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captain and the executive officer left the wardroom with Commander Wingott in tow. Lieutenant Commander Austin turned to Brian and Benedetti, the engineer, as the other officers milled around, refilling coffee mugs.
    “Vince, this briefing in CIC requires all three of us; it’s primarily for SWICs and the evaluators.”
    “Goddamnit, I gotta refuel, Ops,” complained Benedetti.
    Brian studied the deck while the two lieutenant commanders argued. He was a department head but not yet a lieutenant commander.
    “Then I recommend you get the refueling evolution started and come to CIC, Vince. You’ve spent minimal time in CIC during the workup and—”
    “Don’t gimme that shit, Austin,” Benedetti.
    “You got all those precious twidgets working for you in your squeaky-clean, air-conditioned CIC. I got a bunch of dope-smoking, give-a-shit no-loads to contend with in the holes. We’re lucky this boat got this far, with the people I’ve got in my main spaces. I’m the chief engineer first and an evaluator second, and since I don’t want to see a fuel spill, that means I personally oversee the refueling. You listen real good and then you can brief me on the first turnover. See ya.”
    Brian watched as the engineer, a rumpled, balding figure whose uniform smelled perpetually of fuel oil, stomped out of the wardroom, followed by his main propulsion assistant and the Boilers Division officer.
    Austin shook his head.
    “You and I will both pay a price for that attitude, I’m afraid,” he said, picking up his hat. “The three of us are supposed to be in three watch sections, six on, twelve off. But what really happens is that the engineer is so weak in the combat systems area that if anything happens, either you or I get called up to Combat. Or the captain takes him off the watch bill when things go wrong down below. As Vince well knows.
    Come on.”
    They left the wardroom and began to climb the steep interior ladders to CIC.
    “What’s the special brief Commander Wingott’s giving the CO and XO?”
    Brian asked as he followed Austin up the ladder.
    “Probably special rules of engagement stuff, the ‘Personal —For Commanding Officers’ message file from CTF Seventy-seven and COMSEVENTHFLEET, any unwritten personnel policies regarding drug abuse, liberty incidents, or any other problem-related policies like that,”
    said Austin over his shoulder. “Be patient. After a while, the word always trickles down to the evaluators.”
    Brian knew all about being patient. He was one of those rare birds, a native of Washington, D. C. His father had been a professional mechanical engineer in the Navy Department’s Bureau of Ships, and his mother was also a civil servant, a chemist who worked for the Department of the Interior. His parents had met during the Great Depression at a scientific symposium in Washington, then married in 1937. Brian had come along in 1939, a few months before war broke out in Europe. The Holcomb family had lived in the Chevy Chase area for as long as Brian could remember, on a quiet side street off Military Road. No brothers or sisters followed, a fact that Brian came to regret in late childhood, without really knowing why.
    He had attended the local Catholic elementary school up on the boundary between Maryland and the District, in deference to his mother’s Catholic upbringing.
    It was a choice his father supported because it was the best school around; William Falwell Holcomb took no interest in organized religion.
    Brian had been imbued early on with the importance of academic achievement by the attitude of his technically educated parents, aided and abetted by the occasional application of a ruler to the back of his hands by Sister Paul Marie. He Was less of a brilliant academic superstar than he was a patient, hardworking slogger, and by the time he hit high school, he was gravitating closer and closer to the top of his class each year. He became a junior varsity and then a varsity