A. Bertram Chandler - The Rim of Space

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THE RIM OF SPACE

Scanned by Aristotle 1

Slowly and carefully-as befitted her years, which were many-the star tramp Caliban dippped down to

Port Forlorn. Calver, her Second Mate, looked out and down from the control room view-ports to the

uninviting scene below, to the vista of barren hills and mountains scarred by mine work-ings, to the great

slag heaps that were almost moun-tains themselves, to the ugly little towns, each one of which was

dominated by the tall, smoke-belching chimneys of factories and refineries, to the rivers that, even from

this altitude, looked like sluggish streams of sewage.

So this, he thought, is Lorn, industrial hub of the Rim Worlds. This is the end of the penny section. This is where I

§gt °ff- There's no further to go . . .

Captain Bowers, satisfied that the ship was riding down easily and safely under automatic control,

turned to his Second Officer. "Are you sure that you want to pay off here, Mr. Calver?" he asked. "Are

you quite sure? You're a good officer and we'd like to

2A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

keep you. The Shakespearian Line mightn't be up to Commission standards, but it's not a bad outfit ..."

"Thank you, sir," replied Calver, raising his voice slightly to make himself heard over the subdued

thunder of the rockets, "but I'm sure. I signed on in Elsinore with the understanding that I was to be paid

off on the Rim. The Third's quite capable of taking over."

"You want your head read," grunted Harris, the Mate.

"Perhaps," said Calver.

And perhaps I do, he thought. How much of this is sheer masochism, this flight from the warm worlds of the Center

to these desolate Rim planets? Could it have been the names that appealed to me? Thule, Ultimo, Faraway and Lorn

. . ."The usual cross wind, blast it!" swore Bowers, hastily turning his attention to the controls. The old ship

shuddered and complained as the corrective blasts were fired and, momentarily, the noise in the control

room rose to an intolerable level.

When things had quieted down again Harris said, "It's always windy on Lorn, and the wind is always

cold and dusty and stinking with the fumes of burn-ing sulphur ..."

"I'll not be staying on Lorn," said Calver. "I've been too long in Space to go hunting for a shore job,

especially when there's no inducement."

"Going to try Rim Runners?" asked Captain Bowers.

"Yes. I hear they're short of officers."

"They always are," said Harris.

"Why not stay with us?" queried the Captain.

"Thanks again, sir, but ..."

"Rim Runners!" snorted the Mate. "You'll find

THE RIM OF SPACE 3

an odd bunch there, Calver. Refugees from the In-terstellar Transport Commission, from the Survey

Service, the Waverley Royal Mail, Trans-Galactic Clippers..."

"I'm a refugee from the Commission myself," said Calver wryly.

Port Forlorn was close now, too close for further conversation, the dirty, scarred, concrete apron

rushing up to meet them. The Caliban dropped through a cloud of scintillating particles, the dust raised

by her back-blast and fired to brief incan-descence. She touched, sagged tiredly, her structure creaking

like old bones. The sudden silence, as the rockets died, seemed unnatural.

Harris broke it. "And their ships," he said. "Their ships . . . All ancient crocks, mostly worn-out

Epsilon Class tubs thrown out by the Commission just before they were due to collapse from senile

decay ... I'm told that they even have one or two of the old Ehrenhaft Drive jobs ..."

"Wasn't Caliban once Epsilon Sextants?" asked Calver mildly.

"Yes. But she's different," said Harris affec-tionately.

Yes, thought Calver, remembering the conversa-tion, standing at the foot of the ramp to the airlock,

Caliban was different. A worn-out Epsilon Class wag-on she may have been-but she still had pride, just

as her Master and officers still had pride in her. This Lorn Lady was a ship of the same class, probably

no older than Caliban, but she looked a wreck.

Calver looked down at his shoes, which had been highly polished when he left his hotel, and saw that

they were already covered with a thick film of dust. A

4A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

sidewise glance at his epaulettes-the new ones, with their Rim Runners Second Officer's braid, on the old

jacket-told him that they, also, were dusty. He dis-liked to board a ship, any ship, untidily dressed. He

brushed his shoulders with his hand, used a hand-kerchief, which he then threw away, to restore the shine

to his shoes. He climbed the shaky ramp.

