The audience was over.
At the end of the corridor they found that the towing team had again been harnessed to the balloon car, were hanging on to projections on the tower, the lines slack. Delamere was first into the basket and began to dump ballast. During the time that they had spent with the Lord of the Roost, Grimes realized, more bags of sand had been loaded and gas replenished. The Countess was next aboard. She and her compatriot obviously did not love each other and were avoiding physical contact. Mayhew was next, and then Grimes, the precious Letters of Marque tucked into his shirt, made the short but perilous passage.
The balloon was cast off from the mooring spar and the towing team beat their wings clatteringly, then pulled the clumsy aircraft out and away from the tower. The flying escort took up their stations. On the return trip Grimes did not admire the scenery but looked through the documents. There was one set of papers for each ship. That issued to Sister Sue authorized her to make war upon all enemies of the Independent Nest of Kalla, wherever found. It stated, too, that one Commodore Grimes, while master of this vessel, was fully responsible for the conduct of Pride of Erin, Spaceways Princess and Agatha’s Ark. The signature was a jagged scrawl written with some brownish medium. Blood? wondered Grimes. There was an ornate gold seal, bearing the likeness of a rapacious bird with outstretched wings, its taloned feet gripping a planetary orb. The other Letters of Marque were in duplicate—one copy for each captain, the other for the commodore. In each of them it was stated that overall responsibility for the operation rested with Grimes.
So, he thought wryly, whoever carries the can back it’s going to be me. He who sups with Drongo Kane needs a long spoon. So does he who sups with Commodore—correction!—Rear Admiral Damien . . .
The balloon sagged down toward the spaceport mooring masts. Lord Delamere valved gas. He miscalculated and had to compensate by dumping a small bag of ballast.
Grimes was amused and thought, He’s no more perfect than his cousins umpteen times removed . . .
Mooring procedure was carried out quite efficiently. The humans clambered down the light ladder to the ground.
Delamere said, dismissively, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Commodore.”
Grimes led the way to the waiting boat. Inboard, he took the pilot’s seat. The Countess glared at him but went aft to sit with Mayhew. Grimes, starting the inertial drive, lifted with deliberately exaggerated caution. He heard the girl mutter something about Survey Service throw-outs with only two speeds, Dead Slow and Stop. His prominent ears reddened but he maintained his sedate ascent.
Chapter 44
“WELL, MR. MAYHEW?” asked Grimes.
“To begin with, sir, the Lord of the Roost is not human . . .”
“A blinding glimpse of the obvious. I’m not a telepath but even I could see that.”
Mayhew flushed. “Let me finish, sir. I meant that his thought processes are not human. He would be incapable of being devious. He despises you for fighting for profit but realizes that you will be useful to him in the struggle for Kallan freedom.”
“The free rooster in the free barnyard,” said Grimes. “I don’t think that our two liberated ladies would approve of such freedom.”
“With the Hallicheki,” said Mayhew, “it’s a clear choice. Either the cocks or the hens must rule and roost. The cocks are the more intelligent, the more honest. The hens have mean, petty minds. And didn’t the ones who were towing us hate us! All the time they were thinking of tearing the flesh from our bones with their sharp beaks. Oh, we’re on the right side, sir. No doubt of that.”
“And Delamere?”
“I think that what you were thinking about him was quite correct.”
“Talking of Delamere, I suppose that his distant relative is still in the Survey Service.”
“Very much so. He’s a four-ring captain now, and loved by everybody.”
The telephone buzzed.
“Commodore here,” said Grimes.
Williams’ face formed in the little screen and he said, “The boat’s back and inboard, sir. Wally’s finished her mail run. The way she’s carrying on it must be beneath her dignity to act as postwoman.”
“My nose fair bleeds for her. Tell Mr. Stewart to arrange NST hook-up between all ships. I’ll give the captains time to read their Letters of Marque, then I’ll be up to control to give them a pep talk.”
