Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (61 page)

“Good bye,
Little Sister,”
said McKillick. “Don’t come back.”

“If I do,” said Grimes, “it will be fifty years too soon.

He heard the sound of quarrelling female voices behind him.

This would not be, he predicted to himself, one of the more pleasant voyages of his career.

But it would be interesting.

STAR LOOT

Chapter 1

FOR THE FIRST TIME
in his life Grimes was rich.

But money, he was coming to realize, does not buy happiness. Furthermore it is, far too often, a very expensive commodity. It has to be paid for and the price can be high. The cost of his newly acquired wealth was
Little Sister
, the beautiful, golden, deep space pinnace that had been given him by the Baroness Michelle d’Estang. He had hated parting with his tiny ship but financial circumstances had been such that there was almost no option. The fortunes of Far Traveler Couriers were at an extremely low ebb and Grimes, long notorious for his hearty appetite, wanted to go on eating.

At first the courier business had been moderately successful. There seemed to be no shortage of small parcels of special cargo to be carted, at high freight rates, hither and yon across the known galaxy. Then the commercial climate deteriorated and Grimes gained the impression that nobody at all wanted anything taken anywhere in a hurry and at a price. His last employment had been the carriage of a small shipment of memory-and-motivation units from Electra to Austral, the consignee being Yosarian Robotics. There was absolutely no suitable outward cargo for
Little Sister
available on Austral—and the First Galactic Bank was getting restive about Far Traveler Couriers’ considerable overdraught.

Grimes went to see Mr. Yosarian. He knew that the fantastically wealthy roboteer often manufactured very special models for very special customers, some of whom must surely wish delivery in a hurry. He was admitted into an outer office on the very top floor of the towering Kapek Komplex, an assemblage of three glittering tetrahedra of steel and plastic with a fourth tetrahedron mounted on this spectacular foundation.

He sat waiting in a deep, comfortable chair, watching the blonde secretary or receptionist or whatever she was doing something at her desk, languidly prodding a keyboard with scarlet-nailed fingers, watching some sort of read-out on a screen that presented a featureless back to the visitor. She was not at all inclined to make conversation. Grimes wondered idly if she was one of Yosarian’s special robots, decided that she probably wasn’t. She was too plump, too soft looking and there had been nothing metallic in her voice when she condescended to speak to him. He tried to interest himself in the magazines on a low table by his seat but all of them were trade journals. An engineer would have found them fascinating—but Grimes was not an engineer. From his cadet days onward he had displayed little mechanical aptitude and, quite naturally, had entered the spaceman branch of the Survey Service.

He filled and lit his vile pipe, got up from his chair and strolled to one of the wide windows overlooking the city of Port Southern. The tall, elongated pyramid was a feature of local architecture. Between these towers and groupings of towers were green parks, every one of which seemed to have its own fountain, each a wavering plume of iridescent spray. In the distance was the spaceport, looking like a minor city itself. But those gleaming spires were the hulls of ships great and small, passenger liners and freighters.

Grimes could just see the golden spark that was the sunlight reflected from the shell plating of a ship by no means great—
Little Sister
. She had brought him here, to this world. Would she take him away from it? She wouldn’t, he thought bitterly, unless there were some cargo to make it worth her while, some paid employment that would enable him to settle his outstanding bills.

The blonde’s voice broke into his glum thoughts. “Mr. Yosarian will see you now, sir. Go straight through.”

“Thank you,” said Grimes.

He looked around for an ashtray, found one, knocked out his pipe into it.

“That,” said the girl coldly, “happens to be a flower bowl.”

“But there aren’t any flowers in it,” he said defensively.

“A ship is still a ship even when there’s no cargo in her holds,” she told him nastily.

That hurt. She must know how things were with him. Probably everybody in Port Southern, on the whole damned planet, knew. With his prominent ears flushing angrily he went through into the inner office.

***

Like a statue of some corpulent Oriental deity Yosarian sat behind his huge desk, the vast, shining expanse of which was bare save for two read-out screens. He did not rise as Grimes entered, just regarded him through black eyes that were like little lumps of coal representing the visual organs in the white face of a snowman. His too full red lips were curved in a complacent smile.

