Higher Education

Chapter Eleven

The change predicted by Jigger came sooner and harder than expected. The trainees had partied all night and collapsed into their bunks at dawn. They were still settling into exhausted sleep when a fist hammered on the door and a loud female voice shouted from the corridor: “Ten minutes to get to the main assembly hall. If you’re not there, you won’t be going anywhere.”

It wasn’t Gina Styan or Coral Wogan. In fact, it wasn’t anyone who Rick recognized when he stumbled, still yawning and stretching, into the main hall with the rest of the groaning trainees. The woman waiting for them was tall and big-shouldered. She had black hair and bright blue eyes, and she might have been pretty but for her oddly lopsided face.

She counted, and nodded. “You don’t know me—yet. And I’ve seen your names but not your faces. So let’s begin with that. I’m Barney French. Start there at the right.” She pointed at Chick Teazle, who had been first into the hall. “Each of you state your last name.”

As the roll-call proceeded she hardly seemed to be listening. But at the end of it she pointed to Vido Valdez. “You. Valdez. You came close to flunking geography on your test. That won’t do. You’ll be given special assignments to bring you up to speed.

“You, Klein.” She pointed at Alice. “Your mathematics is a disgrace. We’ll do something to take care of that—or rather, you will. Beverly Landau—”

“It’s Goggles, ma’am.” Goggles blushed and wriggled, while the others stared at him. “Goggles Landau.”

“Isn’t your real name Beverly?”

“Yes. But I never use it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s—Beverly is a girl’s name.”

“I see.” She glared at him. “You mean, it’s a girl’s name just like Barney is a boy’s name?”

Goggles was smart enough not to answer, and she went on, “Well, Beverly Landau, I’ll call you what I want to. Your parents certainly did. And, Beverly Landau, if your test results are anything to go by, the amount you understand about atomic structure could be written on the small point on the top of your head. That’s going to change. Agreed.”

“Yes, sir—ma’am.”

“Very good. Actually, I prefer sir. Now, Mao.” She turned to Deedee. “Is there any special name you’d like me to call you by?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. So let’s talk about history. You stated on your general knowledge quiz that Rome was founded in the year 753 AD. Would you be interested in revising that opinion?”

There was a long silence, as Deedee opened her mouth and then closed it. Finally she said tentatively, “753 BC?”

“Correct. A mere difference of fifteen hundred years, but what’s that between friends? Bravo. Or is someone else to be congratulated? Was there a little help from a person behind you? You—Luban. Did you tell Mao the right answer?”

“No, sir.” Rick had been trying to be totally inconspicuous behind Deedee and Vido Valdez.

“Do you know who did?”

“No, sir.” Rick felt his gut tighten. He had just told a direct lie. He had heard Gladys de Witt, on his immediate left, whisper the answer.

“I don’t believe you.” Barney French studied his face. “But I will let it pass. You are in enough trouble already. For the past two months you have been in a position to look at Earth anytime you chose. Did you do so?”

“Yes, sir. Many times.”

“And yet you cheerfully asserted on your final test, despite the evidence of your own eyes, that seventy percent of Earth is land area, while only thirty percent is covered by water.”

“I said it backwards.” Rick cringed at his own stupidity. “I meant it the other way round, seventy percent water.”

“Really? How very reassuring. I suppose you consider it all right to remove oxygen from your suit when you intend to add it. Or perhaps to accelerate your ship when successful rendezvous requires you to decelerate?

“Now listen, all of you.” To Rick’s relief she turned away from him to address the whole group. “You may be thinking, what the hell is all the fuss about? Barney French is nitpicking on things that don’t make a damn of difference. Well if you think that, you’re wrong. No matter how much fudging you got away with on Earth, or even here on CM-2, that ends today. I’m not like Turkey Gossage, willing to blow your nose and change your diaper. When you leave CM-2 you leave kindergarten. Accuracy and precision do make a difference when you’re out in the Belt. The details matter. You have to get things right. If you don’t believe me, take a look.”

She walked along the line of trainees, turning so that they could get a good view of her misshapen face.

“See the scars? See the bone grafts, and the facial reconstruction? Take a close-up. You’re seeing me after thirty-seven operations and the best plastic surgery that money can buy. My body is in worse shape than my face—I have more metal than bone in my shoulders. And I’m one of the lucky ones. Four people died in the accident that did this. And do you know what caused it? One lousy plus sign that should have been a minus, in one small subroutine that controlled one phase of a continuous casting operation on CM-24. The man who made the error paid for it. You probably saw plenty of horror videos when you were back on Earth. But you’ve never known real horror, until you see what a pressure jet of molten steel does when it hits a human body in low-gee.”

