The Makeshift Rocket

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Herr Syrup stopped the exhaust of his fourth-stage keg and leaned back into weightlessness with a sigh. "Ve better not accelerate any more," he said. "Not yust now. Ve vill need a little reserve to maneuver later on."

"Vot later on?" asked Herr von Himmelschmidt sourly. "I don't know vy der ship shot on past us, but soon it comes back und den ve iss maneuvered into chail."

"Vell, meanvile shall ve pass de time?" Herr Syrup took a greasy pack of cards from his jacket and riffled them suggestively.

"Stop riffling them suggestively!" squealed Sarmishkidu. "This is no time for idle amusements."

"Well … hmmm … no, not that … Perhaps … no … Shilling ante?"

At the end of some four hours, when he was ahead by several pounds sterling in I.O.U.s and Sarmishkidu was whistling like an indignant bagpipe, Herr Syrup noticed how dim the light was getting. The gauge showed him that the outside batteries were rather run down also. Everything would have to be charged up again. He explained the situation. "Do you vant first turn on de bicycle or shall I?" he asked.

"Who, me?" Sarmishkidu wagged a languid ear. "Whatever gave you the idea that evolution has prepared my race for bicycle riding?"

"Vell … I mean … dat is—"

"You are letting your Danishness ran away with you."

"Satan i hdvede!" muttered Herr Syrup. He floated himself into the saddle, put feet to pedals, and began working.

"And de vorst of it is," he grumbled, "who is ever going to believe I crossed from Grendel to New Vinshester on a bicycle?"

Slowly, majestically, and off-center, the boat picked up an opposite rotation.

"There they be!" cried Rory McConnell. "Oh dear," said Emily Croft The beer boat swelled rapidly in the forward viewport. The weariness of hour upon hour, searching, dropped from the Erseman. "Here we go!" he cried exultantly. "Tantivy, tantivy, tantivy!"

Then, lacking radar, he found that the human eye is a poor judge of free-space relationships. He buckled down to the awkward task of matching speeds.

"Whoops!" he said. "Overshot!" Ten kilometers beyond, he came to a relative halt, twisted the cumbersome mass of the ship around, and approached slowly. He saw a head pop up into the spacesuit helmet, glare at him, and pop back again. Foam spouted; the boat slipped out of his view.

McConnell readjusted and came alongside, so that he looked directly from the turret at his prey. "He hasn't the acceleration to escape us," he gloated. "I'll folly each twist an' turn he cares to make, from now until—" He stopped.

"Until we get to New Winchester?" asked Emily in a demure tone.

"But—I mean to say—but!" Major McConnell bugged tired eyes at the keg-and-box bobbing across the stars.

"But I've overhauled them!" he shouted, pounding the console. "I've a regular ship with hundreds of times their mass an' … an' … they've got to come aboard! It isn't fair!"

"Since we have no wireless, how can you inform them of that?" purred the girl. She leaned over close and patted his cheek. Her gaze softened. "There, there. I'm sorry. I do love you, and I don't want to tease you or anything, but honestly, don't you think you're becoming a bit of a bore on this subject? I mean, enough's enough, don't you know."

"Not if ye're of Erse blood, it isn't." McConnell set his jaw till it ached. "I'll scoop 'em up, that's what I will!"

There was a master control for the cargo machinery in the engine room, but none on the bridge. McConnell unstrapped himself, shoved grimly "down" to the hold section, pumped out the main hatch chamber and opened the lock. Now he had it gaping wide enough to swallow the boat whole, and—

Weight came back. He crashed into the deck. "Emily!" he bellowed, picking himself up with a bloody nose. "Emily, git away from them controls!"

Three Terrestrial gravities of acceleration were a monstrous load on any man. He took minutes to regain the bridge, drag himself to the main console, and slap down the main drive switch. Meanwhile Emily, sagging in her chair and gasping for breath, managed a tolerant smile.

When they again floated free, McConnell bawled at her: "I love yez more than I do me own soul, an' ye're the most beautiful creature the cosmos will ever see, an' I've half a mind to turn yez over me knee an' paddle ye raw!"

"Watch your language, Rory," the vicar's daughter reproved. "Paddle me black and blue, if you please. I mean, I don't like double-entendres."

"Ah, be still, ye blitherin" angel," he snarled. He swept the sky with a bloodshot telescope. The boat was out of sight again. Of course.

It took him half an hour to relocate it, still orbiting stubbornly on toward New Winchester. And New Winchester had grown noticeably more bright.

"Now we'll see what we'll see," grated Major McConnell.

He accelerated till he was dead ahead of the boat, matched speeds—except for a few K.P.H. net toward him which he left for his quarry—and spun broadside to. As nearly as he could gauge it, the boat was aimed directly into his open cargo hatch.

Herr Syrup applied a quick side jet, slipped "beneath" the larger hull, and continued on his way.

