“See, Angel? That one with the scars? That’s Sandy Stake, who won at Rigel. And there’s Crosscut Louis Baranak. He smashed their main fleet off Betelgeux. Lord, look at them trying to keep those bellies sucked in and look stern and heroic. Sure, I know. So are dinosaurs.”
The warning drift of green smoke shows from the blockhouse. The people of the world count slowly. “Goodby, goodby.” WHOOOOM! Adios, muchachos.
On the ship popular vote has put Red Mike Hallison in charge. He sets the constant at fifty lights, makes an assignment list, calls a meeting in the main lounge in officer’s country, on this ship where every man is an officer.
Thirteen pairs of somber eyes, unsteady hands. Stolid dejection.
“Damn every neat, tidy, well-washed little soul of the universe,” Irish McGuire says.
“Like old shoes,” says Spick Mendez, picking his teeth with a thick thumbnail.
Mike Hallison sits and waits. There is no hot sharp anger. Anger is dulled, heavy, hopeless.
Then Red Mike speaks. “Remember the little fracas on the near side of Antares?”
“Sure,” says Manny Schota. “You were ready to run when I came into range.”
“The reason I bring it up,” says Red Mike, “is because I still think I saw a stranger over there. A ship that was a perfect sphere, red gold when it picked up the reflection of the jolts we sent at them. After we licked ’em, the, stranger wasn’t around. I’ve always had a notion to go beyond Antares and see what I could find.”
A dim awakening in dulled eyes.
“Maybe they’d give us a scrap,” Tane says with a glimmer of hope.
“We can do one of two things,” says Red Mike. “We can go along at this speed until there’s nobody left to give the last man space burial. Or we can go a-hunting.”
A lift of heavy heads and a narrowing of the eyes.
“Hunting? How’d you like to hear a volley off the forward jolt stations again, Sandy? Now you’re saying something. Maybe this is a break, after all.”
Red Mike cuts through the babble. “Okay, lads. We’ll step up the speed and go hunting. Check the armament. See what we’ll have to clear away for battle stations, if we ever find them out in that haystack of stars. Hop to it.”
They go out into the corridors leading fore and aft from the lounge. There is a high note of excitement in their voices. Red Mike smiles. At a distance their voices sound... young. That’s it. Young.
Still smiling he selects a red apple from one of the big baskets of fruit thoughtfully provided by the membership of the Tamarack Club.
He hums at first; then, his voice muffled by a large bite of apple, he sings hoarsely, “Never die, never die. They only blow away.”
