Ride the Star Winds (98 page)

New Bedford
went upstairs in a hurry. Word had come through to Port Forlorn that
Rim Arquebus
was not only tracking what was believed to be the last of the energy eaters but had already made two unsuccessful attempts to destroy the creature. Haab had protested and had been told this sector of space was under the jurisdiction of the Rim Worlds Confederacy and that he, his ship and his people were only there on sufferance. The attitude adopted by his government did not make things any more pleasant for Grimes.

Haab wasted little time setting trajectory once he was clear of Lorn’s Van Allens. He lined his ship up on an invisible point in space some lightyears in from the Llanith sun, then put his inertial drive on maximum acceleration, with his Mannschenn Drive developing a temporal precession rate that Grimes considered foolhardy. Foolhardy or not, the discomfort was extreme—the crushing weight of three gravities acceleration combined with the eerie sensation of always being almost at the point of living backward.

Apart from these discomforts she was not a happy ship. Her people, from the master down, were too dedicated. They lived hunting, talked hunting, thought hunting and, presumably, dreamed hunting. Grimes was allowed into a conversation only when it was assumed that he would make some contribution to the success of the expedition—and this was not often.

One night, at dinner, Haab did ask him for his views on the energy eaters.

“How intelligent do you think they are, Commodore?”

Grimes put down the fork with which he had been eating some vaguely fish-tasting mess, about which he had not dared to inquire. The implement clattered loudly on the surface of the plate—the high acceleration took some getting used to. He said, “You’ve seen all the reports, Captain Haab.”

“Yes, Commodore Grimes. But you must have formed an opinion. After all, the energy eaters are in your back garden.”

Grimes decided that he might as well talk as eat—he would not be missing much, “I don’t suppose I need to tell you about the Terran shark, Captain. He has, however, been described as a mobile appetite. He just eats and eats without discrimination, often to his own undoing. He just hasn’t the sense to consider the consequences. Right?”

Haab looked to Dr. Wayne, his biologist. Wayne grinned and said, “The Commodore hasn’t put it in very scientific language, but he’s not far off the beam.”

“Then,” Grimes went on, “we have human beings who are compulsive eaters. They often are far from being unintelligent—yet they cannot control themselves, even though they know that they are digging their graves with knives and forks. The energy eaters are more intelligent than sharks. They may be as intelligent as we are but we don’t know. Intelligent or not, they are handicapped.”

“Handicapped? Just how?” demanded Haab.

“Unlike human compulsive eaters they have no control over their intake. If there is raw energy around they absorb it, whether they want to or not. They know, I think, that the absorption of the energy generated by a nuclear explosion will be fatal—but if they are in the vicinity of such a blast they cannot help themselves. Sorry—they can help themselves, but only by exercising their power of temporal precession. And by the time they found this out they were almost extinct.”

“Then Moebius Dick will give us a good fight,” commented the mate. “He has survived in spite of everything that the navy has thrown at him.”

“The commodore isn’t very interested in fighting fish,” said Haab. “He told me that he fishes for trout with hand grenades.”

“I believe in getting results,” said Grimes, conscious that the officers and specialists around the table were looking at him coldly.

New Bedford
sped through the warped continuum, homing on the continuous Carlotti signal that Grimes had persuaded the captain of
Rim Arquebus
to transmit. The warship was remaining in the vicinity of the last sighting of Moebius Dick and had received orders from the admiralty to cooperate with Haab. Coded signals had been made to Grimes and, reading them, he had gained the impression that Captain Welldean of the
Arquebus
was far from happy. But Grimes’s heart did not bleed for Welldean. Welldean was in his own ship with his own people as shipmates and his own cook turning out meals to his own taste. No doubt his feelings had been hurt when he had been ordered to abandon his own hunt and to put himself under the command of a reserve officer. But he was not an unwelcome guest aboard somebody else’s vessel.

At last the tiny spark that was
Rim Arquebus
showed up just inside the screen of the mass proximity indicator. Speed was reduced and eventually both drive units were shut down.
Rim Arquebus
hung there, five kilometers from
New Bedford
, a minor but bright constellation in the blackness.

Welldean’s fat, surly face looked out from the screen of the NST transceiver at Grimes and the others in
New Bedford
’
s
control room.

