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  CATCH THE STAR WINDS

  A. Bertram Chandler

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  CATCH THE STAR WINDS: Copyright ©1969 by A. Bertram Chandler

  "Chance Encounter" was first published in New Worlds March 1959

  "On the Account" was first published in Galaxy May 1973

  "The Dutchman" was first published in Galaxy November 1972

  "The Last Hunt" was first published in Galaxy March 1973

  "Rim Change" was first published in Galaxy August 1975

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen EBook

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

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  Riverdale, NY 10471

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  ISBN-10: 0-7394-3965-0

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7394-3965-4

  First Baen Ebook collection printing, December 2007

  Chance Encounter

  We paid off on Faraway, having brought the old Epsilon Pavonis all the way across the Galaxy to hand her over to her new owners, Rim Runners Incorporated. The Commission's Branch Manager booked us in at the Rimrock House, one of the better hotels in Faraway City. All that we had to do was to wait for the arrival of Delta Bootes, in which vessel we were to be shipped back to Earth. The services to and from the Rim Worlds are far from frequent and none of the big passenger liners ever call there; they are not planets that one would ever recommend for a vacation. There's that dreariness, that ever-present sense that one is hanging by one's eyebrows over the very edge of the ultimate cold and dark. The cities on none of the Rim Planets are cities, real cities, but only overgrown—and not so very overgrown at that—provincial towns. The people are a subdued mob who take their pleasures sadly and their sorrows even more sadly. Somebody once said that the average Rim World city is like a graveyard with lights. He wasn't so far wrong.

  Delta Bootes was a long time coming. She was delayed on Waverley by a strike, and then she had to put in to Nova Caledon for repairs to her Mannschenn Drive unit. Some of us didn't worry overmuch—after all, we were being paid, and well paid, for doing nothing and the Branch Manager was footing our weekly bar bills without a murmur. Some of us worried a lot, even so. In the main, with one exception, it was the married men who were doing the worrying.

  The one exception was Peter Morris, our P.R.O.—Psionic Radio Officer to you—our bright young man from the Rhine Institute, our tame telepath. Yet he was single and so far as any of us knew, had no girl waiting for him on any of the colonised worlds or on Earth. But if there had been a first prize for misery he would have won it.

  I liked Peter. During the run out we had formed a friendship that was rather unusual between a telepath and a normal human being—or, as the average graduate of the Institute would put it, between a normal human being and a psionic deficient. I liked Peter, I suppose, because he was so obviously the odd man out and I have a strong tendency towards being odd man out myself. So it was that during our sojourn on Faraway we developed the routine of leaving the others to prop up the bar of the Rimrock House while we, glad to get away from reiteration of the bawdy jokes and boring personal anecdotes, wandered away from the hotel and through the city, finding some small, pleasant drinking place where we could sip our beer in relative peace and quiet.

  We were in such a place that morning, and the drinks that we had imbibed had done nothing at all to cheer Peter up. He was so gloomy that even I, who am far from being a cheerful type myself, remarked upon it.

  "You don't know what it's like, Ken," he told me. "As a psionic deficient you'll never know. It's the aura of . . . of . . . Well, there's fear, and there's loneliness, and a sort of aching emptiness, and together they make up the feel of these Rim Worlds. A telepath is always lonely until, if he's very lucky, he finds the right woman. But it's so much worse here."

  "There's Epstein, the P.R.O. at the port," I said. "And there's Mrs. Epstein. Why don't you see more of them?"

  "That," he declared, "would make it worse. When two telepaths marry they're a closed circuit to an extent that no p.d. couple can ever be . . ." He drank some more beer. "Finding the right woman," he went on, "is damned hard for us. I don't know why it is, but the average Esper female is usually frightfully unattractive, both mentally and physically. They seem to run to puddingy faces and puddingy minds . . . You know, Ken, I needn't have come on this trip. There are still so few of us that we can afford to turn down assignments. I came for one reason only—just hoping that by making a voyage all the way across the Galaxy I'd find somebody."

  "You still might on the way back," I told him.

  "I still might not," he replied.

  I looked at him with a rather irritated pity. I could sense, after a fashion, what he was driving at. He was so much the typical introvert—dark of hair and face, long and lean—and his telepathic talent could do nothing but add to the miseries that come with introversion.

  "You'd better have something stronger," I told him. I caught the bartender's eye. "Two double whiskies, please."

  "Make that three," said a too hearty voice. I looked around, saw that Tarrant, our Second Mate, had just come in.

  "Got tired of the same old stories at last?" I asked unkindly.

  "No," he said. "But somebody had to go to find you two, and I was the most junior officer present, so . . ."

  "Who wants us?" I demanded. "And why?"

  "The Old Man wants you." He lifted his glass. "Here's to crime."

  "What does he want us for?"

