Before you can get a picture of the commander--that is, as far as his
personality goes--you have to get a picture of the man physically.
He was enough taller than the average man to make him stand out in a
crowd, and he had broad shoulders and a narrow waist to match. He wasn't
heavy; his was the hard, tough, wirelike strength of a steel cable. The
planes of his tanned face showed that he feared neither exposure to the
elements nor exposure to violence; it was seamed with fine wrinkles and
the thin white lines that betray scar tissue. His mouth was
heavy-lipped, but firm, and the lines around it showed that it was
unused to smiling. The commander could laugh, and often did--a sort of
roaring explosion that burst forth suddenly whenever something struck
him as particularly uproarious. But he seldom just smiled; Commander
Frank rarely went halfway in anything.
His eyes, like his hair, were a deep brown--almost black, and they were
set well back beneath heavy brows that tended to frown most of the time.
Primarily, he was a military man. He had no particular flair for
science, and, although he had a firm and deep-seated grasp of the
essential philosophy of the Universal Assembly, he had no inclination
towards the kind of life necessarily led by those who would become
higher officers of the Assembly. It was enough that the Assembly was
behind him; it was enough to know that he was a member of the only race
in the known universe which had a working knowledge of the essential,
basic Truth of the Cosmos. With a weapon like that, even an ordinary
soldier had little to fear, and Commander Frank was far from being an
ordinary soldier.
He had spent nearly forty of his sixty years of life as an
explorer-soldier for the Emperor, and during that time he'd kept his
eyes open for opportunity. Every time his ship had landed, he'd watched
and listened and collected data. And now he knew.
If his data were correct--and he was certain that they were--he had
found his strike. All he needed was the men to take it.