"Schizoid?" Percy Kettleman ventured.
"'Nuts' is the word I was searching for," Starbuck concluded. "I believe he intends to keep phasing and phasing, taking us deeper into space and never returning to Earth or the inhabited universe."
"I guess," Kettleman opined, "that we will just have to convince him that he is wrong in that attitude."
"We can make a formal written complaint and request for an explanation under Section XXIV," Romero said. "Is that what you had in mind, Ben?"
"I had a straitjacket in mind," Starbuck admitted. "But I'm new in the Space Service. I have a selfish motive. I want to get back to Earth sometime and a vine-covered ethnology class."
"We better go take him," Kettleman said heavily.
"As much as I dislike agreeing with an ox like you, Kettleman," Romero said, "I conclude it is best."
There was a general rumble of agreement.
"Wait, wait," a youngish man whose name Starbuck vaguely remembered to be Horne stepped forward, his eyes glittering with contact lenses. "I ask you men to remember Christopher Columbus. I like our captain no more than any of you, but he may be right. Perhaps what he is doing is vital. We shouldn't let our selfish fears...."
Always, Starbuck thought, always some egghead comes along to gum up the works.