‘Oh … no!’ groaned McConnell. He began fumbling his way toward the invisible board. Where was it, anyhow?
‘I can cook too,’ said Emily. ‘And sew. And I’m awfully fond of children.’
Herr Syrup noted on his crude meters that the first-stage beer barrel was now exhausted. He pulled the switch that dropped it and pushed himself up into the spacesuit to make sure that that had actually been done. Peering through the helmet globe, he saw that one relay had stuck and the keg still clung. He popped back inside and told Sarmishkidu to hand him some sections of iron pipe through the stovepipe valve; this emergency was not unanticipated. Clumsy in gauntlets, his fingers screwed the pieces together to make a prod which could reach far aft and crack the empty cask loose.
It occurred to him how much simpler it would have been to keep his tools in a box fastened to the outer hull. But of course such things only come to mind when a model is being tested.
He stared aft. The Mercury Girl was visible to the unaided eye, though dwindling perceptibly. She still floated inert, but he could not expect that condition to prevail for long. Well, a man can but try. Herr Syrup wriggled out of the armor torso and back into the cabin. Claus was practicing free-fall flight technique and nipping stray droplets of beer out of the air; sometimes he collided with a drifting empty bottle, but he seemed to enjoy himself.
‘Resuming acceleration,’ said Herr Syrup. ‘Give me a pretzel.’
Suds gushed from the second barrel. The boat wobbled crazily. Of course the loss of the first one had changed its spin characteristics. Herr Syrup compensated and ploughed doggedly on. The second cask emptied and was discharged without trouble. He cut in the third one.
Presently Sarmishkidu crawled ‘up’ into the spacesuit. A whistle escaped him.
‘Vat?’ asked Herr Syrup.
‘There – behind us – your spaceship – und it is coming verdammten fast!’
Having strapped his fiancée carefully into the acceleration chair beside his own, Rory McConnell resumed pursuit. He had lost a couple of hours by now, between one thing and another. And while she drifted free, the Girl had of course orbited well off the correct track. He had to get back on it and then start casting about. For a half hour of strained silence, he maneuvered.
‘There!’ he said at last.
‘Where?’ asked Emily.
‘In the ‘scope,’ said McConnell. His ill humor let up and he squeezed her hand. ‘Hang on, here we go. I’ll have thim back aboard in ten minutes.’
The hazy cloud waxed so fast that he revised his estimate upward. He had too much velocity; it would be necessary to overshoot, brake, and come back—
Then crash! clang-ng-ng! His teeth jarred together. For a moment, his heart paused and he knew naked fear.
‘What was that?’ asked Emily.
He hated to frighten her, but he forced out of suddenly stiff and sandy lips: ‘A meteor, I’m sure. An’ judging from the sound of it, ‘twas big an’ fast enough to stave in a whole compartment.’ You could not exactly roll your eyes heavenward in free space, but he tried manfully. ‘Holy St. Patrick, is this any way to treat your loyal son?’
He shot past the wallowing beer boat at kilometers per second, falling free while he ripped off his harness. ‘The instruments aren’t showin’ damage, but belike the crucial one is been knocked out,’ he muttered. ‘An’ us with no engine crew an’ no deckhands. I’ll have to go out there meself to check. At least this section is unharmed.’ He nodded at the handkerchief he had thrown into the air; when the ventilators were briefly turned off, it simply hung, borne on no current of leakage. ‘If we begin to lose air elsewhere, sweetheart, there’ll be automatic ports to seal yez off, so ye’re all right for the next few hours.’
‘But what about you?’ she cried, white-faced now that she understood. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll be in a spacesuit.’ He leaned over and kissed her. ‘’Tis not the danger that’s so great as the delay. For somethin’ I’ll have to do, jist so acceleration strain don’t pull the damaged hull apart. I’ll be back when I can, darlin’.’
And yet, as he went aft, there was no sealing bulwark in his way, nowhere a wind whistling toward the dread emptiness outside. Puzzled and more than a little daunted, Rory McConnell completed his interior inspection in the engine room, broke out his own outsize space armor from his pack, and donned it: a slow, awkward task for one man alone. He floated to the nearest airlock and let himself out.
It was eerie on the hull, where only his clinging bootsoles held him fast among streaming cold constellations. The harshness of undiffused sunlight and the absolute blackness of shadow made it hard to recogize anything for what it was. He saw a goblin and crossed himself violently before realizing it was only a lifeboat tank; and he was an experienced spaceman.
