The Road to the Rim Page 4

  "They have a merchant fleet of sorts, these Rim Worlders. The Sundowner Line. I've heard rumors that it's about to be nationalized. But they have no fighting navy."

  "But what's all this to do with Miss Pentecost, sir?"

  "If what's more than just hinted at in that confidential report is true—plenty. She's a recruiting sergeant, no less. Any officer with whom she's shipmates who's disgruntled, on the verge of throwing his hand in—or on the verge of being emptied out—she'll turn on the womanly sympathy for, and tell him that there'll always be a job waiting out on the Rim, that the Sundowner Line is shortly going to expand, so there'll be quick promotion and all the rest of it."

  "And what's that to do with me, Captain? "

  "Are all Survey Service ensigns as innocent as you, Mr. Grimes? Merchant officers the Rim Worlds want, and badly. Naval officers they'll want more badly still once the balloon goes up." Grimes permitted himself a superior smile. "It's extremely unlikely, sir, that I shall ever want to leave the Survey Service."

  "Unlikely perhaps—but not impossible. So bear in mind what I've told you. I think that you'll be able to look after yourself now that you know the score."

  "I think so too," Grimes told him firmly. He thought, The old bastard's been reading too many spy stories.

  VII

  THEY WERE DANCING.

  Tables and chairs had been cleared from the ship's saloon, and from the big, ornate playmaster throbbed the music of an orchestra so famous that even Grimes had heard of it—The Singing Drums.

  They were dancing.

  Some couples shuffled a sedate measure, never losing the contact between their magnetically shod feet and the polished deck. Others—daring or foolhardy—cavorted in Nul-G, gamboled fantastically but rarely gracefully in Free Fall.

  They were dancing.

  Ensign Grimes was trying to dance.

  It was not the fault of his partner that he was making such a sorry mess of it. She, Jane Pentecost, proved the truth of the oft-made statement that spacemen and spacewomen are expert at this form of exercise. He, John Grimes, was the exception that proves the rule. He was sweating, and his feet felt at least six times their normal size. Only the fact that he was holding Jane, and closely, saved him from absolute misery.

  There was a pause in the music. As it resumed Jane said, "Let's sit this one out, Admiral."

  "If you wish to," he replied, trying not to sound too grateful.

  "That's right. I wish to. I don't mind losing a little toenail varnish, but I think we'll call it a day while I still have a full set of toenails."

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "So am I." But the flicker of a smile robbed the words of their sting.

  She led the way to the bar. It was deserted save for the bored and sulky girl behind the gleaming counter. "All right, Sue," Jane told her. "You can join the revels. The Admiral and I will mind the shop."

  "Thank you, Miss Pentecost." Sue let herself out from her little cage, vanished gracefully and rapidly in the direction of the saloon. Jane took her place.

  "I like being a barmaid," she told the ensign, taking two frosted bulbs out of the cooler.

  "I'll sign for these," offered Grimes.

  "You will not. This comes under the heading of entertaining influential customers."

  "But I'm not. Influential, I mean."

  "But you will be." She went on dreamily. "I can see it. I can just see it. The poor old Delia O'Ryan, even more decrepit that she is now, and her poor old purser, about to undergo a fate worse than death at the hands of bloody pirates from the next Galaxy but three . . . . But all is not lost. There, light years distant, is big, fat, Grand Admiral Grimes aboard his flagship, busting a gut, to say nothing of his Mannschenn Drive unit, to rush to the rescue of his erstwhile girlfriend. 'Dammitall,' I can hear him muttering into his beard. 'Dammitall. That girl used to give me free drinks when I was a snotty nosed ensign. I will repay. Full speed ahead, Gridley, and damn the torpedoes!' "

  Grimes laughed—then asked sharply, "Admiral in which service?"

  "What do you mean, John?" She eyed him warily.

  "You know what I mean."

  "So . . ." she murmured. "So . . . I know that you had another home truth session with the Bearded Bastard. I can guess what it was about."

  "And is it true?" demanded Grimes.

  "Am I Olga Popovsky, the Beautiful Spy? Is that what you mean?"

  "More or less."

  "Come off it, John. How the hell can I be a secret agent for a non-existent government?"

  "You can be a secret agent for a subversive organization."

  "What is this? Is it a hangover from some half-baked and half-understood course in counterespionage?"

  "There was a course of sorts," he admitted. "I didn't take much interest in it. At the time."

  "And now you wish that you had. Poor John."

  "But it wasn't espionage that the Old Man had against you. He had some sort of story about your acting as a sort of recruiting sergeant, luring officers away from the Commission's ships to that crumby little rabble of star tramps calling itself the Sundowner Line . . . ."

  She didn't seem to be listening to him, but was giving her attention instead to the music that drifted from the saloon. It was one of the old, Twentieth Century melodies that were enjoying a revival. She began to sing in time to it.

  "Goodbye, I'll run

  To seek another sun

  Where I May find

  There are hearts more kind

  Than the ones left behind . . ."

  She smiled somberly and asked, "Does that answer your question?"

