Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (22 page)

In any case the landing was not to be made at Port Coleridge. Grimes had been supplied with charts and told that he was to set the ship down at the point indicated at precisely 2000 local time for that locality. (Porlock, like many worlds with a period of rotation less than that of Earth, found it convenient to adopt a twenty-hour day.) The set-down site, ringed in red on the map, was in one of the deserts that occupied most of the land space of the southern continent of this world. It was, Grimes estimated, at least five hundred Porlock miles (one thousand kilometers) from the nearest town. Noisy as the inertial drive inevitably is, the midnight landing should go unheard in any center of population.

Grimes always enjoyed ship handling and, in spite of the circumstances, he found pleasure in this test of his skill. There was no Aerospace Control to keep him informed as to what the wind was doing at the various levels of the atmosphere. Even if
Bronson Star
had been equipped with sounding rockets he would not have been allowed to use them. But there was a beacon, a bright red light visible only from above, that he was able to pick up from a great altitude; fortunately it was a cloudless night.

That ruddy spark, as soon as he had it in the stern-vision screen, allowed him to estimate drift, which was easily compensated for by lateral thrust although requiring frequent adjustment. Grimes quite forgot that he was acting under duress except when Paul, superciliously obnoxious, remarked that professional spacemen always seem to suffer from the delusion that their ships are made of glass.

The beacon light grew brighter and brighter, so much so that Grimes was obliged to reduce the brilliance of the screen. He watched the radar altimeter and when there were only one hundred and fifty meters to go allowed the target to drift away from the center of the bull’s-eye sight.

“Watch it, Grimes!” ordered Lania sharply. “Watch your aim!”

He said, “I’m looking after your property, or somebody’s property, Highness. Those laser beacons are quite expensive, you know . . .”

“You’re not paying for it!” she snapped but refrained from any further interference.

One hundred . . . Fifty . . .
Grimes increased vertical thrust to slow the rate of descent.
Forty . . . Thirty . . . Bronson Star
was drifting down like a huge balloon with barely negative buoyancy.
Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One . . .

And they were down, with hardly a jar. Grimes stopped the drive and the ship sighed as she adjusted her great weight within the cradle of her tripedal landing gear. The clinometer indicated that she was only a fraction of a degree off the vertical.

Grimes felt for his pipe then remembered that he had left it in his cabin. In any case Their Royal Highnesses would not have tolerated smoking in their presence.

He said, “We’re here.”

“A blinding glimpse of the obvious, Grimes,” said Lania.

“They’re waiting for us, Highness,” said Susie.

“It would be strange if they were not, girl. Mortdale is a good organizer.”

Grimes asked, “May I ring off the engines, Highness?”

“No. Leave everything on Stand By. We just might have to—what is the expression?—get upstairs in a hurry. So remain at your controls.”

Without leaving his chair Grimes was able to look out through the wide viewports. There was activity outside the ship—dark shapes in the darkness, flashing lights, the occasional flashing reflection from bright metal.

“Susie,” ordered Lania, “go down to the airlock to receive General Mortdale. You should recognize him from his photographs and you have the password.”

“Yes, Highness.”

Susie vanished down the hatch.

Grimes started to ask, “Shall I be . . . ?”

“Speak when you’re spoken to,” he was told.

***

Eventually Susie returned.

She was accompanied by three men, clad in drab, insignialess coveralls. Their leader—Mortdale?—was small, compact, terrier-like, with a stubble of grey hair and a close-cropped moustache. Grimes had known officers like him in the Federation Survey Service Marines, had never cared for them. Terriers—stupidly pugnacious at best, vicious at worst—were not his favorite dogs. The other two were taller than their leader. One had yellow hair, the other was bald but they could almost have been twins. Looking at their hard, reckless faces Grimes categorized them as bad bastards.

Mortdale drew himself to attention, so sharply that Grimes was surprised not to hear vertebrae cracking. “Highness!” he snapped.

“General,” acknowledged Paul with a languid nod of his head.

“May I present Major Briggs and Captain Polanski?”

The two men bowed stiffly.

“Captain Polanski, I suppose,” said Paul, “is the spaceman who will be taking over from our unwilling . . . chauffeur.”

