“Admiral Brentley wants to see me before the Board of Inquiry makes its report. His office is that way.” I pointed toward Houston.
“You drive, Alexi.” Vax got in the back seat next to me and closed his eyes.
“How do you feel, Vax?” I could guess; he’d had the same drugs 35 I.
“I’ve been better. It’s all right.”
“What will they do with you?”
“They offered me a posting. I’ll tell you later, if you don’t mind.”
I drew back, a little hurt. “As you wish.”
We pulled up before the Admiral’s sunbaked residence, its yard surrounded by tall, unkempt bushes. A sentry saluted. I paused. “Get some sleep, you two.”
Alexi shook his head. “I’m going to round up the others.
We’ll be back to pick you up when you’re done.”
I was too weary to argue. “Whatever you say.”
The Admiral’s entryway was dark and cool. An orderly took me through a sitting room into a sunny first-floor office.
I came to attention.
“Carry on.” Admiral Brentley’s gruff voice suited him.
Sixtyish, graying, his athletic body had thickened into the heavy muscle of an athlete’s later years. He studied me with-
out expression.
“Aye aye, sir.” I chose the at-ease position.
The Admiral Commanding, Fleet Operations, sat himself on the edge of his desk. “Well, Seafort. What do you have to say for yourself?”
With a pang I realized that he knew it all, had seen the reports, heard my testimony, spoken to his nephew whom I had sentenced to the launch berth for most of the return voyage. Our interview was a formality. Court-martial or not, I would never again see command.
“I’ve nothing to say for myself, sir.”
“No excuses, no defenses?”
“No, sir.” My voice was firm. “I did the best I could with what knowledge I had.”
He regarded me quizzically. “What am I supposed to do with you?”
“Am I to be court-martialed, sir?”
“That’s up to the review board.” His tone was brusque.
“I’m not a member.” He walked around the side of the desk and stood looking out the window behind him. “However, they’ll damn well do what I tell them to do. It’s my fleet.”
I was shocked by his confidence. It meant either that I wasn’t in as much trouble as I thought, or I was in so much trouble that what he said didn’t matter at all. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m not happy with some of your decisions.” He tapped a sheaf of papers on his desk. “Pardoning Mr. Herney, for example. And your commutations for the mutineers on Miningcamp.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir.” I spoke quietly.
“You don’t care, do you?” The accusation surprised me.
I didn’t think it showed.
I wouldn’t lie to a superior. “No, sir, not really. I’ve had months and months to go over it. I did the best I could given who I am and my lack of abilities. I don’t expect you to see it that way, sir, but I’ve learned to live with it.” With Amanda, in the long, loving nights in our cabin. With the fumes of the Chief’s smoke, across my companionable cabin table.
He growled, “Well, I asked for it. I won’t penalize you for the truth.” He came around the desk, faced me with arms folded. “I can’t court-martial you. The public wouldn’t stand for it.”
“The public?” What on earth was he talking about? “Court-martial the hero of Miningcamp? The Captain who saved his ship with pistols blazing?”
“That’s utter nonsense!” I said, forgetting myself.
“The crew swears to it.” He paused, and added, “Courtmartial the first man to make contact with another species? No. I won’t do that.”
I closed my eyes. My stomach hurt anew. I just wanted it over. “Very well, sir.”
“Still, I can see to it that you never board a ship again.”
I was only mildly interested. “Is that what you intend?”
He came closer. “There are some things I can’t overlook.
That business with the circuit judge. It indicates a lack of respect for civilian authority. Couldn’t you have handled him more diplomatically?”
I raised an eyebrow. “What business, sir? I don’t recall any mention in the Log or Governor Williams’s dispatches.”
After a moment the corners of his mouth turned up. “Yes.
Well. You covered that nicely. It only came out in the interrogation.” He brushed it aside. “The worst of it was leaving your ship to visit Telstar.Absolutely inexcusable.”
I no longer had anything to lose. I said, in a tone for which I’d have caned a midshipman, “Tell me you wouldn’t have gone across to look, in my place.”
Admiral Brentley, taken aback by my disregard of. rank, seemed to swell. He strode back to his desk, threw himself in his chair. He glowered; I stared back with indifference.
Slowly, his shoulders relaxed. “I would have done exactly as you did, Nick,” he said. “I’d have gone over to take a look for myself. I’d want to know what happened to their ship: it was identical to my own.”
“Yes,”sir. But I still should have circled the ship first.”
“Why? To check for aliens? In two hundred years we’ve never found anything but a few boneless fish on one watery planet. Why should you be on guard?”
I considered. “I wasn’t sure, thinking about it. It just seemed I should have been more wary. As I should on Miningcamp. I just opened the locks and stood aside.”
“Since when has the Navy gone to Battle Stations to dock at a U.N. orbiting station?” he demanded. “That one, you’re clear on. We’ve already decided. If every Captain has to
ready a defense party before opening locks at a station, we’ll all go glitched. No, it’s the U.N.A.F. Commandant who’ll pay for that.”
He tapped the reports. “I can go along with most of it, even when your decisions differed from mine. Hell, that’s why we send a Captain, to make decisions. We back him up with total authority. Hope Nation is three years out; we can’t pull strings from home port.” He stopped. “But there’s one matter you’ve forgotten. Lieutenant Ardwell Crossburn. My nephew.”
“Yes, sir.” I sagged. He would stand by his family; he had to. Blood was stronger than regs. Anyway, my treatment of Crossburn was further proof of my disrespect for authority.
What Captain in his right mind would abuse the nephew of his Commanding Admiral? “He’s come to see me several times, Seafort. Some of his reports are shocking. Did you actually make him take the launch apart every day for eighteen months?”
“Almost every day, sir. Not while we were Defused.”
“And you thought you could get away with it?” Brentley’s tone was menacing.
“I didn’t care, sir.” I spoke with civility, but I’d had enough.
“He says you’re a lunatic. That you’re paranoid, you were suspicious of bombs.”
“It kept him in the launch berth, sir.”
He glared at me. I stared back.
In his eye, an odd twinkle. “You really did that?”
“Yes, sir. I did.”
“What do you think of him, Mr. Seafort?”
I could be insolent to him, but I wouldn’t lie, though my answer would cost me my career. “He’s dangerous, sir. He never should have made lieutenant. He throws his family connections in the face of his seniors, and takes it upon himself to investigate us. I wasn’t going to put up with that.
I’d do exactly the same again. Or maybe I’d brig him. I don’t know.”
Brentley shook his head. “Do you know what trouble I went to, getting him out of the Solar System? The wires I pulled so his orders would come from someone else? And you, you ungrateful whelp, you bring him back and dump him in my lap again!”
I snorted. “He was dumped on me, sir. I had no choice.
I was under weigh when I found out about him.”
He turned away disgusted. “I know. It’s not your fault. I never thought it was.” He looked up. “You know how he made lieutenant? Some toadying Captain thought I’d be pleased. He did it for me. For me!” The Admiral turned back to me, shaking his head. “By the way, don’t worry about challenging that pah” of Dosmen who glitched your puter. It won’t be necessary; they’ve been dealt with.”