A World To Die For by Sam Carson

They cut the Markab out of hyper space three parsecs from Deneb, on the North Galactic Polar course. Three men were aboard the space yacht. The alien ship they expected to find was a thousand times greater. By standards of the Galactic Service, the Markab was on a suicide mission.

Rik Guelf, the Markab’s pilot, conned sync parallax tapes, the robot master controls and set the screen charts. In came Captain Rodolph, stout and weary from twenty years of patrol service. Behind was Pere Danold, thin and lithe, with feral eyes and tight lips.

“I’m tossing out telar screens. If they’re breaking out of hyper, as the outposts charted, we won’t wait long.”

“You hope,” Danold’s sardonic voice jeered. “Your phantom ship paralyzes five ships of the line beyond Altair, so they send for us to blast it.”

Captain Rodolph looked the younger man over thoughtfully. “You volunteered back at Fleet Base Eighty.”

Danold settled to a bench, legs outstretched. “Why not? When the brass installs the newest trinogen gun in this dinky yacht,” he laughed mirthlessly, “one that can blast the ears off a cruiser at a thousand miles—well, I wanted a crack. Trouble was,” he added, “I thought we were after a Vegan, making a sneak attack.”

“You were told it was a mission beyond the call of duty,” Rodolph said sternly. “None of the ships meeting the alien had a trinogen battery. We can’t carry but one. We’ve got the fast drive. They figure we can get in one shot and duck.”

“I still say it would make sense to arm a fleet with trinogens,” Danold grumbled. “If that alien has a transparent ship five miles long, which I gravely doubt on both counts.”