Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Clear the field!” Grimes bellowed through a borrowed bullhorn.

  “Clear the field!” the cry was taken up by officers and NCOs.

  Grimes, accompanied by Shirl and Darleen, returned to the transceiver. He took the microphone from Maggie, ordered Gupta to land at the position marked by the beacons. Gupta acknowledged, then came in slowly, very slowly. Anyone would think, thought Grimes, that Krait had been built from especially fragile eggshells.

  But Krait came in, her inertial drive hammering, maintaining her in a condition of almost weightlessness. Luckily there was no wind; had there been she would have been blown all over the field like a toy balloon.

  She came in, and she landed. Her drive was not shut off but was left running, muttering irritably to itself, in neutral. Obviously Lieutenant Gupta wasn’t at all happy about the situation. Grimes was. Krait, even under Maggie’s unskilled management, would be able to make a quick get-away.

  “Krait to Commander Lazenby,” came from the transceiver speaker. “Your orders, please?”

  Grimes passed the microphone to Maggie. “Report to the Lady Ellena in the command office, please.”

  There was another period of waiting.

  At last Krait’s airlock door opened and the ramp was extended. Down it marched Lieutenant Gupta. For some reason he had taken the time to change into his full dress finery—starched white linen, frock coat, gold braided sword belt and ceremonial sword in gold-braided scabbard, gold-trimmed fore-and-aft hat. He threw a grudging salute in Maggie’s general direction. She, not in uniform, could not reply in kind but bowed slightly and stiffly.

  “Where are your officers, Lieutenant?” asked Maggie.

  “At their stations still, Commander.”

  “They are to accompany you to audience with the Lady Ellena. It is essential that her instructions be heard by everybody.”

  “If you so wish,” said Gupta. He lifted his right wrist to his lips to speak into the communicator.

  “Tell them,” said Maggie, “not to bother to change out of working uniform. They can come just as they are.”

  “All the officers?” queried Gupta.

  “Yes.”

  “But regulations require that there must be a shipkeeper.”

  She said, “I shall be your shipkeeper until you return. In any case, I wish to get some things from my cabin.”

  Scowling, Gupta barked orders into his communicator.

  They came down the ramp in their slate gray shorts-and-shirt working uniform—a lieutenant jg, three ensigns, first lieutenant, navigator, electronicist and engineer officer. This latter, Grimes noted happily, had not shut down the drive before leaving the ship. He hoped that Gupta would not send him back to do so. But Gupta, unlike Grimes when he had been captain of such a vessel, was a slave to regulations. In these circumstances the drive must be left running until such time as the captain decided that it was safe to immobilize his command. And he was leaving Krait in the hands of an officer—Commander Lazenby—senior to himself.

  Lieutenant Phryne marched up to them, followed by six Amazon privates. She saluted with drawn sword.

  “Lieutenant,” said Maggie, “please escort these gentlemen to the Lady Ellena.”

  “As you say, Commander.”

  As Krait’s people marched off, Maggie mounted the ramp, passed through the airlock doors. How long would it take her to get up to control? Grimes had timed himself many years ago; it was one of the emergency drills. He doubted that she would break his record. He had done it in just under five minutes—but he had known the layout of the ship. Should he allow Maggie double that time? He snuck a glance at his wrist companion, surreptitiously adjusted and switched on the alarm. He looked around the drill ground. The well-disciplined Amazons had been ordered to clear the field; that order still stood. They were standing there around the perimeter, sunlight brilliantly reflected from metal accoutrements. Even so, Grimes thought, he and the others would have to be fast. Those women were dead shots and in the event of their being ordered to use no firearms, to take their prisoners alive, they could run.

  His wrist companion suddenly beeped.

  “Now!” barked Grimes.

  Fenella sprinted up the ramp. Shirl and Darleen each made it to the airlock with a single leap. Grimes followed hard on their heels. He was dimly aware that the Amazons had broken ranks, were pouring inwards from all sides toward the little spaceship. But he had no time to watch them. The outer airlock door was shutting, was shut. The deck under his feet lurched. He and Fenella and Shirl and Darleen were thrown into a huddle. Structural members were either singing or rattling, or both. Maggie must have slammed the drive straight from neutral to maximum lift.

