Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Thank you,” said Grimes. “Be good.”

  He made his way aft, using the spiral staircase. He paused briefly at the farm deck, watched the hydroponics technician, who had discarded his spacesuit, working among the tanks, planting the new seedlings that he had brought up from Bronsonia. He was unaware of Grimes’ presence and Grimes did not disturb him at his work.

  He continued aft. He was not sure if he was glad or sorry to be leaving this old ship. Not all his memories of her would be bad and, if all went well, she might prove to be his financial salvation.

  Outside the airlock’s inner door he sealed his faceplate, pulled on his gauntlets. He told Pinner and the shuttle captain that he was about to let himself out, asked Pinner to close the outer door after him. Pinner replied rather testily that he had been a spaceman long enough to know his airlock drill and the shuttle captain growled, “I thought that I was going to have to come aboard to get you, the time you’ve taken! A bloody long five minutes!”

  Even this airlock chamber held memories, Grimes thought. Maggie had passed through it. (And would he ever see her again?) He recalled the body of the pseudo-Susie when he had placed it there prior to ejection. At the finish, the very finish, it could almost have been that of the original woman and Grimes had felt like a murderer disposing of the evidence of his crime.

  Pressure dropped rapidly as the air was pumped into the main body of the ship. The outer door opened. The shuttle hung there, a mere twenty meters distant, a dark torpedo shape in the shadow of the ship, her own open airlock door a glowing green circle in the blackness.

  Grimes positioned himself carefully, jumped.

  He fell slowly through nothingness, jerked himself around so that he would make a feet-first landing. His aim was good and he did not have to use his suit-propulsion unit. As soon as he was in the chamber the outer door closed and he felt rather than heard the vibration as the shuttle’s inertial drive started up.

  ***

  The shuttle captain was an overly plump, surly young man.

  He grumbled, “Up and down, up and down, like a bleeding yo-yo. Two trips when one shoulda done. I told them that. Lemme wait, I said, until the gardener’s done his planting. Make just one round trip of it. But no. Not them. They want you in some sort of a bleeding hurry . . .”

  “Who are they?” asked Grimes mildly.

  “Marston—he’s manager of the Corporation. The police. Oh—just about every bastard . . .”

  “I suppose,” said Grimes, “that Mr. Marston’s glad to get his ship back . . .”

  The shuttle captain laughed sardonically. “Pleased? Take it from me, Captain, that pleased he is not. He’d sooner have the insurance than the ship . . . But excuse me. I want to get this spaceborne junk heap down to New Syrtis in one piece . . .”

  Grimes tried to relax in the co-pilot’s chair. (The shuttle carried no co-pilot; in fact her captain was her only crew.) He never felt happy as a passenger. His companion’s handling of the controls, he thought, reminded him of that mythical monkey who, walloping the keyboard of a typewriter for an infinitude of time, would finish up writing all the plays of William Shakespeare. He transferred his attention to the viewports. New Syrtis was in view now—white spires and domes set amid green parks with the spaceport itself a few kilometers to the north. He borrowed the control cab binoculars, made out a spark of bright gold glowing in the morning sun on the dark grey of the spaceport apron.

  Little Sister . . .

  “Looking for your ship, Captain? I wouldn’t mind buying her myself, if I had the money . . . But Marston’s been sniffing around her. In fact he was counting on the Bronson Star insurance money to buy her . . .”

  The shuttle was losing altitude fast, driving down in what was practically a controlled drive. Little Sister and the other ships in port—an Epsilon Class tramp, decided Grimes, and something a little larger—were now visible to the naked eye.

  “One thing for sure,” said the shuttle captain, “Marston would sooner see you shot than getting a medal . . .”

  “Mphm.”

  “Mind you, he’s not broke. He can afford better legal eagles than the Guild can. He’ll fight your salvage claim tooth and nail . . .”

  “Mphm.”

  “You’da done better for everybody if you’d taken that decrepit old bitch out to the Rim or some place and changed her name . . .”

  “Not very legal,” said Grimes.

