First Command

by A Bertram Chandler

  “And, talking of orders—” The admiral pushed a fat, heavily sealed envelope across his highly polished desk. “Nothing very secret. No need to destroy by fire before reading. I can tell you now. As soon as you are ready for Deep Space in all respects you are to lift ship and proceed to New Maine. We have a sub-Base there, as you know. That sub-Base will be your Base. From New Maine you will make a series of exploratory sweeps out toward the Rim. A Lost Colony Hunt, as you junior officers romantically put it. Your own two recent discoveries have stimulated interest, back on Earth, in that sort of pointless exercise. Hrrmph.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Grimes gathered up his papers and rose to leave.

  “Not so fast, Commander. I haven’t finished yet. Discovery, as I can see that you suspect, is not a happy ship. Your predecessor, Commander Tallis, contrived to leave her on medical grounds. The uniformly bad reports that he put in regarding Discovery’s personnel were partly discounted in view of his nervous—or mental—condition. Hrrmph.

  “Now, Grimes, I’m going to be frank. There are many people in the Service who don’t like you, and who did not at all approve of your last two promotions. I didn’t altogether approve of them myself, come to that, although I do admit that you possess one attribute that just might, in the fullness of time, carry you to flag rank. You’re lucky, Grimes. You could fall into a cesspit and come up not only smelling of roses but with the Shaara Crown Jewels clutched in your hot little hands. You’ve done it, figuratively, more than once.

  “But I only hope that I’m not around when your luck runs out!”

  Grimes started to get to his feet again.

  “Hold it, Commander! I’ve some advice for you. Don’t put a foot wrong. And try to lick that blasted Discovery into some sort of shape. If you do find any Lost Colonies play it according to the book. Let’s have no more quixotry, none of this deciding, all by your little self, who are the goodies and who are the baddies. Don’t take sides.

  “That’s all.”

  “You mean, sir,” asked Grimes, “that this is some sort of last chance?”

  “You said it, Commander. You said it. But just don’t forget that the step from commander to captain is a very big one.” The admiral shot out a big hand. Grimes took it, and was surprised and gratified by the warmth and firmness of the old man’s grip. “Good hunting, Grimes. And good luck!”

  Chapter 2

  Grimes dismounted from the ground car at the foot of Discovery’s ramp. The driver, an attractive blonde space-woman, asked, “Shall I wait for you, Commander?”

  Grimes, looking up at the towering, shabby bulk of his new command, replied, “No, unfortunately.”

  The girl laughed sympathetically. “Good luck, sir.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He tucked his briefcase firmly under his arm, strode toward the foot of the ramp. He noted that the handrails were long unpolished, that a couple of stanchions were missing and that several treads were broken. There was a Marine sentry at the head of the ramp in a khaki uniform that looked as though it had been slept in. The man came to a rough approximation to attention as Grimes approached, saluted him as though he were doing him a personal favor. Grimes returned the salute with unwonted smartness.

  “Your business, Commander?” asked the sentry.

  “My name is Grimes. I’m the new captain.”

  The man seemed to be making some slight effort to smarten himself up. “I’ll call Commander Brabham on the PA, sir.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Grimes. “I’ll find my own way up to my quarters.” He added, rather nastily, “I suppose the elevator is working?”

  “Of course, sir. This way, sir.”

  Grimes let the Marine lead him out of the airlock chamber, along a short alleyway, to the axial shaft. The man pressed a button, and after a short interval, the door slid open to reveal the cage.

  “You’ll find all the officers in the wardroom, sir, at this time of the morning,” volunteered his guide.

  “Thank you.” Then, “Hadn’t you better be getting back to your post?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

  Grimes pushed the button for CAPTAIN’S FLAT.

  During the journey up he was able to come to further conclusions—none of them good—about the way in which the ship had been run. The cage was not quite filthy, but it was far from clean. The gloss of the panel in which the buttons were set was dulled by greasy fingerprints. On the deck Grimes counted three cigarette butts and one cigarillo stub. Two of the indicator lights for the various levels were not working.

