Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  Plainly neither Grimes, Darleen nor Shirl was included in the “us”. They remained sitting on the bunk while Onslow and Fenella Pruin left the cabin. Grimes hoped that they would make each other very happy.

  ***

  They helped themselves to a last meal before leaving Triton; they did not know where the next one was coming from as, after paying the bar bill, Grimes had only a few credits left. They dressed in the clothing that, supplied by Onslow, was to be part of their disguise. (When captured and when escaping from the Snuff Palace none of them had been wearing sarongs.) Padded brassieres were contrived for Shirl and Darleen— “False upperworks!” laughed Onslow as he, personally, adjusted them on the girls’ chests—as well as binding to reduce the size of their prominent rumps. From the neck down, at least, they no longer looked like New Alician women. Syntheskin from Triton’s medicine chest was used to gum Grimes’ prominent ears flat to his skull. Onslow found a wig—it had been left behind by some past female passenger—for Fenella. It transformed her into a quite pretty redhead, somehow softened her features.

  Grimes and the two Matilda’s Children were first down the gangway. They waited on the wharf while Fenella and Captain Onslow made a last, passionate farewell on the poop deck. Her wig fell off. Grimes just caught it before it fell into the narrow gap between the ship’s side and the wharf stringer.

  At last she came down, took the artificial head covering from Grimes without a word of thanks, put it back on. She waved one last time to Onslow. Then, with Grimes in the lead they made their way to the Port Troy subway station. They kept away from the bright lights. This was easy as the only ship working cargo was a big bulk carrier. Apart from the activity about her the port area was very quiet. They met nobody during their short walk.

  The entrance to the station was just an entrance, lacking either crude or subtle sexual symbolism. There were no other intending passengers; the only similitude to life was that presented by the animated, pornographic advertisements to either side of the escalator and on the platform.

  There was no through car to Port Aphrodite; they would have to change at New Bali Beach. That station was fairly busy. While they waited on the platform for the Port Aphrodite car Grimes felt uneasily that everybody was staring at them. He told himself firmly that this could not be so; their appearance was no more outre than that of the average tourist on this planet.

  But there was one fat woman, herself sarong clad, who was subjecting Grimes, and Grimes only, to an intense scrutiny. He had seen her before somewhere, he thought.

  But where?

  When?

  Then he remembered. She was one of the witnesses to his humiliation on Bali Beach when the Shaara had bombed him with garbage. She was the one whom he, rather childishly, had humiliated in her turn on the Platform of the Port Aphrodite subway station.

  She approached him tentatively. She asked. “Isn’t it Captain Grimes? I never forget a face . . .”

  “My name, madam,” said Grimes, “is Fenn.” (It was the first one that came into his head. He realised that Fenella Pruin was glaring at him—but she did not hold a copyright on the alias.) He laughed. “I must have a double.”

  “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Fenn. But you are like Captain Grimes—apart from your ears, that is. And I’m sorry, in a way, that you’re not him . . .”

  Is there a reward out? he wondered.

  “Why?” he asked, trying to make his voice unconcerned.

  “Because if you were him he’d still be alive. He was such a charming young man, in spite of his wealth so utterly unspoiled. There aren’t many like him in the galaxy . . .”

  “What do you, mean, madam?” asked Grimes. “My friends and I are new here. We’ve yet to look at a newspaper or listen to a bulletin . . .”

  “Oh, you must be passengers on that big ship that came in yesterday. I can’t remember her name but my hubby, who used to be in shipping—on the business side, of course—told me that she’s one of the Commission’s Beta Class liners under new ownership. But this Captain Grimes is—or was, but they haven’t found any bodies yet although they found wreckage—a shipowner as well as being a space captain. Only a little ship but built, so they say, of gold. I can’t believe that but she shines like gold. He came here with just one passenger, a girl as rich as himself. They chartered one of those camperflies and flew off for a tour. They never came back. They were last seen taking off from Vulcan Island. Pilot error it must have been, although you’d think that a man who could take a spaceship all around the galaxy would be able to manage a camperfly. Even my hubby can, although he’s certainly not either a spaceman or an airman. He just sets the controls on automatic and presses the buttons for where he wants to go. Perhaps that was the trouble. Would a real captain be happy to let his ship do his thinking for him?

