"What conditions?" Eisner prompted.

"First, that we unanimously agree here and now that Dwight runs the show. That he becomes our captain officially."

"Why?" Abuzar asked suspiciously.

"Come on, Abuzar. You know as well as I do that there has to be one man at the top. Eventually we're going to be in situations where one person has to give the orders and make the decisions. I figure we should decide who that's going to be now, instead of arguing it out in the middle of a crisis. Dwight's been running things since Blutman died and doing a pretty good job of it. Nikki's too reckless, and even you don't trust your temper. I couldn't do it, and wouldn't want to if I could. To my thinking, that makes Dwight number one. If we can't agree on something as basic as that, we should call it quits right now."

"I don't think I'm all that reckless," Nikki grumbled. "But I've got no objections to Dwight running things."

"Abuzar?"

"If we need a captain, I guess Dwight's the logical choice."

"Okay, that's that." Roz nodded. "How about you, Dwight?"

"I guess I never thought about it. I'm like Abuzar. I didn't really think a chain of command was necessary for four people."

"But will you serve as captain?" Roz pressed.

"Before I agree, what was the other condition to your staying with us, Rosalyn?"

"Oh, that." Roz grimaced. "It's nothing really. Your agreeing to be captain was the big one. My second point was that I think we should all take new names."

"Oh, come on, Roz!" Abuzar exploded.

"Hold on a minute, Abuzar," Eisner said. "Why do you think that's necessary, Roz?"

"I don't know about you other space bums, but I've still got family out there. I'm not too wild about dragging their name into the crazy things I'm going to be doing, and I sure don't want some pirate tracking them down to get back at me. Besides, up until now we've all got pretty clean records. On the off chance that someday we want to quit what we're doing and go back to leading normal lives, it wouldn't hurt to have a 'clean' name to go back to. Whether the rest of you want to go along with this or not, I'm going to use a different name for my new career. From now on, I want the rest of you to get used to calling me 'Whitey.' "