Ride the Star Winds (19 page)

He was relieved when he emerged into the late afternoon sunlight, looking up to the gleaming bulk
of Fat Susie
swinging at the mast. Sanchez looked out from an open control cab window and waved cheerfully. Grimes raised a hand to return the salutation.

Now there would be that blasted ladder to negotiate. The wrenched muscles of his right leg were still painful and he could move the limb only by making a conscious effort.

“Your Excellency,” said Su Lin, “I will ask Captain Sanchez to send down a cradle for you.”

“You will not.”

Slowly, painfully, he went up the ladder, taking as much weight as possible on his arms, Su Lin close behind him. He clambered at last into the control cab.

“What’s wrong, Commodore?” asked Sanchez anxiously.

“Just a twisted leg, Raoul. It could have been worse.”

“Very much worse,” said the girl.

“But what happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. Meanwhile, get us the hell out of here.”

“The mooring mast is not manned, sir.”

“You can actuate your release gear from the cab, can’t you? As long as nothing fouls it, it’s quite safe.”

Sanchez did as ordered and
Fat Susie
drifted slowly astern, away from the roof of the Sanchez mansion, a winch whining as the short length of wire cable was reeled in. Only Ram Das, the butler, was there to see them go.

“You must rest now, Your Excellency,” said Su Lin.

“All right.”

“Where do we go, Commodore?” asked Sanchez.

“I’ll leave it to you, Raoul. Surprise me.”

Walking slowly and painfully he made his way aft to his quarters.

Chapter 30

Stripped,
prone on his bunk, Grimes submitted to the ministrations of Su Lin.

He murmured, “What did I ever do to deserve you? Devoted handmaiden . . . Highly efficient bodyguard . . . And now masseuse . . .”

Under her kneading fingers the soreness and stiffness were dissipating. But there was another stiffness, of which he was becoming embarrassedly conscious.
As long as she doesn’t ask me to turn over . . .
he thought.

But she did not.

She slapped his naked buttocks and said cheerfully, “You’ll survive, Commodore. But you usually do, don’t you?”

“If I didn’t,” he told her, “I shouldn’t be here.” He flexed his legs experimentally. “Thanks to you, I shall be able to stand my watch.”

“All part of the PAT service,” she told him. “And, talking of watches, it’s almost time that I was relieving Raoul. You’ll be fit to take over at midnight, will you? Good. Then you had better get some sleep.”

“I’ll do just that,” he said.

Sleep was a long time coming—and when it did he was plagued by nightmares—or, rather, by a recurring nightmare. In it he would be standing there, helpless, on the hot road, under a blazing sun, while the madman came at him with bloody machete upraised. Each time he woke up just as the sharp, gleaming blade was descending on his unprotected head.

And then Su Lin was there, switching on the light, putting the tea tray down on his bunkside table.

“Are you all right, Commodore?” she asked. “Do you feel fit enough to take over? If not, Raoul and I can manage between us.”

“I’m feeling fine, Su Lin.”

“You don’t look it.”

“I’m a little tired, that’s all. The tea will perk me up. Get back to control like a good girl. I’ll be with you shortly.”

“As you say, Commodore,” she said doubtfully.

The tea did refresh him.

He dressed, then made his way forward and down into the cab.
Fat Susie
was ambling along at cruising speed, almost silently, only the occasional click and whine of servo-mechanisms telling that the auto-pilot was functioning, maintaining course and adjusting attitude and altitude as requisite.

He looked at the chart and at the dotted line of the extrapolated track ahead of the airship’s actual position, a trace that, astern of her, was unbroken.

“We’re flying over the Unclaimed Territory, as they call it, now,” said Su Lin. “No doubt, eventually, it will be tamed—with wheatfields and vineyards and . . . dreamweed plantations. It all depends, I suppose, on what sort of influx of refugee labor—slave labor—there is over the next few years. . . .”

“Assuming, of course,” Grimes said, “that things continue going on as they have been going on. But aren’t we supposed to be throwing a spanner into that machinery?”

She grinned. “We are, Commodore.”

“Just what is down there, anyhow?” asked Grimes.

“In places, a jumble of rocks. Deep canyons. Savage animals. Even more savage plants.”

