Upon a Sea of Stars (32 page)

A black-uniformed officer led Grimes through long corridors, lit by bright electric bulbs, and up stairways to the office of the High Priest. He, an elderly, black-robed man, frail, his skin darkened by age to an opaque olive, had been a young student at the time of the first landing. He claimed to have met the Commodore on that occasion, but Grimes could not remember him. But he was almost the double of the old man who had held the high office then—a clear example of the job making the man.

“Commodore Grimes,” he said. “Please be seated.”

“Thank you, your Wisdom.”

“I am sorry to have interfered with your plans, sir. But your Mr. Weeks insisted.”

“He assured me that it was important.”

“And he has . . . put you in the picture?”

“Yes.”

The old man produced a decanter, two graceful glasses. He poured the wine. Grimes relaxed. He remembered that the Tharnian priesthood made a point of never drinking with anybody whom they considered an enemy, with nobody who was not a friend in the true sense of the word. There was no toast, only a ceremonial raising of goblets. The liquor was good, as it always had been.

“What can I do?” asked Grimes.

The priest shrugged. “Very little. I told Mr. Weeks that our own police were quite capable of handling the situation, but he said, ‘It’s
his
mess. He should have his nose rubbed in it.’ ” The old man’s teeth were very white in his dark face as he smiled.

“Tales out of school, your Wisdom.” Grimes grinned. “Now I’ll tell one. Mr. Weeks doesn’t like spacemen. A few years ago his wife made a cruise in one of the T-G clippers—and, when the divorce came though, married the chief officer of the liner she traveled in.”

The High Priest laughed. “That accounts for it. But I shall enjoy your company for the few weeks that you will have to stay on Tharn. I shall tell my people to bring your baggage from the Embassy to the University.”

“That is very good of you.” Grimes took another sip of the strong wine. “But I think that since I’m here I shall help in the search for Mr. Missenden. After all, he is still officially one of our nationals.”

“As you please, Commodore. Tell me, if you were in charge how would you set about it?”

Grimes lapsed into silence. He looked around the office. All of the walls were covered with books, save one, and on it hung another of those big maps. He said, “He’ll have to get out by sea, of course.”

“Of course. We have no commercial airship service to Tangaroa, and the Tangaroans have no commerical airship service at all.”

“And you have no submarines yet, and your aerial coast guard patrol will keep you informed as to the movements of all surface vessels. So he will have to make his getaway in a merchant vessel. . . . Would you know if there are any Tangaroan merchantmen in port?”

“I would know. There is one—the
Kawaroa.
She is loading textiles and agricultural machinery.”

“Could she be held?”

“On what excuse, Commodore? The Tangaroans are very touchy people, and if the ship is detained their consul will at once send off a radio message to his government.”

“A very touchy people, you say . . . and arrogant. And quarrelsome. Now, just suppose that there’s a good, old-fashioned tavern brawl, as a result of which the master and his officers are all arrested. . . .”

“It’s the sort of thing that could easily happen. It has happened, more than once.”

“Just prior to sailing, shall we say? And then, with the ship immobilized, with only rather dim-witted ratings to try to hinder us, we make a thorough search—accommodations, holds, machinery spaces, storerooms, the works.”

“The suggestion has its merits.”

“The only snag,” admitted Grimes, “is that it’s very unlikely that the master and all three of his mates will rush ashore for a quick one just before sailing.”

“But they always do,” said the High Priest.

As they always had done, they did.

Grimes watched proceedings from the innkeeper’s cubbyhole, a little compartment just above the main barroom with cunning peepholes in its floor. He would have preferred to have been among the crowd of seamen, fishermen and watersiders, but his rugged face was too well known on Tharn, and no amount of hair and skin dye could have disguised him. He watched the four burly, blue- and brass-clad men breasting the bar, drinking by themselves, tossing down pot after pot of the strong ale. He saw the fat girl whose dyed yellow hair was in vivid contrast to her green skin nuzzle up to the man who was obviously the Tangaroan captain. He wanted none of her—and Grimes sympathized with him. Even from his elevated vantage point he could see that her exposed overblown breasts were sagging, that what little there was of her dress was stained and bedraggled. But the man need not have brushed her away so brutally. She squawked like an indignant parrot as she fell sprawling to the floor with a display of fat, unlovely legs.

