Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire (16 page)

Two minutes passed before Billings appeared. "You called me, sir?"

"Yes, I did. I had a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard. It has disappeared. Do you know anything about it?"

"Yes, sir. I removed it myself."

"Removed it?" McShane threw Simcox and Fane a look of half-suppressed exasperation. "What on earth for?"

"I have obtained your first issue of technical books and placed them on the rack in readiness, sir. It would be advisable to commence your studies at once, if I may say so."

"Why the rush?"

"The examination at the end of the first month is designed to check on the qualifications that new entrants are alleged to possess. Occasionally they prove not to the complete satisfaction of the college. In such a case, the person concerned is sent home as unsuitable." The old eye acquired a touch of desperation. "You will have to pass, sir. It is extremely important. You will pardon me for saying that an officer can manage without drink when it is expedient to do so."

Taking a deep breath, McShane asked, "Exactly what have you done with the bottle?"

"I have concealed it, sir, in a place reserved by the staff for that purpose."

"And don't I ever get it back?"

Billings was shocked. "Please understand, sir, that the whiskey has been removed and not confiscated. I will be most happy to return it in time for you to celebrate your success in the examination."

"Get out of my sight," said McShane.

"Very well, sir."

When he had gone, McShane told the others, "See what I've got? It's worse than living with a maiden aunt."

"Mine's no better," said Fane gloomily.

"Mine neither," endorsed Simcox.

"Well, what are we going to do about it, if anything?" McShane invited.

They thought it over and after a while Simcox said, "I'm taking the line of least resistance." He raised his tone to passable imitation of a childish treble. "I am going to go home and do my sums because my Nanny will think I'm naughty if I don't."

"Me, too," Fane decided. "An officer and a gentleman, sir, never blows his nose with a ferocious blast. Sometimes the specimen I've got scares hell out of me. One spit on the floor and you're expelled with ignominy."

They ambled out, moody-faced. McShane flung himself into a chair, spent twenty minutes scowling at the wall. Then, becoming bored with that, he reached for the top book in the stack. It was thrillingly titled
"Astromathematical Foundations of Space Navigation."
It looked ten times drier than a bone. For lack of anything else to do, he stayed with it. He became engrossed despite himself. He was still with it at midnight, mentally bulleting through the star-whorls and faraway mists of light.

Billings tapped on the door-panels, looked in, murmured apologetically, "I realized that you are not yet in bed, sir, and wondered whether you had failed to notice the time. It is twelve o'clock. If I may make so bold—"

He ducked out fast as McShane hurled the book at him.

Question Eleven: The motto of the Space Training College is
"God Bless You."
As briefly as possible explain its origin and purpose.

McShane scribbled rapidly. "The motto is based upon three incontrovertible points. Firstly, a theory need not be correct or even visibly sensible; it is sufficient for it to be workable. Secondly, any life form definable as intelligent must have imagination and curiosity. Thirdly, any life form possessed of imagination and curiosity cannot help but speculate about prime causes."

He sharpened his thoughts a bit, went on, "Four hundred years ago a certain Captain Anderson, taking a brief vacation on Earth, stopped to listen to a religious orator who was being heckled by several members of the audience. He noticed that the orator answered every witticism and insult with the words, 'God bless you, brother!' and that the critics lacked an effective reply. He also noted that in a short time the interrupters gave up their efforts one by one, eventually leaving the orator to continue unhampered."

What next? He chewed his pen, then, "Captain Anderson, an eccentric but shrewd character, was sufficiently impressed to try the same tactic on alien races encountered in the cosmos. He found that it worked nine times out of ten. Since then it has been generally adopted as a condensed, easily employed and easily understood form of space-diplomacy."

