“Well, Roz?” Eisner asked. “How about you? Are you with us, or do you want to shuttle down to planet-side? We’ll buy out your share of the ship if you want.”
Roz chewed her lip thoughtfully for a few moments before she replied.
“Tell you what,” she said at last. “You can count me in with two conditions.”
“What conditions?” Eisner prompted.
“First, that we unanimously agree here and now that Dwight runs the show. That he becomes our captain officially.”
“Why?” Abuzar asked suspiciously.
“Come on, Abuzar. You know as well as I do that there has to be one man at the top. Eventually we’re going to be in situations where one person has to give the orders and make the decisions. I figure we should decide who that’s going to be now, instead of arguing it out in the middle of a crisis. Dwight’s been running things since Blutman died and doing a pretty good job of it. Nikki’s too reckless, and even you don’t trust your temper. I couldn’t do it, and wouldn’t want to if I could. To my thinking, that makes Dwight number one. If we can’t agree on something as basic as that, we should call it quits right now.”
“I don’t think I’m all that reckless,” Nikki grumbled. “But I’ve got no objections to Dwight running things.”
“Abuzar?”
“If we need a captain, I guess Dwight’s the logical choice.”
“Okay, that’s that.” Roz nodded. “How about you, Dwight?”
“I guess I never thought about it. I’m like Abuzar. I didn’t really think a chain of command was necessary for four people.”
“But will you serve as captain?” Roz pressed.