Upon a Sea of Stars (63 page)

“You, sir, should know the answer to that question,” repeated Grimes.

“I’m sorry, Commodore, but I don’t. Not yet, anyhow.” Then, in a tone of forced cheerfulness, “But this is only a silly dream. It must be.”

“It’s not, Captain.” The man’s gold-braided epaulettes and the uniform cap, with the scrambled egg on its peak, hanging on a hook just inside the curtained door made this a safe enough guess. “It’s not, Captain. Pinch yourself.”

“Damn it! That hurt.”

“Good. Do you mind if I sit down?” Carefully, Grimes eased himself on to the settee that ran along one bulkhead of the day cabin. He feared at first that he was going to sink through the cushion, but it had substance (or he had substance) and supported him, although only just. He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to dispel the faintness that was creeping over him. It was the result of shock, he realized, of shock and of disappointment. He had expected to find himself aboard his own ship, the old, familiar, tried and trusted
Faraway Quest
, to be welcomed back by his wife. But where was he now?
When
was he? On Earth, the mother world of humankind? Aboard some sort of surface vessel?

The writer answered the unspoken questions. He said, “I’ll put you in the picture, Commodore. You’re aboard the good ship
Kantara
, which same plies between Melbourne and the port of Macquarie, on the wild west coast of Tasmania. We load pyritic ore in Macquarie for Melbourne, and make the return trip (as we are doing now) in ballast. I doubt very much if you have anything like this trade in your day and age, sir. Macquarie’s one of those places that you can’t get into when you’re outside, and that you can’t get out of when you’re inside. To begin with, the tides are absolutely unpredictable, and it’s safe to work the entrance—it’s called Hell’s Gates, by the way—only at slack water. If you tried to come in against a seven knot ebb you’d be in trouble! And the Inner Bar and the Outer Bar are always silting up, and with strong north westerlies—which we’ve been having—Outer Bar breaks badly. I’ve been riding out a howling westerly gale, keeping well to seaward, as I just don’t like being caught on a lee shore in a small, underpowered and underballasted ship. But the wind’s backed to the south’ard and is moderating, and the glass is rising, and all the weather reports and forecasts look good. So I’m standing in from my last observed position—P.M. star sights—until I’m just inside the extreme range of Cape Sorell light, and then I’ll just stand off and on until daylight, keeping within easy reach of the port. Come the dawn, I’ll have a natter with the harbor master on the radio telephone, and as soon as he’s able to convince me that conditions are favorable I’ll rush in.”

“Why bother with the extreme range of the light?” asked Grimes, becoming interested in spite of all his troubles. “You have radar, don’t you?”

“I do. I have radar and echo sounder. But my radar gets old and tired after only a few hours’ operation, and my echo sounder’s on the blink. I’ve nothing against electronic gadgetry
as long as it can be relied upon.
At the moment, mine can’t be.” The writer laughed. “But this is crazy. To sit here discussing navigation with a navigator from the distant future! I hope that none of my officers comes in to find me carrying on a conversation with myself!”

“I’m real, Captain. And I’m here. And I think that you should do something about getting me back to where I belong.”

“What can I do, Commodore? People have said, more than once, that my stories just
happen
. And that’s true, you know. Furthermore, I’ve always given
you
a free hand. Time and time again I’ve had to make plot changes because you’ve insisted on going your own way.”

“So you can’t help me . . .”

“I wish that I could. Believe me, I wish that I could. Do you think that I want to be haunted by you for the rest of my life?”

“There could be a way . . .” whispered Grimes.
Yes,
he thought,
there could he a way.
Life in that Hall of Fame would not be at all bad as long as he—
and Sonya
—were assured of the same degree of permanence as the others: Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond . . . He said, “I shan’t mind a bit going back to that peculiar Elysium you cooked up as long as my status there is better than that of an ephemeral gate crasher. And, of course, I’d like Sonya with me.”

“And just how can I arrange that for you, Commodore?”

“Easily, Captain. All you have to do is write a best seller, a series of best sellers.”

The other man grinned. “It’s a pity you can’t meet my wife.” He gestured toward a peculiarly two-dimensional photograph in a frame over the desk. The auburn-haired woman who looked out at them reminded Grimes of Sonya. “That’s what she’s always telling me.”