  He got out at the Captain’s Flat, the doughnut of accommodation that surrounded the axial shaft, separated from it by a circular alleyway. He had a set of keys with him, obtained from the admiral’s office. The sliding door to the day room opened as soon as he applied the appropriate strip of magnetized metal. He went in.

  An attempt, not very enthusiastic, had been made to clean up after Commander Tallis’ packing. But Tallis had not packed his art gallery. This consisted of a score of calendars, of the type given away by ship chandlers and ship-repair firms, from as many worlds, utterly useless as a means of checking day and date except on their planets of origin. Evidently Discovery’s last census run had consisted of making the rounds of well-established colonies. Grimes stared at the three-dimensional depiction of a young lady with two pairs of overdeveloped breasts, indubitably mammalian and probably from mutated human stock, turned from it to the picture of a girl with less spectacular upperworks but with brightly gleaming jewelry entwined in her luxuriant pubic hair. The next one to catch his attention showed three people in one pose.

  He grunted—not altogether in disapproval—then found the bell push labeled PANTRY over his desk. He used it. He filled and lit his pipe. When he had almost finished it he pushed the button again.

  At last a spacewoman, in slovenly uniform, came in. She demanded surlily, “Did you ring? Sir.”

  “Yes,” answered Grimes, trying to infuse a harsh note into his voice. “I’m the new captain. My gear will be coming aboard this afternoon some time. Meanwhile, would you mind getting this . . . junk disposed of?” He waved a hand to indicate the calendars.

  “But if Commander Tallis comes back—”

  “If Commander Tallis comes back, you can stick it all back up again. Oh, and you might give Lieutenant Commander Brabham my compliments and ask him to come to see me.”

  “The first lieutenant’s in the wardroom. Sir. The PA system is working.”

  Grimes refrained from telling her what to do with the public-address system. He merely repeated his order, adding, “And I mean now.”

  “Aye, aye, sir, Captain, sir.”

  Insolent little bitch, thought Grimes, watching the twitching rump in the tight shorts vanishing through the doorway.

  He settled down to wait again. Nobody in this ship seemed to be in any hurry about anything. Eventually Brabham condescended to appear. The first lieutenant was a short, chunky man, gray-haired, very thin on top. His broad, heavily lined face wore what looked like a perpetual scowl. His faded gray eyes glowered at the captain. The colors of the few ribbons on the left breast of his shirt had long since lost their brilliance and were badly frayed. Grimes could not tell what decorations—probably good attendance medals—they represented. But there were plenty of canteen medals which were obvious enough—smudges of cigarette ash, dried splashes of drinks and gravies—to keep them company. The gold braid on Brabham’s shoulder boards had tarnished to a grayish green.

  A gray man, thought Grimes. A gray, bitter man. He said, extending his hand, “Good morning, Number One.”

  “Good morning. Sir.”

  “Sit down, Number One.” Grimes made a major operation out of refilling and lighting his pipe. “Smoke, if you wish.” Brabham produced and ignited an acrid cigarette. “Mphm. Now, what’s our condition of readiness?”

  “Well, sir, a week at the earliest.”

  “A week?”

  “This is
n’t an Insect Class Courier, sir. This is a big ship.”

  Grimes flushed, but held his temper in check. He said, “Any Survey Service vessel, regardless of size, should be ready, at all times, for almost instant liftoff.”

  “But, to begin with, there’s been the change of captains. Sir.”

  “Go on.”

  “And Vinegar Nell—Miss Russell, I mean—isn’t very cooperative.”

  “Mphm. Between ourselves, Number One, I haven’t been impressed by the standard of efficiency of her staff.” Or, he thought, with the standard of efficiency of this ship in general. But I shall have to handle people with kid gloves until I get the feel of things.

  Brabham actually grinned. “I don’t think that Sally was overly impressed by you, sir.”

  “Sally?”

  “The captain’s tigress. She used to be Commander Tallis’ personal servant.” Brabham grinned again, not very pleasantly. “Extremely personal, if you get what I mean, sir.”

