The Big Black Mark - A. Bertram Chandler [53]
Grimes waited patiently. It would be useless, he knew, to try to hurry Flannery.
At last: "I've got it, Captain. That broadcast—ye can call it that—comes from a point directly ahead of us. How far? I can't be tellin' ye, but t'is not all that distant. An' I can tell ye, too, that it comes from our sort o' people, humans."
"I somehow can't imagine aliens singing 'Botany Bay,' " said Grimes. And many of the lodejammers were out of Port Woomera, in Australia."
"I've found yer Lost Colony for ye," said Flannery smugly.
Chapter 22
So Grimes ordered the splicing of the mainbrace, the issue of drink to all hands at the ship's expense. He sat in the wardroom with his officers, drinking with them, and drinking to the Lost Colony upon which they would be making a landing before too long. He did not need to be a telepath to sense the change of mood. They were behind him, with him again, these misfits and malcontents. He responded, smiling, when Brabham toasted, "To Grimes's luck!" He clinked glasses with Vinegar Nell, even with the Mad Major. He joined in heartily when everybody started singing "Botany Bay."
Botany Bay.
He rather hoped that this would be the name given by the colonists to this chance-found world circling Star 1716 in the Ballchin Catalog. It might well be; such colonies as had been founded by the crews and passengers of the gauss-jammers of the New Australian Expansion tended to run to distinctively Australian names.
He left when the party began to get a little too rowdy. He did not retire at once, but sprawled in his easy chair, his mind still active. When people recovered from this letting off of steam, he thought, he would have to discuss his plan of campaign with the senior officers, the departmental heads. Then, suddenly but quietly, the outer door of his day cabin opened. He was somehow not surprised when Vinegar Nell came in. She was (as before) carrying a tray, with coffee things and a plate of sandwiches. But this time she was still in uniform.
Grimes gestured toward the supper as she set it down on the low table. "So you still think of me as Gutsy Grimes?" he asked, but he smiled as he spoke.
"Lucky Grimes," she corrected, smiling back, a little lopsidedly. "And I hope, John, I really hope that your luck rubs off on the rest of us."
"I do, too," he told her.
She straightened up after she had put the supper things down, standing over him. Her legs were very long, and slightly apart, her skirt very short. One of her knees was exercising a "gentle but definite pressure on Grimes's outstretched thigh, but with a considerable effort he managed to keep his hands to himself. Then she stooped again as she poured him his coffee. The top two buttons of her shirt were undone and he glimpsed a nipple, erect, startlingly pink against the pale tan of the skin of her breast.
He whispered huskily, "Miss Russell, would you mind securing the door?"
She replied primly, "If you insist, Commander Grimes."
She walked slowly away from the table, away from him, shrugging out of her upper garment, letting it float unheeded to the deck. He heard the sharp click of the lock as it engaged. She turned, stepping out of her brief skirt as she did so. The sheer black tights that were all she was wearing beneath it concealed nothing. She walked past him into the bedroom, not looking at him, a faint smile on her face, her small breasts jouncing slightly, her round buttocks smoothly working, gleaming under the translucent material. He got up, spilling his coffee and ignoring it, following her.
She must have been fast. She was already completely naked, stretched out on the bunk, waiting for him, warmly glowing on the dark blue bedspread. In the dim light her hair glinted like dusky gold against the almost black material of the coverlet, in aphrodisiac contrast to the pale, creamy tan of her upper thighs and lower abdomen. She was beautiful, as only a desirous and desirable woman, stripped of all artifice,