IV

At 1630 hours Commander Technician Harker slipped on the earset, threw

over a transmitting switch, and monotoned the routine verbal message.

"Base to George Easy Peter One.... Base to George Easy Peter One....

Do you hear me George Easy Peter One.... Do you hear me George Easy

Peter One ... reply please ... reply please." Nothing came from his

earphones, but bursts of crackling interference, until he tried the

'copters next, and "George Easy Peter Two" and "George Easy Peter Three"

reported in. They were operating near the base.

He tried "One" again, just in case.

"Base to George Easy Peter One.... Base to George Easy Peter One.... Do

you hear me.... Do you hear me ... out."

A scratching whisper resolved over the interference. Harker's face

wore a stunned look, but he quickly flung over a second switch and the

scratching voice blared over the mother ship's entire address system.

Men dropped their work throughout the great hull, and clustered around

the speakers.

"George One.... Base ... hear you ... rocket crashed ... overland ...

present strength ... supplies ... drop supplies."

Interference surged back and drowned the whispering voice, while

through Odysseus' hull a ragged cheer grew and gathered volume. Harker

shut off the address system and strained over his crackling earphones,

but nothing more came in response to his radio calls.

He glanced up and found the Warning Room jammed with technicians,

science section members, officers, men in laboratory smocks, or greasy

overalls, or spotless Rocket Service uniforms, watching intently his

own strained face as he tried to get through. Commander Chapman

looked haggard, and Harker remembered that some one had once said that

Chapman's young sister was the wife of the medical technician who'd

gone out with Patrol Rocket One.

Harker finally pulled off the earphones reluctantly and set them on the

table before him. "That's all. You heard everything they said over the

P.A. system. Nothing more is coming through."

* * * * *

Night came, another day, night again, and they came finally to the

plateau's end, and stood staring from a windy escarpment across an

endless roof of rainforest far below, grey green under the continuous

roof of lead-colored clouds. Hague, standing back a little, watched

them. A thin line of ragged men along the rim peering mournfully out

across that endless expanse for a gleam that might be the distant hull

of Odysseus, the mother ship. A damp wind fluttered their rags and

plastered them against gaunt bodies.

Clark and Sampler were conferring in shouts.

"Will the tank make it down this grade?" Clark wanted to know.

For once, Sergeant Sampler's mobile, merry face was grim.

"I don't know, but we'll sure try. Be ready to cut that cart loose if

the tank starts to slip."

Drag ropes were fastened to the cart, a man stationed at the tank

hitch, and Sampler sent his tank lurching forward over the edge, and

it slanted down at a sharp angle. Hague, holding a drag rope, set his

heels and allowed the tank's weight to pull him forward over the rim;

and the tank, cart, and muddy figures hanging to drag ropes began

descending the steep gradient. Bormann, just ahead of the Lieutenant,

strained back at the rope and turned a tight face over his shoulder.

"She's slipping faster!"

The tank was picking up speed, and Hague heard the clash of gears as

Sampler tried to fight the downward pull of gravity. Gears ground,

and Sampler forced the whippet straight again, but the downward slide

was increasing. Hague was flattened under Bormann, heels digging, and

behind him he could hear Sergeant Brian cursing, struggling to keep

flat against the downward pull.

The tank careened sideways again, slipped, and Whittaker's white face

popped from her turret.

"She's going," he screamed.

A drag rope parted. Clark sprang like a madman between tank and cart,

and cut the hitch. The tank, with no longer sufficient restraining

weight, tipped with slow majesty outward, then rolled out and down,

bouncing, smashing as if in a slow motion film, shedding parts at

each crushing contact. It looked like a toy below them, still rolling

and gathering speed, when Hague saw Whittaker's body fly free, a tiny

ragdoll at that distance, and the tank was lost to view when it bounced

off a ledge and went floating down through space.

Clark signalled them forward, and they inched the supply cart downward

on the drag ropes, legs trembling with strain, and their nerves

twitching at the memory of Whittaker's chalky face peering from the

falling turret. It was eight hours before they reached the bottom,

reeling with exhaustion, set a guard, and tumbled into their shelter

tents. Outside, Hague could hear Clark pacing restlessly, trying to

assure himself that he'd been right to cut the tank free, that there'd

been no chance to save Whittaker and Sampler when the tank began to

slide.

