Upon a Sea of Stars

by A Bertram Chandler

  They sat around in miserable little groups on the bare mountaintop.

  The Presbyter was gone, nobody knew where or how, and the Deaconess, and Smith, and perhaps a dozen of the others. It had been a long night, and a cold one, but the sun had risen at last, bringing some warmth with it.

  Grimes, in shirt and trousers, stood with Clarrise Lane, who was wrapped in his jacket.

  “But what happened?” he was asking. “What happened? What did you do?”

  She said, “I . . . I don’t know. I suppose that I do have some sort of power. And I suppose that I am, at heart, one of the Blossom People. Our religious beliefs are a sort of vague pantheism. . . . And, after all, the Father of the Gods is very similar in His attributes to the patriarchal gods of later religions. . . .” She looked at the sky. “It’s lucky that I’m a telepath as well as being . . . whatever it is that I am. Rim Sword will be here very shortly. I hope it’s soon. I have a feeling that when some of our fanatical friends recover they’ll be blaming me for everything.”

  “When they recover,” said Grimes. “It will take me a long time.” He added, “But I don’t think you’d better return to Francisco with them.”

  “Ken,” she told him, “has already got the formalities under way that will make me a Rim Worlds citizen.”

  “The obvious one?”

  “Yes.”

  “And are you going to get married in church?” he asked. “It should be interesting.”

  “Not if I can help it,” she told him.

  And so, in due course, Grimes kissed the bride and, at the reception, toasted the newlyweds in imported champagne. He did not stay long after that. He was too much the odd man out—almost all the other guests were married couples, and such few women as were unattached made little or no appeal to him. He was missing Sonya, still away on her galactic cruise. Somehow he missed her less at home, lonely though it was without her. There was still so much of her in the comfortable apartment: her books, the pictures that she had chosen, the furniture that had been specially designed to her taste.

  Having left the party early, he was at his office, at the spaceport, bright and early the following morning. He received, personally, the urgent Carlottigram from Rim Griffon, on Tharn. He smiled as he read it. He had been deskbound for too long, and his recent voyage in the oddly named Piety had aggravated rather than assuaged the itching of his feet. Captain Timms, one of the Rim Runners’ senior masters, was due back from annual leave within a few days and, at the moment, there was no appointment open for him. So Timms could keep the chair warm while Grimes took passage to Tharn; the scheduled departure date of Rim Dragon for that planet fitted in very nicely with his plans.

  “Miss Walton,” he said happily to the rather vapid little blonde secretary, “this is going to be a busy morning. Telephoning first, and then correspondence every which way. . . . To begin with, get me the General Manager. . . .”

  Part 2

  The Bird-Brained Navigator

  HER INERTIAL DRIVE throbbing softly, all hands at landing stations, all passengers save one strapped in their acceleration couches (a sudden emergency requiring the use of the auxiliary reaction drive was unlikely, but possible), the starship Rim Dragon dropped slowly down to Port Grimes on Tharn. The privileged passenger—although in his case it was a right rather than a privilege—was riding in the control room instead of being incarcerated in his cabin. Commodore John Grimes, Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners, said nothing, did nothing that could be construed as interference on his part. Legally speaking, of course, he was no more than a guest in the liner’s nerve center; but at the same time he could and did exercise considerable authority over the space-going employees of Rim Runners, made the ultimate decisions in such matters as promotions and appointments. However, Captain Wenderby, Rim Dragon’s master, was a more than competent ship-handler and at no time did Grimes feel impelled to make any suggestions, at no time did his own hands start to reach out hungrily for the controls.

  So Grimes sat there, stolid and solid in his acceleration chair, not even now keeping a watchful eye on the briskly efficient Wenderby and his briskly efficient officers. They needed no advice from him, would need none. But it was easier for them than it had been for him, when he made his own first landing on Tharn—how many years ago? Too many. There had been no spaceport then, with spaceport control keeping the master fully informed of meteorological conditions during his entire descent. There had been no body of assorted officials—port captain, customs, port health and all the rest of it—standing by awaiting the ship’s arrival. Grimes, in fact, had not known what or whom to expect, although his robot probes had told him that the culture of the planet was roughly analogous to that of Earth’s Middle Ages. Even so, he had been lucky in that he had set Faraway Quest down near a city controlled by the priesthood rather than in an area under the sway of one of the robber barons.

