The Big Black Mark - A. Bertram Chandler [55]
"Damn it!" muttered the radio officer, still fiddling with the controls. "I still can't get a picture."
"Perhaps you aren't supposed to," murmured Grimes.
A final crash of guitars, scream of violins and rattle of drums, an explosive flare of light and color, fading into darkness . . . and then, at last, a picture. A young woman, attractive, with deeply tanned skin and almost white-blonde hair, stood with one slim hand resting on the surface of a table. She was simply clad in a long white robe, which somehow hid no smallest detail of her firm body. She said—and it was a pity that her voice, with its flat intonation, did not match her appearance—"An' that was Damon's Firebird Symphony, played to you by the composer himself. I hope y'all liked it. An' that's it from this station for today. We'll be on the air again at the usual time termorrer with our brecker program, commencin' at 0600 hours. Nighty-night all, an' good sleepin'."
She faded slowly from the screen and the picture of a flag replaced her—a familiar (to Grimes) ensign, horizontal and rippling in a stiff breeze, dark blue, with a design of red, white, and blue crosses superimposed upon each other in the upper canton, a five-starred, irregularly cruciform constellation in the fly. And there was music—also familiar.
"Once a jolly swagman," sang Grimes, softly but untunefully, "camped by a billabong. . . ."
"Do you know it, sir?" asked one of the radio officers.
Grimes looked at the young man suspiciously, then remembered that he was from New Otago, and that the New Otagoans are a notoriously insular breed. He said, "Yes. 'Waltzing Matilda,' of course. Wherever Aussies have gone they've taken her with them."
"Who was Waltzing Matilda?" persisted the officer. "Some old-time dancing girl?"
Brabham sniggered, and Grimes said, "Not exactly. But it's a bit too complicated to explain right now."
And whose ghosts, he wondered, would be haunting the billabongs (if there were billabongs) of this world upon which they would soon be landing? The phantom of some swagman, displaced in time and space, or—Damn you, Flannery, he thought, stop putting ideas into my mind!—or, even, of the mutiny-prone Bligh?
Chapter 24
"We have to let them know we're here," said Grimes.
"The probe is in good working order, sir," said Brabham.
"Not the probe," Grimes told him. He did not want a repetition of all that had happened the last time a probe had been used. He went on, "These people are human. They have maintained a reasonably high standard of technology."
"With airships, Sir?" asked Brabham.
"Yes. With airships. It has never ceased to amaze me that so many human cultures have not persisted with their use. Why waste power just to stay up before you even think about proceeding from Point A to Point B? But never mind the airships. They also have radio." He turned to one of the technicians. "Did you note the time when the station closed down, Lieutenant? Good. And the blonde said that she'd be resuming transmission at 0600 hours tomorrow."
"Local time, sir," pointed out Brabham. "Not ship's time."
"When she whispered her sweet good nights," said Grimes, "I managed to tear my eyes away from her face long enough to notice a clock on the wall behind her. A twenty-four-hour clock. It was registering midnight. And we already know, from our own observations, that Botany Bay has a period of rotation of just over twenty-five Standard Hours. I assume—but, of course, I could be wrong—that there are people in this ship, besides