But As A Soldier, For His Country
This first appeared in UNIVERSE 5, 1974.
This story became the kernel for my novel THE ETERNITY BRIGADE. While I’ve had the ending of that book criticized as a downer, I believe it to be far more hopeful than my original vision.
Harker awoke to dim lighting, to panic all around him. Fast, busy footsteps clacked down bunker corridors, scurrying to no visible result and no possible accomplishment. It was wartime. Naturally.
He was in the spacesuit he had worn last time, which meant that either this war was soon after that last one or else there had been no great improvements in spacesuits over the interval between. It fit him tightly, with an all–but–invisible bubble helmet close around his head. There was no need for oxygen tanks as there had been on th
