Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  He dressed and was not surprised to find that the waistband of his trousers was tight. He filled and lit his pipe; he would have a quiet smoke while waiting for the second pot of tea.

  The majordomo entered the sitting room carrying a big tray. He (it) was followed by Marlene. Clothed—this morntag in pale blue—she looked no more than pleasantly plump. She sat down in one of the chairs by the coffee table, motioned to Grimes to take the other. The robutler put down the tray and left.

  She said, “I thought, perhaps, that we might partake of only a light breakfast . . .”

  On the tray were both teapots and coffeepots, with milk and cream and sugar. There was a large pitcher of some chilled fruit juice. There were croissants, with butter and a syrupy conserve with whole strawberries.

  “Nothing for me, thanks, Marlene,” said Grimes. “Or, perhaps, some fruit juice.” She poured, handed him the glass. “And I think I’ve changed my mind. I told the servant tea, but that coffee smells delicious . . . Yes, two sugars.” She filled his cup. “And I wonder if I might have just a nibble of croissant . . .”

  She laughed. “What I liked about you when I first knew you was your hearty appetite. I’ve heard that your Survey Service nickname was Gutsy Grimes . . . And what of it? Good food is meant to be enjoyed.”

  She managed four croissants to Grimes’ three and was more generous with butter and conserve than he was. Satisfied, she lit a cigarillo. Grimes resumed his pipe.

  “And now, my dear,” she said practically, “we have to get you back to your ship.”

  She was friendly enough, thought Grimes, but little more than that. The events of the previous night might never have happened.

  She got to her feet unassisted, walked toward the door. Grimes followed. She led him through corridors and down spiral staircases to the courtyard. The gleaming Daimler was awaiting them and, standing by it at stiff attention, were the majordomo and four liveried footmen. Grimes wondered wildly if he was supposed to tip them. (What sort of gratuity would a robot expect?) But they bowed stiffly as their mistress and her guest approached and the robutler assisted her through the open door of the car. Grimes sat down beside her. The doors closed. The car lifted and, escorted by the watchbirds, flew silently northward.

  Its passengers, too, were silent. Grimes, at first, attempted to make conversation but the Princess made it plain that she did not wish to talk. There was not, after all, much to say. On a mental plane, he realized, they had little in common—yet he admitted to himself that he did feel some affection for her. The silence was not an uncomfortable one.

  Lake Bluewater showed up ahead, and the white buildings of the spaceport on its farther shore. And there was Sister Sue, gleaming silver in the strong light of the late morning sun. And that was where he belonged, thought Grimes, not in the castle owned by a member of this planet’s aristocracy.

  She spoke at last.

  “I’ve brought you back, John, to where you really want to be.”

  He said, “I wanted to be with you.” Then, bending the truth only slightly if at all, “I want to be with you again.”

  She laughed—regretfully?

  “Do you? I’m no Michelle, and I know it. If you were to settle on El Dorado—and if Commodore Kane’s enterprise is successful you might well be financially qualified—you would range farther afield than Schloss Stolzberg. I should not be able to hold you. There’s too much of the tomcat in you. You’re capable of feeling cupboard love—but, until you meet the right woman (if ever you do) little more . . .

  “But it was good having you . . .”

  Grimes tried to believe that she really meant what she said.

  She was facing him now, holding her face up to his. He put his arms about her, kissed her. Her lips tasted of strawberries.

  They broke apart as the car began its descent. Probably Williams and several of the others would be watching. He did not wish to be the subject of ribald comment.

  The vehicle grounded gently on the apron, ran silently to the foot of the ramp. (Yes, Williams was there, and the Green Hornet.) The door on Grimes’ side opened. He inclined his head to the hand that she extended to him, kissed it lightly. He dismounted, then reached through the other open door to retrieve his bag. He heard her order, “Home,” as the doors shut. The car rose swiftly, dwindled fast to a mere speck in the southern sky.

  “Sorry to have called you back, Skipper,” said the mate cheerfully while Ms. Connellan scowled at Grimes. “But the Commodore is very insistent. He wants us at Port Kane as soon as possible, if not before.”

  “Are the engines ready?”

