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by GERALD VANCE
The gleaming insignia stripes on Lieutenant Ward Harrison's broad shoulders were less than two days old when he received his first assignment.
"Lieutenant Harrison," his commanding officer said, glancing from the papers he held in his hands to the young man who stood at attention before his desk, "this will be your first touch of action since you were commissioned. A lot depends on how you handle yourself."
"Yes sir," Ward answered. He straightened his already poker-straight spine. His face was young and serious and intent. There was a blaze of zeal in his blue eyes and grimness in the tightness of his jaw. But a lock of blonde hair that fell over his forehead lent an incongruously boyish cast to his grimly set features.
His commander, a Planetary Colonel, with thirty years of void experience behind him, smiled slightly and looked down at the papers in his hands again.
"Your training record has been ex-
Ward Harrison got himself into a barrel of trouble when he accepted a job at the Martian Observation Station. There were fearful "things" on Mars. . .
208
