The Big Black Mark

by A Bertram Chandler

  "Then there are the engines, sir."

  "The engines? What about them?"

  "The chief has taken down both inertial drive-units. There're bits and pieces strewn all over the engine room deck."

  "Was the port captain informed of this immobilization?"

  "Er, no, sir."

  "And why not?"

  "I didn't know what the chief had done until he'd already done it."

  "In the captain's absence you were the officer in charge. You should have known. All right, all right, the chief should have come to you first. Apparently he didn't. But as soon as you knew that this rustbucket was immobile you should have reported it."

  "I—I suppose I should, sir."

  "You suppose! Why didn't you?"

  A sullen flush spread over the grayish pallor of Brabham's face. He blurted, "Like the rest of us in this ship, MacMorris has been in quite enough trouble of various kinds. I didn't want to get him into any more. Sir."

  Grimes repressed a sigh. It was obvious that this ship was a closed shop, manned by the No Hopers' Union, whose members would close ranks against any threatened action by higher authority, no matter how much they bickered among themselves. And what was he, Grimes? A No Hoper or a pillar of the Establishment? In his heart of hearts, which side was he on? While he was sorting out a reply to make to Brabham a familiar bugle call, amplified, drifted through and over the ship's PA system.

  Brabham shifted uneasily in his chair.

  "Are you coming down to lunch, sir?" he asked.

  "No," decided Grimes. "You carry on down, and you can ask—no, tell—Miss Russell to send me some sandwiches and a pot of coffee up here. After lunch I shall see Lieutenant Commander MacMorris, Miss Russell, and Mr. Flannery, in that order. Then I shall see you again.

  "That is all."

  Chapter 3

  It was the little blonde stewardess, Sally, who brought up Grimes's lunch. While he was eating it she set about stripping Tallis' calendars from the bulkheads, performing this task with a put-upon air and a great deal of waste motion. Grimes wondered if she had made the sandwiches and the coffee in the same sullenly slapdash way. No, he decided after the first nibble, the first sip. She must have gone to considerable trouble with the simple meal. Surely all the available bread could not have been as stale as the loaf that had been used. Surely it must have been much harder to spread butter so extremely thinly than in the normal manner. And where had she found that stringy, flavorless cold mutton? The coffeepot must have been stood in cold water to bring its weak contents to the correctly tepid stage.

  "Will that be all? Sir?" she asked, her arms full of calendars.

  "Yes," Grimes told her, adding, "Thank you," not that she deserved it. He decided that he would tell Miss Russell to let him have a male steward to look after him. Obviously this girl would give proper service only to those who serviced her, and she was too coarse, too shop-soiled for his taste, apart from the obvious disciplinary considerations.

  Almost immediately after she was gone there was a knock at the door. A big man entered. He was clad in filthy, oil-soaked overalls. A smear of black grease ran diagonally across his hard, sullen face. More grease was mixed with his long, unruly yellow hair. His hot blue eyes glared down at Grimes.

  "Ye wanted to see me, Captain? I'm a busy man, not like some I could mention."

  "Lieutenant Commander MacMorris?"

  "Who else?"

  "Commander MacMorris, I understand that this ship is immobilized."

  "Unless ye intend to take her up on reaction drive, she is that."

  "By whose authority?" demanded Grimes coldly.

  "Mine, o' course. Both the innies was playin' up on the homeward passage. So I'm fixin' 'em."

  "Didn't you inform the first lieutenant before you started taking them down? He was in charge, in the absence of a captain."

  "Inform him? He looks after whatever control room ornaments look after. I look after my engine room."

  "As long as I'm captain of this ship," snapped Grimes, "it's my engine room. How long will it take you to reassemble the inertial drive-units?"

  Grimes could almost read MacMorris' thoughts as the engineer stood there. Should he or should he not angrily protest the captain's assumption of proprietorial rights? He muttered at last, "If I do all that has to be done, a week."

  "A week? Just to put things together again?"

  "A week it will be."

  "Normal in-port routine, I suppose, Commander MacMorris . . . 0800 to 1700, with the usual breaks . . . I see. But if you work double shifts . .. ?"

  "Look, Captain, you're not suggesting—"

  "No, Commander MacMorris. I'm not suggesting. I'm ordering."

  "But we all have friends on the Base, and the last cruise was a long one."

  "You will work double shifts, Chief, longer if necessary. I'll want this vessel ready for Space no more than three days from now."

  MacMorris grunted wordlessly, turned to go.

  "Oh, one more thing," said Grimes.

  "Yes? Sir."

  "In the future you are to ask me for permission before you immobilize the engines. That is all."

  The engineer left sullenly. Grimes carefully filled and lit his battered pipe. What was it that somebody, some girl, had called it, some time ago? The male pacifier. Well, he needed pacifying. He disliked having to crack the whip, but there were occasions when it was unavoidable. MacMorris was known to be a good engineer—but he was one of those engineers to whom a ship is no more than a platform existing for the sole purpose of supporting machinery. Grimes thought, not for the first time, that captains had it much better in the days of sail. Even then there were technicians—such as the sailmaker—but a competent wind ship master would be able to repair or even to make a sail himself if he absolutely had to.

