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The Winds of Time
He contracted for a charter trip--but the man who hired his spacer wasn't quite a man, it turned out--and he wanted more than service!
by James H. Schmitz
Illustrated by Brotman
Gefty Rammer came along the narrow passages between the _Silver Queen's_control compartment and the staterooms, trying to exchange the haggardlook on his face for one of competent self-assurance. There was nothingto gain by letting his two passengers suspect that during the past fewminutes their pilot, the owner of Rammer Spacelines, had been a barestep away from plain and fancy gibbering.
He opened the door to Mr. Maulbow's stateroom and went inside. Mr.Maulbow, face very pale, eyes closed, lay on his back on the couch,still unconscious. He'd been knocked out when some unknown forcessuddenly started batting the _Silver Queen's_ turnip-shape around as the_Queen_ had never been batted before in her eighteen years ofspacefaring. Kerim Ruse, Maulbow's secretary, knelt beside her employer,checking his pulse. She looked anxiously up at Gefty.
"What did you find out?" she asked in a voice that was not very steady.
Gefty shrugged. "Nothing definite as yet. The ship hasn't beendamaged--she's a tough tub. That's one good point. Otherwise ... well, Iclimbed into a suit and took a look out the escape hatch. And I saw thesame thing there that the screens show. Whatever that is."
"You've no idea then of what's happened to us, or where we are?" MissRuse persisted. She was a rather small girl with large, beautiful grayeyes and thick blue-black hair. At the moment, she was barefoot and in asleeping outfit which consisted of something soft wrapped around hertop, soft and floppy trousers below. The black hair was tousled and shelooked around fifteen. She'd been asleep in her stateroom when somethingsmacked the _Queen_, and she was sensible enough then not to climb outof the bunk's safety field until the ship finally stopped shuddering andbucking about. That made her the only one of the three persons aboardwho had collected no bruises. She was scared, of course, but taking thesituation very well.
Gefty said carefully, "There're a number of possibilities. It's obviousthat the _Queen_ has been knocked out of normspace, and it may take sometime to find out how to get her back there. But the main thing is thatthe ship's intact. So far, it doesn't look too bad."
Miss Ruse seemed somewhat reassured. Gefty could hardly have said thesame for himself. He was a qualified normspace and subspace pilot. Hehad put in a hitch with the Federation Navy, and for the past eightyears he'd been ferrying his own two ships about the Hub and notinfrequently beyond the Federation's space territories, but he had neverheard of a situation like this. What he saw in the viewscreens when theship steadied enough to let him pick himself off the instrument roomfloor, and again, a few minutes later and with much more immediacy, fromthe escape hatch, made no sense--seemed simply to have no meaning. Thepressure meters said there was a vacuum outside the _Queen's_ skin.That vacuum was dark, even pitch-black but here and there camemomentary suggestions of vague light and color. Occasional pinpricks ofbrightness showed and were gone. And there had been one startlingphenomenon like a distant, giant explosion, a sudden pallid glare in thedark, which appeared far ahead of the _Queen_ and, for the instant itremained in sight, seemed to be rushing directly towards them. It hadgiven Gefty the feeling that the ship itself was plowing at high speedthrough this eerie medium. But he had cut the _Queen's_ drives to themerest idling pulse as soon as he staggered back to the control consoleand got his first look at the screens, so it must have been the lightthat had moved.
But such details were best not discussed with a passenger. Kerim Rusewould be arriving at enough disquieting speculations on her own; theless he told her, the better. There was the matter of the ship'slocation instruments. The only set Gefty had been able to obtain anyreading on were the direction indicators. And what they appeared toindicate was that the _Silver Queen_ was turning on a new headingsomething like twenty times a second.
Gefty asked, "Has Mr. Maulbow shown any signs of waking up?"
Kerim shook her head. "His breathing and pulse seem all right, and thatbump on his head doesn't look really bad, but he hasn't moved at all.Can you think of anything else we might do for him, Gefty?"
"Not at the moment," Gefty said. "He hasn't broken any bones. We'll seehow he feels when he comes out of it." He was wondering about Mr.Maulbow and the fact that this charter had showed some unusual featuresfrom the beginning.
Kerim was a friendly sort of girl; they'd got to calling each other bytheir first names within a day or two after the trip started. But afterthat, she seemed to be avoiding him; and Gefty guessed that Maulbow hadspoken to her, probably to make sure that Kerim didn't let any of heremployer's secrets slip out.
Maulbow himself was as aloof and taciturn a client as Rammer Spacelinesever had picked up. A lean, blond character of indeterminate age, withpale eyes, hard mouth. Why he had selected a bulky semifreighter likethe _Queen_ for a mineralogical survey jaunt to a lifeless little sunsystem far beyond the outposts of civilization was a point he didn'tdiscuss. Gefty, needing the charter money, had restrained his curiosity.If Maulbow wanted only a pilot and preferred to do all the rest of thework himself, that was certainly Maulbow's affair. And if he happened tobe up to something illegal--though it was difficult to imaginewhat--Customs would nail him when they got back to the Hub.
But those facts looked a little different now.
* * *
Gefty scratched his chin, inquired, "Do you happen to know where Mr.Maulbow keeps the keys to the storage vault?"
Kerim looked startled. "Why, no! I couldn't permit you to take the keysanyway while he ... while he's unconscious! You know that."
Gefty grunted. "Any idea of what he has locked up in the vault?"
"You shouldn't ask me--" Her eyes widened. "Why, that couldn't possiblyhave anything to do with what's happened!"
He might, Gefty thought, have reassured her a little too much. He said,"I wouldn't know. But I don't want to just sit here and wonder about ituntil Maulbow wakes up. Until we're back in normspace, we'd better notmiss any bets. Because one thing's sure--if this has happened to anybodyelse, they didn't turn up again to report it. You see?"
Kerim apparently did. She went pale, then said hesitantly, "Well ... thesealed cases Mr. Maulbow brought out from the Hub with him had some veryexpensive instruments in them. That's all I know. He's always trusted menot to pry into his business any more than my secretarial dutiesrequired, and of course I haven't."
"You don't know then what it was he brought up from that moon a fewhours ago--those two big cases he stowed away in the vault?"
"No, I don't, Gefty. You see, he hasn't told me what the purpose of thistrip is. I only know that it's a matter of great importance to him."Kerim paused, added, "From the careful manner Mr. Maulbow handled thecases with the cranes, I had the impression that whatever was insidethem must be quite heavy."
"I noticed that," Gefty said. It wasn't much help. "Well, I'll tell_you_ something now," he went on. "I let your boss keep both sets ofkeys to the storage vault because he insisted on it when he signed thecharter. What I didn't tell him was that I could make up a duplicate setany time in around half an hour."
"Oh! Have you--?"
"Not yet. But I intend to take a look at what Mr. Maulbow's got in thatvault now, with or without his consent. You'd better run along and getdressed while I take him up to the instrument room."
"Why move him?" Kerim asked.
"The instrument room's got an overall safety field. I've turned it onnow, and if something starts banging us around again, the room will bethe safest place on the ship. I'll b
ring his personal luggage up too,and you can start looking through it for the keys. You may find thembefore I get a new set made. Or he may wake up and tell us where theyare."
Kerim Ruse gave her employer a dubious glance, then nodded, said, "Iimagine you're right, Gefty," and pattered hurriedly out of thestateroom. A few minutes later, she arrived, fully dressed, in theinstrument room. Gefty looked around from the table-shelf where he hadlaid out his tools, and said, "He hasn't stirred. His suitcases are overthere. I've unlocked them."
Kerim gazed at what showed in the screens about the control