Catch the Star Winds Page 4

  "But what have we done?" asked Doc in a worried voice.

  "My conscience is clear," I said. "At least, I think it is . . ."

  "My conscience is clear," Sandra stated firmly.

  "Mine never is," admitted Doc gloomily.

  The mate put his glass down on the table. "All right," he told us brusquely. "Go and get washed behind the ears and brush your hair. One of you drag the crystal gazer away from his dog's brain in aspic and try to get him looking something like an officer and a gentleman."

  "Relax, Ralph," said Jenkins, pouring what was left in the decanter into his own glass.

  "I wish I could. But it's damned odd the way the commodore is yelling for all of us. I may not be a psionic radio officer, but I have my hunches."

  Jenkins laughed. "One thing is certain, Ralph, he's not sending for us to fire us. Rim Runners are never that well off for officers. And once we've come out to the Rim, we've hit rock bottom." He began to warm up. "We've run away from ourselves as far as we can, to the very edge of the blackness, and we can't run any farther."

  "Even so . . ." said the mate.

  "Doc's right," said Sandra. "He'll just be handing out new appointments to all of us. With a bit of luck—or bad luck?—we might be shipping out together again."

  "It'll be good luck for all of you if we are," said Doc. "My jungle juice is the best in the fleet, and you all know it."

  "So you say," said Sandra.

  "But what about the old man?" I asked. "And the engineers? Are they bidden to the presence?"

  "No," said Ralph. "As far as I know, they'll just be going on leave." He added gloomily, "There's something in the wind as far as we're concerned. I wish I knew what it was."

  "There's only one way to find out," said Sandra briskly, getting to her feet.

  * * *

  We left the ship together—Ralph, Doc Jenkins, Sandra, Smethwick and myself. Ralph, who was inclined to take his naval reserve commission seriously, tried to make it a march across the dusty, scarred concrete to the low huddle of administration buildings. Both Sandra and I tried to play along with him, but Doc Jenkins and our tame telepath could turn any march into a straggle without even trying. For Smethwick there was, perhaps, some excuse; released from the discipline of watchkeeping he was renewing contact with his telepathic friends all over the planet. He wandered along like a man in a dream, always on the point of falling over his own feet. And Jenkins rolled happily beside him, a somewhat inane grin on his ruddy face. I guessed that in the privacy of his cabin he had depleted his stocks of jungle juice still further.

  I wished that I'd imbibed another stiff slug myself. The wind was bitterly cold, driving the dust before it in whorls and eddies, filling our eyes with grit, redolent of old socks and burning sulphur. I was wondering how anybody could be fool enough to come out to the Rim Worlds. I was wondering, not for the first time, how I'd ever been fool enough to come out to the Rim Worlds.

  It was a relief to get into the office building, out of that insistent, nagging wind. The air was pleasantly warm, but my eyes were still stinging. I used my handkerchief to try to clear the gritty particles from them, and saw through tears that the others were doing the same—all save Smethwick, who, lost in some private world of his own, was oblivious to discomfort. Ralph brushed the dust from his epaulettes and then used his handkerchief to restore a polish to his shoes, tossing the soiled fabric into a handy disposer. He started to ascend the stairs, and paused to throw a beckoning nod at us. Not without reluctance we followed.

  There was the familiar door at the end of the passageway with Astronautical Superintendent inscribed on the translucent plastic. The door opened of itself as we approached. Through the doorway we could see the big, cluttered desk and, behind it, the slight, wiry figure of Commodore Grimes. He had risen to his feet, but he still looked small, dwarfed by the furnishings that must have been designed for a much larger man. I was relieved to see that his creased and pitted face was illumined by a genuinely friendly smile, his teeth startlingly white against the dark skin.

  "Come in," he boomed. "Come in, all of you." He waved a hand to the chairs that had been set in a rough semicircle before his desk. "Be seated."

  And then I didn't feel so relieved after all. Fussing in the background was Miss Hallows, his secretary, tending a bubbling coffee percolator. From past experience I knew that such hospitality meant that we were to be handed the dirty end of some very peculiar stick.

  When the handshaking and the exchange of courtesies were over we sat down. There was a period of silence while Miss Hallows busied herself with the percolator and the cups. My attention was drawn by an odd-looking model on the commodore's desk, and I saw that the others, too, were looking at it curiously and that old Grimes was watching us with a certain degree of amusement. It was a ship, that was obvious, but it could not possibly be a spaceship. It was, I guessed, some sort of aircraft; there was a cigar-shaped hull and, protruding from it, a fantastically complicated array of spars and vanes. I know even less about aeronautics than I do about astronautics—after all, I'm just the spacefaring office boy—but even I doubted if such a contraption could ever fly. I turned my head to look at Ralph; he was staring at the thing with a sort of amused and amazed contempt.

  "Admiring my new toy?" asked the commodore.

  "It's rather . . . it's rather odd, sir," said Ralph.

  "Go on," chuckled Grimes. "Why don't you ask?"

  There was an embarrassed silence, broken by Sandra. "All right, commodore. What is it?"

