Hammer grunted and resigned the argument. Of course it was quite possible that 12-Upjohn was right; he did not lack for experiencein fact, he wore the Silver Barring, as the most-traveled Consort of State ever to ride the Standing Wave. Nevertheless Oberholzer repressed a sniff with difficulty.
Like all the military, he was a colonial; he had never seen the Earth, and never expected to; and, both as a colonial and as a Marine who had been fighting the Matriarchy’s battles all his adult life, he was more than a little contemp-tuous of Earthmen, with their tandem names and all that they implied. Of course it was not the Consort of State’s fault that he had been born on Earth, and so had been named only Marvin 12 out of the misfortune of being a male; nor that he had married into Florence Upjohn’s cabinet, that being the only way one could become a cabinet member, and Marvin 12 having been taught from birth to believe such a post the highest honor a man might covet. All the same, neither 12-Upjohn nor his entourage of drones filled Oberholzer with confidence.
Nobody, however, had asked M. Sgt. Richard Oberholzer what he thought, and nobody was likely to. As the chief of all the non-Navy enlisted personnel on board the Hobo, he was expected to be on the bridge when matters were ripening toward criticality; but his duty there was to listen, not to proffer advice. He could not in fact remember any occasion when an officer had asked his opinion, though he had receivedand executedhis fair share of near-suicidal orders from bridges long demolished.