The Big Black Mark Read online

  The three officers sat in a stiff line on the settee, the woman in the middle. Grimes regarded them over the rim of his cup. Brabham looked, he thought, like a morose bloodhound.

  The Mad Major, with his wiry gray hair and bristling moustache, his hot yellow eyes, looked like a vicious terrier. Grimes had never liked terriers. And Vinegar Nell? More cat than dog, he decided. A certain sleekness . . . but sleek cats can be as bad tempered as the rougher ones. He finished his coffee, got to his feet, reached for his cap. "All right," he said. "We'll get the show on the road."

  * * *

  They started in the control room. There was little to find fault with there. Lieutenant Tangye, the navigator, was a man who believed in maintaining all his instruments in a highly polished state. Whether or not Tangye was capable of using these instruments Grimes had yet to discover. Not that he worried much about it; he was quite prepared to do his own navigation. (He, while serving as navigator in a cruiser, had been quite notorious for his general untidiness, but no captain had ever been able to complain about any lack of ability to fix the ship's position speedily and accurately.)

  The next deck down was Grimes's own accommodation, with which he was already familiar. He devoted more time to the two decks below in which the officers, of all departments, were accommodated. The cabins and public rooms were clean, although not excessively so. The furnishings were definitely shabby. Miss Russell said, before he could make any comment, "They won't supply anything new for this ship."

  Perhaps They wouldn't, thought Grimes, but had anybody bothered to find out for sure?

  The Marines' quarters were next, housing twenty men. Here, as in the control room, there was some evidence of spit and polish. Grimes decided that the sergeant, a rugged, hairless black giant whose name was Washington, was responsible. Whatever the crimes that had led to his appointment to Discovery had been, he was an old-timer, convinced that the space soldiers were superior to any mere spaceman, ships' captains included. The trouble with such men was that, in a pinch, they would be loyal only to their own branch of the Survey Service, to their own officers.

  Petty officers' quarters next, with the bos'n—another old-timer—coming to stiff attention as the inspection party entered the compartment. Grimes decided that he wouldn't trust the man any farther than he could throw him—and, as the bos'n was decidedly corpulent, that would not be very far. Langer . . . yes, that was his name. Hadn't he been implicated in the flogging of ship's stores when the heavy cruiser Draconis had been grounded on Dingaan for Mannschenn Drive recalibration?

  Provedore ratings, deck ratings, engine room ratings . . . everything just not quite clean, with the faint yet unmistakable taint of too-long-unwashed clothing and bedding permeating the ship's atmosphere.

  Storerooms—now well stocked.

  The farm decks, with their hydroponic tanks, the yeast and algae and tissue culture vats—everything looked healthy enough. Grimes expressed the hope that it would all stay that way.

  The cargo hold, its bins empty, but ready for any odds and ends that Discovery might pick up during the forthcoming voyage.

  The boat bays . . . Grimes selected a boat at random, had it opened up. He satisfied himself that all equipment was in good order, that the provisions and other supplies were according to scale. He ran the inertial drive-unit for a few seconds in neutral gear. The irregular beat of it sounded healthy enough.

  Engine spaces, with the glowering MacMorris in close attendance. In the Mannschenn Drive room, ignoring the engineer's scowl, Grimes put out a ringer to one of the finely balanced rotors. It began to turn at the slightest touch and the other rotors, on their oddly angled spindles, moved in sympathy. There was the merest hint of temporal disorientation, a fleeting giddiness. MacMorris growled, "An' does he want us all to finish up in the middle o' last week?" Grimes pretended not to have heard him.

  The inertial drive room, with the drive-units now reassembled, their working parts concealed beneath the casings .. . reaction drive . . . nothing to see there but a few pumps. And there was nothing to see in the compartment that housed the hydrogen fusion power plant; everything of any importance was hidden beneath layers of insulation. But if MacMorris said that it was all right, it must be.

  "Thank you," said Grimes to his officers. "She'll do." He thought, She'll have to do.

  "You missed the dogbox, sir," Brabham reminded him, with ill-concealed satisfaction.

  "I know," said Grimes. "I'm going there now. No, you needn't come with me."

  Alone, he made his way to the axial shaft, entered the elevator cage. He pushed the button for the farm deck. It was there that the psionic amplifier was housed, for no other reason than to cut down on the' plumbing requirements. Pumps and pipes were essential to the maintenance of the tissue culture vats; some of the piping and one of the pumps were used to provide the flow of nutrient solution through the tank in which floated the disembodied canine brain.

  On the farm deck he made his way through the assemblage of vats and tanks and found, tucked away in a corner, a small, boxlike compartment. Some wit had taped a crudely printed notice to the door: BEWARE OF THE DOG. Very funny, thought Grimes. When I was a first trip cadet it always had me rolling on the deck in uncontrollable paroxysms of mirth. But what was that noise from inside the room? Someone singing? Flannery, presumably.

  "I'll die but not surrender

  Cried the Wild Colonial Boy. . . ."

