Ride the Star Winds (95 page)

Then it burst.

There was real acceleration now, driving him down into the padding of his chair. He was dimly aware that Listowel—a strange Listowel, who looked like a photographic negative, whose shorts-and-shirt uniform was black instead of the regulation white, whose face had become oddly negroid—was doing things, explaining as his hands moved over the console. His voice, normally light, was a deep, grumbling bass. “Have to pivot the sails, Commodore. Edge on, or we’ll be taken aback—”

Suddenly things snapped back to normal.

Color and sound were as they should be and the acceleration had eased to a fairly comfortable one gravity. Grimes took mental stock of himself. Yes, he was still Commodore John Grimes of the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve, astronautical superintendent of Rim Runners. And he was still aboard
Pamir
. He turned to look at his wife, who smiled back at him rather shakily. And Sonya was still Sonya.

So far so good.

And the log screen?

Blue numerals now—
1.000459 . . . 1.000460 . . .
The final
1
flashed up and then, in steady succession: 2, 3, 4, 5 . . .

All my years in deep space,
thought Grimes,
and this is the first time I’ve
really
traveled faster than light . . .

“So . . . we are all anti-matter now, Captain?” asked the Reverend Madam Swithin that evening at dinner. She did not wait for a reply, but went on, “But what about our souls, our essential essences?”

“I’m afraid, madam, that that’s rather outside my province,” replied Listowel.

“And what do you think, Commodore?”

Grimes grunted through a mouthful of steak.

“But the Llanithi have souls,” the missionary went on. “Otherwise I should not be traveling to their worlds.”

A rather uncomfortable silence was broken by Sonya. “Tell me, Madam Swithin—do you ever, in your séances, establish communication with the departed spirits of non-human entities?”

“Frequently, Mrs. Grimes. One of our mediums has as her control a Shaara princess, who last enjoyed material existence five hundred standard years ago. And recently, during a service in our church in Port Farewell, a spirit spoke through the officiating medium and said he was—that he had been, rather—a people’s marshal on Llanith. What is a people’s marshal, Captain?”

“It’s roughly equivalent to a police commissioner on our worlds, madam,” replied Listowel.

Sonya sipped from her wine glass, then asked, “One thing has always rather puzzled me, Madam Swithin. One of the doctrines of your church is reincarnation. How does that fit in with that large number of disembodied spirits who are always present at your séances to say their pieces?”

The motherly little woman smiled sweetly at Sonya. “There is reincarnation, as we believe—as we
know
—Mrs. Grimes. But the soul is not reincarnated into a new body immediately after its release from the old one. In the case of ordinary people the delay is not a long one. It is the extraordinary people, the outstanding personalities, who often have to wait for centuries, or until a suitable vehicle for their rare psyches has become available—”

“In other words,” said Grimes, who was becoming interested, “until the genes and chromosomes have been suitably shuffled and dealt.”

“What a good way of putting it, Commodore. I must remember that.” She looked at Grimes as though she were viewing him as a potential and valuable convert which, Grimes realized, he could be.
Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut?
he asked himself. “You will agree, Commodore, that a special sort of character is required for the captain of a ship?”

Grimes made a noncommittal sound.

“And that an even more special kind of character is required for the captain of a sailing ship—”

“I did,” admitted Grimes cautiously, “bear certain qualities in mind when I appointed the masters and officers to these lightjammers—and not all of those I selected passed the rather rigorous training.”

Listowel muttered something about bumbling around in blimps over the Great Barrens, but subsided when Grimes glared at him.

“And how many lightjammers does your company operate, Commodore?”

“At the moment, four.
Pamir
,
Herzogen Cecile
,
Lord Of The Isles
and
Sea Witch
.
As the trade expands we shall require more tonnage, of course.
Preussen
and
Garthpool
are on the drawing boards. And the Rim Worlds Navy has the plans for at least three sailing warships.”

“Four ships. And five more some time in the future. But what of the thousands of sailing captains who must have lived in the days when their vessels were the only long-distance transport on Earth? Many of those souls must still be waiting for reincarnation.”

“One of my ancestors might be among them,” said Grimes.

“Really, Commodore?”

