"Relax," I said. "He won't get out of hand. That old boy is no fool and he won't pull any raw deals. The one I'd look out for is Morrie. He acts like a crazy kid sometimes. You can't always figure him."
"Morrie!" she exclaimed. "Bill Drake, you are jealous! He's just a kid."
"That's what I said, a crazy kid."
"And I'm two years older than he is." The washer stopped spinning and I went over and began removing the duds and putting them in the dryer.
She started to get up to help me. She'd been sitting cross-legged on the floor, as we all did because we had no chairs aboard. "Don't bother," I told her. "This isn't hard work."
She sat down again. "Do you realize, Bill Drake, that there are no laws here in space excepting those laid down by Spartan?"
"I can think of a few of Newton's laws that he has no control over."
"I'm not talking about physical laws. Spartan is more powerful than any nabob who ever lived on earth—he is a greater despot than Caesar, than the Pharaohs. That's why he's stand-offish with everyone. He has the power of life and death over us all."
I closed the dryer and set the timer. "Forget it, Gail," I told her, dropping down beside her. "Spartan's like a military commander. Not only our lives, but the success of this mission are his responsibility. He can't very well get chummy with buck privates." I didn't particularly love the guy, but I thought—then—that I understood him.
"We're not buck privates," she said, with a woman's logic and hatred of metaphor.