EMBARKING APERTURE," Brim's KA'PPA display announced directly. "LOCAL GRAVITY
INFLUENES NEUTRAL." Simultaneously, Queen Elidean's director lamps began to flash a pattern amidships.
"All hands to stations for deep-space mooring," he directed on the blower. "All hands to stations for deep-space mooring. Muster honor party to the main boarding chamber on the double." Then, turning to the KA'PPA system, he dispatched his own signal, "STARFURY ACKNOWLEDGES STARBOARD EMBARKING APERTURE." Now, it was time for the business of helmsmanship.
Carefully increasing speed, he began by bringing Starfury's head a little more to port with deft control inputs that gently increased the Queen's relative bearing in reverse proportion to her distance ahead, checking every few moments with Tissaurd, who had glued her eye to the bearing scanners. When the old battleship was about a thousand irals ahead, Tissaurd reported a bearing of three points from course; by the time they narrowed the distance to approximately five hundred irals, the bearing had doubled. And while he flew, Brim also made his own checks, glancing aft to compare Starfury's flowing cobalt Drive plume with Queen Elidean's broad wake of emerald-green. Long ago he'd developed his own rule of thumb to cover such maneuvers: he was usually well positioned during an approach whenever he maintained some fifteen irals of space between the two wakes.
Brim's instruments showed Starfury to be traveling at some five times the battleship's cruising velocity when he arrived off a point approximately three hundred irals astern of her aperture. Judging now by instinct alone, he gradually reduced power and allowed momentum, or "surge," to cover the remaining irals to the boarding aperture, while natural HyperLight retro-induction (toward Sheldon's Great Constant at LightSpeed) bled off velocity proportional to the cube root of Starfury's net mass. By the time she was abreast the battleship's aperture, the pipe had already started to deploy in a flashing welter of director beams.
"Stand by to receive pipe alongside to port," he piped. "Stand by to receive pipe alongside to port!"
Moments later he gradually reversed two of the ship's Drive units; until both starships were running about fifty irals apart, matched perfectly in course and speed, while the pipe connected noisily to Starfury's main accommodation port. He'd done it again....
Taking stock of his control settings, he slaved his helm to the battleship's, relinquished the con to an exhausted (but grinning) Nadia Tissaurd, and set out at a run toward the main deck to welcome the Fluvannian dignitary.
CHAPTER 4
Showing the Flag
Puffing after his sprint from the bridge, Brim arrived at the main boarding chamber only clicks before the Fluvannian Ambassador. Starfury's little marching band had already begun braying out the intolerable agglomeration of groans, squeaks, and wheezing noises that, in aggregate, composed the perfectly awe-inspiring Fluvannian national anthem, "Our Dulcet Star Rises Shrill O'er the Fo'zelii."
Calhoun and Drummond both had sent the Carescrian introductory literature about Fluvanna and Fluvannians. But none of it was adequate preparation for the individual who appeared as the great boarding hatch popped inward, then slid aside on its massive guides.
Beyazh the Ambassador was erect, fierce, and patriarchal in every feature. Were it not for his stately progress across Starfury's main boarding lobby, he might have been mistaken for some heroic statue come to life from Courtland Plaza in Avalon. Wearing very full and baggy black cotton bloomers, a high-necked white shirt under a short black silken jacket, and a crimson fez around which was tied a white turban, the man looked like every Fluvannian travel poster Brim had ever seen—even to soft, black leather boots turned up at the toes. He had great, dense eyebrows; glowering, deep-set eyes that spoke of ten thousand days peering into the blackness of Hyperspace; and a gigantic ebony mustache whose stilettolike ends were twisted nearly vertical. He was followed out of the airlock by a confused gaggle of bobbing travel cases in every color of the spectrum.
After what seemed to be a lifetime, Starfury's hard-pressed volunteer musicians (most from Disrupter sections, with exception of two clearly tone-deaf cooks) ceased their dreadful labors, and the boarding chamber fell silent except for muted thunder from the Drive. The Fluvannian bowed deeply from the waist, then straightened and touched first his forehead and next his lips in a sweeping gesture that ended with his right hand turned palm upward toward Brim—an intergalactic gesture of goodwill.
"Fluvannian diplomatic party requests permission to board I.F.S. Starfury," he announced solemnly, rising to a dignified position of attention and this time saluting in a more contemporary style.
Impressed, Brim returned the salute briskly. "Permission granted. Your Excellency," he said, "with my personal welcome."
"Stand by to cast off the pipe," Tissaurd's voice ordered over the blower, "Stand by to cast off the pipe." Moments later the massive hatch glided silently back in position and sealed itself with a quiet hiss.
Brim dismissed the ship's band while Beyazh strode across the chamber offering his hand in a modern handshake—and abdicating the job of transferring his luggage to a crew of bemused ratings.
"If I remember anything about my days as a starsailor," the big man said, "you are anxious to oversee our disengagement from the Queen, Captain Brim."
Heavy repulsion motors whirred inside the aperture—above them on the bridge, Tissaurd was already retracting the huge lug bolts that held Queen Elidean's pipe in place. "You remember well. Your Excellency," Brim remarked. "Would you grant me the honor of your company on the bridge?"
"As our Sodeskayan friends might say, Captain," the Fluvannian replied with a smile, " 'Coarse winds and bitter snow deter no crag wolves.' Is that not so?"
Brim swallowed. "Absolutely, Your Excellency," he replied with hardly a pause. "This way please." Fluvanna promised to be an unusual place indeed.
Brim and Beyazh found jump seats on the bridge just in time to watch Queen Elidean's golden pipe disappear into its aperture. Moments later the battleship's director beams winked out. "Deep-space mooring operations are completed," Tissaurd piped throughout the ship. "AH hands carry out normal and routine work in accordance with previous instructions."
Beyazh contemplated Tissaurd with ill-concealed interest. "Your First Lieutenant?" he asked.
"She is, Your Excellency," Brim replied.
The Ambassador's eyebrows rose momentarily. "Truly alluring," he remarked, raising an eyebrow, "tiny, yet so perfect—and no youngster, either. Captain," he said. "I must meet this gorgeous woman at the first opportunity."
Momentarily taken aback, Brim opened his mouth, but the Ambassador continued with a sigh.
"Ah, Captain," he said, "calm yourself. I shall not force myself on your most seductive First Lieutenant. I have more breeding than that. But if she is conducive to—shall we say— the inconsequential attentions of a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard, well...." He shrugged casually, but his eyes warned that he meant business.
Brim forced aside a grin. He didn't blame the Ambassador one iota; he almost told the man so, but at the last moment decided that he ought to be as professional as possible with this high-level diplomat, at least until he got to know him. "Lieutenant Tissaurd's personal life is of no concern aboard ship, Mr. Ambassador," he said stiffly, "except in that it affects her performance as an officer." Suddenly he felt as stuffy as his words.