He looked it over. Seemed all right but not quite enough. The question insisted upon brevity but it had to be answered in full, if at all. "The tactic has not resolved all differences or averted all space wars but it is workable in that it has reduced both to about ten per cent of the potential number. The words 'God bless you' are neither voiced nor interpreted in conventional Earth-terms. From the cosmic viewpoint they may be said to mean, 'May the prime cause of everything be beneficial to you!' "

Yes, that looked all right. He read it right through, felt satisfied, was about to pass on to the next question when a tiny bubble of suspicion lurking deep in his subconscious suddenly rose to the surface and burst with a mentally hearable pop.

The preceding ten questions and the following ones all inquired about subjects on which he was supposed to be informed. Question Eleven did not. Nobody at any time had seen fit to explain the college motto. The examiners had no right to assume that any examinee could answer it. So why had they asked it? It now became obvious—they were still trapping.

Impelled by curiosity he, McShane, had looked up the answer in the college library, this Holy Joe aspect of space travel being too much to let pass unsolved. But for that he'd have been stuck.

The implication was that anyone unable to deal with Question Eleven would be recognized as lacking in curiosity and disinterested. Or, if interested, too lazy and devoid of initiative to do anything about it.

He glanced surreptitiously around the room in which forty bothered figures were seated at forty widely separated desks. About a dozen examinees were writing or pretending to do so. One was busily training his left ear to droop to shoulder level. Four were masticating their digits. Most of the others were feeling around their own skulls as if seeking confirmation of the presence or absence of brains.

The discovery of one trap slowed him up considerably. He reconsidered all the questions already answered, treating each one as a potential pitfall. The unanswered questions got the same treatment.

Number Thirty-four looked mighty suspicious. It was planted amid a series of technical queries from which it stuck out like a Sirian's prehensile nose. It was much too artless for comfort. All it said was: In not more than six words define courage.

Well, for better or for worse, here goes. "Courage is fear faced with resolution."

He wiped off the fiftieth question with vast relief, handed in his papers, left the room, wandered thoughtfully around the campus.

Simcox joined him in short time, asked, "How did it go with you?"

"Could have been worse."

"Yes, that's how I felt about it. If you don't hit the minimum of seventy-five per cent, you're out on your neck. I think I've made it all right."

They waited until Fane arrived. He came half an hour later and wore the sad expression of a frustrated spaniel.

"I got jammed on four stinkers. Every time there's an exam I go loaded with knowledge that evaporates the moment I sit down."

Two days afterward the results went up on the board. McShane muscled through the crowd and took a look.

McShane, Warner. 91%. Pass with credit.

He sprinted headlong for Mercer's House, reached his room with Simcox and Fane panting at his heels.

"Billings! Hey, Billings!"

"You want me, sir?"

"We got through. All three of us." He performed a brief fandango. "Now's the time. The bottle, man. Come on, give with that bottle."

"I am most pleased to learn of your success, sir," said Billings, openly tickled pink.

"Thank you, Billings. And now's the time to celebrate. Get us the bottle and some glasses."

"At eight-thirty, sir."

McShane glanced at his watch. "Hey, that's in one hour's time. What's the idea?"

"I have readied paper and envelopes on your desk, sir. Naturally, you will wish to inform your parents of the result. Your mother especially will be happy to learn of your progress."

"My mother especially?" McShane stared at him. "Why not my father?"

"Your father will be most pleased, also," assured Billings. "But generally speaking, sir, mothers tend to be less confident and more anxious."

"That comes straight from one who knows," commented McShane for the benefit of the others. He returned attention to Billings. "How long have you been a mother?"

"For forty years, sir."

The three went silent. McShane's features softened and his voice became unusually gentle.

"I know what you mean, Billings. We'll have our little party just when you say."

"At eight-thirty to the minute, sir," said Billings. "I will bring glasses and soda."

He departed, Simcox and Fane following. McShane brooded out the window for a while, then went to his desk, reached for pen and paper.

