Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (24 page)

“Coping with them should be no problem,” said Susie.

It should not be, thought Grimes. Presumably the girl, with access to the ship’s medicine chest, should be able to drug the soldiers’ food or drink.

“There’s still the problem of getting through the Dunlevin screen in one piece,” said Hodge. “But suppose we do, and suppose that we’re able to seize the ship—we’ve got it made. A navigator, an engineer and a catering officer. There’s nowhere in the galaxy we can’t go.”

The door was flung open. One of Mortdale’s aides—it was Major Briggs, Grimes realized—stood in the opening. He glared at Grimes and at Hodge, reserved an especially venomous look for Susie.

He snarled, “Fraternizing with the prisoner, are you? The general will hear of this.”

Hodge made an ostentatious display of his pistol, said, “Their Highnesses’ orders have always been that the prisoner is to take his meals under guard.”

“Guards,” snapped Briggs, “should remain standing, not sprawl all over whatever seating is available.”

“I’m a spaceman,” growled Hodge. “Not a soldier.”

“Do not belabor the obvious, Mr. Hodge. And now, Captain Grimes, if you’ve quite finished your Lucullan repast would you mind accompanying me to Control?” He made an imperative gesture with his pistol. “Up!”

Grimes wiped his mouth, deliberately slowly, with the paper napkin, then got to his feet. He preceded the major up the spiral staircase to the control room.

***

Lania, Paul and General Mortdale were awaiting him there, sitting at ease in the command chair and the two seats flanking it. Grimes, with Briggs at his side, stood before them. Nobody told him to sit; he decided that for him to do so would only cause unpleasantness.

Lania asked, “Have you given any thought to the problem of an unobserved landing on Dunlevin, Grimes? After all, you are—or were—a naval officer rather than a merchant spaceman. You must have made a study of strategy and tactics.”

Mortdale interrupted. “As I have already said, Highness, space-borne invasions are the concern of the officers commanding the troops as well as of those commanding the transports. What do you know about the Gunderson Gambit, Captain Grimes?”

“Only what I have read, General. As a matter of fact I was thinking that it might be applied in this case . . . If this were a warship—which she’s not—I’d consider that attempting to take out the orbital forts would be less risky.”

“This Gunderson Gambit . . .” asked Paul, “Is it risky?”

“Less risky, I think,” said Grimes, “than trying to slip past the forts unobserved in normal spacetime.”

“It has been tried—the Gunderson Gambit, I mean?” asked Lania.

“By Commodore Gunderson, during the investment of Tallis. It worked for him.”

“But it didn’t work, General, for Captain Tanner during the first Waldegren campaign, or for Captain Lake at the Battle of Kahbil.”

“It could work for Captain Grimes at the Battle of Bacon Bay,” said Mortdale.

“Bacon Bay?” asked Grimes. The name reminded him of something, some historical military disaster.

“Yes, Captain. According to our Intelligence that will be the best place for a landing. The majority of the population is disaffected.”

“But this Gunderson Gambit?” demanded Lania. “It’s all very well for you military technicians to enjoy an entertaining—to yourselves—discussion but please remember that the ultimate decision rests with . . .” The unspoken word “me” might just as well have been said aloud. She looked at her consort. “With His Highness,” she finished.

Paul squirmed in his seat. Already, thought Grimes, the man was scared shitless.

“You explain, Captain,” ordered Mortdale. “You’re the spaceman.”

“As you know, Highness,” said Grimes to Lania, “the interstellar drive propagates a temporal precession field. Normally it is shut down before a close approach is made to a planetary body . . .”

“The Van Allens?” murmured the woman. “I recall that when we got away from Bronsonia we did not proceed under Mannschenn Drive until we were clear of the Van Allen Belts.”

“There is no actual risk involved, these days, in running the Van Allens with the drive in operation. It’s not usually done because crew and passengers—passengers especially—can be scared by the brush discharges from every metal projection. Come to that, there is no actual danger, physical danger, that is, if you run right through a planet or even a sun; relative to a ship proceeding under Mannschenn Drive such bodies exist in an alternate universe. Of course, if the drive went on the blink at just the wrong place at the wrong time it would be just too bad for the ship and her people—and for the inhabitants of a populated world if a spaceship suddenly materialized somewhere under the surface. And as for suns—such an accident might trigger off a nova. There’s only one way of finding out for sure and nobody’s keen on trying it.”

