The one experience that stands out in my mind more than any other really began about five minutes after I was assigned to my first ship, the Alabama, when I was given the list of my officers and crew to check over. Half way down the list I came to a name, Oscar Resnick, and suddenly the thrill of being a captain was gone. For two cents, at that moment, I would gladly have become a retired Space Captain before I started. I was fifty-two years old then, and it had been about thirty years since I last saw Resnick. His rating was still spaceman first class, and I knew if he had ever risen higher he had been demoted again, as was inevitable, sooner or later. He was an incurable bully with the worst streak of sadistic cruelty in him I've ever run across.
Even the sight of his name on that list sent an instinctive fear through me. Once, when I was still a space recruit he had whipped me to within an inch of my life and instilled in me the realization that he could do it any time, anywhere.
A man like that is slightly mad, or strikes you that way. You stay out of his way if you can, and if you can't you let him have his way, swallow his insults, do anything to avoid the beating you would get if he took the whim. Live with that for two years as I had thirty years before, and you never get over it.
Now I was captain of my first ship and he was to be one of the crew. And I knew in my heart that if he walked up to me and suddenly reached up to scratch his head I would cringe and turn pale. I wouldn't be able to help it. And if that happened it would be the end of me. The crew would think I was yellow—and I was when it came to Oscar Resnick.
Oh, he wouldn't do anything that would give me cause to toss him in the brig, nor even anything that would give me cause to fire him—at least a reason that would stand up under a union inquiry if he demanded one, which he would. He would just grin at me knowingly with eyes that told me he thought I was yellow, and hesitate just long enough after an order to make me wonder if he was going to obey—the kind of stuff that could break me down completely, in time. And there would be nothing I could do about it.
I made a try to keep him off my crew. The Dispatcher admitted Resnick had the reputation of being a trouble maker, but if I didn't take him there was likelihood the Union would call out the whole crew and ground the ship.
Then the Dispatcher pointed out the fact that the list was short one man, my personal orderly. I hadn't thought about an orderly at all, and hadn't chosen one yet. He gave me the list of available orderlies and I looked it over, most of the names meaning nothing at all to me. Suddenly I ran across a name I knew. I didn't know the man, but I had heard of him, and probably all of you have.
The name was David Markham. He was the David Markham all right, the Dispatcher said when I asked him—the one who was kicked out of Space Patrol for abject cowardice. The Dispatcher told me the man had been trying for two years to get back into space, the Union wouldn't take him, and the only way he could get into service was an orderly to a Captain—if any Captain took him.
The Dispatcher suggested two or three other men he knew personally, any one of which I would probably like and decide to keep permanently. But a crazy idea was running around in my head. It was a clutching at straws, but what it amounted to was this: I had a bully on my crew, a man who had my number and knew how to use it. Why not balance him out by making my one choice on the crew a man who was the exact opposite, an abject coward? Possibly, on some level of thought, I wanted company if Resnick showed me up to the crew, someone who couldn't look down on me because of the simple fact that he was the lowest there was.