Catch the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  1.000000 . . .

  Now there was sensation, a feeling of unbearable tension. Something had to give. Something, somewhere, snapped suddenly. Ahead the sparse scattering of stars diminished in number. The Rim Suns—astern in actuality—suddenly flickered out, reappeared in their proper relative bearing.

  "Mr. Wallasey," said Listowel, "make the routine ETA call to Llanith," He looked inquiringly toward Grimes, who said, "Yes. We maintain routine—until somebody or something interferes with it."

  Wallasey was having his troubles. From the switched-on Carlotti transceiver issued a continuous warbling note.

  "Interference—" he muttered.

  "Jamming," amended Grimes. "This is it, Captain. Any moment now." He looked around the control room. Fowler was tense over his console, as was Denby, the second officer, at the radar. Wallasey was still twiddling knobs at the Carlotti set. Sonya and Sandra were sitting quietly in their chairs, apparently taking only a mild interest in the proceedings—but either woman, Grimes well knew, could spring into action at an instant's notice. And Sandra, after all, could handle a lightjammer almost as well as her husband.

  There was nobody else on the bridge. Willoughby was below, in charge of the damage control party, and Major Trent was looking after the guns manned by his men.

  "Target," reported Denby. "Green seventy-five. Range fifty kilometers. Closing."

  "Thank you, Mr. Denby. Keep us informed," said Grimes.

  "Green now seventy-five, still. Positive altitude five degrees, increasing."

  "Range?"

  "Forty—and closing."

  Grimes spoke into the microphone that carried his voice through the ship and into the gunners' helmet speakers. "This is the commodore. The enemy has been sighted. She is closing fast. From now on there will be frequent changes of trajectory. Stand by to open fire on command. Over."

  Trent's voice came in reply, "All is ready, sir. Guns loaded, but not yet run out."

  "Don't run them out until you get the order to fire, Major."

  "Green seventy-four, sir. Range thirty, closing. Positive altitude seven degrees. Increasing slowly."

  "Captain," said Grimes, "roll us seven degrees to port. I want to keep our friend exactly on the plane of our ecliptic. We can't aim the guns individually—we have to aim the ship. Understand?"

  "Understood, Commodore." The directional gyroscopes rumbled briefly as Pamir was turned about her long axis.

  "And now, Captain, start altering course to port. Just behave as you would normally in trying to avoid a close quarters situation."

  Looking through the viewports Grimes saw the sails being trimmed. With the light from the Llanith sun as the wind, Pamir was being steadied on to a starboard tack.

  "Green eighty-five, opening. Range twenty-five, holding. Altitude zero."

  Grimes got up from his chair, went to the big binoculars on their universal mount. He had no trouble picking up the intruder. Her suit of sails made her a big enough target.

  He said, "Mr. Wallasey, don't bother any more with the Carlotti set. Try calling on NST."

  "Very good, sir." The third officer turned to the normal space-time transceiver, equipment suitable for use only at short ranges. "What shall I say, sir?"

  "Pamir to unidentified vessel. What ship? What are your intentions? You know."

  "Pamir to unidentified vessel," said Wallasey, speaking slowly and distinctly. "Come in, please."

  Almost immediately a voice replied, "Unidentified vessel to Pamir. Maintain your present course and speed. Open your airlocks to receive my boarding party." There was a slight accent. Waldegren? It sounded like it.

  Listowel turned to Grimes. "What now, Commodore?"

  Grimes grinned. "If we didn't have ladies present I'd tell him to get stuffed. Pass me the mike, Mr. Wallasey." Then he said, in what Sonya referred to as his best quarterdeck voice, "Pamir to unidentified vessel. Identify yourself at once. And sheer off. You are getting in my way."

  "Unidentified vessel to Pamir. Open your airlock doors. Prepare for boarding party. Do not offer resistance. Over."

  "Mphm," grunted Grimes, releasing the pressure of his thumb on the transmit button of the microphone. "I want you to turn away, Listowel. You are master of an unarmed merchant vessel. You can't fight, so you run. Put the Llanith sun dead astern. As long as he sees us doing all the right things he'll be lulled into a sense of security."

  Driving surfaces pivoted about their masts, the east sails presenting their black sides to the source of light, the west sails their reflective sides. The ship came around fast. And then, on all four masts, the reflective surfaces were spread to catch the full force of the photon gale.

  "Bearing green one six five. Altitude zero. Range nineteen. Closing."

  "Must have hung out the crew's washing," commented Listowel. "Pm afraid that I can't squeeze any more out of Pamir."

  "It doesn't matter," Grimes told him. "We want her to catch up." He looked astern through the binoculars. Pamir's sails cut off the glare from the Llanith sun and the raider was clearly visible on the starboard quarter. Like Pamir she was a four-master, with a cruciform rig, but additional triangular sails had been set between the masts. Running free this would give her a decided advantage.

  "Range fifteen. Fourteen. Closing."

  "Sir?" asked Fowler appealingly.

  "No," said Grimes. "Not yet. We must consider the legalities. She must fire the first shot."

