While a hovering rescue vessel took up station above him, Brim suffered every agony of self-condemnation and disgust. Would the Krasni-Peych engineers ever believe he hadn't overstressed the Drive? How could they conclude otherwise with the terrific speeds he had been making? And what would Nik Ursis and Dr. Borodov think of him? He knew how accurate K-P's calculations always were—and he knew for a certainty that if there had been a fault, it must have been his. Poor Anna Romanoff—she had traveled across half a Universe to see him make an utter fool of himself.
So near yet so thraggling far!
He was slumped miserably in the cockpit, shaking his head and dreading the probe he knew would follow when an Imperial motor launch drew up alongside in a glare of powerful floodlights. Ursis and Valerian were among the wildly gesticulating crew, waving at him excitedly, full of enthusiasm and smiles.
And they were cheering. For the life of him, he couldn't understand why. Pushing open the hatch, he stuck his head out and sourly demanded to know what all the hullabaloo was about.
"About?" Ursis asked with a huge grin on his face. "Since when is winning the Mitchell Trophy not a propitious time for raising hullabaloos?"
"Yeah," Valerian whooped. "Why the long face, Brim? At ninety-one M LightSpeed you beat Groener by more than seven M's. That's not good enough for you or something?" With that, he popped the cork from a magnum that promptly erupted in a stream of bubbling meem and unerringly arced its way to the top of Brim's head.
"Voots's greasy beard!" the disheartened Carescrian groused, ducking inside the hatch again, where he was immediately showered by a second stream of bubbling meem from a similar bottle expertly aimed by Ursis. Moments later, at least three yellow-clad ground-crew handlers began pouring more meem in from atop the fuselage. Then a hirsute paw thrust a fresh bottle through the deluge, foaming from its top.
"Drink, my furless friend!" Ursis boomed. "It is not often one wins anything by such a grand margin.
'Glare ice and crag wolves cause stars to shine brilliantly in ice caves,' as everyone knows!"
"Ice caves my bloody ass! " Brim shouted, angrily waving away the bottle as waves of foaming meem ran everywhere in the little flight bridge. "I thraggling lost this one. Didn't you see me pass the xaxtdamned pylons going the wrong way? I never even got to finish!"
Suddenly, Ursis stopped cheering and put a restraining hand on Valerian's chest. "Wait, my friends!" he roared. The spraying meem stopped instantly. "Wilf," the huge Sodeskayan said, narrowing his eyes, "you do believe you lost the race, don't you?"
"Xaxtdamned right," Brim spluttered, mopping his face with the great red handkerchief he kept in his battle suit pocket. "The drive unsealed in the middle of the circuits, then gave out completely on the way back. That's why I made landfall from that direction—not because I planned it that way. I was trying to get turned around when the generators failed, too. I haven't even crossed the finish line yet!"
"Wilfuska," Ursis cried out with a pained look on his face. "No wonder you look so unhappy. Poor furless human. No wonder you made such a... spectacular... landfall!"
"I don't need your pity," Brim grumped, settling back miserably into a puddle of cold meem that had collected on his seat.
"You can say that again, friend," Valerian said with a lopsided grin.
Brim looked up and scowled. "Don't you make fun of me, too, Mark," he protested. "I feel bad enough about the whole thing all by myself."
"But that's just it," Valerian protested. "You don't need anyone's pity because you, friend, are still turned around."
Brim blinked and shook his head. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Look for yourself," Ursis said, pointing out from the launch. His huge grin had suddenly returned. "You are still turned around—as you were when you flew through the pylons."
Brim stuck his head through the hatch again and peered off toward the pylons. The race complex did seem to be on the wrong side of the lake! He frowned for a moment, then climbed out of the hatch and stood with the ground handlers, balancing atop the M-5's main fuselage. This time, he studied the shoreline and... Voot's beard! If Rudolpho was on that side of the lake then... For an instant, he faltered, and was immediately shored up by the handlers. Shaking his head and squaring his shoulders, he took one more look around the lake, then looked down into the launch. "Nik," he said after considerable hesitation.
"Yes?"
"You still got that bottle of bubbling meem with you?"
"It has never been touched, Wilfuska."
Brim grinned. "In that case," he said, shaking off the two handlers "I'll be right there.... whee! " With that, he leaped off the M-5 and plunged to the surface, rear end first in a terrific splash of lake water that utterly soaked everyone still in the launch. "Now," he shouted, bobbing to the surface and pulling himself over the gunwale. "Let me at the thraggling meem!"
Later, back at the shed, while riotous crowds of Imperials poured a second deluge of meem all over him and the M-5's flight bridge (as well as themselves), Brim had the distinct pleasure of knowing he'd caused two consecutive nights of profound discord in Rudolpho— and the second one wasn't even a secret!
Not long afterward, Moulding took off and cooly annexed second place at a stewardly pace of more than 88M LightSpeed.
The following morning, Brim stood on a dais beneath the winner's flagpole, dressed in a Fleet-blue jumpsuit and listening to an Imperial flag snapping overhead in a stiff breeze off Lake Garza. He had little stomach for ceremonial adulation; his own moment of triumph had come and rapidly gone the previous evening after he skipped his powerless M-5 to a most startling victory followed by celebrations that lasted the rest of the night. All he wanted now was a little peace and quiet, preferably in the sole company of Anna Romanoff.
He glanced at Toby Moulding, standing in full uniform on a slightly lower dais beneath the second-place flagpole, and grinned. Always the aristocrat, his tall, handsome partner looked the part of a champion, smiling grandly at the media personalities that swarmed like locusts around the base of the flagpoles.
Thank the Universe, Brim thought. At least one Imperial ought to look like a winner.
At his right, Greener braced under the Leaguer flag flying from the shortest pole. Wearing a Controller's uniform devoid of any but the most basic insignia, she looked neither right nor left—nor did she smile.
For Leaguers, anything except first place equated with absolute defeat.
He endured on the dais for nearly half a metacycle before the media had enough. Then he was glad to steal off and sit on a lakefront bench for nearly a metacycle while Romanoff threw crumbs to a noisy flock of waterfowl. It was the high point of his day. Especially when the breeze occasionally provided him with an enhanced view of her shapely legs.
All too soon, however, an embassy officer ferreted them out. After that, it was a perpetual sequence of parties and receptions until he and Romanoff embarked on separate starliners to opposite ends of the Empire. Shaking his head in irony, he was forced to admit that Hanna Notrom had inadvertently made an important point for herself: he was paying an awful price for winning the Mitchell Trophy!