There was no airlock watch-but Calver had learned that the outward standards of efficiency di-minished,

almost according to the Law of Inverse Squares, with increasing distance from the Galactic Center. He

shrugged, found the telephone.

After studying the selector board he pressed the button labelled Chief Officer. There was no reply. He

tried Control Room, Purser and then Captain, then re-placed the useless instrument in its clip, and opened

the inner airlock door. He was agreeably surprised to find that the manual controls worked easily and

smoothly. He picked up his bags and went into the ship. He was familiar enough with the layout of this type

of vessel and went straight to the axial shaft. The newer Epsilon Class vessels boasted a light elevator for

use in port. Calver was not amazed to discover that Lorn Lady did not run to such a luxury.

There was somebody clattering down the spiral stairway in the axial shaft, the stairway that led up to the

officers' accommodation. Calver stood there and waited. The owner of the noisy feet dropped into view.

He was a man of Calver's age, no longer young. His uniform was tight on his stocky frame; he wore Rim

Runners epaulettes-the three gold bars of a Chief Officer with, above them, the winged wheel- but his cap

badge was an elaborate affair of stars and rockets surmounted by an ornate crown.

THE RIM OF SPACE 5

He looked up at Calver when he reached the deck, making the tall man suddenly conscious of his

gan-gling height. He said, "You'll be the new Second. I'm the Mate. Maclean's the name. Welcome

aboard the Forlorn Bitch." He grinned. "Well, she looks it, doesn't she?"

They shook hands.

"I'll take my bags up to my cabin," said Calver. "I've seen enough of Port Forlorn to last me a long

time so, if you like, I'll do the night aboard."

"Night aboard? There's no shipkeeping here," laughed Maclean. "And there's no cargo working

to-night, either. The night watchman will be on duty in an hour or so, and he's fairly reliable."

Calver looked as shocked as he felt.

"I know how you feel," said the Mate, "but you'll get over it. I used to feel the same myself when I first

came out to the Rim-after the Royal Mail it seemed very slovenly."

"I'm afraid it does."

"You're out of the Commission's ships, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I thought as much. You're a typical Commission officer-middle-aged before your time, stiff and

starchy and a stickler for regulations. It'll wear off. Anyhow, up you go and park your bags. I'll wait for

you here. Then we'll go and have a couple or three drinks to wash this damned dust out of our throats."

Calver climbed the spiral staircase and found his cabin without any trouble. It was, to his relief,

rea-sonably clean. He left his bags under the bunk, went down to the airlock to rejoin Maclean. The two

men walked down the ramp together.

6A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

"You'll not find Commission standards here," said the Mate, taking up the conversation where

he had dropped it. "Qr, come to that, Royal Mail stan-dards. We keep the ships safe and reasonably

clean -and reasonably efficient-but there's neither mon-ey nor labor to spare for spit and polish."

"So I've noticed."

"So I noticed, too, when I first came out to the Rim. And if I hadn't told Commodore Sir Archibald

Sinclair to his face that he was a blithering old idiot I'd still be in the Royal Mail, still keeping my night

aboard in port and making sure that a proper airlock watch was being maintained, and all the rest

of it ..." He paused. "There's a not bad little pub just outside the spaceport gates. Feel like trying it?"

"As you please," said Calver.

The two men walked slowly across the dusty apron, past cranes and under gantries, through the gates

and into a street that seemed lined with fac-tories and warehouses. The swinging sign, the big bottle with

vanes and ports added to make it look like a rocketship, was, even though sadly tarnished and faded, a

note of incongruous gaiety.

The pub was better inside than out, almost achiev-ing coziness. It was, at this early hour of the

evening, practically deserted. Calver and Maclean sat down at one of the tables, waiting only a few

seconds for attention. The slatternly girl who served them did not ask for their order but brought them a

bottle of whisky with graduations up its side, two glasses and a jug of water.

"They know me here," said Maclean unneces-sarily. He filled and raised his glass. "Here's to crime."

