Free The Big Black Mark by A. Bertram Chandler Page A

worlds more kind than the ones left behind . . .

    Vinegar Nell, fitting into his arms as though she belonged there, had always belonged there, was singing softly as she danced. And was he, Grimes, dancing as well as he thought he was? Probably not, he admitted to himself, but she made him feel that he was cutting a fine figure on the polished floor. And she was making him feel rather more than that. He was acutely conscious of the tightness of the crotch of his dress trousers.

    When the number was over he was pleased to see that Brabham had wandered off somewhere by himself, but he was not pleased when Commander Denny claimed Vinegar Nell for the next dance, and still less pleased when he found himself having to cope with Denny's wife. He suffered. It was like having to tow an unwieldy captive balloon through severe atmospheric turbulence. But then the Mayoress made a welcome change, although she chattered incessantly. After her, there were a few girls whose names he promptly forgot.

    Vinegar Nell again, and the last dance.
 
Good night! ladies,
Good night, ladies,
Good night, ladies . . .
We're bound to leave you now. . . .

    "But you don't have to leave me, John," she whispered.

    Mphm?

    And everybody was singing:
 
Merrily we roll along,
Roll along, roll along,
Merrily we roll along
O'er the bright blue sea. . . .

    He said, "We have to roll along back to the ship, after we've said our good nights, and thanked the mayor for his party."

    She said, her mood suddenly somber, "There's no place else to roll. Not for us."

    The synthesizer emitted a flourish of trumpets, a ruffle of drums. The dancers froze into attitudes of stiff—or not so stiff—attention. Blaring brass against a background of drumbeats, an attempt to make dreadfully trite melody sound important. It was one of those synthetic, utterly forgettable national anthems, the result, no doubt, of a competition, selected by the judges as the poor best of a bad lot. The words matched the music:
 
New Maine, flower of the galaxy,
New Maine, stronghold of liberty. . . .

    Then: "Good night, Mr. Mayor. On behalf of my officers I must thank you for a marvelous party."

    "Good night, Captain. It was a pleasure to have you aboard. Good night, Miss Russell. If the Survey Service had more paymasters like you, I'd be a spaceman myself. Ha, ha! Good night. . . good night."

    "Good night."

    The ground cars were waiting outside, in the portico. As before, Grimes rode in the lead vehicle with Vinegar Nell and Dr. Brandt. With them, this time, was the chief engineer.

    "A waste of valuable time, these social functions," complained the scientist as they sped back toward the Base.

    "Ye were nae darin' sae bad on the free booze an' tucker," pointed out MacMorris.

    "And neither were you, Chief," put in Vinegar Nell.

    "Ah'm no' a dancin' man, not like our gallant captain. An' as for the, booze an' tucker—it's aye a pleasure to tak' a bite an sup wi'oot havin' you begrudgin' every mouthful!"

    "I still say that it was a waste of time," stated Brandt. "Commander Grimes, for example, could have spent the evening going through the port captain's records to see if there are any reports of Lost Colonies."

    "Mphm," grunted Grimes smugly, happily conscious of the folded copy of the chart that Davinas had given him, stiff in the inside breast pocket of his mess jacket.

    They were approaching the Base now. There stood Discovery , a tall metal steeple, dull-gleaming in the wan light of the huge, high, lopsided moon. And there were great dark shapes, sluglike, oozing slowly over the concrete apron of the spaceport.

    "Filthy brutes!" exclaimed the driver, breaking the morose silence that he had maintained all the way from the mayor's palace.

    "Great snakes?" asked Grimes.

    "What else, Captain? Whoever decided that those bloody things should be protected should have his bloody head read!"

    "You, man!" snapped Brandt. "Take us in close to one of them! Put