  "I don't know. All that I know is this. Some meteor-pitted old bastard calling himself Captain Grimes came barging into the pub and demanded an audience with our lord and master. They retired to confer privily. Shortly thereafter the call for all hands to battle stations went out."

  "Grimes . . ." I said slowly. "The name rings a bell. I seem to remember that when we handed the old Eppy Swan over somebody mentioned that Captain Grimes, the Chief Superintendent for Rim Runners, was away on Thule."

  "Could be," admitted Tarrant. "He has the look of a chairborne spaceman. In which case we'll have another drink. It's bad enough having to run to the beck and call of our own Supers without having to keep those belonging to a tuppenny ha'penny concern like Rim Runners happy."

  We had another drink, and another. After the third whisky Peter's gloom seemed to be evaporating slightly, so he ordered a fourth one. The Second Mate and I each ordered another round, after which we thought that we had better discover what was cooking. We walked rather unsteadily into the untidy street, hailed a ground cab and were driven back to the Rimrock House.

  * * *

  We found them all waiting for us in the Lounge—the Old Man and the rest of the officers, the chunky little man whose appearance justified Tarrant's description of him as a "meteor pitted old bastard."

  "Sir," said the Old Man stiffly, "here are my Third Officer, Mr. Wilberforce, and my Psionic Radio Officer, Mr. Morris. I have no doubt that they will show as little enthusiasm for your project as any of my other officers. Yours is essentially a Rim World undertaking, and should be carried out by Rim World personnel."

  "They can decide, sir," said Captain Grimes. "You have told me that these officers have no close ties on Earth or elsewhere; it is possible that they may find the proposition attractive. And, as I have already told you, we guarantee repatriation."

  "What is it all about, anyhow?" asked Tarrant.

  "Sit down, gentlemen," said Grimes, "and I'll tell you." While we were finding chairs he filled and lit a foul pipe. "I'll have to recapitulate for your benef
it; I hope that the rest of you don't object.

  "Well, as you are no doubt aware, we of the Rim Worlds consider ourselves the orphans of the galaxy. You know why these planets were colonised in the first instance—the Central Government of those days feared an alien invasion sweeping in from outside the Galaxy. The general idea was to set up a huge ring of garrisoned planets, a fortified perimeter. That idea has died over the years and, as a result, only a very small arc of the Rim has been explored, even.

  "We of the Rim Worlds wish to survive as a separate, independent entity. Starved as we are of trade and shipping we have little chance of surviving at all. So it has been decided that we take our own steps, in our own way, to achieve this end.

  "You've heard, of course, of the odd pieces of wreckage that come drifting in, from time to time, from somewhere. It was such flotsam that first gave the Central Government the idea that there might be an invasion from some other galaxy. Now, we don't think that those odd bits and pieces ever did come from outside. We think that there are inhabited planets all around the rim, and that advantageous trade would be possible with them.

  "For years we've been trying to persuade the brass hats of the Survey Service to carry out a systematic exploration, but the answer's always the same. They haven't the ships, or they haven't the men, or they haven't the money. So, at last, we have decided to carry out our own exploration. Your old ship, Epsilon Pavonis, is being fitted out for the job. She's being renamed, by the way—Faraway Quest. . ."

  "And what," asked Tarrant, "has this to do with us?"

  * * *

  Captain Grimes hesitated, seemed almost embarrassed. "Frankly," he said, "the trouble is this. We don't seem to breed spacemen, real spacemen, on the Rim Worlds. Puddle jumpers, that's all they are. They'll venture as far as Ultimo, or Thule, or the Shakespearean Sector, but they just aren't keen to fare any further afield . . ."

  "There's too much fear on these worlds," said Peter Morris suddenly. "That's the trouble. Fear of the cold and the dark and the emptiness . . ."

  Grimes looked at him. "Of course," he said, "you're the telepath . . ."

  "Yes, I'm the telepath. But you don't need to be any kind of an Esper to sense the fear."

  "All right, then," said Grimes. "My own boys are just plain scared to venture so much as a single light year beyond the trade routes. But I've got a Master for Faraway Quest—myself. I've a Purser, and Chief and Second Mannschenn Drive Engineers, and one Rocket Engineer. I've a Chief Officer and a Surgeon-cum-Bio-Chemist, and an Electronic Radio Officer. All of us are from the Centre, none of us was born out here, on the Rim. But this is a survey job, and I shall need a well manned ship.

  "I can promise any of you who volunteer double your current rates of pay. I can promise you repatriation when the job is over, to any part of the Galaxy."

  "Most of us," said our Captain, "have homes and families waiting for us. We've been out for too long now."

  "You're sure that there are inhabited worlds out along the Rim?" asked Peter. "What of their people?"

  "Purple octopi for all I know," replied Grimes.

  "But there's a chance, just a chance, that they might be humanoid, or even human?" insisted the Psionic Radio Officer.

  "Yes, there's a chance. Given a near infinitude of habitable worlds and an infinitude of time for evolution to take its course, then anything is possible."

