Ride the Star Winds (81 page)

It would all have been very amusing, but there were far too many cries of approval and support from both Government and Opposition benches—especially when the Honorable Member, after having divulged the information that
Flying Cloud
was already airborne, demanded that the Government act
now
.

Ralph, as he listened, looked worried. He said, “Miss Wayne, I think that our receiver has broken down, hasn’t it?”

She grinned back at him. “It has. Shall I pull a fuse?”

“Don’t bother,” he said. “If we get a direct order from the commodore to return to port we shall do so, I suppose. Otherwise . . .”

He had handed over the controls to Doc Jenkins and myself; I was steering and Doc was functioning, not too inefficiently, as altitude coxswain. We were rising in a tight spiral, and below us was a snowy, almost featureless field of altocumulus. Above us was the sky, clear and dark, with the Great Lens of the Galaxy already visible although the sun had yet to set. So far all had gone well and smoothly, although it was obvious that in order to break free of the atmosphere we should have to valve more ballast.

Suddenly Sandra cried out, pointing downwards.

We all looked through the transparent deck of the control room and saw that something small and black had broken through the overcast. A tiny triangle it was, a dart, rather, and at its base was a streak of blue fire bright even against the gleaming whiteness of the cloud. Ralph managed to bring the big, mounted binoculars to bear.

“Air Force markings,” he muttered. “One of the rocket fighters.”

Somebody muttered something about “bloody flyboys.”

“Better have the transceiver working,” ordered Ralph.

Hard on his words came a voice from the RT. “Officer commanding Defense Wing 7 to master of
Flying Cloud
. Return at once to your berth. Return at once to your berth.”

“Master of
Flying Cloud
to unidentified aircraft,” replied Ralph coldly. “Your message received.”

The plane was closer now, gaining on us rapidly. I watched it until a sharp reprimand from Ralph caused me to return my attention to the steering. But I could still listen, and I heard the airman say, “Return at once to your berth. That is an order.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I shall be obliged to shoot you down.” This was followed by a rather unpleasant chuckle. “After all, Captain, you’re a big target and a slow one.”

“And if you do shoot us down,” said Ralph reasonably, “what then? We are liable to fall anywhere. And you know that the anti-iron that we carry makes us an atomic bomb far more powerful than any fission or fusion device ever exploded by man to date.” He covered the microphone with his hand, remarking, “That’s given him something to think about. But he can’t shoot us down, anyhow. If he punctures the ballast tanks or knocks a few pieces off the hull we lose our negative lift . . . and if he should rupture the casing around the anti-iron . . .”

“What then?” asked Martha Wayne.

“It’ll be the last thing he’ll ever do—and the last thing that we shall ever experience.”

“He’s getting bloody close,” grumbled Doc. “I can see the rockets mounted on his wings, and what look like a couple of cannon—”

“Comply with my orders!” barked the voice from the RT.

“Sandra,” said Ralph quietly, “stand by the ballast controls.”

“I give you ten seconds,” we heard. “I have all the latest reports and forecasts. If I shoot you down here you will fall somewhere inside the ice cap. There’s no risk of your dropping where you’ll do any damage. Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

“Jettison,” ordered Ralph quietly.

“Valves open,” reported Sandra.

Looking down, I could see the water gushing from our exhausts—a steady stream that thinned to a fine spray as it fell. I could see, too, the deadly black shape, the spearhead on its shaft of fire that was driving straight for our belly. And I saw the twinkle of flame at the gun muzzles as the automatic cannon opened up, the tracer that arched towards us with deceptive laziness. So he wasn’t using his air-to-air missiles, that was something to be thankful for. He wasn’t using his air-to-air missiles—yet.

The ship shuddered—and I realized, dimly, that we had been hit. There was an alarm bell shrilling somewhere, there was the thin, high scream of escaping atmosphere. There was the thudding of airtight doors slamming shut and, before the fans stopped, there was the acrid reek of high explosive drifting through the ducts. Then, with incredible swiftness, the aircraft was falling away from us, diminishing to the merest speck against the gleaming expanse of cloud. She belatedly fired her rockets, but they couldn’t reach us now. We were up and clear, hurled into the interstellar emptiness by our anti-gravity. We were up and clear, and already Lorn was no more than a great ball beneath us, a pearly sphere glowing against the blackness of space. We were up and clear and outward bound—but until we could do something about getting the ship under control we were no more than a derelict.

