The Inheritors - A. Bertram Chandler [36]
The captain's name was not, as he had expected that it would be, Morrow. (But in an emergency, such as a forced landing on an unexplored world, anybody at all is liable to come to the fore.) The name of Morrow was not among those of the officers. A passenger, then? Examination of the ship's passenger list would supply the answer.
Lisa was pointing to a shelf of volumes. "And these," she was saying, "were Morrow's own books . . . ."
Grimes paused on his way to the display cases in which the ship's documents were housed. Books told one so much about their owner's makeup. His eye swept over the fiction titles. He realized, with pleased surprise, that he had read most of them, when he was a cadet at the Academy. Early Twentieth Century—and even late Nineteenth Century—science fiction aboard a starship! But it was no more absurd than to find the same science fiction required reading for future officers of a navy whose ships, even though they had yet to penetrate to The Hub, fared out to The Rim. The Planet Buyer . . . that had been good, as he remembered it. The Island Of . . .
His wrist transceiver was buzzing. He raised the instrument to his mouth. "Captain!" Saul's voice was urgent. "Captain, I would have called you before, but we've been having transmitter trouble. Drongo Kane left in his pinnace at first light this morning, heading north. He's got Sabrina with him and three of his own people, all armed."
"You heard that?" Grimes demanded of his officers.
They nodded.
"Thank you for your attention," Grimes said to Lisa, "but we must get back to our pinnace."
"Is Drongo Kane a friend of yours, that you are so eager to greet him?" she asked innocently, and looked bewildered when Grimes replied, "That'd be the sunny Friday!"
18
Grimes paused briefly in the room where Janine was still gossiping with Maya. As he entered he heard Maya ask, "And how do you deal with the problem of the uncontrollable adolescent?"
He said, "Excuse me, ladies. I've just received word that Drongo Kane is on his way here . . . ."
"Drongo Kane?" asked Janine, arching her silver brows.
"The captain of a ship called the Southerly Buster," Maya told her. "A most generous man."
"Goodie goodie," exclaimed her sister queen. She looked rather pointedly at Danzellan's gleaming clock on the wall, then at Grimes's watch that was strapped around her slim, brown wrist.
"Perhaps he'll give you an egg timer . . ." suggested Maggie Lazenby.
"What is that?" asked Janine.
"It's not important," said Grimes impatiently. "Excuse us, please."
He led the way out of the palace, to where his pinnace was grounded in the middle of the plaza, looking like a huge, stranded silver fish. He looked up at the clear sky. Yes—there, far to the southward, was a tiny speck, a dark dot against the blueness that expanded as he watched. Then he was aware that the two queens had followed him outside.
"Is that Drongo Kane?' asked Janine.
"I think it is," he replied.
"Then I must prepare a proper reception," she said and walked rapidly back to her palace. Maya stayed with Grimes.
She said, "Janine prides herself on doing things properly."
"If she were doing things properly," Grimes told her, "she would have a battery of ground to air missiles standing by."
"You must be joking!" she exclaimed, shocked.
"Have our own armament in readiness, sir?" asked the navigator.
"Mphm. I was joking, Mr. Pitcher. But it will do no harm to have the twenty millimeters cocked and ready."
Two women were building another fire in the brazier that had served Grimes for a beacon. One of them produced a large box of oversized matches from the pouch that she wore slung from her shoulder, lit the kindling. Almost immediately the column of gray smoke was climbing skyward.
Kane's pinnace was audible now as well as visible, the irregular beat of its inertial drive competing with the more rhythmic efforts of Janine's drummers,