Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (33 page)

But there was somebody—no, something—coming. Something that was not thinly squealing but was making a low, moaning sound. There was the heavy padding—padding, not scuttering—of bare feet on the treads of the stairway.

It—no,
she
—came into view.

She was as he remembered her, although a little less plump. She was chewing as she moaned to herself and a trickle of blood ran from her mouth down her chin. There were half-healed scratches on her shoulders and breasts. She stooped to pick up another meat fragment, thrust it between her full lips.

“Susie!” cried Grimes.

She straightened, stared at him. There was no sign of recognition on her face although, he was sure, there was intelligence behind the brown eyes.

“Susie!”

She growled, deep in her throat, sprang for him, clawed hands outstretched. He brought his gun up but it was too late. She knocked it from his grasp. She threw her arms about him in a bearlike hug and her open mouth, with its already bloodstained teeth, went for his throat.

It was not the first time that Grimes had been in intimate contact with a naked woman but it was the first time that he had been on the defensive. His head jerked back from those snapping teeth even as her long, ragged nails tore through the thin fabric of his shirt and deeply scored his sides. He brought his fists up to try to pummel her sensitive breasts but she was holding him too closely. But he managed to get his right hand open, found a taut nipple, squeezed.

She screamed, with rage as well as pain.

He squeezed harder, twisted.

He had room now to fight, brought his left knee up between her thighs, felt the warm moistness that, in other circumstances, would have been sexually stimulating—that was, he realized with a mixture of shame and horror, sexually stimulating. Again he brought his knee up, harder.

She broke away.

He dived for the gun but she was on him again, the weight of her on his back, forcing his face down onto the hard deck. With a superhuman effort he rolled over, reversing their positions, fought his way free of her.

Again he tried for the pistol which had been kicked, during their struggles, almost to the open door of the boat bay. She recovered fast and hit him again, a thunderbolt of feminine flesh that should have been soft and desirable but that was horrifying. He was knocked into the boat bay, fell heavily, winding himself. He heard the thud as she fetched up against the bulkhead outside. When he scrambled to his feet the door was closing, was almost shut. He got his fingers onto the edge of the sliding panel but hastily snatched them back before they were amputated.

She must, he thought, inadvertently have pressed the local control button. Or was it so inadvertent? How much of the original Susie’s own knowledge was in the brain of this replica? (Did it have a brain? He was almost sure that it did.)

He would wait, he decided, until he felt stronger, hoping that the pseudo-Susie would wander elsewhere, would not know what the pistol was for and would leave it where it had last fallen. It was not edible; she almost certainly would not touch it. And, he told himself, it would be easier to deal with this single, large opponent than with a horde of tiny horrors. (And was there a limit to its growth? Would it double in size if it ate him, Grimes? Or was its augmentation the result of a steady diet of its fellow clones?)

What was it doing now? Did it know enough? Did it remember enough to push the right button to open the door again? (But surely no cells from Susie’s brain had been used in the manufacture of the original devil doll.) Were its fingers, even now, poking, intelligently or un-intelligently, at the array of buttons on the bulkhead?

They were.

Grimes heard the evacuation pump start, drawing the atmosphere from the boat bay into the body of the ship. The controls for this pump were not duplicated inside the bay; the only ones that were were those for opening and closing the door. And the door, Grimes remembered, could not be opened from inside when a pressure differential existed.

He tried, of course, but it was useless.

Unless he sealed himself in the boat, and that hastily, he would not be able to breathe.

He was caught in the very trap that he had devised for the mini-Susies.

Chapter 32

GRIMES ACTIVATED
the boat’s life-support systems.

Bitterly regretting not having put on his spacesuit when he made the attempt to trap and dispose of the mini-Susies—or, as it had turned out, the life-size pseudo-Susie—he searched the boat’s stores for anything, anything at all, that could be used as breathing apparatus. But he was not desperate enough to venture out into the vacuum of the boat bay with a plastic bag over his head—especially since there was little of any use that he could do once he was there.