  He disentangled himself from the women, began the laborious climb—it seemed as though he were having to fight at least two gravities—up the spiral staircase, from the airlock to control.

  Chapter 24

  He pulled himself up through the hatch into the control compartment.

  Maggie was hunched in the captain’s chair, staring at the read-out screens before her, at the display of flickering numerals that told their story of ever and rapidly increasing altitude,

  Grimes made his way to the first lieutenant’s seat with its duplicate controls, flopped into it with a sigh of relief.

  “All right, Maggie,” he said. “I’ll take over.”

  “You’d better,” she told him. “I’ve been wondering what to do next.”

  “You’ve done very well so far,” he said. “You got us out of there very nicely.”

  He reduced thrust to a reasonable level. Krait was still climbing but now people could move about inside her hull at something better than a crawl, not hampered by a doubling of their body weight. He then gave his attention to the screens giving him views in all directions. He was half-expecting that there would be pursuit of some kind but there was not.

  “What now?” asked Maggie. “Do we go to Melitus to rescue Brasidus?”

  “Not yet,” said Grimes. “We carry on straight up. It may fool Ellena, it may not. I hope it does.” He chuckled. “Let’s try this scenario on for size. The notorious pirate, John Grimes, aided by his female accomplices, feloniously seized the Federation Survey Service’s courier Krait . . . .”

  “And why would he do that? And why should Commander Lazenby, of all people, help him? To say nothing of Fenella Pruin and Shirl and Darleen . . . .”

  “We’ll get Fenella to write the script. You and Shirl and Darleen are hopelessly in love with me, slaves of passion. And Fenella’s just along for the ride, getting material for her next piece in Star Scandals.”

  She laughed. “You could do her job as well as she does. But this scenario of yours . . . . There was opportunity for you to carry out your piratical act. You seized it. But what was the motive? I am assuming that Ellena does not know that we know where Brasidus is being held.”

  “Mphm.” Grimes filled and lit his pipe. “But, before we start kicking ideas around to see if they yelp, let’s get the others up here.” He spoke into a microphone. “This is the Captain speaking. All hands to report to the control room. On the double.”

  “Where is the control room?” came Fenella’s yelp from the intercom speaker.

  “Just follow the spiral staircase up as far as you can go.”

  “Isn’t there an elevator?”

  “This,” said Grimes, “is a Serpent Class courier, not a Constellation Class cruiser.”

  “Even an Epsilon Class star tramp has an elevator in the axial shaft!” she snapped.

  “Stop arguing!” he yelled. “Just get up here!”

  She did, without overmuch delay, accompanied by Shirl and Darleen. There were chairs for only two of the newcomers but Darleen, squatting on the deck, did not appear to be too uncomfortable.

  Grimes talked. “This is the way that I see things. I’m an outsider who just happens to have come to New Sparta at a time when all manner of balloons are going up. I came to New Sparta to wait th
ere for the arrival of my ship, Sister Sue, which vessel is all my worldly wealth. I have heard rumors that the New Spartan government intends to seize her, for conversion to an auxiliary cruiser. (Well, Ellena could do that, if she had the brains to think of it. She wouldn’t dare to seize a ship belonging to one of the major lines.) So, not for the first time in my career, I’m playing the game according to my rules.”

  “I’ll say you are!” exclaimed Fenella. “You always keep telling us that you were never a pirate, but what you’ve just done bears all the earmarks of piracy.”

  “Never mind that. But there’s one crime that I have committed—I’ve lifted from New Sparta without first obtaining Outward Clearance. Even so, as far as Aerospace Control is concerned Krait was put at the disposal of the New Spartan government. It doesn’t much matter. All the legalities and illegalities can be sorted out later.”

  “Oh, we all of us know that the Law is an ass, Grimes,” said Fenella impatiently. “Just what are your intentions, legal or otherwise?”