  “Oh. Go on.”

  “And we’re still trying to get a replacement for Mr. Flannery’s psionic amplifier. He insists that only the brain of an Irish setter will do.”

  “And what happened to the old one?”

  Brabham permitted himself a small chuckle. “He thought that it should share a binge. He poured a slug of Irish whiskey into its life-support tank. And then he tried to bring it around with black coffee.”

  “Gah!” exclaimed Grimes.

  “Then he blamed the whiskey for the demise of the thing. It wasn’t real Irish whiskey, apparently. It was some ersatz muck from New Shannon.”

  Grimes succeeded in dispelling the vision of the sordidly messy death of the psionic amplifier from his mind. He said firmly, “To begin with, Miss Russell will just have to pull her finger out. You’re the first lieutenant. Get on to her.”

  “I’d rather not, sir.”

  Grimes glared at the man. “I’m not being funny, Mr. Brabham. Shake her up. Light a fire under her tail. And as for Mr. Flannery, he’ll just have to be content with whatever hapless hound’s brain the Stores Department can dig up—even if it comes from an English bulldog!”

  “Then there are the engines, sir.”

  “The engines? What about them?”

  “The chief has taken down both inertial drive-units. There’re bits and pieces strewn all over the engine room deck.”

  “Was the port captain informed of this immobilization?”

  “Er, no, sir.”

  “And why not?”

  “I didn’t know what the chief had done until he’d already done it.”

  “In the captain’s absence you were the officer in charge. You should have known. All right, all right, the chief should have come to you first. Apparently he didn’t. But as soon as you knew that this rustbucket was immobile you should have reported it.”

  “I—I suppose I should, sir.”

  “You suppose! Why didn’t you?”

  A sullen flush spread over the grayish pallor of Brabham’s face. He blurted, “Like the rest of us in this ship, MacMorris has been in quite enough trouble of various kinds. I didn’t want to get him into any more. Sir.”

  Grimes repressed a sigh. It was obvious that this ship was a closed shop, manned by the No Hopers’ Union, whose members would close ranks against any threatened action by higher authority, no matter how much they bickered among themselves. And what was he, Grimes? A No Hoper or a pillar of the Establishment? In his heart of hearts, which side was he on? While he was sorting out a reply to make to Brabham a familiar bugle call, amplified, drifted through and over the ship’s PA system.

  Brabham shifted uneasily in his chair.

  “Are you coming down to lunch, sir?” he asked.

  “No,” decided Grimes. “You carry on down, and you can ask—no, tell—Miss Russell to send me some sandwiches and a pot of coffee up here. After lunch I shall see Lieutenant Commander MacMorris, Miss Russell, and Mr. Flannery, in that order. Then I shall see you again.

  “That is all.”

  Chapter 3

  It was the little blonde stewardess, Sally, who brought up Grimes’s lunch. While he was eating it she set about stripping Tallis’ calendars from the bulkheads, performing this task with a put-upon air and a great deal of waste motion. Grimes wondered if she had made the sandwiches and the coffee in the same sullenly slapdash way. No, he decided after the first nibble, the first sip. She must have gone to considerable trouble with the simple meal. Surely all the available bread could not have been as stale as the loaf that had been used. Surely it must have been much harder to spread butter so extremely thinly than in the normal manner. And where had she found that stringy, flavorless cold mutton? The coffeepot must have been stood in cold water to bring its weak contents to the correctly tepid stage.

  “Will that be all? Sir?” she asked, her arms full of calendars.

  “Yes,” Grimes told her, adding, “Thank you,” not that she deserved it. He decided that he would tell Miss Russell to let him have a male steward to look after him. Obviously this girl would give proper service only to those who serviced her, and she was too coarse, too shop-soiled for his taste, apart from the obvious disciplinary considerations.

  Almost immediately after she was gone there was a knock at the door. A big man entered. He was clad in filthy, oil-soaked overalls. A smear of black grease ran diagonally across his hard, sullen face. More grease was mixed with his long, unruly yellow hair. His hot blue eyes glared down at Grimes.

