The Way Back

by A Bertram Chandler

  "No. Get up to the control room as fast as you can. The officer of the guard woke up and is looking for Elena . . ." There was a pause. "And his keys. Never mind us, John. Carry on straight up."

  After a second's hesitation Grimes cancelled the boat-bay compartment stop. But there was, unfortunately, no way of controlling the speed of the elevator. Its cage was a cage, in every sense of the word. Once the shipkeepers realized what had happened, what was happening, the prisoners would be prisoners again, trapped between decks.

  The elevator jolted to a halt, just as the stridency of alarm bells shrilled throughout the ship. But luck was with Grimes and the loyalists. Whoever had cut the power had done so hastily, without checking the location of the cage. It had stopped at the level of the boat-bay compartment.

  "Out!" ordered Grimes as Williams strained at the manual door control. "Out!" The floor of the cage was half a meter above deck level, but that did not matter. The compartment, now, was sealed off from the rest of the ship by the airtight doors, but that did not matter either. There was no egress either up or down, forward or aft—but there was still out.

  Number Three was the nearer of the several bays. "Number Three Boat!" snapped Grimes. "How is she, Bill?"

  "Fine, Skipper, last time I checked. She can take us anywhere."

  "Then open her up. We'll take her."

  He ran behind Elena to the storeroom where Mayhew and Clarisse were confined. He snatched the bunch of magnetic keys from her hand; Ken, as he knew very well, always fumbled pitifully with even the simplest magnetic devices, and when he was controlling another's body the fumbling would be even more pronounced. He opened the door, saw Mayhew and Clarisse stretched on their benches, manacled at wrists and ankles. He released them, was briefly surprised at the agility with which they swung off their beds. But, of course, Dalzell would have allowed them to exercise under guard; he would have had uses for them.

  Grimes had no need to tell the telepaths of his intentions. They followed him without question to the boat bay. As they were about to board the craft the Commodore asked suddenly, "Where's Elena?"

  "She ran off as soon as I got out of her mind. She's frightened. She's hiding . . ."

  "Can't you control her again? We can't leave her to face the music."

  "I'm . . . I'm trying, John. But she has a strong mind. She's . . . fighting back . . ."

  "What's that noise?" asked Sonya sharply.

  Faintly, but audible now that the alarm bells had stopped ringing, was the wailing of a siren, an externally mounted horn. It would not be long before Dalzell and the mutineers returned from the village. And surely, thought Grimes, not even the major would blame the native girl for the escape of the prisoners. But I wouldn't like to be in the shoes of the ship-keepers! he told himself with grim satisfaction.

  "All systems Go!" shouted Williams. "It's time we went!"

  The commodore clambered into the boat, took the pilot's seat. He sealed the hull. He pressed the remote control button that should open the external door of the bay. Nothing happened; he was still looking out through the forward viewport at an unbroken sheet of metal. Whoever was in the control room had had enough sense to actuate all locking devices throughout the vessel.

  But a lifeboat is a lifeboat, designed to get away from a distressed ship in practically every foreseeable combination of adverse circumstances. The emergency break-out, thought Grimes, should be working. It was. When he pushed the red button one explosive charge blew the door outwards, and another one threw the boat clear of the ship. Had the inertial drive failed to function she would have hit the village like a projectile—as it was, she blundered noisily skyward, pursued by a stream of tracer fired by somebody who was obviously not Hendriks.

  "He, whoever he is," commented Williams scornfully, "would make a good gunnery officer . . . He'd make a good gunnery officer weep!"

  "Don't complain," Sonya told him.

  Chapter 22

  The boat was spaceworthy enough and all its equipment was in good working order and it was fully stocked with emergency provisions. Grimes had no doubt of its capability to transport him and the loyalists to Mars, or to anywhere else in the Solar System. The Quest, with her main engines immobilized, could not pursue. Unfortunately, the ship's armament, both main and secondary, was still in working order.

  Grimes turned to Mayhew. "Ken," he said urgently, "try to tune in to Hendriks. Get inside his mind, find out what he's doing, what he's going to do . . ."

  "I . . . I'm already in touch. I'm picking up his thoughts. Dalzell is telling him to swat us out of the sky."

  "Hell!" muttered the Commodore. And it would be hell, a brief, searing and spectacular inferno if one of Faraway Quest's missiles found the lifeboat. A near miss would be enough to destroy her. Her inertial drive unit was hammering flat out, but she could not hope to outrun the vicious rockets. It would be many, many minutes before she was safely out of effective range.

  Grimes glanced nervously out of the viewports, saw that the others were doing the same. There was nothing to see; there would be nothing to see until the boat broke through the heavy overcast. Unless . . . Perhaps a blinding flash, and then oblivion.

  Mayhew was speaking softly. "He . . . he is telling Dalzell that the self-guiding missiles are inoperable . . . But . . ." there was amazement in the telepath's voice . . . "but I think that he is lying . . ."

  Grimes felt the beginning of hope. Perhaps Hendriks was not, after all, a murderer.

  "Fire . . ." whispered Mayhew.

  "Wait for it!" exclaimed Williams with spurious heartiness. "Wait for it!"

