The Trophy

Brim watched the little convoy maneuvering through the throng. Try as he might, it was difficult to feel any great indignation toward Onrad for having taken his decision for granted. In truth, he doubted if princes could operate without making a lot of assumptions. They simply wouldn't have enough time. Besides, he was under no obligation to anyone. If he decided against employment with the ISS for any reason, he could always turn in his badge, leave the hotel, and that would be that. He hurried to one of the lobby's great wing-backed easy chairs where he impulsively ripped open the envelope, extracted two sheets of pale coralline manuscript plastic, and began to read:

Dearest Wilf,

In the long months since we last met in Avalon, you have seldom been far from my mind. In that way, you have sustained me through what you must by now have discovered has been a virtual captivity. Until this day, Rogan has successfully blocked all of my many attempts to communicate. Cousin Onrad, however, is far beyond my husband's reach.

I trust that by now you also know that I have finally delivered my son, Rodyard. Not only has he introduced a whole new love into my life, he has also brought a fresh set of responsibilities. And in no way would I even attempt to claim that I remain unchanged because of him. The truth is that I am totally changed. Only in my love for you do I remain constant, even though I know that our relationship must now endure its second drastic permutation. That change is something that we must someday work out, my dearest, but only when our eyes can meet as well as our minds. For now, Wilf, be certain of my love, but be forewarned that I no longer exist as the Margot Effer'wyck you once knew.

Now, time grows short, and I must complete this message. Onrad confesses to me that he will soon offer you the position of Principal Helmsman for the Imperial Starflight Society, but he is not at all certain you will accept. He refuses to discuss the basis for his doubts, but I suspect that I know. I spent the last night of my own freedom looking helplessly at your despair. After the reward you received for your wartime sacrifices, you could retain very little love for our ungrateful Empire or its people.

Nevertheless, I pray to the very Universe that you will somehow find it in yourself to overlook these all-too-obvious transgressions. One glimpse into Kirsh Valentin's eyes and you would know why you must. Wilf, these competitions have suddenly become much more than quests for pride or even an outlandish token like the Mitchell Cup. The real trophy is now the crass promotion of industrial and scientific capabilities—factors that attract allies whose added might can insure achievement of more fundamental goals: conquest and power. Believe me, I know. My own husband is already strongly attracted to the tyrant's cause.

Onrad has returned now, so I must end. The Universe speed your flight, my darling, until we touch again.

Love thou the land, with love far-brought From out the storied Past, and used Within the present, but transfused Thro' future time by power of thought.

—Cennone

I love you,

Margot

Brim devoured Margot's letter, reading it over and over again, examining each elegantly handwritten word for all possible meanings while he desperately attempted to create her face in his mind's eye. He was so preoccupied that he nearly missed the opening ceremonies. When he finally consulted his timepiece, only moments remained in which to hurry across the crowded floor, catch a jammed lift to the fifth level, and sprint to the grand ballroom, where he arrived, rather out of breath, with less than a cycle to spare.

An imposing doorman in a purple uniform trimmed with gold glared at Brim. He was backed up by ten government types with short haircuts and massive chins who looked totally out of place in evening clothes. "The employment office," he proclaimed regally, "is two flights below, at the other end of the hall."

Brim peered up at the man and flashed his badge. "Glad to know that, friend," he said impassively. "Let me know if you find work." Then he opened the door for himself and strode through as if he had been a member of the ISS for the last thousand years.

Inside, under a colonnade that ringed the perimeter of the great, circular room, it was instantly clear to Brim—who was wearing a plain blue tunic over white civilian trousers and walking shoes, the best clothes he owned—why the doorman had tried to prevent him from entering. Beneath a high, magnificently-colored trompe l'oeil ceiling of mythological space creatures in flight, a glittering assemblage of perhaps two hundred unquestionably affluent people had assembled, dressed for the clear and singular purpose of impressing each other. They were seated at ten large, circular tables, noisily laughing and talking, while artfully ignoring the extravagant ministrations of at least a hundred servants in ill-fitting evening clothes who scurried here and there, lugging huge trays of goblets and bottles. The air was heavy with odors of fine wines, liquors, cigarettes of every scent, perfume, and the delicate scent of glowing panthion blossoms that were placed everywhere in great baskets and sprays. Music from a small orchestra wove through the conversation and muted clatter of tableware.

At the far end of the room on a raised dais, a long, straight table had been set for twelve. In the center, Prince Onrad presided over the whole assemblage, flanked by Regula Collingswood and a brooding aristocrat whom Brim immediately recognized as Onrad's longtime confidant and trusted friend, the Duke of Washburn. At Collingswood's left sat Anna Romanoff, unobtrusively staring into a portable information terminal. And beside Romanoff posed a svelte woman with captivating gray eyes whom Brim recognized as Veronica Pike, Director of the Sherrington Hyperspace Works, a small but highly reputed starship manufacturer. Poised and enigmatic as a gryphon, she was dressed in severe light gray business apparel that accentuated long, sable hair and a flawless, tawny complexion.

Grinding his teeth in embarrassment, the Carescrian speedily concluded that there was no place in the room for a credit-strapped Helmsman named Wilf Brim. Turning abruptly to avoid a large, bovine maitre'd whose obeisant professional gaze had just trapped his glance, he reached for the door handle at precisely the same time that Toby Moulding rose from a nearby table occupied mostly by people in Fleet uniforms. "Wilf!" he called, "Here, sit with us. I've been saving you a place."

Brim shuddered, attempting to conjure some excuse that would allow him to escape. But he was too late.

In a moment, Moulding had ushered him to a chair between his own and a comfortable-looking, middle-aged man dressed in a brown herringbone tweed jacket with dark flannel trousers and pointed Rhodorian boots. "Mark," Moulding said, putting his hand on the man's shoulder, "I want you to meet Wilf Brim—a person you'd want to know even if he weren't about to do some flying for you."

The man had a sizable nose, damp, humorous eyes, and a drooping black moustache of truly prodigious size. His woolen coat and trousers hinted of a cool home climate, and he wore an old-fashioned white shirt and necktie. "Glad to meet you, Wilf," he said, extending his hand. "Mark Valerian's my name."

"Glad to meet you," Brim said, gripping Valerian's hand in his own. The man's name rang a bell somehow, but he couldn't quite place it. "I'm at the Fleet base here in Atalanta," he added, slipping into his chair.

"I work for Veronica Pike over at Sherrington's," Valerian returned.

"Sweet Universe," Brim swore, suddenly recalling where he'd heard Valerian's name before. "You're the designer who engineered the attack launch for I.F.S. Intractable, aren't you?—the one built to Abner Klisnikov's specifications."

Valerian's bushy eyebrows arched with sudden amazement. "Where in the galaxy did you hear about that overpowered beast?" he exclaimed. "I thought that little kite was blown to atoms when Intractable hit a space mine back during the war."

"Not quite," Brim replied with a growing sense of excitement. "She was eventually destroyed in the war, along with a grand old starship named Prize. But she lasted long enough that I got to put in quite a few metacycles at her controls. I even took her on a mission—and, yeah, she was a bit overpowered with those two big spin gravs, but all in all..."

Moulding laughed as he took his seat. "Somehow," he said, "I thought you two might have a lot to talk over, but I didn't know about Abner Klisnikov's starship. Universe."

"What's this about Klisnikov's starship?" a handsome woman in an exquisite uniform broke in. "Abner was the greatest Helmsman of all time, I understand."

"Yeah," another interjected. "Let's hear..."

At that point, the harried waiters arrived to serve luncheon. In addition to goblets of vintage Logish Meem, they brought rich soups, delicate luncheon saucisson from rare game meats, cheese of every flavor and persuasion, yeasty breads fresh from the oven, fruits from all over the galaxy, glacés and desserts of every conceivable description. It slowed, but never completely defeated, the eager conversations that ebbed and flowed among the very serious deep-space advocates at the table. The banquet took fully two standard metacycles to consume, but by the end of it, Brim had come to understand that not all of the ISS members were wealthy fops, although it was reasonably clear that most were wealthy beyond his own wildest dreams. To his surprise, he was sitting with the elite Imperial Fleet's HighSpeed Starflight Team.

Following a second dessert course, the Duke of Washburn brought the meeting to order, or at least to a semblance of order. At most of the other tables, conversations went on unabated, albeit in a quieter tone.

Many of the socialites were nodding in their chairs while Romanoff recited the minutes of the last meeting, and some actually fell asleep while Collingswood went through the motions of introducing the Society's reorganized racing plan.

Brim's eyes met Valerian's for a moment. "Are they like this all the time?" he whispered.

"I don't know," Valerian confided quietly beneath a glowering frown. "But if wealthy people have to act this discourteously, I think I'd just as soon stay indigent, thank you."

Brim was about to comment further when Onrad rose to speak. That served to quiet the irritating hum of conversation that pervaded the room.

"Today," the Prince announced in his most monarchical rhetoric, "the Imperial Starship Society begins an altogether new racing curriculum—one that will forever change the way we conduct our competitive activities." With that, he explained at length that Sherrington Hyperspace Works had already been retained to design and construct a special racing hull under Chief Designer Mark J. Valerian.

Furthermore, the Sodeskayan firm of Krasni-Peych, whose galaxy-famous research center was located only a short drive outside Gromcow, would supply both a gravity propulsion system and Hyperspace Drive.

Brim grinned to himself. That explained a few things, including the presence in Atalanta of his two Sodeskayan friends. Then his heart stood still when he heard his own name.

"Additionally," Onrad proclaimed, "not only has the Admiralty directed the Fleet's renowned HighSpeed Starflight team to act as our consultants, we have ourselves engaged the services of Mr. Wilf Brim, an extraordinary Fleet veteran and Diagnostic Helmsman from the base here at Atalanta, to serve as Principal Racing Helmsman for the Society...."

Brim felt his face flush as polite applause rippled through the room. He glanced at Moulding and Valerian, then shrugged. "First I heard about any of this," he whispered.

"You mean he didn't ask you beforehand?" Moulding queried in astonishment.

Brim chuckled. "Why bother?" he asked. "There isn't a Helmsman alive who'd turn down a berth in the Mitchell and he knows it." Then he turned to Valerian and grinned. "Especially if that Helmsman flew one of Mark Valerian's ships before."

"Well, I thank you kindly," the designer said with a pleased look of surprise on his face. Frowning mightily, he seemed to deliberate for a moment, then after some sort of conclusion reached inside his coat and withdrew a folded scrap of cheap, yellow note plastic. "Tell me what you think of this," he said, handing it to Brim.

The Carescrian felt his eyes widen with genuine awe as he unfolded the scrap of plastic on the tablecloth between himself and Moulding. On it, Valerian had sketched three views of a starship that could only be described as an aerodynamic masterpiece—a graceful collection of fluid, elliptical curves that represented a total departure from the last two centuries of angular, wedge-shaped design. Brim turned the elegant little starship in his imagination: a truly handsome conformation of second-degree conics that managed to integrate hull and superstructure into one perfectly aesthetic whole. After what he realized must have been considerable time, he looked up from the drawing and peered into Valerian's eyes. "Universe," he whispered almost reverently, "I'd probably kill for a chance to fly something like this."

"Do you suppose you could use an accessory to that killing?" Moulding asked. "I'm sure any of us on the Team will be glad to help."

Brim grabbed Moulding's hand. "You're on, Toby," he said, "but I have a feeling that we'll need everyone's help before this thing is over."

A ripple of quiet cheering went 'round the table as the others raised a toast with their goblets.

"In that case," Valerian said, looking around the room with a frown, "I suppose His Bloody Cocksure Highness over yonder is going to have his way again—despite this gaggle of highbrow society blockheads at the other tables." He swiveled his chair to face the two Helmsmen and tapped the yellow scrap of plastic with a long, slim ringer. "The problem is," he drawled, "this time, things aren't going to turn out entirely the way Onrad wants them."

Brim raised an eyebrow while the remainder of their table-mates leaned forward in expectation, hanging on Valerian's words.

"Complex systems like starships don't just come together instantly," the designer explained, "especially new ones that have to be faster than anything else in the galaxy." He took the drawing from the table and tucked it back into his coat. "It takes time to produce this kind of a design, even when we hurry. And," he continued, nodding toward the two Bears at the other end of the table, "I can't believe that our Sodeskayan friends are going to come up with their new drive much faster."

Brim nodded understandingly. His experience getting I.F.S. Defiant ready for action had been an excellent lesson in the difficulties of new starships. And Defiant hadn't been even half as radical as what appeared to be on Valerian's mind.

"What happens if you aren't ready for next year?" a Lieutenant on the far side of the table asked.

"Onrad will simply have to wait," Valerian said with a shrug.

"Think he will?" another queried.

"If he wants to race this beauty, he will," Valerian stated, patting his coat pocket. "But then, he'll be pretty sure Sherrington can make it worth his while," he added, "especially now that these two have agreed to fly."

Brim grinned. "In that case, brother Valerian, keep in touch. I don't plan to be anywhere else for the next year or so."

"Nor do I," Moulding echoed.

"Oh, I shall assuredly keep in touch, my friends," Valerian warranted with a grin. "We've got a trophy to win."

True to Valerian's prediction, neither the radical Sherrington hull nor its new Krasni-Peych Drive was ready in time for the race at the League capital of Tarrott; therefore, no Imperial entry appeared in the Mitchell lineup of 52004. Onrad blustered, but in the end conceded that some things, like the creation of new starships, were beyond even his most heavy-handed cajoling. Eventually, he even decreed that certain of the Society's operational consultants should attend the contest as guest observers. And so it was that Wilf Brim and Toby Moulding found themselves disembarking from a passenger liner into a city whose citizens, only a few years before, would gladly have blasted either of them into subatomic particles on sight.

For Brim, whose most memorable face-to-face encounter with Leaguers had been punctuated by excruciating pain and brutal torture, the visit produced strange emotions, indeed. They were no stranger, of course, than the journey itself, his first as a paying customer on a starliner rigged out for peacetime service. S.S. Montcalm, a twin-Drive fast packet, launched the previous year by A. G. Vuklin in the domain of Peret'nium, was totally unlike the occasional converted transports on which he had normally traveled during the war. Unfortunately, his intimate knowledge of the menials who labored below decks to insure his comfort took the edge off what might have been an expansive feeling, even riding in the tourist section.

Now, standing in the pompous, oppressively columned terminus of a city whose very name embodied death and destruction, a sense of oppression enveloped him like a heavy, wet canvas. Little wonder Sodeskayans refused to attend the race, even though Leaguers were now forbidden by treaty from the Bearskin coats they fancied. Everywhere he looked, people strutted along the concourses wearing colorful military uniforms with holstered blasters and decorative daggers dangling from their belts. There were the League's "normal" military Legionnaires dressed in coarse gray uniforms; sinister Controllers in jet black finery; Labor Corps Associates outfitted in ochre; ONL (National Transport Workers) officers in vivid red; the Youth Corps in umber coveralls with wide yellow sashes; girls of the XLD (Alliance of Cloud League Maidens) in severe green jumpers; even six-year-old Gru'mphe, or Child Troopers of the Leaguer confederation, dressed in black like mini-Controllers. All moved with some terrible inner zeal, barking orders at one another as though they were still at war. And everywhere was the sick-sweet foulness of Time Weed, the mysterious narcotic all Controllers were known to smoke.

Brim became so absorbed in the arrogant spectacle that he was quite startled when a smiling, well-dressed little man in the dark gray livery of the Imperial Foreign Service tapped Moulding on the shoulder. He had a long, narrow face, a prominent nose, and laughing eyes whose humor even a permanent glower could ill suppress.

"I say," he drawled, peering discreetly at a microdisplay on his left wrist, "you two must be Moulding and Brim."

"That's us," Moulding answered with a frown. "And...?"

"'Arry Drummond from the Imperial Embassy," the little man explained. He deftly extended the tiny holobadge of an Imperial Attache in the palm of his hand. "'Is 'Ighness Prince Onrad sent me out to fetch th' two uv you to the embassy. 'E figured it'd be easier wiv' me drivin' since you'd both probably feel uncomfortable wiv'out a couple of disrupters between yourselves and the bloody Leaguers 'ere."

"He had that right," Brim chuckled. "I've never seen so many of their uniforms all in one place."

"Makes you wonder what it's like when they actually give a war," Drummond said, leading the way toward a huge, overburdened archway marked diplomatic only in Vertrucht, the League's language.

"I think I'd just as soon not find out," Brim quipped. He meant it. If this one terminal were any indication, every man, woman, and child in the whole League was ready to resume fighting at a moment's notice.

Outside under the massive portico, Brim and Moulding climbed into the rear compartment of an imperious Majestat-Baron limousine skimmer. Moments later, Drummond deftly set course into one of a wide band of cableways, the League's version of normal highways. Near these cables, automatic devices in Leaguer vehicles could take over and "follow the wire," as the expression went. The driver then had only to effect cable switches at the proper times to reach any destination, steering with rudder-pedals for short distances off the ends. "All hands to action stations," he joked as they meshed with the bustling, mostly military traffic. "This is going to be more like an invasion than a visit."

Tarrott was located near the center of a large, temperate continent in the boreal hemisphere of Dahlem, a small planet orbiting a bright trinary known collectively as Uadn'aps. The city was roughly triangular in shape and divided by both the meandering river Eer'pz and a brutally linear canal known as the Conquest Waterway. On the nightward side of the city, the river was dammed into a sizable body of water, Lake Tegeler, that served as a landing area for the vast intergalactic starship terminal and also as the site of the race.

The centerpiece of historic Tarrott, however, was its Avenue of the Conquerors, a wide band of cables and pavement that traditionally formed the city's lightward-nightward axis. From time immemorial, it had served as the main political artery of an entire domain, scene of countless military pageants and parade ground of League power, a most imposing and famous byway. At its nightward end rose the galaxy-famous Martial Gate, striking symbol of its government's philosophy. Located precisely five c'lenyts nightward from the great spaceport, it was a majestic series of arches resting on twelve splendid riotinic columns. Its perfect proportions were based on those of the Propylaea, an enigmatic artifact in the Twelfth Realm, apparently abandoned by a race of sentients that had disappeared without a trace from the Universe long before the contemporary system of domains achieved interstellar flight. At the top of the gate was a gigantic statue depicting the allegorical Goddess of Victory (or Peace, depending on which period of League history one chose), her chariot drawn by four leonine gryphons, whose great wings were caught forever in gleaming metallic flight.

Settled in the comfortable seat of Drummond's skimmer, Brim could only stare in awe as they pulled into the main stream of traffic and threaded their way through one of its central arches. The monument had been created centuries ago by one of the greatest of Leaguer Romantic artists, sculptor-architect Gotfried Bernard Buss, and even today, its flowing beauty seemed to embody all that was good about the League.

But its arrogant theme stood for all that was hateful as well. Brim looked out the window at twin rows of huge, amber trees lining the roadway, bracing himself in the seat as Drummond bounced back and forth among the cables, dodging other black Majestat-Baron limousines speeding importantly by with sirens blasting the afternoon air. There were few people to be seen on the sidewalks for such a large city. And those who were afoot appeared to be driven by some compulsion. Outdoors, Tarrott seemed to be more conducive to machines than to flesh and blood; it was not a comfortable, or comforting, place.

"Busy place, ain't it?" Drummond commented as he swerved into a faster traffic cable.

"Glad you're driving instead of me," Moulding answered with a grin.

Presently, he recognized the templelike Royal Cultural Center, built for feebleminded Emperor Renzo the Magnificent in the 48000's. It now served as home of the State Enrichment Directorship, whatever that was. Small by other galactic standards, the overblown-rococo structure made up for in glitter what it lacked in size. Beside it stood a building Brim recognized from his Arnholtt Guidebook as Schlegel University: a restored palace originally built for Prince Gonlow'e, Renzo's half brother. Walkways and small parks around the building were filled with students, as purposeful and uniformly clothed as if they were marching in a parade. The Carescrian shuddered. What kind of peace could the future bring if whole generations were being raised as warriors? His answer seemed all too clear. Farther along the great avenue, he recognized five clustered, interlocking domes of gleaming gold, surmounted by a great KA'PPA antenna. It was there Neuffman Van Zeicht had perfected the Raddiman-Gebritz generators that once powered nearly a thousand years of starships. After five millennia, the complex structures showed no sign of age and were still in constant, active use. "Factory zone, Toby," he joked.

