Bud Sparhawk: Primrose Rescue

Louella sighed and made a small adjustment to the tiller. “So what do you suggest that we do?”

“Simple,” Rams smiled groggily as he climbed out of the pilot’s seat and stumbled toward his bunk and some much needed rest. “Find ’nother station.”

By the end of his next watch Louella had decided on the station that they could intercept soonest and set them on the intercept track. The station she chose, CS-12, was farther to the south and an eighth of the way around the planet, far enough from the track of the storm not to have been affected. With proper trim and a little luck they could transit the distance to her track in little over a week or, with fair winds and some luck, a little less.

“We won’t starve before we get there,” Pascal remarked when he saw her sail plan. “I think we have enough food and water on board to last us. Just the same, I’m worried about our host. Rams’ leg is definitely looking worse and the amount of sedative I’ve got left in the medicine chest is running dangerously low. We have to get him to a doctor as soon as possible.”

“I agree. Be a pity to lose him after he rescued us. Say, our air looks good, too,” Louella said squinting at the tell-tales on the instrument panel. “We’ve enough reserves to spend another two weeks out here before the atmosphere in here goes stale on us. As long as we don’t run into any more problems we shouldn’t have any trouble reaching C-12. Piece of cake.”

“Sure,” Pascal replied with a worried glance at their rescuer. “Let’s just hope we all survive long enough to eat it.”

The following days were an endless blur of watch on watch at the wheel, trying to keep Primrose on her track and squeezing every bit of speed they could out of the ship. Pascal took to talking to Rams in the long quiet hours to keep himself awake, telling the captain of the races he had run, talking about the lean years before being hired by JBI when he and Louella had bummed around the world, their clothes their only possessions. He spoke of the clear air of a winter’s crossing, the stormy clouds of a southern storm, the crystalline brilliance of a spring night far from land, and the smooth hissing silence as a ship’s bow sliced the waves.

The one thing he never spoke about was the gut-wrenching fear he had felt when he brought Rams back to Primrose , and the shame that stilled burned inside him for his craven, cowardly behavior. Louella might think he was some sort of hero, but he knew the truth of what had happened, he knew absolutely certainly that he was, at heart, a sniveling little coward, afraid of the deep dark that was anxious to pull him to its bosom.

The return to his bunk at the end of each watch was a brief respite, a welcome relief for his poor body. He could hardly wait to lie down and release the truss that bound his lower body and protected him from rupturing himself in Jupiter’s constant two gee drag. Usually he fell asleep in seconds, only to groggily wake at the chime to return to the wheel and relieve Louella.

But occasionally he could not rest. In those periods he recalled the terror he had felt when he was outside. What if Louella found out that his cowardly fear had nearly caused him to kill himself and the captain? Would she laugh at him, belittling him in that taunting way of hers if he told her? Yes, he thought sadly, she would do exactly that. He had no choice but to hide his cowardice from her and Rams. He just wished that he could hide it from himself as well.

He had nightmares of falling endlessly into Jupiter’s bottomless depths and being crushed slowly in her enormous embrace. There was no rest from such dreams and he usually awoke bathed in the stink of fearful sweat.

Ten days after the near encounter with the wayward station, the winds, which had been generally westward, suddenly became gusty, shifting thirty degrees to the north, varying in strength each time they quartered back to the west.

Once, Thorn started to drift away from Primrose when the winds gusted, only to slam back and strike broadside as the wind shifted. Primrose shuddered with the force of the collision. A moment later, far below, Thorn ’s keel, with the huge rock attached, smashed into Primrose ’s and sent a vibration racing upwards that made the hull ring.

The chunk of rock embedded in Thorn ’s keel had been a gift from the storm, one of the valuable bits of flotsam the storms occasionally brought up from the depths. It was these rocks that made Jupiter’s miners risk searching the edges of the hurricanes despite the dangers. A single rock could bring a fortune for its metallic content, and a modest profit for the volitiles that it might contain. By the standards of the trade the one caught in Thorn ’s keel was enormous, ten times the size of the largest one Rams had ever heard of.

“Any more surprises like that and we’re liable to flounder,” Louella remarked as the vibrations dampened. “I’m not sure of how much punishment this ship will bear.”

“We ought to cast Thorn off,” Pascal suggested. “ Thorn and that damned rock’s a danger to us. Besides, we could to make better time if we weren’t burdened by the tow.”

“NO!” Rams shouted from his bunk. The reduction of the dosage meant that he was conscious more than not. “Can’t do that to me… won’t let you steal my future.”

Pascal knelt beside him. “Captain, be reasonable. You need medical attention soon or you’ll never be able to use that leg. What good would all the money be if you can’t walk?”

Rams coughed. “Not ’bout money… ’s about freedom: owning my ship free and clear; being able to steer from port to port without worrying about the bank waiting to seize it. About having enough profit to get a decent crew, ’nough to put something aside for when I can’t fight the damned gravity any more.”

He pushed Pascal’s arm away and turned his head toward Louella, stretching a hand out to her. “This is about having Primrose as my own for the first time. Can’t you understand that?” he sobbed before lapsing back to unconsciousness. “Can’t… you… understand…”

Pascal couldn’t understand Rams’ concern. He’d always sailed on someone else’s boat; sometimes as captain, but mostly as crew. Ownership had never mattered to him; it was being able to sail the ship, to direct her course, to trim her heading was all he cared about: There always had been far more ships needing trained captains and crew than there were capable people. Ownership wasn’t important.

“I understand,” Louella remarked unexpectedly from the passageway, breaking his chain of thought. “We’ll do everything we can to save her, won’t we Pascal?” The tone of her voice told him that anything other than agreement would create a hell of a row.

“It’s insane,” he replied with as much emphasis as he could muster as he let her slip behind the wheel. ” We’re liable to have a hull rupture if Thorn smashes into us again! We’ll never make it to the station unless we cut the damn tow loose and get rid of Thorn and that damned rock! Its stupidity to try to save them when our own survival is at stake.”

Louella snorted in derision and twisted the wheel, heading Primrose back into the wind. Thorn was pushed away as the head wind rushed between the two hulls.

“I’m putting us on a new course. If we sail close to the wind Thorn will stay on our lee side and away from Primrose . We won’t have any more bumping.”

“That’s crazy. That is completely off our planned course! We might miss the station entirely!”