To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (17 page)

Grimes was happy but Kravisky was not. The Surgeon Lieutenant’s face had paled to a peculiar, pale green. He seemed to be swallowing something.
Physician, heal thyself,
thought Grimes sardonically. “I . . . I wish you’d look where you’re going,” mumbled the young doctor.

“Beautiful view, isn’t it?” Grimes glanced through the ports, then at his console. There was nothing to worry about. He had a hemisphere to play around in. By the time he was down, the terminator would be just short of Lake Bluewater. It would be a daylight landing, to save these very casual locals in Port Control the trouble of setting out a flare path. There would be the radio beacon to home upon and at least twenty miles of smooth water for his runway. It was —he searched his memory for the expression used by long ago and faraway pilots of the Royal Air Force; history, especially the history of the ships of Earth’s seas and air oceans, was his favorite reading—it was a piece of cake.

“Isn’t it . . . isn’t it hot in here?” Why couldn’t Kravisky relax?

“Not especially. After all, we’re sitting in a hot-monococque.”

“What’s that?” Then, with a feeble attempt at humor, “The remedy sounds worse than the disease . . .”

“Just an airborne thermos flask.”

“Oh.”

“Like a park, isn’t it?” said Grimes. “Even from up here, like a park. Green. No industrial haze. No smog . . .”

“Too . . . tame,” said Kravisky, taking a reluctant interest.

“No, I don’t think so. They have mountains, and high ones, too. They have seas that must be rough sometimes, even with weather control. If they want to risk life and limb, there’ll be plenty of mountaineering and sailing . . .”

“And other sports . . .”

“Yeah.” The radio compass seemed to be functioning properly, as were air speed indicator and radio altimeter. The note of the distant beacon was a steady hum. No doubt the El Doradans possessed far more advanced systems that were used by their own aircraft, but the reentry vehicle was not equipped to make use of them. “Yeah,” said Grimes again. “Such as?”

“I’m a reservist, you know. But I’m also a ship’s doctor in civil life. My last voyage before I was called up for my drill was in the Commission’s
Alpha Cepheus . . .
A cruise to Caribbea. Passengers stinking with money and far too much time on their hands . . .”

“What’s that to do with sports?”

“You’d be surprised. Or would you?”

No, thought Grimes, he wouldn’t. His first Deep Space voyage had been as a passenger, and Jane Pentecost, the vessel’s purser, had been very attractive. Where was she now? he wondered. Still in the Commission’s ships, or back home, on the Rim?

Damn Jane Pentecost and damn the Rim Worlds. But this planet was nothing like Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo or Thule. He had never been to any of those dreary colonies (and never would go there, he told himself) but he had heard enough about them. Too much.

The air was denser now, and the control column that Grimes had been holding rather too negligently was developing a life of its own. Abruptly the steady note of the beacon changed to a morse A—dot dash, dot dash. Grimes tried to get the re-entry vehicle back on course, overcompensated. It was N now—dash dot, dash dot. The Lieutenant was sweating inside his suit when he had the boat under control again. Flying these antique crates was far too much like work. But he could afford another glance at the scenery.

There were wide fields, some green and some golden-glowing in the light of the afternoon sun, and in these latter worked great, glittering machines, obviously automatic harvesters. There were dense clumps of darker green—the forests which, on this world, had been grown for aesthetic reasons, not as a source of cellulose for industry. But the El Doradans, on the income from their mines alone, could well afford to import anything they needed. Or wanted. And only the odd gods of the Galaxy knew how many billions they had stashed away in the Federation Central Bank on Earth, to say nothing of other banks on other planets.

There were the wide fields and the forests, and towering up at the rim of the world the jagged blue mountains, the dazzlingly white-capped peaks. Rather too dazzling, but that was the glare of the late-afternoon sun, broad on the starboard bow of the rocket boat. Grimes adjusted the viewport polarizer. He could see houses now, large dwellings, even from this altitude, each miles distant from its nearest neighbor, each blending rather than contrasting with the landscape. He could see houses and beyond the huge, gleaming, azure oval that was Lake Bluewater, there were the tall towers of Spaceport Control and the intense, winking red light that was the beacon. Beyond the port again, but distant, shimmered the lofty spires of the city.

