The Big Black Mark

by A Bertram Chandler

  Watch it, Grimes, he admonished himself. Watch it! And why the hell should I? part of him demanded mutinously.

  That's why! he snarled mentally as one of his own officers, a junior engineer, swept past, holding a local lass at least as closely as Grimes was holding the paymaster. The young man leered and winked at his captain. Grimes tried to relax his grip on Vinegar Nell, but she wasn't having any. Her arms were surprisingly strong.

  At last the music came to a wailing conclusion. "I enjoyed that," she said.

  "So did I, Miss Russell," admitted Grimes. "Some refreshment?" he asked, steering her toward one of the buffet tables.

  "But I should be looking after you." She laughed. It wasn't so much what she said, but the way that she said it. "Mphm," he grunted aloud.

  Captain Davinas was already at the table with his partner, a tall, plain local woman. "Ah," he said, "we meet again, Commander."

  Introductions were made, after which, to the disgust of the ladies, the men started to talk shop. The music began again and, with some reluctance, Vinegar Nell allowed herself to be led off by the Penobscot police commissioner, and the other lady by the first mate of Sundowner.

  "Thank all the odd gods of the galaxy for that!" Davinas laughed. "I have to dance with her some of the time—she's the wife of my Penobscot agent—but she'll settle for one of my senior officers. Talking of officers—I'll swap my purser for your paymaster any day, John!"

  "You don't know her like I do, Bill," Grimes told him, feeling oddly disloyal as he said it. He allowed Davinas to refill his glass, tried to ignore the beseeching glances of three young ladies seated not far from them. "Oh, well, I suppose we'd better find ourselves partners, especially since there seems to be a shortage of men here. But I'd sooner talk. Frankly, I'm sniffing around for information on this sector of space—but I suppose that can wait until tomorrow."

  "Not unless you want a job as fourth mate aboard Sundowner. I lift ship for Electra bright and early—well, early—tomorrow morning."

  "A pity."

  "It needn't be. I'm not much of a dancing man. I'd sooner earbash and be earbashed over a cold bottle or two than be dragged around the floor by the local talent. And I was intending to return to my ship very shortly, anyhow. Why not come with me? We can have a talk on board."

  Chapter 10

  Davinas and Grimes slipped out of the ballroom almost unnoticed. A few cabs were waiting hopefully in the portico, so they had no difficulty in obtaining transport to the spaceport. It was a short drive only, and less than twenty minutes after they had left the palace Davinas was leading the way up the ramp to the after airlock of Sundowner.

  It is impossible for a spaceman to visit somebody else's ship without making comparisons—and Grimes was busy making them. Here, of course, there was no uniformed Marine at the gangway, only a civilian night watchman supplied by the vessel's local agent, but the ramp itself was in better repair than Discovery's, and far cleaner. It was the same inboard. Everything was old, worn, but carefully—lovingly, almost—maintained. Somehow the merchant captain had been able to instill in his people a respect—at least—for their ship. Grimes envied him. But in all likelihood Davinas had never been cursed with a full crew of malcontents, and would have been able to extract and dump the occasional bad apple from this barrel without being obliged to fill in forms in quintuplicate to explain just why.

  The elevator cage slid upward swiftly and silently, came to a smooth stop. Davinas showed Grimes into his comfortable quarters. "Park the carcass, John. Make yourself at home. This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat . . ."

  ". . . and call the cat a bastard," finished Grimes.

  "Then why don't you?"

  Grimes felt something rubbing against his legs, looked down, saw a large tortoiseshell tom. The animal seemed to have taken a fancy to him. He felt flattered. In spite of the affair on Morrowvia he still liked cats.

  "Coffee?"

  "Thanks."

  Davinas poured two mugs from a large thermos container, then went into the office adjoining his dayroom. Grimes, while he petted the cat, looked around. He was intrigued by the pictures on the bulkheads of the cabin, holograms of scenes on worlds that were strange to him. One was a mountainscape—jagged peaks, black but snowcapped, thrusting into a stormy sky, each summit with its spume of ice particles streaming down wind like white smoke. He could almost hear the shrieking of the icy gale. Then there was one that could have been a landscape in Hell—contorted rocks, gaudily colored, half veiled by an ocher sandstorm.

  Davinas came back, carrying a large folder. "Admiring the art gallery? That one's the Desolation Range on Lorn, my home world. And that one is the Painted Badlands on Eblis. Beats me why some genius doesn't open a tourist resort there. Spectacular scenery, friendly indigenes, and quite a few valleys where the likes of us could live quite comfortably."

  "The Rim Worlds," murmured Grimes. "I've heard quite a lot about them, off and on. Somehow the Survey Service never seems to show the flag in that sector of space. I don't suppose I'll ever see them."

  Davinas laughed. "Don't be so sure. Rim Runners'll take anybody, as long as he has some sort of certificate of com patency and rigor mortis hasn't set in!"

  "If they ever get me," declared Grimes, "that'll be the sunny Friday!"

  "Or me," agreed Davinas. "When the Sundowner Line finally folds I'm putting my savings into a farm."

