Chapter 2
GRIMES’ DECISION to make Tiralbin his base for operations had been influenced by his memory of an officer whom he had known while he was in the Survey Service. This gentleman—a Tiralbinian by birth and upbringing—had complained continuously about the infrequency of mail from home and the long, long time that it took to reach him. “It’s that damn Interstellar Transport Commission!” he would say. “It has the contract with our local government for the carriage of mails, but does it lug them a mere five light years to Panzania, the mail exchange for that sector of the galaxy? Like hell it does. Not it. Those bloody Epsilon Class rustbuckets drop into Port Muldoon when they feel like it, which isn’t often. And then they’re never going anywhere near Panzania . . .” Grimes recalled especially a parcel that his colleague had torn open with great indignation. According to the postmark it had taken just over a year to reach Lindisfarne Base. It contained a not readily identifiable mass that looked as though it would have been of interest only to a geologist. It was, in fact, a birthday cake that had been baked by the disgruntled lieutenant’s fiancÈe. (Grimes had wondered briefly if that cake ever had been any good . . .)
So here he was on Tiralbin, John Grimes, ex-Commander, Federation Survey Service, Owner/Master of a little ship hardly bigger than a lifeboat but one capable of taking him, in fair comfort, anywhere in the galaxy. And here he was, in the company of the Chief of Customs, the Port Health Officer and the Port Captain (who had joined the party as soon as pratique had been granted and before the expensive Scotch had run out), sitting at a table in the Gentlepersons’ Club in Muldoon. Tiralbin, he was learning, was a planet on which class distinctions were maintained. Only those who could claim descent from the passengers of the First Ship could become members of a club such as the Gentlepersons’. Any guests, such as himself, must be vouched for by at least two hosts. As the trio of port officials were all First Shippers, Grimes was admitted after signing his name in four books and on six forms.
The club was dull. The decor was archaic. Grimes, on Earth, had seen quite a few examples of mock Tudor. This was mock mock Tudor. There was music, of the canned variety, orchestral melodies that were as trite as they were sedate. There were no dancing girls. Some of the female gentlepersons drinking at the bar, seated around the tables, could have been attractive enough had they not been so dowdily dressed. The men, even those not in uniform, affected a flamboyance of attire; the women, almost without exception, wore neck-high, ankle-length grey. As for Grimes himself, he was a sparrow among peacocks. The only dress uniform he had aboard the pinnace was the gaudy purple livery that the Baroness had required him to wear aboard The Far Traveller and his only civilian suit—into which he had changed from his shipboard shorts-and-shirt working gear—was as drab as the ladies’ dresses.
There were a few, a very few, exceptions to the feminine drabness. One of these was drinking at the bar, not far from Grimes’ table. She was a tall woman, made taller yet by the lustrous black hair elaborately coiled on top of her head. She was strong featured, her nose too large and chin too firm for mere prettiness. Her wide mouth was a scarlet slash across her pale face. Her eyes were a startling green. She was wearing a black, high-collared shirt, gold-trimmed, black, sharply creased trousers tucked into glossy, black, calf-high boots.
“And who is that?” asked Grimes in a low voice. “The general of your women’s army?”
The Chief Customs Officer laughed. “Not quite, although it is a uniform she’s wearing, and her rank is roughly equivalent to that of general.” He raised his voice. “Tamara! Why don’t you join us?”
The tall woman came across from the bar, set her glass down on the table, lowered her generously proportioned body into the chair that the Port Captain found for her. She looked at Grimes and smiled slightly.
“So you’re the famous John Grimes,” she said. “I’ve heard about you. My sister is engaged to an officer in the Federation Survey Service.”
“The famous cake baker,” said Grimes.
She laughed. “So you know about that silly business. I got blamed, of course.”
“But how?” asked Grimes.
“Tamara,” said the Customs Officer, “is our Superintending Postmistress.”
“In person,” said that lady. She continued to address Grimes. “And you, Captain, held the rank of Commander in the FSS. You were captain of Discovery at the time of the mutiny. You were left on the newly discovered—or rediscovered—Lost Colony of Botany Bay when the mutineers left for parts unknown in your ship, wrecking the destroyer Vega in the process. You resigned your FSS commission rather than face a court martial, but Commander Delamere, captain of Vega, had other ideas. He tried to arrest you, but you were rescued by the Baroness d’Estang, of El Dorado, who just happened to have blown in in her spaceyacht, The Far Traveller. And now—with no Baroness, no spaceyacht—you bob up on Tiralbin in command of a glorified lifeboat.” She laughed. “Very glorified. The thing’s built of solid gold, they tell me.” She looked hard at Grimes. “Quite a story, Captain. Would you mind filling in the gaps?”
“The Baroness and I split brass rags,” Grimes told her. “She gave me Little Sister—the pinnace—in lieu of back pay and separation pay.”
“A literally golden handshake,” she said. “And now what do you intend doing?”
Grimes said, “I was thinking of starting a courier service.”
“You were, were you? Or you are, are you? You’ve come to the right shop. In my official capacity I know just how lousy the mails are out of and into this world. Unfortunately we have no ships of our own and must rely upon the service, such as it is, provided by the Commission.”
“I’m surprised that you don’t have ships,” said Grimes.
“We did, once,” the Port Captain told him. “Three, very second hand Epsilon Class tramps. Tiralbinian King, Tiralbinian Queen, Tiralbinian Prince. The King’s inertial drive packed up when she was coming in to a landing at Port Chaka, on Panzania and the auxiliary reaction drive did more harm than good; blew the arse off her. Luckily there were no fatalities, although she was a structural total loss. The Prince? Nobody knows what happened to her—except, perhaps, her crew. It’s assumed that her Mannschenn Drive went on the blink when she was on passage from Tiralbin to Atlantia. As for the Queen—her operating costs were astronomical. Repairs, maintenance and more repairs. We had a chance to sell her to Rim Runners and grabbed it with both hands. And that, Grimes, is the short, sad history of the Tiralbinian Interstellar Transport Commission.”
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes. He made a major production of lighting and filling his pipe. “So there’s a chance that a small, private operator based on this planet might make a go of things.”
“A chance,” conceded the Postmistress. “As far as I’m concerned, there are escape clauses in our contract with ITC. For example, if ITC cannot provide a ship to carry mails directly from Tiralbin to their planet of destination I can place such articles aboard any vessel making such a voyage. Mind you, it’s not very often that such a vessel is here when we want one.”
“The last time,” said the Port Captain, “was five years ago.”
“It was,” she agreed. She frowned slightly. “It so happens, it just so happens, Captain Grimes, that there’s an urgent consignment of parcel mail for Boggarty. Would you be interested?”
“I would,” said Grimes, without hesitation.
“How much would you charge?” she asked bluntly.
“I’ll have to do my sums first,” he told her.
“Do that,” she said, “and let me know by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Epsilon Corvus is due in the day after tomorrow, and by some minor miracle she’s actually proceeding from here direct to Panzania—and Panzania, as you know, has the mail exchange.”
“Boggarty’s well off the trade routes,” said Grimes. “Even from Panzania the consignment would travel by a very roundabout way.”
“Feed that factor into your computer with the others,” the Postmistress said.