“No, Highness. The captain is a member of my staff.”

“Then may I suggest, General, that you get your qualified spaceman aboard as soon as possible? There are the holds to convert into troop accommodation, the stores and the weapons to load, the troops to embark. This work must be supervised.”

“It can be supervised by an army officer, Highness,” said Mortdale.

“What about the man you were supposed to have for us?” demand Lania sharply.

“Him?”
The general’s voice was contemptuous. “He backed out. There was some star tramp here short of an officer and so he got himself signed on as Third Mate without letting me know. By this time he’s halfway to Ultimo.”

“I would have expected you to exercise better control over your people, General Mortdale,” said Lania coldly. “Thanks to your negligence the success of the operation has been jeopardized. The work of conversion, the loading, the embarkation must inevitably be delayed. It will not be long before the planetary authorities realize that something odd is going on out here in the desert.”

“The World Manager and his ministers are sympathetic to our cause, Highness. They hope for a favorable trade agreement with the new government on Dunlevin . . .”

“And who gave
you
the authority to negotiate such deals?” demanded Paul hotly. “Who . . .”

Lania silenced him with an imperious wave of her hand.

“And as I have already said, Highness,” went on the general, “my officers can oversee the work at least as well as any spaceman. As for the lift-off and the navigation to Dunlevin . . .” Grimes realized that Mortdale’s rather mad, yellow eyes were staring directly at him . . . “
he
, whoever he is, got you here. He must be competent. He can take us away from here.”

“He will do as he’s told,” said Lania, “if he values his health.”

Grimes said, “I understood that I was to be released on this world. Highness.”

“Did you?” Then, to Mortdale, “Have your officers put him back in his kennel until we need him again. Susie will show them where it is.”

Chapter 10

LOCKED IN HIS CABIN
once more Grimes stretched out on his bunk. He had never felt so helpless before in his entire life. He listened to the sounds that told him of the work in progress—hammerings, occasional muffled shouts, the rattle of ground vehicles being driven up the loading ramp to the cargo port. He could visualize what was being done; among the courses that he had sat through during his Survey Service career was one dealing with the conversion of commercial vessels to military purposes. If he’d been doing the job, he thought, he would have utilized inflatable troop-deck fittings—but that presupposed the availability of the necessary materials. Failing that, tiers of bunks could be knocked up from timber or fabricated from metal.

He wondered which technique was being used. Although this was not his ship—he had been little more than a caretaker and now was a prisoner—he still felt responsible for her. And, at brief intervals, when handling a lift-off or set-down or when adjusting trajectory, he would be, after a fashion, in actual command.

Susie came in briefly, escorted by one of Mortdale’s men. She brought him a packet of sandwiches and a plastic mug of coffee. She said little, was obviously reluctant to speak in front of the stranger.

Grimes enjoyed the light meal; it took a lot to put him off his food. He enjoyed the pipe afterward. While smoking it he tried to think things out. He would have to play along, he decided. Even though he owed no loyalty to the Royal House of Dunlevin he owed none to the Council of Commissars who were that planet’s present rulers. Voluntarily he would serve neither. Under duress he would do what he was told until—and that would, indeed, be the sunny Friday—a chance presented itself for him to make his escape.

And meanwhile—what was happening back on Bronsonia? Had his case been brought before the court yet? And if so, how had it gone? Had he lost his ship—
his
ship—the golden
Little Sister?
His worries about his legal affairs did, at least, help to take his mind off his present predicament.

And then, telling himself that there was nothing that he could do about anything at this present moment, he allowed himself to drift into a troubled sleep.

***

The period of his incarceration passed slowly.

Susie, always accompanied by an armed man, brought him his meals at what seemed to be regular intervals. He asked her how the work of conversion into a troop transport was going. She answered him shortly on each occasion, noncommitally, obviously inhibited by the presence of her escort.

Then, at last, she was able to tell him that lift-off would be as soon as he got himself up to Control. Grimes welcomed this intelligence. Given recreational facilities he did not object to a period of idleness but with no playmaster and no reading matter apart from those two novels (which he had finished long since and that were not worth reading) and the propaganda magazines he was becoming bored.

