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"Rod, wait! We've got to do something! Rod, where are you going?" She stared at his back as he walked rapidly away. Now what did I do? she wondered.
Blaine's door was closed but the telltale showed that it wasn't locked. Kevin Re
"Come in."
Re
"No. Can I get you anything?" Blaine clearly didn't care one way or another. He didn't look at Re
No. Not time to push. Not just yet. Re
Blaine's cabin was big. It would have been a tower room if Lenin had been designed with a tower. There were only four men and one woman who rated cabins to themselves, and Blaine wasn't using the precious room; he booked to have been sitting in that chair for hours, probably ever since the funeral services. Certainly he hadn't changed. He'd had to borrow one of Mikhailov's dress uniforms and it didn't fit at all.
They sat silently, with Blaine staring into some internal space-time that excluded his visitor.
"I've been going over Buckman's work," Re
"Oh? How goes it?" Blaine asked politely.
"Way over my head. He says he can prove there's a protostar forming in the Coal Sack. In a thousand years it'll be shining by its own light. Well, he can't prove it to me, because I don't have the math."
"Um."
"How are you making out?" Re
Blaine finally lifted haunted eyes. "Kevin, why did the kids try to do a reentry?"
"God's eyes, Captain, that's plain silly. They wouldn't have tried anything of the kind." Jesus, he's not even thinking straight. This is going to be tougher than I thought.
"Then you tell me what happened."
Re
"Superbly." Blaine actually smiled. "Even a dead man couldn't pass up a straight line like that."
"You had me wondering." Re
"Eh?" Blaine frowned. There was a spark of life in his eyes. Re
"Yeah, but Kevin, what went wrong? If the Brownies got to the boats they'd have designed them right. Besides, there'd be controls; they wouldn't make you reenter."
Re
"Maybe-"
"Maybe a lot of things. Maybe they were designed for Brownies. The kids would have had to crowd in, rip out a dozen fifteen-centimeter Motie crash couches or something. There wasn't much time, with the torpedoes due to go in three minutes."
"Those goddamn torpedoes! The casings were probably full of Brownies and a rat ranch, if anyone had looked!"
Re
"I should have."
"Why?" Re
"I'm not a skipper."
Aha! Re
Blaine looked up at Re
"I thought of that," said Re
"No, but I wish I could be sure."
"You would be if you knew Moties as well as I do. Convince yourself. Study the data. We've got plenty aboard this ship, and you've got the time. You've got to learn about Moties, you're the Navy's heaviest expert on them."
"Me?" Rod laughed. "Kevin, I'm not an expert on anything. The first thing I've got to do when we get back is convince a court-martial-"
"Oh, rape the court-martial," Re
"And what do you suggest I brood over, Lieutenant Re
Kevin gri
"Re
Kevin's grin broadened. "-or how to get me out of your cabin. Captain, look at it this way. Suppose a court finds you guilty of negligence. Certainly nothing worse. You didn't surrender the ship to an enemy or anything. So suppose they seriously want your scalp and they hang that on you. Worse thing they could do would be ground you. They wouldn't even cashier you. So they ground you, and you resign-you're still going to be Twelfth Marquis of Crucis."
"Yeah. So what?"
"So what?" Re
"Well-" Blaine looked sheepish, and a little embarrassed by Re
"What do you think? You're the only aristocrat in the Empire who knows a bloody thing about Moties, and you're asking me what to do? Captain, I expect you to put your arse in gear, that's what. Sir. The Empire's got to develop a sensible policy about Moties, and the Navy's influence is big- You can't let the Navy get its views from Kutuzov! You can start by thinking about those Motie ambassadors the Admiral wants to leave stranded here,"
"I'll be damned. You really are worked up about this, aren't you?"
Re
Rod grimaced. Moties aboard another ship! Good Lord-
"And stop thinking like that," Re
Rod shook his head impatiently. "You're acting as if my judgment were worth something. The evidence is against that."
"Good Lord. You're really down in the dumps, aren't you? Do you know what your officers and men think of you? Have you any idea? Hell, Captain, it's because of guys like you that I can accept the aristocracy-" Kevin stopped, embarrassed at having said more than he intended. "Look, the Tsar's got to ask your opinion. He doesn't have to take your advice, or Horvath's, but he does have to ask both of you. That's in the expedition orders-"