Ride the Star Winds (88 page)

Where I

May find

There are worlds more kind

Than the ones left behind . . .”

I said, “The Rim Runners’ March . . .”

“You could be right,” said Ralph doubtfully. Then, with growing assurance, he repeated, “You could be right. Even so, that piece of music is not the exclusive property of Rim Runners. It’s old, old—and nobody knows how many times it’s had fresh lyrics tacked on to it. But hearing it, on
their
radio, is evidence that Terran ships have been in contact with this world. The Survey Service, perhaps, or some off-course star tramp. But I think that we can expect a friendly reception, assistance, even . . .” He was beginning to look more cheerful. “All right. We’ll get the rest of the way off this wagon now. This is the ideal approach, towards the sunlit hemisphere of the planet. You know the drill, all of you. Trim sails—black surfaces towards the sun, reflecting surfaces towards the source of reflected light. Start the pumps as soon as they have some atmosphere to work on.”

His strong, capable hands played over the control panel. I watched the telltale screen. There was the ship as seen from directly ahead, scanned by the camera at the end of its long bowsprit, eclipsing the sun. Surrounding her were the geometric array of vanes and spars, some blindingly white, some sooty black. I watched—but there was no change in the design. I heard Ralph curse softly, I looked back to him. The control panel was alive with red lights.

The intercom speaker crackled and from it issued Peggy’s voice. “The wiring’s gone. The power supply to the trimming motors. Burned out.”

“Manual trimming,” ordered Ralph sharply. “Get along to the trimming motor room, all of you. And fast.”

I was the first out of the control room, with Sandra, Doc Jenkins and Martha hard on my heels. We shuffled through the alleyways at speed, keeping the magnetized soles of our sandals in contact with the deck, knowing that to fall free would be to waste time rather than to gain it. But it was a nightmarish means of progression. As we passed the psionic radio room we ran into Claude Smethwick, who had just come out into the alleyway. I grabbed his arm and hustled him along with us, refusing to listen to what he was trying to tell me.

The trimming motor room stank of burned insulation, of overheated and melted metal and plastic, of ozone. Peggy was there, frantically stripping panels from the bulkhead sheathing, laying bare the damaged wiring. I heard Sandra say, “If you’d done this before, Miss Cummings, instead of playing around with homemade fireworks . . .”

“Shut up!” I shouted. Then, “Peggy, put the manual controls in gear!”

“Peter,” Claude Smethwick was babbling. “Peter, I’ve made contact. This world . . .”

“Later,” I snapped. “Tell me later. We have to get the way off the ship.”

“But . . .”

“Get your paws on to that wheel, all of you! Now . . . now . . .
together!
” The hand gear was stubborn, and our actions at first were clumsy and uncoordinated.
“Together!”
I shouted again.

The worst of it all was that we were having to work in free-fall conditions. All that held us to the deck was the magnetism of the soles of our sandals. We had no purchase. Yet, at last, the big wheel started to turn—slowly, slowly. I wondered how much time remained to us before we should plunge, a blazing meteorite, down through the planet’s atmosphere.

I snatched a glance at the indicator and gasped, “Belay, there. Belay.” So far, so good. The main drivers were trimmed. The auxiliary vanes still presented a greater reflecting surface to the sun than did the mainsails to the reflected light of the planet, but things were coming under control, the feeling of nightmarish urgency was abating.

Ralph’s voice came through the intercom. “Trim 1 and 2 spinnakers. Then stand by.”

“Turn back!” bawled Claude Smethwick. “We must turn back!”

“Why, Mr. Smethwick?” asked Ralph’s disembodied voice coldly.

“I’ve been trying to tell you, but nobody will listen. I’ve been in touch with the telepaths on that planet. It’s Llanith, one of the antimatter worlds. And they say, ‘Turn back! Turn back!’”

“Mr. Malcolm,” snapped Ralph. “Trim all sails!”

Again we strained and sweated, again we were driven by the nightmarish sense of urgency. The first pair of spinnakers was trimmed—and then, with the second pair of auxiliary vanes rotated barely a degree on their spars, the hand gear seized up. Peggy said nothing, just relinquished her hold on the wheel and walked rapidly to the spacesuit locker.

I demanded, “Where are you off to?”

