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e a minute. It would take place in the presence of the crew. It would be something that would catch me unawares, bring the light of fear into my eyes for all the crew to see. That would be enough. The word would go back that Captain Peabody was yellow.
Some of the crew would quit the ship at North Marsport, telling the Union business agent they didn't want to ship with a yellow Captain. The business agent would find men refusing to sign on my ship because I was a yellow Captain. And inevitably the time would come when I could not keep a full crew. Then the owners would dismiss me, and I wouldn't be able to get another berth as Captain.
David Markham proved from the start to be an extremely conscientious orderly. My quarters were kept spotless, I had only to lift my eyebrows and he was there ready to obey. How many hours a day he spent wiping up imaginary dust, rubbing nonexistent detergent off my eating utensils for the nth time before I sat down to eat, polishing my already mirror-bright shoes, and the million and one things I didn't even know about, I'll never know.
Few orderlies mix with the crew, and he was no exception. Most orderlies either have the personality of a spinster to start with or acquire it after a few years. He had none of that, but then he wasn't the type that orderlies are made of.
There was a tension in him at all times that was so strong it seemed almost visible--a tension that made each minor chore a matter of life and death to him. It was pitiful to watch, and I usually avoided watching him as much as possible. But a Captain may not pick up something he has dropped, or do a lot of things that any ordinary man does for himself but which are the traditional duties of the orderly--if for no other reason than to keep him busy; so by necessity David Markham was with me during most of my waking hours.
As the days passed the haunting fear in the depths of his eyes seemed almost to have vanished. If I had not known who he was I would have laughed at the possibility of his being a coward. Even knowing who he was, I began to doubt it.
I would catch Markham gazing through a viewport into the subdued silver velvet of infinity and at the millions of flashing jewels that are the individually visible suns of our galaxy and the nebulae that are other galaxies, with his tortured soul, for the moment, at peace. I would hesitate, wanting to join him in his quiet mood as I would have joined any other man, then I would steal away, unable somehow to bring myself to create any kind of bond between us. I had, I realized by then, chosen David Markham in the hopes that he might become a tidbit I could toss to Resnick to pacify him and divert him from me. A cowardly motivation, no matter how you look at it. It had been an impulse I was now ashamed of. It haunted me. Because of it I couldn't bring myself to extend to him a Judas friendship, which is what I felt it would be.
We were forty days out from Earth when Resnick turned his attention to David Markham. I discovered it quite by accident. Ten minutes after my regular sleep period had begun the First Mate saw fit to inform me that an uncharted meteor swarm was going to intercept us in four hours, and of course it was my responsibility to determine what precautions should be taken.
Under ordinary circumstances I would merely have rung for my orderly, but I was half asleep and did the more natural thing. I went to the door to his room, next to mine, and opened it without knocking. He had just undressed, getting ready for bed. He stood there, startled at my unexpected entrance. And I saw the ugly purple splotch over his kidneys that could have come only from the blow of a fist.
I pretended I hadn't noticed it. I merely told him that there would be emergency duty, and backed out, sliding the door shut.
When he came out two minutes later, he gave no indication of whether he thought I had noticed the bruise or not. And for the next few hours I was far too busy to concern myself about it anyway. But I felt as though I had given him that bruise myself, with my own fist, and I was as surely responsible for it as though I had.
While I plotted the courses of hundreds of chunks of meteor iron to search out safe holes through the intercepting meteor group my thoughts whispered gleefully, "All you have to do is pretend you don't know anything and maybe Resnick will be grateful and leave you alone."
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