Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

“It will be when we meet up with the Shaara. It will look suspicious if we’re making way through the air with a motionless prop . . .”

  Lennay oscillated his head in the native equivalent to a nod. “Yes. I see.” He launched into a spate of explanations. “It is quite simple. You open this valve to admit the gas, then you pull down sharply on this lever to strike a spark, then . . .”

  “It would be simpler,” Grimes told him, “to use a catalyst, like platinum wire . . .” He could not see the other’s expression in the darkness but knew that it was one of pained puzzlement. “But it doesn’t matter. As long as this way works, why worry?”

  He led the way up the ladder back to Little Sister’s airlock, went forward to the control cab. He looked at the radar screen and at the chart. He would, he decided, make a slight deviation so as to negotiate the Daganan Pass rather than fly over the mountains. That would be what a real airship would do so as to avoid jettisoning overmuch ballast. There was little chance that news of his coming would reach the Rogue Queen before his arrival at Kahtrahn but he could not afford to take any chances. The camouflage must be maintained until the end.

  Tamara slept all the time that he was steering the ship through the series of narrow ravines. He had thought of awakening her, but there was little to see. Not only were the viewports almost completely obscured but it was now very dark. Without radar it would have been extremely hazardous pilotage, especially to one with no local knowledge.

  At last Little Sister was through the mountains. Ahead of her was the northern coastal plain and beyond that the sea. To the east the sky was pale and a scattering of thin, high clouds already golden. Grimes adjusted course, put the ship back on automatic pilot, yawned widely.

  Lennay said sympathetically, “You are tired, Captain.”

  “You can say that again!” agreed Grimes.

  He got up from his seat, went aft. Tamara in her bunk, blanket covered, was snoring softly and almost musically. He spoke to her; she went on snoring. He shook her shoulder. Her eyes opened and she looked up at him coldly.

  He said, “You have the watch. I’m turning in.”

  She said, “Surely you don’t expect me to fight your bloody battles for you.”

  “No. But take over, will you? We’re on automatic pilot; all you have to do is watch the instruments, the radar especially. Should you pick up any aerial targets, at any range at all, call me at once. Otherwise let me know when we’re one hundred kilometers from the Desaban coastline.”

  She actually managed a grin. “I’m only a goddess, Grimes, not a navigator. But I think I’ll be able to manage . . .”

  She threw aside the blanket, stood there naked for a few moments, stretching like some great, lazy cat. Unhurriedly she pulled on her tunic. She asked, “All right if I make some coffee first?”

  “Lennay will fix that,” said Grimes.

  Lennay, not waiting to be told, had already done so. He bowed low before Tamara before handing her the steaming mug. “And for you, Captain?” he asked.

  “No thank you,” said Grimes regretfully. “It would only keep me awake.”

  He went forward with Tamara, showed her the pinnace’s position on the chart and the course line that he had penciled in with a small cross marking where he wished to be called, then walked aft to his own bunk. He thought that he would have trouble in getting to sleep but he was out as soon as his body hit the mattress.

  Chapter 29

  HE CAME AWAKE as soon as Lennay touched him.

  The native handed him a mug of coffee which Grimes sipped gratefully.

  “We are one hundred kilometers from the coastline,” said Lennay. “The Lady Delur asked me to inform you that nothing of interest otherwise had appeared on the screen of the radar.”

  “Mphm.” Grimes filled and lit his pipe, padded forward. Tamara smiled up at him from her chair. He smiled back, looked first through the forward viewscreen—not that he could see much; it was almost like peeping through a keyhole—and then into the radar screen. Yes, there was the coastline, distant still but closing steadily. That patch of greater brightness inshore a little must be the port city of Denb; he had made a good landfall, he thought. Or Little Sister, left to her own devices, had made a good landfall.

  He grunted again, went aft to the little toilet. When he was finished he put on his familiar shirt and shorts uniform; he felt far happier in this rig than he had felt either in the ceremonial sarong or the slightly less hampering tunic. He was pleased that the Shaara had left most of his clothing aboard the pinnace, although, attracted by the plenitude of gold braid and buttons, they had stolen the finery that he had been obliged to wear when employed by the Baroness.