She stared at and through the hushed group of trainees. “You will see simulations of accidents just like the one I was involved in—but not today. So you can go now. Pick up your assignments as you leave. Each of you will find your name on one of the packets. I want all the work done in the next three days. What each of you is required to do reflects your individual weaknesses, plus one additional question that you must all try to answer. Cooperate as much as you like—but remember, you get no credit if you spend your time helping somebody else, and then screw up on your own work. You’re not trainees any more. You’re apprentices. Earn that title.

“Oh, yes, and one other thing. I don’t think you want to open those assignments right now, because we’ll be lifting from CM-2 in four hours. Pack your bags, and say your fond farewells. Anyone who wants to go to the Belt should be at the main port by eleven hundred hours.”

CM-2, so alien two months ago, felt like home now. Rick had his few belongings packed in ten minutes, spent another hour wandering the familiar exercise rooms, dining-hall, and dormitories, and then fifteen minutes on his bunk examining the packet that he had been given by Barney French.

He stared in dismay at the contents. He was tired out, nervous, and about to enter the new environment of a ship heading for the Belt. But somehow he was supposed to tackle these assignments and finish them in the next three days.

Your knowledge of Earth geography is inadequate. Read the following—pages of references. Tons of reading, for someone who still had to mouth out most words of more than two syllables.

Your lack of knowledge of the Belt and the solar system is deplorable. Learn the following by heart. Sheet after sheet of data about the planets, asteroids, rings and moons of the solar system, endless names and numbers and lists and computer file references.

Back in school he had never been forced to learn things by heart. That was dismissed by the powers-that-be in the Earth education system as “rote learning,” old-fashioned and restrictive and undesirable. It didn’t leave a student with what Principal Rigden always called “time for smelling the roses.”

Rick didn’t recall smelling many roses. He did know he had spent a lot of time watching the tube.

Not any more, though. No tubes, except as video outlets for education and training modules. He suspected he was going to see plenty of those.

He puzzled over the final question, the one given to all the apprentices: Estimate your ship’s travel time to the Belt. Tables of the coordinates of the destination, CM-26, as a function of time, together with an initial position of the starting point, CM-2, will be found in this packet. You may assume that there will be continuous acceleration and deceleration on the journey at one quarter of a standard Earth gravity. Answers within ten percent are acceptable.

Rick groaned to himself. Absolutely baffling—he didn’t know how to do orbital mechanics. Hell, he couldn’t even spell the words.

Just yesterday he had been on top of the world, now it was back to the same old grind only worse. He would force down some breakfast—he still believed what he had told Deedee, an active brain needed food—then he would head for the main launch port.

Jigger was right. The honeymoon, if it had ever started, was over.

With an hour or more to go to eleven, the main port was already crowded when Rick got there. He had seen ships come and go from CM-2, and as part of the practical course the trainees had been given a guided tour around one of them; but he had never examined any ship the way that he studied the Vantage, waiting now for its passengers and crew.

The ship was huge, ten times the size of the transfer vehicle that had carried the trainees from low Earth orbit out to CM-2. Most of it, though, was the drive. The living quarters would be a tight fit for the forty passengers and crew. Rick walked over to the point of closest approach to the main engines of the Vantage, and stood staring up at them. They were Diabelli Omnivores, a linked ring of a dozen blue cylinders, each about four meters across and forty meters long. Within them, deuterium and helium-3 would be fused. The heat produced by that raised the main propellant, hydrogen, to a temperature of more than a million degrees.

Naturally, the Omnivores were never used close to any other object. Smaller ion rockets surrounding the main drive ring provided for maneuvering and docking. The main engines were called omnivores because with some modification they could fuse any of the lighter elements up to neon. It meant that the Vantage, like her sister ships Vanquish and Vanity, could find suitable fuel anywhere in the solar system.

It also meant that in the hottest fusion mode the internal temperature would reach a billion degrees.

“Close your mouth, Rick.” Deedee’s voice came from right next to him. “You’re an apprentice now, not a trainee. You’re not supposed to gape.”

He turned. Apparently two hours sleep agreed with Deedee. She was bright-eyed and full of bounce. Rather than look at her he pointed up at the Omnivores. “We’ll be sitting right on top of those monsters. If something goes wrong with the drive, we’ll never even know it. Might as well be in the middle of a supernova. How come you’re not as worried as I am?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe women just know how to fake things.”

“Yeah. But you never gave me a chance to find out about that.”

Although Rick kept his tone light, there was a hidden bitterness in him. Apparently Deedee thought nothing unusual had happened the previous night. But it had. After a couple of hours of dancing, Rick had suggested that he and Deedee go off together, just the two of them, and find someplace quiet. He spoke casually, as though it was no big deal, which was the way you handled these things. That didn’t mean it was, though.

