First Command (34 page)

“
Lode Cougar
was unlucky—as so many of the old gaussjammers were. A magnetic storm threw her thousands of light-years off course. Her navigators were unable to determine her position. Her pile was dead, and her only source of power was her diesel generators. The engineers kept these running—which meant that the ship’s biochemist was having to produce fuel for the jennies rather than food for the crew and passengers.

“But all they could do was to stand on and stand on, from likely star to likely star, pulling their belts ever tighter, finding that some suns had no planetary systems, that other suns had worlds in orbit about them utterly incapable of supporting any kind of life, let alone life as
we
know it.

“Almost inevitably there was a mutiny. It came about when a gang of starving passengers was caught foraging in the cargo spaces—
the refrigerated cargo spaces.
Is it cannibalism when you gorge yourself on fertilized human ova? A rather doubtful legal point . . . Anyhow, the master of the
Cougar
decided that it was cannibalism, and ordered the offenders shot. In the consequent flareup there was rather too much shooting and then an orgy of
real
cannibalism. . . . Things went from bad to worse after that, especially since the captain, his senior officers and most of the more responsible passengers were killed. Among the survivors was a professional genetic engineer, a Dr. Edward Morrow. He wrote despairingly in his private journal, ‘Will this voyage never end? Men and women are behaving like wild beasts. No, I must not say that, because my fellow passengers are worse than beasts. No decent animal could ever sink to such depths.’ That passage sticks in my memory. It explains so much. Sometime later he wrote that the ship was approaching yet another sun, and that Bastable, the liner’s third officer, hoped that it would run to a habitable planet. ‘If it does not,’ Morrow wrote, ‘that is the finish of us. Soon there will be only one survivor, gnawing the last shreds of human flesh from the last bone.’

“Lode Cougar
cautiously approached the world that was still to be named. It looked to be habitable. There was a meeting of crew and passengers—what was left of them—and Bastable told them that the landing would have to be made in high magnetic latitudes, for the obvious reason. The others told Bastable that the landing would have to be made in some region with a hospitable climate; nobody was in fit condition to undertake a long trek over ice fields. Bastable acceded to their demands, after a long argument. Had he not been the only man capable of handling the ship he would have been murdered there and then.

“He got her down, as we know. He got her down, in one piece. The experience shattered him. He went to his quarters immediately after the landing, got out the bottle of alcohol that he had been jealously hoarding, and drank himself into insensibility. In his weakened condition—like all the rest he was more than half starved—it killed him. Regarding his death, Morrow made more unkind remarks in his journal about the human race.

“With the very few survivors a colony of sorts could have been started, might possibly have survived. There were ten men—nine of them, including Morrow, passengers, one of them a junior engineer. There were six women, four of them young. Morrow persuaded his companions that they would have a far better chance if they had underpeople to work for them. The only ova that had survived the trouble were those of cats—but Morrow was expert in his profession. With the aid of the engineer he was able to set up incubators and then—all that was required was in the ship’s cargo—a fully equipped laboratory.

“He wrote again in his journal, ‘The first batch is progressing nicely, in spite of the acceleration. I feel . . . paternal. I ask myself, why should these, my children, be
underpeople!
I can make them more truly human than the hairless apes that may, one day, infest this new world . . . .’

“Regarding the deaths of his fellow
Lode Cougar
survivors he says very little. One suspects that he knew more than he wrote about the food poisoning that killed Mary Little, Sarah Grant and Delia James. One wonders if Douglass Carrick fell off that cliff, or was pushed. And how did Susan Pettifer and William Hume come to get drowned in the river? It is interesting to note, too, that Mary, Sarah, Delia and Susan were the potential child bearers. And, as well as working in his laboratory, Morrow set up a still and soon had it in operation, turning out a very potent liquor from a fermented mash of berries and wild grain. The surviving men and the two remaining women didn’t care much then what happened, and as Morrow had succeeded in activating a team of robots from the cargo he was independent of them.

“He didn’t bother to kill them as his first batch of ‘children’ was growing to forced maturity. He just let them die—or be killed by wild animals when they went out hunting for meat.”

“Yes,” said Kane. “I know all that. The Morrowvians are non-citizens.”