Things could have been worse.

Nobody was injured, although Peggy had been obliged to scramble fast into a spacesuit. There were several bad punctures in the pressure hull, but these could be patched. There was a consignment of steel plates in our cargo, and our use of them in this emergency would be covered. The loss of atmosphere could be made good from our reserve bottles. It was unfortunate that we were now in a condition of positive buoyancy rather than the neutral buoyancy that Ralph had planned for the voyage—but, he assured us, he had already worked out a landing technique for use in such circumstances. (Whether or not it would prove practicable we still had to find out.)

So, clad in space armor and armed with welding torches, Peggy and I turned to render the ship airtight once more. As mate I was in official charge of repairs, but I soon realized that my actual status was that of welder’s helper. It was Peggy Simmons who did most of the work. A tool in her hands was an extension of her body—or, even, an extension of her personality. She stitched metal to metal with the delicate precision that an ancestor of hers might have displayed with needle, thread and fine fabric.

I watched her with something akin to envy—and it was more than her manual dexterity that I envied. She had something that occupied all her attention. I had not. Although it was foolish, every now and again I had to throw back the welder’s mask and look about me. I was far from happy. This was not the first time that I had been outside in deep space, but it was the first time that I had been outside on the Rim. It was the
emptiness
that was so frightening. There was our sun, and there was Lorn (and it seemed to me that they were diminishing visibly as I watched) and there was the distant, dim-glowing Galactic Lens—and there was
nothing
. We were drifting towards the edge of the dark in a crippled ship, and we should never (I thought) make it back to warmth and comfort and security.

I heard Peggy’s satisfied grunt in my helmet phones and wrenched my eyes away from the horrid fascination of the ultimate emptiness. She had finished the last piece of welding, I saw, and she straightened up with a loud sigh. She stood there, anchored by the magnetic soles of her boots to the hull, a most unfeminine figure in her bulky suit. She reached out to me, and the metallic fingers of her glove grated on my shoulder plate. She pulled me to her, touched her helmet to mine. I heard her whisper, “Switch off.”

I didn’t understand what she wanted at first—and then, after the third repetition, nudged the switch of my suit radio with my chin. She said, her voice faint and barely audible, “Do you think that this will make any difference?”

“Of course,” I assured her. “We can bring pressure up to normal throughout the ship now.”

“I didn’t mean
that!
” she exclaimed indignantly.

“Then what the hell did you mean?” I demanded.

“Do you think that this will make any difference to Ralph’s—the captain’s—attitude towards me? After all, the other two women weren’t much use, were they?”

“Neither was I,” I admitted sourly.

“But you’re a man.” She paused. “Seriously, Peter, do you think that this repair job will help? With Ralph, I mean . . .”

“Seriously, Peggy,” I told her, “it’s time that we were getting back inside. The others are probably watching us and wondering what the hell we’re playing at.” I added, “There’s never been a case of seduction in hard vacuum yet—but there’s always a first time for everything.”

“Don’t be funny!” she flared. Then, her voice softening, “There’s an old saying: The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. It could be that the way to a space captain’s heart is through his ship.”

“Could be,” I admitted. “Could be. But Ralph won’t love either of us for dawdling out here when he’s itching to clap on sail. Come on, let’s report that the job’s finished and get back in.” I switched on my suit radio again.

Before I could speak I heard Ralph’s voice. Even the tinny quality of the helmet phones couldn’t disguise his bad temper. “What the hell do you two think you’re doing? Standing there hand in hand, admiring the scenery . . . Mr. Malcom, are the repairs finished? If so, report at once and then return inboard.”

“Repairs completed, sir,” I said.

“Then let’s not waste any more time,” suggested Ralph coldly.

