Ride the Star Winds (84 page)

But I hadn’t the guts.

I went, instead, to the companionway leading down to the next deck, to the compartment in which the subordinate officers were housed. From Martha’s cabin drifted the faint strains of music—or of what she called music, a recording of one of Krashenko’s atonal symphonies. So she was alone, which meant that Peggy would be alone too. (Peggy made no secret of the fact that she liked something “with a bit of tune to it.”) Doc Jenkins, as acting second mate, would be on watch. And Claude Smethwick almost certainly would be sending his thoughts ranging across the lightyears, gossiping with his fellow telepaths aboard distant ships and on distant worlds.

I tapped at Peggy’s door and heard her call out what I thought was an invitation to enter.

I stepped into the cabin—then started to back out. She was prone on her bunk, absorbing the radiation of a sunlamp. She was wearing a pair of dark glasses and a thoughtful expression.

I stammered, “I’m sorry. I thought you said to come in.”

She said, “I did say come in. Shut the door. There’s a draft.”

I shut the door, then sat down heavily in the chair. It was rather too close to the bunk. (Or, perhaps, it wasn’t close enough . . .) I thought,
To hell with it. If she’s not embarrassed, why should I be?
and looked at her with appreciation. There was something hauntingly familiar about her unclad body as well as something surprising. In her overalls she was dumpy and unglamorous—naked, she was rather beautiful. She was plump, but in the places where it counted, and her waist was narrow. I thought that I should be able to get my two hands around it. I thought that it would be nice to try.

She said, “A penny for them.”

I told her, “I was wondering if this lamp of yours could be used to make Bombay Duck.”

She asked, “What is Bombay Duck?”

I said, “It’s fish, uncooked and dried in the sun. It stinks. You crumble it over curry.”

She said, “You’re a bloody liar, Peter.”

“I’m not. That’s all that Bombay Duck is. Stinking dried fish.”

“I’m not disputing that. Your thoughts, at this moment, may be below your navel, but they’re not centered on your stomach.”

“Well . . .” I muttered lamely.

“And furthermore, Mr. Malcolm, you needn’t expect that I’m going to catch you on the rebound, or that you’re going to catch me the same way.”

I said, “It would be a neat solution.”

“Now, perhaps. But probably a messy one later, when certain persons who shall be nameless decide that their duties to their respective services come first.” She declaimed:

“I could not love thee, deah, so much,

Loved I not honor more.”

I said, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

She said, “I don’t care if you burst into flame.”

“Not very original,” I told her. “And not very funny.” I lit a cigarette. She stretched a shapely arm and took it from me, but still succeeded in displaying no more than her rear elevation. I lit another cigarette and put it to my lips. I said, “Come to think of it, it is rather hot in here.”

“Is it?” she asked. Then she said, “No, you may not remove your shirt. And you may not, repeat not, remove your shorts. If you do, I shall holler rape. And as you’re in my cabin, and not I in yours, you’ll find yourself well in the cactus.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Precisely,” she said.

For a while I smoked in silence, and she smoked in silence. I thought,
You can look, but you can’t touch.
I asked, “Aren’t you done on that side?”

She said, “No.”

We smoked in silence; this time, she broke it.

“Why did you come to see me, Peter?”

I said, “I thought you might be able to help.”

“And why should I want to help you?”

“Just enlightened self-interest,” I said. “You want Listowel, God knows why. I want Sandra back. If you get that stuffed shirt commander it’ll leave my everloving wife at loose ends—and I don’t think, somehow, that she’ll make a pass at either Doc Jenkins or poor old Claude.”

“All right,” she said. “You help me, and I help you. If the old woman returns to her husband that leaves Ralph all on his ownsome. Then Martha and I can fight it out between us.”

“This mutual aid . . .” I said.

“It’s all rather complicated,” Peggy told me. She threw the end of her cigarette into the disposer. “It all hinges on the fact that Sandra puts the ship first. And I think—mind you, it’s not a certainty-that you can get yourself well into her good books. How would it be if you could say, ‘Look, darling, I’ve made you the captain of the first FTL ship in history’?”

“This ship is not faster than light,” I said. “But the Mannschenn Drive ships are, and the Ehrenhaft drive wagons, what few there are left of them.”

