The Trophy

The Mitchell Trophy

Following the Treaty of Garak in 52000, intragalactic commerce began to expand at breakneck speed.

The Great War had introduced literally millions of people on both sides to space flight and forced loosely linked dominions all over the galaxy into new dependence upon one another. A burgeoning transportation industry found itself pressured for more and more speed as frontiers rapidly expanded to the most remote parts of the galactic spiral, and beyond.

To conquer distance, to couple new power generators with the subtle properties of HyperSpeed Drives and hull configurations, then spur all three to the limit of their potential—that was the challenge. The urge to produce the fastest starship in the known Universe became an obsession that captivated the best technical minds everywhere.

Among the major galactic dominions, this burning quest for speed was eventually subsidized by government treasuries and entrusted to special government employees who contended as much for national honor as for personal glory. The starships they flew evolved rapidly from reconditioned war machines that coursed through space at perhaps forty thousand times the speed of light to such engineering masterpieces as Sherrington's M-6B in which (then) Lt. Commander Tobias Moulding, I.F. achieved an absolute velocity of nearly 112M LightSpeed late in 52009.

A major part of this battle was fought in the laboratories of great commercial enterprises by designers who repeatedly pushed themselves to create faster and more powerful systems. But the final proof was in absolute performance, and prodigious races became the battlegrounds where these creations were actually put to the test.

The most distinctive of the competitions—for the Mitchell Trophy—offered little in the way of a stipend to the victor; moreover, its rules seriously restricted the nature of vessels that could enter. Yet those same starships are largely credited with extending the boundaries of civilization beyond the galaxy and into the Universe itself.

Mitchell, son of a Rhodorian industrialist, believed that practical starships were the key to intragalactic commerce, and therefore to the survival of civilization itself. He concluded that true starship utility depended not only upon raw HyperLight velocity through deep space but, in equal measure, upon the ability to land and take off readily from the surfaces of planets anywhere. Accordingly, he began a speed competition for private starflight societies and personally donated its unique trophy to be awarded at yearly races until one society won three times in a row, thereby gaining permanent possession. Each year's race was to be hosted by the previous year's winning society. But despite Mitchell's hopes to keep the race out of state arenas, military and government-employed Helmsmen competed regularly.

From The Galactic Almanac (And Handy Encyclopedia), 52015

CHAPTER 1

End of the Line

"Thraggling Universe, Peretti—the gravs have tripped out. I can't keep her on course. Crank 'em up— now! "

"Power's gone, Mr. Brim. Readouts say she's blown the feed tube."

"Better send out an alert then, Sparks. Looks like we're going in. Pam, get everybody down in the cabin."

While Hamlish frantically broadcast the timeworn litany of trouble in deep space, Wilf Ansor Brim struggled alone with the old starship's controls. Beside him Jana Torgeson slumped over her co-Helmsman's console, reeking of cheap meem. "Morris," he yelled into a flickering display, "see about jettisoning some of the cargo back there!"

"Ain't enough of us here ta do much good this trip, Mr. Brim," Morris responded with a smug look on his face. "Warned ya before we left, we did...."

Brim ground his teeth. At the beginning of the trip, there had been hardly enough hands to staff Jamestown's bridge, much less handle a cargo bay. "I understand," he growled. "But you'd better do all you can. The more you get rid of, the more chance we all have of surviving the crash."

" That puts things in a whole new light, Mr. Brim," Morris responded. His thin visage disappeared from the screen like a gray wraith.

Dressed in a tan civilian Captain's uniform—a threadbare remnant from some long-defunct spaceline—the thirty-seven-year-old Brim shook his head. No wonder Morris had never been in the Fleet. He'd have spent his whole life in the brig. Through the ship's forward Hyperscreens—normally transparent crystalline windshields that simulated conventional vision when traveling faster than LightSpeed—he watched the first tongues of flame begin streaming aft from protrusions on the hull.

Reentry time and no gravs! He shook his head in disgust. All he had to work with now was the steering engine. The little gravity kicker wasn't much, but it gave him a chance—one of the few he could presently think of. Like any good Helmsman, he always tried to have a trick or two up his sleeve, just in case Voot decided to strike—which, in this case, he surely had. Suddenly, the ship jolted.

"There goes the pallet of hullmetal rolling machines," Morris reported from a display. He was now dressed in a bright orange space suit and helmet.

"Good work," Brim acknowledged through clenched teeth. Those big machines were worth a whole lot more than old City of Jamestown herself. Luckily, they'd been insured by their wary owners before takeoff. Little StarFleet Enterprises could never have raised that kind of ante in a million Standard years.

Without them, however, there would now be no hauling fee, and Universe knew the company needed every thraggling credit it could earn. He shook his head in frustration and peered down at the solid undercast, still c'lenyts below. At least the ship didn't seem to be falling so fast now....

"That's the last of the mobile crawlers," Morris reported momentarily. "Cargo deck's empty, all right?"

Brim nodded. "Very good, Morris," he said. But it wasn't very good at all. Even if he managed to bring the old starship in without killing anybody—which was still quite problematical—things looked bleak for StarFleet Enterprises. Jamestown was the only ship left in the fleet.

"Port Authority's dispatched a rescue tug," Hamlish reported presently. His beige-colored uniform was a lot newer than Brim's, even though it did start life in a different spaceline. "I've given 'em our predicted landing coordinates, just in case we get there."

Brim laughed grimly to himself. They'd get there, all right. No way to go anywhere else with only a steering engine. "I'll have the space radiators out, Jana," he ordered absently, preoccupied with his own readouts. Moments later, he shook his head in disgust, then reached over the gray-haired woman's rumpled form to activate her controls himself. Almost immediately, old Jamestown began to shudder and rumble while long, tapered panels deployed from either side of her torpedo-shaped hull. In the presence of any atmosphere at all, they had a startling effect.

Peretti chuckled contemptuously. "Not much left to cool with those old radiators, is there, Brim?" He was the only one in the crew with a new, made-to-order StarFleet Enterprises uniform. Clearly, he had access to funds above and beyond anything the faltering spaceline could disburse.

"Not radiators—wings," Brim snapped through his teeth as he concentrated on flying. One mistake now and they were all dead.

"Wings?"

"Yeah, wings," Brim answered instinctively. In the Fleet, it had once been his duty as Principal Helmsman to help train junior officers. "You haven't logged much time in these old kites, have you?"

"What's that got to do with the price of cawdor nails?" Peretti asked defensively, attempting to pull his coat over a sizable paunch.

"Not much anymore," Brim grunted while stratoturbulence rattled the old hullmetal plating, "but if you'd spent any time at all with these old ships, you'd know that their radiators are shaped like wings—as a safety feature. Probably for situations just like this."

"Passengers are down," a woman's voice interrupted from the alternate console—his main-cabin display had been out for the last month.

"Very well," Brim answered, conjuring her face in his mind's eye: Pamela Hale, the Chief Stewardess.

During the war years, she'd been executive officer of a battlecruiser. Pam was at least ten years older than himself and still stunningly beautiful. "Better get yourself down while you're at it," he added, "and strapped tight, somewhere against the aft side of a bulkhead. Local gravity won't hold long after we hit."

"I thought I heard the gravs go," she said from the intercom. "Can't Peretti get them going?"

"They're dead," Peretti interjected apathetically. "Like us, probably."

"No problem," she quipped easily. "A lot of people I run into these days died years ago."

Brim smiled. Hale was a brave one, all right. He guessed that she'd probably seen enough wartime action that nothing in the Universe could much faze her. "As long as those steering engines hold out," he said—hoping he sounded a lot more assured than he felt—"I'll bring us in." He glanced out the Hyperscreens again and shook his head. He couldn't even see where they were going to make landfall.

"Well, don't let me keep you, then," Hale said in the same bantering voice. "I wouldn't want anybody to think I was interfering with operations or anything."

"Go strap yourself down," Brim teased. People like that could calm a thraggling thunderstorm if they wanted to. He wondered how she'd ever wound up in an end-of-the-line outfit like StarFleet. He guessed it would be quite a story.

Outside, reentry flames were now flooding along the decks, and Jamestown's great, tapered radiators looked like dazzling sails spun of light itself. In the raging slipstream, their thunder raged through the old starship like a disruptor barrage.

"Going through about fifteen thousand irals," Hamlish reported, peering over Torgeson's still-inert form.

"Thanks, Sparks," Brim acknowledged. "I can use that kind of help a lot more than communications now."

"I'll switch consoles then," Hamlish grunted, and dragged Torgeson to a nearby jump seat. She wore a nondescript green jumpsuit and Brim noticed she had worn holes in both her boots. Afterward, the little COMM Operator slid behind the co-Helmsman's readouts and adjusted his glasses while he grinned awkwardly. "You'll have to tell me what you want to see."

"Start by calling out the altitude every couple thousand irals or so," Brim said grimly. "My altimeter conked out this morning."

"Twelve thousand irals," Hamlish announced presently. "I guess we've slowed some, haven't we?"

"Yeah," Brim agreed, "the rate indicator shows that." It was better, but still awfully fast. "Button up the cargo holds, Mr. Morris," he warned, speaking into the display.

"Cargo holds are secure, Mr. Brim," Morris replied calmly.

Brim envied him his space suit; it would be a big help in a crash landfall. Since passengers didn't wear them, however, bridge crews couldn't either.

"Ten thousand irals, and the checkout panel's lit, Mr. Brim," Hamlish reported.

"Got you—read the checklist to me as it displays."

"Aye, Mr. Brim. Shoulder harnesses?"

"Check," Brim answered, struggling into a network of faded webbing. He wondered how strong it actually was after all these years.

"Buoyancy chambers?"

Brim checked an emergency area beside the altimeter readout. Three green lights—the old rustbucket thought she could float, anyway. "Ready," he said hopefully.

"Eight thousand irals."

"Check." The undercast seemed to be coming up at them faster as the distance narrowed. He shuddered.

"Steering engine on continuous power?"

"Continuous power—check."

"Autoflight panels?"

"Off," Brim said emphatically. Under these circumstances, he wasn't about to trust anybody's hundred-year-old autohelm.

"Emergency beacon?"

"It'll be on soon as you hit the green panel under your forward Hyperscreen."

"It's on."

"Check."

"Six thousand irals. That's the last item from the panel checklist, Mr. Brim."

"Very well," Brim acknowledged. "Just stay where you are. I'll call out a few more items myself in a moment."

Suddenly, they plunged into the clouds. At once, torrents of rain began to thunder against the fiery Hyperscreens, transformed instantly to steam while the old starship bounced and groaned in the darkening gloom. They were soon in such dense vapor that their forward position light bathed the outside world in a ghostly white glow, while the rotating beacon blinked dazzling green across it like disrupter fire.

"Speed brakes?" Brim asked. "Five lights over there on panel two."

"Five lights... on."

"Good work, Hamlish," Brim said. Then, "Pam, are you strapped in down there?"

"With my back against a bulkhead, Wilf."

"What about the passengers?"

"Safe as I can make 'em."

"Wish me luck, then."

"You bet— real good luck, sweetie."

"Three thousand irals..."

A heartbeat later, they broke out into driving snow over a seascape of whitecapped swells. Brim glanced at the leaden gray combers below while ice suddenly frosted the fast-cooling Hyperscreens. He switched on the heat and melted it, but he didn't need ice to tell him that it was cold down there.

An altitude warning horn sounded. "One thousand irals," Hamlish reported.

"Thanks," Brim acknowledged, almost wholly consumed in setting up his landing. "What's our airspeed?"

Now, he was clumsily turning upwind across the troughs of the swells. They suddenly looked bigger than battleships.

"Airspeed one sixty-three." Hamlish's voice was getting tight and squeaky.

Brim chuckled to himself. He wasn't the only one terrified by the view through the forward Hyperscreens.

Only a few hundred irals separated them from the rolling violence of those swells. "Brace yourself," he warned. "Here we go."

"Pull up! Pull up! " cautioned the ship's altitude alert.

He punched the alarm into silence as he rolled the port radiator into a rogue gust, then dropped the nose slightly. Speed meant lift, and he'd soon need all of the latter he could get. Somehow, he had to set her down on the relative calm of an upward slope while traveling in the opposite direction. Long patterns of lacy spume marked the troughs parallel to his flight path. A sudden gust threw Jamestown's nose to starboard again; this time, she began to crab sideways. Grinding his teeth, Brim rolled the port radiator lower. After what seemed like an eon, she began to line up again—but now, no more than thirty irals separated her belly from the crest of an oncoming swell. Time to get her down. Brim carefully raised her nose till she slowed, barely maintaining lift. Timing was everything now; a false move and they were all dead. The old starship trembled violently as the radiators began to stall, but Brim deftly willed her airborne with the steering engine at full forward until—moments before the next crest passed beneath the hull—he brought the nose up sharply, then plunged behind the mountainous wavetop as it surged astern, dousing the Hyperscreens with foam and spume.

A split click later, old Jamestown smashed onto the back of the wave, launching two massive cascades of green water high overhead and shuddering back in the air while Brim struggled to raise her nose from the next impact. Suddenly he stiffened. In the corner of his eye he caught a large inspection hatch hanging from the leading edge of the port radiator. It had clearly torn open at the first violent impingement, and was now scuffing the surface in short bursts of mist. Before he could react, it caught the roiled surface, then separated in an explosive cloud of spray, dropping the wingtip precipitously. In desperation, he put the helm hard to starboard, but it was too late. The radiator's tip dug into the water and the starship cartwheeled. With the steering engine at full detent, he struggled to whipsaw back on course, and almost made it—but not quite. When the ship slammed into the next wave, her nose was still down. The concussion knocked out the local gravity and pushed the City of Jamestown violently back to starboard. Loose equipment cascaded wildly along the bridge floor while the air filled with screams from the lower decks and Brim's face smashed into the readout panel. The starboard Hyperscreens gave way to a tempest of dazzling high-voltage sparks. Before Brim could move, green water erupted onto the flight bridge like an explosion.

Spluttering and coughing, Brim fought against the shoulder straps in a desperate effort to keep his head above the flood. Whining emergency pumps began to labor in the background as waves surged in all directions through the flight bridge. Then the water stopped pouring in as the old starship reared her nose skyward, hung for awful clicks, and plunged back in a great welter of spray. Moments later, she careened to a stop, rolling wildly, parallel to the endless ranks of swells. Somehow, she was down.

With Hamlish back at his station anxiously contacting various manned compartments to see who might have survived, Brim secured the few controls that yet needed attention, then leaned out the side window and looked sadly back along Jamestown's listing hull. Here and there, her plates were wrinkled like cheap tissue paper. The spaceframe had clearly given way in a number of locations. He'd done his best for the old girl. It simply hadn't been good enough.

He shook his head as he watched a tug materialize out of the driving snow overhead and begin setting up a landfall. Clearly, this was the end of the line for old City of Jamestown—and probably StarFleet Enterprises as well. Then he took a deep breath and pursed his lips grimly. For all practical purposes, he supposed, it was also the end of the line for Wilf Ansor Brim, at least economically.

Later, Brim balanced himself precariously atop Jamestown's shattered bridge as the tug pulled them slowly into harbor. Two bright green hawser beams crackled from optical bollards on the stubby, hunchbacked rescue ship to the nose of the ED-4, but for the last hundred c'lenyts or so, those beams had disappeared ahead into heavy fog that set in as the storm subsided. There was no sky and no horizon, only the mist, cold and wet on his face. The sea's leaden swell was long and slow, littered with ice fragments. Listing heavily to port, Jamestown sloughed unwillingly through the sluggish water, shouldering aside half-frozen mush that streamed past her ruined flanks and tumbled in her wake with a distant, whisperlike chuckle. Aft, he could see the misshappen curve of the hull, the dull, corrugated segment outside the failed generator chamber, a number of open hatches, the stubby KA'PPA tower, and farther on, white arcs of foamy water jetting from the pump outlets.

Then it started to snow again. Small white flakes whirled past his face like moths near a Karlsson lamp.

He shivered. His old tan uniform didn't heat well anymore, and a tear below the collar let a lot of frigid dampness in. But it felt better trembling out there in the cold than sitting uselessly below. With the Hyperscreen frames empty and open to the weather. Jamestown's bridge was, for all practical purposes, just as cold and wet as the outdoors. Besides, the wrecked, waterlogged consoles tended to remind him of his own fortunes during the last two years. Somehow, none of it seemed credible—not even now.

Less than two months after he (then Lieutenant Wilf Brim, Imperial Star Fleet) reported to a new assignment aboard I.F.S. Thunderbolt, Emperor Nergol Triannic and his League of Dark Stars had unexpectedly sued for an armistice. The war had ended precisely three standard weeks later, with Triannic sent into exile on remote little Portoferria, orbiting a huge gas giant in the sparsely populated ninety-first region of the galaxy. During the peace euphoria that followed, the Thunderbolt was expeditiously paid off, declared surplus, then towed to the breakers—early victim of the Congress for Intragalactic Accord, or CIGA. This burgeoning new organization had quickly infected the Imperial Government as well as the Admiralty when the war's patriotic fervor began to wane.

Brim's own career had followed the same path a short time later. After six weeks of inactivity at the great Fleet base on frozen Gimmas-Haefdon, he had been summoned to a large auditorium at one of the headquarters buildings, packed in with other recently orphaned Fleet officers, and indifferently discharged with a month's credits in his pocket, a one-way ticket to anywhere in the Empire, and a printed citation ("suitable for framing") from Greyffin IV, Grand Galactic Emperor, Prince of the Reggio Star Cluster, and Rightful Protector of the Heavens. "We wish to personally thank you," the citation began, "for your tireless devotion to the cause of..." Heartsick, Brim had thrown it away—the signature was clearly a fake.

He'd seen the real thing the day he'd been awarded the Emperor's Cross, and that citation was actually signed. He'd even met the Emperor in person. During another life, it seemed now....

Afterward, with throngs of other displaced Blue Capes, he'd made his way back to Avalon, the Imperial capital. Even if he had wished to return to his native Carescria—which he did not—nothing remained of his earlier life there. After the Helmsmen's Academy and the life of an Imperial officer, there was no returning to that poverty-blighted desert, not even with the specter of approaching destitution. And his meager savings had dwindled predictably in the fast-paced, explosive life of Avalon City—capital of nearly half the galaxy.

Brim shook his head as the fog thickened again, making him blink. There would certainly be no income from this trip—not with a jettisoned cargo and a wrecked starship. He shrugged as the mist isolated him completely for a moment. It was some satisfaction to have spared everyone on board, especially the passengers, unfortunate wretches that they were. Most of them were clearly on the bottom rungs of the Empire's economic ladder. They were the only kind of fares little StarFleet Enterprises could attract: people who could pay so little they'd take passage on a clapped-out antique like Jamestown.

Just to get to Avalon....

He laughed with half-cynical compassion. All too soon, they'd find out—as he had—that they'd only gone from some distant frying pan into a brand-new fire....

The fog cleared again for a moment, revealing a bleak forest of gantry cranes, most of them inactive.

When the huge port reverted to a peacetime economy, many of the great commercial terminals had been forced to close their piers from lack of traffic. Brim shook his head; it certainly wasn't the kind of postwar paradise he'd once imagined. But then, he'd been a bit more idealistic in those days, expecting people to feel some appreciation—perhaps even a little obligation—for returning veterans and the wartime sacrifices they'd made. He snorted. The CIGAs took care of that with their ceaseless attacks on everything even remotely connected with the military. Instead of making him feel as if he had finally earned some worth in the Empire, he'd gotten the idea early on that he was actually part of a national embarrassment. The war was over, and the sooner people could forget about every part of it, the better.

He shrugged, then started momentarily as Pam Hale materialized out of the fog, expertly negotiating the wet hullmetal on spike-heeled boots as she took her place beside him. A full-length cloak and hood covered everything but her face with woolly tan. She had soft, mist-covered features: a dimpled chin with generous lips and high cheeks, a pug nose, and enormous blue eyes whose comers were developing a network of tiny wrinkles. "Not a pretty sight," she observed, nodding toward the empty docks and boarded-up cranes. "A lot of folks are out of work now that peace has come to the Empire."

"Yeah," Brim muttered. "Unless someone's actually aiming a disrupter at them, most people these days don't seem to attach much importance to Fleets or Blue Capes."

