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being real. Sometimes the screeching lasted half the night. He didn’t fight back, insofar as I could tell. I never heard his voice raised. Once, in my presence, while we walked through the pines, he muttered, “She doesn’t know any better. She’s just an Old Earth whore.”
    I asked no questions and he didn’t explain. I supposed she was one of the sluts they’d grabbed early and had scattered around for the morale of the men, and had found unnecessary in a mixed-sex service. All heart, our do-good leaders. They’d dropped the women where they were.
    Maybe Marie had a right to be hostile.
    Three days of unpleasantness. Then, well ahead of schedule, my friend told me, “Time to go. Pick the things you want to take. We’ll leave after dark. West of here it’s better to travel at night.” The quarreling had become too much for him. He wanted out.
    He didn’t admit that. He simply made his announcement. When Marie got the word, the gloves came off. She no longer kept the vitriol private.
    I didn’t blame him for running.
    A young Guardswoman brought us a Navy floater after sundown. We boarded under Marie’s fiercest barrage yet. My friend never looked back.
    After we dropped the Guardswoman at her headquarters, I asked, “Why don’t you throw her out? You don’t owe her anything.”
    He didn’t respond for a long time. Instead, he lit his pipe and puffed his way through. Midway, he said, “We’ll pick up our First Watch Officer and a new kid. Going to start him off in Ship’s Services. Academy boy. Don’t get many of those anymore.”
    Later still, in snatches, he told me what he thought of our ship’s officers. He didn’t say a lot. Thumbnail sketches. He didn’t want to talk about his command. He responded to my earlier question just before we collected his First Watch Officer.
    “Somebody owes her. They put the hose to her. She’ll never get off this rock. Might as well use my place.”
    What can you say to that? Call him a sucker for strays? I don’t think so. I’d call it a case of one man’s using otherwise unimportant resources to rectify one of this universe’s countless injustices. I think that’s the way he pictured it. I don’t think thumbscrews would have forced him to admit it.
    The First Watch Officer was Stefan Yanevich. Lieutenant. Another Canaan native. A long, lanky man with ginger hair and eyes that sometimes looked gray, sometimes pale blue. Thin, sharp features and sleepy eyes. A soft drawl when he spoke, which was seldom. He was as reticent as my friend the Commander.
    He was waiting outside his quarters, alone, and looked eager to go. But there was no eagerness in the way he slung his duffel aboard.
    He had long, slim fingers that moved while he gave me his biography. Twenty-five. His Academy class had been two behind ours. He’d volunteered for Canaan because it was his homeworld. This would be his sixth mission.
    The Commander thought well of him. He would have his own ship next mission.
    He accepted me without question. I supposed the Commander had vouched for me. He didn’t seem interested in why I was here, or who I used to be. Again, I assumed the Commander had filled him in.
    The Old Man said, “Next stop, the kid.”
    Yanevich became interested. “Met him yet? What’s he like?”
    “Came up last week. Squared away. Shows promise. We’ll like him.” There was an edge to his voice. It said it didn’t matter if anyone liked the new man, but it would be a nice bonus if he turned out okay.
    Ensign Bradley was as quiet as the others, but more naturally so. He wasn’t hiding from anything. When he did speak, he successfully downplayed his own lack of experience. He drew both the Commander and First Watch Officer out more skillfully than I had. I pegged him as a very bright and personable young man, when he turned himself on. He wasn’t a Canaanite. In an aside to me, he said, “I flipped a coin when I got my bars. Heads or tails, Fleet or Climbers. Came up