The Dark Side of Antri
By Sewell Peaslee Wright
Commander John Hanson relates an interplanetary adventure illustrating the splendid Service spirit of the men of the Special Patrol.
An officer of the Special Patrol Service dropped in to see me the other day. He was a young fellow, very sure of himself, and very kindly towards an old man.
He was doing a monograph, he said, for his own amusement, upon the early forms of our present offensive and defensive weapons. Could I tell him about the first Deuber spheres and the earlier disintegrator rays and the crude atomic bombs we tried back when I first entered the Service?
I could, of course. And I did. But a man’s memory does not improve in the course of a century of Earth years. Our scientists have not been able to keep a man’s brain as fresh as his body, despite all their vaunted progress. There is a lot these deep thinkers, in their great laboratories, don’t know. The whole universe gives them the credit for what’s been done, yet the men of action who carried out the ideas—but I’m getting away from my pert young officer.
He listened to me with interest and toleration. Now and then he helped me out, when my memory failed me on some little detail. He seemed to have a very fair theoretical knowledge of the subject.
“It seems impossible,” he commented, when we had gone over the ground he had outlined, “that the Service could have done its work with such crude and undeveloped weapons, does it not?” He smiled in a superior sort of way, as though to imply we had probably done the best we could, under the circumstances.
I suppose I should not have permitted his attitude to irritate me, but I am an old man, and my life has not been an easy one.