  “To begin with, a spot of misdirection. As soon as we’re clear of the atmosphere I’ll switch to Mannschenn Drive, as though at the commencement of a Deep Space voyage. And then I’ll attempt to raise Sister Sue on Carlotti Radio. Of necessity it will be a broad beam transmission; I don’t know where she is, only the general direction from which she will be approaching. My signals will be monitored on New Sparta.”

  “And what will you tell Sister Sue?” asked Maggie.

  “I’ll try to arrange a rendezvous with her, about one lightyear—no, not ‘about,’ exactly—from New Sparta. I shall tell Williams that he is, on no account, to approach any closer and that I shall be boarding to take command.”

  “Won’t your Mr. Williams—or Captain Williams as he still is—think that these orders are rather . . . weird?” asked Fenella.

  “Probably. But he should be used to weird orders by this time.”

  Krait drove up through the last tenuous shreds of atmosphere, through the belts of charged particles. Aerospace Control began, at last, to take an interest in her.

  “Aerospace Control to Krait . . . Aerospace Control to Krait . . . .”

  “Krait to Aerospace Control,” said Grimes into the microphone. “I read you loud and clear.”

  “Return at once to the spaceport, Krait.”

  “Negative,” said Grimes.

  After that he ignored the stream of orders and threats that poured from the NST transceiver speaker.

  It was time then to actuate the Mannschenn Drive. The rotors in their intricate array began to spin, tumbling, precessing, warping the dimensions of normal Space-Time around themselves and the ship. Perspective was distorted, colors sagged down the spectrum and what few orders Grimes gave were as though uttered in an echo chamber. But, as sometimes was the case, there were no déjà vu phenomena, no flashes of precognition.

  And then it was over.

  Krait was falling through a blackness against which the stars were no longer points of light but vague, slowly writhing nebulosities.

  “So that’s that,” said Maggie practically.

  “That’s that,” agreed Grimes. “Now all I have to do is to get the bold Billy on the blower and tell him my pack of lies, for Ellena’s benefit.”

  In its own little compartment, the Mobius Strip antenna of the Carlotti Deep Space Radio was revolving and its signals, on broad beam, were being picked up, instantaneously, by every receiver within their range, which was a very distant one—and being picked up, reciprocally, by Aerospace Control on New Sparta.

  “Grimes to Sister Sue,” said Grimes. “Grimes to Sister Sue. Do you read me?”

  At last there came a reply in a male voice strange to Grimes, faint, as though coming from a very long way off—which it was.

  “Sister Sue here. Pass your message.”

  “Who is that speaking?” asked Grimes.

  “The third officer. Pass your message.”

  “Get Captain Williams for me, please.”

  “He’s sleeping. I’m perfectly capable of taking your message.”

  “Get Captain Williams for me. Now.”

  “Who is that calling?”

  “Grimes.”

  “Is that the name of a ship or some fancy acronym?”

  “Grimes,” repeated the owner of that name. “John Grimes. The owner. Your employer. Get Captain Williams to the Carlottiphone at once.”

  “How do I know that you’re Grimes?”

  “You should know by this time, young man, that not any Tom, Dick or Harry can get access to a Carlotti transceiver. Get Captain Williams for me. And see if you can arrange a visual hook-up as well as audio. I’ve the power here to handle it.”

  “Oh, all right, all right. Sir.”

  Williams wasted no time coming to Sister Sue’s control room. His cheerful, fleshy face appeared in the screen.

  “Oh, it is you, Skipper. What’s the rush? Couldn’t it all have waited until I set her down on New Sparta?”

  “It couldn’t, Billy.”

  “But you were always getting on to me about the expense of needless Carlotti communications . . .”

  “This one is not needless. To begin with, New Sparta’s in a state of upheaval. The Archon was kidnapped and his wife, the Lady Ellena, took over the government. Now she seems to have a civil war on her hands. I don’t want my ship sitting on her arse at Port Sparta with shooting going on all about her.”

  “She’s been shot at before, Skipper.”

