Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (34 page)

He had occasional conversations with Commander Perkins and his officers, discussing the boarding procedure, telling them as much as he could about the layout of the ship. He told them the code for opening the outer airlock door; he did not want them to burn their way in, causing needless damage. He was assured that
Explorer’s
engineers would be able to synchronize temporal precession rates and was told that when the two vessels were almost alongside each other a transship tunnel, airlock to airlock, would be used by the boarding party.

He slept some more, ate some more, talked some more.

The time passed.

***

At last
Explorer
was alongside
Bronson Star
.

With temporal precession rates synchronized a switch was made to NST radio which, both in the boat and aboard the Survey Service ship, was tuned to the frequency of the boarding party’s helmet transceivers. Perkins was sending his people aboard
Bronson Star
suited up, in full battle order. Any sort of scrimmage—as Grimes knew too well—aboard a spaceship is liable to result in sudden and disastrous loss of atmosphere . . .

“Tunnel extending . . .” Grimes heard over his transceiver.

“Contact . . . Tunnel end locked . . . Tunnel end sealed . . .”

Not long now . . .
thought Grimes.

A fresh voice came from the speaker of the NST transceiver.
“Bronson Star’s
airlock door opening . . .” Then there was an indignant gasp. “What the hell’s this? A bloody booby trap?”

I should have warned them
. . . Grimes told himself.

The officer in charge of the boarders went on, obviously to Perkins, “Sir, the mutineer has tried to block off the airlock with all manner of garbage! We shall have to
dig
our way in!”

Oh, well,
thought Grimes,
that saves
me
the bother of explaining.

“I think, sir, that we should have the gunnery officer here before we start burrowing through this mess. There could be bombs . . .”

Grimes broke in. “There aren’t any bombs aboard this ship, or even materials for making them.”

Perkins said, “Commander Grimes should know, Mr. Tamworth. Get on with the boarding.”

“All right for
him
to talk,” came a barely audible whisper. “
He
doesn’t have to stumble through shit . . .”

There was a feminine laugh, oddly familiar.
Susie?
thought Grimes, staring around in momentary panic. But that was impossible. Susie may have laughed quite frequently but, so far as Grimes knew, the pseudo-clone was quite incapable of laughter. There was the sound again. It came from the speaker of the transceiver.
Explorer
, as a scientific research rather than a fighting vessel, would almost certainly carry female personnel on her books and those ladies must be listening in.

Some would-be humorist was singing softly,

“Down in the sewer, shoveling up manure,

“That’s where the spaceman does his bit!

“You can hear those shovels ring, ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling,

When you’re down in the sewer shoveling . . .”

“Mr. Tamworth! This is no occasion for buffoonery! Keep your men under proper control!”

“Sir.” Then, still in a sulky voice, “Airlock chamber sufficiently cleared. Access to inner door. Inner door opening . . .”

“Proceed straight to the boat bay, Mr. Tamworth, to release Commander Grimes. Use your weapons only in self-defense.”

“Sir.” A long pause, then, “No sign of opposition. We are proceeding to boat bay level by elevator, which is functioning quite normally.”

“You are
what?
Don’t you realize that you and your people could be trapped in the cage? Get out
at once
and use the spiral stairway!”

“Sir.”

“Commander Grimes, Commander Perkins here. Mr. Tamworth and his people should soon be with you.”

“So I have gathered, Commander Perkins.”

Finally Tamworth came back on the air. “Outside Number 1 Boat Bay. We have encountered no opposition. Am bleeding atmosphere back into the bay.” A pause. “Have found one pistol on the deck outside the compartment. A Franzetti-Colt, caliber 10 millimeter . . .” Another pause. “Pressures equalized. Am opening door.”

Grimes let himself out of the boat, stepped down to the deck just as his spacesuited rescuers came in through the doorway. In the lead was a tall man with the twin gold stripes of a lieutenant on the shoulders of his space suit. Immediately behind him was another figure, not quite so tall, wearing commander’s insignia.

This one lifted the faceplate of her helmet.

“Surprise, surprise!” she said.

“Maggie!” gasped Grimes.

Chapter 34

“MAGGIE!”
Then, “What are you doing
here?
” he demanded.

