Upon a Sea of Stars

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Why bother with the extreme range of the light?” asked Grimes, becoming interested in spite of all his troubles. “You have radar, don’t you?”

  “I do. I have radar and echo sounder. But my radar gets old and tired after only a few hours’ operation, and my echo sounder’s on the blink. I’ve nothing against electronic gadgetry as long as it can be relied upon. At the moment, mine can’t be.” The writer laughed. “But this is crazy. To sit here discussing navigation with a navigator from the distant future! I hope that none of my officers comes in to find me carrying on a conversation with myself!”

  “I’m real, Captain. And I’m here. And I think that you should do something about getting me back to where I belong.”

  “What can I do, Commodore? People have said, more than once, that my stories just happen. And that’s true, you know. Furthermore, I’ve always given you a free hand. Time and time again I’ve had to make plot changes because you’ve insisted on going your own way.”

  “So you can’t help me . . .”

  “I wish that I could. Believe me, I wish that I could. Do you think that I want to be haunted by you for the rest of my life?”

  “There could be a way . . .” whispered Grimes. Yes, he thought, there could he a way. Life in that Hall of Fame would not be at all bad as long as he—and Sonya—were assured of the same degree of permanence as the others: Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond . . . He said, “I shan’t mind a bit going back to that peculiar Elysium you cooked up as long as my status there is better than that of an ephemeral gate crasher. And, of course, I’d like Sonya with me.”

  “And just how can I arrange that for you, Commodore?”

  “Easily, Captain. All you have to do is write a best seller, a series of best sellers.”

  The other man grinned. “It’s a pity you can’t meet my wife.” He gestured toward a peculiarly two-dimensional photograph in a frame over the desk. The auburn-haired woman who looked out at them reminded Grimes of Sonya. “That’s what she’s always telling me.”

  There was a sharp buzz from the telephone on the desk. The writer picked up the handset. “Master here.”

  “Third Officer here, sir,” Grimes heard faintly. “I’ve just picked up Cape Sorell light, at extreme range, right ahead . . .”

  “Good, Mr. Tallent. Turn her on to the reciprocal course. Yes, keep her on half speed. I’ll be right up.”

  Grimes followed the shipmaster out of the day cabin, up the narrow companionway to the chartroom, out of the glass-enclosed wheelhouse, then out through a sliding door to the wing of the bridge. The night was clear, and the stars (would he ever see them again as more than lights in the sky?) were bright. Astern was the winking, group-flashing light, an intermittent spark on the far horizon. And then the light itself was gone, only a flash recurring at regular intervals marking its position as the lantern dipped below the planet’s curvature.

  The captain grunted his satisfaction, then turned to stare forward. There was still quite a sea running, the wave crests faintly phosphorescent in the darkness; there was still a stiff breeze, broad on the port bow, but there was no weight to it. The ship was lifting easily to the swell, the motion not at all uncomfortable. The captain grunted again, went back to the chartroom. Grimes looked over his shoulder as he bent over the chart, noted the range circle with Cape Sorell as its center, the dot on it in the middle of its own tiny, penciled circle with the time—2235—along it, and another, cryptic notation, 33.5. On the chart, to one side, was a message pad. Final Gale Warning, it was headed. “Wind and sea moderating in all areas,” read Grimes. “All pressures rising.”

  The shipmaster was busy now with parallel rulers, pencil and dividers. From the observed position he laid off a course—270° True. With the dividers he stepped off a distance, marked it with a cross and wrote alongside it “0200?” Grimes realized that the officer of the watch had come into the chartroom. He could see the young man, but the young man, it seemed, could not see him.

  “Mr. Tallent,” said the shipmaster, “we’ll stand out to this position, then bring her around to 090 True. All being well, we shall be within comfortable VHF range at daylight, and with any luck at all the Bar will have stopped breaking and we shall have slack water. I’ll not write up my night orders yet; I’ll see the second officer at midnight before I turn in . . .”

