Catch the Star Winds Read online

  We saw a circle of yellow light suddenly appear on Listra's sleek side. We saw, through telescopes and binoculars, the little figure that hung there for a while in black silhouette. We could make out the bulky bundle that she was carrying.

  Flame jetted from her shoulder units, and she was falling out and away from her own ship. Slowly she approached the lifeboat. I looked away briefly, looked at the screen. The aliens, like ourselves, were crowded around viewports, were watching this first physical contact between our two races.

  She was very close to Peter's boat now. I could imagine him waiting in the little cabin, as he had waited—how many times?—in his dreams. I could appreciate, dimly, what he must be feeling. I had been in love myself and had waited for the loved one, and what I had felt must be no more than a pale shadow of what is felt by a telepath. There was, I confess, more than a little envy in my thoughts.

  She was very close to the boat, and I saw that Peter had the outer door of the little airlock open.

  For a long second she was silhouetted against the glow of the airlock light. . .

  And then . . .

  And then I was blind, as the others were blind, with tears welling from my eyes, the skin of my face burning from its exposure to radiation. She had been there, just entering the boat, and then she and the boat had vanished in one dreadful flash.

  Slowly sight returned, dim and painful. I was looking once again at the screen, and I could see that those in the other ship had been affected as we had. There was pain on their faces, and it was not only physical pain. I knew then—as they must have known as they looked at us—that this had been no act of treachery, that there had been no murderous bomb concealed among the package of bartered goods.

  Slowly the alien Captain shrugged his shoulders. He made a gesture of rejection with his slim hands. One of his officers handed him something. It was a black glove. He put it on. Slowly he brought his hands together—the white skinned one and the black gloved one. He flung them apart explosively.

  The screen went blank. We looked away from it through the port. The alien ship was gone.

  "We should have guessed," Liddell was muttering. "We should have guessed. They did."

  "But too late," said one of the others.

  "What should we have guessed?" asked Grimes.

  "Antimatter," said Liddell. "We've known for centuries that it can exist. Matter identical with what we call normal matter, except that all electrical charges are reversed. We thought that we might find it in other galaxies if ever we had a ship capable of making the journey . . . But perhaps the Dain Worlds aren't really part of this galaxy at all."

  "And when it comes into contact with normal matter?" pressed Grimes.

  "You saw, Captain. There can never, never, be any contact between the Lowanni and ourselves."

  "And what happens," I asked, "when it's two living bodies of the two kinds of matter that make the contact?"

  "You saw," said Liddell.

  But I was not satisfied with the answer, and am still not satisfied. I remembered what Peter had told me about the conclusion of his dream, and have yet to decide if he was the unluckiest, or the luckiest of men.

  CATCH THE STAR WINDS

  For the one-time service manager of a certain engineering concern

  I

  THE CREW

  Chapter 1

  She was old and tired, the Rim Dragon—and after this, her final voyage, we were feeling just that way ourselves. It was as though she had known somehow that a drab and miserable end awaited her in the ungentle hands of the breakers, and she had been determined to forestall the inevitable and go out in a blaze of glory—or as much glory as would have been possible for a decrepit Epsilon Class tramp finishing her career after many changes of ownership at the very rim of the Galaxy, the edge of the dark.

  Fortunately for us, she had overdone things.

  Off Grollor, for example, a malfunctioning of the control room computer had coincided with a breakdown of the main propellant pump. If the second mate hadn't got his sums wrong we should have been trapped in a series of grazing ellipses, with no alternative but to take to the boats in a hurry before too deep a descent into the atmosphere rendered this impossible. As things worked out, however, the mistakes made by our navigator and his pet computer resulted in our falling into a nice, stable orbit, with ample time at our disposal in which to make repairs.

  Then there had been pile trouble, and Mannschenn drive trouble—and for the benefit of those of you who have never experienced this latter, all I can say is that it is somewhat hard to carry out normal shipboard duties when you're not certain if it's high noon or last Thursday. It was during the Mannschenn drive trouble that Cassidy, our reaction drive chief engineer, briefly lost control of his temperamental fissioning furnace. By some miracle the resultant flood of radiation seemed to miss all human personnel. It was the algae tanks that caught it—and this was all to the good, as a mutated virus had been running riot among the algae, throwing our air conditioning and sewage disposal entirely out of kilter. The virus died, and most of the algae died—but enough of the organisms survived to be the parents of a new and flourishing population.

  Then there had been the occasions when Rim Dragon had not overdone things, but her timing had been just a little out. There had been, for example, the tube lining that had cracked just a second or so too late (fortunately, really, from our viewpoint) but the mishap nonetheless had resulted in our sitting down on the concrete apron of Port Grimes, on Tharn, hard enough to buckle a vane.