THE RIM OF SPACE 7

Calver sipped his drink. The whisky was not bad. He read the label on the bottle, saw that the liquor

had been distilled on Nova Caledon. It wasn't Scotch -but here, out on the Rim, the price of the genuine

article would have been prohibitive.

He said, "Would you mind putting me into the picture, Maclean? They were very vague in the office

when I joined the Company."

"They always are," the Mate told him. "They're never quite sure which way is up. Besides-you hadn't

yet signed the Articles; you had yet to bind yourself, body and soul, to Rim Runners. I suppose you

noticed the Secrecy Clause, by the way?"

"I did."

"I suppose you thought it a rather odd clause to find in a merchant ship's Articles of Agreement. But

it's there for a reason. Your predecessor signed it- and ignored it. That's why he's doing his spell in the

mines, under guard ..."

"What! Surely they wouldn't ..."

"They would, Calver-and in his case they did. Bear in mind that Rim Runners is just about a

gov-ernment shipping line and that all of us are, auto-matically, officers of the Rim Naval Reserve . . .

"Anyhow ..." He glanced around him, made sure that there was nobody within earshot. "Anyhow, this

is the way of it. Until very recently Rim Runners owned only a handful of ships and served only four

planetary systems-those of Thule, Ultimo, Faraway and Lorn. Just puddle-jumping by our standards,

Calver-our old standards, that is. Even so, they had to keep on recruiting officers from the rest of the

Galaxy. They don't like Deep Space, these Rim Worlders; they're scared of it. I suppose that it's

be-cause for all their lives they've been hanging over the

8A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

edge of the Ultimate Pit by their eyebrows.

"But the Rim Government wants to expand, wants to become sufficiently powerful to be able to

thumb its nose at Earth and the Federation. As you know, the Survey Service has always neglected the

Rim. So Rim Runners put their own survey ships into operation. They made a sweep to the Galactic

West-and found the anti-matter suns and planets. There was no room for expansion there. They ran to

the East and found normal matter and quite a few stars with inhabited worlds. There's Mellise, which is

practically all water and inhabited by a race of intelligent amphibians. There's Tharn, which has yet to

build an industrial civilization but whose peo-ple are as near human as makes no difference.

There's Grollor, where the natives can just be classed as humanoid and have the first beginnings of space

travel. There's Stree, with its philosophical lizards ..."

"I can see," said Calver, "that I'll have to do some heavy boning up on the Pilot Books ..."

Maclean laughed. "There aren't any Pilot Books, Calver. Not yet. When there are, it'll be the likes of

us who've written them." He splashed more whisky into the glasses. "Anyhow, we're loading zinc and tin

and cadmium tomorrow for Port Faraway on Faraway. We load at Faraway for the

Eastern Circuit. How does that suit you?"

"The Eastern Circuit? The new worlds?"

"Aye."

"Sounds interesting. But you still haven't made this secrecy business clear."

"The Rim Government," said Maclean patiently, "wants to form its own Federation, out here on the

THE RIM OF SPACE 9

Rim, wants to have the whole thing sewn up tight with pacts and treaties and trade agreements before

any Survey Service ship comes nosing out this way. All known Federation agents have been rounded up

and are being kept in protective custody. Pickering, your predecessor, was an ex-Lieutenant

Commander out of the Survey Service and had the odd idea that he still owed them loyalty-in spite of the

Court Martial that was the cause of his leaving them ..."

"And are you loyal to the Rim?" asked Calver. "I know that there's no likelihood that the Kingdom of

Waverley will ever cast covetous eyes on this sector of the Galaxy-but suppose they did?"

"I'm a Rim Worlder," said Maclean at last. "I wasn't born out here, but the Rim has always had its

appeal for me. It's a last frontier, I suppose, and will be until some genius comes up with an intergalactic

drive . . . And out here one can be a spaceman, a real spaceman, without all the time being tangled up in

red tape . . . And now there are the new worlds, and there'll be more of them ..." He looked around.

"The dump's filling up. No more shop talk."

As he said, the place was filling up. There were roughly-dressed men from dockside, mines and

fac-tories, a few overly-neat men from offices. There were women-some of them drably and dowdily

respect-able, others whose skimpy dress, too red lips and ov-erly made-up faces were like a uniform.