Hague lay in his little tent listening to the footsteps splash past

in muddy Venusian soil, and was thankful that he hadn't had to make

the decision. He'd been saving three cigarettes in an oilskin packet,

and he drew one carefully from the wrapping now, lit it, and inhaled

deeply. Could he have done what Clark did--break that hitch? He still

didn't know when he took a last lung-filling pull at the tiny stub of

cigarette and crushed it out carefully.

As dawn filtered through the cloud layer, they were rolling shelter

tents and buckling on equipment. Clark's face was a worn mask when he

talked with Hague, and his fingers shook over his pack buckles.

"There are thirteen of us. Six men will pull the supply cart, and six

guard, in four hour shifts. You and I will alternate command at guard."

He was silent for a moment, then watched Hague's face intently as he

spoke again.

"It'll be a first grade miracle if any of us get through. Hague,

you--you know I had to cut that tank free." His voice rose nervously.

"You know that! You're an officer."

"Yeah, I guess you did." Hague couldn't say it any better, and he

turned away and fussed busily with the bars holding the portable Sonar

detection unit to the supply cart.

They moved off with Hague leaning into harness pulling the supply

cart bumpily ahead. Clark stumbled jerkily at the head, with Blake, a

lean, silent ghost beside him, rifle in hand. The cart came next with

Hague, Bormann, Sergeant Brian, Crosse, Lenkranz and Sewell leaning

in single file against its weight. At the rear marched photographer

Whitcomb, Hirooka with his maps, and Balistierri, each carrying a

rifle. The big Swede Swenson was last in line, peering warily back into

the rainforest shadows. The thirteen men wound Indian file from sight

of the flatheaded reptilian thing, clutching a sheaf of bronze arrows,

that watched them.

* * * * *

Hague had lost count of days again when he looked up into the shadowy

forest roof, his feet finding their way unconsciously through the thin

mud, his ears registering automatically the murmurs of talk behind him,

the supply cart's tortured creaking, and the continuous Sonar drone.

The air felt different, warmer than its usual steam bath heat, close

and charged with expectancy, and the forest seemed to crouch in waiting

with the repressed silence of a hunting cat.

Crosse yelled thinly from the rear of the file, and they all halted

to listen, the hauling crew dropping their harness thankfully. Hague

turned back and saw Crosse's thin arm waving a rifle overhead, then

pointing down the trail. The Lieutenant listened carefully until

he caught the sound, a thin call, the sound of a horn mellowed by

distance.

The men unthinkingly moved in close and threw wary looks into the

forest ways around them.

"Move further ahead, Hague. Must be more lizard-men." Clark swore, with

tired despair. "All right, let's get moving and make it fast."

The cart creaked ahead again, moving faster this time, and the snicking

of rifle bolts came to Hague. He moved swiftly ahead on the trail and

glanced up again, saw breaks in the forest roof, and realized that the

huge trees were pitching wildly far above.

"Look up," he yelled, "wind coming!"

The wind came suddenly, striking with stone wall solidity. Hague

sprinted to the cart, and the struggling body of men worked it off

the trail, and into a buttress angle of two great tree roots, lashing

it there with nylon ropes. The wind velocity increased, smashing torn

branches overhead, and ripping at the men who lay with their heads well

down in the mud. Tiny animals were blown hurtling past, and once a

great spider came flailing in cartwheel fashion, then smashed brokenly

against a tree.

The wind drone rose in volume, the air darkened, and Hague lost

sight of the other men from behind his huddled shelter against a

wall like root. The great trees twisted with groaning protest, and

thunderous crashes came downward through the forest, with sometimes

the faint squeak of a dying or frightened animal. The wind halted for

a breathless, hushed moment of utter stillness, broken only by the

dropping of limbs and the scurry of small life forms--then came the

screaming fury from the opposite direction.

For a moment, the gunnery officer thought he'd be torn from the root

to which his clawing fingers clung. Its brutal force smashed breath

from Hague's lungs and held him pinned in his corner until he struggled

choking for air as a drowning man does. It seemed that he couldn't draw

breath, that the air was a solid mass from which he could no longer get

life. Then the wind stopped as suddenly as it had come, leaving dazed

quiet. As he stumbled back to the cart, Hague saw crushed beneath a

thigh-sized limb a feebly moving reptilian head; and the dying eyes of

the lizard-man were still able to stare at him in cold malevolence.

