"Good luck."
Sten had become experienced enough with the testing to instantly look at his radar screen. Ah-hah. There... somewhat to the right... so I must direct this craft... and, just as implicitly promised, the radar set hazed green.
Sten evaluated the situation—the illusion he was experiencing through the helmet. Unlike the Shavala-experience, in these tests any action Sten took would be "real." If, for instance, he steered the ship onto the rocks, he would experience a wreck and, probably, since Selection people were sadistic, slow drowning.
Simple solution. Easy, Sten thought.
All I have to do is hit the antigrav, and this boat will—
Wrong. There were only three controls in front of Sten: a large, spoked steering wheel and two handles.
This was a two-dimensional boat.
There were gauges, which Sten ignored. They were probably intended to show engine performance, and Sten, having no idea what kind of power train he was using, figured they were, at least at the moment, irrelevant.
Another wave came in, and the ship pitched sideways. Sten, looking at his choices, threw the right handle all the way forward, the left handle all the way back, and turned the wheel hard to the right.
The pitching subsided.
Sten equalized the two handles—I must have two engines, I guess—and held the wheel at midpoint.
Ahead of him the storm cleared, and Sten could see high rocks with surf booming over them. There was a slight break to the left—the harbor entrance.
Sten steered for it.
The rocks grew closer, and crosscurrents tried to spin Sten's boat.
Sten sawed at throttles and wheel.
Very good. He was lined up.
The rain stopped, and Sten saw, bare meters in front of him, the glisten of earth as a wave washed back. Clotting bastards—that's what a bar was!
He reversed engines.
A series of waves swept his boat over the stern. Sten ignored them.
He got the idea.
When a wave hits the bar, the water gets deep. All I need to do is wait for a big wave, checking through the rear bridge windows, and then go to full power. Use the wave's force to get into the harbor.
It worked like a shot. The huge wave Sten chose heaved the boat clear, into the harbor mouth.
Sten, triumphant, forgot to allow for side currents, and his boat smashed into the causeway rocks.
Just as anticipated, not only did his boat sink, Sten had the personal experience of drowning.
Slowly.
GRADE: PASSING.
By now, Sten had learned the names of his fellow candidates.
The hard sergeant, who Sten had figured would be thrown out immediately, had managed to survive. Survive, hell—so far he and Victoria had interchanged positions as Number One and Number Two in the class standings. A specialist in ancient history would not have been surprised, knowing the man's name—William Bishop the Forty-third.
Sten, not knowing, was astonished, as were the other candidates, who had dubbed the sergeant "Grunt," a nickname he accepted cheerfully.
The furry would-be beer aficionado, whose name was Lotor, was a valued asset. He was the class clown.
Since normal military relief valves such as drunkenness, passes, and such were forbidden, the candidates tended to get very crazy in the barracks. Lotor had started the water-sack war.
Sten had been the first victim.
There had been an innocent knock on his door at midnight. He'd opened the door to get a plas container of water in the face.
Sten, once he'd figured out who the culprit was, had retaliated by sealing Lotor in his shower with the drain plugged. He'd relented before the water level hit the ceiling.
Lotor, after drying his fur, had escalated. He had decided that Sten had allies, Sh'aarl't being one. So he'd tucked the floor fire hose under Sh'aarl't's door and turned it on.
Sh'aarl't, awakened when her room got half-full, had sensibly opened the door and gone back to sleep.
Lotor had not considered that making a spider an enemy was a bad thing to do.
The next night, Sh'aarl't had spun her web out from her window up a floor to Lotor's room and gently replaced his pillow with a water bag.
Lotor, again looking for a new target, went after Grunt. He tied an explosive charge to a huge water bag, rolled it down the corridor, knocked on Bishop's door, and then scurried.
Grunt opened his door just as the water bag blew.
His revenge required filling Lotor's room with a huge weather balloon filled with water. Bishop, being the combat type he was, didn't bother to figure out whether Lotor was present when he set the trap.
It took most of the barracks staff to free Lotor.
At that point, through mutual exhaustion and because no one could come up with a more clever escalation, the watersack war ended.
The only good effect it produced was the linking of Lotor, Bishop, Sten, and Sh'aarl't into a vague team.
The team adopted Victoria as their mascot. She wasn't sure why but was grateful for the company. The four never explained, but it was just what Sten had felt on the map exercise: One of them had to make it. And Victoria was the most likely candidate.
The five had discussed their options—which all agreed were slim—and also what those IPs really would turn out to be if they were required to wear uniforms instead of the blank coveralls.
Victoria had the best slander on Ferrari. She said the sloppy man must have been a Warrant-1, who probably blackmailed his commanding officer while stealing every piece of Imperial property that wasn't bonded in place.
They had laughed, shared a cup of the guaranteed-no-side-effects herbal tea, and headed for their rooms and the omnipresent studying.
At least most of them did.
Possibly the herbal tea had no reported effects.
Sten and Victoria bade Sh'aarl't good night at her door. Sten meant to walk Victoria to her room but found himself asking her into his own room.
Victoria accepted.
Inside, Sten gloried and dismayed. Victoria pressured the bed and plumped the pillows. She touched a finger to her flight suit zip, and the coverall dropped away from her tiny, absolutely perfect body.
Sten had fantasized about making love to a ballerina—specifically Victoria. He hadn't suggested it because he had the rough idea that if he suggested and she accepted, his capabilities would be exactly as impotent as Mason daily suggested.
Tension and all that.
Sten may have been accurate about his own potential. But he had no idea how creative an ex-professional dancer could be.
The next day both Victoria and Sten tested very, very low on the various challenges.
They'd had less than an hour's sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Selection moved on from written or livie tests to live problems, giving Ferrari and Mason a chance for real hands-on harassment.
Sten had the idea that the particular situation he was facing would be a real piece, since Ferrari was beaming and even Mason had allowed his slash of a mouth to creep up on one side.
"This is what we call a Groupstacle," Ferrari explained genially.
Group. Obstacle.
The group was Bishop, Victoria, Lotor, Sten, and six others.
The obstacle was:
"We're standing here," Ferrari said, "in the control room of a destroyer. Flower class, in case you're curious. It looks terrible, does it not?"
He waited for the chorus of agreement from the candidates.
"The reason it looks so bad is because it has crash-landed on a certain planetoid. This planetoid has acceptable atmosphere and water. But there is nothing to eat and very little which can be made into shelter."