“Well?” he said.
“I’d think you’d be fed to the teeth with that freak by this time,” Averdor said without preamble. “Something’s got to be done. Captain, before the crew gets so surly that we have to start handing out brig sentences.”
“I don’t like know-it-alls any better than you do,” Gorbel said grimly. “Especially when they talk nonsenseand half of what this one says about space flight is nonsense, that much I’m sure of. But the man’s a delegate of the Council. He’s got a right to be up here if he wants to.”
“You can bar anybody from the greenhouse in an emer-gencyeven the ship’s officers.”
“I fail to see any emergency,” Gorbel said stiffly.
“This is a hazardous part of the galazypotentially, anyhow. It hasn’t been visited for millennia. That star up ahead has nine planets besides the one we’re supposed to land on, and I don’t know how many satellites of planetary size. Suppose somebody on one of them lost his head and took a crack at us as we went by?”
Gorbel frowned. “That’s reaching for trouble. Besides, the area’s been surveyed recently at least onceotherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
“A sketch job. It’s still sensible to take precautions. If there should be any trouble, there’s many a Board of Review that would call it risky to have unreliable, second-class human types in the greenhouse when it breaks out.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“Dammit, Captain, read between the lines a minute,” Averdor said harshly. “I know as well as you do that there’s going to be no trouble that we can’t handle. And that no reviewing board would pull a complaint like that on you it there were. I’m just trying to give you an excuse to use on the seals.”