First Command (65 page)

She’s shrewd,
thought Grimes.
She’s got him weighed up.

She turned again to Billinger.
“You
are the master, Captain. I am paying you a handsome salary. I expect you to begin earning it. And I am sure that Port Captain Grimes will be willing to oversee the entire exercise from the ground.”

“I shall be pleased to, Your Excellency,” said Grimes.

“Your pleasure,” she told him, “is of little consequence. After all, this is your spaceport, even though it is normally used for archaic Australian religious rites. Thank you, gentlemen.”

They were dismissed.

Chapter 5

“I don’t like it,
John,” said Mavis.

The Lady Mayor of Paddington, President of the Council of Mayors of Botany Bay, was sprawled in an easy chair in Grimes’ sitting room, regarding him solemnly over the rim of her beer mug. She was a big woman, although too firm-bodied to be considered obese, older than him but still sexually attractive. She was wearing a gaudy sarong that displayed her deeply tanned, sturdy legs almost to the crotch, that left bare her strong but smooth arms and shoulders. Her lustrous, almost white hair made a startling contrast to the warm bronze of her face, as did the pale gray eyes, the very serious eyes. Of late she had been too much the mother and too little the lover for Grimes’ taste.

He said, “We have to get that bloody
Vega
off your cricket pitch some time.”

She said, “That’s as may be—but I wouldn’t trust your cobber Delamere as far as I could throw him.”

“No cobber of mine,” Grimes assured her. “He never was and never will be.” He laughed. “Anyhow,
you
could throw him quite a fair way.”

She chuckled. “An’ wouldn’t I like to! Right into one o’ those stinkin’ tanks out at the sewage farm!”

Grimes said, “But he’d never dare to use his guns to threaten you, to demand that you turn me over to him. He knows damn well that if he sparked off an incident he’d be as much in the shit with the Survey Service as I am.”

She did not need to be a telepath to sense his mood. She said softly, “That Service of yours has been more a mistress—and a mother—to you than I have ever been, ever could be.”

“No,” he said, after too long a pause. “Not so.”

“Don’t lie to me, John. Don’t worry about hurtin’ my feelings. I’m just an old bag who’s been around for so long that emotionally I’m mostly scar tissue. . .” She lit one of the cigars rolled from the leaves of the mutated tobacco of Botany Bay, deeply inhaled the fragrant, aphrodisiac smoke, exhaled. Grimes, whether he wanted to or not, got his share of the potent fumes. In his eyes she became more and more attractive, Junoesque. The sarong slipped to reveal her big, firm, brown-gleaming breasts with their erect, startlingly pink nipples. He got up from his own chair, took a step toward her.

But she hadn’t finished talking. Raising a hand to fend him off she said, “An’ it’s not only the Service. It’s space itself. I’ve been through this sorta tiling before. My late husband was a seaman—an’ he thought more o’ the sea an’ his blasted ships than he ever did o’ me. An’ the airship skippers are just as bad, their wives tell me. Sea, Air—an’ Space . . . The great mistresses with whom we mere human women can never compete . . .

“You don’t haveter tell me, Johnnie boy, but you’re pinin’. It’s a space-goin’ command you really want, not the captaincy of a cricket field that just happens to be cluttered up with spaceships. I wish I could help—but it’ll be years before we have any spaceships of our own. An’ I wish I could get you off Botany Bay—for your sake, not mine! I hear things an’ I hear of things. That Delamere was sayin’—never mind who to—“The Survey Service has a long arm—an’ if that bastard Grimes thinks he’s safe here, he’s got another thing comin’.”

“Delamere!” sneered Grimes.

“He’s a weak man,” said Mavis, “but he’s vain. An’ cunning as a shit-house rat. An’ dangerous.”

“He couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag,” said Grimes.

“He has men—an’ he’ll soon have a ship—to do his fightin’ for him,” Mavis said.

“It’s up to me whether he has a ship or not,” said Grimes. “And now let’s forget about him, shall we?”

He dropped the last of his clothing to the floor. She was ready for him, enveloped him in her ample, warm embrace. For a time—if only for a short time—he forgot space and ships and, even, that nagging premonition of disasters yet to come.

