Catch the Star Winds Read online

  "Precisely," agreed Grimes. "Well, I don't think that they'll be able to get things moving prior to your takeoff, captain—but if you should have to return to surface for any reason, or even if you hang in orbit, there's a grave risk that you'll be held. I want there to be no hitches."

  "There will be none," said Ralph stiffly.

  "Good. And when do you intend getting upstairs?"

  "At the advertised time, sir, 0900 hrs."

  "And you're quite happy about everything?"

  "Yes, sir. Even so . . ."

  "Every spaceman always feels that 'even so'—otherwise he wouldn't be worth a damn as a spaceman. (Some more coffee, please, if you'll be so good. Excellent.) I suppose that I'll still be around when you return. I hope so. But I shall be getting your voyage reports by way of the psionic radio . . ."

  "I'm surprised, commodore," said Martha Wayne, "that the ship hasn't been fitted with the Carlotti equipment."

  "It wouldn't work," Grimes told her. "It will run only in conjunction with the Mannschenn drive." He turned to the telepath. "So you're the key man, Mr. Smethwick."

  Claude grinned feebly and said, "As long as you don't expect me to bash a key, sir."

  We all laughed. His ineptitude with anything mechanical was notorious.

  Grimes got to his feet reluctantly. "I'll not get in your hair any longer. You all have jobs to do." He said, as he shook hands with Ralph, "You've a good ship, Listowel. And a good crew. Look after them both."

  "I'll do that," promised Ralph.

  "I won't say goodbye," said Grimes. "Au revoir is better."

  He swung away abruptly and walked quickly out of the wardroom. I hurried after him to escort him to the gangway.

  At the airlock he shook hands with me again. He said quietly, "I envy you, Mr. Malcolm. I envy you. If things had been different I'd have been sailing in her. But . . ."

  "There are times," I said, "when I envy those who have family ties."

  He allowed himself to grin. "You have something there, young man. After all, one can't have everything. I've a wife and a son, and you have the first of the interstellar lightjammers. I guess that we shall each of us have to make the best of what we've got. Anyhow, look after yourself."

  I assured him that I would, and, as soon as he was ashore, I went back inside the ship.

  * * *

  The takeoff was a remarkably painless procedure.

  When the ship was buttoned up and we were at our stations, the linesmen let go our moorings fore and aft. The little winches, obedient to the pressing of buttons in the control room, functioned perfectly. On the screen of the closed-circuit TV I watched the lines snaking in through the fair-leads, saw the cover plates slide into place as the eyes vanished inside our hull. There was no need for any fancy maneuvers; the wind pushed us gently away from the wharf.

  "Ballast," ordered Ralph. "Pump 3 and 5."

  "Pump 3 and 5," I repeated, opening valves and pressing the starter buttons.

  I heard the throbbing of the pumps, watched the mercury fall in the graduated columns of the draft indicator, a twin to the one in the supercargo's office. But we still had negative lift, although we were now floating on the surface like a huge bubble. There was a new feel to the ship, an uneasiness, an expectancy as she stirred and rolled to the low swell. And still the mercury dropped in the transparent tubes until, abruptly, the pulsation of the pumps cut out.

  "Number 4, sir?" I asked.

  "No, Peter. Not yet. Extrude atmospheric control surfaces."

  "Extrude atmospheric control surfaces, sir."

  On the screen I saw the stubby wings extend telescopically from the shining hull.

  "I thought that you just pumped all ballast and went straight up," said Martha Wayne, who was seated at the radio telephone.

  "We could," said Ralph, "we could; but, as I see it, the secret of handling these ships is always to keep some weight up your sleeve. After all, we shall have to make a landing on Grollor. I intend to see if I can get her upstairs on aerodynamic lift." He turned to me. "I don't think that it's really necessary to keep Sandra and Doc on stations in the storeroom and the farm. After all, this isn't a rocket blast-off, and they're supposed to be learning how to handle this scow. Get them up here, will you?"

  "And Claude and Peggy?" I asked.

  "No. Claude is hopeless at anything but his job, and Miss Simmons had better keep her eye on her mechanical toys."

  I gave the necessary orders on the intercom, and while I was doing so the speaker of the RT crackled into life. "Spaceport control to Flying Cloud," we heard. "Spaceport control to Flying Cloud. What is the delay? I repeat: what is the delay?"

  The voice was familiar; it belonged to Commodore Grimes. And it was anxious.

  "Pass me the mike," said Ralph. He reported quietly, "Flying Cloud to spaceport control. There is no delay. Request permission to take off."

  "Take off then, before the barnacles start growing on your bottom!" blustered Grimes.

  Ralph grinned and handed the microphone back to Martha. He waited until Sandra and Doc, who had just come into the control room, had belted themselves into their chairs; then he put both hands on the large wheel. "Full ahead port," he ordered. I pressed the starting button, moved the handle hard over, and Ralph turned his wheel to starboard. "Full ahead starboard," he ordered.

