The Big Black Mark - A. Bertram Chandler [70]
"Yes. A. single transmission. I don't want the emperor's monitors getting a fix on us. Elsinore will relay it."
"As you say, sir."
The tiny Carlotti antenna, the rotating Moebius strip, synchronized with the main antenna now extruded from the hull, began to turn and hunt. Elsinore would receive the signal, over the light-years, almost instantaneously. How long would it be before Davinas got it, and where would he be? How long would it be before Sundowner made her landing on Botany Bay? How long would Brandt have to wait? Grimes found that he was envying the scientist.
He debated with himself whether or not to drop in on Flannery, but decided against it. The PCO had found no fellow telepaths, but he had found quite a few boozing pals. No doubt the man would be suffering from a monumental hangover.
He went up to his quarters. He started to think about writing his report. Then he thought about his first report, the one in which he had damned Swinton. Should he rewrite it? The Mad Major had been very well behaved on Botany Bay. People like him should smoke those cigars all the time. Make love, not war.
Grimes decided to sleep on it. After all, it would be some days before the ship would be in a sector of space from which it would be safe to inform Lindisfarne Base of her whereabouts, and even then a long and detailed report of her activities would almost certainly be picked up and decoded by the Waverley monitors. It could wait until Discovery was back at Lindisfarne.
By the Standard Time kept by the ship it was late at night. And Grimes was tired. He turned in, and slept soundly.
Chapter 31
Discovery was not a happy ship.
All hands went about their duties sullenly, with a complete lack of enthusiasm. Grimes could understand why. They had been made too much of on Botany Bay. It had been the sort of planet that spacemen dream about, but rarely visit. It had been a world that made the truth of Dr. Johnson's famous dictum all too true. How did it go? A ship is like a prison where you stand a good chance of getting drowned. . . . Something like that, Grimes told himself. And though the chances of getting drowned while serving in a spaceship were rather remote there were much worse ways of making one's exit if things went badly wrong.
He went down to the farm deck to have a yarn with Flannery. The PCO had recovered slightly from his excesses but, as usual, was in the process of taking several hairs of the dog that had bitten him. The bottle, Grimes noted, contained rum, distilled on Botany Bay.
"Oh, t'is you, Skipper. Could I persuade ye? No? I was hopin' ye'd be takin' a drop with me. I have to finish this rotgut afore I can get back to me own tipple."
"So you enjoyed yourself on Botany Bay," remarked Grimes.
"An' didn't we all, each in his own way? But the good, times are all gone, an' we have to travel on."
"That seems to be the general attitude, Mr. Flannery."
"Yours included, Skipper. How iver did ye manage to make yer own flight from the mayor's nest?"
"Mphm."
"Iverybody had the time of his life but poor ould Ned." Flannery gestured toward the canine brain suspended in its sphere of murky nutrient fluid. "He'd've loved to have been out, in a body, runnin' over the green grass of a world so like his own native land."
"I didn't think the dingo ever did much running over green grass," remarked Grimes sourly. "Through the bush, over the desert, yes. But green grass, no."
"Ye know what I'm meanin'." Flannery suddenly became serious. "What are ye wantin' from me, Skipper?" It always used to be "Captain," thought Grimes. Flannery's been tainted by Botany Bay as much as anybody else. "Don't tell me. I know. Ye're wonderin' how things are in this rustbucket. I don't snoop on me shipmates, as well ye know. But I can , give ye some advice, if yell only listen. Ride with a loose rein. Don't go puttin' yer foot down with a firm hand. An' it might help if ye let it be known that ye're not bringin' charges against the Mad Major when we're back on Lindisfarne. Oh—an' ye could try