“I haven’t finished yet, Captain Kane. There was something of the Pygmalion in Morrow—as there must have been in quite a few of those genetic engineers. He fell in love with one of his own creations—his Galatea. He even named her Galatea.”

“Touching . . .” commented Kane.

“Yes, wasn’t it? And he married her; he’d decided that his people couldn’t live in a state of complete anarchy, and must have a few, necessary laws. So he made the union legal.”

“Uncommonly decent of him,” sneered Kane.

“But that didn’t stop him from having quite a few concubines on the side . . . .”

“So the Morrowvian idol had his feet of clay.”

“Don’t we all, Captain, don’t we all?”

“So the records prove that true humans can have sexual relations with these underpeople. I’d found that out long before I saw the precious records. Judging by the stink in here, Commander Grimes has found it out too.”

“John! What have you been doing? Don’t tell me that you and Maya . . .”

“I won’t tell you if you tell me not to.”

“So you did. I hope you enjoyed it, that’s all.”

Kane laughed patronizingly. “So I’ll leave you people to your family squabbles, and get back to my ship and send my report off to Lindisfarne. A very good day to you all.”

“Wait!” Maggie snapped sharply. “I haven’t finished yet.”

“I don’t think that anything further you can say will change my mind. Underpeople are underpeople. Underpeople are property. Period.”

“There is a ruling,” said Maggie slowly, “that any people capable of fertile union with true people must, themselves, be considered true people.”

“And so, to coin a phrase, what?”

“Morrow’s unions were fertile.”

“So he says. How many glorified tomcats were sneaking into his wife’s or his popsies’ beds while he was elsewhere?”

“The Morrow strain is strongest in North Australia, among the people who bear his name.”

“What evidence is there?”

“The Morrows are a little more ‘human’ than the other Morrowvians. Very few of their women have supplementary nipples. Their general outlook is more ‘human’—as you know yourself. That show you put on for Janine with the saluting cannon. . . . And the show she put on for us.”

“Yeah. I grant you that. But I think the words of the ruling you mentioned are, ‘a fertile,
natural
union.’ Old Doc Morrow was a genetic engineer. I’ve heard it said that those boys could crossbreed an ant and an elephant. . . . I’m sorry. I’ m really sorry for you all. You’ve tried hard, but by the time the Federation reaches a decision I’ll have made my pile.”

“I,” said Danzellan, “can supply more proof for Commander Lazenby’s arguments.”

“You, Captain? You’re no biologist, you’re just a shipmaster like myself.”

“Even so . . . .” The master of
Schnauzer
was obviously finding something highly amusing. “Even so. . . . You know, it’s just over two hundred and twenty days that I first landed on Morrowvia—and that’s about two hundred and seventy days Standard . . . .”

“I can do sums in my head as well as you can.”

“I am sure you can, Captain Kane. And are you married? Have you a family?”

“No—to both questions.”

“It doesn’t matter. Well, on the occasion of my first visit, my second officer, Mr. Delamere, got Tabitha, the daughter of the Queen of Melbourne, into trouble, as the saying goes. The young idiot should have taken his contraceptive shots before he started playing around, of course. He’s really smitten with her, and managed to get himself appointed to
Schnauzer,
rather against my wishes. Now he wants to make an honest woman of the girl—once again, as the saying goes—but Lilian, Tabitha’s mother, will not allow him to marry her unless he complies with local law. This means that he will have to change his name to Morrow, which he does not want to do. He will, of course. The Dog Star Line wants a resident agent on this planet. And even though the queenships are not hereditary in theory they usually are in practice.”

“What are you driveling about?” asked Kane crudely.

Danzellan flushed. He said stiffly, “Tabitha has presented young Delamere with a son.”

“And how many local boyfriends has she had?” demanded Kane.

“She says that she has none. Furthermore, I have seen the baby. All the Morrowvians have short noses—except this one, who has a long nose, like his father. The resemblance is remarkable . . . .”

Kane refused to concede defeat.

“Paternity tests . . .” he mumbled.

“I can soon arrange those, Captain,” Grimes told him. “Don’t forget that I have my own biologists, as well as other scientists.” He turned to Danzellan. “Did Mr. Delamere come with you, Captain? Call him up, and we’ll wet the baby’s head!”

