"Right," Brim admitted sheepishly. After that, they sat in silence for a long while with nothing to say.
"Good meem," she said at last, staring into her goblet.
"Yeah," Brim replied.
"Too bad we're shipmates," Tissaurd said quietly, draining the last of her meem.
"Why do you say that, Number One?" Brim asked.
"Because," the petite officer answered, setting her goblet on the table and getting to her feet,
"with your problems, you need a woman to take you to bed for a spell—and it can't be me."
Brim looked up and shook his head. "I think you're right, Nadia," he said wryly. "Twice."
"I'm sorriest about the second part," she said as she started for the hatch.
"So am I," Brim called after her, then she was gone.
After the landfall of their first ancient ED-4 transport and its cargo of medical equipment, Commander Penelope Hesternal, Starfury's Medical Officer, immediately established an excellent field hospital in the deep, cool cellars of the ruined hall—staffing it with a bevy of handsome male nurses she recruited during a diplomatic run to Magor, Only days later, the other ED-4s arrived from Bromwich with spare parts literally cramming their holds. Within metacycles, Barbousse and three crews of starsailors (augmented by hefty teams of locals) commenced 'round-the-clock efforts to reactivate the site's ancient gravity pools. And for those not otherwise occupied, either Brim or Tissaurd took Starfury aloft twice a day for gunnery drills and "swapping" classes during which everyone got a chance to suffer someone else's duty station. It allowed little time to become bored with the desolate surroundings or grouse about the primitive conditions—or focus on any of the hundred and one troubles that can result from a combination of monotony and the close proximity of shipboard life.
Almost before they knew it, a morning arrived when the first pair of Starfury MK-1s were due: R.F.S. Starsovereign and R.F.S Starglory. Brim and Ambassador Beyazh had just emerged from an inspection tour of the new hospital, and were standing alongside the crumbling stone walls of Varnholm Hall where the Ambassador's launch hovered, ready for takeoff.
"Captain," the Ambassador prompted, cocking his head to one side and staring out to sea, "did you hear that?"
Brim nodded. "Sounds like Admiralty-type gravity generators to me," he said, looking out over crested, gray-green rollers marching endlessly against the ancient gravity pools at the foot of the piebald slope. "It's either our first two Starfuries or the very grandfather of all thunderstorms, Mr. Ambassador,"
he replied. Starfury herself hovered quietly below on one of the inboard pools, testing her moorings in the gusty—and perpetual—wind.
"So the adventure resumes," Beyazh said grimly, glancing up at Varnholm's perpetual overcast as if he could see the ships from where he stood.
Brim nodded. "And the wounds and the deaths," he added.
The Ambassador pursed his lips as the thunder swiftly rose in volume. "Why is it we always end up shooting at each other when we have disagreements?" he growled. "If mere really is a Universe who cares and loves, like the Gradygroats teach, then how can war be permitted to happen?"
Brim had no response to the man's words—in any case, they were all but drowned out by the velvet thunder of two Starfury-class starships descending majestically out of the overcast little more than a c'lenyt offshore. The big ships paralleled the coast for a time, keeping close formation and tearing the cloud base into long tubes of furiously swirling tatters. Abruptly Starfury's KA'PPA beacon began to strobe from the pool site, and in perfect concert, the MK-1s heeled fifty degrees to starboard and swung out to sea, their massive shapes hazed by wild vortices of gravitons pouring from their pontoons before they disappeared in Varnholm's perpetual sea mist.
Less than a cycle afterward, a siren wailed and the renewed section of gravity pools came alive with groups of people gathering here and there to don protective garments, start repulsion generators, move large wheeled cylinders about, and make last-moment adjustments to a multitude of tripod-mounted globes that glowed with every color of the spectrum. The prodigious figure of Barbousse could be seen at the end of an instrument jetty, his Fleet Cloak streaming in the wind as he activated one of Varnholm's ancient magnetic beacons with an enormous metal crank. Brim watched the operations with emotional fascination —almost pride. Imperial Blue Capes possessed a certain mystique: a whole set of skills and mettle that were never totally understood by landsmen. No matter what was required of them, they carried out their duties with an air of confidence and imperturbability that came as much from constant testing as it did from millenniums-old tradition. And it made them practically infallible.
Far out to sea, the thundering generators abruptly changed pitch, then continued in a much reduced note. "Sounds as if they're down," Beyazh observed, "and you'd better be on your way to greet them, Mr. Base Commander."
Brim laughed. "Not me," he protested. "I've got my hands full just trying to keep Starfury out of trouble."
The Ambassador frowned. "Captain," he said in a very serious voice, "whether or not you like it—or even feel particularly ready for it—you are right now in command of this so-called base. It was set up on your orders by people from the starship you command. In other words, it's yours. At least until Commodore Calhoun finds his way back from Beta Jagow."
Brim bit his lip. "I suppose you're right, aren't you," he said.
"Never question a Diplomatic Officer," Beyazh chuckled. "Greatest bunch of know-it-alls in the galaxy. Sometimes, we're even right—as I am now."
"I guess I hadn't been thinking about much else except how to get the base in shape," Brim replied. "And if I had thought of taking charge," he added with a chuckle, "I might have quit work on the spot."
"Too late for that now," Beyazh said didactically, sending a perfectly horrid parody of the Fleet salute Brim's way. "You'd better get yourself down there so you can greet the newcomers when they arrive. Someone has to be in charge, my friend."
Brim returned the salute and started down the hill. "See you again, Mr. Ambassador," he said.
"Safely—in Avalon, one hopes," Beyazh called after him. "Once you take out that space fort the Leaguers are building."
Brim laughed in spite of himself. Clearly, few secrets escaped the purview of His Excellency. In the next moments, two shadows, darker than the mist, loomed perhaps one and a half c'lenyts out to sea.
These rapidly defined themselves into R.F.S. Starsovereign and R.F.S Starglory with their distinctive tri-hulls and great batteries of disrupters. The two starships were keeping close station abreast as they drove toward shore, majestic and powerful, the sea creaming away from triple footprints while shimmering KA'PPA rings spread deliberately from tall masts that remained serenely steady against the gray sky. Within cycles, Starsovereign had lined up on the number 23 gravity pool, and presently the big ship was secured. Moments later the noise of her generators died in a haze of stray gravitons that drifted away in the afternoon grayness in a big, shimmering cloud. Starglory moored on pool number 19 shortly afterward —just as Brim arrived at the brow.
"You'll be goin' aboard, Captain Brim?" the brow operator, a leading Torpedoman, called over the noise of the repulsion generators while he guided a newly painted gangway toward the ship's main hatch.