  “Ye wanted to see me, Captain? I’m a busy man, not like some I could mention.”

  “Lieutenant Commander MacMorris?”

  “Who else?”

  “Commander MacMorris, I understand that this ship is immobilized.”

  “Unless ye intend to take her up on reaction drive, she is that.”

  “By whose authority?” demanded Grimes coldly.

  “Mine, o’ course. Both the innies was playin’ up on the homeward passage. So I’m fixin’ ‘em.”

  “Didn’t you inform the first lieutenant before you started taking them down? He was in charge, in the absence of a captain.”

  “Inform him? He looks after whatever control room ornaments look after. I look after my engine room.”

  “As long as I’m captain of this ship,” snapped Grimes, “it’s my engine room. How long will it take you to reassemble the inertial drive-units?”

  Grimes could almost read MacMorris’ thoughts as the engineer stood there. Should he or should he not angrily protest the captain’s assumption of proprietorial rights? He muttered at last, “If I do all that has to be done, a week.”

  “A week? Just to put things together again?”

  “A week it will be.”

  “Normal in-port routine, I suppose, Commander MacMorris . . . 0800 to 1700, with the usual breaks . . . I see. But if you work double shifts . . . ?”

  “Look, Captain, you’re not suggesting—”

  “No, Commander MacMorris. I’m not suggesting. I’m ordering.”

  “But we all have friends on the Base, and the last cruise was a long one.”

  “You will work double shifts, Chief, longer if necessary. I’ll want this vessel ready for Space no more than three days from now.”

  MacMorris grunted wordlessly, turned to go.

  “Oh, one more thing,” said Grimes.

  “Yes? Sir.”

  “In the future you are to ask me for permission before you immobilize the engines. That is all.”

  The engineer left sullenly. Grimes carefully filled and lit his battered pipe. What was it that somebody, some girl, had called it, some time ago? The male pacifier. Well, he needed pacifying. He disliked having to crack the whip, but there were occasions when it was unavoidable. MacMorris was known to be a good engineer—but he was one of those engineers to whom a ship is no more than a platform existing for the sole purpose of supporting machinery. Grimes thought, not for the first time, that captains had it much better in the days of sail. Even th
en there were technicians—such as the sailmaker—but a competent wind ship master would be able to repair or even to make a sail himself if he absolutely had to.

  There was another knock at the door.

  “Come in!” he called.

  “I see you’re still smoking that filthy thing!” sniffed Vinegar Nell

  She had hardly changed at all, thought Grimes, since when they had last been shipmates—and how many years ago was that? She was slim, still, almost to the point of thinness. Her coppery hair was scraped back severely from her broad brow. Green eyes still glinted in the sharp, narrow face. Her mouth was surprisingly wide and full. She could have been very attractive were it not for her perpetually sour expression.

  Grimes said stiffly, “Must I remind you, Miss Russell, that I am the captain of this ship?”

  “And so you are, sir. And a full commander. I never thought you’d make it.”

  “That will do, Miss Russell.” Belatedly he remembered his manners. “Sit down, will you?” The legs displayed when her short uniform skirt rode up were excellent. “Now, Miss Russell, I want Discovery ready for Space in three days.”

  “You’re asking a lot, Captain.”

  “I’m not, Paymaster. You know the regulations as well as I do. At least as well.” He quoted, “All fleet units shall be maintained in a state of instant readiness.”

  “But there are provedore stores to be loaded. The farm needs a thorough overhaul; the yeasts in numbers two and three vats went bad on me last trip, and I’m not at all happy about the beef tissue culture. The pumping and filtration systems for the hydroponic tanks need a thorough clean out.”

  “You can write, can’t you?”

  “Write?” The fine eyebrows arched in puzzlement.

  “Yes. Write. It’s something you do on a piece of paper, such as an official form, with a stylus. Make out the necessary requisitions. Mark them urgent. I’ll countersign them.”

  “Commander Tallis,” she told him, “always wanted all re pairs and maintenance carried out by the ship’s personnel.”