Upon a Sea of Stars

by A Bertram Chandler

  Grimes had removed his helmet so that his voice would not be muffled by the diaphragm. “Get into that bloody boat!” he roared. And in a softer voice, as the Mate obeyed, “Good luck.”

  He replaced his helmet and, as he did so, Sonya operated the controls set into the bulkhead. A door slid shut, sealing off the boat bay from the rest of the ship. The outer door opened, revealing the black emptiness of the Rim sky. Smoothly and efficiently the catapult operated, throwing the boat out and clear. Intense violet flame blossomed at her blunt stern, and then she was away, diminishing into the distance, coming around in a great arc on to the trajectory that would take her to safety.

  Grimes didn’t watch her for long. He said, “We’d better get back to Control, to help the Major and his men. They’re trapped in there.”

  “They aren’t trapped. They’re just waiting to see that the boat’s escaped.”

  “But how will they get out?”

  “The same way that we got into this rustbucket. We sent back to the ship for a laser pistol, burned our way in. Luckily the airtight doors were all in good working order.”

  “You took a risk . . .”

  “It was a risk we had to take. And we knew that you were wearing a spacesuit. But it’s time we weren’t here.”

  “After you.”

  “My God! Are you going to be as stuffy as that Captain?”

  Grimes didn’t argue, but pushed her out of the boat lock. He jumped after her, somersaulting slowly in the emptiness. He used his suit reaction unit to steady himself, and found himself facing the ship that he had just left. He saw an explosion at her bows, a billowing cloud of debris that expanded slowly—broken glass, crystallizing atmosphere, a gradually separating mass of bodies, most of which ceased to struggle after a very few seconds.

  But there were the larger bodies, seven of them, spacesuited—and each of them sprouted a tail of incandescence as the Marines jetted back to their own ship. The Major used his laser pistol to break out through the control room ports—but all the mutants would not be dead. There would be survivors, sealed off in their airtight compartments by the slamming of the emergency doors.

  The survivors could be disposed of by Corsair’s main armament.

  Chapter 23

  “WE WERE WAITING for you, Skipper,” Williams told Grimes cheerfully as the Commodore re-entered his own control room.

  “Very decent of you, Commander,” Grimes said, remembering how the Mate of Sundowner had realized his long standing ambition and clobbered his Captain. “Very decent of you.”

  He looked out of the viewports. The grain carrier was still close, at least as close as she had been when he had boarded her. The use of missiles would be dangerous to the vessel employing them—and even later might touch off a mutually destructive explosion.

  “You must still finish your task, man Grimes,” Serressor reminded him.

  “I know. I know.” But there was no hurry. There was ample time to consider ways and means.

  “All armament ready, sir.”

  “Thank you. To begin with, Commander Williams, we’ll open the range . . .”

  Then suddenly, the outline of Sundowner shimmered, shimmered and faded. She flickered out like a candle in a puff of wind. Grimes cursed. He should have foreseen this. The mutants had access to the Mannschenn Drive machinery—and how much, by continuous eavesdropping, had they learned? How much did they know?

  “Start M.D.,” he ordered. “Standard precession.”

  It took time—but not too long a time. Bronson was already in the Mannschenn Drive room, and Bronson had been trained to the naval way of doing things rather than the relatively leisurely procedure of the merchant service. (Himself a merchant officer, a reservist, he had always made it his boast that he could beat the navy at its own game.) There was the brief period of temporal disorientation, the uncanny feeling that time was running backwards, the giddiness, the nausea. Outside the ports the Galactic Lens assumed the appearance of a distorted Klein flask, and the Lorn sun became a pulsing spiral of multicolored light.

  But there was no sign of Sundowner.

  Grimes was speaking into the telephone. “Commander Bronson! Can you synchronize?”

  “With what?” Then—“I’ll try, sir. I’ll try . . .”

  Grimes could visualize the engineer watching the flickering needles of his gauges, making adjustments measured in fractions of microseconds to his controls. Subtly the keening song of the spinning, precessing gyroscopes wavered—and, as it did so, the outlines of the people and instruments in the control room lost their sharpness, while the colors of everything momentarily dulled and then became more vivid.

