To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga

by A Bertram Chandler

  Grimes replied slowly and carefully. “Legally speaking, what we’re involved in isn’t a war. But it is a war, of sorts. And a just war. And, in any case, the Master of a merchant vessel has the legal right to resist illegal seizure or destruction by force of arms. Of course, we have to consider the illegal circumstances attending the arming of this ship . . . .”

  “Let’s not get bogged down in legalities and illegalities,” said Craven, with a touch of impatience. “The lawyers can sort it all out eventually. Do we reactivate?”

  “Yes,” said Grimes.

  “And you, Mr. Baxter. What do you say?”

  “We Rim Worlders just don’t like Waldegren. I’ll not pass up a chance ter kick the bastards in the teeth. Reactivate, Skipper.”

  “Good. And how long will it take you to make good the circuit the beacon’s spliced in to?”

  “Twenty minutes. No more. But d’yer think we oughter put the whole thing to the vote first?”

  “No. Everybody here was under the impression that we should be fighting. With one possible exception, they’re all volunteers.”

  “But I did volunteer, sir,” objected Grimes.

  “Make your mind up, Ensign. You were telling me just now that you’d been shanghaied. All right. Everybody is a volunteer. So we just rebait the trap without any more yapping about it. Let me know as soon as you’re ready, Mr. Baxter. Will you require assistance?”

  “I’ll manage, Skipper.”

  When he was gone Craven turned to Grimes. “You realize, Ensign, that this puts me in rather a jam. Let me put it this way. Am I justified in risking the lives of all my officers to carry out a private act of vengeance?”

  “I think that you can take Mr. Baxter and myself as being representative, sir. As for the others—Miss Pentecost’s a Rim Worlder, and her views will coincide with Baxter’s. And the original crew members—they’re just as entitled to vengeance as you are. I know that if I’d been an officer of this ship at the time of the original piracy I’d welcome the chance of hitting back.”

  “You would. Yes. Even if, as now, an alternative suddenly presented itself. But . . .”

  “I honestly don’t see what you’re worrying about, sir.”

  “You wouldn’t. It’s a matter of training. But, for all my Reserve commission, I’m a merchant officer. Oh, I know that any military commander is as responsible for the lives of his men as I am—but he also knows that those lives, like his own, are expendable.”

  “It’s a pity that Baxter found the beacon,” said Grimes.

  “It is—and it isn’t. If he hadn’t found it, I shouldn’t be soliloquizing like a spacefaring Hamlet. And we should have brought the ship in intact and, like as not, all been awarded Lloyd’s Medals. On the other hand—if he hadn’t found it we—or I?—should have lost our chance of getting back at the pirates.”

  “You aren’t Hamlet, sir.” Grimes spoke with the assurance of the very young, but in later years he was to remember his words, and to feel neither shame nor embarrassment, but only a twinge of envy and regret. “You aren’t Hamlet. You’re Captain Craven, Master under God. Please, sir, for once in your life do something you want to do, and argue it out later with the Almightly if you must.”

  “And with my owners?” Grimes couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw something like a smile beneath Craven’s full beard. “And with my owners?”

  “Master Astronauts’ certificates aren’t all that common, sir. If worst comes to worst, there’s always the Rim Worlds. The Sundowner Line, isn’t it?”

  “I’d already thought of that.” There was no doubt about it. Craven was smiling. “After all that you’ve been saying to me, I’m surprised that you don’t join forces with our Miss Pentecost.”

  “Go out to the Rim, sir? Hardly.”

  “Don’t be so sure, young Grimes. Anyhow, you’d better get Miss Pentecost up here now so that we can see how friend Baxter is getting on. There’s always the risk that he’ll find a few more things among the cargo that aren’t nailed down.”

  15

  GRIMES CALLED Jane Pentecost on the intercom; after a minute or so she made her appearance in Control. Craven told her what Baxter had discovered and what he, Craven, intended doing about it. She nodded in emphatic agreement. “Yes,” she said. “The thing’s here to be used—and to be used the way that we want to use it. But I don’t think that we should make it public.”

  “Why not, Miss Pentecost?”

