"We were rather too busy, sir. Of course, if we’d been properly equipped, we’d have had at least two cameras. As it was…"
"I know. I know. You had nothing but spacesuits over your birthday suits. But surely you gained some sort of impression."
"Just a ship, sir. Alleyways, airtight doors and all the rest of it. Oh, yes… Fluorescent strips instead of luminescent panels. Old-fashioned."
"Sonya?"
"Sounds like a mercantile version of this wagon, John. Or like a specimen of Rim Rummers' vintage tonnage."
"Don’t be catty. And you, Doctor?"
"So far," admitted the medical officer, "I’ve made only a superficial examination. But I’d say that our late prisoner was an Earth-type mammal. Male. Early middle age."
"And what species?"
"I don’t know, Commodore. If we had thought to bring with us some laboratory white rats I could run a comparison of tissues."
"In other words, you smell a rat. Just as we all do." He was speaking softly now. "Ever since the first ship rats have been stowaways—in surface vessels, in aircraft, in spaceships. Carried to that planet in shipments of seed grain they became a major pest on Mars. But, so far, we have been lucky. There have been mutations, but never a mutation that has become a real menace to ourselves."
"Never?" asked Sonya with an arching of eyebrows.
"Never, so far as we know, in our Universe."
"But in this one…"
"Too bloody right they are," put in Williams. "Well, we know what’s cookin' now, Skipper. We still have one nuclear thunderflash in our stores. I vote that we use it and blow ourselves back to where we came from."
"I wish it were as simple as all that, Commander," Grimes told him. "When we blew ourselves here, the chances were that the ship would be returned to her own Space-Time. When we attempt to reverse the process there will be, I suppose, a certain tendency for ourselves and the machinery and materials that we have installed to be sent back to our own Universe. But no more than a tendency. We shall be liable to find ourselves anywhere—or anywhen." He paused. "Not that it really worries any of us. We’re all volunteers, with no close ties left behind us. But we have a job to do, and I suggest that we at least try to do it before attempting a return."
"Then what do we try to do, Skip?" demanded Williams.
"We’ve made a start, Commander. We know now what we’re up against. Intelligent, oversized rats who’ve enslaved man at least on the Rim Worlds.
"Tell me, Sonya, you know more of the workings of the minds of Federation top brass, both military and political, than I do. Suppose this state of affairs had come to pass in our Universe, a hundred years ago, say, when the Rim Worlds were no more than a cluster of distant colonies always annoying the Federation by demanding independence?"
She laughed bitterly. "As you know, there are planets whose humanoid inhabitants are subjects of the Shaara Empire. And on some of those worlds the mammalian slaves of the ruling arthropods are more than merely humanoid. They are human, descendents of ships' crews and passengers cast away in the days of the Ehrenhaft Drive vessels, the so-called gaussjammers. But we’d never dream of going to war against the Shaara to liberate our own flesh and blood. It just wouldn’t be… expedient. And I guess that in this Space-Time it just wouldn’t be expedient to go to war against these mutated rats. Too, there’ll be quite a large body of opinion that will say that the human Rim Worlders should be left to stew in their own juice."
"So you, our representative of the Federation’s armed forces, feel that we should accomplish nothing by making for Earth to tell our story."
"Not only should we accomplish nothing, but, in all probability, our ship would be confiscated and taken apart to see what makes her tick insofar as dimension hopping is concerned. And it would take us all a couple of lifetimes to break free of the red tape with which we should be festooned."
"In other words, if we want anything done we have to do it ourselves."
"Yes."
"Then do we want anything done?" asked Grimes quietly.
He was almost frightened by the reaction provoked by his question. It seemed that not only would he have a mutiny on his hands, but also a divorce. Everybody was talking at once, loudly and indignantly. There was the Doctor’s high-pitched bray: "And it was human flesh in the tissue culture vats!" and William’s roar: "You saw the bodies of the sheilas in this ship, an' the scars on 'em!" and the Major’s curt voice: "The Marine Corps will carry on even if the Navy rats!" Then Sonya, icily calm: "I thought that the old-fashioned virtues still survived on the Rim. I must have been mistaken."
"Quiet!" said Grimes. "Quiet!" he shouted. He grinned at his officers. "All right. You’ve made your sentiments quite clear, and I’m pleased that you have. The late owners of this ship are intelligent beings—but that does not entitle them to treat other intelligent beings as they treat their slaves. Sonya mentioned the human slaves on the worlds of the Shaara Empire, but those so-called slaves are far better off than many a free peasant on Federation worlds. They’re not mistreated, and they’re not livestock. But we’ve seen the bodies of the men, women and children who died aboard this ship. And if we can make their deaths not in vain…"
Sonya flashed him an apologetic smile. "But how?" she asked. "But how?"
"That’s the question." He turned to Mayhew. "You’ve been maintaining a listening watch. Do these people have psionic radio?"
"I’m afraid they do, sir," the telepath told him unhappily. "I’m afraid they do. And…"
"Out with it, man."
"They use amplifiers, just as we do. But…"
"But what?"
"They aren’t dogs' brains. They’re human ones!"
XV
Sonya asked sharply, "And what else have you to report?"
"I… I have been listening."
"That’s what you’re paid for. And what have you picked up?"
"There’s a general alarm out. To all ships, and to Faraway Ultimo and Thule, and to the garrisons on Tharn, Mellise and Grollor…"
"And to Stree?"
"No. Nothing at all to Stree."
"It makes sense," murmured the woman. "It makes sense. Tharn, with its humanoids living in the equivalent of Earth’s Middle Ages. Grollor, with just the beginnings of an industrial culture. Mellise, with its intelligent amphibians and no industries, no technology at all. Our mutant friends must have found the peoples of all those worlds a push-over."
"But Stree… We don’t know just what powers-psychic? psionic?—those philosophical lizards can muster, and we’re on friendly terms with them. So…"
"So we might get help there," said Grimes. "It’s worth considering. Meanwhile, Mr. Mayhew, has there been any communication with the anti-matter worlds to the Galactic West?"
"No, sir."
"And any messages to our next door neighbors—the Shakespearian Sector, the Empire of Waverly?"
"No, sir."
Grimes smiled—but it was a cold smile. "Then this is, without doubt, a matter for the Confederacy. The legalities of it all are rather fascinating…"
"The illegalities, Skipper," said Williams. "But I don’t mind being a pirate in a good cause."
"You don’t mind being a pirate. Period," said Sonya.
"Too bloody right I don’t. It makes a change."
"Shall we regard ourselves as liberators?" asked Grimes, but it was more an order than a question. "Meanwhile, Commander Williams, I suggest that we set course for Stree. And you, Mr. Mayhew, maintain your listening watch. Let me know at once if there are any other vessels in our vicinity—even though they haven’t Mass Proximity Indicators they can still pick up our temporal precession field, and synchronize."