"Right ho," Moulding commented wryly. "Couldn't miss the local Gorn-Hoff branch office."

Brim laughed. Nearly everyone knew for a fact that Valentin's speedy Gorn-Hoff TA 153-V32 had been modified for racing in those very labs. And the League's powerful new racer for this year's contest, the Gantheisser GA 209V-1, had also been developed there—although the Leaguers were attempting to convince the galaxy that the unique starship was little more than a "normal" Gantheisser production machine.

Not far past the laboratory domes was a huge and totally new statue honoring Leaguers who had fallen in the "War of Heroes," as the just-ended conflict was known throughout the League. The massive statue of a Controller was erected on a plot of land that once boasted a royal palace which in its day dominated the whole center of the city. A few blocks beyond on the left, an immense brick-shaped structure with black glass sides disrupted the whole skyline. The League Chancellery. Everyone on both sides of the war knew its grim, unrelieved lines. It contained the Congress of the League, a number of reception halls for state occasions, and an auditorium that seated five thousand people. In addition, the guidebook made reference to "several highly rated gastronomic establishments." Brim snorted to himself. The Chancellery might rate highly in a Leaguer gastronomic guide, but it was doubtful to even his untrained eye that it would ever win a prize for architectural merit. It stood, pompous and contemporary, in contradiction to the other neoclassical (albeit haughty) buildings that populated the avenue. He settled back and considered that his first views of the great stone and metal city had done nothing to soften his feelings about these once-mortal enemies. He nevertheless resolved to keep an open mind as long as he could.

At last, Drummond slowed for a great intersection, eased into a curb cable, and swung their big skimmer onto a tree-lined avenue of the diplomatic quarter. "Next stop, th' Imperial Embassy," he announced.

Here were block after block of embassies from every domain wealthy enough to maintain intragalactic trade. Some of the largest were those of the League's wartime partners: pompous mansions built in the prevailing Leaguer style with colonnades and balconies from which visiting dignitaries could greet Leaguer crowds. One of the newest and most garish was decorated with the Torond's coat of arms. Frowning, Brim wondered if Margot might be in the city for the races. The mere thought of such a possibility was enough to start his heart pounding, and he shook his head in negation. He took a deep breath and forced the thought from his mind. Business first.

Moments later, they braked onto a wide driveway that skirted a triad of shimmering flame fountains, then stopped beneath a tasteful metal portico at the entrance to the Imperial Embassy. "Won't keep you gentlemen 'ere more 'an a couple of metacycles at the most," he explained. "But we've found it's good to understand a little about 'ow the Leaguers operate on their 'ome turf. Those bully boys paradin' all over can get a little rough if you don't know about their rules."

Brim nodded as painful memories flashed past his mind's eye. "I've noticed," he growled under his breath.

Then he frowned. The embassy faced a small park across the avenue that seemed to exist for the sole purpose of containing a large and uncanny likeness of Nergol Triannic, the League's exiled emperor. But no nameplate had been affixed to the heroic statue's base.

"What d'you think of the statue?" Drummond asked while he hoisted their traveling cases from the luggage compartment and activated their ground repulsion units. "It 'asn't got an official name, but everybody around 'ere calls it 'Cousin Nergol.'" He laughed. " Almost ugly enough, ain't it?"

"It'll do by half," Moulding declared, staring at the menacing shape as if it were some sort of monstrous viper poised for an attack.

Brim kept his silence. In spite of the CIGA's vehement protestations to the contrary, no governing body with peaceful intentions could have purposely erected anything like that across the street from an old adversary. Chilling waves of apprehension passed over him. As he suspected, the war— his war—had merely evolved into another stage. And before it was over, this one promised to be a great deal more sinister and dangerous than the period of open conflict that had preceded it.

Taking momentary leave of Drummond, the two Helmsmen stepped inside the embassy's elegant, marble foyer, then followed signs to a small auditorium where they joined three other civilians for a short, informal briefing in which Imperials were urged to conduct themselves, at least publicly, in the most conservative manner possible. No surprises expected, nor received. The briefer, a middle-aged Public Relations Analyst with a bald head, a large paunch, and the air of one who was quite accustomed to teaching, described "normal" Leaguers as talkative, full of abrasive good humor, and even reasonably friendly, despite their penchant for uniforms. Except for some peculiar beliefs, they posed no particular threat to anyone going about his normal, daily routines. It was the Controllers one had to watch at all times. And they were everywhere, enforcing every law to the very letter, with no room for interpretation.

It seemed that the Time Weed they smoked destroyed their reasoning process and made them bullies.

They were the ones to watch. But Brim already knew that. Far too well.

Afterward, Drummond stopped them on their way from the auditorium. "Before we continue on to your room, Mr. Brim," he said quietly, "they tell me there's somebody 'ere who would like to spend a few moments talking wiv you."

Brim raised an eyebrow. "I don't know anybody in Tarrott," he protested, "at least anybody who might want to talk to me."

Drummond shrugged. " 'Is 'Ighness Prince Onrad's the one who sent me," he said in a confiding tone.

"An' it probably won't take too much time. You know 'ow these diplomatic things go." He smiled. "I'll show Lieutenant Moulding an excellent bar we 'ave for special guests. Prince Onrad's waitin' for 'im there right now."

Brim shook his head in mock defeat. "Anything for the Prince," he said. "He's about the embassy, I take it then."

" 'E is," Drummond said. " 'E said to tell you that 'e'd probably see you in the evenin'—when you 'ad more time to spend with 'im."

"More time?" Brim asked. "What else have I got to do this afternoon?"

"Beats me, Mr. Brim," Drummond said, leading the way along a side corridor, "but 'Is 'Ighness evidently thinks you'll be busy with someone. 'E 'as me standin' by for as long as it takes."

"I'll try not to keep either of you too long," Brim said to Moulding.

Drummond stopped by a door at the end of a hall and put his hand on the latch. "Lieutenant Moulding and I have got all the time in the Universe this afternoon, Brim," he said with an abrupt change of character. "I wouldn't want to think you'd wasted even a click of it worrying about either of us—or anything else for that matter." With that, he opened the door and swept Brim inside with a firm hand in the small of his back. "You can ring when you need me—the bell's on a chord in the bar."

As the door clicked shut, Brim found himself in a darkened, paneled lounge off a side corridor. Except for a tiny, well-stocked bar, the room was small and intimate. The kind of room, he guessed, where real diplomacy was carried out, not the opulent ballrooms where phony conferences were posed around ornate tables for public consumption.

Squinting while his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, he jumped when a woman's figure rose from a shadowed chair on the opposite side of the room and started toward him. "Margot!" he gasped, his heart suddenly pounding as if it would burst from his chest. "Margot!"

Then his arms were abruptly filled with perfumed softness, her lips smothering his with warm, wet kisses, and for a long time, his mind went whirling aimlessly. When at last he opened his eyes, hers were still closed. He paused while her breathing steadied, then gently kissed her eyes, salty and wet with tears.

"Margot," he whispered. "Sometimes I thought I'd never see you again."

She nodded silently, then opened her eyes and seemed to peer directly into his very spirit. "And I was so afraid for you—every waking moment. It seemed like a million years."

Brim pressed her cheek to his. "I survived—for this day," he said gently.

She hugged him tighter. "Oh, Universe," she whispered, "I've missed you so much, Wilf." After that, she became silent for a long time, as if fighting some terrific force within herself. Finally, she bit her lip "Can you still love me now that things have changed so...?" she asked. Then her voice trailed off into silence again as if she were afraid to finish.

"You mean now that you have a child?" Brim asked, puzzled.

"Something like that, Wilf," she said vaguely, moving her head back slightly so she could focus into his eyes again. "There is now another part of me—an important part, and one that most likely will last as long as I exist. Can you accept that?"

Brim unexpectedly felt something seize inside himself. Here, in this room, he found he couldn't answer the question as he'd expected he might. He'd certainly thought enough about her motherhood over the last year or so. He knew he could accept it. But this child? Involuntarily, he raised his hands in supplication.

"I-I don't know, Margot," he stammered in a sudden agony of emotion. "I never took him into consideration that way."

"You've got to, Wilf," she said, pushing herself gently from his embrace. "I tried to tell you about me in the letter Onrad smuggled out. I guess I didn't do a very good job."

In the light, Brim could see that she was dressed in a white silk blouse and black velvet skirt with high-heeled boots. Her blond hair was piled loosely on her head, and she wore a single strand of pearls around her neck. As usual, she looked stunning. He shook his head, "I simply read into your words what I wanted to hear," he heard himself admit, "not what you were trying to say." He led her to a small sofa and they sat in silence for what seemed to be ages. Finally, his mind formed the one simple question at the root of his problem. "I wonder," he said, "do I really know you anymore, Margot?"

She nodded sadly. "A fair question, Wilf," she answered, again looking deeply into his eyes. "And the answer is partially yes. But only partially."

"Do you still love me?" he asked.

"More than ever, I think," she answered. She smiled and frowned in her own unique way. "Yet I love Rodyard, too. Differently, of course. The important part is that I find my affection for him doesn't subtract from some finite 'love pool' within me. It's an extension—an increase, if you will." She looked at him beseechingly. "Does that make any sense at all?"

Brim thought a moment. It seemed to make sense; but then, he wanted it to. What he failed to understand was how he felt about the child. He shuddered when he remembered how he had been affected by Rogan LaKarn's child long before he had even been born. After a long moment of silence, he took her hand. "How do we get things started again?" he asked. "I mean..." He shook his head. He couldn't put his thoughts into words.

She laughed ruefully and nodded her head. "I don't know," she said. "I'm not even sure what 'getting started' means." She turned to him with a sad little look in her eyes. "Perhaps if I were to take off my clothes here?" she asked.

Brim took a deep breath. "Well," he admitted, feeling a familiar stirring in his loins, "I suppose that's part of it. At least it always was—before I... I couldn't that night."

Margot laughed quietly. "Wilf," she said, turning to place the softness of her hand against his cheek,

"forget about that night back on Avalon. It wasn't your fault—the whole Universe had ganged up on you.

Besides," she added with a look of distress, "this time, it has nothing to do with you. It's me." She shook her head. "Do you think for a moment that I'd be sitting here like this if I were my normal self? You know me better than that. We'd be noisily rutting on this couch right now—and I wouldn't even care who watched us through the spy peepers."

"You mean you don't want to anymore?" Brim asked.

Margot frowned and shifted in her seat. "I'm not sure that's a proper way to put it, Wilf," she answered with a serious little smile. "It's almost as if we'd just finished doing it—and I was at the relaxed end of some great, protracted orgasm. I guess my body's still all taken up with, well, other things right now. It's simply not very conducive to... well... to having the kind of affair we'd been having—like sneaking halfway across a galaxy for one night in bed." She looked at him imploringly. "Do you have any idea what I'm trying to say to you Wilf?" she asked.

Brim tenderly put his arm around her shoulder. "No," he said, "I don't suppose I do."

"Can you live with that?" she asked.

He frowned. "I'm not really sure," he admitted, astonished by his own words. Something very basic had changed since that night in his shabby apartment, but as yet he couldn't completely define what it was, or perhaps didn't want to.

Margot suddenly looked frightened. "Th-then what's to become of us?" she asked.

"Eventually," Brim said, again utterly surprised by his own lack of emotion, "everything we ever wanted in life." He folded her hand in his. "So long as I really love you and you really love me, Margot, it seems to me that all we have to do is wait. Eventually, we'll be together again."

Margot suddenly threw her arms around his shoulders. "Do you mean that, Wilf?" she asked. "Really?"

"I can only prove it to you some time in the future, Margot," Brim answered. "And," he added, probing deeply into her eyes, " you will have to tell me when that time has come—for it will be you who determines it."

After that, they stood silently, wrapped in each other's embrace until the tiny chime of Margot's timepiece sounded from her purse.

"I've got to go," she said.

Brim nodded. "Until then," he said with a strange, empty feeling in his stomach. "You'll let me know."

"Yes, my dearest," Margot whispered, opening a panel in the wall, "until then." Beyond, in a dim passage, stood two chauffeurs dressed in the green, white, and red colors of the Torond. "We shall see each other more often now that my captivity has ended," she said. "And I shall let you know. I shall shout it to the very Universe." Then she squeezed his hand and was gone, hurrying down the passageway as the panel slid noiselessly shut.

During the next few days, Brim and Moulding spent most of their waking metacycles poking around the race district, making the most of the HELMSMAN: ALL ZONES guest passes they had been issued as members of the Imperial Starflight Society's racing committee. At first, they were hesitant to enter the shed area where the starships were being groomed for the race. Then, utterly amazed at how much leeway the passes actually permitted, they began to barge through every hangar—Moulding in full uniform, Brim in casual civilian clothes—studying whatever they could lay their eyes on.

The racers themselves were tiny in comparison to normal starships; even the largest carried a crew of two or three at maximum. Floating on custom gravity pads, these special machines came in every conceivable shape and style. Some were slim and graceful, optimized for efficient operation within the race's dictated atmospheric takeoff and landing areas; others were squat and clearly shaped to enclose the maximum propulsion apparatus possible within an envelope of minimum mass-to-drag ratio. Still others disregarded atmospherics almost completely, relying on brute power to achieve speed objectives in the void of space where a preponderance of the racing would be done. All, however, shared one characteristic in common: they were colorful. R'autor RC3-5s from A'zurn raced in gleaming silver with red and white stripes curving gracefully from diminutive Hyperscreens to Drive outlets; Dampier DA.39s, first native entries from LaKarn's Torond, were colored a stunning orange-green with national colors vertically striped on their huge gravity-generator outriggers; businesslike Gantheisser GA 209V-1s from the League were purest white with gleaming red sponsons and bridge highlights; Velone-451s from Beta Jagow raced in bright green with jasmine racing bands and black accents. Brim, who had spent most of his flying years on clapped-out ore barges or uniformly obsidian-colored Fleet warships, found himself fascinated by the colorful spectacle.

Out on breezy Lake Tegeler, speeding pleasure craft and tour boats roiled the waters all day, trailing endless wakes that gleamed against the deep blue like white ribbons of foam among the endless march of waves. In the starship lanes, great liners came and went, their rumbling thunder linking the great capital city to the distant ends of the galaxy. Now and then, one of the racers would crackle out to a takeoff vector, freezing every form of movement on the sparkling surface until it had completed its tests, whatever they happened to be.

And in the background, forbidding ranks of gray warships hovered at their moorings, tier upon tier of grim superfiring disrupters parked fore and aft. Brim shuddered; these huge Leaguer ships clearly didn't exist in the filtered vision of the CIGAs. But when it came time to fight—and that time would come—what Imperial ships would remain to face them?

The race pavilion itself encompassed a broad, paved apron on the austral banks of the lake. Facing the inland perimeter of the apron was an imposing grandstand with a colossal crystal bubble that could be moved into place during inclement weather. Shed areas where the starships were prepared by their various crews were sited at either side of the grandstand. The "sheds" themselves, were identical cylindroid hangars, individually fitted out and equipped by the racing teams that inhabited them. Fronting each of these was a fixed, "standard" gravity pool whose dimensions and parameters had been agreed upon among representatives of the contestants months prior to the race. It was from these that the racers would depart and return, like the commercial starships of Mitchell's dream.

Each shed took on the personality of the domain to which it had been assigned. The Leaguer shed, for example, had four of the gleaming new Gantheisser racing machines parked out back, as backups.

Inside, the walls were lined with precisely ordered rows of accessories for use by veritable armies of technicians in white laboratory coats who swarmed over the two racers that were being readied for the actual contest. Brim shook his head as teams of meticulous Leaguers carried out complete practice shop drills timed by a Controller with a huge chronometer. These people were out to win their second race in a row—no ifs or buts about it. He wondered when he would encounter his old adversary Kirsh Valentin.

In contrast to the machinelike organization in the Leaguer's shed, an absolute confusion of activity seemed to spin around the Torond's two graceful Dampier starships. Mechanics and technicians were everywhere, swarming over the two DA.39s like a plague of insects. Brim needed no coaching to take that team's efforts seriously, in spite of his personal attitude toward Baron Rogan LaKarn. Mario Marino built first-rate starships.

Brim had special friends in the A'zurnian shed, and had purposefully saved that visit for last. Otherwise, he'd strongly suspected that he might see little else on the lakefront. And he was substantially correct. As soon as he and Moulding arrived, they were treated as if they had personally signed on as members of the A'zurnian racing team. Brim's special friend Aram of Nahshon was off planet for the day, but others had been alerted for the arrival of two Imperials, and they were afforded hospitality that was clearly reserved for visiting dignitaries.

Metacycles later—after much fine Logish Meem and a most detailed inspection of the A'zurnian's chunky little R'autor RC3 racer—the two Imperials had just climbed into their skimmer when Moulding pointed at a long, pretentious Majestat-Baron limousine coming off the cable toward the Leaguer's shed.

"Important bus if I ever saw one," he observed. "Suppose we ought to drive over for a closer look?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Brim chuckled. "After all, these guest passes make us all bosom buddies.

Right?"

"Right ho," Moulding agreed sarcastically. "Brothers all under the skin—or something like that."

Without even linking their car onto a cable, Brim steered a direct course (more or less) across three parking lots with the rudder pedals alone. "Never did believe in their damned guide wires," he joked as they jolted at right angles across a number of cable ways.

Moulding shook his head sagely. "Brother Brim," he answered, "if you keep this up, you're going to make things very difficult when you apply for League citizenship."

"Ah... yeah," Brim agreed, with his index finger raised cheerfully. "That's precisely what I had in mind."

Moments later, they whirred through a huge ornamental garden, careened around a fountain in a cloud of tumbling flowers, and drew to a halt in a parking stall near the front of the Leaguer's shed. The big skimmer was just coming to a stop under the portico, where an honor guard of gray-uniformed Legionnaires braced at stiff attention. As the two Imperials debarked and strolled to the front of their car, the alert Commander met Brim's eye. His hostile glare made it amply clear that the Legionnaires behind him were in place for more than the ceremony.

Grinning, Brim shot a rakish salute to the man, then settled back to watch as the hulking Majestat-Baron began to disgorge its passengers—all Controllers.

First out was a brutish Galite'er, Leaguer equivalent of an Imperial Commodore. Heavyset and totally bald around his high-peaked cap, the man had vast shoulders and a massive frame that seemed to threaten his tight black tunic with every movement he made. After him came a dwarfish, middle-aged woman—an OverGalite'er—who walked with a distinct limp, as if her right foot were damaged in some way. She was followed by another woman, a buxom, athletic-looking Praefect who was much younger than the other two.

"Hmm," Moulding observed, raising his eyebrows in approval. "Now there's an improvement if I ever saw one."

"Maybe," Brim answered, "but I'll bet she wears her blaster to bed."

"Uncomfortable, that," Moulding conceded, wrinkling his nose.

"More than one would imagine," Brim quipped from the side of his mouth.

Last out of the Majestat-Baron was a tall, well-built figure of a Provost who, even from behind, made Brim's scalp bristle. Instantly, the Commander of the honor guard stepped from his position and took the man by his elbow, nodding toward the two Imperials in the parking lot as he spoke.

"Looks as if you're being tattled upon," Moulding quipped. "Perhaps this will teach you to not to drive through Leaguer flower beds so indifferently...."

Still with his back to the parking lot, the tall Provost haughtily dismissed the Legionnaire, then called something to his companions. Only the Praefect responded, turning for a moment and nodding before she followed her two superiors through the door. This accomplished, the man spun on his heel and peered out into the evening darkness, his aristocratic features highlighted by the overhead lights.

Brim inadvertently caught his breath.

"Friend of yours?" Moulding asked.

"An acquaintance," Brim growled through clenched teeth. "We got together a couple of times during the war. His name is Kirsh Valentin."

"Somehow, I thought I recognized him," Moulding said grimly, watching the Provost start across the parking lot toward them, his boots clicking smartly on the pavement.

As Valentin approached, Brim leaned casually against the cable car, his head spinning with loathsome memories; the man represented everything he detested. Suddenly, his churning emotions turned to icy calm, almost as if he were on the bridge of a starship preparing for battle. He took two steps forward, then settled calmly with his hands on his hips, legs apart, waiting. It was Valentin's territory. He could make the next move.

