Sulkily Grimes pushed Adder up through the last, high wisps of cirrus, into the purple twilight, towards the bright, unwinking stars. She screamed through the last tenuous shreds of atmosphere, and shortly thereafter von Tannenbaum reported that she was clear of the Van Allens. Grimes, still far too conscious of the Commissioner's cold regard, cut inertial and reaction drives, then slowly and carefully—far more slowly than was usual—used his directional gyroscopes to swing the sharp prow of the ship on to the target star. He applied correction for Galactic Drift—and then realized that he had put it on the wrong way. He mumbled something that sounded unconvincing even to himself about overcompensation and, after a few seconds that felt more like minutes, had the vessel headed in the right direction.
He wondered what would happen when he started the Mannschenn Drive—but nothing did; nothing, that is, worse than the familiar but always disquieting sense of déjà vu. He had a vision of himself as an old, old lieutenant with a long white beard—but this was nothing to do with the temporal precession field of the Drive, was induced rather by the psionic field generated by the Commissioner. He didn't like her and had a shrewd suspicion that she didn't like him.
She said, "Very educational, Mr. Grimes. Very educational."
She unstrapped herself from her chair. Slovotny and von Tannenbaum got up from their own seats, each determined courteously to assist her from hers. They collided, and von Tannenbaum tripped and fell, and Beadle fell over him.
"Very educational," repeated the Commissioner, gracefully extricating herself from her chair unaided. "Oh, Mr. Grimes, could you come to see me in ten minutes' time? We have to discuss the new galley routine."
"Certainly, Mrs. Dalwood." Grimes turned to his embarrassed officers. "Deep Space Routine, Mr. Beadle." Usually he said, "Normal Deep Space Routine," but had more than a suspicion that things would not be at all normal.
Things were not normal.
Usually Adder's people were gourmands rather than gourmets, and a certain tightness of waistbands was an accepted fact of life. Even when whoever was doing the cooking produced an inedible mess bellies could be filled, and were filled, with sandwiches of the doorstep variety. But these relatively happy days were over.
As she had told Grimes, the Commissioner's robots were skilled cooks. To have called them chefs would not have been exaggerating. Insofar as subtlety of flavorings and attractiveness of presentation were concerned nobody could fault them. To the average spaceman, however, quantity is as important as quality. But there were no second helpings. The coldly efficient automatons must have calculated just how much nutriment each and every person aboard required to operate efficiently himself—and that was all that he ever got. Too, there was always at least one of the mechanical servitors doing something or other around the galley and storerooms, and Grimes and his officers knew that the partaking of snacks between meals would be reported at once to Mrs. Dalwood.
A real Captain, one with four gold bands on his shoulderboards and scrambled egg on the peak of his cap, would never have tolerated the situation. But Grimes, for all his authority and responsibility, was too junior an officer. He was only a Lieutenant, and a passed-over one at that, while the Commissioner, although a civilian, could tell Admirals to jump through the hoop.
But he was hungry.
One morning ship's time, he went down to the solarium for his daily exercises. This compartment could, more aptly, have been called the gymnasium, but since it was part of the "farm" it got its share of the ultra violet required for the hydroponics tanks. Mrs. Dalwood and her maid, Rosaleen, were still there, having their daily workout, when Grimes came in. Always he had timed his arrival until the two women had finished, but for some reason he was running late. It was not that he was prudish, and neither were they, but he had decided that the less he had to do with them the better.
As he came into the room he noticed their gowns hanging outside the sauna. He shrugged. So what? This was his ship. He took off his own robe and then, clad only in trunks, mounted the stationary bicycle. He began to pedal away almost happily, watching the clock as he did so.
From the corner of his eye he saw the door to the sauna open. The Commissioner, followed by her maid, came out. It was the first time that he had seen her naked. He almost whistled, then thought better of it. She was a bit of all right, he admitted, if you liked 'em lean and hungry. He inclined his head towards her courteously, carried on pedaling.
Rather to his surprise she stood there, looking him over. She said, "Mr. Grimes, there is a little improvement in your condition, but that probably is due to a properly balanced diet." She walked towards him, her feet slim and elegant on the carpeted deck, her breasts jouncing over so slightly. "Get off that thing will you?" Grimes did so, on the side away from her. She stooped, with fluid grace, and tested the pedals with her right hand.
"Mr. Grimes! How in Space do you hope to get any benefit from these exercises unless you do them properly?" Her hand went to the adjusting screw of the roller on top of the wheel, turned it clockwise. The muscles of her right arm stood out clearly under the smooth brown skin as she tested the pedals again. Then she actually smiled, saying, "On your bicycle, spaceman!"
Grimes remounted. He had to push, hard, to start the wheel rotating. He had to push, to keep it rotating. Now and again he had ridden on real bicycles, but almost always had dismounted rather than pedal up a steep hill. She stood there watching him. Until now he would have thought it impossible actively to dislike an attractive naked woman. But there has to be a first time for anything.