There was a slim girl who began to wring a plaintive melody from a piano accordion. She flashed a smile

at the two spacemen as she played.

Maclean sang softly in time to the music:

"Exiled from home

10 A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

By woman's whim,

We'll ever roam And run the Rim . . .'"

"This," said a female voice, huskily attractive, "is where he usually starts to cry into his whisky ..."

"That's a lie, Arlen," said Maclean, "and you know it."

Calver turned in his chair. He saw the Purser, whom he had already met, and, beside him, a tall

woman with the silver bars of a Catering Officer on her epaulettes. She was a little too slim for

conven-tional prettiness and her features were too strong and bore the ineradicable marks of past strain.

There was a startling silver streak in her burnished, dark hair.

She said, "You'll be Calver. The new Second."

"I am," said Calver.

"I'm Arlen. Chief cook and bottle washer."

She extended a slim, strong hand. Calver took it. Her eyes, he noticed, were a blue so deep as to be

almost black. Her smile was a little crooked, which made it no less attractive.

Fender, the little Purser, bustled up with two extra chairs, set them in place noisily. The sullen waitress

brought more glasses.

Arlen sat down gracefully. She said, "Try to im-agine that you're back in the Royal Mail, Maclean. Be

a gentleman and pour me a drink."

The Mate poured drinks.

"We're all lushes on the Rim, Calver," said Arlen. (She had, he decided, already taken more than a

few on board.) "We're all lushes, even though we've learned the hard way that drinking solves nothing.

But we don't like happy drunks. The last Second THE RIM OF SPACE 1 ]

Mate but one, Wallis, he was a happy drunk. He was so happy that he could never be trusted with the

loading. It was all one to him if the center of gravity was up in the control room or somewhere under the

main venturi. But Maclean's not like that. Maclean will cry into his whisky, and pour a little of it over that

absurd Royal Mail cap badge that he insists on wearing, and will stagger back on board tonight full of the

woes of all the Universe as well as his own- and God help the stevedore if he stows one slab of zinc a

millimeter out of place tomorrow!"

".Stow it, Arlen," said Maclean.

"Are you a happy drunk, Calver?" she demanded.

"No," he said.

"Then you're one of us. You'll make a, real Rim Runner, skimming the edge of Eternity in a

super-annuated rustbucket held together with old string and chewing gum, and taking a masochistic

pleasure in it. You've run away from yourself until you can't run any further, and there's a sort of

desperate joy in that, too. You don't drink to forget. You don't drink to get into a state of maudlin,

mindless happiness; you drink to intensify your feelings, you ..."

"Stow it, Arlen!" snapped Maclean.

She got to her feet. "If that's the way you feel," she said coldly, "I'd better leave."

"Can't a man have a drink in peace without all this amateur psychiatry?" complained the Mate. "I drink

because I like drinking. Period."

"Goodnight," she said.

"I'll see you back aboard," said Calver.

"No thanks," she told him. "I'm a big girl now. I'm not afraid of the dark. Would I be with Rim

Runners if I were?"

A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

Calver saw that the woman with the accordion was drifting towards the table, was smiling at Maclean,

that Fender was already exchanging glances with one of the bold-eyed girls. He knew how the evening

would develop and he wanted no part of it. He stood up, put his hand under Arlen's elbow and began to

steer her towards the door.

"Goodnight, Maclean," he said. "Goodnight, Fender."

"What's the hurry, Calver?" asked the Mate. "The night's a pup."

"I'm rather tired," said Calver.

"All right. See you in the ayem."

The musician and the other woman slid into the vacated seats as Calver and Arlen reached the door.

The waitress was bringing another bottle of whisky.

Calver glanced back to the table. "It looks like being a dog of a night ..."

"What night isn't?" countered Arlen bitterly.

it was cold outside, and the gusty wind filled their eyes with dust. It was not the sort of night on which

one finds pleasure in stargazing-yet Calver looked to the sky. The great, gleaming lens of the Galaxy was

almost set, only one last glimmering parabola of cold fire visible low in the west. Overhead the sky was

dark, the blackness intensified by the sparse and dim nebulosities that were the unreachable island

universes.