  “I could be wrong, Captain, but in my opinion there are quite a few people in this ship who’d welcome the chance of wriggling out of being the cheese in the mousetrap. When there’s no alternative they’re brave enough. When there’s a face-saving alternative . . .”

  Baxter’s voice came from the intercom speaker. “Chief Reaction Drive Engineer to Control. Repairs completed. Please check your panel.”

  Yes, the circuit had been restored. The buzzer sounded, and on the board a glowing red light showed that the outer door to the cargo hold airlock was open. How much of the failure of the indicators was due to battle damage and how much to Baxter’s sabotage would never be known. Craven’s heavy eyebrows lifted ironically as he looked at Grimes, and Grimes shrugged in reply.

  Then, the watch handed over to the girl, the two men made their way aft from the Control Room. Outside the airlock they found Baxter, already suited up save for his helmet. There had been only two suits in the locker, and the engineer had brought another one along for the Captain from somewhere.

  The little compartment would take only two men at a time. Craven and Grimes went through first, then were joined by Baxter. There was no longer any need for secrecy, so the suit radios were switched on. The only person likely to be listening in was Jane Pentecost in Control.

  Grimes heard Craven muttering angrily as they passed packages that obviously had been opened and pillaged, but the Captain did no more than mutter. He possessed the sense of proportion so essential to his rank—and a few bulbs of looted liquor were, after all, relatively unimportant.

  They came to the bin in which the case allegedly containing caviar had been stowed, in which some secret agent of Waldegren had tapped the circuit supplying power to the beacon. Inside the box the gleaming machine was still motionless. Craven said, “I thought you told me the current was on.”

  “It is, Skipper.” Baxter’s voice was pained. “But I switched it off before I fixed the wiring.” He extended a gloved finger, pressed a little toggle switch.

  And nothing happened.

  “Just a nudge.” whispered the engineer.

  The oddly convoluted rotor turned easily enough, and as it rotated it seemed almost to vanish in a mist of its own generating—a mist that was no more than an optical illusion.

  It rotated, slowed—and stopped.

  Baxter cast aspersions upon the legitimacy of its parenthood. Then, still grumbling, he produced a volt-meter. Any doubt that power was being delivered to the machine was soon dispelled. Power was being delivered—but it was not being used.

  “Well, Mr. Baxter?” demanded Craven.

  “I’m a fair mechanic, Skipper—but I’m no physicist.”

  “Mr. Grimes?”

  “I specialized in gunnery, sir.”

  Craven snorted, the sound unpleasantly loud in the helmet phones. He said sarcastically, “I’m only the Captain, but I have some smatterings of Mannschenn Drive maintenance and operation. This thing isn’t a Mannschenn Drive unit—but it’s first cousin to one. As I recall it, some of the earlier models couldn’t be started without the employment of a small, temporal precession field initiator. Furthermore, these initiators, although there is no longer any need for them, are still carried as engine room spares in the Commission’s ships.”

  “And that gadget’ll start this little time-twister, Skipper?” asked the engineer.

  “It might, Mr. Baxter. It might. So, Mr. Grimes, will you go along to the Mannschenn Drive room and ask Mr. Wolverton for his initiator? No need to tell him what it�
�s for.”

  WOLVERTON was in the Mannschenn Drive room, staring moodily at the gleaming complexity of precessing rotors. Grimes hastily averted his eyes from the machine. It frightened him, and he didn’t mind admitting it. And there was something about the engineer that frightened him, too. The tall, cadaverous man, with the thin strands of black hair drawn over his gleaming skull, looked more like a seer than a ship’s officer, looked like a fortune-teller peering into the depths of an uncannily mobile crystal ball. He was mumbling, his voice a low, guttural muttering against the thin, high keening of his tumbling gyroscopes. The Ensign at last was able to make out the words.

  “Divergent tracks. . . . To be, or not to be, that is the question—”

  Grimes thought, This ship should be renamed the State of Denmark. There’s something rotten here . . . . He said sharply, “Mr. Wolverton!”

  Slowly the Chief Interstellar Drive Engineer turned his head, stared at Grimes unseeingly at first. His eyes came into focus. He whispered, “It’s you.”