  There had been another propellant pump failure—this time on Mellise—that caused us to be grounded on that world for repairs at just the right time to be subjected to the full fury of a tropical hurricane. Luckily, the procedure for riding out such atmospheric disturbances is laid down in Rim Runners' Standing Orders and Regulations. It was a Captain Calver, I think, who had been similarly trapped on Mellise several years ago in some ancient rustbucket called Lorn Lady. He had coped with the situation by rigging stays to save his ship from being overturned by the wind. We did the same. It worked—although the forward towing lugs, to which our stays were shackled, would have torn completely away from the shell plating with disastrous consequences had the blow lasted another five minutes.

  Anyhow, the voyage was now over—or almost over.

  We were dropping down to Port Forlorn, on Lorn, falling slowly down the column of incandescence that was our reaction drive, drifting cautiously down to the circle of drab gray concrete that was the spaceport apron, to the gray concrete that was hardly distinguishable from the gray landscape, from the dreary flatlands over which drifted the thin rain and the gray smoke and the dirty fumes streaming from the stacks of the refineries.

  We were glad to be back—but, even so . . .

  Ralph Listowel, the mate, put into words the feeling that was, I think, in the minds of all but one of us. He quoted sardonically:

  "Lives there a man with soul so dead

  Who never to himself hath said

  When returning from some foreign strand

  This is my own, my native land?"

  Of all of us, the only genuine, native-born Rim Worlder descended from the first families was the old man. He looked up from his console now to scowl at his chief officer. And then I, of course, had to make matters worse by throwing in my own two bits' worth of archaic verse. I remarked, "The trouble with you, Ralph, is that you aren't romantic. Try to see things this way . . .

  "Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies with magic sails,

  Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales . . ."

  "What the hell's the bloody purser doing in here?" roared the captain, turning his glare on me. "Mr. Malcolm, will you please get the hell out of my control room? And you, Mr. Listowel, please attend to your duties."

  I unstrapped myself from my chair and left hastily. We carried no third mate, and I had been helping out at landings and blast-offs by looking after the RT. Besides, I
liked to be on top to see everything that was happening. Sulkily, I made my way down to the officers' flat, staggering a little as the ship lurched, and let myself into the wardroom.

  The other two "idlers" were there—Sandra and Doc Jenkins. They were sprawled at ease in their acceleration chairs, sipping drinks from tall glasses dewy with condensation.

  "So this is how the poor live," I remarked sourly.

  "The way that the old bitch has been carrying on," said Doc affably, "we have to assume that any given drink may be our last. But how come you're not in the greenhouse?"

  "They gave me the bum's rush," I admitted, dropping into the nearest chair, strapping myself in. I was feeling extremely disgruntled. In well-manned, well-found ships pursers are brought up to regard the control room as forbidden ground, but over the past few months, I had become used to playing my part in blastings-off and landings and had come to appreciate the risks that we were running all the time. If anything catastrophic happened I'd be dead, no matter where I was. But when I die I'd like to know the reason.

  "So they gave you the bum's rush," said Sandra, not at all sympathetically. (She had been heard to complain that if the purser was privileged to see all that was going on, a like privilege should be extended to the catering officer. "Might I inquire why?"

  "You might," I told her absently, listening to the thunder of the rocket drive, muffled by the insulation but still loud in the confined space. It sounded healthy enough. They seemed to be getting along without me up there. But we weren't down yet.

  "Why?" she asked bluntly.

  "Give me a drink, and I'll tell you."

  She did not unstrap herself but extended a long, shapely arm and managed to shove the heavy decanter and a glass across the table so that they were within my reach. I looked at the surface of the liquid within the container. It was rippled, but ever so slightly, by the vibration. The old girl was behaving herself. I might still have time for a drink before things started to happen. I poured myself a generous slug and raised the tumbler to my lips. It was, as I had suspected, the not at all bad gin manufactured by the doctor in his capacity of biochemist. The lime flavor made it palatable.

  She said, "You've got your drink."

  I said, "All right. If you must know, I was quoting poetry. Ralph started it. The master did not, repeat not, approve . . ."

  "Down," quoted the doctor in his fruitiest voice.

  "Down.

  Fierce stabbing

  Flame phallus

  Rending

  Membrane of atmosphere,

  Tissues of cloud.

  Down-bearing,

  Thrusting

  To stony womb of world.

  Spacemen, I ask you

  What monster

  Or prodigy

  Shall come of this rape?"

  I looked at him with some distaste. His chubby face under the overly long, overly oily black hair was (as usual) smugly sensual. He had an extensive repertoire of modern verse, and practically all of it dealt with rape, both literal and figurative.

  "If I'd quoted that trash," I told him, "the old man would have been justified in booting me out of his Holy of Holies. But I was quoting poetry. Poetry. Period."