Calver shivered.

"It's . . . It's frightening," whispered Arlen. "It's worse, somehow, seen from a planetary surface. Yet it

has something ..."

"Something?" he asked. "Or . . . nothing?"

"There are easier and faster ways of finding noth-ing," she said.

Calver felt a flare of anger and began to appreciate how, at times, her shipmates found this woman

hard to live with. He asked brutally, "Then why didn't you take one?"

A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

"Why didn't you?" she countered. "I'll tell you. Because you're like the rest of us. I don't know your

story, any more than you know mine, but something happened to smash the career that you were carving

out for yourself in the Commission's service-some-thing that was your fault, and nobody else's. You hit

rock bottom-but you refused to admit it. You de-cided, quite probably on a subconscious level, that the

only salvation lay in a voyage-real and symbol-ical-to the very edge of the night ..."

Calver laughed harshly. "And does this fancy the-ory of yours apply to all the Rim Runners?"

"To most of us. Not to the Old Man-he was born out here, on Thule. The only thing that he's running

away from is the Grim Reaper; he's two hundred years old if he's a day. Fender's a Rim Worlder, too.

So's Levine, our Psionic Radio Officer.

"But there's Bendix, the Interstellar Drive Engi-neer-he's out of Trans-Galactic Clippers. There's

Renault, the Rocket King-he was Reaction Chief of a Beta Class liner ..."

"I've heard of him," said Calver. "I've never sailed with him."

"Brentano, Electronic Radio, used to be in a re-spectable little outfit called Cluster Lines. Old Doc

Malone had a flourishing practice in Port Austral, in the Centaurian System. Maclean, as you know, was

with the Waverley Royal Mail ..."

"And you?" he asked.

"Another refugee from the Commission," she said. "But I was ashore, on Earth, for a few years before

I came out here ..."

Calver realized with a start that they had walked the distance from the tavern to the spaceport gate.

THE RIM OF SPACE 15

The guard on duty-alert in spite of his slovenly ap-pearance-looked at them, at their uniforms.

He said, "Good evening, Mrs. Arlen. Back early tonight."

"Somebody has to be up in the morning to cook breakfast for these space-hounds," she said.

"And this gentleman?"

"Our new Second Officer."

The guard looked from the photograph that he had produced from his pocket to Calver's face,

nodded curtly. He pressed the button that opened the gate. Arlen and Calver passed through. Ahead of

them was the ship, black against the dark sky, only a dim glimmer of yellow light shining from the airlock.

"The Forlorn Lady," said Arlen. "The poor old For-lorn Bitch. When I hear people talking about

her I always wonder if they're referring to the ship, or to me . . . But I have every right to be forlorn. Do

you know what they used to call me? Calamity Jane Lawler. But that was before I was married. It's

Calamity Jane Arlen now ..."

They walked slowly up the rickety ramp to the air-lock, Calver steadying the girl with his arm. They

got past the watchman-an ex-spaceman by the looks of him, and a heavy drinker-without waking him.

They climbed the spiral staircase to the officers' flat.

Arlen led the way into the little pantry adjoining the messroom, switched on the percolator. In a

mat-ter of seconds it began to chuckle softly to itself. She drew two mugs of the bitter, black brew.

"Sugar, Calver? Cream?"

"Just sugar, thanks."

"I don't know why I drink this muck," she said. "It'll sober me up, and I don't want to be

sober.

A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

When I've had a few drinks I can accept the coldness, the loneliness, and make them part of me. When

I'm sober, they . . . They frighten me ..."

"Lawler," said Galver slowly, ignoring what she had just said. "Lawler . . . Calamity Jane Lawler . . .

The name rings a bell. Weren't you in Alpha Scorpii at one time?"

"Yes," she said flatly. "I was. It was when there was the outbreak of food poisoning, and some fool

pointed out that something horrid always happened aboard any ship that I was in. Hence the name. It

stuck. The worst of it is that I do seem to be an acci-dent prone sort of person, even ashore. When I left

the Commission's service, when I married, the calamities still kept on coming. So ..."