"Aaaargh!" Tiny flecks of foam touched McConnell's lips. He tried again. And again.

And again.

"It's no use," he choked at last. "He can slide past me too easy.. The wan thing I could do would be to ram him an' be done—Arragh, hell have him, he knows I'm not a murderer."

"Really, dear," said Emily, "it would all be so simple if you would just give up and admit he's won." "Small chance of that!" McConnell brooded for a long minute. And slowly a luster returned to his eyes. "Yes. I have it. The loadin' crane. I'll have to jury-rig a control to the bridge, as well as a visio screen so I can see what I'm doin'. But havin' given meself that much, why, I'll approach ag'in with the crane grapple projectin' from the hatch, reach out, an' grab hold!"

"Rory," said Emily, "you're being tiresome."

"I'm bein' Erse, by all the saints!" McConnell rubbed a bristly red jaw. "'Tis hours 'twill take me, an' him fleein' the while. Could ye hold us alongside, me only one?"

"Me?" The girl opened wide blue eyes and protested innocently. "But darling, you told me after that last time to leave the controls alone, and I admit I don't know a thing about it I mean, it would be unlawful for me to try piloting, wouldn't it, and positively dangerous. I mean to say, medén pratto."

"Ah, well, I might have known how the good loyal heart of yez would make ye a bloody nuisance. But either give me your word of honor not to touch the pilot board ag'in, or I must break me own heart by tyin' yez into that chair."

"Oh, I promise, dear. I'll promise you anything within reason."

"An' whatsoever ye don't happen to want is unreasonable. Yes." Rory McConnell sighed, kissed his lady love, and went off to work. The escape boat blasted feebly but steadily into a new orbit—not very different, but time and the pull of the remote sun on an inert ship would show their work later on.

General Scourge-of-the-Sassenach O'Toole lifted a gaunt face and glared somberly at the young guardsman who had finally won through to his office. "Well?" he clipped.

"Beggin" your pardon, sir, but—"

"Salute me, ye good-for-nothin' scut!" growled O'Toole. "What kind of an army is it we've got here, where a private soldier passin' the captain in the street slaps his back an' says, "Paddy, ye auld pig, the top of the mornin' to yez an' if ye've a moment to spare, why, 'tis proud I'll be to stand yez a mug of dark in yon tavern'—eh?"

"Well, sir," said the guardsman, his Celtic love of disputation coming to the fore, "I say 'twas a fine well-run army of outstandingly high morale. Though truth to speak, the captain I've been saddled with is a pickle-faced son of a landlord who would not lift his hat to St. Bridget herself, did the dear holy colleen come walkin' in his door."

"Morale, ye say?" shouted O'Toole, springing from his chair. "Morale cuts both ways, ye idiot! How much morale do ye think the officer's corps has got, or I meself, when me own men name me Auld S.O.T.S. to me face, not even both-erin' to sound the initials sep'rit, an' me havin' not touched a drop in all me life? I'll have some respect hereabouts, be-gorra, or know the reason why!"

"If ye want to know the reason I can give it to ye, General, sir, ye auld maid in britches!" cried the guardsman. His fist smote the desk. "'Tis just the sour face of yez, that's the rayson, an' if ye drink no drop 'tis because wan look at yez would curdle the poteen in the jug! Now if ye want some constructive suggistions for improvin' the management of this army—"

They passed an enjoyable half hour. At last, having grown hoarse, the guardsman bade the general a friendly good day and departed.

Five minutes later there was a scuffle in the anteroom. A sentry's voice yelped, "Ye can't go in there to himself without an appointment!" and the guardsman answered, "An appointment I've had, since the hour before dawn whin I first came an' tried to get by the bureaucratic lot of yez!" and the scuffle got noisier and at last the office door went off its hinges as the guardsman tossed the sentry through it.

"Beggin' your pardon, sir," he panted, dabbing at a bruised cheek and judiciously holding the sentry down with one booted foot, "but I just remembered why I had to see yez."

"Ye'll go to the brig for this, ye riotous scum!" roared O'Toole. "Corp'ril of the guard! Arrest this man!"

"That attitude is precisely what I was criticizin" earlier," pointed out the soldier. "'Tis officers like yez what takes all the fun out of war. Why, ye wall-eyed auld Fomorian, if ye'd been in charge of the Cattle Raid of Cooley, the Brown Bull would still be chewin' cud in his meaddy! Now ye listen to me—"

As four freshly arrived sentries dragged him off, he shouted back: "All right, then! If ye're goin' to be that way about it, all right an' be damned to yez! I won't tell ye my news! I won't speak a word of what I saw through the tellyscope just before sunrise—or failed to see—ye can sit there in blithe ignorance of the Venusian ship havin' vanished from her orbit, till she calls down the Anglian Navy upon yez! See if I care!"

For a long, long moment, General Scourge-of-the-Sassen-ach O'Toole gaped out at Grendel's blue sky.