She said, “I have to go outside.”

“If there’s time,” muttered Sandra. “If there’s time. Why don’t you make another rocket, dearie?”

“What’s the delay?” Ralph was demanding. “What’s the delay?” Then, his voice suddenly soft, “Good-bye, all of you. It’s been good knowing you. Good-bye, Sandra . . .”

She said fiercely, “I might be able to make it to control in time.”

Dropping our hands from the useless wheel we watched her go. “Very touching,” whispered Jenkins. “Very touching . . .” But, in spite of the slight edge of sarcasm to his voice, he was holding Martha Wayne very closely.

I said to Peggy, “This seems to be it. A pity, since everything’s been tidied up so nicely.”

She pushed the spacesuit back into its locker and came to stand beside me. She said, putting her hand in mine, “But this mightn’t be the end, my dear. Even if there’s no afterlife, we know that we’re still living in the alternative Universes . . .”

“Or dying . . .” said Jenkins glumly.

And then—it’s odd the way that the human brain works in a crisis—a snatch of archaic verse that I must have learned as a child rose from the depths of my memory, flashed across my mind:

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,

Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept

On the reef of Norman’s Woe . . .

But the crew of the schooner
Hesperus
had died a cold death—ours would be a fiery one. I hoped that it would be sudden.

The ship lurched and shuddered, as though she had in actual fact driven on to a roof. There was a rending, tearing noise, felt as well as heard—the spars and sails, I realized, bearing the brunt of our impact with planet’s atmosphere, were braking us, slowing us down. There was the thin, high scream of air rushing over and through projections on our hull, the gaps in our shell plating. The temperature rose sharply. I held Peggy to me tightly, thinking,
This is it.

The screaming died to a faint whistle and was drowned by a new sound, the throbbing of the air compressors.

Ralph’s voice from the bulkhead speaker was faint and shaky, yet reassuring. He said, “All hands report to the control room. All hands report to control—to splice the main brace. And then we’ll make it landing stations.”

Chapter 20

It’s not at all a bad sort
of world, this Llanith, and I rather think that Peggy and I shall be staying here, even though Ralph and the local scientists are sure that they’ll be able to work out just what did happen, just how
Flying Cloud
made the transition from normal matter to anti-matter, or vice versa. The commodore will not have achieved the economical means of interstellar travel of his dreams, but we shall have presented him with something better, much better. There’s little doubt that commerce and cultural exchange between the Llanithi Consortium and the Rim Worlds Federation will soon be practicable. And Peggy and I will have an edge on those who, in the not-too-distant future, will come to learn and to teach and to trade.

Meanwhile, Ralph has suggested that each of us tell the story, in his own words, of what happened. The stories, he says, will be of great value to the scientists, both on Llanith and back home on Lorn. It seems that there may have been other forces besides physical ones at play, that psychology may have come into it, and psionics. Be that as it may, it seems obvious—to Peggy and me, at any rate—that the attempt to exceed the speed of light was the governing factor.

Not that we worry much about it.

We’re doing nicely, very nicely, the pair of us. My restaurant is better than paying its way; even though the Llanithi had never dreamed of such highly spiced dishes as curry they’re fast acquiring the taste for them. And the bicycles—another novelty—that Peggy makes in her little factory are selling like hotcakes.

Doc and Martha are settling down, too. There’s quite a demand for the sort of verse and music that they can turn out without really trying. And when they get tired of composing they pick up their brushes and dazzle the natives with neoabstractionism. And Claude? He gets by. A telepath can find himself at home anywhere—he can always contact others of his kind. If the Llanithi were purple octopi—which they aren’t, of course—he’d be equally happy.

It’s only Ralph and Sandra who aren’t fitting in. Each of them possesses a rather overdeveloped sense of duty—although I am inclined to wonder if Sandra, in her case, isn’t really hoping to find her way back to that time track on which the Matriarchate ruled the Rim Worlds and on which she was captain of her own ship.

If she ever does, I shall be neither her husband nor her cook.

This Universe suits me.

