Brief description:
CHAPTER I
The Master Ship
There was no great surge of pride in the breast of Jan Van Reese with sev eral hundred other newcomers to West Point, he was being conducted through the Catacombs of the Spatials. For the last five hundred years, since the Year of Our Lord 3676, in fact, there had been a Van Reese at West Point. Every last one of them—each a direct forebear of Jan—had attained "command of the Polestar.
Jan had never seen the Polestar. What's more, he didn’t care whether he ever did. He had heard three generations of Van Reese’s talk about it until he knew everything there was to lmow about the ship. He could have drawn every nut and bolt of it without a single mistake, on a big blueprint. Jan Van Reese came of a military family, a fighting family—-but he was thoroughly sick of the whole business of war. Tradition was all right, yet after five hundred years of other people’s bloodshed and Van Reese glory, it was time a Van Reese got tired of the profession.
Just the same, listening to the “ohs” and ‘ahs” of the other plebes, he couldn’t keep down an involuntary surge of emotion that rose and clogged his throat. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandf'ather, and their fathers, had each walked this way before him. And each, he must always remember, had commanded the Polestar. He did remember. They would would never let him forget.
The Master Ship
There was no great surge of pride in the breast of Jan Van Reese with sev eral hundred other newcomers to West Point, he was being conducted through the Catacombs of the Spatials. For the last five hundred years, since the Year of Our Lord 3676, in fact, there had been a Van Reese at West Point. Every last one of them—each a direct forebear of Jan—had attained "command of the Polestar.
Jan had never seen the Polestar. What's more, he didn’t care whether he ever did. He had heard three generations of Van Reese’s talk about it until he knew everything there was to lmow about the ship. He could have drawn every nut and bolt of it without a single mistake, on a big blueprint. Jan Van Reese came of a military family, a fighting family—-but he was thoroughly sick of the whole business of war. Tradition was all right, yet after five hundred years of other people’s bloodshed and Van Reese glory, it was time a Van Reese got tired of the profession.
Just the same, listening to the “ohs” and ‘ahs” of the other plebes, he couldn’t keep down an involuntary surge of emotion that rose and clogged his throat. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandf'ather, and their fathers, had each walked this way before him. And each, he must always remember, had commanded the Polestar. He did remember. They would would never let him forget.
Publication
Thrilling Wonder Stories, Vol. XVII, No. 3 September 1940