The Makeshift Rocket (4 page)

‘I think not,
acushla
, I think not,’ said McConnell. ‘Ye mustn’t trouble your pretty head about these things.’

‘I t’ink maybe she ban right,’ said Herr Syrup. ‘I ban in Anglia often times.’

‘Well, if the Sassenach want a fight,’ said McConnell merrily, ‘a fight we’ll give them!’

‘But you’ll kill so many innocent people,’ protested Emily. ‘Why, a bomb could destroy the Greek theatre on Scotia! And all for what? A little money and a mountain of pride!’

‘
Ja
, you ruin my business,’ croaked Sarmishkidu.

‘And mine. My whole ship, said Herr Syrup, almost tearfully.

‘Oh, now, now, now, man, ye at least should not be tryin’ to blarney me,’ said McConnell. ‘What harm can a six or seven weeks’ holiday here do to yez?’

‘Ve ban carrying a load of Brahma bull embryos in exogenetic tanks,’ said Herr Syrup. ‘All de time, dose embryos is growing.’ He banged his mug on the table. ‘Dey is soon fetuses, by Yudas! Ve have only so much room aboard ship; and it takes time to reash Alamo from here. If ve are held up more dan two, t’ree veeks—’

‘Oh, no!’ whispered McConnell.

‘Ja,’ said Herr Syrup. ‘Brahma bull calves all over de place. Ve cannot possibly carry dem, and dere is a stiff penalty in our contract.’

‘Well, now.’ McConnell looked uneasy. ‘Sure, an’ ’tis sorry I am, an’ after this affair has all been settled, if yez wish to file a claim for damages at Teamhair I am sure the O’Toole government will—Oh, oh.’ He stopped. ‘Where did ye say your owners are?’

‘Anguklukkakok City, Venus.’

Well—’ Major McConnell stared at his toes, rather like a schoolboy caught in the cookie jar. ‘Well, now, I meself think ‘twas a good thing the Anguklukkakok Venusians were all converted last century, but truth ’tis, Jiniral O’Toole is pretty strict an’—’

‘I say,’ broke in Emily, ‘what’s the matter? I mean, if your owners are—’

‘Baptists,’ said Rory McConnell.

‘Oh,’ said Emily in a small voice.

McConnell leaped to his feet. One huge fist crashed on the table so the beer steins leaped. ‘Well, ’tis sorry I am!’ he
shouted. Sarmishkidu flinched from the noise and folded up his ears. ‘I’ve no ill will to anyone, meself, ’tis a dayd done for me country, an’ – an’ – an’ why must all of yez be turn-in’ a skylarkin’ merry-go into hurt an’ harm an’ sorrow?’

He stormed toward the exit.

‘The score!’ thundered Sarmishkidu in his thin, reedy voice. ‘The score, you unevaluated partial derivative!’

McConnell ripped out his wallet, flung a five-pound note blindly on the floor, and went up the stairs three at a time. The door banged in his wake.

The sun was low when Knud Axel Syrup pedaled a slightly erratic course over the spaceport concrete. He had given the Alt Heidelberg several hours’ worth of his business: partly because there was nothing else to do but work his way down the beer list, and partly because Miss Emily Croft – once her tears were dried – was pleasant company, even for a staid old married man from Simmerboelle. Not that he cared to listen to her exposition of Duncanite principles, but he had prevailed on her to demonstrate some classical dances. And she had been a sight worth watching, once he overcame his natural disappointment at learning that classical dance included neither bumps nor grinds, and found how to ignore Sarmishkidu’s lyre and syrinx accompaniment.

‘Du skal faa min sofacykel naar jeg doer
—’ sang Herr Syrup mournfully.

‘An’ what might that mean?’ asked the green-clad guard posted beneath the
Mercury Girl
.

‘You shall have my old bicycle ven I die
,’ translated Herr Syrup, always willing to oblige.

‘Oh, said the guard, rather coldly.

Herr Syrup leaned his vehicle against the berth. ‘Dat is a
more modern verse,’ he explained. ‘De orig’inal song goes back to de T’irty Years’ Var.’

‘Oh.’

‘Gustavus Adolphus’ troops ban singing it as—’ Something told Herr Syrup that his little venture into historical scholarship was not finding a very appreciative audience. He focused, with some slight difficulty, on the battered hull looming above him. ‘Vy is dere no lights?’ he asked. ‘Is all de crew in town?’

