Sam Carruthers would be the first one to say it.
Thin, quiet Sam, who'd been in space as ship's surgeon and psychiatrist for as long as Joel himself. It had been twenty-two years since they'd left the Academy together. Sam had taken his specialty training in space medicine, while he, Joel, had let himself get sucked into qualifying as pilot.
Twelve years of the Academy. And twenty-two more being ordered around the freezing hell of God's black universe like a toy on a string.
And for all of it, Sam still had that look in his dark, brooding eyes—the look that had been glazed with shock, but which had still not surrendered, the day they told Sam he wasn't going to make pilot.
The look would still be there four minutes and thirty seconds from now when he led the others into the fore-waist bridge to holler "We've hit it again!" It would always be.
Joel tilted the liquor bottle and one big, clumsy-looking hand poured steadily into the thick glassite flagon he held in the other. He downed it in a gulp.
Hit it again hell!
And behind Sam there would be the first officer, Dobermann. Little, wiry German who knew more about languages and semantics than the guy who'd invented them, and the best astro-navigator you could find in this or any other galaxy. Sure, they always gave Nicholas Joel nothing but the best. That was part of it. Part and parcel of the whole damn conspiracy.
Dobermann wouldn't say anything when he came in. But there'd be a thorough-going, successful, mission-accomplished look on his handsome face. Dobermann never missed.
And Southard.... Still a kid, still wet behind the ears, but a hell of a promising astrophysicist, backed up with plenty of biochemistry and geophysics. It was still a big, romantic adventure to Southard, and he wore the single red, gleaming stripe of ship's second officer on his broad young shoulders as though it was the thick gold circle of a full captaincy.