The Big Black Mark

by A Bertram Chandler

  The main doors, as he approached them, slid open reluctantly with a distinctly audible squeak. In the hallway beyond them an elderly petty officer, in shabby grays, got slowly up from his desk as Grimes entered. He was not wearing a cap, so he did not salute; but neither did he stiffen to attention.

  He asked, "Sir?"

  "I am Commander Grimes, captain of Discovery."

  "Then you'll be wanting to see the old—" He looked at the smartly uniformed Grimes and decided to start again. "You'll be wanting to see Commander Denny. You'll find him in his office, sir." He led the way to a bank of elevators, pressed a button.

  "Rather shorthanded, aren't you?" remarked Grimes conversationally.

  "Oh, no, sir. On a sub-Base like this it isn't necessary to have more than the duty PO—which is me—manning Reception."

  "I was thinking about policing the spaceport apron," said Grimes.

  "Oh, that!" The petty officer's face did show a faint disgust.

  "Yes. That."

  "But there's nothing that we can do about the bastards, sir. They always did relieve themselves here, before there was a spaceport. They always will. Creatures of habit, like—"

  "They?"

  "The great snakes, sir. They're called great snakes, though they're not snakes at all, really. More of a sort of slug. Just imagine a huge sausage that eats at one end and—"

  "I get the idea. But you could post guards, suitably armed."

  "But the great snakes are protected, sir. There's only the one herd left on the entire planet."

  "Then why not a force field fence, with a nonlethal charge."

  "Oh, no, sir. That would never do. The Old Man's wife—I beg pardon, sir, the commander's wife—would never stand for it. She's the chairlady of the New Maine Conservationist Association."

  "Mphm." At this moment the elevator, which had taken its time about descending, arrived. The door opened. Grimes got into the car as the petty officer said, "Seventh deck, sir." He pressed the right button and was carried slowly upward.. Commander Denny's office was as slovenly as his spaceport. Untidiness Grimes did not mind—he never set a good example himself in that respect—but real dirt was something else again. The drift of papers on Denny's desk was acceptable, but the dust-darkened rings on its long-unpolished surface left by mugs of coffee or some other fluids were not. Like his petty officer in Reception, Denny was wearing a shabby gray uniform. So were the two women clerks. Grimes thought it highly probable that it was the elderly, unattractive one who did all the work. The other one was there for decoration—assuming that one's tastes in decoration run to bold-eyed, plump, blonde, micro-skirted flirts.

  The Base commander got slowly to his feet, extended a pudgy hand. "Commander Grimes?"

  "In person."

  The two men shook hands. Denny's grip was flabby.

  "And these," went on Denny, "are Ensign Tolley"—the older woman favored Grimes with a tight-lipped smile—"and Ensign Primm." Miss Primm stared at the visitor haughtily. "But sit down, Grimes. You're making my control room—ha, ha—look untidy."

  Grimes looked around. There were two chairs available in addition to those occupied by the clerks, but each of them held an overflow of paper.

  "Sit down, man. Sit down. This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard."

  "I don't see any cats," said Grimes. Not of the four-legged variety, anyhow, he thought "And to judge by the state of your spaceport apron, somebody, or something, has already been. . . er. . . spitting on the mat!"

  Surprisingly it was the elderly ensign who laughed, then got up to clear the detritus from one of the chairs. Neither Denny nor the younger woman showed any amusement.

  "And now, Commander," asked Denny, "what can I do for you?"

  "I shall require the use of your port facilities, Commander," Grimes told him. "I'll be wanting to replenish stores, and my chief engineer could do with some shore labor to lend a hand with his innies; he wants to take them down to find out why they're working, and then he'll have to put them together again. You know what engineers are."

  "Yes. I know. And then you'll be off on your Lost Colony hunt, I suppose."

  "That's what I'm being paid for. Have you heard any rumors of Lost Colonies out in this sector?"

  "I'm just the OCB, Grimes. Nobody ever tells me anything."

  And would you be interested if they did? Grimes wondered. He said, "Our lords and masters must have had something in mind when they sent me out this way."

  "And who knows what futile thoughts flicker through their tiny minds? I don't."

  And you've got to the stage where you don't much care, either, thought Grimes. But he could not altogether blame the man. This dreary sub-Base on a dull world was obviously the end of the road for Denny. Here he would mark time until he reached retirement age. And what about himself? Would this sort of job be his ultimate fate if some admiral or politician upon whose corns he had trodden finally succeeded in having him swept under the carpet and forgotten?

  "Oh, Commander," said Denny, breaking into his thoughts.

  "Yes, Commander?"

  "You'll be getting an official invitation later in the morning. It's quite a while since we had one of our ships in here, so the mayor of Penobscot—that's where the commercial spaceport is—is throwing an official party tonight. Bum freezers and decorations. You and your officers are being asked."

  "I can hardly wait."

  "The master of Sundowner should be there, too, with his people."

  "Sundowner!"

  "She's at Port Penobscot, loading fish. She's a star tramp. Rim Worlds registry. She gets around."

  "Mphm. It could be worthwhile having a yarn with him."

