Commander Karsine had entered the control room during Narant's brief reverie in front of the viewing screen. An able and successful combat officer still in his early thirties, Karsine wore the light weight space armor the regulations prescribed for moments of impending action. Even if the enemy blasted a hole in the control room itself, that armor could protect Karsine long enough to save or disintegrate the cruiser, as the case might be.
"Commander," Narant suddenly blurted. "One request. I should like to remain this one time and observe your tactics right here."
"Denied." Karsine explained brusquely that only combat personnel were allowed in the central control room during contact with a strange vessel. "But," he ended, patronizingly, "you can watch from the observation room. When we have made the capture, I'll be happy to review my operations with you."
When we have made the capture. The Commander's abundant self confidence only served to further depress Narant. Out there in the void rode a space vessel of an altogether unknown race. And there was no question in Karsine's mind but that their cruiser would take the alien. Not "if" we make the capture. Simply, "when." It was small solace for Narant to recall that he himself had firmly established Self Confidence as one of the highest-rated mental traits for military command. It had been one of his major projects as a Psychanalyst 4th Class.
As he left the bridge, the airlock rumbled shut behind him, sealing off the control room from the rest of the ship. Narant climbed the spiral staircase into the observation room. One entire wall was a thick quartzite pane over-looking the control center. You could see as much from up here as down below. But somehow it wasn't the same.
Other technicists with non-combatant specialties were already strapped to seats in the room, prepared to watch the show on which their very lives might depend. The "VM" lamp winked slowly on and off, its orange glow warning against "possible violent maneuvers." Narant found a seat and obediently fastened the safety harness. He studied the view screen on the bridge below. The alien ship, seemingly unaware of the danger that now threatened it, still followed its initial course.
Narant tried to concentrate on the scrambling activity in the control center, but his rebellious mind would have none of it. Unwanted memories rose up to haunt him. He had been assigned to this trip mainly to purge those thoughts from his mind with work and action, but the cure appeared no cure at all.
Three months ago his final request for the marriage permit had returned disapproved. The accompanying explanation had been a masterpiece of scientific doggerel. It analyzed the genetic composition of Narant and Technicist 3rd Class Melda. It presented carefully worked-out Tables of Probability regarding the nature and potential achievement of the offspring of such a union. It called attention to the low probability rate of Melda and Narant begetting a genius. "Therefore," it had concluded, "it is not in the best interests of the intended participants, nor will it serve to build the race, if the aforementioned are joined in matrimony."
There followed a rare bit of sterilized philosophy: "It is to be hoped that each party mentioned in the above will readily find another individual in whom to repose his and her natural emotional interest." Narant felt, with a startling sense of the primeval, that if he should find the person who phrased that report he would delightfully club him to death.