She met his eyes. "You're right," she agreed, "they don't." The she shrugged wistfully. "Though the Admiralty does seem to maintain adequate ships in commission for people with the proper pedigree—'political interest,' I think is the term they use."

Brim nodded. So far he could see, that was the normal way of the Universe. In the end, all privilege was skewed toward wealth. Every Carescrian knew it, fatalistically expected it, even. That didn't mean he particularly liked being treated the way he'd been treated. At one time, he'd hoped that things would change. But those hopes had been short-lived indeed. And, he supposed, it was easier for him to return to being nothing than to experience it for the first time, as were many of his presently out-of-work ex-Fleet colleagues. Only Margot made things really difficult for him. He felt for the ring she had given him, hanging from a chain around his neck. He hated being nobody, because of her.

"What'll you do now?" Hale asked, interrupting his musing. "I doubt if Iverson can keep StarFleet running with no starships to fly."

Brim snorted grimly and nodded. "I doubt it, too," he said. There was no use pretending otherwise. The little company had been in a precarious financial position for a long time. It was the only reason they'd hired him in the first place—he was willing to fly for almost no pay at all. He shrugged. "Maybe I'll go into another line of work," he said lamely.

"Oh?" Hale looked at him with an expression of concern. "What else do you know how to do?"

"Well," Brim said, struggling to maintain his facade of confidence, "this isn't the only flying job in the Universe. Who knows, I might just get myself a job jockeying one of those hot starships they're getting ready for the Mitchell Trophy Race."

" Really! " Hale asked with an exaggerated look of awe. "I thought the Imperial Starflight Society was only for the rich and famous. Or is there something I should know about you, Wilf?"

Brim grinned in spite of himself. "No," he answered, "I've got no secrets—nor fame nor money. So I guess I won't show up in A'zurn for the races next year." He shrugged. "I suppose I don't know precisely what I'll do next, but I'm bound to find something. " Deep down, the thought cut him like a knife. How could he carry on a romance with a Royal Princess like Margot Effer'wyck if he had to live in a slum and work as a common laborer, with calloused hands? He ground his teeth. That part of his rapid economic descent frightened him more than anything else. But then, maybe it didn't matter much anyway. After all, her duties left her little time to spend with him these days. He forced the dismal thought from his mind.

"How about you, Pam?" he asked. "What kind of plans do you have?"

"Like everybody else, Wilf," she said, "I'll find something. I always have before." She looked away into the fog. "Something ..."

Brim knew she wasn't any more sure of herself than he was.

At length, the tug dragged City of Jamestown into a filthy basin adjacent to a salvage yard. While Brim sat disconsolately at the Helmsman's console, blowing on his hands to keep them warm, she was floated over submerged gravity pontoons that eventually restored her to the standard twenty-five irals altitude that starships maintain while at rest. After this, heavy cranes nudged her broken hull over a dilapidated stone gravity pool where she connected with a rusty brow indifferently smeared with bright patches of orange anticorrosion compounds.

"Not exactly the royal landing pier on Lake Mersin," Peretti observed gloomily.

"It's a lot better than the bottom of Prendergast Bight," Hamlish countered.

"I guess," Brim allowed, but his sentiments were closer to Peretti's. In the Fleet he'd always landed on the lake, close in to the city instead of the drab, sprawling commercial port hundreds of c'lenyts to the austral pole. He looked down at the brow, just concluding its efforts to attach itself with Jamestown's sprung main hatch. The first person across was J. Throckmorton P. Iverson, owner and Chief Executive of StarFleet Enterprises, pushing upstream against a stampeding throng of passengers who wanted to be rid of starships forever. When finally he stepped onto the bridge, wearing a food-spotted gray business suit, scuffed shoes, and threadbare cuffs, he had the dazed look of someone who had been recently smashed between the eyes by a meteor. With his fat pink cheeks and narrow, nearsighted eyes, he looked more like a bookkeeper than an entrepreneur. "I, ah, hear nobody got killed," he said, glancing around hesitantly.

" Nobody, " Brim assured him quietly. "Three or four were a little shaken when their seats tore loose, but nobody was seriously hurt, except old Jamestown herself." He peered down at his boots. "I guess she's gone for good."

"Yeah," Iverson said, clearing his throat nervously and looking across the old ship's twisted decks.

"Looks like she's gone, all right, the way the hullmetal's wrinkled."

"Sorry," Brim said lamely. Nothing else seemed appropriate.

Iverson dropped his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. "Wasn't your fault, Brim," he admitted quietly. "Everybody more or less expected the generators to go pretty soon. We just thought that, well, you know, maybe she'd last one more trip and pay for the repairs she needed so badly. I guess we should have told you."

Brim felt his gorge rise, along with a nearly uncontrollable rage. "You mean you knew about that power supply tube?" he snorted, taking an angry step forward, "And you let me take all those people into Hyperspace anyway?"

"Well," Iverson said, shrinking back and wringing his hands. "We didn't exactly know, you understand..."

Brim took a deep breath and, shutting his eyes, let out a long sigh. What use was it? Everything was all over anyway, with no one badly hurt, at least in a physical sense. And Iverson never would understand.

Bean counters didn't see things the way Helmsmen did—they weren't supposed to. After a long silence, he unclenched his fists. "It doesn't matter, Mr. Iverson," he said. "Just pay us off and we'll be on our way."

Iverson nervously pinched the fleshy part of his hand. "Y-yeah," he stuttered, "T-that's what I came to talk about, Brim."

"You do have the credits to pay us, don't you?" Brim demanded, narrowing his eyes.

"Um," Iverson stammered, "I d-don't exactly have that much now, but..."

"But," interjected a deeper voice from the aft companionway, "Mr. Iverson is counting on that many extra credits once he's sold this twisted wreck for scrap—and paid me for the services of my tug."

Centered in the hatch was a squat, muscular man dressed in white satin coveralls and a gray ebony cloak.

Wearing a black velvet cap gathered and puffed over the crown with elaborate ribbon lacings, he had a massive frowning brow, sharp nose, pointed moustache, and the cold gray eyes of a professional assassin. Brim recognized him in a moment: one of the most influential—and reputedly dangerous—men in Avalon's dockyard milieu.

"Zolton Jaiswal!" Iverson grumbled, a disagreeable look forming on his face. "I, um, was just coming to see you."

"Ah, I am comforted to know that, friend Iverson," Jaiswal pronounced without changing his own brooding demeanor. "We of the salvage brotherhood have been expecting the arrival of your ship for quite a while, now. Old Jamestown has functioned without repairs much longer than many of my colleagues expected." He laughed sardonically and stepped into the bridge. "They clearly reckoned without placing Mr. Brim in their equations—as I did not. That is the reason my tug arrived alone." He chuckled quietly. "Everyone else assumed that you must have taken the old ship to another port for repairs. They stopped anticipating your call for assistance. On the other hand," he said, placing a hand over his heart, "I continued to monitor the distress channels, certain that you—with neither assets nor credit for such costly work—would count on Mr. Brim here to keep your rickety equipment in operation until the last possible moment. And of course," he added, "I was right."

Iverson's face twisted with resentment. "So you waited," he continued in a bitter voice, "like the rest of the carrion-eaters who have feasted on the Fleet since Triannic's xaxtdamned Treaty of Garak."

"Think what you will, Iverson," the little man said with a grim scowl. "But were it not me here, someone else would be scrapping those ships." He touched the neck clasp of his cloak. "Like others, you mistake good business practices for traitorous double-dealing. But I am just as patriotic as the next man on Avalon, perhaps a little more, were the truth known."

"More like a thraggling CIGA, from where I stand," Iverson sulked.

Jaiswal's lip curled with ill-concealed rage. "Fortunately," he said, drawing a saffron plastic envelope from his cloak, "I am under no obligation to endure your petty insults. But you are under obligation to pay this."

"Yeah," Iverson groaned, with a look of utter defeat. "I know—let me have the invoice."

With a grim little smile, Jaiswal handed it over.

Iverson glanced at the scrap of plastic, then set his jaw and took a deep breath. "Pretty xaxtdamn sure of yourself, weren't you," he snorted. "You've already included the tow to the breaker's yard."

Jaiswal shrugged indifferently. "I can make you a separate invoice, should that be necessary."

"Maybe I'll get some other estimates," Iverson spat back petulantly.

"Suit yourself, Iverson," Jaiswal sighed with a detached shrug, "but your rent on my gravity pool is high, as are the fees for my tug that even now waits—with its meters running—to tow this ship to the breakers."

Iverson clenched his fists and looked down at his worn boots. "I suppose you already know how much old Jamestown's worth as scrap."

"To the very credit," Jaiswal said, inspecting his fingernails. "I had an estimate made from my tug. The amount you receive will precisely cover the credits owed to your crew plus my towing invoice, with a modicum extra that will pay Mr. Brim, here, for making the trip. Imperial law requires a certified Helmsman aboard all commercial tows, as you know."

"You bastard," Iverson groaned lifelessly. "I'm almost sorry Brim didn't let her sink."

"She would have sunk, Iverson," Jaiswal reminded him, hands at his chest, palms up, "without Brim at the controls. And you would now be up to your reddish neck in murder charges for every passenger lost in the crash."

Iverson shook his head and looked at his feet again. "You don't have to remind me," he said.

"I assume it is settled then?" Jaiswal asked. "Shall we tow this wreck to the breakers before you owe me more credits than she is worth?"

Iverson peered around the cabin for a moment, fastening his gaze finally on Brim. Peretti and Hamlish were already packing their gear. "You'll ride her?" he asked.

"Yeah," Brim agreed, "I guess I might as well. Looks as if that's the last I'll ever get from StarFleet Enterprises."

"You're right there, Brim," Iverson assured him. "Poor old Jamestown was the last card I had to play."

Then he laughed cynically. "Nergol Triannic and all his StarFleets never even touched me during the war.

It took the CIGAs and their xaxtdamned peace efforts to really mess up my life."

"And shatter the Fleet," Hale added from the companionway. A small traveling case hovered at her heels, and she was dressed for the outdoors.

Brim stepped to the hatchway, frowning. "I guess you heard you'll get paid," he said, a discreet specter of perfume tempting his nostrils.

"Yes, thank the Universe," she said quietly, "Hamlish left the COMM channel open."

"I guessed that Jaiswal might do something like that," Brim said. Then, on an impulse, he took her hand—surprisingly soft and warm in his. "What can I do to help you?" he asked.

"You're helping right now," she said softly, smiling down at her hand. "And, of course, I am still alive."

Brim frowned and shook his head. "No," he protested. "I mean—"

"I know what you mean," she stated quietly. "And I appreciate it. But there's nothing much anybody can do about me—except myself. Besides, Mr. Brim," she said with a wink, "you'll be tied up for at least two days with the tow, and by that time, I intend to be well on my way—wherever that way turns out to be."

Brim nodded and released her hand. He expected that she'd waste no time. Unless he missed his guess, there was considerable resilience under all her feminine sleekness. "I hope our paths cross again, Pam,"

he said. "You're pretty special."

"You're pretty special yourself, Mr. Wilf Ansor Brim," she chuckled grimly. "Maybe we can get together the next time." Then she peered past him into the bridge. "Don't take any wooden credits, gang," she laughed. "Especially you, Jaiswal—I'd hate to hear that there was anybody around slick enough to take you for a ride."

"Even wooden credits from such a sweet hand as yours would seem precious to me, splendid lady," he said, bowing elaborately and fixing her with a penetrating stare. "Perhaps I can drop you off somewhere in my limousine."

Hale raised her eyebrows, and she considered the dark little man for a moment with new interest. "All right," she said at length, "perhaps you can." She turned for a moment to wink at a surprised Brim, then started back down the companionway, her traveling case bobbing along the treads after her. "I'll be outside the brow, Jaiswal," she called over her shoulder. "Don't be long." Then, except for the exquisite afterglow of her perfume, she was gone.

The scrapyard of Z. Jaiswal & Co., Shipbreakers, at the dismal seaside town of Keith'Inver was ugly—extravagantly so. Located on Inver Bight, a bend of the Imperial continent's bleak and nearly treeless boreal coast, the mean little village incorporated cheap wooden housing, bad sewers, and worse pavement. During winter, which was both heavy and long, the air was chilly, and the dampness penetrated to the marrow of one's bones. Local dwellers coughed and sneezed and watched advertisements for useless patent remedies, in an age that had all but forgotten disease. It was a grim annex of the Imperial capital that never appear in tourist ads. Due to a perverse ocean current, its sky was gloomy most of the year, as were its gray, squalid landscape and most of the structures that interrupted its cheerless uniformity.

Defunct and empty, City of Jamestown listed silently in thick quayside scum, moored alongside the unkempt corpses of I.F.S. Treacherous, a relatively late-mark T-Class destroyer, and the battle-worn I.F.S. Adamant, an ancient frigate. Behind these luckless starships, busy cutting torches were already throwing showers of sparks over the grimy, opened hull of I.F.S. Conqueror, once-mighty flagship of Vice Admiral (the Hon.) Jacob Sturdee during the historic battle for Atalanta. Busy, weather-blackened derricks hoisted massive plates of dulled hullmetal from the great starship's savaged cadaver and dropped them unceremoniously into waiting scrap barges bound for collapsium forges elsewhere in the galaxy.

Halfway across the bay, a cloaked, one-eyed hunchback with a crooked mouth and twisted hands bent over the controls of an open ferry taking Brim to Keith'Inver's public dock and the single daily train to Avalon City. The Carescrian shivered in biting, wind-driven dampness, hardly able to gaze back at the old warships. But no matter where he cast his eyes, some gallant vessel was being dismantled. Z. Jaiswal

& Co., had ample jobs, all right—for people with no regard for what they were doing. He ground his teeth at the appalling irony going on before his eyes. In six years of bloody, pitiless warfare, the enormous battlefleets of Nergol Triannic had been unable to achieve what the Imperial Admiralty was doing to itself of its own volition. With a bit of assistance, of course, from Nergol Triannic's Treaty of Garak, as well as patriotic organizations like the Congress for Intragalactic Accord.

Brim shook his head sadly as the unkempt ferry ground alongside the terminal wharf. The Treaty of Garak: CIGAs stalwartly claimed it had ended a war—but had it actually? Were Nergol Triannic's minions really sending ships to the breakers as they claimed? He'd called Leaguers a lot of vile names in his day, but "quitter" wasn't one of them so far as he could remember.

He carefully counted out his fare to the hunchback, then climbed to the grimy surface of the wharf and made his way to the train platform. A lot of other people claimed that the treaty was only a ruse. And if they were correct, then the only benefit would accrue to the League, buying them time to recover from the unsuccessful attack on Atalanta at Hador-Haelic. And while powerful CIGA peacemongers—many within the Admiralty itself—busily demonstrated their willingness to banish war by calling for more cuts in the size of the Imperial Fleet, the League of Dark Stars was probably rebuilding theirs in secret, biding time until they were handed their goal of galactic domination on a silver platter.

After a chilly wait, Brim watched his train snake out of its tunnel like a long segmented needle, then sigh into the station, radiating heat as it slowed to a hover over its single glowing track. A door hissed open and Brim, alone on the dingy platform, stepped inside, taking a cramped seat at the rear of the windowless third-class compartment. He looked at his timepiece and nodded to himself. With a little luck at the Avalon end, he'd be back in his flat just in time for the message Margot promised to send when she returned.

That thought produced visions of loose golden curls framing a glamorous oval face, languid blue eyes, generous lips, and a brow that frowned in the most lovely way possible every time she smiled. Her Serene Majesty, Princess Margot of the Effer'wyck Dominions and Baroness of the Torond was not only Brim's one true love—as well as extravagant lover—she was also intelligent, courageous, and deliciously heretical. At the time she and Brim met aboard I.F.S. Defiant, she specialized in perilous covert missions to League planets that produced some of the war's most valuable intelligence information. However, once Emperor Greyffin IV, her uncle, caught wind of these dangerous activities, he forbade them to continue.

A politically dictated marriage (to Baron Rogan LaKarn, first in succession for the throne of the Torond) was simply too valuable an asset to risk. Temporarily stymied in her efforts at direct action, she continued her military career by directing an important intelligence organization in Avalon, and even found time to secretly participate in the defense of Atalanta, during which she was severely wounded.

Wryly, Brim considered her coming visit. He'd seen so very little of her since his return to Avalon. Not that he could blame her for it. She was, after all, obligated to accompany her husband wherever he went.

And LaKarn was a devoted traveler. Until he was someday crowned Grand Duke—upon the eventual death of his mother—he ostensibly served as Ambassador to the Empire, with residence in Avalon. But the "residence" part was little more than a joke, as was his post at the embassy. Like many other superwealthy young men of the postwar civilization, LaKarn was on a pleasure spree, traveling regularly among the great cities of the galaxy, visiting celebrated spas and casinos, and hobnobbing with other members of a new, fast-moving, freewheeling leisure class.

During the rare times Brim and Margot had been able to steal a moment together, she often decried the meaningless life she was forced to live. But during her long absences, Brim found himself struggling bitterly against resentment for the vast difference between his own deepening poverty and the lavish lifestyle she followed.

Little more than a metacycle later, he was back in Avalon, hurrying through the wintry streets on foot.

With the job market as unpromising as it was, he needed to save every credit, especially if he expected to eat with any regularity. As he crossed over a busy thoroughfare, speeding limousines below reminded him of the days past when he traveled these same boulevards in similar transportation—once in one of the Emperor's own. And even though he'd been poor most of his existence, the taste of the good life he'd received in the Fleet was not easily forgotten, nor relinquished.

A large and colorful holoboard farther along the street touted someone's news service. Brim stopped to look. What caught his eye was a sleek starship in the background of the ad. Lean and powerful-looking, it was one of the three modified attack ships the Imperial Starflight Society planned to enter in the Mitchell Trophy Race, scheduled to take place in less than a year as he remembered. By the Universe, he thought to himself, there was a ship he'd like to fly! He grinned and thought of Pam Hale's words about being "rich and famous." Well, he might be broke and obscure, but he'd once rubbed elbows with a few of the swells that belonged to that exclusive club, although he suspected they'd be ashamed to admit they knew him these days.

He sighed as he made his way up a narrow staircase to his apartment. Cooking odors from neighboring flats reminded him that the last morsel he'd eaten was a cold box lunch provided by the tugboat captain almost a day ago. Tonight, he would skip supper as well. He wanted to toast Margot's visit with good Logish Meem, and that meant he must economize.

He keyed the lock on a peeling, age-stained door, then entered his chilly one-room flat, nearly devoid of furniture, or much of anything else for that matter. As his funds had dwindled, he had sold off most of his meager possessions—even his prized wartime medals and a rare old Sodeskayan blaster—always optimistic that new employment was around the corner. But it never was. So many jobless Helmsmen were idle on the streets of Avalon, and so few ships were still in commission, that only the well connected found jobs; skills were secondary attributes in that cutthroat market. Unfortunately for Brim, "connecting"

with the influence he unquestionably possessed meant accepting help. And that was something quite beyond his experience.

Seating himself on a carton before a battered public correspondence socket, he called up his mail.

Immediately, messages appeared from Nikolai Yanuarievich Ursis and Anastas Alexyi Borodov, wealthy Sodeskayan Bears and comrades from a thousand days of desperate warfare. They were again solicitously offering employment on freighters of G.F.S.S. (Great Federation of Sodeskayan States) registry.

Concluding one more time that the Bears' proposals were made more from compassion than from actual need, he turned them down by return mail, writing of fictitious opportunities that would keep him lucratively busy for a year or more. When he finished, his face burned with embarrassment; he had an almost morbid fear of receiving charity. Carescrians might collectively be the poorest people in the Empire, but they were also proud, and fiercely independent.

Another message was from Lieutenant Commander Regula Collingswood, now married to Erat Plutron, one of the surviving old-line Admirals in the Imperial Fleet. She was also an officer of the Imperial Starflight Society, if he remembered correctly. Her note was one more invitation to Bemus Hall, their ancient manor house near the boreal shore of Lake Mersin. Brim shook his head sadly; Collingswood too was concerned for his situation. With deep appreciation and considerable regret, he sent a polite message of refusal. Facing that magnificent person from his present poverty was simply unthinkable, as was accepting help from flighted A'zurnian embassy officials who, in still another message, were making their regular check of his situation on behalf of a nation whose everlasting gratitude he had earned in a bygone land campaign. He politely refused this as well. If a person couldn't make his own way in the galaxy, then he didn't deserve to live, and that was that.

