Space Cadet (11 page)

The Sergeant crouched in the air, his feet drawn up. “At the count of one,” he was saying, “take the ready position, with your feet about six inches from the steel. At the count of two, place your feet firmly against the steel and push off.” He shoved against the steel wall and shot into the air, still talking, “Hold the count of four, turn on the count of five—” His body drew up into a ball and turned over a half turn, “—check your rotation—” His body extended again, “—and make contact on the count of seven—” His toes touched the far wall, “—letting your legs collapse softly so that your momentum will be soaked up without rebound.” He collapsed loosely, like an empty sack, and remained floating near the spot where he had landed.

The room was a cylinder fifty feet in diameter in the center of the ship. The entire room was mounted in rollers and was turned steadily in the direction opposite to the spin of the ship and with the same angular speed: thus it had no net spin. It could be entered only from the end, at the center of rotation.

It was a little island of “free fall”—the free-fall gymnasium. A dozen youngster cadets clung to a grab line running fore-and-aft along the wall of the gym and watched the sergeant. Matt was one of the group.

“And now, gentlemen, let’s try it again. By the numbers—One! Two! Three!” by the count of five, at which time they all should have turned in the air, neatly and together, all semblance of order was gone. There were collisions, one cadet had even failed to get away from the grab line, and two cadets, refugees from a midair skirmish, were floating aimlessly toward the far end of the room. Their faces had the bewildered look of a dog trying to get traction on smooth ice as they threshed their arms and legs in an effort to stay their progress.

“No! No! No!” said the sergeant and covered his face with his hands. “I can’t bear to look. Gentlemen—
please!
A little coordination. Don’t throw yourself at the far wall like an Airedale heading into a fight. A steady, firm shove—like this.”

He took off sideways, using the traction given him by his space boots, and intercepted the two deserters, gathering one in each arm and letting his momentum carry the three bodies slowly toward the far end of the grab line, “Grab on,” he told them, “and back to your places. Now, gentlemen—once more. Places! By the numbers—normal push off, with arrested contact—one!”

A few moments later he was assuring them that he would much rather teach a cat to swim.

Matt did not mind. He had managed to reach the far wall and stay there. Without grace, proper timing, nor at the spot he had aimed for, but he had managed it, after a dozen failures. For the moment he classed himself as a spaceman.

When the class was dismissed he hurried to his room and into his own cubicle, selected a spool on Martian history, inserted it in his projector, and began to study. He had been tempted to remain in the free-fall gymnasium to practice; he wanted very badly to pass the “space legs” test—free-fall acrobatics—as those who had passed it and qualified in the use of basic space suits as well were allowed one liberty a month at Terra Station.

But he had had an extra interview with Lieutenant Wong a few days before. It had been brief, biting, and had been concerned with the efficient use of his time.

Matt did not want another such—nor the five demerits that went with it. He settled his head in the neck rest of his study chair and concentrated on the recorded words of the lecturer while scenes in color-stereo passed in front of him, portraying in chill beauty the rich past of the ancient planet.

The projector was much like the study box he had used at home, except that it was more gadgeted, could project in three dimensions, and was hooked in with the voicewriter. Matt found this a great time-saver. He could stop the lecture, dictate a summary, then cause the projector to throw his printed notes on the screen.

Stereo-projection was a time-saver for manual subjects as well. “You are now entering the control room of a type A-6 utility rocket,” the unseen lecturer would say, “and will practice an airless landing on Luna”—while the camera moved through the door of the rocket’s pilot room and panned down to a position corresponding to the pilot’s head. From there on a pictured flight could be made very realistic.

Or it might be a spool on space suits. “This is a four-hour suit,” the voice would say, “type M, and may be worn anywhere outside the orbit of Venus. It has a low-capacity rocket unit capable of producing a total change of speed in a three-hundred-pound mass of fifty foot-seconds. The built-in radio has a suit-to-suit range of fifty miles. Internal heating and cooling is—” By the time Matt’s turn came for space-suit drill he knew as much about it as could be learned without practice.