An hour’s search revealed no leak. There was a dent in the bow which might or might not be freshly made, nothing else. And yet that meteor had struck with such a doomsday clang that he had thought the hull might be torn in two. Well, evidently St. Patrick had been on the job. McConnell returned inside, disencumbered himself, went forward, reassured Emily, and began to kill his unwanted velocity.
Almost two hours had passed before he was back in the vicinity of the accident, and then he could not locate the fugitive boat. By now it would have ceased blasting; darkly painted, it would be close to invisible in this black sky. He would have to set up a search pattern and – He groaned.
Something drifted across his telescopic field of view. What the deuce? He nudged the spaceship closer, and gasped.
‘Son of a—’ Hastily, he switched to Gaelic.
‘What is it, light of both my eyes?’ asked Emily.
McConnell beat his head against the console. ‘A couple of hoops an’ some broken staves,’ he whimpered. ‘Oh, no, no, no!’
‘But what of it? I mean, after all, when you consider how Mr. Syrup put that boat together, well, actually.’
‘That’s just it!’ howled McConnell. ‘That’s what’s cost me near heart failure, plus two priceless hours or more an’—That was our meteor! An empty beer barrel! Oh, the ignominy of it!’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Herr Syrup stopped the exhaust of his fourth-stage keg and leaned back into weightlessness with a sigh. ‘Ve better not accelerate any more,’ he said. ‘Not yust now. Ve vill need a little reserve to maneuver later on.’
‘Vot later on?’ asked Herr von Himmelschmidt sourly. ‘I don’t know vy der ship shot on past us, but soon it comes back und den ve iss maneuvered into chail’
‘Veil, meanvile shall ve pass de time?’ Herr Syrup took a greasy pack of cards from his jacket and riffled them suggestively.
‘Stop riffling them suggestively!’ squealed Sarmishkidu. ‘This is no time for idle amusements.’
‘Well … hmmm … no, not that … Perhaps … no … Shilling ante?’
At the end of some four hours, when he was ahead by several pounds sterling in I.O.U.’s and Sarmishkidu was whistling like an indignant bagpipe, Herr Syrup noticed how dim the light was getting. The gauge showed him that the outside batteries were rather run down also. Everything would have to be charged up again. He explained the situation. ‘Do you vant first turn on de bicycle or shall I?’ he asked.
‘Who, me?’ Sarmishkidu wagged a languid ear. ‘Whatever gave you the idea that evolution has prepared my race for bicycle riding?’
‘Vell … I mean … dat is—’
‘You are letting your Danishness run away with you.’
‘Satan i helvede!’ muttered Herr Syrup. He floated himself into the saddle, put feet to pedals, and began working.
‘And de vorst of it is,’ he grumbled, ‘who is ever going to believe I crossed from Grendel to New Vinshester on a bicycle?’
Slowly, majestically, and off-center, the boat picked up an opposite rotation.
‘There they be!’ cried Rory McConnell.
‘Oh dear,’ said Emily Croft.
The beer bo
at swelled rapidly in the forward viewport. The weariness of hour upon hour, searching, dropped from the Erseman. ‘Here we go!’ he cried exultantly. ‘Tantivy, tantivy, tantivy!’
Then, lacking radar, he found that the human eye is a poor judge of free-space relationships. He buckled down to the awkward task of matching speeds.
‘Whoops!’ he said. ‘Overshot!’ Ten kilometers beyond, he came to a relative halt, twisted the cumbersome mass of the ship around, and approached slowly. He saw a head pop up into the spacesuit helmet, glare at him, and pop back again. Foam spouted; the boat slipped out of his view.
McConnell readjusted and came alongside, so that he looked directly from the turret at his prey. ‘He hasn’t the acceleration to escape us,’ he gloated. ‘I’ll folly each twist an’ turn he cares to make, from now until—’ He stopped.
‘Until we get to New Winchester?’ asked Emily in a demure tone.
‘But – I mean to say – but!’ Major McConnell bugged tired eyes at the keg-and-box bobbing across the stars.
‘But I’ve overhauled them!’ he shouted, pounding the console. ‘I’ve a regular ship with hundreds of times their mass an’ … an’ … they’ve got to come aboard! It isn’t fair!’
