Read Online Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III by A. Bertram Chandler - Free Book Online Page A

we . . . ?”
    “There,” said Grimes, pointing to the trough.
    Even in the dim lighting he could see her angry flush. “This is insufferable! Surely they realize that we must have privacy!”
    “Privacy,” he told her, “is a concept meaningless to a social insect.”
    “But not to me,” she said. “You’re a spaceman, a captain. Tell these people that we demand to be housed in conditions such as we are accustomed to.”
    He said, “I’ve no doubt that this cell is bugged. But bear in mind that our accommodation is, by Shaara standards, first class.”
    “Not by mine,” she said stubbornly. “And now, would you mind standing in the corner with your face to the wall? I have to . . .”
    After an interval, during which he tried not to listen, she said, “All right. You may turn round now.”
    ***
    Their accommodation was first class by Shaara standards, but they were not Shaara. The food was nourishing, although very soon they were having to force it down, eating only to keep up their strength. They exercised as well as they were able in the cramped quarters when they realized that they were putting on weight. Before long they decided to go naked; the air was hot rather than merely warm, and humid, and their longjohns were becoming uncomfortably sweaty. After a struggle they managed to tear the upper portion of Grimes’ garment into strips for use as washcloths. An estimated twelve days after their capture Grimes sacrificed the lower legs of his longjohns so that Tamara could use the material for sanitary napkins.
    Now and again, although not very often, there was a flare-up of sexuality, a brief and savage coming together that left them both exhausted but strangely unsatisfied. Always at the back of their minds was the suspicion, the knowledge almost, that alien eyes were watching. Also, Grimes missed, badly, his pipe as a sort of dessert after intercourse. (He missed his pipe. Period.) And Tamara complained every time about the roughness of his face; there were no facilities in the cell for depilation. (He noted, with a brief flicker of interest, that her body remained hairless.)
    Fortunately for their sanity both of them could talk—and listen. The trouble there was that Tamara, when Grimes was telling stories about his past life, would interrupt and say, “But you handled that wrongly. You should have . . .”
    And after the first few times he would snap, “I was there, and you weren’t!” and then there would be a sulky silence.
    It was squalid, humiliating—but the ultimate humiliation was yet to come.
    Without warning the door of their cell opened and a swarm of drones burst in and chivvied them out into the alleyway, along tunnels and up ramps until they came to a huge chamber that must have occupied almost an entire deck of the Shaara ship.

Chapter 13

    IT WAS, GRIMES SUPPOSED, a recreation room—although it would have passed muster as an indoor jungle. There was the moss-covered deck, pillars so thickly covered with flowering vines that they could have been trees, real trees the uppermost branches of which brushed the deck-head and, in the center of the compartment, was a seemingly haphazard piling of smooth rocks down which glistening water tinklingly trickled. And there was Baroom’s crew—a scattering of bejewelled princesses, a rather larger number of gaudily caparisoned drones, a horde of comparatively drab workers.
    The two humans were dragged to the pile of rocks, up it to a platform on the top of it. The drones returned to deck level leaving a princess there with them. Suddenly a bright spotlight came on, playing over their naked bodies. The princess extended one of her upper arms. The taloned “hand” at its extremity touched, first, Tamara’s left breast, then her right, then descended to her groin. It hovered there briefly, then moved to Grimes’ penis. Instinctively he tried to swat the claw away but, with lightning rapidity, another claw caught his arm, scratching it