  “We should get in tomorrow all right, sir,” said the officer.

  “Don’t be so bloody sure. You can never tell with this bloody place!”

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Good night, Mr. Tallent.”

  Back in the day cabin, Grimes said, “You can see, Captain, that I have no real existence here and now. You must try to make me real somewhere.”

  “Or somewhen.”

  “Or somewhen.”

  “More easily said than done, Commodore. Especially in the existing circumstances. At the moment of writing I am master of this little rustbucket. Master under God, as Lloyd’s puts it. This ship is my responsibility—and you should be able to appreciate that. This evening I was writing just as relaxation, one hand on the keyboard, the other ready to pick up the telephone . . .”

  Grimes said, “You take yourself too bloody seriously. This is only a small ship with a small crew on an unimportant trade.”

  “Nonetheless,” the shipmaster told him, “this is my ship. And the crew is my crew. The trade? That’s the Company’s worry; but, as Master, it’s up to me to see that the ship shows a profit.”

  “And I’m your responsibility too,” Grimes pointed out.

  “Are you? As I’ve already said, Commodore, you’ve proven yourself able to go your own sweet way in any story that I’ve written. But if I am responsible, just bear in mind that I could kill you off as easily as I could swat a fly. More easily. How do you want it? Act of God, the King’s enemies, or pirates? Nuclear blast—or a knife between the ribs?”

  “You’re joking, surely.”

  “Am I? Has it never occurred to you, Commodore, that a writer gets rather tired of his own pet characters? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes, but had to drag him back to life to please his public. Ian Fleming was becoming more than somewhat browned off with James Bond when he, himself, kicked the bucket. . .”

  Grimes looked toward the photograph over the desk. “But you like Sonya,” he said.

  “I do. She’s too good for you.”

  “Be that as it may. She’s part of my world, my time . . .”

  “So?”

  “Well, I thought . . .”

  The telephone buzzed. The shipmaster picked up the handset. “Yes?”

  “The wind’s freshening, sir, and it’s veered to west.”

  “Put her back on full speed, Mr. Tallent.” The captain got up from his chair, went to the aneroid barometer mounted on the bulkhead. He tapped it. The needle jerked in a counterclockwise direction. “Just what I need,” he said. “A bloody secondary.”

  “What does that mean, Captain?”

  “It means, Commodore, that those Final Gale Warnings aren’t worth the paper that Sparks typed them on. Very often, too often, in these waters the secondary depression is more vicious than the so-called primary.”

  “What can you do?”

  “Stand out. Make offing. Get the hell off this bloody lee shore.”

  Again the telephone buzzed. “Master here.”

  “Sir, we’ve lifted Cape Sorell again . . .”

  “Tell the engineers to give her all they’ve got. I’ll be right up.”

  The ship was lurching, was rolling heavily as she fell away from the wind. She was pounding as her fore part lifted and then slammed back down into the trough. Her screw was racing each time that her stern came clear of the water, and as the propeller lost purchase, so did the rudder. “Sir,” complained the helmsman, “the wheel’s hard over, but she’s not coming back . . .”

  “Keep it hard over until she answers,” ordered the Master. He was looking into the radar sc
reen. It was not a very good picture. There was spoking, and there was too much clutter. But there, right astern, was the faint outline of the rocky coast, a ragged luminosity. And there were the range circles—and slowly, slowly, the coastline was drifting from the 24 mile to the 20 mile ring. Even Grimes, peering over the other man’s shoulder, could appreciate what was happening.

  “Mr. Tallent!”

  “Sir?”

  “Call the Chief Officer. Tell him to flood the afterhold.”

  “Flood the afterhold, sir?”

  “You heard me. We have to get the arse down somehow, to give the screw and the rudder some sort of grip on the water.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “She’s logging three knots,” whispered the Master. “But she’s making one knot—astern. And that coast is nothing but rocks . . .”

