Ursis bent and glowered at the readouts. "Hmm," he muttered. "Isee what you mean." He frowned as he studied the flowing colors on the console readouts, then turned to Brim. "As you have probably gathered, Wilf," he said with a serious look on his face, "we have lost automatic balance of the port Verticals." He thought for a moment, staring out over the tossing gray water of the wind-swept sound. "Perhaps it would be wise to request a brief systems delay."
Brim nodded. "Hull 921," he announced after another, much louder, crack of thunder rattled to a conclusion in the distance. "Request five-cycle systems check, please."
There was a measurable pause before an answer came. "Hull 921: cleared for one five-cycle systems check," the woman's voice acknowledged with a slight edge. Brim understood that launch operations were meticulously timed, and delays of any kind could result in horribly tangled schedules. "Check in immediately when you complete, please," the controller added.
"Hull 921. Many thanks," Brim answered, then nodded to Ursis. "You've got five cycles, Nik," he said.
Ursis and Provodnik huddled for perhaps two cycles, conversing rapidly is Sodeskayan and exercising the controls. Presently the older Bear straightened and nodded to Brim. "It seems that we have serious problems indeed, my friend," he said, nodding his head gravely. "Probably Alexi and I can jury-rig a fix around the trouble in perhaps a metacycle.
Would you inquire as to what that might do to the launch schedule?"
Brim naddoed. "Hull 921. Requesting one-metacycle systems workaround," he said, but was pretty sure of the answer before he started.
The controller's voice returned almost immediately. "Hull 921: sorry, that is a negative. Do you need to scrub your launching?"
"Hull 921. How long before you could schedule us again, please?"
"Hull 921," the controller answered after a slight pause, "estimate ten standard days before we have openings."
Brim looked at the Bear, who had been listening to the conversation. "What now, Nik?"
Ursis turned to Provodnik. "We could take the starboard generator off Automatic and run it ourselves, Alexi Radosni," he suggested. "Otherwise, we cause immediate cancellation of the lauch—and put Defiant at least a week behind schedule." He stared the young Bear directly in the eye. "Do you think you can use the manual controls here to balance the generator with its mate to port?... If you feel any uncertainty at all, I should count it a privilege to take your place at the console—immediately."
Provodnik considered for a moment. "I am sorelyeh temptesd to claim that I can, Nikolai Yanuarievich," he said, sliding from his seat, "but that would be irresponsible. My sole experience with CL-Standard-84 generators is aboard this ship—and I arrived on EleandorBestienne only ten days ago from the Mother Planets."
"Your honesty is appreciated, Alexi Radosni," Ursis replied pointedly frowning up through a network of bare frames and stringers at the fast-approaching storm. "This is definitely no time for heroics of any kind." Then he pursed his lips and slid into the seat at the first drops of rain began to spatter the console. "Wilf," he said, "you will please to inform Operations that we shall be ready to proceed momentarily."
Brim nodded and touched the COMM. "This is Hull 921," he said, raising his voice to make it heard over the hiss of the rain. "Stand by for affirmative on launch decision."
"Hull 921: Much appreciated!" the woman's voice crackled from the COMM module.
"Standing by...."
" Defiant requires approximately one hundred ten on the Verticals," Ursis explained to the younger Sodeskayan as new color sequences began to cascade over the readouts. "So..." his hand hardy moved over the controls, but the generators changed pitch slightly and a number of indicators winked on the console. "Only the slightest lift while they melt the retaining trennels," he said, his voice now hardly audible over the drumming rain. He was all business now: a complete professional—totally consumed by his work. "Call out the vectors, Alexi Radosni—as they appear."
"One hundred ten in vertical," Provodnik repeated, staring at the readouts in rapt concentration. The rumble from 'midships increased noticeably as Ursis shifted a section of the control from green to a reddish orange. "And steady...."
The elder Bear looked up momentarily and nodded to Brim. "We are now ready when Operations is, Wilf," he said.
"Hull 921. Prepared to detach immediately," Brim reported.
The woman's matter-of-fact reply came within a moment: "Hull 921: stand by." Her words were almost coincident with the actual firings of the trennels that held the ship to the stocks.
Bright flashes strobed in the stormy grayness from beneath the hull, accompanied by an ear-splitting volley of sharp reports that cascaded from the bow to the stern and rocked the ship like low-altitude turbulence. Clouds of acrid smoke swept the deck and burned Brim's nostrils while Ursis's hands moved surely over the gravity controls and lightning flashed from the lowering storm.
"One hundred fifteen in vertical..." Provodnik intoned. "One hundred twenty and steady...."
The sound of the ship's Vertical generators rose almost neg ligibly and the deck swayed beneath Brim's feet. He looked out the Hyperscreen frame in surprise. Defiant was already halfway off the stocks and moving swiftly over the darkening shoreline in the wake of the two tugs. A sudden cacophony of air horns and sirens crashed through the teeming storm: Defiant's welcome to the world. A small knot of dockyard technicians lining the quayside broke out in cheering—all ragged and spontaneous. Shipwrights from other stocks paused to wave their helmets as she passed. These men had built countless starships, both in war and in peace, and—the Universe willing—they would build countless more. Their cheers reflected fierce professional pride and sent a gesture of goodwill to the star sailors who would man this, the latest result of their craft. Brim felt his eyes fill for a moment—it was not the rain....
Then all noise was abruptly swallowed in a stunning—deafening—strike of lightning on the high KA'PPA tower directly aft of the bridge. For a moment, the entire structure and its empty KA'PPA studs blazed out like some skeletal beacon. Brim was knocked gasping to the deck by the concussion—and a tremendous thunderclap that instantly proceeded from it.
Nearly deafened by the violent discharge, he climbed shakily to his feet only to catch the rasping shriek of a runaway gravity generator. He'd heard that ugly sound a number of times before on failing Carescrian ore barges. They all sounded pretty much the same. It was the port Vertical this time—clearly its automatic damper had been blown out by the lightning strike, and the big generator was now spooling up to full power!
More blinding flashes of nearby lightning burned images of Ursis's grim visage in Brim's eyes as the Bear desperately fought Defiant's controls. "Cap that machine, Alexi Radosni!" he roared to Provodnik as the deck canted up crazily to starboard, "NOW!" His words were nearly drowned by another cascade of crackling thunder. Eerie green light continued to flash from the empty KA'PPA masts and flickered along the network of open stringers above the bridge.
With no directional controls installed on the bridge, Brim could only hang on and watch helplessly while both deck crews aft slid across the streaming hullmetal in their protective suits, scrambling desperately for nonexistant handholds. One by one, the screaming men dropped over the metal precipice into the thrashing water beneath the ship. On the bridge, loose gear and small tools cascaded into heaps along the starboard bulkhead. Grabbing an open Hyperscreen housing, Brim hung on while the big starship tilted toward vertical, blanking the stormy sky with the darker mass of her own deck. She was going over on her back!