The Big Black Mark (21 page)

Brandt wanted to stay on Botany Bay, but expressed misgivings about the amount of time he would have to wait until contact with the Federation was established. Grimes told the scientist of the simple "code that he had agreed upon with Captain Davinas. He said, "With any luck at all,
Sundowner
should drop in almost as soon as I've shoved off. As the sole representative of the Federation on this planet you'll be empowered to make your own deal with Davinas. And Davinas, of course, will be making
his
own deals with the Council of Mayors. I've told Mavis to expect him."

"It all
seems
foolproof enough, Commander Grimes," admitted Brandt.

"You can make anything foolproof, but it's hard to make it bloody foolproof," Grimes told him cheerfully. "All the same, neither Davinas nor myself come in that category."

"So you say," grumbled Brandt. Yet it was obvious that he was pleased to be able to get off the ship for an indefinite period. Grimes suspected that a romance had blossomed between him and a not very young, rather plain professor of physics at Paddington University. Quite possibly he would decide to resign his commission in the Survey Service and live on Botany Bay. There were quite a few others, Grimes knew, who had the same idea. That was why he wanted to get spaceborne before the rot set in properly.

Then there was the farewell party—the last, in fact, of a series of farewell parties. It was a beach barbecue. (The colonists
loved
beach barbecues.) It was a huge affair, with no fewer than a dozen fires going, held on the beach of Manly Cove, one of the bigger bays on the north coast but still within easy reach of the city. All hands were there, with the exception of the unlucky watchkeepers. The beer and the wine flowed freely and everybody was smoking the mutated tobacco. Grimes stayed with Mavis. He might see her again; he most probably would not. He wanted to make the most of this last evening. They found a lonely spot, a small floor of smooth sand among the rocks.

She said, "I shall miss yer, Skip."

"And I you."

"But when yer gotter go, yer gotter go. That's the way of it, ain't it?"

"Too right it is. Unluckily."

"Yer boys don't wanter go. Nor yer sheilas."

"There is such a thing as duty, you know."

"Duty be buggered. Ships have vanished without trace, as yer know bloody well. No one knows yer here."

"They'd soon guess. If there were any sort of flap about
Discovery's
going missing, then Captain Davinas—the master of
Sundowner
I was telling you about—would soon spill his beans. And the Survey Service can be very vicious regarding the penalty of mutiny and similar crimes. I've no desire to be pushed out of the airlock, in Deep Space without a spacesuit."

"You mean they'd do
that
to yer?"

"Too bloody right, they would."

"An' I'm not worth takin' the risk for. But you sort of
explode
in a vacuum, don't yer? All right. I see yer point."

"I didn't think that there was enough light," said Grimes, looking down at her dimly visible nudity.

She laughed. "I didn't mean
that.
But seein' as how the subject has risen. For the third time, ain't it?"

"Third time lucky," murmured Grimes.

Liftoff had been set for 1200 hours the following day. As on the day of landing the stands were crowded, and the brave, blue flags were flying from every pole. Two of the big dirigibles cruised slowly in a circle above the Oval. Their captains would extend the radius before
Discovery
began to lift.

There were no absentees from the ship at departure time, although it was certain that many of her complement would have liked to have missed their passage. Grimes was the last man up the ramp. At the foot of the gangway he shook hands with Brandt, with the mayors of the city-states. He had intended that his farewell to Mavis would be no more than a formal handshake, but her intentions were otherwise. He felt her mouth on his for the last time. When he pulled away he saw a tear glistening in the corner of her eye.

He marched stiffly up the ramp, which retracted as soon as he was in the airlock. He rode the elevator up to control. In the control room he went to his chair, strapped himself in. He looked at the telltale lights on his console. Everything was ready. His hand went out to the inertial drive start button.

Discovery
growled, shook herself.
(Growl you may, but go you must!)
She shuddered, and from below came the unrhythmic rattle of loose fittings. She heaved herself off the grass. In the periscope screen Grimes could see a great circular patch of dead growth to mark where she had stood, with three deep indentations where the vanes had dug into the sod. He wondered, briefly when it would be possible to play a cricket match in the Oval again.