  “And then, of course, he had a beautiful young lady with him . . . Perhaps, when he should have been piloting, he was doing something else. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead but the girl—what was her name?—was free with her favours. There was that fat Port Captain for one; I did hear that he actually burst into tears when he heard that his lady love was missing . . . Now what was her name? It’s on the tip of my tongue. Prudence something or other—but she wasn’t very prudent, was she?

  “No, what am I thinking about? Not Prudence. Prunella. Yes, that was it. Prunella . . .? Prunella Fenn. You wouldn’t be her brother, would you? Or perhaps her husband, come here to find out what happened to her . . .?”

  “No,” said Grimes. “No relation.”

  “But what a coincidence! You looking like Captain Grimes—but much better looking!—and with the same name as the young lady who was with him when he vanished . . .”

  Fortunately the Port Aphrodite car came in. Grimes practically shoved his three companions through the open door into the interior. He paused briefly to say, “Thank you for the talk, madam.” He laughed. “After what you’ve told us we shan’t be hiring a camperfly! A very good night to you.”

  The door closed before he had taken his seat. The car sped through the tunnel.

  “Did you have to use Fenn as a name?” asked Fenella coldly.

  “It’s as good as any other,” said Grimes. “Or is it? Anyhow, we’ve learned a bit. We—you and I, that is, Fenella—are definitely missing, presumed dead. Your fat friend Jock is heartbroken. He’ll be overjoyed to see you again. You—we—had better concoct a story to satisfy him. We’ll probably need his help to get back on board Little Sister.”

  “All right, Mr. Fenn. What are your ideas?”

  “You’re the writer.”

  “Not a fiction writer.”

  “No?” He raised his eyebrows, winced as this caused a sting of pain in the skin of his skull under his gummed down ears. “No? Judging from some of your pieces that I read in Star Scandals . . .”

  “None of them,” she told him, “is more fantastic than the story of what’s happened to us on this world.”

  Chapter 31

  NO OTHER PASSENGERS boarded the car at the two stops before arrival at Port Aphrodite. Grimes and Fenella were able to work out the details of what they hoped would be a plausible story. It did not tally with the one that Captain Onslow had told the authorities in Troy but, hopefully, Little Sister would be well up and away from New Venusberg before there was any thorough checking up.

  They would tell Captain McKillick that they had visited Vulcan Island in the rented camperfly. Returning to the mainland they had seen, on the surface, a huge sea beast, a Moby Dick. Fenella Pruin—Prunella Fenn, rather—had wanted a closer look at the monster. They had been flying only a few meters above it when it had lashed up and out with its tail, which had done the aircraft no good at all. It had crashed into the water and broken up.

  Grimes and Fenella had gotten away, using one of the camperfly’s wings as a raft. (Although the gas cell was holed there was still sufficient buoyancy for it to stay afloat.) They had drifted on to a small island and had stayed there, living on
fruit and roots and shellfish, until they had been fortunate enough to attract the attention of the passing Triton. Then, during the voyage to Troy, there had been another unfortunate incident. Grimes, sunbathing on the upper deck, had been recognised by one of the crew—probably that princess whom he had first met in Lady Luck’s—of a Shaara blimp on a Moby Dick hunting expedition. This spiteful being had taken a shot at him with the blimp’s rocket harpoon. She had missed Grimes but scored a hit on Triton’s wheelhouse. When the wire had parted an end of it, whipping back, had killed or injured a few hapless Shaara who had left their airship to make an assessment of the situation.

  It was decided that Fenella would try to call Triton, from a public call box, as soon as they got to Port Aphrodite. Onslow had told her that he intended to have his damaged transceiver replaced that night; in fact the technicians had been due on board only half an hour or so after the fugitives had left the ship. The captain would then be able to amend his story to make it agree with theirs.

