“Hard a-port!” he ordered.
“Hard a-port, sir!” The clicking of the repeater was audible above the shrieking of the wind.
“Ease her . . . Midships . . . Steady! Steady as you go!”
Sonya Winneck hung there, her stern a bare two cables from the side of Iron Warrior. Grimes thought, I cut that ratlier too close. But at this range it’ll be impossible for Andersen to miss. To the Third Officer, at the radar, he called, “Are we opening the range?”
“Slowly, sir.”
It was time that Andersen got his rocket away. The ship was not pitching too badly; firing at just the right moment should not be difficult. As long as the missile passed over the target it would be a successful shot. Grimes went out to the wing of the bridge to watch. The air scoop dodger deflected the wind, throwing it up and over, so it was not too uncomfortable away from the wheelhouse.
Andersen fired—and at precisely the wrong moment the ship’s head fell off heavily to starboard. The rocket streaked through the air, arcing high, a brief orange flare against the gray, ragged clouds, a streamer of white smoke, and behind it the fluorescent yellow filament of the nylon line. Inevitably it missed, finally splashing to the sea well forward of and beyond Iron Warrior’s bows.
Grimes didn’t see it drop. He stormed into the wheel-house, bawled at the helmsman, “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”
“It’s the wheel, sir,” The man’s voice was frightened. “It turned in my hands. I can’t budge it!”
The ship was coming round still, turning all the time to starboard. The gale force wind and her own engines were driving her down on to the helpless Warrior. “Stop her!” ordered Grimes. “Full astern!”
Denham was still at the radar, so Wilcox jumped to the engine controls. He slammed the lever hard over to the after position. Still the ship was making headway—but, at last slowing. She stopped at last, her stern scant feet from Iron Warrior’s exposed side. Grimes could see the white faces of her people as they stared at him, as they watched, in horrified disbelief, this rescuer turned assassin.
Sonya Winneck was backing away now, her stern coming up into the wind. She was backing away, but reluctantly, Wilcox shouted, “Denham, come and give me a hand! I can’t keep this bloody handle down!”
Grimes dragged his attention away from the ship he had so nearly rammed to what was happening on his own bridge. Both the Chief and Third Officer—and Wilcox was a big, strong man—were having to exert all their strength to keep the metal lever in its astern position. It was jerking, forcing itself up against their hands.
Sonya—who until now had been keeping well out of the way—grabbed him by the arm. “Tell the Chief to put the engine controls on manual!” she screamed. “I know what’s happening!”
“What’s happening?”
“No time now to tell you. Just put her on manual, and get Lecky up here!”
Grimes went to the telephone, rang down to the engine-room. “Manual control, your end, Mr. Jones,” he ordered. “Keep her on full astern until I order otherwise. And send Miss Hales up to the bridge. At once.”
Thankfully, Wilcox and Denham released their painful grip on the bridge control lever. On the console the revolution indicator still showed maximum stern power. Ahead, the distance between the two ships was fast diminishing. From the VHF transceiver came a frightened voice, “What’s happening, Sonya Winneck? What’s happening?”
“Tell him,” said Grimes to Denham, “that we’re having trouble with our bridge controls. We’ll get a line aboard as soon as we can.”
Wilcox, watching the indicator, yelled, “She’s stopped! The bitch is coming ahead again!”
Sonya said urgently, “There’s only one thing to do, John. Shut off the Purcell Navigator. Iron Warrior has P N against her name in the Registry—and she was built by Varley’s.” She turned to Mary Hales, who had just come onto the bridge. “Mary, switch off that bloody tin brain, or pull fuses, or something—but kill it!”
The pretty little blonde was no longer so pretty. On one side of her head the hair was charred and frizzled, and her smooth face was marred by an angry burn. “We’ve been trying to,” she gasped. “The Chief and I. It won’t let us.”
“She’s coming astern again,” announced Wilcox. “She’s . . . No, she’s stopped . . .”
