Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (3 page)

Finally the estimated cost of the round voyage appeared on the screen. It was, inevitably, frightening. After he realized that his master’s salary was included in the total he decided to add only a modest 10%. He put through a call to the Superintending Postmistress. After a short delay her face appeared on the screen, as his would be appearing on the one at her end.

“Yes, Captain?” she asked.

“I’ve done my sums,” he replied. “I don’t think you’ll like the result.”

“Tell me.”

He told her.

Her fine eyebrows arched, but the rest of her face remained impassive.

She said, “I’m not
buying
your pinnace.”

He said, “If you were it would cost quite a bit more.”

She smiled. “I suppose so. And, after all, I’m not paying the bill. Neither is my government. The Boggartians want the shipment no later than yesterday, and if it’s sent through normal channels it could take a year to reach them. I’ll punch through a Carlottigram and find out if they’re willing to pay the charges. I’ll call you back.”

Grimes brewed coffee, filled and lit his pipe, settled down to watch what passed for entertainment on Tiralbin on his playmaster, which, in port, could function as a tridi receiver. He watched without much enthusiasm a local version of football being played in pouring rain. One team was male, the other female, but the players were so thickly coated with mud that it was impossible to determine their sex.

The transceiver chimed.

It was the Superintending Postmistress.

She said, “They must be in a hurry on Boggarty. They wasted no time in replying. They have agreed to pay your figure, half, before departure, to be placed to your credit in the Galactic Bank, the other half to be paid on delivery. There is only one slight snag . . .”

“And what is that?” asked Grimes.

“They demand that our Postal Service send one of its own officials to travel in charge of the parcels, to hand them over in person. You have passenger accommodation, don’t you?”

“Of a sort,” he said. “Not too uncomfortable, but no privacy.”

“As long as I don’t have to share a bunk . . .”

He doubted that he had heard her correctly. “As long as
you
don’t have to share a bunk?”

She laughed. “I’m overdue for a long leave. I want to travel, but travel is damned expensive—as you should know.”

He said, “I’m finding out.”

She told him, “I thought that I might temporarily demote myself to postwoman . . .”

He said, “I thought that I, as a courier, would be a sort of a postman.”

She said, “But you’re not an employee of our government. You’re a private individual, a hired carrier. You have still to build up a reputation for reliability.”

Grimes felt his prominent ears burning. He exclaimed, “They have only to check my Survey Service record!”

She laughed. “And what sort of marks will the FSS give you for reliability? Apart from the way in which you lost your last ship, you had quite a few enemies among the top brass, and not too many friends. You’re on the run from a court martial.”

The angry flush spread all over his face, then slowly subsided. He had to admit that she was right. As an officer of the Federation Survey Service he was finished. As a merchant officer, a shipmaster—or even a shipowner of a sort—he had yet to prove himself.

She demanded, “Well, Captain Grimes, do you want the job or not?” She grinned engagingly, “Would my company be so hard to put up with? Or would you rather have some hairy-arsed postman? I could arrange that, you know . . .”

He looked at her face in the screen. He decided that she would be preferable to a postman, but remembered the last time that he had been cooped up in a small spacecraft—a lifeboat—with an attractive woman. It had been great fun at first, but they had finished up hating each other. However,
Little Sister
was more, much more, than a mere lifeboat. There would be, with the erection of a plastic partition in the main cabin (and who was going to pay for that?) far more privacy. The food would be much better, even though it had its origin in the algae vats. And there would be a foreseeable conclusion to the voyage, as there had not been on that past occasion.

He smiled back at her. He said, “All right. It’s on. But you’d better come out to the spaceport to see what you’re letting yourself in for.”

“It’s a date,” she said. “Expect me half an hour from now.”

***

She was punctual.

A scarlet, post office car, with a uniformed driver, drew up in a cloud of spray by the pinnace’s airlock exactly twenty-nine minutes after the conclusion of the call. He had occupied the time with housekeeping—a hasty tidying up, the programing of the autochef with a lunch for two, one of the few remaining bottles of El Doradan Spumante put to cool in the refrigerator, gin of the ship’s own manufacture decanted from its plastic container into a much more attractive glass flagon.