  “Being legal’ll get you no place,” said the shuttle captain. “Stand by for the bump. We’re almost there . . .”

  The shuttle sat down in the corner of the spaceport reserved for small craft of her kind with a bone-shaking crash.

  “Thanks for the ride,” said Grimes.

  “It’s what I’m paid for,” said the shuttle captain sourly.

  Chapter 37

  THERE WAS A RECEPTION committee awaiting Grimes.

  Marston was there—a skinny, sour-faced beanpole of a man who looked down at Grimes with an expression of great distaste. There was the New Syrtis Port Captain who, with Captain Wendover, seemed inclined to accord Grimes a hero’s welcome. There was a high-ranking police officer. There were men and women hung around with all manner of recording equipment, obviously representatives of the media.

  “Captain Grimes,” called one of them, a rather fat and unattractive girl, “welcome back to Bronsonia! Do you have any message for us?”

  “Captain Grimes,” said Wendover firmly, “will be saying nothing to anybody until he has conferred with the Guild’s lawyers.”

  The news hen transferred her attention to Marston. “Mr. Marston, aren’t you pleased to have your ship back?”

  Marston tried to ignore her.

  “Mr. Marston, wouldn’t you rather have had the insurance money?”

  Marston turned to the police officer. “Chief Constable, are you to permit me to be harried?”

  “Mr. Marston,” said the policeman, “these ladies and gentlemen are taxpayers, just as you are supposed to be.” He turned to Grimes. “I have a copy of your report, Captain. I understand that you have urgent personal business to discuss with Captain Wendover and so I will defer my own interrogation until later. You understand, of course, that you will not be allowed to leave this planet until such time as the Police Department has completed its inquiries.”

  “Captain Grimes,” called the fat girl, “say something to us!”

  “Can I?” Grimes asked Wendover.

  “Captain Grimes!” One of the other girls was aiming her recorder at him. “What happened to Prince Paul?”

  Wendover had a firm hold on Grimes’ arm, was obviously preparing to hustle him off. He whispered, “Tell them something—just to keep them quiet! But be careful.”

  “Is there any damage to the ship, Grimes?” demanded Marston.

  “Only minor,” replied Grimes curtly. He turned to face the reporters. He said, “I’m glad to be back. I’m gladder still to be back in one piece. I . . .”

  “That will do, Captain,” said Wendover.

  “I’d like a few words with Grimes,” said Marston.

  “Captain Grimes,” said Wendover, “must discuss his business affairs with the Guild’s legal counsel before he talks to anybody else.”

  “That is his right,” said the Chief Constable, who obviously did not like Marston.

  “I’d like to change,” said Grimes. He was still wearing his spacesuit and wanted to get into the comfortable tunic and slacks that were in the bag that he was carrying.

  “In my office,” said Wendover.

  “Do not forget,” Marston said, “that the spacesuit is the property of the Interstellar Shipping Corporation of Bronsonia.”

  “Surely, Mr. Marston,” said the fat girl, “you can afford to let the captain have a souvenir of his adventurous voyage.”

  The shipowner snarled wordlessly.

  “Come on, Captain,” said Wendover. “This way. My car.”

  ***

  “What was all that abo
ut?” asked Grimes during the drive to the city.

  “Marston’s in none too happy a financial situation,” said Wendover. “Oh, he’s not broke. He could still afford to buy your Little Sister, for example, unless the bidding were forced up to some absurd level. I happen to know that he’d like to have something like her so that he could get the hell off the planet in a hurry if—when—his financial affairs come really unstuck.”

  “He’s not a spaceman,” said Grimes.

  “There are one or two drunken bums on our books,” said Wendover, “whom we wouldn’t recommend even for a ship-keeping job. Marston would be prepared to employ one of them as yachtmaster if he absolutely had to. And then, assuming that he did make it to some other world, that solid gold ship of yours would give him the capital to make a fresh start.”

  “Mphm.”

  The car sped through the streets of New Syrtis, came to a stop outside the dome that housed the offices of the Astronauts’ Guild. The robochauffeur announced, “Gentlemen, you are here.”

