The Road to the Rim (13 page)

He would shed no tears for them.

CRAVEN CAME BACK to the Control Room at the change of watch, when Grimes was handing over to Jane Pentecost. He waited until the routine had been completed, then said, "We know where our friends are headed. They were, like us, running for Waldegren—but they're having to change course." He laughed harshly. "There must be all hell let loose on their home planet."

"Why? What's happened?" asked Grimes.

"I'll tell you later. But, first of all, we have an alteration of course ourselves. Look up Dartura in the Directory, will you, while I get the Drive shut down."

Epsilon Sextans
was falling free through normal spacetime before Grimes had found the necessary information. And then there was the hunt for and the final identification of the target star, followed by the lining up by the use of the directional gyroscopes. There was the brief burst of acceleration and then, finally, the interstellar drive was cut in once more.

The Captain made a business of selecting and lighting a cigar. When the pungent combustion was well under way he said, "Our young Mr. Summers is a good snooper. Not as good as some people I know, perhaps." Grimes flushed and Jane Pentecost looked puzzled. "He's a super-sensitive. He let me have a full transcript of all the signals, out and in. It took us a little time to get them sorted out—but not too long, considering.
Adler—
that's the name of the surviving frigate—
was
running for home. Her Captain sent a rather heavily edited report of the action to his Admiral. It seems that
Adler
and the unfortunate
Albatross
were set upon and beaten up by a heavily armed Survey Service cruiser masquerading as an innocent merchantman. The Admiral, oddly enough, doesn't want a squadron of Survey Service battlewagons laying nuclear eggs on his base. So
Adler
has been told to run away and lose herself until the flap's over . . . ."

"And did they send all that
en clair?"
demanded Grimes. "They must be mad!"

"No, they aren't mad. The signal's weren't
en clair."

"But . . ."

"Reliable merchant captains," said Craven, "are often entrusted with highly confidential naval documents. There were some such in my safe aboard
Delta Orionis,
consigned to the Commanding Officer of Lindisfarne Base. The officer who delivered them to me is an old friend and shipmate of mine, and he told me that among them was the complete psionic code used by the Waldegren Navy. Well, when I had decided to take over this ship, I'd have been a bloody fool not to have Photostatted the whole damned issue.

"So that's the way of it. Herr Kapitan von Leidnitz thinks he can say what he likes to his superiors without anybody else knowing what he's saying. And all the while . . ." Craven grinned wolfishly. "It seems that there's a minor base, of sorts, on Dartura. Little more than repair yards, although I suppose that there'll be a few batteries for their protection. I can imagine the sort of personnel they have running the show—passed-over commanders and the like, not overly bright. By the time that we get there we shall have concocted a convincing story—convincing enough to let us hang off in orbit until
Adler
appears on the scene. After all, we have their precious code. Why should they suspect us?"

"Why shouldn't
we
be
Adler?"
asked Grimes.

"What do you mean, Ensign?"

"The Waldegren Navy's frigates are almost identical, in silhouette, with the Commission's
Epsilon
class freighters. We could disguise this ship a little by masking the dissimilarities by a rough patching of plating. After all,
Adler
was in action and sustained some damage—"

"Complicated," mused the Captain. "Too complicated. And two
Adlers—
each, presumably, in encoded psionic communication with both Waldegren and Dartura . . . . You've a fine, devious mind, young Grimes—but I'm afraid you've out-fixed yourself on that one."

"Let me talk, sir. Let me think out loud. To begin with—a ship running on Mannschenn Drive
can
put herself into orbit about a planet, but it's not, repeat not, recommended."

"Damn right it's not."

"But we have the heels
of Adler?
Yes? Then we could afford a slight delay to carry out the modifications—the disguise—that I've suggested. After all, forty odd light years is quite a long way."

"But what do we gain, Mr. Grimes?"

"The element of confusion, sir. Let me work it out. We disguise ourselves as well as we can. We find out, from intercepted and decoded signals,
Adler's
ETA—
and
the coordinates of her breakthrough into the normal continuum. We contrive matters to be more or less in the same place at exactly the same time. And when the shore batteries and the guardships see no less than two
Adlers
slugging it out, each of them yelling for help in the secret code, they won't know which of us to open fire on."

