Upon a Sea of Stars (31 page)

“I’ve met them,” said Grimes.

“What I said about his sister and the soldier really shocked him.”

“And which of them refuse to sail with each other?”

“Almost everybody has it in for the second mate. He’s a Latter Day Fascist and is always trying to make converts. And the two chiefs are at each other’s throats. Kerholm, the Interstellar Drive specialist, is a militant atheist—”

And I was on my annual leave,
thought Grimes,
when this prize bunch of square pegs was appointed to this round hole. Even so, I should have checked up. I would have checked up if I hadn’t gotten involved in the fun and games on Kinsolving’s Planet.

“Captain,” he said, “I appreciate your problems. But there are two sides to every story. Mr. Vacchini, for example, is a very efficient officer. As far as he is concerned, there could well be a clash of personalities. . . .”

“Perhaps,” admitted Dingwall grudgingly.

“As for the others. I don’t know them personally. If you could tell them all to meet in the wardroom in—say—five minutes, we can go down to try to iron things out.”

“You can try,” said the Captain. “I’ve had them all in a big way. And, to save you the bother of saying it, Commodore Grimes, they’ve had me likewise.”

Grimes ironed things out. On his way from Lorn to Tharn he had studied the files of reports on the captain and his officers. Nonetheless, in other circumstances he would have been quite ruthless—but good spacemen do not grow on trees, especially out toward the Galactic Rim. And these were good spacemen, all of them, with the exception of Missenden, the second officer. He had been born on New Saxony, one of the worlds that had been part of the short-lived Duchy of Waldegren, and one of the worlds upon which the political perversions practiced upon Waldegren itself had lived on for years after the downfall of the Duchy. He had been an officer in the navy of New Saxony and had taken part in the action off Pelisande, the battle in which the heavy cruisers of the Survey Service had destroyed the last of the self-styled commerce raiders who were, in fact, no better than pirates.

There had been survivors, and Missenden had been one of them. (He owed his survival mainly to the circumstance that the ship of which he had been Navigator had been late in arriving at her rendezvous with the other New Saxony war vessels and had, in fact, surrendered after no more than a token resistance.) He had stood trial with other war criminals, but had escaped with a very light sentence. (Most of the witnesses who could have testified against him were dead.) As he had held a lieutenant commander’s commission in the navy of New Saxony he had been able to obtain a Master Astronaut’s Certificate after no more than the merest apology for an examination. Then he had drifted out to the Rim, where his New Saxony qualifications were valid; where, in fact, qualifications issued by any human authority anywhere in the galaxy were valid.

Grimes looked at Missenden. He did not like what he saw. He had not liked it when he first met the man, a few years ago, when he had engaged him as a probationary third officer—but then, as now, he had not been able to afford to turn spacemen away from his office door. The Second Officer was tall, with a jutting, arrogant beak of a nose over a wide, thin-lipped mouth, with blue eyes that looked even madder than Captain Dingwall’s, his pale, freckled face topped by close-cropped red hair. He was a fanatic, that was obvious from his physical appearance, and in a ship where he, like everybody else, was unhappy his fanaticism would be enhanced.
A lean and hungry look,
thought Grimes.
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
He added mentally,
But only when they think about the wrong things. The late Duke Otto’s
Galactic Superman,
for example, rather than Pilgren’s
Principles of Interstellar Navigation.

He said, “Mr. Missenden . . .”

“Sir?” The curtly snapped word was almost an insult. The way in which it was said implied, “I’m according respect to your rank, not to
you
.”

“The other officers have agreed to continue the voyage. On arrival at Port Forlorn you will all be transferred to more suitable ships, and those of you who are due will be sent on leave or time off as soon as possible. Are you agreeable?”

“No.”

“And why not, Mr. Missenden?”

“I’m not prepared to make an intercontinental hop under a captain who insulted me.”

“Insulted you?”

“Yes.” He turned on Dingwall.” Did you, or did you not, call me a bird-brained navigator?”

“I did, Mr. Missenden,” snarled Captain Dingwall. “And I meant it.”

“Captain,” asked Grimes patiently, “are you prepared to withdraw that remark?”

“I am not, Commodore. Furthermore, as master of this ship I have the legal right to discharge any member of my crew that I see fit.”

