Ride the Star Winds (74 page)

Even so, trade was not to be sneezed at.

They talked, the two Captains. They discussed an interchange of gifts, of representative artifacts from both cultures. It was when they got to this stage of the proceedings that they struck a snag.

“There are,” said our Doctor coldly, “such things as micro-organisms. I would point out, Captain, that it would be suicidal folly to allow an alien to board this ship, even if he kept his spacesuit on. He might carry something that would wipe all of us out—and might carry something back with him that would destroy both himself and all his shipmates.”

Peter broke in. “I’ve been talking with Erin,” he said.

“Erin?” asked the Old Man.

“That’s her name, sir. She’s the alien P.R.O. We’ve decided that the exchange of artifacts is necessary, and have been trying to work out a way in which it would be carried out without risk. At the same time, it means that both parties have a guinea pig . . .”

“What do you mean, Mr. Morris?”

“Let me finish, sir. This ship, as you know, has only one airlock, but carries more boats than is necessary.
Listra
—the ship out there—has the normal complements of boats for a vessel of her class but has no less than four airlocks, two of which are rarely used. This is the way we’ve worked it out. One of our boats, and one of
Listra
’s airlocks, can be used as isolation hospitals . . .

“I can handle a boat, sir, as you know, compulsory for every non-executive officer in the Commission’s service to hold a lifeboatman’s certificate. The idea is this. I take the boat out to midway between the two ships, carrying with me such goods as we are giving to the aliens. Erin comes out in her spacesuit, bringing with her what the aliens are giving us. Then she returns to her ship, and I bring the boat back to this ship. She will remain in the airlock, as I shall remain in the boat, until such time as it is ruled that there is no danger of infection . . .”

I looked at the screen. I saw that the slim, blonde girl was talking earnestly to Captain Sanara. I saw other officers joining in the discussion. I looked back from the screen to Captain Grimes. His dark, mottled face was heavy with misgivings. I heard him say, “This could be suicide, Mr. Morris.”

“It could be, sir—but so could coming out on an expedition like this. And you know as well as I do that very few alien micro-organisms have been found that are dangerous to Man. All that it means, essentially, is that Erin and I will have to do our jobs in rather uncomfortable conditions from now on.”

“Why you, and why Erin?”

“Because we’re the telepaths. Suppose, for example, you send a tube of depilatory among the other goods to be exchanged. Erin’s people might think that it’s toothpaste, or mustard, or . . . or anything at all but what it is. When we’re together in the boat we can explain things, talk things over. We’ll get more ground covered in half an hour together than we should in half a week, talking ship to ship . . .”

“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?” grumbled Grimes. “But on a job of this sort it’s foolish to discourage an enthusiastic volunteer . . . Well, I suppose that the rest of you had better start collecting artifacts. Books, and tools, and instruments, samples of our food and drink . . .”

“You mean it’s all right, sir?” asked Peter, his face suddenly radiant.

“Mr. Morris, if this were a commercial vessel I’d never allow one of the officers to take such a risk. If you like you can tell that girl that I take a dim view of her Captain for allowing her to take the risk . . .”

“She doesn’t think of it that way.”

“Doesn’t she? Then she should.”

“Can I get ready, sir?”

“You can. Don’t forget to brush your hair and wash behind the ears—after all, you have acting temporary ambassadorial status.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Peter vanished from the control room as though he had added teleportation to his other talents. Grimes sighed and looked at the screen, looked at the radiant girl who was, obviously, thanking her Captain. He sighed again and demanded, of no one in particular, “Who said it?”

“Who said what?” asked the Chief Officer.

“Journeys end in lovers’ meetings,” said Grimes.

It was all so obvious, even to non-telepaths.

I was in the boat with Peter shortly before he blasted off.

I said, “You seem pretty certain.”

“Of course I’m certain. And she was lonely too, just as I have been. Among her people they have a similar set up to ours, but in reverse. With them it’s usually the male telepath who’s an unattractive, mindless clod. This chance encounter means a lot to both of us.”

