Grimes 007 The Wandering Buoy, page 1
THE WANDERING BUOY
Actions—even enormously sophisticated actions—do not reveal the motivation that led to them. And even actions can be hair-raisingly mysterious. A. BERTRAM CHANDLER
Illustrated be Leo Summers
It really shouldn't have been there. Nothing at all should have been there, save for the sparse drift of hydrogen atoms that did nothing at all to mitigate the hard vacuum of interstellar space, and save for the Courier Adder, proceeding on he lawful occasions.
It shouldn't have been there, but it was, and Grimes and his officers were pleased, rather than otherwise, that something had happened to break the monotony of the long voyage.
"A definite contact, Captain," said von Tannenbaum, peering into the spherical screen of the mass proximity indicator.
"Hm-m-m . . ." grunted Captain Grimes. Then, to the electronic communications officer, "You're quite sure that there's no traffic around, Sparks?"
"Quite sure, Captain," replied Slovotny. "Nothing within a thousand light-years."
"Then get Spooky on the intercom, and ask him if he's been in touch with anybody . . . or anything."
"Very good, Captain," said Slovotny rather sulkily. There was always rivalry, sometimes far from friendly, between electronic and psionic communications officers.
Grimes looked over the navigator's shoulder into the velvety blackness of the screen, at the tiny, blue-green spark that lay a little to one side of the glowing filament that was the ship's extrapolated trajectory. Von Tannenbaum had set up the range and bearing markers and was quietly reading aloud the figures. He said, "At our present velocity we shall be up to it in just over three hours."
"Spooky says that there's no psionic transmission at all from it, whatever it is," reported Slovotny.
"So if it's a ship, it's probably a derelict," murmured Grimes.
"Salvage . . ." muttered Beadle, looking almost happy.
"You've a low, commercial mind, Number One," Grimes told him. As I have myself, he thought. The captain's share of a fat salvage award would make a very nice addition to his far from generous pay. "Oh, well, since you've raised the point you can check towing gear, spacesuits and all the rest of it. And you, Sparks, can raise Lindisfarne Base on the Carlotti. I'll have the preliminary report ready in a couple of seconds . . ." He added, speaking as much to himself as to the others, "I suppose I'd better ask permission to deviate, although the galaxy won't grind to a halt if a dozen bags of mail are delayed in transit . . ." He took the message pad that Slovotny handed him and wrote swiftly, To Officer Commanding Couriers. Sighted unidentified object coordinates A1763.5 x ZU97.75 x J222, approx. Request authority investigate. Grimes.
By the time that the reply came Grimes was on the point of shut ting down his Mannschenn Drive and initiating the maneuvers thai would match trajectory and speed with the drifting object.
It read, Authority granted, but please try to keep your nose clean for a change. Damien.
"Well, Captain, we can try," said Beadle, not too hopefully. With the Mannschenn Drive shut down radar, which gave far more accurate readings than the mass proximity indicator, was operable. Von Tannenbaum was able to determine the elements of the object's trajectory relative to that of the ship, and after this had been done the task of closing it was easy.
At first it was no more than brightening blip in the screen and then, at last, it could be seen visually as Adder's probing searchlight caught it and held it. To begin with it was no more than just another star among the stars, but as the ship gained on it an appreciable disk was visible through the binoculars, and then with naked eye.
Grimes studied it carefully through his powerful glasses. It was spherical, and appeared to be metallic. There were no projections on it anywhere, although there were markings that looked like painted letters or numerals. It was rotating slowly.
"It could be a mine . . ." said Beadle, who was standing with Grimes at the viewport.
