For instance, you seldom found that more than half the personnel of such a base really cared about the work they were doing—the rest were serving out their time, stacking up their future life ten years for one. Aboard a Patrol cruiser, people all cared about the work. They had to. If they didn’t, a single ten-year tour of operations would drive them crazy. Also he was better off than the commandant because his job took him places; he might actually set foot on ten or a dozen different worlds in the course of a trip—under conditions of fantastic secrecy, naturally—while Brzeska was stuck under this same old dome. There was one fundamental way, though, in which the commandant had the better of the bargain. If things went seriously wrong, it would be Brzeska’s responsibility as ranking officer in this Galactic sector. But it would be Gus Langenschmidt’s fault. He led Maddalena into the office that had been assigned to him for the period of his stay on the base-world, and flung himself into a chair.