There was a sharp buzz from the telephone on the desk. The writer picked up the handset. “Master here.”

“Third Officer here, sir,” Grimes heard faintly. “I’ve just picked up Cape Sorell light, at extreme range, right ahead . . .”

“Good, Mr. Tallent. Turn her on to the reciprocal course. Yes, keep her on half speed. I’ll be right up.”

Grimes followed the shipmaster out of the day cabin, up the narrow companionway to the chartroom, out of the glass-enclosed wheelhouse, then out through a sliding door to the wing of the bridge. The night was clear, and the stars (would he ever see them again as more than lights in the sky?) were bright. Astern was the winking, group-flashing light, an intermittent spark on the far horizon. And then the light itself was gone, only a flash recurring at regular intervals marking its position as the lantern dipped below the planet’s curvature.

The captain grunted his satisfaction, then turned to stare forward. There was still quite a sea running, the wave crests faintly phosphorescent in the darkness; there was still a stiff breeze, broad on the port bow, but there was no weight to it. The ship was lifting easily to the swell, the motion not at all uncomfortable. The captain grunted again, went back to the chartroom. Grimes looked over his shoulder as he bent over the chart, noted the range circle with Cape Sorell as its center, the dot on it in the middle of its own tiny, penciled circle with the time—2235—along it, and another, cryptic notation, 33.5. On the chart, to one side, was a message pad.
Final Gale Warning
, it was headed. “Wind and sea moderating in all areas,” read Grimes. “All pressures rising.”

The shipmaster was busy now with parallel rulers, pencil and dividers. From the observed position he laid off a course—270° True. With the dividers he stepped off a distance, marked it with a cross and wrote alongside it “0200?” Grimes realized that the officer of the watch had come into the chartroom. He could see the young man, but the young man, it seemed, could not see him.

“Mr. Tallent,” said the shipmaster, “we’ll stand out to this position, then bring her around to 090 True. All being well, we shall be within comfortable VHF range at daylight, and with any luck at all the Bar will have stopped breaking and we shall have slack water. I’ll not write up my night orders yet; I’ll see the second officer at midnight before I turn in . . .”

“We should get in tomorrow all right, sir,” said the officer.

“Don’t be so bloody sure. You can never tell with this bloody place!”

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Mr. Tallent.”

Back in the day cabin, Grimes said, “You can see, Captain, that I have no real existence
here
and
now
. You
must
try to make me real
somewhere
.”

“Or somewhen.”

“Or somewhen.”

“More easily said than done, Commodore. Especially in the existing circumstances. At the moment of writing
I
am master of this little rustbucket. Master under God, as Lloyd’s puts it. This ship is my responsibility—and
you
should be able to appreciate that. This evening I was writing just as relaxation, one hand on the keyboard, the other ready to pick up the telephone . . .”

Grimes said, “You take yourself too bloody seriously. This is only a small ship with a small crew on an unimportant trade.”

“Nonetheless,” the shipmaster told him, “this is
my
ship. And the crew is
my
crew. The trade? That’s the Company’s worry; but, as Master, it’s up to me to see that the ship shows a profit.”

“And I’m your responsibility too,” Grimes pointed out.

“Are you? As I’ve already said, Commodore, you’ve proven yourself able to go your own sweet way in any story that I’ve written. But if I
am
responsible, just bear in mind that I could kill you off as easily as I could swat a fly. More easily. How do you want it? Act of God, the King’s enemies, or pirates? Nuclear blast—or a knife between the ribs?”

“You’re joking, surely.”

“Am I? Has it never occurred to you, Commodore, that a writer gets rather tired of his own pet characters? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes, but had to drag him back to life to please his public. Ian Fleming was becoming more than somewhat browned off with James Bond when he, himself, kicked the bucket. . .”

Grimes looked toward the photograph over the desk. “But you like Sonya,” he said.

“I do. She’s too good for you.”

“Be that as it may. She’s part of my world, my time . . .”

“So?”

“Well, I thought . . .”

The telephone buzzed. The shipmaster picked up the handset. “Yes?”

“The wind’s freshening, sir, and it’s veered to west.”