“You can break a bottle of champagne over it!” growled Kane, pushing his way out of the day cabin, brushing past Maya who was just coming in, and complaining, “I’m
still
hungry, John. They say that all the ice cream is finished . . . .”

“Go on,” said Maggie. “Do the decent thing. Buy the girl a popsicle to show her how much you love her.”

“I’ll have some more ice cream made, Maya,” promised Grimes, looking at her with combined pity and irritation, noticing that Danzellan was regarding her with condescending amusement.

The Morrowvians, thanks to the long-dead Morrow’s skill—he had even imposed the right gestation period on his people—were safe from Drongo Kane and his like, but had no defenses against Big Business as represented by the Dog Star Line.

Or had they?

Grimes suspected that they, with their innate feline charm combined with selfishness, would not do at all badly in the years to come.

THE BIG
BLACK MARK

DEDICATION:

To William Bligh

Last Chance

“Now, Grimes,
I’m going to be frank,” said the admiral. “There are many people in the Service who don’t like you, and who did not at all approve of your last two promotions. I didn’t altogether approve of them myself, come to that, although I do admit that you possess one attribute that might, in the fullness of time, carry you to flag rank. You’re lucky, Grimes. You could fall into a cesspit and come out not only smelling of roses but with the Shaara Crown Jewels clutched in your hot little hands. You’ve done it, figuratively, more than once. But I only hope that I’m not around when your luck runs out!”

“You mean, sir,” asked Grimes, “that this is some sort of last chance ?”

“You said it, commander.
You
said it. . . .”

Chapter 1

Commander John Grimes,
Federation Survey Service, should have been happy.

Rather to his surprise he had been promoted on his return, in the Census Ship
Seeker,
to Lindisfarne Base. He now wore three new, gleaming stripes of gold braid on his shoulder boards instead of the old, tarnished two and a half. Scrambled egg—the stylized comets worked in gold thread—now adorned the peak of his cap. And not only had he been promoted, from lieutenant commander to commander, he had been appointed to the command of a much bigger ship.

He should have been happy, but he was not.

The vessel, to begin with, was not a warship, although she did mount some armament. Grimes had served in real warships only as a junior officer, and not at all after he had reached the rank of lieutenant. As such he had commanded a Serpent Class courier, a little ship with a small crew, hardly better than a spacegoing mail van. Then, as a lieutenant commander, he had been captain of
Seeker,
and in her had been lucky enough to stumble upon not one, but two Lost Colonies. It was to this luck that he owed his promotion; normally it was the officers in the fighting ships, with the occasional actions in which to distinguish themselves, who climbed most rapidly up the ladder of rank.

Now he was captain of
Discovery,
another Census Ship.

And what a ship!

To begin with, she was old.

She was not only old; she had been badly neglected.

She had been badly neglected, and her personnel, who seemed to be permanently attached to her, were not the sort of people to look after any ship well. Grimes, looking down the list of officers before he joined the vessel, had recognized several names. If the Bureau of Appointments had really tried to assemble a collection of prize malcontents inside one hapless hull they could not have done better.

Or worse.

Lieutenant Commander Brabham was the first lieutenant. He was some ten years older than Grimes, but he would never get past his present rank. He had been guilty of quite a few Survey Service crimes. (Grimes, too, had often been so guilty—but Grimes’s luck was notorious.) He was reputed to carry an outsize chip on his shoulder. Grimes had never been shipmates with him, but he had heard about him.

Lieutenant Commander (E) MacMorris was chief engineer. Regarding him it had been said, in Grimes’s hearing, “Whoever gave that uncouth mechanic a commission should have his head examined!” Grimes did not know him personally. Yet.

Lieutenant (S) Russell was the paymaster. Perhaps “pay-mistress” would have been a more correct designation. Ellen Russell had been one of the first female officers of the Supply Branch actually to serve aboard a ship of the Survey Service. From the very beginning she had succeeded in antagonizing her male superiors. She was known—not affectionately—as Vinegar Nell. Grimes had, once, been shipmates with her. For some reason or other she had called him an insufferable puppy.