  "We've no bloody option, Bill," remarked Grimes resignedly. He suppressed the temptation to throw the boat violently off course; to do so might convert a miss into a near-miss or even into a direct hit. He would stand on, trusting in whatever decency remained in the Gunnery Officer's makeup.

  Then it happened.

  Below and to starboard the clouds were rent apart by the explosion, by a brief and dreadful burgeoning of scarlet fire. The ambient mists vanished, flash-dried by the searing heat of the blast. The boat was driving upwards towards the domed ceiling of a roughly globular cavern of clear air in the center of which a man-made sun had been born, had lived briefly and had died. The first shock wave hit her and, even through the insulation, the doomsday crack of it was deafening. The first shock wave hit her, and then the secondary, and then the tertiary, slamming her to port and up. Grimes, sweating, fought the controls, somehow keeping the little craft steady on her heading. She was buffeted by the turbulence engendered by the detonation of the missile's warhead; it seemed that surely she must break up, spilling her people into the incandescent nothingness.

  Up, Grimes pushed her. Up, up . . .

  And she was clear of the overcast, although only those who had not been temporarily blinded by the blast could see the bright stars in the black sky overhead, the yellow moon, lopsided, in its last quarter, low on the eastern horizon.

  Below them was the cloud—towering cumulus, vaporous peaks and pinnacles that grew and shifted and toppled, that swirled around and above the point where the rocket had burst.

  "Fire . . ." whispered Mayhew again, echoing Hendriks' thought and spoken word.

  Grimes said nothing. He knew that he must gain altitude, and yet more altitude, and even then there would be no safety. The inertial drive snarled in protest but kept going.

  This time it was a salvo of three missiles, all of them well short of the target. This must have been, the Commodore realized, intentional on Hendriks' part, just as the first miss must have been intentional—although too near for comfort. The rockets burst where the boat had been, not where she was now. They flared dazzlingly beneath the surface of the cloud mass, turning the shadowy canyons into deep rivers of flame.

  Mayhew started to laugh. It was not hysterical mirth. It was genuine amusement.

  "Share the joke, Ken," snapped Sonya. "We need something to cheer us up."

  "That la
st salvo," said the telepath, "consisted of four missiles . . ."

  "I counted only three explosions," Carnaby told him.

  "There were only three explosions, James. The fourth missile was a dud."

  "So what?" demanded the navigator. "None of them came near us."

  "That is so. But . . . But Hendriks is the gunnery specialist, and Dalzell is only a glorified infantryman. Hendriks told the Major that the first round was the ranging shot—which it most certainly was. Then, to the observers in the ship, the bursts of the second salvo, well in the clouds and practically simultaneous, looked like a single explosion. The radar showed something falling out of control and tracked it down to the sea. Hendriks knew that it was his dud missile. Dalzell thought, as he was meant to think, that it was us . . ."

  "If Hendriks is so bloody loyal," growled Williams, "why isn't he here?"

  "Because he doesn't want to be, Billy. He thinks he has a future on Earth . . ."

  Grimes, who had been listening, chuckled. "And so he could have. After all his given name is Thor . . ."

  "Very far-fetched," commented Sonya. "And what about the others? Do none of them go down in history? Or mythology . . ."

  "Those two hulking Marine privates . . ." suggested Brenda Cole. "Those twin brothers . . . Their name is Rome . . ."

  "Romulus and bloody Remus? Oh, no. No."

  "And why not, Sonya?" asked Grimes. "Come to that, the Second Engineer's name is Caine. William Caine or Bill Caine . . . Tubal Cain or Vulcan?"

  His wife snorted inelegantly. "At least," she said, "you will not realize your secret ambition. You will not go down in history as Zeus, father of the gods. Let us be thankful for small mercies."

  The Commodore sighed. He realized wryly that his display of regret was at least half genuine. He checked the instruments, then set the controls of the boat on automatic. She would fly herself now, driving up and clear through and out of the atmosphere, until such time as course could be set. He motioned Carnaby to the seat next to his. He pointed out through the wide forward viewport to where Mars gleamed ruddily, almost a twin to the equally ruddy Antares only a few degrees to the south.

  He said, "There she is, James. We've a toy computer that's little more than an electric abacus and precious little else in the way of navigational gear. We haven't even got an ephemeris. Do you think you can get us there?"

  "I do, sir," replied Carnaby confidently.

  "But why Mars?" demanded Sonya. "We should be safe enough from Dalzell and his mob in Earth's southern hemisphere—especially since he thinks that we've all been killed . . ."

  "Hendriks knows that we haven't been. He's given us our chance, but he wouldn't welcome us back. Am I correct, Ken?"

  "You are, John. I'll tell you what he was thinking. And that's the last I'll see of that cantankerous old bastard! He'll not do much good for himself among the Australian aborigines . . ."

  "So Australia is definitely out," said Grimes. "And the Martians may be willing to help us."

  "That'll be the sunny Friday, Skipper," said Williams. "But we'll give it a go."

  "We'll give it a go," agreed Grimes.

