Catch the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  "Moebius Dick has gone," announced Murgatroyd.

  "When he surfaces again, we shall be in position," Haab told him as he left the control room.

  Murgatroyd looked at Grimes. There's nobody else to talk to, he seemed to be thinking, so I may as well pass the time of day with you. He said, "The Old Man always brings 'em back."

  "Alive?" queried Grimes.

  "When he wants to," replied the mate.

  Then he laughed. "He hasn't much choice as far as that thing's concerned. If it's dead it's nothing." Even in free fall he contrived to give the impression of being slumped in his seat. An incongruous wistfulness softened the rough, scarred, big-featured face under the coarse, yellow hair.

  "You wish you were out in one of the chasers," Grimes stated rather than asked.

  "I do. But somebody has to mind the shop—and it always seems to be me. There they go, Commodore."

  Four bright sparks darted into the emptiness between New Bedford and Rim Arquebus. As they reached a predetermined position they slowed, stopped, then slid into a square formation. Moebius Dick should reappear at the center of the quadrangle and then, at Haab's signal, each of the little crafts would become a fantastically powerful electromagnet and each would emit the beamed Carlotti transmissions, effectively netting the energy eater in time and space.

  Murgatroyd and Grimes stared into the screen of the mass proximity indicator. Four little points of light marked the positions of the chasers, a much fainter one denoting the presence of the energy eater.

  "Master to New Bedford," crackled from the speaker. "Check position, please."

  "New Bedford to master," replied Murgatroyd. "You are exactly in position. Over."

  "Rim Arquebus to Commodore Grimes," put in Welldean. "Do you wish me to take any action when the EE surfaces?"

  "Haab to Grimes. You are only an observer. And that goes for your navy, too, Over."

  "The old man gets tensed up," remarked Murgatroyd, with the faintest hint of apology in his voice.

  "Rim Arquebus to Commodore Grimes. My weaponry is manned and ready," persisted Welldean.

  "So is mine." Murgatroyd chuckled, waving a big hand over his fire-control console.

  The minutes, the seconds, ticked by. Grimes watched the sweep second hand of the clock. He had noted the time of Moebius Dick's disappearance. The half-hour was almost up. When that red pointer came around to 37 . . .

  "Now!" yelled the Mate.

  Moebius Dick was back. The enormous circle of gyrating luminescence had reappeared in the center of the square formed by the chasers. From the NST speaker came the low-pitched buzz and crackle of interference as the solenoids were energized. The energy eater hung there, quivering, seeming to shrink within itself. Then it moved, tilting like a precessing gyroscope.

  Haab's voice could be heard giving orders: "Increase to six hundred thousand gausses. To six-fifty—seven hundred—"

  From one of the chasers came a bright, brief flare and from the speaker a cry of alarm: "Captain, my coil has blown!"

  "Master to second and fourth mates—triangular formation."

  Moebius Dick was spinning about a diametric axis, no longer a circle of light but a hazy sphere of radiance. The energy eater was rolling through the emptiness, directly toward one of the three still-functioning chasers. The small craft turned to run. Rim Arquebus stabbed out with a barrage of laser beams. In New Bedford's control room Murgatroyd swore, added his fire to that from the frigate. It was ineffective—or highly effective in the wrong way. The monster glowed ever more brightly as it absorbed the energy directed at it, moved ever faster. The chaser turned and twisted desperately, hopelessly. The other chasers could not pursue for fear of running into the fire from the ships. There was nothing that they could have done, in any case.

  "The old man's boat—" muttered Murgatroyd. "I guess it's the way he wanted to go—" His hand fell away from the firing stud. Moebius Dick was rolling over Haab's small and fragile craft.

  Grimes, on the NST VHF, was ordering, "Hold your fire, Rim Arquebus! Hold your fire!"

  Welldean's voice came back: "What the hell do you think I'm doing?" Adding, as a grudging afterthought: "Sir."

  The lights of the chaser flared briefly through the luminous, swirling haze that enveloped them, flared and died. But something, somebody, broke through the living radiance. It was the spacesuited Haab, using his personal propulsion unit to drive him back to his ship.

