Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  “It is a known fact,” snapped Maggie, “that Commodore Grimes is an owner-master.”

  “At the moment,” said Grimes, “just an owner. I shall be master again as soon as I get my name back on Sister Sue’s register.”

  “It is the unknown facts that interest me . . .” murmured Fenella. “Such as the real reason for the appointment of a notorious pirate . . .”

  “Not a pirate!” yelled Grimes.

  “ . . . to the governorship of a planet.”

  “You’ve trodden on corns in the past,” said Grimes coldly. “You should know, by this time, that there are some corns better not trodden on.”

  Maggie sighed. “All this is getting us nowhere and has nothing at all to do with New Sparta. Would you mind telling us, Fenella, just what you’ve found out?”

  The journalist finished her coffee, said, “No thanks, Maggie. One cup of this mud was ample. Potables shouldn’t need knives and forks to deal with them.” She took a cigarette from the box on the table, puffed it into ignition. “Now, I think I’m getting places, which is more than can be said for the pair of you. A Major Hera has taken quite a fancy to Shirl and Darleen. She is taking private savate lessons and, in return, is teaching the two girls her own version of wrestling. Now, now . . . I know that you have dirty minds, or I know that Grimes has, but there’s nothing like what you’re thinking. Not yet, anyhow, but I must admit that Shirl and Darleen are surprisingly innocent in some respects. Well, Hera is a high-up in the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the New Hellas Association. She’s already persuaded quite a few Amazon officers and NCOs to join. She’s been trying to persuade the two new Instructor Lieutenants to join. I’ve advised them to yield to her blandishments and then to keep their eyes skinned and their ears flapping.”

  “I can’t see them as spies,” said Grimes. “They’re too direct. Too honest.”

  “Who else have we got?” she asked. “Not me. Not either of you,”

  “And they will report to you?” asked Grimes.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “They will report to us,” stated Maggie firmly. “After all, they are Commodore Grimes’s friends. What could be more natural than that they should join him here for a drink or two?”

  “As long as I am present,” said Fenella.

  “Talking of drinks,” said Grimes, “I could do with a stiff one to wash away the taste of that alleged coffee.”

  The two ladies thought that this was quite a good idea.

  Chapter 15

  “You know, John,” said Brasidus, “I think that I was much happier in the old days. When I was a simple sergeant in the army, with authority but not much responsibility. Now I have responsibility, as Archon, but my authority seems to have been whittled away.” He sighed. “Sparta—it wasn’t called New Sparta then—was a far simpler world than it is now. We were happy enough eating and drinking and brawling. There were no women to tell us to wash behind the ears and watch our table manners.” He gulped from his mug of wine. “I regard you as a friend, John, a good friend, but I have thought that it was a great pity that you ever came to this planet, opening us up to the rest of the Galaxy . . .”

  “If it hadn’t been me,” said Grimes, “it would have been somebody else. The search for Lost Colonies is always going on. I’ve heard that 90 percent of the interstellar ship disappearances have now been accounted for. And, in any case, how many ships of that remaining 10 percent founded a colony? Possibly none of them.”

  “You are changing the subject, my friend. In the old days I should never have been obliged to disguise myself in order to enjoy, with a good friend, what you refer to as a pub crawl. I should never have had to wait for an evening when my wife—my wife—was out attending some meeting or other. There weren’t any wives.”

  “As I recall it,” said Grimes, “some of your boyfriends, your surrogate women, could be bitchy enough. And, in any case, the King of Sparta would have done as you are doing now, put on disguise, if he wished to mingle, incognito, with his subjects.”

  “If he had mingled more,” said Brasidus sourly, “he might have kept his crown. And his head. As it was, he just didn’t have his finger on the pulse of things.”

  “And you have?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Tell me, what do you feel?”

  “I . . . I wish that I knew.”