  “Who else, Chief? Captain’s compliments, and he’d like to borrow your temporal precession field initiator.”

  “He would, would he? And why?”

  “An—an experiment.” said Grimes, with partial truth. The fewer people who knew the whole truth the better.

  “An experiment?”

  “Yes. If you wouldn’t mind letting me have it now, Chief. . . .”

  “But it’s engine room stores. It’s the Commission’s stores. It’s a very delicate instrument. It is against the Commission’s regulations to issue it to unqualified personnel.”

  “But Mr. Baxter is helping with the . . . experiment.”

  “Mr. Baxter! That letter-off of cheap fireworks. That . . . Rim Runner! No. No. Mr. Baxter is not qualified personnel.”

  “Then perhaps you could lend us one of your juniors.”

  “No. No, I would not trust them. Why do you think that I am here, Mr. Grimes? Why do you think that I have been tied to my gyroscopes? Literally tied, almost. If I had not been here, keeping my own watch, when the pirates struck, this ship would have been utterly destroyed. I know the Drive, Mr. Grimes.” He seized the Ensign’s arm, turned him so that he was facing the gleaming, spinning rotors, endlessly precessing, endlessly tumbling down the dark dimensions, shimmering on the very verge of invisibility. Grimes wanted to close his eyes, but could not. “I know the Drive, Mr. Grimes. It talks to me. It shows me things. It warned me, that time, that Death was waiting for this ship and all in her. And now it warns me again. But there is a . . . a divergence. . . .”

  “Mr. Wolverton, please! There is not much time.”

  “But what is Time, Mr. Grimes? What is Time? What do you know of the forking World Lines, the Worlds of If? I’ve lived with this machine, Mr. Grimes. It’s part of me—or am I part of it? Let me show you . . . .” His grip on the Ensign’s arm was painful. “Let me show you. Look. Look into the machine. What do you see?”

  Grimes saw only shadowy, shimmering wheels and a formless darkness.

  “I see you, Mr. Grimes,” almost sang the engineer. “I see you—but not as you will be. But as you might be. I see you on the bridge of your flagship, your uniform gold-encrusted and medal-bedecked, with commodores and captains saluting you and calling you ‘sir’ . . . but I see you, too, in the control room of a shabby little ship, a single ship, in shabby clothes, and the badge on your cap is one that I have never seen, is one that does not yet exist. . . .”

  “Mr. Wolverton! That initiator. Please!”

  “But there is no hurry, Mr. Grimes. There is no hurry. There is time enough for everything—for everything that is, that has been, that will be and that might be. There is time to decide, Mr. Grimes. There is time to decide whether or not we make our second rendezvous with Death. The initiator is part of it all, Mr. Grimes, is it not? The initiator is the signpost that stands at the forking of the track. You weren’t here, Mr. Grimes, when the pirates struck. You did not hear the screams, you did not smell the stench of burning flesh. You’re young and foolhardy; all that you want is the chance to play with your toys. And all that I want, now that I know that alternatives exist, is the chance to bring this ship to her destination with no further loss of life.”

  “Mr. Wolverton . . .”

  “Mr. Grimes!” It was Captain Craven’s voice, and he was in a vile temper. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”

  “Captain,” said Wolverton. “I can no more than guess at what you intend to do—but I have decided not to help you to do it.”

  “Then give us the initiator. We’ll work it ourselves.”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Give me the initiator, Mr. Wolverton. That’s an order.”

  “A lawful command, Captain? As lawful as those commands of yours that armed this ship?”

  “Hold him, Grimes!” (And who’s supposed to be holding whom? wondered the Ensign. Wolverton’s grip was still tight and painful on his arm.) “Hold him, while I look in the storeroom!”

  “Captain! Get away from the door! You’ve no right . . .”