“Very well,” said Grimes, “As Captain Dingwall has pointed out I can only advise and mediate. But I do possess some authority; appointments and transfers are my responsibility. Will you arrange, Captain, for Mr. Missenden to be paid, on your books, up to and including midnight, local time? Then get him off your Articles of Agreement as soon as possible, so that the second officer of
Rim Dragon
can be signed on here. And you, Mr, Missenden, will join
Rim Dragon
.”

“If you say so,” said Missenden, “Sir.”

“I do say so. And I say, too, Mr. Missenden, that I shall see you again in my office back in Port Forlorn.”

“I can hardly wait, Sir.”

Captain Dingwall looked at his watch. He said, “The purser already has Mr. Missenden’s payoff almost finalized. Have you made any arrangements with Captain Wenderby regarding his second officer?”

“I told him that there might be a transfer, Captain. Shall we meet at the Consul’s office at 1500 hours? You probably know that he is empowered to act as shipping master insofar as our ships on Tharn are concerned.”

“Yes, sir,” stated Dingwall. “I know.”

“You would,” muttered Missenden.

The transfer of officers was nice and easy in theory—but it did not work out in practice. The purser, Grimes afterward learned, was the only person aboard
Rim Griffon
with whom the second officer was not on terms of acute enmity. Missenden persuaded him to arrange his pay-off for 1400 hours, not 1500. At the appointed time the purser of the
Griffon
was waiting in the Consul’s office, and shortly afterward the purser and the second officer of
Rim Dragon
put in their appearance. The
Dragon’s
second mate was paid off his old ship and signed on the Articles of his new one. But Missenden had vanished. All that
Griffon’s
purser knew was that he had taken the money due him and said that he had a make a business call and that he would be back.

He did not come back.

Commodore Grimes was not in a happy mood. He had hoped to be a passenger aboard
Rim Griffon
when she lifted off from Port Grimes, but now it seemed that his departure from Tharn for the Rim Worlds would have to be indefinitely postponed. It was, of course, all Missenden’s fault. Now that he had gone into smoke all sorts of unsavory facts were coming to light regarding that officer. During his ship’s visits to Tharn he had made contact with various subversive elements. The Consul had not known of this—but Rim Runners’ local agent, a native to the planet, had. It was the police who had told him, and he had passed the information on to Captain Dingwall. Dingwall had shrugged and growled, “What the hell else do you expect from such a drongo?” adding, “As long as I get rid of the bastard he can consort with Aldebaranian necrophiles for all I care!”

Quite suddenly, with Grimes’s baggage already loaded aboard
Rim Griffon
, the mess had blown up to the proportions of an interstellar incident. Port Grimes’s Customs refused outward clearance to the ship. The Rim Confederacy’s Ambassador sent an urgent message to Grimes requiring him to disembark at once—after which the ship would be permitted to leave—and to report forthwith to the Embassy. With all this happening, Grimes was in no fit state to listen to Captain Wenderby’s complaints that he had lost a first class second officer and now would have to sail shorthanded on completion of discharge.

The Ambassador’s own car took Grimes from the spaceport to the Embassy. It was a large building, ornately turreted, with metal-bound doors that could have withstood the charge of a medium tank. These opened as the Commodore dismounted from the vehicle, and within them stood saluting Marines.
At least,
thought Grimes,
they aren’t going to shoot me. Yet.
An aide in civilian clothes escorted him to the Ambassador’s office.

The Honorable Clifton Weeks was a short, fat man with all of a short, fat man’s personality. “Sit down, Commodore,” he huffed. Then, glowering over his wide, highly polished desk at the spaceman. “Now, sir. This Missenden character. What about him? Hey?”

“He seems to have flown the coop,” said Grimes.

“You amaze me, sir.” Week’s glower became even more pronounced. “You amaze me, sir. Not by what you said, but by the way in which you said it. Surely you, even you, have some appreciation of the seriousness of the situation?”

“Spacemen have deserted before, in foreign ports. Just as seamen used to do—still do, probably. The local police have his description. They’ll pick him up, and deport him when they get him. And we’ll deport him, too, when he’s delivered back to the Confederacy.”

“And you still don’t think it’s serious? Hey?”