  The two men looked around the tavern, which was far from crowded. They had been able to secure a table at which they could talk with a great degree of privacy. Even the two bodyguards, although not quite out of earshot, were fully occupied chatting up the slovenly, but crudely attractive, girl who had brought them a fresh jug of wine. Had he not already seen how swiftly Jason and Paulus could act when danger threatened Grimes would have doubted their value.

  “But you have your Secret Service, or whatever you call it,” pursued Grimes. “Surely they keep you informed.”

  Brasidus laughed. “I sometimes think that the State subsidizes the New Hellas Association and other possibly subversive organizations. They’re packed with Intelligence agents, all of them dues-paying members. But do they tell me everything? Do they tell me anything?”

  “They must tell you something, just to stay on the payroll if for no other reason.”

  “But do they tell me the truth?” demanded the Archon. “This way, mingling with my people in disguise, I can hear things for myself. There are grumblings—but what government has ever been universally popular? Need I ask you that? There are those who want a return to the Good Old Days, a womanless world, and who resent the influx of females from Earth and other planets. There are those who want a society more closely modeled on that of ancient Greece, on Earth, with women kept barefoot and pregnant.” He laughed. “There are even those, mainly women, who hanker after some mythical society that was ruled by a woman, Queen Hippolyte, where men were kept in subjection. But that, as you would say, is the lunatic fringe . . . .”

  “With the Lady Ellena as a member?” Grimes could not help asking.

  Brasidus laughed again. “She is a good wife, I’ll not deny that, although perhaps a shade overbearing. And I . . . humor her. She believes, or says that she believes, that the Hippolyte legends are true. Oh, I’ve tried to reason with her. I’ve imported books from Earth, Greek histories, and she’s condescended to read them. And she says that there has been a conspiracy of male historians to suppress the Hippolyte story, to laugh it away as a mere myth . . .”

  “Your scholars had done some ingenious tampering with history and biology before your Lost Colony was found,” said Grimes.

  “That was different,” said Brasidus. “But Ellena . . . I’ve played along with her, up to a point. I let her form her Amazon Guard. Having toy lady soldiers to play with keeps her happy.”

  “Toy soldiers?” asked Grimes. “Oh, they probably wouldn’t be a match for an equal number of Federation Space Marines, but against ordinary troops they’d give a very good account of themselves.”

  “You really think that?”

  “I do.”

  There was a brief silence, broken only by the happy squeals of the serving wench who had been looking after Paulus and Jason. Of the serving wenches, rather. The original girl had been joined by another, equally coarsely attractive. The pair of them were sitting on the bodyguards’ laps, fondling and being fondled. Grimes filled and lit his pipe, looking toward the door to the street as he did so. He saw the women enter, six of them. A fat blonde, a tall, skinny redhead, four very nondescript brunettes. They were dressed, all of them, in rather tawdry finery, with chaplets of imitation vine leaves intertwined with their tousled hair, latter-day bacchantes—or a sextet of working girls enjoying a night on the tiles. They did not seem to be sober, lurching and staggering as they made their way across the floor, giggling and nudging each other.

  “Women,” muttered Brasidus, “cannot drink with dignity.”

  Not only women, thought Grimes, although he was inclined to the opinion that drunken men are somewh
at less of a nuisance.

  The fat blonde failed successfully to negotiate the quite generous space between Grimes’s table and that at which the two bodyguards were sitting. Her heavy, well-padded hip almost shoved Grimes off his chair. “Gerrout o’ my way, you barshtard . . .” she slurred, glaring at him out of piggy blue eyes that, the Commodore suddenly realized, looked more sober than otherwise. Two of the other women had gotten themselves entangled with Brasidus. Wine bottle and glasses were overset.

  Simultaneously, Jason and Paulus were having their troubles. Their chairs had gone over backwards and they were sprawled on the floor, their limbs entangled with those of their female companions. They were trying to get their pistols out from the concealed holsters, but without success.

  The corpulent innkeeper came bustling up. “Citizens! Citizens! I must implore you to keep the peace!”

  “Keep a piece of this!” snarled the redhead, cracking him smartly across the brow with a wine bottle.

