Brim seated Romanoff in the Krasni-Peych box with Ursis and Borodov, who were acting as temporary escorts to Moulding's voluptuous redhead. Then he hurried off through the noisy, colorful throng for a lift to the Imperial shed with Valerian in a Sherrington limousine.
Following the traditional parade (in which Brim was paired with Kirsh Valentin!) and interminable speeches by toothsome Imperial officials, the race at last got underway. Earlier, Prince Onrad had decreed that this year, the order of competition would be reversed. Therefore, the contest began when an orchestra struck up the Tarian national anthem, "All Hail the Crinig Tree!" At the same time, blood green flags raced to the top of three flagpoles located on the winner's dais in the center of the HyperDrome. Taras, a first-time contender, fielded two odd-looking starships that earlier had showed some promise in practice heats. During the next metacycle and a half, however, they left no doubt in anyone's minds that someone else would carry home the Mitchell Trophy this year.
The entry from Fluvanna—there was only one—fared considerably better, but came nowhere close to the minimum qualifying speeds achieved by many of the other domains. Both racers from the ten-star cluster of Wooglin finished with respectable times, as did those from Beta Jagow and Prendergast; but the day ended on a note of tragedy when a starship from Vukote disintegrated in three terrific explosions before it had achieved more than a c'lenyt of altitude. After protracted conferences between Imperial safety officials and practically the whole Vucotian staff, the latter withdrew from competition and the day ended nearly two metacycles later than anyone had expected.
While most of Avalon immersed itself in parties of one kind or another that night, Brim and Romanoff set off promptly to her town house where they retired almost immediately with vows from both sides that on the eve of such an important event, Brim should sleep all the way through the night, with no interruptions.
They broke their vow only once—by urgent and mutual agreement.
Competition resumed the next morning with an outstanding exhibition of sportsmanship when the Beta Jagow Starship society loaned a rare ingot of Relox-31 to desperate Fluvannian technicians. The latter quickly applied most of it to a leaking power chamber in the needlelike Pagona pc.7 they had entered, and shortly thereafter outstripped their benefactors by two places in the final standings. Afterward, Wooglin's entries bettered both by nearly 7.5M LightSpeed. Early in the afternoon, however, two sleek R'autor M6C-32s piloted by A'zurnians effortlessly swept all previous competitors from the race, boosting the high average speed to nearly 94M LightSpeed, while sending a shock wave through most of the racing community. Brim grimaced when he heard the news. Any possibility of an easy victory had just evaporated, not only for himself but for his adversaries from the League and Torond who would fly next.
As Fleet intelligence had speculated, Rogan LaKarn's uprated DA.72/c's flew with Drive crystals extravagantly overstressed by new power plants installed at the last moment by frantic Dampier engineers. Both Helmsmen gallantly completed the race in their treacherous machines, but the first was seriously burned when the new insulation failed to keep stray energy from the flight bridge, and the second ran at no more than three-quarters power settings after a wildly erratic takeoff. When they were finished, the Torond had managed only a poor second to A'zurn's little R'autors, and as late afternoon waned into the coolness of early evening, only the League stood between Brim and another Mitchell Trophy.
The setting Triad of Asterious had turned Avalon's nightward horizon into layers of deep mauve and pink as three black League banners shot to the top of the center flagpoles. Valentin raced first, and almost from the beginning his brutish Gantheisser 209 V-5 was dogged by trouble. While he was still on the gravity pool, the enormous DB 601ARJ power plant refused to fully energize, and his embarrassed colleagues were forced to plead for an official time-out while squads of technicians sorted out the problem under dozens of bobbing hover-floods. Then, after little more than two laps aloft, both plasma tubes delaminated at the feed end, burning dead spots in the crystal and forcing him from the race.
Without sufficient power to make landfall, he had to abandon the badly scorched ship in orbit and return—ignominiously—aboard an Imperial destroyer.
Only cycles after the first reports of Valentin's difficulties swept through the shed area, Brim and Moulding sat on the edge of the Imperial gravity pool, watching through night glasses while a hovering traction machine drew Groener's snow white Gantheisser to the gravity pool, now brilliantly lighted by lofty Karlsson lamps. Soon afterward, two white Majestat-Baron limousine skimmers emerged from a side wing of the shed and sped across the apron, tracing specially installed follower cables. The first deposited Groener at the League's gravity pool where she alighted just below the hovering Gantheisser's boarding ladder among an orderly group of technicians. Even a battle suit couldn't hide her spectacular curves. The second big skimmer drew to a halt directly behind Groener's to disgorge OverGalite'er Gorton Ro'arn and four tough-looking Controllers wearing special Racotzi Police badges on their hats.
Groener had a grim look on her face as she glanced sullenly at Ro'arn, and when he raised his hand to attract her attention, she turned away as if she could no longer tolerate the sight of his face. She paused at the boarding ladder for a moment, then ultimately shook her head, issued a few terse commands to the ground crew, and mounted to the hatch with no further communication to anyone.
"A very unhappy-looking lady out there," Toby Moulding commented, handing Brim the night glasses.
Both Imperials were already dressed in battle suits and ready to fly.
Brim adjusted the gain and focused in on the Gantheisser's Hyperscreens. "You can say that again," he replied, peering intently through the darkness. Unfortunately, from his angle of view, most of Groener's face was hidden by her instrument panel.
Moments later, the big DB 601ARJ energized in a sparkling globule of heat energy that spilled from the sides of the gravity pool in waves of distorted light. This was followed almost immediately by the thunder of a gravity generator.
"She couldn't be bothering with her checklist!" Moulding observed, raising his voice over the rumble of the Gantheisser's second big generator.
"No," Brim agreed, handing back Moulding's night glasses. "She certainly couldn't—there isn't enough time..." At that moment, the brutish starship lurched off its gravity pool and lumbered toward the central access ramp before a surprised Imperial orchestra could belatedly strike up the League's national anthem.
Moulding peered through the night glasses again. "I think she's in some kind of trouble."
"Yeah," Brim agreed with a feeling of absolute helplessness. "And as usual, there's not a xaxtdamned thing anybody can do about it." He watched Groener taxi out over the water and swing her bow toward the starting gates. "If only we cared about individuals as much as we do about cultures," he said, "maybe we wouldn't get into the kind of troubles that end up in wars."
"What?" Moulding asked.
Brim laughed grimly as Groener took the starter's flag and thundered down the takeoff vector, trailing three lofty cascades of spray that shone in the radiance of the bobbing vector markers. "Only a stray thought, Toby," he said, "about not being able to help people because they bring trouble on themselves."