Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (43 page)

The women were squealing more loudly now, jumping from the stage. They were crouching as they hopped, their hands held up to their breasts like forepaws. They scattered, bounding between the tables. One of them brushed by Grimes. Given a tail, he thought, she could have passed for a big, albino kangaroo.

The hunted were familiar with the terrain, the hunters were not. They blundered into tables, oversetting drinks. Some were deliberately tripped by the outstretched legs of friends or wives or mistresses. But the quarries would have to allow themselves to be run down eventually. That was their job. That was what they were being paid for.

The first “kill” was not far from where Grimes was sitting. The huntsman, running with his spear extended before him, just flicked his victim on the buttocks with the end of his weapon. She screamed—and it was a real scream. She fell face down, her body twitching.

The hunter yelled in triumph, pounced on to her, roughly turned her over, spreading her legs. He coupled with her brutally and briefly. He rolled off her, got unsteadily to his feet. Grimes stared disgustedly into the man’s face. Even under the thick paint he thought that he could read shame. The man muttered something, shambled slowly towards the dressing room.

Grimes looked down at the girl, sprawling supine on the floor. She looked up at him. He was shocked by her expression, by the hopelessness of it. He wanted to say something comforting, to do something. He was half way out of his chair when Tanya stopped him.

“Don’t waste sympathy on the little bitch,” she said harshly. “She’s making a damn sight better living here than she would be on her own lousy planet.”

“And where is that?” asked Grimes.

“How should I know? There’re girls here from all over the galaxy. None of us was pressganged.”

“Mphm?”

“Of course not. Oh, I admit that getting back to Carinthia after I’ve made my pile won’t be as easy as I thought it would be. Making my pile’s the trouble. By the time I’ve paid the nominal—ha, ha!—rent for my room and bought a few rags and crusts therenot much left of my retaining fee. If it weren’t for the generosity of tourists . . . And spacers . . .”

“Mphm.”

“I’m being frank with you, John. If I take you up to my room I shall expect a present.”

“I’m sorry,” lied Grimes. “I have to be back aboard my ship soon. But if you can tell me anything about these girls there’ll be a present for you.”

“Cash on the nail,” she said.

He went into a brief but intense session of mental arithmetic. There would be the bill for the meal and a tip for the waitress. Luckily he did not have to worry about paying his fare back to the spaceport. He extracted notes from his wallet, passed them to her.

“Is that all?” She shrugged. “Better than nothing, I suppose. Well, all I know about the big-bummed, flat-chested bitches is that they were brought here in Captain Dreeble’s ship, the
Willy Willy.
They’re under contract to Able Enterprises. Able Enterprises owns a big chunk of this Kathouse. Satisfied?”

“What language do they speak?”

“A sort of standard English. With an accent—rather like yours.”

The lights were up again now. The last of the hunted girls had picked herself up from the floor and vanished from the room. The music was no longer eery but merely brassily strident. The stage was occupied by a giggling gaggle of tourist women, dancing lasciviously, tripping over the clothing that they were discarding. They were joined by a group of the hunters, still blackly and greasily naked.

Grimes waited for a while to see if anybody would be doing anything with a bottle and two wine glasses—but that must be, he decided, a party trick peculiar to Fenella Pruin. He asked Tanya to call for the bill. She did so. She scowled at him when he tipped the little waitress.

He said a not very warm goodnight to Tanya.

She said a not very warm goodnight to him.

There was no suggestion from either side that they should meet again.

He returned to his ship.

Chapter 9

“AND HOW DID YOU FIND
the Kathouse?” asked Fenella Pruin, regarding Grimes rather blearily over the breakfast table. Before he had time to reply she said, “These are bloody awful eggs. Where did you get them? Did you steal them out of a mud snake’s nest?”

Grimes ignored this latter, answering only the first question. “Expensive,” he said. “You owe me . . .”

“
I
owe
you!
Come off it, buster!”

“I was helping you in your investigations . . .”

“You were having a bloody good time.” She regarded him steadily, accorded him a derisive sneer. “Or were you? With your peculiar problem . . .”

“The fact remains,” said Grimes, trying to ignore the burning of his ears, “that I had to pay my admission into the Kathouse. Then I was stuck with a bill for an expensive dinner . . .”

