"Suspense, tension can break a man, any man. I've seen it happen too often, far, far too often. And when you're keyed up to snapping point, sometimes for seventeen days on end, when you have constant daily reminders of what may happen to you in the shape of broken, sinking ships and broken, drowning bodies, well, we're men, not machines.

Something has to go, and does. The Admiral will not be unaware that after the last two trips we shipped nineteen officers and men to sanatoria, mental sanatoria?"

Brooks was on his feet now, his broad, strong fingers splayed over the polished table surface, his eyes boring into Starr's.

"Hunger burns out a man's vitality, Admiral Starr. It saps his strength, slows his reactions, destroys the will to fight, even the will to survive. You are surprised, Admiral Starr? Hunger, you think, surely that's impossible in the well, provided ships of today? But it's not impossible, Admiral Starr.

It's inevitable. You keep on sending us out when the Russian season's over, when the nights are barely longer than the days, when twenty hours out of the twenty-four are spent on watch or at action stations, and you expect us to feed well!" He smashed the flat of his hand on the table.

"How the hell can we, when the cooks spend nearly all their time in the magazines, serving the turrets, or in damage control parties? Only the baker and butcher are excused, and so we live on corned-beef sandwiches.

For weeks on end! Corned-beef sandwiches!" Surgeon-Commander Brooks almost spat in disgust.

Good old Socrates, thought Turner happily, give him hell. Tyndall, too, was nodding his ponderous approval. Only Vallery was uncomfortable, not because of what Brooks was saying, but because Brooks was saying it. He, Vallery, was the captain: the coals of fire were being heaped on the wrong head.

"Fear, suspense, hunger." Brooks's voice was very low now. "These are the things that break a man, that destroy him as surely as fire or steel or pestilence could. These are the killers.