  "The purple octopi are more probable," I said.

  "Perhaps," almost whispered Peter. "Perhaps . . . But I have limited, very limited, premonitory powers, and I have a definite feeling that. . ."

  "That what?" I asked.

  "Oh, never mind." To Grimes he said, "I take it that you can use a P.R.O., Captain?"

  "That I can," declared Grimes heartily.

  I sighed. "You offer about double the pay," I said. "I'm Third Officer in the Commission's fleet as you know. If I come with you as Second, do I get twice the Commission's rate for that rank?"

  "You do."

  "Count me in," I said.

  "You must be mad," said Tarrant. "Both of you—but Wilberforce is less mad than Morris. After all, he's doing it for money. What are you doing it for. Crystal Gazer?"

  "Mind your own business!" he snapped.

  Some hours later, when we were out at the spaceport looking over the structural alterations that were being made to Faraway Quest, I asked him the same question.

  He flushed. "What do people do things for, Peter?"

  "Money," I replied. "Or power. Or . . ."

  "Precisely," he said, before I could finish. "It's only a hunch, but I have a strong feeling that this is the chance, the only chance, to find her."

  I remember that I said, "I hope you're right."

  * * *

  Delta Bootes dropped down at last to Port Faraway, and all of our shipmates, openly jubilant, boarded her. We saw them off, Peter and I. We had our last drinks with them in the little smoking room and then, feeling rather lost and lonely (at least, I did) scrambled out of the airlock and down the ramp as the last warning bell started to sound. We stood with the other spectators a safe distance from the blast-off area, watched her lift on her column of pale fire, watched her vanish into the clear, twilit sky. With her departure I realised the irrevocability of my action in volunteering for this crazy survey voyage. There was no backing out now.

  We walked to the corner of the field where work was still progressing on Faraway Quest. Outwardly she was little changed, except for the addition of two extra boat blisters. Internally she was being almost rebuilt. Cargo space was being converted into living accommodation. In spite of the shortage of trained space-faring personnel Grimes had found volunteers from other quarters. Two professors of physics from Thule City were signing on as assistant engineers, and there were three astronomers from Ultimo as well as a couple of biologists. Grimes—who, we had learned, had served in the Survey Service as a young man—had persuaded the local police force to lend him three officers and fifty men, who were being trained as Space Marines. It began to look as though Faraway Quest would be run on something approaching Survey Service lines.

  * * *

  We looked at her, standing tall and slim in the light of the glaring floods.

  I said, "I was a little scared when I watched Delta Bootes blast off, Peter, but now I'm feeling a little happier."

  "I am too," he told me. "That. . . That hunch of mine is stronger than ever. I'll be glad when this old girl is ready to push off."

  "I don't trust hunches," I told him. "I never have, and never will. In any case, this female telepath with the beautiful mind you're hunting for may turn out to be nothing but a purple octopus."

  He laughed. "You've got purple octopi on the brain. To hear you talk, one would think that the Galaxy was inhabited by the brutes . . ."

  "Perhaps it is," I said. "Or all the parts that we haven't explored yet."

  "She exists," he told me seriously. "I know. I've dreamed about her now for several nights running."

  "Have you?" I asked. Other people's dreams are as a rule, dreadfully boring, but when the other person is a telepath with premonitory powers one is inclined to take some interest in them. "What did you dream?"

  "Each time it was the same," he said. "I was in a ship's boat, by myself, waiting for her to come to me. I knew what she was like, even though I'd never actually met her. She wasn't quite human. She was a little too tall, a little too slim, and her golden hair had a greenish glint to it. Her small ears were pointed at the tips. As I say, I knew all this while I sat there waiting. And she was in my mind, as I was in hers, and she was saying, over and over, I'm coming to you, my darling. And I was sitting there in the pilot's chair, waiting to close the outer airlock door as soon as she was in . . ."

  "And then?"

  "It's hard to describe. I've had women in real life as well as in dreams, but never before have I experienced that feeling of utter and absolute oneness . . ."

  "You're really convinced, aren't you?" I said. "Are you sur
e that it's not auto-hypnosis, that you haven't built up from the initial hunch, erecting a framework of wish-fulfillment fantasy?"

  "I'd like to point out, Ken," he said stiffly, "that you're a qualified astronaut, not any sort of psychologist. I'd like to point out, too, that the Rhine Institute gives all its graduates a very comprehensive course in psychology. We have to know what makes our minds tick—after all, they are our working tools."

  "Sorry," I said. "The main thing is that you feel reasonably sure that we shall stumble across some intelligent, humanoid race out there."

  "Not reasonably sure," he murmured. "Just certain."

  "Have you told Grimes all this?"

  "Not all, but enough."

  "What did he say?"

  "That I was in charge of communications, not prognostications, and that my most important job was to see to it that my amplifier was healthy and functioning properly."