  There was another knock at the door.

  "Come in!" he called.

  "I see you're still smoking that filthy thing!" sniffed Vinegar Nell

  She had hardly changed at all, thought Grimes, since when they had last been shipmates—and how many years ago was that? She was slim, still, almost to the point of thinness. Her coppery hair was scraped back severely from her broad brow. Green eyes still glinted in the sharp, narrow face. Her mouth was surprisingly wide and full. She could have been very attractive were it not for her perpetually sour expression.

  Grimes said stiffly, "Must I remind you, Miss Russell, that I am the captain of this ship?"

  "And so you are, sir. And a full commander. I never thought you'd make it."

  "That will do, Miss Russell." Belatedly he remembered his manners. "Sit down, will you?" The legs displayed when her short uniform skirt rode up were excellent. "Now, Miss Russell, I want Discovery ready for Space in three days."

  "You're asking a lot, Captain."

  "I'm not, Paymaster. You know the regulations as well as I do. At least as well." He quoted, "All fleet units shall be maintained in a state of instant readiness."

  "But there are provedore stores to be loaded. The farm needs a thorough overhaul; the yeasts in numbers two and three vats went bad on me last trip, and I'm not at all happy about the beef tissue culture. The pumping and filtration systems for the hydroponic tanks need a thorough clean out."

  "You can write, can't you?"

  "Write?" The fine eyebrows arched in puzzlement.

  "Yes. Write. It's something you do on a piece of paper, such as an official form, with a stylus. Make out the necessary requisitions. Mark them urgent. I'll countersign them."

  "Commander Tallis," she told him, "always wanted all re pairs and maintenance carried out by the ship's personnel."

  "One way of making sure that you get longer in port. But my name is Grimes, not Tallis. I don't like to loaf around Base until the stern vanes take root Make out those requisitions."

  "All right," she said flatly.

  "Oh, and that stewardess . . . Sally, I think her name is."

  "Your servant."

  "My ex-s
ervant Have her replaced by a male steward." A smile that was almost a sneer flickered over her full mouth as she looked around at the bulkheads, bare now, stripped of their adornment of blatantly bare female flesh. "Oh, I see. I never thought that you were that way in the old days, Captain."

  "And I'm not now!" he snarled. "It's just that I don't like insolent sluts who can't even make a decent sandwich. On your way down, tell Mr. Flannery that I want him, please."

  "Nobody wants Mr. Flannery," she said. "But we're stuck with him."

  * * *

  Flannery finally put in an appearance. He looked as though he had been dragged out from a drunken slumber. He was red-haired, grossly fat, and his unhealthily pale face was almost featureless. His little eyes were a washed-out blue, but so bloodshot that they looked red. The reek of his breath was so strong that Grimes, fearing an explosion, did not relight his pipe.

  "Mr. Flannery?"

  "An' who else would it be, Captain?"

  "Mphm." The temperamental telepaths had always to be handled carefully and Grimes did not wish to provoke the man into insubordination, with its inevitable consequences. It would take much too long to get a replacement. Once the ship was up and away, however—"Mphm. Ah, Mr. Flannery, I believe that you're unable to get a suitable psionic amplifier to replace the one that, er, died."

  "An' isn't that the God's truth, Captain? Poor Terence, he was more than just an amplifier for me feeble, wanderin' thoughts. He was more than just a pet, even. He was a brother."

  "Mphm?"

  "A dog from the Ould Sod, he was, a sweet Irish setter. They took his foine body away, bad cess to 'em, but his poor, naked brain was there,, in that jar o' broth, his poor, shiverin' brain an' the shinin' soul o' him. Night after night we'd sit there, out in the dark atween the stars, just the pair of us, a-singin' the ould songs. The Minstrel Boy to the war has gone. . . . An' ye are that Minstrel Boy, Paddy, he'd say to me, he'd think to me, an' you an' me is light-years from the Emerald Me, an' shall we iver see her again?" Grimes noted with embarrassed disgust that greasy tears were trickling from the piggy eyes. "I'm a sociable man, Captain, an' I niver likes drinkin' alone, but I'm fussy who I drinks with. So ivery night I'd pour a drop, just a drop, mind ye, just a drop o' the precious whiskey into Terence's tank . . . he liked it, as God's me guide. He loved it, an' he wanted it. An' wouldn't ye want it if the sweet brain of ye was bare an' naked in a goldfish bowl, a-floatin' in weak beef tea?"

  "Mphm."

  "An one cursed night me hand shook, an' I gave him half the bottle. But he went happy, a-dreamin' o' green fields an' soft green hills an' a blue sky with little, white fleecy clouds like the ewe lambs o' God himself. . . . I only hope that I go as happy when me time comes."

  If you have anything to do with it, thought Grimes, there's a very good chance of it.

  "An' I've tried to get a replacement, Captain, I've tried, an' I've tried. I've haunted the communications equipment stores like a poor, shiverin' ghost until I thought they'd be callin' one o' the Fathers to exorcise me. But what have they got on their lousy shelves? I'll tell ye. The pickled brains o' English bulldogs, an' German shepherds an'—yell niver believe me!—an Australian dingo! But niver an honest Irish hound. Not so much as a terrier."

