First Command (62 page)

“Thank you, sir, Commander, sir,” simpered Mavis infuriatingly.

There were visitors. The visitors brought gifts—mainly cakes. The cakes were, of course, X-rayed. There was nothing of a metallic nature inside them. They were sliced, and samples chemically analyzed. There was not a trace of plastic explosive. Delamere’s PCO was on hand during each visiting period to scan the minds of the visitors, and reported that although, naturally, there was considerable hostility to Delamere—and to Grimes himself—there was no knowledge of any planned jailbreak. Oddly enough, Skipper Jones did not visit his wife, and it was obvious that she was deeply hurt. Grimes knew the reason. He dare not tell Vinegar Nell. He dare not visit her himself. Jones, of course, knew of the clandestine manufacture of Somnopon. There was another slight oddity of which Grimes thought nothing—at the time. Many of the cakes and other edible goodies came from the kitchens of the mayor’s palace. But that was just another example of Mavis’ essential goodheartedness.

When the big night came—it was early evening, actually—Grimes was standing with Brandt and Jones on the flat roof of one of the towers of the university. From it they could see the airport, and just beyond it the huge, floodlit shape of
Discovery.
They could see the Oval, and the even larger, brightly illumined tower that was
Vega.
They returned their attention to the airport. One of the dirigibles was about to cast off—
Duchess of Paddington,
a cargo carrier, commanded by a friend of Jones’s. Grimes watched through borrowed binoculars. He could make out the mooring mast, with its flashing red light on top, quite well, and the long cigar shape that trailed from it like a wind sock. He saw the airship’s red and green navigation lights come on. So she had let go.
Duchess of Paddington
drifted away from the mast, gaining altitude. She was making way, and slowly circled
Discovery.
Grimes wondered vaguely why she was doing that;
Discovery
was not the target. A dry run, perhaps. Now she was steering toward the Oval, a dimly seen blob, foreshortened to the appearance of a sphere, in the darkling sky, two stars, one ruby and one emerald, brighter far than the other, distant stars that were appearing one by one in the firmament. The throbbing beat of her airscrews came faintly down the light breeze.

The airship passed slowly over the university.

“Conditions ideal,” whispered Jones. “Smithy’ll be openin’ his valves about now. Let’s go!”

The party descended to ground level by an express elevator, piled into a waiting car. Jones took something off the back seat, thrust it at Grimes. “Take this, Commander. You’ll be needin’ it.”

Grimes turned the thing over in his hands. It was a respirator. He asked, “What about the rest of you?”

“We’re all full o’ the antidote. I hope it works. Ronson assured us that it will.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler if I had a shot?”

“We took it orally. But we’re protectin’ you, Commander. When the fun’s over you take off yer mask an’ just pass out, same as all the other bastards. If there ain’t enough Somnopon still lyin’ around, we’ve a spare bottle.”

“You’ve thought of everything,” admitted Grimes. He put on the respirator, looked out at the tree-lined, gas-lit streets sliding past the car. A few pedestrians, he saw, had succumbed to stray eddies of the anesthetic. Gas is always a chancy weapon.

They were approaching the entrance to the Oval. They could already hear, over the hum of their engine, loud voices, the crashing of the main gate as it was forced. Grimes expected a rattle of fire, from
Vega—
but
her people had been taken unawares, even as the mutineers had been.

The car stopped. Jones jumped out. “Good-bye, Commander. An’ thanks. I wish I could’ve known you better.” He extended his hand for a brief, but firm, handshake.

“I’ll see you again,” said Grimes.

“You won’t. I sincerely hope you won’t. Nothin’ against
you,
mind you.” He ran off, toward the stands.

Grimes got out of the car, realized that many vehicles were already on the scene, that more were arriving. He was almost knocked over by a mob rushing the transport. There was Jones, towing a bewildered Vinegar Nell by the hand. There were Brabham, MacMorris, Tangye, Sally. . . .

“To the ship!” Jones was shouting. “To
Discovery!
”

“To
Discovery!
”
the cry was going up. “To
Discovery!
”
Not only were there mutineers in the mob, but many local women.

