The Inheritors - A. Bertram Chandler [47]
At last it was obvious to Mr. Dreebly that he had only two choices. Either he could return to the surface, or he could commit suicide by crushing his control room and everybody in it against Seeker's far less vulnerable stern. He was not in a suicidal mood.
Grimes could not resist the temptation. He called for a microphone and for a hookup to the Buster's transceiver. He said just one word, and that with insufferable smugness.
"Chicken!"
Slowly the two ships dropped through the night—Southerly Buster cowed and inferior. Apart from that one taunt there had been no exchange of signals. Slowly they dropped, the defeated Dreebly and the overconfident Grimes.
It was this overconfidence that led, at the finish, to disaster. Just before Dreebly's landing Grimes miscalculated, and his stern made brief contact with the Buster's stem, doing her no great damage but throwing her off balance. With all his faults, Dreebly was a superb shiphandler. He fought to correct the topple, and had he not been inhibited by the ominous bulk of the other vessel hanging immediately above his control room he might well have done so. Southerly Buster's fall was not completely catastrophic, but it was a fall, nonetheless. Visibly shuddering, she tilted, further and further, until her long axis was parallel to the ground.
It was then that Dreebly lost control, and there was a tinny crash as she dropped the last half meter.
24
It was, Grimes admitted glumly, quite a mess. Just how big a mess it was depended upon the legality or otherwise of his actions, the illegality or otherwise of Kane's operations. Legalities and illegalities notwithstanding, he was obliged to give assistance to the damaged—the wrecked—ship.
She was not a total write-off, although on a world with no repair yards it would be months before she could be made spaceworthy; she would probably have to be towed off-planet to somewhere where there were facilities. (And who would have to pay the bill? Kane would certainly take legal action against the Federation.)
Fortunately everybody aboard Southerly Buster had escaped serious injury, although the unfortunate women from Oxford, who had just been recovering consciousness at the time of the crash, were badly bruised and shaken. Them Grimes sent back to their town in Seeker's boats.
He said to Saul, "I've done enough damage for one day. I'm turning in—for what's left of the night."
"The report to Base, sir . . . ."
Grimes told him coarsely what he could do to the report, then, "It will have to wait, Number One. I don't want to stick my neck out in writing until I have a few more facts."
"But you put down an attempt at slave trading, sir."
"Mphm. I hope so. I sincerely hope so. But I'm afraid that the bastard Drongo has some dirty big ace up his sleeve. Oh, well. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I'm getting some shut-eye. Good night, Number One."
"Good night, sir."
Grimes went up to his quarters. He paused briefly in his day cabin, poured himself a stiff drink, downed it in one swallow. He felt a little better. He went through into his bedroom, and stiffened with astonishment in the doorway, Maya was there, curled up on the bed, her back to him. She was snoring gently—and then immediately was wide awake, rolling over to face him.
"Maya . . ." he said reprovingly.
"I had to sleep somewhere, John," she told him, even more reprovingly. "And you seemed to have quite forgotten all about me."
"Of course I hadn't," he lied.
"Of course you had," she stated, without rancor. "But you had much more important things