On the Account

I

Commodore Grimes
sat at his desk, looking down at the transcript of a Carlottigram from Port Listowel.
Lord Of The Isles,
one of the lightjammers on the run between the Rim Worlds and the Llanithi Consortium, was overdue. She, using her own Carlotti equipment, had beamed a final message to Port Forlorn before breaking the light barrier. Once the speed of light had been exceeded she was in a weird, private universe of her own—stranger even than the private universes of ships running under the Space-Time-twisting Mannschenn Drive—and unable to communicate with any planetary base or any other ship. Toward the end of her voyage she had made her routine reduction of speed to a sublight velocity and had started to send her ETA to the Carlotti Station on Llanith. She had gotten as far as giving her name and then, according to the Llanithi Carlotti operator on watch, had experienced what seemed to be interference on the band in use. Nothing more had been heard from her. And now she was all of ten days overdue.

The communicator buzzed sharply.

Grimes pressed the button that would admit the incoming call. The screen lit up and on it appeared the fleshy, ruddy face of Admiral Kravitz.

“Ah, Grimes.”

The commodore repressed temptation to counter with,
And whom the hell else did you expect?
Legally speaking the admiral was not his superior officer except when Grimes was called back to active duty with the Rim Worlds Navy but there would be no sense in antagonizing the man.

“Sir?” Grimes replied curtly.

“This
Lord Of The Isles
business, Grimes?”

“You have a transcript of the signal from Port Listowel, sir?”

“Of course. We do have an intelligence branch, you know. What do you make of it?”

“I don’t like it. Especially coming right after the vanishing of
Sea Witch
under very similar circumstances.”

“What are you doing about it, Grimes?”

“I could ask you the same question, sir.”

“We cleaned up the energy-eaters for you, Grimes, and we made a clean sweep.
Rim Culverin
has been maintaining a patrol ever since the conclusion of Operation Rimhunt and has reported no further invasion of our territorial space by those entities.” The admiral paused, then went on: “I’m not altogether happy about those lightjammers of yours, Grimes. As you know, we’re having some built for the Navy, but I’m beginning to feel like trying to get the program canceled. They aren’t safe.

“Sailing ships, indeed, in
this
day and age?”

“They’re the only ships we have capable of trading with the Llanithi Consortium.”

“At the moment, Grimes, at the moment. But our boffins are working on some other, simpler way of achieving a reversal of atomic charges.”

“With what success, sir?” asked Grimes innocently.

Kravitz flushed. “None so far. But give them time, give them time. Meanwhile—”

“Sir?”

“Meanwhile, Grimes, I am recalling you to active duty. As long as the so-called ships of the line are still on our drawing boards we have to maintain an interest in sailing vessels. Furthermore, I have learned from your employers—from Rim Runners—that all further sailings of the lightjammers have been suspended until such time as the mystery of the disappearance of
Lord Of The Isles
and
Sea Witch
has been cleared up. They are agreeable to the requisitioning and commissioning of
Pamir
as an auxiliary cruiser. You will sail in her.”

Grimes grinned. “Thank you, sir. But I have to tell you that I’m not qualified in sail.”

“Pamir
’s people are—and they all, like yourself, hold reserve comissions. Listowel’s a full commander, isn’t he? You’ll be in overall charge of the ship and the expedition, but he can be your sailing master. We’ll be putting aboard regular Navy personnel—gunnery specialists and the like. Satisfied?”

“Gunnery specialists?”

“You never know when weapons are going to come in handy, Grimes. It’s better to have them than to be without them.”

Grimes had to agree. He knew as well as anybody that the Universe was not peaceful and that man was not its only breaker of peace.

Not at all reluctantly Grimes handed over his astronautical superintendent’s duties to Captain Barsac, one of Rim Runners’ senior masters. But it was with a certain degree of reluctance that he left his comfortable home in Port Forlorn for Port Erikson, the lightjammers’ terminal. Sonya refused to accompany her husband. She detested cold weather. Port Forlorn’s climate was barely tolerable. Only Esquimaux, polar bears or penguins—assuming that the immigration or importation of these from Earth could be arranged—would feel at home at Coldharbor Bay in Lorn’s Antarctica.

Pamir
was alongside at Port Erikson. The cargo she had brought from Llanith had been discharged but she had not commenced to load for the return voyage. As yet the advance party from the Admiralty Yards was still to arrive, although accommodations—looking like black, partially inflated balloons grounded in the snow—had been set up for them.