The Leaguer stopped a short distance from Brim, smiled, and clicked his heels. "Well, my once and future antagonist," he said, peeling off a white glove and extending his hand. "It has been a long time, hasn't it?" He smelled both of cologne and Time Weed.

Brim gripped the proffered hand. It was cool and dry. "Probably not long enough, Valentin," he said, meeting the man's gaze with a sardonic grin. "—for either of us."

Valentin laughed. "Ah, Brim. You Imperials take life too seriously. The war is over, my friend. And forgotten. We are no longer enemies: merely competitors. Spend some time considering what your onetime shipmate Puvis Amherst has to say. That organization of his, the Congress for..." He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Intragalactic Accord," Brim prompted as if he had just pronounced a truly evil malediction. He'd heard that the cowardly Amherst—once a shipmate aboard I.F.S. Truculent—had become a major force in the CIGA, but he had no idea how famous the man had become.

" Yes," Valentin remarked, "the Congress for Galactic Accord—'CIGAs' you call them. Well, you should listen to what they have to say. That movement represents the future—a truly nonaggressive society whose time has come." Then he snickered. "But of course," he added, opening his arms in a magnanimous gesture that wounded Brim to his soul, "you don't even wear a uniform anymore, do you?"

"In spite of the thraggling CIGA traitors at home, some of my friends still do," Brim replied through clenched teeth. "Commander Toby Moulding, meet Kirsh Valentin."

Valentin clicked his heels and bowed slightly without offering his hand. "I am honored to make your acquaintance, Commander," he said.

Moulding smiled at the obvious snub. "Yes," he agreed quietly, "you are."

Contemptuous anger blazed momentarily in Valentin's eyes. "Your score, Commander," he acknowledged. For a moment, he inspected his perfectly manicured fingernails, unconsciously grinding his teeth. "How regrettable," he observed at length, "that you Imperials have been unable to ready a starship for the races this year. But I am told that you both inspected our Gantheisser GA 209V-1s today, so you will already know that the race would have been ours in any case. That must be some recompense."

"Races are never won until the finish line is crossed," Moulding reciprocated. "I wasn't aware that any official heats were run today."

"Ah, my dear Moulding," Valentin chuckled, raising his hands palm up to his waist, "of course the race must be actually ran, but can there be any question about its resolution?"

Moulding stuck to his ground. "I'm dashed if I'll concede you the race, Valentin," he said hotly. "No matter how good that new Gantheisser looks, it won't be the winner until it is actually fastest over the race course. And quite a lot can happen between now and then, you know."

"True," Valentin allowed, "but it won't. We have left nothing to chance. You will see this is true when I personally pilot the winning starship." Then his eyes narrowed. "And for next year's race," he added, this time looking directly at Brim, "there is nothing your poor Sherrington Works can produce that will compare to the Gantheissers we have under development. Believe me. I have already seen the mock-ups."

"Next year at this time," Brim said, "I shall be quite glad—and ready—to discuss next year's racers. Right now, this year's is quite enough for me to digest."

"True," Valentin said. "I trust you will be present at the finish line?"

"Count on it," Brim said. "I wouldn't miss a moment of it."

"Good," Valentin said, pulling on his white gloves. "Then you will watch me win." He chuckled cynically.

"It will prepare you for next year—if Valerian and your silly Bears can actually cobble a new ship together by that time."

"We'll see next year, won't we?" Brim answered.

"Indeed we shall," Valentin relented with a smirk. "But I really did not come to argue racing tonight," he said. "Actually, I came to personally extend you, Commander Moulding, and your civilian friend, an invitation to a Chancellery reception tomorrow night before the race. Kabul Anak is in the capital for the races and is interested in meeting you both. Formal attire, of course."

Brim met his partner's eyes. "How about it, Toby?" he asked. "I can't imagine you traveling without a formal uniform, and I'll bet the embassy can throw together something appropriately civilian for me."

Moulding grinned. "I'm sure they can," he said. "Provost Valentin, I accept your kind offer. I have always hoped I should one day meet the famous Admiral Kabul Anak."

"And I," Brim added. "Perhaps one day we shall even have the honor of meeting Nergol Triannic himself."

Valentin's eyes narrowed. "The Emperor's exile will come to an end in good time, Imperials. You may count on it. Then..." His voice trailed off and he nodded to himself as if rehearsing some secret thought.

He took a deep breath. "I shall look forward to the honor of meeting you again tomorrow evening," he said, dropping the subject of the exiled Nergol Triannic like a hot coal. Abruptly, he came to attention, clicked his heels, and started off toward the shed. As he cleared the entrance, six armed guards took their places on either side of the portico, and a sign lighted on the door itself: no admittance.

Clearly, the League's peaceful countenance existed only during daylight metacycles. Brim and Moulding left immediately for their hotel, each deep in his own thoughts.

The special reception was officially in honor of the race crews, but its published guest list made it clear that the event was really given to impress influential hangers-on who attended the race more as a social event.

Brim spent part of the morning studying a protocol manual supplied by the mysterious Drummond, who also volunteered to locate a suit of formal civilian evening clothes—no easy task, considering that most of the civilians who owned such outfits were also planning to wear them to the same event.

In fact, however, Drummond did show up with a black cutaway coat, trousers, and a ruffled shirt, along with two harried tailors. Their task of fitting Brim into clothes cut for someone considerably larger would surely have been easier had they started with a week in which to make their alterations. As it was, the bustling women effected excellent modifications to both the coat and the trousers in miraculously little time. Brim and Moulding arrived at the reception in an embassy limousine only a few cycles after the appointed time.

At night, the grim Chancellery was even more forbidding than in the daylight—an effect heightened by great searchlights that illuminated its vast flanks of black glass. As Drummond carefully threaded his embassy car into the wide driveway, the streets were packed with thousands of curious onlookers who pressed noisily against glowing guide ropes patrolled by legions of gray-uniformed guards carrying blast pikes.

Outside the cavernous portico, a great arc of flags on lofty flagpoles flowed and snapped in the night breeze creating a spectacle of color against the unrelieved blackness of the naked glass walls. Elsewhere, bunting decorated—or did it hide?—every surface from which it could be hung, and the broad Chancellery lawn fairly bristled with formations of battlesuited Legionnaires, their stiff-jointed commanders fiercely holding Leaguer standards: long poles, each topped by a gilded krieges'bat gripping two wreathed daggers in its claws.

"I don't know why they call it the League," Moulding commented quietly, returning the formal salute of at least a hundred Controllers as he alighted from the car. "With all the armed Legionnaires around here, most of those poor chaps on the street must feel like prisoners."

Inside, the Chancellery's cavernous entrance hall had its calculated effect: Brim was duly impressed. Only it reminded him of an overdone trade hall he'd once entered on some cheap little planet determined to impress its neighboring domains at any cost. The Leaguer architects had used polished white granite everywhere, on the walls and the ceiling—even the floor, where most of it was covered by thick, ebony carpeting. Fantastic chandeliers glowed and sparkled form hidden light sources like miniature galaxies.

And above the hubbub, sinuous music from a large orchestra in a free-floating crystal globe interposed itself through an atmosphere that was already tinged with the sick-sweet odor of Time Weed.

Brim and Moulding gave their names to a tall, blond, and blue-eyed protocol officer in a light blue uniform, then joined the long reception line. Out on the main floor, hundreds of uniformed supernumeraries darted among the elegant revelers, carrying trays of drinks and edibles and smiling so zealously that they seemed—at least to Brim—as if they might be candidates for the Gradgroat-Norchelite priesthood. A whole legion of others along the wall, however, stood rock still, their menacing eyes constantly in motion and their hands close to the huge holstered blasters that so cleverly blended into their uniforms.

"I say," Moulding whispered facetiously under his breath, "you don't suppose those bloody blasters are loaded, do you?"

Brim raised his eyebrows. "How could you even suggest such a thing?" he asked. "I thought everybody knew they carry meem in those holsters."

"Probably explodes when you drink it," Moulding grumped.

After nearly a metacycle, they neared the head of the line and Brim got his first good view of Grand Admiral Kabul Anak—the man who had assumed the reins of government in his Emperor's absence.

Much smaller than Brim expected, he had usually been pictured in Imperial propaganda during the war as a huge, menacing giant. In real life, he appeared to be much less frightening—almost mundane. Brim was certain he would have walked past the little man on the street without particularly noticing him. He had long, gray hair to match a short beard and dense sidewhiskers that completely covered his ears. His exquisite Admiral's uniform—with all its decorations, campaign ribbons, and badges of rank—failed to conceal a late-middle-age paunch, and a certain drooping of the shoulders that was clearly the result of grievous war wounds sustained at the decisive Battle of Atalanta. It was said that nearly two-thirds of the man's body had been replaced in a healing machine after his super battleship Rengas had been reduced to tangled wreckage in a ship-to-ship contest with Erat Plutron's dauntless old Queen Elidian.

Nevertheless, although clearly fatigued, he was quite gallantly clasping his guests' hands, exchanging a few words, then smiling as he passed them along, nodding to an aide for the next introduction. It almost seemed as if the man truly wanted to be liked, although Brim had grown far too cyncial about politicians in general to credit that with much thought.

Anak was also amazingly adept at all the handshakes that had developed throughout the domains of the galaxy. He gripped hands, elbows, and forearms; kissed fingers; bowed; and even bussed cheeks. And sometimes when attractive women were involved, he held on to these salutes for an extended time, especially if the salute involved a hug or a facial kiss. Brim smiled as he watched. The old space fox might well have boring moments in his job, but he clearly made the most of good ones when they came along!

He chatted briefly with the handsome A'zurnian couple ahead of the two Imperial Helmsmen, made his little gestures, then nodded to an aide in a snow white uniform trimmed by gold cord.

"Helmsman to the Imperial Starflight Society, Commander Tobias Moulding," echoed straightaway through the hall.

The Admiral's tired face slipped into boredom as he gripped Moulding's hand, and his eyes wandered momentarily onto the reception floor. The two exchanged a few perfunctory words that Brim couldn't hear, then Anak nodded once more to the aide.

"Principal Helmsman to the Imperial Starflight Society, Private Citizen Wilf Ansor Brim!"

Brim stepped before the Leaguer Admiral and extended his hand. For some reason, he felt no nervousness in the presence of this infamous personage and arch enemy of almost everything he held decent. "Your Excellency," he said, as directed by the protocol book he had studied in the afternoon—only he said it in perfect Vertrucht, the native language of the League.

"Ah, you do speak our language, don't you, Brim?" Anak said, smiling slightly and looking intensely into Brim's eyes. "I had almost forgotten." His handshake was cold and dry, but firm. Up close, his countenance regained all the legendary greatness that, over the years, Brim had bestowed on him in his imagination. Kabul Anak seemed every iral an Admiral.

"I learned your language in my youth," Brim answered, "aboard Carescrian ore barges."

"Yes, I know," Anak answered, looking Brim in the face. For a moment, he stood in silence, his blue eyes burning into the Carescrian's very soul. Abruptly, he shook his head. "How you must hate me," he said with an expression of genuine pain.

Brim could hardly credit his ears. "A-admiral?" he stammered in astonishment.

"I am aware," Anak continued quietly, "that during my first raid on Carescria, your young sister was killed. She died in your arms, if I am not mistaken."

Brim stood for a moment in silence, terribly aware that he was delaying a line of influential and important dignitaries, yet unwilling to break the awful conversation. "That is correct, Admiral," he heard himself say.

"Perhaps, then," Anak answered, "you will feel that the score is somewhat evened between us when I tell you that my only son died while attacking an Imperial convoy just prior to the battle for Atalanta." He took a deep breath, as if fighting some deep emotion. "His Gorn-Hoff 380A-8 was destroyed during a stem attack by the light cruiser I.F.S. Defiant," he continued quietly.

Anak's words hit Brim like a meteorite. "I don't know what to say, Admiral," he muttered.

"There are no adequate words, Mr. Brim," Anak said, nodding to his aide for the next guest, "only the understanding that two sides exist in every war."

Stunned, Brim moved on to the next dignitary in the line, but he never even heard the woman's name, nor, for that matter, the names of the other Leaguers he met that evening. Except for Valentin, of course, who never had time for him anyway. In fact, the appearance of Margot in a magnificent white gown was one of the few events that registered as the revelry continued. LaKarn himself was in an expansive mood, and stopped to greet the Carescrian as if he were some long-lost friend. Brim shook the man's hand, then bent to kiss Margot's beautiful tapered fingers. But when he peered into her eyes, he could see how much pain and embarrassment the exchange was actually causing her. After listening to the Baron boast pointedly about his new son for a few moments, he made a mindless excuse and joined Moulding, who was talking to a group of fashionable young Imperials—patriotic members of the Imperial Highspeed Starflight Team on temporary duty to study the race firsthand.

Subsequently, Anna Romanoff's appearance might well have been the best part of Brim's evening. She looked the very picture of high fashion in a soft reddish brown knit coat that reached to her knees, a matching skirt, and an onyx turtleneck sweater. She was also, however, under close escort by a handsome Commander in the uniform of the Lombardian Fleet. Brim chanced to meet them a number of times during the next metacycle, but after their first encounter, the Commander made it quite clear he had little interest in furthering relationships with mere "private citizens," even though Romanoff herself appeared as if she might harbor ideas to the contrary.

Neither Brim nor Moulding stayed late at the reception. The first heats of the race were scheduled in the morning, and both wanted to be fresh for the occasion. Even so, Anak preceded them out of the reception hall by thirty cycles. On the way home, Moulding asked him what he and the Admiral had discussed during their rather extraordinary conversation in the reception line.

Brim shook his head. "Let's just say that I learned something important about warfare from the Admiral, Toby," he said.

"And that was?" Moulding asked.

Brim thought a moment, then looked his friend directly in the eye. "I learned that the other side could bleed, too," he answered. "For some reason, that had never occurred to me."

CHAPTER 5

Lys

Next morning, Brim and Moulding arrived at the Imperial box in the grandstand area just after dawn transformed the morning skies from lavender to pink and then to gold. Colossal outlines of two Leaguer battleships dominated the far shore of Lake Tegeler, their massive disrupters somehow at odds with the peaceful sunrise. One, the extensively rebuilt Lias Mondor, had been badly damaged at the Battle of Atalanta; its adjunct, a new super-Rengas-class ship named Burok was still another of the advanced warships Anak was building in flagrant violation of the Treaty of Garak. Leaguer bureaucrats simply claimed she was half her actual mass, and nobody questioned their words—at least nobody with any authority.

At the race complex itself, black and crimson Leaguer flags fluttered in the central grandstand and shed areas. From the pavilion area, one could view only takeoffs and landings—and, of course, the start/finish line. The race circuit itself, however, was far out in space along a triangular route with legs of 494.8, 228, and 277.2 Standard light-years, each turning angle marked by a huge type-19 beacon star. To complete the contest, crews had to make ten laps (negotiating two sharp angles and one easy curve each time), then return. They flew the course against the clock: fastest computed speed took the trophy—for one Standard year. According to the rules, any competitor who managed to win the trophy three times gained permanent possession.

Uadn'aps was halfway toward its midday zenith when Rogan LaKarn ostentatiously lead Margot to a seat in the Torond's royal box, thereby affording Brim—only a few irals distant in the Imperial section—his first close look at Rodyard. Wearing a miniature Grenzen's uniform, complete with peaked cap, jodhpurs, and high boots, the child was carried in the arms of a squat, masculine-looking attendant who seemed more like a bodyguard than a nurse. And prepared as Brim might have thought he was to meet Margot's child, the strange, melancholic sensation of loss he got from the encounter was far out of proportion to anything he'd imagined. Once—a million years ago, it now seemed—he had dared hope to father his own child with the beautiful Margot Effer'wyck. Now, that vision seemed dead and cold as space itself.

Moments later, for some reason known only to himself, the child turned to fasten his steel blue eyes on Brim, staring intently with a kind of insight that bordered on recognition. And in that brief interval, a new and more sinister shadow added its own unique darkness to the Carescrian's already gloomy mood—a distinct and menacing impression of presentiment.

Brim recognized the sensation immediately; there was certainly nothing unfamiliar or mysterious about it.

He'd often experienced similar awareness in combat when he spied a League warship closing in at a distance: an unavoidable menace to be dealt with at some future juncture, but not right away.

A time would come—unquestionably—when he must likewise deal with young LaKarn. He knew it in his bones. Now, however, more pressing matters demanded his immediate consideration, and he turned his attention to the race.

Precisely at Morning:2:0, stirring, martial strains of "The Conqueror," the League's national anthem, split Lake Tegeler's cool morning air, while a prototype Renkers attack ship dived steeply over the grandstand, then executed a shrieking pull-up and thundered out toward space, spinning vigorously around its central axis. As the sound of the Renkers faded into the sky, loudspeakers announced the arrival of Kabul Anak, personally representing the exiled Nergol Triannic. Brim watched the little man take his seat with mixed emotions, then shrugged off the previous evening as a temporary aberration, nothing more. Precisely ten cycles following Anak's arrival, a traditional trumpet fanfare yerked out the official opening of the contest and the Starter, a grizzled veteran Controller, gave a little speech about sportsmanship from his platform directly in front of the grandstand. He spoke in Vertrucht. Brim wondered how many of the actual contestants could understand it.

Individual heats were flown in reverse sequence from the previous year's finish order. Therefore, the actual race began when doors to the Ripernian shed slid open; that small dominion had managed to finish dead last. While a huge brass orchestra yerked out the Ripernian national anthem ("There Is No Star Like Ripern"), a powerful crawler tugged their wedge-shaped star racer outside on a portable gravity pad, its support machinery thundering. Nearly thirty assorted mechanics and technicians in matching lavender coveralls marched on either side of the little vessel, then assisted in transferring it to the gravity pool.

Following this, the technicians swarmed up ladders and spread out over the hull for a final inspection, the colorfully dressed crew climbed aboard amid sporadic cheering from the grandstand, and the gravity generators fired off in a great rush of noise and distorted light. Moments later, the Helmsman waved from his little flight bridge, an army of Legionnaires cleared a path from the gravity pool to the water, and the little starship trundled off toward the water amid rolling thunder from its twin generators. Just short of the shore—and a safe distance from the grandstand in case of malfunction—it stopped in a circle of N-ray hydrants while special teams of experts hurried to enable its Drive. Then it moved out over the water and headed for the takeoff vector.

Each starting gate consisted of two pylons accurately positioned in the water and equipped with three sets of lights: ruby for "nonready," amber for "start signal pending," and green for "race." When a ship was properly positioned just short of the pylons, its Helmsman signaled that he (or she) was ready by the simple expedient of standing on the brakes while directing full power to the gravs. This sent a great cloud of spray sweeping aft from the racer that quickly built hundreds of irals into the air. In acknowledgment, the Starter switched on the amber pylon lamps, then took his flag from a rack, held it dramatically over his head, and snapped it smartly down between two light-sensitive poles that activated the green takeoff lamps on the pylons. The actual race clock was started by the ship's passage between the pylons—and subsequently stopped when the ship returned between the same gates at the end of its run.

In no time at all, the Ripernian entry was bellowing along the lake, remaining just above the surface for nearly two c'lenyts before it lifted in a near-vertical climb and disappeared into the cloudless blue sky, although its deep thunder persisted nearly a cycle before fading below the clamor of the spectators.

Moments later, a second Ripernian ship was manhandled onto the gravity pool....

For the remainder of the day, and well into the long spring evening, each racing team took its turns at the starting pylons. Spectators followed the race on miniature scoreboards at their seats that showed the elapsed time at which each contestant snapped around one of the turning points. During much of the contest, it appeared as if LaKarn's Dampier DA.39 might take first place, with A'zurn's stubby little R'autor in a solid second. But as the last heats approached, Brim got a distinct feeling that the competition was far from over until the League had run its heats.

In a blaze of searchlights, the Leaguer crews—identically dressed in spotless white coveralls—manhandled Valentin's sinister-looking Gantheisser GA 209V-l onto the gravity pool, and within thirty cycles, Brim's old nemesis was turning in times that shaved whole clicks from the day's fastest runs. By the time he landed, it was clear that the next race would again be held in Tarrott.

