Battle for the Stars

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But I can't, thought Jay Birrel. Not yet. My feet ache. I didn't sleep well. I want to see my wife, but I can't go home. I have to go on into this place where a human being looks as pathetic as an insect in a furnace.

Such thoughts made Birrel uneasy. He disliked imaginative thinking and imaginative people, he regarded himself as a tough, practical man. They had a job to do and that was all there was to it, and he might as well quit mooning about it. He straightened up a little more. He was always doing that, trying to gain a little height, so that when he gave an order to a man he would not have to look up to him. It seemed a little foolish to do it, but he could not quite get over the nagging consciousness that his height was only average.

He said, “Radar?"

Joe Garstang, beside him, answered without turning. “Nothing has been monitored yet. Not yet."

Garstang was a younger man than Birrel, but he was so big and broad and slow-speaking that he made you think of a rock. The rock could worry, though. Birrel sensed the worry now and thought. He doesn't like this job… And he doesn't like having me aboard. No captain likes to be outranked on his own ship, especially on a mission like this one. Well, that is too bad, I do not like it either, but we are going ahead into that mess anyway.

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