“I’m one of the scientific officers aboard
Explorer
,” she told him.

“You might have told me that you were there,” he said.

She said, “I thought it better if we didn’t see each other again, John, if we didn’t speak to each other, even. If Bill hadn’t been so against it I’d probably not have come across to you . . .”

“Bill?”

“Commander Perkins.” Her wide mouth opened and curved, displaying very white teeth, but he sensed that she was smiling with rather than at him. “But at the last minute I insisted on accompanying the boarding party. I just couldn’t resist the temptation of finding out, at first hand, what sort of mess you’ve got yourself into now.”

“And talking of messes,” said Lieutenant Tamworth, who had opened his own faceplate, “may I suggest, Commander Lazenby, that we get this one sorted out?” He handed the weapon that he had picked up from the deck to Grimes. “Your pistol, Commander?” Grimes took it. “And now, will you lead the way? This is, after all, your ship.”

Lead the way?
Grimes asked himself.
Where to?
Where would the pseudo-Susie be hiding? If she were hiding . . . Where would she be lurking to pounce out on them?

The farm deck, he thought.

He climbed the spiral staircase that ran around the axial shaft, Maggie immediately after him, then the lieutenant, then four ratings, alert for the first sign of attack, pistols cocked and ready.

The farm deck was as he had left it. The boarders looked curiously at the havoc wrought by Grimes himself—the hydroponic tanks stripped of all their vegetation, the emptied yeast vats.

Tamworth said, “So this is where all that garbage in your airlock came from . . . You said that she was mad. She must have been . . .”

“She probably still is,” said Maggie. “And, therefore, her actions will be unpredictable.”

Grimes wondered why she—it—had not yet attacked, said nothing.

They continued their ascent, searching every compartment as they climbed. Storerooms, galley, pantry, the wardroom. As they looked into the Third Officer’s cabin Grimes remembered his torrid sessions there with the real Susie, wondered what acid comment Maggie would make if she knew what he was thinking. But she was no more his keeper than he was hers.

They came at last to the Master’s quarters.

Grimes was first into his day cabin, brought up and aimed his pistol. But the pale, naked figure sitting hunched over the desk was motionless.

“Is that her?” demanded Tamworth.

“It is,” said Grimes. “If she attacks, shoot to kill.”

One of the men muttered something about a wicked waste.

Grimes approached the . . . thing cautiously. It did not stir. He stretched out his left hand to touch a bare shoulder. The skin was cold, clammy. He grasped the flaccid flesh, squeezed. There was no response.

He muttered, “She’s dead . . .”

“I’m the nearest thing here to a doctor,” said Maggie briskly. “Get back all of you—and you, John. Let the dog see the rabbit . . .”

She got her gloved hands under the armpits of the seated figure, lifted and pulled until it was sprawled back in the chair. It fell into an odd, boneless posture. Grimes was reminded of how the homunculus that was the start of all the trouble had looked among the shards of its broken bottle.

“Cardiac arrest, I’d say,” stated Maggie. “I can’t see any wounds. But I’d like to make a more thorough examination. Meanwhile, Mr. Tamworth, why don’t you and your men make a check of the control room to make sure that all is in order? And you, Commander Grimes, stay here with me, please. I may need a little help.”

Tamworth and his men left willingly enough; in that obscene posture the dead pseudo-Susie was not a pretty-sight.

“Shut the door, John,” ordered Maggie. “Better lock it.”

While he was doing so she picked up the solidograph of herself from the desk, looked at it. She said, “I’m pleased that you kept this . . . But I don’t think that Bill would be happy if he knew that you have it.”

“Damn Bill!” swore Grimes.

“He’s a nice bloke,” said Maggie. “And he’s in love with me. Which is just as well. It means that he’ll accept
my
story of what’s been happening here without question. You’ve been up to something, John, something very odd. That thing in your chair is not human. I imagine that you don’t want it taken aboard
Explorer
for a proper examination.”

“I don’t,” said Grimes.

“Then talk. It’s all right; I’ve accidentally on purpose switched off my helmet radio. You can spill all the beans you want without anybody but myself being privy to your guilty secrets.”

