
A sleek, newly‑commissioned battleship drifts through the star‑strewn void, its decks echoing with the voices of five thousand eager cadets singing the “Spaceman’s Hymn.” Amid the camaraderie, veteran officers share worn memories of past skirmishes with the alien Xantu, recalling daring raids and hard‑won laughter while the Milky Way stretches like a ghostly ribbon beyond the observation deck. Their reverie snaps to attention when a frantic transmission reports a sudden, brutal attack by Dark Nebula forces, thrusting the crew into an immediate scramble for battle readiness.
Now the ship must turn its massive engines toward Terra Base, racing against an unseen enemy that threatens to cut them off before they can regroup. Commanders scramble to equip the green‑horn cadets with battle suits, while the seasoned crew braces for a confrontation that could reshape the fragile peace of the Solar Federation. The opening combines nostalgic flashbacks with a tense, ticking‑clock urgency, setting the stage for a high‑stakes space‑opera that tests courage, loyalty, and the thin line between heroism and survival.
Language
en
Duration
~37 minutes (35K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
Dec 18, 2020
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
A little-known science fiction writer remembered for a fast-moving space adventure from the pulp-magazine era. The surviving record is sparse, but his work captures the wartime energy and big-galaxy imagination that defined early 1950s SF.
View all books
by Vinceslas-Eugène Dick

by Philippe Aubert de Gaspé

by Abraham Cahan

by Eliza Fowler Haywood

by Laure Conan

by Pauline E. (Pauline Elizabeth) Hopkins

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps