First Command (51 page)

“Get on the blower to the observatory, Clarry,” ordered the announcer. “Tell the lazy bludgers ter get their useless radio telescope on the job.” Then, facing his audience—those on the planet and those in space—”Orright, Captain whatever-yer-name-is. It’s over ter you again.” He grinned. “At least you’ve saved me the trouble o’ readin’ the bloody news!”

Grimes reappeared in the screen, holding another card. He read, “Can you understand me? Over.”

The announcer came back. “Yair—though Matilda knows where yer learned yer spellin’. An’ yer sound like you’ve a plum in yer mouf.” He mimicked Grimes’s way of speaking. “And whom have I the honor of addressing, Captain, sir?” He grinned again, quite convincingly. “I used to act in historical plays before I was mug enough to take this job. Over.”

“My name is Grimes, Commander Grimes of the Federation Survey Service. I am, as I’ve already told you, captain of the Survey Ship
Discovery.
I was ordered to make a search for Lost Colonies. Over.”

“An’ you’ve sure found one, ain’t yer? We’re lorst orright. An’ we thought we were goin’ ter stay that way. Hold on a sec, will yer? Clarry’s got the gen from the observatory.”

The unseen Clarry’s voice came from the speaker. “T’aint a hoax, Don. The bastards say there is somethin’ up there, where somethin’ shouldn’t be.”

“So yer for real, Commander Grimes. Ain’t yer supposed ter say, ‘Take me to yer leader’? Over.”

“Take me to your leader,” said Grimes, deadpan. “Over.”

“Hold yer horses, Skip. This station’ll be goin’ up in flames at any tick o’ the dock, the way the bleedin’ phones are runnin’ hot. Her Ladyship’s on the way ter the studio now, s’matter o’ fact. Over.”

“Her Ladyship? Over.”

“The mayor o’ Paddo, no less. Or Paddington, as I s’pose you’d call our capital. Here she is now.”

The announcer bowed, backed away from the camera at his end. He was replaced by a tall, ample woman, silvery haired and with what seemed to be the universal deep tan. She was undeniably handsome, and on her the extremely short dress with its gay floral pattern did not look incongruous—and neither, somehow, did the ornate gold chain that depended from her neck. She said—and even the accent could not entirely ruin her deep contralto—“‘Ow yer doin’, Skip? Orright?” Then, turning to address the announcer, do I say now, Don? ‘Over,’ ain’t it? Orright. Over.”

“I’m honored to meet you, Your Ladyship. Over.”

“Don’t be so bloody formal, Skipper. I’m Mavis to me mates—an’ any bastard who’s come all the way from Earth’s a mate o’ mine. When are yer comin’ down ter meet us proper? Do yer have ter land at one o’ the magnetic poles same as
Lode Wallaby
did? Or do yer use rockets? If yer do, it’ll have ter be someplace where yer won’t start a bushfire. Wherever it is, there’ll be a red carpet out for yer. Even at the bloody North Pole.” Then, as an afterthought, “Over.”

“I have rocket drive,” said Grimes, “but I won’t be using it. My main drive, for sub-light speeds, is the inertial drive. No fireworks. So I can put down on any level surface firm enough to bear my weight. Over.”

“You don’t look all that fat ter me, Skip. But you bastards are all the same, ain’t yer? No matter what yer ship is, it’s
I
,
I
,
I
all the time.” She grinned whitely. “But I guess the Bradman Oval’ll take the weight o’ that scow o’ yours. Havin’ you there’ll rather bugger the current test series but the landin’ o’ the first ship from Earth is more important than cricket. Never cared for the game me self, anyhow. Over.”

“I’ll make it the Bradman Oval, then, Your . . . sorry. Mavis. Once we get some less complicated radio telephone system set up your technicians can go into a huddle with mine. I’d like a radio beacon to home on, and all the rest of it.” He paused, then went on. “Forgive me if I’m giving offense, but do you speak for your own city only, or for the whole planet? Over.”

“I speak for me own city-state. The other mayors speak for their city-states. An’ it so happens that at the moment I
am
President of the Council of Mayors. So I do speak for Botany Bay. That do yer, Skip? Over.”

“That does me, Mavis. And now, shall we leave all the sordid details to our technicians? Over.”

“ ‘Fraid we have to, Skip. I can’t change a bloody fuse, me self. Be seein’ yer. Over.”

“Be seeing you,” promised Grimes.

Chapter 25

Grimes had several more conversations
with the mayor of Paddington before the landing of
Discovery.
The radio experts on the planet and in the ship had not taken long to set up a satisfactory two-way service, and when this was not being used for the exchange of technical information the spaceship’s crew was continuously treated to a planetary travelogue. Botany Bay was a
good
world, of that there could be no doubt. There was neither overpopulation nor pollution. There was industry, of course, highly automated—but the main power sources were the huge solar energy screens set up in what would have otherwise been useless desert areas, and wind- and water-drive turbo-generators. There were oil wells and coal mines—but the fossil fuels merely supplied useful chemicals. The only use of radioactives was in medicine. Airships, great and small, plied the skies, driven by battery-powered motors, although there were a few jets, their gas turbines burning a hydrogen-oxygen mixture. On the wide seas the sailing vessel was the commonest form of ship—schooners mainly, with auxiliary engines and with automation replacing man-power. Efficient monorail systems crisscrossed the continents—but the roads, surprisingly, seemed to be little more than dirt tracks. There was a reason for this, the spacemen soon discovered.
Lode Wallaby
had carried among other livestock the fertilized ova of horses—and horses were used extensively for private transport, for short journeys.

Botany Bay, in the main, enjoyed an almost perfect climate, its continents being little more than large islands, the oceans exercising a tempering effect from the tropics to the poles. The climate had not been so good when the first colonists landed, destructive hurricanes being all too common. Now, of course, there was a planetwide weather watch, and fast aircraft could be dispatched at short notice to a developing storm center to drop anti-thermal bombs.

Botany Bay, throughout, could boast of almost unspoiled scenery. In all industrial establishments ugliness had been avoided. In the cities there had been a deliberate revival of architectural styles long vanished, except in isolated cases, from Earth. Paddington, for example, was a greatly enlarged, idealized version of the Terran Paddington, maintained as a historical curiosity in the heart of sprawling Sydney. There were the narrow, winding streets, tree lined, and the terrace houses, none higher than three stories, each with its balconies ornamented by metal railings cast in intricate floral designs. It was all so archaic, charmingly so. Grimes remembered a party to which he had been invited in the original Paddington. The host, when accused of living in a self-consciously ancient part of Sydney, had replied, “We Australians don’t have much history—but, by any deity you care to name, we make the most of what we have got!”

This Paddington, the Botany Bay Paddington, was a city, not a mere inner suburb. It stood on the western shore of the great, natural harbor called Port Jackson. Its eastern streets ran down to the harbor beaches. To the west of it was the airport, and also the Bradman Oval. To the south and east were the port facilities for surface shipping. To the north were The Heads, the relatively narrow entrance to the harbor. And on the north coast were the high cliffs, with bays and more sandy beaches.

Grimes studied the aerial view of the city and its environs that was being transmitted to him. He could foresee no difficulties in making a landing. He would keep well to the west on his way down, so that if, in the event of a breakdown of his inertial drive, he were obliged to use the auxiliary reaction drive he would do no damage to the city.

He had wanted to adhere to the standard practice of the Survey Service and bring the ship down at dawn, but the mayor would not agree to this. “Come off it, Skip!” she remonstrated. “I don’t like gettin’ up at Matilda-less hours, even if you do! Wot’s wrong wif ten hundred? The streets’ll be aired by then, an’ everybody’!! be up an’ dressed. We want ter
see
yer comin’ down. We don’t want ter be starin’ up inter the gloom ter watch somethin’ droppin’ down outa the sky that could be no more than a solid-lookin’ cloud wif a few lights hung on it!”

Grimes was obliged to agree. As a Survey Service captain he was supposed to make friends as well as to influence people. Meanwhile, as a preliminary measure, he had certain of the ship’s clocks adjusted to synchronize with Paddington Local Time. Ten hundred hours Mavis had said, and he was determined that the pads of his tripedal landing gear would touch the turf of the Oval at precisely that time.

It was a fine, clear morning when
Discovery
dropped down through the atmosphere. Her inertial drive was working sweetly, but inevitably noisily, and Grimes wondered what the colonists would be thinking of the irregular beat of his engines, the loud, mechanical clangor driving down from above. Their own machines—with the exception of the few jet planes—were so silent. In the periscope screen the large island, the continent that had been named New Australia, showed in its entirety. Its outline was not dissimilar to that of the original Australia, although there was no Tasmania, and Port Jackson was on the north and not the east coast. The coastal fringe was green, but inland there were large desert areas, the sites of the solar power stations.