Paul and Lania were in the control room, as was General Mortdale. The soldier was still wearing his drab coveralls but shoulder straps, bearing the now familiar silver stars and golden crown insignia, had been added.

“Take her up,” ordered Lania.

“Where to?” asked Grimes. “Or need I ask? Highness.”

She looked at him coldly. “As you said, need you ask? And now, what are you waiting for?”

Grimes said, “First I have to do some checking. Highness.”

He looked out of the ports. He saw nothing but darkness. This was to be a midnight lift-off just as it had been a midnight set-down. A glance at the chronometer and a minor conversion calculation confirmed this. He walked to the big panel presenting information regarding the current state of the ship, noted from the indicators that her mass had been considerably increased but not to the extent to place any undue strain upon the inertial drive. He wished that he knew the makeup of this extra weight—how many men, how many armed vehicles, what weapons, what stores? But the question was an academic one. All life-support systems were functioning. Airlock doors were closed.

“Take your time, Grimes,” said Lania sarcastically.

“Take your time, Captain,” said Mortdale, without irony. “Make sure that everything is as it should be.” To Lania he remarked, “A good commander takes nothing for granted, Highness.”

“There’s one thing that he can take for granted,” snapped the Crown Princess. “And that’s that he’ll get his head blown off if he attempts anything that he shouldn’t. All right, Grimes, get us away from here.”

Grimes strapped himself into the command chair. He said into the intercom microphone, “All hands stand by for lift-off. Secure all.”

“All has been secured,” said the general.

The inertial drive muttered irritably and then commenced its arrhythmic hammering. The noise, thanks to sonic insulation, was not too loud in either the control room or the accommodation. Grimes wondered if anybody had thought to insulate the cargo holds, which were now troop decks. He rather hoped that this had not been done. It would make him a little happier to know that Paul’s and Lania’s loyal soldiers would be experiencing a thoroughly uncomfortable passage.

Bronson Star
heaved her clumsy bulk off the gibber plain, clawed for the sky. She lifted complainingly. Grimes doubted that the weight of her cargo, animate and inanimate, had been properly distributed. But the Commission’s Epsilon Class star tramps were sturdy workhorses and could stand considerable abuse.

She groaned and grumbled into the black, star-spangled sky. As on the occasion of her landing there was no communication with Aerospace Control. Grimes wondered what report, what complaints would be made by the captain of the big airliner, a dirigible ablaze with lights, that passed within ten kilometers of the climbing spaceship; even though
Bronson Star
was not exhibiting the regulation illuminations, she would have shown up as an enormous blip on the aircraft’s radar screen.

She drove through the last, tenuous wisps of atmosphere, out and up, through the Van Allens, established herself in orbit. Grimes was busy, as was the computer, presenting him with the coordinates of the target star. There was Free Fall when the inertial drive was shut off, centrifugal effects while the directional gyroscopes turned the ship about her axes, temporal disorientation when the Mannschenn Drive propagated its artificial, warped continuum about the vessel. Inertial drive again, and a comfortable one-gravity acceleration . . .

“Back to your kennel, Grimes,” said Lania.

Chapter 11

GRIMES
could not help worrying.

Even though he felt nothing but dislike for Paul and Lania and their people—with one possible exception—he still felt responsible for them. He was not the only spaceman aboard the ship—the original skyjackers must have received some sort of training before being employed in orbital vehicles and Hodge had served in deep space vessels—but he was the only master astronaut. During the voyage from Bronsonia to Porlock he had not been overly concerned; the life-support systems had been required to serve the needs of only five persons. But now . . . It is axiomatic that the more people there are aboard a ship the more things there are that can go wrong.
Somebody
should be making rounds at regular intervals.
Somebody
should be seeing to it that the departmental heads—Hodge and Susie?—were doing their jobs efficiently.
Somebody
should be inspecting the troop decks to ensure that conditions were reasonably hygienic. In Grimes’ experience even marines, for all their spit and polish, could not be trusted to maintain a high standard of personal cleanliness. And these soldiers that the ship was carrying were not marines, were only irregulars although, presumably, General Mortdale had been an officer in the army of Dunlevin prior to the revolution.