AND WE SAILED the MIGHTY DARK A Complete Novelet By FRANK BELKNAP LONG [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Startling Stories, March 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] CHAPTER I Graveyard of Old Ships You've seen them—the old ships, the battered and ruined ships, the ships that have made one voyage too many, and are so ancient you can't remember their names or the reputations they've earned for themselves in deep space! Sure you've seen them! Black hulls stretching away for miles into the red sunset—ships that can be bought for a song if you've a song left in you and still want to go adventuring on the rim of the System. Do you know how it feels not to have a song left in you? Do you know how it feels to be a legend without substance—the lad who broke the bank at Callisto City and walked out two days later without a penny to his name? Pete knew and he kept harping on it. "If you'd quit that first night, Jim, instead of pushin' it all back across the board!" There was awe in his eyes when he looked at me, and then he'd look at the ships, and I could guess what he was thinking. Good old Pete! When he shut his eyes I was still wearing a golden halo. Lucky Jim Sanders, strong as an ox and coming along fine—born lucky and loving life too much to worry his head about the future. But when life rises up and wallops you and lays you out flat you forget the good times and your own recklessness, and the inner strength and the laughing girls, and you just want to sit down and never get up! I'd met Pete down in the valley, sitting on a rock. He didn't want to get up either. He wanted to croak. A wiry little cuss with blue eyes and a fringe of beard on his chin that had just grown there and stayed. Clothes that made him look like he was trying to spin a cocoon about himself. You bet he had a story! A hard luck story that would have made Sinbad look like a quiet family man.
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