The Inheritors - A. Bertram Chandler [51]
"Loud and clear, Commander. Danzellan here. My ETA your landing site is thirty minutes Standard, twenty-four minutes Local, from now. I have your Commander Lazenby with me. Over."
"Thank you, Captain Danzellan." Should he ask to speak with Maggie? No. She had made no attempt to speak with him. And Grimes was in a misogynistic mood. Women! Cats!
He returned to the viewport. He passed the time by mentally composing the sort of report—or complaint—that he would write if he were Drongo Kane.
To: Flag Officer in Charge of Lindisfarne Base
From: Drongo Kane, master and owner of s/s Southerly Buster
Subject: Piratical action by Lieutenant Commander John Grimes, Captain of ESS Seeker.
Sir,
I regret to have to report that while my vessel was proceeding on her lawful occasions she was wantonly attacked by your Seeker, under the command of your Lieutenant Commander Grimes. Commander Grimes not only used his armament to impede the embarkation of fare-paying passengers, subjecting them to a sleep gas barrage, but also fired upon Southerly Buster herself. Later he attempted to ram my ship after she had lifted off, and only the superlative skill of my chief officer, who was in charge of the vessel at the time, averted a collision. Although contact between the two ships was avoided contact with the ground was not. As a result of this, Southerly Buster sustained severe structural damage . . .
"Pinnace in sight visually, sir," reported the O. O. W.
"Thank you, Mr. Giles."
Danzellan came in more slowly and cautiously than Kane had done, but he wasted no time, setting his craft down at the foot of Seeker's ramp. Grimes watched Schnauzer's master get out, then help Maggie Lazenby to the ground. He told Giles to telephone down to the airlock sentry, instructing the man to inform Captain Danzellan and Maggie that he would be waiting for them in his quarters. He went down to his day cabin, hastily shutting the door between it and his bedroom. The smell of cat was still strong.
He found and filled his foulest pipe, lit it. When Danzellan and Maggie came in he was wreathed in an acrid, blue smog.
"What a fug!" she exclaimed.
The intercom telephone buzzed. It was the O.O.W. calling. "Sir, Captain Kane and his chief officer are at the airlock. They wish to speak to you."
"Send them up," said Grimes.
"What in the universe have you been doing, Commander?" asked Danzellan. "Fighting a small war?"
"Or not so small," commented Maggie.
"I," Grimes told them bitterly, "was attempting to prevent the commission of a crime. Only it seems that slave trading is not a crime, insofar as this bloody world is concerned."
"The underpeople . . . " said Maggie softly. "Underpeople—and the still unrepealed Non-Citizen Act . . . . But how did you find out? It took me hours after I was able to get my paws on the records . . . ."
"I added two and two," Grimes told her, "and came up with three point nine recurring. All the clues are so obvious. Rudimentary nipples, paw-like hands and feet, the way in which the people eat and drink, and the use of 'cat' as a term of opprobrium when, apart from the Morrowvians themselves, there isn't a single animal of Terran origin on the planet . . . ."
Danzellan grinned. "I see what you mean. I've been known to refer to particularly stupid officers as 'pathetic apes.' "
"Those same points had me puzzled," admitted Maggie. "But I'm surprised that you noticed them."
"And Morrow's books," went on Grimes. "The Island of Doctor Moreau. The Cordwainer Smith novels. The names of the four families—Wells, Morrow, Cordwainer and Smith. And North Australia . . . ."
"You're losing me there," admitted Maggie.
A junior officer knocked at the door. "Captain Kane to see you, sir. And Mr. Dreebly."
Kane blew into the room like the violent storm after which his ship was named. He blustered, "I'll have your stripes for this, Grimes! As soon as your bloody admiral hears my story he'll