it more and more
difficult to keep awake. You couldn't rid yourself of the temptation of
going back to bed and dreaming again--dreaming, perhaps, of an Ohio town
that his own imagination had gilded and varnished and adorned until
sometimes he thought it existed only in his imagination and not in
reality at all.

He scrubbed at his face until a tingle of alertness came to it, then
went back to the main compartment. The steward had laid out the silver,
and Davis and McCandless were already there. Davis completely relaxed in
the atmosphere that could only exist between an Executive Officer and a
Captain. The Exec, as both he and the Captain well knew, was the only
man on board with whom the Captain could maintain a relationship that
was something other than professional. Not necessarily friendly but ...
more relaxed.

McCandless sat in the leather upholstered chair by the table, stiff and
self-conscious. The hope of the nation, the Captain thought. Provided
that they learned how to hate and to keep that hate alive as long as he
had kept his.

His own boy had been about McCandless' age, he thought suddenly.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Davis asked.

The Captain sat down at the table. The coffee was hot and he could smell
the eggs that the steward was frying in the small galley. He tucked in a
napkin at his neck. It was old-fashioned but practical, he thought. You
dribbled down the front, you didn't spill things in your lap.

"It isn't exactly up to me, Harry. It's up to Washington." He poured out
three cups of coffee and handed one to Davis and one to McCandless. The
Lieutenant clutched the cup in a deathlike grip, as if the ship were
doing forty-degree rolls and he might lose it any minute. "I asked you
up to breakfast to get your ideas on it. I have my own but on something
like this, anybody's ideas are as good as mine. Maybe better."

Davis frowned and rubbed the tip of his nose thoughtfully. "Well, it
looks to me, Bill, as if we have a situation here where an unknown ship
from somewhere--I'm not saying where--has investigated two ships on
maneuvers and finally chosen to hover over one, for what reasons we
don't know. To me it looks like the only things we can do is notify
Washington and stand by for orders."

Great God, the Captain thought, disgusted, there was nothing worse than
a Commander bucking for four stripes. A more cautious man didn't exist
on the face of the Earth nor, possibly, a more fearful o