ALL THAT, TO MAKE AN elongated story brief, happened on the first day out of Mars. As any schoolchild knows, it’s a full hundred million from the desert planet to the asteroid belt. In those days, there was no such device as a Velocity-Intensifier unit, and the Leo, even though she was then considered a reasonably fast little patroller, muddled along at a mere 400,000 m.p.h. Which meant it would take us at least ten days, perhaps more, to reach that disputed region of space around Vesta, where the Federation outposts were sparse and the Alliance block began.
That period of jetting was a mingled joy and pain in the britches. Captain Slops was responsible for both.
For one thing, as I’ve hinted before, he was a bit of a panty-waist. It wasn’t so much the squeaky voice or the effeminate ges
