Five thousand green space-cadets, manning
the mighty _Albion_ on their shake-down cruise,
heard that grim message from HQ: "_War with
Xantu! Return immediately to Terra Base!_"
Which posed a problem ... for lurking in
starry battleground, somewhere between Earth
and the doom-ship, was half the Xantu fleet!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The bulkheads of the mighty battleship rocked with the song welling
from five thousand throats. As the young, eager voices swelled into
the chorus of "The Spaceman's Hymn," Vice-Admiral Jack Harrigan felt a
lump grow in his own throat. Captain Mike O'Brien, short, muscular and
definitely Irish, joined the admiral at the balcony hatch; together
they looked down upon the huge ship's auditorium.
"It's a long, long way to the Milky Way ..." the chorus rose, fell,
faded and died.
Harrigan nodded to O'Brien and the two men matched strides down the
passageway.
"Something on your mind, Jack?" O'Brien asked.
"Oh, I don't know, Mike. I just got to thinking about the old days,
I guess, hearing those kids singing. The Force is all glory to them;
color, ceremony, power, flitting around the Galaxy like this. Cream
of the crop, they are, and every last one of them fought to get in
the Force. But I wonder how they'd face up to the other side of this
business?"
"Combat?" O'Brien screwed up his face.
"Yeh boy. Combat like we saw, with our backs to the wall and
nine-tenths of the Galaxy howling for our heart's blood. Wonder if
they'd change their minds about the force--" he jerked his thumb back
towards the auditorium--"if it came again?"
"Dunno." Mike shrugged. "Maybe old Fitzsimmons wondered about us the
same way when we went on our shake-down cruise. We were a sad bunch,
I'll admit. But we didn't pan out too bad, did we Jack?"
The two officers had reached the observation deck. The Milky Way
stretched a hazy filament across the heavens. Harrigan drew a long
breath, hooked his thumbs in his belt and smiled.
"No, Mike, not bad at all, if I do say so. It was rugged while we were
going through it, I suppose. But things have been quiet for so long
now ... damn it, we did have fun, didn't we Mike?"
Mike grinned crookedly. "Fun is right. Remember the time Shorty
Michaels caught those two Xantu ships flat-footed behind the Coal Sack?"
"Yeah. Blew 'em to Hell and back and found out later they were the two
strongest ships in the Xantu fleet. If they had seen him first ...
brother, he shook for a week after they told him."