“You have an appointment, sir?” she asked with a professional smile.
The man nodded curtly but said nothing. His eyes flickered toward her briefly, then returned to the wall. She tried to decide whether he was angry or in pain. The black eyes burned with cold fire. She checked the list of appointments. Her smile disappeared, to be replaced by a tight-lipped expression of scorn.
“You’re Space Commander Eli Roki?” she asked in an icy tone.
Again the curt nod. She gazed at him steadily for several seconds. “Colonel Beth will see you in a few minutes.” Then her typewriter began clattering with sharp sounds of hate.
The man sat quietly, motionlessly. The colonel passed through the reception room once and gave him a brief nod. Two majors came in from the corridor and entered the colonel’s office without looking at him. A few moments later, the intercom crackled, “Send Roki in, Dela. Bring your pad and come with him.”
The girl looked at Roki, but he was already on his feet, striding toward the door. Evidently he came from an unchivalrous planet; he opened the door without looking at her and let her catch in when it started to slam.
Chubby, elderly Colonel Beth sat waiting behind his desk, flanked by the pair of majors. Roki’s bearing as he approached and saluted was that of the professional soldier, trained from birth for the military.
“Sit down, Roki.”
The tall space commander sat at attention and waited, his face expressionless, his eyes coolly upon the colonel’s forehead. Beth shuffled some papers on his desk, then spoke slowly.
“Before we begin, I want you to understand something, commander.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are not being tried. This is not a court-martial. There are no charges against you. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
The colonel’s pale eyes managed to look at Roki’s face without showing any contempt. “This investigation is for the record, and for the public. The incident has already been investigated, as you know. But the people are aroused, and we have to make a show of some kind.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Then let’s begin. Dela, take notes, please.” The colonel glanced at the papers before him. “Space Commander Roki, will you please tell us in your own words what happened during patrol flight Sixty-one on fourday sixmonth, year eighty-seven?”
There was a brief silence. The girl was staring at the back of Roki’s neck as if she longed to attack it with a hatchet. Roki’s thin face was a waxen mask as he framed his words. His voice came calm as a bell and clear.
“The flight was a random patrol. We blasted off Jod VII at thirteen hours, Universal Patrol Time, switched on the high-C drive, and penetrated to the ten-thousandth level of the C’th component. We re-entered the continuum on the outer patrol radius at thirty-six degrees theta and two-hundred degrees psi. My navigator threw the dice to select a random course. We were to proceed to a point on the same co-ordinate shell at thirty theta and one-fifty psi. We began—”
The colonel interrupted. “Were you aware at the time that your course would intersect that of the mercy ship?”
The girl looked up again. Roki failed to wince at the question. “I was aware of it, sir.”
“Go on.”
“We proceeded along the randomly selected course until the warp detectors warned us of a ship. When we came in range, I told the engineer to jockey into a parallel course and to lock the automatics to
“You saw its insignia?”
“Yes, sir. The yellow mercy star.”
“Go on. Did they answer your challenge?”
“Yes, sir. The reply, decoded, was: Mercy liner Sol-G-6, departure Sol III, destination Jod VI, cargo emergency surgi-bank supplies, Cluster Request A-4-J.”
Beth nodded and watched Roki with clinical curiosity. “You knew about the Jod VI disaster? That twenty thousand casualties were waiting in Suspendfreeze lockers for those supplies?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry they died.”
“Go on with your account.”
“I ordered the navigator to throw the dice again, to determine whether or not the freighter should be boarded for random cargo inspection. He threw a twelve, the yes-number. I called the freighter again, ordered the outer locks opened. It failed to answer, or respond in any way.”
“One moment. You explained the reason for boarding? Sol is on the outer rim of the galaxy. It doesn’t belong to any cluster system. Primitive place—or regressed. They wouldn’t understand our ways.”
“I allowed for that, sir,” continued the cold-faced Roki. “I explained the situation, even read them extracts of our patrol regs. They failed to acknowledge. I thought perhaps they were out of contact, so I had the message repeated to them by blinker. I know they got it, because the blinker-operator acknowledged the message. Evidently carried it to his superiors. Apparently they told him to ignore us, because when we blinked again, he failed to acknowledge. I then attempted to pull alongside and attach to their hull by magnetic grapples.”
“They resisted?”
“Yes, sir. They tried to break away by driving to a higher C-level. Our warp was already at six-thousand C’s. The mass-components of our star cluster at that level were just a collapsing gas cloud. Of course, with our automatic trackers, they just dragged us with them, stalled, and plunged the other way. They pulled us down to the quarter-C level; most of the galaxy was at the red-dwarf stage. I suppose they realized then that they couldn’t get away from us like that. They came back to a sensible warp and continued on their previous course.”
“And you did what?”
“We warned them by every means of communication at our disposal, read them the standard warning.”
“They acknowledge?”
“Once, sir. They came back to say: This is an emergency shipment. We have orders not to stop. We are continuing on course, and will report you to authority upon arrival.” Roki paused, eyeing the colonel doubtfully. “May I make a personal observation, sir?”
Beth nodded tolerantly. “Go ahead.”
“They wasted more time dodging about in the C’th component than they would have lost if they had allowed us to board them. I regarded this behavior as highly suspicious.”
“Did it occur to you that it might be due to some peculiarity in Sol III’s culture? Some stubbornness, or resentment of authority?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you ask opinions of your crew?”
A slight frown creased Roki’s high forehead. “No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Regulation does not require it, sir. My personal reason—the cultural peculiarities of my planet.”
The barb struck home. Colonel Beth knew the military culture of Roki’s world—Coph IV. Military rank was inherited. On his own planet, Roki was a nobleman and an officer of the war-college. He had been taught to rely upon his own decisions and to expect crisp, quick obedience. The colonel frowned at his desk.
“Let’s put it this way: Did you
“Yes, sir. They thought that we should abandon the pursuit and allow the freighter to continue. I was forced to confine two of them to the brig for insubordination and attempted mutiny.” He stopped and glanced at one of the majors. “All due apologies to you, sir.”
The major flushed. He ranked Roki, but he had been with the patrol as an observer, and despite his higher rank, he was subject to the ship commander’s authority while in space. He had also been tossed in the brig. Now he glared at the Cophian space commander without speaking.
“All right, commander, when they refused to halt, what did you do?”
“I withdrew to a safe range and fired a warning charge ahead of them. It exploded in full view of their scopes, dead ahead. They ignored the warning and tried to flee again.”
“Go on.”
