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freshly pressed uniform jacket over his thick, broad
shoulders, checked to see if the jeweled-incrusted wings were exactly
horizontal with the first row of spatial exploratory ribbons before entering the
wardroom. He well remembered, when he was a junior officer, how the sight of a
well-dressed, impeccably neat commanding officer, no matter how long they had
been spacing, maintained the enthusiasm, confidence, and morale of the officers
and men.
                   The wardroom looked like a tridimensional
pictograph advertising the dining salon of a billionaire's yacht. Soft light
from the curving overhead ricocheted from the gleaming, satiny pandamus wood
lining the bulkhead, glanced on the spotless linen, flickered on the silverware
like liquid flame. In the center of the elliptical table was his own donation
to the officers' mess: a massive stand of carmeltia; the fabulously valuable,
deathless, roselike flower from Dynia.
                   He enjoyed dinner with his officers. He
refused to pattern himself after other officers of his same class, who as soon
as they were given a command, no matter how small, begin to live a life of
lofty solitude. They felt such eremitic behavior would automatically make them
revered, feared, and admired. The majesty that went with command, Lieutenant
Nord Corbett well knew, came from mutual respect and not from living in a
half-world of distant glory.
                   He quickly noted, as he sat at the head of the
table, there was still no trace of irking boredom on the alert faces of his ten
officers. He looked for evidence of dullness every night at this time. An
officer bored with the monotony of spacing was a terrible hazard because he
could easily infect others with his own morose discontent.
                   The steward was at his elbow. From an
intricately carved, large silver bowl he pulled a shining metal can, nested in
ice. "A lettuce and tomato salad, sir?" Then
apologetically, "That's all we have left now."
                   Nord Corbett nodded. The salad as it emerged
from the can looked garden fresh, even to tiny beads of moisture on the crisp
leaves.
                   Nord looked down the table at Ensign Munroe,
finance and supply officer. "Fresh canned stores are about gone now,
aren't they?" He ladled dressing on the bright green and red vegetables.
                   "Yes, sir. We'll
be on dry stores in about another week," Munroe answered, "unless, of
course, we pass a ship going Earthwards with fresh food."
                   "Then we'll be on them for the rest of
the trip," Nord announced, " we won't pass
any ships until we approximate Lanvin."
                   "We'll only have to eat dry stores for
about five or six more months," Ensign Lesnau, the astrogation officer,
prophesied.
                   Hardman, the executive officer, chuckled.
"Did you hear that, gentlemen? Please note, Mr. Lesnau announces an ETA
for Lanvin plus or minus one month. I'd suggest, captain," he looked at
Nord, "you might have Dr. Stacker teach him astrogation."
                   The laughter that circled the table at the
thought of the space surgeon teaching astrogation was as euphoric as a
synthetic comedy. Even after one hundred and two days of spacing, he still
couldn't believe it; the warm thought cloaked his mind; these smiling officers
were on his first command —Terrestrial Spaceship FFT-136. Their holds were
filled with agricultural supplies from the Colonial Office on Earth to Lanvin:
Planet IV, Sun 3, Sirius System. His feeling of
responsibility for the safe execution of this task was like the joy of a father
with a new son.
                   "Captain," Hardman interrupted his
reverie, "you missed a good story. Just before dinner, Munroe was telling
me about the most original crime on earth."
                   "You mean in space," Munroe
corrected; he