"Dear Mother,—"

The long, vast, incredibly complicated whirl of four years sufficiently jam-packed to simulate a lifetime. Lectures, advice, the din of machine shops, the deafening roar of testpits, banks of instructions with winking lights and flickering needles, starfields on the cinema screen, equations six pages long, ball games, ceremonial parades with bands playing and banners flying, medical check-ups, blood-counts, blackouts in the centrifuge, snap questions, examinations.

More examinations, more stinkers, more traps. More lectures each deeper than its predecessor. More advice from all quarters high and low.

"You've got to be saturated with a powerful and potent education to handle space and all its problems. We're giving you a long, strong dose of it here. It's a very complex medicine of which every number of the staff is a part. Even your personal servant is a minor ingredient."

"The moment you take up active service as an officer every virtue and every fault is enlarged ten diameters by those under you. A little conceit then gets magnified into insufferable arrogance."

"The latter half of the fourth year is always extremely wearing, sir. May I venture to suggest that a little less relaxation in the noisiest quarter of town and a little more in bed—"

"You fellows must get it into your heads that it doesn't matter a hoot whether you've practiced it fifty or five hundred times. You aren't good enough until you've reduced it to an instinctive reaction. A ship and a couple of hundred men can go to hell while you're seeking time for thought."

"Even your personal servant is a minor ingredient."

"If I may be permitted the remark, sir, an officer is only as strong as the men who support him."

For the last six months McShane functioned as House Proctor of Mercer's, a dignified and learned figure to be viewed with becoming reverence by young and brash first-year men. Simcox and Fane were still with him but the original forty were down to twenty-six.

The final examination was an iron-cased, red-hot heller. It took eight days.

McShane, Warner.
82%.
Pass with credit.

After that, a week of wild confusion dominated by a sense of an impending break, of something about to snap loose. Documents, speeches, the last parade with thudding feet and
oompah-oompah
, relatives crowding around, mothers, brothers, sisters in their Sunday best, bags, cases and boxes packed, cheers, handshakes, a blur of faces saying things not heard. And then an aching silence broken only by the purr of the departing car.

He spent a nervy, restless fortnight at home, kissed farewells with a hidden mixture of sadness and relief, reported on the assigned date to the survey-frigate
Mamasea
. Lieutenant McShane, fourth officer, with three men above him, thirty below.

The
Mamasea
soared skyward, became an unseeable dot amid the mighty concourse of stars. Compared with the great battleships and heavy cruisers roaming the far reaches she was a tiny vessel—but well capable of putting Earth beyond communicative distance and almost beyond memory.

It was a long, imposing, official-looking car with two men sitting erect in the front, its sole passenger in the back. With a low hum it came up the drive and stopped. One of the men in front got out, opened the rear door, posed stiffly at attention.

Dismounting, the passenger walked toward the great doors which bore a circled star on one panel. He was a big man, wise-eyed, gray-haired. The silver joint under his right kneecap made him move with a slight limp.

Finding the doors ajar, he pushed one open, entered a big hall. Momentarily it was empty. For some minutes he studied the long roster of names embossed upon one wall.

Six uniformed men entered from a corridor, marching with even step in two ranks of three. They registered a touch of awe and their arms snapped up in a sixfold salute to which he responded automatically.

Limping through the hall, he found his way out back, across the campus to what once had been Mercer's House. A different name, Lysaght's, was engraved upon its lintel now. Going inside, he reached the first floor, stopped undecided in the corridor.

A middle-aged civilian came into the corridor from the other end, observed him with surprise, hastened up.

"I am Jackson, sir. May I help you?"

The other hesitated, said, "I have a sentimental desire to look out the window of Room Twenty."

Jackson's features showed immediate understanding as he felt in his pocket and produced a master key. "Room Twenty is Mr. Cain's, sir. I know he would be only too glad to have you look around. I take it that it was once your own room, sir?"

"Yes, Jackson, about thirty years ago."

The door clicked open and he walked in. For five minutes he absorbed the old familiar scene.

"Thirty years ago," said Jackson, standing in the doorway. "That would be in Commodore Mercer's time."

"That's right. Did you know him?"