Suddenly through the driving downpuor, he saw Provodnik scramble across the crazily canted deck of the bridge using empty console supports for footholds. In mere clicks, the young Bear grabbed a handle on the emergency power panel, twisted the door open, and—incredibly without losing his grip—pulled a main fuse block to the automatic controls.
Instantly, the ear-splitting shriek died to an even rumble as the runaway generator spooled down to default power settings and Defiant slowly returned to an even keel. Aft, the ungainly tugs had been caught off guard and were completely unable to react at all, except for the knots of crewmen that poured from the hatches, pointing with astonishment as the big ship settled back on an even keel.
Heart thumping wildly in his chest, Brim glanced forward toward the receding stocks just as ten broken bodies appeared in Defiant's frothing wake: remains of the hapless work crews who were caught in the maelstrom of raging gravitrons beneath the ship. His skin crawled. Such absolute destructive potential was only one reason why powerful vessels like starships were rarely permitted to fly across land masses—at least at low altitudes. He shuddered in the chill air—had he grabbed at the Hyperscreen housing even a click later than he did, he might have fallen from the bridge and joined them himself....
A few irals away, Ursis and the younger Sodeskayan were again totally engrossed in the control console, each running one of the generators by hand. Apparently Provodnik had suddenly received a great dose of confidence in his ability at a console. Sudden necessity had a way of making that happen—Brim understood the process well. The very best of Carescrian ore barges he had flown could supply three lifetimes' worth of sudden necessity—in a single trip!
Shaking his head, he realized for the first time that it was no longer raining.
The resulting inquest extended over nearly twenty-five interminable days, depriving Brim and Ursis of valuable metacycles they should have spent helping prepare Defiant for space.
It was time that had to be made up from their own lives—but manpower was too short in those wartime years to permit substitutes at any job.
When the tribunal ended, however, all three officers present on the bridge were pronouced to be "without fault," and references to the incident were deleted immediately from their Admiralty records. Surprisingly, the official "culprit" in the shipyard report was not the lightning strike. Instead, sole blame was fixed on the defective signal mixer whose improperly synchronized feedback logic had slowly destroyed both automatic control mechanisms during the preceding weeks of intense system testing. But Brim and Ursis both noted a great deal of coincident work being done on the KA'PPA-tower insulation—and complete reisolation of the Vertical's waveguide system.
Neither the Carescrian nor his Sodeskayan friend mentioned anything about the waveguide work outside Defant's immediate flight crew, but Commander Collingswood subsequently messaged a number of highly classified reports to Vice Admiral Plurton—a close friend in the Admiralty—in case the trouble should surface at some later tiem. "It never hurts to have one's political homework promptly done," as she stated one morning in the wardroom. "You never know when a folder of well-placed reports might come in very handy."
Perhaps the only positive result of the tragedy was a totally revamped Veritcal specification for the remainder of the Defiant-class ships. But the changes were far too late for Defiant herself—whose major systems were already on board and could only be retrofitted, not wholly replaced. Unfortunately, as Ursis often out it, "A whole year's worth of patches is often inferior to a five-minute design modification." In addition, Defiant herself was now widely known as a troubled ship, a reputation Brim suspected she would never fully escape.
And, of course, there was not much that could be done for the men who were killed.
Defiant's crew joined the shipyard workers in a generous collection for their families, but a few things in that day and age were still beyond the capabilities of technology....
With each new morning, the starship became more and more complete—inside and out—and crew members began to arrive in a steady stream. A new lieutenant commander reported aboard early one morning some two weeks following Defiant's near disaster. He was middle-aged, handsome in a weather-beaten way, and looked as if he were clearly accustomed to command—although he had only a reserve commission. There was a certain agelessness to his face, framed by a gray beard and mustache, and even from a distance his gray eyes sparkled with the keen wisdom and humor of a longtime starsailor.
One ring with an enorous StarBlaze graced his long fingers, and his new uniform, though casually worn, had clearly been fashioned for a prince—at a princely sum.
Brim was taking a fresh-air break when the man strode across the brow and stopped just short of the main entrance hatch. He leaned back to gaze at the bridge for a moment, then shrugged in a sort of pained resignation. This ritual completed, he stopped to critically inspect Brim as if the latter had purposely presented himself there for just such an occasion.
"They ca' me Baxter Oglethorp Calhoun," he said abruptly in a rich baritone. "I'm to be Defiant's Executive Officer—an', Mr. Wilf Brim, with myself on board, ye are no mair the only Carescrian in the crew."
Brim felt his heart skip a beat—he'd spent years losing the same sort of thick Carescrian burr he'd just heard. "A Carescrian?" he stammered.
"Ay, chield, 'tis indeed a thing you'd better believe," Calhoun said with a grin, "even if ye have decided to forsake the old tongue. But don't get your hopes up for any 'down-home'
commizzeratn'. 'Tis been so long since I ha' luiked upon that awful place, I hardly remember onything o't—except 'tis a good place to be from. Forever!"
"You'll get no arguments from me on that score, Number One," Brim vowed. "But how is it you happen to know me?"
"A better question is how might I ha' avoided it, mon," Calhoun declared. "Right noo, ye are the most Carescrian in the Empire—for which I am eternally grateful. The likes o' ye keeps the public eye off the likes o' me." He smiled with obvious satisfaction, then abruptly pushed his way past and continued on into the ship.
"I think I'm honored," Brim replied to the man's receding back. "What is it you normally do in peacetime?"
"I am no stranger to space, young mon," Calhoun muttered without even bothering to turn his head, "an' I may yet find my grave in it." He laughed. "For the nonce we'll say that I'm in what you'd call the salvage business—an' the less ye ask o't, the better. Understand?"
Brim started to reply, but by that time, Calhoun was busy at the sign-in desk, and Ursis was paging from the bridge. The young Carescrian chuckled as he made his way up a companionway two treads at a time. It looked as if Defiant was attracting a typical Collingswood gathering of miscellany. Somehow, he wasn't surprised—or disappointed—in the slightest.
Defiant's crew ranged all the way from seasoned space veterans to raw new recruits—officers and ratings alike. And all voiced happy surprise at conditions aboard their new ship. The wardrooms and spaceman's mess were constantly supplied with all sorts of normally unavailable food and potables—courtesy of the mysterious Barbousse. Already the ship was developing her own personality. Perhaps it was somewhat more clublike in pradigm than might be generally considered desirable throughout the Fleet. But then a very similar atmosphere had been—at least in Brim's opinion—largely responsible for old Truculent's success before its near destruction while battling three NF-110s off Lixor in the Ninety-first Province with Brim at the controls.