"Port Paddington to
Discovery,
"
came a voice from the speaker of the NST transceiver, "you know where we live now. Come back as soon as yer like. Over."

"Thank you," said Grimes. "I hope I shall be back."

"Look after yourself, Skip!" It was Mavis' voice.

"I'll try," he told her. "And you look after
your
self."

She had the sense to realize that Grimes would be, from now on, fully occupied with his pilotage. But it was an easy ascent. There was little wind at any level, no turbulence. The old ship, once she had torn herself clear from the surface, seemed glad to be heading back into her natural element. After not very long, with trajectory set for Lindisfarne Base, Grimes was free to go below.

In his cabin he got out a message pad. He wrote:
Davinas, d/s/s Sundowner. Happy Anniversary. John.
He took it down to the radio officer on duty. He said, "I'd like this away as soon as possible. It might just catch him in time. On Botany Bay I rather lost track of the Standard Date."

"Didn't we all, sir?" The young man yawned. No doubt he had a good excuse for being tired, but his manner was little short of insolent. "Through the Carlotti station on Elsinore, sir?"

"Yes. A. single transmission. I don't want the emperor's monitors getting a fix on us. Elsinore will relay it."

"As you say, sir."

The tiny Carlotti antenna, the rotating Moebius strip, synchronized with the main antenna now extruded from the hull, began to turn and hunt. Elsinore would receive the signal, over the light-years, almost instantaneously. How long would it be before Davinas got it, and where would he be? How long would it be before
Sundowner
made her landing on Botany Bay? How long would Brandt have to wait? Grimes found that he was envying the scientist.

He debated with himself whether or not to drop in on Flannery, but decided against it. The PCO had found no fellow telepaths, but he had found quite a few boozing pals. No doubt the man would be suffering from a monumental hangover.

He went up to his quarters. He started to think about writing his report. Then he thought about his first report, the one in which he had damned Swinton. Should he rewrite it? The Mad Major had been very well behaved on Botany Bay. People like him should smoke those cigars all the time.
Make love, not war.

Grimes decided to sleep on it. After all, it would be some days before the ship would be in a sector of space from which it would be safe to inform Lindisfarne Base of her whereabouts, and even then a long and detailed report of her activities would almost certainly be picked up and decoded by the Waverley monitors. It could wait until
Discovery
was back at Lindisfarne.

By the Standard Time kept by the ship it was late at night. And Grimes was tired. He turned in, and slept soundly.

Discovery
was not a happy ship.

All hands went about their duties sullenly, with a complete lack of enthusiasm. Grimes could understand why. They had been made too much of on Botany Bay. It had been the sort of planet that spacemen dream about, but rarely visit. It had been a world that made the truth of Dr. Johnson's famous dictum all too true. How did it go?
A ship is like a prison where you stand a good chance of getting drowned. . . .
Something like that, Grimes told himself. And though the chances of getting drowned while serving in a spaceship were rather remote there were much worse ways of making one's exit if things went badly wrong.

He went down to the farm deck to have a yarn with Flannery. The PCO had recovered slightly from his excesses but, as usual, was in the process of taking several hairs of the dog that had bitten him. The bottle, Grimes noted, contained rum, distilled on Botany Bay.

"Oh, t'is you, Skipper. Could I persuade ye? No? I was hopin' ye'd be takin' a drop with me. I have to finish this rotgut afore I can get back to me own tipple."

"So you enjoyed yourself on Botany Bay," remarked Grimes.

"An' didn't we all, each in his own way? But the good, times are all gone, an' we have to travel on."

"That seems to be the general attitude, Mr. Flannery."

"Yours included, Skipper. How iver did ye manage to make yer own flight from the mayor's nest?"

"Mphm."

"Iverybody had the time of his life but poor ould Ned." Flannery gestured toward the canine brain suspended in its sphere of murky nutrient fluid. "He'd've loved to have been out, in a body, runnin' over the green grass of a world so like his own native land."

"I didn't think the dingo ever did much running over green grass," remarked Grimes sourly. "Through the bush, over the desert, yes. But green grass, no."