Grimes glanced at the control room clock, which was now keeping local time. There was time to spare; he could afford to take things easily.

“Target,” announced Tangye. “Bearing 020, range fifty. Closing.”

“Altitude?” asked Grimes.

“It’s matching altitude with us, sir.”

“It can’t be one of the airships this high,” said Grimes. He added nastily, “And, anyhow, we don’t have Major Swinton at fire control this time.”

He turned away from his console to look out of the viewports on the bearing indicated. Yes, there the thing was, a silvery speck, but expanding, closing fast.

“What if they
are
hostile, Captain?” asked Brabham. “We’re a sitting duck.”

“
If
they are hostile,”-Grimes told him, “we’ll give them the privilege of firing the first shot.”

“It’s one of their jets,” said Tangye.

“So it is,” agreed Grimes. “So it is. They’re doing the right thing; laying on an escort.”

The aircraft closed them rapidly, circled them in a slowly descending spiral. It was, obviously, a passenger plane, with swept-back wings. Grimes could see men in the forward control cabin. They waved. He waved back, then returned his attention to handling the ship. He hoped that the jet pilot would not attempt to approach too close.

He could see Port Jackson plainly enough in the screen now, a great irregular bite out of the northern coastline. He could see the golden beaches with a cream of surf outlining them and—very small, a mere, crawling insect—one of the big schooners standing in toward The Heads. And there were two more targets announced by the radar-watching Tangye—airships this time, huge brutes with the sunlight reflected dazzlingly from their metal skins.

A familiar voice came from the speaker of the control room transceiver. “That’s a noisy bitch yer’ve got there, Skip. Sounds like umpteen tons of old tin cans fallin’ downstairs. Just as well yer didn’t come in at sparrer fart.”

“Do you have sparrows here?” asked Grimes interestedly.

“Nah. Not
reel
sparrers. But it’s what we call one o’ the native birds. Don’t know how it got by before it had human bein’s ter bludge on.”

“Mphm. Excuse me, Mavis, but I’d like to concentrate on my pilotage now.”

“That’s what me late husband useter say. He was skipper o’ one o’ the coastal schooners. Oh, well, I can take a hint.”

Grimes could see the city now—red roofs and gray, a few towers of pseudo-Gothic appearance. He could see the airport, with one big dirigible at its mooring mast like an oversized wind sock. And there, just beyond it, was the Bradman Oval, a darkly green recreation area with spectators’ stands around it and, he was pleased to note, a triangle of red flashing lights, bright even in the general brightness of the morning. The radio beacon had been set up as requested by Grimes, but he preferred to use visual aids whenever possible.

The Oval expanded to fill the screen. The stands, Grimes saw, were crowded. He thought sourly,
These bastards have more faith in my innies than I do.
If the inertial drive were to break down, necessitating the use of the emergency reaction drive, there would be a shocking tragedy. But the beat of the engines still sounded healthy enough. He applied a touch of lateral thrust, brought the three beacons into the center of the screen. He looked at the clock: 0953. He was coming down just a little too fast. A slight, very slight increase of vertical thrust. The figures on the face of the radar altimeter nickered down in slightly slower succession.

That should do it,
thought Grimes smugly.

Eleven . . . ten . . . nine . ..

And, on the clock, 0955.

Seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one. . .
0959.

Gently, gently,
thought Grimes.

Zero!

And, on the clock, the sweep second hand jumped to the same numeral.

The ship groaned and shuddered as her weight came onto the shock absorbers, and silence fell like a blow when the inertial drive was shut down. But there was another noise, a tumult that Grimes at first could not identify. Then he realized that it was cheering, noisy cheering, loud enough to be heard even inside the buttoned-up ship. And, faintly, there was the noise of a band. “Waltzing Matilda” (of course).

He looked out of the port at the waving crowds, at the blue flags, with their Union Jacks and Southern Crosses, flying from every mast around the Oval.

“So yer made it, Skip,” the mayor’s voice issued from the speaker. “Bang on time, too! Welcome to Botany Bay! Welcome to Paddo!”