As usual, he saved Margot's correspondence for last. Hearing from her was almost an obsession with him, but lately, he had begun to view her messages in a new and altogether unsettling manner.

During his tenure in the Fleet, the tremendous disparity in their economic circumstances had never seemed very significant. Then he had been an officer, and surely on his way up. These days, however, while she was still a Royal Princess, he was now a nobody, with few prospects of any kind. It bothered him that poverty seemed to distort his point of view, especially because he was reasonably sure that she remained constant in their star-crossed love affair. If anything, the messages she sent were now even more loving and erotic than they ever were before her marriage.

Within the metacycle, he discovered that her latest posting was no exception. "Wilf, dearest love," she whispered as her flushed countenance faded for the last time from the display, "soon, we will be together, and I shall no longer have to do this for myself." After a few moments, he wiped his brow, then checked his face in the mirror for the thousandth time. Her "soon" was less than two days hence. He hoped to Voot that the swelling in his bruised nose would subside by then.

Brim's run-down bed creaked as Margot drowsily rolled a leg over his hips and covered his face with wet, perfumed kisses. "I love you, Wilf," she sighed drowsily,—"more than the Universe itself...."

Strangely wide awake after a long evening of unrestrained lovemaking, he gently caressed her silky hair with his free hand until her breathing evened out and she lay still in his arms. In the late-night silence, his mind's eye retraced their surreptitious meeting that evening in the romantic shadows of a snug, out-of-the-way bistro. Somehow, his cheap clothes didn't seem so noticeable there, and from the time he kissed her long, tapering fingers, all the hopelessness of his current life healed in the warm glow of her soul. Later, she had even made his shabby walk-up seem like a suite in some grand hotel as, garment by garment, she slowly bared her glorious body, then drew his face into a glorious tangle of moist golden curls.

In the stillness of the night he let the warm perfume of her breath restore his shattered spirit. Clearly, she cared for him as much today as she had on that glorious evening years ago when they first made love in her private suite at the Effer'ian embassy.

Then—infernally—a wave of despair swept all the warmth away. In those days, he had been Wilf Brim the Helmsman, a proud man with a mission and a future who could damn well contend for the most desirable woman in the Empire. What mattered most in that wild tumult of battle were skills, guts, and confidence. He had them all—in great quantities. Lately, however, it seemed that skill and guts counted for very little in the peacetime Empire of CIGA politics. And to his everlasting shame, he deathly feared that he was now losing his confidence. It was a long time before he finally drifted off into a confused state that only vaguely resembled sleep.

He awoke with a start to quiet weeping from the pillow next to him. "Margot," he whispered with anxious concern, "what is it? What's wrong?" By the glow of his wall heater, he could see her cheeks were streaked with eye makeup.

She only buried her head in her hands and began to cry aloud until her body was wracked with violent sobs. Truly distressed by this time, Brim held her close in his arms, caressing the back of her neck and her shoulders until she seemed to regain some control and the fitful wrenching subsided. When her breathing returned to something like normal, he put his lips to her ear. "Want to tell me about it?" he asked in a whisper.

With her face still buried in the crook of his arm she shook her head. "No, Wilf, I don't," she murmured bitterly, "but I must." Without another word, she slipped from the bed and stepped to his sink where she turned up the lights and began to wash her face.

Even in Brim's anxiety, the sight of her ample buttocks and long, shapely legs were enough to cause a familiar excitement in his loins. Margot Effer'wyck was absolutely the most desirable woman he had encountered anywhere in the galaxy. What could have happened to her? He bit his lip. All he could do was wait patiently until she decided to share her troubles.

Inspecting her face in his tiny mirror, she at last turned and made her way back to the bed where she settled cross-legged beside him and took his hand in hers. "At first," she began, peering at him with a grave look, "I thought I ought to keep this from you for a while." She sighed quietly as light from the heater turned her hair into a golden halo. "But tonight," she continued presently, "I suddenly awoke with the fear that if I did, I might lose your trust. And without that, I would lose you, Wilf Brim."

Her red-rimmed eyes gazed at him with such fierce emotion that Brim raised himself to a sitting position.

"You can tell me, Margot," he said gently.

Almost as if she were at prayer—he'd actually seen people doing that—she bowed her head and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she looked him directly in the eye. "I'm pregnant, Wilf," she whispered quickly, as though the words themselves were bitter in her mouth. "I'm going to bear Rogan's son in a little less than eight months."

From a thousand c'lenyts distance, Brim heard his breath catch and he felt the sharp knife of dismay turn in his gut. "His son?" he asked weakly.

"His son," Margot repeated with the same intense look. "I'd managed to prevent that from happening for a long time, but ... well..." She shrugged. "We were in Tarrott after touring the League a few weeks back.

Rogan was dickering with Gorn-Hoff for three of their attack ships he wants to modify for the Mitchell Trophy Race, and, well, you can imagine how a big consortium like Gorn-Hoff entertains...." She raised her open hands guilelessly. "At any rate, after a huge banquet and a lot of Logish Meem, I simply needed company, and for once Rogan didn't let me down." She took a deep breath. "If it's any recompense, I was thinking about you most of the time—especially when..." She paused and smiled ruefully. "Anyway,"

she continued, "it wasn't until morning that I remembered I'd taken no precautions—and I was too embarrassed to ask for that kind of medical help in a foreign domain. Besides," she added, "Rogan would have killed me—he's been trying for a long time." She looked into his eyes again. "There," she said grimly. "Now you know everything about it."

Brim fought his emotions to a draw and gently lifted her chin until she was looking into his eyes. "It's all right," he said gently. "It was bound to happen someday...." But somehow, inside it wasn't all right. He gazed at her small breasts and the sensual curve of her stomach and suddenly things were different.

Instead of his usual stirrings, the sight of her golden pubic thatch sent a wave of regret coursing through his spirit like a gust of icy air. It was as if LaKarn had been there all night with them, watching.

"Are you all right, Wilf?" Margot asked with a sudden look of concern.

Brim took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said presently, "I'm all right. I guess I just wasn't ready for that kind of news...."

Margot gently bent to kiss his fingers. "Neither was I about a week ago," she said with a shake of her head. Then, a shadow of concern passed across her eyes and she threw her arms around his neck. "Hold me for a moment, Wilf," she begged anxiously. "I don't want to let this thing come between us!"

Brim eased her head back to the pillow. "The Universe knows I love you, Margot," he whispered ardently, "—better than life itself. And tomorrow I shall love you even more—for every tomorrow I live to see." It was no meaningless platitude: he meant every word. Then, he brushed her damp eyelashes with his lips and began to gently kiss her on the the mouth.

After some time, she began to clamp his shoulders more tightly and her breathing became labored.

Suddenly, her mouth opened and her tongue darted between his lips while she rolled onto her side and rhythmically crushed her groin into his hip. "Wilf," she moaned in a tow voice, "I need you again...."

At that moment, panic struck Wilf Brim with the force of a runaway starship. He wasn't ready. He ground his teeth and concentrated.

"Wilf," she urged breathlessly, throwing her leg over his waist, "hurry! I have to leave in less than a metacycle." She was ready, no doubt about that.

Totally incredulous, he squeezed his hand between them to make certain. It was true. "I-I'm not ready," he confessed with a groan. "I can't."

"You what?"

"I can't," he croaked, rolling over on his back.

"Oh, Wilf, my poor darling," she whispered in dismay. Suddenly she covered him with her body, placed her hands on his cheeks, and smothered his face in gentle kisses. "It's all right," she whispered in a voice filled with compassion. "You don't have to prove anything to me—ever. I love you. That's all that counts."

In spite of her tender words, Brim couldn't relax. "Oh great Universe," he moaned between clenched teeth, "now I've failed you in this too." He rolled from under her and swung his legs onto the floor, sitting with the sheet gripped in both hands as if it were his only anchor to sanity.

Margot quickly knelt beside him with her arms around his neck. "Wilf, Wilf," she sobbed. "What have I done to you?"

"Nothing," he answered, his voice cracking with emotion. "It's just that... well, I can't seem to win for losing, these days." He put his face in his hands, feeling the emotions welling within him.

Suddenly, he felt her hand at his groin. "Dearest Wilf," she whispered, urging him onto the bed again.

She never got to finish. Discreet rapping at the door preceded the unmistakable voice of Ambridge, her chauffeur. "Madam, we must make haste. The household plans to awaken much earlier than usual today."

Brim felt her whole body go rigid beside him. "I hear you, Ambridge," she called presently. "I shall be there in a moment." She hesitated for no more than a click longer, then placed her hands on his cheeks and kissed him full on the mouth. "Wilf," she said as she sprang from the bed and began to pull on her clothes, "you must not let this affect you in any way." She frowned as she struggled with the buttons on her ornate blouse, then turned to look at him full in the face. "You are no less a man this morning," she said, her hands on her hips, "than you were last night when you caused me to wake everyone in this building with my happy moaning."

Still in a state of shock, Brim could only sit numbly while she stepped into her shoes. After a long moment, he got to his feet and held her cloak. "I don't know what to say, Margot," was all he could mumble.

"Wilf," she said with a look of deepening concern on her face. "Wilf, look at me. You certainly aren't the only man this has happened to. I mean—"

Quiet but insistent rapping commenced at the door again. "Madame," Ambridge whispered.

"I'm on my way," she answered over her shoulder. "Wilf, are you going to be all right?"

Brim gathered the remaining shreds of his ego and pulled himself erect, feeling more than a little foolish standing naked in front of this very thoroughly dressed woman. "I'm all right now," he lied, nervously fingering her ring as it dangled from the chain around his neck. Somehow the metal felt unnaturally cold.

"Don't worry about me."

"You're sure, Wilf?"

"You can count on it." He took her in his arms and kissed her on the mouth while Ambridge continued to knock at short intervals. "You'd better go now," he said after a moment.

She nodded. "Don't ever forget that I love you, dearest," she said. "'For thee, my own sweet lover, in thy heart, I know, myself secure, as thou in mine: We were and are—I am, even as thou art—Beings who ne'er each other can resign; It is the same, together or apart....'" The she opened the door and was gone in the blink of an eye.

During all those dreary years that followed Admiral Kabul Aaak 's first great attack on Carescria—the raid wiped out every member of his family—Wilf Brim had become convinced that he could never again find the necessary tears to cry.

He was wrong.

CHAPTER 2

Claudia

In that last half-metacycle before dawn, Brim managed to throw on his clothes and stumble blindly out into the cold, sleety streets. Anything was better than the solitude of his dingy room, and the raw memories of his latest and most painful failure. It was too awful to contemplate.

Considerably later, after losing all track of time, he found himself shivering on the waterfront of Lake Mersin beneath the landward end of the causeway leading to Avalon's Grand Terminal Island. He was tired and hungry, but no force in the Universe could make him return to the place of his shame. He was also cold—the heating elements in his clothes hadn't worked for months now, nor was his lightweight jacket much good at stopping the raw wind that swept in off the lake. Had City of Jamestown held together for one last trip, he had planned to buy his heated suit back from the used-garments dealer. He shrugged. The way things were going in his life, he would soon be lucky to have any clothes at all.

He looked around at the mean streets leading to the dilapidated waterfront. He'd not been in this part of town since his cadet days when he'd come to the section looking for... entertainment. He shook his head determinedly—after last night, those thoughts were strictly off-limits. Ahead, he noticed a queue of ragged-looking people waiting patiently in the driving sleet, hands in their pockets, arms tight against their bodies to conserve heat. Those at the head of the line were singly entering one of the grime-blackened storefronts in a shabby row facing the wharfs. From time to time, others exited from another door, some to stand in a small crowd at the end of a short jetty, others to disappear with a dejected shuffle along the littered waterfront streets.

Something about those figures moving out onto the jetty set them apart. Brim frowned—what was it?

Suddenly, he knew: they walked with the rolling gate of space sailors, professionals who understood how to carry themselves in any kind of gravity gradient.

He stopped behind the last person in line, a thin and angular woman with a sharply hooked nose, prominent chin, and pockmarked cheeks. Her eyes, however, were a dead giveaway for a starsailor—they had the permanent narrowing people got after spending a lifetime staring out into the void. She wore a stocking cap over her stringy gray hair, a faded Imperial battle jacket from which the insignia had been removed, and heavy woolen slacks with worn Fleet-issue boots. "What're they giving away up there?" he asked, nodding toward the storefront.

The woman laughed scornfully. "These days, nobody's givin' out any thin' to anybody," she said, "especially ex-Blue Capes. Where have you been since the Treaty of Garak, mister? Ain't you heard about the CIGAs?"

Brim looked her in the eye. "Same place you've been, I'd guess," he answered emotionlessly. "And I've heard the CIGAs, all right. Too much."

The woman stomped her boots in the wet slush and returned her attention to the storefront. "Thought so,"

she said. Then she fell silent.

"You still didn't tell me what the line's for," Brim prompted after a while.

"You never asked."

"Yeah. You're right; I guess I didn't. Why's everybody in line?" For better or worse, he seemed to be in it, too. At least ten other ragged figures had queued up behind him while he talked.

She laughed derisively. "I guess you haven't been down this way very often— Mister ex-officer," she hissed. "But we're seein' more and more of your kind every day."

"You still didn't tell me why you're in—"

"Jobs," the woman said, "IGL Spacelines. They recruit people for the lower decks in places like this. You know—menials."

Brim nodded. He'd heard; he'd simply never before had a reason to... Suddenly he frowned. There was ample reason now. His funds were almost gone after his meal with Margot and their bottle of Logish Meem. He'd had to hassle with her for the right to pay for everything, but she'd finally given in, clearly to save what little pride he retained. Soon, however, that pride would cost him dearly. His rent was due in exactly one week, to a landlady totally devoid of compassion. At that juncture, he would have to either find some employment or accept help from someone. Otherwise, he would become one of the city's growing cadre of homeless veterans who slept in doorways or under bridges. Even that was almost better than accepting help.

He stayed where he was, shuffling along in the line. Just about everything he owned of any value was on his back, and he couldn't bring himself to return home. Presently, he found himself through the door and into the relative warmth of a shabby room whose peeling walls were covered by holoposters advertising IGL's great starliners. One, nearest the bare light pictured a city of canals, proclaiming:

Royal

A'zurnian Getaway

Odyssey

Lifting on a biweekly schedule.

Book Early for the

Mitchell Trophy Race

at

Magalla'ana,

A'zurn

Brim ground his teeth. The Mitchell Trophy Race. Margot's naked body suddenly replaced the holoposter in his mind's eye —only she was rutting with LaKarn and making a baby after dickering with Gorn-Hoff for starships to compete in that race!

"Well, c'mon, mister," a man demanded behind a scarred desk, "none of us have all day. How many years in space you got?" He had a fat, greasy face and wore the quasi-military uniform of Intragalactic Spacelines, whose winter tunic was clearly too warm for the room. He was sweating profusely as he peered nearsightedly into a battered display.

"Twenty-two years in space; almost five of them in the Fleet," Brim answered, trying to keep his eyes from the poster. Even for a Carescrian, he'd started flying early.

The fat man made a face and looked up. "Just in case I might believe that kind of corgwash, mister," he growled, "what kind of work you lookin' for?"

Brim forced his mind to concentrate. What kind of experience did he have? Clearly, they weren't looking for Helmsmen in a place like this.

"Come on, mister," the fat man chided again. "Either pay attention or let somebody else in." He wiped his nose with a pudgy finger.

"Um... I guess I can do b-baggage handling," Brim stammered. Before he learned to fly the dangerous ore barges that earned him his berth in the Helmsmen's Academy, he'd worked at a lot of menial jobs.

"Baggage handlin'," the man repeated, his pudgy fingers thrumming a filthy console while he squinted into the display. "Yeah, good choice," he said presently, "we got a couple of round-trip berths on S.S. Prosperous—big 'un, deparrin' tonight for Hador-Haelic and the city of Atalanta." He looked up at Brim. "You look like you're pretty strong, all right. They'll like that. But you got no seniority with IGL, either—leastwise, you don't show up on the company's books under Brim. So they'll expect you for extra duty in the galley if you want the job."

Brim considered a moment. If nothing else, it would mean a warm, dry place to sleep for a while. And at the rate things were going, that might be a definite improvement in his lifestyle.

"Get a move on, Brim. There's lots of people outside that'll take the job with no thinkin'."

"I'll take it." Brim said.

"Where's your stuff?" the IGL man asked. "You'll have t' get the next launch t' catch 'er."

"Everything I own is on my back," Brim asked.

"All right," the man said, bending to his console again, "that's it. Remember, it's a round-trip job and there's laws against jumpin' ship in the middle. This ain't no free trip to Atalanta, no matter how many jobs they've got there during their reconstruction. Unnerstand?"

"I understand," Brim said, eager to be on the way to anything.

He spent most of the next metacycle on one of ICL's shabby, fly-spotted work stations, trying to ignore the holoposter and keep his mind from the open wound that Margot had become while he completed the million and one legal forms required by the Empire for intragalactic employment. Then, having been issued a temporary scrap of a badge reading, new menial, he made his way onto the cold quayside. One more job remained before reporting to the pier.

Transferring his last credits to a public correspondence system, he sent a brief message (via text, the least expensive delivery method available) to a confidential destination Margot maintained for just such circumstances:

Dearest Margot:

Last night proved how much I need to put together some sort of new life for myself: one in which I can look you in the face once more. Please trust that I am safe, that I remain unchanged in my love for you, and that I shall someday return. Care for yourself in the way I would care for you, were I able.

All my love,

Wilf

Within two metacycles, he was balancing himself on the icy open deck of a labor-pool launch as it skidded around the edge of a colossal gravity pool supporting IGL's premiere starliner, the S.S.

Prosperous. Far overhead, he could see the big ship's conoid bow and farther back, her high, rakish superstructure, completely distorted by the extreme perspective. After a complete postwar refitting, she was resplendent in dazzling white with the vivid IGL logo blazing forth from the center of her bridge. The last time he'd seen her this close, she was finished in wartime ebony hullmetal and he was on his way to A'zurn for the first land campaign of his experience.

As the launch drew to a halt at the lowest embarkation platform, he looked up to see passengers gliding into the big ship on moving walkways through lofty, gold-tinted glass brows. He shook his head as he dodged a sheet of icy spray, wondering what sort of skills one needed to obtain such luxury in peacetime.

Then he shrugged sadly. Whatever they were, all seemed far beyond his own wretched understanding.

"All right, bums," a tough-looking IGL officer barked from a freight elevator, "in here on the double. We've work aplenty for the likes of you."

Before he swung himself to the wave-slick platform, Brim craned his neck for a last look at the ship's brooding control bridge, nearly one hundred fifty irals overhead. While he stood there, transfixed, he felt a sharp jab in the ribs. He looked down to see a pair of young IGL surface officers: slim, perfectly uniformed, and effete, as nonflying officers often seemed to be. One was brandishing a baton.

"On your way, Menial," he said contemptuously. "The only way you'll see the bridge of that ship is with a mop in your hand." He laughed at his own joke.

"That's right," the other sniggered. "What do y' think y' are, a Helmsman or something?"

Whines and rumbles of imminent landfall cascaded on Brim's ears as he desperately sprinted toward the menials' compartment. He'd been the last hand to leave the galley because it was his responsibility to make a final cleaning pass over the slops compartments and the garbage crusher. Now, with the ship's mammoth gravity generators droning at idle—about to be reversed at any moment—he knew he had only cycles to strap himself in before Pandemonium broke loose along the big starship's keel. He could almost feel it.

"Hands to landing stations! Hands to landing stations!" a clamorous voice brayed over the blower. "All hands to landing stations!"

