To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga by A. Bertram Chandler Page A
Authors: A. Bertram Chandler
Ads: Link
Will you and Mr. Ludovic take the Ensign along to the Detention Cell?”
“I’ll see you on trial for piracy, Captain!” flared Grimes.
“An interesting legal point, Ensign—especially since you are being entered in my Official Log as a mutineer.”
10
THE DETENTION CELL was not uncomfortable, but it was depressing. It was a padded cell— passengers in spacecraft have been known to exhibit the more violent symptoms of mania—which detracted from its already inconsiderable cheerfulness if not from its comfort. However, Grimes was not mad—not in the medical sense, that is—and so was considered able to attend to his own bodily needs. The little toilet was open to him, and at regular intervals a bell would sound and a container of food would appear in a hatch recessed into the bulkhead of the living cabin. There was reading matter too—such as it was. The Ensign suspected that Jane Pentecost was the donor. It consisted of pamphlets published by some organization calling itself The Rim Worlds Secessionist Party. The almost hysterical calls to arms were bad enough—but the ones consisting mainly of columns of statistics were worse. Economics had never been Grimes’ strong point.
He slept, he fed at the appointed times, he made a lengthy ritual of keeping himself clean, he tried to read—and, all the time, with only sounds and sensations as clues, he endeavored to maintain a running plot of the ship’s maneuvers.
Quite early there had been the shutting down of the Mannschenn Drive, and the consequent fleeting sensation of temporal disorientation. This had been followed by the acceleration warning—the cell had an intercom speaker recessed in the padding—and Grimes, although it seemed rather pointless in his sponge rubber environment, had strapped himself into his couch. He heard the directional gyroscopes start up, felt the effects of centrifugal force as the ship came around to her new heading. Then there was the pseudo-gravity of acceleration, accompanied by the muffled thunder of the reaction drive. It was obvious, thought the Ensign, that Captain Craven was expending his reaction mass in a manner that, in other circumstances, would have been considered reckless.
Suddenly—silence and Free Fall, and almost immediately the off-key keening of the Mannschenn Drive. Its note was higher, much higher, than Grimes remembered it, and the queasy feeling of temporal disorientation lasted much longer than it had on previous occasions. And that, for a long time, was all. Meals came, and were eaten. Every morning—according to his watch—the prisoner showered and applied depilatory cream to his face. He tried to exercise—but to exercise in a padded cell, with no apparatus, in Free Fall, is hard. He tried to read—but the literature available was hardly more interesting to him than a telephone directory would have been. And, even though he never had been gregarious, the lack of anybody to talk to was wearing him down.
It was a welcome break from the monotony when he realized that, once again, the ship was maneuvering. This time there was no use of the directional gyroscopes; there were no rocket blasts, but there was a variation of the whine of the Drive as it hunted, hunted, as the temporal precession rate was adjusted by tens of seconds, by seconds, by microseconds.
And then it locked.
The ship shuddered slightly—once, twice.
Grimes envisaged the firing of the two mooring rockets, one from the bow and one from the stern, each with the powerful electromagnet in its nose, each trailing its fathoms of fine but enormously strong cable. Merchant vessels, he knew, carried this equipment, but unlike naval ships rarely used it. But Craven, as a Reservist, would have seen and taken part in enough drills.
The ship shuddered again—heavily.
So the rendezvous had been made. So Delta Orionis and Epsilon Sextans, their Drives synchronized, bound together by the rescue ship’s cables, were now falling as one unit
“I’ll see you on trial for piracy, Captain!” flared Grimes.
“An interesting legal point, Ensign—especially since you are being entered in my Official Log as a mutineer.”
10
THE DETENTION CELL was not uncomfortable, but it was depressing. It was a padded cell— passengers in spacecraft have been known to exhibit the more violent symptoms of mania—which detracted from its already inconsiderable cheerfulness if not from its comfort. However, Grimes was not mad—not in the medical sense, that is—and so was considered able to attend to his own bodily needs. The little toilet was open to him, and at regular intervals a bell would sound and a container of food would appear in a hatch recessed into the bulkhead of the living cabin. There was reading matter too—such as it was. The Ensign suspected that Jane Pentecost was the donor. It consisted of pamphlets published by some organization calling itself The Rim Worlds Secessionist Party. The almost hysterical calls to arms were bad enough—but the ones consisting mainly of columns of statistics were worse. Economics had never been Grimes’ strong point.
He slept, he fed at the appointed times, he made a lengthy ritual of keeping himself clean, he tried to read—and, all the time, with only sounds and sensations as clues, he endeavored to maintain a running plot of the ship’s maneuvers.
Quite early there had been the shutting down of the Mannschenn Drive, and the consequent fleeting sensation of temporal disorientation. This had been followed by the acceleration warning—the cell had an intercom speaker recessed in the padding—and Grimes, although it seemed rather pointless in his sponge rubber environment, had strapped himself into his couch. He heard the directional gyroscopes start up, felt the effects of centrifugal force as the ship came around to her new heading. Then there was the pseudo-gravity of acceleration, accompanied by the muffled thunder of the reaction drive. It was obvious, thought the Ensign, that Captain Craven was expending his reaction mass in a manner that, in other circumstances, would have been considered reckless.
Suddenly—silence and Free Fall, and almost immediately the off-key keening of the Mannschenn Drive. Its note was higher, much higher, than Grimes remembered it, and the queasy feeling of temporal disorientation lasted much longer than it had on previous occasions. And that, for a long time, was all. Meals came, and were eaten. Every morning—according to his watch—the prisoner showered and applied depilatory cream to his face. He tried to exercise—but to exercise in a padded cell, with no apparatus, in Free Fall, is hard. He tried to read—but the literature available was hardly more interesting to him than a telephone directory would have been. And, even though he never had been gregarious, the lack of anybody to talk to was wearing him down.
It was a welcome break from the monotony when he realized that, once again, the ship was maneuvering. This time there was no use of the directional gyroscopes; there were no rocket blasts, but there was a variation of the whine of the Drive as it hunted, hunted, as the temporal precession rate was adjusted by tens of seconds, by seconds, by microseconds.
And then it locked.
The ship shuddered slightly—once, twice.
Grimes envisaged the firing of the two mooring rockets, one from the bow and one from the stern, each with the powerful electromagnet in its nose, each trailing its fathoms of fine but enormously strong cable. Merchant vessels, he knew, carried this equipment, but unlike naval ships rarely used it. But Craven, as a Reservist, would have seen and taken part in enough drills.
The ship shuddered again—heavily.
So the rendezvous had been made. So Delta Orionis and Epsilon Sextans, their Drives synchronized, bound together by the rescue ship’s cables, were now falling as one unit
Similar Books