“Watch her, Mr. Wilcox,” ordered Grimes. He ran with his wife and the Electrician to the house abaft the chartroom in which the Purcell Navigator lived. It squatted there sullenly on its four stumpy legs, the dials set around its spherical body glaring at them like eyes. From its underside ran armored cables, some thick and some thin—that one leading aft and down must be the main power supply, the ones leading into the wheelhouse and chartroom would be connected to various controls and navigational equipment. On the after bulkhead of the house was a switchboard and fuse box. Mary Hales went straight to this, put out her hand to the main switch. There was a sudden, intense violet flare, a sharp crackling, the tang of overheated metal. The girl staggered back, her blistered hands covering her eyes. “That’s what happened to the engine room switchboard!” she wailed. “It’s welded itself in the On position!” Then, using language more seamanlike than ladylike, she threw herself at the fuse box. She was too late—but perhaps this was as well. Had she got the lid open she would have been blinded.
Still cursing softly, she grabbed a spanner from her belt. Her intention was obvious; she would unscrew the retaining nut holding the main supply lead firmly in its socket. But an invisible force yanked the tool out of her hand, threw it out of the open door.
Grimes watched, helpless. Then he heard Sonya snarling, “Do something. Do something, damn you!” She thrust something into his right hand. He looked down at it. It was the big fire ax from its rack in the chartroom. He got both hands about the haft, tried to swing up the head of the weapon, staggered as the magnetic fields which now were the machine’s main defense tugged at it. But he lifted the ax somehow, brought it crashing down—and missed his own right foot by a millimeter. Again he raised the ax, straining with all his strength, and again struck at the thick cable. The ship lurched heavily, deflecting his aim, and, fantastically, the magnetic deflection brought the head back to its target. The armored cable writhed away from the blow, but not in time, not enough. The keen edge bit home, in a coruscation of violet sparks. And Mary Hales, with a smaller ax that she had found somewhere, was chopping away, sobbing and cursing; and Sonya was jabbing with a heavy screwdriver at the thing’s “eyes”—and so, at last, it died.
And so it died, damaged beyond its built-in powers of self-regeneration. (Mary Hales made sure of that.) And so Grimes was able to get a line aboard Iron Warrior, and the Warrior’s people got the towing wire shackled onto their anchor cable, and slowly, slowly but surely, the crippled ship was dragged to safety, away from the avidly waiting fangs and talons of Devlin’s Islet; the rocky teeth and claws that, when the tow finally commenced, had been less than half a mile distant.
The Purcell Navigator was dead, and its last flares of energy had destroyed or damaged much more than itself. The gyro-compass and the autopilot were inoperative (but the ship had a magnetic compass and hand steering). Loran and radar were burned out, inertial navigator and echometer were beyond repair, even the Chernikeeff Log was useless. But Grimes was not worried. He had sextant, chronometer, ephemeris and tables—and the great navigators of Earth’s past had circled their globe with much less in the way of equipment. In the extremely unlikely event of his not knowing where he was he could always ask Iron Warrior for a fix—but he did not think that he would have to do so.
He did, however, urge the Warrior’s Master to put his own Purcell Navigator out of commission, explaining why in some detail. Then he went to the house abaft the chartroom where, under the direction of Mary Hales, Wilcox and his men were loosening the holding down bolts, disconnecting the cables that had not already been cut. (There might still be a flicker of life in the thing, some capability of
self-repair.) He watched happily as the Mate and three brawny ratings lifted the spherical casing from the deck, staggered with it out the door.
“What shall we do with it, sir?” asked the Mate.
“Give it a buoyancy test,” ordered Grimes. He followed the men to the side rail of the bridge, watched as they tipped it over. It sank without a trace.
Grimes was relieved of his command in Longhaven, after the successful completion of the tow, and flown back to Steep Island, accompanied by Sonya. Neither he nor his wife felt very strong when they boarded the airship—the crews of both Sonya Winneck and Iron Warrior had united in laying on a farewell party more enthusiastic than restrained. (“You must be glad to see the back of us,” Sonya had remarked at one stage of the proceedings.) Even so, old and tired as he was feeling, Grimes had insisted on seeing the airship’s captain so as to be assured that the craft was not fitted with a Purcell Navigator. Then, he and his wife went to their cabin and collapsed into their bunks.
