Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (69 page)

Crumley, Horace. Chief Engineer, Reaction and Inertial Drives. Another old-timer. Extremely conscientious.

And as boring as all hell, thought Grimes. All his conversation is along “when I was in the old so-and-so” lines.

Denning, Fred. Second Engineer. A refugee from a bicycle shop but reliable. Not, unfortunately, officer material.

Snobbish bastard! he admonished himself.

Singh, Govind. Third Engineer. A refugee from the Port Southern Monorail. Would be happier aboard a train than a spaceship—and, possibly, a little more useful.

Mr. Singh had endeared himself to Grimes by fixing the playmaster in the captain’s day cabin; after his ministrations the thing would present a picture only in black and white with sound no louder than a whisper. Fortunately old Mr. Stewart had been able to get the thing working properly.

Paulus, Ludwig. Fourth Engineer. Another refugee from the Port Southern Monorail. Has not yet been given the opportunity to demonstrate his incompetence but when the time comes will not be found lacking.

Come, come, Grimes, he thought reprovingly. Your innies are working, aren’t they, and working well. So are the life-support systems. Just because people haven’t been through the Academy and learned which knives and forks to use at table and how to wear a uniform properly it doesn’t mean that they’re no good as spacemen.

Malleson, Phillip. Chief Engineer, Mannschenn Drive. Very much the academic but he knows his job. Good conversationalist . . .

But he’s being paid to run the time-twister, isn’t he, not to be the life and soul of the party. Still, it always helps when an officer is a good shipmate as well as being highly efficient.

Federation Survey Service, then Trans-Galactic Clippers. A typical big ship engineer of the better kind.

Watch that snobbery, Grimes!

Trantor, George. Second Engineer, Mannschenn Drive. And Ph.D., and makes sure that everybody knows it. As snobbish in his way as I am in mine. Must know his job, otherwise Malleson wouldn’t tolerate him.

Giddings, Walter. Third Engineer, Mannschenn Drive. Another Ph.D. Like Mr. Trantor tends to hold himself aloof from the low, common spacemen.

Granadu, Magda. Catering Officer/Purser/Acting Bio-Chemist. An extremely capable person and a good shipmate. An inspired touch with the autochef. Farm deck always in perfect order. Works well with members of other departments—as, for example, with the engineers in necessary maintenance of LSS. Very popular with almost every member of the crew. I have no doubt that if this vessel becomes known as a happy ship she will be largely responsible.

Somebody was knocking at his door.

“Come in,” he called.

It was the Green Hornet.

“Yes, Ms. Connellan?” asked Grimes, trying to hide his distaste.

“Sir. It is bad enough having to keep watch and watch. But when I am not being fed properly the situation becomes intolerable!”

Grimes looked at her. The sealseam at the front of her uniform shirt was under great strain. So was the waistband of her shorts. And it was obvious that she had not been feeding herself properly; there was a splash of half-dried sauce over her left breast and another on the right leg of her lower garment.

“Lunch,” he said, “was very good.”

“All right for people who like mucked up food with the real flavor disguised by garlic and pepper!”

“There is always choice, Ms. Connellan.”

“What choice, sir? I’ve raised the point with Ms. Granadu, our so-called Catering Officer, time and time again.”

“There was a perfectly good steak, to order, with French fried potatoes.”

“French fried potatoes my a . . .” She caught herself just in time, finished the sentence with “foot.”

“Potatoes reconstituted from some sort of flour, molded into shape and then fried. But not
potatoes
. On New Donegal we know our potatoes. I’ll say this for the Commission—in their ships you get real potatoes!”

“Your last ship was
Delta Crucis
, wasn’t she?” asked Grimes.

“Yes. What of it?”

“A cargo-passenger liner, Ms. Connellan. You get luxuries aboard passenger ships that you don’t get in Epsilon Class tramps. You have a bio-chemist on the Articles who is practically a full-time gardener, who can amuse himself by growing all sorts of things in the hydroponics tanks. Here, Ms. Granadu has plenty to occupy her time without bothering about things that are hard to grow in aboard-ship conditions.”

“You could have carried a few kilos of potatoes in the stores.”