Meanwhile, he reflected, he could survive in his prison almost indefinitely, breathing recycled air, drinking recycled water, eating processed algae that had proliferated on a diet of his own body wastes. And while he was existing drably
Bronson Star
would continue her voyage—to Bronsonia, past Bronsonia, dropping through the warped dimensions until such time as her Mannschenn Drive ceased to function. If this happened during Grimes’ lifetime he would be able to eject from the ship and make his way to the nearest inhabited planet—
if
he was able to fix his position,
if
the boat’s mini-Mannschenn didn’t break down, if, if,
if
, . . .

But he could always yell for help on the lifeboat’s Carlotti transceiver and, possibly, there would be somebody within range.

And, he thought, I can yell for help
now
.

He switched on the Carlotti, watched the Mobius strip antenna begin to rotate. It would have to be a broadcast message, of course; a beamed transmission would have given him far greater range but unless he knew the exact azimuth of the target he would only be wasting time.

He said into the microphone, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.
Bronson Star
requires immediate assistance. Mutiny on board.” And that, he thought, would tie in with the story that he intended to tell to the authorities on Bronsonia. “Master trapped in boat bay. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”

He waited for a reply. Surely, he thought, that Dog Star liner,
Doberman
, would still be within range.

He repeated the call.

Again he waited.

He was about to call for the third time when a voice came from the speaker of the transceiver—faint, distorted but intelligible.

“FSS
Explorer
to
Bronson Star
. Your signal received. What are your coordinates, please?”

Explorer
. . . A sister ship to one of Grimes’ earlier commands,
Seeker
. Survey Service . . . A great pity that it wasn’t
Doberman
, thought Grimes. Was he still on the Service’s wanted list? But the old adage held true: Beggars can’t be choosers.

He said, “I am holed up in my Number One boat I am on trajectory from . . .” he caught himself just in time . . . “Dunlevin to Bronsonia. Not having access to the ship’s control room I am unable to fix my position.”

That last was true enough. With the boat still inboard the larger vessel it was impossible to obtain accurate bearings of any Carlotti beacons in the vicinity.

“
Explorer
to
Bronson Star
. Broadcast a steady note for precisely one minute, then returned to receive mode. Over.”

Grimes made the necessary adjustments to the transceiver, broadcast his beacon call for sixty seconds, switched back to Receive.

“
Explorer
to
Bronson Star
. We are homing on you. We have you now in our MPI tank. We estimate rendezvous thirty-seven hours and nineteen minutes from now. Can you hold out?”

“Yes,” replied Grimes.

“How many mutineers are there?”

“One.”

“Armed?”

“Yes,” said Grimes after a moment’s hesitation. It could be true. The pseudo-Susie had access to all the ship’s firearms, including the pistol that Grimes had dropped.

“And you are Captain Grimes—lately Commander Grimes of this Service?”

“Yes.”

There was a brief laugh. “Don’t worry. We have no orders to arrest you. Confidentially, Commander Delamere didn’t exactly cover himself with glory when
he
tried it on Botany Bay—and your late employer, the Baroness d’Estang, was able to pull quite a few strings on your behalf. We know that you were in charge of
Bronson Star
when she was skyjacked. What happened next?”

Grimes grunted irritably. He would just imagine those bastards in
Explorer’s
control room flapping their big, ugly ears as he told his story, gloating over his misfortunes.
So,
they would be saying,
Grimes’ famous luck is really running out now, isn’t it?

He said, telling the truth at first, “I was forced, at gunpoint, to navigate
Bronson Star
to Porlock. There we picked up a bunch of mercenaries and counterrevolutionaries. Then I took the ship from Porlock to Dunlevin. As you may already have heard the invasion didn’t come as a surprise to the present government of Dunlevin. Two of the royalists—a ship’s engineer and a catering officer—had stayed on board with me and they helped me to escape. But the three of us failed to see eye to eye about where to go next. I, of course, wanted to return the ship to her rightful owners. The other two had some crazy idea of running out to the Rim Worlds and setting up shop as a one-ship star tramp company. They pulled guns on me and ordered me to deviate from trajectory . . .”
And that’s the answer,
he thought,
to the question of why I’m approaching Bronsonia from a slightly wrong direction.
“Cutting a long story short, there was a fight. Hodge was killed. After the funeral I adjusted trajectory and resumed passage. I thought that Susie—the catering officer—wouldn’t cause any more trouble. But she did.” He paused for thought. “She’s quite mad, I think. Running around the ship stark naked. There was a bit of a struggle . . .”

