Space Cadet (10 page)

Lunch was hot roast beef sandwiches with potatoes, green salad, lime sherbet, 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. Matt’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 voicewriter—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 voicewriter 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 something 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 we’ll 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. I’m 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 I!”