Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (21 page)

Porlock . . .

The ship’s navigational data bank flashed the coordinates onto the screen almost immediately. Grimes had to reduce the scale of the chart tank so as to include the Porlock sun. He discovered then that there was no convenient target star. The first adjustment of trajectory, therefore, must be made on instruments only. This was no more than a minor inconvenience.

Resuming his command seat, he shut down inertial and Mannschenn drives while the others watched him intently, their pistols ready. He turned the ship on her axes around the directional gyroscopes. He restarted the inertial drive and then the spacetime-twisting Mannschenn. Sometimes, on such occasions, there were flashes of déjà vu to accompany the spatial and temporal disorientation—but this time (as far as Grimes was concerned) there was only the discomfort of mild nausea. The chilling thought came to him that perhaps he had no future.

But he knew that he must continue to cooperate until such time—if ever—as he had a chance, however faint, to escape.

Lania got up from her chair to look into the chart tank, then stared out and up through the viewports at the stars, mere vague nebulosities as seen in the warped continuum engendered by the ever-precessing rotors of the Drive. She looked away hastily, back into the tank.

She said accusingly, “That . . . that extrapolated trajectory or whatever you call it misses the Porlock sun by lightyears!”

“Allowance for galactic drift,” he told her.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?” she asked coldly.

It took him some little time to realize what she was driving at. Then, “Allowance for galactic drift, Highness,” he said, hating himself for according her that title.

“Hodge and Susie,” she ordered, “take him back to his kennel.” Then, “Oh, before you tear yourself away from us, Grimes, what is our estimated time of arrival?”

“At our present precession rate and at an acceleration of one gravity just thirty standard days, Highness.”

She made no acknowledgment, voiced neither approval nor disapproval, saying only, “Take him back to his kennel.”

Chapter 7

GRIMES MISSED HIS WATCH.
And there was no bulkhead clock in the Third Officer’s cabin; her original owners, the Interstellar Transport Commission, were parsimonious in some respects, considering that only departmental heads were entitled to certain “luxuries.”

But time would pass whether or not he possessed the mechanical means of recording its passage. One way of passing time is to sit and think. Grimes went through to the bathroom to do his sitting and thinking; he could smoke his pipe in there without its becoming obvious to anybody entering the cabin that he had found the means of lighting the thing.

He sat and he thought.

He thought about the skyjackers. The man called Paul was wearing the most gold and silver braid so, presumably, was the leader. But Lania, with fewer stars and smaller crowns on her shoulder boards, was the one giving all the orders—leader
de facto
if not
de jure
. The situation, perhaps, was analogous to that obtaining when a rather ineffectual Captain is overshadowed by a tough, dynamic First Lieutenant or Chief Mate or whatever.

Hodge? Just another engineer, no matter where he came from or whose badges he was wearing.

Susie? Her like could be found in many spaceships, both naval and mercantile. She was no more (and no less) than a spacefaring hotel manager.

All four of the skyjackers, it seemed, had been in the employ of the Bronsonian Meteorological Service, crewpersons aboard Station
Beta
. How big a crew did those artificial satellites carry? Grimes didn’t know. But there must have been a mutiny, during which one of the skyjackers, the navigator of the party, had been killed. Somebody else—possibly the captain, with the muzzle of a pistol pressing into the back of his neck—had driven
Beta
out of her circumpolar orbit into one intersecting that of
Bronson Star
.

And this “Highness” business . . .

Grimes had known Highnesses and Excellencies and the like and was prepared to admit that Lania and Paul did have about them something of that aura which distinguishes members of hereditary aristocracy from the common herd. He knew what it was, of course. It was no more than plain arrogance; if you have it drummed into you from birth on that you are better than those in whose veins blue blood does not flow you will end up really believing it.

But what had a Highness been doing as a crewwoman aboard an orbital spacecraft? A met. observatory owned by a planet state whose elected ruler bore the proud title of First People’s Minister, not First Peoples’ Minister . . . Grimes allowed himself a break to enjoy the semantic subtlety.

He heard the cabin door open, voices.

(Didn’t these people ever knock?)