  “And flooding the hold will help?” asked Grimes.

  “It’d better. It’s all I can do.”

  They went back out to the wing of the bridge, struggling to retain their balance as the wind hit them. Cape Sorell light was brightly visible again, right astern, and even to the naked eye it had lifted well clear of the sea horizon. A shadowy figure joined them there—the Chief Officer, decided Grimes.

  “I’ve got two fire hoses running into the hold, sir. What depth of water do you want?”

  “I want 100 tons. Go below and work it out roughly.”

  “What if the ceiling lifts?”

  “Let it lift. Put in your hundred tons.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Another officer came onto the bridge—big, burly, bearded. This must be, realized Grimes, the midnight change of watch. “Keep her as she’s going, sir?” he asked.

  “Yes. Keep her as she’s going, Mr. Mackenzie. She’ll be steering better once we get some weight in aft, and racing less. But you might tell the engineers to put on the second steering motor . . .”

  “Will do, sir.”

  The shipmaster made his way back into the wheelhouse, staggering a little as the vessel lurched in the heavy swell. He went to the radar unit, looked down into the screen with Grimes peering over his shoulder. Right astern, the ragged outline of Cape Sorell was touching the twenty mile ring. Slowly the range decreased—slowly, but inexorably.

  The Chief Officer was back. “About two foot six should do it, sir.”

  “Make it that . . .”

  Then, gradually, the range was opening again. The range was opening, and the frequent heavy vibrations caused by the racing screw were becoming less. The wind was still shrieking in from the westward, whipping the crests off the seas, splattering them against the wheelhouse windows in shrapnel bursts of spray, but the ship was steering again, keeping her nose into it, clawing away from the rocks that had claimed, over the years, too many victims.

  Grimes followed the Master down to the afterdeck, stood with him as he looked down a trunkway into the flooded hold. Swirling in the filthy water were the timbers of the hold ceiling, crashing against the bulkheads fore and aft, splintering themselves against frames and brackets and the hold ladders, self-destroying battering rams driven by the force of the ship’s pitching and rolling. There would be damage, even Grimes could see that. There would be damage—and, inevitably, the writing of reports with carbon copies every which way.

  Grimes knew this, and he should have had more sense than to attempt to bring up the subject again of his own, private worries.

  He said, “This hold flooding seems to have worked . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps, Captain, you could spare the time to discuss the question of returning me to my own place and period . . .”

  “. . . off!” snarled the shipmaster. “I’ve more important things on my plate than your troubles. . . . Off!”

  The screaming wind took hold of Grimes, whirling him away into the darkness. But, before he was gone, he heard the Chief Officer ask his captain, “Who was that, sir? I thought I saw somebody standing there with you, a stranger in an odd-looking uniform . . .”

  “Just a figment of the imagination, Mr. Briggs. Just a figment of the imagination.”

  He was standing in his own day cabin, aboard Faraway Quest. He was staring at Sonya, and she, her face white under the auburn hair, was staring at him.

  “John! You’re back!”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been holding the ship, here on Kinsolving, but our lords and masters have been putting the pressure on us to return . . .”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Grimes told her.

  “Why not?”

  “Because wherever you are, that’s where I belong.”

  He was sitting in his day cabin, trying to relax over a stiff drink. He had brought his ship into port, scurrying in during a lull between two depressions, pumping out after ballast to compensate for the weight of water in the flooded hold, clearing the Bar without touching. He was overtired and knew that sleep was out of the question. But there was nothing for him to do; his Chief Officer was capably overseeing the pumping out of the flooded compartment and would, as soon as possible, put the necessary repairs in hand.

  He thought, I might as well finish that bloody story. He inserted paper into his typewriter, refueled and lit his pipe, began to write. As the final words shaped themselves on the white sheet he looked up at the photograph of the red-haired woman over his desk. Because wherever you are, that’s where I belong . . .