All very nice, but what’s the air speed? Too high, too bloody high. Cut the rocket drive? Yes. Drag’ll slow her down nicely, and there’re always the parachute brakes and, in an emergency, the retro-rockets. Still on the beam, according to the beacon. In any case, I can see it plainly enough. Just keep it dead ahead . . .

Getting bumpy now, and mushy . . . What else, in such an abortion of an aircraft? But not to worry. Coming in bloody nicely, though I say it as shouldn’t.

Looks like pine trees just inland from the beach. Cleared them all right. Must say that those supercilious drongoes in Port Control might have made some sort of stab at talking me in. All they said, “You may land.” Didn’t quite say, “Use the servants’ entrance . . .”

Parachute brakes? No. Make a big bloody splash in their bloody lake and play hell with their bloody goldfish . . .

Kravisky shouted, screamed almost, and then Grimes, whose attention had been divided between the beacon and the altimeter, saw, cutting across the rocket boat’s course, a small surface craft, a scarlet hull skittering over the water in its own, self-generated, double plume of snowy spray. But it would pass clear.

But that slim, golden figure, gracefully poised on a single water ski, would not.

With a curse Grimes released the parachute brakes and, at the same time, yanked back on his control column. He knew that the parachutes would not take hold in time, that before the rocket boat stalled it would crash into the woman. Yet—he was thinking fast, desperately fast—he dared not use either his main rocket drive to lift the boat up and clear, or his retro-rockets. Better for her, whoever she was, to run the risk of being crushed than to face the certainty of being incinerated.

Then there were birds (birds?), great birds that flew headlong at the control cabin, birds whose suicidal impact was enough to slow the boat sufficiently, barely sufficiently, to tip her so that forward motion was transformed to upward motion. The drogues took hold of the water, and that was that. She fell, soggily, ungracefully, blunt stern first, and as she did so Grimes stared stupidly at a broken wing, a broken
metal
wing that had been skewered by the forward antenna.

Chapter 5

Neither Grimes
nor Kravisky was hurt—seat padding and safety belts protected them from serious damage—but they were badly shaken. Grimes wondered, as the re-entry craft plunged below the churning surface of the lake, how deep it would sink before it rose again. And then he realized that it would not rise again, ever, or would not do so without the aid of salvage equipment. Aft there was an ominous gurgling that told its own story. Aft? That noise was now in the cabin itself. He looked down. The water was already about his ankles.

“Button up!” he snapped to the Surgeon Lieutenant.

“But what . . . ?” the words trailed off into silence.

“The ejection gear. I hope it works under water.”

“But . . .” Kravisky, his faceplate still open, made as though to unsnap his seat belt. “The papers. Our uniforms. I must get them out of the locker . . .”

“Like hell you will.
Button up!”

Sullenly, Kravisky checked that his belt was still tight, then sealed his helmet. Grimes followed suit. His hand hesitated over the big, red button on the control panel, then slammed down decisively. Even through the thick, resilient padding of his seat he felt the violent kick of the catapulting explosion. He cringed, expecting the skull-crushing impact of his head with the roof of the cabin, the last thing that he would ever feel. But it did not come, although he was faintly aware of the lightest of taps on his shoulder. And then he and the Surgeon Lieutenant, still strapped in their buoyant chairs, were shooting upwards, the sundered shell of the control cabin falling away beneath and below them, soaring to the surface in the midst of a huge bubble of air and other gases. Somehow he found time to look about him. The water was very blue and very clear. And there was a great, goggle-eyed fish staring at them from outside the bubble. It did not look especially carnivorous. Grimes hoped that it wasn’t.

The two chairs broke surface simultaneously, bobbing and gyrating. Slowly, their motion ceased. They floated in the middle of a widening circle of discolored water, a spiralling swirl of iridescent oil slicks. And there were more than a few dead fish. Grimes could not repress a chuckle when he saw that they were golden carp. About five hundred yards away, its engine stopped, lay the scarlet power boat. But there was something in the water between it and the astronauts, something that was approaching at a speed that, to the spacemen should have been painfully slow and yet, in this environment, was amazingly fast.