Enough was enough, thought Grimes. He stepped forward to try to stem the rush. He saw Swinton leveling a weapon taken from one of the guards—and saw Vinegar Nell knock it to one side just as it exploded. Nell clawed the respirator from his face, crying, “Keep out of this, John! The less you know the better!” She swung the gas mask to hit him in the belly, and he gasped. That was all he knew.

Chapter 46

He awoke suddenly.
Once again there was the dull ache in his arm where a hypodermic spray had been used. He opened his eyes, saw a khaki-uniformed man bending over him. One of Delamere’s Marines . . . ?

“You’re under arrest,” said the man. “All you Terry bastards’re under arrest.”

What the hell was going on? The man, Grimes saw, was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, with the brim turned up on one side. The beam of a light shone on a badge of polished brass, a rising-sun design. Not a Marine . . . a policeman.

“Don’t be so bloody silly, Vince.” It was Mavis’ voice. “The skipper’s a pal o’ mine.”

“But the orders were—”

“Who gives the orders round here? Get inside, to the Oval. There’s plenty o’ Terries in there to arrest, an’ quite a’ few wantin’ first aid!” She added admiringly, “That bloody Brabham! He’s made a clean getaway, an’ there’ll be no chase!” She put out a hand and helped Grimes to his feet. “Thinkin’ it over, Skip, I’d better have yer arrested with the others. But we’ll walk an’ talk a while, first.”

They went in through the main entrance, picking their way carefully through the wreckage of the gate. Grimes cried out in dismay.
Vega
was there still, but no longer illumined by the glare of her own floodlights, no longer proudly erect. She was on her side, the great length of her picked out by the headlights of at least two dozen heavy-duty vehicles. Externally she seemed undamaged. Internally? She would be a mess, Grimes knew.

“The cricket season’s well an’ truly buggered,” said Mavis cheerfully. “Never could see anythin’ in the game me self.”

“What happened?” demanded Grimes.

“That bloody Brabham . . . or it could’ve been Jonesy’s idea. It was as much airmanship as spacemanship.”

“Jones? He’s with the mutineers?”

“An’ quite a few more. I couldn’t stop ‘em. Not that I wanted to.”

“But what happened?”

“Oh, they all made a rush for your
Discovery
after the breakout.
Your
crew, an’ Jones, an’ . . . oh, we’ll have ter sort it out later, how many darlin’ daughters an’ even wives are missin’. Where was I? Oh, yes.
Discovery
lifted off. But she didn’t go straight up. She sorta drifted across the city, her engines goin’ like the hammers o’ Hell, just scrapin’ the rooftops. Then she lifted, but only a little, just so’s her backside was nuzzlin’
Vega’s
nose. Like two dogs, it was. An’ she sorta
wriggled,
an’
Vega
wriggled too, more an’ more, until. . .
Crash!
An’ then Brabham went upstairs as though the sheriff an’ his posse were after him.”

“Delamere was lucky,” said Grimes.

“Bloody unlucky, if you ask me.”

“No. Lucky. Brabham could have used his weaponry. Or he could have sat on top of
Vega
and cooked her with the auxiliary rocket drive.” He managed a grin. “I guess you people must have had a civilizing influence on him. Oh, one more thing. How was it that the mutineers weren’t affected by the gas?”

“They were all immune, that’s why. Ain’t many people can resist the goodies that come out o’
my
kitchen! But we made sure that none o’ the popsies deliverin’ the pies an’ cakes knew the secret ingredient. Not with a nasty, pryin’ telepath pickin’ up every thought. But that’ll have ter do. Here come the mug coppers wi’ yer pal Frankie. He’s under arrest, same as you are.”

Delamere, battered and bruised, held up by the two men of his police escort, staggered toward the mayor. He saw Grimes, stiffened.

“I might have known that you’d be at the bottom of this, you bastard!”

“How the hell could he be?” asked Mavis. “My police found him sprawled, unconscious, by the main entrance.”

“You’re in this too, you bitch! You’ll laugh on the other side of your face when this world is under Federation military occupation!”

“An’ is your precious Federation willin’ ter fight a war over Botany Bay, specially at the end o’ long supply lines? Dr. Brandt showed us how ter build a Carlotti set. We used it, ternight. We got through ter Waverley without any trouble at all. The emperor’s willin’ to put us under his protection.”

“Grimes, you’ll pay for this. This is a big black mark on your Service record that’ll never be erased!”

