To Prime the Pump - A. Bertram Chandler [6]
Grimes was happy but Kravisky was not. The Surgeon Lieutenant's face had paled to a peculiar, pale green. He seemed to be swallowing something. Physician, heal thyself, thought Grimes sardonically. "I . . . I wish you'd look where you're going," mumbled the young doctor.
"Beautiful view, isn't it?" Grimes glanced through the ports, then at his console. There was nothing to worry about. He had a hemisphere to play around in. By the time he was down, the terminator would be just short of Lake Bluewater. It would be a daylight landing, to save these very casual locals in Port Control the trouble of setting out a flare path. There would be the radio beacon to home upon and at least twenty miles of smooth water for his runway. It was —he searched his memory for the expression used by long ago and faraway pilots of the Royal Air Force; history, especially the history of the ships of Earth's seas and air oceans, was his favorite reading—it was a piece of cake.
"Isn't it . . . isn't it hot in here?" Why couldn't Kravisky relax?
"Not especially. After all, we're sitting in a hot-monococque."
"What's that?" Then, with a feeble attempt at humor, "The remedy sounds worse than the disease . . ."
"Just an airborne thermos flask."
"Oh."
"Like a park, isn't it?" said Grimes. "Even from up here, like a park. Green. No industrial haze. No smog . . ."
"Too . . . tame," said Kravisky, taking a reluctant interest.
"No, I don't think so. They have mountains, and high ones, too. They have seas that must be rough sometimes, even with weather control. If they want to risk life and limb, there'll be plenty of mountaineering and sailing . . ."
"And other sports . . ."
"Yeah." The radio compass seemed to be functioning properly, as were air speed indicator and radio altimeter. The note of the distant beacon was a steady hum. No doubt the El Doradans possessed far more advanced systems than were used by their own aircraft, but the reentry vehicle was not equipped to make use of them. "Yeah," said Grimes again. "Such as?"
"I'm a reservist, you know. But I'm also a ship's doctor in civil life. My last voyage before I was called up for my drill was in the Commission's Alpha Cepheus . . . A cruise to Caribbea. Passengers stinking with money and far too much time on their hands . . ."
"What's that to do with sports?"
"You'd be surprised. Or would you?"
No, thought Grimes, he wouldn't. His first Deep Space voyage had been as a passenger, and Jane Pentecost, the vessel's purser, had been very attractive. Where was she now? he wondered. Still in the Commission's ships, or back home, on the Rim?
Damn Jane Pentecost and damn the Rim Worlds. But this planet was nothing like Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo or Thule. He had never been to any of those dreary colonies (and never would go there, he told himself) but he had heard enough about them. Too much.
The air was denser now, and the control column that Grimes had been holding rather too negligently was developing a life of its own. Abruptly the steady note of the beacon changed to a morse A—dot dash, dot dash. Grimes tried to get the re-entry vehicle back on course, overcompensated. It was N now—dash dot, dash dot. The Lieutenant was sweating inside his suit when he had the boat under control again. Flying these antique crates was far too much like work. But he could afford another glance at the scenery.
There were wide fields, some green and some golden-glowing in the light of the afternoon sun, and in these latter worked great, glittering machines, obviously automatic harvesters. There were dense clumps of darker green—the forests which, on this world, had been grown for aesthetic reasons, not as a source of cellulose for industry. But the El Doradans,