Chapter 45
ONE BY ONE, at thirty-minute intervals, the four ships dropped down to the spaceport. By the time that Agatha’s Ark was landed the hoses connected to Sister Sue’s intake valves were already throbbing as tons of reaction mass—water—were being pumped into her tanks and teams of dingy, sullen hens, bullied into activity by strutting male birds, were connecting the pipes to Pride of Erin and Spaceways Princess.
There was, of course, no planet leave for the privateer crews. Those officers who had come ashore to supervise the work about their ships would not stray from the spaceport. They were all too conscious of the smoldering hate with which the workhens regarded them, of the haughty disdain for mere mammals evinced by the arrogant cocks.
Grimes stood at the foot of Sister Sue’s ramp to await Lord Delamere. Mayhew was with him. They were approached by a stocky, dark-featured man wearing master’s uniform with the badge of the Interstellar Transport Commission on his cap.
This person made a sketchy salute. Grimes replied.
“Good morning, Captain,” said the ITC master.
“Good morning, Captain,” replied Grimes.
“Jones is the name, Captain. Of Cross Eppie.” He waved his hand toward one of the two Epsilon Class tramps. “Or Epsilon Crucis, if you want to be formal.”
“Grimes,” said Grimes, introducing himself.
“Of Sister Sue,” said Jones unnecessarily. Then, “What is this? An invasion? Four ex-Epsilon Class tramps, all armed to the teeth . . . We’ve been half expecting a couple or three Hegemony cruisers to come roaring in, but . . . And you must be on their side . . . The Kallan rebels, I mean.”
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes, filling his pipe.
“Why all the lethal ironmongery, Captain?” persisted Jones.
“Defensive armament,” muttered Grimes through a cloud of acrid smoke.
“Are you blockade runners, then? And have you any idea of the sort of punch packed by one of the Hegemony’s cruisers? Those vicious hens’d chew you up and shit you out in five seconds flat.”
“Thank you for the information,” said Grimes coldly.
“I’m just trying to be helpful, Captain. I know these people. I’ve been running to the various Hallicheki planets for the last twenty years. I think that the commission’s very foolish to be maintaining trading relations with Kalla.”
“So you’re a blockade runner too, Captain Jones. And, like me, you just go where you’re sent.”
Jones would have made a reply, a heated one possibly, but there was a clattering noise from overhead. The men looked up. Dropping down from the murky sky was a helicopter, a small one, little more than a basket dangling beneath rotors. It landed. Delamere stepped out of the flimsy-looking cab. Grimes saluted him—not the sort of salute that he would have given to an admiral or to a pretty girl but a curt greeting to an equal. The El Doradan nodded in reply.
“Excuse me, Captain Jones,” said Grimes. “I have matters to discuss with my agent.”
Followed by Mayhew he walked toward the little aircraft.
“I have arranged for you to see the ex-Minister of Star Shipping,” said Delamere. “She will be able to give you information about the Hallicheki trade routes.”
“That will be useful,” said Grimes. “Do you have transport laid on?”
“Not necessary, Commodore. The . . . prison is only a short walk from here.”
***
The prison—or that part of it in which the ex-Minister was confined—was no more than a hovel, a dingy kraal. In it a filthy, more-dead-then-alive hen was chained by one leg to the central pole, was squ
atting in her own filth. Her skin was scabbed where feathers had been plucked out and the dun plumage around these patches was darkly matted. Where one eye had been was a still oozing wound.
There were two cockbirds in the malodorous hut. Guards? Interrogators? Delamere—who must have been an accomplished linguist—addressed one of the gaudy beings in the Hallicheki language. It sounded like a comedian imitating a parrot. There was a squawking reply from one of the avians.
“She will not talk,” said Delamere to Grimes. “But do not worry. There are . . . methods.”
There was a cacophony of squawks from the larger and gaudier Kallan, answered only by the female’s sullen silence. There was a tearing out of a beakful of feathers from the hen’s breast—which elicited an agonized screech. There was a vicious beak poised menacingly over the remaining eye—and a low, gobbling sound from the prisoner which Grimes did not need to be told was supplication.
The ex-Minister talked. When she faltered she lost yet more plumage. That of newly shed blood was added to the other stinks in the hut. But she talked and Delamere translated. Mayhew recorded the interrogation.