  Grimes tried to get to his feet but two of the brunettes pounced on him, bore him to the floor. They were surprisingly well-muscled wenches. Their hard feet thudded into his ribs and belly. He had enough presence of mind to protect his testicles with his hands—but that left his head uncovered. A calloused heel struck him just behind the right ear and, briefly, he lost consciousness. Then dimly he was aware of the scuffling around him and the voice of the fat woman—no trace of drunkenness now—saying sharply, “Now! While he’s still out!”

  But I’m not still out, thought Grimes, not realizing at first that she was not talking about him.

  He was no longer out but those two useless bodyguards were, jabbed with needles loaded with some kind of drug by the tavern wenches. He was no longer out and he raised himself on his hands and knees, in time to see the six women—no, the eight women; they had been joined by the two serving girls—hurrying through the door to the street with Brasidus supported between them. None of the inn’s patrons had made any move to interfere. Why should they? Drunken brawls were not uncommon.

  Somehow he got to his feet. He started toward the door and then hesitated. Unarmed he was no match for no less than eight hefty, vicious wenches. He stumbled to where Paulus was sprawled, face down, on the floor. He fell to his knees, fumbled in the man’s clothing. He found the concealed holster almost at once, pulled out the pistol. He checked that it was loaded, cocked the weapon. He had by now recovered sufficiently to run, albeit painfully, to the door.

  To his surprise he did not have to look far to find the kidnappers. They were standing there, all eight of them, in the middle of the poorly lighted street, still supporting the unconscious Archon between them.

  “Freeze!” yelled Grimes, waving the Minetti.

  They turned to look at him but otherwise made no move.

  “Release him! At once!”

  “If that’s the way you want it, buster,” said the fat blonde.

  The women stepped away from Brasidus. Fantastically his body remained upright. Even more fantastically it seemed to elongate, as though the Archon were becoming taller with every passing second. Grimes stared incredulously. He heard, then, the faint humming of a winch. He looked up and saw, at no great altitude, a dark gray against the black of the night sky, the bulk of a small airship. He started to run forward, to try to grab the feet of his friend. Somebody tripped him. He fell heavily but, luckily for him, retained his grip on the pistol. He sensed that the kidnappers were closing in around him and fired at random, not a full, wasteful burst but spaced shots. Surely, in this scrum, he must get somebody in the legs.

  He heard a yelp of pain, then another.

  He got to his feet.

  Nobody stopped him.

  There was nobody there to stop him.

  He looked up.

  The dirigible was gone, presumably with Brasidus a prisoner in its cabin.

  He looked around.

  The dirt of the road surface had been scuffed by the struggle. In two places there were dark, glistening stains. Blood. But the women had melted into the shadows, taking their wounded with them. He hoped that the fat bitch was among the casualties.

  There was the sound of approaching, running feet. He turned in that direction, holding the pistol ready. He saw who was coming, three policemen, what little light there was reflected from their polished black leather and stainless steel.

  Hastily Grimes put the gun into a pocket.

  The leading police officer shone his torch full on Grimes’s face, although not before the Commodore had noticed that he was holding a stungun in his other hand.

  He said disgustedly, “You again.” Grimes thought that he recognized the voice. He went on, “I heard shots. There has obviously been some sort of struggle here. What have you been doing?”

  “I haven’t been doing anything,” said Grimes virtuously if not quite accurately. He tried to fit a name to the owner of the voice. “Sergeant Priam, isn’t it? Would you mind not shining that light into my eyes?”

  “Certainly, sir. Commodore, sir. And now would you mind telling me what in Zeus’s name has been going on?”

  “A kidnapping. The Archon. He was snatched by a gang of women, carried away in an airship. No, I didn’t get any registration marks or numbers. The thing wasn’t carrying lights.”

  The beam of the sergeant’s torch was directed downward.

  “And this blood. Whose is it? The Archon’s?”

  “There was a struggle, as you can see. One or two of the women got hurt.”

  “You shot them.”

  “It was better,” said Grimes, “than having my head kicked in.”