Chapter 6

Grimes stood with Wheeldon
on the close-cropped grass of the Oval—the groundsmen were still carrying out their duties although no one knew when, if ever, play would be resumed—a scant five meters from the recumbent hulk of
Vega.
She was no more than a huge, useless, metal tube, pointed at one end and with vanes at the other. It did not seem possible that she would ever fly, had ever flown. Like a giant submarine, improbably beached on grassland, she looked—a submarine devoid of conning tower and control surfaces. Grimes remembered a visit he had paid to one of the ship-building yards on Atlantia where he, with other Survey Service officers, had witnessed the launching of a big, underseas oil tanker. And this operation, of which he was in charge, was a launching of sorts . . .

Forward of the crippled destroyer stood
The Far Traveler,
a fragile seeming golden tower, a gleaming spire supported by the flying buttresses that were her stern vanes. Between each of these there was a steel towing lug, the dull gray of the base metal contrasting harshly with the rich, burnished yellow of the yacht’s shell plating. Grimes had inspected these fittings and, reluctantly, had admitted that Delamere’s artificers had made a good job. To each of the three lugs was shackled a length of wire rope, silvery metal cordage that, in spite of its apparent flimsiness, was certified to possess a safe working load measured in thousands of tons. It, like the Baroness’s yacht, was a product of Electra, yet another example of arcane metallurgical arts and sciences. It was hellishly expensive—but when it came to the supply of stores and equipment to its ships the Survey Service had occasional spasms of profligacy. That wire must have been in
Vega’s
storerooms for years. Nobody had dreamed that it would ever be used.

Lugs had been welded to the destroyer’s skin just abaft the circular transparencies of the control-room viewports. To each of these a length of the superwire was shackled. All three towlines were still slack, of course, and would be so until
The Far Traveler
took the strain. Grimes didn’t much care for the setup. The problem would be to maintain an equal stress on all parts. He would have liked to have installed self-tensioning winches in either the yacht or the warship but, although such devices were in common use by Botany Bay’s shipping, none were available capable of coping with the enormous strains that would be inevitable in an operation of this kind. As it was, he must do his damnedest to ensure that at least two of the wires were taking the weight at all times, and that there were no kinks. He could visualize all too clearly what would happen if there were—a broken end whipping through the air with all the viciousness of a striking snake, decapitating or bloodily bisecting anybody unlucky enough to be in the way. And he, Grimes, was liable to be one such. He had to direct things from a position where he could see at once if anything was going wrong. Delamere and the Baroness and all
Vega’s
crew, with the exception of one engineer officer, were watching from the safety of the stands. And Mavis, with her entourage, was also getting a grandstand view . . .

He stood there, capless in the warm sunshine but wearing a headset with throat microphone. It was a good day for the job, he thought, almost windless. Nothing should go wrong. But if everything went right—there was that nagging premonition back again—then things could start going wrong. For him.
Heads you win, tails I lose . . .
? Maybe.

He said to Wheeldon, “Better get up to the stands. If one of those wires parts it won’t be at all healthy around here.”

“Not on your sweet Nelly,” replied the Deputy Port Captain. “I’m supposed to be your apprentice. I want to see how this job is done.”

“As you please,” said Grimes. If Wheeldon wished to share the risk that was his privilege. He actuated his transceiver. “Port Captain to
Far Traveler.
Stand by.”

“Standing by,” came Billinger’s voice in the headset.

“Port Captain to
Vega.
Stand by.”

“Standing by,” replied the engineer in the destroyer’s inertial drive room.

Ships,
thought Grimes,
should be fitted with inertial drive units developing sufficient lateral thrust to cope with this sort of situation. But I’ll use whatever thrust Frankie’s engineer can give me . . .

“Port Captain to
Far Traveler.
Lift off!”

The yacht’s inertial drive started up, cacophonous in the still air. She lifted slowly. The wire cables started to come clear of the grass.

“Hold her at that, Billinger. Hold her . . . Now . . . Cant her, cant her . . . Just five degrees short of the critical angle . . .”

The Far Traveler
was not only a floating tower, hanging twenty meters clear of the ground, but was becoming a leaning tower, toppling slowly and deliberately until her long axis was at an angle of forty degrees from the vertical. Billinger should have no trouble holding her in that position. In a normal vessel anxious officers and petty officers would be sweating over their controls; in the fully-automated yacht servo-mechanisms would be doing all the work.

“Port Captain to
Vega . . .
Maximum lateral thrust, directed
down!”