  He relieved Tamara at the controls. She went aft to tidy up, saying that with things liable to start happening at any moment she might as well look her best. She returned with a tray of food, having persuaded the autochef to produce hot rolls with butter, a quite savory paté and a jug of chilled orange juice. Lennay, sharing the simple but satisfying meal, expressed gratification and amazement but when told that what he was eating was probably processed Shaara excrement abruptly stopped eating. He suggested that it was time that he started the gas turbine and went out through the airlock and down to the car. Grimes could imagine him throwing open a window and vomiting. With typical spaceman’s heartlessness, remembering how he, as a green cadet, had been nauseated when learning of the origin of a meal that he had just enjoyed, he was amused rather than otherwise.

  Lennay came back after a long interval, reporting that the airship’s engine was in operation and the airscrew spinning. Grimes thanked him, then closed the airlock doors. From now on the ship was in fighting trim, invulnerable to almost anything save a direct hit by a missile with a nuclear warhead. Yes, thought Grimes, she was invulnerable but an explosion in her near vicinity could and would shake her like a terrier shaking a rat, and could her frail human crew survive such treatment? Possibly, as long as he and Tamara were tightly strapped into their chairs, as long as Lennay was well secured in one of the bunks . . .

  He gave the necessary orders, set the example.

  They were over Denb now. On their present course they would pass ten kilometers to the west of Kahtrahn. Grimes made an adjustment of course to starboard.

  “Target,” reported Tamara. “Bearing green oh-one-oh. Range thirty-five. Closing.”

  Grimes looked into the screen. Yes, there was the blip. It could not be Baroom; she would have been picked up at far greater range. There was very little metal, apart from the engine, in the Shaara blimps however. This could be a blimp, or a native airship.

  Yes, the range was still closing and the bearing was unchanged. It, whatever “it” was, was on an interception course. Grimes brought Little Sister round ten degrees to starboard. Through the peephole in the camouflaging fabric he could see something silvery against the blue sky. He picked up the binoculars from their box, stared ahead through the powerful glasses. Yes, it was a blimp all right. It was too fat for one of the native dirigibles. Tiny motes danced around it—the drones swarming out of the car of their aerial transport.

  Tamara said, “They’ll get a nasty surprise when you open up with the laser cannon.”

  Grimes told her, “They won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if I open up now I’ll give the game away and the Rogue Queen will be able to pick us off at long range. No, I’ll just keep on going through whatever those bastards sling at us and hope that there’s enough smoke to cover the rents in the camouflage. With any luck at all they’ll assume that we’re the local version of a kamikaze, but one too ill-armed and flimsy to take seriously . . .” He laughed. “That’s one thing about the Shaara. They’re never ones to use a power hammer to crack a walnut. They’ll use on us only the weaponry that past experience on this world has taught them is ample to swat a gasbag out of the sky. By the time they realize what we really are it will be too late for them to deliver a nuclear punch without doing for themse
lves as well as us . . .”

  “Which they might do,” she said.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.

  “It will be fitting,” called Lennay from his bunk, “if the gods, the prophecy fulfilled, ascend to heaven on a pillar of the fire that has destroyed their enemies . . .”

  Grimes sighed. It was all too possible, but, as far as he was concerned, he wanted the gods to ascend to heaven in a golden chariot, Little Sister.

  The blimp was closing rapidly, directly ahead. There was a flickering of pale flame at the forward end of the thing’s gondola, a stream of sparks bright even in the bright sunlight. Tracer. Whoever was in command of the Shaara airship wanted to bring the intruder down herself instead of leaving the task to the drones. Faintly the noise of the bullets striking the outer skin of the pinnace rang through the cabin.

  I should have thought of having a few gasbags of hydrogen packed in, thought Grimes. Our friends will be wondering when the fireworks display is going to start . . . But I suppose that there must be helium on this world and the inference will be that we’ve sacrificed lift for safety . . .