“Have you any further information, Captain?” asked Haab.

Welldean replied in a flat voice, “The EE emerges into NST at regular half-hour intervals, remaining for ten minutes each time, presumably to feed on the radiation emitted by my ship. Pursuant to instructions—” he seemed to be glaring directly at Grimes— “I have made no hostile moves. Would the Commodore have any further orders for me?”

“None at the moment, Captain,” Grimes told him. “Just stand by.”

“
Rim Arquebus
standing by,” acknowledged Welldean sulkily.

“When will Moebius Dick . . .” Haab was interrupted by a shout from his mate.

“There she blows!” The energy eater had appeared midway between the two ships. It was huge, brilliantly luminous, lazily rotating. Grimes paraphrased wryly,
He who eats and runs away will live to eat some other day . . .
This thing had eaten and run away, eaten and run away and it had grown, was a vortex of forces all of a kilometer across. It would never fit into
New Bedford
’
s
capacious hold, a compartment designed for the carriage of alien life forms, some of them gigantic. But this did not matter. The cage of beams and fields would be set up outside the ship, but still within the temporal precession field of the Mannschenn Drive.

Grimes, a mere observer aboard a vessel that was not his own, felt superfluous, useless, as Haab and his officers went into the drill that had been worked out to the last detail. The mate, Murgatroyd, would remain on board in charge of the ship—and Haab, with the second, third and fourth mates, would go out in the one-man chasers. Haab was already in his spacesuit—the small craft were no more than a flying framework, unpressurized—and his prosthetic leg, through some freak of sound conductivity, clicked loudly as he moved. In his armor, with that mechanical noise accompanying every motion of his legs, he was more like a robot than a man, even though his chin beard was jutting through the open faceplate of his helmet.

“Good hunting, Captain,” said Grimes.

“Thank you, Commodore.” Haab turned to his mate. “You’re in charge of the ship, Mr. Murgatroyd. Don’t interfere with the hunt.” Then, to Grimes, “Will you tell Captain Welldean to keep his guns and torpedoes to himself?” Welldean’s heavy face scowled at them from the screen of the NST transceiver.

“Moebius Dick has gone,” announced Murgatroyd.

“When he surfaces again, we shall be in position,” Haab told him as he left the control room.

Murgatroyd looked at Grimes.
There’s nobody else to talk to,
he seemed to be thinking,
so I may as well pass the time of day with you.
He said, “The Old Man always brings ’em back.”

“Alive?” queried Grimes.

“When he wants to,” replied the mate.

Then he laughed. “He hasn’t much choice as far as that thing’s concerned. If it’s dead it’s nothing.” Even in free fall he contrived to give the impression of being slumped in his seat. An incongruous wistfulness softened the rough, scarred, big-featured face under the coarse, yellow hair.

“You wish you were out in one of the chasers,” Grimes stated rather than asked.

“I do. But somebody has to mind the shop—and it always seems to be me. There they go, Commodore.”

Four bright sparks darted into the emptiness between
New Bedford
and
Rim Arquebus
. As they reached a predetermined position they slowed, stopped, then slid into a square formation. Moebius Dick should reappear at the center of the quadrangle and then, at Haab’s signal, each of the little crafts would become a fantastically powerful electromagnet and each would emit the beamed Carlotti transmissions, effectively netting the energy eater in time and space.

Murgatroyd and Grimes stared into the screen of the mass proximity indicator. Four little points of light marked the positions of the chasers, a much fainter one denoting the presence of the energy eater.

“Master to
New Bedford
,” crackled from the speaker. “Check position, please.”

“
New Bedford
to master,” replied Murgatroyd. “You are exactly in position. Over.”

“
Rim Arquebus
to Commodore Grimes,” put in Welldean. “Do you wish me to take any action when the EE surfaces?”

“Haab to Grimes. You are only an observer. And that goes for your navy, too, Over.”

“The old man gets tensed up,” remarked Murgatroyd, with the faintest hint of apology in his voice.

“
Rim Arquebus
to Commodore Grimes. My weaponry is manned and ready,” persisted Welldean.

“So is mine.” Murgatroyd chuckled, waving a big hand over his fire-control console.

The minutes, the seconds, ticked by. Grimes watched the sweep second hand of the clock. He had noted the time of
Moebius Dick’s
disappearance. The half-hour was almost up. When that red pointer came around to 37 . . .

