Thus was born the Hog Alley band. It grew to seven pieces and started working on a repertoire to be presented at a ship's entertainment. Matt dropped out when he became eligible for the space polo league, as he could not spare time for both-his meager, talent was no loss to the band.
Nevertheless he remained in the orbit of the oldster. Arensa adopted all four of them, required them to report to his room from time to time, and supervised their lives. However, he never placed them on the report. By comparing notes with other youngster cadets on this point, Matt discovered that he and his friends were well off. They attended numerous sessions of the 'Forum,' first by direction, later from choice. The staple recreation in the Randolph, as it is in all boarding schools, was the
bull session. The talk ranged through every possible subject and was kept spiced by Arensa's original and usually radical ideas.
However, no matter what was discussed, the subject usually worked around to girls and then broke up with the un-startling conclusion: 'There's no sense in talking about it-there aren't any girls in the Randolph. Let's turn in.'
Almost as entertaining was the required seminar in 'Doubt.' The course had been instituted by the present commandant and resulted from his own observation that every military organization-with the Patrol no exception- suffered from an inherent vice. A military hierarchy automatically places a premium on conservative behavior and dull conformance with precedent; it tends to penalize original and imaginative thinking. Commodore Arkwright realized that these tendencies are inherent and inescapable; he hoped to offset them a bit by setting up a course that could not be passed without original thinking.
The method was the discussion group, made up of youngsters, oldsters, and officers. The seminar leader would chuck out some proposition that attacked a value usually regarded as axiomatic. From there on anything could be said.
It took Matt a while to get the hang of it. At his first session the leader offered: 'Resolved: that the Patrol is a detriment and should be abolished.' Matt could hardly believe his ears.
In rapid succession he heard it suggested that the past hundred years of Patrol-enforced peace had damaged the race, that the storm of mutations that followed atomic warfare were necessarily of net benefit under the inexorable laws of evolution, that neither the human race nor any of the other races of the system could expect to survive permanently in the universe if they deliberately forsook war, and that, in any case, the Patrol was made up of a bunch of self-righteous fatheads who mistook their own trained-in prejudices for the laws of nature.
Matt contributed nothing to the first discussion he attended.
The following week he heard both mother love and love of mother questioned. He wanted to reply, but, for the life of him, could think of no other answer than 'Because!' Thereafter came attacks on monotheism as a desirable religious form, the usefulness of the scientific method, and the rule of the majority, in reaching decisions. He discovered that it was permissible to express opinions that were orthodox as well as ones that were unorthodox and began to join the debate by defending some of his own pet ideas.
At once he found his own unconscious assumptions that lay behind his opinions subjected to savage attack and found himself again reduced to a stubborn and unvoiced 'Because!'
He began to catch on to the method and found that he could ask an innocent question that would undermine someone else's line of argument. From then on he had a good time.
He particularly enjoyed it after Girard Burke was assigned to his seminar. Matt would lie in wait until Girard would express some definite opinion, then jump him-always with a question; never with a statement. For some reason not clear to Matt, Burke's opinions were always orthodox; to attack them Matt was forced to do some original thinking.
But he asked Burke about it after class one day. 'See here, Burke-I thought you were the bird with a new slant on everything?'
'Well, maybe I am. What about it?'
'You don't sound like it in 'Doubt.' '
Burke looked wise. 'You don't catch me sticking my neck out.'
'What do you mean?'
'Do you think our dear superiors are really interested in your bright ideas? Won't you ever learn to recognize a booby trap, son?'
Matt thought about it. 'I think you're crazy.' Nevertheless he chewed it over.
The days rolled past. The pace was so hard that there was little time to be bored. Matt shared the herd credo of all cadets that the Randolph was a madhouse, unfit for human habitation, sky junk, etc., etc.-but in fact he had no opinion of his own about the school ship; he was too busy. At first he had had some acute twinges of homesickness; thereafter it seemed to recede. There was nothing but the treadmill of study, drill, more study, laboratory, sleep, eat, and study again.
He was returning from the communications office, coming off watch late one night, when he heard sounds from Pete's cubicle. At first he thought Pete must be running his projector, studying late. He was about to bang on his door and suggest going up to the galley to wheedle a cup of cocoa when he became convinced that the sound was not a projector.
Cautiously he opened the door a crack. The sound was sobbing. He closed the door noiselessly and knocked on it. After a short silence Pete said, 'Come in.'
Matt went in. 'Got anything to eat?'
'Some cookies in my desk.'
Matt got them out. 'You look sick, Pete. Anything wrong?'
'No. Nothing.'
'Don't give me the space drift. Out with it.'
Pete hesitated. 'It's nothing. Nothing anybody can do anything about.'
'Maybe so, maybe not. Tell me.'
'There's nothing you can do. I'm homesick, that's all!'
'Oh-' Matt had a sudden vision of the rolling hills and broad farms of Iowa. He suppressed it. 'That's bad, kid. I know how you feel.'
'No, you don't. Why, you're practically at home-you can just step to a port and see it.'
'That's no help.'
'And it hasn't been so terribly long since you've been home. Me-it took me two years just to make the trip to Terra; there's no way of telling when I'll ever see home again.' Pete's eyes got a faraway look; his voice became almost lyrical. 'You don't know what it's like, Matt. You've never seen it. You know what they say: 'Every civilized man has two planets, his own and Ganymede.' '
'Huh?'
Pete did not even hear him. 'Jupiter hanging overhead, filling half the sky- ' He stopped. 'It's beautiful, Matt. There's no place like it.'
Matt found himself thinking about Des Moines in a late summer evening . . . with fireflies winking and the cicadas singing in the trees, and the air so thick and heavy you could cup it in your hand. Suddenly he hated the steel shell around him, with its eternal free-fall and its filtered air and its artificial lights. 'Why did we ever sign up, Pete?'
'I don't know. I don't know!'
'Are you going to resign?'
'I can't. My father had to put up a bond to cover my passage both ways-if I leave voluntarily he's stuck for it.'
Tex came in, yawning and scratching. 'What's the matter with you guys? Can't you sleep? Don't you want anybody else to sleep?'
'Sorry, Tex.'
Jarman looked them over. 'You both look like your pet dog had died. What's the trouble?'
Matt bit his lip. 'Nothing much. I'm homesick, that's all.'
Pete spoke up at once. 'That's not quite straight. I was the one that was pulling the baby act-Matt was trying to cheer me up.'
Tex looked puzzled. 'I don't get it. What difference does it make where you are so long as you aren't in Texas?'