  Grimes grinned. It sounded as though the psionic communications officer had already established rapport with his new pet. But wouldn't a dingo prefer the eerie music of a didgeridoo? What if he were to indent for one? He grinned again.

  He knocked at the door, slid it open. Flannery was sitting—sprawling, rather—at and over his worktable. There was a bottle, open, ready to hand, with a green label on which shone a golden harp. There was no glass. The PCO, still crooning softly, was staring at the spherical tank, at the obscene, pallid, wrinkled shape suspended in translucent brown fluid.

  "Mr. Flannery!"

  Flannery went on singing.

  "Mr. Flannery!"

  "Sorr!" The man got unsteadily to his feet, almost knocked himself down again with a flamboyant parody of a salute. "Sorr!"

  "Sit down before you fall down!" Grimes ordered sharply. Flannery subsided gratefully. He picked up the bottle, offered it to Grimes, who said, "No, thank you," thinking, I daren't antagonize this fat, drunken slob. I might need him. He remarked, "I see you have your new amplifier."

  "Indeed I have, Captain. An' he's good, as God's me witness. Inspired, ye were, when ye said I should be takin' Ned."

  "Mphm. So you don't anticipate any trouble?"

  "Indeed I do not. Ask me to punch a message through to the Great Nebula of Andromeda itself, an' me an' Ned'll do it."

  "Mphm." Grimes wondered how he should phrase the next question. He was on delicate ground. But if he had Flannery on his side, working for him, he would have his own, private espionage system, the Rhine Institute's code of ethics notwithstanding. "So you've got yourself another pal. Ha, ha. I wonder what he thinks of the rest of us in this ship . . . me, for example."

  "Ye want the God's own truth, Captain?"

  "Yes."

  "He hates you. If he had his teeth still, he'd be after bitin' you. It's the uniform, ye see, an' the way ye're wearin' it. He remembers the cowardly troopers what did for the Ned who's his blessed namesake."

  "Not to mention the jolly swagman," growled Grimes. "But that's all nonsense, Mr. Flannery. You can't tell me that that's the brain of a dingo who was around when the Kelly Gang was brought to book!"

  Flannery chuckled. "What d'ye take me for, Captain? I don't believe that, an' I'm not expectin' you to. But he's a dog, an' all dogs have this race memory, goin' back to the Dream Time, an' farther back still. And now, Captain, witt ye, with all due respect, be gettin' out of here? Ye've got Ned all upset, ye have."

  Grimes departed in a rather bad temper, leaving Flannery communing with the wh
iskey bottle and his weird pet.

  Chapter 5

  Six hours before liftoff time Grimes received Brandt, the only scientific officer who was making the voyage, in his day cabin. From the very start they clashed. This Dr. Brandt—he soon made it clear that he did not wish to be addressed as "Commander" and that he considered his Survey Service rank and uniform childish absurdities—was, Grimes decided, a typical case of small-man-itis. He did not need to be a telepath to know what Brandt thought about him. He was no more than a bus driver whose job it was to take the learned gentleman to wherever he wished to go.

  And then Brandt endeared himself to Grimes still further by putting his thoughts into words. "It's a high time, Captain," said the little, fat, bald black-bearded man, "that contacts with Lost Colonies were taken out of the clumsy hands of you military types. You do irreparable damage with your interferences. I should have been on hand to make a thorough and detailed study of the New Spartan culture before you ruined it by aiding and abetting revolution."

  "Mphm," grunted Grimes.

  "And you did the same sort of thing on Morrowvia."

  "Did I? I was trying to save the Morrowvians from Drongo Kane—who, in case you don't know, is a slave trader—and from the Dog Star Line, who wanted to turn the whole damn planet into a millionaires' holiday camp."

  "Which it is now well on the way to becoming, I hear."

  "The Morrowvians will do very nicely out of it. In any case, on neither occasion was I without scientific advice."

  "Dr. Lazenby, I suppose you mean. Or Commander Lazenby, as she no doubt prefers to be called. Pah!"

  "Wipe the spit off your beard, Doctor," admonished Grimes, his prominent ears flushing angrily. "And, as far as Commander Lazenby is concerned, the advice she gave me was consistently, good."

  "You would think so. An ignorant spaceman led up the garden path by a flashily attractive woman."

  Luckily Brabham came in just then on some business or other, and Grimes was able to pass Brandt on to the first lieutenant. He sat down at his littered desk and thought, That cocky little bastard is all I need. He remembered a captain under whom he had served years ago, who used to exclaim when things went wrong, "I am surrounded by rogues and imbeciles!"

  And how many rogues and imbeciles was he, Grimes, surrounded by? He began to make calculations on a scrap of paper.

  Control room officers—six.

  Electronic communications officers—two.

  Psionic communications officer—one (and that was more than ample!).

  Supply branch officers—two.

  Engineer officers—six.

  Medical officer—one.

  Marine officer—one.

  Scientific officer—one.

  That made twenty, in the commissioned ranks alone.

  Cooks—four.

  Stewards—two.

  Stewardesses—four.

  That made thirty.

  Marines, including the sergeant and corporal—twenty-two.

  Fifty-two was now the score.