  “There’s the mucking bastard!” shouted Williams.

  And there she was, close aboard them, a phantom ship adrift on a sea of impossible blackness, insubstantial, quivering on the very verge of invisibility.

  “Fire at will!” ordered Grimes.

  “But, sir,” protested one of the officers. “If we interfere with the ship’s mass while the Drive is in operation . . .”

  “Fire at will!” repeated the Commodore.

  “Ay, ay, sir!” acknowledged Carter happily.

  But it was like shooting at a shadow. Missiles erupted from their launchers, laser beams stabbed out at the target—and nothing happened. From the bulkhead speaker of the intercom Bronson snarled, “What the hell are you playing at up there? How the hell can I hold her in synchronization?”

  “Sorry, Commander,” said Grimes into his microphone. “Just lock on, and hold her. Just hold her, that’s all I ask.”

  “An’ what now, Skipper?” demanded Williams. “What now?”

  “We shall use the Bomb,” said Grimes quietly.

  “We shall use the Bomb,” he said. He knew, as did all of his people, that the fusion device was their one hope of a return to their own Space and Time. But Sundowner must be destroyed, the Time Stream must, somehow, be diverted. Chemical explosives and destructive light beams were, in these circumstances, useless. There remained only the Sunday Punch.

  The ships were close, so close that their temporal precession fields interacted. Even so, it was obvious why all the weapons so far employed had failed. Each and every discharge had meant an appreciable alteration of Corsair’s temporal precession rate, so that each and every missile and beam had missed in Time rather than in Space. Had Corsair been fitted with one of the latest model synchronizers her gunnery might have been more successful—but she was not. Only Branson’s skill was keeping her in visual contact with her prey.

  Getting the Bomb into position was not the same as loosing off a missile. Slowly, gently, the black-painted cylinder was eased out of its bay. The merest puff from one of its compressed air jets nudged it away from Corsair towards the target. It fell gently through the space between the two ships, came finally to rest against Sundowner’s scarred hull.

  At an order from Grimes the thick lead shutters slid up over the control room ports. (But the thing was close, so close, too close. Even with the radar on minimum range the glowing blob that was Sundowner almost filled the tank.) Carter looked at Grimes, waiting for the order. His face was pale—and it was not the only pale face in Control. But Serressor—that blasted lizard!—was filling the confined space with his irritating, high, toneless whistling.

  Sonya came to sit beside him.

  She said quietly, “You have to do it. We have to do it.”

  Even her presence could not dispel the loneliness of command. “No,” he told her. “I have to do it.”

  “Locking . . .” came Branson’s voice from the bulkhead speaker. “Locking . . . Holding . . .”

  “Fire,” said Grimes.

  Chapter 24

  TIME HAD PASSED.

  How long, Grimes did not know, nor would he ever know. (Perhaps, he was often to suspect later, this was the next time around, or the time after that.)

  He half opened his eyes and looked at the red haired woman who was shaking him back to wakefulness�
��the attractive woman with the faint scar still visible between her firm breasts. What was her name? He should know. He was married to her. Or had been married to her. It was suddenly of great importance that he should remember what she was called.

  Susan . . . ?

  Sarah . . .?

  No . . .

  Sonya . . .?

  Yes, Sonya. That was it. . . .

  “John, wake up! Wake up! It’s all over now. The Bomb blew us back into our own continuum, back to our own Time, even! We’re in touch with Port Forlorn Naval Control, and the Admiral wants to talk to you personally.”

  “He can wait,” said Grimes, feeling the fragments of his prickly personality click back into place.

  He opened his eyes properly, saw Williams sitting at his controls, saw Serressor, nearby, still youthful, and with him the gangling adolescent who was Mayhew.

  For a moment he envied them. They had regained their youth—but at a dreadful risk to themselves. Even so, they had been lucky.

  And so, he told himself; had been the human race—not for the first time, and not for the last.

