"Well, she only holds about ten passengers," Claudia admitted.
"I heard that she's also a real handful to control," Gastongay added, pointedly looking Brim in the eye. "You know that Abner Klisnikov-the last Mitchell Trophy winner-was chief Helmsman on Intractable. He volunteered to fly the mission himself, and the launch was built to his personal specifications. From what I understand, he could fly anything."
"Abner Klisnikov," Brim repeated, shaking his head reverently, "the famous racer. I'd been told he was killed, but they never said where.... I think I've simulated every mission he recorded."
"So?" Claudia asked. "Do you think you could handle a launch built for his hands?"
"Probably," Brim said. "I don't expect to run trophy races or attack any forts with it-at least not soon."
"A sensible answer," Claudia replied. Her brown eyes met Brim's for only a moment-but flashed a clear message of interest before glancing away toward Defiant once more. "And she is the only launch we've got in flying shape at the base. We could probably fix one up for you from a wreck, of course, but it would take some time...."
"What do you think, Wilf?" Calhoun interjected. "If you are half the Helmsman they say you are, we've got ourselves a new launch."
"But it'll only carry ten passengers," Brim protested. "Do you think the Captain will want it?"
Calhoun laughed. "If I know anything about Collingswood," he said, "she'll agree a launch that carries ten is a lot better than an empty spot on the boat deck that carries naught."
"Can I show it to you, Lieutenant Brim?" Claudia asked, nodding toward a battered, sun-bleached skimmer with a canvas top that was hovering nearby. "I happen to be on my way to that warehouse right now."
Calhoun winked at Brim and grinned. "I think ye ought to go nab a luik," he said.
"Especially if this lovely lass is willing to take ye there. I can probably finish up with Mr. Gastongay here without any mair help."
Brim turned to Claudia. Whatever else she might be, she certainly was lovely. "At your service, ma'am," he said, squinting in the sunlight. "I'd love to see a launch like that."
Not half a metacycle later, Brim found himself shivering in the chill dry air of a warehouse five hundred irals beneath the lowest streets of Atalanta. Beside him, Claudia calmly piloted her little skimmer through the trackless maze of ancient stone tunnels and storerooms as if she traveled them every day-which, on reflection, she probably did. At every turn, their headlights picked out bewildering collections of every spare part imaginable: crated interrupters, gravitron compensators, wave shunts, dynamos, telsa coils, amplifiers, generators, multipliers, Drive oscillators, resonance waveguides, Deighton modulators, the billion and one items necessary to maintain a sizable fleet aloft and in fighting trim.
Atalanta's substantial accumulation of goods was mute testimony that convoys did work, even though Brim was certain that its cost was far beyond mere credit accounting, dearly, for every milston of equipment delivered, at least two more had been destroyed by League raiders. And unfortunately, he estimated, it would take only a single major battle to empty the great store rooms again in very short order.
At the fifth level, Claudia abruptly turned left and headed the little skimmer back along a shadowed avenue of palletized J-type crystal synchronizers that led-eventually-to the entrance of a darkened, virtually empty room. Stopping for a moment, Claudia switched out her headlights and grinned at Brim in the glow of the instruments. "I have a feeling, Lieutenant," she said, thumbing a small controller at her side, "that you will find this immensely interesting."
She was correct. Brim suddenly caught his breath when the lights switched on. "Voot's left ear!..." he gasped, blinking his eyes in the harsh brightness. At the far end of a vast, but otherwise empty, stone chamber rested one of the truly startling auxiliary vessels be had ever set eyes upon. Claudia brought the skimmer to a halt just under its snub-nosed prow.
Resting on a wooden shipping dolly and covered by a layer of fine, whitish dust, the graceful little spaceship was no more man forty irals long, with remarkably clean lines and a relative lack of angles anywhere. Wordlessly, Brim jumped to the pavement and walked around its slim ovoid hull, marveling at the flowing, compact design that looked almost as if it was originally created for high-speed work within an atmosphere of some sort. Two great teardrop nacelles-as gracefully streamlined as the hull itself-clearly contained the ship's spin-grav generators. These were slung from the outer ends of wide, bladelike sponsons attached at the widest point of the hull perhaps eight irals aft of the prow. The rounded tips of the nacelles came even with the launch's stubby nosecap.
A tiny glassed-in bridge placed the Helmsman and Coxswain side by side over the leading edge of the sponsons. The forward location would certainly provide a splendid view through the V-shaped windscreens on landing, Brim surmised. But as the top of the bridge was faired almost flush with the rise in the fuselage aft, he silently predicted it would also be troublesome during a stem attack. Of course, if Claudia were correct in her claims about the little ship's power plants, that threat might well be minimized.
Abaft and below the flight bridge, five small portholes on each side of the hull fixed the position of double passenger seats. A quartet of .303 blasters protruded through the nose just above the distinctive barrel of a Brentanno MK-8, 75-mmi antitank disruptor in a pivot housing. Brim was not simply impressed, he was astounded. The deceptively graceful hull was clearly capacious enough to house such weapons under the flight bridge floor alone....
"Should I assume you like her, Lieutenant?" Claudia broke in, almost startling Brim from his reverie.
"You may," he chuckled. "And, by the bye, my real name is not 'Lieutenant,' Donna Valemont," he added, using the Haelician polite form of address he'd learned at the briefing.
"All right," she said, smiling more with her eyes than anything else, "I shall call you Wilf if you will call me Claudia. A deal?"
"A done deal," Brim said with a grin.
"'Done' deal?"
"Happily agreed on," Brim explained, trying to concentrate on her existence as a highly placed professional. Her quiet, almost casual air of competence made this easy to do, but the occasional hints of nipples pressing through her close-fitting pelisse made it difficult to forget that she was also an extremely sensuous woman. Somehow, in Claudia Valemont, neither intruded on the other-both were there in easy view because she wanted things that way. It was becoming abundantly clear to Wilf Brim that he was in the presence of an extraordinary woman. With no little sense of culpability, be conceded that he would like to know a lot more about her....
On the cramped flight bridge, Brim seated himself at the Helmsman's console and studied the array of instruments-amazingly well placed. The little ship was a work of art. He located the generator controls, steering gear, collective, navigation instruments, lights, trim, IFF detonators, fire extinguishers, flight-path scanners-all where they ought to be and easily grouped for natural interfacing.
After a few moments, Claudia joined him in the stale air of the powered-off spaceship.
Climbing through the tiny starboard hatch, she inadvertently revealed a leg nearly all the way to the stunning whiteness of her inner thigh. Brim tried not to stare as she quickly rearranged her skirt, but a familiar stirring began in his loins and continued while she took her place at the console beside him. After a few cycles of rubbing shoulders while he pointed out the firing controls on the coxswain's console, he knew he would require a few moments' cooling off before he could stand outside the flight bridge again. His jumpsuit was also reasonably form-fitting-especially where it would show....