Brim glimpsed an unmistakable cityscape as he raced past a viewport. At the same moment a Helmsman ten decks overhead activated the big ship's lift modifiers and skewed her gravity gradient forward. Brim understood all too well what was about to result, but there was nothing he could do save brace for the inevitable, which followed immediately. A mighty gravitron flux, racing like an invisible piston through the corridor, sent him sprawling along the metal deck, then dashing his head into a bulkhead in a sudden storm of swirling lights. Abruptly, everything went black.

He awoke to someone tugging painfully on his arm—an IGL officer? His eyes were too blurred to be sure.

"Wake up, you xaxtdamned lazy beggar," the wobbly apparition demanded in a deep voice. "Thank your lucky stars that little evening nap of yours didn't get you killed when we made landfall! Now off to your duty post on the double—understand?"

Still bewildered from the terrific blow, Brim dumbly struggled to his feet and floundered along the hallway, holding his aching head with both hands. It felt as if his brains had been pounded by a meteor.

"And Menial," the man called after him, "try to be a little cleaner about yourself in the future. You smell like a sack of garbage!"

Brim clamped his mouth shut and stumbled along the hall. He had, he reminded himself for the ten thousandth time, signed up for the job of his own free will. And in truth, the constant baggage organizing that occupied much of his first two days out was good, honest work. In fact, he found it almost enjoyable. But when all the million and one traveling cases were at last sorted and properly stowed, the officers wasted little time in appointing him to the ship's monster galley as a Slops Mate. After that, he spent nearly every waking metacycle contemplating garbage of every species, vintage, and stench—often while he was knee deep in it. The word intolerable couldn't even half describe the remainder of his passage.

And now, it was reasonably clear why there was always a shortage of Slops Mates. The poor devils either slipped on the rancid grease that perpetually coated the slops ramp, thereby joining the very garbage they were processing, or they were simply dashed to flinderation when they couldn't reach safety during takeoffs or landings.

He frowned as he passed another viewport. Outside, past the colossal overhang of Prosperous's hull, he could see the winking early-evening lights of Atalanta—a city he had once helped save. His eyes followed the great upsweep of City Mount Hill as it became one with the darkening sky. And even in the failing light, after a lapse of more than two years, scars from the great battle waged above the city were easily visible, as were countless construction sites. Everywhere he looked, builders' derricks intruded on the skyline.

Brim nodded to himself. There was no putting it off any longer. With all that construction, there simply had to be job openings. A lot of them. And no matter what sort of work they called for, the worst would—by definition—be a lot more desirable than cleaning garbage chutes. He shrugged. There was really no decision. He'd made up his mind the first day he pulled slops duty.

Glancing over his shoulder, he checked to make certain the corridor was empty, then turned and continued on his original course to the menials' compartment. A plan was already beginning to form in his mind—one that had served him well in the Great War when he was trapped aboard a Leaguer ship.

The grimy chamber where Brim slept was nearly empty when he arrived, but even though most of the hard-used menials who bunked there were now at their stations, it still reeked of overworked, underwashed bodies. Quickly stripping to the skin, he donned the shabby clothing he'd worn the day of his departure. Over this, he pulled the only clean set of IGL work togs he possessed. Then, rumpling his privacy blanket as if he had merely relinquished the recliner to report for duty, he hurried off toward the baggage holds.

On his way, he made one hasty stop, in a compartment marked baggage supervisors only. Boldly entering the restricted office unit, he strode past four IGL officers—three women and a man—seated in front of a situation terminal that was clearly tuned to one of Atalanta's seamier broadcast stations. None so much as bothered to look up as he made his way across the room to a rack of logic scribers: the same kind of portable writing board carried by everyone in the Universe who ever took an inventory or made a survey. Selecting a battered-looking veteran of what must have been hundreds of transgalactic journeys, he quickly erased its contents, then exited the room—again without eliciting any reaction from its "legal" occupants—and continued along the corridor at a trot.

When he arrived at the hatch to baggage hold number four, his assigned duty station, Brim carefully peered around the coaming, waited until the deck was clear of IGL supervisors, then stole into the maze of lofty chutes that held traveling cases to be unloaded. Selecting a large, expensive-looking grip at random, he hefted it to the floor and activated its "follower" unit, recording the registration number on a "Personal Delivery" form that he'd called up from his scriber's memory. Then, with the grip bobbing along at his heels, he signed the scriber with a flourish— Peter Mason, a name he'd drawn from some distant recess of his mind—and strode out across the main floor of the baggage room as if the orders he'd just drawn up and authenticated were real.

Before he arrived at the heavily guarded personnel exit, Brim was interrogated by no less than five suspicious IGL officials. Presentation of the scriber alone was enough to get him past the first four—none of them even bothered to read it.

The fifth, however—a two-striper—was a different matter entirely. He not only took the scriber from Brim's hands, he read it carefully, frowning when he came to the signature section, clearly trying to remember someone on the IGL staff with the name of Mason. "Who is this Peter Mason, Menial?" he demanded, his narrow face wearing a look of haughty suspicion. He was a well-cared-for-man in his sixties, but his red hair was dark as any twenty-year-old's. He also wore a large CIGA ring encrusted with gaudy stones.

Brim felt his brow break out in perspiration while the officer studied his forged scriber. Could it be that Peter Mason was a real name? "I don't rightly know, sir," he said, deciding hastily to play on IGL's predilection for rank consciousness. "When I saw the four stripes on his cuff, I thought I'd better do what he said. He wanted this grip delivered in person to the terminal, an' I wasn't about to ask any questions...."

"Four stripes, you say?"

"Aye, sir," Brim affirmed, "I don't rightly know much about IGL ranks, but I sure didn't want to fool with the likes of him, if you get my drift, sir. He looked like a tough one, he did...."

"I see," the man said while a frown formed on his face. He considered for a moment more—in which Brim sternly reminded himself to breathe—then handed over the scriber. "Well, er, off you go, then, Menial," he ordered reluctantly, "and don't let me catch you loitering on your way back."

"Aye, sir," Brim said, knuckling his forehead and starting down the corridor at a run, the grip careening after him at full clip. "You won't find me wastin' time on this ship, ever—an' you can believe it, sir," he called over his shoulder. Then he scampered down a companionway taking the treads two at a time.

Within cycles, Brim found himself approaching a crew exit hatch. Beyond, the yellowish brilliance of Karlsson lamps streamed from the end of a long, covered brow. Freedom was less than a hundred irals distant; however, one last obstruction remained: a crystal guard column. And there was no way he could enter the brow without passing it. Gathering all the courage and brashness he could muster, he marched toward the opening as if he expected the guard to let him past on sight.

Inside his transparent enclosure, the man was tall and raw boned with unintelligent eyes, a lumpy nose, and a great lantern jaw that fairly begged to be punched. He appeared to be in vigorous conversation through his terminal with a sultry-looking woman whose lavishly made-up face and fantastic green eyelids suggested a well-established profession. Without interrupting his dialogue, the man thrust an officious hand out a small window to block Brim's path.

"I've gotta hurry, Officer," Brim protested in an exaggerated whisper through the window, "this traveling bag was promised at hatch fifty-one more'n five clicks ago. Somethin' about a lady gettin' caught with the wrong guy in her bed last night..." He flashed the scriber. "See?" he said, pointing first to the display, then to the flashing ID tag on the traveling case. "They match."

His heart skipped a long beat when the terminal prattled angrily and the guard's eyes opened wide with rage.

"Nobody," he growled resentfully at the display, "says anything like that to me—'specially the likes of you , ya slut!"

The terminal responded noisily with something unintelligible, whereupon the man looked blindly at Brim with a frenzied expression on his face, as if he were trying to put words to his rage.

Heart in his mouth, Brim could only flash the scriber again. "Got to hurry," he mouthed theatrically.

Without another glance, the guard waved him through while he shouted a great torrent of invective at the display. Brim heard little of it, nearly outrunning the traveling case again in his haste to clear the IGL crew area, which he did before the next five cycles had passed.

Much later, hurrying inland on foot, he hoped guiltily that someone would restore the purloined traveling case to its rightful owners. He'd abandoned it with his IGL work togs behind a gigantic potted o'gett fern in the crowded terminal. Presently, he was climbing City Mount Hill, following one of the stone tram alleys that crisscrossed Atalanta, dodging huge top-hampered interurban cars that thundered by from both directions at perilously high speeds. When he'd put at least five c'lenyts between himself and the IGL, he veered into one of the older parts of the city to shelter for the remainder of the chilly spring evening in a dark storefront. And even though his teeth chattered from time to time, he couldn't remember when he'd last felt so much at ease and at home, anywhere.

He awoke when the great star Hador was just beginning to tint Haelic's broad horizon with tenuous shades of red and mauve. In the dusky half-light, he watched a little native Zuzzous crackling down from the nightward sky toward a waterfront landing, its beacon flashing like a firefly. Atalanta! He was hungry again, dying for a hot cup of cvceese'. But he was also free. And that alone seemed worth the trip.

From his vantage point on City Mount Hill, he could see all the way to the civilian districts of the harbor and the colossal form of Prosperous brooding on an immense canal-side gravity pool amid IGL's sprawling complex of warehouses and terminals. The big ship's myriad position lights and scuttles glittered like stars from a private galaxy. He shook his head. Magnificent was the word she brought to mind. He'd loved the big ship when he'd first laid eyes on her years ago, and his sour experience as a menial had changed nothing. People who loved starships—and the stars—as much as Brim did were a tough lot to discourage.

He shrugged, surmising the harbor authorities would have given up searching for him by now. His name would soon be posted as a "jumper" in waterfront police departments of a dozen ports of call throughout the Empire. But aside from the postings themselves, he was fairly certain that nothing further would result from his jumping ship. The loss of one Slops Mate more or less could have little real significance.

Besides, he chuckled to himself, IGL had actually gained in the transaction—menials weren't paid off until the ship returned home; therefore, he'd worked the outbound leg free. A fair trade, he calculated. And with his pay, they could keep the remainder of their garbage, as well.

While one of the city's million-odd sable rothcats brushed against his legs, he contemplated his first real view of the city in slightly more than two years. Atalanta's administrators had clearly accomplished much in the way of rebuilding since the League's last great attack was rebuffed. Everywhere he looked he could see new tile roofs in a million reds, browns, oranges, and greens, along with walls that didn't quite match their neighbors and domes whose surfaces were patched with varying degrees of metallic luster.

But, as he had noted the previous evening, unrestored vestiges of destruction were equally evident—to his Helmsman's eye, perhaps more so. The whole cityscape was pockmarked with empty lots, tumbled masonry, yawning windows, and skeletal remains of burned-out structures. Perhaps the most poignant reminder of that ferocious battle was the empty crag that once cradled the Gradgroat-Norchelite's now-vaporized monastery. He stared in awe, remembering its colossal, flame-shaped spire and the curious motto that appeared over its massive doorway.

In Destruction Is Resurrection;

The Path of Power Leads Through Truth

While Hador's first rays painted the great melted pinnacle with subtle traces of crimson and coral, he glimpsed elaborate scaffolding and the beginnings of a huge circular wall. Smiling to himself, Brim nodded his head in approval. The Gradygroats were already at work rebuilding their once-famous edifice.

Norchelite friars were never ones to let a little destruction stand in their way. Brim knew that from experience.

He frowned. How his life had changed! Once, long ago in his days as a Fleet officer, Gradygroats and their monastery had seemed interesting to him—important even, in a strange sort of way. Now, his whole existence seemed to be taken up with things like occasionally filling his empty stomach or finding shelter for the night. He shook his head and glanced across the harbor to the Fleet base where a light cruiser soared effortlessly up from the bay. Even at a distance he could pick out the lines of a Vengeance-class starship. As it thundered out toward space, a charge of emotion surged along his spine. In spite of everything, it was hard to disregard the memories he'd accumulated at the sprawling military complex.

Especially memories of Claudia Valemont, the beautiful, long-haired Division Manager who had been his friend and occasional paramour while I.F.S. Defiant called Atalanta its home port. He smiled wryly, watching Hador's brilliance at last reach down to sparkle on Grand Harbor itself. Even now, it was hard to decide if Claudia had been more lover than friend, or the other way around, during those frantic months after Margot's wedding. One thing for certain, however: she'd been absolutely the number one cook in his known Universe. Memories of her kitchen still made his mouth water.

Claudia, too, was gone from Brim's life—by his own choice. He had gradually stopped answering her messages when his fortunes began to sour in Avalon. Loss of her sparkling correspondence had been a high price to pay for his pride, but it seemed a lot better than letting her discover what a failure he'd become in civilian life.

He squandered a few moments more in reflection before he put his hands in his pockets and started off downhill, this time toward Atalanta's ancient waterfront district to look for work. Perhaps, he considered, some day he might still attempt to get in touch with her. But it wouldn't be until he had made a lot more of himself in this new, postwar environment than he'd been able to do so far.

In less than a metacycle of brisk walking, he found himself caught up in a half-familiar maze of shadowed streets and murky canals fronted by dilapidated warehouses built of age-darkened brick and stone. The still air was filled with arcane and familiar scents from a whole galaxy of commerce. Across a short expanse of cobblestones and glowing tram tubes stood the decrepit warehouse he'd formerly known by the fictitious name of Payless Starmotive Salvage. Now cold and tenantless, it had once been secret headquarters for one of the war's most brilliant intelligence coups against the League. Brim had obtained his Emperor's Cross on that mission. Now, the defunct old building somehow reminded him of himself.

He looked around him. If he were going to find work, he reasoned, this district seemed to be a perfect place to start. Even at an early metacycle, the byways were crowded with busy people who hurried along with purpose in their steps. Brim wondered what they all did. Most were dressed in what he remembered to be Atalantan working clothes: for the most part, loose, baggy trousers or full skirts with brightly tinted shirts and vests. Coats were either loose sack or sleeveless with high necks and narrow turnover collars, many paired with bright, multi-hued hats and vividly decorated guild aprons. A colorful, cheerful people, Atalantans, Brim remembered. He meant to become one of them as soon as possible. If nothing else, the CIGAs hadn't really taken hold of this war-torn town. People here understood the need for strength.

Clearly, he considered, scanning a new building that was going up a few blocks away, a lot of construction jobs went begging in Atalanta. They'd have to, even if the city's reconstruction were only proceeding half as fast as it appeared to be. But where to find one? That was the question. His travels had already taken him into three storefronts that looked for all the world as if they contained labor offices. Businesses like that tended to have the same look everywhere: in Avalon, Atalanta, or even Carescria. The trouble was, he could barely speak, much less read or write, the Halacian dialect natives used. And that had proved to be a tough obstacle indeed. Job interviews, he found, simply didn't work in sign language; he'd eventually discontinued each one, having accomplished nothing. He shook his head. If only he could bring himself to contact Claudia. She would help; he knew she would. But all he had left now was his pride, and he wasn't about to give that up, too.

During the next metacycles, he entered two more of the placement offices, with no better luck in them than he'd experienced in the others. Both times, he ended up back on the sidewalk feeling thoroughly frustrated—and even more hungry as morning wore into afternoon. Stopping beside a sidewalk shop to get his bearings, he sniffed the delicious aroma of freshly brewed cvceese' while his mouth began to water. It had been a long time since he'd put anything in his stomach.

Suddenly, he frowned and peered across the street. Directly opposite the shop was one of Atalanta's ubiquitous Gradygroat missions. Why hadn't he thought of them before? During the war, he'd had dealings with friars from all parts of the order, and he'd never met one of them who didn't speak at least some Avalonian. At the time, he'd given it little thought. As an officer in the Imperial Fleet, one made certain assumptions about language. He laughed at himself. He'd been getting just a bit too big for his breeches in that Fleet cloak, he mused, and filed the little revelation away for future reference. Such a small dose of comeuppance might prove valuable someday, if he ever managed to dig his way out of the hole in which his life had apparently come to rest.

Dodging across the busy street, he pushed open the door to the mission and stepped into what appeared to be a huge, round chamber. He smiled. Everything bore an uncanny resemblance to the colossal room in the Gradygroat's now-destroyed monastery, as well as to the orbiting space forts that had played such an important mission in the salvation of Atalanta.

In this little canal-side mission, however, it was all illusion, effected by clever use of holopanels. The floor appeared to contain the monastery's shining rings of "destruction," "resurrection," and "truth." A shaft of light from a lenslike "power" aperture beamed from the center of the ceiling to the center ring where a circular desk replaced the jeweled cone of the original. However, all but the latter—and its occupant—were holographic shams.

Inside the desk sat a rotund friar whose curly black beard covered most of his face. He had a great fleshy beak of a nose, somber, inquisitive eyes, and the look of a man who had experienced a great deal of the galaxy—good and bad. He was dressed in the long, crimson gown of a Gradgroat-Norchelite friar and clutched a steaming mug of cvceese', whose aroma nearly drove Brim up a wall. The man gave a genial nod and said something Brim could not understand at all.

"Does, ah... anybody here speak Avalonian, Father?" Brim asked hesitantly.

"I speak many languages, young man," the Friar answered this time in flawless Avalonian, the kind Brim had encountered only at the Imperial Court. "Welcome to the Juniper Street Mission. Father Amps at your service."

"Th-thank you, Father," Brim stumbled dumbly. He found it was difficult to stop staring at the mug.

"Ah, can I help you in any way," Amps asked after a few moments of silence. He smiled understandingly.

"Perhaps a cup of cvceese?"

Brim swallowed hard. "I'd love one," he said, half embarrassed at how anxious his voice sounded.

Presently, he was sipping a scalding hot mug of sticky-sweet cvceese'. Somehow, it brought back his days on the bridge of a warship, when he fairly lived on the stuff during his long metacycles at action stations. "Thanks, Father," he said quietly. "You can't know how good this tastes."

"Hmm. Perhaps I can," Amps said, his eyes peering momentarily into a distant time. "Once, in another life, I knew a great deal of hunger. How can I help you. Mister, ah... ?"

"My name's Brim, Father," the Carescrian answered. "Wilf Brim. And I'm trying to find work." He blurted out the words as though they'd been poisoning his system. "I need a job so I can eat—but I don't know enough Halacian to apply anywhere."

"I won't ask how you got to Atalanta," Amps said gently. "But I assume you haven't been here very long."

"A valid assumption," Brim admitted.

"When was the last time you ate?" Amps probed abruptly.

Brim shook his head. "I'm not looking for handouts, Father," he said quietly. "I'd rather earn my credits. The sooner I can do that, I'll be able to take care of the food situation myself."

"You didn't answer my question, young man. When was the last time you ate?"

"It's been a while," Brim admitted, "but that's not important. What I need is—"

"I understand," Amps interrupted firmly, "but you'll have an even harder time finding what you're looking for if you're thinking about food." He reached into the desk and came out with a carton of energy bars.

"Eat a few of these, Wilf," he said. "After that, we'll see what we can do about finding a job agent who speaks Avalonian."

Brim started to protest, but the little man held up his hand.

"You can owe the order for whatever you eat," he chuckled. "I doubt if it will threaten the budget for this year—even with our new construction." Then his face took on a serious countenance. "It's all part of being a Norchelite friar," he said. "Some of us tend orbital forts, others preach, and still others, like me, assist their fellow creatures. All serve the order, each in his own way."

"But I'm not a Gradygr—" Brim protested, catching himself a little too late.

"I didn't for a moment think you were a Gradygroat," Amps said with a grin, imperturbably using Brim's slang for the Gradgroat-Norchelite Order. "Offhand, I'd guess you were once an officer of the Imperial Fleet and are presently out of work." He grinned. "Were I to speculate further, I'd also probably guess that you jumped ship after S.S. Prosperous made landfall yesterday evening."

Brim felt a wave of apprehension grip his chest. Had he just walked into an IGL trap? He tensed and his eyes darted toward the exit.

"Calm yourself, m'boy," Amps said with a chuckle. "If I were in cahoots with IGL, you'd already be on your way back to the ship. Now sit yourself on the counter here and put away a couple of those energy bars. While you're doing that, I'll see if I can't find someone who can get you a job. If you don't mind construction, you'll have no trouble finding a job in this city."

Brim looked the friar in the eye and decided he might as well trust him. "I'll work at damned near any kind of construction job, Father," he said, meaning every word.

When Brim was most of the way through his third energy bar, Amps looked up and chuckled. "You were hungry, weren't you, Wilf?"

"Not anymore, Father," Brim answered, grinning with his mouth still half full.