One of the other drinkers—a fisherman by the looks of him—came to the aid of beauty in distress. Or perhaps it was only that he was annoyed because the woman, in her fall, had jostled him, spilling his drink. Or, even more likely, he was, like the woman, one of the High Priest’s agents. If such was the case, he seemed to be enjoying his work. His huge left hand grasped the captain’s shoulder, turning him and holding him, and then right fist and left knee worked in unison. It was dirty, but effective.

After that, as Grimes said later, telling about it, it was on for young and old. The three mates, swinging their heavy metal drinking pots, rallied to the defense of their master. The fisherman picked up a heavy stool to use as his weapon. The woman, who had scrambled to her feet with amazing agility for one of her bulk, sailed into the fray, fell to a crouching posture, straightening abruptly, and one of the Tangaroan officers went sailing over her head as though rocket-propelled, crashing down on to a table at which three watersiders had been enjoying a quiet, peaceful drink. They, roaring their displeasure, fell upon the hapless foreigner with fists and feet.

The police officer with Grimes—his English was not too good—said, “Pity break up good fight. But must arrest very soon.”

“You’d better,” the Commodore told him. “Some of your people down there are pulling knives.”

Yes, knives were out, gleaming wickedly in the lamplight. Knives were out, but the Tangaroans—with the exception of the victim of the lady and her stevedoring friends—had managed to retreat to a corner and there were fighting off all comers, although the captain, propped against the wall, was playing no great part in the proceedings. Like the fisherman, the two officers had picked up stools, were using them as both shields and weapons, deflecting flung pots and bottles with them, smashing them down on the heads and arms of their assailants.

The captain was recovering slowly. His hand went up to fumble inside the front of his coat. It came out, holding something that gleamed evilly—a pistol. But he fired it only once, and harmlessly. The weapon went off as his finger tightened on the trigger quite involuntarily, as the knife thrown by the yellow-haired slattern pinned his wrist to the wall.

And then the place was full of University police, tough men in black tunics who used their clubs quite indiscriminately and herded all those present out into the waiting trucks.

Quietly, Grimes and the police officer left their observation post and went down the back stairs. Outside the inn they were joined by twelve men—six police and six customs officials, used to searching ships. Their heels ringing on the damp cobblestones, they made their way through the misty night to the riverside, to the quays.

Kawaroa
was ready for sea, awaiting only the pilot and, of course, her master and officers. Her derricks were stowed, her moorings had been singled up, and a feather of smoke from her tall, raked funnel showed that steam had been raised. She was not a big ship, but she looked smart, well maintained, seaworthy.

As Grimes and his party approached the vessel they saw that somebody had got there ahead of them, a dark figure who clattered hastily up the gangway. But there was no cause for hurry. The ship, with all her navigating officers either in jail or in the hospital, would not be sailing, and the harbor master had already been told not to send a pilot down to take her out.

There was no cause for hurry. . . .

But what was that jangling of bells, loud and disturbing in the still night? The engine room telegraph? The routine testing of gear one hour before the time set for departure?

And what were those men doing, scurrying along to foc’sle head and poop?

Grimes broke into a run, and as he did so he heard somebody shouting from
Kawaroa’s
bridge. The language was unfamiliar, but the voice was not. It was Missenden’s. From forward there was a
thunk!
and then a splash as the end of the severed headline fell into the still water. The last of the flood caught the ship’s bows and she fell away from the wharf. With the police and customs officers, who had belatedly realized what was happening, well behind him, Grimes reached the edge of the quay. It was all of five feet to the end of the still-dangling gangway and the gap was rapidly widening. Without thinking. Grimes jumped. Had he known that nobody would follow him he would never have done so. But he jumped, and his desperate fingers closed around the outboard man-ropes of the accommodation ladder and somehow, paying a heavy toll of abrasions and lacerations, he was able to squirm upward until he was kneeling on the bottom platform. Dimly he was aware of shouts from the fast receding dock. Again he heard the engine room telegraph bells, and felt the vibration as the screw began to turn. So the after lines had been cut, too, and the ship was under way. And it was—he remembered the charts that he had looked at—a straight run down river with absolutely no need for local knowledge. From above sounded a single, derisory blast from
Kawaroa’s
steam whistle.

