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Chapter 4

Nonetheless he was having his fun, was young Mr. Grimes.

Once he had the feel of his unhandy craft, once he stopped resenting having to worry about such matters as skin temperature, angle of attack, drag, and the rest of the aeronautical esoterica, he began to enjoy himself, to thrill to the sensation of speed as the first wisps of high altitude cirrus whipped by. This was better, after all, than making a slow, dignified descent in the pinnace, with its inertial drive, or in one of the other rocket boats—old-fashioned but not so downright archaic as this re-entry vehicle—in which he had now and again ridden, that cautiously shinnied down, stern first, the incandescent columns of their exhaust gases. He felt confident enough to withdraw his attention from his instruments, to risk a sidewise glance at his companion.

Grimes was happy but Kravisky was not. The Surgeon Lieutenant's face had paled to a peculiar, pale green. He seemed to be swallowing something. Physician, heal thyself, thought Grimes sardonically. "I . . . I wish you'd look where you're going," mumbled the young doctor.

"Beautiful view, isn't it?" Grimes glanced through the ports, then at his console. There was nothing to worry about. He had a hemisphere to play around in. By the time he was down, the terminator would be just short of Lake Bluewater. It would be a daylight landing, to save these very casual locals in Port Control the trouble of setting out a flare path. There would be the radio beacon to home upon and at least twenty miles of smooth water for his runway. It was —he searched his memory for the expression used by long ago and faraway pilots of the Royal Air Force; history, especially the history of the ships of Earth's seas and air oceans, was his favorite reading—it was a piece of cake.

"Isn't it . . . isn't it hot in here?" Why couldn't Kravisky relax?

"Not especially. After all, we're sitting in a hot-monococque."

"What's that?" Then, with a feeble attempt at humor, "The remedy sounds worse than the disease . . ."

"Just an airborne thermos flask."

"Oh."

"Like a park, isn't it?" said Grimes. "Even from up here, like a park. Green. No industrial haze. No smog . . ."

"Too . . . tame," said Kravisky, taking a reluctant interest.

"No, I don't think so. They have mountains, and high ones, too. They have seas that must be rough sometimes, even with weather control. If they want to risk life and limb, there'll be plenty of mountaineering and sailing . . ."

"And other sports . . ."

"Yeah." The radio compass seemed to be functioning properly, as were air speed indicator and radio altimeter. The note of the distant beacon was a steady hum. No doubt the El Doradans possessed far more advanced systems than were used by their own aircraft, but the reentry vehicle was not equipped to make use of them. "Yeah," said Grimes again. "Such as?"

"I'm a reservist, you know. But I'm also a ship's doctor in civil life. My last voyage before I was called up for my drill was in the Commission's Alpha Cepheus . . . A cruise to Caribbea. Passengers stinking with money and far too much time on their hands . . ."

"What's that to do with sports?"

"You'd be surprised. Or would you?"

No, thought Grimes, he wouldn't. His first Deep Space voyage had been as a passenger, and Jane Pentecost, the vessel's purser, had been very attractive. Where was she now? he wondered. Still in the Commission's ships, or back home, on the Rim?

Damn Jane Pentecost and damn the Rim Worlds. But this planet was nothing like Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo or Thule. He had never been to any of those dreary colonies (and never would go there, he told himself) but he had heard enough about them. Too much.

The air was denser now, and the control column that Grimes had been holding rather too negligently was developing a life of its own. Abruptly the steady note of the beacon changed to a morse A—dot dash, dot dash. Grimes tried to get the re-entry vehicle back on course, overcompensated. It was N now—dash dot, dash dot. The Lieutenant was sweating inside his suit when he had the boat under control again. Flying these antique crates was far too much like work. But he could afford another glance at the scenery.

There were wide fields, some green and some golden-glowing in the light of the afternoon sun, and in these latter worked great, glittering machines, obviously automatic harvesters. There were dense clumps of darker green—the forests which, on this world, had been grown for aesthetic reasons, not as a source of cellulose for industry. But the El Doradans, on the income from their mines alone, could well afford to import anything they needed. Or wanted. And only the odd gods of the Galaxy knew how many billions they had stashed away in the Federation Central Bank on Earth, to say nothing of other banks on other planets.

There were the wide fields and the forests, and towering up at the rim of the world the jagged blue mountains, the dazzlingly white-capped peaks. Rather too dazzling, but that was the glare of the late-afternoon sun, broad on the starboard bow of the rocket boat. Grimes adjusted the viewport polarizer. He could see houses now, large dwellings, even from this altitude, each miles distant from its nearest neighbor, each blending rather than contrasting with the landscape. He could see houses and beyond the huge, gleaming, azure oval that was Lake Bluewater, there were the tall towers of Spaceport Control and the intense, winking red light that was the beacon. Beyond the port again, but distant, shimmered the lofty spires of the city.

All very nice, but what's the air speed? Too high, too bloody high. Cut the rocket drive? Yes. Drag'll slow her down nicely, and there're always the parachute brakes and, in an emergency, the retro-rockets. Still on the beam, according to the beacon. In any case, I can see it plainly enough. Just keep it dead ahead . . .

Getting bumpy now, and mushy . . . What else, in such an abortion of an aircraft? But not to worry. Coming in bloody nicely, though I say it as shouldn't.

Looks like pine trees just inland from the beach. Cleared them all right. Must say that those supercilious drongoes in Port Control might have made some sort of stab at talking me in. All they said, "You may land." Didn't quite say, "Use the servants' entrance . . ."

Parachute brakes? No. Make a big bloody splash in their bloody lake and play hell with their bloody goldfish . . .

Kravisky shouted, screamed almost, and then Grimes, whose attention had been divided between the beacon and the altimeter, saw, cutting across the rocket boat's course, a small surface craft, a scarlet hull skittering over the water in its own, self-generated, double plume of snowy spray. But it would pass clear.

But that slim, golden figure, gracefully poised on a single water ski, would not.

With a curse Grimes released the parachute brakes and, at the same time, yanked back on his control column. He knew that the parachutes would not take hold in time, that before the rocket boat stalled it would crash into the woman. Yet—he was thinking fast, desperately fast—he dared not use either his main rocket drive to lift the boat up and clear, or his retro-rockets. Better for her, whoever she was, to run the risk of being crushed than to face the certainty of being incinerated.

Then there were birds (birds?), great birds that flew headlong at the control cabin, birds whose suicidal impact was enough to slow the boat sufficiently, barely sufficiently, to tip her so that forward motion was transformed to upward motion. The drogues took hold of the water, and that was that. She fell, soggily, ungracefully, blunt stern first, and as she did so Grimes stared stupidly at a broken wing, a broken metal wing that had been skewered by the forward antenna.

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Framed