Grimes picked up his pipe from where he had left it on the desk, filled and lit it. He noticed that the lid of the box that he had used as a trap was open, that the mangled remains of the first mini-Susie to be killed were gone from it. He looked at the open, sharp-toothed mouth of the life-sized simulacrum, shuddered.

“You haven’t changed,” commented Maggie. “You can’t think, you can’t talk without that foul incinerator of yours. One thing about Bill—he’s a nonsmoker . . .”

“Must you keep dragging that bastard Perkins up?”

“Why not? At least he’s human. And it looks to me as though you’ve been passing your lonely days and night with some sort of obscene sex doll, something that you picked up on some foul world whose people cater to the tastes of woman-starved spacemen. What happened? Did she—no,
it
—get out of control? Did you hide in the lifeboat to escape a fate worse than death?”

“Damn it, no!” shouted Grimes.

“Then tell.”

Grimes told.

***

He had to keep it short. Back aboard
Explorer
Commander Perkins must be getting anxious when he heard no reports directly from Maggie, might even order Tamworth and his men to break into the Master’s quarters.

Maggie interrupted once.

“Yes, John, I’ve heard of Joognaan, but I’ve never been there. And so Susie had herself remodeled. I can’t say that I blame her if she looked like
that
. What was she like after the job was done?”

“Not bad,” said Grimes noncommitally, then went on.

He finished, “Those surplus cells from the original Susie must have been changed, somehow, when the Joognaanards made me the girl in the bottle that was Susie’s parting gift. They can’t have died when the bottle was broken. They reassembled, somehow, in the algae tank, devoured those aquatic worms. And then, after I let them out, the horde of tiny copies of the original thrived on the yeast. And when I tried to starve them they reunited by absorption, or ingestion, and grew . . .”

“If she’d eaten you,” said Maggie, “she’d have been a giantess. But what killed her?”

Somebody was hammering on the door; either Lieutenant Tamworth was acting on his own initiative or had been ordered by his captain to ensure that Maggie Lazenby was safe.

Maggie nudged the on-off button of her helmet transceiver with her chin. “Commander Lazenby here,” she said. “I’m afraid that my radio switch is defective. Unless I keep it pressed all the time it goes off. Yes, I’ve almost finished the examination . . . Damn!” This latter was for the benefit of her listeners just before she switched off again.

The hammering ceased.

She said, “Poor Bill. He probably thinks that we’re enjoying ourselves. But I don’t think that I could with that
thing
staring at me with its dead eyes . . . Talking of dead eyes—why did she die?”

“I can guess,” said Grimes. “We know that she had a very odd metabolism. Perhaps
dead
meat was poison to her. The beef that I used as bait perhaps wasn’t quite dead enough to have a lethal effect—after all, whatever comes from the tissue-culture vats is alive, after a fashion, until it’s cooked. But the thing in the box—she must have eaten it—was
very
dead . . .”

She switched on the helmet transceiver again.

“Commander Lazenby here. Commander Grimes has fixed that switch for me. The woman, the mutineer, is dead. Cardiac arrest. She must have had a weak heart and the exertion and the excitement were too much for her . . . No, Bill, I don’t think that we should bring the body aboard
Explorer
. Commander Grimes has admitted that she was his mistress and still feels a sentimental regard for her. He wants to bury his own dead . . .” She addressed Grimes. “So it’s good bye once again, John. I’m pleased that we were able to help you. We can’t stay with you much longer; we have a schedule to keep . . .” She nudged the switch again with her chin, laughed. “You never were a very good electrician, John, were you?”

She put her spacesuited arms about him, hugged him. “Good luck, John. And good luck to your friends, to Hodge and the real Susie. You know, I’m just a little jealous of her. And good luck to you? Yes—although you still have more than your fair share of it. If
I
hadn’t been aboard
Explorer,
if
I
hadn’t carried out the examination of this corpse that so obviously isn’t a human body, all three of you would have been in the cactus . . .”

“Good bye, Maggie,” he said. “And good luck to you, too . . .”

He managed to kiss her through the open faceplate of her helmet. When at last he withdrew his mouth from hers, audibly, her chin inadvertently nudged the switch.

He heard, very faintly, Perkins’s voice from her helmet phones, “What was that? What was that noise?”