Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  Mr. Stewart was undergoing a far less wearing time than his captain. The responsibility for jamming the victim’s transmissions, should she attempt to make any, was divided between Sister Sue, Spaceways Princess and Agatha’s Ark. Captain O’Leary had been ordered to instruct his radio officer to monitor all Carlotti signals originating from anywhere at all. Pride of Erin was the squadron clown, one of those ships incapable of doing anything right, inevitably slow off the mark. It would be good to be rid of her.

  Slowly, steadily, the range closed, could be measured in light-minutes and, at last, in kilometers. The Hallicheki captain finally squawked—or tried to squawk. Stewart, who had the Carlotti watch, jammed her before she could do more than clear her scrawny throat prior to speaking. Grimes, no longer in his chair, stood over the main MPI screen, staring into the sphere of velvety blackness in which were the four bright sparks—the potential victim, the other three privateers and, in the exact center, Sister Sue’s reference marker. He saw that relative bearings were no longer changing as they had been. He realized what had happened, was happening. The Hallicheki had shut down her drives—Mannschenn and inertial—as the preliminary to a major alteration of trajectory. This, inevitably, was a time-consuming process. And when the gyroscopes had swung the ship, turning her hull about its axes, which way would she be heading? Grimes guessed—and, as it turned out, correctly—that the panic-stricken hen would put the raiders right astern and then increase not only the thrust of the inertial drive but the intensity of the temporal precession field.

  “Stop Mannschenn!” he ordered Williams, who was in the 2 I/C seat. “Stop inertial drive. Pass the order to all ships. Make it Action Stations!”

  “I’ve only one pair of hands, Skipper,” the mate grumbled—but it was a good-humored whinge. The subdued clangor of the inertial drive slowed and ceased while Grimes was still making his way back to his own chair. He managed to pull himself into the seat despite the cessation of acceleration and the consequent free fall. The thin, high note of the Mannschenn drive deepened to a hum, then died away. As the temporal precession field faded the stridulation of the alarms shrilled to near inaudibility. Colors sagged down the spectrum and perspective was a meaningless concept.

  And there was that song again.

  I murdered William Moore as I sailed, as I sailed . . .

  Then everything snapped back to normal—colors, sounds, perspective. Grimes stared into the two miniature repeater screens before him—mass proximity indicator and radar. The Hallicheki ship was a radar target now, just inside the extreme range of two thousand kilometers. So she had not yet restarted her interstellar drive, was still in normal spacetime. Obedient to the touch of the captain’s fingers the powerful directional gyroscopes deep in Sister Sue’s bowels rumbled and Grimes felt himself pressed into the padding—under his buttocks, along his spine and his right side—of his chair by centrifugal forces. He brought the tiny spark that was the merchantman directly ahead, held it there and then reactivated the inertial drive, on maximum thrust.

  “General chase!” he ordered and heard Venner repeat the words, heard acknowledgments from the other ships. He hoped that all that he had ever heard about Hallicheki spacemanship—not held in very high regard by the Survey Service’s officer instructors—was true. By the time that the fumbling hens had gotten their vessel onto the new trajectory, with inertial and interstellar drives restarted, the privateers would be almost within range. (Of course, if the avian captain had any sense she would steer toward the pursuit, not away from it. Grimes remembered a ride that he had taken in a ground car, years ago, through the Australian countryside, and a witless hen that had run ahead of the vehicle, swerving neither to left nor right. He knew, somehow, that his quarry would be equally witless.)

  He glanced up and out through the viewports. The stars were hard, bright—and there were those other, unnatural constellations, the recognition lights of the vessels of the fleet, ahead of Sister Sue now after the alteration of trajectory. Closest was the vividly green display of Pride of Erin. Grimes did not need to look into his radar screen to see that the range was closing, that Sister Sue would soon sweep past her. O’Leary’s spacemanship must almost be down to Hallicheki standards. And there was Spaceways Princess, scarlet, and Agatha’s Ark, blue. Grimes thought of perpetrating a pun about arclamps but thought better of it.