“Storeroom space is limited, Ms. Connellan.”

“Everything in this bloody ship is limited. I should have had my head examined before I signed on here.”

“I shall be happy to release you as soon as we get to Port Woomera,” said Grimes coldly.

“Oh, will you, sir? Isn’t that just typical. You use me, exploit me, and then you cast me aside like a worn-out glove.”

“If it hadn’t been for me,” Grimes told her, “you’d still be in the Port Southern jail.”

“And probably feeding a damn sight better than I am here.”

“Ms. Connellan, you have made your complaint. I have listened to it. You are the only person aboard this ship who has found fault with the food. You are at liberty to make further complaints—to the Guild, to the Shipping Master, to whoever will listen to you—after we get to Port Woomera.

“That is all.”

“But . . .”

“That is all!” snarled Grimes.

She glared at him, turned sharply about and flounced out of his day cabin. Looking at her fat buttocks straining the material of her shorts almost to bursting Grimes thought that it was exercise she needed rather than more starch in her diet. If
Sister Sue
were a warship he would be able to order people to have a daily workout in the gymnasium. But
Sister Sue
was a merchantman and the powers of her captain, although considerable, were only a civilian shipmaster’s powers.

Chapter 12

SISTER SUE
came to Port Woomera.

Grimes stared into the stern view screen, looking at what once had been a familiar view, the waters of the Great Australian Bight to the south and to the north the semi-desert, crisscrossed with irrigation canals, with huge squares of oddly glittering grey that were the solar energy collection screens, with here and there the assemblages of gleaming white domes that housed people and machinery and the all-the-year-round-producing orchards. Close inshore, confined in its pen of plastic sheeting, was a much diminished iceberg. Farther out to sea a much larger one, a small fleet of tugs in attendance, was slowly coming in toward what would be its last resting place.

Grimes applied lateral thrust to bring the ship directly above the spaceport. He could see clearly the white buildings, assemblages of bubbles, and the lofty control tower. And there were the smaller towers, metallically gleaming, that were the ships, great and small.

His berth had been allocated. He was to bring
Sister Sue
down to the Naval Station, about five kilometers to the east of the commercial spaceport. He could identify a Constellation Class cruiser, a couple of Star Class destroyers and what he thought was a Serpent Class courier.
Adder?
he wondered. That little ship had been his first command. But he doubted if the long arm of coincidence would be stretched to such an extent. It was extremely unlikely that there would be any ships or any people whom he had known, during his days in the Survey Service, at Port Woomera. He had never been attached to the Port Woomera Base.

The triangle of brightly flashing beacons marking his berth was clearly visible. It showed a tendency to drift away from the center of the screen. Grimes put on lateral thrust again to counteract the effect of the light breeze, decreased vertical thrust. On the screen the figures of the radar-altimeter display steadily diminished.

He allowed his attention to wander briefly, looked to the towers of Woomera City in the middle distance. He watched one of the big dirigibles of Trans-Australia Airlines coming into its mooring mast at the airfield at the city limits. Soon, he thought, he would be aboard one of those airships. His parents, in Alice Springs, would be looking forward to seeing him again after his long absence from Earth.

Looking back to the radar altimeter read-out he stepped up vertical thrust.
Sister Sue
was not a Federation Survey Service courier, or a deep space pinnace like
Little Sister
, in which a flashy landing would be relatively safe. It wouldn’t do for a ship of this tonnage to drop like a stone and then slam on thrust at the very last moment. Nonetheless, he thought, she would be able to take it. She was a sturdy enough brute.

One hundred meters to go . . .

Ninety-five . . . Ninety . . .

Slight drift,
thought Grimes.
Lateral thrust again . . .

He turned to look at his officers. Williams, he noted, was watching him approvingly. The Green Hornet hastily wiped a sneer from her face. Without his being a telepath Grimes knew what she was thinking,
Anybody would think that the bloody ship was made of glass!

To hell with you,
he thought.
I won’t have to put up with you for much longer.

Deliberately he took his time over the final stages of the descent.

