Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

any rank present) The staff members who would command the stand-by crew

were, however, there in force. Of them, Jorn recognized only Toni Cook, the

stand-by captain. The red room was decidedly crowded.

“Thank you for your promptness-in some cases the cause of considerable

personal danger to yourselves,” Ertak said, in his light wintry voice. “I

would not have asked you to take the risks had we not been confronted with

a crisis of the very first order-in

And all the Stars a Stage 51

fact, of a unique order. I am not very well equipped to explain that and I

am going to give the job to Dr. Kamblin in a moment. First, however, there’s

one other thing on my mind.”

He swung his head toward Ailiss.

Lieutenant O’Kung, we are going to have to discard your new nomenclature

for the crews. It turns out that in the four months we have been using it,

we have done ourselves considerable damage.”

“In what way?” Ailiss said coldly.

“It has seriously deteriorated the quality of the men we’ve been recruiting

as stand-bys. While I was waiting for you all to get here, I had some

samples taken among the stand-bys available to me here at the base. The

sampling shows that fully a third of the standby recruits we now have think

of the training, bard though it is, as essentially a make-work kind of

labor camp. If those men were suddenly asked to go on the actual mission,

they’d panic.”

I don’t think so,” Ailiss said. “I pre-tested their attitudes in that area,

naturally, Director.”

“Did you throw them the proposition itself, as an immediate reality?”