He got up, knocked his pipe out into the toilet bowl (the one operational only during acceleration), flushed. He put the pipe into his pocket, came through into the cabin.

Susie said brightly, “Oh, there you are. Making room for breakfast?”

Hodge, behind her, grinned.

“Breakfast?” queried Grimes, looking at the tray that she set down on his desk. He was hungry, but a bowl of stew, however savory, did not seem right, somehow, for the first meal of the day.

“Or lunch, or dinner. Take your pick. But it has to be something that you can eat out of a soft, plastic bowl with a soft, plastic spoon. Her Highness’s orders.”

“Her Highness?”

“That’s what we all have to call her now. And Paul, of course, is His Highness.”

“But Bronsonia’s a sort of republic.”

“And where we came from wasn’t. Or, to be more exact, where our parents came from.”

“Porlock?” wondered Grimes. “But Porlock’s a republic too—unless it’s changed since I did my last Recent Galactic History course.”

“May as well tell him, Susie,” said Hodge. “He can listen while he’s eating. I’ve more important things to do than play at being your armed escort.”

“All right,” said the girl. “Get dug into your tucker and listen. Our parents were refugees from Dunlevin. You may recall from your history courses that Dunlevin
was
a monarchy. Paul’s father
was
the Crown Prince; he was one of the few members of the royal family who got away in the royal yacht. Lania’s parents were the Duke and Duchess of Barstow, who also escaped. Hodge’s father was an officer in the Royal Dunlevin Navy. My father was too, Paymaster Commander of the yacht.

“Wallis, who
should
have been our navigator on this caper, was the son of Commodore Wallis, a loyalist officer. As a matter of fact he—young Wallis, that is—was Third Mate of this ship before he entered the met. service . . .”

Grimes worked his way through the plate of stew while she was talking. It wasn’t too bad, although he, had he been cooking, would have programmed the autochef to be more generous with the seasonings. And the mug of coffee that came with the meal was deficient in sweetening.

Susie’s story was interesting. He remembered, now, reading about the revolution on Dunlevin. The ruling house on that planet had not been at all popular and, as Dunlevin was of little strategic importance, had not been propped up by Federation weaponry. Even so the Popular Front had not enjoyed a walkover, mainly because the Royalists had been given support—arms and “volunteers”—by the Duchy of Waldegren. The Interstellar Federation, albeit reluctantly, had imposed a blockade on Dunlevin. The Federation did not like the Popular Front but liked Waldegren even less. And it was Federation presence that prevented too enthusiastic a massacre when the last Royalist stronghold fell; shiploads of refugees made their escape under the guns of the blockading Survey Service fleet.

Some of those refugees, obviously, had found haven on Bronsonia.

“So,” said Grimes after he had swallowed the last spoonful, “you people hope to mount a counterrevolution . . . I’m sorry to be a wet blanket—but you haven’t the hope of a snowball in hell. This rustbucket isn’t a warship, you know. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Any ship,” she told him sweetly, “is a potential troop transport. And any merchant vessel is a potential auxiliary cruiser. It’s rather a pity, Grimes, that we shall be leaving you on Porlock. We could have used your Survey Service expertise.”

He said, “I’m not a mercenary.”

She said, “But certain episodes in your past career indicate that you’re willing to fight on the right side.”

He said, “The
right
side isn’t necessarily the right side.”

“Ha. Ha bloody ha. If you’ve ever lived under a left-wing tyranny you’d be talking differently.”

“Have you ever lived under a left-wing tyranny, Susie?”

“No. But we know how things are on Dunlevin.”

“Do you?”

“Yes!” she snapped. “Have you finished your meal?” She snatched the tray off the desk. “We’ll leave you now. You’ll be told when you’re required again.”

“There should be at least a once-daily check of position,” said Grimes.

“You people,” she told him scornfully, “are always trying to kid us, those of us who aren’t members of the Grand Lodge of Navigators, that you’re indispensible.”

And with those parting words she left him.

Chapter 8

THE VOYAGE WORE ON.