Steep Island, although not officially an airport, had a mooring mast, so a direct flight was possible. When the time came for Grimes and Sonya to disembark they were feeling better and, in fact, had been able to put the finishing touches to their report.
Captain Thornton, the Havenmaster, welcomed them warmly but was obviously anxious to hear what they had to tell him. In minutes only they were all seated in the Havenmaster’s Lookout and Thornton was listening intently as they talked.
When they were finished, he smiled grimly, “This is good enough,” he said. “It’s good enough even for the Council of Master Wardens. I shall issue orders that those infernal machines are to be rendered inoperative in every ship fitted with them, and that no more are to be put aboard any Aquarian vessel. Then we make arrangements to ship them all back to where they came from.”
Grimes was surprised, and said so. He was used to having his recommendations adopted eventually, but in most cases there was a lot of argument first.
Thornton laughed. “What you’ve said is what I’ve been saying, John, for months. But nobody listens to me. I’m just a reactionary old shellback. But you, sir, as well as being a well-known maritime historian, have also one foot—at least—in what to us is still the future. You’re a master astronaut, you hold the rank of commodore in the Space Navy of your Confederacy. They’ll listen to you, when they won’t listen to me.”
“It’s Sonya they should listen to,” Grimes said. “She’s a spacewoman and an intelligence officer. She tied the loose ends together.”
“But it was all so obvious,” she said smugly. “Two yards, and two yards only, on this planet licensed to fit the Purcell Navigator: Varley’s and the Carrington State Dockyard. Two . . . sororities? Yes, two sororities of ships, the Varley Sisterhood and the Carrington Sisterhood, each hating the other. Limited intelligence, but, somehow, a strong, built-in spite, and also a strong sense of self-preservation. That much, I think, was intended by those electronic geniuses on Elektra—and possibly more, but I’ll come to that later.
“Anyhow, if a Carrington sister saw a chance of taking a swipe at a Varley sister without much risk of damage to herself she’d take it. And vice versa. Hence all the collisions, and all the minor berthing accidents. Now and again, of course, the sense of self-preservation worked to everybody’s benefit . . .” She smiled at her husband rather too sweetly. “I know of at least one bungled berthing where everything, almost miraculously, came right in the end . . .”
“But what’s behind it all?” asked the Havenmaster. “You’re the Intelligence Officer. Is it, do you think, intentional on somebody’s part?”
“I don’t know, Tom. I’d have to snoop around on Elecktra to find out, and I doubt if the Elektrans would let me. But try this idea on for size . . . What if the Elektrans want to make Aquarius absolutely dependent upon them?”
“It could be . . .” mused Thornton. “It could be . . .” He went up, walked to the bookshelves, took out a book, opened it. It was Grimes’s own Times Of Transition. The Havenmaster leafed through it to find the right place. He read aloud, “ ‘And so was engendered a most unseamanlike breed of navigator, competent enough technicians whose working tools were screwdrivers and voltmeters rather than sextants and chronometers. Of them it could never be said Every hair a ropeyarn, every fingernail a marlinespike, every drop of blood pure Stockholm tar. They were servants to rather than masters of their machines, and ever they were at the mercy of a single fuse . . .’ ” He shut the book with a slam. He said, “It can’t happen here.”
“Famous last words,” scoffed Sonya, but her voice was serious.
“It mustn’t happen here,” said Grimes.