At last
Sister Sue’s
stern vanes made gentle, very gentle contact with the apron. She rocked ever so slightly, then was still. Shock absorbers sighed as they took the weight when the inertial drive was shut down.

“Finished with engines,” said Grimes smugly. He pulled his pipe from a pocket, filled it and lit it.

“Finished with engines, Skipper,” repeated Williams and passed this final order on to the inertial-drive room. Then, “Shall I go down to the airlock to receive the boarding party? I see them on the way out.”

“Do that,” said Grimes.

Through a viewport he watched the ground cars scurrying out across the apron. Customs, he supposed, and Port Health and Immigration. One of them, however, was a grey vehicle looking like a minor warship on wheels—probably the Survey Service officer responsible for arranging for the discharge of
Sister Sue’s
cargo. But what was that broad pennant fluttering from a short mast on the bonnet of the car? He got up from his seat, swung the big mounted binoculars to bear.

A black flag, with two golden stars . . .

Surely, he told himself, a Rear Admiral would not be concerning himself with the offloading of an unimportant consignment of outdated bumf.

Was the Survey Service still after his blood?

But if they were going to arrest him, he thought, they would have sent a squad of Marines, not a flag officer.

Nonetheless there was cause for worry. In his experience Admirals did not personally welcome minor vessels, minor merchant vessels especially.

He went down to his quarters to change hastily into the least shabby of his uniforms and to await developments. As he left the control room he heard Ms. Connellan singing softly to herself—and at him.

“Sheriff and police a-coming after me . . .”

Bitch!
he thought.

Chapter 13

“SO WE MEET AGAIN, GRIMES,”
said Rear Admiral Damien.

“This is a surprise, sir,” Grimes said. Then, “Congratulations on your promotion.”

Damien laughed. “Once I no longer had
you
to worry about, once I wasn’t always having to justify your actions to my superiors, I got my step up.”

Grimes waited until his guest was seated then took a chair himself. He looked at Damien, not without some apprehension. Apart from the extra gold braid on his sleeves his visitor looked just as he had when he was Commodore Damien, Officer Commanding Couriers, on Lindisfarne Base. He was as thin as ever, his face little more than a skull over which yellow skin was tightly stretched. He still had the mannerism of putting his skeletal fingers together, making a steeple of them over which he regarded whomever it was he was addressing. So he was now looking at Grimes, just as he had so often looked at him in the past when Grimes, a lowly lieutenant, had been captain of the Serpent Class courier
Adder
. On such occasions he had either been taking Grimes to task for some misdeed or sending him out on some especially awkward mission.

“Coffee, sir?” asked Grimes.

“Thank you, er, Captain.”

Grimes called Magda on the telephone. Almost at once she was bringing in the tray with the fragrantly steaming pot, the cream, the sugar and the mugs. She looked at Damien curiously, then at Grimes.

She asked, “Will that be all, sir?”

“Yes, thank you, Magda.”

She made a reluctant departure. Probably everybody aboard
Sister Sue
would be wondering why an Admiral had come to visit Grimes, would be expecting her to have the answers.

Grimes poured. He took both sugar and cream in his mug. Damien wanted his coffee black and unsweetened.

He said, “I suppose you’re wondering, just as your Catering Officer was wondering, what I’m doing aboard your ship.”

“I am, sir.”

“It all ties in with my new job, Grimes. My official title is Coordinator of Merchant Shipping. When I learned that a star tramp called
Sister Sue
, commanded by John Grimes, was due in I was naturally curious. I made inquiries and was pleased to learn that
Sister Sue’s
master was, indeed,
the
John Grimes.”

“You flatter me, sir.”

“Nonetheless, Grimes, this is not altogether a social call. No, I haven’t come to place you under arrest. Or not yet, anyhow. There were, of course, very extensive inquiries into the
Discovery
mutiny and you were more or less cleared of culpability. More or less. There are still, however, those in high places who would like your guts for garters.”

“Mphm.”

“Cheer up, Grimes. I haven’t come to shoot you.” He sipped. “Excellent coffee, this, by the way. But you always were notorious for your love of life’s little luxuries.” He extended his mug for a refill. “I suppose that this ship keeps quite a good table.”