At last, to Grimes’ great relief, it was over. He, with Delamere and Mayhew, left the hut. The air outside was warm, humid, heavy and, compared to the atmosphere inside a well managed starship, almost unbearably stuffy. Compared to that inside the hut it was like champagne after pond water.
“Happy now, Commodore Grimes?” asked Delamere.
“I’m not, My Lord. I thought that I should be fighting on the right side; now I’m not so sure. Was that cruelty necessary? There are other ways—drugs and the like—to get beings to talk.”
“The Hallicheki, male or female, are a cruel race, Grimes.”
“I still don’t have to like them.”
“As long as you do what your Letters of Marque entitle you to do, likes and dislikes don’t come into it.”
“I suppose not.”
As they approached Sister Sue Grimes saw that the water hoses had been withdrawn and were being reeled in. They were still connected to the other three ships. He saw, too, that officers from the two ITC tramps were talking with people from the privateers, looking up at the armament as they did so. It didn’t matter. Only one person knew what trajectory the fleet would follow once it was clear of the Kallan atmosphere—and that one person was Grimes. (And, he realized, Mayhew—but he and the telepath were working for the same boss.)
“Good luck, Commodore, and good hunting,” said Delamere.
The two shook hands briefly, without much enthusiasm on either side. The El Doradan clambered into his helicopter and clattered skyward.
“Well, Mr. Mayhew?” asked Grimes when they were back on board and sitting in the commodore’s day cabin.
“She spoke the truth, sir,” said Mayhew. “And Lord Delamere’s translation was a faithful one. The trade route between Kookadahl and New Maine seems the most promising. Much of the freight is carried in the ships of the Hegemony. From Kookadahl to New Maine there are tree pearls, mainly for transshipment to other human worlds. Quite precious, as you know. Attempts have been made to grow the pearl tree, from smuggled seeds, on other planets but they have never been successful.”
“Spare me the botany lesson, Mr. Mayhew.”
“Sorry, sir. Tree pearls, and ferancha skins and ingots of gold and platinum . . . The other way the pickings wouldn’t be so good. A horrid sort of fish meal that they make on New Maine for the Hallicheki market. Things like eels, pickled in brine. Too—and this is what suits our purpose—one of the Terran ships, the Commission’s Epsilon Draconis, selected to be a possible victim of piracy, is on that trade. Her assistant purser is really, like myself, a PCO from the Survey Service.”
“But will the Hallicheki institute a convoy system?” wondered Grimes aloud. “Will they arm their merchantmen?”
“I don’t think so,” Mayhew told him. “Or, at least, not at first. Even if there are spies for the Hegemony among the crews of the ITC tramps—which is extremely unlikely—it will take some time to organize convoys, to fit defensive armament and all the rest of it. The Hallicheki Admiralty will be at least as slow as ours when it comes to dedigitating.”
“You could be right,” conceded Grimes. “You probably are right.”
He dismissed Mayhew and sent for Magda Granadu.
***
She brought the coins and the book.
Grimes shook the ancient discs of silvery alloy in his cupped hands, feeling—as he had before—that he was standing at the focus of supernatural lines of force. It’s no more than superstition, he told himself. But . . .
The coins clinked between the concavities of his palms. He let them drop to the deck.
Two tails and and head . . . Yin . . .
Two heads and a tail . . . Yang . . .
Three tails . . . Yin . . .
Three heads . . . Yang . . .
Two tails and a head . . . Yin . . .
Three tails . . . Yin . . .
The trigrams: Chen, thunder, arousing, K’an, water, dangerous . . .
The hexagram: Hsieh, Escape . . .
“It all looks rather ominous,” said Grimes to the woman.
“It is,” she murmured as she consulted the book.
Escape. Advantage will be found to the south and west. If no further expeditions are called for, good fortune will come from returning home . . .
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” he said. “But the south and west? Austral and Port Woomera?”
“There’s more,” she told him. “There’s the commentary, and the lines . . .”
Here the trigram depicting danger is confronted by that depicting powerful arousal. By movement there is an escape from peril . . .