‘Since we have no wireless, how can you inform them of that?’ purred the girl. She leaned over close and patted his cheek. Her gaze softened. ‘There, there. I’m sorry. I do love you, and I don’t want to tease you or anything, but honestly, don’t you think you’re becoming a bit of a bore on this subject? I mean, enough’s enough, don’t you know.’
‘Not if ye’re of Erse blood, it isn’t.’ McConnell set his jaw till it ached. ‘I’ll scoop ’em up, that’s what I will!’
There was a master control for the cargo machinery in the engine room, but none on the bridge. McConnell unstrapped himself, shoved grimly ‘down’ to the hold section, pumped out the main hatch chamber and opened the lock. Now he had it gaping wide enough to swallow the boat whole, and—
Weight came back. He crashed into the deck. ‘Emily!’ he bellowed, picking himself up with a bloody nose. ‘Emily, git away from them controls!’
Three Terrestrial gravities of acceleration were a monstrous load on any man. He took minutes to regain the bridge, drag himself to the main console, and slap down the main drive switch. Meanwhile Emily, sagging in her chair and gasping for breath, managed a tolerant smile.
When they again floated free, McConnell bawled at her: ‘I love yez more than I do me own soul, an’ ye’re the most beautiful creature the cosmos will ever see, an’ I’ve half a mind to turn yez over me knee an’ paddle ye raw!’
‘Watch your language, Rory,’ the vicar’s daughter reproved. ‘Paddle me black and blue, you please. I mean, I don’t like double-entendres.’
‘Ah, be still, ye blitherin’ angel,’ he snarled. He swept the sky with a bloodshot telescope. The boat was out of sight again. Of course.
It took him half an hour to relocate it, still orbiting stubbornly on toward New Winchester. And New Winchester had grown noticeably more bright.
‘Now we’ll see what we’ll see,’ grated Major McConnell.
He accelerated till he was dead ahead of the boat, matched speeds – except for a few K.P.H. net toward him which he left for his quarry – and spun broadside to. As nearly as he could gauge it, the boat was aimed directly into his open cargo hatch.
Herr Syrup applied a quick side jet, slipped ‘beneath’ the larger hull, and continued on his way.
‘Aaaargh!’ Tiny flecks of foam touched McConnell’s lips. He tried again.
And again.
And again.
‘It’s no use,’ he choked at last. ‘He can slide past me too easy. The wan thing I could do would be to ram him an’ be done – Arragh, hell have him, he knows I’m not a murderer.’
‘Really, dear,’ said Emily, ‘it would all be so simple if you would just give up and admit he’s won.’
‘Small chance of that!’ McConnell brooded for a long minute. And slowly a luster returned to his eyes. ‘Yes. I have it. The loadin’ crane. I’ll have to jury-rig a control to the bridge, as well as a visio screen so I can see what I’m doin’. But havin’ given meself that much, why, I’ll approach ag’in with the crane grapple projectin’ from the hatch, reach out, an’ grab hold!’
‘Rory,’ said Emily, ‘you’re being tiresome.’
‘I’m bein’ Erse, by all the saints!’ McConnell rubbed a bristly red jaw. ‘’Tis hours ’twill take me, an’ him fleein’ the while. Could ye hold us alongside, me only one?’
‘Me?’ The girl opened wide blue eyes and protested innocently. ‘But darling, you told me after that last time to leave the controls alone, and I admit I don’t know a thing about it. I mean, it would be unlawful for me to try piloting, wouldn’t it, and positively dangerous. I mean to say, medén pratto!
‘Ah, well, I might have known how the good loyal heart of yez would make ye a bloody nuisance. But either give me your word of honor not to touch the pilot board ag’in, or I must break me own heart by tyin’ yez into that chair.’
‘Oh, I promise, dear. I’ll promise you anything within reason.’
‘An’ whatsoever ye don’t happen to want is unreasonable. Yes.’ Rory McConnell sighed, kissed his lady love, and went off to work. The escape boat blasted feebly but steadily into a new orbit – not very different, but time and the pull of the remote sun on an inert ship would show their work later on.
General Scourge-of-the-Sassenach O’Toole lifted a gaunt face and glared somberly at the young guardsman who had finally won through to his office. ‘Well?’ he clipped.
‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but—’
‘Salute me, ye good-for-nothin’ scut!’ growled O’Toole. ‘What kind of an army is it we’ve got here, where a private soldier passin’ the captain in the street slaps his back an’ says, “Paddy, ye auld pig, the top of the mornin’ to yez an’ if ye’ve a moment to spare, why, ’tis proud I’ll be to stand yez a mug of dark in yon tavern” – eh?’
‘Well, sir,’ said the guardsman, his Celtic love of disputation coming to the fore, ‘I say ‘twas a fine well-run army of outstandingly high morale. Though truth to speak, the captain I’ve been saddled with is a pickle-faced son of a landlord who would not lift his hat to St. Bridget herself, did the dear holy colleen come walkin’ in his door.’
‘Morale, ye say?’ shouted O’Toole, springing from his chair. ‘Morale cuts both ways, ye idiot! How much morale do ye think the officer’s corps has got, or I meself, when me own men name me Auld S.O.T.S. to me face, not even botherin’ to sound the initials sep’rit, an’ me havin’ not touched a drop in all me life? I’ll have some respect hereabouts, begorra, or know the reason why!’
‘If ye want to know the reason I can give it to ye, General, sir, ye auld maid in britches!’ cried the guardsman. His fist smote the desk. ‘’Tis just the sour face of yez, that’s the rayson, an’ if ye drink no drop ’tis because wan look at yez would curdle the poteen in the jug! Now if ye want some constructive suggistions for improvin’ the management of this army—’
They passed an enjoyable half hour. At last, having grown hoarse, the guardsman bade the general a friendly good day and departed.
Five minutes later there was a scuffle in the anteroom. A sentry’s voice yelped, ‘Ye can’t go in there to himself without an appointment!’ and the guardsman answered, ‘An appointment I’ve had, since the hour before dawn whin I first came an’ tried to get by the bureaucratic lot of yez!’ and the scuffle got noisier and at last the office door went off its hinges as the guardsman tossed the sentry through it.
‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ he panted, dabbing at a bruised cheek and judiciously holding the sentry down with one booted foot, ‘but I just remembered why I had to see yez.’
‘Ye’ll go to the brig for this, ye riotous scum!’ roared O’Toole. ‘Corp’ril of the guard! Arrest this man!’
‘That attitude is precisely what I was criticizin�
�� earlier,’ pointed out the soldier. ‘’Tis officers like yez what takes all the fun out of war. Why, ye wall-eyed auld Fomorian, if ye’d been in charge of the Cattle Raid of Cooley, the Brown Bull would still be chewin’ cud in his meaddy! Now ye listen to me—’
As four freshly arrived sentries dragged him off, he shouted back: ‘All right, then! If ye’re goin’ to be that way about it, all right an’ be damned to yez! I won’t tell ye my news! I won’t speak a word of what I saw through the tellyscope just before sunrise – or failed to see – ye can sit there in blithe ignorance of the Venusian ship havin’ vanished from her orbit, till she calls down the Anglian Navy upon yez! See if I care!’
For a long, long moment, General Scourge-of-the-Sassen-ach O’Toole gaped out at Grendel’s blue sky.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Spent, shaking with lack of sleep and sheer muscular weariness, Rory McConnell weaved through free fall toward the bridge. As he passed the galley, Emily stopped him. Having had a night watch of rest, she looked almost irritatingly calm and beautiful. ‘There, there, love,’ she said. ‘Is it all over with? Come, I’ve fixed a nice cup of tea.’
‘Don’t want any tea,’ he growled.
‘Oh, but darling, you must! Why, you’ll waste away. I swear you’re already just skin and bones … oh, and your poor dear hands, the knuckles are all rubbed raw. Come on, there’s a sweetheart, sit down and have a cup of tea. I mean, actually you’ll have to float, and drink it out of one of those silly suction bottles, but the principle is the same. That old boat will keep.’
‘Not much longer,’ said McConnell. ‘By now, she’s far closer to the King than she is to Grendel.’
‘But you can wait ten minutes, can’t you?’ Emily pouted. ‘You’re not only neglecting your health, but me. You’ve hardly remembered I exist. All those hours, the only thing I heard on the intercom was swearing. I mean, I imagine from the tone it was swearing, though of course I don’t speak Gaelic. You will have to teach me after we’re married. And I’ll teach you Greek. I understand there is a certain affinity between the languages.’ She rubbed her cheek against his bare chest. ‘Just as there is between you and me … Oh, dear!’ She retired to try getting some of the engine grease off her face.
The Makeshift Rocket Page 9
