Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (53 page)

Darleen got up from her own seat, made a production of getting Grimes settled into a comfortable chair. Shirl poured him a mug of steaming coffee. Fenella Pruin watched sardonically.

“And now,” she said, “perhaps the conquering hero will tell us what he intends doing next.”

Grimes sipped his coffee, nibbled a pastry. He said. “I’ve set course for Port Aphrodite . . .”

“Straight back to your beloved
Little Sister,
of course.”

“Do you have a sister, John?” asked Shirl. “You never told us.”

“It’s his ship,” said Fenella.

The soft, background music, of which Grimes had hardly been conscious, was interrupted. “This is a news flash. A camperfly, number SCF2011, has been stolen from a private mountain resort in Caligula Valley. Its charterer, Dr. Wilburn Callis, a visitor to New Venusberg, was murdered. Aboard the aircraft are two underpeople, females, and two true humans, a man and a woman. All four are dangerous criminals. Aircraft are requested to keep a sharp lookout for the stolen vehicle and to report any sighting at once.

“It is believed that the criminals will be heading towards Port Aphrodite.”

The interrupted music resumed. Grimes gulped what was left of his coffee but his enjoyment of it had been ruined. Obviously the stolen camperfly was no longer an asset but a liability. He did not know what the aerial capability of the planetary police forces was but was certain that it must be considerable.

“Well,” asked Fenella Pruin, “what are you going to do about it?”

He reached out for the box of Caribbean cigars, selected one of the slim, brown cylinders. It would not be as good as a pipe but he had long considered the fumes of smouldering tobacco an aid to thought. He ignited it with a flick of his fingernail, put the other end to his mouth. He inhaled. Shirl poured him more coffee.

“Aren’t you going to
do
something?” demanded Fenella Pruin.

“I have no intention of flying into a screaming tizzy,” he told her. “To begin with, I’m going to land. There may or may not be something flyable at the Colosseum that has the heels of us, but if there is it’ll be after us as soon as they get it airborne . . .”

He got up from his chair, went forward to the control cab. He studied the screen which depicted the terrain over which they were flying, looked at the chart. But before he could bring the camperfly down he would have to get off the rhumb line—or was it a great circle course?—between the Colosseum and Port Aphrodite. There was enough metal in the camperfly’s construction to make it a radar target, an anomalous echo that would be picked up by the instruments of pursuing aircraft.

He switched to manual, made a bold alteration of course to starboard. And was that a deep valley showing in the screen, ahead and a little to port? It was a dark rift of some kind, meandering through the general luminescence. He transferred his attention to the all-around lookout radar. The sky—ahead, astern, to both sides—was empty. So far. But he decided that it would be too big a risk to use landing lights.

At reduced speed he drifted down. The worst part of it was that the control cab was not designed for making a visual landing—not that much could be seen in the darkness. He watched the radar altimeter. Yes, that was a valley, or a canyon, and a deep one. He was directly over it now.

He stopped engines. The camperfly had sufficient buoyancy from its gas cells for its descent to be gentle. There was enough breeze, however, for it to be blown off its planned descent. Grimes restarted the engines to maneuver the unwieldy aircraft back into position, making allowance for leeway. But he could not foresee that at ground level there would be an eddy. The camperfly, instead of dropping neatly into the canyon, the walls of which gave ample clearance, drifted to the leeward rim. The port wing of the aircraft fouled something, crumpled. There was a loud hiss of escaping helium, audible even in the cabin. At first there was a violent lurch to starboard and then, as the damaged wing, no longer buoyant, tore free of the obstruction, a heeling over to port. On its side the camperfly dropped into the gulf. Luckily there was sufficient lift remaining in the undamaged gas cells for the descent to be a relatively gentle one.

She struck, with the port wing acting as a fender, cracking up beneath her. She settled, then almost at once was on the move again. Heavy blows shook her structure from beneath, from both sides. A strange, somehow fluid, roaring noise was audible in the control cab.

Grimes extricated himself from the tangle of female arms and legs into which he had been thrown, not as gently as he would have done in a situation of lesser urgency. He ignored the outraged squeals of the women. The dim lighting in the control cab was still on. He saw, through what had been the upper surface of the transparent dome and which was now a wall, this luminescence reflected from a black, swirling surface.