  “Yes. I told Mr. Crumley to be ready for the shift. Oh, and the Commodore told me to ask you to call him as soon as you got back. You’ll have to use the phone in the office.” He scowled. “They can call us aboard the ship but we can’t call them from the ship . . .”

  “All right,” said Grimes. “Would you mind taking my bag aboard for me, Ms. Connellan?” The Second Mate scowled at him but wordlessly took his luggage. “And come with me, Mr. Williams.”

  Together they walked into the port office. In the doorless booth Grimes said, “Get me Commodore Baron Kane.” The holographic image of a golden lady’s maid appeared and told him, “The Commodore will speak with you shortly.” She faded. Kane appeared.

  “Ah, Grimes, back at last after your wallow in the von Stolzberg flesh pots. Anybody would think that you were not eager for gainful employment.”

  “I had a duty to my hostess,” said Grimes stiffly.

  “I’m sure you did. Now, listen. Port Kane is twelve hours ahead of Port Bluewater. The hop should take you four hours, at the outside; I imagine that your innies are capable of delivering enough lateral thrust. If you lift off at, say, 1400 your time you should be at Port Kane at 0600 my time, just before sunrise. There’ll be the usual beacons to mark your berth. Keep in touch with Aerospace Control to confirm your ETA and all the rest of it. The Port Captain will bring you a gnomonic chart and a plan of Port Kane.”

  “And also the bill for my port charges here?” asked Grimes.

  “They’ll be just a matter of bookkeeping, Grimes, to be deducted from whatever profit you make as a privateer. After your arrival—not immediately after, of course; like you I enjoy my sleep—I shall call aboard you with the charter party for your signature. Also I shall be introducing you to the other captains. Is everything clear, Grimes?”

  “Yes, Kane.”

  Drongo Kane scowled, then grinned sourly. “All right, all right. I should have called you Captain Grimes. Soon it will be Commodore Grimes. Does that make you happy?”

  “I’m rolling on the deck, Commodore, convulsed with paroxysms of pure ecstasy.”

  “That will do, you sarcastic bastard. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  Kane’s image faded.

  ***

  Later, in Sister Sue’s control room, Grimes and Williams studied the gnomonic chart. It would be a simple enough operation to shift ship—although something of a nuisance. Luckily the ship possessed a rarely used gyro compass, which had now been started, with a repeater on the bridge. Williams had painted a mark on the inside of one of the big viewports to coincide with the lubber’s line. That would be, for the purposes of this short voyage, “forward.” The Green Hornet, grumbling that this was a spaceship, not an airship, had not been capable of working out the great circle distance and courses so Grimes had done it himself.

  Grimes looked at his watch.

  “All right, Mr. Williams, make it lift off stations. I shall want Control fully manned until we’re underway, then just one officer besides myself until we’re ready to set down.”

  He took his usual seat, controls at his fingertips, displays before his eyes. He waited until the others—Williams, Connellan, Venner and Stewart—were at their stations before putting the inertial drive on standby. Mr. Venner obtained permission from Aerospace Control to lift ship.

  Sister Sue shuddered then rose slowly from the apron.
Grimes set course by turning her about her vertical axis, watching the repeater card until the lubber’s line was on the correct reading. Then there was the application of lateral thrust and, at an altitude of only two kilometers, the ship was underway on the first leg of the great circle course.

  The officers watched interestedly. Save as passengers, during spells of planetary leave, atmospheric flights were outside their experience. Grimes, of course, during his Survey Service career had often handled pinnaces proceeding from point to point inside a world’s air envelope. He had done so often enough, too, in Little Sister.

  Sister Sue swept majestically—and noisily; would there be any complaints from the pampered people in the mansions and chateaux and castles over which she was clattering?—in an east northeasterly direction, the fast westering sun throwing her long shadow over fields and forests. Grimes increased vertical thrust to give her safe clearance over the Golden Alps, a range of snow-capped crags bare of vegetation for most of their towering height, whose sheer yellow rock faces reflected the sunlight as though they were indeed formed from the precious metal.

  Beyond the mountains the ship dropped again, into shadow, into deepening dusk, into darkness. There were no cities on the land below her, no towns, no villages even. There were only sparsely scattered points of light, marking the dwelling places of the very rich. It was like, Grimes thought, the night sky of the Rim Worlds, out toward the edge of the galaxy, an almost empty blackness.

