The Band Played on

In the cold void between worlds, nobody salutes the garbage collector. Captain Thomas Murdock spends his days hauling waste from humanity's farthest outpost, invisible to the pilots and scientists who get the glory. When toxic air seeps through the station's veins and death drifts in on quiet feet, the heroes look to Murdock. He knows the ship's gut, its pipes and passages, the places no one else has ever cared to learn. He volunteers for the suicide run: deliver the filters or die trying. What follows is a descent through a screaming storm that tests whether a man defined by refuse can become something more. Lester Del Rey builds a quiet monument to the hands that keep civilization breathing, the ones we never think to thank.