PREVIEW OF PERIL
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!