  In the radar screen the tiny, distant spark that was the merchantman vanished but still showed in the MPI. So she was underway again.

  “Stop her!” ordered Grimes, suiting the action to the words as far as his own ship was concerned. “Pass the order.”

  “To all ships. Stop inertial drive,” he heard the Countess’s voice.

  So Venner must now be at his battle console, thought Grimes.

  “Mr. Williams,” he said, “set up the graticules and graduations in the main MPI. Let me know how much, if at all, I must come around to keep the target ahead . . .”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper!”

  “Ms. Connellan, stand by the NST transceiver . . .”

  “But we’ll not be needing it for a long while yet. Sir.”

  “Stand by the NST!”

  That would keep her from getting underfoot.

  “We’re lucky, Skipper!” he heard Williams say. “Just bring her right ahead, and keep her there, and we’ve got her!”

  “Good. To all ships, Ms. Walshingham. Put target ahead. Restart all drives. General chase!”

  There was again the brief period of complete disorientation as the temporal precession field built up, as the tumbling, processing gyroscopes of the drive dragged the ship with them into her own warped continuum.

  And again Grimes heard the ballad of Captain Kidd.

  And what can I do about it? he asked himself. What can I do about it? Captains, even privateer captains, don’t go around murdering their senior officers . . .

  But Captain Kidd had done so.

  Chapter 47

  IT IS AXIOMATIC that a stern chase is a long chase.

  The chase would have been a very long one, and quite possibly unsuccessful, had not Survey Service pattern governors—obtained from whom, and at what expense?—been fitted to the Mannschenn Drive units of the four ships when, at Port Kane, the other modifications had been made. With this hyperdrive in operation things were uncomfortable. There was always the feeling of walking a thin, swaying wire over an abyss that was the Past, maintaining balance with extreme difficulty. There was the frightening knowledge—in Grimes’ mind at least—that he and all aboard Sister Sue, as was the ship herself, were at the mercy of a swirling field of force and of the man controlling—trying to control!—it. But Malleson was better than highly competent. He was designer as well as engineer. He knew—Grimes hoped—what he was doing. He would allow not the slightest fluctuation of field strength.

  Obviously Captain O’Leary’s Mannschenn Drive chief was neither so confident nor so competent. Pride of Erin straggled badly. She was well astern when the flagship and Spaceways Princess and Agatha’s Ark finally overhauled their fleeing quarry and stationed themselves about her, the three points of an equilateral triangle.

  “Make to Princess and Ark,” ordered Grimes, “synchronize at will!”

  He heard the Countess repeat the order into the Carlotti transceiver microphone as he pressed the button that had been installed among the other controls of the wide arms of his chair.

  The thin, high keening of the Mannschenn Drive wavered, took on an odd, warbling quality. Inside the control room things . . . flickered. It was like watching one of the very earliest movies in some museum of the cinematic arts. It was like being inside such a movie.

  Abruptly the flickering ceased and the whine of the drive resumed its normal quality. Looking through his viewports Grimes could see the hard, bright, colored sparks that were the recognition lights of the Ark and the Princess against the backdrop of blackness and stars that still had the semblance of vague nebulae. Of the Hallicheki ship there was, as yet, no v
isual sign although she was showing up on the radar screen as well as in the MPI. To all practical intents and purposes the four wheels were sharing their own tiny universe; relative to them the rest of the continuum was warped.

  “Let us see the target, please, Mr. Venner,” said Grimes.

  The laser cannon could be used as a searchlight. It came on now. Yes, there she was—a distant, silver egg sitting in a silver skeleton eggcup. She could not escape by throwing herself out of synchronization. She could not even stop her Mannschenn Drive so as to emerge into normal spacetime. To all intents and purposes her interstellar drive was a mere slave to the more powerful units aboard the privateers and would be so for as long as the synchronizers were in operation. But the Hallicheki captain still exercised full control over her inertial drive. Suddenly she reduced thrust and began to fall astern, out of the trap. Almost immediately, almost as one, the three raiders fell back with her, regained their stations. She applied a lateral component—but before she was dangerously close to Agatha’s Ark Captain Prinn was doing likewise and Grimes and MacWhirter were maintaining their distances off with contemptuous ease.