  “And I hope you’re satisfied, you cantankerous old bastard,” he muttered.

  “And it all actually happened . . .” murmured Admiral Kravinsky, indicating the thick report that lay on his desk.

  “I . . . I suppose so . . .” said Grimes uncertainly.

  “You should know, man. You were there.”

  “But where was there?”

  “Don’t go all metaphysical on me, Grimes.” The Admiral selected a gnarled cheroot from the box before him, lit it. In self-defense the Commodore filled and ignited a battered briar pipe. He regretted, he realized, having lost that meerschaum during his last adventure.

  Kravinsky regarded the swirling clouds of acrid blue smoke thoughtfully. He said at last, “It was rummy, all the same. Very rummy.”

  “You’re telling me,” concurred Grimes.

  “I think that we shall be leaving Kinsolving severely alone for quite a while. I don’t like this business about our just being a figment of the imagination or an imagination of the figment or whatever . . .”

  “You don’t like it. . .” muttered Grimes.

  “All right, all right, my heart fair bleeds for you. Satisfied? And now, Admiral, I have a job for you that should be right up your alley.”

  “Admiral? Have I been promoted, sir?”

  “That’d be the sunny Friday! But, Grimes, I seem to remember that you’re an honorary admiral in the Tharn Navy, and that same Navy consists of seagoing surface vessels. The rank, meaningless though it is, should be useful to you when we send you to Aquarius.”

  “The rank’s not meaningless, sir,” protested Grimes.

  “So much the better, then. On your way, Admiral. Weigh anchor, splice the main brace, heave the lead or whatever it is you seafaring types do when you get under way.”

  “It should be interesting,” said Grimes.

  “With you around to complicate matters, it’s bound to be.”

  The Sister Ships

  CAPTAIN JOHN GRIMES stood impassively in the port wing of his bridge as his ship, the round-the-world tramp Sonya Winneck, slid gently in toward her berth. But although his stocky body was immobile his brain was active. He was gauging speed, distances, the effect of the tide. His engines were stopped, but the vessel still seemed to be carrying too much way. He was stemming the ebb, but, according to the Port Directions there was sometimes—not always—an eddy, a counter current along this line of wharfage. In any case, it would be a tight fit. Ahead of him was Iron Baron, one of the steel trade ships: a huge, beamy brute with gigantic deck cranes almost capab
le of lifting her by her own bootstraps. In the berth astern was the Lone Star Line’s Orionic, with even more beam to her than the Baron.

  “Port!” ordered Grimes. “Hard over!”

  “Hard aport, sir!” replied the quartermaster.

  Sonya Winneck was accosting the wharf at a fairly steep angle now, her stem aimed at a bollard just abaft Iron Baron’s stern. Grimes lifted his mouth whistle to his lips, blew one short, sharp blast. From the fo’c’sle head came the rattle of chain cable as the starboard anchor was let go, then one stroke of the bell to signal that the first shackle was in the pipe.

  Grimes looked aft. Sonya Winneck’s quarter was now clear of Orionic’s bows. “Midships! Slow astern!”

  He heard the replies of the man at the wheel and the Third Officer. He felt the vibration as the reversed screw bit into the water. But would slow astern be enough? He was about to order half astern, then realized that this was what he was getting, if not more. The transverse thrust of the screw threw Sonya Winneck’s stern to port even as her headway was killed. Already a heaving line was ashore forward, and snaking after it the first of the mooring lines. Aft, the Second Mate was ready to get his first line ashore.

  “Stop her,” ordered Grimes. “That will do the wheel, thank you.”

  On fo’c’sle head and poop the self-tensioning winches were whining. Grimes, looking down from the bridge wing to the marker flag on the wharf, saw that he was exactly in position. He made the traditional “arms crossed above the head” gesture—Make her fast as she is—to the Chief Officer forward, the Second Officer aft. Then he walked slowly into the wheelhouse. The Third Officer was still standing by the engine control pedestal.