The supply cart was still intact, roped between buttressing roots to

belt knives driven into the tough wood. Hague and Clark freed it,

called a hasty roll, and the march was resumed at a fast pace through

cooled, cleaner air. They could no longer hear horn sounds; but the

grim knowledge that lizard-men were near them lent strength, and Hague

led as rapidly as he dared, listening carefully to the Sonar's drone

behind him, altering his course when the sound faded, and straightening

out when it grew in volume.

A day slipped by and another, and the cart rolled ahead through thin

greasy mud on the forest floor, with the Sonar's drone mingled with

murmuring men's voices talking of food. It was the universal topic, and

they carefully worked out prolonged menus each would engorge when they

reached home. They forgot heat, insect bites, the sapping humidity, and

talked of food--steaming roasts, flanked by crystal goblets of iced

wine, oily roasted nuts, and lush, crisp green salads.

V

Hague, again marching ahead with Balistierri, broke into the

comparatively bright clearing, and was blinded for a moment by the

sudden, cloud-strained light after days of forest darkness. As their

eyes accommodated to the lemon-colored glare, he and Balistierri

sighted the animals squatting beneath low bushes that grew thickly in

the clearing. They were monkey-like primates with golden tawny coats,

a cockatoo crest of white flaring above dog faces. The monkeys stared

a moment, the great white crests rising doubtfully, ivory canine teeth

fully three inches long bared.

They'd been feeding on fruit that dotted the shrub-filled clearing;

but now one screamed a warning, and they sprang into vines that made a

matted wall on every side. The two rifles cracked together again, and

three fantastically colored bodies lay quiet, while the rest of the

troop fled screaming into tree tops and disappeared. At the blast of

sound, a fluttering kaleidoscope of color swept up about the startled

rocketeers, and they stood blinded, while mad whorls of color whirled

around them in a miniature storm.

"Giant butterflies," Balistierri was screaming in ecstasy. "Look at

them! Big as a dove!"

Hague watched the bright insects coalesce into one agitated mass of

vermillion, azure, metallic green, and sulphur yellow twenty feet

overhead. The pulsating mass of hues resolved itself into single

insects, with wings large as dinnerplates, and they streamed out of

sight over the forest roof.

"What were they?" he grinned at Balistierri. "Going to name them after

Bormann?"

The slight zoologist still watched the spot where they'd vanished.

"Does it matter much what I call them? Do you really believe any one

will ever be able to read this logbook I'm making?" He eyed the gunnery

officer bleakly, then, "Well, come on. We'd better skin these monks.

They're food anyway."

Hague followed Balistierri, and they stood looking down at the golden

furred primates. The zoologist knelt, fingered a bedraggled white

crest, and remarked, "These blast cartridges don't leave much meat, do

they? Hardly enough for the whole party." He pulled a tiny metal block,

with a hook and dial, from his pocket, looped the hook through a tendon

in the monkey's leg and lifted the dead animal.

"Hmmm. Forty-seven pounds. Not bad." He weighed each in turn, made

measurements, and entered these in his pocket notebook.

The circle around Sewell, who presided over the cook unit, was merry

that night. The men's eyes were bright in the heater glow as they

stuffed their shrunken stomachs with monkey meat and the fruits the

monkeys had been eating when Hague and Balistierri surprised them.

Swenson and Crosse and Whitcomb, the photographer, overate and were

violently sick; but the others sat picking their teeth contentedly in a

close circle. Bormann pulled his harmonica from his shirt pocket, and

the hard, silvery torrent of music set them to singing softly. Hague

and Blake, the bacteriologist, stood guard among the trees.

At dawn, they were marching again, stepping more briskly over tiny

creeks, through green-tinted mud, and the wet heat. At noon, they heard

the horn again, and Clark ordered silence and a faster pace. They

swung swiftly, eating iron rations as they marched. Hague leaned into

his cart harness and watched perspiration staining through Bormann's

shirted back just ahead of him. Behind, Sergeant Brian tugged manfully,

and growled under his breath at buzzing insects, slapping occasionally

with a low howl of muted anguish. Helen, the skin bird, rode on

Bormann's shoulder, staring back into Hague's face with questioning

chirps; and Hague was whistling softly between his teeth at her, when

Bormann stopped suddenly and Hague slammed into him. Helen took flight

with a startled squawk, and Clark came loping back to demand quiet.

Bormann stared at the two officers, his young-old face blank with

surprise.

"I'm, I'm shot," he stuttered, and stared wonderingly at the thing

thrusting from the side opening in his chest armor. It was one of the

fragile bronze arrows, gleaming metallically in the forest gloom.