  "You have to settle on something," Grimes said firmly.

  "But you don't understand, Captain." Suddenly the heavy brogue was gone and Flannery seemed to be speaking quite soberly. "There must be absolute empathy between a telepath and his amplifier. And could I achieve empathy with an English dog?"

  Balls! thought Grimes. I'll order the bastard to take the bulldog, and see what happens. Then a solution to the problem suddenly occurred to him. He said, "And they have a dingo's brain in the store?"

  "Oh, sure, sure. But—"

  "But what? A dingo's a dog, isn't he? As a dog he possesses a dog's telepathic faculties. And he's a peculiarly Australian dog."

  "Yes, but—"

  "And what famous Australians can you call to mind? What about the Wild Colonial Boy? Weren't all the bushrangers—or most of 'em—Irish?"

  "Bejabbers, Captain, I believe ye've got it!"

  "You've got it, Mr. Flannery. Or you will get it. And you can call it Ned, for Ned Kelly."

  * * *

  And so that's that, thought Grimes, when Flannery had shambled off. For the time being, at least. It still remains to be seen if my departmental heads can deliver the goods. But he was still far from happy. Unofficially and quite illegally a captain relies upon his psionic communications officer to keep him informed when trouble is brewing inside his ship. "Snooping' is the inelegant name for such conduct, Which runs counter to the Rhine Institute's code of ethics.

  For such snooping to be carried out, however, there must be a genuine trust and friendship between captain and telepath. Grimes doubted that he could ever trust Flannery or that he could ever feel friendly toward him.

  And, to judge by his experience to date, similar doubts applied to everybody in this unhappy ship.

  Chapter 4

  Surprisingly, the ship was ready for liftoff in three days.

  Had the Survey Service been a commercial shipping line the refitting operations would have been uneconomical, with swarms of assorted technicians working around the clock and a wasteful use of materials. It was still a very expensive operation in terms of goodwill. Discovery's people were robbed of the extra days at Lindisfarne Base to which they had all been looking forward, and the officers in charge of the various Base facilities grew thoroughly sick and tired of being worried by Grimes, all the time, about this, that, and the other.

  But she was ready, spaceworthy in all respects, and then Grimes shook Brabham by saying that he was going to make an inspection.

  "Commander Tallis only used to make inspections in Space," objected the first lieutenant.

  "Damn Commander Tallis!" swore Grimes, who was becoming tired of hearing about his predecessor. "Do you really think that I'm mug enough to take this rustbucket upstairs without satisfying myself that she's not going to fall apart about my ears? Pass word to all departmental heads that I shall be making rounds at 1000 hours. You, Miss Russell, and Major Swinton will accompany me. Every other officer and petty officer will be standing by whatever he's responsible for."

  "Ten hundred is morning smoko, sir."

  "And so what? Smoko is a privilege, and not a right. Report to me at 1000 hours with Miss Russell and the major. Oh, and you might polish your shoes and put on a clean: uniform shirt."

  If looks killed, Brabham would have had to organize a funeral, not captain's rounds. Had he been too harsh? Grimes asked himself as the first lieutenant walked stiffly out of the day cabin. No, he thought. No. This ship needs shaking up, smartening up. He grinned. And I've always hated those captains who pride themselves on a taut ship. But I don't want a taut ship. All I want is something a few degrees superior to a flag of convenience star tramp.

  Meanwhile his own quarters were, at least, clean. The steward who had replaced Commander Tallis' pet, Sally, was a taciturn lout who had to be told everything, but once he was told anything, he did it. And the service of meals in the wardroom had been improved, as had been the standard of cookery. Also, under Grimes's prodding, Brabham was beginning to take a little pride in his appearance and was even seeing to it that his juniors did likewise. MacMorris, however, was incorrigible. The first time that Grimes put in an appearance in the wardroom, for dinner on the evening of his first day aboard, the engineer was already seated at the table, still wearing his filthy coveralls. On being taken to task he told the captain that he had to work for a living. Grimes ordered him either to go and get cleaned up or to take his meal in the duty engineers' mess. Rather surprisingly, MacMorris knuckled under, although with bad grace. But was it, after all, so surprising? Like all the other people in this ship he was regarded as being almost unemployable. If he were paid off from Discovery he would find it hard, if not impossible, to obtain another spacegoing appointment in the Survey Serv
ice. In a ship, any ship, he was still a big frog in a small puddle and, too, was in receipt of the active-duty allowance in addition to the pay for his rank. As one of the many technicians loafing around a big Base he would be a not too generously paid nobody.

  The steward brought in Grimes's coffee. It was the way that he liked it, very hot and strong. He poured a cup of the steaming brew, sipped it appreciatively. There was a knock at the door. It was Brabham, accompanied by Major Swinton and Vinegar Nell.

  "Rounds, sir?" asked the first lieutenant.

  Grimes glanced at the bulkhead clock. "A little early yet. Be seated, all of you. Coffee?"

  "No, thank you, sir. We have just finished ours."