sat glumly on the settee, smoking his pipe, trying to visualize what was happening. Sonic insulation muffled interior noises but he could faintly hear shouts, mechanical whinings and clankings. The little hovertanks would be streaming down the ramps, followed by the heavier tracked vehicles. He strained his ears for the sound of gunfire, of exploding missiles, heard nothing but the diminishing bustle of disembarkation. It seemed that the landing was unopposed.

  Then there was silence save for the murmurings of the ship’s own life processes. The air flowing in through the ventilation ducts was cooler now, bore alien scents, some identifiable, some not. The smell of the seashore predominated; a brininess, the tang of stranded seaweed. This was to be expected; Bronson Star had landed just above the high-water mark on the beach at Bacon Bay. Hodge was flushing out the ship’s stale atmosphere with the fresh, sea air.

  Grimes’ sweat-soaked clothing dried on his body. He would have liked to have stripped, showered and laundered his garments but knew that he must maintain himself in a state of instant readiness. Were Susie and Hodge playing their parts? he wondered. Had the girl served drugged food and drink to Briggs and his sergeants? Had the engineer readied the ship for immediate lift-off?

  The door opened and Susie stood there. As on a past occasion her clothing was in disarray, her shirt torn, her ample breasts exposed.

  She swore, “That bald-headed bastard Briggs! The sergeants went out like a light—but not him! Two mugs of coffee with enough dope to put a regiment to sleep and still he stayed on his feet! Hodge had to put a dent in his sconce with a wrench while he was trying to strangle me.” She grinned viciously, “But whoever finds him where we left him—either Lania or the Free People’s Army—will treat him much more roughly!”

  Grimes brushed past her, ran up the spiral staircase to Control; it was faster than waiting for the elevator. Before sitting in the command seat he looked out through the viewports, towards the glow on the horizon that marked the city lights of Dunrovinroyalist army’s first objective. Then, between ship and city, an impossible sun suddenly rose, blinding despite the automatic polarization of the ports. Grime
s ran to his chair, did not bother to strap himself in. He knew that he must get the ship up before the shock wave hit.

  The inertial drive was already on Stand By. It commenced its metallic stammer at the first touch of Grimes’ fingers on the controls. He did not—as he should have done, as in normal circumstances he would have done—nurse the innies up gradually to maximum thrust; he demanded full power at once and miraculously got it.

  Nonetheless the initial lift-off was painfully slow.

  Bronson Star groaned, shuddered. She climbed into the night sky like a grossly fat old woman reluctantly clambering upstairs to bed, wheezing and palpitating. Then the shock wave hit her, slamming her sidewise—but also upward. Grimes struggled with his controls, maintaining attitude. When the ship was once again upright he saw that she was making better speed, was climbing fast and faster.

  Only then was Grimes able to check that all was ready—or had been ready—for lift-off. The airlock doors were all sealed, he saw; that was the most important thing. Life-support systems were functioning.

  Susie—he had quite forgotten that she was in the control room with him—called out. “John! The radar! Somebody’s after us!”

  He heaved himself out of his chair, went to the screen tank of the all-around radar. Yes, there were intruders, six tiny sparks, astern but closing. He had no quarrel with them but it was reasonable to assume that they had a quarrel with him.

  Perhaps—perhaps!—he would be able to talk his way to freedom.

  He went to the NST transceiver, switched on. At once a strange voice came from the speaker, “Free People’s Air Force to unidentified spacecraft . . .” Obviously whoever was talking had been doing so for some time. “Free People’s Air Force to unidentified spacecraft . . . Free People’s . . . .”

  “Bronson Star here,” said Grimes.

  “Land at once, Bronson Star. Resistance is useless. Your army and your leaders have been destroyed. Land at once, or we open fire.”

  And why all the talking? wondered Grimes. Why had not the spaceship been fired upon already? Why should people quite willing to wipe out an army with a nuclear landmine be reluctant to destroy a spaceship? Of course, he reasoned, Bronson Star would be a most welcome addition to the Dunlevin merchant service, but . . . Surely if they couldn’t have her they would see to it that nobody else did.

  He looked at the stern vision screen—and laughed.

  The shock waves had not only given the ship a welcome boost; it had pushed her into a position directly above one of the cities. Which one he neither knew nor cared. He wondered if its people knew that they were, in effect, his hostages.

  He told Susie, “Take over the NST. Keep ’em talking. I have to make sure that we stayed relatively put . . .”

  Back in his command chair he used lateral thrust to keep the city lights coincident with the bull’s eye of the screen. He watched the altimeter figures steadily climbing. He heard Susie saying into the microphone, “We are neutrals. We were skyjacked by Prince Paul and General Mondale. We were forced, at gunpoint, to bring them and their soldiers here . . .”

  “You must return for questioning. No harm will come to you if you are innocent . . .”

  “You have no jurisdiction over a Bronsonian spaceship . . .”

  “When she is in our airspace we have. Return to the surface at once.”

  “Ask them,” said Grimes, “ ‘Straight down?’”

  Susie did so. She laughed. Grimes laughed—then remembered that he still had to get past the orbital forts. No matter what his position would be relative to Dunlevin’s surface a cloud of radioactive dust and gases above the stratosphere would be little worry to anybody at ground level.