“For you and which floosie?”

“And then I purchased some information.”

“Then spill it.”

“What about my expenses?”

“You’re a mercenary bastard, aren’t you? All right. Let me have a detailed account, in writing, and I’ll think about it. Get me some more coffee, will you? Then talk.” Grimes fetched more coffee.

He said, “In some ways the evening was disappointing. I didn’t see anybody doing anything with a bottle and two wine glasses . . .”

She glared at him, snarled. “You don’t have to believe everything that you hear—especially from that fat slob Jock McKillick! But did you see the specialty of the house, the kangaroo hunt?”

“Yes.”

“Kangaroos are Australian animals, aren’t they? You’re an Australian. Was the hunt authentic?”

“Kangaroos aren’t hunted. They’re protected fauna.”

“But they must have been hunted once. Centuries ago.”

“I wasn’t around then. Oh, all right, all right. I suppose that the hunt was an attempt to reconstruct a very ancient, long since dead nomadic culture. Of course, if I’d been stage managing it I’d have given the hunters woomeras and boomerangs . . .”

“What’s a woomera? Some sort of weapon, I suppose.”

“A spear thrower.”

She laughed. “I can just imagine it. Lethal missiles mowing down Katy’s customers . . .”

“It would be newsworthy,” said Grimes. “Well, anyhow there was the weird music. As far as I know the Australian aboriginals didn’t hunt to music—but those sounds did contribute to the atmosphere. The most convincing part of the hunt was the kangaroos themselves. Those girls with their odd legs . . . And it seems quite definite that they come from a world called New Alice and that they’re brought here in Drongo Kane’s ship,
Willy Willy.
The master is Aloysius Dreeble, who used to be Kane’s mate in
Southerly Buster.”

“And they come from New Alice. Anything Australian about that name?”

“Yes. Alice Springs is a city in Central Australia. It’s referred to usually just as Alice or the Alice.”

“And not for the first time—where the hell
is
New Alice? Nobody seems to know. Not even you.”

“One person will know,” said Grimes. “Captain Aloysius Dreeble. And his ship is due in very shortly.”

“How do you know?”

“I read the papers,” said Grimes smugly.

Chapter 10

WILLY WILLY
was not coming into Port Aphrodite. There was another spaceport on New Venusberg used only by vessels bringing cargoes of an objectionable nature, the bulkies and others. Presumably
Willy Willy
must be one of those others. It had not been hard to discover her arrival date and time. It has been easy enough to find out where Port Vulcan was situated. It was on Vulcan Island, the location for New Venusberg’s industries—apart from the tourist industry, of course. There was a regular air service to and from the industrial complex but it was rarely, if ever, used by tourists. Holiday makers had better (or worse) things to do with their time than the inspection of automated factories.

Fenella Pruin said that it might excite suspicion if she and Grimes proceeded to Port Vulcan by a scheduled flight to watch
Willy Willy
’s arrival. It would be quite in character, however, if she, playing the role of a bored rich bitch, hired a camperfly for a few days for a leisurely drift around the scenic beauties of the pleasure planet. The camperflies were smallish aircraft with sleeping accommodation and cooking and toilet facilities. They were hybrid machines with helium gas cells incorporated in their thick wings and above their fuselages, slow but airworthy, suitable for handling by amateur pilots. They were so buoyant that it was quite impossible for them to come down hard. The girl in the Uflyit office was only mildly interested when Grimes produced his Master Astronaut’s Certificate of Competency as proof that he was a capable pilot. She was much more interested in seeing that Fenella Pruin paid the quite enormous but returnable deposit. It was a fine morning when Grimes and his passenger lifted off from Port Aphrodite. He had spent most of the previous day accustoming himself to the controls of the rented aircraft and then had retired early. Fenella Pruin had spent the day and most of the night with Captain McKillick. McKillick, looking very much the worse for wear, came to the Uflyit landing field, on the outskirts of the spaceport apron, to see them off.

He glared at Grimes from bloodshot eyes.

He said, “You know that I could have taken a few days leave, Prue, to pilot you around . . .”

She said, “And leave Grimes, here, to carry on boozing and wenching at my expense? Not bloody likely. I’m making him earn his keep.”

