Captain Brixby paused outside the door which separated his own modest quarters from the garishly luxurious passenger accommodation. He always did. On his first trip as captain of a giant starliner he had told himself reassuringly that time was bound to give him the kind of social confidence a luxury-liner captain needed; now on his third he was beginning to doubt that he would ever lose that queasy feeling when it was time for him to take his seat at the head of the captain’s table for dinner.
He was an able man and he knew it. The owners of Pan-Galaxy knew it too, and that was why when he acquired the necessary seniority Jack Brixby more or less automatically received his transfer from the big star freighters to the prestige liners. It had been no surprise to anyone, and Brixby himself, modestly ambitious, had had no doubts that the appointment to the Floribunda, one of the plum jobs for any captain, was exactly what he wanted.
But nothing is ever quite what one expects. The responsibility didn’t bother him. The routine business of running the ship was all right. The officers, with certain reservations, were all right.
What irked Captain Jack Brixby was the forty per cent of his time that he had to spend — waste, he would have said — with the passengers.
Well … he was wasting still more time by his reluctance to enter the dining-room. Squaring his shoulders, he opened the door and strode past the cocktail bar and milk bar into the vast dining-room. Some of the ships he had commanded could rest on the floor of this chome-and-glass cavern, leaving plenty of room to walk around them.
Greeted by black-coated male or bare-backed female passengers, he answered with vague heartiness, trying to compensate with expansive cordiality for the fact that he couldn’t remember their names. Greeting the 250 passengers on the Floribunda by name, not to mention the crew of 45, was utterly beyond him.
Reaching the captain’s table at last, he managed to make more or less appropriate responses. These people were not quite strangers. He sat down beside a pretty girl, who advised him: “Don’t have anything to do with the mock turtle soup, captain. It’s not the turtle that’s being mocked, it’s us.”
Brixby cleared his throat to make some answer, then discovered he had nothing to say. A forty-five-year-old bachelor, he was terrified of Faith, a gay widow of twenty-six who was frankly looking for a replacement and had already confided that she liked older men in positions of authority, and if they didn’t have a lot of money it didn’t matter, because she had plenty.
He was careful not to notice what she was wearing, having found that whatever it was it always bothered him, though he was unable to prevent his optic nerve reporting that it was vividly green (Faith was a redhead).
He spooned up his chicken soup, pretending to be too hungry for conversation, and sitting rigid to try to avoid the possibility of burning contact with Faith’s thigh. Frustrating this effort cheerfully, she nudged him com-panionably.
“I’m not bothering you, captain, am I?” she murmured, and chuckled mischievously. She had a deep, breathy and very sexy voice.
“Of course not, Mrs. Delman,” he lied.
She looked up and said with a change of tone: “Oh, that’s too bad. You’ve only just started and here’s one of your officers coming to disturb you.”
Brixby turned his head. Fernie, the chief radio officer, was approaching purposefully. “Yes?” Brixby said.
“Message for you, sir.” Fernie sounded aggrieved. “For you personally, from the owners.” He waited.
“Give it to me, then,” said Brixby, slightly impatiently. He was not in the least nervous of his officers.
“I haven’t got it, sir. You’ve to come to the radio cabin and take it yourself. Alone.”
“Now?” Brixby rose, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.
“It’s too bad,” said Faith sympathetically.
Brixby followed Fernie from the dining-room, curious and already the calm, efficient master in space. Professional problems never bothered him, only social ones.
Fernie stopped at the door of the radio room. “You’re to take the message alone, sir.” There was no doubt he was ruffled, with some excuse — doing this sort of thing to a senior radio officer was almost without precedent.
Brixby went into the cabin and Fernie pointedly closed the door behind him. The subspace radio was live, of course, and still set to receive the mysterious message. Brixby sent out the ship’s call sign, announced himself, and waited.
In the peculiarly spectral tones of subspace radio a voice said: “Yes, captain … I presume you’re alone? This is most important.”
“Yes, I’m alone.”
“I’m Johnson, chief communications officer of Pan-Galaxy. You recognise my voice?”
As a matter of fact it was difficult to recognise any voice over subspace radio, but Brixby said: “Yes,” to save time.
“Good. I’m now putting you through to Admiral Cecil of the Navy.”
Well, well. Secrecy, and now a naval admiral.
“Captain Brixby? This is Admiral Cecil. I take it you’re satisfied that you’re now under my authority?”
It was highly irregular, but the preliminaries could mean nothing else. The Navy had, of course, no jurisdiction over privately-owned spaceliners. It was not entirely unknown, however, for the Navy to approach a company on Earth and virtually commandeer a civilian ship in deep space. Subspace radio was instantaneous, but sub-space interstellar travel, though immensely faster than interplanetary flight by normal drive, was relatively slow. A civilian ship on the spot might be worth a hundred heavily-armed cruisers a hundred light-years away.
“Yes, sir,” said Brixby briefly.
“I have received an urgent message from Controller Seburg of Control Sector 1444. You are to place yourself under his command. The first thing you will do is divert to Persephone Alpha at once. Do not land, but orbit Persephone Alpha until further notice, or until you receive fresh orders from Controller Seburg.”
“Sir?”
The capital and organisation involved in any deep-space passenger flight was staggering. Before Pan-Galaxy had agreed to such a course, they must have received ironclad government guarantees and be convinced that no other course was open.
There was a pause. The admiral clearly didn’t want to explain if it could be avoided. He must have realised, however, that some explanation was obligatory, for he went on: “Persephone Alpha has been attacked by Persephone Beta. It was no ordinary attack. There were features about it which may make the situation in Control Sector 1444 of galactic importance. I understand Alpha, which you may know better as Shangri-La or Shan, is about to be attacked again. If so, you will not arrive before the attack. But your assistance may be required afterwards.”
This sounded crazy to Brixby. He had heard of Shangri-La and knew that while it might be rich and important some day, that day was far in the future. The two Persephone planets were not, as of this moment, worth in total half the current value of the Floribunda.
“I can’t believe that you can really be ordering me to risk my ship,” he said.
“I don’t want to order you, Brixby. This is a naval request.”
“Sorry, admiral, I won’t wear that. My first responsibility is to my passengers and ship. If you leave it up to me, I must refuse your request.”
“Captain, the importance of this matter — ”
“Please put Johnson back on.”
“I — oh, very well.”
Johnson said: “Yes, captain, Pan-Galaxy have been approached and have agreed that you’re to do whatever the admiral wants.”
“At risk to my ship and passengers? I want this on record, Johnson.”
“It’s all on record. Naturally.”
“Then put this on record too. I’m obeying you and the admiral under strongest possible protest. I’m making one last submission: Don’t ask me to do it.”
“Captain, you know better than I do how often a Pan-Galaxy ship is completely dependent on the Navy. If the Navy were to withdraw co-operation — ”
“All right,” Brixby sighed. “Put the admiral on again … Admiral, I want to make this clear. Request me, and I’ll reluctantly turn you down.”
“All right,” said the admiral angrily, “I’ll have to order you. Seburg’s our man on the spot and I have to back him.”
“You take full responsibility,”
“Yes, damn you, yes!”
Brixby said mildly: “Well, that’s all right.”