Upon a Sea of Stars (70 page)

He pulled his attention away from the viewport, took an interest in what was going on in the control room. It was all much as he remembered it from his own Survey Service days—dials and gauges and display units, telltale lights, the remote controls for inertial, auxiliary rocket and Mannschenn Drives, the keyboard of the Gunnery Officer’s “battle organ.” And, apart from the armament accessories, it was very little different from the control room of any modern merchantman.

The people manning it weren’t quite the same as merchant officers; and, come to that, weren’t quite the same as the officers of the Rim Worlds Navy. There was that little bit of extra smartness in the uniforms, even to the wearing of caps inside the ship. There were the splashes of fruit salad on the left breast of almost every uniform shirt. There was the crispness of the Captain’s orders, the almost exaggerated crispness of his officers’ responses, with never a departure from standard Naval terminology. This was a taut ship, not unpleasantly taut, but taut nonetheless. (One of Grimes’s shortcomings in the Survey Service had been his inability, when in command, to maintain the requisite degree of tension.) Even so, it was pleasant to experience it once again—especially as a passenger, an outsider. Grimes looked at Sonya. She was enjoying it too. Was she enjoying it too much?

Still accelerating, although not uncomfortably, the ship drove through the thin, high wisps of cirrus. Overhead the sky was indigo, below Aquarius was already visibly a sphere, an enormous mottled ball of white and gold and green and blue—mainly blue. Over to the west’ard was what looked like the beginnings of a tropical revolving storm. And who would be caught in it? Grimes wondered. Anybody he knew? In deep space there were no storms to worry about, not now, although in the days of the lodejammers magnetic storms had been an ever-present danger.

“Secure all!” snapped Commander Farrell.

“Hear this! Hear this!” the Executive Officer said sharply into his microphone. “All hands. Secure for free fall. Report.”

Another officer began to announce, “Sick Bay—secure, secure. Enlisted men—secure. Hydroponics—secure . . .” It was a long list. Grimes studied the sweep second hand of his wristwatch. By this time a Rim Runners’ tramp would be well on her way. Quite possibly, he admitted, with some shocking mess in the galley or on the farm deck. “. . . Mannschenn Drive Room—secure. Inertial drive room—secure. Auxiliary rocket room—secure. All secure, sir.”

“All stations secure, sir,” the Executive Officer repeated to the Captain.

“Free fall—execute!”

The throb of the inertial drive faltered and died in mid-beat.

“Centrifugal effect—stand by!”

“Centrifugal effect—stand by!”

“Hunting—execute!”

“Hunting—execute!”

The mighty gyroscopes hummed, then whined. Turning about them, the ship swung to find the target star, the distant sun of Glebe, lined it up in the exact center of the Captain’s cartwheel sights and then fell away the few degrees necessary to allow for galactic drift.

“Belay gyroscopes!”

“Belay gyroscopes!”

“One gravity acceleration—stand by!”

“One gravity acceleration—stand by!”

“One gravity acceleration—execute!”

“One gravity acceleration—execute!”

The inertial drive came to life again.

“Time distortion—stand by!”

“Time distortion—stand by!”

“Mannschenn Drive—stand by!”

“Mannschenn Drive—stand by!”

“Mannschenn Drive—3 lyps—
On!
”

“Mannschenn Drive—3 lyps—
On!
”

There was the familiar thin, high keening of the ever-precessing gyroscopes, the fleeting second (or century) of temporal disorientation, the brief spasm of nausea; and then, ahead, the sparse stars were no longer steely points of light but iridescent, pulsating spirals, and astern the fast diminishing globe of Aquarius could have been a mass of multi-hued, writhing gases.
Star Pioneer
was falling down the dark dimensions, through the warped continuum toward her destination.

And about time,
thought Grimes, looking at his watch again.
And about bloody time.

Glebe, Parramatta, Wyong . . . Pleasant enough planets, with something of the Rim Worlds about them, but with a flavor of their own. Lost Colonies they had been, settled by chance, discovered by the ships of the New Australia Squadron after those hapless lodejammers had been thrown light-years off course by a magnetic storm, named after those same ships. For generations they had developed in their own way, isolated from the rest of the man-colonized galaxy. Their development, Commander Farrell complained, had been more of a retrogression than anything else. Commodore Grimes put forward his opinion, which was that these worlds were what the Rim Worlds should have been, and would have been if too many highly efficient types from the Federation had not been allowed to immigrate.