  He broke through and broke away and for a second or so it seemed that he would succeed. Then Moebius Dick was after him, overtaking him, enveloping him. From the NST speaker came a short, dreadful scream. The globe of flame that was the energy eater seemed to swell, was swelling, visibly and rapidly, assuming the appearance of a gigantic, spherical fire opal. The three surviving chasers retreated rapidly.

  Dark streaks suddenly marred the iridescent beauty of the sphere, spread, rapidly covering the entire surface. Where Moebius Dick had been there was only nothingness.

  No, not nothingness.

  Floating in the darkness, illumined by the searchlights of the three small craft, was the lifeless, armored figure of Captain Haab.

  "They'll bring him in," muttered Murgatroyd. "I'll take him back to Earth for burial. Those were his wishes."

  "Rim Arquebus to New Bedford," came Welldean's voice. "Do you require medical assistance? Shall I send a boat with my surgeon—"

  "We've a quack of our own," snarled Murgatroyd, "and a good one. But even he won't be able to do anything. The old man is dead."

  Rim Change

  I'm a sort of exception that proves the rule.

  And that, oddly enough, is my name—George Rule, currently master in the employ of the Dog Star Line, one of the few independent shipping companies in the Federation able to compete successfully with the state-owned Interstellar Transport Commission. When I was much younger I used to be called, rather to my embarrassment, Golden Rule. That was when my hair, which I tend to wear long, and my beard were brightly blond. But, given time, everything fades, and my nickname has faded away with my original colouring. In uniform I'm just another tramp master—and the Odd Gods of the Galaxy know that there are plenty of such in the Universe!—and out of uniform I could be the man come to fix the robochef. It's odd—or is it?—how those engaged in that particular branch of robotics tend to run to fat . . .

  But this exception business . . .

  The space services of the Rim Confederacy are literally crawling with officers who blotted their copy books in the major shipping lines of the Federation and various autonomous kingdoms, republics and whatever, and even with a few who left certain navies under big black clouds. The famous Commodore Grimes, for example, the Rim Worlds' favourite son, isn't a Rim Worlder by birth; he was emptied out of the Federation Survey Service after the Discovery mutiny. (It was Grimes, by the way, who got me emptied out of Rim Runners, the Confederacy's state shipping line, many years ago.)

  I am a Rim Worlder by birth. I'm one of the very few spacemen who was born an Outsider and who now serves in the Insiders' ships, the very opposite to all those Insiders who, for reasons best known to themselves, came out to the Rim. I was one of the first cadets to pass through the Confederacy's space training college at Port Last, on Ultimo. I started my space-going career as Fourth Mate of the old Rim Mammoth and then, after I gained my Second Mate's Certificate, was appointed Third Mate of Rim Tiger. Captain—as he was then—Grimes was master of her. He was a real martinet in those days.

  Now that I'm master myself I can appreciate his reasons for wanting to run a taut ship. The affair aboard Discovery must still have been vivid in his mind and probably he was thinking that if he'd been less easy going the mutiny would never have happened. I didn't take kindly to the sort of discipline that he tried to impose. Rim Mammoth had been a very happy ship; the Tiger was far from it. Looking back on it all, any Third Mate of mine who tried to get away with the things that I tried to get away with would get a rough passage and a short one
.

  Anyhow—it was after I'd scrambled aboard at Port Fortinbras, very much the worse for wear, about two microseconds prior to lift-off—I was called into the Sacred Presence. Before he could start on me I told him what he could do with his Survey Service ideas. Then I told him what he could do with his ship. I told him that I wasn't at all surprised that Discovery's officers had done what they did . . . And so on.

  I don't blush easily, but the memory of that scene induces a hot flush from my scalp to the tips of my toes. I was lucky, bloody lucky, not to have been pushed out through an airlock without a spacesuit. (At the time we were, of course, well on our way to Port Forlorn.) Oh, I was escorted to the airlock after our landing on Lorn, taken to the Shipping Office and paid off, and told that it was extremely unlikely that Rim Runners would ever require my services again.

  But I was lucky:

  (a)I got a job.

  (b)I got a job that took me away from the Rim.

  (c)I got a job that exercised a certain civilizing influence (badly needed, I admit now) on me.