“Put her back on full speed, Mr. Tallent.” The captain got up from his chair, went to the aneroid barometer mounted on the bulkhead. He tapped it. The needle jerked in a counterclockwise direction. “Just what I need,” he said. “A bloody secondary.”

“What does that mean, Captain?”

“It means, Commodore, that those
Final Gale Warnings
aren’t worth the paper that Sparks typed them on. Very often, too often, in these waters the secondary depression is more vicious than the so-called primary.”

“What can you do?”

“Stand out. Make offing. Get the hell off this bloody lee shore.”

Again the telephone buzzed. “Master here.”

“Sir, we’ve lifted Cape Sorell again . . .”

“Tell the engineers to give her all they’ve got. I’ll be right up.”

The ship was lurching, was rolling heavily as she fell away from the wind. She was pounding as her fore part lifted and then slammed back down into the trough. Her screw was racing each time that her stern came clear of the water, and as the propeller lost purchase, so did the rudder. “Sir,” complained the helmsman, “the wheel’s hard over, but she’s not coming back . . .”

“Keep it hard over until she answers,” ordered the Master. He was looking into the radar screen. It was not a very good picture. There was spoking, and there was too much clutter. But there, right astern, was the faint outline of the rocky coast, a ragged luminosity. And there were the range circles—and slowly, slowly, the coastline was drifting from the 24 mile to the 20 mile ring. Even Grimes, peering over the other man’s shoulder, could appreciate what was happening.

“Mr. Tallent!”

“Sir?”

“Call the Chief Officer. Tell him to flood the afterhold.”

“
Flood
the afterhold, sir?”

“You heard me. We have to get the arse down somehow, to give the screw and the rudder some sort of grip on the water.”

“Very good, sir.”

“She’s logging three knots,” whispered the Master. “But she’s making one knot—
astern
. And that coast is nothing but rocks . . .”

“And flooding the hold will help?” asked Grimes.

“It’d better. It’s all I can do.”

They went back out to the wing of the bridge, struggling to retain their balance as the wind hit them. Cape Sorell light was brightly visible again, right astern, and even to the naked eye it had lifted well clear of the sea horizon. A shadowy figure joined them there—the Chief Officer, decided Grimes.

“I’ve got two fire hoses running into the hold, sir. What depth of water do you want?”

“I want 100 tons. Go below and work it out roughly.”

“What if the ceiling lifts?”

“Let it lift. Put in your hundred tons.”

“Very good, sir.”

Another officer came onto the bridge—big, burly, bearded. This must be, realized Grimes, the midnight change of watch. “Keep her as she’s going, sir?” he asked.

“Yes. Keep her as she’s going, Mr. Mackenzie. She’ll be steering better once we get some weight in aft, and racing less. But you might tell the engineers to put on the second steering motor . . .”

“Will do, sir.”

The shipmaster made his way back into the wheelhouse, staggering a little as the vessel lurched in the heavy swell. He went to the radar unit, looked down into the screen with Grimes peering over his shoulder. Right astern, the ragged outline of Cape Sorell was touching the twenty mile ring. Slowly the range decreased—slowly, but inexorably.

The Chief Officer was back. “About two foot six should do it, sir.”

“Make it that . . .”

Then, gradually, the range was opening again. The range was opening, and the frequent heavy vibrations caused by the racing screw were becoming less. The wind was still shrieking in from the westward, whipping the crests off the seas, splattering them against the wheelhouse windows in shrapnel bursts of spray, but the ship was steering again, keeping her nose into it, clawing away from the rocks that had claimed, over the years, too many victims.

Grimes followed the Master down to the afterdeck, stood with him as he looked down a trunkway into the flooded hold. Swirling in the filthy water were the timbers of the hold ceiling, crashing against the bulkheads fore and aft, splintering themselves against frames and brackets and the hold ladders, self-destroying battering rams driven by the force of the ship’s pitching and rolling. There would be damage, even Grimes could see that. There would be damage—and, inevitably, the writing of reports with carbon copies every which way.

Grimes knew this, and he should have had more sense than to attempt to bring up the subject again of his own, private worries.

He said, “This hold flooding seems to have worked . . .”