Chapter 2

With its crew doubly decimated—the starship had carried a complement of only thirty on departure from Earth—there could be little question of what next to do. Even while the two survivors hovered between life and death in the sick bay, the No. 1 ordered an immediate return home. In the weeks it took to achieve worm velocity the captain's wounds healed sufficiently that he was able to move fairly comfortably about the vessel, but he showed no inclination to resume his command and by tacit agreement the first mate retained authority for what remained of the aborted voyage.

Despite copious evidence of history to the contrary, human beings cling stubbornly to the belief that they control their own destiny. It's on that imagined basis that occasional individuals blessed with uncommon good luck reap public acclaim and reward for fortuitous events that occur around them mainly by pure happenstance.

By the same token, every calamity demands its scapegoat upon whom blame may be cast. In the case of the ill-fated voyage of the Argo, the obvious candidate was the captain. Not only had he commanded the starship, not only had he been a principal (though admittedly far from the only) moving force in the decision to essay a landing, but worst of all in the popular mind he had survived while six of his companions had not and the seventh was permanently disabled. Excoriation of the man knew no bounds as the scope of the disaster became understood.

At special investigatory committee hearings that were broadcast holographically worldwide, criticism by the elderly members—themselves unqualified to command a starship but by virtue of bureaucratic seniority assigned to review his performance—centered first and most intensely on his decision to land at all. Never mind that his standing orders called for a sampling of biological specimens from any discovered world showing indications of life, never mind that those orders made no provision for the presence of intelligent life on the planet to be examined, never mind that nothing in human experience suggested an intelligent species would be so implacably hostile as to attack in overwhelming numbers at the very moment of First Contact, he should have known, was the consensus of committee opinion—an opinion that holo commentators quickly echoed.

Not only that, his militarily minded second-guessers continued, but he should have seen the encircling movement as soon as it began. It was obvious, they argued; even a child should have noticed and reacted. By his negligence he had thrown away the lives of his fellows, the very lives his command obligated him to protect.

By the time the hearings concluded the captain's name had become almost synonymous with failure and incompetence, to the point that he could not appear in public without being beleaguered by invective, even physical assaults. He was dismissed from the Star Exploration Service ignominiously. For a time even his promised pension was imperiled, though ultimately cooler heads prevailed on this when confronted by the lawyer he had finally, reluctantly been compelled to hire. He retired to a nearly hermit-like existence in a remote town in northern Scotland where his neighbors, after an initial period of virtual shunning, came to appreciate his quiet presence and peaceful demeanor. When after three years of guilt-ridden living he committed a tidy suicide, none but those few neighbors were surprised.