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The bad feeling between spacemen and the Special Order Squadrons had started about 18 years ago when the cruiser Icarus had taken the first Planeteers to Mercury. He reviewed the history of the expedition. The spacemen’s job had been to land the newly created Special Order Squadron on the hot planet. The job of the squadron was to explore it.
Landing craft and snapper-boats swarmed to meet them, and within an hour after their arrival the Planeteers were surrounded by spacemen, cadets from the platform, and officers and men wearing Planeteer black. A cadet approached Rip and looked at him with awe. "Sir, I don't know how you ever did it!"
"What do you mean?" asked Connel. Tom's eyes lit up. "If he's alive, sir, then he's probably following a path or trail that would keep him away from heavy underbrush," he said. Connel thought a moment. "There's only one trail away from here." He turned and pointed to the trail made by the tyrannosaurus. "That one." The three spacemen stared at the wide path left by the huge beast.
He was a Guardsman, and it was good to be back home! Major Connel paced nervously in front of the group of spacemen. Tom, Roger, Astro, Alfie, and Mr. Shinny were lounging around the small clearing between the Polaris and the Space Devil. A piece of thin space cloth had been stretched between the two ships to shield the men from the blazing sun. Connel stopped in front of Roger and Shinny.
"I understand, sir," said Tom quietly. "Dismissed!" roared Connel, recovering his composure again, and very conscious that he had exposed his innermost feelings to the cadet. But he didn't mind too much. Tom Corbett had proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had the stuff true spacemen are made of, and because of this, Connel could feel as close to him as a man near his own age.
When Weald was a first-magnitude star, the four were not highly qualified astrogators, to be sure, but they were vastly better spacemen than at the beginning. Inevitably, their attitude toward Calhoun was respectful. He'd been irritable and right. To the young, the combination is impressive. Maril had served as passenger only.
A thousand miles above earth’s surface the great space platform sped from daylight into darkness. Once each two hours it circled the earth completely, spinning along through space like a mighty wheel of steel and plastic. Through a telescope from earth the platform seemed a lifeless, lonely disk, but within it, hundreds of spacemen and Planeteers went about their work.
The whole affair was pretty well hushed up, but it produced bad feeling between the Special Order Squadrons and the spacemen. "Trigger-happy space bums," the spacemen called them, and much worse, besides. The men of the Special Order Squadrons, searching for a handy nickname, had called themselves Planeteers, because most of their work was on the planets. As Maj.
Jurgen, Prince Trevannion, accepted the coffee cup and lifted it to his lips, then lowered it. These Navy robots always poured coffee too hot; spacemen must have collapsium-lined throats. With the other hand, he punched a button on the robot's keyboard and received a lighted cigarette; turning, he placed the cup on the command-desk in front of him and looked about.
The charge hit the target and Loring became rigid, his body slowly floating above the deck. His back to the wall, braced for the recoil, Tom brought his arm around slowly and aimed at Mason. He fired, and the spaceman stiffened. Tom smiled. Neither of the spacemen would give him any more trouble now. He pushed slightly to the left and shot over to the valve that Mason had unwittingly turned off.
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