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