“But he doesn’t have the local knowledge that I have.”

“He can read a chart. And it isn’t as though we’re going anywhere in particular. We shall just be bumbling around.”

The Port Captain turned on Grimes.

“Look after her,” he threatened with a touching show of devotion, “or I’ll have your guts for a necktie when you get back!”

“Mphm,” Grimes grunted.

He stood to one side and watched McKillick try to enfold the girl in a loving embrace. She did not cooperate; the wet kiss that should have plastered itself over her mouth landed on her ear.

She broke away, saying, “I’ll be seeing you, Jock. If you can’t be good, be careful.”

She clambered into the cabin of the tubby aircraft.

“Be seeing you, Captain,” said Grimes.

“Be seeing you, Captain,” replied McKillick with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

The two men did not shake hands.

Grimes boarded and went forward, sat down beside Fenella Pruin. The aircraft was designed for easy handling with minimal controls. Trying to make it look even easier than it actually was Grimes went through the take-off procedure. The electric motors whined and the camperfly rose at a steep angle, obedient to Grimes’ touch. He did not set course at once for Vulcan Island but circled the spaceport as he ascended, looking down at the ships both great and small, at his own
Little Sister
goldenly agleam in her berth between the huge TG liner and the big Shaara vessel. There was some activity around the latter. He wondered briefly what the bee people were doing; they seemed to be hauling something bulky out of a cargo airlock.

After his second circuit Fenella Pruin demanded irritably, “What are you playing at, Grimes? Trying to disappear up your own fundamental orifice?”

He told her, “We don’t want to be seen heading for Vulcan Island.”

“At the moment we aren’t heading
anywhere.”
Grimes sighed resignedly and then, ignoring the compass, steered for a tall conical peak to the westward. The Mons Veneris Park would be as good an apparent destination as any; once he was out of sight from Port Aphrodite he would bring the camperfly around to a north easterly course. There was ample time to waste; allowing for two nocturnal set-downs they should be at Port Vulcan a good three hours prior to Aloysius Dreeble’s ETA.

She said (couldn’t she ever stop talking?), “You aren’t such a bright businessman, you know.”

“I know,” he said. He thought,
If I were I wouldn’t be obliged to carry people like you around.

“If you were,” she went on, “you’d do the same as the Shaara. Carry a blimp on board for this sort of outing.”

“Where would I stow the bloody thing?” he snarled. “Even you,” she sneered, “might have more sense than to carry it with the gas cells inflated. But I suppose it would be beneath your precious dignity to learn anything from the Shaara.”

“Why the sudden interest in those bloody bumblebees?” he demanded.

“It’s just that we’re being followed,” she told him. The pilot’s cab of the camperfly was a transparent bubble set above fuselage top level, affording all-round vision. Grimes looked aft. Yes, there was something astern, coming up on them slowly. He could not be sure but it did look like a Shaara blimp. It had to be a Shaara blimp. As far as he knew there were no aircraft of that type native to New Venusberg. “Are you going to let them pass us?” she asked. He said, “I’ve no option. This camperfly is designed for comfort, not for speed.”

“But a bloody gasbag . . .”

“Gasbag it may be but it’s not starved for horsepower. Or workerpower, or whatever term the Shaara use.”

“Don’t be so bloody pedantic.”

The camperfly flew on, still heading for the Mons Veneris. The blimp gained steadily on its parallel course, a little to starboard, flying at the same altitude as the humans’ aircraft. Grimes studied it through the binoculars that were included in the rented equipment. He could see the arthropod crew in the open car under the envelope—a mixed bunch of drones and princesses he decided. Was
his
princess, the one with whom he had exchanged words in Lady Luck’s establishment, among them? he wondered. She might be. And so what? Presumably the ban on the carrying of weapons on this world applied to all visitors, not only to human beings. And what could unarmed Shaara do to him?

They could get in his hair, that was what.

The blimp was abeam of the camperfly now, matching speed, blocking Grimes’ turn on to the north easterly course. Its crew were watching him through their big, faceted eyes. Sunlight was reflected dazzlingly from the jewels that adorned the dark brown, velvety fur of their bodies.