This was so, Grimes knew. It would be extremely unwise for him to return to Lindisfarne to face court-martial. He would resign, here and now, by Carlottigram. After that? The Imperial Navy, if they’d have him? With his record, probably not.

The Rim Worlds? Rim Runners would take anybody, as long as he had some qualifications and rigor mortis hadn’t set in.

The implications of it all he would work out later. The full appreciation of the desperate situation into which he had been maneuvered—by Mavis as much as by anybody—would sink in slowly.

He looked up at the night sky, at the distant stars.

Would
Discovery
find her Pitcairn Island?

Would the fate of her people be happier than that of those other, long ago and far away, mutineers?

In spite of all that had been done to him by them, in spite of all that had happened because of them, he rather hoped so.

THE FAR
TRAVELER

Dedication

To all far travelers.

The dreams changed.

There were, as before, memories from the minds of the colonists who had long lived in symbiosis with the fungus but now there were other memories—brief flashes, indistinct at first but all the time increasing in clarity and duration. There were glimpses of the faces and the bodies of women whom Grimes had known.

The women . . .

And the ships.

Lines from a long-ago read and long-ago forgotten piece of verse drifted through Grimes’ mind:

The arching sky is calling

Spacemen back to their trade . . .

He was sitting in the control room of his first command, a little Serpent Class courier, a king at last even though his realm, to others, was a very insignificant one. Obedient to the touch of his fingers on the console the tiny ship lifted.

All hands! Stand by! Free Falling!

The lights below us jade . . .

And through the dream, louder and louder, surged the arythmic hammering of a spaceship’s inertial drive . . . .

Chapter 1

The Far Traveler
came to Botany Bay, to Paddington, dropping down to the Bradman Oval—which sports arena, since the landing of the Survey Service’s
Discovery,
had become a spaceport of sorts.
Discovery
was gone, to an unknown destination, taking with her the mutineers and the friends that they had made on the newly discovered Lost Colony. The destroyer
Vega,
dispatched from Lindisfarne Base to apprehend the mutineers, was still in the Oval, still lying on her side, inoperative until such time as the salvage tugs should arrive to raise her to the perpendicular.
Discovery,
under the command of her rebellious first lieutenant, had toppled the other ship before making her escape.

John Grimes, lately captain of
Discovery,
was still on Botany Bay. He had no place else to go. He had resigned from the Federation’s Survey Service, knowing full well that with the loss of his ship his famous luck had run out, that if ever he returned to Lindisfarne he would be brought before a court martial and, almost certainly, would be held responsible for the seizure by mutineers of a valuable piece of the Interstellar Federation’s property. And, in all likelihood, he would be held to blame for the quite considerable damage to
Vega.

In some ways, however, he was still lucky. Apart from anything else he had a job, one for which he was qualified professionally if not temperamentally even though Botany Bay, as yet, owned no spaceships under its flag. (The lost-in-space
Lode Wallaby,
bringing the original colonists, had crashed on landing and, in any case, the essentially cranky gaussjammers had been obsolete for generations.) Nonetheless Botany Bay now needed a spaceport; since the news of
Discovery’s
landing had been broadcast throughout the Galaxy an influx of visitors from outside was to be expected. A spaceport must have a Port Captain. Even if Grimes had not been on more than merely friendly terms with Mavis, Lady Mayor of Paddington and President of the Planetary Council of Mayors, he would have been the obvious choice.

Obvious—but not altogether popular.
Vega’s
people were still on Botany Bay and all of them blamed Grimes for the wreck of their vessel and, come to that, Commander Delamere, the destroyer’s captain, had always hated Grimes’ guts. (It was mutual.) And there were the parents whose daughters had flown the coop with the
Discovery
mutineers—and quite a few husbands whose wives had done likewise. Vociferously irate, too, were the cricket enthusiasts whose series of test matches had been disrupted by the cluttering up of the Oval with spaceships.

Only the prompt intervention of the local police force had saved Grimes, on one occasion, from a severe beating up at the hands of a half dozen of Delamere’s Marines. There had been no police handy when a husband whose wife had deserted with
Discovery’s
bo’s’n gave Grimes two black eyes. And he was becoming tired of the white-clad, picketing cricketers outside his temporary office continually chanting, “Terry bastard, go home!”