Ride the Star Winds by A. Bertram Chandler Page A

who would now be living in the Residence, dined with him that evening, the two men taking their meal in Grimes’s sitting room. (He had decided to use the dining room only for state occasions.) They were waited upon by Su Lin. The meal was a good one, traditional New Cantonese cookery. The pilot wielded his ivory chopsticks with as much assurance as did Grimes.
    There was no need for Su Lin to activate what Grimes thought of as the anti-bug; conversation consisted mainly of generalities and of astronautical shop talk. Finally Sanchez said good night and left. Su Lin brought more tea, for herself and Grimes.
    She said, “I am switched on.”
    “Indeed? And what are we talking about, Su Lin? I have to call you that as I don’t know your real name.”
    She laughed. “As far as the bugs are concerned you’re living up to your reputation. Casanova Grimes, the terror of the space ways.”
    “Do people really think of me like that?”
    “Some of them do. Pirate, libertine. . . . Oh, you’ve a reputation all right.”
    “Mphm.”
    “If Bardon thinks that you’re spending all your time womanizing he’ll not be expecting you to start putting your foot down with a firm hand.”
    “Mphm.”
    He looked at her. It was obvious that she was enjoying being herself and not playing the part of a faithful handmaiden.
    He said, “You were just going to tell me who you’re really working for when Raoul came in.”
    “Yes, I was. Do you really want to know, Your Excellency?”
    “As long as we’re in private you can call me John.”
    “I am honored, John. I’m with Pat.”
    With Pat? Did she mean that she had an Irish boyfriend, Grimes wondered, and therefore out of bounds as far as he was concerned? But PAT was an acronym, he remembered. PAT. People Against Tyranny. He recalled the first time that he had heard of this organization; it was during a spell ashore between ships at Lindisfarne Base. A dictatorial planetary president had been assassinated and PAT had claimed the credit for this act of justice. There had been some discussion of the affair in the junior officers’ mess.
    “Aren’t you running rather a risk telling me, Su?”
    “I don’t think so, Captain Grimes, Survey Service Reserve.”
    “My Reserve Commission is supposed to be a secret.”
    “It is—and PAT CC, Pat Central Committee, are among those keeping that secret.”
    “Do you mean to tell me that Admiral Damien is one of your members? If ever there was a tyrant, he’s one!”
    “So you say. But we have members everywhere. On Electra, for example. Silverman, the scientist/salesman, really came here just to check the bugs in the Residence and to supply me with the counter measure. But getting back to Damien—didn’t it ever occur to you that, when he was O.C. Couriers and you a courier captain, he was always sending you on missions in the hope, usually realized, that you’d throw a monkey wrench into somebody’s machinery at the right time?”
    “You could look at it that way.”
    “And when it was necessary to put a stop to the privateering operations of Drongo Kane and the Eldorado Corporation—just who did Admiral Damien pressgang back into the Survey Service?”
    “Me. All right, then. Since PAT seems to have been using me for the Odd Gods of the Galaxy alone know how many years, why have I never been asked to become a member?”
    “Because you’re an awkward bastard. You’d be as liable to throw a monkey wrench into our machinery as into anybody else’s.”
    “Then why are you spilling all these beans?”
    “Because I was told to do so. It was decided that you should know that there is a galaxywide organization behind you—as long as you’re doing the right things. And that if you do the wrong things—there’s a nasty, mercenary streak in your nature—you’d better try to make a get-away to the Magellanic Clouds.”
    Grimes got up from his chair and began to pace back and forth. He managed to light his pipe—on the run, as