  Chapter 16

  HE HAD HOPED that the royalist invaders would create enough of a diversion to distract attention from Bronson Star’s getaway. He had strongly suspected that the landing would not be a great surprise to the rulers of Dunlevin; he had not anticipated that the invading force, in its entirety, would be wiped out by nuclear blast. (Surely there could have been no survivors.) He had envisaged a nasty little battle but with fatal casualties deliberately kept to a minimum so that there could be a show trial afterward with public humiliation of Paul, Lania and their adherents. But military and political leaders do not always see eye to eye—and the military have always been prone to use steam hammers to squash gnats.

  Meanwhile—how trigger happy were the crews of the fortress satellites? Would they shoot first and ask questions afterward or would they try to talk Bronson Star into surrender? (Their Air Force colleagues had given up the chase saying, before they turned away, “You’ve had your chance. You’ll never get past the forts.”) Did the satellite crews know about the Gunderson Gambit? It was supposed to be a closely guarded secret of the Federation Survey Service—but Mortdale knew (had known) about it. And if Mortdale had known . . .

  “Susie,” he asked urgently, “was the general ever in the Marines? The Federation Survey Service Marines, that is . . .”

  “Why do you ask, John? He’s dead now. What does it matter what he was.”

  Cold-blooded little bitch! thought Grimes angrily. The general, with all his faults, had been more of Grimes’ breed of cat than Paul and Lania or, come to that, Susie and Hodge.

  “This is important,” he said. “Was he ever in the Marines?”

  “Yes,” she admitted sulkily. “Quite a few of the refugees, the military types, entered Federation service. He got as high as colonel, I believe . . .”

  And as a colonel, thought Grimes, he’d have had access to all manner of classified information. He hoped that there were no ex-colonels of Marines in the satellites. It was extremely unlikely that there would be.

  He said, “Put the radar on long range. See if you can pick up any of the orbital forts.”

  She said, “There’re all sorts of bloody blips—some opening, some closing. They could be anything.”

  “They probably are,” said Grimes.

  Then again a strange voice came from the transceiver. “Fortress Castro to Bronson Star. This is your last chance. Inject yourself into closed orbit and prepare to receive our boarding party—or we open fire!”

  “You can’t!” cried Susie to Grimes.

  “I have to,” he said. “Look at the gauges. You wouldn’t be able to breathe what’s outside the ship but it’s still more atmosphere than vacuum. I can’t risk the Gunderson Gambit—yet.”

  He had anticipated this very situation, reasoned that a show of compliance would be the only way to avoid instant destruction. Already he had thrown the problem into the lap of the computer; all that he had to do now was switch over from manual to automatic control.

  “Inject into orbit!” came the voice of Fortress Castro. “We are tracking you. Inject into orbit—or . . .”

  “Tell them that we’re injecting,” said Grimes to Susie.

  He threw the switch, heard and felt the arrhythmic hammering of the drive as Bronson Star was pushed away from her outward and upward trajectory. He hoped that Fortress Castro’s commander was relying more upon the evidence presented by his computer than the display in his radar tank. It would be some time before the ship’s alteration of course would be visually obvious.

  He got up from the command chair, went to his own radar. That large blip must be the orbital fort, that tiny spark moving away from it, toward the center of the screen, the vehicle carrying the boarding party. He turned his attention from the tank to the board with the array of telltale gauges; the dial at which he looked registered particle contact rather than actual pressure. Outside the ship there was vacuum to all practical intents and purposes—the practical intents and purposes of air-breathing organisms. But the sudden—it would have to be sudden—propagation of a temporal precession field would mean the catastrophic, intimate intermingling of those sparsely scattered atoms and molecules, those charged particles, with all matter, living and inanimate, within the ship.

  At this distance from the planet the risk
was still too great.

  Grimes stared into the radar tank. Would Bronson Star reach apogee before the shuttle caught her? Would he be justified in using thrust, to drive the ship to a higher altitude in a shorter time? He decided against this. Fortress Castro’s computer would at once notify the shuttle’s commander—and that vehicle was close enough now to use its light weaponry, automatic guns firing armor-piercing bullets that would pierce the shell of the unarmored Bronson Star with contemptuous ease, crippling her but not destroying.

  “What the hell’s going on up there?” came Hodge’s voice from the intercom.

  “We are temporarily in orbit,” said Grimes. “I shall initiate Mannschenn Drive as soon as possible.”

  “I hope,” said Susie—who, as a spaceperson of sorts, was beginning to get some grasp of the situation— “that it will be soon enough.”

  “Shuttle to Bronson Star,” came a fresh voice from the NST transceiver. “Have your after airlock ready to receive boarders.”

  “Willco,” said Susie, looking at Grimes, her eyebrows raised in unspoken query.

  He grinned at her with a confidence that he did not feel.

  The ship’s computer, pre-programmed, took over. Grimes had forgotten to instruct it to sound any sort of warning before starting the Mannschenn Drive. He heard the hum of the rotors as they commenced to spin, the faint murmur that rapidly rose to a high-pitched whine. He saw colors sag down the spectrum, the warped perspective. And it was as though the control room had been invaded by a swarm of tiny, luminous bees, each miniscule but intense flare the funeral pyre of a cancelled-out atom. But there was no damage done—not to Susie, not to himself, not to the ship. And not, he hoped, to Hodge.

  The pyrotechnic display abruptly ceased.