  "That, my dear," he told her, "is your new ship."

  Chapter 3

  We looked at the commodore, and he looked back at us. I tried to read his expression and came to the reluctant conclusion that he wasn't joking. We looked at the weird contraption on his desk. Speaking for myself, the more I stared at it, the less like a ship it seemed. Have you ever seen those fantastic ornamental carp that are bred on Earth, their bodies surrounded by an ornate tracery of filmy fins, utility sacrificed to appearance? That's what the thing reminded me of. It was pretty, beautiful even in a baroque kind of way, but quite useless. And Grimes had told us quite seriously that it was a model of our new ship.

  Ralph cleared his throat. He said, "Excuse me, sir, but I don't quite understand. That . . . that model doesn't seem to represent a conventional vessel. I can't see any signs of a venturi . . ." He was on his feet now, bending over the desk. "And are those propellers? Or should I say airscrews?" He straightened up. "And she's not a gaussjammer, one of the old Ehrenhaft drive jobs. That's certain."

  Old Grimes was smiling again. "Sit down, Captain Listowel. There's no need to get excited."

  "Captain Listowel?" asked Ralph.

  "Yes." The smile vanished as though switched off. "But only if you agree to sail in command of . . ." he gestured towards the model . . . "the Flying Cloud."

  "Flying Cloud? But that's a transgalactic clipper name!"

  Grimes smiled again. "The first Flying Cloud was a clipper on Earth's seas in the days of wooden ships and iron men. This Flying Cloud is a clipper, too—but not a transgalactic clipper. She is the latest addition to Rim Runners' fleet, the first of her kind."

  "But—" Ralph was looking really worried now. "But, sir, there are many senior masters in this employ. As for that, there are quite a few chief officers senior to me . . ."

  "And all of them," said Grimes, "old and set in their ways, knowing only one way of getting from point A to point B, and not wanting to know any other. Lift on reaction drive. Aim for the target star. Accelerate. Cut reaction drive. Switch on Mannschenn drive. A child could do it. And while all this is going on you have the ship overmanned with a pack of engineers eating their heads off and pulling down high salaries, and getting to the stage where they regard the ship merely as a platform upon which to mount their precious machinery."

  I couldn't help grinning. It was common knowledge that Grimes didn't like engineers and was hardly on speaking terms with the engineer superinte
ndents.

  But Ralph, once he had smelled a rat, was stubborn. And he was frank. He said, "I appreciate the promotion, sir. But there must be a catch to it."

  "Of course there is, Captain Listowel. Life is just one long series of catches—in both senses of the word. Catches as in your usage of the word—and fumbled catches." He added, "I hope you don't fumble this catch."

  Ralph was persistent. "I see your point, sir. But this ship is obviously something new, something highly experimental. As you know, I hold my master's certificate—but it's valid in respect of conventional drives only."

  "But you, Captain Listowel, are the only officer we have with any qualifications at all in respect of the Erikson drive." He pulled a folder out of the top drawer of his desk and opened it. "Like most of our personnel, you made your way out to the Rim by easy stages. You were four years on Atlantia. You shipped in topsail schooners as navigator—it seems that the Atlantian Ministry of Transport recognizes astronautical certificates of competency insofar as navigation is concerned. You thought of settling permanently on the planet and becoming a professional seaman. You sat for, and obtained, your second mate's certificate in sail . . ."

  "But what connection . . . ?"

  "Let me finish. You were in Rim Leopard when she had that long spell for repairs on Tharn. You elected to take part of your leave on that world—and you shipped out as a supernumerary officer in one of their trading schooners."

  "Even so . . ."

  "Take it from me, Captain Listowel, that your fore-and-aft rig second mate's ticket, together with your experience, means more than your master astronaut's certificate. Too, you are qualified in one other, very important way." He looked at each of us in turn. "You're all so qualified."

  "I know nothing about wooden ships, commodore," said Jenkins, "and I'm not an iron man."

  "Too right, doctor," agreed the commodore cheerfully. "But you have no close ties on any of the Rim Worlds—neither chick nor child, as the saying goes. And that applies to all of you."

  "And so this new ship is dangerous?" asked Ralph quietly.

  "No, Captain Listowel. She's safer than the average spaceship—far safer than Rim Dragon. She'll be as easy as an old shoe. And economical to run. She is," he went on, "a prototype. It is our intention, insofar as some trades are concerned, to make her the standard carrier."

  "And the catch?" insisted Ralph.

  "All right. You're entitled to know." He leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling as though in search of inspiration. "You are all of you, I take it, familiar with the principle of the conveyor belt?"

  "Of course," Ralph told him.

  "Good. You know, then, that as long as the belt is kept loaded, the speed at which it is run is of relatively minor importance. So it is with shipping. Express services are desirable for mails and passengers and perishables—but what does it matter if a slab of zinc is ten years on the way instead of ten weeks?"

  "It will matter a lot to the crew of the ship," grumbled Doc.

  "I agree. But when the ship is traveling almost at the speed of light, there will not be a lapse of ten years subjective time. To the crew it will be just a normal interstellar voyage."

