"How's it look?" Brim asked when Valerian had come to rest for a moment nearby.
The designer pursed his lips and frowned. "I think it's going to be close, Wilf," he admitted. "But then, we Sherrington people won't be the ones who actually pull off the necessary miracle—this is mostly a Krasni-Peych show. All I can do is help when I'm needed and keep out of the way when I'm not." He frowned for a moment, looking over Brim's shoulder. "I say, there, Jaech," he yelled at a young engineer standing atop the Drive compartment with a glowing coil over his shoulder,
"let me help you with that assembly!" Then he grinned again at Brim. "Come back in the morning, Wilf," he said as he started across the floor. "We'll know a lot more at that time."
Before he started up the ladder, he turned, his face broken by a little grin. "And don't forget to bring your flying togs!" he added.
The following morning, Brim awoke long before dawn and dressed in his fatigues without waking Romanoff. The latest report from the HyperDrome indicated that both technical teams had worked straight through the night and were nearly ready to test their handiwork. Results of those first tests would be a good indication of how he might spend his afternoon, watching or flying.
As his driver turned toward the Imperial shed, Brim could see that the whole area was bathed in the harsh glare of Karlsson lamps burning at their highest intensity. Clearly, work had gone on all night, and the very fact that nobody had given up yet was a highly encouraging sign so far as he was concerned. Inside the shed, Moulding's M-6B was reduced to a skeleton amidships while his own could be seen huddling atop a gravity pad in one of the Drive-arming circles. At a distance, it appeared to be mostly in one piece—at least compared to its sister ship.
"You want the shed or the Drive circle, Commander?" the driver asked.
"Better make it the Drive circle," Brim replied, "I might as well get the news firsthand." Less than five cycles later, he flashed his badge at a manned security gate and strode onto the giant lenslike system of N-ray emitters. Above him, the M-6B loomed on its gravity pad, gleaming dark blue in the bright artificial light and literally covered by technicians. Hundreds of cables glowing in a rainbow of hues led from openings in her hull to an armada of vans laden with diagnostic equipment.
Twelve additional cables, each thicker than a man's arm, ran to massive connectors abaft the ship's trousers. Brim recognized these as superconducting power transmission lines, now glowing dull red from the enormous energy required to electrosaturate the new Drive crystal before it was powered the first time. Unprepared crystals often shattered at the first application of Drive energy, and this particular prototype was clearly getting special but time-consuming care. Brim shook his head—the M-6B would never be ready to fly before late afternoon at the earliest. If for some reason this year's heats were quickly concluded, the Empire could lose the trophy by default.
Shortly thereafter, as he stared out at the frantic work going on around the starship, he saw Valerian and Pogreb—both dressed in the same clothes they had worn the previous evening at supper—step out of the blockhouse and hurry to one of the larger consoles that was mounted on a heavy flatbed skimmer. He scurried across the lens in short order. "How do things look?" he asked anxiously.
Both engineers jumped. "Oh—Wilf," Valerian exclaimed with a frown, "we were just about to call you."
"And?" Brim asked.
"Well," Pogreb began.
Brim tensed. "Well," he prompted.
Valerian grimaced. "We just finished connecting the new control systems, Wilf," he reported.
"With a little luck, we'll have her all buttoned up in little more than a metacycle," he said.
"And—praise the Universe for small miracles—we might even finish Moulding's in time, too."
This time, it was Brim who grimaced. "There's an implied but here somewhere," he said with the beginnings of real concern forming in his mind. "I wonder why haven't I heard either of you use the word fly?"
"The electrosaturation process," Pogreb explained, "is takink nearly ten more metacycles before it finishes."
Brim understood the issue immediately. "And since by that time, the racing program will be well underway," he said with a frown, "there'll be no opportunity for flight tests. Right?"
Valerian nodded. "That's about it. Wilf," he said. "If either you or Moulding is going to race, you'll have to fly an experimental starship that has just been hurriedly bolted together, along with a newly saturated, prototype Drive crystal—and then immediately run it flat out. How does that sound to you?"
"Wonderful," Brim grumped, shaking his head and rolling his eyes skyward, "just thraggling wonderful."
"Will you do it?" Valerian asked.
"Will I do what?"
"Fly it."
"Of course I'll fly it," Brim said. "One of these days, Mark, you've got to go to Carescria and check out the ore barges I used to fly." He shook his head. "We'd have been overjoyed there just to get halfway reliable crystals. Then we could spend more time wondering if the hulls would stay together." He looked Valerian in the eye. "Lots of times, they didn't."
Valerian mumbled something unintelligible, then shook his head. "Do you suppose Moulding will fly, too?" he asked.
Brim smiled. "Probably you'll want to ask him yourself," he said. "But I'll bet he's just as suicidal as I am—especially when it comes to this race."
"For Voot's sake, just don't push your thrust damper into the reflector zone." Valerian warned,
"...whatever you do. That might definitely qualify as suicidal from what I've heard. The system's never been tested at all in this spaceframe."
"I'll watch it," Brim promised grimly. "I've got a race to win."