  He looked out of one of the big viewports. From this altitude he could see no signs of change—but change there must have been, change there had been. On that long ago exploration voyage in the old Quest he had opened up the worlds of the Eastern Circuit to commerce—and the trader does more to destroy the old ways than either the gunboat or the missionary. In this case the trader would have been the only outside influence: the Rim Worlds had always, fortunately for them, been governed by cynical, tolerant agnostics to whom gunboat diplomacy was distasteful. The Rim Worlders had always valued their own freedom too highly to wish to interfere with that of any other race.

  But even commerce, thought Grimes, is an interference. It makes people want the things that they cannot yet produce for themselves: the mass-produced entertainment, the labor-saving machines, the weapons. Grimes sighed. I suppose that we were right to arm the priesthood rather than the robber barons. In any case, they’ve been good customers.

  Captain Wenderby, still intent on his controls, spoke. “It must seem strange, coming back after all these years, sir.”

  “It does, Captain.”

  “And to see the spaceport that they named after you, for the first time.”

  “A man could have worse monuments.”

  Grimes transferred his attention from the viewport to the screen that showed, highly magnified, what was directly astern of and below the ship. Yes, there it was. Port Grimes. A great circle of gray-gleaming concrete, ringed by warehouses and administration buildings, with cranes and gantries and conveyor belts casting long shadows in the ruddy light of the westering sun. He had made the first landing on rough heathland, and for a long, heart-stopping moment had doubted that the tripedal landing gear would be able to adjust to the irregularities of the surface. And there was Rim Griffon, the reason for his voyage to Tharn. There was the ship whose officers refused to sail with each other and with the master. There was the mess that had to be sorted out with as few firings as possible—Rim Runners, as usual, was short of spacefaring personnel. There was the mess.

  It was some little time before John Grimes could get around to doing anything about it. As he should have foreseen, he was a personality, a historical personality at that. He was the first outsider to have visited Tharn. He was responsible for the breaking of the power of the barons, for the rise to power of the priesthood and the merchants. Too, the Rim Confederacy’s ambassador on Tharn had made it plain that he, and the government that he represented, would appreciate it if the Commodore played along. The delay in the departure of a very unimportant merchant vessel was far less important than the preservation of interstellar good relations.

  So Grimes was wined and dined, which was no hardship, and obliged to listen to long speeches, which was. He was taken on sight-seeing tours, and was pleased to note that progress, although inevitable, had been a controlled progress, not progress for its own sake. The picturesque had been sacrificed only when essential for motives of hygiene or real efficiency. Electricity had supplanted the flaring natural gas jets for house-and street-lighting—but the importation and evolution of new build
ing techniques and materials had not produced a mushroom growth of steel and concrete matchboxes or plastic domes. Architecture still retained its essentially Tharnian character, even though the streets of the city were no longer rutted, even though the traffic on those same streets was now battery-powered cars and no longer animal-drawn vehicles. (Internal combustion engines were manufactured on the planet, but their use was prohibited within urban limits.)

  And at sea change had come. At the time of Grimes’s first landing the only oceangoing vessels had been the big schooners; now sail was on its way out, was being ousted by the steam turbine. Yet the ships, with their fiddle bows and their figureheads, with their raked masts and funnels, still displayed an archaic charm that was altogether lacking on Earth’s seas and on the waters of most Man-colonized worlds. The Commodore, who was something of an authority on the history of marine transport, would dearly have loved to have made a voyage in one of the steamers, but he knew that time would not permit this. Once he had sorted out Rim Griffon’s troubles he would have to return to Port Forlorn, probably in that very ship.

  At last he was able to get around to the real reason for his visit to Tharn. On the morning of his fifth day on the planet he strode purposefully across the clean, well-cared-for concrete of the apron, walked decisively up the ramp to Rim Griffon’s after air lock door. There was a junior officer waiting there to receive him; Captain Dingwall had been warned that he would be coming on board. Grimes knew the young man, as he should have; after all, he had interviewed him for a berth in the Rim Runners’ service.

