To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (56 page)

“Go on, Commodore.”

“I am not a suspect whom you are interrogating, young lady. I have been
requested
rather than ordered by my superiors to render you whatever assistance lies within my unfortunately limited power. It so happens that the Lizard Class courier
Skink
will be lifting from Base in four days’ time, carrying dispatches and other assorted bumfodder to Olgana. You may take passage in her if you so desire.”

“But I don’t want to go to Olgana. You people have been furnished with the elements of
Delta Geminorum’s
extrapolated trajectory. My orders are to board her, with a prize crew, and bring her in to port.”

“I am aware of that, Miss Freeman. The captain of
Skink
will have
his
orders too. They will be, firstly, to carry such additional personnel as will be required for your prize crew and, secondly, to make whatever deviation from trajectory is required to put the prize crew aboard the derelict.”

“And will John be the captain of this . . . this
Skink?
”

“John?” Damien registered bewilderment “John?” Then slow comprehension dawned. “Oh, you mean young Grimes, here. No, John will not be commanding any vessels under my jurisdiction. I honestly regret having to disappoint you, Miss Freeman, but
Skink
is Lieutenant Commander Delamere’s ship.”

Delamere,
thought Grimes disgustedly.
Handsome Frankie Delamere, who could make a living posing for Survey Service recruiting posters. . . . And that’s about all that he’s fit for—that and screwing anything in skirts that comes his way. Good-bye, Una. It was nice knowing you.

Damien switched his regard to Grimes. “And you are still unemployed, Lieutenant Commander,” he stated rather than asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“It distresses me to have to watch officers doing nothing and getting paid for it, handsomely.”
So he’s giving me
Skink
after all,
thought Grimes.
I
did hear that Delamere was overdue for leave.
Damien went on, “‘Unfortunately, you passed out of my immediate ambit on your promotion to your present rank.”
That’s right. Rub it in, you sadistic old bastard!
Grimes’ spirits, temporarily raised, were plummeting again. “However, I am on quite amicable terms with Commodore Browning, of the Appointments Bureau.” He raised a skinny hand. “No, I am not, repeat and underscore
not,
going to give you another command under my jurisdiction. I learned my lesson, all too well, during that harrowing period when you were captain of
Adder.
But somebody—preferably somebody with spacegoing command experience, has to be in charge of the prize crew. I shall press for your appointment to that position.” He grinned nastily and added, “After all, whatever happens will have nothing to do with
me.
”

“Thank you, sir,” said Grimes.

“You haven’t got the job yet,” Damien told him.

After they had left the Commodore’s office Una said, “But he must like you, John. You told me that he hated your guts.”

“Oh, he does, he does. But he hates Frankie Delamere’s guts still more.”

“Then how is it that this Delamere is still one of his courier captains?”

“Because,” Grimes told her, “dear Frankie knows all the right people. Including the Admiral’s
very
plain daughter.”

“Oh.”

“Precisely,” said Grimes.

Chapter 4

All navies
find it necessary to maintain several classes of vessel. The Federation Survey Service had its specialized ships, among which were the couriers. These were relatively small (in the case of the Insect Class, definitely small) spacecraft, analogous to the dispatch boats of the seaborne navies of Earth’s past. There were the already mentioned Insect Class, the Serpent Class (one of which Grimes had commanded) and the Lizard Class. The one thing that all three classes had in common was speed. The Insect Class couriers were little more than long range pinnaces, whereas the Lizard Class ships were as large as corvettes, but without a corvette’s armament, and with far greater cargo and passenger carrying capacity than the Serpent Class vessels.

Skink
was a typical Lizard Class courier. She carried a crew of twenty, including the commanding officer. She had accommodation for twenty-five passengers—or, with the utilization of her cargo spaces for living freight, seventy-five. Her main engines comprised inertial drive and Mannschenn Drive, with auxiliary reaction drive. Her armament consisted of one battery of laser cannon together with the usual missiles and guidance system. She would have been capable of fighting another ship of the same class; anything heavier she could show a clean pair of heels to.