“She’s an oxygen breather?” I asked. “You’re sure of that? I mean, if she comes in here and takes off her helmet and our atmosphere poisons her . . . I don’t want to be pessimistic, but I believe in facing facts.”

“She’s an oxygen breather,” Peter assured me. “She eats food very like ours. (I hope she likes chocolates—I’ve got some here). She drinks alcoholic liquor in moderation. She smokes, even. She can try one of our cigarettes and I’ll try one of hers . . .”

“You’ve found out a lot in a short time, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have. That’s my job—and hers. But I’ll have to ask you to leave me, Ken. I’ve got a date.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to come along?”

“Not bloody likely!” he snapped.

“All right, then. And all the best of luck.”

“Thanks,” he said.

I stood by the blister until I felt the shock of his blasting off, until the red READY light changed to green, showing that he was out and clear. I made my way back to Control. I joined the group at the port watching the little spacecraft coasting out and away from us, watched her take up a position roughly midway between the two ships.

We saw a circle of yellow light suddenly appear on
Listra’s
sleek side. We saw, through telescopes and binoculars, the little figure that hung there for a while in black silhouette. We could make out the bulky bundle that she was carrying.

Flame jetted from her shoulder units, and she was falling out and away from her own ship. Slowly she approached the lifeboat. I looked away briefly, looked at the screen. The aliens, like ourselves, were crowded around viewports, were watching this first physical contact between our two races.

She was very close to Peter’s boat now. I could imagine him waiting in the little cabin, as he had waited—how many times?—in his dreams. I could appreciate, dimly, what he must be feeling. I had been in love myself and had waited for the loved one, and what I had felt must be no more than a pale shadow of what is felt by a telepath. There was, I confess, more than a little envy in my thoughts.

She was very close to the boat, and I saw that Peter had the outer door of the little airlock open.

For a long second she was silhouetted against the glow of the airlock light. . .

And then . . .

And then I was blind, as the others were blind, with tears welling from my eyes, the skin of my face burning from its exposure to radiation. She had been there, just entering the boat, and then she and the boat had vanished in one dreadful flash.

Slowly sight returned, dim and painful. I was looking once again at the screen, and I could see that those in the other ship had been affected as we had. There was pain on their faces, and it was not only physical pain. I knew then—as they must have known as they looked at us—that this had been no act of treachery, that there had been no murderous bomb concealed among the package of bartered goods.

Slowly the alien Captain shrugged his shoulders. He made a gesture of rejection with his slim hands. One of his officers handed him something. It was a black glove. He put it on. Slowly he brought his hands together—the white skinned one and the black gloved one. He flung them apart explosively.

The screen went blank. We looked away from it through the port. The alien ship was gone.

“We should have guessed,” Liddell was muttering. “We should have guessed.
They
did.”

“But too late,” said one of the others.

“What should we have guessed?” asked Grimes.

“Anti-matter,” said Liddell. “We’ve known for centuries that it can exist. Matter identical with what we call normal matter, except that all electrical charges are reversed. We thought that we might find it in other galaxies if ever we had a ship capable of making the journey . . . But perhaps the Dain Worlds aren’t really part of this Galaxy at all.”

“And when it comes into contact with normal matter?” pressed Grimes.

“You saw, Captain. There can never,
never
, be any contact between the Lowanni and ourselves.”

“And what happens,” I asked, “when it’s two living bodies of the two kinds of matter that make the contact?”

“You saw,” said Liddell.

But I was not satisfied with the answer, and am still not satisfied. I remembered what Peter had told me about the conclusion of his dream, and have yet to decide if he was the unluckiest, or the luckiest of men.

Catch the Star Winds

For the one-time service manager

of a certain engineering concern

I: THE CREW

Chapter 1

She was old and tired,
the
Rim Dragon
—and after this, her final voyage, we were feeling just that way ourselves. It was as though she had known somehow that a drab and miserable end awaited her in the ungentle hands of the breakers, and she had been determined to forestall the inevitable and go out in a blaze of glory—or as much glory as would have been possible for a decrepit Epsilon Class tramp finishing her career after many changes of ownership at the very rim of the Galaxy, the edge of the dark.