As Valentin climbed from his Gantheisser amid a blaze of searchlights and thunderous applause, the League was now within a single race of capturing the Mitchell Trophy permanently. Brim sat silently, grinding his teeth. Had he fostered any questions about his commitment to the race, they were now totally gone. Only Valerian's voice rang in his ears, obscuring the thunderous cheers of the crowd: " We've got a trophy to win." Brim meant to do everything in his power to make sure that happened.

Less than a metacycle later, as if to add insult to injury, the number two Gantheisser ran a close second—piloted by the shapely and long-legged Praefect who had preceded Valentin into the League shed while Brim watched from the parking lot.

Both Brim and Moulding quietly departed Tarrott early the next morning, but soon after their return to Atalanta, the Carescrian embarked alone for Sodeskaya. He intended to learn everything he could about Krasni-Peych's new Drive, as well as the starship for which it was intended. One thing was now clear in his mind: he did not intend to watch Kirsh Valentin win anything again—ever.

Only a month later, the League began a second warlike confrontation, this time issuing trumped-up charges against its neighboring dominion of Beta Jagow. During the Great War, forces from this diminutive ally of the Empire had seized a thirty-planet area claimed by the League; now Zoguard Grobermann, the League's Minister of State, complained that ex-Leaguers on five habitable planets were being held in unwilling subjugation. This time, he openly threatened to send "forces" that would rectify the situation. He made no mention of what forces he might send, but the message was nonetheless clear: the League could back up its threats with warships.

The immense Sodeskayan passenger liner with its sleek lines and spacious accommodations seemed nothing less than incredible from Brim's delighted point of view. Clearly an engineer's ship from bow to stern, Ra'dio Kruznyetski Kondrashin was not only fast and economical, she was also luxurious beyond Brim's wildest dreams. If the recently launched vessel were any indication of what he might encounter at Krasni-Peych's research complex outside Gromcow, his visit to the planet of Sodeskaya promised to be an interesting one indeed.

He had also discovered shortly after his arrival in the ornate boarding salon that he had somehow been assigned to first-class accommodations. Surprised and apprehensive that he might have to pay for the upgrade—which he doubted he could—he'd inquired immediately about the situation and was informed by a Purser that nothing concerning his passage could be altered. Apparently, the upgrade of his original "tourist"-class reservations had been arranged for, as well as prepaid, in Gromcow, by order of Imperial Authority.

Now, as a guest on the spacious flight bridge of the big starship, Brim relaxed in the deep cushions of a luxurious jump seat and watched the crew set up for landfall on wintry Sodeskaya. The curve of the big planet had long since become a level, albeit cloudy, horizon in the forward Hyperscreens, and the Helmsman—one Ivanovich Kapustan Bokh—was setting up for his final approach into Gromcow's Tomoshenko Memorial Starport. Bokh flew smoothly and without effort, hunched attentively over the instrument panel while he scanned the readouts and peered now and then through the Hyperscreens, his great furry head and powder blue AkroKahn Captain's cap protruding above the seat back. "We Helmsmen of excellence must hang together," the smiling Bear had said, shaking Brim's hand on the latter's first visit to the flight bridge, "—there are so few of us in the first place."

After that, Brim spent much of his time with the crew—all Sodeskayans—realizing that here was an opportunity to rub elbows with some of the best starsailors in the Universe. Cursed with relatively poor eyesight in comparison to other spacefaring races, few Bears cared for the actual business of starflight, preferring instead to employ their vast intellectual energies by engineering vessels for others to operate.

Gromcow Tower was reporting low IFR with dense clouds right down to minimums. Forward, there was only gray to be seen; Kondrashin had been within the clouds since the fifteen-thousand-iral mark, descending slowly in a precisely timed holding pattern. There were light bumps, but Bokh clearly had the touch. He was handling the forty-five-thousand-milston starship as if she were a small trainer.

Moments after the Gromcow tower issued permission to land, Bokh smoothly banked the big starship into a descending turn and captured the ILS beam within the first few clicks, almost as if he were a Leaguer following some sort of bizarre cable system. At the middle marker, they picked up the ruby landing vector only just above minimum altitude, but once the starship was configured and the power was set, there were no perceptible changes in altitude whatsoever until the final flare-out. Absolutely no sensation in pitch, roll, or power—Brim's kind of Helmsmanship. And the landing that followed was equally good. Bokh flew through the driving snow with that special consideration for machinery that marked a true professional. He put Kondrashin onto her gravity foot with the feather-light touch most good Helmsmen got one time in twenty.

Once they were moored on one of Tomoshenko's massive gravity pools, Brim thanked the Sodeskayan Helmsman and his assistant for the masterful ride, but since both were filling out reports, they didn't get much of a chance to talk. Afterward, he hurried to his stateroom to collect the few valuables that weren't in his luggage, planning to make directly for the main boarding hatch to meet Ursis and Borodov. But he never made it.

Dressed in even heavier greatcoats than they had worn on Atalanta and laden with a number of large boxes, the two Sodeskayans stopped him at the door to his stateroom. Their choice of clothing gave Brim pause to wonder if his old heated raincoat was indeed going to keep him from freezing to death in the winter hemisphere. After all, both Bears also wore natural fur coats under their clothing.

"Aha, Wilf Ansor," Borodov exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear. "It is high time you visited the G.F.S.S. I have been looking forward to this for many years now!" With that, he dumped his armload of packages on a nearby settee and hugged Brim until the Carescrian nearly feared for his life.

The other Bear laughed, taking Brim's hand and pumping it vigorously in the Imperial manner. "Anastas Alexyi is not the only one who has anticipated your visit with great expectations. We have much to show you."

"About Holy Gromcow as well as our new StarDrive," Borodov interjected with a smile, releasing Brim so he could breathe again. "Both are magnificent," he added, "but only Gromcow is glorious as well."

"And cold enough at this time of year to turn you into furless icicle," Ursis said, picking up Brim's worn raincoat. He scratched his head for a moment, checking the coat's environmental controls. "This is what you brought?" he asked.

"It's all I've got," Brim replied.

"Well, it would serve," Ursis judged, nodding his head professorially, "—but when in the G.F.S.S., one should wear what Sodeskayans wear, to coin a phrase. Is that not correct, Dr. Borodov?"

"Indeed," Borodov agreed. "And it is to that end that we have brought these," he stated, indicating the packages on the settee. "We have a chilly excursion to make presently. It will be well if you are dressed warmly for it."

Frowning, Brim began to explore the boxes. They contained a slate-colored greatcoat with huge silver buttons and high, soft boots much like Ursis's; a huge, egg-shaped hat to match the one on Borodov's head; heavy gloves; and a long, woolen scarf of bright crimson. "How in the Universe am I going to pay for all of this?" he asked, turning to his two friends. "In fact, how am I going to pay for that first-class upgrade to my ticket?"

"You aren't," Borodov declared, as if the answer were so obvious that it hardly rated consideration.

"Well, somebody's got to pay for gear like this," Brim protested hotly. "Remember, I took thermodynamics in school, too, and there is no free lunch. Anywhere in the Universe."

"True," Ursis agreed. "But nothing in the laws of thermodynamics forbids the giving of gifts in a spirit of true friendship."

"But..." Brim countered.

"No buts about it," Ursis said, scowling suddenly. "I thought we had discussed such nonsense in Atalanta." He shook his head. "That xaxtdamned pride of yours, Wilf Brim, will someday yet overwhelm my good humor."

Brim turned to Borodov, but the old Bear only nodded his head sagely. "One can give without loving, Wilf Ansor," he said, "but it is impossible to love without giving." Then he smiled. "Nikolai Yanuarievich and I simply had no choice."

Brim took a deep breath, and clasped their six-fingered hands in his. "I am probably hopeless, my friends," he said, looking from one to the other, "but I am also surely grateful. This outfit is magnificent."

"Plus," Ursis said with his usual grin, "it is also warm. Your furless self will most likely appreciate that even more than the friendship before this visit is over."

Gromcow, itself—Holy Gromcow—had existed in one form or another since the beginnings of recorded Sodeskayan history. And indeed, the modern city grew like a tree in concentric rings from its ancient core: the Great Winter Palace, now home of Nicholas the August, present Knez of the G.F.S.S. and arguably the mightiest noble in the Empire of Greyffin IV. Not that the outward growth had been smooth or even steady. Great fires, wars, and occasional revolutions constantly stirred the skyline, so that in any district one might encounter a mix of modern, ancient, and nearly anything in between. The miracle of the city was that it all fit as aesthetically as it did.

Tomoshenko Memorial Starport was located on a huge, artificially heated lake outside the city. This was fed by the wide Gromcow River that bisected, a considerable distance upstream, the austral quarter of the Old City Center and ran through the grounds of the Great Winter Palace.

The terminal itself could only be described as cavernous, with brilliant lighting, rich decoration, and an extravagant use of marble with mosaics that set a standard of opulence seldom approached in the galaxy.

Brim walked in awe through the gleaming and spacious edifice, wondering why he perceived no arrogance in the design of this grossly overdone station, as compared to the one in Tarrott. Smiling foolishly at his own parochial outlook, he followed his two Sodeskayan friends outside to a huge limousine skimmer emblazoned with the Great Imperial Seal, where two massive, smiling chauffeurs waited to take them to the research center on the far side of the city.

Brim found that approaching Gromcow was a series of pleasant surprises: one moment the big limousine was in gently rolling countryside, spinning past snow-covered fields and wintry, bare woods populated by cozy log cottages trimmed with elaborate fretwork; the next moment, thick clusters of elegant apartment houses loomed beside the right-of-way, their grounds filled with young Bears playing happily in the driving snow. The transition from country to city was abrupt indeed.

After a few blocks, the right-of-way evolved to paved streets, jammed with steady streams of pedestrians as well as all manner of vehicles. The buildings in this section were contemporary, constructed of gleaming metal and glass in angular shapes of towers and columns, all connected by fantastic networks of graceful crystal bridges. Interspersed with the buildings were parks, filled with statuary and Bears, as well as people from every race in the galaxy; this was also the embassy ring. Here and there, the crowds parted to make way for groups of young Bears of both sexes marching raggedly behind banners and singing boisterously. Colorful trams of two and sometimes three streamlined cars glided through the snow-covered squares, bells clanging as pedestrians darted across the roadway in front of them. Even archaic wheeled carriages drawn by huge Sodeskayan droshkats—an unusual breed of nonflighted gryphons-rumbled over the cobbles, easily keeping time with the superbly congested traffic.

By the time their limousine reached the inner ring of the city the throngs had become a bobbing sea of kerchiefs, caps, and wooly monstrosities like those that Ursis and Borodov habitually wore. Everything here spoke of the many golden ages of Sodeskayan art, music, and literature. Within its historic streets were Gromcow's lavish art galleries, most of its famous Bearish theaters, the galaxy-famous Conservatory of Music, and countless monuments to the titans of Bearish literature. Wherever the pavement narrowed, as it did often in this oldest section of town, the imperturbable pedestrians spilled onto the streets. Fascinated, Brim spotted villagers shuffling along in belted smocks among splendidly dressed executives swinging briefcases. Between breaks in the crowds, he glimpsed shop windows, filled with commodities from all over the galaxy. Colorful posters hung from every lamp post, portraying Bearish servicemen dressed in greatcoats and battlesuits. There were no CIGAs in Sodeskaya—the G.F.S.S. was one of the few Imperial dominions that had ignored Triannic's Treaty of Garak, in spite of heated orders from the Imperial Admiralty. The Sodeskayan high command merely changed the device everyone wore on his headgear, renamed all services as numbered divisions of a nebulous "Home Guard," then continued to reinforce their defenses as before. It was another example of the very loose ties between Knez Nicholas and his so-called dominant government in Avalon—although many believed that Greyffin IV himself privately applauded the Bears' independent action.

Not until he arrived in the old city did Brim begin to understand why he could settle back comfortably in the midst of this milling confusion when he'd felt so restive in the ordered calm of Tarrott. It was because vibrant Gromcow, in all its disordered hubbub, was a city of warm, living individuals, whereas Tarrott, in the final analysis, was a city optimized for machines—and sentient beings who behaved more like components of a system than flesh-and-blood people.

Abruptly, just as it had earlier changed from country to urban congestion, the surroundings once more underwent a transformation. Teeming streets gave way to apartments, then to light industry, and then once more to sparsely populated fields and woodlands. Centuries before, a smog-and-haze-clogged Gromcow had decreed that all heavy industry would move to satellite towns, thus at least diluting (if offering no further improvement of) the atmospheric pollution that seemed to go inexorably hand in hand with efficient industrialization.

It was still snowing heavily, but the busy lanes of the right-of-way were clearly marked by hovering globes that kept traffic flowing as smoothly as if it were a midsummer day. In no time, a vast complex of factories emerged through the driving snow, and the chauffeur exited along a broad thoroughfare leading through towering stands of evergreens. On the far side of the trees, they drew to a halt on a wide courtyard just short of three massive gates that were clearly a main plant entrance. Above the center portal, huge Sodeskayan characters spelled out KPOCHBL-II3TY—Krasni-Peych. The courtyard was patrolled by what looked like a full brigade of soldiers with formidable Khalodni N-37 blast pikes slung over their shoulders. Immediately, two Lieutenants in high, black boots, olive green greatcoats with royal blue epaulettes, and billed military caps, also trimmed in royal blue, strode purposefully to the car while subordinates looked on attentively, their six-fingered hands slipping nearer to their weapons. Ursis opened his window and exchanged words in Sodeskayan with one of the officers, then handed him a large envelope closed with the Great Cachet of the Knez. Gesturing respectfully, the Lieutenant unsealed the envelope and withdrew six holobadges, two of which he handed to his partner for the drivers. After peering assiduously at each of the backseat's occupants, the Lieutenant suddenly grinned, bowed deferentially, and, handing back the badges, waved them toward the gates with a smart salute. A few moments later, the big limousine was on its way through the huge complex between high buildings with massive doors; great, circular gravitron towers hundreds of irals in height, topped by multifaceted crystal globes, and connected at various levels by intricaie bridges; numerous funnel-shaped structures that appeared to be wrapped by a layer of thick crystal tubing that glowed and pulsed in varying colors; as well as ordinary office buildings whose warmly lighted windows gave glimpses of laboratories, libraries, and offices. Presently, they drew to a hover above another snow-covered apron, this at the end of a long Becton-type gravity-cushion tube, commonly used by starships in place of water for hard-surface landfalls. Above the cooling fins of its power terminus hovered a sleek NJH-26 star launch—a Sodeskayan executive transport renowned throughout the galaxy for its elegance and speed. Moments later, the three were walking through the blizzard, snow crunching under their boots as they made their way toward the little ship's glassed-in brow. On either side of the tube right-of-way, evergreens stood out in dark emerald against the snow and clumps of tall birchlike trees formed tangles of long, white fingers against the cloud-darkened sky. With his new badge bobbing from the collar of his greatcoat, Brim found himself walking as all Gromkovites walked in winter, hardly lifting his feet, almost sliding them over the surface, balancing at every step, and treading solidly without slackening his pace. In the muffled silence of the snowfall, he wondered idly if so much ice and snow ultimately affected the posture of everyone in the city.

Inside, the cabin was comfortably warm and paneled in dark wood. Deep-cushioned sofas lined the walls with four Bear-sized easy chairs at each corner. Soft, indirect lighting illuminated a sumptuous lunch set out on a low table equipped with an expressing apparatus that filled the air with delicious aromas from freshly brewed cvceese'.

"Help yourselves, gentlemen," the blue-clad AkroKahn Helmsman called through a forward hatch that opened onto the ship's flight bridge. "It's a short enough trip out to the Ivan Ivanov that you'll have to do some serious eating."

"Thanks, Kovonchino," Ursis answered. "We shall do our best." Then he turned to Brim with an embarrassed smile on his face. "We laid on a few snacks," he said.

"Yes," Borodov seconded. "In case you might be hungry after your travels."

"Or us," Ursis added with a sly grin.

Brim was about to answer when the entrance hatch whined shut and the Helmsman warned, "Switching to internal gravity!"

In panic, Brim tried to forget the nearby food as his stomach turned upside down and he clamped his teeth together and held his breath. No matter how many thousands of times he'd gone through switches to or from internal gravity, he'd never overcome his tendency toward a weak stomach at the transition point, even though weightlessness bothered him not at all. Forcing back his gorge, he swallowed mightily, then gasped in a great draft of air. "Ah," he stammered, sinking queasily into one of the aft easy chairs, "you two go ahead and start. I'll just sit here for a few moments while I get back my space legs..." Scant cycles later, they were hurdling along the Becton tube—while Borodov wolfed down his second Kagle sausage.

The Ivan Ivanov was not at all what Brim had expected—in actuality, it was two starships, the old Sodeskayan merchantmen Sovaka Doynetz and Nadya Gordovsky, joined amidships by a network of great hullmetal girders. On the port-bridge wing of Gordovsky, Borodov pointed through a Hyperscreen to a large pod mounted in the center of this network, braced by additional beams and spars like some sort of monster insect caught in the center of a web. "There it is, Wilf," he said, "—the new PV/12 starship Drive. K-P has toiled over the design theory for nearly ten Standard years now; it took the Mitchell Trophy Race to put the project on a front burner."

"They've started calling it the 'Wizard,'" Ursis added with a grin. "Everyone expects great things."

Brim nodded thoughtfully. "We may need some magic to keep up with next year's Gantheisser," he said, "at least if what that bastard Valentin says has any truth to it."

Ursis frowned and peered through the Hyperscreens. "I suppose we shall have part of that answer in a few moments," he said with a sage nod.

Outside, clamshell doors swung slowly open in the forward end of the pod, exposing hefty focusing rings.

Behind them was a typical HyperDrive blast tube. Space radiators mounted along the finned side of the pod were beginning to glow reddish orange as super-Tesla coils pumped enormous power to the new Drive crystal. Ivan Ivanov was traveling at a fast cruise; when the K-P engineers fired off their new Drive, it would thrust forward, against the mass and momentum of the two old merchantmen. To Brim, the whole thing served to drive home the terrific force and power that would be at his command on the bridge of Valerian's new starship. He shook his head. "Awesome," he muttered to himself. He meant it.

Presently, a pattern of twelve powerful strobe beacons began to flash at the same time a klaxon horn clattered on the bridge. "The count has begun," Borodov warned, looking up from a situation display at his elbow.

As he spoke, the deck trembled beneath Brim's boots while muted thunder from the old merchantman's Drive increased significantly from below decks. Aft, the ship's twin Drive plumes flared up dramatically as she swung off toward open space. Clearly, the single Helmsman piloting both old hulls was preparing to combat some tremendous counterforce.

An urgent voice announced something in Sodeskayan over the blower.

"Twenty clicks till light-off!" Ursis translated. "Brace yourself, Wilf Ansor. One can never accurately predict the results of a lab experiment." Simultaneously, the pod's strobe beacons began to flash more rapidly.

Brim took a grip on the Hyperscreen coaming as the blower announced. "Five..." He had heard enough Sodeskayan to at least count to ten. "Four... three... two... one... zotrob!"

The next instant, a shimmering cobalt glow exploded around the forward end of the pod, followed by an eerie, sapphire Drive plume that was more of a Drive beacon in Brim's reckoning. Unlike "normal" plumes from standard Sheldon-type Drive crystals that appeared to flow aft until they faded into the blackness of space, the Wizard's exhaust wake extended out like a beacon of pure blue light that enclosed a gleaming necklace of saffron-hued refraction bodies marching slowly in the opposite direction of thrust. The effect was absolutely unlike anything he had ever experienced.

And clearly, the Wizard Drive produced thrust in prodigious amplitude. While the Bear at the test console increased the flow of energy to the pod, old Ivanov's Helmsman was compelled to send more and more power to the Drives on the lab ship—enough so that the whole bridge began shuddering uncomfortably.

The Helmsman suddenly bellowed over his shoulder to the Pod Operator, who was peering into his consoles with apparent consternation. Something was clearly 'way out of control; Brim could tell from the way the hull was working and grinding. Outside, the pod had visibly bent the great hullmetal girders and was now swinging its great blue beam in a vast cone like some Brobdingnagian child playing with an equally colossal hand-light. "Sweet mother of Voot," Brim muttered suddenly. "If she broaches at this speed, we'll all be killed—especially with that brute ready to swing us around." Involuntarily, he grabbed at a nearby console, but he knew it wouldn't help.

Ursis bellowed something that sounded like a warning, but he was quickly drowned out by a mounting rumble that shook the framework of the hull.