"Good," Amps laughed. "Put several more of those bars in your pocket and then look at this," he directed, tilting his display to face outward. "The agent you want to see has a storefront about ten c'lenyts from here, on the other side of City Mount Hill. I'll lend you fare for the interurban. You can return it at any alms box—when you're feeling a little more flush than today." Then he chuckled. "We'll just call ourselves even on the energy bars, though," he added. "It gets pretty hot around here in the summer, and you can imagine what they'd be like, melted in an alms box."

Within two metacyctes, Brim was talking to a burly clerk dressed in a green checked shirt and light tan trousers made of something that looked a lot like canvas. His reddish hair was long and tied at the nape of his neck by a small black ribbon. He had a strong chin, a short, bulbous nose, bushy ginger eyebrows, and intense, watery green eyes that didn't let go once they fastened onto you. A sign on his desk announced, ARGYLE G. BEAVERTON, FACTOR.

"What sort of work do you do, Brim—normally, I mean?" Beaverton asked in a gruff voice.

Brim shrugged hopelessly. "I'm a Helmsman," he said.

"Hmm," Beaverton quipped with mock deliberation, "we haven't quite finished our entry for the Mitchell Trophy Race yet, but when we do, we'll be sure to look you up."

"Couldn't ask for more than that," Brim returned wryly. It was clear that there was no escaping Mitchell's xaxtdamned race or its awful reminder of Margot's pregnancy and his failure as a man. Grimly he forced himself back to the present. "Do you suppose somebody out there might have something else for me to do?" he asked, managing a smile of sorts.

The man consulted his terminal. "Well," he declared with a chuckle, "we've got more construction jobs than we can fill in a million years. Ever drive a grav loader, for instance? I could place a hundred loader jockeys this morning."

Brim felt his spirits soar. "You bet," he said "I put in a couple of years driving those things when I was a kid. Where do I sign up?"

Beaverton bit his lip. "I may have put that the wrong way," he admitted with a frown. "What I meant to ask was, do you have a license to operate a grav loader?"

"A license?" Brim asked. "We never needed a license back home."

"Unfortunately," the man said, "you need one here. It's all part of the guild system, and rigidly enforced."

"A guild system," Brim mused. "Well, I guess grav loaders are out, then."

"Plenty more jobs where that one came from," Beaverton assured him. "Ever do any work with synthetic roof tiles?"

"No. Afraid not."

"Surveying?"

"Um, no."

"Woodworking? Cabinetry?"

"A little, but..."

"Glazing?"

"No."

"Hmm. How about gardening?"

"Well..."

"Yeah, I understand. You are a little shy on experience, I guess."

"I can drive just about any kind of rig."

"Not without a guild license, you can't. And guilds take a residency of at least a year. When I talked to Friar Amps, I sort of got the idea you hadn't been here too long."

"I haven't," Brim admitted.

"Hmm..." Suddenly, Beaverton snapped his fingers. "I'll just bet you'd be good with one of those particle beam axes," he exclaimed. "You know, the open grid cages about the size of an oil drum with handles on the side and top—got a big cathode injector filament inside, firing through a tube of focusing coils. They use 'em to cut foundations out of rock where there isn't a lot of working room—instead of blasting."

Brim frowned. He wasn't very familiar with heavy construction equipment, but every little boy who had grown up anywhere near an excavation knew that particle beam axes could make more noise than a supernova at a hundred irals. "Yeah," he said, searching his memory. "I think they're powered from some sort of portable beatron—on a gravity sled, aren't they?"

"You've got it—that thick connecting hose is really the power transmission line." Beaverton looked up from the display. "Dirtiest, hardest, noisiest job you can get. Guilds won't have anything to do with them—too damned dangerous. But the pay's right, if you can stand the dust and the noise— and you don't kill yourself."

"The pay's good?"

"It's gotta be," Beaverton said. "Otherwise, they couldn't get anybody to run one. Not with all the other jobs around."

"I'll take it," Brim said on a sudden hunch. "Sounds like just what I'm looking for."

Brim stood shirtless beneath the late afternoon sun, mopping sweat from his brow with a great red handkerchief. (He now carried one wherever he went.) Overhead, cries from angry seabirds interspersed with the din of heavy construction machinery. His present building site was close by Grand Harbor, not far from the big Imperial Fleet base. He could often smell the clean odor of the sea, along with a lot of construction dust. On the job, his teeth always felt gritty.

Nearby, surveyors dressed in the bright green and yellow colors of their guild were busily verifying the corner he had just melted in solid rock for the foundation of a government office building. Not a bad job of it, he judged, in spite of the cramped space. Corners were tough; they took a delicate touch—and this one especially, because of the irregular shape the building would take when it went up.

Brim smiled to himself as he rested, just a little smugly perhaps. The construction company had called him specially for the job. Operating the bulky machine turned out to be elementary for someone accustomed to aiming objects the size of a starship, and he'd quickly established himself as the best beam axe operator in the area. In nearly five months of arduous work, he'd found a permanent place to live, was making good credits—for a sweat laborer—and was back to the superb physical shape he'd maintained while he was an officer in the Fleet. He even managed a small weekly offering in one of the the ten-million-odd alms boxes the Gradygroats maintained throughout the city.

Abruptly he turned his eyes skyward to watch an ebony destroyer thunder up from the bay and bank steeply over the construction site, its many turrets and antennas silhouetted against the bright blue sky.

The ship was still low enough when it passed overhead that he could see its Helmsman through the bridge Hyperscreens. His breath caught while the ground shook to the beat of its mighty gravs, and he watched with enchantment until it had flown out of sight. Clearly, he might be out of the starship business, but the business was far from being out of him.

Above him, at the edge of the excavation, a colorfully dressed lunchtime crowd had gathered to watch.

From the nearby Fleet base, he guessed. He'd gotten used to audiences; construction seemed to naturally draw people's attention.

"Corner seems perfect, as usual," the Lead Surveyor announced presently, looking up from his instrument. "You can start the next one anytime you want."

Brim nodded and hoisted the beam axe to his shoulder. "Thanks," he acknowledged with a wink. "See you back here in about a metacycle," he said. He had just started to guide the beatron's gravity sled to his next marked corner, across the excavation site, when he thought he heard someone calling his name.

"Wilf! Wilf Brim!"

Startled, he turned and peered up into the crowd. Hardly anyone knew him in Atalanta, except for Claudia Valemont.

He bit his lip. There she was—in a short, yellow pelisse that accentuated her upthrust breasts, tiny waist, and elegant legs. She was waving to him from behind a dusty crystal viewers' railing, a small figure with long brown hair that flowed almost to her waist. For a split click, it was almost as if she were there beside him. A rush of emotions gripped his chest like a great fist.

"Wilf? Is that you?" she called, breaking into a smile. Suddenly angry with himself, he stiffened. He'd been careless. Working this close to the huge Fleet base, he was bound to run into her. Ears burning with shame, he quickly turned away, as if he'd encountered a stranger. Then he hoisted the axe so it hid his face and slinked off across the excavation, tugging the beatron by its cable. That magnificent woman, a prominent civilian manager at the Fleet base, had loved him when he was Principal Helmsman of a light cruiser in the Imperial Fleet. What would she think of him now?

As soon as he reached the site of his next corner, he cranked up the beatron until its shrieking howl insured that he'd hear no more of Claudia's voice. Then he lost himself in the strenuous act of carving rock. He operated the heavy machine without a break, working until he was exhausted. But when he released the trigger, she had gone.

He nearly killed himself to complete the remainder of the foundation by day's end, vowing that he would accept no more assignments this near to the base. So far as he was concerned, Wilf Brim was dead—temporarily, perhaps, but dead all the same. He was determined to avoid everyone from his former life until he'd restored at least some of his lost prestige.

With the final corner inspected and approved, Brim powered off the beatron, coiled its transmission cable, then secured the axe to brackets on the gravity sled and pushed everything to the lorry exit for transportation to his next contract.

He nodded to himself. Contracting for jobs—that was by far the best part of his new existence. He'd never before worked as an independent, without an immediate boss. Now, people sought him out, and he made job arrangements according to his own best advantage, not his employer's. It was a good existence, and with bonuses he actually earned a bit more than he had as a Helmsman.

After a last check of the rented axe and beatron, he pulled on his work shirt, then strode across the dusty excavation toward a personnel gate and the ancient gravcycle he'd purchased earlier that month, it was the first vehicle he'd personally owned in his thirty-eight years, and he found he was quite proud of it—especially the oversized, twin-beam generator that one of its many former owners had installed. He took a deep breath of sea air, anxious to be home. He was bone-tired this afternoon. A shower would feel wonderful.

As he walked, he couldn't drive Claudia's face from his thoughts. Over the years, he'd forgotten how beautiful she really was—a wartime mistake he made nearly every time they were separated a week or more. It seemed that he simply wasn't willing to believe his own memory. He laughed. Someday, he promised himself, once he'd managed to recoup some of his fortune, he was going to get in touch with her again.

He was hardly out of the gate when Claudia appeared from between two equipment buildings, threw her arms around his neck, and planted a long, hard kiss directly on his mouth. "A lot of people have been looking for you, Wilf Brim," she said breathlessly when they both came up for air.

Caught completely by surprise, Brim could only stammer. "I-I d-didn't know anybody would—"

"Gorksroar," she said with a cross look in her brown eyes, then immediately smothered his lips again.

This time, Brim folded her in his arms and kissed back until they were both a little breathless.

When they were finished, she gently pulled away and looked at him for a long time in silence. "Wilf," she whispered at last, a worried look on her face, "why didn't you?..." Then she stopped in midsentence and shook her head. "I already know," she sighed in resignation, "because you're Wilf Brim, that's why."

Presently, she placed her hands on his cheeks, drew him to her lips, and they kissed again for a long time.

"Wilf Brim," she said after a time as she gently extracted herself from his embrace, "I am beginning to have some very familiar stirrings, where I shouldn't."

For a moment, Brim thought he might be having some too. And he'd managed to purge any vestige of those thoughts from his mind since his last night with Margot. Panic beset him for a moment when he began speculating what Claudia would do if she discovered that he couldn't. He shuddered. He'd rather die than have that happen again. He began to recklessly conjure some justification for not going home with her when her words started to penetrate his panic.

"... I'm married now, and I don't think I ought to..."

"You're what?" he interrupted.

"Wilf, listen to me. I really would invite you home so we could talk, but I'm married now. And those few kisses are all I need to know that, well, things clearly haven't changed with the way I feel about you, and..." She shrugged, and raised her hands palms up. "It just wouldn't be fair to him—or you." Then she frowned and looked down at her tiny feet. "—or me," she added in a low voice.

Brim's face burned with embarrassment. He was both relieved and hurt by the news, although he had to admit it to himself that he was a lot more hurt than anything else. Not that he'd ever had her all to himself, or anything even approaching that. She'd maintained her considerable male following throughout their brief relationship, but at least he'd always considered himself one of the special ones. He took a deep breath. "Well, ah, congratulations, Claudia," he said, hoping against hope the only emotion on his face was one of delight. "Do I know him?"

"You met him one night," she said softly. "Remember Nesterio's Racotzian Cabaret?" she asked. "We went there the first evening we spent together—and talked almost the whole night."

Brim nodded. "Of course I remember," he said, harking back to the war years. "It was after a wardroom party aboard a heavy cruiser...." He closed his eyes. "I.F.S. Intransigent," he said, snapping his fingers.

"And it was one of the most unforgettable evenings I have ever spent." It was no exaggeration.

She lowered her eyes and made a peculiar, almost sad, little smile. "Me too," she whispered.

"Your husband," Brim reminded her, "—he was there?"

"Who?" Claudia asked, pulling herself back from somewhere a long distance away.

"The guy you married," Brim prompted gently, taking her hand in spite of himself. "You said I'd met him at Nesterio's."

Claudia gave him a little laugh. "Oh, yes," she answered, allowing her hand to remain for a moment before she withdrew it, "you did. I married Nesterio."

Brim nodded, somehow not surprised. "Quite a guy," he said equivocally. "He saved your life, or something, didn't he? After a raid, I think."

"That's right," Claudia replied, dropping her eyes. "He saved my life...."

And then, suddenly, there was nothing more that seemed safe to talk about.

Following a long, embarrassed interval, Claudia looked into Brim's face again. "I must be going, Wilf,"

she said. "But, well, we've got to stay friends. Give me your address. After I get my head in order again, I'll be in touch."

Brim suddenly froze. How to say he couldn't bear to see her again, that he was ashamed he was no longer a Helmsman? In a flash, it came to him. It wasn't necessary! She didn't seem to care what he did.

The subject had never even come up; he himself had been too busy to think about it. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he'd blabbed out his address. Then, in clicks she was on her way. This time, however, he got no kiss.

He watched her skimmer careen around a corner, and she was gone. Clearly she was still operating the same decrepit little vehicle she'd used all through the war. He wondered how either of them had survived her driving. Savoring the fresh memory of I that stunning face, he stood for a moment in silence, wondering... What if he'd persisted in his original resolve to give up Margot shortly after she married?

Would he and Claudia be together now?

He stopped pursuing that train of thought immediately. One chooses one's path he affirmed, climbing into the gravcycle's worn saddle, then one follows that path and never looks back.

Little more than a week later, Brim strode from his tiny apartment and picked his way through Atalanta's fragrant predawn darkness to his gravcycle. It was soaked with a dull glaze of dew, and he carefully wiped its seat with his huge red handkerchief. In doing so, he accidentally swiped loose a folded sheet of plastic that someone had wedged between the machine's tiller and readout panel. He shook his head.

Another advertisement. Hardly a morning went by that there weren't a few stuck somewhere on the powerful little machine. Imagine how many he'd accumulate if he were driving something the size of a limousine!

As usual, the gravity mechanism was difficult to start, and when finally it did catch, refused to maintain any kind of steady output, although it did manage to startle a large rothcat that was stalking a moth nearby. The little machine grumbled and hiccuped uncomfortably while Brim dismounted and hunkered down to peer through a tiny porthole in the ion chamber. The two plasma beams were completely out of sync, as usual. He chuckled and shook his head wryly. The weather must have changed again; it didn't take much to throw the whole thing out of kilter. He reached inside his saddlebags, retrieved a pair of torquing tools, and, inserting them almost by feel, delicately twisted first the left, then the right until...

there, the beams matched perfectly. But he didn't really need to see them at that point; he could hear the results. The dyspeptic belching had already tapered off into a silken growl that would have pleased even a Sodeskayan Drive engineer. Damned fine little machine, he thought happily—and fast as it was sweet.

As he drew the torquers from their sockets, his left hand brushed a heated cooling fin. Swearing, he dropped the tool. It landed squarely on the advertisement, which, close up, didn't look like an advertisement at all. No pictures, no headlines, simply a small folded sheet of plastic with... He switched on the cycle's headlamp. There were initials on the outside; CVN. CVN? Quizzically breaking the seal, he unfolded the sheet:

Wilf:

We have an opening here at the Fleet base that seems more suited to your talents than "axe operator," even though you do seem to have gained quite a reputation lately in the construction trades—I've checked. The job title is "Diagnostic Helmsman," and it calls for someone who can fly nearly anything that comes in for repairs. It's not a high position, but the work's steady. And it's a start.

If you think you might be interested, come to the main entrance tunnel of our new Headquarters building tomorrow at the beginning of Morning watch. Before you reach the leftmost turnstile, you'll see a door marked "Duty Crews, Base Operations." Use the "Visitors" button and give your name. Someone will be expecting you.

Claudia Valemont-Nesterio

Brim felt a surge of mortification crimp his gut. Just as he'd suspected! He was now an object of her pity.

He squeezed his eyes shut in humiliation. Why in all the Universe had he given out his xaxtdamned address? Crumpling the note into a ball, he tossed it into one of his faded saddlebags and gunned the grav, opening its verniers before he even mounted. Then, bitterly forcing all thoughts of Claudia and her note from his mind, he thundered off at high speed toward the day's construction site. Better to find any kind of work than accept charity. Especially from a former lover.

Early on, however, he discovered that the possibility of a flying job wasn't something he could brush aside so easily, even when his mind ought to have been elsewhere. Nearly half a Standard year had passed since he'd laid hands on a starship's controls, and almost four times that since he'd flown anything that was in any decent state of repair. If only he'd been able to locate Claudia's worse-than-damned offer for himself....

"Watch it, Brim!" someone bellowed in a panicky voice.

"You're cuttin' too far off the base line, for xax' sake. Look out!"

Blasted from his reverie, Brim released the trigger just before his bucking machine mowed down a whole set of foundation girders. "G-got away from me for a click," he said, his face burning with shame. He'd never done that before.

"Hey, Brim," a lanky, rumpled supervisor in scarlet shirt and blue overalls called from a nearby platform, "you all right?" The man's baggy eyes were mournful, he had a fat, bulbous nose, and one upper tooth was missing, square in the center of his mouth.

"Yeah," Brim assured him, "I'm all right. I just, uh, turned my ankle on a rock. See?" He kicked a small rock close to his foot.

"All right," the supervisor allowed, dubiously. He didn't buy the rock pretext any more than Brim expected. "You be damned careful from now on," he added. "That axe of yours coulda' took down the whole framework—and you'd have worked the rest of your life to pay us back for all that col-steel. Unnerstand?"

"Understand," Brim said penitently, "—it won't happen again, believe me."

Throughout the remainder of the morning, Brim concentrated on the axe as if existence itself depended on it. But even that didn't prevent him from dreaming about the Helmsman's job all during his lunch break and every click in which he wasn't actually using the axe to cut. The more he thought about the job, the more he wanted it, especially since the sky seemed to be perfectly saturated that day with every kind of flying vehicle known to intragalactic civilization.

His resolve crumpled before he even finished the day's work. Midway through the afternoon, he mopped his brow with the red handkerchief and ambled over to the supervisor's platform. "I won't be able to make it tomorrow," he called through the open door.

"Whadda' you mean you won't make it tomorrow?" the supervisor demanded angrily.

"Just what I said," Brim stated evenly. "I've got personal business."

"Who the xaxt's going to finish this hole here? There's a lot more work to go—and none of it's spec'ed for anybody that qualifies at less than Master Axeman. How'm I gonna get somebody like that on this kind of notice?"

Brim nodded. The man was right—contracting came with certain obligations. He took a deep breath.

"You won't have to get somebody," he promised. "I'll knock it off myself—tonight—before I go home."

"Voot's beard, Brim, you'll xaxtdamn well knock yourself off, too. Those axes are tough! I've seen 'em wipe out bigger men than you in just a morning."

"I'll live," Brim returned quietly.

"Maybe," the supervisor said. "But who's gonna inspect your work?"

"Who needs to?" Brim asked. "You ever see me fail a cut?"

"Well you sure as Zorkt weren't all that grand-lookin' when you damn near took down the framework a while back," the supervisor retorted. "Besides, rules is rules, ya know—and my rules calls for inspections."

"Hey, it's all the same to me," Brim answered. "If you'd rather inspect than have me finish this foundation, suit yourself. I doubt if I'll have a hard time finding other places looking fora good axeman."

"Yeah, well..." The man frowned and scratched his head through gray, stringy hair. Clearly, Brim had scored a point. He turned to a weather-beaten construction manager bent over a nearby console, clearly deep in concentration. "Whadda you think?" he demanded.

"Let him finish," the old man replied without looking up. "He'll be all right, believe me."

The supervisor's eyebrows raised for a moment, and he waited for a justification—which he didn't get.

"All right," he conceded after an embarrassing pause, "—ah, go ahead and finish the job. But just you keep in mind that if the work ain't perfect I won't pay. Got that?"

Brim laughed. "I got that," he said evenly. Striding back to his station in Hador's pitiless afternoon brilliance, he hoisted the big machine to his shoulder, braced himself, and squeezed the triggers. It was going to be a long, hot work day.

CHAPTER 3

Old Friends

The following morning, Brim parked his gravcycle in the visitors' lot outside Base Headquarters, and grimaced. The monstrous new building was four times the size of its predecessor and incalculably more elaborate. For a moment, he wondered how many fine warships had been scrapped to pay for the colossal glass structure. Unfortunately, Gradygroats alone seemed to know how to make buildings into weapons, and even they'd managed that only once.