  The two men sipped their good coffee. Davinas lit a long, slim cigar, Grimes his pipe. The cat purred noisily between them.

  Then: "I hear that you're on a Lost Colony hunt, John."

  "Yes, Bill. As a matter of fact, Commander Denny did mention that you might be able to give me a few leads."

  "I might be. But, as a Rim Worlds citizen, I'm supposed to make any reports on anything I find to the Rim Worlds government. And to my owners, of course."

  "But the Rim Worlds are members of the Federation."

  "Not for much longer, they're not. Surely you've heard talk of secession lately." Davinas laughed rather unpleasantly. "But I'm not exactly in love with our local lords and masters. I've been in the Sundowner Line practically all my working life, and I haven't enjoyed seeing our fleet pushed off the trade routes by Rim Runners. They can afford to cut freights; they've the taxpayer's money behind them. And who's the taxpayer? Me."

  "But what about your owners? Don't you report to them?"

  "They just aren't interested anymore. The last time that I made a deviation, sniffing around for a possible new run for Sundowner, there was all hell let loose." He obviously quoted from a letter. " 'We would point out that you are a servant of a commercial shipping line, not a captain in the Federation Survey Service . . .' Ha!"

  "Mphm. So you might be able to help me?"

  "I might. If you ask me nicely enough, I will." He poured more coffee into the mugs. "You carry a PCO, of course?"

  "Of course. And you?"

  "No. Not officially. Our head office now and again—only now and again, mind you—realizes that there is such a force as progress. They found out that one of the early Carlotti sets was going cheap. So now I have Carlotti, and no PCO. But—"

  "But what?"

  "My NST operator didn't like it. He was too lazy to do the Carlotti course to qualify in FTL radio. He reckoned, too, that he'd be doing twice the work that he was doing before, and for the same pay. So he resigned, and joined Rim Runners. They're very old-fashioned, in some ways. They don't have Carlotti equipment in many of their ships yet. They still carry psionic communication officers and Normal Space-Time radio officers."

  "Old-fashioned?" queried Grimes. "Perhaps they still carry PCOs for the same reason as we do. To sniff things out."

  "That's what I tried to tell my owners when they took away Parley's amplifier, saying that its upkeep was a needless expense. A few spoonfuls of nutrient chemicals each trip, and a couple of little pumps! But I'm getting ahead of myself. This Parley was my PCO. He's getting on in years, and knows that he hasn't a
hope in hell of finding a job anywhere else. Unlike the big majority of telepaths he has quite a good brain and, furthermore, doesn't shy away from machinery, up to and including electronic gadgetry. He actually took the Carlotti course and examination, and qualified, and also qualified as an NST operator. So now he's my radio officer, NST, and Cariotti. It breaks his heart at times to have to push signals over the light-years by electronic means, but he does it. If they'd let him keep his beagle's brain in aspic he'd still be doing it the good old way, and the Cariotti transceiver would be gathering dust. But with no psionic amplifier, he just hasn't the range."

  "No. He wouldn't have."

  "Even so, if one passes reasonably close to a planet, within a few light-years, a good telepath can pick up the psionic broadcast, provided that the world in question has a sizable population of sentient beings."

  "Human beings?"

  "Not necessarily. But our sort of people, more or less. I'm told that there's no mistaking the sort of broadcast you get from one of the Shaara worlds, for example. Arthropods, however intelligent, just don't think like mammals."

  "And you have passed reasonably close to a planet with an intelligent, mammalian population? One that's not on any of the lists?"

  "Two of them, as a matter of fact. In neighboring planetary systems."

  "Where?"

  "That'd be telling, John. Nothing for nothing, and precious little for a zack. That's the way that we do business in the Sundowner Line!"

  "Then what's the quid pro quo, Bill?"

  Davinas laughed. "I didn't think that you trade school boys were taught dead languages! All right. This is it. Just let me know what you find. As I've already told you, the Sundowner Line's on its last legs; I'd like to keep us running just a little longer. A new trade of our own could make all the difference."

  "There are regulations, you know," said Grimes slowly. "I can't go blabbing the Survey Service's secrets to any Tom, Dick, or Harry. Or Bill."

  "Not even when they were Bill's secrets to begin with? Come off it. And I do happen to know that those same regulations empower you, as captain of a Survey Service ship, to use your own discretion when buying information. Am I right?"

  "Mphm." Grimes was tempted. Davinas could save him months of fruitless searching. On the one hand, a quick conclusion to his quest would be to his credit. On the other hand, for him to let loose a possibly unscrupulous tramp skipper on a hitherto undiscovered Lost Colony would be to acquire yet another big black mark on his record. But this man was no Drongo Kane. He said, "You know, of course, that I carry a scientific officer. He has the same rank as myself, but if I do find a Lost Colony he'll be wanting to take charge, and I may have to take a back seat."

  "If he wants to set up any sort of Base," countered Davinas, "he'll be requiring regular shipments of stores and equipment and all the rest of it. Such jobs, as we both know, are usually contracted out. And if I'm Johnny-on-the-spot, with a reasonable tender in my hot little hand—"

  It made sense, Grimes thought. He asked, "And will you want any sort of signed agreement, Bill?"