“Fascinating as these horror stories are,” said Lania coldly, “I shall be obliged if you will come to the point.”

“Very well, Highness. The Gunderson Gambit involves running in as close as you dare under Mannschenn Drive and then . . . materializing. If you’ve miscalculated very badly you break through into the normal continuum below the surface of the planet. The result is a Big Bang with the ship at Ground Zero. There’s also a Big Bang if you materialize at anything below stratospheric level. But where can you say that a planet’s atmosphere ends? If the sudden mixture of ship’s matter and planetary matter occurs at an altitude where the planetary matter is no more than a few stray molecules and atoms of assorted gases you should suffer only a few casualties, with luck not even fatal ones. There should be no great damage to the ship’s structure or to her machinery. The major risk will be a descent of at least six hundred kilometers with your inertial drive making enough racket to awaken even the sleepiest sentries.”

“We didn’t wake any sentries on Porlock,” said Lania.

“On Porlock, Highness,” said Mortdale, “nobody was on the alert for an armed invasion. Furthermore, the authorities were turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to our coming and going.” He turned to Grimes. “But the people on the world on which your Commodore Gunderson was landing were, presumably, expecting trouble. What did
he
do?”

“He modified his ship while he was still outside the range of planet- and satellite-based radar, then made a powered, stern-first approach. He shut down his Mannschenn Drive at superstratospheric altitude, then fell free, using his inertial drive, initially, only to maintain attitude. Finally, only seconds before impact, he slammed on full vertical thrust
and
fired his auxiliary reaction drive. It worked—for the commodore. But this ship—a merchantman, not a warship—doesn’t run to auxiliary rockets.”

“But even without reaction drive,” stated rather than asked Mortdale, “you can do it.”

“The last part, General, yes. At least, I’ll try. But the powered, stern-first approach is out.”

“Why, Captain Grimes?”

“To begin with, it would mean that our entry into the atmosphere, even with the inertial drive shut down for the final free fall, would be at far too high a velocity. As I’ve already said, we don’t have braking rockets to use before set-down. And we donhave the heat shields that a warship has. We’d hit the ground as a blob of molten metal.

“Our approach will have to be a normal one apart from our shutting down Mannschenn Drive within the Van Allens. We have to swing on the gyros, of course, so that we fall stern first to the target area. If anybody happens to be watching they’ll see us appear suddenly on their radar screens—and they’ll see, too, that we’re just falling. There’ll be panic stations—even if they assume that we’re a meteorite and not a spaceship. At best—as far as we’re concerned—there’ll be an evacuation of the strike area. At worst there’ll be an attempt to destroy the hunk of cosmic debris—if they
are
fooled—before it strikes. And we don’t run to antimissile laser or antimissile missiles.”

The general grinned, quite amicably. “It is refreshing to discuss strategy and tactics with a man of your training, Captain. Most of my own officers are somewhat amateurish. But our main problem is one of a silent approach. We have our sympathizers, of course, on Dunlevin, a royalist underground. As soon as you can give me a firm ETA, a Carlottigram will be sent from this ship, allegedly emanating from a passenger aboard
Alpha Puppis
, to an elderly lady living in the capital city, Dunrobin. Innocent birthday greetings unless you have the key to the code . . . We have people in the planet-based radar stations and also in the fortress satellites. There will be brief—very brief—breakdowns, failures to observe what is showing on the screens, at just the right—for us—time . . .”

“Aren’t they taking a great risk, those radar operators?” asked Grimes.

“They will be well rewarded,” said Lania.

If they’re lucky,
thought Grimes.
If they’re bloody lucky.

“But can they be trusted?” asked Paul. “Can they be trusted?”

“You should never have gotten into this,” Lania told him, “if you haven’t the guts to see it through.”

Grimes wondered how long Paul would last if the counterrevolution were successful but told himself, as he looked at the flabby prince, that he could hardly care less.

All that he wanted to do was to get down onto Dunlevin in one piece and then, as soon as possible, to leave in the same intact state.