  Grimes stood on.

  The blimp stood on.

  Stubborn bitch . . . thought Grimes of the Shaara airship’s captain. But she, princess or high-ranking worker, would be expecting the other aircraft to burst into flames at any second and, secure in the knowledge of the non-flammability of her own vessel, would be prepared to skirt closely or even to fly through the flaming wreckage. She was due for a big surprise.

  She stood on, her automatic guns still hammering away. Hot metal flattened on the transparency of the pinnace’s forward viewport, fell away. Then her nerve failed. When there was nothing at all visible from Little Sister’s control cab but the huge, clumsy, grey bulk of her she pulled sharply to starboard. Grimes held his course, striking her a glancing blow. The blimp rebounded from the contact like a violently struck beach ball. The pinnace, with her far greater mass, stood on stolidly. Grimes hoped that the camouflage had not been torn from the pinnace’s port side exposing her true nature. He brought her round slowly, careful to maintain the impression that she was only a slow and clumsy airship, adjusted trim so that he had the Shaara blimp in sight. She swam into his limited field of vision. Her envelope was crumpled and she was settling slowly but as far as Grimes could see there were no fragments from his disguise adhering to the wreckage. He turned away from the disabled ship and from the squad of drones flying fast towards him, laser pistols drawn and ready. Probably they would succeed in setting fire to the sonic insulation with which Little Sister was covered; as long as the bright golden plating was not revealed thereby the resulting smoke and flame would be more to his advantage than otherwise.

  He returned his attention to the radar screen.

  Something big was ahead, was rising rapidly. It could only be Baroom. It could only be the Rogue Queen determined to make an example of the native dirigible that had dared to ram one of her airships.

  And what weaponry would she be using?

  Laser, probably, thought Grimes—but he was not surprised when he felt the muffled shock of close explosions and heard the faint clangs of shrapnel that had penetrated the disguising envelope and the vegetable fibre lagging. And these must be well ablaze by now although the smoke and flame, blowing astern, were not visible from the control cab. Nonetheless the temperature gauges showed that the outer skin was heating rapidly although the interior of the pinnace was still cool.

  The Rogue Queen still had time to launch a nuclear missile, but time was running out for her. If she delayed firing such a weapon much longer she could not use it for fear of destroying her own ship. But, thought Grimes, she might take that risk. So he increased speed, hoping to be able to carry out his intentions before the last of the blazing camouflage was stripped away.

  Baroom was in sight visually now. Grimes stared at her through the ragged, widening rent in the tattered fabric of the envelope. He saw the continuous flashes from her turret guns, the scintillating streams of tracer shells. The Shaara gunnery was not at all brilliant; whoever was in fire control was still assuming that the moving target was making only the normal speed of an airship. The Shaara, he remembered, did not use computers to any great extent; an organization of intelligent, social insects is, to a certain degree, an organic computer itself with built-in limitations, including a refusal to admit data known to be impossible, and until Little Sister was stripped of the last of her disguise her speed would fall into that category.

  Baroom was close now. Grimes could see the people in the transparent dome of her control room—Shaara and a scattering of humanoids. He aimed for the rounded apex of the huge, conical spaceship and pressed the firing switches of the twin lasers. Reflected light almost blinded him, but it must have been worse, much worse, for the Rogue Queen, her officers and her allies before the automatic screening was actuated. In that instant they would have realized who their enemy was, but now it was too late for them to do anything about it.

  Little Sister bored in viciously—but in almost the last instant before impact Grimes applied full stern power. Tough though his ship was he did not wish to subject her to the strain of a collision and, even if she survived the shock relatively unscathed, it was unlikely that her crew would do so.

  But she struck, hard enough for her prow to make a deep dent in the shell of the Shaara control room. She struck, and as she did so Grimes cut the reverse thrust and came ahead again on his inertial drive, gently at first and then building up to the full capacity of his engines.