  "You insult me, and you insult yourself. Your word's good enough, isn't it?"

  "All right." Grimes had made up his mind. "Where are these possible Lost Colonies of yours?"

  "Parley picked them up," said Davinas, "when I was right off my usual tramlines—anybody's usual tramlines, come to that—doing a run between Rob Roy and Caribbea." He pushed the coffee mugs and the thermos bottle to one side, opened the folder that he had brought from his office on the low table. He brought out a chart. "Modified Zimmerman Projection." His thin forefinger stabbed decisively. "The Rob Roy sun, here. And Sol, as the Caribbeans call their primary, here. Between them, two G type, stars, 1716 and 1717 in Ballchin's catalog, practically in line, and as near as damn it on the same plane as Rob Roy and Caribbea. Well clear of the track, actually—but not too well clear."

  "It rather surprises me," said Grimes, "that nobody has found evidence of intelligent life there before."

  "Why should it? When those old lodejammers were blown away to hell and gone off course—assuming that these worlds are Lost Colonies, settled by lodejammer survivors—PCOs hadn't been dreamed of. When your Commodore Slater made his sweep through that sector of space, PCOs still hadn't been dreamed of. Don't forget that we had FTL ships long before we had FTL radio, either electronic or psionic."

  "But what about the odd merchant ships in more recent years, each with her trained telepath?"

  "What merchant ships? As far as I know, Sundowner wi the only one to travel that route, and just once, at that. I happened to be on Rob Roy, discharging a load of kippered New Maine cod, and the word got through to my agents there that one of the transgalactic clippers, on a cruise, was due in at Caribbea. She'd been chartered by some Terry outfit calling themselves The Sons of Scotia. And it seems that they were going to celebrate some Earth calendar religious festival—Burns Night—there."

  "Burns?" murmured Grimes. "Let me see. Wasn't he a customs officer? An odd sort of chap to deify."

  "Ha, ha. Anyhow, the Punta del Sol Hotel at Port of Spain sent an urgent Carlottigram to Rob Roy to order a large consignment of haggis and Scotch whiskey. I was the only one handy to lift it. I got it there on time, too, although I just about burned out the main bearings of the Mannschenn Drive doing it."

  "And did they enjoy their haggis?" wondered Grimes.

  "I can't say. I didn't. The shippers presented me with half a dozen of the obscene things as a token of their appreciation. Perhaps we didn't cook them properly."

  "Or serve them properly. I don't suppose that Sundowner could run to a bagpiper to pipe them in to the messroom table."

  "That could have been the trouble." Davinas looked at his watch. "I hate to hurry you up, John—but I always like to get my shut-eye before I take the old girl upstairs. But, before you go, I'd like to work out some way that you can let me know if you find anything. A simple code for a message, something that can't be cracked by the emperor of Waverley's bright boys. As you see from the chart, those two suns are practically inside Waverley's sphere of influence. I want to be first ship on the scene—after you, of course. I don't want to be at the tail end of a long queue of Imperial survey ships and freighters escorted by heavy cruisers."

  "Fair enough," agreed Grimes. "Fair enough. Just innocent Carlottigrams that could be sent by anybody, to anybody. Greetings messages? Yes. Happy Birthday, say, for the first world, that belonging to 1717. Happy Anniversary for the 1716 planet. Signed 'John' if it's worth your while to persuade your owners to let you come sniffing around.

  Signed 'Peter' if you'd be well advised not to come within a : hundred light-years.

  "But you'll be hearing from me. I promise you that."

  "Thank you," said Davinas. "Thank you," said Grimes.

  Chapter 11

  Davinas phoned down to the night watchman to ask him to order a cab for Grimes. While they were waiting for the car he poured glasses of an excellent Scotch whiskey from Rob Roy. They were finishing their drinks when the night watchman reported that the car was at the ramp.

  Grimes was feeling smugly satisfied when he left Sundowner. It certainly looked as though he had been handed his Lost Colony—correction, two Lost Colonies—on a silver tray. And this Davinas was a very decent bloke, and deserved any help that Grimes would be able to give him.

  The ride back to the mayor's palace was uneventful. The party was still in progress in the huge ballroom; the girl at the synthesizer controls was maintaining a steady flow of dance music, although only the young were still on the floor. The older people were gathered around the buffet tables, at which the supplies of food and drink were being replenished as fast as they dwindled.

  Grimes joined Brabham and Vinegar Nell, who were tucking into a bowl of caviar as though neither of them had eaten for a week, washing it down with locally made vodka,

  "Be with us, sir," said Brabham expansively. "A pity they didn't bring this stuff out earlier. I
f I'd known this was going to come up, I'd not have ruined my appetite on fishcakes and sausage rolls!"

  Grimes spread a buttered biscuit with the tiny, black, glistening eggs, topped it up with a hint of chopped onion and a squeeze of lemon juice. "You aren't doing too badly now. Mphm. Not bad, not bad."

  "Been seeing how the poor live, sir?" asked the first lieutenant.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You went off with Sundowner's old man."

  "Oh, yes. He has quite a nice ship. Old, but very well looked after."