  "But those legalities would only apply, sir, if we were a merchant vessel. But we aren't. We're an auxiliary cruiser of the Rim Worlds Navy—"

  "A space-lawyer yet!" commented Grimes admiringly. The young man was right, of course. He, Grimes, should have played heavy commodore as soon as contact had been made with the pirate, demanding her unconditional surrender. He might have done just that if he had a real warship under his feet. He decided that, after all, his own way of playing it was the best, especially since the other ship obviously had the heels of Pamir. He said, "You can play with your rockets as soon as I give the word, not before. And when you do use them, try for the enemy's rigging, his masts and sails."

  "Bearing green one five oh. Closing. Range nine. Closing."

  "This is the commodore. Action will be opened shortly. It seems likely that the starboard broadside will be the first to be used."

  "Unidentified ship to Pamir. You've been asking for trouble. You are about to get it. Over."

  "You have our permission to tell him to get stuffed, John," said Sonya sweetly.

  "Bearing green one two five. Range seven. Closing."

  Shortening sail, thought Grimes, watching through the binoculars. There're those tri-s'ls or whatever he calls 'em coming in. And I can see ports opening. Boat bays? Or gunports?

  A gout of yellow flame spurted from one of the openings in the raider's hull, just abaft the masts. A long time later, it seemed, there was an explosion ahead of Pamir, about half a kilometer distant, a sudden rose of pale fire burgeoning in the blackness. So the pirate was using projectile weapons.

  "Unidentified vessel"—the joke was wearing thin—"to Pamir. That was the last warning. Surrender or take the consequences."

  "Bearing green ninety. Range five, four, three—closing."

  No identification marks, thought Grimes, studying the other vessel through the powerful glasses. Could be one of ours, save for a few, subtle points of difference . . .

  He said to Fowler. "All right, Lieutenant. You may open fire."

  He saw the first rocket flash from its launching tube, trailing a wake of blue flame, spinning a flimsy filament of incandescence over the shortening distance between the two ships. It got a little over halfway, and then a stream of tracer came hosepiping from a gunport, met it, eroded it into ragged and harmless fragments of spinning debris. The warhead didn't explode.

  "Rapid fire!" ordered Grimes. "Get the other five rockets out and on the way as quickly as possible. Don't bother guiding them in. One might get through."

  None d
id. The pirate's machine gunners were fast.

  "Range one. Point seven five. Point five."

  "Resistance is useless," came the voice from the NST transceiver.

  "Starboard broadside, fire," said Grimes into the intercom microphone.

  He was not altogether prepared for what happened. He was expecting to see the enemy's sails shredded, his masts cut down, by the shot that he had prepared, the same sort of shot that had been used so effectively during the days of sail on Earth, the bags of scrap metal, nuts and bolts, lengths of metal chain. He had forgotten, though, that one of the old men-o'-war never, when firing a broadside, fired all guns simultaneously—they were fired in quick succession.

  Pamir lurched. It was more than a mere lurch. It was as though a giant palm had swatted her on her starboard side. The north and south masts were carried away, each of them falling to starboard as the ship was driven to port by the recoil, the yards of each of them ripping the sails of the east mast, becoming inextricably entangled with the rigging.

  "You got her, sir!" Fowler was yelling. "You got her!"

  Grimes, who had been knocked down by the violent lateral acceleration, got groggily to his feet, staggered to the starboard viewports. The raider was, indeed, in a sorrier state than Pamir. In addition to the damage to her rigging there were gaping holes in her shell plating, through some of which smoke and flame flared explosively, like rocket exhausts. Her control room ports were bright with the ruddy glare of an internal fire. She was spinning slowly about her long axis. The one undamaged main spar, the east mast, which had been on her starboard side, shielded from Pamir's guns, lifted into view as she rolled, lifted, then dipped toward the other ship—and held steady, a long, metal lance. Freakishly, then, the rotary motion ceased. Perhaps a survivor was still exercising some sort of control, was determined to exact vengeance before his death. And on the far side air, mixed with the gases of combusion, was still escaping into the vacuum, inexorably driving the total wreck on to the near-wreck.

  "Range closing," Denby was saying, over and over again. "Range closing. Range closing."

  "Reaction drive!" ordered Grimes. "Get us out of here!" He could visualize the end of that long spar driving through Pamir's shell plating and piercing the vacuum chamber in which the sphere of antimatter was suspended in the strong magnetic fields. It was not a nice thing to think about.

  Listowel made no reply. The captain was slumped in his seat, unmoving.

  Sandra was shaking her husband violently. "Ralph! Wake up! Wake up!" Then, snarling wordlessly, she pulled him from his chair, letting him drift to the deck. Before she was properly seated in his place her long fingers were on the controls. She snarled again, then snapped, "Something's wrong, Commodore!"

  "Starboard broadside," ordered.

  Grimes into the intercom microphone. "Fire!" That should push them away and clear from their dying attacker.

  "The guns are off their mounts," came a hysterical voice. "We have casualties—"

  Denby was still calling out range figures—in meters now—but it was not necessary. The shattered, burning raider was too close and was getting closer.