  The car arrived at the Port Aphrodite station.

  There were people on the platform awaiting the transport to carry them to various pleasure establishments. None of these was at all interested in Grimes and his three companions. There were public call boxes at the head of the escalator. There were a few moments of panic when Grimes could not find the much depleted notecase that he had tucked into the waistband of his sarong. While he was fumbling it fell to the floor between his feet. He picked it up, gave it to Fenella.

  She went into the box. Grimes and the two New Alicians watched her through the transparent door and walls as she fed one of the plastic bills into the slot. The screen lit up, showing the face—that of a silver woman—of the roboperator. Fenella said something. The robot replied, the metallic lips moving mechanically. There was a short delay. Then the original picture in the screen faded, was replaced by one of the bearded face of Captain Onslow. He was not alone; there was a brief glimpse of a head of luxuriant blonde hair in the background, of smooth, sun-tanned skin. A girl in every port, thought Grimes amusedly, as well as girls between ports wherever possible . . .

  Onslow did not seem at all pleased to be seeing and hearing his recent lady love so soon after the fond farewell. His initial scowl, however, was replaced by a somewhat spurious smile. He said little, let Fenella do most of the talking. He looked relieved when the conversation was terminated.

  Fenella came out of the box. She seemed amused rather than otherwise. She said, “He didn’t waste much time, did he? Off with the old love, on with the new . . . Just one of those things . . .”

  “Ships that pass in the night,” said Grimes.

  “Very funny!” she snapped. “Very funny. Well. Anyhow, he’s agreed to change his story the next time that anybody asks him how his wheelhouse got busted up. I didn’t have much trouble persuading him. He was wanting to get back to that brazen floosie he had with him.”

  “Mphm.”

  “And now let’s get back to your precious ship.”

  They left the station, walked out into the soft night. The spaceport was almost as it had been when they left it. There were two freighters working cargo with glaring lights all about them. There were the cruise liners. There was Little Sister, goldenly agleam in her berth between two big ships. One was the Shaara vessel that had been there when they arrived. The other was one of the Interstellar Transport Commission’s Beta Class passenger liners. But was she still owned by the Commission? A flag, softly floodlit, flew from the telescopic mast extruded from her sharp stem, an ensign of imperial purple with, in glowing gold, the CR monogram, the symbol representing the Credit, the galaxy-wide monetary unit.

  It was the flag of El Dorado.

  And why not? The El Doradans, Grimes well knew, enjoyed kinky sex as much as anybody and could afford to pay for it better than most.

  But the name of the ship . . .

  He could read it now, in golden (of course) letters on the burnished grey shellplating under the control room.

  Southerly Buster III . . .

  Southerly Buster . . . Drongo Kane . . .

  And Kane, through his Able Enterprises, pulled far heavier Gs on New Venusberg than Grimes or even Fenella Pruin.

  He said as much to her as they walked towards Little Sister. She agreed with him but said that it was of no consequence; once they got off this cesspit of a planet she would lift the lid off the whole, stinking can of worms.

  There were guards around Little Sister—not only a Customs officer but two armed men in uniform—modelled on that of the Federation Marines—of the spaceport police.

  One of these said sharply, “Halt! I’m sorry, gentlepersons, but nobody is allowed near this ship.”

  “I am the master,” said Grimes, with deliberate pomposity. “I am Captain Grimes.”

  “If you are,” said the guard, “you don’t look anything like your photograph. Captain Grimes has ears. Yours are quite normal.”

  “The airlock door is coded to me,” said Grimes. “It will let me in.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. My orders are that nobody, but nobody, is to approach this ship.”

  “But I am Captain Grimes. I am the master. The owner.”

  “So you say, sir.”

  “I am Prunella Fenn,” said Fenella Pruin.

  “Somebody else who doesn’t look much like her photograph!” laughed the guard.

  “Captain McKillick will soon identify me—but I most certainly do not wish to be kept hanging around until tomorrow morning!”