Sonya took sides in the ensuing argument—the wrong side at that. “The trouble with you, John,” she told him, “is that you’re just naturally against all progress. That’s why you so enjoyed playing at being a twentieth century sailor on Aquarius. That’s why you don’t squirm, as
we
do, every time that you hear one of these blown away Aussies drawl, ‘She’ll be right . . .’ ”

“But it’s true, ninety-nine percent of the time.” He turned to Farrell. “I know that you and your smart young technicians were appalled at the untidiness of the Carlotti Stations on all three of these planets, at the slovenly bookkeeping and all the rest of it. But the beacons work and work well, even though the beacon keepers are wearing ragged khaki shorts instead of spotless white overalls. And what about the repairs to the one on Glebe? They knew that it’d be months before the spares for which they’d requisitioned trickled down through the Federation’s official channels, and so they made do with the materials at hand . . .”

“The strip patched with beaten out oil drums . . .” muttered Farrell. “Insulators contrived from beer bottles . . .”

“But that beacon works, Commander, with no loss of accuracy.”

“But it shouldn’t,” Farrell complained.

Sonya laughed. “This archaic setup appeals to John, Jimmy. I always used to think that the Rim Worlds were his spiritual home—but I was wrong. He’s much happier on these New Australian planets, which have all the shortcomings of the Rim but nary a one of the few, the very few good points.”

“What good points are you talking about?” demanded Grimes. “Overreliance on machinery is one of them, I suppose. That’s what I liked about Aquarius, and what I like about these worlds—the tacit determination that the machine shall be geared to man, not the other way round . . .”

“But,” said Sonya. “The contrast. Every time that we step ashore it hits us in the eye. Jimmy’s ship, with everything spick and span, every officer and every rating going about his duties at the very peak of efficiency—and this city (if you can call it that) with everybody shambling around at least half-asleep, where things get done after a fashion, if they get done at all. It must be obvious even to an old-fashioned . . . seaman like yourself.”

“Aboard a ship,” admitted Grimes, “any sort of ship, one has to have some efficiency. But not too much.”

The three of them were sitting at a table on the wide veranda of the Digger’s Arms, one of the principal hotels in the city of Paddington, the capital (such as it was) of Wyong. There were glasses before them, and a bottle, its outer surface clouded with condensation. Outside the high sun blazed down on the dusty street, but it was pleasant enough where they were, the rustling of the breeze in the leaves of the vines trailing around the veranda posts giving an illusion of coolness, the elaborate iron lace of pillars and railing contributing its own archaic charm.

A man came in from outside, removing his broad-brimmed hat as soon as he was in the shade. His heavy boots were noisy on the polished wooden floor. Farrell and Sonya looked with some disapproval at his sun-faded khaki shirt, the khaki shorts that could have been cleaner and better pressed.

“Mrs. Grimes,” he said. “How yer goin’?”

“Fine, thank you, Captain,” she replied coldly.

“How’s tricks, Commodore?”

“Could be worse,” admitted Grimes.

“An’ how’s the world treatin’ you, Commander?”

“I can’t complain,” answered Farrell, making it sound like a polite lie.

The newcomer—it was Captain Dalby, the Port Master—pulled up a chair to the table and sat down with an audible
thump
. A shirt-sleeved waiter appeared. “Beer, Garry,” ordered Dalby. “A schooner of old. An’ bring another coupla bottles for me friends.” Then, while the drinks were coming, he said, “Your Number One said I might find you here, Commander.”

“If it’s anything important you want me for,” Farrell told him, “you could have telephoned.”

“Yair. Suppose I could. But yer ship’ll not be ready ter lift off fer another coupla days, an’ I thought the walk’d do me good . . .” He raised the large glass that the waiter had brought to his lips. “Here’s lookin’ at yer.”

Farrell was already on his feet. “If it’s anything serious, Captain Dalby, I’d better get back at once.”

“Hold yer horses, Commander. There’s nothin’ you can do till you get there.”

“Get
where?
”

“Esquel, o’ course.”

“What’s wrong on Esquel?”

“Don’t rightly know.” He drank some more beer, taking his time over it. “But a signal just came in from the skipper of the
Epileptic Virgin
that the Esquel beacon’s on the blink.”

“Epsilon Virginis,”
corrected Farrell automatically. Then—“But this could be serious . . .”

“Nothin’ ter work up a lather over, Commander. It’s an un-watched beacon, so there’s no need to worry about the safety of human personnel. An’ it’s not an important one. Any nog who can’t find his way through this sector o’ space without it ain’t fit ter navigate a plastic duck across a bathtub!”