"So? What did happen?"

"What happened to you?" she demanded in reply. "We don't know each other well enough yet to

start swapping life stories. I doubt if we ever shall."

Calver finished his coffee. He said, "Goodnight, Arlen."

"Goodnight," she replied dully.

Feeling suddenly both helpless and useless, Calver left her there in the little pantry, went to his cabin

and turned in.

He was surprised at the speed with which he was able to adjust himself to the rather slovenly routine

of Lorn Lady. She was pitifully shorthanded by the stan-dards to which he was accustomed; there was

no Third Officer, there were no junior engineers for either the Interstellar Drive or the Reaction Drive,

and the Surgeon was also the Biochemist and, as such, was in charge of hydroponics, tissue culture

THE RIM OF SPACE 17

and the yeast and algae vats. There were no cadets to do all the odd jobs that were beneath the dignity

of the officers. Such jobs were done, if they were essen-tial; otherwise they remained undone.

Safety first, Maclean had said. Safety First. Effi-ciency second. Spit and polish this year, next year,

some time, never. Yet the gleaming, ever-precessing gyroscopes of the Mannschenn Drive Unit sang

softly and smoothly, with never a stammer; and the pumps that drove the fluid propellant into the furnace

of the Pile functioned with a reliability that could have been the envy of many a better found vessel. Old

Doc Malone was an efficient farmer, and there was never a shortage of green salads or fresh meat in the

mess; the algae served only as air and water purifiers, never as article of diet,

Yet she was old, was Lorn Lady. Machinery can be renewed part by part, but there comes a time

when the shell plating of the hull holding that same ma-chinery is almost porous, when every structural

member is weakened by the fatigue that comes to all metal with the passage of the years.

She was old, and she was tired, and the age of her and the fatigue of her were mirrored in the frail

body of Captain Engels, her Master. He was the oldest man whom Calver had ever met, even in Space

where, barring accidents, extreme longevity is the rule rather than the exception. A few sparse strands of

yellowish hair straggled over the thin, transparent parchment covering his skull. His uniform was too big

for the fragile, withered body it covered. Only his eyes, pale blue and bleak, were alive.

He worried the officers very little, keeping to his own accommodation most of the time. Yet any minor

18 A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

malfunctioning, any deviation from normal routine, no matter how trivial, would bring him at once to the

control room. He would say nothing, yet his mere presence would induce in the mind of the officer of the

watch a sense of gross inadequacy and, with it, the resolve not to let the thing, whatever it might have

been, occur again.

There was very little camaraderie aboard the ship whilst she was in Space; watch and watch routine

gives small opportunity for social intercourse. But, Calver decided, there would not have been much

so-cial life even if the ship had been adequately manned. She carried too heavy a cargo of regrets. With

Maclean he might have struck up a friendship, but the only times they met were at the changes of

watches. He would have liked to have gotten to know Jane Arlen better-but she kept him, as she kept all

the others aboard the ship, at arm's length.

The voyage to Faraway passed, as all voyages pass. There were no emergencies of any kind. The

landing at Port Faraway was slow and painful, old Captain Engels refusing to trust the auto pilot and

treating the ship as though she were an extension of his own aged and brittle body. Once she was

berthed, discharge and loading progressed according to plan.

Calver had free time when Lorn Lady was in port. He did not particularly want it, but realized the

folly of staying aboard the ship. On the evening of the day of arrival he changed into his least shabby

uniform and then went to Arlen's cabin to see if she would come with him; she told him curtly that she

was busy and that one Rim World city was as bad as the next anyhow. He left her checking stores,

walked down THE RIM OF SPACE 19

the ramp from the airlock and on to the apron. He was obliged to admit that Arlen was right. From the

spaceport Faraway looked like Lorn. The air was a little purer, perhaps, but was just as chilly and as

dusty. There was no warmth in the westering sun, no light and color in the world.

He took the monorail from the spaceport to Faraway City. It was hard for a stranger, like

him-self, to tell where the industrial suburbs ended and the city proper began. All the buildings were low,

all drab and in various stages of dilapidation. Even though the sun was down when his journey was

ended, there was a marked shortage of bright lights.