  He thought, I hope I’m not around when our luck finally does run out.

  DEDICATION

  For itchy-footed Susan

  Part 1

  The Rim Gods

  “AND WHO,” demanded Commodore Grimes, “will it be this time?” He added, “Or what?”

  “I don’t know, sir, I’m sure,” simpered Miss Walton.

  Grimes looked at his new secretary with some distaste. There was no denying that she was far more photogenic then her predecessor, and that she possessed a far sweeter personality. But sweetness and prettiness are not everything. He bit back a sarcastic rejoinder, looked again at the signal that the girl had just handed him. It was from a ship, a vessel with the unlikely name of Piety. And it was not a word in some alien language that could mean anything—the name of the originator of the message was Terran enough. Anglo-Terran at that. William Smith. And after that prosaic appellation there was his title—but that was odd. It was not the usual Master, Captain, Officer Commanding or whatever. It was, plainly and simply, Rector.

  Piety. . . . Rector. . . . That ship’s name, and that title of rank, had an archaic ring to them. Grimes had always been a student of naval history, and probably knew more about the vessels that had sailed Earth’s oceans in the dim and distant past than anybody on the Rim Worlds and, come to that, the vast majority of people on the home planet itself. He remembered that most of the ancient sailing ships had been given religious names. He remembered, too, that rector had once been the shipmaster’s official title.

  So what was this ship coming out to the Rim, giving her ETA, details of last clearance, state of health on board and all the rest of it? Some cog, some caravel, some galleass? Grimes smiled at his own fancy. Nonetheless, strange ships, very strange ships, had drifted out to the Rim.

  “Miss Walton . . .” he said.

  “Yes, Commodore,” she replied brightly.

  “This Piety . . . see what details Lloyd’s Register has on her.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The Commodore—rugged, stocky, short, iron-gray hair over a deeply tanned and seamed face, ears that in spite of suggestions made by two wives and several mistresses still protruded—paced the polished floor of his office while the little blonde punched the buttons that would actuate the Port Forlorn robot librarian. Legally, he supposed, the impending arrival of the Piety was the port captain’s pigeon. Grimes was Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners, the Confederacy’s shipping line. But he was also the officer commanding the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve and, as such, was concerned with matters of security and defense. He wished that Sonya, his wife, were available so that he could talk things over with her. She, before her marriage to him, had held the rank of Commander in the Intelligence branch of the Interstellar Federation’s Survey Service and, when it came to mysteries and secrets of any kind, displayed the aptitudes of a highly intelligent ferret. But Sonya, after declaring that another week on Lorn would have her climbing up the wallpaper, had taken off for a long vacation—Waverley, Caribbea, Atlantia and points inward—by herself. She, when she returned, would be sorry to have missed whatever odd adventures the arrival of this queerly named ship presaged—and Grimes knew that there would be some. His premonitions were rarely, if ever, wrong.

  He turned away from the banked screens and instruments that made his office look like an exceptionally well fitted spaceship’s control room, walked to the wide window that took up an entire wall, which overlooked the port. It was a fine day—for Lorn. The almost perpetual overcast was thin enough to permit a hint of blue sky to show through, and the Lorn sun was a clearly defined disk rather than the usual fuzzy ball. There was almost no wind. Discharge of Rim Leopard, noted, seemed to be progressing satisfactorily. There was a blue flare of welding arcs about the little spacetug Rim Mamelute, presently undergoing her annual survey. And there, all by herself, was the ship that Grimes—to the annoyance of his wife—often referred to as his one true love, the old, battered Faraway Quest. She had been built how many (too many) years ago as a standard Epsilon Class tramp for the Interstellar Transport Commission. She had been converted into a survey ship for the Rim Worlds’ government. In her, Grimes had made the first landings on the inhabited planets to the Galactic East, the worlds now referred to as the Eastern Circuit. In her he had made the first contact—but not a physical one—with the anti-matter systems to the Galactic West.

