First Command

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Listen, Grimes, keep your nose out of my business or you’ll get it bloodied.”

  “I’m inclined to think, Kane, that your business is my business. I represent the Federation . . . .”

  “An’ the Federation is supposed to encourage honest trade, not interfere with it.”

  “Honest trade?”

  “You heard me. Honest and legal.”

  “All right, Kane. I have your word for it—for what it’s worth. Where are you taking those women?”

  “It’s no concern of yours, Grimes. But it’s only natural that after generations of isolation they’ll want to see new worlds.”

  “Mphm. And how are they paying their fares? You never impressed me as being a philanthropic institution.”

  Kane laughed. “Have you never heard of Travel Now, Pay Later? TG Clippers do a lot of business that way, an’ so does Cluster Lines.”

  “But these people don’t have money.”

  “There’re more important things in life than money—not that I can think of any right now.”

  Grimes realized that he was being talked into a corner. He said firmly, “I have to know where you intend taking your . . . er . . . passengers.”

  “I’ve already told you that it’s none of your business.”

  “Would it be . . . Essen?”

  “I’m not sayin’ that is is—but what if it is Essen?”

  “All right, Captain Kane. If you don’t mind, I’ll just assume that it is Essen. There’d be a good market there for women, wouldn’t there? And Federation law definitely prohibits any kind of traffic in human beings.”

  “Yeah. It does. I know the law as well as you do, Commander. Probably better. An’ I’m tellin’ you flat that I’m breakin’ no laws. So I’ll be greatly obliged if you’ll tell your Jimmy The One to get out of my mate’s hair.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain Kane, but I just can’t take your word for it.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, would you? We couldn’t have a spick-an’-span Survey Service commander takin’ the word of Drongo Kane, a poor, honest workin’ stiff, master of a scruffy little star tramp, could we? Oh, no. But I’ll tell you this. One of your own officers, that Commander Maggie Lazenby, is in Janine’s palace now, an’ that stuffed shirt Danzellan is with her. Janine’s lettin’ ‘em look at the secret records, the ones that she showed me. I’m not kiddin’ you, Grimes. She’ll tell you that you can’t touch me.”

  “That remains to be seen, Captain Kane.”

  “Why don’t you call her now?”

  “Why not?” agreed Grimes tiredly. He got on to Timmins, ordered him to arrange a hookup. After a few minutes Maggie’s voice came through the speaker of the pinnace’s transceiver.

  “Commander Lazenby here, Seeker.”

  “Stand by, please, Commander Lazenby. I’m putting you through to the captain.”

  “Captain here,” said Grimes.

  “Yes, John?”

  “I’ve been talking with Captain Kane . . . .”

  “Yes. I know. He’s just come into the Records Room.”

  “He assures me that whatever he’s doing is quite legal, and that you’ll bear him out.”

  “Yes, but . . . I’ve just unearthed some very old records. . . . And from what Captain Danzellan tells me . . .

  “She says yes,” put in Kane. “An’ until the law is changed, if it ever is . . . .”

  “I said yes, but . . .” insisted Maggie.

  “And if Tabitha is not lying . . .” contributed Danzellan.

  “She said yes!” snapped Kane, his customary drawl forgotten.

  “Maggie!” said Grimes forcibly. “Report, at once, in detail what you have discovered.”

  But there was no report. Kane used his wrist transceiver to jam the signals from those worn by Maggie and Danzellan, and before either or both of them could take any action the far more powerful transceiver of Kane’s pinnace blocked all further transmissions from Ballarat.

  23

  Yes . . . but.

  Yes . . . but.

  But what?

  Meanwhile, Mr. Saul had made the terrain between the landing site and Oxford quite impassable to any ground vehicle, and would have to be restrained before he blew away all Seeker’s 60 mm ammunition. Grimes told the first lieutenant to cease fire, at once.

  But what loophole in Federation law had Kane discovered? What possible means of stopping that loophole had Maggie discovered? Where did Francis Delamere’s local girlfriend, Tabitha, come into it?