  “Ms. Connellan, Ms. Walshingham,” ordered Grimes, “try to raise her on NST and Carlotti.”

  The two women obeyed. It was the Green Hornet who got through on the normal spacetime radio. In the screen appeared a bird’s face—yellow beak, dun plumage, mad yellow eyes.

  “Who are you? Who are you? What are you doing?”

  Ms. Connellan passed a microphone to Grimes.

  He said, “You are under arrest. You will complete your voyage to such port as we shall decide under escort. Do not attempt to escape.”

  “But you are . . . human.” (She made it sound like a dirty word; in her language it most probably was.) “The Hegemony is not at war with Earth!”

  “At the moment, no,” admitted Grimes smugly.

  “You are pirates!”

  “We are not,” Grimes told her. “We hold Letters of Marque issued by the Lord of the Roost on Kalla.”

  “Rebel worm! We will pluck the feathers from his skin, the skin from his flesh and the flesh from his bones! We . . .”

  “You’ll have to catch him first, Captain. Meanwhile, are you coming quietly?”

  “No!” came the screeched reply. “No! No!”

  And somebody must be playing with the Hellicheki ship’s inertial drive controls like a demented pianist; ahead and astern she darted, to one side and the other. It was all quite useless.

  “This,” said Grimes, “is getting to be rather boring. Mr. Venner, tickle the lady, will you. Use the quickfirer. Reduced charges, of course, and solid shot. And for the love of all the Odd Gods of the Galaxy, don’t miss!”

  This admonition was necessary. To diminish the mass of a ship running under interstellar drive is to ask for trouble and, almost certainly, to get it. But Sister Sue was now part of a four-ship system enclosed by a common precession field. As long as those projectiles hit and adhered to their target the overall mass of the system would not be changed.

  The merchantman’s last application of lateral thrust had brought her almost dangerously close to Sister Sue. This suited Grimes. At this range not the most incompetent gunnery officer could miss his target—and Venner was highly competent. From the muzzle of the quickfirer issued a stream of bright tracer that, with apparent laziness, drifted across the black gulf between the two ships like a swarm of luminous bees, striking her in a ragged line from stem to stern.

  The noise inside that ovoid hull, thought Grimes, must be deafening—but, at the very worst, there would be no more than a very minor puncture or two that would be automatically sealed.

  “Piracy!” the Hallicheki captain was screeching, her words almost drowned by the drumbeat of the striking shot.

  “That was just a sample,” Grimes told her.

  “Terry pirate! I demand . . .”

  “You are in no position to do any demanding, Captain. You are a prize of war. Do you want another taste of gunfire? After all, it is your cargo that I want, not you and your crew. Your bodies, alive or dead, are of no importance.”

  “Pirate! Filthy pirate! All right. I . . . surrender. But as soon as I can I will scream to the Hegemony!”

  “And much good may it do you, Captain.”

  Meanwhile, where the hell was Pride of Erin? Captain O’Leary had been told that he would be taking the first prize in. Captain O’Leary, Grimes saw, was no more than a dim spark right astern, just within range of the mass proximity indicator.

  “Ms. Walshingham,” he said, “call Pride of Erin. Tell her to shake the lead out of her pants. Gods! She’d be late for her own fucking funeral!”

  The Countess spoke into the microphone of the controlroom Carlotti transceiver. Her voice was cold and arrogant. It was that of the lady of the manor tearing a strip off a delinquent under gamekeeper, using what she would consider to be lower-class vocabulary for effect but retaining her upper-class diction.

  “Sister Sue to Pride of Erin . . .”

  “Pride of Erin I’ve been after havin’ me troubles . . .”

  “Sister Sue to Pride of Erin. Shake the lead out of your pants. Gods! You’d be late for your own fucking funeral!”

  “What did you say?” shouted Grimes to the fourth officer. “That was no way to make a signal to another ship!”

  “I said what you said, sir.”