  The ship came round easily, heading out for the open sea. From the transparent bubble that was the control room we could now see nothing but gray water and gray sky, and the dark line of the horizon towards which we were steering; but on the screen of the closed circuit TV we could watch the huddle of spaceport buildings and the wharf, to which the little blimp was still moored, receding.

  With his left hand Ralph held Flying Cloud steady on course; his right moved over the controls on the steering column. And the motion was different now. The ship was no longer rolling or pitching, but, from under us, came the rhythmic slap, slap of the small waves striking our bottom as we lifted clear of the surface. And then that was gone and there was only the clicking of our compass and the muffled, almost inaudible throbbing of our screws.

  From the RT came Grimes' voice, "Good sailing, Flying Cloud. Good sailing!"

  "Tell him thank you," said Ralph to Martha. Then, characteristically, "Even so, we haven't started to sail yet."

  Chapter 11

  We should have spent more time in the atmosphere than we did, getting the feel of the ship. But there was the broadcast that Martha picked up on the RT, the daily transmission of proceedings in the Senate. The Honorable Member for Spelterville was in good form. We heard Flying Cloud described in one sentence as a futuristic fictioneer's nightmare, and in the next as an anachronistic reversion to the dark ages of ocean transport. And then, just to make his listeners' blood run cold, he described in great detail what would happen should she chance to crash in a densely populated area. The casing around the sphere of anti-iron would be ruptured and, the antimatter coming into contact with normal matter, there would be one hell of a big bang. Furthermore, he went on, there was the strong possibility of a chain reaction that would destroy the entire planet.

  It would all have been very amusing, but there were far too many cries of approval and support from both Government and Opposition benches—especially when the Honorable Member, after having divulged the information that Flying Cloud was already airborne, demanded that the Government act now.

  Ralph, as he listened, looked worried. He said, "Miss Wayne, I think that our receiver has broken down, hasn't it?"

  She grinned back at him. "It has. Shall I pull a fuse?"

  "Don't bother," he said. "If we get a direct order from the commodore to return to port we shall do so, I suppose. Otherwise . . ."

  He had handed over the controls to Doc Jenkins and myself; I was steering and Doc was functioning, not too inefficiently, as altitude coxswain. We were rising in a tight spiral, and below us was a snowy, almost featureless field of altocumulus. Above us was the sky, clear and da
rk, with the great lens of the Galaxy already visible although the sun had yet to set. So far all had gone well and smoothly, although it was obvious that in order to break free of the atmosphere we should have to valve more ballast.

  Suddenly Sandra cried out, pointing downwards.

  We all looked through the transparent deck of the control room and saw that something small and black had broken through the overcast. A tiny triangle it was, a dart, rather, and at its base was a streak of blue fire bright even against the gleaming whiteness of the cloud. Ralph managed to bring the big, mounted binoculars to bear.

  "Air force markings," he muttered. "One of the rocket fighters."

  Somebody muttered something about "bloody flyboys."

  "Better have the transceiver working," ordered Ralph.

  Hard on his words came a voice from the RT. "Officer commanding Defense Wing 7 to master of Flying Cloud. Return at once to your berth. Return at once to your berth."

  "Master of Flying Cloud to unidentified aircraft," replied Ralph coldly. "Your message received."

  The plane was closer now, gaining on us rapidly. I watched it until a sharp reprimand from Ralph caused me to return my attention to the steering. But I could still listen, and I heard the airman say, "Return at once to your berth. That is an order."

  "And if I refuse?"

  "Then I shall be obliged to shoot you down." This was followed by a rather unpleasant chuckle. "After all, captain, you're a big target and a slow one."

  "And if you do shoot us down," said Ralph reasonably, "what then? We are liable to fall anywhere. And you know that the anti-iron that we carry makes us an atomic bomb far more powerful than any fission or fusion device ever exploded by man to date." He covered the microphone with his hand, remarking, "That's given him something to think about. But he can't shoot us down, anyhow. If he punctures the ballast tanks or knocks a few pieces off the hull we lose our negative lift . . . and if he should rupture the casing around the anti-iron . . ."

  "What then?" asked Martha Wayne.

  "It'll be the last thing he'll ever do—and the last thing that we shall ever experience."

  "He's getting bloody close," grumbled Doc. "I can see the rockets mounted on his wings, and what look like a couple of cannon—"

  "Comply with my orders!" barked the voice from the RT.

  "Sandra," said Ralph quietly, "stand by the ballast controls."

  "I give you ten seconds," we heard. "I have all the latest reports and forecasts. If I shoot you down here you will fall somewhere inside the ice cap. There's no risk of your dropping where you'll do any damage. Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . ."

  "Jettison," ordered Ralph quietly.

  "Valves open," reported Sandra.

  Looking down, I could see the water gushing from our exhausts—a steady stream that thinned to a fine spray as it fell. I could see, too, the deadly black shape, the spearhead on its shaft of fire that was driving straight for our belly. And I saw the twinkle of flame at the gun muzzles as the automatic cannon opened up, the tracer that arched towards us with deceptive laziness. So he wasn't using his air-to-air missiles, that was something to be thankful for. He wasn't using his air-to-air missiles—yet.