  And would the arrival of the good ship Piety lead to her recommissioning? Grimes hoped so. He liked his job—it was interesting work, carrying both authority and responsibility—but he was often tired of being a deskborne commodore, and had always welcomed the chance to take the old Quest up and out into deep space again. As often in the past he had a hunch, a strong one. Something was cooking, and he would have a finger in the pie.

  Miss Walton’s childish treble broke into his thoughts. “Sir, I have the information on Piety. . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “She was built as Epsilon Crucis for the Interstellar Transport Commission fifty Terran standard years ago. She was purchased from them last year, Terran reckoning, by the Skarsten Theological Institute, whose address is listed as Nuevo Angeles on Francisco, otherwise known as Beta Puppis VI. . . .”

  “I’ve visited Francisco,” he told her. “A pleasant world, in many ways. But an odd one.”

  “Odd? How, sir?”

  “I hope I’m not treading on any of your corns, Miss Walton, but the whole planet’s no more than a breeding ground for fancy religions.”

  “I’m a Latter Day Reformed Methodist myself, sir,” she told him severely. “And that’s not fancy.”

  “Indeed it’s not, Miss Walton.” And I’m a cynical, more or less tolerant agnostic, he thought. He went on, “And does Lloyds condescend to tell us the category in which this renamed Epsilon Crucis is now listed? A missionary ship, perhaps?”

  “No, sir. A survey ship.”

  “Oh,” was all that Grimes could say.

  Two days later Grimes watched, from his office window, Piety come in. Whatever else this Rector William Smith might or might not be he was a good ship handler. There was a nasty wind blowing across the spaceport, not quite a gale, but near enough to it; nonetheless the ship made a classic vertical descent, dropping to the exact center of the triangle formed by the berth-marker beacons. It was easy enough in theory, no more than the exact application of lateral thrust, no more than a sure and steady hand on the remote controls of the Inertial Drive. No more—and no less. Some people get the feel of ships; some never do.

  This Piety was almost a twin to Grimes’s own Faraway Quest. She was a newer (less old) ship, of course, but the design of the Epsilon Class tramps, those trusty workhorses of the Commission, had changed very little over the years. She sat there in her assigned berth, a gray, weathered spire, the bright scarlet beacons still blinking away just clear of the broad vanes of her tr
ipedal landing gear. From her stem a telescopic mast extended itself, and from the top of the metal staff a flag broke out, whipped to quivering rigidity by the wind. The Commodore picked up his binoculars through which to study it. It was not, as he had assumed it would be, the national ensign of Francisco, the golden crux anasta and crescent on a scarlet ground; even with the naked eye he could see that. This was a harshly uncompromising standard: a simple white cross on a black field. It must be, decided Grimes, the houseflag of the Skarsten Institute.

  The after air lock door opened and the ramp extended from it, and to it drew up the beetle-like cars of the various port officials—port captain, customs, immigration, health. The boarding party got out of their vehicles and filed up the gangway, to where an officer was waiting to receive them. They vanished into the ship. Grimes idly wondered whether or not they would get a drink, and what the views of these Skarsten people were on alcohol. He remembered his own visit to Francisco, as a junior officer in the Federation’s Survey Service, many years ago. Some of the religious sects had been rigidly abstemious, maintaining that alcohol was an invention of the devil. Others had held that wine symbolized the more beneficent aspects of the Almighty. But it was hardly a subject worthy of speculation. He would find out for himself when, after the arrival formalities were over, he paid his courtesy call on the ship’s captain.

  He went back to his desk, busied himself with the paperwork that made a habit of accumulating. An hour or so later he was interrupted by the buzzing of his telephone. “Grimes here!” he barked into the instrument. “Commodore Grimes,” said a strange voice. It was a statement rather than a question. “This is William Smith, Commodore, Rector of Piety. I request an appointment.”

  “It will be my pleasure, er, Rector.” Grimes glanced at his watch. It was almost time for his rather dreary coffee and sandwich lunch. It was not the sort of meal that one asked visitors to share. He said, “Shall we say 1400 hours, our time? In my office?”