"My chair, General?" Margot asked, batting her eyelashes.
"Harrumpf...HAW!"
"Oh, thank you," Margot went on breathlessly. "You are indeed an excellent dancer. Why, 1 declare, simply everyone was admiring us out there, weren't they?"
"Ee-gad!"
"Um... General," Quince exclaimed rising suddenly from his seat with a worried look. "I'm gonna get him out of here," he said to Brim as he took Hagbut's arm. "He gets this way sometimes...." With that, he led the tottering man out into the foyer.
Margot smiled a little ruefully, her cheeks still flushed with excitement. "I probably shouldn't have done that," she said, "but the old goat had it coming for such a long time."
Brim stiffened. "What do you mean?" he asked.
Margot giggled. "I mean, I shouldn't have upset the old fool so."
"You know why he was upset?" Brim asked. It was like waiting to be hit by a disruptor.
She smiled at him, then reached across the table to take his hand. "By the look on your face, I can tell that Quince let you know about the dress you bought."
"Great Universe," Brim exclaimed, "you must have been ready to kill me."
Margot laughed. "Well," she admitted with a grin, "I was upset for a few cycles. But then I thought, 'Why not?' With legs like mine, I was bound to look great-and what a wonderful way to get at a stuffed shirt like Hagbut-so I wore it."
Brim bit his lip. "Margot," he said, "I swear I had no idea, believe me. How can I ever begin to tell you how sorry I am?..."
She batted her eyelashes again. "Do I look as sexy as 1 think I do?" she asked, thrusting her bosom at him.
"Universe," Brim whispered, "like a zillion credits!" Abruptly, he felt her foot caressing his leg.
"Hey, starsailor," she whispered, nodding toward the foyer, "you lookin' for good time, huh? Weeth handsome stud like you, I do it for notheengs...."
Within cycles, he and Margot were once again alone in the privacy of a limousine. But now they sat calmly, she sheltered by his arm with her blond curls in disarray on his shoulder.
"Bad luck," she whispered quietly.
Brim smiled. "We're together-I call that the best luck in the Universe."
She nestled deeper in his arm. "You know what I mean, Wilf," she said sadly. "We've lost a lot of time-and we didn't have very much to start with. You flew a long way to be with me for one night-and oh, how I wanted to make that worth your while. Every click."
Well," Brim said, "you'd certainly made a fine start of it before the wreck -Hogan's third eye, but you're good at that."
She leaned over and kissed him on his cheek while they cruised past the great domed tower of Marva. "But we didn't get to finish before we crashed," she said reflectively, "and then I had to waste time dancing with that old fool Hagbut." She shrugged a little. "At least the whole mess makes it easier for me to say what I've got to say sometime tonight, Wilf."
Brim felt his heart catch. He knew what was coming, and tried to make it easier on her. "I guess you and LaKarn have finally set the date for your marriage," he stated, trying to sound as if the words didn't hurt.
Margot nodded and pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Yes," she said after a little while, "we have. There was simply no use postponing it. Greyffin IV put too much pressure on me."
Brim ground his teeth a moment as Ambridge stopped for a signal at the entrance to Courtland Plaza-he stared at the great Savoin gravity fountain without even seeing it.
"When?" he whispered. He was afraid to look at her for fear he might lose what little emotional control he had.
"Soon, Wilf," Margot replied, her eyes filling with tears. "One month from tonight."
Brim squeezed her hand. "Don't cry," he whispered. "It's not the end of us-unless of course you want it to be that way."
She turned to him with a hurt look on her face. "Please, Wilf, don't ever say anything like that. I never loved before I met you-and there's no room left in my heart for anyone else.
Besides," she added, "Rogan's so busy with his career, he doesn't have that much time for me."
"So long as I am never an anchor for you, Margot," Brim said.
She stared at the floor of the limousine for a moment, then took a deep breath and appeared to gather some reserve of strength around herself. "That," she said looking him directly in the eye, "is really what we must discuss tonight."
"My being an anchor?" Brim asked while a hollow of cold fear suddenly formed in the pit of his stomach. He'd always been afraid dial...
"No," Margot answered. "My being an anchor-for you."
Brim frowned. "What?" he asked incredulously.
"We've been over it before, Wilf," she reminded him. "I simply can't ask you to live a celibate life, especially since I do not intend to discourage Rogan from-well, his rights as my husband. It wouldn't be fair-to him or to me. I couldn't live that way either." She pointed a finger at his chest and looked deep into his soul. "Wilf, dearest, face it. If we-our love-is to survive this marriage I am being forced into, you are going to have to share some other beds yourself. Otherwise, no matter how much you think you love me now, there will be lonely nights when your mind dwells on thoughts of me with him-like that-and it will poison your love for me just as surely as Avalon orbits the Asterious triad."
Brim started to protest. "I couldn't do anything like that," be said, but she gently closed his mouth with her lingers.
"Remember how tenuous our privacy was tonight-and I'm not even married yet," she whispered. "Then think about what difficulties the future may bring after..." Her voice trailed off. Suddenly she kissed him again, this time on the lips. "Tomorrow is time enough for reality, dearest," she said, '"tonight is ours to love-and I find that I have once again adverted to the generalized debauchery, venery, and lecherousness which seems to overtake me whenever I find myself within ten million c'lenyts of your person. Look," she said, pointing out the window, "the Boulevard of the Cosmos. We're almost there. Hold me, Wilf; hold me...."
Shortly after that, the limousine arrived at the Effer'ian Embassy, where they made love until they lost their desperate struggle with exhaustion and fell asleep in each other's arms, I.F.S. Albatron departed for Menander-Garand the next afternoon precisely on schedule.
But the takeoff credit was recorded in the Cohelmsman's log book. Wilf Brim was asleep in the bridge long before the ship passed into Hyperspace.
Chapter 3
CONVOY DUTY
After more than a week at Hyperspeed, Convoy C'Y/98 was still battering its way through attacks so vicious that oldtime flight-crew veterans called it the worst trip in memory. Off-duty for the moment, Wilf Brim and Nik Ursis occupied two jump seats on the bridge, watching a brace of Hyperflares erupt around distant ranks of merchant ships in the van. Heavy flashes of disruptor fire followed immediately. Soon afterward, reverberating thunder from Defiant's Drive rose in fullness and shook the bridge while Provodnik gated reserve combat energy to the cruiser's energy chambers-in case it was needed....
"Here they come again," Jennings stated emotionlessly from the Helmsman's console.
"Too right," Collingswood agreed in tired resignation from her console-she never got to relax in a jump seat; mere was only one captain. "I see the flares...."
Brim took a deep breath and mentally cringed. He'd personally faced a lot of danger in his thirty years, but never anything like the last few days. Endless successions of assaults made him feel like a hoary veteran of the convoy lanes already-and it was only Defiant's third escort mission. Was this the ninth attack-or the hundredth-since he'd gone off duty? He could feel tension mount rapidly as the crew waited for their inevitable dose of terror. Lately, Kabul Anak seemed to be committing every killer ship he could find in his frenzied quest to starve the Empire's key Fleet base at Hador-Haelic.