The Man Who Sailed The Sky
It was fortunate, Sonya always said, that the Federation Survey Service’s Star Pioneer dropped down to Port Stellar, on Aquarius, when she did. Had not transport back to the Rim Worlds, although it was by a roundabout route, become available it is quite possible that her husband would have become a naturalized Aquarian citizen. Seafaring is no more (and no less) a religion than spacefaring; be that as it may, John Grimes, Master Astronaut, Commodore of the Rim Confederacy’s Naval Reserve, Honorary Admiral of the Ausiphalian Navy and, lately, Master Mariner, was exhibiting all the zeal of the new convert. For some months he had sailed in command of an Aquarian merchantman and, although his real job was to find out the cause of the rapidly increasing number of marine casualties, he had made it plain that insofar as his own ship was concerned he was no mere figurehead. Although (or because) only at sea a dog watch, he was taking great pride in his navigation, his seamanship, his pilotage and his ship handling.
“Damn it all,” he grumbled to Sonya, “if our lords and masters wanted us back they’d send a ship for us. I know that Rim Eland isn’t due here for another six weeks, on her normal commercial voyage—but what’s wrong with giving the Navy a spot of deep space training? The Admiralty could send a corvette . . .”
“You aren’t all that important, John.”
“I suppose not. I’m only the Officer Commanding the Naval Reserve, and the Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners . . . Oh, well—if they don’t want me, there’re some people who do.”
“What do you mean?” she asked sharply.
“Tom told me that my Master Mariner’s Certificate of Competency and my Pilotage Exemption Certificates are valid for all time. He told me, too, that the Winneck Line will give me another appointment as soon as I ask for it. There’s just one condition . . .”
“Which is?”
“That we take out naturalization papers.”
“No,” she told him. “No, repeat, capitalize, underscore, no.”
“Why not, my dear?”
“Because this world is the bitter end. I always thought that the Rim Worlds were bad enough, but I put up with them for your sake and, in any case, they’ve been improving enormously over the past few years. But Aquarius . . . It’s way back in the twentieth century!”
“That’s its charm.”
“For you, perhaps. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed our voyage in Sonya Winneck—but it was no more than a holiday cruise . . .”
“An odd sort of holiday.”
“You enjoyed it too. But after not too long a time you’d find the life of a seafaring commercial shipmaster even more boring than that of a spacefaring one. Do you want to be stuck on the surface of one planet for the rest of your life?”
“But there’s more variety of experience at sea than there is in space . . .”
Before she could reply there was a tap on the door. “Enter!” called Grimes.
Captain Thornton, the Havenmaster of Aquarius, came into the suite. He looked inquiringly at his guests. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked.
“You are, Tom,” Sonya told him. “But you’re welcome to join the argument, even though it will be the two of you against me. John’s talking of settling down on Aquarius to continue his seafaring career.”
“He could do worse,” said Th
ornton.
Sonya glared at the two men, at the tall, lean, silver-haired ruler of Aquarius, at her stocky, ragged husband whose prominent ears, already flushing, were a thermometer of his rising temper. Grimes, looking at her, had the temerity to smile slightly, appreciatively. Like the majority of auburn-haired women she was at her most attractive when about to blow her top.
“What are you grinning at, you big ape?” she demanded. “You.”
Before she could explode Thornton hastily intervened. He said, “I came in with some news that should interest you, both of you. I’ve just got the buzz that the Federation’s Star Pioneer is putting in to Port Stellar. I know that you used to be in the Survey Service, John, and that Sonya still holds a Reserve commission, and it could be that you’ll be meeting some old shipmates . . .”
“Doubtful,” said Grimes. “The Survey Service has a very large fleet, and it’s many years since I resigned . . .”
“Since you were asked to resign,” remarked Sonya.
“You were still in your cradle, so you know nothing about the circumstances. But there might be some people aboard that Sonya would know.”
“We shall soon find out. I have to throw a party for the Captain and officers—and you, of course, will be among the guests.”
Grimes knew none of Star Pioneer’s officers, but Sonya was acquainted with Commander James Farrell, the survey ship’s captain. How well acquainted? Grimes felt a twinge of jealousy as he watched them chatting animatedly, then strolled over to the buffet for another generous helping of the excellent chowder. There he was engaged in conversation by two of the Pioneer’s junior lieutenants. “You know, sir,” said one of them, “your name’s quite a legend in the Service . . .”
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