Chapter 23
Grimes enjoyed the flight.
He had always loved dirigibles, maintaining that they were the only atmospheric flying machines that were real ships. And now he had one of his very own to play with—although it was a great pity that he was not master as well as being de facto owner. When he had time and opportunity, he thought, he would qualify as a pilot of lighter-than-air craft. Meanwhile • Sanchez was instructing him in the elements of airship handling, allowing him to take the controls during the circuit of Mount Bakunin.
The snow-covered upper slopes of the great, truncated cone were dazzlingly white on the sunlit side, a chill, pale blue in the shadow..The frozen-over crater lake was like cold, green stone. The lower slopes were thickly forested and even the old scars of lava flows were partially overgrown with scrub. As was to be expected in the vicinity of a high mountain there were eddies and updraughts and downdraughts. Sanchez watched alertly while Grimes steered and Su Lin, acting as altitude coxswain, turned her own wheel this way and that. He said little, just an occasional “Easily, sir, easily. . . .” or “Not so fast, Su, or you’ll put us in orbit. . . .” Fat Susie made her own creaking protests at the over-application of elevators or rudder but these diminished as Grimes and the girl got the hang of their controls.
And then course was set and its maintenance left to the automatic pilot. Fat Susie flew quietly and steadily into the darkening east, the flaming sunset astern. Dusk deepened into night and the stars, the unfamiliar (to Grimes) constellations appeared in the sky. Those directly overhead were, of course, obscured by the airship’s upper structure but Su Lin was able to point out and identify those not far above the horizon.
“That’s the Torch of Liberty.” she said. “The bright red star at the tip of it is the Pole Star. . .”
“Mphm.” (That constellation, thought Grimes, looked as much like a torch as that other grouping of stars, with Earth’s Pole Star at the tip of its tail, looks like a Little Bear.)
“The Hammer and Sickle. . . .”
“I was under the impression,” said Grimes, “that the founders of this colony were Anarchists, not Communists.”
“They had to call their constellations something,” put in Sanchez. “And that one does look like what it’s called.”
Su Lin went up and aft to the ‘galley, returned after not too long with dinner for them all. a simple but excellent meal of lamb chops and some spicy green vegetable with a fruit salad to follow. Shortly after this Grimes retired to his cabin; he was taking the middle watch at the suggestion of Sanchez. “You’ll want to see Rumpel’s Canyon,” the pi.lot had told him. “In the dark’?” queried Grimes. “You’ll see it all right, sir,” Sanchez assured him.
Stretched out on the comfortable couch he had little trouble in getting to sleep, lulled by the slight swaying motion of the ship and by her rhythmic whispering. He awoke instantly, feeling greatly refreshed, as Su Lin, calling him for his watch, switched on the cabin light. She had brought him a pot of tea.
“Rise and shine!” she cried brightly. “Rise and shine, Your Excellency!”
She put the tray down on the bunkside table and returned to the control cab.
Grimes poured and sipped tea, then got up and went into the tiny toilet facility. He finished his tea while he was dressing. He filled and lit his pipe, then went out into the narrow alleyway toward the control cab. Looking up at the gas cells, their not overly taut fabric rippling from forward to aft, he wondered how it had been in the early days of airships when the only buoyant gas available was hydrogen. It must have been hell on smokers, he thought.
He clambered down the short companionway into the cab. Su Lin turned away from the forward windows, through which she had been peering, binoculars to her eyes.
“The canyon’s coming up now,” she said.
She handed him the glasses. He adjusted the focus and looked. There was the hard, serrated line of the land horizon, black against the faintly luminous darkness of the sky.
“More to your left,” she told him.
A spark of light . . . A town or village? But there was an odd quality about it. It was pulsing as though it were alive. The ship flew on and now there was more than just a spark to be seen. A stream of iridescence came slowly into view, a winding, rainbow river and then, most spectacular of all, a great cataract of liquid jewels.
At last the show was over, fading astern.
“Luminous organisms,” said Su Lin matter of factly. “Found only in the Rumpel River. And now, sir, will you take the watch?”
“I relieve you, madam,” said Grimes formally.
