Read "Wreckers of the Star Patrol" by Malcolm Jameson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
-"WHY should I hire you?" bellowed Captain Fennery, bunching his shaggy eyebrows into a heavy scowl. "We want no namby-pamby sissies in the _Hyperion! "_ Bob Hartwell merely flushed and stood a little straighter. If his need had not been so great, his answer to that would have been a straight right to the jaw. Moreover, he had just told the man why he was there--of his having been in command of the neat packet, _Mary Sue,_ of the Venus-Tellurian Line, and how that company had blown up and left him stranded on Venus.
But he restrained himself. Distasteful as working for Stellar Transport was, it was preferable to remaining in Venusport, broke and on the beach. An epidemic of _paludal_ fever was sweeping the planet, and the crimps who supplied the swamp plantations with cheap labor were taking a heavy nightly toll. He _must_ get off Venus at any cost.