Across the street from the monorail station was a hotel-Rimrock House, proclaimed the flickering

neon sign. Calver walked across to it, went first into the bar. The whisky, he soon discovered, was

inferior to the rotgut distilled by old Doc Malone. After his sec-ond drink he went into the hotel

restaurant, ordered a meal. He did not enjoy it. Whoever had cooked it could have taken a few lessons

from Arlen, with ad-vantage.

He was grimly amused to see that the couple at the next table shared his low opinion of the Rimrock

House cuisine. He could not help overhearing some of their comments. Their accent was familiar, and

brought a wave of nostalgia with it. Earth, he thought. But what are they doing here? They must be

tour-ists. But who 'd come out to the Rim for pleasure?

The man got abruptly to his feet, stalked out of the restaurant. The girl remained seated, caught

Calver's eye and grinned ruefully. She said, "Grim, isn't it? It was too much for my brother. He's gone up

to his room to nurse his indigestion ..."

A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

Now that the girl had spoken to him, Calver was able to look at her without rudeness. There were

pretty women, and even beautiful women, on the Rim Worlds-but all of them were lacking in finish, all of

them ruined what had been given them by Na-ture with unsuitable clothing and accessories.'This girl,

obviously, had been brought up to regard the adornment of her face and body as an art, as a fine art. No

beauty doth she miss, thought Calver, remember-ing the words of an old poet, when all her robes are

on. But beauty's self she is when all her robes are gone . . .

"We thought that we should be playing safe by having something simple," she went on. "Steak Diane .

. . That wasn't asking too much, was it?"

"One would think not," admitted Calver.

"I saw you making faces over your dinner," she said.

"Lobster Thermidor," he told her. "But I'd hate to meet the arthropod that was masquerading as a

lobster. My guess is that it was just an oversized cockroach ..."

Her face, even with the grimace of disgust, was at-tractive-and her laugh was even more so, its silvery,

tinkling quality somehow matching the gleaming platinum of her hair. She said, "Will you join me for

brandy and coffee in the Lounge? I'll get them to bring down a bottle of the real stuff from my room.

Even though Napoleon never dipped his beak into it, it's still the produce of France ..."

"Thank you," said Calver.

He got to his feet when he saw that the girl was about to rise, escorted her from the restaurant to the

Lounge, to a table in a dimly-lit corner. He heard her ask the waitress to send somebody to her

room, THE RIM OF SPACE 21

heard the other woman say, "Certainly, Miss Verrill. . ."

He said, "From Earth, Miss Verrill?"

"How did you know?"

"I heard the waitress address you by name."

"I meant, how did you know that I was from Earth?"

"The accent is obvious. You're from Earth, from one of the English speaking nations. North America

... In fact, Virginia ..."

"You're right, Mr ___ ?"

"Calver."

"Mr. Calver. Also from Earth. With the in-definable accent, the amalgam of accents, of the true

spaceman. But I didn't know that there were any big ships in port."

"There aren't."

"I must be slipping. When I saw you sitting there I thought that you were a typical I.T.C. officer out for

an evening's slumming, seeing how the poor live ..."

"I was in the I.T.C.," said Calver shortly.

"And now?"

"Rim Runners."

"Oh, yes. Rim Runners. They're the local ship-ping line, aren't they?"

"They are."

The waitress brought the coffee. With it, on the tray, there was the bottle of brandy, the two balloon

glasses. The coffee was vile. The brandy was not.

Calver felt its warmth creeping through him. It was pleasant here, away from the ship, pleasant to be

seeing a new face, listening to a fresh voice. Even though the meal had been almost inedible, there

A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

were compensations. This was the sort of life that he had run away from (or been driven away from?)-

the pleasant chatter over a glass of good liquor, the companion at whom other men looked with envy.

And perhaps . . .

Perhaps ...

And why not? he asked himself. A beautiful wom-an, unattached, lonely ... So she's got her brother

with her. So what? No matter what the mores of the rest of the Galaxy might be, Earth had left the

Vic-torian era centuries behind.

"I envy spacemen," the girl was saying.

"Why? The life's not bad at times-but at times it's not good."