He said, “Be seated, Captain.” His voice was just too pleasant to be classed as oleaginous, but only just.

Grimes started to turn. The nearest chair had been against the wall, near the door by which he had entered. But it was no longer there. Walking rapidly but silently on its four legs, it had positioned itself behind him. The edge of its padded seat nudged Grimes just below the backs of his knees.

He sat rather more heavily than had been his intention.

Yosarian laughed.

Grimes said, “Quite a trick.”

“But little more, Captain. You should see—and use—some of the robot furniture that I design and manufacture. Such as the beds. Custom made.” He leered. “And what do you think of
these?
”

A drawer in the desk must have opened—by itself, as both Yosarian’s fat hands were sprawled on the polished surface. Something was coming out of it. A tiny hand found purchase on the edge of the desk top, then another. It—
she
—pulled herself up. She was only a mechanical doll but she could have been alive, a miniature golden girl, perfect in every detail from her long, yellow hair to the toes of her golden feet. She pirouetted and as she did so she sang wordlessly. High and thin was the music but with an insidious rhythm. She was joined by two more dolls, both female, one white-skinned and black-haired, the other whose body was a lustrous black and whose hair shone like silver. They carried instruments—the white girl a syrinx, the black girl a little drum. They sat cross-legged, piping and drumming, while the golden doll danced and sang.

“These come life-size, too,” said Yosarian. “Special orders. Very special orders . . .”

“Mphm,” grunted Grimes thoughtfully and disapprovingly.

“And you wouldn’t believe that they’re made of metal, would you?” He raised his hands, clapped them sharply, then with his right index finger pointed at Grimes. The musicians stopped playing, the dancer halted in mid-step. Then all three of them ran gracefully to the edge of the desk, jumped down to the thick carpet. Before Grimes realized what was happening they were swarming up his legs, on to his lap. His ears, flamed with embarrassment.

“Go on, touch them. They aren’t programed to bite, Captain.”

Gingerly, with the tip of a forefinger, Grimes stroked the back of the golden dancer. It could almost have been real skin under his touch—almost, but not quite.

Yosarian clapped again. The dolls jumped down from Grimes’ lap, ran around to Yosarian’s side of the desk, vanished.

“You must often, Mr. Yosarian, get special orders for these . . . toys,” said Grimes.

“
Toys?
You offend me, Captain. But there are special orders. Only a short while ago the Grand Duke Oblimov on El Dorado wanted a pair of dancing boys, life-size. Do you know El Dorado, Captain? I have thought, now and again, of retiring there. I’ve more than enough money to be accepted as a citizen, but I’d be expected to buy a title of some kind—and that I would regard as a sinful waste of hard-earned credits! As a matter of fact it was an El Doradan ship that carried the small shipment to the Grand Duke. She was here on a cruise and all the passengers were Lord this and Lady that. The master of her called himself Commodore, not Captain, and
he
was a Baron. The funny part of it all was that I used to know him slightly, years ago, when he was skipper of a scruffy little star tramp running out of Port Southern . . .”

“Commodore Baron Kane,” said Grimes sourly.

“You know him? It’s a small universe, isn’t it? But what can I do for you, Captain Grimes? I’m sure that you didn’t come all the way from the spaceport just to talk to me and watch my pretty mini-robots perform.”

“You have mentioned special orders, Mr. Yosarian. I’ll be frank; I need employment for my ship and myself very badly. I was wondering if . . .”

“I am sorry, Captain. The last special order was the one to El Dorado; the next one will be—” he shrugged and spread his hands—” who knows when? But perhaps you have not wasted your time after all . . .”

“Then you do have something?”

“You have something, Captain Grimes. Something that I want, for which I am prepared to pay. I will tell you a secret. When I was very young I wanted to become a spaceman. As you know, your Antarctic Space Academy on Earth accepts entrants from all the Federated Planets—as long as they can pass the preliminary examinations. I almost passed—but
almost
isn’t good enough. So I had to go into my father’s business—robotics. He wasn’t exactly poor—but I am rich. I have been thinking for some time of purchasing a little ship of my own, a spaceyacht, something so small that I am not required by law to carry a qualified master. I have the know-how—or my people have the know-how—to make a computer pilot capable of navigating and handling life-support systems and all the rest of it. I may have to import a special m-and-m unit from Electra, but that is no problem. They can send it with the next big shipment that I have on order.”