  “There’s nothing more annoying,” said Grimes, “than being shot at in somebody else’s war. I want you to heave to, a light-year out, until the dust settles. I’ll rendezvous with you and come aboard to talk things over.”

  “Where are you calling from, Skipper?” asked Williams. “Have you got yourself another ship? Who are those popsies in the background?”

  “Yes, I have borrowed a ship. Never mind from whom. And I’m on my way out to you now. I’ll home on your Carlotti broadcast. I’ve good equipment here.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you, Skipper.”

  “Give my regards to Magda, will you? And to old Mr. Stewart.”

  “Will do, Skipper.”

  “See you,” said Grimes. “Out.”

  Yes, he would be seeing Williams, but not for a while yet.

  Chapter 25

  Krait, insofar as New Sparta Aerospace Control was concerned, was now an invisible ship, falling through the warped dimensions toward her rendezvous with Sister Sue, undetectable by radar as long as her Mannschenn Drive was in operation. Some planets—such worlds as were considered to be strategically important—had defense satellites in orbit crammed with sophisticated equipment, such as long-range Mass Proximity Indicators capable of picking up approaching vessels running under Mannschenn Drive. New Sparta was not strategically important.

  So while the Lady Ellena would be more than a little annoyed by the theft of a minor warship that she had hoped to acquire for her own use, she might well be pleased, thought Grimes, at the removal from her domain of three nuisances—Maggie Lazenby, Fenella Pruin and Grimes himself. He allowed himself to feel sorry for Lieutenant Gupta. He and his officers, spacemen without a spaceship, would be discovering that they were far from welcome guests in the Palace . . . .

  Meanwhile it was time that he started thinking of his own strategy rather than the troubles of others. He would begin by setting an orbital course for Melitus rather than trajectory for Sister Sue’s estimated position. Just where was Melitus?

  He and the women went down to the wardroom—Krait was quite capable of looking after herself—where there was a play master which, like any such device aboard a spaceship, could be used to obtain information from the library bank. They all took seats, Grimes in one from which he could operate the play master’s controls. He punched for LIBRARY, then for PLANETARY INFORMATION, then for NEW SPARTA, then for MELITUS. Words appeared on the screen. Mountain, 1.7 kilometers above sea level, Latitude 37° 14’ S, Longitude 176°
59’E.

  Village called Melitus? typed Grimes.

  No information, appeared the reply.

  Map of Mount Melitus vicinity?

  Not in library bank.

  Grimes swore. “I should,” he said, “have brought along the atlas from my quarters.”

  “It would have looked suspicious,” said Fenella, “if you’d been carrying it around with you.”

  “I could have torn out one or two relevant pages,” said Grimes, “and put them in my pockets.”

  “But you didn’t,” said Fenella.

  “There are some maps in my cabin,” Maggie told them. “I’ll get them now.”

  She spread them on the wardroom table. Grimes found the one he wanted, studied it carefully. When making his final approach, back in normal Space-Time, he would be shielded by the bulk of the planet from the probing radar of Aerospace Control. Unluckily he would be unable to make a quiet approach; the inertial drive unit of even a small ship is noisy; the only really heavy sonic insulation is to protect the eardrums of the crew. But there was a technique which he might employ, that he would employ if conditions were suitable. It was one that he had read about but had never seen used.

  The map was a contour one. To the north Mount Melitus was steep, in parts practically sheer cliff. The southern face was sloped almost gently to the plain. There was a river, little more than a stream, that had its source about halfway up the mountain. A little below this source was the village of Melitus. But those contour lines . . . . The southern slopes were only comparatively gentle but there did not seem to be any suitable place upon which to set down a spaceship, even a small one. Grimes studied the map more carefully, took a pair of dividers to measure off distances. The river made a horseshoe bend just over a kilometer downstream from the village. The almost-island so formed was devoid of contour lines. Did that mean anything or was it no more than slovenly cartography? But the map, saw Grimes, was a Survey Service publication and the Survey Service’s cartographers prided themselves on their thoroughness. He hoped they had been thorough when charting the Mount Melitus area.