He stopped. " 'Hey' yourself! Were you yelling at me?"
"Uh, yes. You're a Scout, aren't you?"
"Certainly."
"So am I. My name's Bill Lermer. Shake." I slipped him the Scout grip.
He returned it. "Mine's Sergei Roskov." He looked me over. "You're one of the Johnny-Come-Latelies, aren't you?"
"I came over in the Mayflower" Iadmitted.
"That's what I meant. No offense— I was born Earth-side, myself. So you used to be a Scout, back home. That's good. Come around to meeting and we'll sign you up again."
"I'm still a Scout," I objected.
"Huh? Oh, I get you—'Once a Scout, always a Scout.' Well, come around and we'll make it official."
That was a very good time for me to keep my lip zipped. But not me—oh, no! When comes the Tromp of Doom, I'll still be talking instead of listening. I said, "It's as official as it can be. I'm senior patrol leader, Baden-Powell Troop."
"Huh? You're kind of far away from your troop, aren't you?"
So I told him all about it. He listened until I was through, then said quietly, "And you laddie bucks had the nerve to call yourselves the 'Boy Scouts of Ganymede.' Anything else you would like to grab? You already have our meeting hall; maybe you'd like to sleep in our beds?"
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing." He seemed to be thinking it over. "Just a friendly warning, Bill——"
"Huh?"
"There is only one senior patrol leader around here–and you're looking right at him. Don't make any mistake about it. But come on around to meeting anyhow," he added. "You'll be welcome. We're always glad to sign up a new tenderfoot."
I went back to the Receiving Station and looked up Hank Jones and told him all about it. He looked at me admiringly. "William, old son," he said, "I've got to hand it to you. It takes real talent to louse things up that thoroughly. It's not easy."
"You think I've messed things up?"
"I hope not. Well, let's look up Doc Archibald and see what can be done."
Our troop master was holding clinic; we waited until the patients were out of the way, then went in. He said, "Are you two sick, or just looking for a ticket to gold brick?"
"Doc," I said, "we were wrong. There are so Scouts on Ganymede."
"So I know," he answered.
I said, "Huh?"
"Mr. Ginsberg and Mr. Bruhn and I have been negotiating with the senior Scout officials here to determine just how our troops will be taken into the parent organization. It's a bit complicated as there are actually more Mayflower Scouts than there are in the local troop. But they have jurisdiction, of course."
I said, "Oh."
"Well have a joint meeting in a few days, after we get the rules ironed out."
I thought it over and decided I had better tell him what had happened, so I did.
He listened, not saying anything. Finally I said, "Hank seems to think I've messed things up. What do you think, Doc?"
"Mmmm—" he said. "Well, I hope he's wrong. But I think I may say you haven't helped the situation any."
I didn't know what to say. "Don't look so tragic about it," he urged. "You'll get well. Now run along and forget it. It may not make any difference."
But it did make a difference. Doc and the others had been pitching for our troops to be recognized as properly constituted troops, with all ratings acknowledged. But after Sergei spread the word around, the regular Ganymede Scouts all squawked that we were nothing but a bunch of tenderfeet, no matter what we had been back on Earth. The place for us to start was the bottom; if we were any good, we could prove it— by tests.
It was compromised; George says things like that are always compromised. Ratings were confirmed on probation, with one G-year to make up any tests that were different. Our troops were kept intact But there was one major change:
All patrol leaders had to be from the original Ganymede Scouts; they were transferred from the Leda troop. I had to admit the justice of it. How could I be a patrol leader on Ganymede when I was still so green that I didn't know northwest from next week? But it didn't set well with the other fellows who had been patrol leaders when the word got around that I was responsible for the flies in the soup.
Hank talked it over with me. "Billy my boy," he told me, "I suppose you realize that you are about as popular as ants at a picnic?"
"Who cares?" I objected.
"You care. Now is the time for all good men to perform an auto da fé"
"What in great blazing moons is an auto da fé?"
"In this case it means for you to transfer to the Leda Troop."
"Have you gone crazy? You know what those guys think of us, especially me. I'd be lucky to get away with my life."
"Which just goes to show how little you know about human nature. Sure, it would be a little rough for a while, but it's the quickest way to gain back some respect."
"Hank, you really are nuts. In that troop I really would be a tenderfoot—and how!"
"That's just the point," Hank went on quietly, "We're all tenderfeet—only here in our own troop it doesn't show. If we stay here, we'll keep on being tenderfeet for a long time. But if we transfer, we'll be with a bunch who really know their way around—and some of it will rub off on us."
"Did you say 'we'?"
"I said 'we'."
"I catch on. You want to transfer, so you worked tip this gag about how I ought to do so, so you would have company. A fine chum you are!"
He just grinned, completely unembarrassed. "Good old Bill! Hit him in the head eight or nine times and he can latch on to any idea. It won't be so bad, Bill. In precisely four months and nine days we won't be tenderfeet; we'll be old timers."
"Why the exact date?"
"Because that is the due date of the Mayflower on her next trip—as soon as they arrive they'll be the Johnny-Come-Latelies."
"Oh!"
Anyhow, we did it—and it was rough at first, especially on me... like the night they insisted that I tell them how to be a hero. Some twerp had gotten hold of the meteorite story. But the hazing wasn't too bad and Sergei put a stop to it whenever he caught them at it. After a while they got tired of it.
Sergei was so confounded noble about the whole thing that I wanted to kick him.
The only two merit badges to amount to anything that stood in the way of my getting off probation and back up to my old rating of Eagle Scout were agronomy and planetary ecology, Ganymede style. They were both tough subjects but well worth studying. On Ganymede you had to know them to stay alive, so I dug in.
Ecology is the most involved subject I ever tackled. I told George so and he said possibly politics was worse—and on second thought maybe politics was just one aspect of ecology. The dictionary says ecology is "the science of the interrelations of living organisms and their environment." That doesn't get you much, does it? It's like defining a hurricane as a movement of air.
The trouble with ecology is that you never know where to start because everything affects everything else. An unseasonal freeze in Texas can affect the price of breakfast in Alaska and that can affect the salmon catch and that can affect something else. Or take the old history book case: the English colonies took England's young bachelors and that meant old maids at home and old maids keep cats and the cats catch field mice and the field mice destroy the bumble bee nests and bumble bees are necessary to clover and cattle eat clover and cattle furnish the roast beef of old England to feed the soldiers to protect the colonies that the bachelors emigrated to, which caused the old maids.