  Something gave, but it was not the fantastically strong structure of the pinnace. Grimes fired his lasers through the widening crack in the Shaara warship’s stem. Only those directly in the line of fire would be killed but the others would be panicking—he hoped—and instruments and controls would be destroyed. He . . . pushed.

  Baroom fell away from the vertical, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

  Suddenly she toppled and had Grimes not applied full stern power Little Sister would have been dragged down with her. She plunged to the ground, driven to destruction by her own mighty engines rather than dragged by the force of gravity.

  She struck, and it was only then that Grimes realized that the battle had taken place over the city of Kahtrahn. He watched in horror as tall buildings crumpled under the impact, as other buildings were rocked by the explosion of Baroom’s ammunition, as fires broke out among the ruins.

  He turned to the others, said in a shaky voice, “We must go down. We must help . . .”

  Lennay said, “What can we do, Captain? We have done enough . . .”

  “You can say that again,” Grimes told him. “But we must render assistance.”

  “Those people,” said Tamara, “must be hating all aliens, including us, by now. It’s time that we were getting out of here.”

  Reluctantly Grimes conceded that she was right.

  Chapter 30

  THE PROPHECY FULFILLED the demons from Outer Space destroyed, Delur and Samz ascended to Heaven. They left, as saviours so often do, quite a mess behind them. The Desabans were not as grateful as they might have been and were inclined to harp upon the fact that their capital city had been devastated and to cast doubts upon the divinity of Grimes and Tamara. And in Taraplan, now that there was no longer any danger of Shaara domination, only a handful of fanatics preached the Old Religion. The trouble was that the Darijjans had become accustomed, over the years, to visits from outside and knew that they themselves could build spaceships once they got around to it. Meanwhile there was a period of anarchy until a successor to the late President Callaray could be found. There was a paying off of old scores. There were rioting and arson.

  Grimes—who had always evinced a weakness for taking sides—would have liked to stay to help Lennay and his adherents. Tamara, however, insisted that the voyage be resumed at once, that the precious consignment of parcel mail be carried to its recipient without further delay.
She talked menacingly about the penalties for breach of contract. Grimes could not but listen to her. He insisted, however, that he perform one last service for his devotees—the rounding up of the Shaara survivors. These, not having been aboard Baroom at the time of her destruction, had fled to an island off the south coast of Desaba where they had killed or enslaved the native inhabitants. They had three blimps, automatic projectile weapons and lasers. The ammunition for their machine guns was limited but, as each of the airships possessed its own generator, the power cells of the laser pistols could be recharged as required for a long time to come.

  There were princesses, drones and workers—females, males and neuters. Possibly breeding had commenced already.

  The raid on the island was a short and bloody business. Little Sister, no longer in disguise, pounced at first light. Somehow the Shaara were expecting her. The blimps were already airborne and around each of them was a squadron of drones. They made no attempt to flee but attacked at once. A pinnace built of normal materials would have been overwhelmed by the ferocity of the assault. Looking back on it all Grimes was inclined to think that it was deliberately suicidal. The blimps bored in, their machine cannon flaming. The streams of tracers converged on the pinnace and the bursting shells blotted out all vision from the forward viewport. The drones were above Little Sister, around her, below her. Skin temperature gauges went mad.

  Grimes fired the twin lasers and, at the same time, swung the ship’s head to port, then to starboard, slashing with the double beam. The cannonade abruptly ceased and he could see ahead again, watched all three blimps fluttering groundward, their descent barely slowed by the charred rags that had been their envelopes. The crews—those who were still living—flew out from the cars to join the battling drones. Grimes slashed again and bee bodies burst smokily.

  But the drones surrounding Little Sister were keeping well out of the field of fire of her lasers. Even if they could not hurt her—although they were searching frantically for a weak spot—they could not be hurt themselves. But they were singleminded, concentrating their fury on the obvious enemy. Perhaps they did see the native dirigible that came drifting above the battle; if they did, they ignored her. She could be dealt with at leisure. They were not expecting the invisible vapor that was discharged from her gondola, that fell slowly, that blinded and poisoned.