Captain Hawkins remained in his room, completely isolated from the rest of the ship, for almost four hours. During that time he simply sat in his easy chair and thought. At the beginning of the fifth hour he broke a precedent and opened a bottle of whiskey. At the beginning of the sixth hour he broke still another precedent and sent for Broussard. Hawkins was neither too drunk nor too sober when the psychologist arrived. He told the scientist to sit down and offered him a drink.
"I know it's unethical for me to take you away from the men when they need your help more than ever before," Hawkins began slowly, choosing to stare moodily at the table instead of directly at the man he was talking to. "But for once I am exercising a Captain's perogatives.
"You must have realized some of the problems that face anyone in a position of command. Usually we have to operate on pretty rigid rules, but things always go better if it seems as though we aren't quite as rigid as we really must be. The men under you always feel better if they think they have some free choice about things. In any military set-up you can't allow much of this free will at all. The best commander is the one who decides what it is his men must do in a given situation, and then finds some way of making the men want to do it." Again he paused, then looked up, facing Broussard squarely.
"I have decided what the result of the balloting must be—and I want you, as a psychologist, to help me make sure that I get that result without anyone else being aware that we've rigged things." He got up from the table and began nervously pacing the floor.
After a few moments he stopped and turned to face the psychologist, both his fists clenched tightly on the back of his easy chair. He said nothing.
After several moments of silence, Broussard cleared his throat and asked, "And which choice have you decided it must be?"
Hawkins collapsed into the chair. Finally his mouth opened, his lips trembled, and he said, "Slavery, of course. It's the only choice.
"You're the psychologist, perhaps you can understand the fierce pride I'd take in knowing that the men would have the ... the guts to want to end it all instead of bowing down to that bastard out there who holds us in the very palm of his hands." Hawkins paused in this outburst, blinked his eyes briefly, and then continued.
"But that's just the emotion showing through. From the logical point of view, our race must continue. If we choose slavery we'll live and breathe and die just as we always have. We'll do all of these things on alien planets, having forgotten the Earth we sprang from and all our past history, as sorry as some of that has been. We'll have forgotten who we are. We will have lost ourselves."
He banged a fist down on the table. "But we will exist! The protection of the race comes first, and we've got to make sure that it is protected, that the Sunward makes the logical decision. I'll steer things as best I can, but I'll need help."