First Command (20 page)

“And what are
we
supposed to do, Captain?” asked Forsby.”Plant the Federation’s flag, or something?”

“Or something,” said Maggie Lazenby. “You can rest assured of that.”

Or something,
thought Grimes.

4

As far as Grimes knew
there was no real urgency—nonetheless he pushed
Seeker
along at her maximum safe velocity. This entailed acceleration slightly in excess of 1.5 G, with a temporal precession rate that did not quite, as Maggie Lazenby tartly put it, have all hands and the cook living backward. But Maggie had been born and reared on Arcadia, a relatively low gravity planet and, furthermore, disliked and distrusted the time-twisting Mannschenn Drive even more than the average spaceman or -woman. However, Lieutenant Brian Connery was an extremely competent engineer and well able to maintain the delicate balance between the ship’s main drive units without remotely endangering either the vessel or her personnel.

Even so, Grimes suffered.
Seeker
had a mixed crew—and a ship, as Grimes was fond of saying, is not a Sunday School outing. On past voyages it had been tacitly assumed that Maggie was the captain’s lady. On this voyage it was so assumed too—by everybody except one of the two people most intimately concerned. Grimes tried to play along with the assumption, but it was hopeless.

“I suppose,” he said bitterly, after she had strongly resisted a quite determined pass, “that you’re still hankering after that beefy lout, Brasidus or whatever his name was, on Sparta . . . .”

“No,” she told him, not quite truthfully. “No. It’s just that I can’t possibly join in your fun and games when I feel as though I weigh about fourteen times normal.”

“Only one and a half times,” he corrected her.

“It
feels
fourteen times. And it’s the psychological effect that inhibits me.”

Grimes slumped back in his chair, extending an arm to his open liquor cabinet.

“Lay off it!” she told him sharply.

“So I can’t drink now.”

“You will not drink now.” Her manner softened. “Don’t forget, John, that you’re responsible for the ship and everybody aboard her . . . .”

“Nothing can happen in deep space.”

“Can’t it?” Her fine eyebrows lifted slightly. “Can’t it? After some of the stories I’ve heard, and after some of the stories you’ve told me yourself . . .”

“Mphm.” He reached out again, but it was a half-hearted attempt.

“Things will work out, John,” she said earnestly. “They always do, one way or the other . . . .”

“Suppose it’s the wrong way?”

“You’ll survive. I’ll survive. We’ll survive.” She quoted, half seriously, “ ‘Men have died, and worms have eaten ‘em—but not for love . . .’”

“Where’s that from?” he asked, interested.

“Shakespeare. You trade school boys—you’re quite impossible. You know nothing—
nothing—
outside your own field.”

“I resent that,” said Grimes. “At the Academy we had to do a course in Twentieth Century fiction . . .

Again the eyebrows lifted. “You surprise me.” And then she demanded incredulously, “What sort of fiction?”

“It was rather specialized. Science fiction, as a matter of fact. Some of those old buggers made very good guesses. Most of them, though, were way off the beam. Even so, it was fascinating.”

“And still trade-school-oriented.”

He shrugged. “Have it your way, Maggie. We’re just Yahoos. But we do get our ships around.” He paused, then delivered his own quotation. “ ‘Transportation is civilization.’”

“All right,” she said at last. “Who wrote that?”

“Kipling.”

“Kipling—and science fiction?”

“You should catch up on your own reading some time . . . .” The telephone buzzed sharply. He got up and went rapidly to the handset.

She remarked sweetly,
“Nothing
can happen in deep space . . . .”

“Captain here,” said Grimes sharply.

Lieutenant Hayakawa’s reedy voice drifted into the day cabin. “Hayakawa, Captain sir . . . .”

“Yes, Mr. Hayakawa?”

“I . . . am not certain. But I think I have detected psionic radiation—not close, but not too far distant.”

“It is extremely unlikely,” Grimes said, “that we are the only ship in this sector of space.”

“I . . . I know, Captain. But—it is all vague, and the other telepath is maintaining a block . . . I . . . I tried at first to push through, and he knew that I was trying . . . . Then, suddenly, I relaxed . . . .”

Psionic judo . . .
thought Grimes.

“Yes . . . You could call it that . . . But there is somebody aboard that ship who is thinking all the time about . . . Morrowvia . . . .”

“Drongo Kane,” said Grimes.