"Grimes," said Craven slowly, "I didn't know you had it in you. All I can say is that I'm glad that you're on
our
side."

"Am I?" asked Grimes wonderingly,. suddenly deflated. He looked at the Captain who, after all, was little better than a pirate, whose accomplice he had become. He looked at the girl, but for whom he would not be here. "Am I? Damn it all, whose side
am
I on?"

"You'd better go below," Craven told him gently. "Go below and get some sleep. You need it. You've earned it."

"Jeremy," said Jane Pentecost to Craven, "would you mind looking after the shop for half an hour or so? I'll go with John."

"As you please, my dear. As you please."

It was the assurance in the Captain's voice that hurt.
It won't make any difference to us, it
implied.
It can't make any difference. Sure, Jane, go ahead. Throw the nice little doggie a bone . . . . we can spare it.

"No thank you," said Grimes coldly, and left the Control Room.

But he couldn't hate these people.

AFTER A LONG SLEEP Grimes felt better. After a meal he felt better still. It was a good meal, even though the solid portion of it came from tins. Craven's standards were slipping, thought the Ensign. He was reasonably sure that such items as caviar, escargots, pâté de foie gras, Virginia ham, Brie, and remarkably alcoholic cherries were not included in the Commission's inventory of emergency stores. And neither would be the quite reasonable Montrachet, although it had lost a little by being decanted from its original bottles into standard squeeze bulbs. But if the Captain had decided that the laborer was worthy of his hire, with the consignees of the cargo making their contribution toward that hire, that was his privilege . . .? Responsibility?—call it what you will.

Jane Pentecost watched him eat. As he was finishing his coffee she said, "Now that our young lion has fed, he is required in the Control Room."

He looked at her both gratefully and warily. "What have I done now?"

"Nothing, my dear. It is to discuss what you—we—will do. Next."

He followed her to Control. Craven was there, of course, and so were Baxter and Summers. The Captain was enjoying one of his rank cigars, and a limp, roll-your-own cigarette dangled from the engineer's lower lip. The telepath coughed pointedly every time that acrid smoke expelled by either man drifted his way. Neither paid any attention to him, and neither did Grimes when he filled and lighted his own pipe.

Craven said, "I've been giving that scheme of yours some thought. It's a good one."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me. I should thank you. Mr. Summers, here, has been maintaining a careful listening watch.
Adler's
ETA is such that we can afford to shut down the Drive to make the modifications that you suggest. To begin with, we'll fake patching plates with plastic sheets—we can't afford to cannibalize any more of the ship's structure—so as to obscure our name and identification letters. We'll use more plastic to simulate missile launchers and laser projectors—luckily there's plenty of it in the cargo."

"We found more than plastic while we were lookin' for it," said the engineer, licking his lips.

"That will do, Mr. Baxter. Never, in normal circumstances, should I have condoned . . ."

"These circumstances ain't normal, Skipper, an' we all bloody well know it."

"That will do, I say." Craven inhaled deeply, then filled the air of the Control Room with a cloud of smoke that, thought Grimes, would have reflected laser even at close range. Summers almost choked, and Jane snapped, "Jeremy!"

"This, my dear, happens to be
my
Control Room." He turned again to the Ensign. "It will not be necessary, Mr. Grimes, to relocate the real weapons. They functioned quite efficiently where they are and, no doubt, will do so again. And now, as soon as I have shut down the Drive, I shall hand the watch over to you. You are well rested and refreshed."

"Come on," said Jane to Baxter. "Let's get suited up and get that sheeting out of the airlock."

"Couldn't Miss Pentecost hold the fort, sir?" asked Grimes. He added, "I've been through the camouflage course at the Academy."

"And so have I, Mr. Grimes. Furthermore, Miss Pentecost has had experience in working outside, but I don't think that you have."

"No, sir. But . . . "

"That will be all, Mr. Grimes."