  Wolverton relinquished his hold on Grimes who, twisting with an agility that surprised himself, contrived to get both arms about the engineer’s waist. In the scuffle the contact between their magnetic shoe soles and the deck was broken. They hung there, helpless, with no solidity within reach of their flailing limbs to give them purchase. They hung there, clinging to each other, but more in hate than in love. Wolverton’s back was to the machine; he could not see, as could Grimes, that there was an indraught of air into the spinning, shimmering complexity. Grimes felt the beginnings of panic, more than the mere beginnings. There were no guardrails; he had read somewhere why this was so, but the abstruse physics involved did not matter—all that mattered was that there was nothing to prevent him and Wolverton from being drawn into the dimension-twisting field of the thing.

  He freed, somehow, his right hand, and with an effort that sprained his shoulder brought it around in a sweeping, clumsy and brutal blow to the engineer’s face. Wolverton screamed and his grip relaxed. Violently, Grimes shoved away. To the action there was reaction.

  Craven emerged from the storeroom, carrying something that looked like a child’s toy gyroscope in a transparent box. He looked around for Grimes and Wolverton at deck level and then, his face puzzled, looked up. He did not, as Grimes had been doing for some seconds, vomit—but his face, behind the beard, went chalk-white. He put out his free hand and, not ungently, pulled Grimes to the deck.

  He said, his voice little more than a whisper, “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing—except to get a pistol and finish him off. . . .”

  Grimes forced himself to look again at the slimy, bloody obscenity that was a man turned, literally, inside-out—heart (if it was the heart) still beating, intestines still writhing.

  16

  IT WAS GRIMES who went for a pistol, fetching a Minetti from the weapons rack that he, himself, had fitted up in the Control Room. He told Jane Pentecost what he wanted it for. He made no secret of either his horror or his self blame.

  She said, “But this is a war, even if it’s an undeclared one. And in a war you must expect casualties.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. But I pushed him into the field.”

  “It was an accident. It could easily have been you instead of him. And I’m glad that it wasn’t.”

  “But you haven’t seen . . .”

  “And I don’t want to.” Her voice hardened. “Meanwhile, get the hell out of here and back to the Mannschenn Drive room. If you’re so sorry for the poor bastard, do something about putting him out of his misery.”

  “But . . .”

  “Don’t be such a bloody coward, Grimes.”

  The words hurt—mainly because there was so much truth in them. Grimes was dreading having to see again the twisted obscenity that had once been a man, was dreading having to breathe again the atmosphere of that compartment, heavy with the reek of hot oil, blood and fecal matt
er. But, with the exception of Craven, he was the only person in the ship trained in the arts of war. He recalled the words of a surgeon-commander who had lectured the midshipmen of his course on the handling of battle casualties—and recalled, too, how afterward the young gentlemen had sneered at the bloodthirstiness of one who was supposed to be a professional healer. “When one of your shipmates has really had it, even if he’s your best friend, don’t hesitate a moment about finishing him off. You’ll be doing him a kindness. Finish him off—and get him out of sight. Shockingly wounded men are bad for morale.”

  “What are you waiting for?” demanded Jane Pentecost. “Do you want me to do it?”

  Grimes said nothing, just hurried out of the Control Room.

  Craven was still in the Mannschenn Drive room when Grimes got back there. With him were two of the interstellar drive engineers—the Second and the Third. Their faces were deathly white, and the Second’s prominent Adam’s apple was working spasmodically, but about them there was an air of grim resolution. The Third—how could he bear to touch that slimy, reeking mess?—had hold of its shoulders (white, fantastically contorted bone gleaming pallidly among red convolutions of flesh), while the Second, a heavy spanner in his hand, was trying to decide where to strike.

  The Captain saw Grimes. “Give me that!” he snapped, and snatched the pistol from the Ensign’s hand. Then, to the engineers, “Stand back!”

  The little weapon rattled sharply and viciously. To the other smells was added the acridity of burned propellant. What had been Wolverton was driven to the deck by the impact of the tiny projectiles, and adhered there. There was surprisingly little blood, but the body had stopped twitching.

  Craven handed the empty pistol back to the Ensign. He ordered, “You stay here, Mr. Grimes, and organize the disposal of the body.” He went to the locker where he had put the initiator, took out the little instrument and, carrying it carefully, left the Mannschenn Drive room. Neither of the engineers, still staring with horrified fascination at their dead Chief, noticed.