  Petty officers—four.

  General purpose ratings—twenty.

  Total, seventy-six. Seventy-six people who must have ridden to their parents' weddings on bicycles.

  Grimes had done his figuring as a joke, but suddenly it was no longer funny. Normally he enjoyed the essential loneliness of command, but that had been in ships where there was always company, congenial company, when he felt that he needed it. In this vessel there seemed to be nobody at all with whom he could indulge in a friendly drink and a yarn.

  Perhaps things would improve.

  Perhaps they wouldn't.

  Growl you may, he told himself, but go you must.

  Chapter 6

  It is always an anxious moment when a captain has to handle a strange ship, with strange officers and crew, for the first time. Grimes, stolidly ensconced in the pilot's chair, tried, not unsuccessfully, to convey the impression that he hadn't a worry in the whole universe. He made the usual major production of filling and lighting his pipe while listening to the countdown routine. "All hands," Brabham was saying into the intercom microphone, "secure ship for liftoff. Secure ship. Secure ship." Lieutenant Tangye, the navigator, was tense in the co-pilot's seat, his hands poised over the duplicate controls. No doubt the slim, blond, almost ladylike young man was thinking that he could make a far better job of getting the old bitch upstairs than this new skipper. Other officers were standing by radar and radar altimeter, NST transceiver, drift indicator, accelerometer, and all the rest of it. It was unnecessary; all the displays were visible to both pilot and co-pilot at a glance—but the bigger the ship the more people for whom jobs must be found.

  From the many compartments the reports came in. "All secure."

  "All secure for liftoff."

  "All secure."

  "All secure."

  "Any word from Commander Brandt yet?" asked Grimes. "After all, he is a departmental head."

  "Nothing yet, sir," replied Brabham.

  "Shake him up, will you, Number One."

  "Control to Commander Brandt. Have you secured yet? Acknowledge."

  Brandt's voice came through the speaker. "Doctor Brandt here. Of course I'm secure. This isn't my first time in Space, you know."

  Awkward bastard, thought Grimes. He said, "Lifting off."

  "Lifting off," repeated Brabham.

  At Grimes's touch on the controls the inertial drive, deep in the bowels of the ship, muttered irritably. Another touch—and the muttering became a cacophonous protest, loud even through the layer after layer of sonic insulation. Discovery shook herself, her structure groaning. From the NST speaker came the bored voice of Aerospace Control. "You are lifting, Discovery. You are clear of the pad. Bon voyage."

  "Acknowledge," said Grimes to the radio officer. He didn't need to be informed that the ship was off the ground. His own instruments would tell him that if he bothered to look at them—but the feel of the ship made it quite obvious that she was up and clear, lifting faster and faster. In the periscope screen he could see the spaceport area—the clusters of white administration buildings, the foreshortened silvery towers that were ships, big and little, dropping away, diminishing. The red, flashing beacons marking the berth that he had just left were sliding from the center of the display, but it didn't matter. He had been expecting drift, the wind the way it was. If he had been coming in to a landing it would have been necessary to apply lateral thrust; during a liftoff all that was required was to get up through and clear of the atmosphere.

  A hint of yaw—

  Only three degrees, but Grimes corrected it, more to get the feel of the ship than for any other reason. With the same motivation he brought the red flashers back to the center of the periscope screen. Mphm. The old bitch didn't handle too badly at all. He increased acceleration from a half gee to one gee, to one and a half, to two.

  The intercom speaker squawked. "Dr. Brandt, here. What the hell are you playing at up there?"

  "Minding our own bloody business!" snapped Grimes into his microphone. "Might I suggest that you do the same?"

  Brabham sniggered loudly.

  "Emergency rocket drill," ordered Grimes quietly. That, as he had suspected it would, took the grin off the first lieutenant's face. But the reaction drive was here to be used, wasn't it? "Number One, pass the word."

  "Attention, all hands," growled Brabham into the intercom. "Stand by for testing of reaction drive. Sudden variations in acceleration are to be expected. Stand by. Stand by."

  Grimes pushed a button, looked down at his console. Under ROCKETS the READY light glowed vivid green. With all his faults, MacMorris kept every system in a state of go. Decisively Grimes cut the inertial drive. His stomach tried to push its way up into his throat as acceleration abruptly ceased. He brought a finger down to the FIRE button, pushed it down past the first, second, and third stops. He felt as well as heard the screaming roar as the incandescent gases rushed through the Venturis, and then the renewal of accele
ration pushed him downward into the thick padding of his chair.

  "Aerospace Control to Discovery. Are those pyrotechnics really necessary?"

  "Tell him testing, testing," said Grimes to the radio officer. He succeeded in restarting the inertial drive and cutting the rockets at exactly the same instant. The ship continued to drive upward with no reduction of velocity.

  Brabham loudly sighed his relief. "You're lucky," he commented. "Sir. Come to that, we're all lucky."

  "What do you mean, Number One?" demanded Grimes.

  The first lieutenant laughed sourly. "This is the first time that the reaction drive has been tested within the memory of the oldest man. Commander Tallis would never use it."