  Grimes decided that Southerly Buster’s lift-off from Morrowvia must be, at the very least, delayed. Could he stop the Buster’s boat from ferrying, a dozen or so at a time, the unconscious women to the ship? Yes, he could—but only at grave risk to the boat’s passengers. Embarkation would have to be allowed to continue; by the time that it was complete he, Grimes, would be back aboard Seeker and would be able to take full charge.

  Seeker’s cannon were silent now, and Southerly Buster’s one remaining boat had nosed cautiously out of its bay and was flying to where the victims of the gas shell barrage were sprawled in the long grass. Seeker’s boat transmitted pictures of all that was going on. The small craft from the Buster dropped to a landing among the sleeping bodies and two men, wearing respirators, scrambled out of it. Working fast, they dragged fifteen of the women into the boat, careless of any abrasions or contusions they might inflict. They were equally careless with their two anesthetized mates—but that was no excuse. Kane’s men were clothed and the risk of painful damage to their skins was so much less.

  “Do I have to watch this, Captain?” the first lieutenant was raging.

  “I’m afraid you have to, Mr. Saul,” Grimes told him. “Of course, if you can think of any way of stopping it without hurting any innocent people . . .”

  Saul did not reply.

  The first load was carried to Southerly Buster, the boat landing at the foot of the boarding ramp. Its passengers were dragged out and dumped on the ground, and almost immediately the boat began its return journey. Meanwhile a cargo hatch had been opened high on the side of the ship and the arm of a crane swung out. A net was lowered and the women, together with the two unconscious men, were piled into it, swiftly hoisted up an inboard. It was obvious that Kane was blessed with an efficient second-in-command.

  Seeker’s boat followed the one from Southerly Buster back to her loading site. There was a repetition of the callously efficient handling of the unknowing passengers—and then another, and then another.

  But Grimes’s pinnace had crossed the coastline now, was rushing inland. Grimes hoped to be back aboard Seeker before Southerly Buster’s embarkation was completed, although he could not hope to make it before sunset. Dusk was sweeping over the countryside as the two ships came into view, Kane’s vessel towering brightly in the harsh glare of working lights. Saul had the hatch of the pinnace’s bay open and waiting, and Billard expertly jockeyed the craft into the opening. Grimes was out through the door and running up to the control room before the pinnace had settled to her chocks. He found Saul staring sullenly out of a viewport.

  “That’s the last boatload,” said the first lieutenant morosely. “Recall our boat, sir?”

  “Do just that, Mr. Saul. I want the ship buttoned up for lift-off.”

  “Yes . . . .” Saul gestured toward the Buster. “She’s buttoning up.”

  The boom of the crane was withdrawn, the cargo hatch was shut. Southerly Buster’s boat lifted from the ground where she had discharged her last load, nosed up the mother ship’s side to her bay. The ramp folded up and inward. The airlock door slid shut. Faintly there came the clangor of starting machinery, the unmistakable broken rhythm of the inertial drive.

  Grimes ordered, “Use your sixty millimeters again, Mr. Saul. Tracer, time fused. I want every shell bursting directly over her—not too close, but close enough so they can hear the shrapnel rattling around their control room.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  The automatics rat
tled deafeningly, the tracers streaked out from the muzzles in a flat trajectory, the bursting shells were spectacular orange flowers briefly blossoming against the dark sky.

  Not at all surprisingly Dreebly’s voice came screaming from the transceiver. “Stop firing! Stop firing, you idiots, before you hurt somebody!”

  “Then shut down your engines!” commanded Grimes. “I am grounding you.”

  “By what authority? You have no authority here. This is not a Federated world.”

  “Shut down your engines!”

  “I refuse.”

  Dreebly did more than merely refuse. Winking points of blue flame appeared from a turret on Southerly Buster’s side. The streams of tracer from the two ships intersected, forming a lethal arch. Freakishly there were explosions at its apex as time-and impact-fused projectiles came into violent contact with each other—but the majority of Seeker’s shells still burst over Southerly Buster, and those from the Buster’s guns burst directly over Seeker.

  “The bastard’s hosepiping!” exclaimed Saul.