It was a voyage such as Grimes had never experienced before, such as he hoped that he would never experience again. He was able to keep track of the passage of objective time only because, at irregular intervals, he was taken up to the control room to check the ship’s position. Finally he had target sun, the Porlock primary, and knew, with a combination of relief and apprehension, that the passage was almost over. Until Lania was able to replace him with a navigator who was one of her own people he was safe. Once his services were no longer required would he be set free on Porlock? And if he were, how would he make his way back from that planet to Bronsonia? And would he find
Little Sister
still there? Would she have been sold to pay his various debts and fines?

The only one of the skyjackers who was at all friendly was Susie. Paul was becoming more and more the Crown Prince—the King, rather—and Lania a sort of hybrid, a cross between Queen and Grand Vizier. And Hodge, Grimes felt, was taking sadistic delight in the spectacle of a space captain at the receiving end of orders.

Susie’s friendliness was due, partly, to missionary zeal. But whom was she trying to convince—herself or Grimes? He judged that she was beginning to regret having become involved in this enterprise, that she was realizing, although she would hate to admit it, that she had far more in common with Grimes, the apolitical outsider, than with her dedicated companions.

Meanwhile she soon discovered that he was smoking in the cabin that was also his prison. Not only did she turn a blind eye—or insensitive nose—but actually brought him more tobacco from the ship’s stores when his own ran out. And she gave him a chess set, and reading matter. Most of this latter consisted of propaganda magazines; it seemed that there was quite a colony of refugees from Dunlevin on Bronsonia.

Grimes rather doubted that the accounts of life on Dunlevin, as printed in these journals, were altogether accurate. He did know, from his reading of recent history during his Survey Service days, that life on that world had been far from pleasant for the common people during the monarchy. They must have welcomed the transition of power from kings to commissars. And were the commissars as bad as the kings had been? Grimes doubted it. Dunlevin aristocracy and royalty were descended from the notorious Free Brotherhood, pirates who, as a prelude to the erection of a facade of respectability, had taken over a newly colonized planet, virtually enslaving its inhabitants.

He argued with Susie during his meal times. It passed the time although it was all rather pointless; neither of them possessed first-hand knowledge of conditions on Dunlevin.

He asked her, “Why should you, an attractive girl who had a secure and reasonably happy future on Bronsonia—where you were born—throw away everything to play a part in this—
your
word, Susie—caper?”

She was frank with him.

“Partly,” she admitted, “because of the way that I was brought up. Father—even though he manages a restaurant—is still very much the Royal Dunlevin Navy officer. Mother—customers refer to her as the Duchess—is still the aristocrat. They believe, sincerely, that it is my duty to help to restore the House of Carling to the throne and to destroy the socialist usurpers . . .”

“While they stay put in their hash house, raking in the profits.”

“They’re no longer young, Captain. And they have contributed, substantially, to the Restoration Fund.”

“And so,” said Grimes, “when Their Royal Highnesses raise a tattered banner and beat a battered drum your parents are proud and happy to see their darling daughter falling into step, risking
her
neck . . .”

“They are proud. Of course they’re proud.”

“But how come there’re so few of you? Just Paul and Lania and Hodge and yourself—and whoever it was that got himself killed in the met. satellite?”

“Because we were the only ones able to be in the right place at the right time to seize this ship. And it took lots of undercover organizing to get us all aboard
Beta
at the same time. But on Porlock . . .”

“That’s enough yapping,” grumbled Hodge. “Come on, Susie. I’ve work to do, even if some other people haven’t.”

Chapter 9

GRIMES BROUGHT
Bronson Star
down to Porlock.

He sat in the control room, with Their Royal Highnesses and Susie in other chairs so situated that they could cover him with their pistols without risk of shooting each other. He told them that if they did kill him they, in all probability, would die too. Lania told him that even she knew enough to use the inertial drive to reverse the vessel’s fall. He said that the NST transceiver should be used to request permission from Aerospace Control to make entry. She told him that this was not only unnecessary but impossible since the Aerospace Controllers were on strike—a stoppage, thought Grimes, conveniently timed to coincide with
Bronson Star’s
planetfall. Doubtless a coded message had been sent to somebody by means of the Carlotti Deep Space radio.