  "But," Ralph interjected, "where does the economy come in?"

  "In manning, for a start. I have already discussed the matter with the Astronauts' Guild, and they agree that personnel should be paid on the basis of subjective elapsed time . . ."

  "What!" exploded Ralph.

  "Plus a bonus," Grimes added hastily. "Then there's fuel consumption. There'll be a pile, of course, but it will be a small one. It will be supply power only for essential services and auxiliary machinery. As you all know, fissionable elements are in short supply and very expensive on the Rim Worlds, so that's a big saving. Then, there'll be no reaction drive and interstellar drive engineers to wax fat on their princely salaries. One donkey-man, on junior officer's pay, will be able to handle the job . . ."

  "A donkeyman?" asked Sandra, her voice puzzled.

  "Yes, my dear. In the last days of sail, on Earth, the windjammers used some auxiliary machinery, steam-driven. The mechanic who looked after and ran this was rated as donkeyman."

  Then Ralph voiced the thoughts, the objections of all of us. He complained, "You've told us nothing, commodore. You want us to buy a pig in a poke. You've mentioned something called the Erikson drive, and you've given us a short lecture on the economics of ship management, but we're spacemen, not accountants. Oh, I know that we're supposed to get our starwagons from point A to point B as economically as possible—but getting them there at all is the prime consideration. And, frankly, I don't see how that contraption could get from one side of the spaceport to the other."

  And, I thought, you've got us all interested, you cunning old bastard. You've got us hooked.

  Grimes looked down at the cold coffee in his cup with distaste. He got up, went to his filing cabinet and pulled out the "W" drawer, taking from it a bottle of whiskey and glasses. He said, "It's rather a long story, but you're entitled to hear it. I suggest that we all make ourselves comfortable."

  We settled down with our drinks to listen.

  Chapter 4

  You will recall [he said] that some few years ago I commissioned Faraway Quest to carry out a survey of this sector of the Galaxy. To the Galactic East I made contact with Tharn and Grollor, Mellise and Stree, but you are all familiar with the planets of the Eastern Circuit. My first sweep, however, was to the West. Yes, there are worlds to the West, populous planets whose peoples have followed a course of evolution parallel to our own. They're more than merely humanoid, some of these people. They're human. But—and it's one helluva big "but"—their worlds are antimatter worlds. We didn't realize this until an attempt was made to establish contact with an alien ship. Luckily only two people were directly involved—our own psionic radio officer and a woman, who seemed to hold the same rank, from the other vessel. The idea was that they should meet and rub noses and so on in one of Faraway Quest's boats, midway between the two ships; both I and the other Captain were worried about the possibility of the exchange of viruses, bacteria and whatever, and this boat of mine was supposed to be a sort of quarantine station. But we needn't have worried. Our two pet guinea pigs went up and out in a flare of energy that would have made a fusion bomb look silly.

  So that was it, I thought at the time. The psionic radio officers had had it, in a big way, so communications had broken down. And it was quite obvious that any contact between ourselves and the people of the antimatter worlds was definitely impossible. I got the hell out and ran to the Galactic East. I made landings on Tharn and Grollor and Mellise and Stree and dickered with the aborigines and laid the foundation of our Eastern Circuit trade. But there was that nagging doubt at the back of my mind; there was that unfinished business to the West. Cutting a long story short, after things were nicely sewn up on the Eastern Circuit worlds I went back. I managed to establish contact—but not physical contact!—with the dominant race. I'd replaced my psionic radio officer, of course, but it was still a long job. I'm sure that Mr. Smethwick won't mind if I say that the average professional telepath just hasn't got the right kind of mind to cope with technicalities. But we worked out a code to use with buzzer and flashing lamp, and eventually we were even able to talk directly on the RT without too many misunderstandings.

  We traded ideas. Oddly enough—or not so oddly—there wasn't much to trade. Their technology was about on the same level as our own. They had atomic power (but who hasn't?) and interstellar travel, and their ships used a version of the Mannschenn drive, precessing gyroscopes and all. It was all very interesting, academically speaking, but it got neither party anywhere. Anything we knew and used, they knew and used. Anything they knew and used, we knew and used. It was like having a heart to heart talk with one's reflection in a mirror.

  Oh, there were a few minor differences. That new system of governor controls for the Mannschenn drive, for example—we got that from the ant
imatter people. And they'd never dreamed of keeping fish in their hydroponics tanks, but they're doing it now. But there was nothing really important.

  But I had to bring something back. And I did. No doubt you've often wondered just what is going on inside Satellite XIV. It's been there for years, hanging in its equatorial orbit, plastered with KEEP OFF notices. It's still there—but the reason for its construction has been removed.

  I brought something back. I brought back a large hunk of antimatter. It's iron—or should I say "anti-iron"? But iron or anti-iron, it still behaves as iron in a magnetic field. It's hanging in its casing, making no contact with the walls—and it had better not!—held in place by the powerful permanent magnets. It'd be safe in a hard vacuum, but it's safer still suspended in the neutronium that the University boys were able to cook up for me.