Kirby did not know what mountains they were. He did know that the Mannlicher bullets of eleven bad Mexicans were whining over his head and whizzing past the hoofs of his galloping, stolen horse. The shots were mingled with yelps which pretty well curdled his spine. In the circumstances, the unknown range of snow mountains towering blue and white beyond the arid, windy plateau, offering he could not tell what dangers, seemed a paradise.
Explorers who dread spiders and snakes prove that heroism is always more heroic to outsiders. Then there's the case of the first space pilot to Mars who developed the itch
When you've had your ears pinned back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard to remember that an intelligent people has no respect for a whipped enemy. but does for a fairly beaten enemy.
Logic's a wonderful thing; by logical analysis, one can determine the necessary reason for the existence of a dead city of a very high order on an utterly useless planet. Obviously a shipping transfer point! Necessarily...
During the Earth-Silth conflicts, two commanders of opposing warships played a game of chicken at one of the outer known solar systems, the result being a head-on collision and two ships fused together at the bows. After the cease fire agreement plans were made to salvage what they could from the ships and Alain from Earth was sent as part of a two man crew to recover components from the Earth vessel while a team from the Silth would handle theirs. Nothing turned out to be as expected.
Fangs of the Wolf World. Across half a Galaxy, the Terran Empire maintains its sovereignty with the consent of the governed. It is a peaceful reign, held by compact and not by conquest. Again and again, when rebellion threatens the Terran Peace, the natives of the rebellious world have turned against their own people and sided with the men of Terra; not from fear, but from a sense of dedication.