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

painfully.
    “Do not struggle,” said the princess. “You will not be harmed. We are instructing our crew. And now you and the female will perform for us your generative functions.”
    “Not a hope in hell!” snarled Grimes.
    “I do not understand. Please to repeat.”
    “No,” said Grimes definitely.
    “You mean that you will not perform for us?”
    “Yes.”
    “It does not matter,” said the princess. “We have obtained certain records from your ship. Perhaps you will find it amusing to watch. We shall find them instructive.”
    Records? wondered Grimes—and then he remembered.
    Not only his prominent ears were burning with embarrassment—the angry flush spread over his entire body.
    To one side of the circular chamber the wall was clear of vegetation. It glowed suddenly with light—not the red illumination that was the norm for this ship but bright, white, with splashes of color. The scene was the cabin of Little Sister. There was a cast of two, Grimes and Tamara Haverstock. There was hardly any dialogue but there were gasps and little screams. There was an intertwining of naked limbs, an undignified, vigorous pumping . . .
    “You bastard!” whispered the woman—the actual woman, not the one on the screen—viciously. “You bastard!”
    “I can explain . . .” muttered Grimes.
    “There are questions,” said the princess. “Not many of our crew are familiar with humans and their ways. There are those who ask how many eggs the female will produce after the mating.”
    “You bastard.’” repeated Tamara Haverstock.

Chapter 14

    FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE Grimes tried to forget the details of the remainder of the voyage. Thinking of it as a preview of hell might have been an exaggeration, but it was most certainly not a foretaste of heaven, and in purgatory (we are told) there is hope. Hope was a quality altogether absent from this cramped cell with its boredom, its savorless food, the hateful company of the hating woman who spoke only to snarl at him, who had lost all interest in her appearance and who had become a compulsive eater, whose once trim body had become a mass of unsightly bulges, whose breasts were sagging, whose hair fell in an unsightly tangle about her sweaty, fattening, sullen face. Even so small a comfort (small comfort?) as his precious pipe with a supply of tobacco would have made conditions slightly less intolerable, but he was denied even this.
    But every voyage must have its end.
    And then, at long last, came the time when Grimes woke from an uneasy sleep. The light in the cabin was changing, shifting, deepening from pink to violet and its perspective was no longer that of a cube but a tesseract. Tamara’s sprawled, naked figure was as he had first known it, long-legged, firm-bodied, with the fine bone structure of her face prominent. She was snoring, but even that normally unlovely sound was musical . . .
    Abruptly perspective, light and color were again as they always (for how long? for too long) had been. But sound was different. There was something lacking—and that something was the all-pervasive thin, high whine of the Mannschenn Drive. So, thought Grimes, Baroom was making planetfall. So in a matter of a few hours, or even less, it would be landing stations.
    He touched the woman on a fleshy shoulder. Her eyes slowly opened. She looked up at him with an expression that at first was oddly eager but that almost immediately became one of extreme distaste.
    She muttered, “It’s you. I was dreaming, but . . . Lemme sleep, damn you.”
    He said, “Tamara, we’ve arrived. Or almost arrived. They’ve just shut down their Mannschenn Drive . . .”
    “And so bloody what? Take your filthy paws off me!”
    He snarled back at her, “For the love of the Odd Gods of the Galaxy pull yourself together, woman! We shall be landing shortly. I don’t know on what world but we’re liable to be meeting strangers. And you’re a mess.”
    “And you’re no oil painting yourself,