  “Good morning, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Good morning, sir.” The Third Officer was painfully nervous, and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbled as he spoke. His ears, almost as outstanding as Grimes’s own, flushed a dull red. “The Old—” The flush spread to all of Taylor’s features. “Captain Dingwall is waiting for you, sir. This way, sir.”

  Grimes did not need a guide. This Rim Griffon, like most of the older units in Rim Runners’ fleet, had started her career as an Epsilon Class tramp in the employ of the Interstellar Transport Commission. The general layout of those tried and trusted Galactic workhorses was familiar to all spacemen. However, young Mr. Taylor had been instructed by his captain to receive the Commodore and to escort him to his, Dingwall’s, quarters, and Grimes had no desire to interfere with the running of the ship.

  Yet.

  The two men rode up in the elevator in silence, each immersed in his own thoughts. Taylor, obviously, was apprehensive. A delay of a vessel is always a serious matter, especially when her own officers are involved. And Grimes was sorting out his own impressions to date. This Rim Griffon was obviously not a happy ship. He could feel it—just as he could see and hear the faint yet unmistakable signs of neglect, the hints of rust and dust, the not yet anguished pleading of a machine somewhere, a fan or a pump, for lubrication. And as the elevator cage passed through the “farm” level there was a whiff of decaying vegetation; either algae vats or hydroponic tanks, or both, were overdue for cleaning out.

  The elevator stopped at the captain’s deck. Young Mr. Taylor led the way out of the cage, knocked diffidently at the door facing the axial shaft. It slid open. A deep voice said, “That will be all, Mr. Taylor. I’ll send for you, and the other officers, when I want you. And come in, please, Commodore Grimes.”

  Grimes entered the day cabin. Dingwall rose to meet him—a short, stocky man, his features too large, too ruddy, his eyes too brilliantly blue under a cockatoo-crest of white hair. He extended a hand, saying, “Welcome aboard, Commodore.” He did not manage to make the greeting sound convincing. “Sit down, sir. The sun’s not yet over the yardarm, but I can offer you coffee.”

  “No thank you, Captain. Later, perhaps. Mind if I smoke?” Grimes produced his battered pipe, filled and lit it. He said through the initial acid cloud, “And now, sir, what is the trouble? Your ship has been held up for far too long.”

  “You should have asked me that five days ago, Commodore.”

  “Should I?” Grimes stared at Dingwall, his gray eyes bleak. “Perhaps I should. Unfortunately I was obliged to act almost in an ambassadorial capacity after I arrived here. But now I am free to attend to the real business.”

  “It’s my officers,” blurted Dingwall.

  “Yes?”

  “The second mate to begin with. A bird-brained navigator if ever there was one. Can you imagine anybody, with all the aids we have today, getting lost between Stree and Mellise? He did.”

  “Legally speaking,” said Grimes, “the master is responsible for everything. Including the navigation of his ship,”

  “I navigate myself. Now.”

  And I can imagine it, thought Grimes. “Do I have to do everybody’s bloody job in this bloody ship? Of course, I’m only the Captain. . . .” He said, “You reprimanded him, of course?”

  “Darn right I did.” Dingwall’s voice registered pleasant reminiscence. “I told him that he was incapable of navigating a plastic duck across a bathtub.”

  “Hmm. And your other officers?”

  “There’re the engineers, Commodore. The Interstellar Drive chief hates the Inertial Drive chief. Not that I’ve much time for either of ‘em. In fact I told Willis—he’s supposed to run the Inertial Drive—that he couldn’t pull a soldier off his sister. That was after I almost had to use the auxiliary rockets to get clear of Grollor—”

  “And the others?”

  “Vacchini, Mate. He couldn’t run a pie cart. And Sally Bowen, Catering Officer, can’t boil water without burning it. And Pilchin, the so-called purser, can’t add two and two and get the same answer twice running. And as for Sparks . . . I’d stand a better chance of getting an important message through if I just opened a control viewport and stood there and shouted.”