Enveloped in hooded, transparent rainwear she walked from the car, which turned to return to the city, to the airlock. Grimes helped her off with the water-slick coverall, then ushered her into the little cabin. She seated herself at the small table. She looked at the flagon, the glasses, the little bottle of flav, the bowl of ice cubes.

“So,” she remarked, “this is how the poor live.”

He poured drinks, raised his glass, said, “Down the hatch.”

“Down the hatch,” she repeated. She sipped. “H’m. You don’t do yourself badly. One thing we can’t do here is make decent gin.”

The autochef chimed. Grimes got up to get disposable napkins and—a legacy from
The Far Traveller—
gold cutlery. Her eyes widened as he laid the table. He went through into the galley-workshop-engine room, returned with the meal on gold-rimmed china. It was ‘steak’, with ‘mashed potato’ and a puree of ‘peas.’ Appearancewise and flavorwise it passed muster, although the texture of the ‘meat’ left much to be desired. (So, he realized, did his choice of a wine to accompany the meal; a still red would have been more suitable.)

His guest patted her lips with her napkin. “Congratulate the chef for me, Captain. Tissue culture beef?”

“Not in a ship this size,” he told her. “She’s too small to run to a farm. Just algae, from the vats, processed, colored and flavored.”

She said, “I’ll not ask what nutrients your algae subsist upon. I’m not altogether ignorant of spaceship ecology. I’m not squeamish either. After all, the sewage of every town and city on this planet is processed and fed back into the land. Do you have coffee, by the way?”

“Coming up,” said Grimes.

“You’ve got yourself a passenger,” she told him.

Chapter 5

EPSILON CORVUS
came in while Grimes, standing in
Little Sister’s
airlock to keep out of the persistent rain, was receiving the stores that he had ordered. The transfer of funds to his account with the Galactic Bank had been made with quite amazing promptitude and, for one of the few times in his life, he felt rich. He was having to restrain himself from spending money like a drunken spaceman.

The Commission’s ship dropped down through the grey overcast, glimpsed fitfully through the slowly drifting veils of rain, the arrhythmic clangor of her inertial drive muffled by the downpour. Finally she sat down decisively in the center of the triangle formed by the marker beacons. The driver of the ship chandler’s truck which delivered the stores remarked sourly, “She’s here. At last. And much good will she be to us.”

“Who’s us?” asked Grimes politely.

The driver gestured to the name painted on the side of his vehicle. “Bannington and Willis, that’s who. I’m Willis. Those cows . . .” he jerked his thumb towards the freighter “. . . don’t buy a single item here apart from private orders. Bloody Venus strawberries. Tiralbin’s one claim to fame. Ha!” He brightened slightly.
“You
didn’t order any, Captain. I’ll be back at the spaceport before you push off, I’ll be delivering aboard the Old Crow, so what about putting you down for a couple of dozen cans?”

“No thank you,” said Grimes.

“Don’t need ’em, hey? You’re lucky. Mind you, they don’t work on everybody. Not on me, for one. If they did I wouldn’t be selling them! Ha! Well, sign here Cap for what you’ve got.” Grimes signed. “Sure you won’t change your mind about the strawberries? From what I hear you may be needing them after all . . .”

“No thank you,” said Grimes again. He was mildly annoyed by the assumption that a man and a woman alone together in a small spacecraft must inevitably fall into each other’s arms. Since his appointment to his first commercial command,
The Far Traveller,
he had studied the Space Shipping Act. He had learned that any master or officer forcing his attentions on a female passenger or crew member was liable to the suspension or cancellation of his certificate of competency. Grimes possessed a civilian master astronaut’s certificate, having been required to pass that examination before his promotion to Lieutenant Commander in the Survey Service. He had no desire to lose it.

The truck drove off and Grimes went inside the pinnace to stow his stores. He was still finding it strange to have to do everything himself but was rather enjoying it. He sang untunefully:

“Oh, I am the cook and the captain bold

And the mate of the
Nancy
brig . . .”

A strange voice called, “Ahoy,
Little Sister!
May I come aboard?”

Grimes stowed a carton, then turned towards the airlock. He said, “This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.”