"What I envy," she said, "is the here today and gone tomorrow philosophy."

Promising, he thought, studying her face in the dim, flattering light. He decided that she was not as

young as he had first thought, but that did not matter. She was an attractive woman, and an available

woman, and he, despising the spaceport trollops, had been too long without a woman.

"Love 'em and leave 'em ..." she went on.

"Too right," he agreed. Then, "This is rather absurd. I don't even know your given name."

"Does it matter? 'Darling' is safe. Stick to that and you can be as absent-minded as you please." She

smiled again-and there was definite promise in the smile. "But if you must know-it's Sonya ..."

"It rather suits you," he said. "If it wasn't for that Virginian accent-but I like it-you'd look fine with one

of those Russian hounds, a Borzoi, on a leash. . ."

"So I'm the Grand-Duchess-in-exile type?"

THE RIM OF SPACE 23

"You could be, at that. But a human Grand Duchess, not a female with a mixture of ice water

and indigo in her veins. As for the 'in-exile' part- any civilized person is in exile out here." He added,

"You especially."

"And you. You belong to big ships, not the scruffy little tramps that run the Rim." She sipped

her drink, looking at him over the rim of her glass with violet eyes in which there was more than a hint of

promise. "Fair exchange is no robbery. What do they call you when you're up and dressed?"

"Calver. But take away the uniform and it could be Derek."

"It rather suits you. Derek . . . Derrick . . . Puts me in the mind of something tall and angular ..."

"The original Derrick, after whom derricks were named, was a public hangman," Calver told her.

"Need we be so morbid, Derek?"

"We needn't, Sonya."

"Then let's don't. Or don't let's. You know what I mean, anyhow." She raised a slim wrist, looked at

the tiny, jeweled watch that seemed more ornament than precision instrument. "If I know my darling

brother he's away by now, drowning that vile dinner in one of the low groggeries he's so partial to. If you

don't mind, I'll slip upstairs and make sure. His room's next to mine, and he's inclined to be just a little

old-fashioned and stuffy . . . Don't bother to get up. I shan't be long."

Calver watched her walk towards the door. She walked as a woman should walk-not flaunting the

slendernesses and the curves below her beautifully-cut clothing, but not making any secret of them,

seeming to move to inaudible music. He thought,

A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

She's what I've been needing. It's a pity that the old Forlorn Lady will be such a short time in port, but Sonya might

still be here when we get back. Or she might come to Lorn . . .

He thought, Careful, Calver, careful. You know what these rich bitches are like-or you should know. Once bitten,

twice shy. Don't get too deeply involved again. You heard what she said- 'Love 'em and leave 'em . . .'

He saw the other woman standing by the door through which Sonya had passed-the tall brunette,

handsome rather than beautiful (but who, given the correct stimuli, would be beautiful), slimly elegant, too

elegant (as Sonya had been) for her surround-ings, somehow familiar.

She was looking at him intently, and her gaze was accusatory.

He wondered what specter this was from his past come to haunt him-then realized that it was Jane

Arlen, strange in her civilian clothes.

in uniform she was a handsome woman. In her tai-lored gray costume, with the little, bright accessories

detracting from its severity, she was a little more than handsome. Beautiful? Calver decided-although

not rapidly-not. She would never be beautiful until she lost that hardness.

She walked slowly to the corner where Calver was sitting. He got to his feet, sketched the suggestion

of a bow.

She said, "Doing yourself proud, aren't you?" He said, "I'd offer you a drink-but it's not mine to offer."

He added, "But I don't suppose Sonya would mind."

She said, "Sonya! Why not Olga Popovsky?" "What the hell are you getting at, Arlen?" de-

manded Calver.

"The original innocent abroad," she sneered. "I suppose you think that she's after you for your good

looks. Or your bankroll. It's a well-known fact that all Rim Runner Second Mates are millionaires."

A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

He retained a precarious grip on his temper. He said reasonably, "Listen, Arlen, there's no need to be

a dog. I asked you to come ashore with me, and you refused. Now, just because I'm having a few drinks

with an attractive woman, you go off at the deep end ..."

She sat down abruptly.

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