“Now!” yelled the Mate.

Moebius Dick was back. The enormous circle of gyrating luminescence had reappeared in the center of the square formed by the chasers. From the NST speaker came the low-pitched buzz and crackle of interference as the solenoids were energized. The energy eater hung there, quivering, seeming to shrink within itself. Then it moved, tilting like a precessing gyroscope.

Haab’s voice could be heard giving orders. “Increase to six hundred thousand gausses. To six-fifty—seven hundred—”

From one of the chasers came a bright, brief flare and from the speaker a cry of alarm: “Captain, my coil has blown!”

“Master to second and fourth mates—triangular formation.”

Moebius Dick was spinning about a diametric axis, no longer a circle of light but a hazy sphere of radiance. The energy eater was rolling through the emptiness, directly toward one of the three still-functioning chasers. The small craft turned to run.
Rim Arquebus
stabbed out with a barrage of laser beams. In
New Bedford’s
control room Murgatroyd swore, added his fire to that from the frigate. It was ineffective—or highly effective in the wrong way. The monster glowed ever more brightly as it absorbed the energy directed at it, moved ever faster. The chaser turned and twisted desperately, hopelessly. The other chasers could not pursue for fear of running into the fire from the ships. There was nothing that they could have done, in any case.

“The old man’s boat—” muttered Murgatroyd. “I guess it’s the way he wanted to go—” His hand fell away from the firing stud. Moebius Dick was rolling over Haab’s small and fragile craft.

Grimes, on the NST VHF, was ordering, “Hold your fire,
Rim Arquebus!
Hold your fire!”

Welldean’s voice came back, “What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Adding, as a grudging afterthought, “Sir.”

The lights of the chaser flared briefly through the luminous, swirling haze that enveloped them, flared and died. But something, somebody, broke through the living radiance. It was the spacesuited Haab, using his personal propulsion unit to drive him back to his ship.

He broke through and broke away and for a second or so it seemed that he would succeed. Then Moebius Dick was after him, overtaking him, enveloping him. From the NST speaker came a short, dreadful scream. The globe of flame that was the energy eater seemed to swell, was swelling, visibly and rapidly, assuming the appearance of a gigantic, spherical fire opal. The three surviving chasers retreated rapidly.

Dark streaks suddenly marred the iridescent beauty of the sphere, spread, rapidly covering the entire surface. Where Moebius Dick had been there was only nothingness.

No, not nothingness.

Floating in the darkness, illumined by the searchlights of the three small craft, was the lifeless, armored figure of Captain Haab.

“They’ll bring him in,” muttered Murgatroyd. “I’ll take him back to Earth for burial. Those were his wishes.”

“
Rim Arquebus
to
New Bedford
,” came Welldean’s voice. “Do you require medical assistance? Shall I send a boat with my surgeon—”

“We’ve a quack of our own,” snarled Murgatroyd, “and a good one. But even he won’t be able to do anything. The old man is dead.”

Rim Change

I’m a sort of exception
that proves the rule.

And that, oddly enough, is my name—George Rule, currently master in the employ of the Dog Star Line, one of the few independent shipping companies in the Federation able to compete successfully with the state-owned Interstellar Transport Commission. When I was much younger I used to be called, rather to my embarrassment, Golden Rule. That was when my hair, which I tend to wear long, and my beard were brightly blond. But, given time, everything fades, and my nickname has faded away with my original colouring. In uniform I’m just another tramp master—and the Odd Gods of the Galaxy know that there are plenty of such in the Universe!—and out of uniform I could be the man come to fix the robochef. It’s odd—or is it?—how those engaged in that particular branch of robotics tend to run to fat . . .

But this exception business . . .

The space services of the Rim Confederacy are literally crawling with officers who blotted their copy books in the major shipping lines of the Federation and various autonomous kingdoms, republics and whatever, and even with a few who left certain navies under big black clouds. The famous Commodore Grimes, for example, the Rim Worlds’ favorite son, isn’t a Rim Worlder by birth; he was emptied out of the Federation Survey Service after the
Discovery
mutiny. (It was Grimes, by the way, who got
me
emptied out of Rim Runners, the Confederacy’s state shipping line, many years ago.)