His visitor was a small, wiry man in grey working uniform with master’s epaulettes on the shoulders. He introduced himself. “I’m Halley, from the Old Crow, as they call her here. I couldn’t help noticing your little ship when I came in and thought I’d like a closer look at her. The port officials told me that she’s built of gold . . .”

“She is, Captain,” said Grimes. He waved his visitor to a chair, took one himself. “Coffee?”

“Thank you.”

Grimes got up again, went through to the galley and returned with two steaming mugs.

“Ex Survey Service, aren’t you, Captain?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And now you’re one of us, more or less.”

“I’m trying to be.”

The other man grinned. “I’m afraid that you haven’t tried quite hard enough. As well as being Master of
Epsilon Corvus
I’m an official of the Guild. A Committee-man, as a matter of fact. You, sir, are about to embark on a commercial voyage in a ship not commanded by a Guild member. I have to tell you that members of the Guild and of the space-associated unions have no option but to declare you black.”

“Which means?” asked Grimes.

“Which means that you will receive no clearance to lift from Aerospace Control, for a start.”

Grimes shrugged.

“It means, too, that Aerospace Control on Boggarty will be informed that you are black if you do, illegally, lift from Port Muldoon . . .”

“Call me Ishmael,” muttered Grimes.

“What? Oh, yes. Ha, ha. I’m sorry, Captain, but that’s the way of it. As a Survey Service type you’ve led a sheltered life. You’ve no idea of the struggle we’ve had, and are still having, to maintain and to improve conditions.” He grinned. “I understand that you’re owner as well as master, so your own conditions are up to you. But if you were, as an employee, in command of
this
spacecraft you’d be entitled to hard-lying money
and
short-handed money. You’ve no cook or steward, no engineer . . .”

I should have included hard-lying money and short-handed money in my estimated costs,
thought Grimes.
I will in future.

His guest pulled a sheaf of papers from the inside breast pocket of his uniform coveralls. “I’m not holding a pistol at your head, Captain, but I do strongly advise you to join the Guild. Apart from anything else we guarantee you full legal protection—as master, that is, not owner. But it’s as a master that you’re always liable to come up against a court of enquiry. So, if you’ll just fill in the details and sign here . . .”

Grimes sighed. “How much?” he asked.

“Joining fee, five hundred. Annual dues another five hundred.”

It wasn’t much compared to the profits that Grimes hoped soon to be making, compared to the salary that he was paying himself on paper. And, he reluctantly admitted, Guild membership was an essential to a merchant spaceman. He filled in the forms and signed them. He made out a check for one thousand credits to the Interstellar Astronauts’ Guild, signed that. He received a small plastic card, with his name already printed on it, in exchange.

Business over, Halley was once again quite affable. He said, “Well, that was quite painless, wasn’t it? Welcome aboard and all that.” He relaxed in his chair, cast an appraising eye around the cabin. “You know, Captain, I rather envy you. No owners to get on your back. No crew to get in your hair, no passengers . . .”

A female voice called from the airlock, “May I join the party?”

“Meet my passenger, Captain Halley,” said Grimes.

***

Halley and Tamara Haverstock were already acquainted. Neither much liked the other. The Superintending Postmistress was, to the shipmaster, yet another officious official to make his life a misery, with her unreasonable demands, each and every time that he was in Port Muldoon. Halley, to Tamara Haverstock, was the unobliging representative of the cordially disliked Interstellar Transport Commission.

“Are you actually travelling in
this,
Miss Haverstock?” Halley asked.

“Your ship, Captain Halley, seems never to be proceeding in a direction suitable to my requirements. And now, if you will excuse me, I have business to discuss with Captain Grimes.”

Halley rose to leave. “Bon voyage,” he said. “And don’t do anything that you couldn’t do riding on a bicycle. Remember Paragraph 118 (c) of the Space Shipping Act. If you do fall foul of it, the Guild will back you up.”

“What was he talking about?” asked the Postmistress after he was gone.

“I don’t know,” said Grimes. Actually he didn’t, but strongly suspected that Paragraph 118(c) was the one setting out the penalties for rape, or alleged rape.