He paused again, heard faintly, “Who said that Grimes’ luck was running out?
I
wouldn’t complain if I had to wrestle with naked ladies!”

“Somehow,” he went on, “I was pushed into the boat bay. She shut me in and started the exhaust pump. All that I could do was scramble into the boat before I asphyxiated.”

A fresh voice came through the transceiver speaker, an authoritative one. “Commander Grimes, this is Commander Perkins here, captain of
Explorer
. I have one or two questions that I’d like to ask . . .”

Grimes had known Perkins slightly—an unimaginative man, a stickler for regulations. He hoped that the questions would not be awkward ones.

“Tell me, Commander, why you did not break Carlotti silence until now? Surely
Bronson Star’s
owners would be entitled to learn that their ship was on her way back to their planet.”

“I feared,” said Grimes, “that units of the Dunlevin Navy might be in pursuit. I did not wish my exact whereabouts to be known.”

“The Dunlevin Navy . . .” sneered Perkins. “Two more or less armed converted star tramps and a deep space tug . . .”

“But armed,” said Grimes. “
Bronson Star
is not.”

“Also,” went on Perkins, “the government of Dunlevin has already lodged complaint with the Federation that you, during your escape from that world, threatened to destroy one of their cities. Surely you realized, Commander, that that was tantamount to piracy.”

“I merely pointed out,” said Grimes, “that if their air force shot me down I should fall onto a major center of population.”

“Nonetheless, you disregarded orders given you by the legal authorities of Dunedin.”

“I was acting,” said Grimes stiffly, “in my owners’ interests.”

“That,” Perkins told him, “will have to be argued out in the courts.” His manner seemed to soften. “Strictly between ourselves, I don’t think that Dunlevin’s pitiful squeals will get much sympathy on Earth. Meanwhile, you can hang on, can’t you, until we reach you?”

“I shan’t exactly live like a king,” said Grimes. “But I shall live.”

Chapter 33

GRIMES HAD TIME
to think things over while
Explorer
sped to her rendezvous with
Bronson Star
. In some ways it was better that his rescuers should be Survey Service personnel rather than merchant spacemen. The average tramp captain, in these circumstances, would be looking out for his owner’s interests—and his own. He would calculate just how much his deviation had cost, erring on the generous side and then send in the bill. He might even claim that he was entitled to a share of the
Bronson Star
salvage money. But
Explorer’s
people—even though the vessel was more of a survey ship proper than a warship—would merely be performing their normal functions as galactic policemen.

But as a galactic police Commander Perkins would be far too nosey. He would want to place the mutineer, the pseudo-Susie, under arrest aboard his own ship. In addition to the medical officer aboard that vessel there would be assorted scientists, inevitably a biologist or two. It would not take these people long to discover that Susie was not human. Awkward—very awkward—questions would be asked. And if the right answers were elicited then not only Grimes would be in the cactus but Hodge and the real Susie, probably still waiting on Joognaan for a ship off planet, would not escape the long arm of the law.

He would just have to play the cards the way that they fell, decided Grimes. Possibly, as
de facto
master of
Bronson Star
, he might be able to ride a high horse, asserting that Susie was, after all,
his
mutineer and must be placed in restraint aboard
his
ship, to be delivered by
him
to the authorities on Bronsonia. Perkins had been a little junior to Grimes when the latter had still been a Survey Service officer. Just possibly he might be able to assert his no longer existent seniority.

He slept.

There was little else to do.

He made an unsatisfactory meal from the boat’s stock of preserved foodstuffs; the algae in their tanks, reanimated when he actuated the life-support systems, had not yet proliferated sufficiently to be a source of nourishment.