  "It could be, Commander. These tramp skippers often stumble on things that our survey captains miss. Sometimes they report them, sometimes they don't."

  "You can say that again, Commander. The last Lost Colony that I visited, Morrowvia, the Dog Star Line was trying to keep all to its little self. And it looks as though they'll be able to do just that." Grimes looked at his watch. Denny had made no move to offer him tea, coffee, or anything stronger, and it was past the time when he usually had his morning coffee aboard the ship. "I'd better be getting back to find out what disasters have been happening in my absence. And my departmental heads should have their requisitions ready for my autograph by now."

  "I'll see you tonight, Commander," said Denny.

  "See you tonight, Commander Denny," said Grimes.

  As he let himself out he overheard the younger of the two women say, in a little-too-loud whisper, "Gawd save us all! What a stuck-up tailor's dummy! I hope he treads in something on the way back to his rustbucket!"

  Chapter 9

  The mayor sent a small fleet of ground cars to pick up Discovery's officers. Grimes, resplendent in black and gold and stiff white linen, with his miniature decorations on their rainbow ribbons a-jingle on the left breast of his mess jacket, rode in the lead vehicle. He was accompanied by Brabham, Major Swinton, Dr. Brandt, and Vinegar Nell. The paymaster looked remarkably handsome in her severely cut, long-skirted evening dress uniform. Swinton, in his dress blue-and-scarlet, had transformed himself from a bad-tempered terrier into a gaudy and pugnacious psittacoid. Brabham (of course) was letting the side down. His mess uniform, when he extricated it from wherever it had been stowed, had proved to be unwearable, stained and creased, and far too tight a fit. He had compromised by wearing a black bow tie, instead of one of the up-and-down variety, with his not-too-shabby double-breasted black outfit. And Brandt, of course, had never possessed a suit of mess kit. He was wearing civilian evening dress, with the sash of some obscure order—the sash itself was far from obscure, being bright purple edged with gold—stretched across his shirt front.

  The electric cars sped swiftly along the road between the Base and Penobscot. Dusk was falling fast from a leaden sky, and little could be seen through the wide windows of the vehicles. Even in broad daylight there would have been l
ittle to see; this country was desolate moorland, only slightly undulant, with not so much as a tree or a hill or even a stony outcrop to break the monotony. Ahead, brighter and brighter as the darkness deepened and the distance diminished, glared the lights of the port city.

  The motorcade swept past the spaceport where Sundowner, a stubby tower of metal, stood among the cargo-handling gantries, a briefly glimpsed abstract of black shadows and garish, reflected light. Slowing down at last it skirted the harbor—Penobscot was a seaport as well as a spaceport—and the long quay where the big oceangoing trawlers were discharging their glittering catch.

  The mayor's palace overlooked the harbor. It was a big, although not high, building, pseudo-classical, its pillared facade glowing whitely in the floodlights. The approach was along a wide avenue, lined with tall, feathery-leafed trees, in the branches of which colored glow-bulbs had been strung. Brabham muttered something in a sour voice about every day being Christmas on New Maine. Vinegar Nell told him tartly to shut up. The chauffeur said nothing, but Grimes could sense the man's resentment.

  The car drew to a halt in the portico. The driver left his seat to open the door for his passengers—the sort of courtesy that was long vanished from Earth but that still persisted in many of the colonies. Grimes was first out, then assisted Vinegar Nell, who was having a little trouble with her unaccustomed long skirt, to the ground. Brabham dismounted, then Swinton, then Brandt. The chauffeur saluted smartly and returned to his driving seat in the car, which sped off in a spattering of fine golden gravel.

  Grimes limped to the wide doorway—a tiny pebble had got inside his right shoe—followed by the others. Mingled music and light flowed out into the portico. Standing by a group of heroic statuary—well-muscled, naked women wrestling with some sort of sea serpent—was a portly individual whom Grimes took, at first, for a local admiral. This resplendently uniformed person bowed, albeit with more condescension than obsequiousness, and inquired smoothly, "Whom shall I announce, sir?"

  "Commander Grimes, captain of the Survey Ship Discovery. And with me are Commander Brandt, of the scientific branch, Lieutenant Commander Brabham, my executive officer, Major Swinton, of the Federation Marines, and Lieutenant Russell, my paymaster."

  The functionary raised a small megaphone to his mouth; with it he could compete quite easily with the buzz of conversation and the music from the synthesizer. "Captain Grimes . . . Commander Brandt. . ."

  "Doctor Brandt!" snarled the scientist, but he was ignored.

  "Lieutenant Commander Brabham . . . Major Swinton . . . Lieutenant Russell."

  Grimes found himself shaking hands with a wiry little man in a bright green evening suit, with an ornate gold chain of office about his neck. "Glad to have you aboard, Captain!"

  "Commander, Mr. Mayor," corrected Grimes. "Your majordomo seems to have promoted me."

  "You're captain of a ship, aren't you?" The mayor grinned whitely. "Come to that, I always call Bill Davinas 'commodore.' I'll hand you over to him now while I greet your officers."