  He flew on toward the dawn, toward Port Kane.

  Chapter 34

  PORT KANE was a cluster of white domes, dominated by a graceful, latticework control tower, on the western bank of the broad, slow-flowing Rio del Oro. There was something familiar about that tower, thought Grimes. Then he laughed. It was obvious that Michelle must have had some say in its design. It was almost a replica of a far more famous erection in the city of Paris, on faraway Earth. It dwarfed the relatively squat, far more solid in appearance, towers that were the spaceships. All three of them, like Sister Sue, had started their working lives as Epsilon Class tramps of the Commission’s fleet. They had been altered, however, the one-time symmetry of their hulls broken by added sponsons. A laser cannon turret, another turret for the quick-firing projectile cannon, a third one for the missile launcher . . . Two of the ships gleamed dull silver in the light of the rising sun. The third one had been painted a green that once had been vivid, that now was dull and flaking. A hundred or so meters clear of this vessel—Pride of Erin, she had to be—the triangle of scarlet flashing beacons had been set out.

  “Port Kane Control to Sister Sue,” came the mechanical voice from the NST speaker. “Control to Sister Sue. Set down between the beacons.”

  Mr. Stewart acknowledged. Grimes applied lateral thrust until he had the triangle of beacons centered in the stern view screen. He cut vertical thrust, just enough so that the ship was almost weightless. She fell gently, touched, shuddered and then was still.

  “Finished with engines,” ordered Grimes.

  He looked out through a viewport, saw a group of figures standing on the pale grey concrete of the apron and staring up at him. He took a pair of binoculars from the box, looked down at them. There were two men and a woman. One of the men was short, with a ruddy face and a neat, pointed, white beard. He was wearing a green uniform with four gold bands on each sleeve. The other one, also a captain to judge from his sleeve braid, was tall. His face was almost obscured by a luxuriant, red-gold hirsute growth. His uniform was black with a black-and-gold kilt in lieu of trousers, with a gold trim on his long socks. The woman, too, was tall. What she was wearing could have been a short-skirted business suit in sober grey had it not been for the rather ornate golden epaulets. The lines of her face were harsh, her mouth wide but with thin lips, her nose a prominent beak.

  Grimes said to Williams, “Looks like the bold masters of Pride of Erin, Spaceways Princess and Agatha’s Ark down there. I may as well meet them now. You can come with me.”

  The ramp was just being extended from the after airlock door as they stepped out of the elevator cage. They marched down the gangway, Williams in the lead. Once they were on the ground the mate fell back to let Grimes precede him.

  “Captain Grimes?” asked the little man in the green uniform.

  “Yes. And you’re Captain O’Leary, aren’t you? And Captain MacWhirter, and Captain Prinn. A very good morning to you all.”

  “And the top o’ the morn to you, Captain. Or should I be sayin’ Commodore? We didn’t think that we should like havin’ the Survey Service—no disrespect intended to yourself—bossin’ us around, but the way things are, you could be the lesser of two evils. We thought we’d be after seein’ you, bright an’ early, before Drongo tells you his side of it . . .”

  “I’m only ex-Survey Service,” said Grimes, not realizing that he had lied until the words were out. “And I’m not your commodore yet. But what seems to be the trouble, Captain?”

  “Oh, ’tis these El Doradan Navy liaison officers, or gunnery officers, or observers, or whatever they’re supposed to be when they’re up an’ dressed. Space puppies, all of ’em, but puttin’ on the airs an’ graces of admirals. I’ve a still wet behind the ears junior grade lieutenant callin’ himself the Honorable Claude Ponsonby. His daddy is Lord Ponsonby—whoever he might be. Captain MacWhirter has a Count—not that he counts for much! An’ Captain Prinn has a Count too—although he calls himself a Graf . . .”

  “The Graf von Stolzberg,” said Grimes.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “His . . .” He corrected himself. “Commodore Kane told me. And it’s Commodore Kane who makes the rules. What can I do about it?”