"Ye know what I'm meanin'." Flannery suddenly became serious. "What are ye wantin' from me, Skipper?"
It always used to be
"
Captain,
"
thought Grimes.
Flannery's been tainted by Botany Bay as much as anybody else.
"Don't tell me. I know. Ye're wonderin' how things are in this rustbucket. I don't snoop on me shipmates, as well ye know. But I can , give ye some advice, if yell only listen. Ride with a loose rein. Don't go puttin' yer foot down with a firm hand. An' it might help if ye let it be known that ye're not bringin' charges against the Mad Major when we're back on Lindisfarne. Oh—an' ye could try bein' nice to Vinegar Nell."

"Is that all?" asked Grimes coldly.

"That's all, Skipper. If it's any consolation to ye, Ned still likes ye. He's hopin' that ye don't go makin' the same mistake as Grimes was always afther makin'."

"
Grimes?
"
asked Grimes bewilderedly.

"T'was Bligh I was meanin'."

"Damn Bligh!" swore Grimes. "This ship isn't HMS
Bounty.
This, in case you haven't noticed, is FSS
Discovery,
with communications equipment that can reach out across the galaxy.
Bounty
only had signal flags."

"Ye asked me, Skipper, an' I told ye." Flannery's manner was deliberately offhand. "Would there be anythin' else?"

"No!" snapped Grimes.

He went up to the main radio office, had a few words with the operator on duty. He was told there was very little traffic, and all of it signals from extremely distant stations and none of it concerning
Discovery.
He carried on to the control room, stared out through the viewports at the weirdly distorted universe observed from a ship running under Mannschenn Drive, tactfully turning his back while the officer of the watch hastily erased the three-dimensional ticktacktoe lattice from the plotting tank.
Ride with a loose rein,
Flannery had warned. He would do so. He looked at the arrays of telltale lights. All seemed to be in order.

He went down to the paymaster's office. Vinegar Nell was there, diligently filling in forms in quintuplicate. He tried to be nice to her, but she had no time for him. "Can't you see that I'm busy, Commander Grimes?" she asked coldly. "All this work was neglected while we were on Botany Bay." She contrived to imply that this was Grimes's fault.

Then Grimes, as he sometimes did, called in to the wardroom to have morning coffee with his officers. Their manner toward him was reserved, chilly.
We were having a good time,
their attitude implied, and this old
bastard had to drag us away from it.

So went the day. There was something going on—of that he was sure. He was, once again, the outsider, the intruder into this micro-society, resented by all. And there was nothing he could do about it. (And if there were, should he do it?)

He was a man of regular habits. In space he required that he be called, by his steward, with a pot of morning coffee at precisely 0700 hours. This gave him an hour to make his leisurely toilet and to get dressed before breakfast. During this time, he would listen to a program of music, selected the previous night, from his little playmaster. It was the steward's duty to switch this on as soon as he entered the daycabin.

He awakened, this morning (as he always did) to the strains of music.
Odd,
he thought. He could not recall having put that particular tape into the machine. It was a sentimental song which, nonetheless, he had always liked—but it was not, somehow, the sort of melody to start the day with.

 
Spaceman, the stars are calling,
Spaceman, you have to roam,
Spaceman, through light-years falling,
Remember I wait at home. . . .

He heard Mullins come into the bedroom, the faint rattle of the coffee things on the tray. He smelled something.
Was the man smoking?
He jerked into wakefulness, his eyes wide open. It was not Mullins. It was the girl, Sally, who had been his predecessor's servant. She was not in uniform. She was wearing something diaphanous that concealed nothing and accentuated plenty. One of the thin cigars dangled from a comer of her full mouth. She took it out. "Here you are, Skipper. Have a drag. It'll put you in the mood."

Grimes slapped the smoldering cylinder away from his face. "In the mood for what?" he snapped.

"You mean to say that you don't know? Not after your carryings-on with the fat cow on Botany Bay, to say nothing of that scrawny bitch of a paymaster . . . ?" She let her robe drop open. "Look at me, Skipper. I'm better than both of 'em, aren't I?"