Space Cadet

VI "READING, AND 'RITING, AND 'RITHMETIC-"

THE P.R.S. Randolph had been a powerful and modern cruiser of her day. Her length was 900 feet, her diameter 200, making her of moderate size, but her mass, as a school ship, was only 60,000 tons, more or less.

She was kept ten miles astern of Terra Station in their common orbit. Left to the influence of their mutual gravitations, she would have pursued a most leisurely orbit around the ten-times-more-massive Terra Station, but, for the safety of traffic at Terra Station, it was better to keep in a fixed position.

This was easy to accomplish. The mass of Earth is six billion trillion tons; the mass of Terra Station is one hundred-million-billionth of that, a mere 600,000 tons. At ten miles the "weight" of the Randolph with respect to Terra Station was roughly one thirtieth of an ounce, about the weight on Earth of enough butter for one half slice of bread.

On entering the Randolph Matt found himself in a large, well-lighted compartment of odd shape, somewhat like a wedge of cake. Clumps of youngster cadets were being herded out exits by other cadets who wore black armbands. One such cadet headed toward him, moving through the air with the easy grace of a pollywog. "Squad nineteen-where's the squad leader of squad nineteen?"

Matt held out his arm. "Here, sir! I'm squad leader of nineteen."

The upperclassman checked himself with one hand on the guide line to which Matt still clung. "I relieve you, sir. But stick close to me and help me round up these yahoos. I suppose you know them by sight?"

"Uh, I think so, sir."

"You should-you've had time." Matt was chagrined to find, in the next few moments that the new squad leader-Cadet Lopez-knew the squad muster roll by heart, whereas Matt had to refer to his copy to assist him in locating the members. He was not really aware of the implications of order and efficient preparation; it did impress him as "style." With Matt to spot and Lopez to dive, hawk like, all the way across the compartment if necessary, to round up stragglers, squad nineteen was soon assembled near one exit, where they clung like a colony of bats.

"Follow me," Lopez told them, "and hang on. No free maneuvers. Dodson- bring up the rear."

"Aye aye, sir."

They snaked their way through endless passages, by guide line across compartment after compartment, through hatches, around corners. Matt was quite lost. Presently the man just head of him stopped. Matt closed in and found the squad gathered just inside another compartment. "Soup's on," announced Lopez. "This is your mess room. Lunch in a few minutes."

Behind Lopez, secured firmly to the far wall, were mess tables and benches. The table tops faced Matt-under him, over him, or across from him- what you will. It seemed an impractical arrangement. "I'm not very hungry," one youngster said faintly.

"You ought to be," Lopez answered reasonably. "It's been five hours or more since you had breakfast. We're on the same time schedule here as Hayworth Hall, zone plus eight, Terra. Why aren't you hungry?"

"Uh, I don't know, sir. I'm just not."

Lopez grinned and suddenly looked as young as his charges. "I was just pulling your leg, kiddo. The chief engineer will have some spin on us in no time, as soon as we break loose from the Bolivar. Then you can sit down on your soft, round fanny and console your tender stomach in peace. You'll have an appetite. In the meantime, take it easy."

Two more squads filtered in. While they waited Matt said to Lopez, "How fast will the ship spin, sir?"

"We'll build up to one gravity at the outer skin. Takes about two hours to do it, but we'll eat as soon as we're heavy enough for you groundhogs to swallow your soup without choking."

"But how fast is that, sir?"

"Can you do simple arithmetic?"

"Why, yes, sir."

"Then do it. The Randolph is two hundred feet through and we spin on her main axis. The square of the rim speed divided by her radius-what's the rpm?"

Matt got a faraway look on his face. Lopez said, "Come, now, Mr. Dodson- pretend you're heading for the surface and about to crash. What's the answer?"

"Uh-I'm afraid I can't do it in my head, sir."

Lopez looked around. "All right-who's got the answer?" No one spoke up. Lopez shook his head mournfully. "And you laddies expect to learn to astrogate! Better by far you should have gone to cow colleges. Never mind-it works out to about five and four-tenths revolutions per minute. That gives one full gravity for the benefit of the women and children. Then it's cut down day by day, until a month from now we're in free fall again. That gives you time to get used to it-or else."

Someone said, "Gee, it must take a lot of power."

Lopez answered, "Are you kidding? It's done by electric-braking the main axis flywheels. The shaft has field coils wound on it; you cut it in as a generator and let the reaction between the wheel and the ship put a spin on the ship. You store the juice. Then when you want to take the spin off, you use the juice to drive it as a motor and you are back where you started, free for nothing, except for minor losses. Savvy?"