  "Oh, yes. Poetry. Meretricious jingles. You and dear Ralph share a passion for this revival of the ancient Terran slush, corn of the corniest. Our lord and master did well in arising in his wrath and hurling you into the outer darkness . . ."

  "Poetry," said Sandra flatly, "and ship handling just don't mix. Especially at a time like this."

  "She was riding down," I said, "sweetly and gently, on full automatic."

  "And all of us," she pointed out, "at the mercy of a single fuse. I may be only chief cook and bottlewasher aboard this wagon, but even I know that it is essential for the officers in the control room to be fully alert at all times."

  "All right," I said. "All right."

  I glared at her, and she glared at me. She was always handsome—but she was almost beautiful when she was in a bad temper. I wondered (as I had often wondered before) what she would be like when the rather harsh planes and angles of her face were softened by some gentler passion. But she did her job, Sandra did, and did it well, and kept to herself—as others, as well as I, had learned the hard way.

  Meanwhile, we were still falling, still dropping, the muffled thunder of our reaction drive steady and unfaltering. In view of the past events and near disasters of the voyage it was almost too good to be true. It was, I decided, too good to be true—and then, as though in support of my pessimism, the sudden silence gripped the hearts of all of us. Sandra's face was white under her coppery hair and Jenkins's normally ruddy complexion was a sickly green. We waited speechless for the last, the final crash.

  The ship tilted gently, ever so gently, tilted and righted herself, and the stuffy air inside the wardroom was alive with the whispered complaints of the springs and cylinders of her landing gear. The bulkhead speaker crackled and we heard the old man's voice: "The set-down has been accomplished. All personnel may proceed on their arrival duties."

  Doc Jenkins laughed, unashamedly relieved. He unstrapped himself and poured a generous drink from the decanter into each of our glasses. "To the end of the voyage," he said, raising his tumbler. He gulped his gin. Then, "Now that we can all relax, Peter, just what was the so-called poetry that led to your well-merited eviction from the greenhouse?"

  " 'Saw the heavens fill with commerce,' " I quoted. " 'Argosies with magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales . . . ' "

  "We dropped down all right," he jested, "but not on any magic sails. A down-thrusting phallus of flame is a far better description of rocket drive."

  "I prefer the magic sails," I said.

  "You would," he said.

  "Some people," said Sandra pointedly, getting to her feet, "have work to do. Even though the ship is finished, we aren't."

  Chapter 2

  Yes, we all had work to do—but none of us, not even Sandra, was particularly keen on getting started on it. We were down, and still in one piece, and we were feeling that sense of utter relaxation that comes at the end of a voyage; there was something in it of homecoming (although the Rim Worlds were home only to the old man), something in it of the last day of school.

  Sandra stood there for a moment or so, looking down at Doc and myself. Her regard shifted to the decanter. She said, "It's a shame to leave all that to you two pigs."

  "Don't let it worry you, duckie," Jenkins admonished her.

  "It does worry me."

  She sat down again and refilled her glass. The doctor refilled his glass. I refilled mine.

  "Journeys end," said Doc, making a toast of it.

  "In lovers meeting," I added, finishing the quotation.

  "I didn't know you had a popsy in Port Forlorn," said Sandra distantly.

  "I haven't," I said. "Not now. Not anymore. But there should be lovers' meetings at the end of a voyage."

  "Why?" she asked, feigning interest.

  "Because some sentimental slob of a so-called poet said so," sneered Doc.

  "Better than all your crap about down-thrusting phalluses," I retorted.

  "Boys, boys . . ." admonished Sandra.

  "Is there anything left in the bottle?" demanded Ralph Listowel.

  We hadn't seen or heard him come into the wardroom. We looked up at him in mild amazement as he stood there, awkward, gangling, his considerable height diminished ever so slightly by his habitual slouch. There was a worried expression on his lined face. I wondered just what was wrong now.

  "Here, Ralph," said Sandra, passing him a drink.

  "Thanks." The mate gulped rather than sipped. "Hmm. Not bad." He gulped again. "Any more?"

  "Building up your strength, Ralph?" asked Sandra sweetly.

  "Could be," he admitted. "Or perhaps this is an infusion of Dutch courage."

  "And what do you want it for?" I asked. "The hazards of the voyage are over and done with."


  "Those hazards, yes," he said gloomily. "But there are worse hazards than those in space. When mere chief officers are bidden to report to the super's office, at once if not before, there's something cooking—and, I shouldn't mind betting you a month's pay, it'll be something that stinks."

  "Just a routine bawling out," I comforted him. "After all, you can't expect to get away with everything all the time."

  A wintry grin did nothing to soften his harsh features. "But it's not only me he wants. He wants you, Sandra, and you, Doc, and you, Peter. And Smethwick, our commissioned clairvoyant. One of you had better go to shake him out of his habitual stupor."