And she had declined.

“Not tonight, Rick. Tonight I want to dance ’til I drop. But if I did go with anybody, you’re the one I would want to go with.”

She had known very well what he was suggesting, but she had hauled him back onto the dance floor. Her answer left him horny and restless. The way she had put it he was not supposed to feel rejected. He did. But he wasn’t going to let her know it, then or now.

There was a stir among the people at the far end of the chamber. Looking that way, Rick saw that an entry port to the front part of the Vantage was opening. A light ladder was scrolling out and reaching down to ground level, though in such low gravity it was hardly necessary. Every one of the apprentices could jump to hit the port blindfold. Some of them were already moving forward toward the ladder.

“Wait for it!” Barney French’s roar came from the entrance to the chamber. “Didn’t you lot ever hear of discipline? Apprentices stay there. I have to be first up so I can assign quarters—unless you all want to sleep on top of each other.”

She came soaring over their heads and went through the port dead center. Just behind her flew Jigger Tait and Gina Styan. It was news to Rick that those two were taking a ride out to the Belt on the Vantage, but he was delighted to see them.

“All right!” Barney reappeared in the port. “Come on. All aboard that’s going aboard. Girls first!”

Her last words were lost in a burst of laughter. Chick Teazle, too impatient to wait for her to finish, had jumped before she got to “girls first.”

Once you were launched in low gee there was no way to stop yourself. Chick floated upward, waving his arms and legs uselessly. Barney waited until he reached the port, then reached down to grab his foot and boosted. He went spinning away right over the top of the ship, to Barney’s raucous, “There you go, Miss Teazle.”

It was new proof that the trainee group still had tricks to learn in space. Rick waited his turn, right after Goggles Landau, then bent his knees and jumped. It was a point of pride to hit the exact center of the port, and he did it.

Barney French didn’t seem to notice. “Luban, 24-C,” she said. “To the right. Keep moving.”

To the right meant toward the front of the ship. Rick floated his way along a cramped corridor with bare metal walls. He had expected that 24-C would be a dorm, and was surprised to find that he had a tiny private room. It held a terminal, a small cabinet up near the ceiling, one chair, and a bed that could be opened all the way only when the chair was folded up into a recess in the wall.

Rick took from his bag the picture of his mother. He had sneaked it out when he left home, and been ashamed to show it back in the dorms of New Mexico or CM-2. Now he placed it on top of the data terminal. Everything else in the bag went into the cabinet. After that there was nothing to do.

Barney French had told him to come to 24-C, but she had not ordered him to stay there. He went back into the corridor. Vido Valdez was heading toward him. He did not seem nearly as unhappy as he had been yesterday, when he learned that Monkey had failed. And Rick had seen him close-dancing late in the evening with Gladys de Witt.

So much for undying love.

Since people were still coming aboard the Vantage, Rick headed the other way, toward the bows of the ship. The corridor ended in what looked like a food service area, with little tables that could be folded out of the walls. It would seat no more than eight people. Beyond it was another corridor, even narrower. Rick eased his way along it, and found himself at last in a tiny round chamber with a curved and bulging transparent wall.

He was in the very front of the ship, staring out at the blank metal facade of the main port floor and wall. As he watched, he heard a series of clanging sounds from behind him followed by the slow rotation of the ship. The port floor was deserted. Rick decided that the ship must now be sealed, and the external pressure would be dropping toward zero so that the docking facility could be opened to space.

And he was still here, sitting in the bows. Shouldn’t he be somewhere else, safely strapped in before the Vantage began to move?

Then he realized that the ship was moving, so gently that he had not noticed it. He was looking out at the starscape beyond CM-2.

He leaned back, overwhelmed by two thoughts. First, he realized the enormous difference between moving to space when you left Earth, and moving through space, which is what they were doing now. To get into space called for powerful thrusters and high accelerations, and you were wise to strap yourself in. But once you were here, even the gentlest acceleration was enough to move you around and no special precautions were needed when you started.

Second was the sudden knowledge: they were on the way. Earth was visible over on the right-hand side of the transparent bubble. When he had first looked at it from CM-2 it had seemed so far away. But in the next few days it would shrink from a whole round world to a tiny pale dot, no brighter in the sky than Venus or Jupiter. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers of distance would gradually turn to hundreds of millions.

Rick stared at the little blue-grey marble, and made a decision that surprised him completely. He had been pleased to leave Earth, and he couldn’t wait to get to the Belt.

But one day, some day, he would come back.