To Prime the Pump - A. Bertram Chandler [8]
"Like hell you will. Button up!"
Sullenly, Kravisky checked that his belt was still tight, then sealed his helmet. Grimes followed suit. His hand hesitated over the big, red button on the control panel, then slammed down decisively. Even through the thick, resilient padding of his seat he felt the violent kick of the catapulting explosion. He cringed, expecting the skull-crushing impact of his head with the roof of the cabin, the last thing that he would ever feel. But it did not come, although he was faintly aware of the lightest of taps on his shoulder. And then he and the Surgeon Lieutenant, still strapped in their buoyant chairs, were shooting upwards, the sundered shell of the control cabin falling away beneath and below them, soaring to the surface in the midst of a huge bubble of air and other gases. Somehow he found time to look about him. The water was very blue and very clear. And there was a great, goggle-eyed fish staring at them from outside the bubble. It did not look especially carnivorous. Grimes hoped that it wasn't.
The two chairs broke surface simultaneously, bobbing and gyrating. Slowly, their motion ceased. They floated in the middle of a widening circle of discolored water, a spiralling swirl of iridescent oil slicks. And there were more than a few dead fish. Grimes could not repress a chuckle when he saw that they were golden carp. About five hundred yards away, its engine stopped, lay the scarlet power boat. But there was something in the water between it and the astronauts, something that was approaching at a speed that, to the spacemen should have been painfully slow and yet, in this environment, was amazingly fast.
There was a sleek head in a golden helmet—no, decided Grimes, it was hair, not an artificial covering— and there was two slim, golden-brown arms that alternately flashed up and swept down and back. And there was the rest of her, slim and golden-brown all over. Somehow it was suddenly important to Grimes that he see her face. He hoped that it would match what he could already see.
As she neared the floating chairs she reverted to a breaststroke and then, finally, came to a standstill, hanging there, a yard or so distant, just treading water. The spacemen could not help staring at her body through the shimmering transparency, her naked body. It was beautiful. With a sudden start of embarrassment Grimes forced his gaze to slide upwards to her face. It was thin, the cheekbones pronounced, the planes of the cheeks flat. Her mouth was a wide, scarlet slash, parted to reveal perfect white teeth. The eyes were an intense blue, an angry blue. She was saying something, and it was obvious that she was not whispering.
Grimes put up his hand, opened the faceplate of his helmet.
". . . offworld yahoos!" he heard. "My two favorite watchbirds destroyed, thanks to your unspaceman-like antics!" Her voice was not loud but it carried well. It could best be described as an icy soprano.
"Madam," Grimes said coldly. It didn't sound quite right but it would have to do. "Madam, I venture to suggest that the loss of my own boat is of rather greater consequence than the destruction of your . . . pets." (Pets? Watchbirds? That obviously metallic wing skewered on the antenna?) He went on, "Our Captain expressly requested that this lake be cleared as a landing area."
"Your Captain?" She made it sound as though the commanding officer of a Zodiac Class cruiser ranked with but below the butler.
"Look here, young woman . . ."
"What did you call me?"
"If you aren't a young woman," contributed Kravisky, "you look remarkably like one."
In her fury the girl forgot to tread water. She went down, came up spluttering. Only one word was intelligible and that was "Insolence!" She reached out a long, slender arm, caught hold of a projection at the edge of Grimes' chair. She floated there, maintaining her distance, glaring up at him.
"Now, young lady . . ."
She was mollified but only slightly. "Don't call me that, either," she snapped.
"Then what . . . ?"
"I am the Princess Marlene von Stolzberg.