Free A Call to Arms by Robert Sheckley

with black hair and wild gold eyes; a man who looked like an African American from Earth; and a being who was unmistakably a Drazi.
    He wondered, Who are these people? What was Galen trying to tell me? The woman with the gold eyes--he couldn’t even identify her race. The African American might be someone in EarthForce, but no one Sheridan had ever met. And the Drazi? What did a Drazi have to do with this?
    And while he was musing, something changed. Sheridan looked around. In the sky, replacing the two moons, was the unmistakable outline of Babylon 5.
    Then he heard Garibaldi’s voice, saying, “Mr. President ? Mr. President?”
     
    Back on the now familiar bridge of Excalibur , everything seemed just the way he had left it. Garibaldi was looking at him curiously. And Drake was standing off to one side, studying his monitors, ostentatiously taking no notice of Sheridan’s lapse.
    When he noticed that Sheridan was again paying attention, Drake began speaking.
    “I was saying that the hull is a plasteel-crystalline alloy, capable of refracting eighty percent of any energy weapon used against it, although that twenty percent can mount up pretty fast in a major battle. We---”
    Sheridan stood up abruptly. “We have to go,” he announced. This isn’t going to be easy, though , he thought to himself. If he had doubted his own sanity, he couldn’t imagine what the others were going to think. But there wasn’t time--the techno-mage had made it clear that the fate of Earth hung in the balance. He’d have to try to explain along the way.
    Garibaldi said, “What? But we Just---“
    “Tell the White Star to pick us up. We have to go, and we have to go right now.”
    “Go where?” Garibaldi asked.
    Sheridan thought back to the last thing he had seen when he was with Galen. It had been Babylon 5.
    He mused aloud, “It was above the faces... over them all... Babylon 5.”
    He left the bridge quickly, without so much as a backward glance. Garibaldi watched him go. He was becoming filled with alarm. What had happened to the chief? Staring at static-filled StellarCom screens, sleeping at weird hours, blackouts, now this. Was he coming unraveled? What was going on here?
    He noticed Drake looking at him.
    “You heard the president’s orders, Mr. Drake. Call up the White Star . We’re going to Babylon 5.”
    He turned away as if this were the most usual order in the world. Drake was an outsider. No sense letting him think his president had gone completely off his rocker, even if he had .
     

Chapter 15
     
    Sheridan sat, silent, pensive, in the command seat aboard the White Star . Around him, one shift of Rangers went off duty, and another came on. Displays danced across the monitors. There was an ever present sensation of power and purpose as the ship knifed noiselessly through space.
    Sheridan had some sheets of paper spread out on the console before him. He was sketching the faces he had seen earlier, in the circles in the dirt: the faces that Galen had caused to appear. Although Sheridan had never thought much of his drawing skills, these sketches were taking shape with uncanny accuracy. He wondered if Galen might have stimulated his artistic center. Hard to say what else could account for this suddenly acquired artistry. Perhaps it was simply a response to a command he had received--programming that enabled him to remember these faces, burn them into his memory, find out to whom they belonged.
    He was engaged in this drawing when Garibaldi came onto the bridge. Garibaldi’s face was a study in itself--the perfect picture of a man trying not to be judgmental. But clearly he needed to know what was going on. He seriously wished Sheridan were being a little more forthcoming. Of course, Garibaldi also knew he often wasn’t very forthcoming himself. He couldn’t blame John for keeping these matters to himself, whatever they were. But he really needed to find out what was going on.
    So he decided to try what he hoped was