"It could be . . ." agreed Grimes. "And it could be fitted with some sort of proximity fuse . . ." He turned to address von Tannenbaum. "You'd better maintain our present distance off, Pilot, until we know better what it is." He stared out through the port gain. Space mines are a defensive rather than offensive weapon, and Adder carried six of the things in her own magazine. They are a dreadfully effective weapon when the conditions for their use are ideal—which they rarely are. Dropped from a vessel being pursued by an enemy they are an excellent deterrent—provided that the pursuer is not proceeding under interstellar drive. Unless there is temporal synchronization there can be no physical contact. Out here, thought Grimes, in a region of space where some sort of interstellar drive must be used, a mine just didn't make sense. On the other hand, it never hurt to be careful. He recalled the words of one of the instructors at the Academy. "There are old space men, and there are bold spacemen, but there aren't any old, bold spacemen."
"A sounding rocket . . ." he said.
"All ready, Captain," replied Beadle.
"Thank you, Number One. After you launch it, maintain full control throughout its flight. Bring it to the buoy, or the mine, or whatever it is, very gently—I don't want you punching holes in it. Circle the target a few times, if you can manage it, and then make careful contact." He paused.
"Meanwhile, restart the Mannschenn Drive, but run it in neutral gear. If there is a big bang we might be able to start precessing before the shrapnel hits us." He paused again, then, "Have any of you gentlemen any bright ideas?"
"It might be an idea," contributed Slovotny, "to clear away the laser cannon. Just in case."
"Do so, Sparks. And you, Number One, don't launch your rocket until I give the word."
"Cannon trained on the target," announced Slovotny after only a few seconds.
"Good. All right, Number One. Now you can practice rocketship handling." Beadle returned to the viewport, with binoculars strapped to his eyes and a portable control box in his hands. He pressed a button, and almost at once the sounding rocket swam into the field of view, a sleek, fishlike shape with a pale glimmer of fire at its tail, a ring of bright red lights mounted around its midsection to keep it visible at all times to the aimer. Slowly it drew away from the ship, heading towards the enigmatic ball that hung in the blaze of the searchlight. It veered to one side to pass the target at a respectable distance, circled it, went into orbit about it, a minuscule satellite about a tiny primary.
Grimes started to get impatient. He had learned that one of the hardest parts of a captain's job is to refrain from interfering—even so . . . "Number One," he said at last, "don't you think you could edge the rocket in a little closer?"
"I'm trying, sir," replied Beadle. "But the thing won't answer the controls."
"Do you mind if I have a go?" asked Grimes.
"Of course not, Captain." Implied but not spoken was, "And you're welcome!"
Grimes strapped a set of binoculars to his head, then took the control box. First of all he brought the sounding rocket back towards the ship, then put it in a tight turn to get the feel of it. Before long he was satisfied that he had it; it was as though a tiny extension of himself was sitting in a control room in the miniature spaceship. It wasn't so very different from a rocket-handling simulator.
He straightened out the trajectory of the sounding rocket, sent it back towards the mysterious globe and then, as Beadle had done, put it in orbit. So far, so good. He cut the drive and the thing, of course, continued circling the metallic sphere. A brief blast from a braking jet—that should do the trick. With its velocity drastically reduced the missile should fall gently towards its target. But it did not—as von Tannenbaum, manning the radar, reported.
There was something wrong here, thought Grimes. The thing had considerable mass, otherwise it would never have shown so strongly in the screen of the MPI. The greater the mass, the greater the gravitational field. But, he told himself, there are more ways than one of skinning a cat. He actuated the steering jets, tried to nudge the rocket in towards its objective. "How am I doing, Pilot?" he asked.
"What are you trying to do, Captain?" countered von Tannenbaum. "The elements of the orbit are unchanged."
"Hm-m-m." Perhaps more than a gentle nudge was required. Grimes gave more than a gentle nudge—and with no result whatsoever. He did not need to look at Beadle to know that he was wearing his I-told-you-so expression.
So . . .
So the situation called for brute strength and ignorance, a combination that usually gets results.
Grimes pulled the rocket away from the sphere, almost back to the ship. He turned it—and then, at full acceleration, sent it driving straight for the target. He hoped that he would be able to apply the braking jets before it came into damaging contact—but the main thing was to make contact, of any kind.
He need not have worried.
