Martyr's Flight

Walter Stanton belted himself to his desk chair and pulled out the letter from De La Rue, reading it again. He felt a surge of nostalgia at the Old Man's quaint English; the Secretary-General's white-hot internationalism had never impelled him to improve his languages. But there was nothing quaint about the content of the letter....

Mel Cramer shuffled in with the strange gait that they had all developed within days of arriving in space. Automatically he snapped his safety belt to a grommet on Mel's desk, then sat on the top.