First Command

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Estella di Scorpio? No, Your Excellency. I don’t know the lady, nor do I much want to.”

  “Not her, Captain. The . . . er . . . lady before her. That indubitably mammalian female.”

  “That was Maya,” he told her. “The Queen of Cambridge.”

  “A queen, advertising a holiday camp?”

  “She’s no more than a mayor, really, Your Excellency. Cambridge is—or was when I was there—just a little town.”

  She said, “I think that we shall land at this Cambridge rather than at the Melbourne spaceport. After all, you have landed there before in Seeker.”

  “Things were different then, Your Excellency,” he told her. “There was no Aerospace Control. There were no rules and regulations. We just looked around for a reasonably clear and flat patch of ground, then sat down on it. But now we shall have to use the spaceport to get our Inward Clearance from the authorities.”

  “Shall we?” she asked. “Shall we?

  Chapter 28

  Money talks.

  Money talked over the Carlotti Communications System as The Far Traveler closed Morrowvia at a multiple of the speed of light. The planet was, to all intents and purposes, a Dog Star Line dependency, its officials, Dog Star Line appointees. The Baroness was a major shareholder in that company. Radio Pratique was granted. Customs and Immigration formalities were waived. Permission was accorded to Grimes to bring the ship down in the close vicinity of Cambridge.

  Big Sister let him handle the landing, conceding that in these circumstances his local knowledge would be useful. He brought The Far Traveler down through the clear morning air toward an expanse of level ground, devoid of obstructions, that was almost an island, bounded to north, west and south by a winding river, to the east by a wooded hill. To the north and to the west of this eminence there were large villages, each with a sparse sprinkling of pale lights still visible in the brightening dawn. When he had come here before, Grimes recalled, the settlements had been smaller and the lights had been dim and yellow, from oil lamps. Now, obviously, there was electricity. And those latticework masts were new, too. Radio antennae? Possibly, although at least one of them looked heavy enough to afford mooring facilities to an airship.

  Sunrise came at ground level and the horizontal rays cast long, dark shadows, showing up every slightest irregularity in the terrain, every hump and hollow, every outcropping of rock, every bush. Grimes applied lateral thrust, bringing the yacht directly above a patch of green that, from the air, looked perfectly smooth. It was. When he set The Far Traveler down gently in the middle of it she quivered ever so slightly as the shock absorbers took the strain, then was still.

  “A nice landing, Captain,” remarked Big Sister, not at all condescendingly. Grimes remembered how the electronic entity had messed up his landing on Farhaven. But later, on that world, she had saved him and seemed, as a consequence, somehow to have adopted him.

  But the Baroness had not. She said disparagingly, “But, of course, you have been here before.”

  Grimes was sulkily silent. He rang Finished With Engines. Then he took an all around look through the viewports. He said, “It looks like the reception committee approaching, Your Excellency.”

  “How boring,” commented the Baroness. She stifled a yawn. “They must be indecently early risers here.”

  “The noise of our inertial drive will have awakened them,” said Grimes.

  “Possibly.” She sounded very uninterested. “Go down to the airlock to receive them. You may invite them aboard—to your quarters. No doubt they are old friends of yours and will have much to talk about.”

  Grimes left the control room. He was glad that the Baroness had not ordered him to change from his comfortable shirt and shorts into formal rig; only the purple, gold-braided shoulderboards were badges of his servitude. Both airlock doors were open when he got down to the stern. He stepped out and stood at the head of the ramp, savoring the fresh air with its scent of flowers, of dew on grass, and the warmth of the early sun. He looked to the west, to the direction from which he had seen the party approaching.

  There was a woman in the lead—tall, dark-skinned, white-haired, moving with feline grace. He recognized her at once. She had hardly changed. (Old age when it came to the Morrowvians came suddenly and Maya was far from old.) A man strode beside her. Although he was naked, as were all the others, he was obviously not a native. He was far too heavily built and moved with relative clumsiness. A great mane of yellow hair fell to his broad, deeply tanned shoulders and a bushy yellow beard mingled with the almost as luxuriant growth on his chest. He was carrying a slender, ceremonial spear but looked as though he should have been hefting a heavy club.