While Brim watched in horror, the whole network of girders outside ruptured in a churning cloud of hullmetal shards. Instantly, Wizard Prototype Number One disappeared aft, headed up-galaxy for the center of the Universe in a blaze of turquoise light. Brim was thrown to the deck as the starboard half of Ivanov lurched savagely off course and slewed wildly, its massive hull struggling with its own powerful steering engines. The bridge abruptly went dark while Bears roared in alarm and loose debris from a hundred consoles cascaded through the air, smashing to rubbish on the bulkheads or the ceiling.

Abruptly, Borodov's happy voice soared over the confusion. "Wonderful!" he roared. "I say that it's wonderful!" Then he, too, was drowned out—this time by the Ivanov's Drive, which thundered up wildly for a moment as the Helmsman struggled to regain control of the runaway starship. When it finally abated, the wild surges of gravity also ceased and Pandemonium on the bridge died down to a stony silence.

Power was finally restored while Brim dragged himself painfully to his feet. He checked to see how old Dr. Borodov had fared—Ursis was helping him up from the deck. "Are you all right, old friend?" the younger Bear asked with a great deal of concern in his voice.

Borodov shook his furry head and blinked a few times. "Am I all right?" he asked in a voice delirious with elation. "But how could I be anything else! Such power! Such performance! Ah, friend Nikolai Yanuarievich," he said, "it is for our human compatriot that I am now concerned." He looked at Brim.

"We Bears have only to perfect controls for this wonderful monster called Wizard. Wilf Ansor, here, has to fly with one!"

"He's all right," Ursis answered with a wink. "How about you, Wilf Ansor?"

Brim grinned. "I think I'm all in one piece," he chuckled. "Besides, like Dr. Borodov, I'm sort of caught up with thoughts of flying with one of the beasts."

With that, all three turned to peer through the Hyperscreens that were just then beginning to translate again after the power failure.

"Voof," Ursis said reverently.

"Double voof," Brim answered. Outside, the Sovaka Doynetz was just limping back on station, steered by someone in an emergency helm. Something—possibly the runaway test pod itself—had dealt the old merchantman a tremendous blow that staved her hull from the midships radiator section to a few irals from her stern. The starship was rolling wildly, her bow hunting up and down as if she were confused.

"I'd say she's taken some damage to her steering engine," Borodov observed dourly.

"At least her hull appears to be sound," Ursis said, "which is as lucky for us as it is for her crew.

Presently, Krasni-Peych will begin development of the Wizard/R. Then, we shall assuredly need strength."

"The Wizard/R?" Brim asked.

Borodov nodded. "R stands for reflecting."

"I still don't understand," Brim admitted.

The Bear laughed. "At present, only a few individuals in the whole Universe do," he explained. "But reflecting Drives represent the true future of starflight, at least in the eyes of Krasni-Peych. The prototype Wizard you saw today is only a first, brief step in development of this new technology. In spite of its novel engineering, it still operates on the long-established single-crystal/single-pass principal, where energy passes once through the crystal, exciting its lattice structure and providing HyperSpeed thrust." He stopped, glanced at Ursis, and smiled. "Perhaps you will be so kind as to carry on for me, Nikolai Yanuarievich?" he asked.

The younger Bear nodded. "Reflecting Drives," he proceeded, as if he were lecturing at the Dityasburg Institute, "are composed of one or more crystal shells grown around a central core in layers. The most simple example is a core surrounded by a single, thin shell. During normal operation, both fire aft as a unit, with the shell contributing as much as twenty-five percent of the total thrust. However, when short bursts of speed are necessary, the outer shell's thrust can be reversed, directing its output energy forward into a ring-shaped, focusing reflector that feeds back directly into the core. This, we calculate, will increase the unit's thrust aft by as much as forty percent—but only for brief periods of time."

Brim glanced through the Hyperscreens at the limping Doynetz. "You'll need a hefty pod structure to test that beast," he said with awe.

Ursis nodded his huge, shaggy head. "Those words may have just won you a most prestigious Sodeskayan award, Wilf Ansor," he said gravely.

"An award?" Brim asked with interest. "What for?"

"Understatement of the year," the Bear answered with a grin, "—and in this case perhaps understatement of the century."

Sodeskayan Rescue Service vessels were standing off the damaged laboratory vessels less than a metacycle afterward....

Later, having returned to the surface much earlier than they had expected, the three friends killed time in a Krasni-Peycli recreation complex before Brim's departure to the planet of Rhodor. The large, ornately panelled dining room in the complex was lighted by crystal chandeliers and a huge, blazing fireplace at one end. Waiters dressed in formal uniforms with white aprons darted here and there serving tables of Krasni-Peycli clients and employees from all over the Empire—and beyond. In the background, a strolling peasant orchestra played melancholy Sodeskayan music on enormous stringed instruments.

"Valerian seemed to take the whole thing pretty well when I messaged," Borodov was commenting. "But then, it did relieve the pressure on Sherrington to finish their M-five for next year's Tarrott race. It's clear to me that we can never complete our Wizard in their promised time frame."

"I understand," Brim said. "But you say Valerian still claimed he could produce a competitive racer in time for the next race."

"I read his words with my own eyes only cycles ago," the old Bear declared, lighting his Zempa pipe again.

"He might just be able to do such a thing," Ursis declared "A number of improved Drives were developed during the war. Perhaps with one of them in place of the Wizard, he can at least make the new ship competitive."

"Sounds like the best shot we have at the race right now," Brim admitted, "and we've got to enter some sort of competitive ship, or we'll simply give the trophy away." He shrugged, "I suppose I'll find out everything when I get to Rhodor." Just then, he looked up to see Anna Romanoff follow a majordomo into the big room, leading a group of human administrators. Brim recognized a few from the ISS meeting in Atalanta. His eyes met Romanoff's almost immediately—in a room full of Bears, furless beings like humans tended to stand out conspicuously. Slim and almost fragile looking as usual, she was dressed in a simple, dark blue business suit that, for all its professionalism, did little to conceal what was clearly a most alluring figure. She smiled and made a little wave as she sat; then a portly, red-faced man in executive pinstripes began speaking to her from the corner of his mouth while pointing assertively at a portable display.

"One can only pity poor Romanoff at this moment," Ursis observed with a wise nod of his head and a chuckle. "I have had encounters with that man myself: Sforzo Granada, self-appointed protector of the Society treasury."

Brim shrugged. "Probably comes with the job," he observed. "She looks like she can take care of herself."

"True," Ursis said, taking a sip of meem. "But one gets the distinct impression that she might prefer to be spending her time with you, Wilf Ansor."

"Nice thought," Brim said, feeling his face color in spite of himself. As he had observed in Atalanta, Anna Romanoff was just plain sexy.

"I should imagine so," Ursis observed. "Were I drawn in such a way to human beings, I might say that she appears to be a genuinely attractive woman."

At that moment, they were joined by a group of bantering propulsion engineers from the Experimental Section, and the conversation became very technical.

On a whim, Brim excused himself from the ad-hoc academic caucus, got to his feet, and made his way among the tables toward Romanoff. Sforzo Granada was still prattling on, every now and then punctuating his remarks by poking a pudgy finger at the display. "Pardon me, Miss Romanoff," the Carescrian interrupted with a smile he was hard-pressed to conceal, "do you suppose you might spare a few moments to discuss, ah... er...Drive financing?"

Romanoff looked up, frowned for a moment, then returned his smile with a little one of her own—mostly with her brown eyes. "Drive underwriting," she corrected demurely, toying with the huge lace ruffle she wore at her neck, "—and yes, we should spend some time discussing the subject." She glanced at Granada who was peering disapprovingly at Brim as if he were some sort of panhandler. "I shall be finished here in just a few cycles," she said. "Shall I meet you at the table with your friends?"

Brim nodded, and grinned again in spite of himself. "Thank you, Miss Romanoff," he said. "I shall attempt to have all the facts together by that time."

True to her word, Romanoff appeared only a few cycles later. Immediately, the Bears stood and cleared a place, old Borodov introducing her around and ordering a goblet of Logish Meem as if she were an honored guest. The delicate businesswoman seemed oddly surprised at the attention. When the Bears eased themselves back to their technical conversations, Brim looked at her and grinned with embarrassment. "Hmm," he said. "I'm afraid I've already run out of things to say—at least anything that might interest a real financier."

Romanoff took a deep breath. "I shouldn't be too sure of that, Mr. Brim," she said. "You can't imagine how much I long to hear someone talk of anything but finance once in a while." Then her eyes grew as large as saucers. "Like what happened to the Ivan Ivanov. It's all over Krasni-Peych that the Wizard got out of control this morning. And I understand you were aboard. Was it awful?"

"Oh, I was aboard," Brim said with a chuckle, "and it could have been awful. But it wasn't. The test pod ripped away and banged up one of Ivanov's hulls, that's all. Nobody even got hurt—more to the credit of Lady Fortune than good management, according to the Bears." Then he stopped and wrinkled his nose. "You called me Mister Brim, didn't you?"

"I did," Romanoff said with an arched eyebrow. "You called me Miss Romanoff, you know."

Brim thought for a moment. "That's a fact—I did," he admitted. "I guess I just thought that's the way businesspeople talk to one another."

"I don't know you well enough to repeat the kind of names we really use," Romanoff said with a laugh.

"We're a pretty contentious bunch when it comes right down to things."

"Tell you what," Brim suggested. "How about calling me Wilf from now on? That way, I can go ahead and call you Anna. It'll be simpler for both of us."

"Wilf," Romanoff said with a relieved look on her face, "you've got a deal. But we won't have much time to practice this trip. I've got to make a business call to another client here on Sodeskaya before long." In spite of her words, however, she did appear to relax for a moment—the first time that Brim could remember seeing her that way. She sipped her meem carefully for a moment, then looked him squarely in the eye. "How does it feel to pilot a starship?" she asked suddenly, almost as if she were embarrassed by the question. "What's it like to command all that power—have it at your very fingertips?"

This time, it was Brim who raised an eyebrow. He grimaced. "Why..." he started. "I never really thought about it." He shrugged. "It's just something I do, I suppose."

"Can you tell me?" she persisted.

"I don't know," Brim answered truthfully. He thought a moment. "I think I could show you a lot easier," he said, glancing through the window. Outside, near the end of the Becton tube, a little Sherrington Type 224 hovered on a gravity pad. "If you had a couple of cycles, I could probably take you aboard that little executive ship out there." Then he shrugged. "Maybe some other time, when you don't have so much else to do."

Romanoff frowned for a moment. "You could actually take me on the bridge of that starship?" she asked with an excited look in her eyes. "Right now?"

Brim pursed his lips. "Well," he said, "I'd have to ask my friend Ursis about it first."

"Would you?" Romanoff asked. "I suppose I could make my call later."

Elated by the opportunity to accommodate this most attractive woman, Brim tapped Ursis on the arm.

"Do you think there's any possibility of Anna and I going aboard the little 224 out there?" he asked, nodding toward the window.

Ursis peered out at the flight apron, turned to glance for a moment at Romanoff, then smiled. "Hmm," he mused. "It seems to me that the Principal Helmsman for the ISS certainly ought to be able to check out a Sherrington—for instructional purposes, if nothing else." He nodded his head, as if testing out his reasoning. "A moment," he said, raising a long index finger, "I shall see what I can do." With that, he excused himself from his colleagues and ambled over to a house phone, where he carried on a short conversation with someone Brim couldn't see. He was back at the table in a matter of moments. "It is taken care of, Wilf," he declared. "By the time the two of you have reached the boarding tube, the ship will be powered up. I am informed that it is ready to fly." He looked at Brim. "We should leave for the terminal within three metacycles at the latest, Wilf, if you are to catch the AkroKahn liner for Rhodor."

"Maybe we ought to skip it," Romanoff said hesitantly. "I'd feel terrible if I made you miss your ship. Everyone in the Society knows how important it is that you visit Sherrington."

The look on her face made it abundantly clear to Brim that she was seriously concerned. He grinned. "It's all right, Anna," he assured her. "Really. We don't have to fly it, you know."

Romanoff smiled. "Well," she said, taking a deep breath. "I really would love to see the bridge—if you're sure this isn't going to be too much of an inconvenience to anyone."

Brim chuckled. "I can assure you that one Wilf Ansor Brim will feel no inconvenience—and," he continued, indicating the table of chattering Bears. "I'll bet these research types won't even notice that we're gone."

"All right," she said almost shyly, "let's do it."

Ursis winked surreptitiously as they excused themselves from the table. He knew....

The flight bridge of the Sherrington starship Alesander Neyvsky was exquisitely laid out. It should have been, Brim mused as he settled into the Helmsman's recliner. It was clearly brand-new—and also one of Knez Nicholas's personal transports. Beside Brim, Romanoff had seated herself in the right-hand seat, gazing with fascination at the control panels. As he switched power to the console, and color patterns began to cascade over the panels, she started a little in alarm. Then she blushed and put her hand to her lips, watching him from the corner of her eye. "Well, what did you expect?" she laughed in feigned defensiveness, brushing a stray wisp of hair from her forehead. "After all, it is my first time on a flight bridge."

Brim grinned as he glanced across at her. Anna Romanoff was a good-looking woman, no doubt about it. And one of the things that made her so attractive was that she seemed to have no idea how really lovely she was.

"That's a curious look you're giving me, Wilf Brim," she said presently. "Did I say something wrong?"

Brim shook his head. "No," he said, a little embarrassed at being caught in his daydream. "I don't think you could say anything wrong, Anna," he added in a mumble, then turned to the instrument panel. "Ah... this cluster of green indicators," he began, suddenly feeling as bashful as a teenager, "is the set of gravity controls..."

It took nearly a half-metacycle to complete his description of the little starship's myriad controls and indicators—interspersed with the businesswoman's frequent questions, many of which required thoughtful answers. When they'd finished, Brim sat back in the seat and grinned in honest admiration. "I doubt if many instructors at the Helmsmen's Academy ever get so thoroughly interrogated," he said, indicating the fully energized panel with a sweep of his hand. "We've actually got this little ship ready to fly." Then he frowned and looked at her conspiratorially. "You sure you couldn't put that client off for another metacycle or so? I mean, there's still plenty of time for me to get to the terminal, and we wouldn't have to go for a long flight."

Romanoff's eyes glanced around the little flight bridge, then focused through the Hyperscreens toward the end of the Becton tube. She took a deep breath and half stifled a grin. "I really shouldn't..." she began hesitantly, "but..." She shook her head while a delighted expression filled her eyes. "Oh, Wilf, I'd love to."

Then she frowned. "But what about your friends Nikolai and Dr. Borodov? Are you sure they're not going to mind?"

Brim shook his head. "I've touched elbows with the two of them for years," he said. "If they weren't enjoying their colleagues, they'd have let me know. Sodeskayans may be polite, but they're also anything but bashful." He looked into her eyes. "How long can we stay out?"

Romanoff glanced at her timepiece—a handsome, sparkling bauble that suggested quality. It fit, Brim thought. "Well," she said hesitantly, "I suppose I could make my call later in the evening." She suddenly looked him in the eye. "I'll take as much time as you can give me, Wilf," she declared.

"In that case," Brim said with a grin that defied all control, "what do you say we get this little beauty up in the sky where it belongs?"

"What do you say we do?" she asked softly. Within fifteen cycles, they were on their way into deep space.

While Brim put the 224 through its paces, he and Romanoff found more than enough to talk about: starships, the ISS, even the League's latest threats against Beta Jagow. But somehow, he felt an unstated constraint that limited their conversation to "safe" subjects, nothing especially personal, even though he found himself increasingly drawn to this alluring woman. She was obviously a private person, even though her expressive brown eyes made it quite clear that she was anything but bored with his company.

The Carescrian found himself suddenly quiet as he prepared for a sunset landfall on the Becton tube, pulsing steadily in its still-distant forest clearing ahead. Unexpectedly, what had started as a casual lark appeared to be ending not at all the way it had started. There was clearly something about Anna Romanoff that attracted him; he'd felt it the first time they'd met. And now that he was beginning to know her, that attraction was turning to downright fascination. He shook his head and quashed the little fantasy before it developed any further.

As the tops of the giant conifers blurred past, he rolled the 224 slightly—filling the flight bridge for a moment with reddish light from the setting sun—then coasted in over the fence toward the end of the Becton tube. At the last instant, he lifted the nose and settled gently onto the gravity gradient. As the little starship glided to a halt, he stole a glance at Romanoff, relaxed in the recliner beside him with an absolutely enthralled expression on her face. At that moment, he felt like a little boy who has just scored a SyncBall goal in front of the parish heartthrob.

Later, back in the recreation area, the Bears were waiting for them, all grins. Borodov kissed Romanoff's hand. "Well, young lady," he said, "have you decided to take up starship Helmsmanship, now?"

Romanoff's eyes lit with delight. "No, Dr. Borodov," she laughed. "I shall be more than glad to relinquish all starship piloting to the Wilf Brims of the universe."

Brim nodded. "And I," he added gallantly, "shall be quite happy to cede all business transactions to the Anna Romanoffs." He hoped no one would notice how much he had really enjoyed his ride, but it was clear that Ursis had guessed something special had occurred. He and the Bear had been close friends for too many years.

"I take it that the Sherrington performed well during the, er, trials?" Ursis asked with a knowing grin.

"Oh... the trials," Brim said. He smiled. "Actually," he said, "the 224 really is a nice little ship. I'd only flown a few Sherringtons before."

Ursis winked. "In that case," he said, "I shall have my friend report that the flight was a success." He took Romanoff's hand and kissed it. "Miss Romanoff," he said, "it has been much too brief a pleasure. Perhaps some other time, Wilf Ansor will permit us Bears more of a chance to know you."

Romanoff blushed. "Thank you, Nikolai," she said. "I shall look forward to it."

Borodov bowed with all his old-fashioned charm. "And so shall I, Miss Romanoff," he said with a smile.

Clearly surprised by the attention the Bears were lavishing on her, Romanoff opened her mouth for a moment, then reddened, touching her fingertips to her lips again. "I, ah..." she stumbled, "thank you both.

And you too, Wilf. You have all been so kind." Then she looked resolutely at her timepiece and grimaced. "And now, gentlemen," she said, "I'm afraid that I do have a business engagement I must attend to immediately—and I know the three of you must be off for the terminal." She took Brim's hand.

"Wilf, I can never tell you how much I enjoyed my starship ride this evening."

He looked her in the eye. "You already have," he said.

Romanoff frowned. "Wilf Brim," she said, smiling with a lovely blush, "you are absolutely impossible."

Then she turned and hurried along the aisle toward an inner exit and presently disappeared into the administrative wing.

"Our Miss Romanoff looked enormously pleased with her ride," Ursis observed.

"Not half so pleased-looking as friend Wilf Ansor," Borodov seconded.

Brim looked at the old Bear and felt his cheeks burn. "There's considerably more truth to that than I'd like to admit," he said.

"And is there something wrong with savoring the company of an attractive woman?" Ursis asked.

"Especially one who clearly likes to be with you?"

Brim thought of Margot and closed his eyes somberly. "At this point in my life," he asserted, "that's hard to tell."

"Perhaps, then," Borodov suggested, clearly divining Brim's true concern, "it would be better to let nature take its own course."

"Perhaps it would," Brim answered. "Perhaps it would..." A few metacycles later, he was on his way to Rhodor and the Sherrington Works aboard the Valeikya Krusnetsky, another superlative liner of Sodeskayan registry. And once more, someone had upgraded his travel arrangements to first-class.

The Sherrington Works, like most heavy industries on Rhodor itself, was located outside Bromwich, one of the oldest cities on the capital planet. But Sherrington's research facility had relocated some years earlier to a small, up-galaxy Rhodorian planet known as Lys, in orbit around a sixth-order star simply named Tenniel. There, in the hamlet of Woolston, on Hampton Water (a lake in the rural Borealands district), they'd constructed a small development laboratory just prior to the Great War. Until now, however, the facility had managed to produce only a few starships. (One, a rather promising prewar racing machine, had briefly captured the galactic speed record.) However, these were noted more for their originality than the length of their production runs. The company's main work was at Bromwich with repair of starships for the Imperial Admiralty.