Water.

The camperfly had fallen into a swift running river and was being borne rapidly downstream. Even if she were holed by the rocks into which she was crashing there would be no danger of her sinking as long as the remaining gas cells remained intact. The situation, thought Grimes, could have been worse. This was better than either the Colosseum or the Snuff Palace.

Out of the frying pan,
he thought,
and into the washing up water . . .

Chapter 23

THE WOMEN SORTED
themselves out, crawled aft into the main cabin. They reported that the camperfly did not seem to be making water. Shirl returned with cushions so that Grimes could make himself comfortable, Darleen brought him a bottle of brandy. He should, he knew, stay awake—but he had been through too much. If he forced himself to remain fully conscious for what remained of the night he would be in no fit state to cope with any emergencies that might arise. And he wanted Shirl and Darleen, who had already proven themselves, to be fighting fit when needed.

That left one obvious choice for a lookout.

“Fenella!” he called. “Come here, will you?”

“What for? What’s wrong
now?
Are you going to make another of your marvelous landings?”

“Just come here!” shouted Grimes.

She came. It was too dark for Grimes to see her face but he knew that she was glaring at him. “Yes?” she demanded.

“I want you to stand the watch. Here. I’ll be staying here myself. Wake me at once if anything happens.”

“What about
them?
I’m paying for your services. They aren’t.”

“They’re trained fighters. You aren’t. I want them to get some sleep.”

She capitulated suddenly.

“Oh, all right. I suppose you’re right. Snore your bloody heads off, all three of you.”

She plumped down beside Grimes, tried at first to avoid physical contact with him but the curvature of the surface on which they had disposed themselves made this impossible. She lit one of the late Dr. Callis’ cigars. Grimes inhaled her smoke hungrily. Nicotine might keep him awake for a little longer but was a price that he was prepared to pay.

“Did you bring any more of those things with you?” he asked.

“Yes. Want one?”

Grimes said that he did. He lit up.

She asked in a voice far removed from her usual bossiness, “Grimes, what’s going to happen to us?”

He said, “I wish I knew. Or, perhaps, I’d rather not know . . .” The camperfly struck and bounced off a rock, throwing them closer together. “But we’re still alive. And officially we’re dead; that could be to our advantage. When we turn up, in person, singing and dancing, at Port Aphrodite that’s going to throw a monkey-wrench into all sorts of machinery . . .”

“You said
when,
not
if . . .
And as for the singing and dancing, I’m going to sing. To high heaven. That’s what I’m paid for—but I don’t mind admitting that I often enjoy my work . . .” She drew on her cigar, exhaled slowly. “But I do wish that I’d be able to do something about these girls from New Alice . . .” She lowered her voice in case Shirl and Darleen should still be awake in the cabin, and listening. “But they’re obviously underpeople. Some crazy Australian genetic engineer had kangaroo ova to play around with and produced his own idea of what humans should be. But they have no rights. As far as interstellar law’s concerned they’re nonhuman. Oh, I suppose I could try to get GSPCA interested, but . . .”

Grimes was dozing off. His cigar fell from his hand, was extinguished, with a sharp hiss, by the small amount of water that had entered the control cab. His head found a most agreeable nesting place between Fenella’s head and shoulder. She made no attempt to dislodge it.

“ . . . a slave trade’s a slave trade whether or not the victims are strictly human . . .”

Dimly Grimes realized that somebody was snoring. It was himself.

“. . . the river seems to be getting wider . . .”

“Mphm . . .”

“. . . the . . .”

And that was the last that Grimes heard.

***

He was awakened by bright sunlight striking through the transparency of the control cab bubble. By his side Fenella Pruin was fast asleep, snoring gently. A duet of snores came from the cabin. He should have stayed on watch himself, he thought. Nobody in the party, however, would be any the worse for a good sleep.

From the bubble he could see ahead and astern and to port, but not to starboard. He could see the river bank, densely wooded and with high hills in the background. The scenery was not moving relatively to the camperfly—so, obviously, the camperfly was not moving relatively to the scenery. The bank was at least five hundred meters distant.