  The man, the woman (the queen, Maya) and the six archers, slender Dianas, and the half dozen of spearmen . . . Short-haired, all of them (with the exception of the Terran), with similitudes to fur skullcaps on their heads—black, brindle, tortoiseshell—and sharply defined pubic puffs. Grimes walked slowly down the golden ramp to meet them.

  Maya stared up at him incredulously.

  “John! After all these years! If I had known that you were coming back I would have waited . . .” The blond giant scowled. “But this is . . . fantastic! First Captain Kane, and now you . . .”

  “Drongo Kane?” demanded Grimes. “Here!”

  “Never mind him, John. You are here, captain of a fine, golden ship . . .”

  “Owned,” said Maya’s male companion drily, “by her self-styled Excellency, the Baroness Michelle d’Estang. And you are the John Grimes that my wife’s always talking about? I thought that you were in the Survey Service, not a yacht skipper.”

  “I was in the Survey Service,” admitted Grimes. “But . . . I don’t think that I have the pleasure . . .”

  The man laughed. “You can call me Your Highness if you feel like it; I’m Maya’s Prince Consort and Manager of Simple Life Holidays. I’m Bill to my friends, Bill Smith, just another Dog Star Line boy who’s found a fine kennel for himself. Mind you, I haven’t done as well as Swanky Frankie in Melbourne—but I’m not complaining.”

  He extended a meaty hand. Grimes shook it.

  “John . . .” mewed Maya plaintively.

  He shook her hand. She conveyed the strong impression that she would have preferred him to have kissed her—but Bill Smith was watching and so would be, he knew, Big Sister and the Baroness.

  He said, “Will you come aboard for some refreshment? I’m afraid I can’t ask all of you; my accommodation’s not all that commodious . . .”

  “Have one of your hunks bring some dishes of ice cream out for the boys and girls,” Bill Smith told him. “Maya an’ I’ll inflict ourselves on you.” He looked down at himself. “I hope you an’ the Baroness don’t mind the way I’m dressed— but it’s the rig of the day for my job. Both my jobs.”

  Grimes led the way up the gangway, then to his day cabin. He was glad that The Far Traveler did not have a human crew. From his past experience he had learned that some spacemen and women took naturist planets such as Arcadia—and now Morrowvia—in their stride, happily doing in Rome as the Romans did, while others were openly condemnatory or tried to hide their embarrassment by crudely obscene jokes. His robot stewardess, of course, was not at all perturbed by the nudity of his guests—although she, to them, was a source of wonderment. She brought coffee and pastries for the two men, a golden dish of ice cream for Maya. (It had been the first off-planet delicacy that she had enjoyed and she still loved it.) Grimes sent a general purpose robot to take care of Maya’s entourage, then settled down to talk.

  “Drongo Kane?” he asked without preamble. “What’s he doing back here?”

  Before either Maya or her husband could answer, the voice of Big Sister came from the playmaster. “I have been in communication with Melbourne Port Control. Captain Kane’s ship, Southerly Buster, has been berthed there for five weeks, local time. Captain Kane left Melbourne thirty days ago in one of his ship’s boats, taking with him ten of his pas
sengers, seven men and three women. The ostensible purpose of the trip was a tour of England. No doubt your friends in Cambridge, whom you are now entertaining, will be able to give you further information.”

  “Was that your boss?” asked Bill Smith interestedly.

  “No,” replied Grimes, rather wondering with what degree of truth. “That was not Her Excellency. That was the ship’s pilot-computer. We call her Big Sister.”

  “Haw! Big Sister is watching, eh? You’d better keep your paws off Maya!”

  “I don’t think,” said Grimes stiffly, “that Big Sister is concerned about my morals. But what do you know about Drongo Kane?”

  “You tangled with him when you were here last, didn’t you? Maya’s told me all about it. But he’s a reformed character now. He’s muscled in on the tourist racket—but one ship, and that not a very big one, won’t worry the Dog Star Line. As long as he pays his port charges and as long as his passengers blow their money in the tourist traps he’s as welcome as the day is long. He was here . . .”

