The Mitchell Trophy
Following the Treaty of Garak in 52000, intragalactic commerce began to expand at breakneck speed.
The Great War had introduced literally millions of people on both sides to space flight and forced loosely linked dominions all over the galaxy into new dependence upon one another. A burgeoning transportation industry found itself pressured for more and more speed as frontiers rapidly expanded to the most remote parts of the galactic spiral, and beyond.
To conquer distance, to couple new power generators with the subtle properties of HyperSpeed Drives and hull configurations, then spur all three to the limit of their potential—that was the challenge. The urge to produce the fastest starship in the known Universe became an obsession that captivated the best technical minds everywhere.
Among the major galactic dominions, this burning quest for speed was eventually subsidized by government treasuries and entrusted to special government employees who contended as much for national honor as for personal glory. The starships they flew evolved rapidly from reconditioned war machines that coursed through space at perhaps forty thousand times the speed of light to such engineering masterpieces as Sherrington's M-6B in which (then) Lt. Commander Tobias Moulding, I.F. achieved an absolute velocity of nearly 112M LightSpeed late in 52009.
A major part of this battle was fought in the laboratories of great commercial enterprises by designers who repeatedly pushed themselves to create faster and more powerful systems. But the final proof was in absolute performance, and prodigious races became the battlegrounds where these creations were actually put to the test.
The most distinctive of the competitions—for the Mitchell Trophy—offered little in the way of a stipend to the victor; moreover, its rules seriously restricted the nature of vessels that could enter. Yet those same starships are largely credited with extending the boundaries of civilization beyond the galaxy and into the Universe itself.
Mitchell, son of a Rhodorian industrialist, believed that practical starships were the key to intragalactic commerce, and therefore to the survival of civilization itself. He concluded that true starship utility depended not only upon raw HyperLight velocity through deep space but, in equal measure, upon the ability to land and take off readily from the surfaces of planets anywhere. Accordingly, he began a speed competition for private starflight societies and personally donated its unique trophy to be awarded at yearly races until one society won three times in a row, thereby gaining permanent possession. Each year's race was to be hosted by the previous year's winning society. But despite Mitchell's hopes to keep the race out of state arenas, military and government-employed Helmsmen competed regularly.
From The Galactic Almanac (And Handy Encyclopedia), 52015
CHAPTER 1
End of the Line
"Thraggling Universe, Peretti—the gravs have tripped out. I can't keep her on course. Crank 'em up— now! "
"Power's gone, Mr. Brim. Readouts say she's blown the feed tube."
"Better send out an alert then, Sparks. Looks like we're going in. Pam, get everybody down in the cabin."
While Hamlish frantically broadcast the timeworn litany of trouble in deep space, Wilf Ansor Brim struggled alone with the old starship's controls. Beside him Jana Torgeson slumped over her co-Helmsman's console, reeking of cheap meem. "Morris," he yelled into a flickering display, "see about jettisoning some of the cargo back there!"
"Ain't enough of us here ta do much good this trip, Mr. Brim," Morris responded with a smug look on his face. "Warned ya before we left, we did...."
Brim ground his teeth. At the beginning of the trip, there had been hardly enough hands to staff Jamestown's bridge, much less handle a cargo bay. "I understand," he growled. "But you'd better do all you can. The more you get rid of, the more chance we all have of surviving the crash."
" That puts things in a whole new light, Mr. Brim," Morris responded. His thin visage disappeared from the screen like a gray wraith.
Dressed in a tan civilian Captain's uniform—a threadbare remnant from some long-defunct spaceline—the thirty-seven-year-old Brim shook his head. No wonder Morris had never been in the Fleet. He'd have spent his whole life in the brig. Through the ship's forward Hyperscreens—normally transparent crystalline windshields that simulated conventional vision when traveling faster than LightSpeed—he watched the first tongues of flame begin streaming aft from protrusions on the hull.
Reentry time and no gravs! He shook his head in disgust. All he had to work with now was the steering engine. The little gravity kicker wasn't much, but it gave him a chance—one of the few he could presently think of. Like any good Helmsman, he always tried to have a trick or two up his sleeve, just in case Voot decided to strike—which, in this case, he surely had. Suddenly, the ship jolted.
"There goes the pallet of hullmetal rolling machines," Morris reported from a display. He was now dressed in a bright orange space suit and helmet.
"Good work," Brim acknowledged through clenched teeth. Those big machines were worth a whole lot more than old City of Jamestown herself. Luckily, they'd been insured by their wary owners before takeoff. Little StarFleet Enterprises could never have raised that kind of ante in a million Standard years.
Without them, however, there would now be no hauling fee, and Universe knew the company needed every thraggling credit it could earn. He shook his head in frustration and peered down at the solid undercast, still c'lenyts below. At least the ship didn't seem to be falling so fast now....
"That's the last of the mobile crawlers," Morris reported momentarily. "Cargo deck's empty, all right?"
Brim nodded. "Very good, Morris," he said. But it wasn't very good at all. Even if he managed to bring the old starship in without killing anybody—which was still quite problematical—things looked bleak for StarFleet Enterprises. Jamestown was the only ship left in the fleet.
"Port Authority's dispatched a rescue tug," Hamlish reported presently. His beige-colored uniform was a lot newer than Brim's, even though it did start life in a different spaceline. "I've given 'em our predicted landing coordinates, just in case we get there."
Brim laughed grimly to himself. They'd get there, all right. No way to go anywhere else with only a steering engine. "I'll have the space radiators out, Jana," he ordered absently, preoccupied with his own readouts. Moments later, he shook his head in disgust, then reached over the gray-haired woman's rumpled form to activate her controls himself. Almost immediately, old Jamestown began to shudder and rumble while long, tapered panels deployed from either side of her torpedo-shaped hull. In the presence of any atmosphere at all, they had a startling effect.
Peretti chuckled contemptuously. "Not much left to cool with those old radiators, is there, Brim?" He was the only one in the crew with a new, made-to-order StarFleet Enterprises uniform. Clearly, he had access to funds above and beyond anything the faltering spaceline could disburse.
"Not radiators—wings," Brim snapped through his teeth as he concentrated on flying. One mistake now and they were all dead.
"Wings?"
"Yeah, wings," Brim answered instinctively. In the Fleet, it had once been his duty as Principal Helmsman to help train junior officers. "You haven't logged much time in these old kites, have you?"
"What's that got to do with the price of cawdor nails?" Peretti asked defensively, attempting to pull his coat over a sizable paunch.
"Not much anymore," Brim grunted while stratoturbulence rattled the old hullmetal plating, "but if you'd spent any time at all with these old ships, you'd know that their radiators are shaped like wings—as a safety feature. Probably for situations just like this."