"Er, I guess so, sir."

"Look it up in the ship's library, sketch the hook-up, and show it to me after supper." The junior cadet said nothing; Lopez snapped. "What's the matter, Mister? Didn't you hear me?"

"Yes, sir-aye aye, sir."

"That's better."

Very slowly they drifted against a side wall, bumped against it, and started sliding slowly toward the outboard wall, the one to which the mess tables were fastened. By the time they reached it there was enough spin on the ship to enable them to stand up and the mess tables now assumed their proper relationship, upright on the floor, while the hatch through which they had lately floated was a hole in the ceiling above.

Matt found that there was no sensation of dizziness; the effect was purely one of increasing weight. He still felt light, but he weighed enough to sit down at a mess table and stay in contact with his seat; minute by minute, imperceptibly, he grew heavier.

He looked over his place at the table, seeking controls that would permit him to order his meal. There were clips and locking holes, which he guessed, were intended for use in free flight, but nothing else. He looked up as Lopez banged on the table.

"And now, gentlemen, this is not a resort hotel. Count off, around the table." He waited until the youngsters had done so, then said, "Remember your order. Numbers one and two will rustle up the calories today, and all of you in rotation thereafter."

"Where, sir?"

"Use your eyes. Over there."

"Over there" was a door which concealed a delivery conveyor. Cadets from other tables were gathering around it. The two cadets designated as waiters went over and returned shortly with a large metal rack containing twenty rations, each packed in its service platter and still steaming hot. Clipped to each were knife, fork, and spoons-and sipping tubes.

Matt found that the solid foods were covered by lids that snapped back over the food unless clipped up out of the way, while the liquids were in covered containers fitted with valves through which sipping tubes might be slipped. He had never before seen table utensils adapted for free-fall conditions in space. They delighted him, even though Earth-side equipment would have served as long as the ship was under spin.

Lunch was hot roast beef sandwiches with potatoes, green salad, lime sherbert, and tea. Lopez kept up a steady fire of questions throughout the meal, but Matt did not come into his range. Twenty minutes later the metal tray in front of Matt was polished almost as well as the sterilizer would achieve. He sat back, feeling that the Patrol was a good outfit and the Randolph a fine place to be.

Before turning his charges loose Lopez gave them each their schedule of assignments. Mart's room number was A-5197. All living quarters were on A- deck which was the insulated outer skin of the ship. Lopez gave them a brief, condescending lecture on the system of numbering the spaces in the ship and dismissed them. His manner gave no hint

that he himself had been lost for one full day shortly after his own arrival a year earlier.

Matt got lost, of course.

He attempted to take a short cut straight through the ship on the advice of a passing marine and got completely twisted when he found himself at the no-weight center of the Randolph. When he had worked his way back down levels of increasing weight until he found himself at one gravity and could go no further he stopped the first cadet with a black arm band whom he could find and threw himself on his mercy. A few minutes later he was led to corridor five and found his own room.

Tex was already there. "Hello, Matt," he greeted him. "What do you think of our little cabin in the sky?"

Matt put down his jump bag. "Looks all right, but the first time I have to leave it I'm going to unroll a ball of string. Is there a viewport?"

"Not likely! What did you expect? A balcony?"

"I don't know. I sort of hoped that we'd be able to look out and see Earth." He started poking around, opening doors. "Where's the 'fresher?"

"Better start unrolling your ball of string. It's way down the passage."

"Oh. Kind of primitive. Well, I guess we can stand it." He went on exploring. There was a common room about fifteen feet square. It had doors, two on each side, leading into smaller cubicles. "Say, Tex," he announced when he had opened them all, "this place is fitted up for four people."

"Go to the head of the class."

"I wonder who we'll draw."

"So do I." Tex took out his assignment sheet. "It says here that we can reshuffle roommates until supper time tomorrow. Got any ideas, Matt?"

"No, I can't say I really know anybody but you. It doesn't matter as long as they don't snore-and as long as it isn't Burke."

They were interrupted by a rap on the door. Tex called out, "Come in!" and Oscar Jensen stuck his blond head inside.

"Busy?"

"Not at all."

"I've got a problem. Pete and I found ourselves assigned to one of these four-way rooms and the two roommates we landed with want us to make room for two other fellows. Are you guys tied down as yet?"

