Shannon Ellison’s Reviews > Last Chapter > Status Update

I was back again at the kind of life I had known so long. It was the old familiar pattern, unchanged by distance or time from war on the other side of the world — a pattern so embedded in my soul that, coming back to it again, it seemed to me as I lay there that I’d never known anything else in my life. And there are millions of us.

She had been out so long that her men put their ship above their captain. They saw captains come and go, but the ship stayed on forever. They weren’t romantic about their long stay. They hated it, and their gripes were long and loud. They yearned pathetically to go home. But down underneath they were proud — proud of their ship and proud of themselves.

Yes that long dragging night flight back home was a mental hazard, and most likely to make the boys sit and stare.