“Is that so?” she countered.

“Of course,” I said.

“Oh.” She paused for a second or so, then said slowly, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Erikson drive, as it stands, will never be a commercial success. It takes far too long for a cargo, even a non-perishable cargo for which there’s no mad rush, to be carted from point A to point B. And there’s the problem of manning, too. As far as this ship was concerned, Auntie Susan was able to assemble a bunch of misfits with no close ties for the job, people who wouldn’t give a damn if the round voyage lasted a couple or three centuries—objective centuries, that is. Or even subjective. But it mightn’t be so easy to find another crew for another lightjammer. Agreed?”

I said, “You drifted away from the script.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. Her face looked frightened.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. It’s just that I seem to have heard you say almost the same words before.”

She said, but doubtfully, “You’re space-happy, Peter.” Then she went on: “I’m new in space, relatively new compared to the rest of you, but I’ve read plenty. I’m no physicist, but I have a rough idea of the
modus operandi
of the various interstellar drives. And, so far, there’s been no faster-than-light drive.”

“What!” I exclaimed, but somehow I didn’t feel as surprised as I should have.

“No, there hasn’t. I’m right, Peter. The basic idea of the Ehrenhaft drive was that of a magnetic particle trying to be in two places at the same time in a magnetic field or current, the ship being the particle. But, as far as I can gather, space was warped so that she could do just that. I couldn’t follow the math, but I got the general drift of it. And then, of course, there’s the Mannschenn Drive—but, there, the apparent FTL speeds are achieved by tinkering with time . . .”

“Hmm,” I grunted. “Hmm.”

“Getting away from machinery,” she said, “and back to personalities, Sandra loves her ship. I’m sure that if she had to make a choice between Ralph and
Aeriel
it wouldn’t be
Aeriel
left in the lurch. Or if she had to make a choice between you and
Aeriel
. . . but what do you think she’d feel about the man who made her captain of the first real FTL starwagon?”

I said, “You’d better see Doc when he comes off watch. He stocks quite a good line in sedative mixtures.”

She said, “You’re turning down a good chance, perhaps your only chance, Peter.”

“Damn it all,” I said, “even I, and I’m no physicist, can tell you that it’s quite impossible to exceed the speed of light. As you have already pointed out, we can cheat, but that’s all. And in this ship we can’t even cheat. We can no more outrun light than a windjammer could outrun the wind that was her motive power.” I started to point towards something that wasn’t there. “That’s our log. It works by Doppler effect. At the moment our speed is . . .”

She looked at me hard, a puzzled expression on her face. “A log? Here? What the hell’s wrong with you, Peter?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

She said, “There’s something screwy about this ship. But definitely. Anyhow, let me finish what I was going to say. I maintain that we can give it a go—exceeding the speed of light, I mean.”

“But it’s impossible,” I said.

“How do you know?” she countered.

“It’s common knowledge,” I sneered.

“Way back in the Middle Ages,” she said, “it was common knowledge that the sun went round the Earth.”

“Oh, all right,” I grunted. “But tell me, please, just how do you expect to attain FTL speeds?”

“With an auxiliary rocket,” she said. “Just a stovepipe, sticking out from the stern end of the ship. I can make it—and you, with your access to the chemicals for the hydroponics tanks, can make the solid propellant, the black powder. We’re doing about Lume 0.9 recurring at the moment, all we need is a nudge . . .”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Peggy, Peggy, how naive can you be? And with homemade solid propellant yet!”

“You can make it,” she said. “And it’s to your advantage.”

I looked at her. During our heated discussion she had turned over. The dark glasses made her look so much more naked. I said, “I’m not sure that I’m really interested in getting Sandra back . . .”

She flopped back again on her belly in a flurry of limbs.

She said coldly, “Let’s not forget the purpose of this discussion. Frankly, it was my intention to bribe you with the body beautiful to play along with me on this FTL project, but it wouldn’t be right. You want Sandra back, and I want Ralph. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

“But . . .” I extended a hand to one smooth buttock.

“On your bicycle, spaceman,” she told me. “Hit the track. Make another pass, and I holler rape. After all, you’re in my cabin, I’m not in yours. Come and see me again when you’ve got two or three pounds of black powder made up. And if you can’t make it, then Martha and I will figure out some other way.”