Then he shook his head. Military matters were no concern of his. In Avalon's new CIGA-riddled Admiralty, it seemed that the perception of strength was far more important than the real thing. Every day, the Fleet got weaker while the League got more bold. Only the week before, Zoguard Grobermann, the League's Minister of State, had issued a trumped-up warning to Fluvanna, a tiny but strategically critical domain astride the Straits of Remik. Along with Rogan LaKarn's Torond, Fluvanna provided most of the Empire's supply of celecoid quartz kernels from which Drive crystals were grown.

Taking a deep breath, he joined a colorful, noisy throng of Halacian civilians streaming through the main entrance tunnel. Just before he reached the guards at their turnstiles, he jostled his way left and stopped at a door marked with a small plaque that read, DUTY CREWS, BASE OPERATIONS.

Except for the plaque, the door's surface was otherwise featureless. However, a button marked VISITORS and a scanner lens were set into the right-hand frame at about eye level. Brim reached out to press the button, the scanner lens was clearly for flight crew members only. But before he could do it, he found himself stepping aside, deeply affected by a sudden onslaught of anxiety.

Or was it embarrassment?

His head was in turmoil; it couldn't be anxiety. He still considered himself to be as good a Helmsman as any: better than most, truth to tell. It had to be embarrassment, pure and simple. He didn't belong with flight crews any more. He might have made himself into one of the city's best beam axe operators, a considerable accomplishment in construction circles. But on the other side of that door, his axemanship wouldn't even rate a cup of cvceese'. Biting his lip, he tried to get a grip on himself while he stared at the entry button.

"I say—were you going in?" a cultured, masculine voice asked. At the same time, a long index finger touched the glowing scanner window and the door started to swing on silent hinges.

Brim jumped, startled from his reverie. "Er, y-yes I was," he stammered, abruptly focusing on a pair of blue eyes that sparkled with good-natured humor, a grand promontory for a nose, and the droll, confident sort of smile that fairly shouted wealth. The man was tall, blond, and, Brim judged, about the same age as himself. He was wearing the distinctive blue cape of an Imperial Fleet officer with the device of a Lieutenant Commander on its left collar just above his Helmsman's insignia. He also wore the discreet red-on-green insignia of the Imperial HighSpeed Starflight Team, quite a distinction in anybody's book. The uniform sent a twinge of emotion through Brim's gut. He'd forgotten how much he missed his own uniform and the feeling of belonging it provided.

"Right ho," the Commander returned with a grin. "Then I have just done both of us a favor." He motioned Brim through the door and followed him inside. "I say," he drawled presently, "I don't believe I've seen you around the ready room before. Was there someone you were meeting here perhaps?"

"That's what I'm led to understand," Brim replied. "But I don't know who it is—someone here was supposed to be looking for me." He peered around the crowded room. It looked like any of the thousand-odd ready rooms he'd encountered during his wartime travels: a little on the dingy side already and cluttered with awkward furniture. Here and there, knots of people were drinking mugs of cvceese' or viewing newsframes; many were playing cre'el, a game of chance that Brim never had found time to master. Situation boards covered one whole wall, updating their brilliant colors in what appeared to be real time.

"Oh, I see," the Commander said doubtfully, turning to hang his Fleet cloak on a nearby rack. Beneath, his uniform was clearly custom made. "Ah, on business, perhaps?" he asked with a frown.

Brim felt his face flush. "I'm sorry," he said. "I suppose you are wondering what I'm doing here." He laughed in spite of his embarrassment. "My name's Wilf Brim. I'm applying for a civilian Helmsman's position I understand is open at the base here."

"Ah, so you're a Helmsman, too," the Commander exclaimed, extending his hand. "Well, I'm glad to meet you. Tobias Moulding's my name—and no tired jokes, please. Call me Toby for short." He frowned.

"You were with the Fleet yourself at one time, I expect?"

"A thousand years ago," Brim said, gripping the other's hand.

"It's a bad thing the CIGAs have done at the Admiralty," Moulding said with a frown. "But then I'm sure nobody has to tell you about that." He took a deep breath. "Certainly Minister Grobermann had the situation firmly in mind when he sent his threatening message to Fluvanna. Not much we could do without Drive crystals."

Brim only shrugged. "I don't keep up with the League much anymore," he said. "I'm simply anxious to get behind a helm again."

"Well, I hope you will," Moulding said. "But first, we'll need to find out who it is you should report to."

He looked around the room. "I say, chaps," he called out. "This man's name is Brim and he's here to see somebody about one of the civilian Helmsman's positions. Who's doing the checks this morning?"

Presently, one of the cre'el players—this one also a Lieutenant Commander—looked up from his game.

"Tell him I'll be with him when I finish this tomer, and not before," he said, dearly resenting the disturbance.

Moulding looked at Brim and raised an eyebrow. "That Cravinn Townsend," he observed with a look of embarrassment "Friendly sort, isn't he?"

Brim shrugged wryly. "I guess I can't blame him—I never had much truck with civilian fluff merchants either," he said, remembering only too well his attitude toward nonmilitary workers when he was a member of the Fleet. Things that went around had a way of coming around, he filed that away for better future, too.

"Big of you," Moulding said, looking at him quizzically "I'm not sure I'd have reacted in the same way."

"You're not looking for a job, either," Brim chuckled. Then he spied the ubiquitous cvceese' brewer, steaming away in corner. "Come on," he said, "If you've time, I'll buy us both a mug." Inside he laughed—he'd become a big spender again! It hadn't been so long ago that he'd had to beg for one at a Norchelite mission.

"Seems fair," Moulding said, striding to the great brass machine that was leaking steam at any number of complex pipe joints. "I open the door; you buy cvceese'."

Brim threw a credit in a battered tin, then poured a mugful and stood in silence for a moment, sipping the sticky-sweet liquid that threatened to permanently scald his throat. No Logish Meem ever tasted so good as cvceese' first thing in the morning. Somehow it went together with ready rooms as naturally as clear sky goes with clean, fresh air. He smiled to himself. Even if he didn't have a uniform, by Universe, he did belong here.

Abruptly, Townsend let out an oath, pushed himself back from the table, and sauntered across to Moulding with a sour look on his face. He was tall and loose-fitted in a sloppy way with a round, flat countenance, sneering eyes, and a manner that suggested arrogance in ample quantities—the way of a small-minded person who had managed to far outstrip his own competence. Significantly, not a single battle star adorned his cuff. The man had never seen combat, but he did wear a showy gold CIGA ring on his finger. "This is Brim?" he demanded with a disparaging thumb and a sneer of disdain.

"That's who he says he is," Moulding answered with a frown. "But I suppose you might just check with him personally, what?" He made a little bow. "Mr. Brim, may I present Lieutenant Commander Cravinn Townsend, Imperial Fleet?"

"Glad to meet you," Brim offered evenly, extending his hand.

Townsend never acknowledged Brim's gesture. "I don't suppose you have anything like a space suit, do you?" he asked. It was more of a statement than a question.

"No," Brim admitted. "I'm afraid I'll have to check one out." He'd left all his belongings behind in Avalon.

"Wonderful," Townsend spat. "You must really know somebody important around here." He glanced at Moulding. "We'll probably have to furnish his underwear as well. Did you know that this clod is also a Carescrian?"

Moulding's straw-colored eyebrows rose slightly and he turned to look at Brim with curiosity. "I say," he remarked, "a Carescrian." Then he nodded. "I think I may have even heard of you, Wilf. Had quite a lot to do with the battle for Atalanta, didn't you?"

"A little," Brim said, "but then, so did a lot of people."

"Yes, I thought so," Moulding said, a little smile of interest forming on his lips. He turned to Townsend. "I shall take it upon myself to show him where one gets a temporary issue of space togs," he said. "What are you two scheduled to fly this morning?"

"AT-twenty-nine."

Moulding nodded. "Figured," he said. "Hot little beast, what?"

"Yeah," Townsend laughed, turning his face from Brim. He whispered something behind his hand that ended with, "and I'm just the one to do it."

"I see," Moulding said skeptically. "Well, I shall bring the fellow to the ready line in about..." he checked his timepiece, "say three-quarters of a metacycle. All right?"

"Make it a metacycle," Townsend said, starting for the cre'el table he had abandoned. "I've got some unfinished business over here." Then he laughed suggestively over his shoulder. "You'll want to be at the ready line to watch," he said to Moulding.

"Oh, I will indeed be there to watch," Moulding assured him in a droll voice. "In fact," he added quietly, almost to himself, "I don't think I'd miss it for half of Avalon."

Brim took everything in. Except for Moulding, it sounded like the Helmsmen's Academy all over again.

His wealthy classmates as well as his instructors had done everything in their power to make his life difficult, to make him quit. And they had failed. Townsend was no different; he would fail too.

"Well, Wilf?" Moulding asked, looking Brim in the face. "I can't imagine you missed his bloody intentions, so you know full well what to expect. Shall we still go check out some flying togs?"

Brim nodded grimly. "I don't think I'd miss it for half of Avalon either," he replied. "Too xaxtdamned many CIGAs there for my liking."

Little less than a metacycle later, the two men stood at the ready line beside a stubby little T-29G, two-seat advanced trainer of the Imperial Fleet for more than fifteen Standard years. Barely sixty-four irals in length, it was equipped with a powerful R-1820-86 spin-gravitron generator that provided astonishing acceleration. But with no Drive-crystal system, it was limited to HypoSpeed velocities. Brim had just finished an external walkaround; as he expected, it was in excellent repair as it bobbed in the light breeze above a portable gravity pad. A small puddle of coolant had dripped from the spin grav overnight, but as Brim well knew, when no coolant was leaking from an R-1820, there was probably none in the cooling chambers and some had better be added immediately. He stood in his borrowed space suit and felt a warm breeze from the bay on his face. He could hear the rumble of gravs bellowing from the run-up area and the other noises that came from a busy spaceport. A thrill teased his spine—nothing else in the Universe could match this. Spaceflight—the stars! He took a deep breath. It didn't matter who owned the space suit—he belonged here.

"Professional preflight job," Moulding observed, breaking into Brim's daydream. "The ship meets your approval, does she?" he added, while he brushed a stray wisp of yellow hak from his eyes.

Brim laughed. "Yeah," he said, unable to stifle a grin of pleasure. "I wish brother Townsend would hurry. It's been a while since I had my hands on a set of controls where everything works."

"Hmm," Moulding mused. "Yes, well, look here. That chap's been known to be quite late at times." He rubbed his chin, then thumped the little spacecraft's hull affectionately with his fist. "Tell you what," he said. "I can certainly take responsibility for letting you into the cockpit. Why don't you just pull the boarding ladder up and get started." Then he grinned roguishly. "Perhaps," he added, "if Townsend doesn't show up, I'll throw on some space togs, and you can take me up for a spin."

Brim made a mock salute. "Sounds like a plan to me," he said, extending the little ship's boarding ladder.

In short order he unlocked the front canopy, pushed it aside, then settled into the snug front cockpit, virtually surrounded on three sides by an array of readouts and controls that had been familiar since his days in The Academy. He shut his eyes while the odors of the ship transported him to another life.

Plastic, lubricating oils, logics and sealants—all intermixed with the spicy odors of organic insulating compounds. And polish: military vehicles always reeked of polish, no matter what their function. This T-29 was no exception.

For the next few cycles, Brim busied himself checking circuit breakers, valves, and switches. Then he preset the readout panels and peered out into the parking area—still no Townsend. He checked the energy choke: fully closed. Inverters: off. Next he punched all the circuit breakers in. Finally, he stood on the seat and again peered off toward the locker room, shading his eyes from Hador's glare. Townsend was still nowhere in sight. Shrugging, he slid into the seat again, and held his hand in the air. "Spinning up," he called down to Moulding.

Moulding quickly stepped back from the gravity pad. "Right ho, old chap!" he exclaimed. "Go to it!"

Brim switched on the spin-grav master, slid the power switch forward to activate while he counted three clicks, then returned it to energy on and watched the grav panel display energized. With the plasma thus set, he advanced the thrust control halfway off between off and minimum, then hit both run and energy boost in unison; the R-1820 whined and began to spin. He glanced at the interrupter. It began strobing almost immediately—an excellent ship, he considered, while a mindless grin of delight spread across his face.

Eight strobes... nine strobes... ten. Brim mashed START and the spin grav fired thunderously, shaking the little ship's spaceframe with a jarring rhythm while he fed in delicate thrust-control and plasma-form motions to take the machine from a few random zaps to a point where all eighteen ion chambers were sparking on cue. Moments later, the interrupter steadied and the noise and throbbing died to a velvety purr. "Look's like she wants to fly," he shouted.

"I do, too!" Moulding snouted back. "I shall be back before you finish your preflight checklist." He started for the center at a run, but never got much past the gravity pad before Townsend pulled up in an open skimmer, his flabby face red with anger.

"Who said you could start that ship?" he shouted at Brim. "Who even gave you permission to board?

Xaxtdamned Carescrian imbecile—I'll teach you to—"

Moulding grabbed the man's arm before he could reach the boarding ladder. He was smaller than Townsend, but the look in his eyes brooked no nonsense. " I gave him permission," he growled.

Townsend stopped abruptly, then took a step back. "Oh," he said, looking down at Moulding's hand. "I see."

"That's a good chap," Moulding said, releasing his grip with deliberate slowness. But the steely look in his eyes remained. "I'm counting on you to provide Mr. Brim with an impartial check ride, old boy. Don't let me down."

Townsend rubbed his forearm and scowled. "Oh, he'll get a ride, Moulding. One he won't forget."

"That may well be so," Moulding agreed, then glanced up and met Brim's eyes for a moment. He winked, then looked back at Townsend with a little smile on his face. "But then," he added, "unless I miss my guess, Townsend, so will you."

Within fifteen cycles, Brim had completed the ship's preflight checks, while Townsend silently haunted the rear cockpit like a wraith. As whining electric motors drew the canopy shut, he could see that Moulding had taken up a position off the starboard forequarter, and was standing with his hands behind his back, cape blowing in the breeze. "Ship's ready for internal gravity, Commander," he reported on the intercom.

"Well, switch it, then. Don't tell me about it," Townsend sniffed. "After that, you may taxi out to the takeoff area. I've filed a flight plan. And be careful, mind you. These are touchy ships."

"Aye, Commander," Brim said between clenched teeth. He pulled on his helmet, then called the tower for clearance and switched to internal gravity. While the little ship lifted from the gravity pad and hovered on its own, he endured a brief moment of nausea that tied his stomach in knots. Finally, he got his clearance, locked the steering engine into taxi mode, and slid the thrust control into run-up position. At his wave, a Crew Chief dressed in bright yellow coveralls shut off the optical moorings, and the T-29 moved off the gravity pad. Moulding grinned as they taxied past and held his thumb up in the universal sign of good luck.

"You'll need it, Carescrian," Townsend laughed archly over the intercom.

Brim kept his silence. While the spacecraft rolled out, he made a final panel check and selected the Stability Augmentation function on the navigation board. Within a few clicks, a white star illuminated on the mode selector, indicating that the ship had located and was tracking at least three stars in its preprogrammed catalog. If Townsend were as sloppy a Helmsman as promised to be, the system might save both their lives. At the run-up area beside the bay, he waited for takeoff clearance while he spun the R-1820 through military power and completed his takeoff checkout list. Then he taxied out over the water to the departure vector. Ahead, a solid ruby light flashed out of the bright distance. "Your ship," he announced to Townsend. Somehow, in the last few cycles, the morning had become a lot better, in spite of the blockhead riding aft.

Townsend advanced the energy choke to military power but held in place for a few moments to let the plasma build. Then he released the gravity brakes and the T-29 began to dash across the water, gaining speed with each moment.

After about fourteen clicks, Brim began to frown. They had plenty of takeoff velocity now—why weren't they lifting? He checked the readouts as their speed increased. Everything looked normal. Glancing at the flight systems panel, he started to scan for a malfunction when suddenly Townsend pitched the nose up violently and the little ship began to climb like the old-fashioned chemical rockets he'd seen in school. A split click later, the T-29 started to roll around its forward axis as if it were drilling a hole in the sky.

Biting his lip, Brim grabbed the seat on either side of him to keep his hands from the controls. Soon they were nearly fifty thousand irals up, but the rolling climb continued unabated. Was the ship malfunctioning or was Townsend merely showing off? Brim decided to wait things out for another few clicks and braced himself for anything that might transpire.

An instant later, the T-29 whipped around in a wild yaw and headed back toward the surface. But an abrupt decrease in power told Brim all he needed to know about their wild maneuvering. Townsend was still in control, and whatever game the arrogant numskull was trying to play, it was clear he actually thought that he could frighten a combat Helmsman by a little stunt flying. Taking a deep breath, Brim settled back in his recliner, relaxing while the little ship's spaceframe creaked and groaned under the violent maneuvers. With the Stability Augmentation system in backup control, there wasn't much even a total incompetent could do to get them into trouble. But truth to tell, Brim had endured enough Townsends to fill a cesspool. Now he was simply waiting. This match had two periods, and the second was his.

His turn came after a purposely crabbed landing that almost cost them a surface loop; Brim could feel Townsend desperately fighting the controls for half the landing vector. When presently they coasted to a hovering stop just off the surface of the water, Brim almost felt honored. The simpleton had tried so hard to frighten him that he'd almost caused a crash.

"Your ship," Townsend announced disdainfully. But his voice had a slight edge. He knew how close he'd come.

"Very well," Brim acknowledged in a calm voice. He took his time running a number of checkout routines, then accelerated into a normal takeoff run and gently lifted ship, climbing slowly while he tested himself. It was, after all, months since he'd been at any controls. By the time they'd climbed through thirty thousand irals, however, he knew all he needed about himself and the ship. He was satisfied. Then he began to wait. What would happen next was entirely up to Townsend.

"Well, come on, Brim," the man taunted presently. "Anybody can take off and climb." He laughed cynically. "You must have convinced somebody you know how to fly. But so far, all you've shown me is that you're a typical Carescrian phony. Let's see something exciting if you fancy a job flying for the Fleet again."

"You're sure that's what you want?" Brim asked.

"I am not in the habit of wasting words on lowlife trash like you," Townsend growled. "Now either show me some flying, or I shall take us back to the base immediately. Unlike you, I have important things in my life."

"I see," Brim said through clenched teeth. "As you wish." Quietly, he shut off all external COMM, then punched four circuit breakers controlling the little ship's Stability Augmentation system. For the maneuvers he had planned, it would just be in the way.

"Hey, jerk," Townsend complained promptly, "you just shut down the SAS—you want to get us both killed?"

"Perhaps I do," Brim said quietly into the intercom. "Are you ready to die?" At that, he rolled the ship inverted and shut off the spin grav. The T-29 began to fall like a rock.

"Xorked Universe!" Townsend swore in a panicked voice. "What are you doing, zukeed?"

"Locking you out of the control system, for one thing," Brim answered, punching more circuit breakers.

"—and your escape mechanism," he added. "You said you wanted some excitement—well, by Voot's beard, that is precisely what you are about to get." While he spoke, the still-inverted ship was dropping like a meteor, with less than a thousand irals to go.

Townsend had begun to scream incoherently and pound on the canopy with his fists when Brim at last fired off the spin grav at no more than thirty irals altitude and then began to streak along the surface toward the Fleet base, still upside down. In moments, he sped over the breakers (coating his windshield with spray!), cleared the run-up area at no more than twenty irals, then zoomed through an outside loop that ended, inverted again, at precisely the same twenty irals of altitude. Clicks later, Brim rolled the ship rightside up and continued inland at high speed toward Atalanta's City Mount Hill, dodging hangars and trees with the fluid control inputs he'd used as a youth, racing ore barges through the perilous ore shoals off Carescria. After a few moments' play, however, he cranked the ship into a tight turn, then laid it on its side while he flew through one of the narrow stone arches supporting Harbor Causeway, this time to the sounds of Townsend vomiting in his helmet. It hadn't taken long at all. Too bad, he thought. Already, it was time to go home.