Lieutenant Commander Delamere did not expect to have to do any fighting—or running—on this perfectly routine paper run to Olgana. He was more than a little annoyed when he was told by Commodore Damien that there would have to be a deviation from routine. He had his private reasons for wishing to make a quick passage; after a week or so of the company of the Admiral’s plain, fat daughter he wanted a break, a change of bedmates. There was one such awaiting him at his journey’s end.

“Sir,” he asked Commodore Damien in a pained voice, “
Must
I act as chauffeur to this frosty-faced female fuzz?”

“You must, Delamere.”

“But it will put at least three days on to my passage.”

“You’re a spaceman, aren’t you?” Damien permitted himself a slight sneer. “Or supposed to be one.”

“But, sir. A policewoman. Aboard my ship.”

“A Sky Marshal, Lieutenant Commander. Let us accord the lady her glamorous title. Come to that, she’s not unglamorous herself . . .”

“Rear Admiral James doesn’t think so, sir. He told me about her when I picked up the Top Secret bumf from his office. He said, ‘Take that butch trollop out of here, and never bring her back!’”

“Rear Admiral James is . . . er . . . slightly biased. Do you mean to tell me that you have never met Miss Freeman?”

“No, sir. My time has been fully occupied by my duties.”

Commodore Damien stared up at the tall, fair-haired young man in sardonic wonderment until Delamere, who had a hide like a rhinoceros, blushed. He said, “She must keep you on a tight leash.”

“I don’t understand what you mean, sir.”

“Don’t you? Oh, skip it, skip it. Where was I before you obliged me to become engaged in a discussion of your morals?” Delamere blushed again. “Oh, yes. Miss Freeman will be taking passage with you, until such time as you have intercepted the derelict. With her will be a boarding party of Survey Service personnel, under Lieutenant Commander Grimes.”

“Not Grimes, sir! That Jonah!”

“Jonah or not, Delamere, during his time in command of one of my couriers there has never been any serious damage to his ship—which is more than I can say about you. As I was saying, before you so rudely interrupted, Lieutenant Commander Grimes will be in charge of the boarding party, which will consist of three spacemen lieutenants, four engineer lieutenants, one electronic communications officer, six petty officer mechanics, one petty officer cook and three wardroom attendants.”

“Doing himself proud, isn’t he, sir?”

“He and his people will have to get a derelict back into proper working order and bring her in to port. We don’t know, yet, what damage has been done to her by the pirates.”

“Very well, sir.” Delamere’s voice matched his martyred expression. “I’ll see to it that accommodation is arranged for all these idlers. After all, I shan’t have to put up with them for long.”

“One more thing, Delamere. . . .”

“Sir?”

“You’ll have to make room in your after hold for a Mark XIV lifeboat. All the derelict’s boats were taken when the crew and passengers abandoned ship. Lieutenant Commander Grimes will be using the Mark XIV for his boarding operation, of course, and then keeping it aboard
Delta Geminorum.
Grimes, of course, will be in full charge during the boarding and until such time as he releases you to proceed on your own occasions. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then that will be all, Lieutenant Commander.” Delamere put on his cap, sketched a vague salute and strode indignantly out of the office. Damien chuckled and nattered, “After all, he’s not the Admiral’s son-in-law
yet. . . .
”

Grimes and Una stood on the apron looking up at
Skink.

She wasn’t a big ship, but she looked big to Grimes after his long tour of duty in the little
Adder.
She was longer, and beamier. She could never be called, as the Serpent Class couriers were called, a “flying darning needle.” A cargo port was open in her shining side, just forward of and above the roots of the vanes that comprised her tripedal landing gear. Hanging in the air at the same level was a lifeboat, a very fat dagger of burnished metal, its inertial drive muttering irritably. Grimes hoped that the Ensign piloting the thing knew what he was doing, and that Delamere’s people, waiting inside the now-empty after hold, knew what they were doing. If that boat were damaged in any way he would be extremely reluctant to lift off from Lindisfarne. He said as much.

“You’re fussy, John,” Una told him.

“A good spaceman has to be fussy. There won’t be any boats aboard the derelict, and anything is liable to go wrong with her once we’ve taken charge and are on our own. That Mark XIV could well be our only hope of survival.”