Brim arrived at Woolston aboard a Type 224 sent to the Bromwich terminal to fetch him. It was high summer in the Borealands; sunlight and fluffy summer clouds ruled the cool, blue skies as the Sherrington pilot turned onto final and lined up on the lake. When they landed, Mark Valerian was waiting at the gravity pool, looking slimmer than ever in his tweed coat, flannel trousers, and high Rhodorian boots with their pointed toes and thick, elevated heels. "Good to see you, Wilf," he said, shaking Brim's hand as the latter strode off the brow. "How does this compare with Sodeskaya?"

While a company porter in blue livery led his traveling case away, Brim savored the damp, summertime odors of flourishing grasses and forests. "Well," he said, with a grin, "it certainly is a lot warmer." He chuckled. "Voot's beard, Mark, I'll bet you don't even have a Becton tube with all that liquid water out there in the lake."

"Don't make that bet," Valerian contended. "In winter, Hampton Water freezes up just as solid as anything in Sodeskaya. We've got a number of Becton tubes that we use, in fact."

"Hmm," Brim ruminated. He had quickly become spoiled by Atalanta's temperate winter. "In that case, I'll be sure to schedule my trips on days just like this."

"Good idea," Valerian agreed. "But any time we catch you 'round these laboratories, we'll put you directly to work—as we intend to do as soon as you've had time to freshen up."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Brim declared. "How is the racecraft business these days?"

Valerian frowned. "Good and bad, I suppose," he answered. "The good news is that I'll definitely have a racing machine for you next year—without the new K-P Drive, of course. The bad news is that it won't be the one I'd planned."

Brim raised an eyebrow, but Valerian quickly ushered him through the back door of a limousine skimmer.

"Probably best that I show you, Wilf," he promised. "The driver will bring you 'round to the development hangar once you've had a chance to unpack, and I'll meet you there."

Brim nodded affably as he slid into the comfortable seat. There was little he could do about the situation, however things might turn out. Nevertheless, as the car whispered along a tree-shaded, lakeside road, the beginnings of apprehension began to form in the back of his mind. Valerian might be the greatest designer in the Empire—perhaps in the galaxy—but even he was subject to Voot's Immutable Law of Adversity. And when things went awry concerning highspeed starships with prototype StarDrives, doors were opened to all sorts of difficulties, including the worst kinds of bad luck.

Within the metacycle, Brim found himself inside a large building whose curvilinear roof gave more the appearance of a storage shed than a laboratory. The entire rear of the structure —or was it the front?—was composed of huge, sliding door panels that opened directly onto the lakefront. Five small starships, none more than 150 irals in length, were in various stages of construction on the floor, resting on blocks with access panels open, and sizable assemblies missing here and there from their hulls. Cables and hoses connected the ships to outlandish devices that hovered near the floor while technicians studied color patterns that flowed across their surfaces. Here and there, spark showers from collapsium welders cascaded to the floor, and the shriek of hullmetal cutters tore the air. The room was heavy with the scent of scorched metal, fresh sealants, and hot electronic logics. Off in a rear corner of the room beside a large object covered by a tarpaulin, another starship was under construction—much smaller and completely unlike the others. It was to this machine that Valerian was leading him.

"I'm almost certain you'll be flying our M-four next time in Tarrott," the designer confided to Brim as he pointed to the diminutive starship. No more than eighty irals overall, she comprised three separate torpedo-shaped hulls, the bottom two closely joined by streamlined fairings to a smaller, topmost body with a cramped-looking flight bridge faired into its forward end. Hullmetal skin on both lower hulls had been removed, and sturdy mounting rails were being attached inside the ringlike formers that comprised the skeleton.

"Not much chance we could have cobbled up a new M-five in time for the Tarrott race," Valerian said, looking up at the graceful little ship. "But, I don't suppose that matters much anymore now that the Bears have to rethink their control systems." He stroked the ends of his moustache thoughtfully. "At any rate, about a month ago, I assigned a team to start uprating this old bucket of bolts—just in case. And now I'm glad I did. We won't have two entries like most of the other dominions, but at least we'll race. There's not another shipyard in the Empire that's building racers this year, you know." Peering over his horn-rimmed glasses at the little ship, he nodded, as if he had just resolved a controversy. "The M-four isn't a bad little ship, considering her age," he said. "She was remarkably fast for the Drive systems we had before the war—set a galactic speed record just before Anak's first raids." He impulsively kicked aside a small raveling of hullmetal from an otherwise spotless floor. "So I got to thinking what she'd be like with some up-to-date propulsion equipment. Lyon Interstellar, for instance—over in the Avalon Group—built a couple of first-rate Drives for small ships just before Triannic threw in the towel. It made sense that she ought to give those new Gantheissers a run for their money with those on board."

Brim rubbed his chin. It did make sense, all right. With two new Drives—and probably half again her original power—the old starship ought to give anything a run for the money. If she could hold together.

He took a deep breath and peered at the two thick fairings—"trousers," Valerian called them—that attached the two lower hulls to the upper. They looked strong enough. But they had been designed more than a decade previously, for Drives that were vastly less powerful than the ones Valerian was talking about. "You don't think they'd tear her apart do you, Mark?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Valerian replied with a frown. "The only worry I've got right now is a possibility of resonance flutter at really high speeds. And a good Helmsman could take care of that by slacking off on the power." He looked Brim in the eye. "Couldn't he?"

Brim shrugged. "I don't see why not, Mark," he said with a grin. "It's a lot like talking to one of those guys from CIGA—so long as I'm standing here safe and sound in the hangar, everything sounds fine." He took a deep breath. "But up there, well..." He shrugged.

Valerian laughed wryly. "Yeah," he said. "I understand. SMOP—Small Matter Of Piloting, as they say."

He stared for a moment at the stained concrete floor of the laboratory. "Unfortunately," he continued after a moment, "bloody stubborn Prince Onrad has ordered Sherrington to come up with a starship racer that's speedy enough to beat the new Gantheisser 209V-2s—or rather their specifications. And that's what I've done." He shook his head angrily. "Of course, nobody outside the League's actually seen a 209V-2 yet, so far as I know." He raised his hands in supplication. "Well, with a pair of Lyon Napier-type Drive crystals—the kind they run in tandem on the latest FairmileD attack boats—this little antique has better specs than the ones Gantheisser's been handing out to the media. And believe me, Wilf," he added, prodding Brim's chest emphatically, "until the Sodeskayans get their act together and finish that so-called Wizard, this old M-four is the best I can do." Before the Carescrian could react, Valerian strode across the aisle and grabbed the corner of a tarpaulin covering a shape that was slightly larger than the M-4 itself. "Hey, Paul," he barked to a technician across the floor, "let's have some light over here!" Then he gave the canvas a sharp tug.

Brim nearly gasped as the big cover slid to the floor. "Universe," he whispered. Before him, he recognized the partially completed M-5—a graceful, trihulled synthesis of flowing lines and compound ellipses. Even less than half-finished, it was enough to take his breath away.

"Like her?" Valerian asked.

Brim only nodded, so stunned by the new ship that he feared his voice might betray him. After considerable delay, he managed a weak, "Yeah, Mark. I, ah... like her."

Valerian put his hands in his pockets. "Even if I could get her ready for Tarrott," he said, "she'd hold only one of those new Napiers—and as heavy as I've built her, she simply wouldn't have a chance." He swept his hand from stem to stern. "This baby's designed for a whole new generation of starship Drives," he said. "When they're ready, she'll be ready; without them, she's nothing much more than a dream."

" Some dream," Brim said soberly. "Unfortunately, the League's already got two Mitchell victories."

"Yeah," Valerian said, "I know. If they walk off with it this year, we won't need an M-five."

"That's about the size of it," Brim agreed, turning toward the M-4 again. "How long before I get to take this one up?"

Valerian raised his eyebrows. "Probably you won't want to hold your breath," he said. "I doubt if she'll be ready to fly much before race time."

" Much before race time?" Brim asked incredulously. "You mean that I'll have to—"

"—learn to fly it in a simulator? Probably you will. Is that so bad?"

SMOP! Brim shook his head. Valerian was, after all, only a designer. It took a Helmsman to really understand. He gulped a deep breath and wrestled his temper under control. "Like you, Mark," he said after a moment, "I'm not all that thrilled with the way things are turning out right now, but by Voot's greasy beard, I'll give it my best shot."

Valerian smiled grimly and extended his hand. "Thanks, friend," he said. "I'm well aware that my best shot will be a lot safer than yours when race day,rolls around."

Brim nodded as he shook Valerian's hand. "I guess that's true," he acknowledged with a chuckle. "But sometimes safety becomes a xaxtdamned small issue." In his mind's eye, he could see Krish Valentin standing tall and handsome in the Tarrott winner's circle. He ground his teeth—if he had anything to do with it, that would never happen again. After a few moments of silence, he turned to Valerian and smiled dourly. "Better have someone show me where the simulators are, Mark," he said. "It's high time I got to work."

CHAPTER 6

A Short Ride in a Fast Machine

One week prior to the race, the Carescrian stood in a corner of the Imperial shed at Lake Tegeler watching a Sherrington crew complete the assembly of Valerian's re-Drived M-4. Brim had actually flown the little starship three times before it was hurriedly dismantled, loaded aboard one of the newer cruisers in Greyffin IV's diminished Imperial Fleet, and rushed headlong to Tarrott, where it arrived less than a day before the official deadline for forfeiture by default.

"She'll be ready for you in the mornin', Mr. Brim," a heavy-set Crew Chief in blue coveralls said.

"Very well, Johnson," Brim said, "—and thanks. I know how much work that's been."

"Here's hoping she holds together, now," Johnson said. "We've done everything we can to put 'er to rights."

"I understand that," Brim said with an appreciative smile. He meant it. Johnson's crew had worked sorcery getting the old ship to this stage. Now, it was up to one Wilf Ansor Brim to husband it through the race—and still manage to win somehow. "When would be a good time to show up?"

"How about Dawn plus three?" Johnson asked. "She'll be right ready to fly by then."

"So will I," Brim declared, taking one last look at the handsome old racer. Then he turned on his heel and strode out into the late afternoon sunlight, where a limousine skimmer from the embassy hovered, its chauffeur holding the door.

Inside the passenger compartment, Toby Moulding relaxed in Fleet-blue fatigues and comfortable boots.

"I assume she'll be ready in the morning?" he said from a mound of cushions.

"Johnson claims Dawn plus three," Brim replied.

"Then you can count on it," Moulding assured him. "Ted's the best Sherrington has—and they're all pretty good there." He peered into Brim's face. "You don't seem very happy about it, though," he said.

Brim shook his head as the chauffeur picked up the cable and they ponderously started back toward Tarrott. "I wish I were, Toby," he said. "But there's something wrong with that ship. I can feel it in my bones—and don't you laugh. Everybody gets hunches now and then. This one happens to be mine." He folded his arms and stared out the window, biting his lip.

"You don't have to fly it, you know," Moulding said at length. "And that doesn't mean that I—or any other member of the HighSpeed Starflight team, for that matter—would volunteer to fly her in your place. If you don't think she's flyable, then it's your call." He laughed grimly. "We're here as backup Helmsmen, not potential suicides."

"Thanks," Brim said. "If I stepped aside and somebody else got killed because of it, I'd never forgive myself." He shook his head. "I'm the only one who's flown the M-four since the new Drives were installed. At least I got a glimpse of her little quirks in person."

"I noticed some real corkers in the simulator, myself," Moulding said.

"The simulator didn't get 'em by half," Brim grumped.

"Then what do you plan to do?"

"I don't know right now, Toby," Brim said. "I suppose I'll make up my mind sometime before tomorrow morning."

"Right ho," Moulding agreed, clamping a reassuring hand on Brim's shoulder. "A couple more metacycles either way isn't going to count much difference once you've got your decision nailed down."

Brim nodded. "Meanwhile," he said, "there's the bloody Leaguer's reception tonight. And just living through that ought to be more than enough challenge for the rest of this day."

"Wilf," Moulding laughed, "one could get the idea that you don't love the Leaguers—as our friends the CIGAs presume we do."

"Who, me?" Wilf asked, eyes wide in mock surprise. "Dislike the Leaguers? Now where would you get an idea like that?"

"Oh, I don't know," Moulding answered with a careless shrug. "Maybe it has something to do with a prediction of mine."

"What kind of prediction?" Brim asked.

Moulding frowned. "The prediction that you'll be fool enough to risk your neck in that hotted-up M-four just so the bloody Leaguers can't bag the trophy without a fight."

Brim only laughed. "Toby Moulding," he said grimly, "you are a very convincing and perceptive predictor indeed."

After his second floodlit procession to the Chancellery, Brim found himself in another reception line with Kabul Anak's innocuous-looking visage near the far end. This time, however, Kirsh Valentin stood in the place of honor at Anak's left hand, clad in dress blacks with a chest full of medals and gold cordons looping down from his right epaulette.

"Aha," Moulding chuckled under his breath, "I can tell right away that this is going to be a wonderful evening for you."

"Just wun-derful," Brim grumped. "Why, Tarrott is simply full of my favorite people"

"Hmm," Moulding said suddenly, nodding toward the front entrance, "now here comes someone who doesn't fit your model of Tarrott."

Brim turned just as Anna Romanoff entered the Chancellery on the arm of a tall, handsome civilian.

"See," Moulding said, pointing to the couple as they handed their wraps to a aide-de-camp, "you certainly count her as a friend, don't you?"

"Unfortunately, only a friend," Brim admitted absently. He'd never seen her dressed the way she was tonight. She wore a low-cut, white gown, long, white gloves, a stylishly short skirt, and white, spike-heeled shoes that set off a pair of gorgeous legs. All that remained of the formidable businesswoman Brim had come to know was the soft, reddish brown hair, that she still wore more or less gathered into a loose braid at the back of her head. She was everything Brim imagined she might be, and much more. He felt a twinge of jealousy when the man took Romanoff's elbow and guided her to the end of the receiving line, conversing with Anak's aide-de-camp as if such affairs were a commonplace part of his life. "Wonder who she's with?" Brim asked.

"Oh, I know him," Moulding replied. "That's Wyvern J. Theobold—from Civilization Lixor. He's heir to Theobold Interspace, one of the biggest armaments empires in the galaxy."

"Whatever else he's got going for him," Brim commented absentmindedly, "he also has excellent taste in women."

"I say," Moulding observed. "I didn't know you were so taken with our comely ISS Secretary."

Brim felt his face redden. "W-what? Taken?" he stammered. "Not at all. I was thinking that she's sort of good-looking. That's all."

"Oh," Moulding said with an unconvinced grin, "of course. Sorry." Clearly, he didn't believe a word.

When they had worked their way to the front of the line, Moulding was announced first even though he was behind Brim in the slow-moving procession. Valentin shook Moulding's hand in a perfunctory manner, mouthed a few words, then quickly passed him off to Anak while he turned to Brim contemptuously.

"Principal Helmsman to the Imperial Starflight Society, Private Citizen Wilf Ansor Brim!" the aide-de-camp announced.

"Brim—my old adversary," the handsome Leaguer brayed. "Welcome again to Tarrott." He grinned with some inner pleasure. "If I remember correctly, the last time we spoke, you promised that you would discuss this year's races—but only at race time." He laughed. "Well, Carescrian, the time has come to talk. I look forward to learning how you plan to compete against our new Gantheissers with Valerian's ancient M-four."

"The race hasn't been run, yet, Valentin," Brim said calmly, trying to conceal the fact that he'd been stung.

Valentin laughed again. "Ah, yes," he said. "That was your friend Moulding's statement last year. Can't you Imperials come up with something more original—or perhaps more meaningful? You do remember who won the race, don't you?"

Brim was about to answer when Valentin sneeringly nodded his head toward Admiral Anak. "Save it for the reception, Brim," he said. "I shall make sure we have some time to talk this evening. Your excuses in advance for this year's loss ought to prove quite amusing indeed." Abruptly, he turned to his right while Brim bit his lip in frustration. "Admiral Anak," he said without further ado, "I believe you recall meeting ex-Lieutenant Wilf Brim at last year's race reception?"

Tonight, Anak was dressed in a plain civilian evening suit with only a few medals dangling from his chest, although a portentous black and yellow sash ran diagonally across his ruffled shirt. He nodded at Valentin's words. "Yes, Provost, I remember him quite well," he said without apparent emotion.

"Welcome again to Tarrott, Brim," he pronounced in Vertrucht while extending his hand in the Imperial fashion. "I understand that you've returned to wrest the trophy from young Valentin here."

"That is correct, Admiral," Brim answered as Valentin smirkingly turned to his next guest.

Anak glowered. "And you actually will attempt highspeed starflight in that overpowered relic of Valerian's?"

"I will, sir," Brim answered, a little startled by the Admiral's abrupt manner.

Anak nodded while for a long moment his eyes focused somewhere distant. "I don't suppose there is any way to deter you from that sort of vainglorious nonsense?" he asked presently.

Brim felt his mind whirl. What was the old Admiral getting at?

"Brim," Anak continued quietly, "listen to this carefully—I have time to say it only once: engineers from both Gantheisser and Gorn-Hoff have calculated that the two Lyon Napiers in your M-four will interact with destructive resonance flutter when you reach approximately eighty-two M LightSpeed. Our covert agents tell me that you have yet to exceed eighty in your tests." He looked the Carescrian squarely in the eye. "In the name of all that is Universal, don't throw your life away." Then, mercurially as he had begun, he turned to the woman on his right, the curvaceous Helmsman who drove her Gantheisser to second place behind Valentin in the previous year's race. "Praefect Groener," he said, as breezily as if he had never seen Brim before in his life, "it is my pleasure to present Mr. Wilf Ansor Brim, Principal Helmsman of the Imperial Starflight Society. "

Groener's dress blacks consisted of a tight-fitting black tunic with a military skirt that was short enough to flaunt voluptuously athletic legs and small, high-booted feet. She also smelled slightly of TimeWeed.

"Good evening, Mr. Brim," she said in Vertrucht-accented Avalonian. "Kirsh has often described your considerable abilities in Vertrucht. Perhaps later this evening, you might permit me to practice my Avalonian on you?" Beneath a peaked Controller's cap, her blue eyes probed with a half-friendly wariness, as if she expected a rebuff.

Brim silently recalled a futile mission to capture an enemy ship when he ended up being captured instead by Kirsh Valentin—and the cold-blooded torture he later endured at the hands of the young Controller.

Clamping a firm grip on his emotions, he narrowed his eyes, "I should be honored, Praefect Groener," he said, torn between simple desire for the obviously licentious woman and cold, vindictive hate for her uniform.

"I shall look forward to that, Wilf," she said. "And, by the way, my name is not Praefect," she laughed intimately. "Inge will do perfectly well later on."

"Thank you, er, Inge," Brim said with an embarrassed bow; then he turned to the next dignitary in the receiving line. Only two more remained to be dealt with, and he passed them quickly. Soon, he was on his own.

A small orchestra was playing intimate dance music by the time he reached the refreshment bar. Locating a seat at the counter, he had just ordered a goblet of meem when he glimpsed Rogan and Margot LaKarn entering the hall with a glittering crowd of latecomers. Clearly, they had been on the town for a considerable time; three or four were having difficulty navigating to the reception line—including Margot herself.

It had been almost a year since Brim had laid eyes on the Princess. Somehow she had become even more beautiful than he remembered. As LaKarn clumsily helped her from her wrap, he revealed a glamorous apricot gown trimmed in hints of antique gold that set her splendid figure off to its absolute optimum. Her strawberry blond hair was short and fashionably disarrayed, as only a woman supremely confident of her own beauty could wear it. Brim took a deep breath to calm his rising excitement. He would have a moment with her alone tonight, somehow. It was only a matter of time.

As he waited at the bar, he sipped his meem and watched Moulding execute what must have been a most convincing assault on one of the more comely HighSpeed Starflight Team members: a tall, fiery redhead in a low-cut green gown who had green eyes to match, a mass of freckles, and breathtaking legs that seemed to go on forever. Brim had noticed her before, a lot of times. Soon, his Imperial friend was standing at the bar, formal cloak over his arm and clearly ready to leave.

"Important mission tonight, old man," he said with an embarrassed wink. "Will you mind terribly if I find my own way home to the embassy?"

Brim laughed. "If you don't, you're a xaxtdamned fool," he said with a look of feigned horror on his face.

"You've lined up a most alluring target for that mission, old friend."