‘I don’t know what,’ confessed the guard. His manner thawed; he brought up his rifle and began picking his teeth with the bayonet. ‘’T was a quare thing, begorra. Your skipper, the small wan in the dishcloth hat, was argyfyin’ half the day wi’ General O’Toole. At last he was all but thrown out of headquarters an’ came back here. He found our boys just at the point of removin’ the ship’s radio. Well, now, sir, ye can see how we could not let ye live aboard your ship an’ not see-questrate the apparatus by which ye might call New Winchester an’ bring the King’s bloody soldiers down on our heads. But no, that poor little dark sad man could not be reas’nable, he began whoopin’ and screamin’ for all his crew, an’ off he rushed at the head of ’em. Now I ask ye, sir, is that any way to—’

Knud Axel Syrup scowled, fished out his pipe, and tamped it full with a calloused thumb. One could not deny, he thought, Captain Radhakrishnan was normally the mildest of human creatures; but he had his moments. He superheated, yes, that was what he did, he superheated without showing a sign, and then all at once some crucial thing happened and he flashed off in live steam and what resulted thereafter, that was only known to God and also the Lord.

‘Heigh-ho,’ sighed the engineer. ‘Maybe someone like me vat is not so excited should go see if dere is any trouble.’

He lit his pipe, stuck it under his mustache, and climbed back onto his bicycle. Four roads led out of the spaceport, but one was toward town – so, which of three? – wait a minute. The crew would presumably not have stampeded quite at random. They would have intended to do something. What? Well, what would send the whole Shamrock League adventure downward and home? Sabotage of their new drive unit. And the asteroid’s geegee installations lay down
that
road.

Herr Syrup pedaled quickly off. Twilight fell as he crossed the Cotswold Mountains, all of 500 meters high, and the gloom in Sherwood Forest was lightened only by his front-wheel lamp. But beyond lay open fields where a smoky blue dusk lingered, enough light to show him farmers’ cottages and hayricks and – and – He put on a burst of speed.

The
Girl’s
crew were on the road, brandishing as wild an assortment of wrenches, mauls, and crowbars as Herr Syrup had ever seen. Half a dozen young Grendelian rustics milled about among them, armed with scythes and pitchforks. The whole band had stopped while Captain Radhakrishnan exhorted a pair of yeoman who had been hoeing a wayside cabbage patch and now leaned stolidly on their tools. As he panted closer, Herr Syrup heard one of them:

‘Nay, lad, tha’ll no get me to coom.’

‘But, that is to say, but!’ squeaked Captain Radhakrishnan. He jumped up and down, windmilling his arms. The last dayglow flashed off his monocle; it fell from his eye and he popped it back and cried: ‘Well, but haven’t you any courage? All we need to do, don’t y’ know, is destroy their geegee and they’ll jolly well have to go home. I mean to say, we can do it ten minutes, once we’ve overcome whatever guards they have posted.’

‘Posted wi’ machine guns,’ said the farmer.

‘Aye,’ nodded his mate. ‘An’ brass knuckles, Ah’ll be bound.’

‘But where’s your patriotism?’ shouted Captain Radhakrishnan. ‘Imitate the action of the tiger! Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage, and all that sort of thing.’

At this point Herr Syrup joined them. ‘You ban crazy?’ he demanded.

‘Ah.’ Captain Radhakrishnan turned to him and beamed. ‘The very man. Come, let’s leave these bally caitiffs and proceed.’

‘But!’ wailed Herr Syrup.

His assistant, Mr. Shubbish, nudged him with a tentacle and leered: ‘I fixed up a Molotov cocktail, chief. Don’t worry. We got it made.’

There was something in the air, a smell which – Herr Syrup’s bulbous nose drank deep. Yes. Irish whisky. The crew must have spent a convivial afternoon with the spaceport sentries. So that explained why they were so eager!

‘Miss Croft is right,’ he muttered. ‘About whisky, anyhow. It calcifies the liver.’

He pushed his bicycle along the road, beside Radhakrishnan’s babbling commando, and tried to think of something which would turn them back. Eloquence was never his strong point. Could he borrow some telling phrase from the great poets of the past, to recall them to reason? But all that rose into his churning brain was the Death Song of Ragnar Lodhbrok, which consists of phrases like ‘
Where the swords were whining while they sundered helmets’
– and did not seem to fit his present needs.

Vaguely through dusk and a grove of trees, he saw the terraforming plant. And then the air whirred and a small flyer slipped above him. It hung for an instant, then pounced
low and fired a machine-gun burst. The racket was unholily loud, and the tracer stream burned like meteorites.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ exclaimed Captain Radhakrishnan.