  You may remember when Trans-Galactic Clippers used to include the Rim Worlds in the itinerary of their Universal Tours. One of their big ships—Sobraon—was in, and her Fourth Officer, who had incurred multiple injuries in a rented air car crash, was in hospital. The post was mine, I was told, until such time. as a regular TG man was available to relieve me.

  I took it, of course, hastily affixing my autograph to Sobraon's Articles of Agreement before Captain Grimes could breathe a few unkind words into the ear of Captain Servetty, who was to be my new boss. And it was with great relief that I watched, from the Clipper's control room, the lights of Port Forlorn fading below us as we lifted. I decided, then, to make the most of this second chance. I decided, too, that I'd not return to the Rim Worlds, ever.

  There was nothing to hold me; I was an orphan, and had never gotten on with the various aunts and uncles on either side of my family. I'd had a girl, but she'd ditched me, some time back, to marry a wind turbine maintenance engineer. This broken romance had been one of the reasons—the main reason, perhaps—why I'd been such a pain in the neck to old Grimes. As the Universal Tour proceeded everything that I saw—the glamorous worlds such as Caribbea, Electra and all the rest of them—stiffened my resolution. The Rim Worlds were so dreary, and the planets of the Shakespearean Sector were little better.

  This was before Grimes, commanding Faraway Quest, had discovered the worlds of what is now known as the Eastern Circuit Tharn, Mellise, Grollor and Stree.

  All that we had then were Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo and Thule—and, of course, Kinsolving's Planet and Eblis. But nobody ever went near either of those.

  Sobraon knocked quite a few corners off me. There's a saying that you often hear, especially in star tramps, that Trans-Galactic Clippers is an outfit where accent counts for more than efficiency. Don't you believe it. Those boys may convey the impression of taking a cruise in daddy's yacht, but they're superb spacemen. They play hard at times—but they work hard.

  I played with them—and I like to think that I pulled my weight when it was time to work. I was genuinely sorry when I paid off at Canis Major—Dogtown to we Sirians—the capital city of the Sirian Sector. There was a new Fourth Mate, a Company boy, waiting for us there, so Captain Servetty had to take him on. He told me, though, that if I cared to fill in a TG Clippers application form he'd see to it that it received special consideration. I thanked him, of course, and I thought about it. I didn't have to think very hard about the repatriation to the Rim Worlds to which I was entitled. I took the money in lieu and decided to treat myself to a holiday.

  It was while I was enjoying myself at New Capri that I met Jane. She too was on holiday—on annual leave, as a matter of fact. She was at that time a Purser with the Dog Star Line. It was largely because of her that I became a kennelman myself; I became a naturalized Sirian citizen shortly after we married. She gave up spacefaring when our first child was on the stocks.

  Oh well, it's nice having your wife aboard ship with you—but it's also nice to have a home, complete with wife and children, to come back to. You can't have it both ways. And most of the time I got ships that never wandered far from Dogtown, and was contented enough as I rose slowly—but not too slowly—through the ranks from Third to Second, from Second to Chief and, finally, from Chief Officer to Master.

  But now, after all these years, I was coming back to the Rim.

  * * *

  The Dog Star Line ships spend most of the time sniffing around their own backyard, but now and again. they stray. Basset had strayed, following the scent of commerce clear across the Galaxy. At home, on Canis Major, I'd loaded a big consignment of brassards and self-adjusting sun hats for Arcadia. I must find out some time how those brassards sold. They were made with waterproof pockets for smoking requirements, small change, folding money &c &c. The Arcadians, who practice naturism all the year round, have always seemed to manage quite well with a simple bag slung over one shoulder.

  At Ursa Major (the Arcadians have a childish love of puns) I filled up with the so-called Apples of Eden, a local fruit esteemed on quite a few worlds. These were consigned to New Maine. And what would one load in Port Penobscot? Need you ask? Smoked and pickled fish, of course, far less fragrant than what had been discharged. This shipment was for Rob Roy, one of the planets of the Empire of Waverley.

  The cargo we loaded on Rob Roy was no surprise either. The Jacobeans, as they call themselves, maintain that their whisky is superior to the genuine article distilled in Scotland. It may be, it may not be; whisky is not my tipple. But the freight charges from the Empire of Waverley to the Rim Confederacy are far less than those from Earth to the Rim.