  “We’re here,” said Wendover unnecessarily.

  “So I see,” said Grimes.

  ***

  He changed out of his spacesuit in the office washroom, rejoined Wendover and the two lawyers who had been waiting for him in the Secretary’s office. The four men drew coffee from the dispenser, sat around the table to talk.

  One of the legal gentlemen was fat, the other was fatter. One was bald but bearded, the other practiced facial depilation but had long, silvery hair plaited in a pigtail which was adorned with a jaunty little bow of tartan silk; a not-uncommon fashion but one which Grimes had never liked.

  The pigtail wearer, a Mr. McCrimmon, seemed to be the senior of the pair.

  He said, “Let us not beat about the bush. Let us drive to the essentials. I understand, Captain Grimes, that you are desperately in need of money and that you hope that a successful salvage claim in respect of Bronson Star will enable you to pay your various debts and resume possession of your own ship.”

  “Your understanding is correct,” said Grimes.

  “Then I am afraid that I have bad news for you. A claim for salvage on your behalf might, eventually, be successful but it will be a bitter, long drawn out battle. Captain Wendover has already suggested that we cite the San Demetrio precedent but, since you did not actually abandon ship and then return to her, this may not be a valid analogy . . .”

  “San Demetrio?” asked Grimes.

  “It was an interesting case,” said McCrimmon, speaking as though it had been heard only yesterday. “Very interesting. The officer—who was the major beneficiary—and his crew were, indubitably, morally entitled to pecuniary reward and, as it turned out, also legally entitled. If they had not abandoned ship this would not have been so.

  “You are familiar with Terran history, Captain Grimes? You will know of the Second Planetary War, which occurred from 1939 to 1945, Old Reckoning? Much of it was fought at sea and convoys of merchant vessels were harried by surface, submarine and aerial raiders. One such convoy, escorted only by an auxiliary cruiser, a not very heavily armed converted passenger liner, was attacked by a surface raider, a battleship. The auxiliary cruiser put up a valiant but hopeless fight which, however, gave the ships of the convoy a chance to scatter as darkness was falling. One of the merchantmen—an oil tanker, loaded with the highly volatile fuel used by the aircraft of those days—was hit and badly damaged, actually set on fire. Her crew abandoned ship. Miraculously the vessel’s cargo failed to explode.

  “Some little time later the Second Officer, who was in charge of one of the lifeboats, decided to reboard. He and his men succeeded in extinguishing the flames and eventually, despite the fact that almost all navigational equipment had been destroyed, brought San Demetrio to port.

  “The officer and his boat’s crew were, of course, members of San Demetrio’s crew. They had all signed the Articles of Agreement. Had they not abandoned ship, had they stayed on board to fight the fires and make the necessary repairs, they would not have been entitled to salvage money. They would merely have been carrying out the duties—admittedly in somewhat abnormal circumstances—that they had signed on for. No doubt the ship’s owners would have made some kind of ex gratia payment but there would have been no legal entitlement to reward.

  “It was argued, however, that as soon as they had abandoned what was, in effect, a huge, floating bomb the original agreement was no longer valid. Their legal status was that of any outsiders who might have happened to board the vessel to endeavor to save her and her cargo.”

  “I think,” said Grimes slowly, “that I see what you’re driving at. But, as far as Bronson Star is concerned, was I crew in the legal sense? I was employed by Mr. Marston’s outfit but only as a glorified caretaker. I had signed no Articles of Agreement. My name was not on the Register as Master.”

  “A good point, Captain Grimes, and one that Captain Wendover has already raised and one that we shall argue. You must realize, however, that it will be many weeks before a decision is reached by the courts.”

  “And meanwhile,” said Grimes bitterly, “I have to eat.”

  “You are a rich man, Captain,” said McCrimmon. “Even only as scrap, your ship, constructed as she is from a precious metal, is worth a not so small fortune. My partner and I are willing to handle the sale for you—on a commission basis, of course . . .”