“Yes. He was a Barbary Corsair—but before that he was master of an English ship in the Mediterranean trade. A forced convert to Islam who decided to play along and do as well for himself as possible—”

“Are you sure that he was never reincarnated, John?” asked Sonya. “Some of the less savory episodes in your past haven’t been far short of piracy.”

“I might be able to find out for you, Commodore,” said Madam Swithin eagerly. “I am more of an administrator than a medium, but I do have powers—”

“Thank you,” Grimes told her. “But I think I’d rather not know.”

Pamir
drove on, no longer scudding before the photon gale but riding the thunder of her rocket drive. Ahead was an impossible star cluster—the suns of the Llanithi Consortium blue-blazing, the Rim Suns sullenly smoldering embers. Astern was—nothing. On she drove, outrunning light, until the time came for deceleration.

The reaction drive was shut down and, at his controls, Listowel carefully pivoted his sails. Northsail, eastsail, southsail and westsail he turned, trimming them so that the radiance from the Llanithi stars was striking their reflecting surfaces at an oblique angle. Grimes, watching the Doppler Log screen, saw the numerals change from
25.111111
to
25.111110
, to
25.111109 . . .

All four lower courses were now exerting full braking effect and the lower topsails were trimmed, squared.
23.768212 . . . 23.768000 . . . 23.759133 . . .
Upper topsails next.
19.373811 . . .
Topgallant sails . . . The log was winding down rapidly and ahead one of those vividly blue stars was a star no longer, was beginning to show an appreciable disk. Now the royals.
12.343433 . . . 11.300001 . . . 10.452552 . . . 8.325252 . . . 5.000000 . . . 2.688963 . . .

So far there was no sensation. The ship was inertialess, her structure and crew protected from the forces that should have exploded them through the darkness and emptiness in a blazing flare of energy.

1.492981 . . . 1.205288 . . . 1.200438 . . . 1.113764 . . . 1.000009 . . .

The countdown was slowing.

1.000008 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

1.000000 . . .

As when the light barrier had been broken, there was the feeling of unbearable tension. Something snapped suddenly. The stars ahead diminished in number, although those remaining were still blue. Astern, dim and distant, the Rim Stars reappeared.

And the figures in the screen were now in red light:
999999 . . . 999998 . . . 999997 . . .

“Sir.” Willoughby, the chief officer was pointing. Out to starboard, just abaft the beam, was a star where no star should or could be—a point of greenish radiance that steadily brightened.

“Captain! Commodore!” It was Madam Swithin’s voice. What the hell was she doing in the control room?

“Mr. Wallasey,” said Listowel to his third officer, “please escort this lady down to her cabin.”

“But, Captain,” cried the missionary, “this is most important.”

“So is that,” he said, pointing. “I’ve no time to spare for—”

“That,” she interrupted him, “is what is important.”

“Mr. Wallasey—” began Listowel.

“Let her stay,” said Sonya sharply. It was more of an order than a request. “Let her stay.”

The young officer looked uncertainly at his Captain, at the commodore, at the commodore’s wife. He looked again, questioningly, toward Listowel, But the master’s full attention was on the strange light. It was closing on a converging course. And there was something solid, or apparently solid, in the center of that glowing circle of blue-green mist. A ship? Grimes had found a pair of binoculars, had them to his eyes. Yes, a ship.

Madam Swithin was speaking again, but the voice was not her own. It was male and had a strange, guttural accent. And the language was one that Grimes did not understand, although it seemed to be of Terran origin. German? No, he decided. Although there were similarities.

“Who are you?” Sonya was asking. “Speak so that we may understand.”

“I cannot rest. I must not rest. Effer. To sail der seas vas I condemned, for all eternity, vhereffer and vheneffer dere are ships—”

The seas?
wondered Grimes.
But space is a sea . . .

He could make out the hull now through his glasses—high-pooped, with a tall forecastle. He could see the line of black-gaping gunports and the three masts with the square sails at fore and main, the staysails and the spritsail, the lateen sail at the mizzen . . .

This was no lightjammer.

“Kapitan!” that deep, urgent voice was commanding, “Starboard der helm! Starboard der helm!”