Hague cursed, and jerked free of the cart harness.

"Here, I'll get it free." He tugged at the shaft, and Bormann's face

twisted. Hague stepped back. "Where's Sewell? This thing must be

barbed."

"Back off the trail! Form a wide circle around the cart, but stay under

cover! Fight 'em on their own ground!" Clark was yelling, and the men

clustered about the cart faded into forest corridors.

Hague and Sewell, left alone, dragged Bormann's limp length beneath the

metal cart. Hague leaped erect again, man-handled the pneumatic gun off

the cart and onto the trail, spun the charger crank, and lay down in

firing position. Behind him, Sewell grunted, "He's gone. Arrow poison

must have paralyzed his diaphragm and chest muscles."

"Okay. Get up here and handle the ammunition." Hague's face was savage

as the medical technician crawled into position beside him and opened

an ammunition carrier.

"Watch the trail behind me," Hague continued, slamming up the top cover

plate and jerking a belt through the pneumatic breech. "When I yell

charge, spin the charger crank; and when I yell off a number, set the

meter arrow at that number." He snapped the cover plate shut and locked

it.

"The other way! They're coming the other way!" Sewell lumbered to his

knees, and the two heaved the gun around. A blowgun arrow rattled off

the cart body above them, and gobbling yells filtered among the trees

with an answering crack of explosive cartridges. A screaming knot

of grey figures came sprinting down on the cart. Hague squeezed the

pneumatic's trigger, the gun coughed, and blue-fire-limned lizard-men

crumpled in the trail mud.

"Okay, give 'em a few the other way."

The two men horsed the gun around and sent a buzzing flock of explosive

loads down the forest corridor opening ahead of the cart. They began

firing carefully down other corridors opening off the trail, aiming

delicately lest their missiles explode too close and the concussion

kill their own men; but they worked a blasting circle of destruction

that smashed the great trees back in the forest and made openings in

the forest roof. Blue fire flashed in the shadows and froze weird

tableaus of screaming lizard-men and hurtling mud, branches, and great

splinters of wood.

An exulting yell burst behind them. Hague saw Sewell stare over his

shoulder, face contorted, then the big medical technician sprang to his

feet. Hague rolled hard, pulling his belt knife, and saw Sewell and

a grey man-shape locked in combat above him, saw leathery grey claws

drive a bronze knife into the medic's unarmored throat; and then the

gunnery officer was on his feet, knife slashing, and the lizard-man

fell across the prone Sewell. An almost audible silence fell over the

forest, and Hague saw Rocketeers filtering back onto the cart trail,

rifles cautiously extended at ready.

"Where's Clark?" he asked Lenkranz. The grey-haired metals man gazed

back dully.

"I haven't seen him since we left the trail. I was with Swenson."

The others moved in, and Hague listed the casualties. Sewell, Bormann,

and Lieutenant Clark. Gunnery Officer Clarence Hague was now in

command. That the Junior Lieutenant now commanded Ground Expeditionary

Patrol Number One trickled into his still numb brain; and he wondered

for a moment what the Base Commander would think of their chances if he

knew. Then he took stock of his little command.

There was young Crosse, his face twitching nervously. There was Blake,

the tall, quiet bacteriologist; Lenkranz, the metals man; Hirooka,

the Nisei; Balistierri; Whitcomb, the photographer, with a battered

Hasselblad still dangling by its neck cord against his armored chest.

Swenson was still there, the big Swede crewman; and imperturbable

Sergeant Brian, who was now calmly cleaning the pneumatic gun's loading

mechanism. And, Helen, Bormann's skin bird, fluttering over the ration

cart, beneath which Bormann and Sewell lay in the mud.

"Crosse, Lenkranz, burial detail. Get going." It was Hague's first

order as Commander. He thought the two looked most woebegone of the

party, and figured digging might loosen their nerves.

Crosse stared at him, and then sat suddenly against a tree hole.

"I'm not going to dig. I'm not going to march. This is crazy. We're

going to get killed. I'll wait for it right here. Why do we keep

walking and walking when we're going to die anyway?" His rising voice

cracked, and he burst into hysterical laughter. Sergeant Brian rose

quietly from his gun cleaning, jerked Crosse to his feet, and slapped

him into quiet. Then he turned to Hague.

"Shall I take charge of the burial detail, sir?"

Hague nodded; and suddenly his long dislike of the iron-hard Sergeant

melted into warm liking and admiration. Brian was the man who'd get

them all through.