  Grimes shook hands with Davinas, a tall, dark, black-and-gold uniformed man with four gold stripes on each of his epaulettes, who said, "I'm the master of Sundowner, Commander. You probably noticed her at the spaceport. I've been a regular trader here since Rim Runners pushed me off my old routes; the small, private owner just can't compete with a government shipping line."

  "And what do I call you, sir? Commodore, or captain?"

  "Bill, for preference." Davinas laughed. "That commodore business is just the mayor's idea of a joke. The Sundowner Line used to own quite a nice little fleet, but now it's down to one ship. So I'm the line's senior master—senior and only—which does make me a courtesy commodore of sorts. But I don't get paid any extra. Ah, here's a table with some good stuff. I can recommend these codfish patties, and this local rosé isn't at all bad."

  While he sipped and nibbled Grimes looked around the huge ballroom. The floor was a highly polished black, reflecting the great, glittering electroliers, each one a crystalline complexity, suspended from the shallow dome of the ceiling, which was decorated with ornate bas-reliefs in a floral pattern. Along the white-pillared walls panels of deep blue, in which shone artificial stars set in improbable constellations, alternated with enormous mirrors. The overall effect was overpowering, with the crowd of gaily dressed people reflected and re-reflected to infinity on all sides. Against the far wall from the main doorway was the great synthesizer, an intricacy of transparent tubes through which rainbow light surged and eddied, a luminescent fountain containing within itself orchestra, choir, massed military bands—and every other form of music that Man has contrived to produce during his long history. The fragile blonde seated at the console—which would not have looked out of place in the control room of a Nova Class dreadnought—could certainly handle the thing. Beauty and the beast, thought Grimes.

  "Jenkins' Folly," announced Davinas, waving an arm expansively.

  "Jenkins' Folly?"

  "This palace. The first mayor of Penobscot was a Mr. Jenkins. He'd got it firmly fixed in his thick head that New Maine was going to go the same way as so many—too many—other colonies. Population expansion. Population explosion. Bam! According to his ideas, this city was going to run to a population of about ten million. But it never happened. As you know, the population of the entire planet is only that. Once New Maine had enough people to maintain a technological culture with most of the advantages and few of the drawbacks the ZPG boys and girls took control. So this palace, this huge barn of a place, is used perhaps three times a year. Anniversary Day. New Year's Day. The Founder's Birthday. And, of course, on the very rare occasions when one of your ships, with her horde of officers, drops in."

  "Mphm."

  "Ah, here you are, Commander Grimes." It was Denny, looking considerably smarter than he had in his office, although the short Eton jacket of his mess uniform displayed his plump buttocks, in tightly stretched black, to disadvantage. "Clarice, my dear, this is (Commander Grimes. Commander Grimes, meet the little woman."

  Mrs. Denny was not a little woman. She was . . . vast. Her pale flesh bulged out of her unwisely low-cut dress, which was an unfortunate shade of pink. She was huge, and she gushed. "It's always good to see new faces, Commander, even though we are all in the same family."

  "Ah, yes. The Survey Service."

  She giggled and wobbled. "Not the Survey Service, Commander Grimes. The big family, I mean. Organic life throughout the universe."

  If she'd kept it down to the mammalia, thought Grimes, looking with fascination at the huge, almost fully revealed breasts, it'd make more sense. He said, "Yes, of course. Although there are some forms of organic life I'd sooner not be related to. Those great snakes of yours, for instance."

  "But you haven't seen them, Commander."

  "I've seen the evidence of their passing, Mrs. Denny."

  "But they're so sweet, and trusting."

  "Mphm."

  "She's playing our tune, dear," Denny put in hastily, ex tending his arms to his wife. He got them around her somehow, and the couple moved off to join the other dancers.

  Grimes looked around for Davinas but the merchant captain had vanished, had probably made his escape as soon as the Denny couple showed up. He poured himself another glass of wine and looked at the swirling dancers. Some of them, most of them, were singing to the music of the synthesizer, which was achieving the effect of an orchestra of steel guitars.

  Spaceman, the stars are calling,

  Spaceman, you live to roam,

  Spaceman, down light-years falling,

  Remember I wait at home. . . .

  Icky, thought Grimes. Icky. But he had always liked the thing, in spite of (because of?) its sentimentality. He started to sing the words himself in a not very tuneful voice.

  "I didn't think you had it in you, Captain."

  Grimes cut himself off in mid-note, saw that Vinegar Nell had joined him. It was obvious that the tall, slim woman had taken a drink�
��or two, or three. Her cheeks were flushed and her face had lost its habitually sour expression. She went on, "I'd never have dreamed that you're a sentimentalist."

  "I'm not, Miss Russell. Or am I? Never mind. There are just some really corny things I love, and that song is one of them." Then, surprising himself at least as much as he did her: "Shall we dance?"

  "Why not?"

  They moved out onto the floor. She danced well, which was more than could be said for him. Normally, on such occasions, he was all too aware of his deficiencies—but all that he was aware of now was the soft pressure of her breasts against his chest, the firmer pressure and the motion of her thighs against his own. And there was no need for them to dance so closely; in spite of the illusory multitude moving in the mirrors the floor was far from crowded.