The Inheritors - A. Bertram Chandler [6]
Even so, Grimes suffered. Seeker had a mixed crew—and a ship, as Grimes was fond of saying, is not a Sunday School outing. On past voyages it had been tacitly assumed that Maggie was the captain's lady. On this voyage it was so assumed too—by everybody except one of the two people most intimately concerned. Grimes tried to play along with the assumption, but it was hopeless.
"I suppose," he said bitterly, after she had strongly resisted a quite determined pass, "that you're still hankering after that beefy lout, Brasidus or whatever his name was, on Sparta . . . ."
"No," she told him, not quite truthfully. "No. It's just that I can't possibly join in your fun and games when I feel as though I weigh about fourteen times normal."
"Only one and a half times," he corrected her.
"It feels fourteen times. And it's the psychological effect that inhibits me."
Grimes slumped back in his chair, extending an arm to his open liquor cabinet.
"Lay off it!" she told him sharply.
"So I can't drink now."
"You will not drink now." Her manner softened. "Don't forget, John, that you're responsible for the ship and everybody aboard her . . . ."
"Nothing can happen in deep space."
"Can't it?" Her fine eyebrows lifted slightly. "Can't it? After some of the stories I've heard, and after some of the stories you've told me yourself . . .
"Mphm." He reached out again, but it was a half-hearted attempt.
"Things will work out, John," she said earnestly. "They always do, one way or the other . . . ."
"Suppose it's the wrong way?"
"You'll survive. I'll survive. We'll survive." She quoted, half seriously, " 'Men have died, and worms have eaten 'em—but not for love . . .' "
"Where's that from?" he asked, interested.
"Shakespeare. You trade school boys—you're quite impossible. You know nothing—nothing—outside your own field."
"I resent that," said Grimes. "At the Academy we had to do a course in Twentieth Century fiction . . .
Again the eyebrows lifted. "You surprise me." And then she demanded incredulously, "What sort of fiction?"
"It was rather specialized. Science fiction, as a matter of fact. Some of those old buggers made very good guesses. Most of them, though, were way off the beam. Even so, it was fascinating."
"And still trade-school-oriented."
He shrugged. "Have it your way, Maggie. We're just Yahoos. But we do get our ships around." He paused, then delivered his own quotation. " 'Transportation is civilization.' "
"All right," she said at last. "Who wrote that?"
"Kipling."
"Kipling—and science fiction?"
"You should catch up on your own reading some time . . . ." The telephone buzzed sharply. He got up and went rapidly to the handset.
She remarked sweetly, "Nothing can happen in deep space . . . ."
"Captain here," said Grimes sharply.
Lieutenant Hayakawa's reedy voice drifted into the day cabin. "Hayakawa, Captain sir . . . ."
"Yes, Mr. Hayakawa?"
"I . . . am not certain. But I think I have detected psionic radiation—not close, but not too far distant.
"It is extremely unlikely," Grimes said, "that we are the only ship in this sector of space."
"I . . . I know, Captain. But—it is all vague, and the other telepath is maintaining a block . . .I . . . I tried at first to push through, and he knew that I was trying . . . . Then, suddenly, I relaxed . . . ."
Psionic judo . . . thought Grimes.
"Yes . . . You could call it that . . . But there is somebody aboard that ship who is thinking all the time about . . . Morrowvia . . . ."
"Drongo Kane," said Grimes.
"No, Captain. Not Drongo Kane. This is a . . . young mind. Immature . . . ."
"Mphm. Anything else?"
"Yes . . . . He is thinking, too, of somebody called Tabitha . . . ."
"And who's she when she's up and dressed?"
"She is not dressed . . . not as he remembers her."
"This," stated Maggie Lazenby, "is disgusting. I thought, in my innocence, that the Rhine Institute took a very dim view of any prying by its graduates into private thoughts.