The Commissioner turned to her maid. "Rosaleen, you were last on the bicycle. Did you readjust it?"
The girl blushed guiltily over her entire body. "Yes, Ma'am."
"I see that I shall have to watch you too." The woman glanced at the watch that was her only article of clothing. "Unluckily I have some work to do. However, you may stay here for another thirty minutes. The bicycle again, the rowing machine, the horizontal bars. And you, Mr. Grimes, will see to it that she does something about shedding that disgusting fat."
Grimes did not say what he was thinking. He had little breath to say anything. He managed to gasp, "Yes, Ma'am."
Mrs. Dalwood went to her gown, shrugged it on, thrust her feet into her sandals. She walked gracefully to the door. She did not look back at the man on the bicycle, the girl on the rowing machine.
As soon as the door had shut behind her Rosaleen stopped rowing.
She said, "Phew!"
Grimes went on pedaling.
"Hey, Captain. Take five. Avast, or whatever you say."
Grimes stopped. He said, "You'd better carry on with your rowing."
The girl grinned. "We're quite safe, Captain. She is so used to having every order implicitly obeyed that she'd never dream of coming back to check up on us."
"You know her better than I do," admitted Grimes.
"I should." She got up from the sliding seat of the rowing machine, then flopped down on to the deck. She was, Grimes decided, at least as attractive as her mistress, and she had the advantage of youth. And there was so much more of her. The spaceman looked her over, studying her almost clinically. Yes, she had been losing weight. Her skin was not as taut as it should have been.
She noticed his look. She complained, "Yes, I'm starved . . ."
"You get the same as we do, Rosaleen."
"That's the trouble, Captain."
"But you have this sort of feeding all the time."
"Like hell I do. I have my nights off, you know, and then I can catch up on the pastries and candy, and the hot rolls with lots of butter, and the roast pork, with crackling . . ."
"Please stop," begged Grimes. "You're making me ravenous."
She went on, "But aboard your ship I have to toe the line. There's no escape."
"I suppose not."
"But surely you can do something. You've storerooms, with bread . . ."
"Yes, but . . . "
"You aren't scared of her,
Captain?" She looked at him through her big, dark eyes. He had thought that they were black—now he saw that they were a very deep violet.
"Mphm." He allowed his glance to stray downwards, then hastily looked back at her face. There had been invitation in every line of her ample body. He was no snob, and the fact that her status was that of a servant weighed little with him. But she was the Commissioner's servant. A lady has no secrets from her lady's maid—is the converse true? Anyhow, they were both women, and no doubt happily prattled to each other, disparity of social status notwithstanding. She said plaintively, "I'm hungry, Captain."
"So am I, Rosaleen."
"But you're the Captain."
Grimes got off the bicycle. He said, "It's time for my sauna." He threw his shorts in the general direction of the hook on which his robe was hanging, strode to the door of the hot room, opened it. She followed him. He stretched out on one of the benches, she flopped on one opposite him. She said, "I'm hungry."
"It's those damned robots," complained Grimes. "Always hanging around the galley and storerooms."
"They won't be there tonight."
"How do you know?"
"They're much more than cooks. Even I don't know all the things they've been programmed for. This I do know. She has been working on a report, and tomorrow it will be encoded for transmission. The way that she does it is to give it to John—he's the one with the little gold knob on top of his head—to encode. And James decodes each sheet as John finishes it, to ensure that there are no errors."
"Are there ever any?"
"No. But she likes to be sure."
"She would." He wondered when he was going to start sweating. The girl was already perspiring profusely. "Tell me, when does this encoding decoding session take place?"
"After dinner."
"And there's no chance of her breaking it off?"
"None at all. When she starts something she likes to finish it."
"Mphm." The sweat was starting to stream out of Grimes's pores now. The girl got up, began to flick the skin of his back lightly with the birch twigs. He appreciated the attention. "Mphm. And are you free while all this Top Secret stuff is going on?"
"Yes."
"And she should have her nose stuck into it by 2000?"
"Yes, Captain."
"Then meet me outside the galley at, say, 2015 . . ."
"Yes!"
"Thick buttered toast . . ." murmured Grimes, deciding that talking about food took his mind off other things.
"Lots of butter . . ." she added.
"And sardines . . ."
"Fat, oily sardines . . ."
"With lemon wedges . . ."
"With mayonnaise . . ." she corrected.
"All right. Mayonnaise."
"And coffee. With sugar, and great dollops of cream . . ."
"I'll have beer, myself, even though it is fattening."
"We can have beer with, and coffee after . . ."
The door slid open and Hollister came in. Naked, the telepath looked more like a living skeleton than ever. Grimes regarded him with some distaste and wondered if the psionic radio officer had been eavesdropping. To do so would be contrary to the very strict code of the Rhine Institute—but espers, in spite of their occasional claims to superiority, are only humans.