"Oh, quite so," Moulding agreed with a grin that seemed to spread from ear to ear. Then he frowned for a moment. "Wish to bloody blazes we could do something for you, Wilf," he said. "The room's chock-full of eligibles tonight, but it seems as though both the cuties who might interest your egalitarian tastes are here on someone else's arm." Then he put his hand to his mouth. "Sorry, old man," he said. "I didn't mean to..."

"It's all right," Brim said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. "Sometimes, I think the whole galaxy knows." He took a deep swallow of meem.

Moulding shut his eyes for a moment. "Your secret's pretty well kept," he said. "But a number of your friends have guessed."

Brim shrugged, then nodded toward the waiting redhead. "I think your mission's going to be in jeopardy soon, friend," he said. "Better get cracking."

"Yes. Right ho!" Moulding said. "Well, I'm off, then." He scowled for a moment. "It would be a shame to sleep alone with all the good hunting here tonight." Then he squeezed Brim's shoulder and disappeared into the crowd. Not long afterward, Brim watched him exit the hall with the redhead on his arm.

"Wilf," a soft voice said, "I thought you might be here tonight. I want you to meet Wyvern Theobold."

Hopping to his feet, Brim turned to face Anna Romanoff, who was even more alluring up close than she had been at a distance. It required all his concentration to avoid simply staring. How did she manage to conceal that splendid bosom with the business clothes she wore? Taking a deep breath, he gripped Theobold's proffered hand. "Glad to meet you, Wyvern," he lied.

"Glad to meet you," Theobold said. Tall and good-looking, with slate-colored hair and piercing blue-gray eyes, he was dressed in evening clothes that made Brim's rented gear feel even more common than it was. "I've certainly heard about you before," he said. His eyes met Brim's in a way that changed the Carescrian's attitude instantly.

"Anything good?" Brim asked in mock apprehension.

Theobold laughed again. "All of it," he said. "I was there in Tandor-Ra the day you virtually saved the city from an attack—led, if I remember correctly, by Kirsh Valentin." He nodded his head. "Your heroism is quite well known in Lixor."

Brim felt his face flush. "I didn't have much choice," he said. "Captain Collingswood ordered me to take the ship out, so I did. Besides," he added, "I was at the helm all the time. The Blue Capes at the guns deserve most of the praise. We had a fine crew on I.F.S. Truculent."

"From what Regula Collingswood has to say about it, you deserve a lot more credit than that," Romanoff said. "The Leaguers lost three ships that day."

"Did she also mention that, afterward, Truculent had to be scrapped?" Brim asked.

"Yes," Romanoff answered with a little smile. "And she also warned me that you probably still blame yourself for that."

"Hmmm," Theobold mused. "It sounds as if this conversation opens old and painful wounds—besides impugning certain of our more prominent hosts. I must apologize for starting it, but when Anna said that you might be here tonight, I did want to meet you."

"I wasn't all that sure you would be here," Romanoff said.

Brim shrugged, glad for the change of subject. "I wasn't all that sure I'd be here, either," he said. "The M-four and I arrived late last evening. We almost missed the deadline."

A look of concern suddenly clouded Romanoff's face. "Yes," she answered. "That's what I'd heard."

"Is anything wrong?" Brim asked.

Romanoff started to answer, but she was interrupted by the arrival of Kirsh Valentin with Inge Groener on his arm.

"Well, Theobold," Valentin crowed while he took a long and obvious look at Romanoff's low-cut gown, "it seems that you have encountered the Empire's soon-to-be-defeated Helmsman." He drew on a reeking camarge cigarette. "Introduce me to this gorgeous little woman you have on your arm," he demanded, turning his back on Groener as if she had ceased to exist.

With a look of amusement, Theobold made the introduction, then stood back while Valentin ostentatiously bowed to kiss Romanoff's gloved hand.

"You must allow me to show you the sights of Tarrott, Miss Romanoff," the Leaguer said, continuing to hold her fingers in his.

"I am honored, Provost Valentin," Romanoff replied. But her brown eyes offered no encouragement whatsoever as she withdrew her hand.

Clearly undeterred, Valentin bowed again. "I shall indeed look forward to our next encounter, madam."

Then he turned to the Lixorian. "My compliments, Theobold," he said with a smirk. "Your attraction for gorgeous women is most commendable."

Theobold smiled diplomatically and bowed. "I accept your compliments, Provost," he said, nodding toward Groener, "—and I return them."

Valentin indicated his voluptuous companion with a toss of his head. "Oh, Groener has her attributes," he said, patting her on the posterior with a careless laugh. Then he turned to Brim. "But what attributes do you bring to the race this year, my Carescrian friend?" he asked with a smirk. "Surely you have no higher hopes of winning this encounter than you did the last time we dueled. Can you have forgotten what I did to your clapped-out destroyer off Lixor a few years ago?"

Brim started to retaliate, but before he could open his mouth. Theobold spoke in a bitter voice. "Perhaps a number of us remember that incident, Provost," he interrupted, straightening to his full height. "I was in Tandor-Ra during that unprovoked raid you led."

"My dear Theobold," Valentin interjected with an untroubled look, "you must not take wartime events so personally. I was only following orders." He laughed. "And besides, my dear Lixorian, a state of war never did exist between our two domains—only a state of commerce. Or am I mistaken that Theobold Interstellar was one of our main suppliers of collapsium?"

Clearly embarrassed, Theobold glanced nervously at Romanoff while he clinched his fists; then he recovered flawlessly. "As befits the major industry of a peace-loving, neutral domain such as Lixor," he said, "Theobold Interstellar does business with all qualified patrons."

"Of course, my dear Theobold," Valentin sneered as he returned his attention to Brim. "And now my unfortunate Imperial friend, are you ready for your next defeat at my hands?"

"What next defeat, Valentin?" a familiar female voice demanded suddenly from Brim's left. "I w-wasn't aware that you'd scored a first."

Brim caught his breath as he got to his feet. "Margot," he gasped.

Surprised by the swift barb, Valentin whirled to face his attacker. "Aha... Princess LaKarn," he said, recovering with a cruel smirk, "you are quick as ever to defend your onetime sweetheart." He glanced at his perfectly manicured fingernails. "But even Brim admits that Collingswood's old Truculent was scrapped after the encounter. No wonder they forced him out of the Fleet."

" Truculent died along with all three of your ships, Valentin," Brim retorted evenly. "Or had you forgotten how it ended?"

"Not at all," Valentin said archly. "But surely you and your delicious Princess recall that your salvation came from the salvos of her cousin's battlecruiser." He took a last drag on his cigarette and snuffed it out in an acrid cloud of smoke. "Had Onrad failed to arrive when he did, you, my intrepid Imperial Helmsman, would be a swarm of subatomics rushing outward through the Universe."

"I s-saw the g-gun camera recordings of that battle, Valentin," Margot said, stumbling slightly over her words. "And Wilf trashed your ships long before Onrad showed up, without any help at all."

Forgetting his clash with Valentin, Brim suddenly noticed that the Princess was steadying herself against the bar. Her eyes were drooping slightly, and she appeared to be... drunk. Anna Romanoff—who was staring at her with a horrified frown on her face—turned to Brim for a moment, then made a perplexed look when LaKarn himself strode up and clapped Valentin on the back.

The Baron wore a suit of civilian evening clothes that outdid even Theobold's, especially with the stunning red, green, and white sash he wore diagonally across his shirt front. "Kirsh, old man," he exclaimed. "I see my drunken wife has already found you." He laughed, at the same time placing a lustful arm around Groener's waist and nodding to Theobold. His face was flushed as if he also were suffering from one too many goblets of meem. He glanced at Brim, and abruptly his eyebrows raised in surprise. "Well," he said, "this is a reunion, isn't it? I should have known Margot would find you first thing off." He laughed salaciously. "You'll be disappointed this time, though, Brim. Since she's gotten the Habit, she's absolutely lousy in bed."

Brim inadvertently glanced at Romanoff, who had been watching him with an expression of dismay on her face. She looked away immediately as if she were terribly embarrassed, then—without turning her head—she whispered to Theobold. A moment later, the Lixorian made a few lame excuses about busy workdays on the morrow, and they hurried away into the crowd. Brim felt a momentary sense of loss as they left, but when he turned to Margot—who was standing, or rather hanging on, silently at the bar—the sight drove every other thought from his mind. He was at her side in a moment. "Margot," he asked desperately, "what's happened to you? What can I do to help?" Her eyes were glistening with tears.

"You can do nothing," she whispered wretchedly. "I-I'm not drunk—it's TimeWeed, Wilf: the Habit. I love it," she panted, "and I'd kill for it."

Clenching his teeth in distress, Brim took her arm in his hand. "Margot," he said urgently. "Don't say that.

By the Universe, I'll get you out of this some way."

"No!" she cried with a wild look of alarm and pulled her arm from his grip. "I don't want out of it!" She closed her eyes. "I lied to you at the embassy," she whispered. "It's not Rodyard, it's... it's the xaxtdamned H-habit." Then she shut her eyes. "Oh Universe," she groaned, swaying dangerously against the bar. "Don't look at what I've become, Wilf. Remember me the way I was." Then she burst into tears.

Brim reached for her again, but he was brushed roughly aside by the squat, masculine matron he'd spied the previous year. In a moment, she had Margot supported upright by some miraculous grip around her waist and was shuffling off toward the exit where a black-uniformed Army officer from the Torond waited with a wrap over his arm. Stunned, the Carescrian heard LaKarn laugh cruelly in the background.

"Well, Brim?" he gloated. "What's the matter? Has she really changed all that much? Doesn't she appeal to you anymore?" He sniggered wetly through a goblet of meem Valentin had placed before him. "You didn't even try for a little feel, did you?"

Brim started from his chair, but Valentin stepped in his way, grinning cruelly. "One more step, Brim, and I shall have you ejected from the hall."

"You and who else?" Brim growled, clenching his fists.

Valentin laughed again. "Oh, I shan't even have to touch you, Carescrian," he said with a look of revulsion. "They will do it for me." With a nod of his head, he indicated six beefy "civilians" with blond hair and blue eyes who had materialized from the crowd.

Brim narrowed his eyes. "I'll make both of you hurt plenty before they get me, hab'thall," he said, using the most insulting malediction he could dredge from his store of gutter Vertrucht. He started for the Leaguer with blood in his eye.

Valentin shrank against the bar while the guards began to close in from all sides. "Wait!" he choked.

"Would you really sacrifice your chance to fly in the race, Brim? Remember where you are... I shall have you barred from competition instantly."

The Carescrian stopped short and bit his lip in anger. He closed his eyes and took a step back. "You cowardly bastard," he whispered under his breath.

Valentin smiled. "Cowardly? We shall see who is cowardly during the race, Brim," he snapped. "Because I shall beat you there more thoroughly than you have been beaten before in your worthless life."

At this, LaKarn staggered to his feet and threw an arm around Valentin's neck. "Unless I beat both of you," he said, holding up a boastful index finger. "Then I'll have beaten him even worse." He laughed coarsely. "It'll serve the bastard right for spreading my wife's gorgeous legs so often!"

"All right, Rogan," Valentin said, thrusting his chin forward. " One of us will give the Carescrian peasant the thrashing of his life." Then he snickered. "But your drivers will have their hands full beating our new Gantheissers."

"We'll see," LaKarn said, grinning now from ear to ear. "My new Dampier may send your engineers back to their design boards this year."

With a glance, Valentin reassured himself that Brim was defused and waved away the guards. "Perhaps, my competitive friend," he suggested to LaKarn, "we should go somewhere and discuss this—where we can share special entertainments."

LaKarn's eyes lit up. "Yes," he said with a look of childish excitement, "the special entertainments."

"See you at the races, Brim," Valentin said airily, steadying the Baron on his feet, then steering him toward a doorway beside the bar. He turned momentarily to Groener, who had remained standing quietly at the bar. "I shall expect you to be at the shed early tomorrow, Praefect," he said. "There is much work to be done." Then he followed LaKarn through the doorway and was gone.

Groener made a little bow to his receding back. "I shall be there, Provost," she said, snapping her heels together uselessly. "Early..." For a moment, her face took on an expression of hopelessness, then she shook her head and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she stared musingly at the Carescrian for a long moment. "Buy you a drink, Mr. Brim?" she asked, resting against the bar and conspicuously thrusting her magnificent bust toward him.

Brim looked into her eyes for a moment, then boldly stared down at the breasts straining at her tunic.

"Depends," he said.

"On what?" she asked with a slight frown.

"On what you had in mind for after the reception," he said. "Perhaps I won't even want a drink."

Suddenly, he felt her hand on his thigh. It traveled slowly to his crotch. And even though she did smell of TimeWeed, he felt his breathing begin to grow deeper. "Come to think about it, Inge," he said, feeling his pulse quicken, "I guess I'm not terribly interested in another drink—but you do have something I want a lot more than meem."

"As have you," she whispered.

Brim shook his head. "Your embassy or mine?" he asked. "I seem to have inherited a car."

She looked at him with an honest grin and shook her head in irony. "Wilf Brim," she laughed, "I have actually been on assignments where I tried to penetrate your xaxtdamned Imperial Embassy."

"I'm afraid this assignment will get you only as far as a room in the visitor's sleeping wing," he said.

"That will be fine," she laughed, "—and a lot better than I managed on my own." She shook her head ruefully. "I never was cut out for this business of war. I suppose I'm simply more of a Helmsman than a penetrator."

Brim took her arm and helped her to her feet. "Let's go find that car of mine, Inge," he said with a grin.

"I'm both a Helmsman and a penetrator."

"Ah yes," she laughed happily, "I was counting on that."

Uadn'aps was much higher in Dahlem's morning sky than Brim had planned when an embassy car delivered him to the race complex at Lake Tegeler. Three new Leaguer battleships brooded just off the far bank. This morning, however, Brim was more interested in the Leaguer's shed. An empty gravity pad sat in front of its doors. True to her word, Inge Groener must have reported for work early. He only hoped she shared the glow he felt from their lovemaking. The athletic beauty had proven herself both gentle and violent—and always precisely at the right times. He shook his head as the car sped along the apron. People like Inge Groener made it difficult to make blanket statements about Leaguers. He wondered how many other nice ones there might be.

Neither Moulding nor the redhead were among the colorful gathering of Imperials taking the morning air.

Nearby, the M-4 hovered on its gravity pad looking for all the Universe like a teardrop resting on two fat needles. A small army of technicians still swarmed over her brilliantly polished hullmetal, making last-moment changes to controls and rigging. In spite of himself, Brim's first glimpse of the graceful little ship brought back Admiral Anak's dire query: I don't suppose there is any way to deter you from that sort of vainglorious nonsense?

He hurried to the locker room and changed into the latest issue Imperial battle suit—tinted yellow instead of blue to de-emphasize the ISS's many ties to the Imperial Fleet. Then he strode out to meet Valerian on the apron. But Anak's frowning countenance refused to leave his mind's eye: Engineers from both Gantheisser and Gorn-Hoff have calculated that the two Lyon Napiers in your M-four will interact with destructive resonance flutter when you reach approximately eighty-two M LightSpeed.

Clad in his usual tweeds, the designer looked up and smiled when Brim was within haling distance. "How does she look to you?" he asked.

Brim forced himself to smile. "She looks beautiful," he said truthfully, climbing to the rim of the gravity pad with the breeze full in his face. The morning smelled of high summer—fresh-cut grass and water—blended with the odors of hot metal, fresh sealant, ozone, and heated logics from the ship. "How do you feel about her?" he asked.

Valerian shrugged and pursed his lips. "She's solid enough," he said. "I've been with the crew all night and watched just about every fastener slide home and lock." He turned his hands palms up. "I guess she's as ready to go as I can make her. You want to do a walkaround?"

"I'm inclined to take your word, Mark," Brim said. "For this particular bird, you've got to be the greatest Crew Chief in the known Universe."

"Well," Valerian drawled with a grin, "she was all right when I looked her over ten cycles ago—but there's no telling what might have gone wrong since then."

They spent the next metacycle checking drain plugs, access doors, panel tracks, and plumbing mazes before they were finished; each was important—and each was flawless. But the inspection came nowhere near answering the burning question Kabul Anak had planted in Brim's mind the night before.

Ultimately, the Carescrian capitulated to his doubts. "How about resonance flutter between those two big Lyon Napiers?" he asked Valerian. "Is the ship really well enough braced for all that power?"

"Resonance flutter," Valerian mused with a nod. "I wondered if there wasn't something bothering you."

He scratched his head. "Well, I'll have to admit it's a possibility, all right. Those two big crystals will be putting out some powerful oscillations—especially in the mass component..."

"And at exactly the same frequency," Brim finished for him. He shook his head. "How much clearance is there between them?"

Valerian closed his eyes a moment while he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fifteen point nine three five irals, virtual center to virtual center," he said presently. "It's close, but I think it ought to be enough."

Brim made his own mental calculations. "That means I'm safe at least to eighty M LightSpeed, doesn't it?" he asked.

"Probably a little faster even," Valerian assured him. "And, of course, there may be no flutter till twice that speed. Voot's beard, you might never get any at all." He shook his head in mock confusion. "It mostly has to do with the shape of the side lobes they radiate—and these particular beauties ought to be specially safe to work with. Their energy lobes stretch aft—not sideways where they can interact at high time constants. Besides," he added, "the League won it last year for sixty-seven point two M's, so you ought to be able to make a race of it this year for not much more than eighty M's, give or take a few LightSpeeds."

At that moment, a sleek, white Gantheisser GA 209V-2 thundered out of the morning sky, turned gracefully onto final, and descended to the water, skimming the surface in an arrow-straight cascade of spume for nearly a c'lenyt. Brim grinned as it came to a hover above its gravity foot. If Inge Groener's landfall were any indication of her condition, she had a great glow going for her. Then his musing was interrupted by a blue-clad messenger rushing from the shed at a dead run, calling his name at the top of her voice.

"They timed Inge Groener from one of our observation ships this morning," she shouted when she reached the gravity pad, "and it looks like the new Gantheisser's a lot faster than any of us thought it would be."

Brim felt a cold finger of dread trace his spine. He glanced for a moment at Valerian, then knelt on one knee and looked down at the messenger. "How many M's?" he asked.

"Seventy-nine point six four."

Brim looked Valerian in the face. "Will this bucket of bolts do better than that?" he asked.

"My calculations say she'll top eighty-eight," Valerian answered.

"And hold together?" Brim demanded.

"I think so—unless you run into resonance flutter, of course."

"Well, eighty-eight M's is a Vootload past the eighty-one you referred to as safe."

"Yeah, it is," Valerian conceded. "But then, nobody knows if that flutter will even happen." He shrugged.

"I guess it's pretty well up to you, Wilf."

Brim took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah," he said, "I guess it is." He looked out over the lake and sniffed the grass and the water. On the far shore, four obviously new destroyers had just joined the Leaguer battleships while Inge Groener taxied her Gantheisser into a gravity pad. Almost eighty M's, he considered with a sick feeling—and she was only the number two Leaguer Helmsman. Abruptly, Kirsh Valentin's arrogant face filled his mind's eye, and he smashed his fist against the old racer's hullmetal.

"Have them clear the apron, Mark," he said, starting for the ladder. "I'm taking her up!"

Valerian raised an eyebrow, then grinned ebulliently. "That's more like it, Wilf," he said, "—and we'll have extra rescue ships standing by the race course."

"Couldn't ask for anything more than that," Brim called from the ladder, "but I do hope we don't have to bother those nice people. They're always so busy during race season anyway." With a quick thumbs-up, he then crawled through a hatch and wriggled into the little ship's single recliner while sirens wailed outside and a cordon of marshals herded straggling spectators from the apron. Sliding open a side Hyperscreen, he was just about to close the master switches when he spied an embassy limousine coasting through the cordon at high speed. Anna Romanoff was at the wheel.

"Wait—don't go!" she called as she braked to a halt beside the gravity pad and leaped to the pavement.

Moments later she was on her way up the boarding ladder, slippers, windblown skirt, and all. "Wilf," she panted breathlessly, locking her elbows over the hatch coaming and gasping to catch her breath, "I just heard about the Groener woman and her new Gantheisser. You're not going to try and beat that kind of speed in this antique are you?"

"This is the only ship I know of that's faster, Anna," Brim answered. "I have to."

