"Captain leave any special instructions in the Order Book?" he asked.
"Just the usual. Keep a tight watch and proceed cautiously."
"That new stoker," Mac said.
"Yeah?"
"I knew there was something wrong with him. He's got an old Marine uniform in his duffel."
I didn't say anything. Mac glanced over at me. "Well?"
"I don't know." I didn't.
I couldn't say I was surprised. It had to be something like that, about the stoker. The mark was on him, as I've said.
It was the Marines that did Earth's best dying. It had to be. They were trained to be the best we had, and they believed in their training. They were the ones who slashed back the deepest when the other side hit us. They were the ones who sallied out into the doomed spaces between the stars and took the war to the other side as well as any human force could ever hope to. They were always the last to leave an abandoned position. If Earth had been giving medals to members of her forces in the war, every man in the Corps would have had the Medal of Honor two and three times over. Posthumously. I don't believe there were ten of them left alive when Cope was shot. Cope was one of them. They were a kind of human being neither MacReidie nor I could hope to understand.
"You don't know," Mac said. "It's there. In his duffel. Damn it, we're going out to trade with his sworn enemies! Why do you suppose he wanted to sign on? Why do you suppose he's so eager to go!"