His turn came when he passed the basic free-fall test. He was not finished with free-fall drill—there remained group precision drill, hand-to-hand combat, use of personal weapons, and other refinements—but he was judged able to handle himself well enough. He was free, too, to go out for free-fall sports, wrestling, bank tennis, jai alai, and several others—up to now he had been eligible only for the chess club. He picked space polo, a game combining water polo and assault with intent to maim, and joined the local league, in the lowest or “bloodynose” group.

He missed his first chance at space-suit drill because a battered nose had turned him into a mouth breather—the respirator for a type-M suit calls for inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. But he was ready and anxious the following week. The instructor ordered his group to “Suit up!” without preliminary, as it was assumed that they had studied the instruction spool.

The last of the ship’s spin had been removed some days before. Matt curled himself into a ball, floating free, and spread open the front of his suit. It was an unhandy process; he found shortly that he was trying to get both legs down one leg of the suit. He backed out and tried again. This time the big fishbowl flopped forward into the opening.

Most of the section were already in their suits. The instructor swam over to Matt and looked at him sharply. “You’ve passed your free-fall basic?”

“Yes,” Matt answered miserably.

“It’s hard to believe. You handle yourself like a turtle on its back. Here.” The instructor helped Matt to tuck in, much as if he were dressing a baby in a snow suit. Matt blushed.

The instructor ran through the check-off list—tank pressure, suit pressure, rocket fuel charge, suit oxygen, blood oxygen (measured by a photoelectric gadget clipped to the earlobe) and finally each suit’s walkie-talkie unit. Then he herded them into the airlock.

Matt felt his suit swell up as the pressure died away in the lock. It was becoming slightly harder to move his arms and legs. “Hook up your static lines,” called out the instructor. Matt uncoiled his from his belt and waited. Reports came in: “Number one hooked.” “Number two hooked.”

“Number three hooked,” Matt sang out into the mike in his helmet as he snapped his line to the belt of cadet number four. When they were all linked like mountain climbers the instructor hooked himself to the chain and opened the outer door of the lock. They looked out into the star-flecked void.

“Click on,” directed the instructor, and placed his boots gently against the side of the lock. Matt did likewise and felt the magnetic soles of his boots click against the steel. “Follow me and stay closed up.” Their teacher walked along the wall to the open door and performed an awkward little squatting spread-eagle step. One boot was still inside the door, flat to the wall, with the toe pointing inboard; with the other he reached around the corner, bent his knees, and felt for the outer surface of the ship. He withdrew the foot still in the lock and straightened his body—with which he almost disappeared, for he now stuck straight out from the ship, his feet flat to her side.

Following in order, Matt went out through the door. The ninety degree turn to get outside the lock and “standing” on the outer skin of the ship he found to be tricky; he was forced to use his hands to steady himself on the door frame. But he got outside and “standing up.” There was no true up-and-down; they were still weightless, but the steel side was a floor “under” them; they stuck to it as a fly sticks to a ceiling.

Matt took a couple of trial steps. It was like walking in mud; his feet would cling stickily to the ship, then pull away suddenly. It took getting used to.

They had gone out on the dark side of the ship. Sun, Moon and Earth lay behind its bulk, underfoot. Not even Terra Station could be seen.

“We’ll take a walk,” announced the instructor, his voice hollow in their helmets. “Stick together.” He started around the curving side of the ship. A cadet near the end of the chain tried to break both magnetized boots free from the ship at the same time. He accomplished it, by jumping—and then had no way to get back. He moved out until his static line tugged at the two boys on each side of him.

One of them, caught with one foot free of the ship in walking, was broken loose also, though he reached wildly for the steel and missed. The cadet next to him, last in line, came loose in turn.

No more separated, as the successive tugs on the line had used up the energy of the first cadet’s not-so-violent jump. But three cadets now dangled on the line, floating and twisting grotesquely.

The instructor caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, and squatted down. He found what he sought, a steel ring recessed in the ship’s side, and snapped his static line to it. When he was certain that the entire party was not going to be dragged loose, he ordered, “Number nine—haul them in, gently—very gently. Don’t pull yourself loose doing it.”

A few moments later the vagrants were back and sticking to the ship. “Now,” said the instructor, “who was responsible for that piece of groundhog stupidity?”