With its driving jet flaring ineffectually the rocket was streaking back towards Adder, tail first. The control box was useless. "Slovotny!" barked Grimes. "Fire!"
There was a blinding flare, and then only a cloud of incandescent, but harmless, gases still drifting towards the ship.
"And what do we do now, Captain?" asked Beadle. "Might I suggest that we make a full report to Base and resume our voyage?"
"You might, Number One. There's no law against it. But we continue our investigations."
Grimes was in a stubborn mood. He was glad that Adder was not engaged upon a mission of real urgency. Those bags of Fleet mail were not important
But what to do?
Adder hung there, and the thing hung there, rates and directions of drift nicely synchronized, and in one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three Standard years they would fall into, or around, Algol, assuming that Grimes was willing to wait that long—which, of course, he was not. He looked at the faces of his officers, who were strapped into their chairs around the wardroom table. They looked back at him.
Von Tannenbaum—the Blond Beast—grinned cheerfully. He remarked, "It's a tough nut to crack, Captain—but I'd just hate to shove off without cracking it."
Slovotny, darkly serious, said, "I concur. And I'd like to find out how that repulsor field works."
Vitelli, not quite yet a member of the family, said nothing. Deane complained, "If the thing had a mind that I could read, it'd all be so much easier . . ."
"Perhaps it's allergic to metal," suggested von Tannenbaum. "We could try to bring the ship in towards it, to see what happens."
"Not likely, Pilot," growled Grimes. "Not yet, anyhow. Hm-mm . . . you might have something. It shouldn't be too hard to cook up, with our resources, a sounding rocket of all-plastic construction and . . ."
"There has to be metal in the guidance system . . ." objected Slovotny.
"There won't be any guidance system, Sparks. It will be a solid fuel affair, and we just aim it, fire it, and when we see what happens . . ."
"Solid fuel?" demurred Beadle. "Even if we had the formula we'd never be able to cook up a batch of cordite or anything similar . . ."
"There'd be no need to, Number One. We should be able to get enough from the cartridges for our projectile small arms. But I don't intend to do that."
"Then what do you intend, Captain?"
"We have graphite—and that's carbon. We've all sorts of fancy chemicals in our stores, especially those required for the maintenance of our hydroponics system. Charcoal, sulphur, saltpeter . . . Or we could use potassium chlorate instead of that . . ."
"It could work," admitted the Beadle dubiously.
"Of course it will work," Grimes assured him. It did work—although mixing gunpowder, especially in free fall conditions, wasn't as easy as Grimes had assumed that it would be. To begin with, graphite proved to be quite unsuitable, and the first small sample batch of powder burned slowly, with a vile sulfurous stench that lingered in spite of all the efforts of the air-conditioner. But there were carbon water filters, and one of these was broken up and then pulverized in the galley food mixer—and when Grimes realized that the bulkheads of this compartment were rapidly acquiring a fine coating of soot he ordered that the inertial drive be restarted. With acceleration playing the part of gravity things were a little better.
Charcoal 13%, saltpeter 75%, sulphur 12% . . . That, thought Grimes, trying hard to remember the History of Gunnery lectures, was about right. They mixed a small amount dry, stirring it carefully with a wooden ladle. It was better than the first attempt, using graphite, had been—but not much. And it smelled as bad. Grimes concluded that there was insufficient space between the grains to allow the rapid passage of the flame.
"Spooky," he said in desperation, "can you read my mind?"
"It's against Regulations," the telepath told him primly.
"Damn the Regulations. I sat through all those Gunnery Course lectures, and I'm sure that old Commander Dalquist went into the history of gunnery very thoroughly, but I never thought that the knowledge of how to make black powder would be of any use at all to a modern spaceman. But it's all there in my memory—if I could only drag it out!"
"Relax, Captain," Spooky Deane told him in a soothing voice. "Relax. Let your mind become a blank. You're tired, Captain. You're very tired. Don't fight it. Yes, sit down. Let every muscle go loose . . ." Grimes lay back in the chair. Yes, he was very tired . . . He did not like the sensation of cold, clammy fingers probing about inside his brain. But he trusted Deane. He told himself very firmly that he trusted Deane . . .
