Upon a Sea of Stars Read Online Free Page B

Miss Willoughby who really ran the show—and threw himself into the organizing of Sonya Verrill’s expedition. What irked him was the amount of time wasted on legal matters. There was the charter, of course, and then there was the reluctance of Lloyd’s surveyors to pass as space-worthy a ship in which Mannschenn Drive and antimatter were combined, not to say one in which the Carlotti gear had been modified almost out of recognition. Finally Sonya Verrill was obliged to play hell with a Survey Service big stick, and the gentlemen from Lloyd’s withdrew, grumbling.
    Manning, too, was a problem. The Second, Third and Fourth Mates of Rim Mastodon agreed, quite willingly, to sign on Faraway Quest’s articles as Chief, Second and Third. The Psionic Radio Officer was happy to come along with them. After a little prodding at the ministerial level the Catering and Engineering Superintendents supplied personnel for their departments. And then the Institute of Spacial Engineers stepped in, demanding for its members the payment of Danger Money, this to be 150% of the salaries laid down by the Award. Grimes was tempted to let them have it—after all, it was the Federation’s taxpayers who would be footing the bill—and then, on second thoughts, laid his ears back and refused to play. He got over the hurdle rather neatly, persuading the Minister of Shipping and the Minister for the Navy to have Faraway Quest commissioned as an auxiliary cruiser and all her officers—who were, of course, reservists, called up for special duties. Like Lloyd’s, the Institute retired grumbling.
    As a matter of fact, Grimes was rather grateful to them for having forced his hand. Had the Quest blasted off as a specialized merchant vessel only, with her crew on Articles, his own status would have been merely that of a shipmaster, and Sonya Verrill, representing the Survey Service, would have piled on far too many gees. Now he was a Commodore on active service, and, as such, well and truly outranked any mere Commander, no matter what pretty badge she wore on her cap. It was, he knew well, no more than a matter of male pride, but the way that things finally were he felt much happier.
    So, after the many frustrating delays, Faraway Quest finally lifted from her berth at the Lorn spaceport. Grimes was rusty, and knew it, and allowed young Swinton—lately Second Officer of Rim Mammoth , now Lieutenant Commander Swinton, First Lieutenant of R.W.S. Faraway Quest —to take the ship upstairs. Grimes watched critically from one of the spare acceleration chairs, Sonya Verrill watched critically from the other. Swinton—slight, fair-haired, looking like a schoolboy in a grown-up’s cut-down uniform—managed well in spite of his audience. The old Quest climbed slowly at first, then with rapidly increasing acceleration, whistling through the overcast into the clear air beyond, the fast thinning air, into the vacuum of Space.
    Blast-off time had been calculated with considerable exactitude—“If it had been more exact,” commented Grimes, “we’d have rammed our hunk of anti-matter and promptly become the wrong sort of ghosts . . .”—and so there was the minimum jockeying required to match orbits with the innocent-looking sphere of shining steel. The Quest had brought a crew of fitters up with her men with experience of handling similar spheres. Working with an economy of motion that was beautiful to watch they gentled the thing in through the special hatch that had been made for it, bolted it into its seating. Then it was the turn of the physicists, who set up their apparatus and bathed the anti-iron in a flood of neutrinos. While this operation was in progress, two tanker rockets stood by, pumping tons of water into the extra tanks that had been built into the Quest’s structure. This, Grimes explained to his officers, was to prevent her from attaining negative mass and flying out of her orbit, repelled rather than attracted by Lorn and the Lorn sun,