Romanoff shrugged doubtfully. "If it's all right with you," she said after a moment, "then I guess it's all right with me, too."
"Nevertheless, Wilf," Borodov added with a playful grin, "I think you need to be aware that the real reason Mark wants this contraption flown immediately is that Anna won't pay for it until you confirm that it's all right." He wore a high-collared beige tunic trimmed in gold piping, baggy white trousers, and soft boots—Sodeskayan summer attire.
Valerian nodded in sham seriousness. "He's right, you know, Brim," he inserted, "—and I just happen to have a spare battle suit your size in the hangar over there. How's that for coincidence?"
"Stick around while I make that party happen," Brim said to Romanoff and strode off for the hangar.
Inside the typically cramped flight bridge, Brim satisfied himself with his initial checklists, then went through the procedures necessary to start one of the two Admiralty 4053s aboard. It involved seeing if the plasma boost was operative, then energetically alternating high-frequency energy spikes among three impulse points until he got a positive reading on the Bennet gauge. Finally, with both boosters set to maximum, he hit START and ENGAGE at the same time. The interrupter flashed twice, then the generator cut in with a shudder-and settled into a smooth rumble as it quickly reached its rated power.
The starboard generator followed suit less than two cycles later. After that, it was again time for internal gravity.
Fighting his stomach to a standstill, Brim grinned through the narrow Hyperscreens at Valerian and Romanoff while a group of sleepy mechanics and technicians cheered from the ramp. Then waving away the mooring beams, he called up a burst of power and headed out over the water. This time, he noted, the gravity brakes were set so that humans could operate them, not just engineers. He chuckled to himself—even Mark Valerian could change his ways a little. He taxied around for a bit, checking the various instruments and steering engine while he called for clearance from the tower. Then without too much in the way of preliminaries—she would either fly, or she wouldn't—he simply drove over to the far side of the lake, turned into the wind, and started his takeoff run.
With her generators set on fine pitch, the M-5 fairly leaped from the water and climbed away at high speed while Brim watched the Sherrington labs pass rapidly astern and out of sight. So far, the only criticism he had concerned his view through the forward Hyperscreens, which were very narrow, owing to Valerian's placement of the bridge so far forward on the hull.
Immediately, he took the little ship to five thousand irals or so and confirmed what the simulators on Atalanta had earlier estimated about landings. He tried a dummy one at altitude to establish a good approach speed and to make sure that when she settled, she did not flick on her back or do anything else objectionable. The M-5 stopped flying at precisely the predicted power setting, then paid off at about 130 c'lenyts per metacycle with very little tendency to roll either way. After that, he did a few steep turns to try out the controls.
Finally, having assured himself that everything really important was shipshape, he retraced his path back to the lake, called the tower for an overhead break, then made his descent while he watched trees on one side and Sherrington's hangars on the other gradually rise ahead in the narrow Hyperscreens—keeping half an eye on the altimeters. The M-5 was a slippery little starship, and she took time to decelerate.
In the next few clicks he rocketed across a small island, then cautiously eased back on the controls long after instinct told him to. In the simulators, he'd also learned that there was always a danger of flaring too high, then smashing through the gravity gradient and actually touching the surface. Moments later, he heard the gratifying rush of cascading water only irals beneath the keel. He smiled to himself. Back down in one piece—not bad for the first time.
As he taxied up the ramp and eased to a halt on the gravity pad, the M-5's little flight bridge filled with the sounds of cheering; outside, a considerable throng had joined the morning's brace of mechanics. And two of the loudest were Romanoff and Valerian, both of whom looked as if they were greatly comforted by his appearance back safely on the ground.
In the early afternoon—after busy Sherrington technicians had carried out a number of adjustments he'd noted during his brief morning flight—Brim again took the M-5 aloft. This time, however, he was escorted by a Type 225 carrying Valerian, Ursis, Borodov, and a number of system specialists from both Sherrington and Krasni-Peych. After a second set of maneuvers to prove the morning's control adjustments, he called for deep-space clearance and headed out toward the two-hundred-thousand-c'lenyt limit where Sherrington leased a sizable free zone from the Empire for Hyperspace testing.
"Well, Wilf Ansor," Borodov said from a display, his voice muffled in Brim's helmet, "you are ready to invoke the Wizard, eh?"
"Absolutely, Doctor," Brim answered with a chuckle. Beneath his feet, the gravity generators were thundering away at maximum and his LightSpeed meter read 0.97. "Any last instructions?" he asked.
"You should find no deviations from the simulators except for the temperature problem," Borodov said with a frown. "Unfortunately," he added, "we have not cured that."
"The temperature problems I can handle, Doctor," Brim chuckled, unconsciously tightening his mechanical seat restraints and thumbing the cabin gravity to max. "Keep your eye on me just in case this Wiz decides to head out for the next galaxy like the last one did."
"I shall," Borodov answered, "and good luck."
"Thanks," Brim said, then turned to the control panels. He'd already learned that the plasma choke would be highly sensitive due to the Wizard's prodigious demands for power. In itself, that was a minor problem. As plasma gated through the choke and into a feed tube, it was either consumed by the Drive crystal itself (which directly converted the raw energy into HyperThrust), or it was released to space itself by an automatic wastegate activated when gravitron pressure exceeded certain limits. The problem came in deftly controlling the amount of energy that eventually found its way to the crystal. Too little could easily cause catastrophic failure—most commonly in the form of a meltout at the blast tube. Too much, however, often resulted in a violent explosion, especially when fed to a cold crystal. Either result was guaranteed to be fatal in a ship the size of an M-5.
"Point six four at the Tesla coils," Brim sent, gating more of the ship's energy output to the primary plasma source. The tone of the straining gravity generators shifted slightly, but they held and the LightSpeed meter remained rock solid at 0.97.
"Point six four at the Teslas," Borodov echoed.
With great care, Brim eased the choke open to its first detent. Almost instantly, a whole section of his readouts changed from green to yellow as plasma pressure began to rise at the crystal a lot faster than the simulators had predicted. He opened the wastegate to balance the flow. At the right of his power panel, a D meter began to register available force at the crystal, also rising much more rapidly than he expected.
The Wizard was frisky today.
"That's a lot of pressure for a cold crystal," Borodov cautioned, his voice suddenly tense from the display.
"I know," Brim said through his teeth, "I've opened the wastegate, but the pressure's still building from the choke. And I can't get a smaller setting there." Flinching at the thought of an exploding Drive crystal only irals from his back, he opened the wastegate farther, and the pressure at the crystal immediately dropped—below minimums. He had to start all over again.