  Chapter 23

  A lifeboat is designed to save and to sustain life; comfort is a minor consideration. Nonetheless, Grimes and his seven companions were lucky. The boat was certified to accommodate fifty persons; there were only eight people aboard it, so there was room to stretch and for the maintenance of some degree of privacy. There were six toilets—two forward, two aft and two amidships—all of them part and parcel of the boat's life support systems. In this respect the loyalists were almost as well off as they had been aboard the ship. There was a stock of the versatile, all-purpose plastic sheeting in one of the lockers, more than enough for the improvisation of separate sleeping quarters. Grimes did mutter something about "bloody gypsy tents," but nobody took him seriously. The initial supply of fresh water—which would be cycled and recycled many times before planetfall—was ample for all requirements. The food supply—mainly dehydrated concentrates—was adequate, highly nutritious and boring.

  The power cells, always kept fully charged, had provided the energy needed to push the boat up clear of the atmosphere and into orbit. The initiation of the fusion reaction which was the craft's main power source took time, care and patience. The reactor's controls were so designed that anybody able to read and to follow instructions would be capable of starting the thing going, however—an absolute necessity in a vehicle which might well (as on this occasion) number no qualified engineers among its crew.

  There was, of course, a powerful inertial drive unit, but neither reaction drive nor interstellar drive. But there was Carlotti equipment in addition to the Normal Space Time transceiver. The boat was incapable of making an interstellar voyage, although any Deep Space ship picking up the initial distress call (if any) from the parent vessel or from the boat itself would be able to home on the Carlotti transmitter. Voyages within a planetary system, however, were quite practicable. That from Earth to Mars, Carnaby estimated, would occupy a mere fifty days.

  He told the others this while they were eating—"enjoying" would be the wrong word—their first meal in the lifeboat.

  "A mere fifty days?" exploded Sonya. "In this sardine can!"

  "Don't complain," Grimes told her. He went on to speak of the much longer voyages, in much worse conditions, that had been made in open boats on Earth's seas. "And at least," he concluded, "there's no danger of our having to resort to cannibalism."

  "Isn't there?" demanded Sonya. She looked with distaste at the pallid mess in the bowl of her spoon. "Isn't there? After a few weeks of this . . . goo we might feel like it!"

  "Cheer up, Sonya," Williams admonished her. "The first fifty years are the worst!"

  "I said 'days,' not 'years,' Commander," corrected Carnaby.

  "Fifty days . . ." said Grimes thoughtfully. "Ample time to get ourselves organized—but not too much time. To begin with we must try to get it through to the Martians that we come in peace. That's your department, Ken and Clarisse. Try to get in touch with that local telepath again. Play the poor, helpless castaway angle for all you're worth!"

  "And poor, helpless castaways is just what we are," commented Sonya.

  "Mphm. Not so helpless, as long as we have a ship of sorts under us. But there's no point in telling the Martians that. Now, has anybody else any suggestions?" He added, looking at his wife, "Constructive ones, that is."

  "I was rather wondering, sir," asked Ruth Macoboy diffidently, "if I should try to get in touch too. Our NST transceiver, on a tight beam, has a very long range . . ."

  Grimes considered this. He said at last, "We're up against the language barrier, Ruth. Ken and Clarisse, working with ideas rather than words, aren't . . . Mphm. But a beamed signal, even if it's no more than a repetition of a Morse symbol, will tell them that we're coming, that we aren't trying to slink up on them, as it were . . ."

  "Assuming that they are tuned in and listening," said Sonya.

  "They probably will be," said Grimes, "once the telepathic contact has been established." He thought, It doesn't matter, anyhow. The main consideration is keeping as many people as possible fully employed on a voyage like this. In some ways—in one way—Bligh was lucky. During his boat voyage after the Bounty mutiny he charted everything along his track.

  "Can't anything be done about the food?" asked Sonya.

  Grimes turned to Brenda Coles. "That's your department, Brenda. What has Faraway Quest's Assistant Bio-Chemist to suggest?" He grinned. "My apologies. As far as this boat is concerned, you're the Bio-Chemist."

  The small, plump blonde smiled back at him. "This is rather grim, isn't it? But I hope that the next meal will be better. There's a supply of flavoring essences in the galley—chicken, steak, lobster, and coffee, chocolate, vanilla . . . The trouble is that I've never been much of a cook . . ."

  "Your department, then, Sonya," said Grimes. "Ruth will measure out for each meal what we need in the way of
proteins, vitamins and whatever to keep us functioning. You will try to turn these basic requirements into something palatable."

  "Chicken mole . . ." murmured Sonya thoughtfully.

  "And what's that?" demanded Williams. "I've heard rabbit referred to as underground chicken . . ."

  "Really, Bill," she said reprovingly. "Chicken mole is a Mexican dish. Chicken with mole sauce. The mole sauce is made mainly from bitter chocolate."

  "Gah!" exclaimed Williams.

  "And the other main ingredient of the sauce," Grimes told him, "is dried chicken blood. Mphm. I don't think, somehow, that we shall be having chicken mole on the menu. Anyhow, do your best, ladies. And remember that there's no risk of the customers deciding to patronize another restaurant . . ."