“Frankly, no, sir.”

“Commodore, you made the first landing on this planet. But what do you know about it? Nothing, sir. Nothing. You haven’t lived here. I have. I know that the Confederacy will have to fight to maintain the currently favorable trade relations that we still enjoy with Tharn. Already other astronautical powers are sniffing around the worlds of the Eastern Circuit.”

“During the last six months, local time,” said Grimes, “three of the Empire of Waverley’s ships have called here. And two from the Shakespearean Sector. And one of Trans-Galactic Clippers’ cargo liners. But, as far as the rulers of Tharn are concerned, the Confederacy is still the most favored nation.”

“Who
are
the rulers of Tharn?” barked the Ambassador.

“Why, the priesthood.”

The Ambassador mumbled something about the political illiteracy of spacemen, then got to his feet. He waddled to the far wall of his office, on which was hung a huge map of the planet in Mercator projection, beckoned to Grimes to follow him. From a rack he took a long pointer. “The island continent of Ausiphal . . .” he said, “And here, on the eastern seaboard, Port Grimes, and University City. Where we are now.”

“Yes. . . .”

The tip of the pointer described a rhumb line, almost due east. “The other island continent of the northern hemisphere, almost the twin to this one. Climatically, politically—you name it.”

“Yes?”

The pointer backtracked, then stabbed viciously. “And here, well to the west of Braziperu, the island of Tangaroa. Not a continent, but still a sizable hunk of real estate.”

“So?”

“So Tangaroa’s the last stronghold of the robber barons, the ruffians who were struggling for power with the priests and merchants when you made your famous first landing. How many years ago was it? Hey?”

“But what’s that to do with Mr. Missenden?” Grimes asked. “And me?” he added.

“Your Mr. Missenden,” the Ambassador said, “served in the navy of New Saxony. The people with whom he’s been mixing in University City are Tangaroan agents and sympathizers. The priesthood has allowed Tangaroa to continue to exist—in fact, there’s even trade between it and Ausiphal—but has been reluctant to allow the Tangaroans access to any new knowledge, especially knowledge that could be perverted to the manufacture of weaponry. Your Mr. Missenden would be a veritable treasure house of such knowledge.”

“He’s not
my
Mr. Missenden!” snapped Grimes.

“But he is, sir. He is.
You
engaged him when he came out to the Rim.
You
appointed him to ships running the Eastern Circuit.
You
engineered his discharge on this world, even.”

“So what am I supposed to do about him?”

“Find him, before he does any real damage. And if you, the man after whom the spaceport was named, are successful it will show the High Priest just how much we of the Confederacy have the welfare of Tharn at heart.”

“But why
me
? These people have a very efficient police force. And a man with a pale, freckled face and red hair will stand out like a sore thumb among the natives.”

The Honorable Mr. Weeks laughed scornfully. “Green skin dye! Dark blue hair dye! Contact lenses! And, on top of all that, a physical appearance that’s common on this planet!”

“Yes,” admitted Grimes. “I might recognize him, in spite of a disguise. . . .”

“Good. My car is waiting to take you to the High Priest.”

The University stood on a rise to the east of the city, overlooking the broad river and, a few miles to the north, the sea. It looked more like a fortress than a seat of learning, and in Tharn’s turbulent past it had, more than once, been castle rather than academy.

Grimes respected the Tharnian priesthood, and the religion that they preached and practiced made sense to him than most of the other faiths of Man. There was something of Buddhism about it, a recognition of the fact that nothing
is
, but that everything is flux, change, a continual process of becoming. There was the equation of God with Knowledge—but never that infuriating statement made by so many Terran religions, that smug. “There are things that we aren’t meant to know.” There was a very real wisdom—the wisdom that accepts and rejects, and that neither accepts nor rejects just because a concept is
new
. There was a reluctance to rush headlong into an industrial revolution with all its miseries; and, at the same time, no delay in the adoption of techniques that would make the life of the people longer, easier and happier.

Night had fallen when the Embassy car pulled up outside the great gates of the University. The guard turned out smartly—but in these days their function was merely ceremonial; no longer was there the need to keep either the students in or the townsfolk out. On all of Tharn—save for Tangarora—the robber barons were only an evil memory of the past.