The Sergeant knotted his dark brows truculently at Hague. "And I don't

believe Crosse meant what he said. He's a very brave man. We all get a

little jumpy. But he's a good man, a good Rocketeer."

* * * * *

Three markers beside the trail, and a pile of dumped equipment marked

the battle ground when the cart swung forward again. Hague had dropped

all the recording instruments, saving only Whitcomb's exposed films,

the rations, rifle ammunition, and logbooks that had been kept by

different members of the science section. At his command, Sergeant

Brian reluctantly smashed the pneumatic gun's firing mechanism, and

left the gun squatting on its tripod beside charger and shell belts.

With the lightened load, Hague figured three men could handle the cart,

and he took his place with Brian and Crosse in the harness. The others

no longer walked in the trail, but filtered between great root-flanges

and tree boles on either side, guiding themselves by the Sonar's hum.

They left no more trail markers, and Hague cautioned them against

making any unnecessary noise.

"No trail markers behind us. This mud is watery enough to hide

footprints in a few minutes. We're making no noise, and we'll drop no

more refuse. All they can hear will be the Sonar, and that won't carry

far."

On the seventy-first day of the march, Hague squatted, fell almost to

the ground, and grunted, "Take ten."

He stared at the stained, ragged scarecrows hunkered about him in

forest mud.

"Why do we do it?" he asked no one in particular. "Why do we keep

going, and going, and going? Why don't we just lie down and die? That

would be the easiest thing I could think of right now." He knew that

Rocket Service officers didn't talk that way, but he didn't feel like

an officer, just a tired, feverish, bone-weary man.

"Have we got a great glowing tradition to inspire us?" he snarled. "No,

we're just the lousy rocketeers that every other service arm plans to

absorb. We haven't a Grant or a John Paul Jones to provide an example

in a tough spot. The U.S. Rocket Service has nothing but the memory of

some ships that went out and never came back; and you can't make a

legend out of men who just plain vanish."

There was silence, and it looked as if the muddy figures were too

exhausted to reply. Then Sergeant Brian spoke.

"The Rocketeers have a legend, sir."

"What legend, Brian?" Hague snorted.

"Here is the legend, sir. 'George Easy Peter One'."

Hague laughed hollowly, but the Sergeant continued as if he hadn't

heard.

"Ground Expeditionary Patrol One--the outfit a planet couldn't lick.

Venus threw her grab bag at us, animals, swamps, poison plants,

starvation, fever, and we kept right on coming. She just made us

smarter, and tougher, and harder to beat. And we'll blast through these

lizard-men and the jungle, and march into Base like the whole U.S.

Armed Forces on review."

"Let's go," Hague called, and they staggered up again, nine gaunt

bundles of sodden, muddy rags, capped in trim black steel helmets with

cheek guards down. The others slipped off the trail, and Hague, Brian,

and Crosse pulled on the cart harness and lurched forward. The cart

wheel hub jammed against a tree bole, and as they strained blindly

ahead to free it, a horn note drifted from afar.

"Here they come again," Crosse groaned.

"They--won't be--up--with us--for days," Hague grunted, while he threw

his weight in jerks against the tow line. The cart lurched free with

a lunge, and all three shot forward and sprawled raging in the muddy

trail.

They sat wiping mud from their faces, when Brian stopped suddenly,

ripped off his helmet and threw it aside, then sat tensely forward in

an attitude of strained listening. Hague had time to wonder dully if

the man's brain had snapped, before he crawled to his feet.

"Shut up, and listen," Brian was snarling. "Hear it! Hear it! It's a

klaxon! Way off, about every two seconds!"

Hague tugged off his heavy helmet, and strained every nerve to listen.

Over the forest silence it came with pulse-like regularity, a tiny

whisper of sound.

He and Brian stared bright-eyed at each other, not quite daring to say

which they were thinking. Crosse got up and leaned like an empty sack

against the cartwheel with an inane questioning look.

"What is it?" When they stared at him without speaking, still listening

intently, "It's the Base. That's it, it's the Base!"

Something choked Hague's throat, then he was yelling and firing his

rifle. The rest came scuttling out of the forest shadow, faces breaking

into wild grins, and they joined Hague, the forest rocking with

gunfire. They moved forward, and Hirooka took up a thin chant:

"Oooooooh, the Rocketeers

have shaggy ears.

They're dirty ----."

The rest of their lyrics wouldn't look well in print; but where the

Rocketeers have gone, on every frontier of space, the ribald song is

sung. The little file moved down the trail toward the klaxon sound.

