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She wasn’t what he assumed Goddard Futuristics considered ‘captain’ material.
Elias Selberg regarded Isabel Lovelace as… almost neglectful. Team introductions were painfully casual from her, the leading officer of this mission. He fails to recall what joke she had said at the time, but he does remember the way she laughed and clapped her hand on the shoulder of their communications officer. No sense of professionalism with the crew she had just met. He also remembers becoming quickly aware of just how faithful Samuel Lambert was to Pryce and Carter, and also basically formalities.
Perhaps that was what skewed his perspective at first. Viewing Lovelace as a facet of her dynamics before viewing her on her own. It was easy to see her as negligent, childish even, when Lambert was already listing off a long list of rules she was ignoring and they’d barely been a week out in orbit.
She made her orders with no real bite to them. Selberg found none of the authority he had grown accustomed to at Goddard. And he was almost as offended as Lambert, with how lightly she went about things.
But as the crew fell into their routines, Selberg found himself capable of picking her apart from the group. He could view her as one Isabel Lovelace, independent of outside variable. And through his dissection, Elias Selberg found the method in her madness.
The Hephaestus was operable. Not just the ship itself, but the crew within it. The crew ran by a supposed laid-back captain who saw most of the rules of the job as a suggestion. He had fully expected them to fall into disarray the moment they were off of Earth, he anticipated her lack of authority to rear its ugly head when she was actually meant to be giving orders.
And yet, everything was exactly as it should be.
Her work was not negligence, he realized. No, no. It was a human approach. Isabel Lovelace was good-spirited, humorous, and approachable. She never made herself bigger than she needed to. Selberg had simply grown too used to people who felt the need to square their shoulders and puff their chest out to give orders, it seemed. Lovelace did nothing of the sort, and as such, you would find her slipping into your good graces without even recognizing it. There’s less pushback when a difficult task sounds more like a favor from a friend than a demand from a superior. As such, the Hephaestus crew’s communication and morale was shockingly well maintained.
It fascinated him.
He kept his eyes on her, when she spoke with the others. Shockingly diplomatic under layers of irony and long-winded jokes he didn’t care to understand. Even the way she handled Officer Lambert was more calculated than he’d realized. Not manipulative, not really. Just a woman who intended to stand her ground and wasn’t going to maneuver her methods for one man. She’d just learn to make them more malleable instead. Learn which jobs could be delivered with humor and which with light, simple sentences to get them both moving on as fast as possible.
It was still madness. She was still ridiculous, and painfully lax for someone in charge of a mission like this. And yet, the method was there. Visible and measurable.
And of course, he keeps that in mind when they cross paths.
Like right now.
He’s busying himself in his current laboratory with his recent pet project. Very few of his fellow crew members seem to appreciate the spiders, but he finds that benefits him when they make themselves more sparse as a result.
Except Lovelace, apparently. The door to the lab is pushed open and Lovelace welcomes herself in, shuts it behind her. Not that she has no right to. Selberg just has to maintain his own pleasant persona at the sudden new variable in his environment. Diplomatic, friendly.
(Hm. There’s a thought. Are they similar in that regard?
He hopes not.)
“Evening, doctor.” She cuts through the silence he’s been working in with a smile. It’s jarring. “Working hard or hardly working?”
The wordplay is moderately amusing, at least. “Just trying to modify proper environment for specimens, Captain,” he replies, holding up the container currently housing two admirable arachnids. “Hoping to make sure they will continue to sustain long-term living in current conditions.”
Lovelace hums in a way that tells him she’s not excited at the prospect of the spiders’ long-term health. He almost comments on it before the comms system buzzer cuts through the room. And he’s already reaching for it before he registers Lovelace’s rushed “Hey- uh- hold on- wait-“
He wishes he caught her first, because Lambert’s grating voice on the other side of staticky comms almost does him in. “Doctor Selberg, have you seen Captain Lovelace, is she in there with you?” he asks accusingly, voice raised. Of all the factors Selberg was willing to compromise with in his otherwise quiet environment, Officer Lambert is far from one of them.
He’s already half-shouting accusations when Selberg responds quickly and tiredly, “No captain here, Officer Lambert, apologies. Try docking station, maybe she hides there, goodbye!” And he takes his hands off the comms as Lambert’s voice cuts out, with a tired sigh.
From the other side of the lab, Lovelace laughs. It’s not loud but it comes straight from the chest, deep and genuine.
“Thanks for the save,” she says.
“Oh no, that was for me,” Selberg responds coolly. Maybe mildly amused. “I do not want you thinking you will be hiding here every time you decide to go poke the bear.”
“Boooo.” She glides her way over closer to his work station, props her head on her hand. “What, do you two have some sort of stick-in-the-mud solidarity? C’mon, I’m running out of spots.”
“I still do not understand your insistence with Officer Lambert,” Selberg says. “Surely pestering him until his face is red is far from beneficial for workflow.”
Lovelace waves her free hand noncommittally, “Please, I think we’d fall out of orbit and he’d still find a way to complete his make-believe checklist before anything else. He has his priorities, even above trying to find the most effective way to jam a copy of Pryce and Carter directly into my skull.”
Selberg looks up from his work long enough to fix her a look, and he’s only mildly put off by the fact that she seemed to have already been looking back at him before he made eye contact.
“My attempt to drag him kicking and screaming off his high horse is purely an off-hours thing,” she answers in response to the look. “So I want to see if he’s capable of laughter before the sun explodes, sue me. I think it’d be good for him.”
He rolls his eyes in an attempt to offset the smile that tugs at his lips. “And this is fun for you?”
He looks back at her and her eyes are still there, catching his. Her expression is one he can’t really clock, and that makes him pause. There’s a smile and a glint in her eyes when she shrugs and says, “What can I say? I like it when people… present a challenge.”
Something has just been placed.
Her intent has been implied, however subtly. Were he any other member of the crew, or even a version of himself just a few weeks ago, it would slip past him. But Elias Selberg did his due diligence to pay attention to the little things. He didn’t know what her intent was, but he knew it was there. He says nothing in response. He goes back to his work and is entirely aware of her gaze. It moves around, but it keeps straying back to him.
Those glinting eyes shift to the other things Selberg has on his workplace, tools and pieces of other experiments all correctly situated in their own positions on the tabletop to make space for his current work.
He feels her eyes intently shift up to him for a second before she curiously reaches for some of the labeled vials on the table.
She’s waiting for the next response.
He raises a hand forward in warning, in front of her own, and says levelly, “Captain, please. Delicate objects in here.”
And she smiles. And he knows why. He knows he’s given her the exact answer she wanted, by doing nothing more than exactly what he would have done in any circumstance of tampering with his workspace. And it lights up that curiosity in her.
He can feel it.
She lifts her hand up and, like she’s trying to prove a point, lightly taps the microscope in front of her instead. He looks her in those eyes that still focus on him in turn. And they still shine.
As usual, she draws no attention to her own calmly organized surveillance. She files the information away, whatever it was Selberg has given her. And smiles.
“Alright,” she says, pushing off toward the door. “Have fun with your spiders, and with being really boring.”
Selberg’s eyes follow her like hers follow him, until the door shuts, and then he blinks.
It is not often that Elias Selberg has the experience of being studied in return.