At that instant, Defiant's tall KA'PPA tower was struck almost simultaneously by three distinct bolts of lightning. Even inside the bridge, the sounds were deafening-like three tremendous explosions, each utterly echoless and flat in tone. Someone screamed in the rear consoles. Lamps pulsed, along with the local gravity, and every detail of the decks outside was lit with a blinding brilliance of white fire-muted only at the last moment by the protective Hyperscreens. In the midst of the chaos, the sound of the Verticals faded abruptly and the ship began to sink as if she had smashed into a solid obstruction.
"They've tripped out, Wilf!" Ursis yelled over the pandemonium, "The Verticals.... They're both gone!"
Suddenly they were tumbling sickeningly from the bottom of the storm, dropping like a brick toward the sea, which swept under them like a slate-colored torrent of wrinkled chaos-mountainous rollers and flying spume. With no Verticals to cushion the shock, Defiant would hit the water hard enough to smash her hull like an eggshell. From his right, Brim could hear Ursis and Provodnik frantically trying to restart the two generators.
"Six hundred.... Five hundred.... Four hundred...." Aram intoned as if there were no particular emergency.
"HOOT! HOOT! PULL UP! PULL UP!" the Chairman shrieked with emergency inflection.
"HOOT! HOOT!..."
Instinctively, Brim had been bringing the ship's bow up into a vertical position. Now he was ready to act. "Gimme everything you got on the Laterals, Nik," he yelled, baring his teeth with effort. " Dump 'EM!"
All four of the big generators suddenly erupted into violent overload as Ursis shorted the protective load limiters and dumped raw energy into every power chamber. But the big generators needed time to spool up to fullpower.... Defiant's hull trembled like a leaf, groaning and creaking throughout each joint of her starframe. In the corner of his eye, Brim could see the great rollers of the churning sea below. The aft deck must now be nearing the surface, It was going to be close....
"HOOT! HOOT! PULL UP! PULL UP! HOOT! HOOT!
HOOT!..."
In the midst of the confusion, one of the great waves smashed into Defiant's stern with a deafening rumble-clearly audible even above the mounting roar of the straining generators-and threatened to flip her over on her back like a rowboat. Heart in his mouth, Brim watched the horizon slide over the top of the Hyperscreens until-in a titanic upwelling of spray-the big cruiser's generators overcame her downward momentum and she began to rise hesitantly, straight up like one of the prehistoric chemical rockets.
"She feels it!" Calhoun yelled exultantly. "She feels it!"
Iral by painful iral by painful iral Defiant climbed away from the raging ocean, still tossed this way and that by the tremendous winds overhead in the storm, but safe for the moment....
"NIK, WHAT ABOUT THAT RESTART?" Brim yelled over the thunder of the straining generators. "We've got to get her down or head for space."
"One moment more, Wilf," Ursis rumbled back as the ship rocked violently in her vertical position. "Cold starting One," he said, almost to himself as his six-fngered hands ran surely over the controls. Suddenly, the rumble of the lateral generators was joined by the high-pitched whine of a single Vertical. "You can now start to ease her back into position," the Bear roared in triumph, "while we work on Number Two."
A few cycles later, Brim had Defiant back on an even keel and ploughing along under the cloud as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all-except for a hush that had suddenly come over the entire bridge. Aside from the generators, the only noise came from behind him as Collingswood and Calhoun frantically checked in with every duty section on the ship.
Presently, a hand touched his shoulder. "Well done, Wilf," Collingswood said from directly behind him, "We seem to have very little internal damage-after all that.
Unfortunately," she added in a voice tense with anger, "it appears as if our Defiant is still quite susceptible to energy strikes,"
Brim nodded. "It looks that way, Captain," he said.
"The backward waveguide, Nik?"
"I somehow doubt it, Captain," Ursis growled quietly. "They fixed that after the launch debacle-but it is related to that, or I miss my guess."
"Which is a thing you seldom do," she declared. "We shall this time insure Defiant is a lot more tolerant or we will not take her to war. I consider myself brave, but I am definitely not suicidal...."
"Fleet CL.921: do you see landing vector two five right yet?"
"Fleet CL.921. As soon as we break out of this rain shower we will," Brim answered.
"Yeah.... Now we've got it." Ahead, a solid ruby light flashed out of the gray distance.
Sudden gusts of wind pushed him to port and the light began to separate into horizontal lines. As he corrected to starboard, the light shimmered into vertical lines. One last correction to port and it coalesced again.
"Fleet CL.921: arrival detector reports you had a problem out there," a female voice said from the Tower. She sounded a little bit like Margot, but without the latter's perfect modulation.
"Fleet CL.921 is under control and on final," Brim answered calmly.
"Thank you, sir."
Off to port, a forest of shipyard cranes slid by in the rain-streamed Hyperscreens. Brim glanced down at the bridge decking beneath his feet. It was littered with the paraphernalia people usually kept on their consoles: purses, eyeglasses, cvcesse' cups, a bottle of hand lotion, a box of tissues. They'd get it all sorted out in time. He remembered the pulsing gravity, but hadn't realized it was that strong-too busy to notice, probably....
Only a hundred irals altitude now. He walked the steering engines, lining her up for flare-out and hover-down-then dropped the port deck against a stiff crosswind blowing from landward: the nose wandered a little toward the shore, but the big starship stayed on her original course like she was riding rails. Stable-the ruby landing vector ahead was still steady in the Hyperscreens. No wonder the shipyard was proud of Defiant-she was going to be a remarkable disruptor platform.
Now if she'd only learn to stay in the air....
Time to bring her in. Brim checked his instruments: descent rate, speed, pitch. All on the button. The starship began to sink as he pulled back on the Verticals-this time on purpose.
He eased off the steering engine; her bow swung back to line up perfectly with the ruby vector. He kept the deck slanted for the drift.... Nose up a little.... A little more.... He leveled the deck only an instant before gray cascades of water shot hundreds of irals into the air on either side of the hull and Defiant settled gently onto her gravity gradient.
They were down-in one piece, Barbousse's huge banner raised to the KA'PPA mast and snapping furiously in the wind.
The bridge suddenly erupted in wild jubilation. Three cheers for Wilf Brim!"
"He got us through!"
"Hurray for Wilf!"
"To ice, to snow, to Carescria we go!..."
Brim felt his cheeks burn. "I was only trying to save my own skin," he protested, but nobody seemed to believe him.
"Fleet CL.921: if you can make that next high-speed turnoff, cross one seven right and proceed to gravity pool three one three?"
"Fleet CL.921 copies," Brim answered over the continuing hullabaloo in the bridge.
Leaning on the gravity brakes, he skidded the big ship around a turnoff marker bobbing wildly in the heavy swells, then rumbled across a long procession of flashing buoys. Landing lights of a heavy starship shone brightly at the distant landward end. "Crossing one seven right and proceeding to pool three on three three," he said. "Good afternoon."
"Good afternoon, sir."