At the European Space Corporation Headquarters ziggurat, in the penthouse suite, which to an outward-looking eye might have been suspended in deep space, a unilateral decision was being taken by the organization's overlord, Chairman Paul V. Spencer. He was speaking across the wide top of his executive desk to Captain Dag Fletcher and nobody would have guessed from his gravel tone that he believed the man to be the most capable commander on the company list.
Certainly his manner made no bid for empathy and the heavy, grey face was set in a hound dog mould. In fact, he was currently looking like a dog who had bitten hard on a fair bone and found that some dissembler had switched the marrow for fish paste.
"I really ought to go myself, Fletcher; but you see how it is. One blasted thing after the next on this station. If I turn my back for a nanosecond, some goddamned politician gets after the estimates and has a bonanza. Ninny hammers all. Nothing gets done unless I slog my bowels out at this desk. So it will have to be you."
Just in case the man should take it as a compliment, he went on, "You are the only captain I can spare. I know you can pilot a ship. But this is something else. This needs diplomacy. You're not in the army now. If you go in as if you were part of the occupying power, you'll get nowhere fast."
Fletcher said, "I appreciate that, Chairman. I know the Fingalnans. They set a lot of store on keeping face. But the space corporation hook-up is in their interest as much as ours. In fact, over the decade before the agency closed, there was worthwhile payment balance in their favour. They'll agree all right. It's just a matter of moving real slow and making it appear that it was all their own idea in the first place."
Spencer took a ruminative half minute to look at the other party in the symposium. He saw a tall, spare man, who sat relaxed, with long legs stretched out in front of him. Very brown, so that his grey-green eyes looked light by contrast. An intelligent Indo-European face, left eyebrow flared by the pull of a thin radiation burn.
There was no doubt, he was a first class commander with a legendary record as a corvette captain on his recent six-year stint with the Inter Galactic Organization's forces. If he could pull off this mission, he was that very rare bird who combined technical know-how with diplomatic skill, and was likely to be set for high office in the corporation they both served.
But it was a big question. A good measure of Spencer's disenchantment came from having to smooth out snags created by politically blinkered agents of the company and on that count, the ex-military personnel had the lousiest record.
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