  "Don't talk in riddles," he said roughly.

  "Riddles? Perhaps—but not very hard ones. That, John, is a sort of song of farewell from a very old comic opera. As I recall it, the guy singing it was going to shoot through and join the French Foreign Legion. (But there's no French Foreign Legion anymore . . . .) We, out on the Rim, have tacked our own words on to it. It's become almost a national anthem to the Rim Runners, as the people who man our ships—such as they are—are already calling themselves.

  "There's no French Foreign Legion anymore—but the misfits and the failures have to have somewhere to go. I haven't lured anybody away from this service—but now and again I've shipped with officers who've been on the point of getting out, or being emptied out, and when they've cried into my beer I've given them advice. Of course, I've a certain natural bias in favor of my own home world. If I were Sirian born I'd be singing the praises of the Dog Star Line."

  "Even so," he persisted, "your conduct seems to have been somewhat suspect."

  "Has it? And how? To begin with, you are not an officer in this employ. And if you were, I should challenge you to find anything in the Commission's regulations forbidding me to act as I have been doing."

  "Captain Craven warned me," said Grimes.

  "Did he, now? That's his privilege. I suppose that he thinks that it's also his duty. I suppose he has the idea that I offered you admiral's rank in the Rim Worlds Navy as soon as we secede. If we had our own Navy—which we don't—we might just take you in as Ensign, Acting, Probationary."

  "Thank you."

  She put her elbows on the bar counter, propping her face between her hands, somehow conveying the illusion of gravitational pull, looking up at him. "I'll be frank with you, John. I admit that we do take the no-hopers, the drunks and the drifters into our merchant fleet. I know far better than you what a helluva difference there is between those rustbuckets and the well-found, well-run ships of the Commission and, come to that, Trans-Galactic Clippers and Waverley Royal Mail. But when we do start some kind of a Navy we shall want better material. Much better. We shall want highly competent officers who yet, somehow, will have the Rim World outlook. The first batch, of course, will have to be outsiders, to tide us over until our own training program is well under way."

  "And I don't qualify?" he asked stiffly.

  "Frankly, no. I've been watching you. You're t
oo much of a stickler for rules and regulations, especially the more stupid ones. Look at the way you're dressed now, for example. Evening wear, civilian, junior officers, for the use of. No individuality. You might as well be in uniform. Better, in fact. There'd be some touch of brightness."

  "Go on."

  "And the way you comport yourself with women. Stiff. Starchy. Correct. And you're all too conscious of the fact that I, even though I'm a mere merchant officer, and a clerical branch at that, put up more gold braid than you do. I noticed that especially when we were dancing. I was having to lead all the time."

  He said defensively, "I'm not a very good dancer."

  "You can say that again." She smiled briefly. "So there you have it, John. You can tell the Bearded Bastard, when you see him again, that you're quite safe from my wiles. I've no doubt that you'll go far in your own Service—but you just aren't Rim Worlds material."

  "I shouldn't have felt all that flattered if you'd said that I was," he told her bluntly—but he knew that he was lying.

  VIII

  "YES?" JANE WAS SAYING. "Yes, Mr. Letourneau?"

  Grimes realized that she was not looking at him, that she was looking past him and addressing a newcomer. He turned around to see who it was. He found—somehow the name hadn't registered—that it was the Psionic Radio Officer, a tall, pale, untidily put together young man in a slovenly uniform. He looked scared—but that was his habitual expression, Grimes remembered. They were an odd breed, these trained telepaths with their Rhine Institute diplomas, and they were not popular, but they were the only means whereby ships and shore stations could communicate instantaneously over the long light years. In the Survey Service they were referred to, slightingly, as Commissioned Teacup Readers. In the Survey Service and in the Merchant Service they were referred to as Snoopers. But they were a very necessary evil.

  "Yes, Mr. Letourneau?"

  "Where's the Old Man? He's not in his quarters."

  "The Master"—Jane emphasized the title—"is in the saloon." Then, a little maliciously, "Couldn't you have used your crystal ball?"

  Letourneau flushed. "You know very well, Miss Pentecost, that we have to take an oath that we will always respect the mental privacy of our shipmates . . . . But I must find him. Quickly."

  "Help yourself. He's treading the light fantastic in there." When he was gone she said, "Typical. Just typical. If it were a real emergency he could get B.B. on the intercom. But no. Not him. He has to parade his distrust of anything electronic and, at the same time, make it quite clear that he's not breaking his precious oath . . . . Tell me, how do you people handle your spaceborne espers?"

  He grinned. "We've still one big stick that you people haven't. A court martial followed by a firing party. Not that I've ever seen it used."

  "Hardly, considering that you've only been in Space a dog watch." Her face froze suddenly. "Yes, Sue?"

  It was the girl whom Jane had relieved in the bar. "Miss Pentecost, will you report to the Captain in Control, please. At once."

  "What have I done now?"

  "It's some sort of emergency, Miss Pentecost. The Chief Officer's up there with him, and he's sent for the Doctor and the two Chief Engineers."