"You don't have to, Wilf Brim," she said anxiously, toying with the buttons of her white sweater. "The ISS can't ask anyone to risk his life—no trophy in the Universe is worth that." She frowned indignantly. "I don't care if this is the fastest ship in the whole xaxtdamned Universe, even I know that it was never designed to go that fast—and when I called old Bos Gallsworthy, he wasn't even sure it would hold together. He doesn't want you to fly it either, and..."

Brim placed his hand gently on hers and peered directly into her troubled brown eyes. Like a typical civilian, she'd forgotten the CIGAs, Fluvanna, Beta Jagow, and all the rest. But he hadn't. He couldn't.

"Anna," he said, "please try to understand. The fact is that I do have to race this ship. There are much bigger issues at stake than the ISS, I'm afraid."

Romanoff looked at him for a moment, then closed her eyes and grimaced. "I was afraid you'd say something patriotic like that," she said, drumming her fingers on the hatch coaming. She took a deep breath and shook her head. "I don't suppose there's anything I can say to stop you, is there?"

"No," Brim said, still holding her hand. "But I'd be a lot more careful up there if I knew that I were going to spend an evening with you when I get back." The bold words surprised even himself.

"What was that?" Romanoff asked.

Brim grinned in spite of a sudden onslaught of shyness. "I said that I'd be a lot more careful up there if I knew that I were planning to spend an evening with you when I get back."

She suddenly looked surprised. "With me?" she asked.

"Your name is Anna Romanoff, isn't it?" Brim asked facetiously.

Romanoff placed her hand over her mouth. "Yes," she said, "it is." Then she shook her head again. "Oh Universe, Wilf. Can't I somehow reason with you?"

"I'm afraid not," Brim said. "But I do want that evening with you when I get back."

She shut her eyes again. "I give up," she whispered in exasperation. "I absolutely give up." Taking a deep breath, she looked him directly in the eye. "All right, Wilf Brim," she whispered, "if you do manage to come back in one piece, by Universe, you can have any evening you want." With that, she pulled her hand from beneath his, shook her head, and started down the ladder without another word.

Grinning like an idiot, Brim watched until her embassy car disappeared along the cableway, heading back to the city. By Voot, he thought as he turned to the master switches again, an evening with Anna Romanoff might just be worth the risks of a highspeed ride in Mark Valerian's old bucket of bolts.

He went through the ship's preflight checklist in short order, then with plasma pressure steady in the green, he turned on the gravity brakes and shunted energy boost to the grav, kicking in power flow, energizer, and antimatter on queue from the auto-sequencer. After four sharp beeps from the interrupter, his big R2600 caught with a limousine-sized belch of gravitrons that shimmered on the apron like midsummer heatflutter. He grinned. If the Napier Drive crystals ran half so well, the remainder of his morning promised to be interesting indeed. Then, gulping down his transition to internal gravity, he released the brakes. As he moved off the gravity pad, he flashed a thumbs-up to Moulding, who had just shown up in the midst of the HighSpeed Starflight Society cheering section—with the redhead. The blond aristocrat waved back apathetically, obviously content to stay where he was.

Precisely one click later, the Carescrian discovered one of Valerian's only faults. In his zeal for maximum performance from everything, the designer had set the ship's brakes so delicately that merely thinking about the actuator was sufficient to send him crashing into the forward Hyperscreens. Subsequently, his taxi to the takeoff vector was enough to make the greenest student writhe with embarrassment—it must have resembled a Syngallian In'ggo dancer doing a winter mating shuffle. At the strand, he drew to a halt for a moment while a technical crew from Lyon Industries activated his Drives—safely away from the grandstand area—then he set off across the water toward the morning's launch vector.

Centering the ruby takeoff vector in his forward Hyperscreen, he collected what nerves he had left, got clearance from the tower, and completed his checklist. Then running up the grav one last time, he dropped quarter lift enhancers and poured on the energy, gently keeping his steering engine amidships.

The bow lifted at first, then fell as the little ship began to rise free from her gravity gradient. Just before transition, he eased back on the controls to overcome a slight heaviness forward and carefully raised the bow again. At a speed of about eighty-three cpm, only the slightest urging on the elevator control was needed for lift-off, while he practically leaned on the steering engine to check an immediate swing to port.

The M-4 roared upward.

Even with the nagging fear of impending danger hanging over the flight bridge, Brim felt the rush of exhilaration that comes from flying a true thoroughbred starship—albeit an overpowered one. It was a feeling that he had yet to duplicate in any way. With velocity building rapidly toward LightSpeed and a near vertical climb, he settled back to start the twin Napier StarDrives and another checklist. He'd discovered early in the game that one-man starships made for busy drivers.

As he expected, everything about the Drives was also precisely in order: intercoolers ready, time synchronizers on, mass compensators turning, blast tubes open, overdrivers off, HyperBoost on, and reserve energy at maximum.

At 0.95 LightSpeed—while forward vision degenerated to a confusing reddish muzziness—the generators began to run out of energy and he connected the starboard Drive crystal to the power mains.

Passing through 0.98 LightSpeed, he keyed in start for about twelve clicks, then hit the plasma primer and energize. With a harsh resonance that shook Valerian's little starship like a leaf in a storm, the big Lyon Napier came to life, barking out a satisfying rumble and a cloud of green radiation aft. The port crystal followed suit at 0.99 LightSpeed, and less than a heartbeat later, normal outside vision returned as the Hyperscreens began to translate. Behind him, two pulsing Drive plumes looked for all the world like the wake from a ghostly oceangoing ship.

For the next few cycles, he let the speed build as he headed out for the racecourse. During an actual heat, he'd now be under maximum acceleration, but he was still learning the little M-4, and this morning there appeared to be a hundred spectator starships nosing around the course, from private yachts to full-fledged warships.

When he entered the actual circuit, he took the first turn in a wide arc while he gained the feel of the little ship's stiff controls. Clearly, he chuckled to himself, Valerian's M-4 would never be remembered for her maneuverability.

Lap after lap, he flashed around the course, bettering his speed with each circuit: 72.18M LightSpeed...

74.67M ... 75.91M... 78.4M. But with each increase in velocity, the controls grew heavier and harder to operate. Valerian had invested only minimal volume in a steering engine. "She's no attack craft," he was fond of saying. And it made sense at the time. Brim grinned ruefully. At least he could detect no flutter. If there had been anyone to listen, he'd have cheered about that, but his only link to the outside was by KA'PPA COMM, and the sole person monitoring his frequency would be a bored Leaguer flight controller.

On the tenth lap, he increased his speed to 79.64M LightSpeed. By this time, the big Drive crystals were howling through the spaceframe like Great Sodeskayan crag wolves, and the controls were growing harder to use by the moment. He made a note about that in the log book, then steeled himself for the long straightaway. Somewhere between his present velocity and the next increase of two and a half M's of LightSpeed, his old ship would either run into flutter problems, or he would push her for eighty-five.

Carefully, he gated more energy to the Drive, scanned his instruments, then increased the power again.

The second time, he thought he detected a slight wobble in the steady thunder coming from below his feet. Nearly half of the long straightaway remained, so once more, he opened the energy gate. This produced an immediate and definite change in the sound of the Drive, as well as the feel of the controls: almost definitely the onset of flutter. He bit his lip. Now was the time to pull back, at least for any Helmsman with half a brain—or one who didn't have a race he had to win. Grimly, he turned the cabin gravity restraints to maximum, then tightened his chest and shoulder belts. One more increase in the energy. By now the hull was vibrating noticeably and his instruments registered more than 83.5M LightSpeed. He grimaced while he prepared for the next star. At this velocity, he wasn't able to cut the turns so closely.

A moment later, he saw the yacht.

She was a sizable craft—clearly modified from wartime service—and she must have been carrying media people, for she was blazing along where she had no right to be, well inside the restricted lane. Her Drive was throwing up a tremendous wake of gravitron combers—mass waves that Brim's little M-4 violently punched through as if it were smashing a whole succession of brick walls. Few people had any idea at all just how fast 83M LightSpeed was. One had to actually be there to know.

Ordinarily, the ship and its wake would have posed no problem, even well inside the restricted lane where they were. Brim, however, was traveling nearly three times her velocity and was under only a minimum of control—his steering engine almost totally useless for anything but wide-radius turns. "Voot's bloody beard— move!" he yelled helplessly as the range closed with awesome speed, but even if anyone had heard his voice, it was far too late for help.

No time to pause and consider the multitude of possible alternatives. No thought of saving the ship or himself. A lot of people were on that yacht ahead, and he was about to open it like a rotten fruit! There was only one way out—and if he were wrong, he had to go ahead anyway. Instantaneous decision was 90 percent of being right in all the myriad emergencies he'd survived over the years. To be wrong and follow through on the mistake was better than being right too late.

Desperately, he poured energy to the starboard Drive crystal alone. At the last possible moment, the jolting, bouncing racer yawed sharply to one side, then jogged past the yacht with little more than a c'lenyt between them. But the extra power also increased the M-4's previous vibrations by an order of magnitude. Resonance flutter! Instantly, the whole cabin seemed to come apart, a warning klaxon sounded, both forward Hyperscreens disintegrated in a billion whirring crystal shards, and then the whole Universe shattered into one excruciating instant of pain.

It seemed like a thousand Standard years since the accident... yet Brim had a difficult time remembering anything specific about what had happened afterward. He couldn't even remember his previous evening, although clearly it must have been one Universe of a party.

A monumental headache was absolutely dissolving his cranium, and he had no desire at all to get out of bed. Who had he been out with? Not Margot—he was sure of that. Inge? He didn't think so.

Anna, perhaps?

He stiffened. She was certainly on his mind. Was she in bed with him? He ground his teeth. If it were Anna—Great Universe! Why couldn't he remember? Had he been too drunk to make it worth her while?

Had he even been able to... He felt a surge of panic. Anna—wonderful, fragile Anna—and for the life of him he couldn't remember what she looked like when they... His head began to spin with apprehension.

Carefully, he started to probe the bed with his hand.

But his arm didn't seem to work. He tried again. Nothing. In fact, he couldn't move anything, not even an eyelid. Abruptly, he stopped worrying about Anna Romanoff—he was thraggling well paralyzedl By Voot's greasy beard, what in the Universe had he been drinking?

He tried to calm himself by doing a mental checklist, of sorts. He was breathing, although how long he might keep that up was anybody's guess. And, except for his headache, he didn't hurt anywhere. Mostly, so far as he could ascertain without moving anything, he was sort of numb.

And sleepy, again. To xaxt with the checklist—maybe he was dying! "No!" he yelled aloud. "No!" But try as he might, he couldn't match the wave of incredible lassitude that was overtaking him. After a while, he just stopped fighting...

When next he awoke, he could hear voices. And this time, he could open his eyes, too—although he couldn't seem to focus on anything. Nevertheless, somebody else certainly could.

"His eyes are open!" Anna Romanoff's soft voice exclaimed in a whisper.

"Hmm, yes," a strangely familiar, masculine voice agreed, though Brim couldn't place it. "And right on schedule. It's nothing less than a miracle."

"He's been through quite a few of those." It was Regula Collingswood. "I wasn't worried."

"We Sodeskayans would be the very last to impugn your words, Regula," Ursis chuckled, "but..."

"But," Borodov finished for him, "you and Anna were the first two aboard I.F.S. Renown when word came through that the M-four's bridge pod had been recovered." He sounded as if he were grinning.

"We were lucky to find that pod at all," Onrad remarked in his distinctive brogue. "Our friend Brim did quite a thorough job of making sure nobody else would fly that contraption of yours, Valerian."

"That luck had Onrad written all over it," Valerian's deep voice commented in a serious tone. "You kept the search alive long after everybody else had given up, Your Highness. All I wanted to do was murder that zukeed flying the media ship."

Onrad laughed. "Well, I am in command of the squadron, after all," he chuckled, "—no trouble there.

Besides, you'd have assassinated me if I'd even looked as if I were going to give up."

"Lucky for us we had only one M-four," Collingswood said, "or Moulding would have killed himself trying to win for Brim."

"You know, I've got a hunch he can hear us," the mysterious voice interrupted. "What's the scope show, Jennie?"

"I'm getting definite reactions, Doctor Flynn," a female voice interrupted.

That one, Brim was sure he hadn't heard before. But he'd heard of Xerxes O. Flynn! That was who owned the other voice. A great feeling of relief flooded through him. Whatever was wrong, he was in the best possible hands. Flynn had been medical officer aboard both I.F.S. Truculent and I.F.S. Defiant.

Clearly, Onrad had signed the esteemed Doctor of Space Medicine aboard his own ship. Flynn was a true master of the healing machine.

"Wilf," Flynn said, "if you can hear any of this, blink your eyes twice."

It took every bit of his concentration, but Brim managed to blink twice.

"Well, I'll be xaxtdamned," Flynn said. "I guess we'll have to call off the Kerolean taxidermist we sent for." He chuckled. "Poor bastard—he's going to be disappointed. We promised him the ugliest human he'd ever laid eyes on."

"Doctor Flynn!" Romanoff exclaimed.

"I'm getting more reaction, Doctor..."

"Hey, Anna," Flynn said breezily. "That's no insult—it's quite an honor. I've seen some ugly ones, believe me. What do you think, Wilf? Does that hurt your feelings? Blink a couple of times for us."

Brim managed six blinks in a row. He knew he was going to be all right.

According to Flynn, Brim had been lucky in a number of ways. When he was extracted from the mangled cockpit capsule—using a carefully wielded collapsium torch—many bones in his upper torso had been shattered inside an "impregnable" battle suit. By all rights, he deserved to be dead. Only a left shoulder blade and—incredibly—his irreparable spinal column had been spared. His face was nearly flattened when his helmet deformed after impinging directly against a hullmetal bulkhead. Flynn had reconstructed new features only by skillfull interpolation of old Fleet medical records. Additionally, the tremendous concussion had driven bone splinters into the optical portions of both eyes. Repairing those took the most time, working mostly at a molecular level to conserve the incredible clarity that made Brim the finest Helmsman anywhere.

Nevertheless, despite the extent of his injuries, he was now out of danger and well on his way to a complete—if improbable—recovery. Flynn, a fancier of Atalantan rothcats, warned the Carescrian that he now had used up at least ten of his original nine lives.

Perhaps the best part of his recuperation came early, while he was still on board I.F.S. Resolute. Onrad brought the news personally. "Well, Wilf," the Prince said quietly one afternoon, "I suppose you've heard that you'll get to race in the Mitchell again, now that LaKarn's driver beat our friends from the League."

He chuckled. "Old Rogan said that Dampier of his was fast."

Brim took a deep breath as the machine's warm pseudopods gently manipulated his eyes. "I heard, all right, your Majesty," he said, carefully. "It was the best news I've had since I figured out I was going to live." He meant it.

"Marino's DA.67 is a damned handsome ship," Onrad observed. "Did you get to see it before...?"

"Only in the media, Your Majesty," Brim interjected. "But it looked like a fine ship. And you can bet that old Xnor Marino will be in there next year with an even faster version."

"No doubt," Onrad said. Then he laughed. "You haven't even mentioned second and third places. Aren't you interested—or does it even matter, now that you'll be racing in Valerian's new M-five next year?"

It was Brim's turn to chuckle. "It matters, Your Highness," he said. "I think you know how I feel about Kirsh Valentin."

Onrad laughed. "Well, Brim," he said, "in spite of your efforts to conceal it over the years, I have gotten the idea that you don't care for him a great deal." Then he paused for a moment. "The embassy, however, tells me that you have a much more, ah, should we say, friendly relationship with Praefect Greener."

Brim chuckled. "Somehow, Your Highness, I didn't think that was a completely private room they assigned me."

"Actually," Onrad said, "it was. But it isn't often Controllers come to spend the night, so, of course, she did attract her share of attention. And the rooms in that particular wing have uncommonly thin walls."

"I'm glad she at least took a third place," Brim said. "I don't suppose we'll ever know for sure if she actually could have beaten Valentin."

Onrad laughed. "He'd have her killed if she did." Then Brim felt the man's hand on his arm. "I'm terribly sorry about what's happened to Margot," he said in a serious tone. "I needed to tell you that. Neither Father nor I know what to do about it, either. She's LaKarn's legal wife, and because of it, she has dual citizenship. Otherwise, we'd demand her back. Unless one grows up smoking it—like most League children do who are destined for Controller training—TimeWeed will affect the brain. Flynn's best guess is that she's got maybe ten years. Then, well..." His voice trailed off.

After that, there was very little more to talk about.

Later, at the Imperial Hospital in Atalanta, it was Brim's job to make all the new body parts function as cooperating entities, including his eyes. With Toby Moulding generously supplying transportation, he spent countless metacycles doing physical drills of the most agonizing nature, until he could once again manage his gravcycle. After that, he divided his days between his job at the Fleet base, where he slaved tirelessly, regaining his old knack for Helmsmanship and working out in simulators, learning to fly Valerian's new M-5. Only irregular visits from Claudia Valemont and her husband broke the grueling schedule he set for himself—although he did manage to establish an active correspondence with the busy Anna Romanoff, who answered his messages from nearly every corner of the Empire. He wasn't about to let her off the hook; she'd promised him an evening.

Then, at long last, he was again bound for Rhodor, this time aboard the starliner S.S. Commerce Enterprise and luxuriating in first class by order of no less than Emperor Greyffin IV himself. But for all the heady opulence, he was most anxious to reach Sherrington's Woolston labs. In his latest correspondence with Valerian, he'd learned that one of the two M-5s ordered by the Society would soon complete her ground trials, and he intended to make her first flight himself. Besides, Dr. Borodov planned to be there this trip, and he hadn't seen the old gentleman for nearly a year.

When he climbed aboard the Sherrington Type 224 at the Bromwich terminal, he knew immediately that something troublesome was afoot. The little ship was already occupied by a quartet of thermal-transfer specialists from Krasni-Peych who had arrived aboard a Sodeskayan liner less than a metacyle prior to Enterprise. The Bears—ordered in by Dr. Borodov himself—were all more or less in a somber mood because the PV/12 Drive had lately encountered serious cooling problems. Heat elimination was always a special challenge when large emitter systems were installed in small starships where physical radiator area was at a premium.

A second surprise waited for him at Lys, for it was neither Mark Valerian nor his two friends from Sodeskaya who met him at the little Woolston terminal. When the 224's passenger hatch opened to the predawn coolness outside, it was Anna Romanoff who waited under the Karlsson lamps at the far end of the brow. His spirit soared! She'd written that she was scheduled to complete negotiations at the main Bromwich plant about the same time as his own arrival, but he hadn't expected she would be finished so soon. As he led his traveling bag through the gate, his face was set into a silly, ear-to-ear grin—and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

"Thought you might need a lift to the labs," she teased with an impish smile, "so I got here a day early."

Her beautifully tailored cardigan suit was somehow both formal and casual at the same time. Its coarse weave managed to enhance her delicate charm.

"The labs are fine as long as you're going to be there," Brim answered while the Sodeskayans trooped past on their way to a second Sherrington skimmer. "Otherwise," he added, "well, Valerian can come find me wherever you happen to be going."

"Hmm," Romanoff murmured. "I don't suppose he would especially appreciate that since he did lend me the skimmer. I think he'd like you to fly his new ship today."

"Valerian can wait," Brim said. "Look what happened last time I went up in one of his rustbuckets." He laughed and took her arm. "Where's the skimmer, Anna?" he demanded. "We'll spend the day gathering flowers or something—and afterward I'll cash in the evening you promised me a long time ago."

She blushed again. "Mr. Brim," she declared with mock formality, "you are impossible." Then she looked into his eyes and shook her head. "How do you feel, Wilf?" she asked bluntly. "The last time I saw you, you were... well, you know... inside one of those healing machines."

"I feel damn fortunate to be alive," Brim answered seriously, "and very healthy, thank you." He nodded.

"I've received a number of new parts and a lot of good care."

"You deserve a lot of good care," she said.

"The best kind of care I can think of would be you spending the day with me while I avoid Valerian," he said.

"Wilf Brim!" she exclaimed in feigned outrage. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Well, if I do have to fly, then you could at least plan to spend the evening with me," he suggested earnestly.

"I think that can be arranged," she murmured with a blush. There's supposed to be quite a bash after the M-five's first flight."

"You'll go with me?" he asked.