Grimes was tempted to drop from his perch, to swim back ashore. But he knew too much; he had always been a student of maritime history in all its aspects. He knew that a man going overboard from a ship making way through the water stands a very good chance of being pulled under and then cut to pieces by the screw. In any case, he had said that he would find Missenden, and he had done just that.

Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself erect, then walked up the clattering treads to deck level.

There was nobody on deck to receive him. This was not surprising; Missenden and the crew must have been too engrossed in getting away from the wharf to notice his pierhead jump. So . . . He was standing in an alleyway, open on the port side. Looking out, he saw the harbor lights sliding past, and ahead and to port there was the white-flashing fairway buoy, already dim, but from mist rather than distance. Inboard there was a varnished wooden door set in the white-painted plating of the ’midships house, obviously the entrance to the accommodation. Grimes opened it without difficulty—door handles will be invented and used by any being approximating to human structure. Inside there was a cross alleyway, brightly illuminated by electric light bulbs in well fittings. On the after bulkhead of this there was a steel door, and the mechanical hum and whine that came from behind it told Grimes that it led to the engine room. On the forward bulkhead there was another wooden door.

Grimes went through it. Another alleyway, cabins, and a companionway leading upward. At the top of this there were more cabins, and another companionway. And at the top of this . . . the captain’s accommodation, obviously, even though the word on the tally over the door was no more than a meaningless squiggle to Grimes.

One more companionway—this one with a functional handrail instead of a relatively ornate balustrade. At the head of it was a curtained doorway. Grimes pushed through the heavy drape, found himself in what could only be the chart room, looked briefly at the wide chart table upon which was a plan of the harbor, together with a pair of dividers and a set of parallel rulers. The Confederacy, he remembered, had at one time exported quite large consignments of these instruments to Tharn.

On the forward bulkhead of the chart room, and to port, was the doorway leading out to the wheelhouse and bridge. Softly, Grimes stepped through it, out into the near-darkness. The only light was that showing from the compass periscope, the device that enabled the helmsman to steer by the standard magnetic compass, the binnacle of which was sited up yet one more deck, on what had been called on Earth’s surface ships the “monkey island.” There was the man at the wheel, intent upon his job. And there, at the fore end of the wheelhouse, were two dark figures, looking out through the wide windows. One of them, the taller one, turned suddenly, said something in Tangaroan. As before, the voice was familiar but the language was not.

The question—intonation made that plain—was repeated, and then Missenden said in English, “It’s you! How the hell did you get aboard? Hold it, Commodore, hold it!” There was just enough light for Grimes to see the pistol that was pointing at his midriff.

“Turn this ship around,” ordered Grimes, “and take her back into port.”

“Not a chance.” Missenden laughed. “Especially when I’ve gone to all the trouble to taking her out of port. Pity old Dingwall wasn’t here to see it. Not bad, was it, for a bird-brained navigator? And keep your hands up where I can see them.”

“I’m unarmed,” said Grimes.

“I’ve only your word for it,” Missenden told him. Then he said something to his companion, who replied in what, in happier circumstances, would have been a very pleasant contralto. The girl produced a mouth whistle, blew a piercing blast. In seconds two burly seamen appeared on the bridge. They grabbed Grimes and held him tightly while she ran practiced hands over his clothing. It was not the first time that she had searched a man for weapons. Then they dragged him below, unlocked a steel door and threw him into the tiny compartment beyond it. The heavily barred port made it obvious that it was the ship’s brig.

They locked him in and left him there.

Grimes examined his surroundings by the light of the single dim bulb. Deck, deckhead and bulkheads were all of steel—but had they been of plyboard it would have made no difference: that blasted girl had taken from him the only possession that could possibly have been used as a weapon, his pocketknife. There was a steel-framed bunk, with a thin mattress and one sleazy blanket. There was a stained washbasin, and a single faucet which, when persuaded, emitted a trickle of rusty water. There was a bucket—plastic, not metal. Still, it could have been worse. He could sleep, perhaps, and he would not die of thirst. Fully clothed, he lay down on the bunk. He realized that he was physically tired; his desperate leap for the gangway had taken something out of him. And the ship was moving gently now, a slight, soporific roll, and the steady hum and vibration of the turbines helped further to induce slumber. There was nothing he could do, absolutely nothing, and to lose valuable sleep by useless worry would have been foolish. He slept.