“She’s on course and making good time. If any of the automatic controls play up the alarm will sound. Call Captain Sanchez—although that shouldn’t be necessary. There’s a bell in his cabin. Call him, in any case, at 0345. The clock’s adjusted to McReady’s time.”
“So I see.” Grimes lifted his hand and spoke into his wrist companion. “Advance to 0045 exactly on the word Now.” He watched the changing seconds on the clock. “Now.”
“I’m an old-fashioned girl,” said Su Lin. “I prefer old-fashioned watches—not contraptions that can do just about anything but fry eggs. Good night, sir. Or good morning, rather.”
“Good morning, Su.” said Grimes.
His watch passed pleasantly enough. He looked out at the dark landscape streaming past below with the very occasional clusters of light that told of human habitation. He studied the instruments—gyro compass, radar altimeter, ground, airspeed and drift indicators and all the rest of them. He looked into the radar screen and saw a distant target, airborne, and finally was able to pick it up visually, a great airliner ablaze with lights along the length of her, sweeping by on course, he decided, for Libertad.
Then, satisfied that all was in order and would remain so, he went briefly aft to the galley to make for himself a mid-watch snack—a pot of tea and a huge pile of thick ham sandwiches. He went to the galley again to make more tea, this time for Sanchez when he called him.
“You shouldn’t have done that, sir,” protested the pilot. “You . . . You’re the Governor.”
“Where are your Anarchist principles, Raoul? In any case—you’re the captain and I’m only a watchkeeper.”
Shortly afterward Sanchez relieved him in the control cab.
He said, “At least you and Su managed to keep your paws off the controls. I was half expecting that you’d go down for a closer look at the canyon.”
“I’d have liked to. Raoul, but I was brought up to believe that the captain’s word is law.”
“And so, surely, is the Governor’s.”
“That,” said Grimes, “I have yet to convince myself of.”
All of Fat Susie’s people were well-breakfasted, showered (and in the cases of Grimes and Sanchez depilated) when the airship made the approach to the McReady Estate. The morning was fine, almost windless, and below the dirigible the grainfields were like a golden sea. Reaping had been commenced and, like hordes of disciplined ants, the laborers, scythes flashing in the sunlight, were cutting a broad swathe through the wheat, the cut stalks being loaded onto hand-drawn carts. This sort of harvesting, thought Grimes, would be relatively inexpensive only if there were an abundant supply of slave labor—flesh and blood robots. And flesh and blood robots are superior to the metal and plastic ones in at least one respect; they are self-reproducing.
Ahead was what was practically a small town—the threshing sheds, the barracks, mess halls and the like. On a low hill was a sprawling building that seemed to be larger than the Governor’s Residence, tall by Liberian standards, all of four stories. In the center of its flat roof was a mooring mast from which a dirigible, smaller than Fat Susie, a clumsy looking non-rigid, was just casting off.
“McReady to Fat Susie,” came a nasal voice from the speaker of the transceiver. “The mast will be ready for you. The mooring crew is waiting.”
“Thank you, Mr. McReady,” said Grimes into the microphone.
He had little to do but watch as Sanchez brought the airship in. He thought that the pilot was maintaining full speed for too long—and restrained himself from back-seat driving. But a dirigible, he realized, would lose way very quickly once power was cut. Such was the case. It was Su Lin who started, by remote control, the small winches that let down the weighted lines for the mooring crew to grab hold of and the other winch that paid out the stouter mooring, flexible wire rope, from Fat Susie’s blunt nose.
The men on the roof worked efficiently.
A dozen of them held Fat Susie in position while two more of them clipped the end of her bow wire to the other wire from the tower. Winches whined, then there was a muffled clang as the airship’s stem came into contact with the swivel cone.
“We’re here,” said Sanchez.
The door on the port side of the cab slid open, the ladder extended downward until it was just clear of the roof surface. Grimes looked out and down to the people awaiting him. to the tall, blue-denim-clad man with the broad-brimmed hat decorated with a silver band, to the almost as tall blonde woman in her denim shirt and full skirt. Both of them, he saw, were wearing riding boots, with silver spurs.
He thought ironically. Deep in the heart of Texas.