I asked, “She’s in on this?”

“Of course,” said Peggy scornfully. “I hate the bitch, but she’s a good mate. I’d never be able to cut a hole in the stern for my auxiliary rocket unless she approved.”

My hand had strayed back again and was stroking the silky skin on her back. I imagined that I heard her purring, like some great, sleek, lazy cat. And then, with shocking suddenness, she was off the bunk and bundling me towards the door.

“Out,” she snarled. “Out. And don’t come back until you have that powder.”

“But . . .”

“Out!” she said with determined finality, and I was standing in the alleyway, staring resentfully at the panel that had slammed shut on her golden loveliness.

I don’t know whether or not you have ever tried to make black powder, but I can tell you this: it’s easier talking about it than doing it. You want flowers of sulfur, and you want charcoal (or carbon) and you want saltpeter. At first I made the mistake of trying to mix the ingredients dry, and all I got was a grayish dust that burned with a half-hearted fizzle. Then I substituted potassium chlorate for the sodium nitrate, and my sample went off prematurely and took my eyebrows with it. I came to the conclusion then that the powder would have to be properly mixed with water, and then dried out—using, of course, the recommended ingredients. And it worked out, even though I dried the sludge by exposure to vacuum instead of in the sun, as was done (I suppose) by the first cannoneers.

Anyhow, it was as well that I had something to occupy my mind. It was obvious, far too obvious, what was going on between Listowel and Sandra. Peggy’s scheme was a harebrained one, but it might just get results. I had little doubt that it would get results—but what those results would be I could not imagine. Meanwhile, everybody in
Aeriel
continued to do his or her appointed duty, even though the ship was fast becoming a seething caldron of sexual jealousies.

And then, one night (as reckoned by our chronometer) I had the last batch of gunpowder mixed and dried. There was a five-gallon can full of the stuff. I picked it up, let myself out of the galley and made my way to the officers’ flat. As I entered the alleyway I saw Doc Jenkins knocking on the door of Martha Wayne’s cabin. I wondered who was in control, and then wished that I hadn’t wondered. The control room would be well-manned, of course. There would be the captain, and there would be that blasted Survey Service commander, the pair of them looking at the stars and feeling romantic.

“Ah,” said Jenkins, noticing me, “the commissioned cook. In person. Singing and dancing.”

“Neither singing nor dancing,” I said grimly.

“And what have you got in the can, Petey boy? You know that I have the monopoly on jungle juice.”

“Nothing to drink,” I said.

“Then what is it?”

“Something for Peggy.”

“Something for Peggy,” he mimicked. “Something for Peggy . . .” He quoted:

“When in danger or in fear,

Always blame the engineer . . .”

I tried to edge past him, but he put out his hand and grabbed my arm. In spite of his flabby appearance he was strong. And I was afraid to struggle; there was the possibility that the can of black powder might get a hard knock if I did. (I know that in theory it was quite safe, but I still didn’t trust the stuff.)

“Not so fast,” he said. “Not so fast. There’s something going on aboard this ship, and as one of the executive officers, as well as the surgeon, it’s my duty to find out what it is.”

The door of the chief officer’s cabin slid open. Martha stood there looking at us. “Come in,” she ordered sharply. “Both of you.”

We obeyed. Martha shut the door behind us and motioned us to chairs. We sat down. With a certain relief I put the can of powder gently on the carpeted deck—and then, before I could stop him, Doc snatched it up. He shook it.

He demanded, “What’s in this?”

“Some powder,” I said lamely.

“Powder?” He worried the lid off the container. “Powder? What sort of powder?”

“Abrasive powder,” I lied. “Peggy gave me the formula and asked me to cook some up for her.”

“Oh.” He put the can, lid still off, down beside his chair, away from me. He took a cigarette from the box on Martha’s desk, lit it, put it to his lips. He inhaled deeply, inhaled again. The burning end glowed brightly, the ash lengthened as we watched. He made as though to use the open can as an ash tray.

Martha’s hand flashed out, smacked the cigarette from his fingers and sent it flying across the cabin in a flurry of sparks.