  “Only three days,” supplied Maya. “Then he flew off, up river, to Stratford.” She pouted. “I don’t know what he will find there to interest him. Anne—the Queen of Stratford is always called Anne; I wonder why—is more determined to keep to the old ways than any of the rest of us. She will not allow electricity or radio or anything in her city.” She smiled smugly. “We, of course, realize that tourists, even when enjoying a Simple Life Holiday, appreciate the little comforts, such as refrigeration and television, to which they are used.”

  “You appreciate them yourself,” said Bill Smith.

  “I do,” she admitted. “But never mind Captain Kane, John. Tell us about you.” she smiled appealingly. “And while we are talking I will have some more of your delicious ice cream.”

  “And would there be any gin?” asked the Prince Consort hopefully.

  There was.

  Chapter 29

  “This Stratford,” said the Baroness, “sounds as though it might be interesting.”

  “In what way, Your Excellency?” asked Grimes.

  “Unspoiled . . .”

  “It won’t stay that way long if Drongo Kane is there,” Grimes said.

  “You are prejudiced, Captain.”

  She took a dainty sip from her teacup. Grimes took a gulp from his. He badly needed something refreshing but nonalcoholic. It would have been bad manners to let his guests drink alone and he had taken too much for the neutralizer capsules to have their usual immediate effect.

  “Unspoiled,” she said again. “This world the way it was before you and those others blundered in. The Social Evolution of a Lost Colony taking its natural course. If we leave now we shall arrive at Stratford before dark.”

  “There is the party tonight, Your Excellency,” Grimes reminded her. “After all, Maya is a reigning monarch.”

  “The petty mayor of a petty city-state,” she sneered. “But do not worry. I have already sent my sincere apologies for not being able to attend. But I can just imagine what that party will be like! Drunken tourists going native and lolloping around in disgusting, self-conscious nudity. Imitation Hawaiian music played on ‘native’ guitars imported from Llirith. Imitation Israeli horas. Meat charred to ruination over open fires. Cheap gin tarted up with fruit juices—probably synthetic—and served as genuine Morrowvian toddy . . .” She smiled nastily. “Come to that—you have already had too much to drink. Big Sister will be able to handle the pinnace by remote control while you sleep it off in the cabin.”

  “The pinnace?” asked Grimes stupidly.

  “You, Captain, made a survey of this planet shortly after the first landings here. Surely you must remember that there is no site near to Stratford suitable for the landing of a ship, even one so relatively small as The Far Traveler.”

  Grimes did remember then and admitted as much. He said, too, that his local knowledge would be required to pilot the pinnace to Stratford. The Baroness said, grudgingly, that he might as well make some attempt to earn his salary.

  Big Sister said nothing.

  Grimes flew steadily south, maintaining a compass course and not following the meanderings of the river. Ahead the blue peaks of the Pennine Range lifted into an almost cloudless sky. An hour before sunset he knew that he could not be far from Stratford although, as he recalled, the little town was very hard to spot from the air. It was nestled in the river valley and the thatched roofs of its houses were overgrown with weeds. But there had been some quite remarkable rock formations that he had never gotten around to examining closely, rectangular slabs of dark gray but somehow scintillant stone, not far from the settlement.

  Those slabs were still there.

  So was a torpedo shape of silvery metal—the pinnace from Southerly Buster.

  He said, pointing, “Kane’s still here, Your Excellency.”

  “Are you afraid to meet him again?” she asked.

  Grimes flushed angrily. “No,” he said, “Your Excellency.”

  He was not frightened of Kane but he would have been willing to admit that he was worried. Kane was up to no good. Kane was always up to no good. He was a leopard with indelible spots.

  People emerged from the little houses, from the pinnace, alerted by the racket of the boat’s inertial drive. How many Terrans should there have been? Kane and ten of his passengers, seven men and three women . . . But standing there and looking up were thirty people. All of them were clothed, which seemed to indicate that there were no natives among them. Grimes studied the upturned faces through binoculars. Kane was not there—but suddenly that well remembered voice blasted from the transceiver.