  Insolent bitch! he thought. I’ll deal with you later.

  Captain O’Leary’s voice came from the speaker of the Carlotti set. It was obvious that the man was holding himself in with an effort. He, he was implying, could be correct even when his alleged superior could not.

  “I’m doin’ me best, Commodore, but I’m not a miracle worker. I’ll be with you as soon as me time-twister can get me there. I’ll . . .”

  There was a confused gabbling. There were yells.

  There was nothing.

  Grimes stared into the repeater screen. The Hallicheki ship and the Ark and the Princess were still there. Pride of Erin was not.

  “Mr. Williams,” he said, “check the main MPI. See if you can find Pride of Erin.”

  But he knew that O’Leary, his ship and his people were gone, rumbling down the temporal gulfs like a dead leaf whirled to oblivion by an autumnal gale.

  If the Walshingham bitch had not spoken as she had, the thin-skinned master of Pride of Erin would have taken no risks with his malfunctioning interstellar drive.

  But why blame her?

  I’m a fine commodore, he thought. My first action, with nothing fired but a few practice shells, and one of my ships lost . . .

  He hoped that in the remote past or the distant future O’Leary and his crew would find a world do their liking. If they survived.

  Chapter 48

  SO IT WAS SPACEWAYS PRINCESS that took in the first prize while Sister Sue and Agatha’s Ark continued their cruise.

  Shortly after Captain MacWhirter’s ship had been detached from the squadron Captain Prinn made a personal call to Grimes. He was glad that it was during Williams’ watch. It was bad enough that he should overhear what was said; it would have been far worse had it been any of the other officers.

  She looked out at him from the screen of the controlroom Carlotti transceiver, her normally harsh face even harsher than usual. Behind her Grimes could see others of the Ark’s crew, among them the young Graf von Stolzberg. All of them were regarding him with condemnation.

  “Commodore Grimes,” she said, “I am serving notice that after this cruise I shall refuse to put out again under your command. It is my opinion, and that of my officers, that you deliberately goaded Captain O’Leary into taking unjustifiable risks. Why could you not have done as you did eventually, ordering Captain MacWhirter to take charge of the prize? That would have given Captain O’Leary time to make the necessary adjustments or repairs to his Mannschenn Drive. But you were foolishly inflexible and insisted that he close the main body of the fleet without delay. Furthermore you
couched your message in words of a kind that should never be used by a commanding officer to those serving under him. That brutal message was contributory to the disaster.”

  She moved to one side. Marlene’s son (Grimes’ son) came forward.

  “Commodore Grimes, speaking as the El Doradan representative aboard this vessel, I put myself as being in complete agreement with what has been said by Captain Prinn. I shall report to Commodore Kane and to the El Dorado Corporation upon your unfitness to command any further privateering expeditions.”

  And what about your fellow El Doradan? Grimes thought but did not say. What about the El Doradan representative aboard my vessel? She’s one of your lot, Ferdinand my boy. She made O’Leary blow his top . . .

  He asked coldly, ignoring the young officer, “Is that all, Captain Prinn?”

  “That is all, Commodore Grimes. Over and out.”

  “She’s got it in for you, Skipper,” said Williams sympathetically.

  “And rightly so, Billy. Rightly so.”

  “It was that bloody Wally’s fault!”

  “Everything that happens aboard a ship,” said Grimes tiredly, “is the captain’s fault. And everything that happens in a squadron is the commodore’s fault.” He laughed without much humor. “It’s a pity that O’Leary’s given names were Patrick Joseph, not William Moore. That would have taken one weight off my mind . . .”

  “But I’m William Moore, Skipper,” said the mate. “William Moore Williams.”

  “I know,” said Grimes.

  He went down to his day cabin, sent for the Countess of Walshingham.

  ***

  When she came her cat was with her. The animal (?) sat down on the deck and stared, in an oddly hungry manner, at the golden figurine of Una mounted on her golden bicycle. It ignored Grimes—which was just as well. Did it, he wondered, recognize a fellow robot? Did the mini-Una possess some sort of organic brain, just as the evil black and white beast did?