The Project Gutenberg EBook of Decision, by Frank M. Robinson

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Title: Decision

Author: Frank M. Robinson

Illustrator: H. R. Smith

Release Date: August 12, 2009 [EBook #29680]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DECISION ***

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DECISION

BY FRANK M. ROBINSON

ILLUSTRATED BY H. R. SMITH

The captain had learned to hate. It was his profession--and his
personal reason for going on. But even hatred has to be channeled
for its maximum use, and no truths exist forever.

The battle alarm caught him in the middle of a dream, a dream that took
place in a white house in a small town in Ohio, when both he and Alice
had been very young and the grown adults he now called his children had
really been little more than babies.

He rolled out of his bed immediately on hearing the gong, as any good
sailor would, and slipped into his pants and shoes and felt around the
bulkhead for his life jacket. He slipped into it and tightened the
buckles, then put on his cap with the captain's insignia.

He opened the hatch and stepped out into the passageway, blinking for a
moment in the unaccustomed light and trying to shake away the remnants
of his dream. Officers were boiling up the passageway and up the ladder,
some eager ensigns dressed only in their shorts and their life jackets.
It was more wise than funny, he thought slowly. Ships had gone down in a
matter of seconds and anybody who spent precious moments looking for his
pants or his wallet never got out.

Harry Davis, the Exec, a portly man in his fifties, burst out of his
stateroom, still trying to shake the sleep from gummy lids.

The Captain shook his head, trying to alert his mind to the point where
it could make sensible evaluations, and started up the corridor.

"Any idea what it is, Harry?"

Davis shook his head. "Not unless it's what we've been expecting."

What we've been expecting. The Captain grasped the iron piping that
served for railings and jogged up the ladder. Fifty miles north, lolling
in the North