He extricated himself from the sleeping Fenella Pruin’s embrace, clambered aft into the cabin. Shirl and Darleen were sprawled inelegantly on a pile of cushions and discarded clothing. They seemed to be all legs, all long, naked legs. Reluctantly Grimes looked away from them to what had been the starboard side of the cabin, to what was now the overhead. There was a door there. He could reach it, he thought, by clambering on the table which, bolted to the deck, was now on its side.

The table had only one leg. It was strong enough for normal loads but had not been designed to withstand shearing stresses. It broke. Grimes was thrown heavily on to the sleeping girls.

They snapped at once into full and vicious consciousness. Darleen’s hands closed about his throat while Shirl’s foot thudded heavily into his belly.

Then— “It’s you,” said Darleen, releasing him while Shirl checked her foot before it delivered a second blow.

Grimes rubbed the bruised skin of his neck.

“Yes. It’s me. Can the pair of you lift me up to the door? There . . .”

They were quick on the uptake. Their strong arms went around him, hoisted him up. He was able to reach the catch of the door, slide it aft. They lifted him still further. He caught the rim of the opening, pulled himself up and through. He was standing just abaft the starboard wing. It must have acted as a sail; with wind was blowing across the river and had driven the camperfly on to a sandy beach. Beyond this there were trees and bushes, with feathery foliage, blue rather than green. There were hills in the not distant background. Darleen—she must have been lifted by Shirl—joined him.

She said, a little wistfully, “We could live here . . . There must be animals, and fruits, and nuts . . . And roots . . .”

“Mphm,” grunted Grimes. Many years ago he had been obliged to live the simple life in Edenic circumstances and this was not among his most pleasant memories. “Mphm.”

“Help me up!” came a voice from below.

Darleen fell supine to the surface on which she had been standing, lowered an arm through the aperture. Shirl’s head appeared through the opening, then her shoulders, then her breasts, then all of her. She stood by Grimes, looking, as Darleen had looked, to what must have been to her a Promised Land.

“This is beaut,” she said in a flat voice.

“Too right!” agreed Darleen, who was back on her feet.

“We could start a tribe,” said Shirl.

Count me out as a patriarch,
thought Grimes.

“Just the three of us,” went on Shiri, “to start with . . .**

And did that mean the three women, Grimes wondered, or the two New Alicians only partnered by him, with Fenella Pruin somehow lost in the wash? The way that Shirl and Darleen were looking at him the answer to the question was obvious.

“This is just like the Murray Valley at home,” said Darleen.

“Too right,” agreed Shirl.

“But we can’t stay here,” said Grimes.

“Why not?” asked the two girls simultaneously.

“We have to get back to Port Aphrodite,” he said.

“Why?” they countered.

Fenella Pruin’s voice came from inside the camperfly. “Where is everybody? Grimes, where are you?”

“Here!” he called.

With some reluctance the two New Alicians helped her up to the side of the camperfly. Steadying herself with one hand on the up-pointing wing she looked around.

“All very pretty,” she said at last, “but where are we?”

“Home,” said Darleen.

“Home,” said Shirl. “We will settle here—Darleen, John Grimes and myself. We will start a tribe . . .”

“You can stay if you like,” said Darleen generously.

Fenella laughed. “I’m a big city girl,” she said. “And, in any case, you’ll have to ask the owners’ permission before you set up house.”

“The owners?” asked Grimes.

“Yes.” She pointed. “The owners . . .”

They were coming down from between the trees and bushes, making their way to the beach. They were . . . human? Or humanoid.

Their arms were too short, their haunches too heavy. The women were almost breastless. Their skins were a dark, rich brown. Some of them carried long spears, some cruciform boomerangs, some heavy clubs.

They stared at the stranded camperfly, at Grimes and the three women.

“Good morning!” Grimes shouted.

“Gidday!” came an answering shout.

“Where are we?” he called.

“Kangaroo Valley!” came the reply.

Chapter 24

IT HAD BEEN A LONG DAY.

Grimes had supervised the stripping and dismantling of the camperfly, its breaking up into pieces that could be carried into the bush and hidden. Matilda’s Children—as this tribe called itself—possessed some metal tools, saws, hammers and axes, and the construction of the aircraft was mainly of plastic. Nonetheless it had not been easy work.