  The ship shuddered—and I realized, dimly, that we had been hit. There was an alarm bell shrilling somewhere, there was the thin, high scream of escaping atmosphere. There was the thudding of airtight doors slamming shut and, before the fans stopped, there was the acrid reek of high explosive drifting through the ducts. Then, with incredible swiftness, the aircraft was falling away from us, diminishing to the merest speck against the gleaming expanse of cloud. She belatedly fired her rockets, but they couldn't reach us now. We were up and clear, hurled into the interstellar emptiness by our antigravity. We were up and clear, and already Lorn was no more than a great ball beneath us, a pearly sphere glowing against the blackness of space. We were up and clear and outward bound—but until we could do something about getting the ship under control we were no more than a derelict.

  * * *

  Things could have been worse.

  Nobody was injured, although Peggy had been obliged to scramble fast into a spacesuit. There were several bad punctures in the pressure hull, but these could be patched. There was a consignment of steel plates in our cargo, and our use of them in this emergency would be covered. The loss of atmosphere could be made good from our reserve bottles. It was unfortunate that we were now in a condition of positive buoyancy rather than the neutral buoyancy that Ralph had planned for the voyage—but, he assured us, he had already worked out a landing technique for use in such circumstances. (Whether or not it would prove practicable we still had to find out.)

  So, clad in space armor and armed with welding torches, Peggy and I turned to render the ship airtight once more. As mate I was in official charge of repairs, but I soon realized that my actual status was that of welder's helper. It was Peggy Simmons who did most of the work. A tool in her hands was an extension of her body—or, even, an extension of her personality. She stitched metal to metal with the delicate precision that an ancestor of hers might have displayed with needle, thread and fine fabric.

  I watched her with something akin to envy—and it was more than her manual dexterity that I envied. She had something that occupied all her attention. I had not. Although it was foolish, every now and again I had to throw back the welder's mask and look about me. I was far from happy. This was not the first time that I had been outside in deep space, but it was the first time that I had been outside on the Rim. It was the emptiness that was so frightening. There was our sun, and there was Lorn (and it seemed to me that they were diminishing visibly as I watched) and there was the distant, dim-glowing Galactic lens—and there was nothing. We were drifting towards the edge of the dark in a crippled ship, and we should never (I thought) make it back to warmth and comfort and security.

  I heard Peggy's satisfied grunt in my helmet phones and wrenched my eyes away from the horrid fascination of the ultimate emptiness. She had finished the last piece of welding, I saw, and she straightened up with a loud sigh. She stood there, anchored by the magnetic soles of her boots to the hull, a most unfeminine figure in her bulky suit. She reached out to me, and the metallic fingers of her glove grated on my shoulder plate. She pulled me to her, touched her helmet to mine. I heard her whisper, "Switch off."

  I didn't understand what she wanted at first—and then, after the third repetition, nudged the switch of my suit radio with my chin. She said, her voice faint and barely audible, "Do you think that this will make any difference?"

  "Of course," I assured her. "We can bring pressure up to normal throughout the ship now."

  "I didn't mean that!" she exclaimed indignantly.

  "Then what the hell did you mean?" I demanded.

  "Do you think that this will make any difference to Ralph's—the captain's—attitude towards me? After all, the other two women weren't much use, were they?"

  "Neither was I," I admitted sourly.

  "But you're a man." She paused. "Seriously, Peter, do you think that this repair job will help? With Ralph, I mean . . ."

  "Seriously, Peggy," I told her, "it's time that we were getting back inside. The others are probably watching us and wondering what the hell we're playing at." I added, "There's never been a case of seduction in hard vacuum yet—but there's always a first time for everything."

  "Don't be funny!" she flared. Then, her voice softening, "There's an old saying: The way to a man's heart is through his stomach. It could be that the way to a space captain's heart is through his ship."

  "Could be," I admitted. "Could be. But Ralph won't love either of us for dawdling out here when he's itching to clap on sail. Come on, let's report that the job's finished and get back in." I switched on my suit radio again.

  Before I could speak I heard Ralph's voice. Even the tinny quality of the helmet phones couldn't disguise his bad temper. "What the hell do you two think you're doing? Standing there hand in hand, admi
ring the scenery . . . Mr. Malcom, are the repairs finished? If so, report at once and then return inboard."

  "Repairs completed, sir," I said.

  "Then let's not waste any more time," suggested Ralph coldly.

  We didn't waste any more time. Carefully, sliding our feet over the metal skin, we inched towards the open airlock valve. Peggy went in first and I handed the tools and the unused materials to her. I followed her into the little compartment, and I was pleased when the door slid shut, cutting out the sight of the black emptiness.

  The needle on the illuminated dial quivered and then jerked abruptly to the ship's working pressure.

  * * *

  We were all of us in the control room—all save Peggy, who had been ordered, somewhat brusquely, to look after her motors. From our sharp prow the long, telescopic must have already been protruded, the metal spar on the end of which was mounted the TV camera. On the big screen we could see the image of Flying Cloud as she appeared from ahead. I thought that it was a pity that we did not have other cameras that would allow us to see her in profile, to appreciate the gleaming slenderness of her.