"I don't know." I didn't.
I couldn't say I was surprised. It had to be something like that, about
the stoker. The mark was on him, as I've said.
It was the Marines that did Earth's best dying. It had to be. They were
trained to be the best we had, and they believed in their training. They
were the ones who slashed back the deepest when the other side hit us.
They were the ones who sallied out into the doomed spaces between the
stars and took the war to the other side as well as any human force
could ever hope to. They were always the last to leave an abandoned
position. If Earth had been giving medals to members of her forces in
the war, every man in the Corps would have had the Medal of Honor two
and three times over. Posthumously. I don't believe there were ten of
them left alive when Cope was shot. Cope was one of them. They were a
kind of human being neither MacReidie nor I could hope to understand.
"You don't know," Mac said. "It's there. In his duffel. Damn it, we're
going out to trade with his sworn enemies! Why do you suppose he wanted
to sign on? Why do you suppose he's so eager to go!"
"You think he's going to try to start something?"
"Think! That's exactly what he's going for. One last big alley fight.
One last brawl. When they cut him down--do you suppose they'll stop with
him? They'll kill us, and then they'll go in and stamp Earth flat! You
know it as well as I do."
"I don't know, Mac," I said. "Go easy." I could feel the knots in my
stomach. I didn't want any trouble. Not from the stoker, not from Mac.
None of us wanted trouble--not even Mac, but he'd cause it to get rid of
it, if you follow what I mean about his kind of man.
Mac hit the viewport with his fist. "Easy! Easy--nothing's easy. I hate
this life," he said in a murderous voice. "I don't know why I keep
signing on. Mars to Centaurus and back, back and forth, in an old rust
tub that's going to blow herself up one of these--"
* * * * *
Daniels called me on the phone from Communications. "Turn up your
Intercom volume," he said. "The stoker's jamming the circuit."