“A blinding glimpse of the obvious,” he said.
The lines . . .
Sixth in the third place. He travels in a carriage, with a porter to handle his baggage. Such behavior will tempt robbers to attack him. However firm and correct he may try to be, there will be cause for regret . . .
“But I’m supposed to be the robber,” he said.
Nine in the fourth place. Remove your toes. Friends in whom you can trust will then approach.
“Remove my toes, Magda?”
“The interpretation, Commodore,” she told him, “is that you remove hangers-on from your immediate circle, thus allowing true friends to approach.”
“Hangers-on?”
“I could name a few. Her Highness Wally, for one. And for all the use the Green Hornet is, she’s another. And . . .”
“That’ll do.”
Six in the sixth place. The prince looses an arrow from his bow and hits a falcon sitting on top of a high wall. The effect of this action will be in every way advantageous . . .
“A falcon,” said Grimes. “So I shall be taking some Hallicheki ships.”
“You should not take it literally, Commodore. According to the interpretation—he removes the most powerful of his enemies and escapes from their domination.”
“It could be worse,” he said. “Much worse.”
“But there’s still danger,” she told him.
Chapter 46
THROUGH THE WARPED CONTINUUM fell the four ships, their temporal precession rates unsynchronized, using their mass proximity indicators to maintain a rather ragged line astern formation.
Grimes ordered frequent drills. He had been able to stock up on missiles and ammunition for the quick-firing cannon on Kalla. (He had, too, been appalled at the price charged for these martial necessities by the Kallans.) He decided to let Captain O’Leary make the first capture. The sooner that Pride of Erin was on her way to El Dorado with her prize and out of the commodore’s hair the better. Captain MacWhirter would be the next to go. Spaceways Princess came in the barely competent category. Agatha’s Ark he would keep with him as long as possible. Then, when Sister Sue was a ship alone, it would be time to instigate the incident that would give the Survey Service the excuse to crack down on th
e privateers. He would be rather sorry, he admitted to himself, when the time came. He was enjoying being a commodore, with a small fleet under his command. He was looking forward to deploying his squadron, even though it would be against only unarmed merchantmen.
The ships maintained a Carlotti listening watch but broke radio silence rarely, and then transmitted only on very low power. Aboard the flagship was a plotting tank and in it Grimes was able to record the positions of merchant shipping traversing a sphere light-years in diameter. It was a fascinating exercise, requiring considerable navigational skill. Vessels outbound from New Maine to Kookadahl would not be worth bothering with. What value would a cargo of stinking fish paste be? But, at last, there was a ship, one of the Hegemony’s freighters, bound from Kookadahl to the Terran colony.
The squadron steered an intercepting trajectory.
Presumably the Hallicheki captain would have a mass proximity indicator in her control room. Possibly she would become perturbed to see an obvious formation heading toward her. She might assume that it was a squadron of Kallan warships, commerce raiders, and squawk for help.
In Sister Sue’s Main Carlotti Room old Mr. Stewart was standing by, watching his rotating Mobius Strip antennae, his dials and oscilloscopes. He had his orders. As soon as Krorkor—that was the name of the Hallicheki ship, learned from her transmissions in English to the Carlotti station at New Maine—began to send, a characteristic squiggle would appear in one of the screens. Immediately Stewart’s especially designed computer would match crests with troughs, troughs with crests. In the oscilloscope the wavy line of green luminosity would be replaced by one almost straight. From the speakers of any transceivers tuned to the Hallicheki ship would issue . . . nothing.
Grimes, now, rarely strayed from the control room, taking catnaps in his command chair, nibbling snacks and drinking coffee brought up to him by Magda, fouling the atmosphere with the acrid fumes from his vile pipe. He was reasonably happy when Williams or Venner had the watch, distinctly uneasy when Ms. Connellan was in charge. As fourth officer the Countess of Walshingham should have been sharing the chief officer’s watchkeeping duties but Grimes had told his mate, “Find some sort of job for that snooty bitch, Billy, that doesn’t bring her anywhere near Control!”
Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III Page 71