Fortunately for us, she had overdone things.

Off Grollor, for example, a malfunctioning of the control room computer had coincided with a breakdown of the main propellant pump. If the second mate hadn’t got his sums wrong we should have been trapped in a series of grazing ellipses, with no alternative but to take to the boats in a hurry before too deep a descent into the atmosphere rendered this impossible. As things worked out, however, the mistakes made by our navigator and his pet computer resulted in our falling into a nice, stable orbit, with ample time at our disposal in which to make repairs.

Then there had been pile trouble, and Mannschenn Drive trouble—and for the benefit of those of you who have never experienced this latter, all I can say is that it is somewhat hard to carry out normal shipboard duties when you’re not certain if it’s high noon or last Thursday. It was during the Mannschenn Drive trouble that Cassidy, our reaction drive chief engineer, briefly lost control of his temperamental fissioning furnace. By some miracle the resultant flood of radiation seemed to miss all human personnel. It was the algae tanks that caught it—and this was all to the good, as a mutated virus had been running riot among the algae, throwing our air conditioning and sewage disposal entirely out of kilter. The virus died, and most of the algae died—but enough of the organisms survived to be the parents of a new and flourishing population.

Then there had been the occasions when
Rim Dragon
had not overdone things, but her timing had been just a little out. There had been, for example, the tube lining that had cracked just a second or so too late (fortunately, really, from our viewpoint) but the mishap nonetheless had resulted in our sitting down on the concrete apron of Port Grimes, on Tharn, hard enough to buckle a vane.

There had been another propellant pump failure—this time on Mellise—that caused us to be grounded on that world for repairs at just the right time to be subjected to the full fury of a tropical hurricane. Luckily, the procedure for riding out such atmospheric disturbances is laid down in
Rim Runners’ Standing Orders and Regulations.
It was a Captain Calver, I think, who had been similarly trapped on Mellise several years ago in some ancient rustbucket called
Lorn Lady
. He had coped with the situation by rigging stays to save his ship from being overturned by the wind. We did the same. It worked—although the forward towing lugs, to which our stays were shackled, would have torn completely away from the shell plating with disastrous consequences had the blow lasted another five minutes.

Anyhow, the voyage was now over—or almost over.

We were dropping down to Port Forlorn, on Lorn, falling slowly down the column of incandescence that was our reaction drive, drifting cautiously down to the circle of drab gray concrete that was the spaceport apron, to the gray concrete that was hardly distinguishable from the gray landscape, from the dreary flatlands over which drifted the thin rain and the gray smoke and the dirty fumes streaming from the stacks of the refineries.

We were glad to be back—but, even so . . .

Ralph Listowel, the mate, put into words the feeling that was, I think, in the minds of all but one of us. He quoted sardonically:

“Lives there a man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said

When returning from some foreign strand

This is my own, my native land?”

Of all of us, the only genuine, native-born Rim Worlder descended from the first families was the old man. He looked up from his console now to scowl at his chief officer. And then I, of course, had to make matters worse by throwing in my own two bits’ worth of archaic verse. I remarked, “The trouble with you, Ralph, is that you aren’t romantic. Try to see things this way . . .

“Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies

with magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down

with costly bales . . .”

“What the hell’s the bloody purser doing in here?” roared the captain, turning his glare on me. “Mr. Malcolm, will you please get the hell out of my control room? And you, Mr. Listowel, please attend to your duties.”

I unstrapped myself from my chair and left hastily. We carried no third mate, and I had been helping out at landings and blast-offs by looking after the RT. Besides, I liked to be on top to see everything that was happening. Sulkily, I made my way down to the officers’ flat, staggering a little as the ship lurched, and let myself into the wardroom.