  “Let me have the weapon, sir.”

  Grimes shrugged and passed the weapon over.

  He said, “It’s not mine. It belongs to one of the Archon’s bodyguards.”

  “And where are they?”

  “Inside the inn. Unconscious.”

  Sergeant Priam sighed heavily. “Why do these things always have to happen to me? You will have to come to the station, sir, to make your report.” He laughed. “But you’ll find it far easier to make your report to Colonel Xenophon than, eventually, to the Lady Ellena!”

  Chapter 16

  Grimes told his story. Jason and Paulus, almost recovered, thanks to the administration of the antidote, from the effects of the drug with which they had been injected, told their story. The innkeeper, his head bandaged, told his story. Two witnesses, selected at random from the tavern’s customers, told their stories. Colonel Xenophon, a tall, thin, bald-headed man looking more like a schoolmaster—but a severe schoolmaster—than a policeman, listened.

  He said, “I have known, for some time, of the Archon’s nocturnal adventures. I was foolish enough to believe that his professional bodyguards would be capable of protecting him.”

  “On a normal planet,” said Jason hotly, “we should have been.”

  Xenophon’s furry black eyebrows rose like back-arching caterpillars. “Indeed? How do you define normalcy? Is your precious Earth a normal planet? Among my reading of late have been recent Terran crime statistics. They have caused me to wonder why any citizen, male or female, is foolhardy enough to venture out after dark in any of the big cities.

  “And now, Commodore, you are quite sure that the flying machine which removed the Archon was an airship? Could it not have been one of the inertial drive craft or helicopters that have been introduced from Earth?”

  “It could not,” said Grimes definitely. “I know an airship when I see one.”

  “Even in the dark?”

  “There was enough light. And the thing was . . . quiet. Just a faint, very faint humming of electric motors.”

  “So . . . . And in what direction did this mysterious airship fly after the pick-up?”

  “I don’t know. Those blasted women jumped me. I was fully occupied trying to fight them off.”

  “Ah, yes. The women. Did you recognize any of them, Commodore?”

  “No. But I shall if I run across them again.
But, damn it all, Colonel, what are you doing about this crime, this kidnapping? Dirigible airships aren’t as common as, say, motorcycles. There can be very few, if any, privately owned. Your Navy has a fleet of lighter-than-air craft. I’d have thought that you’d have started inquiries with the Admiralty, to find out what ships had been flying tonight.”

  Xenophon smiled coldly. “I should not presume, Commodore, to instruct you in the arts and sciences of spacemanship. Please do not try to tell me how I should do my job. Already inquiries have been made. All the Navy’s ships are either in their hangars or swinging at their mooring masts. All Trans-Sparta Airlines’ ships, passenger carriers and freight carriers, have been accounted for. And that’s all the airships on New Sparta.”

  “So the ship I saw must either have belonged to the Navy or to Trans-Sparta.”

  “If you saw such a ship, Commodore. You may have thought that you did. But drugs had been used during the kidnapping. It is possible that during your first struggle with the women an attempt may have been made to put you out by such means and that you may have received a partial dosage, enough to induce hallucinations. Or a blow on the head might have had the same effect.”

  “If there were no flying machine involved,” persisted Grimes, “how was it that the Archon was spirited away from the inn without trace?”

  “I think,” said the colonel, “that the quarter of the city in which you and the Archon were . . . er . . . conducting your researches is known to Terrans as a rabbit warren. I didn’t appreciate the aptness of that expression until I read one of your classics, Watership Down. But if you want to lose a needle in a haystack, a rabbit warren is a good place to do it.”

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes.

  “And now, Commodore, may I suggest—may I urge—that you and your two companions return to the Palace; transport will be provided for you. I do not envy your having to tell the story of this night’s happenings to the Lady Ellena. She has already been notified, of course, that the Archon is missing. She is a lady of iron self-control but I could tell that she was deeply moved. Please assure her that I and my men will return her husband to her, unharmed, as soon as is humanly possible.”