Tex looked at Matt, who nodded. Tex turned back to Oscar. "You can kiss me, Oscar-we're practically married."

An hour later the four had settled down to domesticity. Pete was in high spirits. "The Randolph is just what the doctor ordered," he announced. "I'm going to like it here. Any time my legs start to ache all I have to do is go up to G-deck and it's just like being back home-I weigh my proper weight again."

"Yep," agreed Tex, "if the joint were co-educational it would be perfect."

Oscar shook his head. "Not for me. I'm a woman-hater."

Tex clucked sorrowfully. "You poor, poor boy. Now take my Uncle Bodie- he thought he was a woman-hater, too. . . ."

Matt never found out how Uncle Bodie got over his disability. An announcer, mounted in the common room, summoned him to report to compartment B-121. He got there, after a few wrong turns, and found another youngster cadet just coming out. "What's it for?" he asked.

"Go on in," the other told him. "Orientation."

Matt went in and found an officer seated at a desk. "Cadet Dodson, sir, reporting as ordered."

The officer looked up and smiled. "Sit down, Dodson, Lieutenant Wong is my name. I'm your coach."

"My coach, sir?"

"Your tutor, your supervisor, anything you care to call it. It's my business to see that you and a dozen more like you study what you need to study. Think of me as standing behind you with a black snake whip." He grinned.

Matt grinned back. He began to like Mr. Wong.

Wong picked up a sheaf of papers. "I've got your record here-let's lay out a course of study. I see you type, use a slide rule and differential calculator, and can take shorthand-those are all good. Do you know any outer languages? By the way, don't bother to talk Basic; I speak north

American English fairly well. How long have you spoken Basic?"

"Er, I don't know any outer languages, sir. I had Basic in high school, but I don't really think in it. I have to watch what I'm saying."

"I'll put you down for Venerian, Martian, and Venus trade talk. Your voice writer-you've looked over the equipment in your room?"

"Just glanced at it, sir. I saw there was a study desk and a projector."

"You'll find a spool of instructions in the upper righthand drawer of the desk. Play them over when you go back. The voice writer built into your desk is a good model. It can hear and transcribe not only the Basic vocabulary, but the Patrol's special vocabulary of technical words. If you will stick to its vocabulary, you can even write love letters on it-" Dodson glanced sharply at Lieutenant Wong, but Wong's face was impassive; Matt decided not to laugh.

"-so it's worth your while to perfect your knowledge of Basic even for social purposes. However, if you speak a word the machine can't find on its list, it will just 'beep' complainingly until you come to its rescue. Now about math-I see you have a condition in tensor calculus."

"Yes, sir," Matt admitted. "My high school didn't offer it."

Wong shook his head sadly. "I sometimes think that modern education is deliberately designed to handicap a boy. If cadets arrived here having already been taught the sort of things the young human animal can learn, and should learn, there would be fewer casualties in the Patrol. Never mind- we'll start you on tensors at once. You can't study nuclear engineering until you've learned the language of it. Your school was the usual sort, Dodson? Classroom recitations, daily assignments, and so forth?"

"More or less. We were split into three" groups."

"Which group were you in?"

"I was in the fast one, sir, in most subjects."

"That's some help, but not much. You're in for a shock, son. We don't have classrooms and fixed courses. Except for laboratory work and group drills, you study alone. It's pleasant to sit in a class daydreaming while the teacher questions somebody else, but we haven't got time for that. There is too much ground to cover. Take the outer languages alone-have you ever studied under hypnosis?"

"Why, no, sir."

"We'll start you on it at once. When you leave here, go to the Psycho Instruction Department and ask for a first hypno in Beginning Venerian. What's the matter?"

"Well. . . . Sir, is it absolutely necessary to study under hypnosis?"

"Definitely. Everything that can possibly be studied under hypno you will have to learn that way in order to leave time for the really important subjects."

Matt nodded. "I see. Like astrogation."

"No, no, no! Not astrogation. A ten-year-old child could learn to pilot a spaceship if he had the talent for mathematics. That is kindergarten stuff, Dodson. The arts of space and warfare are the least part of your education. I know, from your tests, that you can soak up the math and physical sciences and technologies. Much more important is the world around you, the planets and their inhabitants-extraterrestrial biology, history, cultures, psychology, law and institutions, treaties and conventions, planetary ecologies, system ecology, interplanetary economics, applications of extraterritorialism, comparative religious customs, law of space, to mention a few."

Matt was looking bug-eyed. "My gosh! How long does it take to learn all those things?"