  "Then I must away, John. Look after the bar again, Sue. Don't let the Admiral have too many free drinks."

  She moved fast and gracefully, was gone before Grimes could think of any suitable repartee. He said to the girl, "What is happening, Sue?"

  "I don't know, Ad—" She flushed. "Sorry, Ensign. And, in any case, I'm not supposed to talk to the passengers about it."

  "But I'm not a real passenger," he said—and asked himself, Am I a real anything?

  "No, I suppose you're not, Mr. Grimes. But you're not on duty."

  "An officer of the Survey Service is always on duty," he told her, with some degree of truth. "Whatever happens on the spacelanes is our concern." It sounded good.

  "Yes," she agreed hesitantly. "That's what my fiancé—he's a Lieutenant J.G.—is always telling me."

  "So what's all the flap about?"

  "Promise not to tell anybody?"

  "Of course."

  "Mr. Letourneau came wandering into the Saloon. He just stood there staring about, the way he does, then he spotted the Captain. He was actually dancing with me at the time . . . ." She smiled reminiscently, and added, "He's a very good dancer."

  "He would be. But go on."

  "He came charging across the dance floor—Mr. Letourneau, I mean. He didn't care whose toes he trod on or who he tripped over. I couldn't help overhearing when he started babbling away to Captain Craven. It's a distress call. From one of our ships—Epsilon Sextans.'" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "And it's piracy."

  "Piracy? Impossible."

  "But, Mr. Grimes, it's what he said."

  "Psionic Radio Officers have been known to go around the bend before now," Grimes told her, "and to send false alarm calls. And to receive non-existent ones."

  "But the Sexy Eppy—sorry, Epsilon Sextans—has a cargo that'd be worth pirating. Or so I heard. The first big shipment of Antigeriatridine to Waverly . . . ."

  Antigeriatridine, the so-called Immortality Serum. Manufactured in limited, but increasing quantities only on Marina (often called by its colonists Submarina), a cold, unpleasantly watery world in orbit about Alpha Crucis. The fishlike creatures from which the drug was obtained bred and flourished only in the seas of their own world.

  But piracy . . . .

  But the old legends were full of stories of men who had sold their souls for eternal youth.

  The telephone behind the bar buzzed sharply. Sue answered it. She said, "It's for you, Mr. Grimes."

  Grimes took the instrument. "That you, Ensign?" It was Captain Craven's voice. "Thought I'd find you there. Come up to Control, will you?" It was an order rather than a request.

  ALL THE SHIP'S EXECUTIVE OFFICERS were in the Control Room, and the Doctor, the purser and the two Chief Engineers. As Grimes emerged from the hatch he heard Kennedy, the Mate, say, "Here's the Ensign now."

  "Good. Then dog down, Mr. Kennedy, so we get some privacy." Craven turned to Grimes. '"You're on the Active List of the Survey Service, Mister, so I suppose you're entitled to know what's going on. The situation is this. Epsilon Sextans, Marina to Waverley with a shipment of Antigeriatridine, has been pirated." Grimes managed, with an effort, to refrain from saying "I know." Craven went on. "Her esper is among the survivors. He says that the pirates were two frigates of the Waldegren Navy. Anyhow, the Interstellar Drive Engineers aboard Epsilon Sextans managed to put their box of tricks on random precession, and they got away. But not in one piece . . . ."

  "Not in one piece?" echoed Grimes stupidly.

  "What the hell do you expect when an unarmed merchantman is fired upon, without warning, by two warships? The esper says that their Control has had it, and all the accommodation spaces. By some miracle the Psionic Radio Officer's shack wasn't holed, and neither was the Mannschenn Drive Room."

  "But even one missile . . ." muttered Grimes.

  "If you want to capture a ship and her cargo more or less intact," snapped Craven, "you don't use missiles. You use laser. It's an ideal weapon if you aren't fussy about how many people you kill."

  "Knowing the Waldegrenese as we do," said Jane Pentecost bitterly, "there wouldn't have been any survivors anyhow."

  "Be quiet!" roared Craven. Grimes was puzzled by his outburst. It was out of character. True, he could hardly expect a shipmaster to react to the news of a vicious piracy with equanimity—but this shipmaster was an officer of the Reserve, had seen service in warships and had been highly decorated for outstanding bravery in battle.

  Craven had control of himself again. "The situation is this. There are people still living aboard Epsilon Sextans. Even though all her navigators have been killed I think that I shall be able to find her in time. Furthermore, she has a very valuable cargo and, in any case, cannot be written off as a total loss. There is little damage that cann
ot be repaired by welded patches. I have already sent a message to Head Office requesting a free hand. I have salvage in mind. I see no reason why the ship and her cargo should not be taken on to Waverley."

  "A prize crew, sir?"

  "If you care to put it that way. This will mean cutting down the number of officers aboard my own vessel—but I am sure, Mr. Grimes, that you will be willing to gain some practical watch-keeping experience. All that's required is your autograph on the ship's Articles of Agreement."