Brisby answered soberly, “Yes, and a lot of good boys will die before it does.”
“You ain’t foolin’. What gets me is that trader kid — running around the Galaxy with all that ‘burn-before-reading’ between his ears. Shall I slide down and poison him?”
“What, and have to fill out all those copies?”
“Well, maybe Kris can wipe it out of his tender gray matter without resorting to a trans-orbital.”
“Anybody touches that kid and Colonel Baslim will rise up out of his grave and strangle him, is my guess. Did you know Baslim, Stinky?”
“One course under him in psychological weapons, my last year at the Academy. Just before he went ‘X’ Corps. Most brilliant mind I’ve ever met — except yours, of course, Pappy, sir, boss.”
“Don’t strain yourself. No doubt he was a brilliant teacher — he would be tops at anything. But you should have known him before he was on limited duty. I was privileged to serve under him. Now that I have a ship of my own I just ask myself: ‘What would Baslim do?’ He was the best commanding officer a ship ever had. It was during his second crack at colonel — he had been up to wing marshal and put in for reduction to have a ship again, to get away from a desk.”
Stancke shook his head. “I can’t wait for a nice cushy desk, where I can write recommendations nobody will read.”
“You aren’t Baslim. If it wasn’t hard, he didn’t like it.”
“I’m no hero. I’m more the salt of the earth. Pappy, were you with him in the rescue of the Hansea?”
“You think I would fail to wear the ribbon? No, thank goodness; I had been transferred. That was a hand-weapons job. Messy.”
“Maybe you would have had the sense not to volunteer.”
“Stinky, even you would volunteer, fat and lazy as you are — if Baslim asked for volunteers.”
“I’m not lazy, I’m efficient. But riddle me this: what was a C.O. doing leading a landing party?”
“The Old Man followed regulations only when he agreed with them. He wanted a crack at slavers with his own hands — he hated slavers with a cold passion. So he comes back a hero and what can the Department do? Wait until he gets out of the hospital and court-martial him? Stinky, even top brass can be sensible when they have their noses rubbed in it So they cited him for above-and-beyond under unique circumstances and put him on limited duty. But from here on, when ‘unique circumstances’ arise, every commanding officer knows that he can’t thumb through the book for an alibi. It’ll be up to him to continue the example.”
“Not me,” Stancke said firmly.
“You. When you’re a C.O. and comes time to do something unpleasant, there you’ll be, trying to get your tummy to and your chest out, with your chubby little face set in hero lines. You won’t be able to help it. The Baslim conditioned-reflex will hit you.”
Around dawn they got to bed. Brisby intended to sleep late but long habit took him to his desk only minutes late. He was not surprised to find his professedly-lazy Exec already at work.
His Paymaster-Lieutenant was waiting. The fiscal officer was holding a message form; Brisby recognized it. The night before, after hours of dividing Baslim’s report into phrases, then recoding it to be sent by split routes, he had realized that there was one more chore before he could sleep: arrange for identification search on Colonel Baslim’s adopted son. Brisby had no confidence that a waif picked up on Jubbul could be traced in the vital records of the Hegemony — but if the Old Man sent for a bucket of space, that was what he wanted and no excuses. Toward Baslim, dead or not. Colonel Brisby maintained the attitudes of a junior officer. So he had written a dispatch and left word with the duty officer to have Thorby finger-printed and the prints coded at reveille. Then he could sleep.
Brisby looked at the message. “Hasn’t this gone out?” he demanded.
“The photo lab is coding the prints now, Skipper. But the Comm Office brought it to me for a charge, since it is for service outside the ship.”