There was a sleek head in a golden helmet—no, decided Grimes, it was hair, not an artificial covering— and there were two slim, golden-brown arms that alternately flashed up and swept down and back. And there was the rest of her, slim and golden-brown all over. Somehow it was suddenly important to Grimes that he see her face. He hoped that it would match what he could already see.

As she neared the floating chairs she reverted to a breaststroke and then, finally, came to a standstill, hanging there, a yard or so distant, just treading water. The spacemen could not help staring at her body through the shimmering transparency, her naked body. It was beautiful. With a sudden start of embarrassment Grimes forced his gaze to slide upwards to her face. It was thin, the cheekbones pronounced, the planes of the cheeks flat. Her mouth was a wide, scarlet slash, parted to reveal perfect white teeth. The eyes were an intense blue, an angry blue. She was saying something, and it was obvious that she was not whispering.

Grimes put up his hand, opened the faceplate of his helmet.

“. . . offworld yahoos!” he heard. “My two favorite watchbirds destroyed, thanks to your unspaceman-like antics!” Her voice was not loud but it carried well. It could best be described as an icy soprano.

“Madam,” Grimes said coldly. It didn’t sound quite right but it would have to do. “Madam, I venture to suggest that the loss of my own boat is of rather greater consequence than the destruction of your . . . pets.” (Pets? Watchbirds? That obviously metallic wing skewered on the antenna?) He went on, “Our Captain expressly requested that this lake be cleared as a landing area.”

“Your
Captain?”
She made it sound as though the commanding officer of a Zodiac Class cruiser ranked with but below the butler.

“Look here, young woman . . .”

“What
did you call me?”

“If you aren’t a young woman,” contributed Kravisky, “you look remarkably like one.”

In her fury the girl forgot to tread water. She went down, came up spluttering. Only one word was intelligible and that was “Insolence!” She reached out a long, slender arm, caught hold of a projection at the edge of Grimes’ chair. She floated there, maintaining her distance, glaring up at him.

“Now, young lady . . .”

She was mollified but only slightly. “Don’t call me that, either,” she snapped.

“Then what . . . ?”

“I am the Princess Marlene von Stolzberg. You may call me ‘Your Highness’.”

“Very well, Your Highness,” said Grimes stiffly. “It may interest Your Highness to know that I intend to register a strong complaint with Spaceport Control. Your Highness’s lack of ordinary commonsense put Your Highness’s life as well as ours in hazard and resulted in the probable total loss of a piece of valuable Survey Service equipment.”

“Commonsense?” she sneered. “And what about your own lack of that quality, to say nothing of your appalling spacemanship? You saw me. You must have seen me. And yet
you,
you . . . offworlder, assumed that
you
had the right to disturb my afternoon’s recreation!” She made an explosive, spitting noise.

“Let us be reasonable, Your Highness,” persisted Grimes. It cost nothing to play along. “No doubt there was some misunderstanding . . .”

“Misunderstanding?” Her fine eyebrows arced in incredulity. “Misunderstanding? I’ll say there was. You come blundering in here like . . . like . . .”

“Like snotty-nosed ragamuffins from the wrong side of the tracks?” asked Grimes sardonically.

Surprisingly, she laughed, tinkling merriment that was not altogether malicious. “How well you put it, my man.”

Now was the time to take advantage of her change of mood. “Do you think, Your Highness, that you could call to your friend in the boat so that he can pick us up?”

She laughed again. “My friend in the boat? But I am by myself.” She turned her head toward the bright scarlet craft. She called softly, “Ilse! To me, Ilse!”

There was a sudden turbulence at the thing’s stern. It turned until it was stem on to the astronauts and the princess. It came in slowly and steadily, turned again until it was broadside on to the girl, brought itself to a smooth halt by an exact application of stern power. A short ladder with handrails extruded itself with a muted click. The Princess Marlene let go of Grimes’ chair; two graceful strokes took her to her mechanical servitor. As she climbed on board Grimes saw that she was one of those rare women whose nudity is even more beautiful out of the water than in it; the surprisingly full breasts, deprived of their fluid support, did not sag, and there were no minor blemishes to have been veiled by ripples. He felt a stab of disappointment as she reached down for a robe of spotless white towelling and threw it about her. Still watching her, he made to unsnap his seat belt.