At Craven's orders the Drive was shut down, and outside the viewports the sparse stars became stars again, were no longer pulsing spirals of multi-colored light. Then, alone in Control, Grimes actuated his scanners so that he could watch the progress of the work outside the hull, and switched on the transceiver that worked on the spacesuit frequency.

This time he ran no risk of being accused of being a Peeping Tom.

He had to admire the competence with which his shipmates worked. The plastic sheeting had no mass to speak of, but it was awkward stuff to handle. Torches glowed redly as it was cut, and radiated invisibly in the infrared as it was shaped and welded. The workers, in their bulky, clumsy suits, moved with a grace that was in startling contrast to their attire—a Deep Space ballet, thought Grimes, pleasurably surprised at his own way with words. From the speaker of the transceiver came Craven's curt orders, the brief replies of the others.

"This way a little . . . that's it."

"She'll do, Skipper."

"No she won't. Look at the bend on it!"

Then Jane's laughing voice.
"Our secret weapon, Jeremy. A laser that fires around corners!"

"That will do, Miss Pentecost. Straighten it, will you?"

"Ay, ay, sir. Captain, sir."

The two interstellar drive engineers were working in silence, but with efficiency. Aboard the ship were only Grimes and Summers, the telepath.

Grimes felt out of it, but somebody had to mind the shop, he supposed. But the likelihood of any customers was remote.

Then he stiffened in his chair. One of the spacesuited figures was falling away from the vessel, drifting out and away, a tiny, glittering satellite reflecting the harsh glare of the working floods, a little, luminous butterfly pinned to the black velvet of the Ultimate Night. Who was it? He didn't know for certain, but thought that it was Jane. The ship's interplanetary drives—reaction and inertial— were on remote control, but reaction drive was out; before employing it he would have to swing to the desired heading by use of the directional gyroscopes. But the inertial drive was versatile.

He spoke into the microphone of the transceiver. "Secure yourselves. I am proceeding to rescue."

At once Craven's voice snapped back, "Hold it, Grimes. Hold it! There's no danger."

"But, sir . . . "

"Hold it!"

Grimes could see the distant figure now from a viewport, but it did not seem to be receding any longer. Hastily he checked with the radar. Range and bearing were not changing. Then, with relative bearing unaltered, the range was closing. He heard Jane call out, "Got it! I'm on the way back!"

Craven replied, "Make it snappy—otherwise young Grimes'll be chasing you all over the Universe!"

Grimes could see, now, the luminous flicker of a suit reaction unit from the lonely figure.

Later, he and the others examined the photographs that Jane had taken.

Epsilon Sextans
looked as she was supposed to look—like a badly battle-scarred frigate of the Waldegren Navy.

IN TERMS OF SPACE and of time there was not much longer to go.

The two ships—one knowing and one unknowing—raced toward their rendezvous. Had they been plunging through the normal continuum there would have been, toward the finish, hardly the thickness of a coat of paint between them, the adjustment of a microsecond in temporal precession rates would have brought inevitable collision. Craven knew this from the results of his own observations and from the encoded position reports, sent at six hourly intervals, by
Adler.
Worried, he allowed himself to fall astern, a mere half kilometer. It would be enough—and, too, it would mean that the frigate would mask him from the fire of planet-based batteries.

Summers maintained his listening watch. Apart from the position reports he had little of interest to tell the Captain.
Adler,
once or twice, had tried to get in contact with the Main Base on Waldegren—but, other than from a curt directive to proceed as ordered there were no signals from the planet to the ship. Dartura Base was more talkative. That was understandable. There was no colony on the planet and the Base personnel must be bored, must be pining for the sight of fresh faces, the sound of fresh voices. They would have their excitement soon enough, promised Craven grimly.

Through the warped continuum fell the two ships, and ahead the pulsating spiral that was the Dartura sun loomed ever brighter, ever larger. There were light years yet to go, but the Drive-induced distortions made it seem that tentacles of incandescent gas were already reaching out to clutch them, to drag them into the atomic furnace at the heart of the star.