“No, Captain. Not Drongo Kane. This is a . . . young mind. Immature . . . .”

“Mphm. Anything else?”

“Yes . . . . He is thinking, too, of somebody called Tabitha . . . .”

“And who’s
she
when she’s up and dressed?”

“She is not dressed . . . not as
he
remembers her.”

“This,” stated Maggie Lazenby, “is disgusting. I thought, in my innocence, that the Rhine Institute took a very dim view of any prying by its graduates into private thoughts. I was under the impression that telepathy was to be used
only
for instantaneous communications over astronomical distances.”

“If every Rhine Institute graduate who broke the Institute’s rules dropped dead right now,” Grimes told her, “there’d be one helluva shortage of trained telepaths. In any case, the Institute allows some latitude to those of its people who’re in the employ of a recognized law enforcement agency. The Federation’s Survey Service is one such. Conversely, the Institute recognizes the right of any telepath, no matter by whom employed, to put up a telepathic block.”

“I still don’t like it. Any of it.”

“Mr. Hayakawa,” said Grimes into the telephone, “you heard all that?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And what are
your
views?”

In reply came a thin chuckle, then, “I try to be loyal, sir. To the Institute, to the Service, to my shipmates, to my captain. Sometimes it is hard to be loyal to everybody at once. But, also, I try to be loyal to myself.”

“Putting it briefly,” said Maggie Lazenby, “you know on which side your bread is buttered.”

“Butter is an animal-derived food, Miss Commander, which I never touch.”

“Mr. Hayakawa,” asked Grimes, “do you hear anything further from the strange ship?”

“No, Captain. The block has been reestablished.”

“Let me know when you do hear anything more.” He punched buttons, then spoke again into the instrument. “Captain here, Mr. Timmins. Mr. Hayakawa has reported a vessel in our vicinity, apparently heading for Morrowvia. Have you picked anything up?”

“Just the normal commercial traffic, sir. A Shaara freighter,
Mmoorroomm,
Rob Roy to ZZrreemm.
Empress of Scotia,
Dunedin to Darnstadt.
Cutty Sark,
Carinthia to Lorn.
Schnauzer,
Siluria to Macbeth. And, according to Sector Plot, the following ships not fitted with Carlotti equipment:
Sundowner,
Aquarius to Faraway,
Rim Eland,
Elsinore to Ultimo. . . .”

“Thank you.” Then, speaking more to himself than to anybody else,
“Schnauzer . . .
Dog Star Line . . . cleared for Macbeth. . . . She might finish up there eventually . . . .”

He ignored Maggie’s questioning look and went to his playmaster. As its name implied, the device provided entertainment, visual and audio—but this one, a standard fitting in the captain’s quarters in all FSS ships, was also hooked up to the vessel’s encyclopedia bank. “Get me Lloyd’s Register,” he ordered. “I want details
on Schnauzer.
Sirian ownership. Dog Star Line . . . .”

The screen lit up, displaying the facsimile of a printed page.

Schnauzer
—a new ship, small, exceptionally fast for a merchantman, defensively armed. (The Dog Star Line had long insisted that its vessels were capable of conducting their own defense on some of the trade routes where piracy still persisted.)

“Mphm,” he grunted. Back at the telephone he ordered Timmins to send a coded message to the FSS agent at Port Llangowan, on Siluria, to ask the names of
Schnauzer
’s personnel when she cleared outward.

He strongly suspected that the master would be Captain Danzellan.

5

“Master, Roger Danzellan,”
the Federation’s man on Siluria replied eventually. “First mate, Oscar Eklund. Second mate, Francis Delamere. Third mate, Kathryn Daley. Chief engineer, Mannschenn Drive, Evan Jones. Chief engineer, Interplanetary Drives, Ian Mackay. Juniors, H. Smith, B. Ostrog, H. Singh. Purser/catering officer, Glynis Trent . . .” The message went on to say that Captain Danzellan and Mr. Delamere had both been among
Corgi’s
complement when she had last been at Port Llangowan. The last piece of information that it contained was that Francis Delamere was the nephew of the Dog Star Line’s general manager.

So—obviously, the Dog Star people were interested in Morrowvia. On receiving the report from
Corgi’s
master they had acted, and fast. A suitable ship had been shunted off her doubtlessly well-worn tramlines, and Danzellan had been transferred to her command. Probably he had not wished to have Delamere as one of his Officers—but Delamere had pull. Nepotism, as Grimes well knew, existed in the Survey Service. In a privately owned shipping company the climate would be even more suitable to its flourishing.

