A world to die for

By Sam Carson
Titans respect men who create, and add to the betterment of others. Surely it is brave to be a Titan and muchly in love.
Another new name for these pages. Here's Sam Carson, veteran writer, TV and Radio editor, former roving newspaperman, and a father who is now going through an involuntary course in nuclear physics as he keeps up with his son, a chemical engineer and physicist at the University of Tennessee. And when Sam Carson sets foot on an alien planet the hills and valleys as well as the people seem to pulse with light and vitality. It's truly rarely that a writer seated behind his desk can summon such travel magic.
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.