"Let yourself go back in Time, Captain, to when you were a midshipman at the Academy . . . You're sitting there, on a hard bench, with the other midshipmen around you . . . And there, on his platform before the class, is old Commander Dalquist . . . I can see him, with his white hair and his white beard, and his faded blue eyes looking enormous behind the spectacles . . . And I can see all those lovely little models on the table before him . . . The culverin, the falcon, the carronade . . . He is droning on, and you are thinking, How can he make anything so interesting so boring?
You are wondering, What's on for dinner tonight? You are hoping that it won't be that beef stew again ... Some of the other cadets are laughing. You half heard what the commander was saying. It was that the early cannoneers, who mixed their own powder, maintained that the only possible fluid was a wine drinker's urine, their employer to supply the wine
. . . And if the battle went badly, because of misfires, the gunners could always say that it was due to the poor quality of the booze . . . But you are wondering now if you stand any chance with that pretty little nurse . . ." Grimes felt his prominent ears turning hot and scarlet. He snapped into full wakefulness. He said firmly, "That will do, Spooky. You've jogged my memory sufficiently. And if any of you gentlemen think I'm going to order a free wine issue, you're mistaken. We'll use plain water, just enough to make a sort of mud, thoroughly mixed, and then we'll dry it out. No, we'll not use heat, not inside the ship. Too risky. But the vacuum chamber should do the job quite well . . ."
"And then?" asked Beadle, becoming interested in spite of himself.
"Then we crush it into grains." "Won't that be risky?"
"Yes. But we'll have a plastic bowl fitted to the food mixer, and the chief can make some strong, plastic paddles. As long as we avoid the use of metal we should be safe enough."
They made a small batch of powder by the method that Grimes had outlined. Slovotny fitted a remote-control switch to the food mixer in the galley, and they all retired from that compartment while the cake was being crushed and stirred. The bowlful of black, granular matter looked harmless enough—but a small portion of it transferred to a saucer—and taken well away from the larger amount remaining in the bowl—burned with a satisfying whoof! when ignited.
"We're in business!" gloated Grimes. "Adder Pyrotechnics, Unlimited!" They were in business, and while Grimes, Beadle and von Tannenbaum manufactured a large supply of gunpowder Slovotny and Vitelli set about converting a half dozen large, plastic bottles into rocket casings. They were made of thermoplastic, so it was easy enough to shape them as required, with throat and nozzle. To ensure that they would retain the shape after firing they were bound about with heavy insulating tape. After this was finished there was a rocket launcher to make—a tube of the correct diameter, with a blast shield and with the essential parts of a projectile pistol as the firing mechanism.
Then all hands joined forces in filling the rockets. Tubes of stiff paper, soaked in a saturated solution of saltpeter and allowed to dry, were inserted into the casing and centered as accurately as possible. The powder was poured around them, and well tamped home.
While this was being done Spooky Deane—who, until now, had played no part in the proceedings—made a suggestion. "Forgive me for butting in, Captain, but I remember—with your memory—the models and pictures that the instructor showed the class. Those old chemical rockets had sticks or vanes to make them fly straight and . . ."
For a moment this had Grimes worried. Then he laughed. "Those rockets, Spooky, were used in the atmosphere. Sticks or vanes would be utterly useless in a vacuum." But he couldn't help wondering if vanes set actually in the exhaust would help to keep the missiles of a straight trajectory. But unless he used metal there was no suitable material aboard the ship—and metal was out.
Grimes went outside, with von Tannenbaum, to do the actual firing. They stood there on the curved shell plating, held in place by the magnetic soles of their boots. Each of them, too, was secured by lifelines. Neither needed to be told that to every action there is equal and opposite reaction. The backblast of the homemade rocket would be liable to sweep them from their footing.