  “You can see the Port Captain now, lady. He is in his office, still. Some business over the El Doradan ship.”

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll see him now. And you’ll soon find out who we are.”

  ***

  McKillick, as the guard had said, was in his office. Apart from those with whom he was discussing business the administration block was empty; there was nobody to detain Grimes and the three women on their way up to the top floor.

  The office door opened silently as they approached it. The Port Captain, studying papers spread over his desk, did not notice. Neither did the two people, a man and a woman, sitting in chairs facing him. The man was wearing a purple uniform with heavy golden epaulettes. The woman was clad in translucent white beneath which her body glowed goldenly. Diamonds glittered in the braided coronet of her glossy auburn hair, in the pendants hanging from her ears.

  “As far as I know,” the fat McKillick was saying, “Captain Grimes and his passenger, Prunella Fenn, were lost when their hired camperfly crashed in the sea shortly after lifting off from Vulcan Island. I blame myself for the tragedy. I should never have allowed them to leave Port Aphrodite. Grimes I did not trust. The man was no more than an adventurer, battening on wealthy women . . .”

  “Captain Grimes,” said the woman coldly, “was—or is—an extremely competent shipmaster.”

  “Be that as it may,” went on McKillick, “that camperfly did crash in the sea. A search was made but only the wreckage of the aircraft was found. The cause of the disaster could only have been pilot error.”

  “Indeed?” the woman said. “The story that we heard, in a Carlottigram from Captain Dreeble of Willy Willy, was a rather different one. That camperfly may or may not have crashed—but Captain Grimes wasn’t in it. At this moment he’s probably one of the star attractions at the Colosseum—if he’s still alive, that is. He had better be.”

  “He will be,” growled her companion. “His famous luck more than compensates for his many shortcomings.”

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes indignantly.

  McKillick lifted his eyes from the papers on his desk. He stared at Grimes and the three women. The purple-uniformed man and his companion swivelled around in their chairs, also stared.

  “Grimes . . .” murmured Drongo Kane at last. “Live, on stage, in person. Singing and dancing. But what’s happened to your ears?”

  “Grimes . . .” said the Baroness. “Grimes. I was very worried when Commodore Kane got tha
t message about you from Captain Dreeble, especially when he told me about the Colosseum. I’d no idea—believe me, John, I had no idea—what sort of entertainments are available on this planet . . .”

  “Grimes!” shouted McKillick. “Grimes! But who are those people with you? What did you do to Prue?” He was on his feet, looking as though he were about to clamber over his desk to shake the truth out of Little Sister’s captain. “Where is she? Tell me, damn you, where is she?”

  “Here,” said Fenella.

  “But . . . You?”

  She snatched off her disguising wig.

  “Prue! You’re safe! You’re safe!” McKillick did not clamber over his desk but ran clumsily around it. He threw his arms about her, pulled her to him in a bear-like hug. Her face wrinkled in distaste.

  “Very touching,” remarked Drongo Kane, his carelessly assembled features under the straw-coloured hair creased in a sardonic smile. Then, to the Baroness, “I told you that Grimes would muddle through, as usual, Micky.”

  Fenella Pruin managed to extricate herself from McKillick’s embrace. “Later, Jock,” she said. “Later.” Then, to Grimes, “This appears to be some sort of reunion as far as you’re concerned. Would you mind doing the introductions?”

  “Er, yes, Fenella—sorry. Prunella—may I present you to the Baroness Michelle d’Estang of El Dorado?”

  “Am I supposed to curtsey?” asked Fenella.

  The Baroness looked at her disdainfully. “You may if you wish.”

  “And to Captain Drongo Kane . . .”

  “You’ve got it wrong, cobber,” said that gentleman. “It’s Commodore Baron Kane, of the El Doradan Navy.”

  “Commanding a merchant ship,” sneered Grimes. “A cruise liner. A spaceborne gin palace.”

  Kane laughed. “A cruise liner she may be—but she’s rated as an auxiliary cruiser. But who are those two sheilahs with you?”

  “Shirl,” said Shirl.