There was only one thing for Grimes to do—to pile on the Gs and the lumes, to get to Morrowvia before Danzellan. Fortunately, the merchant vessel was not fitted with a Mass Proximity Indicator—the Dog Star Line viewed new navigational aids with suspicion and never fitted them to its ships until their value was well proven. Sooner or later—sooner, Grimes hoped—
Seeker
would pick up
Schnauzer
in her screen and, shortly thereafter, would be able accurately to extrapolate her trajectory.
Schnauzer
would know nothing of
Seeker’s
whereabouts or presence.

And Drongo Kane in his
Southerly Buster?
A coded request for information to the Bug Queen brought the news that he had lifted from Port Fortinbras, his refit completed, with a General Clearance. Such clearances were rarely issued. This one must have cost Kane plenty.

Grimes was spending more and more time in his control room. There was nothing that he could
do—
but he wanted to be on hand when
Schnauzer
was picked up. At last she was there—or
something
was there—an almost infinitesimal spark in the screen, at extreme range. Grimes watched, concealing his impatience, while his navigator, hunched over the big globe of utter darkness, delicately manipulated the controls set into the base of the screen. Slowly a glowing filament was extruded from the center of the sphere—
Seeker
’ s track. And then, from that barely visible spark just within the screen’s limits, another filament was extended.

“Mphm,” grunted Grimes.

The display was informative. Relatively speaking,
Schnauzer
was on
Seeker’s
port beam, a little ahead of the beam actually, and steering a converging course. Morrowvia was out of range of the M.P.I., but there was little doubt that both ships were headed for the same destination.

“Have you an estimate of her speed yet, Mr. Pitcher?” asked Grimes.

“Only a rough one, sir,” replied the tall, thin, almost white-haired young man. “Give me an hour, and . . .”

“Extrapolate now, if you will.”

“Very good, sir.”

Two beads of light appeared, one on each filament. “Twenty-four hours,” said Pitcher. The range had closed slightly but the relative bearing was almost unaltered.”Forty-eight hours.” The bearing was
changing.
Seventy-two hours.”
Schnauzer
was slightly, very slightly, abaft
Seeker’s
beam. “Ninety-six hours.” There was no doubt about it. At the moment
Seeker
had the heels of the Dog Star ship.

Grimes was relieved. He did not want to drive his ship any faster. An almost continuous sense
of déjà vu
is an uncanny thing to have to live with. The temporal precession field had not yet reached a dangerous intensity, but it had been increased to a highly uncomfortable one. Already there was a certain confusion when orders were given and received. Had they been made? Had they been acted upon?

Grimes waited for Pitcher to answer his question, then realized that he had not yet asked it. “Assuming,” he said, “that your first estimate of
Schnauzer’s
speed is correct, how much time do we have on Morrowvia before she arrives?”

“Sixty hours Standard, sir. Almost exactly two Morrowvian days.”

Not long,
thought Grimes. Not long at all for what he had to do. And not knowing what he had to do didn’t help matters. He’d just have to make up the rules as he went along.

He said, “We’ll maintain a continuous watch on the M.P.I. from now on. Let me know at once if there’s any change in the situation, and if any more targets appear on the screen.”

“Drongo Kane?” asked Saul.

“Yes, Mr. Saul. Drongo Kane.”

The first lieutenant’s eyes and teeth were very white in his black face as he smiled mirthlessly. He said, his deep voice little more than a whisper, “I hope that Drongo Kane
is
bound for Morrowvia, Captain.”

“Why, Mr. Saul?” Grimes essayed a feeble jest. “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”

“Racial hatreds die very hard, Captain. To my people, for many, many years, ‘slaver’ has been an especially dirty word. Ganda, as you know, was colonized by my people . . . . And some hundreds of them, rescued by Kane’s
Southerly Buster
before their sun went nova, were sold by him to the Duke of Waldegren . . . .”

“As I said before,” Grimes told him, “they weren’t
sold.
They entered the duke’s service as indentured labor.”

“Even so, sir, I would like to meet Captain Drongo Kane.”

“It’s just as well,” said Grimes, “that he’s not a reincarnation of Oliver Cromwell—if he were, Mr. Connery would be after his blood too . . . .”