And during rare moments of relaxation, he resumed correspondence with a number of the old friends he had once forsaken—except for Margot Effer'wyck-LaKarn. On his first attempt to contact their confidential maildrop, he had been advised by old Ambridge, her chauffeur, that less than a week following their last stolen evening together, she had been sequestered at her husband's palace in Rudolpho, capital of the Torond, incommunicado.
He was, however, able to keep abreast of LaKarn himself, try as he might to avoid even the mention of the man's name. As the Mitchell Trophy Race approached, the public media had little else to report about. In fact, for an entire week preceding the event, the Baron became positively loquacious in his role as sponsor of two Gorn-Hoff 380B-5 fast attack craft entered by his Royal Starflight Society. Brim wondered if he planned for Margot to accompany him to Magalla'ana for the races and how such a journey would affect her child who must certainly reach term during that time.
When recordings of the first race day reached Atalanta on speedy packet ships, Brim spent most of his time in deep space, flying at least twice as many missions as he normally scheduled. Most of the other Helmsmen either stayed home or concocted some excuse to watch broadcasts on one of the base's huge, three-dimensional monitors. That night, he returned to his apartment so fatigued that he took to his bunk immediately and fell into a deep sleep without even consulting the news service to which he indifferently subscribed.
During the remaining race days, he continued filling in for absent colleagues from early morning until everyone but night-shift Helmsmen had departed for home. Only late in the evening of the final race did he find time to catch up on the galaxy's happenings. And thus it was that he became one of the last people in Atalanta—or anywhere else, for that matter—to discover that LaKarn's race-modified Gorn-Hoffs had been able to gamer only a third-place win.
Second place had been won by an old friend, actually one of Brim's apprentices aboard I.F.S. Defiant, Aram of Nahshon. The young flighted native of A'zurn had piloted a R3C-1 prototype from the new A'zurnian starship plant at R'autor, established soon after his domain was liberated from the yoke of League occupation. Brim was so elated about the young A'zurnian's achievement, he almost missed the name of the winning Helmsman. In fact, it was the man's face and blond hair, recorded beside the sleek, brooding form of a new Gorn-Hoff model—the TA 153-V32—that initially caught his attention. Only after he stared at the monitor for a long time did he cue an information channel to assure himself that the handsome, black-uniformed Controller, an OverPraefect, was indeed the Leaguer whom he suspected.
He was not mistaken.
The name was Kirsh Valentin.
For years, memories alone had been quite sufficient to send Brim into wild spasms of anger whenever he thought of Valentin. The sight of his face was even worse. Those cruel blue eyes had once callously looked down at him as he lay in the cold deck of a Leaguer starship waiting for death to deliver him from the agony of his torture. Only lady Fortune—in the person of Lieutenant Commander Regula Collingswood—had saved his life that day, and he had sworn that he would someday revenge himself against the Leaguer. He'd had only one chance at it, so far—and had utterly failed.
In fact, the picture of Valentin so upset Brim that he nearly passed up an ancillary announcement used as filler in the special race supplement:
Born: Rodyard Greyffin A'zurn LaKarn to fashionable Princess Margot Effer'wyck-LaKarn and Rogan LaKarn, Baron of the Torond. The trendsetting royal couple's first child was delivered in Magalla'ana, A'zurn, during a final heat of the Mitchell Trophy Race. Dowager Princess Honorotha LaKarn, current monarch of the Torond, attended the birthing. She reports that mother and son are both doing splendidly.
At the time, Baron LaKarn was occupied with the race committee and could not be reached for comment. The royal family plans to return to the Torond within the next few Standard days.
Brim had little time to reflect upon either event. He was simply too busy keeping up with his own career to worry about things he was powerless to change. He was also a somewhat different man from the Wilf Brim who had fled Avalon nine Standard months in the past.
One frosty evening, shortly after Brim returned to his apartment from the base, his correspondence was interrupted by an unexpected knock at the door. Frowning—he permitted himself few friends and expected even fewer visitors—he got to his feet and opened the door, then staggered back into his living room, grinning in happy consternation. "Nik Ursis!" he blurted out. "Dr. Borodov! By the very hair of Voot's tangled beard, where in the Universe did you two come from?" With that, he fairly leaped through the door in a vain attempt to embrace the two elegant Sodeskayan Bears, both dressed in civilian clothes.
Ursis, the younger of the two and Dean of the famous Dityasburg Academy on the G.F.S.S. planet of Zhiv'ot, stood a quarter again as tall as Brim. He had small, gray eyes of enormous intensity, dark reddish brown fur, a long, urbane muzzle that terminated in a huge, wet nose, and a grin so wide that fang jewels on either side of his mouth blazed in the light of the doorway. On his head he wore a colossal egg-shaped hat of curly wool that covered his ears and added at least an iral to his already formidable height. His black, knee-length greatcoat—embellished by two rows of huge gold buttons and jasmine waist sash—was cut in the military style with a stiff collar, embroidered cuffs, and a wide skirt. Crimson trousers bagged stylishly over his thick calf-length boots, the latter of black leather so soft that it bunched at the ankles. On his left hand he wore a delicately embroidered, six-fingered glove of ophet leather. The other hand held a prodigious bottle of Logish Meem.
The other Bear—Grand Duke (Doctor) Anastas Alexyi Borodov and master of vast baronial estates in the deeply wooded lake country outside Gromcow on the G.F.S.S. mother planet of Sodeskaya—was chestnut in color, much older, somewhat bowed by his years, and stood only a little taller than Brim. His eyes, however, sparkled with youthful humor and prodigious intellect behind a pair of old-fashioned horn-rim spectacles. And, although his graying muzzle was not nearly so intimidating as that of his companion, enormous sideburns provided him with a most profoundly intellectual countenance. He also was splendidly dressed in a handsome, ankle-length greatcoat of thick gray felt that was closed at the waist with a narrow leather belt. From the open collar emerged a heavy vest of darker felt with high, embroidered collars fastened by a delicate necktie of golden rope. Unlike Ursis's soft walking boots, Borodov's were clearly made for riding, cobbled of far stiffer, shiny leather and equipped with unobtrusive spurs secured at the ankle by delicate belts. And, although he also wore a massive hat of curly wool, it was much wider at the top than it was at the headband and gave his head the look of a wooly funnel. "Perhaps, young Brim," he suggested peering over his glasses at the open door, "we should go inside to drink the meem and catch up on old times. It has been much too long since we sat together discussing troubles of the galaxy."
"Is true, Wilf Ansor," Ursis admonished. "During your months of disappearance, you troubled many of your friends—Anastas Alexyi and myself not least among them. Am I correct, Doctor?"
"Most correct, Nikolai Yanuarievich," Borodov replied with a pointed glance at Brim. "'Old snow and wooden floors turn skies blue in the autumn,' as they say."
Brim shook his head in mock concession. Sodeskayan homilies made little sense to human ears. "If you say so," he chuckled while he guided his friends through the door, eagerly looking forward to a rare evening of companionship.
And indeed, the Bears' visit did begin the way he anticipated. Borodov opened Ursis's huge bottle, then poured a magnificent vintage of Logish Meem into Brim's humble collection of cvceese' mugs. And only when these had become empty were they held upside down in the air while the three comrades toasted in the Sodeskayan style: "To ice, to snow, to Sodeskaya we go!" The friendship they shared was a special closeness forged in the hellish disrupter fire of countless, desperately fought battles against the League of Dark Stars.