“I’m listening.”
“Good. The indefeasible is the tightest ship in the Rigellian navy, her record’s clean, and the crew’s morale is almost a legend. We can’t afford to start gigging the men for their personal prejudiceswhich is what it will amount to, if those seals drive them to breaking discipline. Besides, they’ve got a right to do their work without a lot of seal snouts poking con-tinually over their shoulders.”
“I can hear myself explaining that to Hoqqueah.”
“You don’t need to,” Averdor said doggedly. “You can tell him, instead, that you’re going to have to declare the ship on emergency status until we land. That means that the pantrope team, as passengers, will have to stick to their quarters. It’s simple enough.”
It was simple enough, all right. And decidedly tempting.
“I don’t like it,” Gorbel said. “Besides, Hoqqueah may be a know-it-all, but he’s not entirely a fool. He’ll see through it easily enough.”
Averdor shrugged. “It’s your command,” he said. “But I don’t see what he could do about it even if he did see through it. It’d be all on the log and according to regs. All he could report to the Council would be a suspicionand they’d probably discount it. Everybody knows that these second-class types are quick to think they’re being persecuted. It’s my theory that that’s why they are persecuted, a lot of the time at least.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“The man I shipped under before I came on board the Indefeasible,” Averdor said, “was one of those people who don’t even trust themselves. They expect everybody they meet to slip a. knife into them when their backs are turned. And there are always other people who make it almost a point of honor to knife a man like that, just because he seems to be asking for it. He didn’t hold that command long.”