To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga Read Free Page B

decided to outshine the glowing flowers that flamed outside the windows that were not windows.
    There was the Captain, unmistakable with his beard and the shimmering rainbow of ribbons on the left breast of his blouse. There were the passengers at his table—the men inclined to portliness and pomposity, their women sleek and slim and expensive looking. Grimes was relieved to see that there was no vacant place—and yet, at the same time, rather hurt. He knew that he was only an Ensign, a one-ringer, and a very new Ensign at that—but, after all, the Survey Service was the Survey Service.
    He realized that somebody was addressing him. It was a girl, a small, rather chubby blonde. She was in uniform—a white shirt with black shoulder-boards, each bearing a narrow white stripe, sharply creased slacks, and black, highly polished shoes. Grimes assumed, correctly, that she was a junior member of the purser’s staff. “Mr. Grimes,” she said, “will you follow me, please? You’re at Miss Pentecost’s table.”
    Willingly he followed the girl. She led him around the axial shaft to a table for four at which the purser with two passengers, a man and a woman, was already seated. Jane Pentecost was attired as was his guide, the severity of her gold-trimmed black and white in pleasing contrast to the pink and blue frills and flounces that clad the other woman, her slenderness in still more pleasing contrast to the other’s untidy plumpness.
    She smiled and said pleasantly, “Be seated, Admiral.”
    “Admiral?” asked the man at her left, unpleasantly incredulous. He had, obviously, been drinking. He was a rough looking customer, in spite of the attempt that he had made to dress for dinner. He was twice the Ensign’s age, perhaps, although the heavily lined face under the scanty sandy hair made him look older. “Admiral?” He laughed, revealing irregular yellow teeth. “In what? The Space Scouts?”
    Jane Pentecost firmly took control. She said, “Allow me to introduce Ensign Grimes, of the Survey Service . . .”
    “Survey Service . . . Space Scouts . . . S.S. . . . What’s the difference?”
    “Plenty!” answered Grimes hotly.
    The purser ignored the exchange. “Ensign, this is Mrs. Baxter. . . .”
    “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” simpered the woman.
    “And Mr. Baxter.”
    Baxter extended his hand reluctantly and Grimes took it reluctantly. The amenities observed, he pulled himself into his seat and adjusted his lapstrap. He was facing Jane Pentecost. The man was on his right, the woman on his left. He glanced first at her, then at her husband, wondering how to start and to maintain a conversation. But this was the purser’s table, and this was her responsibility.
    She accepted it. “Now you’re seeing how the poor live, Admiral,” she remarked lightly.
    Grimes, taking a tentative sip from his bulb of consommé, did not think that the self-styled poor did at all badly, and said as much. The girl grinned and told him that the first night out was too early to draw conclusions. “We’re still on shoreside meat and vegetables,” she told him, “and you’ll not be getting your first taste of our instant table wine until tomorrow. Tonight we wallow in the unwonted luxury of a quite presentable Montrachet. When we start living on the produce of our own so-called farm, washing it down with our own reconstituted plonk, you’ll see the difference.”
    The Ensign replied that, in his experience, it didn’t matter if food came from tissue-culture vats or the green fields of Earth—what was important was the cook.
    “Wide experience, Admiral?” she asked sweetly.
    “Not very,” he admitted. “But the gunroom cook in my last ship couldn’t boil water without burning it.”
    Baxter, noisily enjoying his dinner, said that this preoccupation with food and drink was symptomatic of the decadence of Earth. As he spoke his knife grated unpleasantly on the steel spines that secured his charcoal broiled steak to