SUICIDE COMMAND By STANLEY MULLEN The rookie astrogator's fingers itched for the controls of a ship. But he never asked for the privilege of riding an atomic bomb into the heart of hell! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Messages crackled through the black gulf of space--the Interplanetary Distress Call. Blaze Norman, navigation officer of the ISP cruiser Scorpio, came out of his space-fog and stared at the helioflash board which was suddenly ablaze with light. Harald, the operator, grunted and spun dials as the frantic messages clicked off. "What's up, Harald?" Norman asked. Harald waved him away impatiently and crouched over his helio receiver board. He was a grizzled old spacehound and hated working with rookie officers. Good kids all right--the examinations saw to that--but you never knew how they were going to react, how much you could depend on them in an emergency. And this was an emergency-- Out in the bleak void between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, the spaceliner Tellus was breaking up. Half of her starboard batteries had fused and exploded, that was just the beginning. Before needle-valves could be shut off, streams of free neutrons ran up the fuel lines into the secondary bank of preparation tanks. Radiation counters buzzed angrily as primary degeneration spread through the masses of fuel in the leaden containers. The lead walls buckled and gave way. Tons of molten magma deluged all of the after compartments of the titanic luxury liner. Inferno. Tellus jerked like a nervous racehorse as the rest of her stern rocket tubes froze and exploded. The after third of the ship was blasted out of existence. Heaven knew what would happen when the rest of that degenerating metal reached the stage of instantaneous disintegration. "It's the spaceliner Tellus," Harald snapped. "She's in trouble outside Jupiter. Position 9-84-7. Two degrees N. Ecliptic. Range 11/4.7. Get on your charts and find out what's out there. I'll buzz the old man." Captain Fries' face appeared on the televisor screen. "Never mind the details," he snapped. "We got part of it up here. Too faint for the audios, of course. What ships are in that sector?" Lieutenant Blaze Norman glanced up from the chart panel. "Nothing of any kind closer than Ganymede, sir. And only some slow ore-freighters there. If there's anything else, my records don't show it." Captain Fries' face looked suddenly old and tired. He sighed. "I guess we'll have to go, but I don't know what good a ship this size will do if they have to be taken off. Anything more from the Tellus?"