By ALFRED COPPEL, Jr.
_Like shadows, the four ships of Flotilla
Blue Three slipped through the patrol cordon
of the powerful Martian Space Force. Only
the crazy luck of their mad, medal-bedecked
Commodore would ever get them out again._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories September 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Second Martian War was three weeks old when the officers of the
Terran destroyer _Darkside_ found themselves assembled in Control and
glumly aware that the Flotilla Commodore was sizing them up. It was
hard to tell just what he was thinking, but whatever it was they had
made up their minds to return it doubled in spades.
Having a Flotilla Commodore on board was actually a hardship,
particularly if as in the case of the _Darkside_--the ship elected was
unsuitable for a flagship. The Commodore needed cabin space for himself
and for his staff, and that meant that five of the _Darkside's_ nine
officers would have to double up on what space was left. On board a
destroyer that meant a good deal. But more important yet was the moral
effect on the ship's company.
With a flag officer on board the easy life of an informal vessel would
vanish and something of the formality of a big ship would take its
place. The officers and crew would feel themselves under the scrutiny
of higher authority no matter how hard the Commodore tried not to
interfere with the working of the ship. And it naturally followed that
the ship's commander would lose some of the joy in his independent
command. Thus a happy ship would become a tight one ... QED. It was a
situation as old as ships and men.
So there was little joy to be seen in the faces of Commander Scott and
his officers when Commodore Hartnett stepped through the valve followed
by his staff. Nor was their anything about Hartnett's appearance to
suggest that they had been anything but right about the manner in which
Flotilla Blue Three would be handled throughout the coming patrol. The
Commodore was a model of military correctness, a martinet moulded in
two Martian Wars and twenty years in space to a steely hardness that
was disconcerting.
They saw a lean, leathery man in his late forties, dressed in
immaculate Greys that sported an apalling amount of silver braid.
Four stripes were rare aboard destroyers. Eyes that matched the hard
grey of the uniform glittered in a spaceburned face, shaded by heavy
black brows. Young Ensign Blake's heart sank as he took in the set
of the shoulders and the smooth fit of the blouse. He made a mental
note of the fact that from now on there would be no more standing
watches in sweatshirt and sneakers. He also reflected sadly on the many
pleasure jaunts that Scott was wont to let him make in the _Darkside's_
skeeter-boat, and bade a mental farewell to those happy moments. The
set of the Commodore's long jaw instilled more respect for Space Force
Regs in the young reservist than all the ten orientation lectures
he had received at Hamilton Spaceport. Plainly there was a new era
beginning for the TRS _Darkside_!
There wasn't a man on board who hadn't heard of Hartnett, of course. A
gambler in combat, he had always managed to come out ahead of the game.
His record was the record of practically every major achievement of the
Force. Most of it could be read from the four rows of ribbons under his
Command Pilot's sunburst.
There was the pale blue of the Terran Honor Medal that he'd won by
ramming a Martian dreadnaught of the Diemos class with his crippled
corvette off Io in the first Cat war. There was the red bar of the DSM
received for leading the first deep-space expedition to reach Ariel
and Oberon in the Uranian system ... that, before Blake had been born.
And the rainbow colored ribbon of the old UN patrol, the First Martian
Victory Medal, the Venerian Exploratory Medal, the Spatial Cross; four
rows of them ending up with the General Service and Martian Occupation
Ribbon.
To say, that it impressed the _Darkside's_ green personnel would be an
understatement. The decorations showed Hartnett to be the gambler ...
the lucky gambler ... that he was said to be.
All the way out to Luna Base from Hamilton Spaceport, the crew of the
flagship had been muttering about the "damned brass-hat" who was going
to disrupt the pleasant life of their beloved ship with his unwanted,
high-ranking, stinking, presence, but the iron-hard reality of the man
and the aura of confidence that emanated from him as he stood on the
steel deck of the Control, spiked their guns too quickly. From the
moments Hartnett stepped aboard, reflected Commander Scott bitterly,
the ship tightened up. From here on in it was Hartnett's ship and there
wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it.
* * * * *
Introductions were short and to the point. Most of the ship's officers
had met Hartnett's staff at the Base Officer's Club after the Captain's
Council, where the commanders of the four ships that made up Flotilla
Blue Three had met their Commodore for the first time. Scott sighed as
he thought of the evident relief on Lieutenant Morrow's face when he
had found that the flagship was to be the _Darkside_ and not his own
ship, the _Lysander_.
"That Hartnett will take over your ship, Scott," Morrow had told him.
"He can't help it. From the moment he steps aboard, it'll be his baby."
And Hartnett was a gambler....
Scott presented his officers to the Commodore almost jealously,
starting with the Executive, Lieutenant Commander Chavez and Lieutenant
Horowitz, the Tactical Physicist; and ending up with Ensign Blake, the
Junior Gunnery Officer, who was startled from his nervous fidgeting by
the sound of his name.
"A reservist," was Hartnett's only comment, and though it was said in
a friendly tone, Blake flushed furiously and wondered if it stuck like
straw out of his ears.
"Mr. Blake is the Charles Blake who won the New York to Ley City
amateur skeeter-boat race last year, Sir," explained Scott.
The Commodore nodded vaguely, his eyes wandering over the burnished
chrome and steel of the Control panels. "Good sport, small ship racing,
Mr. Blake," he commented.