Read To Prime the Pump for Free Online Page B

Grimes, and you may care to assist me in this duty by explaining. If you can."

    "Well, sir, we were coming in to a landing on the surface of Lake Bluewater. As instructed."

    "Yes. Go on."

    Grimes looked at the girl, thought that he was damned if he was going to hide behind a woman's skirts. She returned his gaze coldly. He shrugged, no more than a twitch of his broad shoulders. He faced the screen again, saying, "I made an error of judgment, sir."

    "An expensive one, Mr. Grimes, both to the Service and to yourself."

    And then the Princess Marlene von Stolzberg was standing beside the Lieutenant. "Captain Daintree," she said haughtily, "your officer was not responsible for the loss of your dynosoar. If anybody was, it was I."

    Daintree's heavy eyebrows lifted. " You, Madam?"

    "Yes. It was my hour for water-skiing on the lake, and I saw no reason to cancel my evening recreation because of the proposed landing. I did not think, of course, that any Captain in his right senses would send his advance party down to a planetary surface in such an archaic, unhandy contraption as a dynosoar. Your Mr. Grimes was obliged to take violent evasive action as soon as he saw me cutting across his path. Furthermore, my two watchbirds, seeing that I was in danger, attacked the re-entry vehicle which, in consequence, crashed."

    "Oh. Captain de Messigny, is this lady's story true?"

    "It is, Captain Daintree."

    "Thank you. And may I make a humble request, Captain?"

    "You may, Captain."

    "Just refrain, if you can, from holding tennis tournaments on the landing field or from converting the apron into a rollerskating rink when I'm on my waydown. Over," he concluded viciously, "and out!"

Chapter 8

    They watched Aries come in—de Messigny, the Princess and, a little to one side, Grimes and Kravisky. Grimes had thought it strange that the spaceport control tower should be left unmanned at this juncture, but the two El Doradans, coldly and amusedly, had informed him that the electronic intelligences housed therein were quite capable of handling any normal landing without any human interference. Grimes did not like the way that the Comte slightly stressed the word "normal."

    They stood there, the four of them, on the edge of the apron, well clear of the triangle of red lights. Above them, on gleaming wings, wheeled and hovered a quartet of flying things that looked like birds, that must be four of the watchbirds about which Grimes had already heard, which, in fact, he had already encountered. (And, he thought glumly, there was still the enquiry into the loss of the re-entry vehicle to face.)

    The two El Doradans ignored their mechanical guardians. The Lieutenant could not, wondering what would happen should he make some inadvertent move that would be construed by the electronic brains as an act of hostility. He started to edge a little further away from Marlene von Stolzberg and de Messigny, then, with an audible grunt, stood his ground.

    They saw the ship before they heard her—at first a glittering speck in the cloudless, morning sky and then, after only a few seconds, a gleaming spindle. She was well in sight when there drifted down to them the odd, irregular throbbing of an inertial drive unit in operation, no more than an uneasy mutter to begin with but swelling to an ominous, intermittent thunder, the voice of the power that had hurled men out among the stars.

    But this was all wrong. On any civilized world, or on any civilized world other than this, there would have been an honor guard, ranks of soldiers, in ceremonial uniform, drawn to rigid attention. There would have been antique cannon with black powder charges to fire a salute to the Captain of a major Terran war vessel. There would have been flags and ceremonial. But here, here there was only one man— and his uniform, after all, was a mercantile one—and one woman. A self-styled Princess, perhaps, but even so . . .  And, thought Grimes, there's also Kravisky and