Behind them, something moved in the gloom, resolved itself into a

reptile-headed, man-like thing, that reared a small wooden trumpet to

fit its mouth, a soft horn note floated clear; and other shapes became

visible, sprinting forward, flitting through the gloom....

* * * * *

When a red light flashed over Chapman's desk, he flung down a sheaf of

papers and hurried down steel-walled corridors to the number one shaft.

A tiny elevator swept him to Odysseus' upper side, where a shallow pit

had been set in the ship's scarred skin, and a pneumatic gun installed.

Chapman hurried past the gun and crew to stand beside a listening

device. The four huge cones loomed dark against the clouds, the

operator in their center was a blob of shadow in the dawnlight, where

he huddled listening to a chanting murmur that came from his headset.

Blake came running onto the gundeck; Bjornson, and the staff officers

were all there.

"Cut it into the Address system," Chapman told the Listener operator

excitedly; and the faint sounds were amplified through the whole ship.

From humming Address amplifiers, the ribald words broke in a hoarse

melody.

"The rocketeers have shaggy ears,

They're dirty ----"

The rest described in vivid detail the prowess of rocketeers in general.

"How far are they?" Chapman demanded.

The operator pointed at a dial, fingered a knob that altered his

receiving cones split-seconds of angle. "They're about twenty-five

miles, sir."

Chapman turned to the officers gathered in an exultant circle behind

him.

"Branch, here's your chance for action. Take thirty men, our whippet

tank, and go out to them. Bjornson, get the 'copters aloft for air

cover."

Twenty minutes later, Chapman watched a column assemble beneath the

Odysseus' gleaming side, and march into the jungle, with the 'copters

buzzing west a moment later, like vindictive dragon flies.

Breakfast was brought to the men clustered at Warnings equipment, and

to Chapman at his post on the gundeck. The day ticked away, the parade

ground vanished in thickening clots of night; and a second dawn found

the watchers still at their posts, listening to queer sounds that

trickled from the speakers. The singing had stopped; but once they

heard a note that a horn might make, and several times gobbling yells

that didn't sound human. George One was fighting, they knew now. The

listeners picked up crackling of rifle fire, and when that died there

was silence.

The watchers heard a short cheer that died suddenly, as the relief

column and George One met; and they waited and watched. Branch, who

headed the relief column communicated with the mother ship by the

simple expedient of yelling, the sound being picked up by the listeners.

"They're coming in, Chapman. I'm coming behind to guard their rear.

They've been attacked by some kind of lizard-men. I'm not saying a

thing--see for yourself when they arrive."

Hours rolled past, while they speculated in low tones, the hush that

held the ship growing taut and strained.

"Surely Branch would have told us if anything was wrong, or if the

records were lost," Chapman barked angrily. "Why did he have to be so

damned melodramatic?"

"Look, there--through the trees. A helmet glinted!" The laconic

Bjornson had thrown dignity to the winds, and capered like a drunken

goat, as Rindell described it later.

Chapman stared down at the jungle edging the parade ground and caught a

movement.

A man with a rifle came through the fringe and stood eying the ship

in silence, and then came walking forward across the long, cindered

expanse. From this height, he looked to Chapman like a child's lead

soldier, a ragged, muddy, midget scarecrow. Another stir in the trees,

and one more man, skulking like an infantry-flanker with rifle at

ready. He, too, straightened and came walking quietly forward. A file

of three men came next, leaning into the harness of a little metal

cart that bumped drunkenly as they dragged it forward. An instant of

waiting, and two more men stole from the jungle, more like attacking

infantry than returning heroes. Chapman waited, and no more came. This

was all.

"My God, no wonder Branch wouldn't tell us. There were thirty-two of

them." Rindell's voice was choked.

"Yes, only seven." Chapman remembered his field glasses and focused

them on the seven approaching men. "Lieutenant Hague is the only

officer. And they're handing us the future of the U.S. Rocket Service

on that little metal cart."

The quiet shattered and a yelling horde of men poured from Odysseus'

hull and engulfed the tattered seven, sweeping around them, yelling,

cheering, and carrying them toward the mother ship.

Chapman looked a little awed as he turned to the officers behind him.

"Well they did it. We forward these records, and we've proven that we

can do the job." He broke into a grin. "What am I talking about? Of

course we did the job. We'll always do the job. We're the Rocketeers,

aren't we?"