'Oh.' Matt tucked this away and started trying to digest it. 'What happened afterwards? When you saw the duty officer?'
'I reported to the duty office and the cadet on watch sent me on in. I saluted and announced my name, like a good little boy, and showed him the two orders.' Tex paused and stared into the distance.
'Yes? Go on, man-don't stop like that'
'Then he most scientifically ate my ears off. My Uncle Bodie couldn't have done a better job.' Tex paused again, as if the memory were too painfully sharp. 'Then he quieted down a little bit and explained to me in words of one syllable that reg nine- oh-seven was for emergencies only and that youngster cadets were under the orders of oldster cadets at all times and in all matters, unless the regulations specifically say otherwise.'
'He did? Say, that covers an awful lot of ground. Why, that means a senior cadet can order us to do almost anything. You mean it's covered by law that an oldster can tell me how to part my hair?'
'Just precisely that-you happened to pick the very words Lieutenant von Ritter used. An oldster can't tell you to violate a regulation-he can't tell you to take a poke at the captain and he can't order you to hold still while he takes a poke at you. But that's about all that limits him. Mr. von Ritter says that it's left up to the good judgment and discretion of the senior, and table manners were very definitely Mr. Dynowski's business and not to forget it! Then he told me to report back to Ski.'
'Did he crow over you?'
'Not a bit.' Tex's brow wrinkled. 'That's the funny part about it. Ski treated the whole affair just as if he had been giving me a lesson in geometry. He said that now that I was assured that his orders were according to regulation he wanted me to know why he had told me how to eat my pie. He even said he could see that I would regard it as improper interference with my private life. I said I guessed I didn't have any private life any more. He said no, I had one all right, but it would feel pretty microscopic for a while.
'Then he explained the matter. A patrol officer is supposed to be able to move in all society-if your hostess eats with her knife, then you eat with your knife.'
'Everybody knows that.'
'Okay. He pointed out that candidates come from everywhere. Some of them even come from families and societies where it's good manners for everybody to eat out of one dish, with their fingers'. . . some .of the* Moslem boys. But there is an over-all way to behave that is acceptable anywhere among the top crust.'
'Nuts,' said Matt. 'I've seen the Governor of Iowa with a hot dog in one hand and a piece of pie in the other.'
'I'll bet it wasn't at a state dinner,' Tex countered. 'No, Matt, it made sense the way he told it. He said pie wasn't important, but it was part of a larger pattern-for instance that you must never mention death on Mars or to a Martian.'
'Is that a fact?'
'I guess so. He said that in time I would learn how to 'eat pie with a fork' as he put it, under any possible circumstances on any planet. He let it go at that.'
'I should think he would. I take it he lectured you all evening?'
'Oh, my, no. Ten minutes, maybe.'
'Then where were you? You still hadn't come back to your room, just before taps.'
'Oh, I was still in Ski's room, but I was busy.'
'Doing what? Stroking his brow?'
'No.' Tex looked mildly embarrassed. 'I was writing- 'I will always eat my pie with my fork,' two thousand times.'
Tex and Matt attempted to explore the ship and did in fact visit every deck that was open to them. But the power-room door was locked and a space- marine guard kept them from entering the passageway leading to the pilot room. They tried to get another view from the ports in the recreation room but found that a degree of order had been instituted; the master-at-arms of that deck was requiring each cadet that entered to state that he had not yet had a chance to look out before the cadet was allowed to tarry.
As for the other passenger decks, they found that when they had seen one, they had seen all. Shipboard refreshers interested them for a while, as the curious and clever modifications necessary to make a refresher function properly in space were new to both of them. But four hours is too long to spend inspecting showers and fixtures; after a while they found another fairly quiet spot to loaf and experienced for the first time the outstanding characteristic of all space travel-its monotony.
Much later the ship's speaker blared, 'Prepare for acceleration. Ten minute warning.'
Strapped down again, each in his place, the boys felt short blasts of power at rather long intervals, then a very considerable wait, after which there was the softest and gentlest of bumps. 'That's the drag line,' remarked the sergeant in Matt's compartment. 'They'll warp us in. It won't be long now.'
Ten minutes later the speaker announced, 'By decks, in succession- discharge passengers.'
'Unstrap,' said the sergeant. He left his midships position and posted himself at the hatch ladder. Transferring passengers was a lengthy process, as the two ships were linked by only one air lock each. Matt's party waited while four decks forward of them were emptied, then they pulled themselves along the ladder to the seventh deck. There a passenger port was open but beyond it, instead of empty space, was the inside of a corrugated tube, six feet in diameter. A line ran down the center of it and was made fast to a padeye in the ship. Along this line swarmed a steady stream of cadets, monkey fashion.
In his turn, Matt grabbed the line and pulled himself along. Fifty feet beyond the air lock, the tube suddenly opened out into another compartment, and Matt found himself inside his new home, the P.R.S. Randolph.
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