“Savage plants? You have to be kidding, Su Lin.”

“I’m not. I thought that you had been given a thorough briefing on this planet before you were sent here,
Governor.”

“I was given a fine collection of spools to study on the way out. I studied them. But they were all concerned with history, politics, economics and sociology.”

“I’ll see to it that you get a briefing on Liberia’s natural ecology when we get back to the Residence. Who knows? It might come in useful some day. It will be interesting, at least.”

“As you say.” Grimes was still looking at the chart. “I suppose that these names given to the various natural features should tell me something. Mount Horrible . . . Bloodsuckers Canyon . . . Shocking Valley . . . But that sounds more comic than sinister . . .”

He was interrupted by an insistent beeping from the radar. He went to the console, looked into the PPI. Yes, there was a target, an airborne target, just abaft the starboard beam, all of forty kilometers distant. He pushed the extrapolation button. The airship, as he assumed that it must be, was flying on an almost parallel course in the same direction. Su Lin had gone to the radio telephone transceiver.
“Fat Susie
to unidentified aircraft to my starboard. Do you read me?”

The reply came with no delay.

“Citizen Marat
to
Fat Susie.
I read you loud and clear. Where bound,
Fat Susie?”

“Cruising,
Citizen Marat.
Where are you bound? Over.”

“Libertad to Rousseauville with mail and passengers. Over.” Grimes, now, was staring out through the starboard window of the cab, binoculars to his eyes. He realized that he could not see the line of the land horizon against the dark luminosity of the sky. And, at this range, he should be able to see the other airship’s running lights—but there was nothing there. And something seemed to have blotted out those stars at lower altitudes. He looked ahead. There the stars were dimming, were being obscured.

So
Fat Susie
had driven into a belt of cloud. So what? Radar and radar altimeter were working perfectly. The only traffic was bound in the same direction at the same speed. The extrapolated course was well clear of any mountains.

He heard Su Lin say, “A very good night to you,
Citizen
Marat.
And
bon voyage.”

“
Bon voyage
to you,
Fat Susie.”
And then the male voice of the other watchkeeper chuckled. “Are
you Fat Susie?
”

“Just Su,” she replied. “And not fat.”

“I’d like to meet you some time.”

“Good night.” she said firmly. “Over and out.”

“Wolves of the air,” commented Grimes. “Off with you now, Su Lin. Get your head down. I have the watch.”

Grimes, although he had done his share of atmosphere flying, was a spaceman, not an airman. He did not like this pushing ahead through thick fog. (Cloud, he told himself, cloud, not fog. The air would be clear enough at ground level, clear enough if he pushed
Fat Susie
up and through this vaporous ceiling.) He considered reducing altitude, then decided against it. Airships are not designed for hedge-hopping. Should he lift? But that would mean the dumping of ballast. And Sanchez had set the course, had set it in three dimensions, and might be annoyed, when called to take over the watch, to find that Grimes had been playing silly buggers all over the sky while he slept. All right, all right, Grimes was the pilot’s employer. But he, Grimes, was not the master. Sanchez was.

Should he call Sanchez?

And then,
Grimes told himself,
he’d have valid grounds for thinking of me as an old woman. Damn it all, I’m a shipmaster. I’ve commanded far bigger vessels than this little gasbag. As commodore, I’ve commanded a flotilla. (And,
he thought wryly,
made a jesusless balls of it.)

Apart from the visually invisible
Citizen Marat
there was no other traffic. There would not be, Grimes knew, over this region of the planet. Grimes consulted the radar. The other airship was on a slightly converging course but she was drawing ahead. Furthermore, she was maintaining an altitude at least a thousand meters in excess of
Fat Susie’s.
She would cross ahead of
Fat Susie
safely enough and without incident.

The watch wore on. The air in the control cab, from the fumes of Grimes’s pipe, was almost as thick as the air outside. The airship maintained course and altitude without a human hand at the controls. In the PPI the glowing blip that was
Citizen Marat
was now ahead, still edging over to port. Grimes stared into the screen, drowsy, hypnotized by the steady rotation of the sweep.

But there was something wrong!

The range was no longer opening; it was closing fast. A glance at the auxiliary screen showed that the other ship was losing altitude rapidly. What the hell was she playing at?