  "Roll her, Sandra!" shouted Grimes.

  "But our east mast is some protection—"

  "It's not. Roll her, damn you!"

  "Roll her," repeated Sonya. "He knows what he's doing." She added quietly, "I hope."

  The gyroscope controls and the gyroscopes themselves were still working. There was the initial rumble as the flywheels started to turn, then the low hum. The drifting wreck slid slowly from view, dipping below the starboard viewport rims—but if Denby's radar readings were to be credited disaster was now only millimeters distant.

  Grimes ordered, "Rotate through ninety degrees. Let me know when you're on eighty-five."

  The next few seconds could have been twice that many years.

  "Eighty-five," stated Sandra at last.

  "Port battery—fire."

  Again Pamir was slammed by that giant hand and was swatted clear of the dying raider's murderous sidelong advance. The tracks of the two ships diverged—but not fast enough, thought Grimes. He said urgently, "I don't care how you do it, Sandra, but get some of our sails trimmed to catch the light from Llanith. We must get out of here, and fast!"

  "But we should board," said Sonya. "There may be survivors. There will be evidence. The fire will burn itself out once the atmosphere in the ship is exhausted."

  "Not that sort of fire. Do something, Sandra."

  Using the gyroscopes she turned the ship, at last getting the sails of the one surviving mast trimmed to the photon gale. Astern the wreck dwindled in a second to the merest point of light—and then, briefly, became a speck of such brilliance as to sear the retinas of those who watched. It had happened as Grimes had been sure that it must happen. The casing of the sphere of antimatter had been warped by the heat of the fire—or, perhaps, had been buckled by an explosion. Contact with normal matter had been inevitable.

  The pirate was gone, every atom of her structure canceled out.

  The pirate was gone and Pamir was drifting, crippled. It was the time for the licking of wounds, the assessment of damage before, hopefully, limping into port under jury rig. Men aboard Pamir had been injured, perhaps killed. It had been an expensive victory. And Grimes knew that it would not have been so expensive had he remembered to fire the guns of his broadside in succession instead of all at once.

  He realized that Fowler, the gunnery officer, was saying something to him. "It was brilliant, sir, brilliant, the way you fought the action—"

  He replied slowly, "We won. But—"

  "But?" The young man's face wore a puzzled expression.

  "But you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs," contributed Sonya rather too brightly.

  "But you should be able to make one without blowing up the kitchen," was all that Grimes was able to manage in way of reply.

  The Dutchman

  I

  Grimes was packing his overnight bag without much enthusiasm.

  "Do you have to go?" asked Sonya.

  He replied rather testily, "I don't have to do anything. But the light-jammers have always been my babies and I've always made a point of seeing them in and seeing them out."

  "But Coldharbor Bay? And in midwinter? There are times, my dear, when I strongly suspect that I married a masochist."

  "If only you were a sadist we'd live happily forever after," he retorted. "And if you were a masochist you'd be coming with me to Port Ericson."

  "Not bloody likely," she told him. "Why you couldn't have arranged for your precious lightjammers to berth somewhere in what passes for the Tropics on this dismal planet is beyond my comprehension."

  "There were reasons," he said.

  Yes, there were reasons, one of the most important being that a lightjammer is a potential superbomb with a yield greatly in excess of that of the most devastating nuclear fusion weapon. The essential guts of a starsailer is the sphere of antimatter, contraterrene iron, held suspended in vacuum by powerful magnetic fields. In theory there is no possibility that the antimatter will ever come in contact with normal matter—but history has a long record of disasters giving dreadful proof that theory and practice do not always march hand in hand. The terminal port for the lightjammers, therefore, was located in a region of Lorn uninhabited save by a handful of fur trappers. It would have been at the South Pole itself but for the necessity for open water, relatively ice-free the year around, to afford landing facilities for the ships.

  The first of these weird vessels, Flying Cloud, had been an experimental job designed to go a long way in a long time, but with a very low power consumption. The most important characteristic of antimatter—apart from its terrifying explosive potential—is anti-mass. A ship with a sphere of contraterrene iron incorporated in her structure is weightless and inertialess. With her sails spread to the photon gale she can attain an extremely high percentage of the velocity of light but cannot, of course, e
xceed it,

  The crew of Flying Cloud had been, putting it mildly, a weird mob. Somehow they had become obsessed with the idea of turning the vessel into a real faster-than-light ship. (The conventional starship, proceeding under inertial drive and Mannschenn Drive, is not faster than light, strictly speaking; she makes light-years-long voyages in mere weeks by, as it has been put, going ahead in space while going astern in time.) This desirable end they attempted to achieve by means of a jury-rigged rocket drive, using home-made solid fuel, just to give Flying Cloud that extra nudge.

  Fantastically, the idea worked, although it should not have. Not only did it work, but there were economically advantageous side effects. The lightjammer finished up a long way off course, plunging down to apparently inevitable destruction on Llanith, one of the planets of the anti-matter systems to the galactic west of the Rim Worlds. But a transposition of atomic charges had taken place, She now was anti-matter herself, whereas that contraterrene iron sphere was now normal matter.