"You'll still be studying the day you retire. But even those subjects are not your education; they are simply raw materials. Your real job is to learn how to think-and that means you must study several other subjects: epistemology, scientific methodology, semantics, structures of languages, patterns of ethics and morals, varieties of logics, motivational psychology, and so on. This school is based on the idea that a man who can think correctly will automatically behave morally-or what we call 'morally. What is moral behavior for a Patrolman, Matt? You are called Matt, aren't you? By your friends?"

"Yes, sir. Moral behavior for a Patrolman ,. ."

"Yes, yes. Go on."

"Well, I guess it means to do your duty, live up to your oath, that sort of thing."

"Why should you?"

Matt kept quiet and looked stubborn.

"Why should you, when it may get you some messy way of dying? Never mind. Our prime purpose here is to see to it that you learn how your own mind works. If the result is a man who fits into the purposes of the Patrol because his own mind, when he knows how to use it, works that way-then fine! He is commissioned. If not, then we have to let him go."

Matt remained silent until Wong finally said, "What's eating on you, kid? Spill it."

"Well-look here, sir. I'm perfectly willing to work hard to get my commission. But you make it sound like some-\ thing beyond my control. First I have to study a lot of things I've never heard "of. Then, when it's all over, somebody decides my mind doesn't work right. It seems to me that what this job calls for is a superman."

"Like me." Wong chuckled and flexed his arms. "Maybe so, Matt, but there aren't any supermen, so well have to do the best we can with young squirts like you. Come, now, let's make up the list of spools you'll need."

It was a long list. Matt was surprised and pleased to find that some story spools had been included. He pointed to an item that puzzled him-An Introduction to Lunar Archeology. "I don't see why I should study that-the Patrol doesn't deal with Selenites; they've been dead for millions of years."

"Keeps your mind loosened up. I might just as well have stuck in modern French music. A Patrol officer shouldn't limit his horizons to just the things he is sure to need. Fm marking the items I want you to study first, then you beat it around to the library and draw out those spools, then over to Psycho for your first hypno. In about a week, when you've absorbed this first group, come back and see me."

"You mean you expect me to study all the spools I'm taking out today in one week?" Matt looked at the list in amazement.

"That's right. In your off hours, that is-you'll be busy with drills and lab a lot. Come back next week and we'll boost the dose. Now get going."

"But- Aye aye, sir!"

Matt located the Psycho Instruction Department and was presently ushered into a small room by a bored hypno technician wearing the uniform of the staff services of the Space Marines. "Stretch out in that chair," he was told. "Rest your head back. This is your first treatment?" Matt admitted that it was.

"You'll like it. Some guys come in here just for the rest- they already know more than they ought to. What course was it you said you wanted?"

"Beginning Venerian."

The technician spoke briefly to a pick-up located on his desk. "Funny thing-about a month ago an oldster was in here for a brush up in electronics. The library thought I said 'colonies' and now he's loaded up with a lot of medical knowledge he'll never use. Lemme have your left arm." The technician irradiated a patch on his forearm and injected the drug. "Now just lay back and follow the bouncing light. Take it easy . . . relax . . . relax . . . and . . . close . . . your ... eyes ... and ... relax ... you're ... getting-"

Someone was standing in front of him, holding a hypodermic pressure injector "That's all. You've had the antidote."

"Huh?" said Matt. "Wazzat?"

"Sit still a couple of minutes and then you can go."

"Didn't it take?"

"Didn't what take? I don't know what you were being exposed to; I just came on duty."

Matt went back to his room feeling rather depressed. He had been a little afraid of hypnosis, but to find that he apparently did not react to the method was worse yet. He wondered whether or not he could ever keep up with his studies if he were forced to study everything, outer languages as well, by conventional methods.

Nothing to do but to go back and see Lieutenant Wong about it-tomorrow, he decided.

Oscar was alone in the suite and was busy trying to place a hook in the wall of a common room. A framed picture was leaning against the chair on which he stood. "Hello, Oscar."

"Howdy, Matt." Oscar turned his head as he spoke; the drill he was using slipped and he skinned a knuckle. He started to curse in strange, lisping speech. "May maledictions pursue this nameless thing to the uttermost depths of world slime!"

Matt clucked disapprovingly. "Curb thy voice, thou impious fish."

Oscar looked up in amazement. "Matt-I didn't know you knew any Venerian."

Matt's mouth sagged open. He closed it, then opened it to speak "Well, I'll be a- Neither did II"