“Even so . . .” began Farrell.

“Sit down and finish your beer,” said Grimes.

“Yer a man after me own heart, Commodore,” Dalby told him.

“Did the Master of
Epsilon Virginis
have any ideas as to what might have happened?” asked Sonya.

“If he had, Mrs. Grimes, he didn’t say so. Mechanical breakdown, earthquake, lightnin’—you name it.” He grinned happily at Farrell. “But it suits me down ter the ground that you’re here, Commander. If you weren’t, I’d have ter take me own maintenance crew to Esquel an’ fix the bloody thing meself. I don’t like the place, nor its people . . .” He noticed that Sonya was beginning to look at him in a rather hostile manner. “Mind yer, I’ve nothin’ against wogs, as long as they keep ter their own world an’ I keep ter mine.”

“So you’ve been on Esquel?” asked Sonya in a friendly enough voice.

“Too right. More’n once. When the beacon was first installed, an’ three times fer maintenance. It’s too bleedin’ hot, for a start. It just ain’t a white man’s planet. An’ the people . . . Little, gibberin’ purple monkeys—chatter, chatter, chatter, jabber, jabber, jabber. Fair gets on yer nerves. I s’pose their boss cockies ain’t all that bad when yer get ter know ‘em—but they know what side their bread’s buttered on an’ try ter keep in our good books. If they hate our guts they don’t show it. But the others—the lower classes I s’pose you’d call ‘em—do hate our guts, an’ they do show it.”

“It often is the way, Captain,” said Sonya. “Very often two absolutely dissimilar races are on far friendlier terms than two similar ones. I’ve never been to Esquel, but I’ve seen photographs of the natives and they’re very like Terran apes or monkeys; and the apes and monkeys are our not so distant cousins. You and your men probably thought of the Esquelians as caricatures in very bad taste of human beings, and they thought of you in the same way.”

“Yair. Could be. But I’m glad it’s not me that has ter fix the beacon.”

“Somebody has to,” said Farrell virtuously.

Star
Pioneer
was on her way once more, driving along the trajectory between Wyong and Esquel, her inertial drive maintaining a normal one standard gravity acceleration, her Mannschenn Drive set for cruising temporal precession rate. Farrell had discussed matters with Grimes and Sonya and with his own senior officers. All agreed that there was no need for urgency; the Esquel beacon was not an essential navigational aid in this sector of space; had it been so it would have been manned.

There was, of course, no communication with the world toward which the ship was bound. The Carlotti beacons are, of course, used for faster-than-light radio communication between distant ships and planets, but the one on Esquel was a direction finding device only. A team of skilled technicians could have made short work of a conversion job, rendering the beacon capable of the transmission and reception of FTL radio signals—but there were no human technicians on Esquel. Yet. Imperialism has long been a dirty word; but the idea persists even though it is never vocalized. The Carlotti beacon on Esquel was the thin end of the wedge, the foot inside the door. Sooner or later the Esquelian rulers would come to rely upon that income derived from the rental of the beacon site, the imports (mainly luxuries) that they could buy with it; and then, not blatantly but most definitely, yet another planet would be absorbed into the Federation’s economic empire.

There was conventional radio on Esquel, but
Star Pioneer
would not be able to pick up any messages while her time and space warping interstellar drive was in operation, and not until she was within spitting distance of the planet. There were almost certainly at least a few Esquelian telepaths—but the Survey Service ship was without a psionic radio officer. One should have been carried; one had been carried, in fact, but she had engineered her discharge on Glebe, where she had become wildly enamored of a wealthy grazier. Farrell had let her go; now he was rather wishing that he had not done so.

The
Pioneer
fell down the dark dimensions between the stars, and life aboard her was normal enough. There was no hurry. Unmanned beacons had broken down before, would do so again. Meanwhile there was the pleasant routine of a ship of war in deep space, the regular meals, the card-playing, the chess and what few games of a more physically demanding nature were possible in the rather cramped conditions. Sonya was enjoying it, Grimes was not. He had been too long away from the spit and polish of the Survey Service. And Farrell—unwisely for one in his position—was starting to take sides. Sonya, he not very subtly insinuated, was his breed of cat. Grimes might have been once, but he was no longer. Not only had he resigned from the finest body of astronauts in the galaxy, known or unknown, but he had slammed the door behind him. And as for this craze of his for—of all things!—seamanship . . . Grimes was pained, but not surprised, when Sonya told him, one night, that aboard this ship he was known as the Ancient Mariner.