She laughed. “If that last bomb blows up after we’re aboard, a lifeboat won’t be much use to us.”

“You’re the bomb-disposal expert. You see to it that it doesn’t go off.”

Delamere, walking briskly, approached them. He saluted Una, ignored Grimes. “Coming aboard, Miss Freeman? We shall be all ready to lift off as soon as that boat’s inboard.”

“I’ll just wait here with John,” she said. “He wants to see the boat safely into the ship.”

“My officers are looking after it, Grimes,” said Delamere sharply.

“But
I’ve
signed for the bloody thing!” Grimes told him.

The boat nosed slowly through the circular port, vanished. For a few seconds the irregular beat of its inertial drive persisted, amplified by the resonance of the metal compartment. Then it stopped. There was no tinny crash to tell of disaster.

“Satisfied?” sneered Delamere.

“Not quite. I shall want to check on its stowage.”

“All right. If you insist,” snarled Delamere. He then muttered something about old women that Grimes didn’t quite catch.

“It’s
my
boat,” he said quietly.

“And it’s being carried in
my
ship.”

“Shall we be getting aboard?” Una asked sweetly.

They walked up the ramp to the after airlock. It was wide enough to take only two people walking abreast in comfort. Grimes found himself bringing up the rear.
Let Frankie-boy have his little bit of fun,
he thought tolerantly. He was confident that he would make out with Una; it was now only a question of the right place and the right time. He did not think that she would be carried away by a golden-haired dummy out of a uniform tailor’s shop window. On the other hand, Delamere’s ship would not provide the right atmosphere for his own campaign of conquest. Not that it mattered much. He would soon have a ship of his own, a
big
ship. Once aboard the derelict
Delta Geminorum
people would no longer have to live in each other’s pockets.

Grimes stopped off at the after hold to see to the stowage of his boat while Una and Delamere stayed in the elevator that carried them up the axial shaft to the captain’s quarters. The small craft was snugly nested into its chocks, secured with strops and sliphooks. Even if Delamere indulged in the clumsy aerobatics, for which he was notorious, on his way up through the atmosphere the boat should not shift.

While he was talking with two of his own officers—they, like himself, had an interest in the boat—the warning bell for lift-off stations started to ring.

“Frankie’s getting upstairs in a hurry!” muttered one
Skink’s
lieutenants sourly. “Time we were in our acceleration couches.”

And time I was in the control room,
thought Grimes. This wasn’t his ship, of course, but it was customary for a captain to invite a fellow captain up to Control for arrivals and departures.

“We haven’t been shown to our quarters yet, sir,” said one of Grimes’ officers.

“Neither have I, Lieutenant, been shown to mine.” He turned to the ship’s officer. “Where are we berthed?”

“I . . . I don’t know, sir. And once the Old Man has started his count-down the Odd Gods of the Galaxy Themselves couldn’t stop him!”

“Don’t let us keep you, Lieutenant,” Grimes told him. “Off you go, tuck yourself into your own little cot.
We’ll
manage.”

“But
how,
sir?” demanded Grimes’ officer. “We can’t just stretch out on the
deck . . .
”

“Use your initiative, Lieutenant. We’ve a perfectly good ship’s boat here, with well-sprung couches. Get the airlock door open, and look snappy!”

He and his two officers clambered into the boat. The bunks were comfortable enough. They strapped themselves in. Before the last clasp had been snapped tight
Skink’s
inertial drive started up—and (it seemed) before the stern vanes were more than ten millimeters from the apron the auxiliary reaction drive was brought into play. It was the sort of showy lift-off, with absolutely unnecessary use of rocket power, of which Grimes himself had often been guilty. When anybody else did it—Delamere especially—he disapproved strongly. He could just imagine Frankie showing off in front of his control room guest, Una Freeman. . . .

Oh, well,
he thought philosophically as the acceleration pushed him down into the padding,
at least we’re giving the mattresses a good test. I don’t suppose that they’ll be used again. . . . A long boat voyage is the very least of my ambitions.