  “I don’t want to sell,” said Grimes.

  “You may have to,” Wendover told him, not without sympathy.

  “You will have to,” said McCrimmon bluntly. But he, not a spaceman, would never be able to appreciate the odd affection, the love, even, that can develop between captains and their ships.

  “Think it over, Captain,” went on McCrimmon. “Not that it will be necessary. The lerrigan consignees are already taking legal action for the recovery of the monies that you owe them.”

  “Well, gentlemen,” said Wendover, “we have enjoyed—if that is the word—our preliminary meeting. And now, Captain Grimes, I must take you to see the Port Captain. The Chief Constable will also be present, in his official capacity. But I am sure that you have nothing to fear from them. You used force, as you were legally entitled to do, to recapture the vessel of which you were legally in change.”

  “And after I’ve seen everybody,” asked Grimes, “shall I be entitled to go aboard Little Sister?”

  “I’m afraid not. She’s been sealed, as you know. She’s security against your many debts. But I’ve booked you into the Astronaut’s Arms. It’s not a bad pub and it’s handy to the spaceport.”

  Chapter 38

  HE SAT IN HIS ALMOST comfortable, definitely characterless hotel room. He was smoking his pipe, sipping a large pink gin, his second one. (The first he had gulped.) He looked at the solidograph of Maggie Lazenby standing on the chest of drawers. Maggie had wished him luck. He needed it.

  Of course, he admitted, the situation wasn’t altogether desperate. Presumably he would be allowed to sell the ship piecemeal, her fittings before the vessel herself. The autochef, for example, should fetch quite a few credits . . .

  But . . .

  He looked at the naked figurine in its transparent cube. It would be as though, he thought, he were starving and were carving hunks off Maggie to sustain his own life. A breast one day, an arm the next . . . Then a buttock . . . So it would be with Little Sister. She was a masterpiece of interior design and the subtraction of any fitting would ruin her internal symmetry.

  The telephone chimed.

  Grimes looked at the screen, saw the face of the hotel’s receptionist. He got up, switched the instrument to reception from his end.

  “Captain Grimes,” said the girl, “there is a lady here to see you. May I send her up?”

  A lady? he wondered. Susie’s mother, perhaps . . . What could he tell her? Dare he risk telling her that her daughter was, so far as he knew, alive, well and rich?

  The almost pretty face of the receptionist was replaced by that of the unat
tractive fat girl who had tried to interview him at the spaceport.

  “Captain Grimes—this is Wendy Wayne here. Of the Bronson Star.” She laughed, displaying teeth that would have been better hidden. “No. Not your Bronson Star. The weekly paper.”

  “I don’t feel like an interview,” said Grimes.

  She said, “It’s not an interview I want. I’ve a proposition.”

  Grimes refrained from saying something ill-mannered.

  She laughed again. “Don’t worry, Captain, I’ve no designs on your body beautiful. I already have a lover—and she wouldn’t approve . . .”

  “Mphm.”

  “Strictly business, Captain. Can I come up?”

  “Yes,” said Grimes.

  ***

  “You’ve seen the Bronson Star, of course,” she said.

  “I have,” admitted Grimes. (There had been a tattered copy of that scurrilous weekly aboard the other Bronson Star, the ship.)

  “As you know, we like sensational stories, preferably told in the first person. Ghosted, of course . . .”

  I Was a Sex Slave on Waldegren, remembered Grimes.

  “Our readers like them too.”

  They would, thought Grimes.

  “Your story will be sensational. There must have been some sex. That Lania, for example . . . She had quite a reputation, you know. And that other girl, Susie . . . With those two aboard a ship anything might happen!”

  “It did,” conceded Grimes.

  “And your own name’s not entirely unknown, even on this back of beyond planet. Even our media carried the news of that mutiny aboard Discovery. And now you’re news—NEWS!—again. Unluckily we’re not allowed to publish anything about the Dunlevin affair before the full inquiry’s been held; too many interplanetary ramifications. That’s why the wolf pack didn’t really tear you apart when you landed at the spaceport today.”