  Yes, Dreebly was hosepiping, slowly and deliberately lowering the trajectory of his stream of fire. Would he have the nerve to fire at rather than over a Federation ship? Grimes knew that he did not have the nerve to fire directly at Southerly Buster. Should he do so there would inevitably be casualties—and those casualties might well be among the Buster’s innocent passengers.

  He said to Saul, “Cease fire.”

  “But, sir, I could put that turret out of action . . . .”

  “I said, cease fire.”

  Seeker’s hammering guns fell silent. There was a last burst from the Buster’s automatics, a last noisy rattle of shrapnel around Seeker’s control room. From the transceiver came Dreebly’s taunting voice, “Chicken!”

  “She’s lifting,” said Pitcher.

  “She’s lifting,” echoed Saul disgustedly.

  “Secure all,” ordered Grimes, hurrying to the pilot’s chair. “Secure all! There will be no further warning!”

  He heard the coded shrilling of the alarms as he belted himself in. He checked the telltale lights on the control panel before him. By the time that the inertial drive was ready to lift Seeker clear of the ground Southerly Buster would be beyond pursuit range.

  Was everything secure? It would be just too bad if it wasn’t. The trained spacemen he could trust to obey orders promptly, the scientists were a different kettle of fish. But he couldn’t afford to worry about them now, could not afford to indulge in the archaic, time-consuming, regulation ritual of the countdown.

  He pushed the button for full emergency rocket power—and almost immediately tons of reaction mass exploded from the Venturis in incandescent steam. The giant hand of acceleration slammed him deep down into the padding of his seat. Seeker was lifting. Seeker was up and away, shooting skyward like a shell fired from some gigantic cannon. She overtook the slow-climbing Southerly Buster, roared past her as though she were standing still, left her well astern.

  On the console the telltale light of the inertial drive was now glowing green. Grimes cut his rockets and the ship dropped sickening until the I.D. took hold, then brought up with a jar. She shuddered in every member as Grimes applied lateral thrust, as she lurched sideways across the sky. Pitcher, who had realized what the captain was trying to do, was doing, had stationed himself by the radar. “A little more, sir,” he called. “Easy, now, easy . . . .” Then, “hold her at that!”

  “Hold her!” repeated Grimes.

  The ship shuddered and groaned again, but he was holding her in position relative to the ground below, to the still-climbing Southerly Buster. Then—slowly, but not so slowly as to conceal his intentions—he reduced vertical thrust. Dreebly tried, but in vain, to wriggle past Seeker. Grimes anticipated every move. (Later he learned that Hayakawa had been feeding him information, that Myra Bracegirdle, loyal rather to her sex than to her ship, had worked with and not against her fellow telepath.) It seemed that he could not go wrong—and every time that Dreebly attempted a lateral shift Southerly Buster fell victim to the parallelogram of forces, inevitably lost altitude.

  At last it was obvious to Mr. Dreebly that he had only two choices. Either he could return to the surface, or he could commit suicide by crushing his control room and everybody in it against Seeker’s far less vulnerable stern. He was not in a suicidal mood.

  Grimes could not resist the temptation. He called for a microphone and for a hookup to the Buster’s transceiver. He said just one word, and that with insufferable smugness.

  “Chicken!”

  Slowly the two ships dropped through the night—Southerly Buster cowed and inferior. Apart from that one taunt there had been no exchange of signals. Slowly they dropped, the defeated Dreebly and the overconfident Grimes.

  It was this overconfidence that led, at the finish, to disaster. Just before Dreebly’s landing Grimes miscalculated, and his stern made brief contact with the Buster’s stem, doing her no great damage but throwing her off balance. With all his faults, Dreebly was a superb shiphandler. He fought to correct the topple, and had he not been inhibited by the ominous bulk of the other vessel hanging immediately above his control room he might well have done so. Southerly Buster’s fall was not completely catastrophic, but it was a fall, nonetheless. Visibly shuddering, she tilted, further and further, until her long axis was parallel to the ground.

  It was then that Dreebly lost control, and there was a tinny crash as she dropped the last half meter.

