Contraband From Otherspace

XX

It is said that a drowning man relives his life in the seconds before final dissolution.

So it was with Grimes—but he relived his life in reverse, experienced backwards the long history of triumphs and disasters, of true and false loves, of deprivations and shabby compromises, of things and people that it was good to remember, of things and people that it had been better to forget. It was the very unreality of the experience, vivid though it was, that enabled him to shrug it off, that left him, although badly shaken, in full command of his faculties when the throbbing whine of the ever-precessing gyroscopes ceased at last.

The ship had arrived.

But where?

When?

Ahead in Space and Astern in Time—that was the principle of the Mannschenn Drive. But never Full Astern—or, never intentionally Full Astern. Not until now. And what of the governors that had been fitted to the machine, the flesh-and-blood governors—the human telepath and the saurian philosopher, with his intuitive grasp of complexities that had baffled the finest mathematical brains of mankind?

What of the governors? Had they broken under the strain?

And what of himself, Grimes? (And what of Sonya?)

He was still Grimes, still the Commodore, with all his memories (so far as he knew) intact. He was not a beardless youth (his probing hand verified this). He was not an infant. He was not a tiny blob of protoplasm on the alleyway deck.

He opened the door.

Serressor was still there, still entangled in the shining filaments. But his scales gleamed with the luster of youth, his bright eyes were unfilmed. His voice, as he said, "Man Grimes, we were successful!" was still a croak, but no longer a senile croak "We did it!" confirmed Mayhew, in an oddly high voice.

The telepath was oddly shrunken. The rags that had been his loin clout were in an untidy bundle about his bare feet. No, shrunken was not the word. He was smaller, younger. Much younger.

"That was the hardest part," he said. "That was the hardest part—to stop the reversal of biological time. Serressor and I were right in the field, so we were affected. But the rest of you shouldn’t be changed. You still have your long, gray beard, Commodore."

But my beard wasn’t gray, thought Grimes, with the beginning of panic. Neither was it long. He pulled a hair from it, wincing at the sudden pain, examined the evidence, (still dark brown) while Serressor cackled and Mayhew giggled.

"All right," he growled. "You’ve had your joke. What now?"

"We wait," Mayhew told him. "We wait, here and now, until Sundowner shows up. Then it’s up to you, sir."

Sundowner, thought Grimes. Jolly Swagman… Waltzing Matilda. Names that belonged to the early history of the Rim Worlds. The battered star tramps of the Sundowner Line that had served the border planets in the days of their early colonization, long before secession from the Federation had been even dreamed of, long before the Rim Worlds government had, itself, become a shipowner with the Rim Runners fleet.

Sundowner… She had been (Grimes remembered his history) the first ship to bring a cargo of seed grain to Lorn. And that was when this alternative universe, this continuum in which Grimes and his people were invaders, had run off the historical rails. Sundowner… Serressor knew his history too. The Wise One had planned this rendezvous in Space and Time, so that Grimes could do what, in his universe, had been accomplished by plague or traps, or, even, cats or terrier dogs.

"I can hear her…" murmured Mayhew distantly. "She is on time. Her people are worried. They want to get to port before their ship is taken over by the mutants."

"In this here-and-now," said Serressor, "she crashed—will crash?—in the mountains. Most of the mutants survived. But go to your control room, man Grimes. And then you will do what you have to do."

They were all very quiet in the control room, all shaken by the period of temporal disorientation through which they had passed. Grimes went first to Williams, hunched in his co-pilot’s chair. He said softly, "You are ready, Commander?"

"Ready," answered the Executive Officer tonelessly.

Then the Commodore went to sit beside his wife. She was pale, subdued. She looked at him carefully, and a faint smile curved her lips. She murmured, "You aren’t changed, John. I’m pleased about that. I’ve remembered too much, things that I thought I’d forgotten, and even though it was all backwards it was… shattering. I’m pleased to have you to hold on to, and I’m pleased that it is you, and not some puppy. …"

"I shouldn’t have minded losing a few years in the wash," grunted Grimes.

He looked at the officers at their stations—radar, gunnery, electronic radio. He stared out of the ports at the Lorn sun, its brightness dimmed by polarization, at the great, dim-glowing Galactic lens. Here, at the very edge of the Universe, the passage of years, of centuries was not obvious to a casual glance. There were no constellations in the Rim sky that, by their slow distortions, could play the part of clocks.

"Contact," announced the radar officer softly.

The Commodore looked into his own repeater screen, saw the tiny spark that had appeared in the blackness of the tank.

The radio officer was speaking into his microphone. "Corsair to Sundowner. Corsair to Sundowner. Do you read me? Over."

The voice that answered was that of a tired man, a man who had been subjected to considerable strain. It was unsteady, seemed on the edge of hysteria. "I hear you, whoever you are. What the hell did you say your name was?"

"Corsair. This is Corsair, calling Sundowner. Over."

"Never heard of you. What sort of name is that, anyhow?" And there was another, fainter voice, saying, "Corsair? Don’t like the sound of it, Captain. Could be a pirate."

"A pirate? Out here, on the Rim? Don’t be so bloody silly. There just aren’t the pickings to make it worth while." A pause. "If she is a pirate, she’s welcome to our bloody cargo."

"Corsair to Sundowner. Corsair to Sundowner. Come in, please. Over."

"Yes, Corsair. I hear you. What the hell do you want?"

"Permission to board."

"Permission to board? Who the bloody hell do you think you are?"

"R.W.C.S. Corsair…"

"R.W.C.S.?" It was obvious that Sundowner’s Captain was addressing his Mate without bothering either to switch off or to cover his microphone. "What the hell is that, Joe?" "Haven’t got a clue," came the reply.

Grimes switched in his own microphone. He did not want to alarm Sundowner, did not want to send her scurrying back into the twisted continuum generated by her Mannschenn Drive. He knew that he could blow the unarmed merchantman to a puff of incandescent vapor, and that such an action would have the desired result. But he did not want to play it that way. He was acutely conscious that he was about to commit the crime of genocide—and who could say that the mutated rats were less deserving of life than the humans whom, but for Grimes' intervention, they would replace?—and did not wish, also, to have the murder of his own kind on his conscience.

"Captain," he said urgently, "this is Commodore Grimes speaking, of the naval forces of the Rim Worlds Confederacy. It is vitally important mat you allow us to board your ship. We know about the trouble you are having. We wish to help you."

"You wish to help us?"

"If we wished you ill," said Grimes patiently, "we could have opened fire on you as soon as you broke through into normal Space-Time." He paused. "You have a cargo of seed grain. There were rats in the grain. And these rats have been multiplying. Am I correct?"

"You are. But how do you know?"

"Never mind that. And these rats—there are mutants among them, aren’t there? You’ve been coming a long time from Elsinore, haven’t you? Mannschenn Drive breakdowns… and fluctuations in the temporal precession fields to speed up the rate of mutation."

"But, sir, how do you know? We have sent no messages. Our psionic radio officer was killed by the… the mutants."

"We know, Captain. And now—may we board?"

From the speaker came the faint voice of Sundowner’s Mate. "Rim Ghosts are bad enough—but when they take over Quarantine it’s a bit rough."

"Yes," said Grimes. "You may regard us as Rim Ghosts. But we’re solid ones."