Just then, the clerk finished. "Captain Amherst," he called from behind the counter, "we're finished. Soon as you authenticate this, the Sublieutenant will be reassigned and your roster will be corrected."
Amherst turned his back on Brim as if he had simply ceased to exist. "There now," he said to the young officer, patting him on the shoulder, "you shall have no more concerns about serving aboard one of those absolutely dreadful military starships."
"Oh, thank you, Captain," the Sublieutenant uttered with a look of admiration on his face. "I simply couldn't have survived ..."
Smirking jovially, Amherst made his authentication, then, without a single word of thanks, turned and strode from the office, his newly attached Sublieutenant struggling along in his wake. At the door, he stopped and turned once again toward Brim. "We shall watch you closely, Carescrian," he said, glowering. "Others have attempted to subvert the CIGA and have suffered for it." He grinned for a moment. "In some ways," he said, "I should enjoy that. It would give me great pleasure to personally remove you and all you stand for from the path of peace." Then, he was gone.
Presently, the clerk looked over his glasses at Brim and shook his head. "No offense meant, Commander," he said, "but are you sure you want to go to all this trouble? If Puvis Amherst hates you the way I think he does, then you are on your way out—right now!"
Brim glowered and checked his new documents in the displays. "Don't count on it, mister," he said, authenticating the records one by one. "As we say in the race business, 'it's not over till it's over.'" Then he looked the man directly in the eye. "And this race hasn't even started yet."
After treating himself to an all-too-short interlude with Anna Romanoff—during which both he and the alluring businesswoman began to sort out what promised to be a relationship characterized, if nothing else, by frequent separations—Brim returned to Atalanta, resuming his ongoing employment at the Fleet base and preparing for the next trophy race. Throughout the remainder of the year, he and Moulding both sacrificed countless weeks of their own time in travel to Sodeskaya and Rhodor, assisting in development of the M-6 and its control systems.
The rewards, however, were well worth their levy. Long before race week, Sherrington's two new creations had proven themselves as perhaps the most naturally flyable starships ever. Painted dark cobalt with diagonal blue, white, and red racing stripes applied to the main hull immediately abaft the feed tubes, M-6s were everything the M-5s had started out to be, plus much, much more.
At ninety-six irals overall, each was slightly longer than its predecessors and followed Valerian's predilection for multiple hulls. Two Admiralty NL-4053-D gravity generators were mounted in teardrop outriggers joined to the needle-slim main hull by Valerian's characteristic "trousers." An uprated Wizard Drive (designated PV/16) rode the keel, cooled by external surface radiators nearly twice the area of those on the M-5. Forward, a redesigned power system reduced the twin blisters covering its critically shaped feed tubes and produced nearly an eighth more energy in the same chamber volume. Its familiar-looking flight bridge was located just aft of the bow behind dramatically raked (and enlarged) Hyperscreen arrays, but inside, even the controls were different, incorporating innovative concepts from the Admiralty's Living-Factors Design Section that made the new ships an absolute delight to fly.
They were, of course, incredibly fast. But just as important, they were reliable as well. Even during early phases of the test program, each of the little starships performed with rock-solid dependability—the result of a conservative approach to refinement of the M-5's best characteristics instead of attempting a second quantum leap in technology.
As it turned out, however, the ships were ready only in the barest nick of time. During the same period, both Gantheisser and Dampier had wasted little time preparing their own advanced-technology racing craft, no doubt basing their designs on performance parameters obtained from the same sort of espionage that supplied Sherrington designers with their benchmark criteria.
This time, however, the competitors were operating from an extreme disadvantage. Whereas Valerian's M-6's ran on highly derated Drive systems—result of hopeless cooling problems on the little racers—designers from the League and the Torond had once more boosted conventional, single-lobe Drive technology far past reasonable limits. And while both manufacturers had produced ships that would be at least competitive with the Sherrington entries, their propulsion systems were also fragile in the extreme. It was widely rumored that half the new Gantheisser Drives hammered themselves into junk after only cycles of operation at speed, and top-secret documents from the Admiralty indicated that Praefect Motta Balbo had been killed during a takeoff that ended with a sudden dive into Lake Garza. It was assumed that an energy leak may have entered the flight bridge, and so extra insulation had been installed in the two remaining DA.72/c's. But like the League's new GA 209V-5s, they were largely untried.
Anna Romanoff was a fine-looking woman, with or without benefit of clothes. The previous evening, she had once more proven both to Brim: first wearing a breathtaking white evening gown during the traditional reception hosted by Prince Onrad (at which both LaKarns were conspicuously absent), later clad only in perfume at the fashionable town house she maintained near the center of Avalon's historic Beardmore district.
Again today—little more than a metacycle before the ceremonies opening the Mitchell Trophy Race in Avalon—nearly every passing head turned in admiration as she strolled on Brim's arm through charming formal gardens toward the HyperDrome at Alcott-on-Mersin. She was dressed for the occasion in a stylish costume antique of the sheerest white crepe, consisting of a low-bosomed gown with a very high waistline—little more than a bust confiner. Its bodice at the widest point was only minimally deep and her narrow skirt draped all the way to the ground. Fitted over the very short bodice, she wore a double-breasted jacket of delicate white lace. A flat, wide-brimmed straw hat trimmed with delicate windflowers was tied about her cheeks with long apple green ribbons, and she wore dainty white lace gloves. Thin, low slippers, also of apple green, completed the outfit. Early that morning, Brim had been absolutely dazzled watching her dress. The conservative businesswoman he'd first encountered three years earlier in Atalanta had again vanished from the face of the Universe—at least for the duration of the races.
Historic Alcott Gardens themselves had been in continuous use since before the dawn of interstellar flight.
Located on a high bluff overlooking Irwin's Bay on Lake Mersin, the grounds covered a quarter of a square c'lenyt and were dotted by filigreed pavilions, grandiose floral displays, and cascading fountains, all joined by an intricate network of paved footpaths. On this particular morning, the formal grandeur was greatly enhanced by soft puffs of fair-weather clouds that dwarfed the great starliners thundering out among them from Grand Imperial Terminal, only thirty c'lenyts distant.
Out on the lake, twenty-five capital ships from fifteen-odd dominions hovered as if waiting for a signal to commence warring again. Unfortunately, to Brim's way of thinking, sixteen of them owed allegiance to the League.
Avalon's Imperial HyperDrome was almost as old as starflight itself. Built on a spacious arc of lakefront, it formed a vast stage for the colossal natural arena formed by the bluffs separating the gardens and the lake. Two huge grandstands—set well back from the water and climate-controlled when necessary—divided the extensive apron area into three distinct sectors housing all ten galactic domains that had qualified for this year's contest. Sheds for the Imperial Starship Society, the Nergol Triannic Starflight Society, the Starflight Association of the Torond, and the A'zurnian Starflight Institute—winners of the four previous years' races—were located in the center section. Entries from the less successful domains of Vukote, Beta Jagow, Prendergast, Wooglin, Fluvanna, and Taras occupied the remainder.