He nudged the damper again... with the same results! This time, however, the missile made up distance with a greatly diminished relative velocity, its Drive plume blazing out now like a tiny star. Again he nudged the damper. This time, the HyperMine slowly began to fall behind until he had to skid the ship to track it, still less than two thousand irals distant.
At this point, he had it. Skidding the ship once more, he took a bearing on the diminishing missile, then straightened course, aimed the Drive's exhaust blindly, and slid the damper forward to its detent. The M-6B shot forward with an acceleration that caught Brim totally by surprise. At the same instant, he found himself engulfed in a tremendous fireball—blasted forward again as if slapped by some colossal hand. Moments later, he had left the roiling flare far behind in a burst of phenomenal acceleration. But now Laneer was dead ahead—and expanding in the Hyperscreens like an oncoming meteor! Instinctively pulling back on the thrust damper, he listened to Valerian's tough little spaceframe creak and squeal over the shrill warning of the DRIVE OVERHEAT alarm.
Swerving in desperation, he rolled the ship on its back and skimmed inverted through the star's chromosphere, close enough to the boiling photosphere below that he could make out individual granulation cells, each more than twice the diameter of Avalon herself. Then—miraculously—he was once again flying through open space, the Wizard howling behind him like all the evil spirits of the Universe. Only now the ship was trailing both a seemingly endless Drive plume and a lengthy prominence of flamelike structures—gasses, Brim guessed numbly, disturbed by the Wizard's high-energy exhaust.
An instant later, he blinked in surprise. He'd come out on the far side of the star! He was still in the race—and alive, of all things! Reining in the ravening Wizard before it carried him clear out of the Universe—or melted from its own hellfires—he aimed the ship on a straightaway to Delta-Gahnn, then skidded around the entrance turn, and finished the lap at an average speed of more than 121.31M LightSpeed!
At that instant, his KA'PPA screen came alive: ALCOTT TOWER TO IMPERIAL M-SIX-B ALPHA. ALCOTT TOWER TO IMPERIAL M-SIX-B alpha. DO YOU READ ME? The characters were broken and indistinct on the little display. Brim guessed that the explosion had damaged his HyperLight COMM system—perhaps melted its external antenna array.
I READ YOU, ALCOTT TOWER, he KA'PPAed back as he rushed headlong past Onita on his seventh lap. AM SAFE AND UNDER CONTROL. WILL EXPLAIN EXPLOSION LATER. A moment afterward, he shot out of the curve and battled his way past the glittering cloud of radiation that marked his latest escape from the League. Then he was past Laneer and sprinting once more for Delta-Gahnn. He finished that lap at better than 103.S6M LightSpeed—and the eighth and the ninth as well.
It was on his tenth and final lap that Brim spotted the second space mine. He'd assumed there would be one for some time now; if the Leaguers had troubled themselves concerning him, it only made sense that they'd have similar plans for his partner. The device was still distant and only beginning the great climbing spiral that would bring it to Moulding's M-6B on his sixth lap, but he could already make out its distinctive spindle shape, interrupted by a camera blister. Now, however, by the chance survival of his own ship, the diabolical weapon would wait for an Imperial warship to take it back to Avalon where it might be used for evidence, should the ISS decide to prefer charges. Be that as it may, the Leaguer's maliciousness would soon be irrelevant—especially since he would clearly finish the race at least 1.24M LightSpeed faster than Valentin, with no second chances available.
Twenty cycles later, he brought the M-6B streaking in low over the glare of Avalon City, sped through the night sky along Lake Mersin (trailing a sonic shock wave that, according to irate city officials, leveled thirty c'lenyts of ornamental trees), and thundered inverted between the pylons at better than forty-five hundred c'lenyts per metacycle—winning the Mitchell Trophy once and for all by a margin of better than 2.24M LightSpeed. Then, banking around the grandstands in a slow curve, he brought the little Sherrington racer down flawlessly.
Moulding did not fly in the race—there was no need for such a risk. The Mitchell Trophy had already become a true Imperial hat rack.
Early the next morning, Brim gently untangled himself from Anna Romanoff and stole quietly to the salon, where he watched to see how the public media had interpreted General Drummond's brief explanation of the night's events:
...Turning to the latest Mitchell Trophy news: popular race figure and Carescrian, Lt. Commander Wilf Brim, I.F., broke all existing speed records at the HyperDrome last night to permanently secure the Mitchell Trophy here in Avalon at an average speed of 101.8M LightSpeed. His Sherrington M-6 B racer, however, was extensively charred during a near disaster in the final heat.
According to HyperDrome spokesperson, General Harry Drummond, Brim's spirited Helmsmanship averted a freak tragedy when he avoided what is generally believed to be an ancient space mine, relic of the forty-second-century War for the Glaring Eye. ISS officials removed the record breaking M-6 B to a repair facility immediately after brief victory ceremonies, while Imperial Fleet vessels conducted a thorough search of the area to insure no more of the dangerous artifacts were encountered.
The ship itself is presently undergoing restoration prior to its installation in Avalon's Science Museum, where it will be on display during the metacycles of...
Brim shook his head in bemusement. Since the end of the war, he'd been everything from down-and-out civilian to "popular race figure," and a Lieutenant Commander. He'd even found love, in the literal sense of the word. The experiences had turned him into a very different man than the one he was when he'd entered the Fleet as a raw Sublieutenant some fourteen years previously. For one thing, he walked a lot more confidently these days. Shrugging happily, he watched Romanoff pad through the archway dressed in a lacy negligee, her long brown hair bobbing in glorious tangles about her shoulders.
She put her arm around him possessively, then leaned over to deposit a kiss to the tip of his nose.
"Seems a shame we're letting the Leaguer bastards off scot-free," she grumped, staring sleepily at the display. "They ought to get what they really deserve."