Strykalski sighed, still thinking of his sleek Ganymede. "She'll carry the mail, I suppose. And that's about all that's expected of her."
Cob shrugged philosophically. "Better than tanking that stinking rocket fuel, anyway. Deep space?"
Strike shook his head. "Venus-Mars."
Cob scratched his chin speculatively. "Perihelion run. Hot work."
Strike was again looking at the spaceship's unprepossessing exterior. "A surge-circuit monitor, so help me."
Cob nodded agreement. "The last of her class."
And she was not an inspiring sight. The fantastically misnamed Aphrodite was a surge-circuit monitor of twenty guns built some ten years back in the period immediately preceding the Ionian Subjugation Incident. She had been designed primarily for atomics, with a surge-circuit set-up for interstellar flight. At least that was the planner's view. In those days, interstellar astrogation was in its formative stage, and at the time of the Aphrodite's launching the surge-circuit was hailed as the very latest in space drives.
Her designer, Harlan Hendricks, had been awarded a Legion of Merit for her, and every silver-braided admiral in the Fleet had dreamed of hoisting his flag on one of her class. There had been three. The Artemis, the Andromeda, and the prototype ... old Aphrodisiac. The three vessels had gone into action off Callisto after the Phobos Raid had set off hostilities between the Ionians and the Solarian Combine.
All three were miserable failures.