"Did anyone else get the naked woman asking about your childhood?" I asked.
"I got a man," Susan said.
"Woman," said Harry.
"Man," said Jesse.
"Woman," said Thomas.
"Man," said Alan.
We all looked at him.
"What?" Alan said. "I'm gay."
"What was the point of that?" I asked. "About the naked person, I mean, not about Alan being gay."
"Thanks," Alan said dryly.
"They're trying to provoke particular responses, that's all," said Harry. "All of today's tests have been of pretty basic intellectual or emotional responses, the foundation of more complex and subtle emotions and intellectual abilities. They're just trying to figure out how we think and react on a primal level. The naked person was obviously trying to get you all worked up sexually."
"But what was that whole thing about asking you about your childhood, is what I'm saying," I said.
Harry shrugged. "What's sex without a little guilt?"
"What pissed me off was the one where they got me all pissed off," Thomas said. "I swear I was going to clobber that guy. He said the Cubs ought to have been demoted to the minor leagues after they went two centuries without a World Series championship."
"That sounds reasonable to me," Susan said.
"Don't you start," Thomas said. "Man. Pow. I'm telling you. You don't mess with the Cubs."
If the first day was all about demeaning feats of intellect, the second day was about demeaning feats of strength, or lack thereof.
"Here's a ball," one proctor said to me. "Bounce it." I did. I was told to move on.
I walked around a small athletic track. I was asked to run a small distance. I did some light calisthenics. I played a video game. I was asked to shoot at a target on a wall with a light gun. I swam (I liked that part. I've always liked swimming, so long as my head's above water). For two hours, I was placed in a rec room with several dozen other people and told to do whatever I wanted. I shot some pool. I played a game of Ping-Pong. God help me, I played shuffleboard.
At no point did I even break a sweat.
"What the hell sort of army is this, anyway?" I asked the Old Farts at lunch.
"It makes a little bit of sense," Harry said. "Yesterday we did basic intellect and emotion. Today was basic physical movement. Again, they seem interested in the foundations of high order activity."
"I'm not really aware of Ping-Pong being indicative of higher order physical activity," I said.
"Hand-eye coordination," Harry said. "Timing. Precision."
"And you never know when you're going to have to bat back a grenade," Alan piped in.
"Exactly," Harry said. "Also, what do you want them to do? Have us run a marathon? We'd all drop before the end of the first mile."
"Speak for yourself, flabby," Thomas said.
"I stand corrected," Harry said. "Our friend Thomas would make it to mile six before his heart imploded. If he didn't get a food-related cramp first."
"Don't be silly," Thomas said. "Everyone knows you need to power up with carbohydrates before a race. Which is why I'm going back for more fettuccine."
"You're not running a marathon, Thomas," Susan said.
"The day is young," Thomas said.
"Actually," Jesse said, "my schedule is empty. I've got nothing planned for the rest of the day. And tomorrow, the only thing on the schedule is 'Concluding Physical Improvements' from 0600 to 1200 and a general recruit assembly at 2000, after dinner."
"My schedule is finished until tomorrow, too," I said. A quick glance up and down the table showed that everyone else was done for the day as well. "Well, then," I said. "What are we going to do to amuse ourselves?"
"There's always more shuffleboard," Susan said.
"I have a better idea," Harry said. "Anyone have plans at 1500?"
We all shook our heads.
"Swell," Harry said. "Then meet me back here. I have a field trip for the Old Farts."
"Are we even supposed to be here?" Jesse asked.
"Sure," said Harry. "Why not? And even if we're not, what are they going to do? We're not really in the military yet. We can't officially be court-martialed."
"No, but they can probably blow us out an air lock," Jesse said.
"Don't be silly," Harry said. "That would be a waste of perfectly good air."
Harry had led us to an observation deck in the Colonial area of the ship. And indeed, while we recruits had never been specifically told we couldn't go to the Colonial's decks, neither had we been told that we could (or should). Standing as we were in the deserted deck, the seven of us stood out like truant schoolkids at a peep show.
Which, in one sense, was what we were. "During our little exercises today, I struck up a conversation with one of the Colonial folks," Harry said, "and he mentioned that the Henry Hudson was going to make its skip today at 1535. And I figure that none of us has actually seen what a skip looks like, so I asked him where one would go to get a good view. And he mentioned here. So here we are, and with"—Harry glanced at his PDA—"four minutes to spare."
"Sorry about that," Thomas said. "I didn't mean to hold everyone up. The fettuccine was excellent, but my lower intestine would apparently beg to differ."
"Please feel free not to share such information in the future, Thomas," Susan said. "We don't know you that well yet."
"Well, how else will you get to know me that well?" Thomas said. No one bothered to answer that one.
"Anyone know where we are right now? In space, that is," I asked after a few moments of silence had passed.
"We're still in the solar system," Alan said, and pointed out the window. "You can tell because you can still see the constellations. See, look, there's Orion. If we'd traveled any significant distance, the stars would have shifted their relative position in the sky. Constellations would have been stretched out or would be entirely unrecognizable."
"Where are we supposed to be skipping to?" Jesse asked.
"The Phoenix system," Alan said. "But that won't tell you anything, because 'Phoenix' is the name of the planet, not of the star. There is a constellation named 'Phoenix,' and in fact, there it is"—he pointed to a collection of stars—"but the planet Phoenix isn't around any of the stars in that constellation. If I remember correctly, it's actually in the constellation Lupus, which is farther north"—he pointed to another, dimmer collection of stars—"but we can't actually see the star from here."
"You sure know your constellations," Jesse said admiringly.
"Thanks," Alan said. "I wanted to be an astronomer when I was younger, but astronomers get paid for shit. So I became a theoretical physicist instead."
"Lots of money in thinking up new subatomic particles?" Thomas asked.
"Well, no," Alan admitted. "But I developed a theory that helped the company I worked for create a new energy containment system for naval vessels. The company's profit-sharing incentive plan gave me one percent for that. Which came to more money than I could spend, and trust me, I made the effort."
"Must be nice to be rich," Susan said.
"It wasn't too bad," Alan admitted. "Of course, I'm not rich anymore. You give it up when you join. And you lose other things, too. I mean, in about a minute, all that time I spent memorizing the constellations will be wasted effort. There's no Orion or Ursa Minor or Cassiopeia where we're going. This might sound stupid, but it's entirely possible I'll miss the constellations more than I miss the money. You can always make more money. But we're not coming back here. It's the last time I'll see these old friends."
Susan went over and put an arm around Alan's shoulder. Harry looked down at his PDA. "Here we go," he said, and began a countdown. When he got to "one," we all looked up and out the window.