“You mean . . .” began Grimes.

“I mean that I want your ship, your
Little Sister
. I know how things are with you. There is word of a forced sale, engineered by the First Galactic Bank. So I’m doing you a favor. I will pay a good price. And you will know that your ship will not be broken up just for the precious metal that went into her building. She will survive as a functioning vessel.”

“As a rich man’s toy,” said Grimes.

Yosarian chuckled. “There are worse fates, much worse fates, for ships, just as there are for women. And a ship such as yours, constructed from an isotope of gold, will keep her looks. I shall cherish her.”

“How much?” asked Grimes bluntly.

Yosarian told him.

With an effort Grimes kept his face expressionless. The sum named was far in excess of what he had expected. With such money in his bank account he would be able to retire, a young man, and live anywhere in the galaxy—with the exception of El Dorado—that he wished. But was it enough? Would it ever be enough?

“I think, Captain,” said Yosarian gently, “that mine is a fair offer. Very fair.”

“Yes,” admitted Grimes.

“And yet you are still reluctant. If I wait until your many creditors force a sale I may be able to buy your ship at a mere fraction of this offer.”

“Then why aren’t you willing to wait, Mr. Yosarian?” asked Grimes.

The fat man looked at him shrewdly, then laughed. “All right, Captain. It’s cards on the table. I happen to know that Austral Metals wants your ship. It is quite possible that they would outbid even me—and that, I freely admit, would mean more money in your pocket after all the legal technicalities have been sorted out. But do you know what they would do with her if they got her? They would regard her as no more than scrap metal—precious scrap, but scrap nonetheless. They would break her up, melt her down. Only the Electrans know the secret of producing the isotope of gold of which your
Little Sister
is constructed. Austral Metals use that very isotope in some of their projects—and have to pay very heavily for what they import from Electra. Your ship, her hull and her fittings, would be relatively cheap.

“If I have read you aright, Captain Grimes, you are a sentimentalist. Although your ship is only a machine you feel toward her almost as you would toward a woman—and could you bear to see the body of a woman you loved cut up and the parts deposited in an organ bank?” He shuddered theatrically. “If
I
get
Little Sister
I’ll look after her, pamper her, even. If Austral Metals gets her they’ll hack her and burn her into pieces.”

And I can’t afford to keep her,
thought Grimes. Always in the past something had turned up to rescue him from utter insolvency—but this time nothing would. Or something had. If he accepted Yosarian’s offer it would save
Little Sister
from the breakers as well as putting him back in the black.

“You really want her as a ship?” asked Grimes. “You don’t intend to turn out a line of indestructible golden robots?”

“I give you my word, Captain.”

Grimes believed him.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll take your price—on condition that you clear my overdraught and all my other debts.”

Had he overplayed his hand? For long moments he feared that he had. Then Yosarian laughed.

“You drive a hard bargain, Captain Grimes. Once I would have haggled. Now I will not. At least twice—the first time many years ago, the second time recently—I have tried to get the price down on something I really wanted. Each time I failed—and failed, in consequence, to attain my heart’s desire.”

Grimes wondered what it was that Yosarian had been wanting to buy, decided that it might not be politic to ask. He felt an odd twinge of sympathy.

“My lawyers,” said the fat man, “will call on board your ship tomorrow morning to arrange the details. Please have a detailed statement of your liabilities prepared for them.”

“I shall do that,” said Grimes. “And . . . thank you.”

He got up from his chair, turned to leave the office. A slight noise behind him made him stop, turn again to see what was making it. Another mechanical toy had emerged from one of the drawers of Yosarian’s big desk. This one was a miniature spaceship, perfect in every detail, a replica of an Alpha Class liner only about fifteen centimeters in length. The roboticist gestured with his fat right hand and, with its inertial drive tinkling rather than clattering, it rose into the air and began to circle the opalescent light globe that hung from the ceiling. It could have been a real space vessel, viewed from a distance, in orbit about some planetoid.