Page:Amazing Stories Volume 07 Number 08.djvu/54

Rh I shall permit you to select your own assistants. You are at liberty to choose any two men in the Ganymede garrison. If you wish, I shall allow you one hour in which to make your decision."

"I shall not need it," Brink told him. "My choice is already made. Will you be good enough to notify Captain Albert Hawkins and Lieutenant James Sullivan that they are to accompany me?"

WO hours later, having checked over the cargo and equipment of the new space flyer for the third and last time, Captain Brink, accompanied by his two chosen companions, rocketed through Ganymede's atmosphere and headed toward the planet Saturn.

When the speed indicator told him that the ship had attained its maximum acceleration, Frank shut off the exhausts and relaxed his vigilant attention to the controls.

Captain Hawkins stretched himself, yawned cavernously and mumbled, "There's one thing I like about these long trips. It gives a fellow a chance to catch up on his sleep."

Brink chuckled, "Do you know, Al, I believe your idea of Heaven is a place where you can curl up in a knot and snore for a million years."

"Don't exaggerate," Hawkins protested languidly. "I'll admit I like to sleep. But a million years! Now if you want to make it, say five hundred thousand years, why"

"Beat it!" Brink interrupted him. "Crawl into your hammock and snooze your fool head off!"

Lieutenant Sullivan unlimbered a battered guitar, twisted the keys experimentally, plucked out a few chords of doubtful harmony and crooned: Oh, Captain Jinks, the space marine He drank a quart of gasoline; And since that time he ain't benzine. He's now a piece-ful fight-tur! Brink picked up a magazine of ancient vintage and started reading an absurdly impossible story about a Martian's adventures on Zoxaquokivizibum, an imaginary planet of the star Sirius. After a page or two, he threw the book down in disgust. "Why," he asked himself, "Why don't these writers of science fiction try to keep within the boundaries of plausibility."

Having sung for the seventeenth time the mournful but sprightly saga of the bibulous Captain Jinks, Sullivan put away the guitar and remarked, "By the way, Captain Frank, I've heard that song I don't know how many times and I've often been called a Space Marine myself, and yet I've never been able to make the slightest iota of sense out of that ridiculous nomenclature. I always thought that the word 'marine' meant something pertaining to the sea. Why call us marines when we never go near any oceans?"

"Merely a figure of speech, my boy," Brink elucidated. "Didn't you ever hear about the United States Marines?"

"Certainly I've heard of them. During the World War at the beginning of the twentieth century they were called 'Devil Dogs'."

"That was because they knew how to fight. My great-great-great-grandfather was a Colonel in the United States Marines. Evidently his descendents must have thought that meant something, because the traditions of the marines have been handed down from father to son ever since. They were called marines because they were stationed on warships. That was long before the Earth Republic was established. In those days each nation was goverened independently and had its own separate navy. Whenever trouble started in any part of the world, the marines were always the first to arrive. 'Tell it to the marines' was a common expression. Another phrase that has been handed down in history is 'The marines have landed and have the situation well in hand.' Doesn't that have a familiar ring?"

"It certainly does. Only nowadays, whenever there is trouble, it is always the E. R. S. N. forces that arrive first and get the situation well in hand."

"And that's why they call us the Space Marines! Perhaps it will also interest you to know that the song you were trying to sing a while ago is a rotten parody on a ditty that dates back even further than the United States Marines. It goes like this: "Oh I'm Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. I feed my horse on corn and beans. In fact it's quite—" That was as far as he got. He was interrupted by a stentorian snore, which rumbled forth from the storage chamber like the snarl of an enraged tiger.

It was so unexpected that Sullivan gave a startled jump. Since his body was practically weightless, it sent him sailing out of his seat, bumping his head against the roof of the control room.

When he had recovered his equilibrium, he stammered, "Does he always snore like that?"

"Not always. Only when he is asleep."

"Naturally, you goop. But he must have been asleep for several minutes. How do you explain the sudden outburst of cacophony?"

"Don't ask me to explain anything about Al's peculiarities," Brink grinned. "When it comes to snoozing, he's in a class by himself. It always takes him some time before he is warmed up enough to snore with his full volume, but once he gets going, even the horn of Gabriel couldn't arouse him. I've known him to slumber like a baby with the rockets roaring full blast and with the ship turning pin-wheels."

"Isn't there any way to wake him?" Sullivan asked.

"Only one way I know of."

"And what is that?"

"Watch."

Brink picked up one of those flexible drinking tubes that are familiar to all interplanetary travelers. Unscrewing the cap and squeezing the end opposite the nozzle, he pressed out into his hand a quantity of water. He took careful aim and tossed it gently in the direction of the man in the hammock. Like everything else aboard the space-flyer, the water was weightless, but the cohesion of its particles held it together in an egg-shaped globule. With a sharp smack the liquid missile struck the sleeper's face, flattening out like a pancake and completely covering his nose and mouth.

Like a sea-lion coming up for air, Hawkins snorted and gurgled and finally tumbled out of the hammock and floated to the floor with his arms and legs floundering wildly.

"What tha—What tha!" he blubbered as soon as he could get his breath. "Can't you even let a guy sleep in peace?"

OR many weary days the three space travelers felt as if they were floating immovably in the center of the vast, hollow sphere of sable blackness that was the sky. Behind them the miniature sun with its