Chapter 9
SHE WAS TALKING TO HERSELF, he thought not very interestedly. He heard her voice but could not be bothered to try to make out the words; he was too engrossed in his ticklish, frustrating task. Then one of the little golden wheels, the spindle of which he had just pressed home into its mountings, sprang out again as soon as his hand was removed. It clattered to the deck and trundled forward through the main cabin. He ran after it, pounced on it just before it got as far as the control cab.
She looked up and around at him.
She said, “It’s all right, Grimes. We shall soon have some real engineers to put your time-twister together again.”
“What?” he demanded.
“You heard me.” She gestured with the golden microphone that she was holding. “I could see that we were liable to be stuck here, in the very middle of sweet damn all, for the next ten standard years, so I put out a call for assistance on the Carlotti . . .”
“You did what?”
“You heard me.”
“By whose authority?”
“My own. I may be only a passenger in this toy ship of yours—but I am also the Superintending Postmistress of Tiralbin. It is my duty to ensure that the mails arrive at Boggarty within the specified time.”
He snatched the microphone from her hand, slammed it back into its clip on the control panel with unnecessary violence. He said, “Do you realize that this could lead to a salvage claim against me? Do you know that a salvage award is based on the value of a ship and her cargo? The cargo’s worth damn all, but a pinnace constructed of solid gold . . . I could never pay out that sort of money . . .”
She said sullenly, “That’s a very valuable consignment of parcel mail that we’re carrying. And I have my responsibilities.”
He told her what she could do with them. Then he asked, “Did anybody answer your call?”
“A ship called Baroom.”
Shaara, he thought, with a name like that. He said hopefully, “But you weren’t able to give her our coordinates—”
“No. But they said that it wouldn’t be necessary.”
“They’re homing on our Carlotti transmission I suppose.”
“No. They said that they had us in the screen of their Mass Proximity Indicator.”
And what the hell, he wondered, was a Shaara ship, a ship under any flag, doing in this particular sector of space, hundreds of light years away from any of the established trade routes? (The Shaara Queen-Captain might well be wondering the same about Little Sister.) Anyhow, it was pointless switching off the Carlotti radio which, to comply with regulations, had been in operation, maintaining a listening watch, ever since the lift off from Port Muldoon. Baroom had Little Sister in her MPI screen and, unless and until the mini-Mannschenn was repaired, could close her with ease.
Grimes lifted the microphone from its clip.
“Little Sister to Baroom . . .” he said.
“Baroom to Little Sister.” The voice from the speaker could almost have been that of a robot; the arthropodal Shaara, telepathic among themselves, were obliged to use artificial voice-boxes when speaking with beings dependent upon sound waves for communication. “Do not concern yourself. We are approaching you with rapidity.”
Grimes’ own MPI screen was still a sphere of unrelieved blackness, but, of course, his equipment did not have the range of that carried aboard the bigger ship.
He said, “Please cancel my earlier call. I no longer require your assistance.”
“But it is apparent,” came the voice from the speaker, “that you are not yet proceeding under interstellar drive.”
“I no longer require your assistance,” repeated Grimes. He noticed that a tiny spark had just appeared in the MPI screen. “You may resume your voyage.”
“We shall stand by you,” said Baroom, “until you have completed your repairs.”
“I think,” said Tamara, “that that is very generous of them.”
Grimes muttered something about salvage-hungry bastards, realizing too late that the button of the microphone was depressed. But no comment came from the other ship. He returned his attention to the screen, set up calibration rings, fed the data obtained into the pinnace’s computer. He did not like the way the sums came out.
“Two and a half hours minus . . .” he muttered.
“What does it matter?” Tamara asked. “They’ll just stand by until you admit that you’re licked, and they’ll send engineers aboard to do your job for you.”
“But that’s a Shaara-ship,” said Grimes.
“And so what? I may not be a spacewoman, but even I know that the Federation is on friendly terms with the Hive. Hallichecki, or even some of our own people, like the Waldegrenans—we might have cause to worry. But the Shaara . . . They’re civilized.”
“I haven’t time to explain now,” said Grimes. He picked up the rotor from where he had put it, hurried back to the mini-Mannschenn. He must, he knew, get the thing operative before Baroom came alongside. The only Shaara vessel likely to be traversing this sector of space would be one under the command of a rogue queen.