A Call to Arms Read Online Free PDF Page A

case, that passion was for precision, not for risk-taking. Drake never gambled, never took chances. And now, here was Mr. High-and-Mighty Garibaldi, reaming him out for not going out on a limb with the biggest ship in creation. Calling him Pussyfoot and other, much worse names. It was as though Garibaldi was telling him he could use a few of his father’s gambler’s genes.
    So Garibaldi thought Drake wasn’t a gambler, eh? Well, Garibaldi would be surprised to learn that Drake could, indeed, take a risk when the odds were big enough. He was taking a chance. A big one. And Mr. Garibaldi soon would learn of it, to his regret.
    Near the dice sat a framed photograph of his mother, a nice-looking, faded woman with short, dark hair. She had survived Drake’s father by only three years. Silicosis had taken her away--the dubious gift of the air outlet tubes that blew dust from the mine where she had worked for twenty years as a bookkeeper. Not that he could ever prove the connection. Not that the company would ever admit to even a part of the responsibility. Drake sighed and wished he had something to drink. His nerves were frayed from Garibaldi’s abrasive tirade. Then he noticed his computer was blinking and realized that he had E-mail. His expression brightened. He called it up at once.
    It was from Cora. Who else would write to him?
    “Dear Samuel,” she wrote, “I’ve been able to do it at last! I’m coming to your famous dry dock on the next ship leaving Babylon 5. They want me to look into the oxygen-regenerating plant array we’ve set up there. I’m so excited! Imagine it, me, a Holyoke girl with a minor degree in extraterrestrial biology, getting a chance on a big job like this! Oh, my work won’t be much more than checking numbers off a clipboard--no great skill required!--but it’s a beginning!
    “It will be so nice to see you again. I was greatly impressed by our talk, that time you visited B5. And your views on Earth-Martian politics and the unfairness shown by Earth people toward the Martian-born gave me a lot to think about.
    “See you soon. Yours, Cora.”
    Drake looked away from the letter and tried to calm himself. But there was nothing he could do about the waves of joy that seemed to burst over his head. And nothing he wanted to do. Cora was coming to see him! This was the most wonderful news in the world.
    That a girl like Cora--an Earth girl, tall, slender, blond, educated, of a good family--a patrician !--was crossing empty space to see him had to mean something. She didn’t say so in her E-mail, but that was because she was a formal person. Unless he mistook the signs, her visit meant that she felt something for him, just as he loved her.
    Of course, he had never told her so. And she didn’t say anything to that effect outright. But he was sure he could read the signs, sure she reciprocated his own feelings. And now she was coming to the spacedock!
    He laughed, and his face became almost handsome. He’d reveal his feelings to her this time. She would see how right they were for each other. She would agree to marry him. And then he’d put the nightmare behind him.
    But was that still possible? Did he have the time to undo the strange nightmare of the past months, the long slide that had begun in a Martian bar when he’d gone on leave? There, he’d actually found someone--a perfect stranger--who had listened to him, sympathized with his grievances. A few drinks, and Drake had actually found himself offered riches, and a chance at revenge for the indignities heaped upon him by those snotty Earth types.
    His face flushed with panic as he thought about it now. Where had all his caution gone, his lifetime of weighing one thing against another? Like a fool he had listened to the stranger’s ideas and agreed with the justice of them. These Earth people thought they owned all creation and everything in it! They’d soon see! It had been such a relief to say what he felt, to someone who seemed to