Chapter 13

AS THE VOYAGE
drew to its conclusion Grimes was required more and more frequently in Control. Few were the opportunities when he could discuss with Susie and Hodge their plan of campaign after a landing had been made—
if
a landing was made—and fewer still were the opportunities to have the girl to himself. Their sessions of lovemaking were brief, infrequent but torrid. He knew—and she knew—that what was between them could not last, not even if they survived the landing, not even if they succeeded in making their escape from Dunlevin. The transitory nature of their relationship made it all the more intense.

They had time to talk, sometimes, after their couplings. Once Grimes said to her, “You told me, some time ago, that Lania hates you because you were once Paul’s lover. I just can’t see how a girl like you could fall for a fat slob like him . . .”

She laughed, a little ruefully. She said, “He wasn’t always so fat. And back on Bronsonia—at least to the refugees and their children, such as myself—he was the Prince, the Prince Charming. Many native Bronsonians thought of him that way as well.” She laughed again. “I believe you’re jealous, John . . .”

He laughed, but without real humor. “Perhaps I am.”

And then Hodge, outside the cabin, made his usual major production of unlocking the door.

***

On another occasion they were talking of less personal matters.

He asked her, “What do you know of Bacon Bay, Susie?”

“About as much as you,” she told him. “It’s on the west coast of New Ireland. I suppose it was named after some personality among the original colonists . . .”

He said, “There was a Bacon Bay—no, not Bacon Bay but a name very similar—back on Earth. I remember it from a history lesson years ago, when I was just a school kid. One of the American presidents made a landing there in support of a counterrevolution . . .”

“And what happened?”

“It came unstuck.”

She said, “I have a sort of presentiment that this one will. It’s just as well, I think, that we won’t be sticking around to find out just what does happen . . .”

***

For a change Hodge was watching Grimes eat while Susie kept guard outside.

He said, “I’ve been helping the general’s artificers with the hovertanks. Nasty, vicious little three-man jobs . . . One driver, two gunners . . . You’re an expert on military matters, Grimes; perhaps you could tell me why Mortdale is going to use ground forces instead of a fleet of armed pinnaces? After all, we could have loaded quite a few aboard this ship . . .”

“A lot depends,” said Grimes, “upon what arms he was able to purchase on Porlock. Quite possibly the Porlockers didn’t have any military aircraft to spare.”

“Those tanks,” said Hodge, “were manufactured in the Duchy of Waldegren.”

“And so what? They could still be Porlockian surplus army equipment. But tanks instead of aircraft for the invasion? It makes sense. Aircraft—or spacecraft operating inside or outside an atmosphere—are fine for blowing the hell out of the enemy’s military installations and/or centers of population—but they’re also fine targets themselves. And if you want to take
and hold
, without causing overmuch damage, you need infantry. And tanks are sort of mechanized infantry.”

“They can take and hold as much as they like,” said Hodge, “as long as they don’t hold
us
.”

***

“This looks like being the last time, John,” said Susie. “The last time, that is, on this leg of the voyage. I hope that it’s not the last time, period.”

“I do, too.”

“That’s up to us, the three of us,” she said.

He looked suspiciously at her naked belly. It seemed a little plumper than usual.

She laughed. “By the three of us I meant you, Hodge and myself. Don’t worry about any other possible meaning to my words. I’m taking my shots.”

“Just as well,” said Grimes. “I’ve enough worries already.”

“
You
worried? I’ve heard that when you were in the Survey Service you were notorious for your good luck.”

“If my luck had held,” he said, “I shouldn’t be here now.”

“You bastard!” she said, and Grimes had to talk hard and fast before she would allow him to continue with the lovemaking.

When they were finished he said, “But, after all, I have been lucky. This time with you . . .”

She said, “You don’t deserve it.”

Chapter 14

BRONSON STAR
passed through Dunlevin’s Van Allens, the natural screen of particles held about the planet by its magnetic field. The transit should have been made in nanoseconds of subjective time—but, with the Mannschenn Drive still in operation seemed to occupy an eternity. Grimes had read and had been told of the weird effects that might be expected, had warned the others—but reading about something in a book is altogether different from experiencing it in actuality.