But an alteration of course to starboard would make a collision between
Pamir
and this apparition inevitable.

“Kapitan! Starboard der helm!”

And in the old days when the helm, the tiller, had been put to starboard both rudder and ship had turned to port, Grimes remembered from his reading. Even after the invention and introduction of the ship’s wheel those topsy-turvy steering orders had persisted for quite a long while.

In the old days, the days of the windjammers . . .

And hadn’t there been a legend about a Captain Van . . . What was his name? A Dutchman?

He laughed softly. “A ghost,” he murmured. “A ghost.”

Listowel laughed with him. “A bloody Rim Ghost. I should have known. I’ve heard enough about them. Phantom ships from alternate universes—”

“Kapitan! For der luff of Gott, starboard!”

Listowel laughed again, contemptuously, “That thing can’t hurt us. I’ll not risk my spars and sails, my ship, for a silly, blown-away phantasm!”

A spurt of orange flame leaped from the archaic ship’s forward gunport, followed by billowing dirty white smoke. The Dutchman had fired a warning shot.

“Listowel, bring her around to port at once,” ordered Grimes.

“I’m not running from a ghost ship with ghost cannon, Commodore.”

“Bring her around, damn you!”

“And you can’t order me in my own control room—”

“Legally I can’t—but I do order you.” Had Grimes known how to handle the lightjammer he would have tried to push the younger man from the controls. But he did not know. The only thing in his mind that could be of value in this situation was his memory of the old sailors’ tales.

“Kapitan! Starboard der helm!” It was a despairing cry in that strange male voice from the lips of the medium.

“He’s warning us, Listowel!” cried Grimes. “The old legends—you’ve read them. I’ve seen your bookshelf. The appearance of the Flying Dutchman before disaster . . . The Vanderdecken ships were saved from disaster by a ghost ship’s warning! Come to port, Captain! Bring her around to port!”

Realization dawned on Listowel’s face. With a muttered oath he dropped his hands to the console. He worked fast now that it was almost too late—with desperate urgency. He trimmed the east sails, not bothering about precise angles, bringing all five of the great vanes around as fast as the trimming motors would let him, presenting their light-absorptive surfaces to the radiation of the Llanith sun.
Pamir
lurched as she fell off to port. The mast whipped violently and the royal was ripped from its yards, flapped ahead and away from the ship like a bat into hell. But the rest held as the ship pivoted about her short axis.

And Grimes, looking out to starboard, saw the Dutchman vanish like a snuffed candle—but not before he had glimpsed the tall figure on the poop, his long beard streaming in the wind (here, in interstellar space, where there were no winds but the star winds!), his right arm raised in a gesture of farewell.

“Well,” muttered Listowel shakily. “Well—” Then: “Is it all right for us to resume course, Commodore?”

“I—I suppose so,” replied Grimes. In a stronger voice he said, “I shall ground the lightjammers until a thorough survey has been made of this sector of space. There was something there. Something we just missed.”

On the deck where she had fallen, where Sonya was supporting her head and shoulders, Madam Swithin began to stir. Her eyes opened, stared around her. “Where am I? What happened? How did I get here? I came all over queer and I don’t remember any more—”

“Everything is all right,” Sonya told her.

“Thank you, dear. Thank you. I shall be feeling better in a couple of jiffs. But I’d be ever so grateful if somebody could bring me a nice cup of—” The expression faded from her plump face and her eyes went vacant. That strange male voice—although now little more than a dying whisper—finished the sentence.

“—Holland gin,” it said.

The Last Hunt

I

Grimes
stood at the wide window of his office, which overlooked the Port Forlorn berthing apron, watched the starship
New Bedford
coming in. She was a stranger to the Rim Worlds. According to Lloyd’s Register she was owned by the Hummel Foundation of Earth. The Foundation, Grimes knew, had been set up for the intensive study of xenobiology—its Interstellar Zoo, covering hundreds of square miles of Australia’s Central Desert, was famous throughout the Galaxy. Almost equally famous was
New Bedford
’s master, Captain Haab. He was both master astronaut and big game hunter—an unlikely combination, but a highly successful one.