‘Wait there!’ bawled an amplified voice. ‘Wait there an’ we’ll see what tricks ye’re up to, ye Sassenach
omadhauns
!’

‘Eek,’ said Mr. Shubbish.

Herr Syrup ascertained that no one had been hit. As the flyer landed and disgorged more large Celts than he had thought even a spaceship could hold, he switched off his bicycle lamp and wheeled softly back out of the suddenly quiet and huddled rebel band. Crouched beneath a hedgerow, he heard a lusty bellow:

‘An’ what wad ye be a-doin’ here, where ’tis forbidden to venture by order of the General?’

‘We were just out for a walk,’ said Captain Radhakrishnan, much subdued.

‘Sure, sure. With weapons to catch the fresh air, no doubt.’

Herr Syrup stole from the shadows and began to pedal back the way he came. Words drifted after him. ‘We’ll jist see what himself has to say about this donnybrookin’, me lads. Throw down your gear! ‘Bout face! March!’

Herr Syrup pedaled a little faster. He would do no one any good languishing in the Grendel calaboose and living off mulligan stew.

Not, he thought gloomily, that he was accomplishing much so far.

The asteroid night deepened around him. In this shallow atmosphere the stars burned with wintry brilliance. Jupiter was not many millions of kilometers away, so whitely bright that Grendel’s trees cast shadows; you could see the Galilean satellites with the naked eye. A quick green moon strode up over the topplingly close horizon and swung toward Aries – one of the other Anglian asteroids – spinning with its cluster
mates around a common center of gravity, along a common resultant orbit. Probably New Winchester itself, maddeningly near. When you looked carefully at the sky, you could identify other little worlds among the constellations. The Erse Republic was still too remote to see without a telescope, but it was steadily sweeping closer; conjunction, two months hence, would bring it within a million kilometers of Anglia.

Herr Syrup, who was a bit of a bookworm, wondered in a wry way what Clausewitz or Halford Mackinder would think of modern astropolitics. Solemn covenants were all very well for countries which stayed put; but if you made a treaty with someone who would be on the other side of the sun next year, you must allow for the fact. There were alliances contingent on the phase of a moon and customs unions which existed only on alternate Augusts and—

And none of this was solving a problem which, if unsolved, risked a small but vicious interplanetary war and would most certainly put the
Mercury Girl
and the Alt Heideblerg Rathskeller out of business.

When he re-entered the spaceport, Herr Syrup met a blaze of lights and a bustle of men. Trucks rumbled back and forth, loaded with castings and fittings, sacks of cement and gangs of laborers. The Erse were working around the clock to make Grendel mobile. He dismounted and walked past a sentry, who gave him a suspicious glare, to the berth ladder, and so up to the air lock. He whistled a little tune as he climbed, trying to assure himself that no one could prove he had not merely been out on a spin for his health.

The ship was depressingly large and empty. His footsteps clanged so loud that he jumped, which only made matters worse, and peered nervously into shadowed corners. There was no good reason to stay aboard, he thought; an inn would
be more cheerful and he could doubtless get off-season rates; but no, he had been a spaceman too long, one did not leave a ship completely unwatched. He contented himself with appropriating a case of Nashornbrau from the cargo – since the consignee had, after all, refused acceptance – and carried it back to his personal cubbyhole off the engine room.

Claus the crow blinked wicked black eyes at him from the bunk. ‘
Goddag
,’ he said.

‘
Goddag
,’ said Herr Syrup, startled. To be courteously greeted by Claus was so rare that it was downright ominous.

‘Fanden hade dig
!’ yelled the bird. ‘
Chameau!
Go stuff yourself, you scut!
Vaya al Diablo
!’

‘Ah,’ said Herr Syrup, relieved. ‘Dat’s more like it.’

He sat down on the bunk and pried the cap off a bottle and tilted it to his mouth. Claus hopped down and poked a beak in his coat pocket, looking for pretzels. Herr Syrup stroked the crow in an absent-minded way.

He wondered if Claus really was a mutant. Quite possibly. All ships carried a pet or two, cat or parrot or lizard or uglopender, to deal with insects and other small vermin, to test dubious air, and to keep the men company. Claus was the fourth of his spacefaring line; there had been radiation, both cosmic and atomic, in his ancestral history. To be sure, Earthside crows had always had a certain ability to talk, but Claus’ vocabulary was fantastic and he was constantly adding to it. Also, could chance account for the selectivity which made most of his phrases pure billingsgate?