  24

  It was, Grimes admitted glumly, quite a mess. Just how big a mess it was depended upon the legality or otherwise of his actions, the illegality or otherwise of Kane’s operations. Legalities and illegalities notwithstanding, he was obliged to give assistance to the damaged—the wrecked—ship.

  She was not a total write-off, although on a world with no repair yards it would be months before she could be made spaceworthy; she would probably have to be towed off-planet to somewhere where there were facilities. (And who would have to pay the bill? Kane would certainly take legal action against the Federation.)

  Fortunately everybody aboard Southerly Buster had escaped serious injury, although the unfortunate women from Oxford, who had just been recovering consciousness at the time of the crash, were badly bruised and shaken. Them Grimes sent back to their town in Seeker’s boats.

  He said to Saul, “I’ve done enough damage for one day. I’m turning in—for what’s left of the night.”

  “The report to Base, sir . . . .”

  Grimes told him coarsely what he could do to the report, then, “It will have to wait, Number One. I don’t want to stick my neck out in writing until I have a few more facts.”

  “But you put down an attempt at slave trading, sir.”

  “Mphm. I hope so. I sincerely hope so. But I’m afraid that the bastard Drongo has some dirty big ace up his sleeve. Oh, well. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I’m getting some shut-eye. Good night, Number One.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  Grimes went up to his quarters. He paused briefly in his day cabin, poured himself a stiff drink, downed it in one swallow. He felt a little better. He went through into his bedroom, and stiffened with astonishment in the doorway. Maya was there, curled up on the bed, her back to him. She was snoring gently—and then immediately was wide awake, rolling over to face him.

  “Maya . . .” he said reprovingly.

  “I had to sleep somewhere, John,” she told him, even more reprovingly. “And you seemed to have quite forgotten all about me.”

  “Of course I hadn’t,” he lied.

  “Of course you had,” she stated, without rancor. “But you had much more important things on your mind.” She was off the bed now and was sagging enticingly against him. She said, in a very small voice, “And I was frightened . . . .”

  The scent of her was disturbing. It was not unpleasant but it was strange—yet somehow familiar. It was most definitely female. He said, “But you can’
t sleep here. . . .”

  “But I have been sleeping here, John. . . .” (So, she had begun to use his first name, too.) She pleaded, “Let me stay. . . .”

  “But . . .”

  Her hands, with their strangely short fingers, were playing with the seal-seam of his shirt, opening the garment. They were soft and caressing on the skin of his back, but her nails were very sharp. The sensation was stimulating rather than painful. He could feel her erect nipples against his chest. She pleaded again, “Let me stay. . . .” Against his conscious will his arms went about her. He lowered his head and his lips down to hers. Oddly, at first she did not seem to understand the significance of this, and then she responded avidly. All of her body was against him, and all of his body was vividly aware of it. He walked her slowly backward toward the bed, her legs moving in time with his. Through the thin material of his shorts he could feel the heat of her thighs. She collapsed slowly, almost bonelessly, onto the nest that she had made for herself with pillows and cushions. He let her pull him down beside her, made no attempt to stop her as she removed the last of his clothing. (For a woman who had never worn a garment in her life she was learning fast.)

  Their mating was short, savage—and to Grimes strangely unsatisfying. What should have been there for him was not there; the tenderness that he had come to expect on such occasions was altogether lacking. There was not even the illusion of love; this had been no more than a brief, animal coupling.

  But she, he thought rather bitterly, is not complaining.

  She was not complaining.

  She, immediately after the orgasmic conclusion of the act, was drifting into sleep, snuggled up against him.

  She was purring.

  25

  Dog tired, his nerves on edge after a sleepless night, Grimes stood in his control room and watched Drongo Kane come roaring in from the northward. He had been expecting Kane; Mr. Timmins had monitored the radio signals exchanged by Mr. Dreebly and his irate captain. He was expecting Maggie, too, but not for at least another hour. She had told him that Captain Danzellan was bringing her back to Seeker. She had refused to tell him what it was that she has discovered in the ancient records kept in Janine’s palace, saying, “It will keep.”