He said, "I'm just about cooked, Rosaleen."
"So am I, Captain." She got up from her bench, the perspiration streaming down her still plump body, went through into the shower room. Through the closed door Grimes heard the hiss of the water, her little scream as its coldness hit her. There was the whine of the blowers as she dried off, and then she ran through the hot room on her way back into the solarium.
"Quite a dish, Captain," commented Hollister.
"We," Grimes told him coldly, "are neither kings nor peasants."
He took his own cold shower, and when he stepped out into the gymnasium Rosaleen was gone.
Dinner that night was as unsatisfying as usual. A clear soup, a small portion of delicious baked fish with a green salad, a raw apple for desert. Grimes, at the head of the table, tried to make conversation, but the Commissioner was in a thoughtful mood and hardly spoke at all. Beadle, Slovotny, Vitelli, and Hollister wolfed their portions as though eating were about to be made illegal, saying little. The four officers excused themselves as soon as they decently could—Slovotny going up to Control to relieve von Tannenbaum for his dinner, Beadle to have a look at the air circulatory system, Vitelli to check up on the Mannschenn Drive. Hollister didn't bother to invent an excuse. He just left. Von Tannenbaum came down, took his place at the table. He was starting to acquire a lean and hungry look that went well with his Nordic fairness. The Commissioner nodded to him, then patted her lips gently with her napkin. Grimes, interpreting the signs correctly, got up to help her from her chair. She managed to ignore the gesture.
She said, "You must excuse me, Mr. Grimes and Mr. von Tannenbaum. I am rather busy this evening."
"Can I, or my officers, be of any assistance?" asked Grimes politely.
She took her time replying, and he was afraid that she would take his offer. Then she said, "Thank you, Mr. Grimes. But it is very confidential work, and I don't think that you have Security clearance."
It may have been intended as a snub, but Grimes welcomed it.
"Good night, Ma'am."
"Good night, Mr. Grimes."
Von Tannenbaum turned to the serving robot which was waiting until he had finished his meal. "Any chance of another portion of fish, James?"
"No, sir," the thing replied in a metallic voice. "Her Excellency has instructed me that there are to be no second helpings, for anybody."
"Oh."
In sulky silence the navigator finished his meal. Grimes was tempted to include him in the supper party, but decided against it. The fewer people who knew about it the better.
The two men got up from the table, each going to his own quarters. In his day cabin Grimes mixed himself a drink, feeling absurdly guilty as he did so. "Damn it all," he muttered, "this is my ship. I'm captain of her, not that cast iron bitch!" Defiantly—but why should he feel defiant?—he finished what was in his glass, then poured another generous portion. But he made it last, looking frequently at his clock as he sipped.
20:14 . . .
Near enough.
He got up, went out to the axial shaft, tried not to make too much noise going down the ladder. He paused briefly in the officers' flat, on the deck below and abaft his own. Faint music emanated from behind the door of von Tannenbaum's cabin—Wagner? It sounded like it—and loud snores from inside Beadle's room. His own air circulatory system could do with overhauling, thought Grimes. Slovotny was on watch, and Hollister, no doubt, was wordlessly communicating with his psionic amplifier, the poodle's brain in aspic. Vitelli could be anywhere, but was probably in the engine room.
The V.I.P. suite was on the next deck down. As he passed the door Grimes could hear the Commissioner dictating something, one of the robots repeating her words. That took care of her. Another deck, with cabins for not very important people . . . He thought of tapping on Rosaleen's door, then decided against it. In any case, she was waiting for him outside the galley.
She whispered, "I was afraid you'd change your mind, Captain."
"Not bloody likely."
He led the way into the spotless—thanks to the industry of the robot servitors—galley. He was feeling oddly excited. It reminded him of his training cruise, when he had been a very new (and always hungry) cadet. But then there had been locks to pick . . .
He opened the door of the tinned food storeroom, ran his eye over the shelves. He heard Rosaleen gasp. "New Erin ham . . . Carinthian sausage . . ."
"You'll have Atlantan sardines, my girl, and like 'em . . . Ah, here we are . . . A can each?"
"Two cans."
"All right. Here you are. You can switch on the toaster while I rummage in the bread locker . . .
He thrust the cans into her eager hands, then
collected bread, butter and seasonings. He tore open the wrapper of the loaf, then put the thick slices on the rack under the griller. The smell of the cooking toast was mouth-watering—too mouth-watering. He hoped that it would not be distributed throughout the ship by the ventilation system. But the Commissioner's overly efficient robots must, by this time, have put the air out-take filters to rights.
One side done . . . He turned the slices over. Rosaleen asked plaintively, "How do you work this opener?"
A metallic voice replied, "Like this, Miss Rosaleen—but I forbid you to use it."
The Hard Way Up Page 15