"Imperial V981: you're six c'lenyts from the marker," the Tower announced. "Turn left to heading nine seven one and join the localizer at seventeen hundred. You are cleared for instrument approach one seven left."
"Fleet V981 acknowledges all of that," Corbeil answered. "Thank you...."
Ahead, a land mass was materializing out of the gloomy mists. Here and there, beacons flashed indistinctly, and reflected daylight—such as it was—defined a maze of canals. Massive, silver-domed reactor towers dotted the snow-covered landscape. Brim shook his head. It was almost as if eleven years had suddenly compressed to nothing. Little more than a year ago the great sector harbor had appeared to be completely abandoned—frozen over and lifeless. Now, as they approached, thousands of Karlsson lights glowed everywhere among a myriad of buildings and odd-shaped structures that had once been buried in a hundred irals of snow.
"Sector Tower One Nine to Imperial V981: you are cleared to land three-seven left, wind one nine zero at fifty, gust to one one twelve."
"Thank you, Tower...."
While Corbeil turned onto final, a point of ruby light burned through the mist at them—the landing vector. Moments later their own triangular shadow moved in beneath them and they were level, skimming just above the tops of the huge rollers. From long years of instinct, Brim glanced out the quarter window, judging their touchdown as if he were at the controls. The generators surged for a moment as the ship rotated slightly nose high, then great cascades of white water soared skyward on either side of the hull as Corbeil "plastered" the ship onto her "gravity foot," the hull-shaped depression in the water starships made when they were on the surface. Four orange lights appeared on the instrument panel as he shifted the generators into reverse, and a succession of graviton waves sent clouds of spray forward until the ship came to a halt a regulation twenty-five irals above her foot, pitching moderately in the ground swell.
"All hands secure from landfall operations. All hands secure from landfall operations," the blower announced. "Go to your stations, all landing parties. Stand by mooring and fender beams...."
"Nice landing, Commander," Brim said. The words were no mere courtesy. Corbeil had actually made the whole thing seem easy—which was, after all, a good bit of what Helmsmanship was all about.
But nothing was particularly easy on Gimmas Haefdon. He knew. Years ago, he'd called the huge, frigid base "home."
Corbeil turned and grinned. "Thanks, Captain Brim," he said. "I watched you bring in those tricky little Mitchell Trophy racers a couple o' years back—so I take those words as quite a compliment."
Brim nodded, feeling his face flush. "I never had to land a racer on Gimmas," he returned as Corbeil taxied the little ship past a glowing buoy tossing in the swell and headed toward two age-blackened monoliths that marked the entrance to Sector 17's harbor. The horrible weather was what made the frozen planet such a perfect Fleet base. Nobody else but starsailors could be persuaded to go there.
Negotiating a maze of wide, stone-walled canals lined by rows of gravity pools—many occupied by huge freighters from all over the Empire—they headed through driving snow for a forest of massive shipyard cranes and a huge structure of ancient, age-blackened brick that Brim recognized as a finishing bay where recently completed starships were fitted out in preparation for Fleet duty. Clearly, this part of the great base would soon be in the business of building a fleet again. On either side of the canal, causeways were alive with scurrying vehicles of all kinds and shapes. Past a sharp curve, beacons began to strobe astride one of the gravity-pool ramps curving up from the water. Through the snow, he could make out two bundled figures on a corner of the old stone seawall, holding their ears against the noise as the starship approached. The taller was clearly a Sodeskayan Bear, splendidly dressed in his country's distinctive papakha (a tall black hat shaped like a woolly pillbox), high boots made of black leather so soft they bagged at the ankles, and a long, deep maroon Fleet Cloak cut on the lines of its Imperial counterpart. The other figure, dressed in the dark blue greatcloak of the Imperial Fleet wore an officer's cap and significant bands of gold above his cuffs. Both waved as Corbeil applied the gravity brakes and swung the starship's nose over a glowing Becton tube that led up the curving stone ramp to a gravity pool.
Outside on the obsidian hull, parties of deck hands in magnetic boots and clumsy-looking antiradiation mittens were already racing here and there to open hatches to activate the mooring systems.
Generators surged for a moment as the ship's mass transferred from its gravity foot, and moments later, they were coasting onto the pool. Below, on the age-stained cobblestones, six spool-shaped repulsion generators filled the great, open cell with a reassuring yellow glow. Corbeil eased the ship into reverse for a moment while mooring beams leaped out to optical bollards along the pool's walls, surging and flashing as Jacques Schneider settled to her moorings. Then he glanced at Takanada, who grinned and nodded in return while a weathered brow clanked into place abaft the bridge and connected to the boarding port with a great rush of air.
"All hands stand by for local gravity," she announced as six jewels in an overhead panel switched from red to orange. "All hands stand by for local gravity."
Brim braced himself, watching Takanada reach up and touch each jewel in turn, turning it from orange to green. A momentary wave of nausea savaged his gut and he fought his gorge to a draw. During all his years in space, he'd never quite gotten used to The Switchover—just the momentary discomfort it brought. He shook his head wryly as the feeling rapidly passed. A lot of people never had any problems at all....
"Finished with generators," Corbeil announced to the bearded visage of an Engineering Officer that appeared in a globular display.
"Aye, Captain."
Simultaneously, the background rumble of gravity generators died to the first silence Brim had encountered since the ship lifted off seven days previously.
They were down.
Brim had departed Avalon in such a hurry he had little in the way of baggage as he descended through the brow, dodging busy crewmen running past in both directions. He pulled his Fleet Cloak tighter around his neck and turned up the heat against blasts of cold air surging up from below. As he stepped outside into the snowy air, two figures resembling the pair he had spied on the seawall stepped forward. He recognized them almost immediately. "Dr. Borodov!" he exclaimed, first saluting the Sodeskayan officer, who returned the salute, then immediately engulfed him in a traditional Bear hug.
"Wilfooshka!" the Bear replied. "Seems like year of special holidays since I last laid eyes on you."
Grand Duke (Doctor) Anastas Alexi Borodov was master of vast baronial estates in the deeply wooded lake country outside Holy Gromcow on the G.F.S.S. "Mother" planet of Sodeskaya itself, and—for Brim—as close to family as anyone alive. He was also perhaps the greatest Drive scientist in the known Universe. Both collars of his maroon Fleet Cloak were tipped in the black leather of the Sodeskayan Engineers and bore three stars, denoting a Colonel General. Graying fur on his great muzzle would have been chestnut-colored in his youth but was now as much silver as brown. Somewhat bowed by the years, he stood only a little taller than Brim's six-iral height, but his tiny eyes sparkled with youthful humor and prodigious intellect behind a pair of old-fashioned horn-rimmed spectacles. Enormous sideburns provided him with a most profoundly academic countenance despite a huge, wet nose of the sort that gave most Bears a slightly comic look in humans' eyes—until they'd seen one angry. They were the only warm-blooded beings in the galaxy who could enjoy Gimmas's weather. If anything, the original seed planets of the Great Federation were often colder.