  So Basset had followed the scent of profit clear from the Dog Star to the Rim, and now it looked as though the trail was petering out. On the other legs of the voyage Head Office, by means of Carlotti radio, had kept me well informed as to what my future movements would be. On my run from Rob Roy to Lorn they had remained silent. And Rim Runners, my agents on Lorn, had replied to my ETA with only a curt acknowledgement. I didn't like it. None of us liked it: we'd all been away from home too long.

  Probably I liked it less than my officers. I knew the Rim Worlds; I could think of far nicer planets to sit around awaiting orders.

  We found the Lorn sun without any trouble—not that we should have had any trouble finding that dim luminary. Even if we hadn't been equipped with the Carlotti Direction Finder, and even if the Rim Worlds hadn't been able to boast the usual lay-out of Carlotti Beacons, we'd have had no trouble. There's the Galactic Lens, you see, and it doesn't thin out gradually towards its edges; the stars in the spiral arms are quite closely packed. (I use the word "closely" in a relative way, of course. If you had to walk a dozen or so light years you wouldn't think it was all that close.) And then there's that almost absolute nothingness between the galaxies. Almost absolute. . .

  There's the occasional hydrogen atom, of course, and a few small star clusters doing their best to convey the impression that they don't really belong to the galactic family. The Rim Confederacy is one such cluster. There are the Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo, Thule, Eblis and Kinsolving suns. To the Galactic East there's a smaller cluster, with Tharn, Grollor, Mellise and Stree. To the West there's a sizeable anti-matter aggregation, with a dozen suns. So, as long as you're headed in roughly the right direction when you break out of the Lens, you have no difficulty identifying the cluster you want.

  You have the Galactic Lens astern of you. When the space-time-twisting Mannschenn Drive is running it looks like an enormous, slowly squirming, luminescent amoeba. Ahead there's an uncanny blackness, and the sparse, glimmering, writhing nebulosities that are the Rim Suns seem to make that blackness even blacker, even emptier. And that emptiness still looks too damned empty even when the interstellar drive's shut down and the ship's back in the normal Continuum.

  I could tell that my officers were scared by the weird scenery—or lack of it. I was fe
eling a bit uneasy myself; it was so many years since I'd been out here. But we got used to it after a while—as much as one can get used to it—and here we were at last, dropping down through the upper atmosphere of Lorn. The landing was scheduled for 0900 hours, Port Forlorn Local Time. We couldn't see anything of Port Forlorn yet, although we had clearance from Aerospace Control to enter and were homing on the radio beacon. Beneath us was the almost inevitable overcast, like a vast snowfield in the sunlight, and under the cloud ceiling there would be, I knew, the usual half gale (if not something stronger) probably accompanied by rain, snow, hail or sleet. Or all four.

  "How does it feel to be coming home, sir?" asked my Chief Officer sarcastically.

  "My home's in Canis Major!" I snapped. Then I managed a grin. "If you'll forgive my being corny, home is where the heart is."

  "You can say that again, Captain," he concurred. (He was recently married and the novelty hadn't worn off yet.)

  I took a last, routine look around the control room, just to make sure that everybody was where he was supposed to be and that everything was working. Soon I'd have to give all my attention to the inertial drive and attitude controls and to the periscope screen; inevitably I'd have to do some fancy juggling with lateral and downthrusts. Rugged, chunky Bindle, the Chief Officer, was strapped in the co-pilot's chair, ready to take over at once if I suffered a sudden heart attack or went mad or something. Loran, the Second, was hunched over the bank of navigational instruments, his long, skinny frame all awkward angles and the usual greasy black cowlick obscuring one eye. His job was to call out to me the various instrument readings if, for some reason, such data failed to appear on the periscope screen. Young Taylor, the Third, an extraordinarily ordinary looking youth, was manning the various telephones, including the NST transceiver with which we were in communication with Aerospace Control. In most Dog Star Line's vessels this was the Radio Officer's job, but I had found that our Sparks, Elizabeth Brown (Betty Boops, we called her) was far too great a distraction. Even when she was wearing a thickly opaque uniform blouse (she preferred ones which were not) her abundant charms were all too obvious.