The destroyer came to life, snarling, protesting. The combined racket from the two ships was deafening.

“Lift her, Billinger. Lift her! Maintain your angle . . .”

The Far Traveler
lifted. The cables—two of them—tautened. They . . .
thrummed,
an ominous note audible even above the hammering of the inertial drive units. But the sharp stem of
Vega
was coming clear of the grass, a patch of dead, crushed, dirty yellow showing in sharp contrast to the living green.

“Thirty-five degrees, Billinger . . .”

The change in the yacht’s attitude was almost imperceptible but the threatening song of the bar-taut wires was louder.

“Increase your thrust if you can,
Vega!”

“It’ll
bugger my innie if I do . . .”

“It’s not
my
innie,” growled Grimes.
“Increase your thrust!”

More dead yellow was showing under the warship.

“Billinger—thirty degrees . . . Twenty-five . . . And roll her . . . Roll her to port . . . Just a touch . . . Hold it!”

For a moment it seemed that all the weight would be on one cable only but now two had the strain once more.

“Billinger! Twenty degrees . . .”

Vega
was lifting nicely, coming up from the long depression that she had made with her inert tonnage. Grimes noticed worm-like things squirming among the dead grass stems—but this was no time for the study of natural history. He was trying to estimate the angle made by the destroyer’s long axis with the ground. Soon he would be able to tell the engineer to apply a component of fore-and-aft thrust.

“Billinger, ten degrees . . .”

Then it happened. One of the taut wires snapped, about halfway along its length. The broken ends whipped viciously—the upper one harmlessly but the lower one slashing down to the grass close to where Grimes was standing. It missed him. He hardly noticed it.

“Billinger, roll to starboard! Roll!” He had to get the weight back on to two wires instead of only one. “Hold her! And lift! Lift!”

Would the cables hold?
“Vega!
Fore and aft thrust!
Now!”

The destroyer, her sharp bows pointing upward and rising all the time, surged ahead. Two of her stern vanes gouged long, ugly furrows in the grass. There should have been a spaceman officer in her control room to take charge of her during these final stages of the operation—but Delamere, when Grimes had raised this point, had insisted that it would not be necessary. (The obvious man for the job, of course, would have been
Vega’s
captain—and Frankie, as Grimes well knew, was always inclined to regard the safety of his own skin as of paramount importance.)

Vega
lifted, lifted, coming closer and closer to the vertical. Two of her vanes were in contact with the ground, the third was almost so. Grimes looked up to the taut cables. He could see bright strands of broken wire protruding from one of them. It would be a matter of seconds only before it parted, as had the first one. Obviously those safe working load certificates had been dangerously misleading . . .
“Vega!
Full lateral thrust! Now!”

“The innie’s flat out!”

Damn all engineers!
thought Grimes. At crucial moments their precious machinery was always of greater importance to them than the ship.

“Double maximum thrust—or you’ve had it!” The officer must have realized at last that this was an emergency. The destroyer’s inertial drive not only hammered but . . .
howled.
The ship shuddered and teetered and then, suddenly, lifted her forward end, so rapidly that for an instant the cables hung slack. But Billinger quickly took the weight again and gave one last, mighty jerk. The stranded cable parted but the remaining towline held. The broken end slashed down to the grass on the other side of the destroyer from Grimes.

Vega
came to the perpendicular and stood there, rocking slightly on her vanes.

“Billinger—’vast towing!
Vega—
cut inertial drive!”

“It’s cut itself . . .” said
Vega’s
engineer smugly.

And then, only then, was Grimes able to look down to see what the end of the first snapped cable had done. He stared, and swallowed, and vomited. He stood there, retching uncontrollably, befouling his clothing. But it didn’t much matter. His footwear and lower legs were already spattered with blood and tatters of human flesh. The flying wire had cut the unfortunate Wheeldon—not very neatly—in two.

So Captain Billinger gingerly brought
The Far Traveler
to a landing, careful not to get the yacht’s stern foul of the remaining tow wire. So Commander Delamere, at the head of his crew, his spacemen and Marines, marched down from the grandstand and across the field to resume possession of his ship. So an ambulance drove up to collect what was left of the Deputy Port Captain while Grimes stood there, staring down at the bloodied grass, retching miserably . . . To him came Mavis, and Shirley and, surprisingly, the Baroness.