The Road to the Rim - A. Bertram Chandler [42]
"Why shouldn't we be Adler?" asked Grimes.
"What do you mean, Ensign?"
"The Waldegren Navy's frigates are almost identical, in silhouette, with the Commission's Epsilon class freighters. We could disguise this ship a little by masking the dissimilarities by a rough patching of plating. After all, Adler was in action and sustained some damage—"
"Complicated," mused the Captain. "Too complicated. And two Adlers—each, presumably, in encoded psionic communication with both Waldegren and Dartura . . . . You've a fine, devious mind, young Grimes—but I'm afraid you've out-fixed yourself on that one."
"Let me talk, sir. Let me think out loud. To begin with—a ship running on Mannschenn Drive can put herself into orbit about a planet, but it's not, repeat not, recommended."
"Damn right it's not."
"But we have the heels of Adler? Yes? Then we could afford a slight delay to carry out the modifications—the disguise—that I've suggested. After all, forty odd light years is quite a long way."
"But what do we gain, Mr. Grimes?"
"The element of confusion, sir. Let me work it out. We disguise ourselves as well as we can. We find out, from intercepted and decoded signals, Adler's ETA—and the coordinates of her breakthrough into the normal continuum. We contrive matters to be more or less in the same place at exactly the same time. And when the shore batteries and the guardships see no less than two Adlers slugging it out, each of them yelling for help in the secret code, they won't know which of us to open fire on."
"Grimes," said Craven slowly, "I didn't know you had it in you. All I can say is that I'm glad that you're on our side."
"Am I?" asked Grimes wonderingly,. suddenly deflated. He looked at the Captain who, after all, was little better than a pirate, whose accomplice he had become. He looked at the girl, but for whom he would not be here. "Am I? Damn it all, whose side am I on?"
"You'd better go below," Craven told him gently. "Go below and get some sleep. You need it. You've earned it."
"Jeremy," said Jane Pentecost to Craven, "would you mind looking after the shop for half an hour or so? I'll go with John."
"As you please, my dear. As you please."
It was the assurance in the Captain's voice that hurt. It won't make any difference to us, it implied. It can't make any difference. Sure, Jane, go ahead. Throw the nice little doggie a bone . . . . we can spare it.
"No thank you," said Grimes coldly, and left the Control Room.
But he couldn't hate these people.
XX
AFTER A LONG SLEEP Grimes felt better. After a meal he felt better still. It was a good meal, even though the solid portion of it came from tins. Craven's standards were slipping, thought the Ensign. He was reasonably sure that such items as caviar, escargots, pâté de foie gras, Virginia ham, Brie, and remarkably alcoholic cherries were not included in the Commission's inventory of emergency stores. And neither would be the quite reasonable Montrachet, although it had lost a little by being decanted from its original bottles into standard squeeze bulbs. But if the Captain had decided that the laborer was worthy of his hire, with the consignees of the cargo making their contribution toward that hire, that was his privilege . . .? Responsibility?—call it what you will.
Jane Pentecost watched him eat. As he was finishing his coffee she said, "Now that our young lion has fed, he is required in the Control Room."
He looked at her both gratefully and warily. "What have I done now?"
"Nothing, my dear. It is to discuss what you—we—will do. Next."
He followed her to Control. Craven was there, of course, and so were Baxter and Summers. The Captain was enjoying one of his rank cigars, and a limp, roll-your-own cigarette dangled from the engineer's lower lip. The telepath coughed pointedly every time that acrid smoke expelled by either man drifted his way. Neither paid any attention to him, and neither did Grimes when he filled and lighted his own