We didn’t waste any more time. Carefully, sliding our feet over the metal skin, we inched towards the open airlock valve. Peggy went in first and I handed the tools and the unused materials to her. I followed her into the little compartment, and I was pleased when the door slid shut, cutting out the sight of the black emptiness.

The needle on the illuminated dial quivered and then jerked abruptly to the ship’s working pressure.

We were all of us in the control room—all save Peggy, who had been ordered, somewhat brusquely, to look after her motors. From our sharp prow the long, telescopic must have already been protruded, the metal spar on the end of which was mounted the TV camera. On the big screen we could see the image of
Flying Cloud
as she appeared from ahead. I thought that it was a pity that we did not have other cameras that would allow us to see her in profile, to appreciate the gleaming slenderness of her.

“The first problem,” said Ralph, in his best lecture-room manner, “is to swing the ship. As you are all, no doubt, aware, we possess no gyroscopes. Even so, such devices are not essential. The master of a windjammer had no gyroscopes to aid him in setting and steering a course . . .”

“He had a rudder,” I said, “acting upon and acted upon by the fluid medium through which his hull progressed.”

Ralph glared at me. “A resourceful windjammer master,” he stated flatly, “was not utterly dependent upon his rudder. Bear in mind the fact that his ship was not, repeat not, a submarine and, therefore, moved through no less than two fluid mediums, air and water. His rudder, as you have been so good to tell us, acted upon and was acted upon by the water in which it was immersed. But his sails acted upon and were acted upon by the air.” He paused for breath. “We, in this vessel, may consider light a fluid medium. Now, if you will observe carefully . . .”

We observed. We watched Ralph’s capable hands playing over the control panel. We watched the TV screen. We saw the spars extend from the hull so that the ship, briefly, had the appearance of some spherical, spiny monster. And then the roller reefing gear came into play and the sails were unfurled—on one side a dazzling white, on the other jet black. We could feel the gentle centrifugal force as the ship turned about her short axis, bringing the Lorn sun dead astern.

Then spars rotated and, as far as that camera mounted at the end of its telescopic mast was concerned, the sails were invisible. Their white surfaces were all presented to the Lorn sun, to the steady photon gale. We were running free, racing before the interstellar wind.

I realized that Ralph was singing softly:

“Way, hey, and up she rises,

Way, hey, and up she rises,

Way, hey, and up she rises . . .

Early in the morning!”

Chapter 12

So there we were,
bowling along under full sail, running the easting down. In some ways the Erikson drive was a vast improvement over the Mannschenn Drive. There was not that continuous high whine of the ever-precessing gyroscopes, there was not that uneasy feeling of
déjà vu
that is a side effect of the Mannschenn Drive’s temporal precession field. Too, we could look out of the control room and see a reasonable picture of the Universe as it is and not, in the case of the Galactic Lens, something like a Klein bottle fabricated by a drunken glass blower.

Flying Cloud
was an easy ship, once the course had been set, once she was running free before the photon gale. She was an easy ship—as a ship, as an assemblage of steel and plastic and fissioning uranium. But a ship is more than the metals and chemicals that have gone into her construction. In the final analysis it is the crew that make the ship—and
Flying Cloud
was not happy.

It was the strong element of sexual jealousy that was the trouble. I did my best to keep my own yardarm clear, but I could observe—and feel jealous myself. It was obvious that Sandra was Captain’s lady. It was obvious, too, that both Martha Wayne and Peggy Simmons had aspired to that position and that both were jealous. And Doc Jenkins couldn’t hide the fact, for all his cynicism, that he would have welcomed a roll in the hay with Martha. The only one who was really amused by it all was Smethwick. He drifted into the Control Room during my watch and said, “Ours is a happy ship, ours is.”

“Are you snooping?” I demanded sharply. “If you are, Claude, I’ll see to it, personally, that you’re booted out of the service.”

He looked hurt. “No, I’m not snooping. Apart from the regulations, it’s a thing I wouldn’t dream of doing. But even you must be sensitive to the atmosphere, and you’re not a telepath.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I am sensitive.” I offered him a cigarette, took and lit one myself. “But what’s new? Anything?”