  “You’re Survey Service, Captain Grimes. Or ex-Survey Service. You’ve been a senior officer in a real navy, not a glorified yacht club. Drongo Kane says that you’re to be in charge of things. We’re relyin’ on you to call the puppies to heel.”

  “Do any of you have any naval experience?” asked Grimes.

  “No, Captain,” O’Leary said. “I was with a small outfit called the Shamrock Line, out of New Erin. You may have heard of the New Erin Sweepstake? I won it. At about the same time the Shamrock Line went broke. Thinkin’ that I was well on the way to winnin’ an even larger fortune I bought one o’ their ships . . .”

  “An owner-master, like myself,” said Grimes. “And you, Captain MacWhirter?”

  “I was in the Waverley Royal Mail,” said the Scot. “My old uncle Hamish died and left me the lot. In whisky, he was. In those days I was a religious man an’ a total abstainer. So I sold the distillery an’ all the rest of it an’ bought me a bonny wee ship.” He laughed mirthlessly. “It’s driven me to drink, she has.”

  “I know what it’s like,” said Grimes sympathetically. He turned to the tall woman, who was regarding him through cold grey eyes that matched the short hair swept severely back from her high, pale forehead. “Captain Prinn?”

  “Captain Agatha Prinn,” she corrected him, “to distinguish me from Captain Joel Prinn, my late husband. I was a rich woman, an heiress, on Carinthia. You have heard, perhaps, of the Davitz Circus and Menagerie? I was a Davitz, the last Davitz. But circuses bore me and I have no great love for animals. I sold my interests in the family business and went for a cruise in a Cluster Lines ship, where I met my future husband, at that time a Chief Officer. He paid off on our return to Carinthia and we were married. He persuaded me to buy for him the Commission’s Epsilon Puppis, which was up for sale. He renamed her Agatha’s Ark . . .” She smiled frostily. “I can see that you’re wondering how I came to be a shipmaster myself. I accompanied my husband on his voyages, signed on as purser. I became interested in navigation and spacemanship and studied. Finally I passed for Master on Libertad.” She smiled again. “Libertad qualifications are recognized throughout the galaxy.”

  But only just, thought Grimes. He wondered just how much that Certificate of Competency had cost. He wondered, too, what had happened to Captain Prin
n I. Obviously Captain Prinn II wasn’t going to tell him.

  “So,” he said. “So.” He looked at Pride of Erin and at the other two vessels in line beyond her. “I see that you’ve all been armed.”

  “Aye,” said MacWhirter. “An’ every day we’ve been pittin’ our skills against electronic enemies in yon gunnery simulator—” he waved a hand toward one of the white domes— “while the El Doradan Navy puppies have been standin’ around an’ sneerin’ . . .” He went on enviously, “I don’t suppose that ye’ll be needin’ gunnery instruction, Captain Grimes . . .”

  “A session in the simulator never did anybody any harm,” said Grimes. “I’ll be using it, and so will Mr. Williams here, my chief officer—although both of us have seen action. And my third officer holds a Survey Service Reserve commission but I’ll make sure that he brushes up his gunnery.”

  “It looks, Captain,” said O’Leary enviously, “as though you’ll have no trouble with whatever puppy they foist on you!”

  A uniformed port official, a humanoid robot, approached the party. He saluted Grimes smartly.

  “Sir, Commodore Kane instructs that you be ready to commence discharge at 0800 hours. The Commodore will call upon you at 0930.”

  “Our master’s voice,” said Agatha Prinn sourly.

  And then they all drifted back to their ships.

  ***

  “Sign here, Grimes,” said Drongo Kane. “All four copies.”

  Grimes signed.

  He had read the document carefully and found that its provisions were as good as could be expected. He did not think that he had missed anything in the small print. For a quite substantial consideration he agreed to put his ship, his officers and himself at the service of El Dorado Corporation until such time as the contract would be terminated by mutual consent or, with an option for renewal, after the passage of three Standard Years. He, as master of Sister Sue, had been given the rank of Company Commodore with authority not only over the other shipmasters but to deal, on behalf of the corporation, with planetary governments. Items of equipment on loan from the El Dorado Corporation were to be returned, in good order and condition, on expiration of the contract; there was a penalty clause covering failure, for any reason, to do so.