No one answered. “Speak up,” he said sharply. “It wasn’t an accident; it’s impossible to get both feet off unless you hop. Speak up, confound it, or I’ll haul every last one of you up in front of the Commandant.”

At the mention of that awful word a small, meek voice answered, “I did it, sergeant.”

“Hold out your hand, so I’ll know who’s talking. I’m not a mind reader.”

“Vargas—number ten.” The cadet held out his arm.

“Okay. Back to the airlock, everybody. Stick together.” When they were there, the instructor said, “Inside, Mr. Vargas. Unhook your line, snap to the lock and wait for us. You’ll take this drill over—about a month from now.”

“But sergeant—”

“Don’t give me any lip, or swelp me, I’ll report you for AWOL—jumping ship.”

Silently the cadet did as ordered. The instructor leaned inside to see that Vargas actually anchored himself, then straightened out. “Come, gentlemen—we’ll start again—and no monkey shines. This is a drill, not a tea party.”

Presently Matt said, “Sergeant Hanako—”

“Yes? Who is it?”

“Dodson. Number three. Suppose we had all pulled loose?”

“We’d ’ave had to work our way back on our rocket units.”

Matt thought about it. “Suppose we didn’t have reaction units?”

“Nothing much—under these circumstances. The officer of the watch knows we’re outside; the radio watch is guarding our frequency. They would just have tracked us by radar until they could man a scooter and come get us. Just the same—listen, all of you—just because they’ve got you wrapped in cotton batting is no reason to behave like a bunch of schoolgirls. I don’t know of any nastier, or lonelier, way to die than all by yourself in a space suit, with your oxygen running out.” He paused. “I saw one once, after they found him and fetched him back.”

They were rounding the side of the ship, and the bulging sphere of the Earth had been rising over their metal horizon.

Suddenly the Sun burst into view.

“Mind the glare!” Sergeant Hanako called out. Hastily Matt set his visor for maximum interference and adjusted it to shade his face and eyes. He did not attempt to look at the Sun; he had dazzled his eyes often enough from the viewports of the ship’s recreation rooms, trying to blank out the disc of the Sun exactly, with a coin, so that he might see the prominences and the ghostly aurora. It was an unsatisfactory business; the usual result was a headache and spots before his eyes.

But he never grew tired of looking at Earth.

She hung before him, great and fat and beautiful, and seeming more real than when seen through a port. She swelled across Aquarius, so huge that had she been in Orion she would have concealed the giant hunter from Betelgeuse to Rigel.

Facing them was the Gulf of Mexico. Above it sprawled North America wearing the polar cap like a chef’s hat. The pole was still bright under the failing light of late northern summer. The sunrise line had cleared North America except for the tip of Alaska; only the central Pacific was dark.

Someone said, “What’s that bright dot in the Pacific, over near the edge? Honolulu?”

Honolulu did not interest Matt; he searched, as usual, for Des Moines—but the Mississippi Valley was cloudy; he could not find it. Sometimes he could pick it out with his naked eyes, when the day was clear in Iowa. When it was night in North America he could always tell which jewel of light was home—or thought he could.

They were facing Earth so that the north pole seemed “up” to them. Far off to the right, almost a ship’s width from the Earth, nearly occulting Regulus in Leo, was the Sun, and about half way between the Sun and Earth, in Virgo, was a crescent Moon. Like the Sun, the Moon appeared no larger than she did from Earth surface. The gleaming metal sides of Terra Station, in the sky between Sun and Moon and ninety degrees from Earth, outshone the Moon. The Station, a mere ten miles away, appeared half a dozen times as wide as the Moon.

“That’s enough rubbernecking,” announced Hanako. “Let’s move around.” They walked forward, looking the ship over and getting the feel of her size, until the sergeant stopped them. “Any further and we’d be slapping our feet over the Commandant’s head. He might be asleep.” They sauntered aft and Hanako let them work around the edge of the stern until they looked across the openings of her mighty tubes. He called them back promptly. “Even though she ain’t blasted in years, this area is a little bit hot—and you’re not shielded from the pile abaft frame ninety-three anyhow. Forward, now!”