When the motors fell silent, Calhoun nodded in the display. "You are now clear of the ship," he said.
"Casting off," Brim said.
"Good luck, you young pup," Calhoun said quietly. Then the display went blank as an connection was broken with Defiant. Shortly afterward, Brim nearly lost his meem with toe onset of weightlessness, but be managed-for at least the ten billionth time-to force his protesting stomach into angry submission. He shook his head and laughed at this most embarrassing of his manifold weaknesses. Local gravity was a wonderful thing-and one of the best reasons he could think of for rarely leaving large starships unless they were on the ground.
After nearly half a metacycle, toe frenzied patterns in the Hyperscreens began to disintegrate, then erupted into an angry crimson fabric of sparks that coalesced finally into a normal starscape as the launch slowed through Sheldon's Great Constant and passed the Daya-Peraf transition. Brim's LightSpeed indicator read precisely 0.99 when mighty Zebulon Mu filled the windscreens with a streaming brilliance that seemed to light the entire Universe. Presently, he switched off the autohelm and took the controls himself. "Anything like a cargo ship registering on the proximity scanner?" he asked.
"Nothing, Lieutenant," Barbousse answered, squinting into a display at the top center of his console.
"I'll continue on around until something shows up," the Carescrian said, steering the launch around the huge star. Even traveling at nearly LightSpeed, it took nearly five cycles to locate the merchant ship.
"I've located her. Lieutenant," Barbousse reported tensely. "But she surely doesn't have much altitude anymore."
"How bad off is she?" Brim asked, altering course toward (be stricken merchantman.
Barbousse pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his bead. "Probably," he said, "we won't have much time before she's too far into the star's gravity envelope to fly her out."
"And," Ursis added from the display, "we don't want to be within a standard light year of here if that cargo of power supplies goes up in the photosphere. The resulting flare will melt whole planets."
Brim grimaced. "I'll keep that in mind, Nik," he promised as they bored down into the brilliance. "Believe me!"
S.S. Providential was typical of the big Vergonian merchantmen constructed back during the Twenties. She had a long, black hull shaped like a spindle with a sharp bow and rounded stem. A blunt, single-unit deckhouse in corrugated white hullmetal began just aft of her short foredeck and straddled me hull nearly all the way to her stern. Forward, the structure was approximately five levels in height and surmounted by a control bridge that extended beyond the limits of the deckhouse to both port and starboard like short, thick fins.
According to Ursis's HoloCards, the ship was 407 irals in length, 44 irals at maximum horizontal beam, and displaced 34,351 milstons empty. She was powered by two arcane Grandoffler triple-phisotron Drive units-anyone could see that by the three focusing rings mounted aft of each Drive outlet. She also had the dubious distinction of being the largest ship in Imperial service with twin-Drives of the type.
Up close, it was clear that Providential's fires were extinguished, at least externally. "With a quenching system like that, sir," Barbousse said in an awestruck voice, "radiation fires simply couldn't burn very long. Just look at those big N-ray emitters-all over the hull. And they're still on-every one of them!"
"Doesn't say much for the crew," Brim observed.
Ursis grinned from the display. "Easy for you to say, Wilf Brim." He laughed. "But not everyone gets his start in a Carescrian ore barge, either. Terror is only a relative thing."
Brim chuckled wryly. "I guess you've got a point," he admitted, but he still didn't approve of abandoning a ship until it was about to self-destruct.
For the next ten cycles, they inspected the starship's exterior from every angle, peering carefully at each of the three ragged, stove-in holes where the ship had been hit. "All right,"
Brim said, when they reached the big ship's stem, "what's the verdict? Shall we set down on her for a closer inspection?"
Ursis nodded. "I can see little risk in that," he said.
"Aye, sir," Barbousse agreed. "How about inside that open cargo hatch over there in the deckhouse-right under the bridge? It'll save us a lot of radiation from the gas giant."
"Good idea," Brim agreed, and maneuvered along the bull to a hovering position over the foredeck in front of the cargo ship's main deckhouse. Switching on the launch's powerful landing lights, he pointed the nose of the ship into the yawning hatch.
"Looks like lot of big crates on oversized pallets, sir," Barbousse observed. "About the right size for Antimatter power supplies, I'd judge."
Brim nodded agreement. The huge, octahedroid crates were secured to the deck on either side of an aisle that Brim guessed might be slightly wider than one of the pallets themselves. He frowned-was it wide enough for the launch?
"Going to be close, sir," Barbousse observed.
"Yeah," Brim said, nodding agreement, "xaxtdamned close." But no closer in many respects than he'd been quite used to only a few years previously. Ore barges weren't allocated wide berths on Carescria-expensive structures like that decreased profitability of the mines. And both barges and Helmsmen were considered to be expendable commodities-a routine business expense. Presently, he narrowed his eyes, took one last look at the antigravs, then nodded. "She'll fit," he declared.
"Probably," Ursis growled from the passenger compartment, "you will want to avoid bumping those crates too vigorously."
Brim nodded and concentrated on easing the launch through the doors. "I'll watch it," he said.
"We have about two point seven metacycles, Lieutenant," Barbousse announced, peering into a display. "Gravity's gettin' worse every moment."
Brim nodded, totally concentrating all his mental resources on the controls as he maneuvered carefully into the opening....
Suddenly, Barbousse spoke up. "Lieutenant Ursis, if you would check our clearance to port, I can monitor starboard."
"Good idea," Ursis rumbled, looking up from the display. "I would say we have perhaps an iral of clearance here."
"And at least two on this side, Lieutenant," Barbousse added.
Brim eased slightly to starboard, hardly daring to touch the controls.
"Better now on this side," Ursis reported.
"You still have an iral and a half over here, Lieutenant," Barbousse said.
Brim nodded. "Thanks," he mumbled, then cautiously applied a slight forward thrust vector to the spin-gravs. The launch crept slowly between the towering crates, its landing lights transforming the dark interior of the hold into a two-dimensional cartoon. When the nacelles were centered on the second crate in from the hatch, Brim let the little craft settle gently to the deck. It was like parking a skimmer in a narrow alley between two large, windowless buildings. "All right, everybody," he announced, taking the first breath he could remember for at least a half metacycle, "helmets on-this is as far as she goes." He pulled the spin-gravs back to idle, enabled the gravity brakes, and set up the control panel for a quick getaway. Then he wriggled out of his seat restraints and followed Barbousse to the cargo deck. While the big rating closed the hatches, Brim placed a glove on Ursis's broad shoulder. "Do those HoloCards show any sort of route to the bridge, Nik?" he asked.
Ursis grinned through the visor of his battle suit. "I think so," his voice announced hollowly in Brim's helmet. He looked around as if taking his bearings from the light of the open hatch, then pointed the handlight directly overhead. "Six levels up," he said.
"Won-der-ful," Brim said. "Anything more specific than that?
"Well," the Bear chuckled, "there are indications of a crew lift directly over... that way." He pointed to the starboard wall of the hold: "I suggest we try that first."