Soaring out over the base again in a gentle turn, he activated the external COMM and called for landing clearance. As he expected, he got it quickly; he'd just broken every rule in the book! He laughed. This would certainly be his last time piloting any kind of a government spacecraft. For just a moment, he felt a pang of regret for the trouble he knew he had just caused Claudia. Then he put her out of his mind. It wasn't he who had asked for today's little jaunt around the base; therefore, she would just have to understand.

Finally, with Townsend still spluttering in the backseat, Brim caught the winking ruby flash of a landing vector, cut power to his spin grav once more, and made landfall dead-stick, bringing the ship to an effortless hover on its own gravity in a few easy hull lengths. "Your ship," he said, as they bobbed gently above the swells.

Silence.

"Well?"

After a long while, Townsend's voice came weakly over the intercom. "I can't d-do it, you bastard," he groaned weakly, "too s-sick."

The words were accompanied by more feeble spitting noises, so Brim switched off the intercom and taxied along the maze of canals that lead to the ready line. He smiled wryly. If nothing else, it had been fun getting back at the controls again. He hoped he wouldn't have to pay for his pleasure by doing time in the brig, but the kind of lesson he'd just been handed regarding government employment was worth at least that. After today, he would never again waste his life mooning after another government flying job.

From now on, it was civilian employment exclusively for Wilf Brim. And if that meant that he wouldn't fly for a while, then so be it. He was making a good enough living with his axes.

He had just turned onto a ramp leading back to the ready line when a Base Operations skimmer bobbed in front of him with flags flying officiously. A flashing sign across its stern commanded, follow me.

Shrugging, he pulled in behind the little vehicle and trailed it all the way to the main concrete apron of gravity pads that separated the headquarters building from five square c'lenyts of gravity pools and canals it commanded. Most of the pads were in use by other utility craft of various shapes and sizes; however, one—located in the first row nearest the glass walls of the Administration section—was unoccupied. And it was to this pad that the Security skimmer directed him. He frowned in the bright sunlight as he swung the nose of the ship. Three people were standing on the far side, and the one dressed in a close-fitting yellow jumpsuit was certainly Claudia—he could pick her out anywhere. He grimaced and swallowed a lump in his throat. Her much-deserved anger would be difficult to endure.

The man to the right of her was... Moulding, of course! He, too, had every right to be angry—furious, even. A pity, Brim considered with a grimace; the blond officer seemed to be a decent sort of person, even if he was wealthy.

But who was the other man? Dressed in a severe civilian business suit, he had a familiar look about him.

Suddenly, Brim's heart jumped as the distance narrowed. No one else in the Universe had that combination of features: the dark complexion, thin, dry lips, pockmarked jowls, short-cropped hair, and eyes that could drill holes in hullmetal. They could belong to no one but Bosporus P. Gallsworthy, formerly Principal Helmsman of I.F.S. Truculent—and one of the finest Helmsmen in the Fleet. Brim hadn't seen him for seven years or so, but clearly the man had retired into civilian life. And whatever he was doing there, it didn't bode well for someone who had just broken nearly every flight regulation on—or above—the base. With a shrug, Brim concluded that their anger could wait until he properly shut down the T-29; it made little sense to take his troubles out on the ship. Then, driving the little trainer onto the ample gravity pad, he carefully set both gravity brakes, stopcocked the energy choke, and powered off the spin grav. As soon as the boarding ladder deployed, he heard the rear canopy rumble open.

Presently, in the corner of his eye, he watched Townsend stumble to the pavement, then bolt headlong toward the Headquarters locker room, looking neither left nor right as he ran.

Cycles later, when he finished inciting the ship's systems, he once again focused his eyes and his attention on the trio waiting to vent their ire on him. Strange though, he ruminated as he slid the canopy back: each of them now seemed to be grinning at him.

At the foot of the boarding ladder, Brim loosened his helmet, then carefully rotated it forward and off, squinting at the three silhouettes walking toward him in the sudden, unfiltered brightness. Folding his arms on his chest, he stood his ground, feet apart, chin thrust out in the fresh sea breeze. If retribution was indeed his lot, then it might xaxtdamned well come to him. He braced himself.

Gallsworthy broke the silence in his distinctively hushed voice. "Humph," he began, gripping the Carescrian's hand in a rare show of feeling. "It's been a long time, you young pup." Then, with no warning whatsoever, he began to speak in a boisterous voice that was entirely out of character with anything Brim could recall. "Perfectly dreadful series of malfunctions you had out there, Brim." he bellowed. "Ah yes—it's certainly clear you've lost none of your extraordinary flying skills, Humph."

"Malfunctions?" Brim stammered in bewilderment. He glanced at Claudia for some explanation, only to encounter a perfectly spiritual countenance, brown eyes turned reverently toward the heavens.

"All three of us watched from the control tower, m'boy," Gallsworthy affirmed boisterously before Brim could even open his mouth again. "I was especially impressed when your ship rolled itself on its side and you still managed to safely steer it under the stone bridge. Splendid Helmsmanship! Splendid."

"Yes, right ho," Moulding added, even more stridently, slapping Brim on the shoulder and nodding in an eloquent manner toward a pair of scowling Safety Officers in blue and gold uniforms who were charging around the corner of the gravity pad, clearly intent on grabbing someone. They stopped just short of Brim, puffing officiously. One was a mousy, nervous woman with the mean, narrow eyes of a martinet; her partner was a nondescript and rather stupid-looking man of about twenty who badly needed a shave.

Both wore boots with the gleaming, patent-glass finish favored by security guards everywhere in the galaxy. "A great show of Helmsmanship," Moulding continued to Brim without stopping for breath, "carried out under the most difficult of circumstances. It is certain that you saved Lieutenant Commander Townsend's life. Few men in the Empire could have pulled it off the way you did."

At that, both security officers turned to Gallsworthy with a look of consternation.

"S'at what happened, Commissioner?" the woman asked deferentially. "A malfunction, like? We thought that..."

"Humph. Just what did you think, madam?" Gallsworthy demanded loftily.

"Um, we thought that, um... the dark 'aired one 'ere was out joy ridin', Commissioner," the woman explained, pointing at Brim. "We're gettin' awful complaints from when 'e flew under the bridge, we are.

Scared the bevoots out of a whole tramload o' tourists. Couple o' 'em even jumped in the canal."

"Certainly preferable to his crashing into the bridge," Claudia asserted. "Better to soak a few tourists than dump a whole tramload into the canal—along with the tram—I should think."

"No question, Madam Claudia," the other officer agreed, knuckling his forehead. "We 'adn't no idea 'e was in trouble."

His partner kept a grudging silence, but her eyes showed little accord with his words.

"Of course you had no idea," Gallsworthy conceded grandly. "Humph. You were only doing your jobs—and doing them splendidly, I might add." He inspected his fingernails for a moment. "In fact," he went on presently, turning to address the woman exclusively, "I might even cause a personal memorandum of commendation to be placed in your Headquarters files extolling—humph—the great intelligence that you and your partner have shown in the handling of this potentially awkward situation. Do I make myself clear?" he demanded, fixing the woman with a cold stare.

"A... a commendation?" the woman asked in sudden astonishment.

"My own personal commendation, Officer," Gallsworthy said. "Now do I make myself clear?"

" M-most clear, Commissioner," she stammered with a deep bow. "My partner and I are honored, indeed," she added, this time almost reverently.

"Very well," Gallsworthy said, even more imperiously than before. "On your way, then. The letters will be sent with today's dispatches."

"Thank you, Commissioner," the officers recited in almost perfect unison. Then they saluted and quickstepped the way they had come, shoes glistening in the sunlight.

Clearly, Brim thought, Commissioner Bosporus Gallsworthy had garnered considerable power and authority since his days nearly six years ago aboard old I.F.S. Truculent. Brim kept his silence and waited for someone else to continue.

Gallsworthy broke the silence again, but only after the Security skimmer had started up and was actually gliding along the apron toward the run-up area. "Claudia," he ordered quietly, pointing to the T-29, "have this little beauty towed to Repair and completely dismantled by technicians you can trust to discover something appropriately wrong. Humph. After our friend Brim's display of aerobatics this morning, everyone's going to have questions—from Atalanta's city fathers to the head of my own Security Department."

"At once, Commissioner," Claudia replied, drawing a communicator from her purse. She turned toward the little trainer and began whispering instructions.

Glancing wryly at Moulding, Gallsworthy shook his head and indicated Brim with a casual toss of his thumb. "As I said when you burst into my office grumbling about Townsend," he chuckled, "that idiot wasn't about to make serious trouble for ol' Wilf, here. This madman is trouble—always has been, always will be, so far as I can see. We've needed someone around here like him for a long time—to keep things stirred up, a little. Humph."

"I think I understand," Moulding agreed with a twinkle of humor in his eye. "Wilf," he said, extending his hand. "I look forward to working with you—not only for your renowned Helmsmanship, but because I think we are probably going to be good friends."

"Not so fast, you two," Claudia broke in, replacing the transmitter in her purse. "Wilf hasn't accepted the job yet. He doesn't even know what it pays. Perhaps after his morning with Townsend he won't want to work here." She placed her hands on her hips and looked Brim in the eye. "How about it, Wilf?" she asked. "I think these gentlemen are taking quite a lot for granted; don't you?"

Brim felt his head spin. So far, this hadn't turned out to be the most entertaining morning of his recollection. "Well..." he started gallantly.

Gallsworthy frowned and nodded. "Humph. I suppose she's right, Brim," he interrupted. "I apologize for that. The position's at a Lead Helmsman's level—roughly First Lieutenant's pay. And—humph—yes, I did put you through a bit of difficulty this morning—but then I had to."

"Oh?" Brim demanded with a raised eyebrow.

Gallsworthy nodded. "Brim," he said with a serious face, "from what I could discover after some—humph—discreet inquiries, you were—in my mind—showing signs of what the veterans' organizations euphemistically call 'adversarial hostility.' Without the sugarcoated words, it sounded very possible that you'd built up so much anger you weren't fit to be a military Helmsman anymore—and you'd have had damned good reason, young man. You faced more than your share of rotten luck." He grimaced, then shrugged. "So I made you fly with the greatest simpleton on the base. The way I looked at it, if you could still pilot a ship after taking the garbage I knew he would dish out, then you were all right." He nodded toward Claudia with a wry look. "Humph. I could have saved us both the trouble, had I listened to this one—or a number of other people whose help you'd spurned over the last couple of years. They never lost faith in you, Brim—but I don't think the inverse is necessarily manifest, is it?"

Brim shook his head. The anger was there, all right. It was all his; he'd placed it between himself and the Empire he'd once served. Never again could he blindly love authority as he once had; there were too many scars, now. But for the first time he was beginning to realize that he had also somehow managed to extend that same animosity to his more fortunate friends as well. And as a result, he had doubly suffered when he failed to accept the help they offered. "I-I should have done some listening, too, I'm afraid," he admitted in a low voice.

Claudia touched his forearm. "That part of your life is over now if you choose, Wilf," she said. "Will you join us?"

Blinking back tears that threatened to burst from his eyes, Brim nodded and turned to Gallsworthy. There were no questions or conditions. "I'll take the job, Commissioner," he said quietly, covering Claudia's hand with his for a moment before he released it, "gladly." Then he shook his head ironically. "And I was so xaxtdamned proud of the way I could handle an axe..."

Gallsworthy chuckled quietly. "If I ever catch you flying like that again around my base," he said, "I may take one of those axes to you."

Brim looked up with a little grin. That was more like the Gallsworthy he'd once known! Glancing at the man sideways, he frowned. "Surely not if I am victim of still another malfunction, Commissioner," he replied, fluttering a hand over his heart with a look of righteous bewilderment. "You wouldn't ask me to risk my life, would you?"

Gallsworthy shook his head as they started for the Headquarters building. "Xaxtdamned Carescrians," he chuckled to no one in particular. "Humph. There's no living with them at all.. ."

During the weeks that followed, Haelic passed from summer into the clear, crisp days of autumn while Brim saw the return of his old confidence. In deep space, he quickly established himself as one of the base's premiere Diagnostic Helmsmen, although he often found his piloting talents (as well as his courage) stretched as much by untried starships as they had been by Leaguers during the war years. And much closer to the ground, after a frosty evening's ride on his gravcycle, a honey-blond flight dispatcher wasted no time proving that his troubles with Margot had been only transient—beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Even Townsend checked out of his life by accepting a permanent change of station to Avalon where his CIGA contacts would be more politically valuable.

And during rare moments of relaxation, he resumed correspondence with a number of the old friends he had once forsaken—except for Margot Effer'wyck-LaKarn. On his first attempt to contact their confidential maildrop, he had been advised by old Ambridge, her chauffeur, that less than a week following their last stolen evening together, she had been sequestered at her husband's palace in Rudolpho, capital of the Torond, incommunicado.

He was, however, able to keep abreast of LaKarn himself, try as he might to avoid even the mention of the man's name. As the Mitchell Trophy Race approached, the public media had little else to report about. In fact, for an entire week preceding the event, the Baron became positively loquacious in his role as sponsor of two Gorn-Hoff 380B-5 fast attack craft entered by his Royal Starflight Society. Brim wondered if he planned for Margot to accompany him to Magalla'ana for the races and how such a journey would affect her child who must certainly reach term during that time.

When recordings of the first race day reached Atalanta on speedy packet ships, Brim spent most of his time in deep space, flying at least twice as many missions as he normally scheduled. Most of the other Helmsmen either stayed home or concocted some excuse to watch broadcasts on one of the base's huge, three-dimensional monitors. That night, he returned to his apartment so fatigued that he took to his bunk immediately and fell into a deep sleep without even consulting the news service to which he indifferently subscribed.

During the remaining race days, he continued filling in for absent colleagues from early morning until everyone but night-shift Helmsmen had departed for home. Only late in the evening of the final race did he find time to catch up on the galaxy's happenings. And thus it was that he became one of the last people in Atalanta—or anywhere else, for that matter—to discover that LaKarn's race-modified Gorn-Hoffs had been able to gamer only a third-place win.

Second place had been won by an old friend, actually one of Brim's apprentices aboard I.F.S. Defiant, Aram of Nahshon. The young flighted native of A'zurn had piloted a R3C-1 prototype from the new A'zurnian starship plant at R'autor, established soon after his domain was liberated from the yoke of League occupation. Brim was so elated about the young A'zurnian's achievement, he almost missed the name of the winning Helmsman. In fact, it was the man's face and blond hair, recorded beside the sleek, brooding form of a new Gorn-Hoff model—the TA 153-V32—that initially caught his attention. Only after he stared at the monitor for a long time did he cue an information channel to assure himself that the handsome, black-uniformed Controller, an OverPraefect, was indeed the Leaguer whom he suspected.

He was not mistaken.

The name was Kirsh Valentin.

For years, memories alone had been quite sufficient to send Brim into wild spasms of anger whenever he thought of Valentin. The sight of his face was even worse. Those cruel blue eyes had once callously looked down at him as he lay in the cold deck of a Leaguer starship waiting for death to deliver him from the agony of his torture. Only lady Fortune—in the person of Lieutenant Commander Regula Collingswood—had saved his life that day, and he had sworn that he would someday revenge himself against the Leaguer. He'd had only one chance at it, so far—and had utterly failed.

In fact, the picture of Valentin so upset Brim that he nearly passed up an ancillary announcement used as filler in the special race supplement:

Born: Rodyard Greyffin A'zurn LaKarn to fashionable Princess Margot Effer'wyck-LaKarn and Rogan LaKarn, Baron of the Torond. The trendsetting royal couple's first child was delivered in Magalla'ana, A'zurn, during a final heat of the Mitchell Trophy Race. Dowager Princess Honorotha LaKarn, current monarch of the Torond, attended the birthing. She reports that mother and son are both doing splendidly.

At the time, Baron LaKarn was occupied with the race committee and could not be reached for comment. The royal family plans to return to the Torond within the next few Standard days.

Brim had little time to reflect upon either event. He was simply too busy keeping up with his own career to worry about things he was powerless to change. He was also a somewhat different man from the Wilf Brim who had fled Avalon nine Standard months in the past.

One frosty evening, shortly after Brim returned to his apartment from the base, his correspondence was interrupted by an unexpected knock at the door. Frowning—he permitted himself few friends and expected even fewer visitors—he got to his feet and opened the door, then staggered back into his living room, grinning in happy consternation. "Nik Ursis!" he blurted out. "Dr. Borodov! By the very hair of Voot's tangled beard, where in the Universe did you two come from?" With that, he fairly leaped through the door in a vain attempt to embrace the two elegant Sodeskayan Bears, both dressed in civilian clothes.

Ursis, the younger of the two and Dean of the famous Dityasburg Academy on the G.F.S.S. planet of Zhiv'ot, stood a quarter again as tall as Brim. He had small, gray eyes of enormous intensity, dark reddish brown fur, a long, urbane muzzle that terminated in a huge, wet nose, and a grin so wide that fang jewels on either side of his mouth blazed in the light of the doorway. On his head he wore a colossal egg-shaped hat of curly wool that covered his ears and added at least an iral to his already formidable height. His black, knee-length greatcoat—embellished by two rows of huge gold buttons and jasmine waist sash—was cut in the military style with a stiff collar, embroidered cuffs, and a wide skirt. Crimson trousers bagged stylishly over his thick calf-length boots, the latter of black leather so soft that it bunched at the ankles. On his left hand he wore a delicately embroidered, six-fingered glove of ophet leather. The other hand held a prodigious bottle of Logish Meem.

The other Bear—Grand Duke (Doctor) Anastas Alexyi Borodov and master of vast baronial estates in the deeply wooded lake country outside Gromcow on the G.F.S.S. mother planet of Sodeskaya—was chestnut in color, much older, somewhat bowed by his years, and stood only a little taller than Brim. His eyes, however, sparkled with youthful humor and prodigious intellect behind a pair of old-fashioned horn-rim spectacles. And, although his graying muzzle was not nearly so intimidating as that of his companion, enormous sideburns provided him with a most profoundly intellectual countenance. He also was splendidly dressed in a handsome, ankle-length greatcoat of thick gray felt that was closed at the waist with a narrow leather belt. From the open collar emerged a heavy vest of darker felt with high, embroidered collars fastened by a delicate necktie of golden rope. Unlike Ursis's soft walking boots, Borodov's were clearly made for riding, cobbled of far stiffer, shiny leather and equipped with unobtrusive spurs secured at the ankle by delicate belts. And, although he also wore a massive hat of curly wool, it was much wider at the top than it was at the headband and gave his head the look of a wooly funnel. "Perhaps, young Brim," he suggested peering over his glasses at the open door, "we should go inside to drink the meem and catch up on old times. It has been much too long since we sat together discussing troubles of the galaxy."

"Is true, Wilf Ansor," Ursis admonished. "During your months of disappearance, you troubled many of your friends—Anastas Alexyi and myself not least among them. Am I correct, Doctor?"

"Most correct, Nikolai Yanuarievich," Borodov replied with a pointed glance at Brim. "'Old snow and wooden floors turn skies blue in the autumn,' as they say."

Brim shook his head in mock concession. Sodeskayan homilies made little sense to human ears. "If you say so," he chuckled while he guided his friends through the door, eagerly looking forward to a rare evening of companionship.

And indeed, the Bears' visit did begin the way he anticipated. Borodov opened Ursis's huge bottle, then poured a magnificent vintage of Logish Meem into Brim's humble collection of cvceese' mugs. And only when these had become empty were they held upside down in the air while the three comrades toasted in the Sodeskayan style: "To ice, to snow, to Sodeskaya we go!" The friendship they shared was a special closeness forged in the hellish disrupter fire of countless, desperately fought battles against the League of Dark Stars.

Afterward, there should have been a thousand old stories to retell... jokes not always funny at the time they happened, but now hilarious almost beyond belief... valiant Blue Capes and starships, gone forever except in the memories of those who still honored them... a whole wealth of general catching up for Bears and Carescrians both. But somehow, none of these conversations even got started. The Sodeskayans were already consumed by their current mission and could talk of little else.

"You came halfway across the galaxy for a meeting of the Imperial Starflight Society?" Brim asked in amazement as Borodov refilled their cups. "What sort of interest could either of you have in an amateur outfit like the ISS? Did you see the antique they entered in the trophy race? It looked great, but it flew like it had an asteroid in tow—forty-nine point seven eight M LightSpeed, full bore! Valentin won at better than sixty-two."