  “Ahoy, the pinnace! Who the hell are yer an’ wot yer doin’ here?”

  Kane must be speaking from inside his own boat.

  “The Far Traveler,” replied Grimes stiffly into his microphone. “Her Owner, the Baroness d’Estang of El Dorado. And her Master.”

  “An’ I’m Southerly Buster, Owner and Master, Welcome to Stratford. Come on down. This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat an’ call the cat a bastard!”

  “It should be the local mayor—Queen Anne, isn’t it?—to issue the invitation,” said the Baroness to Grimes.

  “Perhaps Queen Anne is dead,” said Grimes. With sudden foreboding he remembered the old saying; Many a true word is spoken in jest.

  “Take us down, Captain,” ordered the Baroness.

  Grimes reduced vertical thrust and the pinnace settled slowly toward the ground, to the white sheet that somebody had spread to serve as a landing mark. She landed gently. Grimes cut the drive, actuated the controls of the airlock doors. He realized, too late, that he should have brought arms—but the six general purpose robots which had accompanied the humans from The Far Traveler would be capable of doing considerable damage to any enemy using nothing more than their own, enormously strong metal bodies.

  He had landed about five meters from Southerly Buster’s pinnace. A man came out through the airlock door of this craft—tall, gangling, clad in slate-gray shirt-and-shorts uniform with black, gold-braided shoulderboards. His straw-colored hair was untidy, even though short, and his face looked as though at some time in the past it had been shattered and then reassembled by a barely competent, unaesthetic plastic surgeon.

  “Captain Kane?” the Baroness asked Grimes.

  “Drongo Kane,” he said.

  She rose from her seat, was first out of the boat. Grimes followed her, then the robots. Kane advanced to stand in the forefront of his own people. He looked the Baroness up and down like a slave dealer assessing the points of a possible purchase. He bowed then—a surprisingly courtly gesture. He raised the Baroness’s outstretched hand to his lips, surrendered it reluctantly as he came erect. Grimes could not see his employer’s face but sensed that she was favorably impressed by her reception.

  She said, “And now, Captain Kane, may I present my yachtmaster, Captain . . .”

  “Grimes, Madam,” supplied Kane with a grin. “I thought t
hat I recognized his voice but didn’t see how it could be him. But it is. Live on stage, in person. Singing and dancing.”

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes.

  “No hard feelin’s,” said Kane, extending his right hand. “You’ve come down in the universe, I see—but I don’t believe in kickin’ a man when he’s down.”

  Not unless there’s some profit in it, thought. Grimes, taking the proffered paw and getting the handshake over as quickly as possible.

  “You know, ma’am, I’m pleased that you an’ me old cobber Grimes dropped in,” Kane went on. “A couple of independent witnesses is just what I’m needin’ right now. It’d be better if Grimes was still in the Survey Service—but at least he’s not a Dog Star Line puppy.”

  “What are you talking about, Kane?” demanded Grimes.

  “Just this. I —an’ my legal eagle, Dr. Kershaw . . .” A tall, gray-haired, gray-clad man among the small crowd inclined his head toward the newcomers . . . “have the honor of representin’ the rightful owners of this planet.”

  “The rightful owners?” asked Grimes. “Too right.” Kane waved his right hand in a wide arc, indicating the twenty men and women who were standing a little apart from his own people. “The Little, Grant, James and Pettifer families!”

  The names rang a faint bell in the recesses of Grimes’ memory.

  “Descendants,” stated Kane, “of four of the human women who were among the Lode Cougar survivors!”

  Chapter 30

  Kane made no further introductions until he had conducted the Baroness and Grimes into one of the houses. The room that they entered had small windows, unglazed, set into two of the walls, screened with matting against the westering sun. There was a huge, solid, wooden table, a half dozen sturdy chairs. On one of the walls a big map of the planet, drawn to Mercatorial projection, was hanging. It was all very like, thought Grimes, Maya’s council room in her “palace” had been on the occasion of his first landing on Morrowvia. So this was the palace, he thought.