  The officer who is to blame for all this, thought Grimes, is the doctor. He should have seen this coming on. But perhaps I’m to blame as well. Dingwall’s home port is Port Forlorn, on Lorn—and his ship’s been running between the worlds of the Eastern Circuit and Port Farewell, on Faraway, for the past nine standard months. And Mrs. Dingwall (Grimes had met her) is too fond of her social life to travel with him. . . .

  “Don’t you like the ship, Captain?” he asked.

  “The ship’s all right,” he was told.

  “But the run, as far as you’re concerned, could be better.”

  “And the officers.”

  “Couldn’t we all, Captain Dingwall? Couldn’t we all? And now, just between ourselves, who is it that refused to sail with you?”

  “My bird-brained navigator. I hurt his feelings when I called him that. A very sensitive young man is our Mr. Missenden. And the Inertial Drive chief. He’s a member of some fancy religion called the Neo-Calvinists. . . .”

  “I’ve met them,” said Grimes.

  “What I said about his sister and the soldier really shocked him.”

  “And which of them refuse to sail with each other?”

  “Almost everybody has it in for the second mate. He’s a Latter Day Fascist and is always trying to make converts. And the two chiefs are at each other’s throats. Kerholm, the Interstellar Drive specialist, is a militant atheist—”

  And I was on my annual leave, thought Grimes, when this prize bunch of square pegs was appointed to this round hole. Even so, I should have checked up. I would have checked up if I hadn’t gotten involved in the fun and games on Kinsolving’s Planet.

  “Captain,” he said, “I appreciate your problems. But there are two sides to every story. Mr. Vacchini, for example, is a very efficient officer. As far as he is concerned, there could well be a clash of personalities. . . .”

  “Perhaps,” admitted Dingwall grudgingly.

  “As for the others. I don’t know them personally. If you could tell them all to meet in the wardroom in—say—five minutes, we can go down to try to iron things out.”

  “You can try,” said the Captain. “I’ve had them all in a big way. And, to save you the
bother of saying it, Commodore Grimes, they’ve had me likewise.”

  Grimes ironed things out. On his way from Lorn to Tharn he had studied the files of reports on the captain and his officers. Nonetheless, in other circumstances he would have been quite ruthless—but good spacemen do not grow on trees, especially out toward the Galactic Rim. And these were good spacemen, all of them, with the exception of Missenden, the second officer. He had been born on New Saxony, one of the worlds that had been part of the short-lived Duchy of Waldegren, and one of the worlds upon which the political perversions practiced upon Waldegren itself had lived on for years after the downfall of the Duchy. He had been an officer in the navy of New Saxony and had taken part in the action off Pelisande, the battle in which the heavy cruisers of the Survey Service had destroyed the last of the self-styled commerce raiders who were, in fact, no better than pirates.

  There had been survivors, and Missenden had been one of them. (He owed his survival mainly to the circumstance that the ship of which he had been Navigator had been late in arriving at her rendezvous with the other New Saxony war vessels and had, in fact, surrendered after no more than a token resistance.) He had stood trial with other war criminals, but had escaped with a very light sentence. (Most of the witnesses who could have testified against him were dead.) As he had held a lieutenant commander’s commission in the navy of New Saxony he had been able to obtain a Master Astronaut’s Certificate after no more than the merest apology for an examination. Then he had drifted out to the Rim, where his New Saxony qualifications were valid; where, in fact, qualifications issued by any human authority anywhere in the galaxy were valid.

  Grimes looked at Missenden. He did not like what he saw. He had not liked it when he first met the man, a few years ago, when he had engaged him as a probationary third officer—but then, as now, he had not been able to afford to turn spacemen away from his office door. The Second Officer was tall, with a jutting, arrogant beak of a nose over a wide, thin-lipped mouth, with blue eyes that looked even madder than Captain Dingwall’s, his pale, freckled face topped by close-cropped red hair. He was a fanatic, that was obvious from his physical appearance, and in a ship where he, like everybody else, was unhappy his fanaticism would be enhanced. A lean and hungry look, thought Grimes. He thinks too much; such men are dangerous. He added mentally, But only when they think about the wrong things. The late Duke Otto’s Galactic Superman, for example, rather than Pilgren’s Principles of Interstellar Navigation.