"We saw both ships, and how they performed," Borodov said soberly, tamping a charge of Hogge'Poa into his Zempa pipe. "That is precisely why we have come—the Great Federation of Sodeskayan States is, after all, a part of the Empire."

"I understand that," Brim replied, struggling to stifle a gasp as aromatic 'Poa smoke filled his small apartment. Sodeskayans loved the odor, that to Brim smelled like something between smoldering yaggloz wool and fumes from a radiation fire. "But I didn't know the ISS had any Sodeskayan members. From what I understood, it was never much more than a swank social club for wealthy Avalonians."

Borodov nodded. "Your understanding is essentially correct, my friend," he said, frowning thoughtfully at his pipe, which appeared to have extinguished itself in spite of his efforts. "Until the war, those societies conducted starship racing in a very amateurish fashion indeed. The powerful socialites who formed their race committees wished only to bask in the dangerous glamour of starship racing, without necessarily participating in person. By unwritten fiat, they purchased their racers at military storage and reclamation facilities and left the flying side of things to contractors. It was all a big, infatuating game," he snorted,

"right up until this year." With that, he took out a pocket laser and began a new attempt to relight his recalcitrant pipe.

"When the League of Dark Stars broke all the old unwritten rules," Ursis continued in place of his companion, "they also twisted the whole concept from a grand, pangalactic celebration of affluence into a downright arrant display of military prowess. Instead of bumbling through as had all the prewar winners, these Leaguers tailored every detail for one particular task—winning. Which, of course, they did.

Handily. If it hadn't been for young Aram and his new starship factory on A'zurn, your friend Valentin would have won first and second places! And do you know why the Leaguers did it?"

Brim pursed his lips and shook his head. "I guess I hadn't been paying that much attention to the whys, Nik," he explained.

"Think of it this way, Wilf," Ursis explained. "Except for those obscenities who call themselves CIGA, anybody with even half a brain understands that Triannic will resume his war just as soon as he thinks he can win it. He's already taking his first steps with threats against Fluvanna, and competitions like the Mitchell Trophy Race are perfect places to show off military hardware, as well as attract new allies." He looked Brim directly in the eye. "Allies like your friend and mine, Rogan LaKarn," he added pointedly.

"That's my take of the thing, too," Borodov growled with a nod. "But just try to explain that to any of the CIGAs in Avalon," he said, "especially those blasted zukeeds in the Admirally. They not only lack interest in the truth, but have sufficient power to avoid hearing it very often."

"CIGA scum will not always be in the ascendancy," Borodov predicted darkly. "But until that time comes, we must have ways to counter them." He looked at Brim. "And now, friend Wilf, you begin to understand why Nikolai Yanuarievich and I have come halfway across a galaxy to attend a Royal Starflight Society meeting. Certain patriotic forces in the Empire are quietly reacting to the League's unusual win at A'zurn with their own meticulous preparations for the next race—preparations made with quiet, but almost limitless, government assistance."

"And believe me, Wilf," Ursis added, "we are not unique. Similar arrangements are going on all over the galaxy, even as we speak. This year's competition was also the unofficial prelude to the war's next phase." He laughed darkly, indicating the handsome lavender vest he wore over a richly embroidered white shirt and golden rope necktie. "We no longer wear our blue Fleet Capes, my friend, but we still fight for the same cause, eh?"

Brim nodded uncertainly. "If you say so, Nik," he equivocated. Sodeskayan Bears were known all over the Empire as rather parochial patriots.

The Bear shook his head soberly. "I do say so, Wilf Ansor, and proudly, I might add. Moreover, because of this, I am certain of where I stand in relation to the future—as is my friend and mentor Dr. Borodov." Then he rose. "But do you know where you stand?"

Brim felt his eyebrows rise as he looked from one Great Sodeskayan Bear to the other. "I don't think I know what you mean," he started. Then, abruptly it all came home to him. "You mean," he gasped, rising to his feet in astonishment, "that I—a Carescrian—ought to join the ISS with you?"

"In spirit, that is precisely what we mean, Wilf Ansor," Borodov said, taking the pipe from his mouth and looking over his glasses.

For a moment, Brim nearly succumbed to a wild, cynical urge to laugh in the old Bear's face. Ultimately, however, he managed to choke everything back in consideration of their long-established friendship.

Both Sodeskayans were clearly serious. He shook his head. "Nik, Dr. Borodov," he said earnestly, shrugging his shoulders, "I have no place in this crazy mission of yours—whatever it is. I don't particularly like aristocrats—present company excepted, of course. And besides all that, I'm not even so sure how much I love the xaxtdamned Empire. I got pretty hungry there for a while after the war—and I wasn't alone. A lot of us Fleet types got dumped like so much trash when we weren't needed any more."

"That you were, Wilf Ansor," Ursis answered quietly. "But you, at least, did not have to be hungry. Only your own anger prevented friends from helping you."

"But I didn't want charity," Brim snapped defensively, in spite of himself. "I couldn't stand xaxtdamned charity—from anybody."

"As I recall," Borodov interjected gently, "no one offered charity: not Nikolai, nor Commander Collingswood, nor Crown Prince Onrad, nor any of the half-dozen others who badly needed your services and had credits to pay."

" You, Wilf Brim, turned us down with cock-and-bull stories about phantom 'business deals' that were supposed to keep you too busy to accept our offers," Ursis inserted firmly. "Remember?"

Brim felt his face burn. That part of it was certainly true. "Yeah, Nik," he admitted, looking down at his boots. "You two did try to come through for me, a lot of times. And there were others. I haven't forgotten that. But my friends and what they tried to do for me doesn't excuse a whole Empire for the heedless way they treated other veterans who fought and sacrificed. I know what those poor people went through. I talked to them when they were hungry. I saw the hurt in their eyes—while rich bastards like these ISS dudes went on a spending spree all over the galaxy."

Ursis quietly ambled across the room and placed his hand on Brim's shoulder. "Wilf," he said emotionally, "there is no way I can refute your complaints. They are true. But, as you know so well, there are no guarantees concerning this life—only that it goes on toward eventual dissolution, carrying with it most of the inequalities that have existed since the dawn of history. What remains important, then, is that we get on with what we do, all of us. Old comrades once more need your help. And this time let me assure you beyond all shadow of a doubt that you, as well as your talent as a Helmsman, are absolutely necessary."

Brim shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. "I don't doubt you, Nik," he muttered. "It's just that I don't think that this bitterness will go away that easily. I'm doing all right working as a civilian here on Haelic. Sometimes, I even feel as if I belong among the people at work, no matter where I come from." He shook his head and frowned. "But what kind of future could I, a relatively shabby Carescrian, possibly have among people whose chief talent seems to be giving expensive parties?"

Borodov laughed. "About the same sort of future Nikolai Yanuarievich and I plan to have with these persons. You see, we are only consultants to the Society, not members. Of their new Racing Committee, only Regula Collingswood and Prince Onrad are actual members. The rest of the "Special Operations Staff," as we are called, are all hirelings—mere employees, and only temporary at that. If you sign on, the Society will simply 'borrow' you once in a while from the base here, and then friend Gallsworthy will bill the Society. You won't have to give up your new job—or even lose your seniority."

Brim felt himself involuntarily smile, in spite of his churning emotions. "Well," he admitted bleakly, "even a hard-core cynic like me can't complain much about a deal like that. What is it you want me to do?"

"Why don't we come by for you first thing in the morning and take you to the meeting?" Ursis suggested, retrieving his greatcoat from a chair. "That way, you can talk directly to the people who are actually setting things up."

"Somehow," Brim said with a frown, "I have this uncomfortable feeling that the next part of my life has already been planned by someone else—behind my back."

"Someone else plan your life?" Borodov asked in mock astonishment while Brim held his greatcoat.

"Who would do a thing like that?"

"Hmm," Brim mumbled, following the two Sodeskayans outside as they strode toward a huge, chauffeur-driven Rill-21 limousine skimmer hovering discreetly at the curbside.

"See you soon, Wilf Ansor," Ursis called over his shoulder. "We'll be here for you at Morning: one-thirty."

"I'll be ready," Brim answered, sounding a lot more confident than he felt. Ready for what? Then he grinned. His life was clearly about to destabilize all over again, in rapid order. This time, however, the whole process might just prove to be entertaining.

CHAPTER 4

Grand Admiral Kabul Anak

The ISS held its conference at the sumptuous Grand Koundourities Hotel in the heart of the Atalantan business ring. An imposing structure of great apparent age, Brim had been past it countless times, but never inside. Strangely enough, it was old Borodov who seemed to be most familiar with the magnificent hotel. "The Grand Koundourities," he commented as the limousine skimmer approached through heavy, early-morning traffic, "is the largest and oldest civilian structure on all of Haelic, as I recall. It was completed for the fifty-first millennium celebration here in the Standard year 49999." Elegantly dressed as he was the previous evening, the Bear pointed toward the massive stone building's domed central tower.

"During the early five tens," he continued, "it held one of the earliest KA'PPA beacons in existence, and for decades was recognized throughout all known space as the 'Haelic Light.' You can still see the KA'PPA's twelve supports—they look like ornate minarets. Emperor Vargold Narrish IV took his course bearings from that beacon during his early explorations of the Korrellean Sector. And speaking of famous historical figures, it was in 51489 I believe, that Professor David Lu appeared in the main lobby to present Atalanta's City Directorship with his latest Hypercrystal, the basis for all of today's Hyperscreens. Not only that, but here's still another interesting fact," he added as the chauffeur brought them to a halt under the grand portico. "Did you know that the Grand Koundourities was once used as a giant brothel?"

"A brothel?" Brim asked, getting out and peering around with a grin on his face. "Sure doesn't look like one now."

"Nevertheless," Borodov went on with a grin, "it was at one time. Seems that the Garomptar of Pathipett once found himself stranded in Atalanta with his huge star yacht disabled and scarcely an Imperial credit to pay for repairs. Luckily, some three hundred of his most seductive wives were also aboard for his pleasure. So, before word of his financial straits became generally known, he hastily moved his harem into the Koundourities here, took out numerous ads in the local pleasure media, and within three months he'd earned enough to cover the girls' rooms and his starship repairs, with a handsome profit left over for his own private coffers." He laughed. "It's said that the girls loved it. They were normally required to remain faithful, and one imagines that even a very strong man could have made the rounds no more than five or six times a year."

"Universe," Ursis whispered reverently.

"How does he know all that?" Brim asked Ursis as they made their way past a veritable army of colorfully uniformed doormen, through a set of gigantic beveled glass doors, and into a bustling indoor court with marvelously high, arched ceilings that reminded him more of a nicely finished starship hangar than a hotel lobby.

"Baxter Calhoun owns it," the younger Bear explained as if it were common knowledge throughout the Universe. "He wanted Anastas Alexyi and me to stay here, as his guests."

Brim stopped in his tracks, stunned by the Bear's words. "Baxter Calhoun owns this?" he asked in astonishment. "You mean our Commander Baxter Oglethorp Calhoun? Of I.F.S. Defiant ?"

"The same," Borodov assured him. "I thought you of all people would know, especially since he's a fellow Carescrian."

Brim shook his head. "He never let me in on much of anything but a lot of good advice," he answered.

"But how come you two didn't take him up on his offer to stay here?" he asked.

"If anyone around this hotel knew I was Calhoun's guest," Borodov laughed, "I wouldn't be able to endure the fuss they'd make. Besides," he laughed, "my gamekeeper tells me the beds here are much too soft for old Bears like me."

"And I," Ursis laughed, "simply followed suit. It was easier."

"I see," Brim chuckled absently, stopping to peruse the window of a media shop while Borodov and Ursis checked at the information desk. He shook his head. During his year aboard I.F.S. Defiant, he'd certainly guessed that Calhoun was a wealthy man. But he'd had no idea how wealthy.

"Wilf—you're here! The Bears got in touch with you," a familiar voice called from nearby. Brim whirled around just in time to be captured in a wild embrace by Regula Collingswood, his onetime commanding officer on two fine warships.

"Captain Collingswood," he exclaimed, wrapping the woman in his own arms. "How wonderful to see you again!"

"The name's Regula, Wilf," she admonished, smooching him on the cheek, then stepping back for a better look, "or hadn't you noticed that I'm no longer wearing a Fleet cloak."

Brim grinned. "I noticed, all right," he said. In civilian clothes, it was plain to see why she had so completely captured the heart of her husband—and whispered longtime lover—Admiral Erat Plutron.

She was a statuesque woman, tall and ageless with a long, patrician nose, piercing hazel eyes, and soft, graying chestnut hair that she wore in natural curls. She was dressed in a lavender business suit fronted with a great cascade of white ruffles. "You look wonderful," he added—as indeed she did. An extraordinary starship commander during the war, Regula Collingswood had never, even for a moment, let the power of her station interfere with the basic femininity that shaped everything about her personality.

"That's better," she said in mock severity, then took the elbow of a slender, attractive young woman standing beside her, holding a briefcase. Brim felt a momentary excitement when the woman's enormous brown eyes met his and paused with fleeting interest before she turned toward his old commander.

"Wilf," Collingswood said, "You must meet Anna Romanoff—quite an extraordinary person—who has taken on the position of Secretary for the Imperial Starflight Society. Anna, this is the man I have been talking about for weeks."

The woman extended a warm, manicured hand, and again momentarily captured his eyes before she spoke. "I am pleased to meet you, Wilf," she said formally, in a soft voice that had just the slightest trace of some regional accent he couldn't identify. "Regula has said some rather wonderful things about you."

Her satiny, reddish brown hair was parted in the middle, then gathered into a loose braid at the back of her head. She was small, Brim noted—very attractive, with a distinguished nose and slightly pouted lips.

Clearly a businesswoman in every respect, she was outfitted in a light tan dress with a scooped bodice beneath which she wore a white sweater that hinted of an ample bust. Her modest skirt revealed very little of what Brim suspected were shapely legs, and she wore low-heeled business shoes. A sexy woman by nature, he conjectured, who was determined to do business in spite of that. He found himself holding the softness of her hand somewhat longer than he'd planned, and smiled in spite of himself when he let go.

"The Captain—er, Regula—tends to embellish the truth about her former crews," he said.

"Somehow, I doubt that," she answered softly. "Regula also warned me that you are modest to a fault."

Then, before he could react, she turned to Collingswood. "I shall meet you after lunch at... Brightness: one-thirty. That way, we shall have time to go over your numbers again before the General Assembly.

Delighted to have met you, Wilf," she added, nodding toward Brim at the last moment. Then she hurried off across the lobby with a peculiar little prance that Brim found most attractive—and feminine.

"Quite a lady, there," Brim said, impressed, for some reason, out of all proportion to their brief introduction.

"Yes," Collingswood said. "We were lucky to find that one. With her reputation for no-nonsense business management, she's in demand all over the Empire. I think she took the job out of pure patriotism. Voot knows she works every moment of her life." Then she peered at him oddly. "She's pretty, isn't she?"

Brim nodded and grinned at his old commander. "She is that," he agreed, "and she has a cute way of walking, too."

Collingswood frowned for a moment, then smiled in an odd way. "I suppose that's true," she said, as if she had just made some sort of decision, "Anna does have a cute way of walking." She had an almost motherly look on her face as she spoke, if indeed anything about the former starship captain could be construed as motherly. To Brim's recollection, he had heard her mention childbearing only once—as being the best advertisement for birth control she could think of.

"Ah, Regula—here you are!" Borodov exclaimed as he pushed his way through the throng. "Nikolai Yanuarievich," he called over his shoulder. "We no longer have to find them; they have found us!"

Soon, all thoughts about Romanoff were swept away by a second joyous reunion in the lobby, with Collingswood hugging and being hugged by the two magnificently costumed Sodeskayans in a manner that badly disrupted cross-lobby traffic with onlookers.

And what little traffic movement that remained was promptly shut off completely by the appearance of Crown Prince Onrad, heir to the Imperial Throne at Avalon and present Chairman of the Society. Even had he not joined an already noisy reunion, his magnificent blue Fleet cloak—that of a Vice Admiral—would have stopped traffic anywhere. He was slightly taller than Brim, and considerably heavier: a comfortable looking man of obvious royalty. His hair was dark brown and he wore a short, pointed beard with a moustache. In Brim's way of thinking, however, it was the man's eyes that set him apart. He had a way of looking at people that bespoke genuine honesty. The Carescrian had grown far too skeptical to believe that any monarch anywhere could afford to make totally equitable decisions much of the time. Politics simply got in the way of such things. But he nevertheless trusted that the Empire would be in capable hands when one day Onrad ascended to the High Throne in Avalon.

"Aha!" the prince said with a wide grin. "I might have known the four of you would find each other." He too got a long hug from Collingswood while the Bears bowed respectfully at either side. "Now this is what I call a welcoming committee," he whooped over his shoulder to a stiff-looking General dressed in the tan and red uniform of Greyffin IV's Imperial Army. The imposing officer had stopped with his gray briefcase a regulation eight paces to the rear. "Next time, Zapt, see if you can't set up something more along these lines."

Lieutenant General Zapt, who clearly had no sense of the moment whatsoever, bowed and clicked his heels. "I shall see what can be arranged, Your Majesty," he said, his voice just audible over the bustle of the crowd.

With one arm still around Collingswood's waist, Onrad extended his hand to Brim. "Good to have you back among us, Brim," he said, with his usual firm grip. "You worried quite a few people when you disappeared a while back."

"I'm sorry, Your Royal Highness," Brim said, feeling his face flush with embarrassment. "I'd reached a difficult time in my life about then."

"I take it everything's all right now?" the Prince asked pointedly.

"Everything is now excellent," Brim answered.

Onrad pursed his lips impassively and nodded. "General," he commanded, "will you deliver that letter for Mr. Brim?"

A moment later, General Zapt stepped forward and delivered a gray plastic envelope to Brim's hand, then quickly returned to the background. His face was an expressionless mask, but alert, gray eyes betrayed the soul of a battle-hardened trooper.

"From an old friend of yours—my cousin Margot," Onrad explained impassively. "I visited her last week in Rudolpho."

Brim's heart leaped nearly from his chest. "H-how gratifying that she should remember me," he said, struggling to contain himself from ripping the envelope open there in the lobby.

"That is nice, Wilf" Collingswood said with a sudden look of concern in her eyes. "You two certainly became fast friends when we were stationed on Gimmas-Haefdon years ago. I understand she and Baron LaKarn have a son now." She shook her head. "Never could understand what she saw in that stuffed shirt."

Onrad laughed wryly. "She didn't have much choice in the matter, Regula. Father dictated the whole thing to keep Mama LaKarn's Torond and its celecoid quartz Drive crystal kernels more closely bound to the Empire. They control half our supply, you know."

"That's what I'd heard," Collingswood said with a grimace. "Poor Margot."

"We all have some burden to bear," Onrad said, glancing perceptively at Brim for a fleeting instant.

"Margot's tends to be heavier than most." Then he took a deep breath. "Enough of that sort of thing.

Regula, Borodov, Ursis—have you three talked Brim into joining us yet?"

"We only just found him last night," Ursis said with a grin.

"That hasn't allowed much time to talk about anything yet," Borodov added, peering over his glasses.

"And I just ran into him a few moments before you did," Collingswood put in.

"I see," Onrad replied. For a moment, he smiled at some private thought, then he nodded. "Tell you what," he said, looking at Collingswood and the two Bears, "I need to see the three of you for a few moments concerning the membership committee rules. Wilf, why don't you take one of these comfortable lobby chairs for a few cycles, then join us in the grand ballroom for the opening ceremonies?" He consulted his timepiece. "At Morning: two forty-five. That will give us an opportunity to conduct our business—and you can amuse yourself with that letter."

Brim bowed. "Very well, Your Highness," he agreed. "I shall plan to join you in the grand ballroom at Morning: two forty-five sharp."

"General Zapt, a badge for Mr. Brim, if you please." Onrad commanded. Instantly, the wraithlike General handed Brim a holobadge containing the latest three-dimensional representation of his head and shoulders that had been recorded in base security. With that, the Prince and Collingswood swept grandly past, the two Bears and General Zapt hurrying along in their wake.