- Chapter 10






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Chapter 10
Locked in his cabin once more Grimes stretched out on his bunk. He had never felt so helpless before in his entire life. He listened to the sounds that told him of the work in progress—hammerings, occasional muffled shouts, the rattle of ground vehicles being driven up the loading ramp to the cargo port. He could visualize what was being done; among the courses that he had sat through during his Survey Service career was one dealing with the conversion of commercial vessels to military purposes. If he'd been doing the job, he thought, he would have utilized inflatable troop-deck fittings—but that presupposed the availability of the necessary materials. Failing that, tiers of bunks could be knocked up from timber or fabricated from metal.
He wondered which technique was being used. Although this was not his ship—he had been little more than a caretaker and now was a prisoner—he still felt responsible for her. And, at brief intervals, when handling a lift-off or set-down or when adjusting trajectory, he would be, after a fashion, in actual command.
Susie came in briefly, escorted by one of Mortdale's men. She brought him a packet of sandwiches and a plastic mug of coffee. She said little, was obviously reluctant to speak in front of the stranger.
Grimes enjoyed the light meal; it took a lot to put him off his food. He enjoyed the pipe afterward. While smoking it he tried to think things out. He would have to play along, he decided. Even though he owed no loyalty to the Royal House of Dunlevin he owed none to the Council of Commissars who were that planet's present rulers. Voluntarily he would serve neither. Under duress he would do what he was told until—and that would, indeed, be the sunny Friday—a chance presented itself for him to make his escape.
And meanwhile—what was happening back on Bronsonia? Had his case been brought before the court yet? And if so, how had it gone? Had he lost his ship—his ship—the golden Little Sister? His worries about his legal affairs did, at least, help to take his mind off his present predicament.
And then, telling himself that there was nothing that he could do about anything at this present moment, he allowed himself to drift into a troubled sleep.
* * *
The period of his incarceration passed slowly.
Susie, always accompanied by an armed man, brought him his meals at what seemed to be regular intervals. He asked her how the work of conversion into a troop transport was going. She answered him shortly on each occasion, noncommitally, obviously inhibited by the presence of her escort.
Then, at last, she was able to tell him that lift-off would be as soon as he got himself up to Control. Grimes welcomed this intelligence. Given recreational facilities he did not object to a period of idleness but with no playmaster and no reading matter apart from those two novels (which he had finished long since and that were not worth reading) and the propaganda magazines he was becoming bored.
Paul and Lania were in the control room, as was General Mortdale. The soldier was still wearing his drab coveralls but shoulder straps, bearing the now familiar silver stars and golden crown insignia, had been added.
"Take her up," ordered Lania.
"Where to?" asked Grimes. "Or need I ask? Highness."
She looked at him coldly. "As you said, need you ask? And now, what are you waiting for?"
Grimes said, "First I have to do some checking. Highness."
He looked out of the ports. He saw nothing but darkness. This was to be a midnight lift-off just as it had been a midnight set-down. A glance at the chronometer and a minor conversion calculation confirmed this. He walked to the big panel presenting information regarding the current state of the ship, noted from the indicators that her mass had been considerably increased but not to the extent to place any undue strain upon the inertial drive. He wished that he knew the makeup of this extra weight—how many men, how many armed vehicles, what weapons, what stores? But the question was an academic one. All life-support systems were functioning. Airlock doors were closed.
"Take your time, Grimes," said Lania sarcastically.
"Take your time, Captain," said Mortdale, without irony. "Make sure that everything is as it should be." To Lania he remarked, "A good commander takes nothing for granted, Highness."
"There's one thing that he can take for granted," snapped the Crown Princess. "And that's that he'll get his head blown off if he attempts anything that he shouldn't. All right, Grimes, get us away from here."
Grimes strapped himself into the command chair. He said into the intercom microphone, "All hands stand by for lift-off. Secure all."
"All has been secured," said the general.
The inertial drive muttered irritably and then commenced its arrhythmic hammering. The noise, thanks to sonic insulation, was not too loud in either the control room or the accommodation. Grimes wondered if anybody had thought to insulate the cargo holds, which were now troop decks. He rather hoped that this had not been done. It would make him a little happier to know that Paul's and Lania's loyal soldiers would be experiencing a thoroughly uncomfortable passage.
Bronson Star heaved her clumsy bulk off the gibber plain, clawed for the sky. She lifted complainingly. Grimes doubted that the weight of her cargo, animate and inanimate, had been properly distributed. But the Commission's Epsilon Class star tramps were sturdy workhorses and could stand considerable abuse.
She groaned and grumbled into the black, star-spangled sky. As on the occasion of her landing there was no communication with Aerospace Control. Grimes wondered what report, what complaints would be made by the captain of the big airliner, a dirigible ablaze with lights, that passed within ten kilometers of the climbing spaceship; even though Bronson Star was not exhibiting the regulation illuminations, she would have shown up as an enormous blip on the aircraft's radar screen.
She drove through the last, tenuous wisps of atmosphere, out and up, through the Van Allens, established herself in orbit. Grimes was busy, as was the computer, presenting him with the coordinates of the target star. There was Free Fall when the inertial drive was shut off, centrifugal effects while the directional gyroscopes turned the ship about her axes, temporal disorientation when the Mannschenn Drive propagated its artificial, warped continuum about the vessel. Inertial drive again, and a comfortable one-gravity acceleration. . . .
"Back to your kennel, Grimes," said Lania.
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