It was one of those occasions when Grimes wished that he had three pairs of hands. Somehow he managed to push the General Alarm button and, a split second later, to initiate the process of switching from automatic pilot to manual control.
Fat Susie—
the stupid bitch!—seemed reluctant to yield the dominance of her functions to a mere human. It seemed ages before the illuminated sign, AUTO, over the wheel and the gyrocompass repeater flickered out to be replaced by manual. And all the time there was the urgent stridency of the alarm bells to engender panic.

Sanchez and Su Lin were in the control cab. Neither had taken time to dress. Sanchez stared out through the windows at nothingness, then went to the radar.

“Holy Bakunin!” he muttered. “How the hell did you . . .?” Then, “Turn away, man! Hard-a-starboard!”

Grimes, at the wheel, spun it rapidly to the right. He felt
Fat Susie
heel over, heard her creaking protests. From above and abaft the control cab there was a peculiarly muffled crash—and, almost immediately afterwards, a noise that could only be that of the discharge of at least one medium caliber automatic cannon.
Fat Susie
lurched, shuddered. Grimes, clinging to the now useless wheel, managed to keep his feet. He stared out through the port window, saw that the colliding airships had, fortuitously, found a pocket of clear air in the cloud blanket. By the crimson glare of his own vessel’s port navigation light he could see a great hulk backing away, under reversed thrust, from its victim.

He could read the name . . .

No, not the name. The single letter and the three numerals.

Wherever the real
Citizen Marat
was, this was not her.

This was the army’s
R273,
the rigid dirigible that had cast off from the Lopez mooring mast to make room for
Fat Susie.

The clouds enveloped her once more and she vanished from sight.

Fat Susie,
her main gas cells ruptured, fell almost like a stone.

Chapter 31

“Up into the ship!”
shouted Sanchez.

“Why?” asked Grimes stupidly.

“Because the control car is going to hit first, you fool!”

Su Lin was already mounting the short ladder. Grimes followed her. Sanchez followed him. They reached the catwalk that ran fore and aft between the gas cells, these containers wrinkled now, collapsing upon themselves. There was no place else to run. The vertical ladder that gave access to the outside of the envelope was blocked by fold upon fold of limp fabric.

The lights were still burning, running from the emergency power cells. They gave some small comfort. The three members of
Fat Susie’s
crew huddled together in their cave of wrinkled cloth, blocked now at either end, waiting for the crash.

“It can’t be long now,” said Sanchez at last.

His voice was oddly high, almost a soprano.

He’s scared,
thought Grimes.
I
didn’t think that he’d be the type to show such fear . . .

He said philosophically, “What goes up has to come down, I suppose.”

His own voice was high and squeaky, even in his own ears.

The helium,
he thought.
There’s a lot of it in the atmosphere we’re breathing. It’s making us sound like refugees from the papal choir . . .

“She was a good little ship,” said Sanchez regretfully. “I’d like to get the bastards who did this to her.”

“I’d like to get the bastards,” said Grimes, “who did this to us. Did you see the markings on the other dirigible before she backed away?”

“I did,” announced Su Lin, her voice faint, almost as inaudible as a bat’s sonar squeak. “I did. It was the Army ship that we saw at the Lopez plantation. It was no more
Citizen Marat
than I am.”

“You’re the wrong sex in any case,” quipped Sanchez,

There was no doubt about that, thought Grimes. He was acutely aware of the girl’s nudity pressed against him.

He said, changing the subject, “I wonder what premiums Lloyd’s would charge to insure the life of a Liberian governor?” He was about to add. “Especially one who travels by airship . . .” when
Fat Susie
struck.

It was an amazingly gentle contact. The catwalk lifted beneath their feet, throwing them together but not violently. From somewhere beneath them there came the sound of a muffled crash. And then there was silence, broken only by the sound of their breathing and the hiss of escaping helium.

The lights did not go out but their illumination was dimmed by the layers of fabric through which it had to shine.

They were huddled together, the three of them, in a sort of cave, the walls and ceiling of which were formed by the fabric of collapsed gas cells. Luckily air was getting in from somewhere. At the same time the helium was getting out. Their voices were reverting to normal timbre.