"Hi, Tex. How's it going?"
"All right. Say, you should have been here a few minutes ago. We passed one of the television relay stations, close by. Boy, oh, boy, are we traveling!"
"We did, huh? What did it look like?"
"Couldn't see much of it, must have been ten miles away, maybe. But, with the time we're making it was just there she comes and there she goes."
"Can you see the Earth?" Matt squirmed toward the port.
"Natch." Tex gave way and let Matt slide into his place. The frame of the port cut across the eastern Atlantic. Matt could see an arc extending almost from the North Pole to the Equator.
It was high noon over the Atlantic. Beyond it, bright in the afternoon sunlight, he could make out the British Isles, Spain, and the brassy Sahara. The browns and greens of land were in sharp contrast to the deep purple of the ocean. In still greater contrast stood the white dazzle of cloud. As his eye approached the distant, rounded horizon the details softened, giving a strong effect of stereo, of depth, of three-dimensional globularness-the world indeed was round!
Round and green and beautiful! He discovered presently that he had been holding his breath. His nausea was quite gone.
Someone tugged at his leg. "Don't stay there all day. Do you want to hog it?"
Regretfully Matt gave way to another cadet. He turned and shoved himself away from the port and in so doing became disoriented. He could not find Tex in the helter-skelter mass of floating bodies.
He felt a grip on his right ankle. "Let's get out of here, Matt."
"Right." They worked their way to the hatch and moved to the next deck. Being without ports it was not heavily populated. They propelled themselves toward the center of the room, away from the traffic, and steadied themselves on handholds. "Well," said Matt, "so this is it-space, I mean. How do you like it?"
"Makes me feel like a goldfish. And I'm getting cross-eyed trying to figure out which side is up. How's your gizzard? Been dropsick?"
"No." Matt swallowed cautiously. "Let's not talk about it. Where were you last night, Tex? I looked for you a couple of times, but your roommate said he hadn't seen you since dinner."
"Oh, that-'' Tex looked pained. "I was in Mr. Dynkowski's room. Say, Matt, that was a bum steer you gave me."
"Huh? What steer?"
"You know-when you advised me to ask Mr. Dynkowski to put an order in writing if I was in doubt about it. Man, oh man, did you get me in a jam!" .
"Wait a minute-I didn't advise you to do that; I just pointed out that the regs let you do it if you wanted to."
"Just the same, you were egging me on."
"The deuce I was! My interest was purely theoretical. You were a free agent."
"Oh, well-skip it. Skip it."
"What happened?"
"Well, last night at dinner I ordered pie for dessert. I picked it up, just like I always have ever since I got too big for Ma to slap my hands for it, and started shoveling it in my face, happy as a pup in a pansy bed. Ski ordered me to cease and desist-told me to use my fork."
"Yeah? Go on."
"I said to put it in writing, please, sir, polite as a preacher."
"It stopped him?"
"Like fun it did! He said, Very well, Mr. Jarman,' cool as could be, took out his notebook, wrote it out, stamped his thumb print on it, tore out the page and handed it to me."
"So you used your fork. Or didn't you?"
"I sure did. But that's only the beginning. Immediately he wrote out another order and handed it to me. He told me to read it aloud. Which I did."
"What did it say?"
"Wait a minute ... I've got it here somewhere." Tex poked around in his pouch. "Here-read it."
Matt read, " 'Cadet Jarman-immediately after this meal you will report to the officer-of-the-watch, taking with you the first written order I gave you. Explain to him the events leading up to the first order and get an opinion from him as to the legality of orders of this type-S. Dynkowski, psd. cdt.'"
Matt whistled. "Oh, oh. ... What did you do?"
"I finished my pie, the way he told me to, though I didn't want it very much by then. Ski was nice about it. He grinned at me and said, 'No hard feelings, Mr. Jarman. All according to protocol and all that sort of thing.' Then he wanted to know where in the world I had gotten the idea."
Matt felt his neck grow warm. "You told him it was my idea?"
"Do I look stupid? I just told him somebody had pointed out regulation number nine-oh-seven to me."
Matt relaxed. "Thanks, Tex. I'll remember that."
"Forget it. But he sent you a message."
"Me?'
"It was just one word: 'Don't,'"
"Don't what?"
"Just 'Don't.' He added that amateur space lawyers frequently talked themselves out of the Patrol."
"Oh." Matt tucked this away and started trying to digest it. "What happened afterwards? When you saw the duty officer?"
"I reported to the duty office and the cadet on watch sent me on in. I saluted and announced my name, like a good little boy, and showed him the two orders." Tex paused and stared into the distance.
"Yes? Go on, man-don't stop like that"
"Then he most scientifically ate my ears off. My Uncle Bodie couldn't have done a better job." Tex paused again, as if the memory were too painfully sharp. "Then he quieted down a little bit and explained to me in words of one syllable that reg nine- oh-seven was for emergencies only and that youngster cadets were under the orders of oldster cadets at all times and in all matters, unless the regulations specifically say otherwise."
"He did? Say, that covers an awful lot of ground. Why, that means a senior cadet can order us to do almost anything. You mean it's covered by law that an oldster can tell me how to part my hair?"
"Just precisely that-you happened to pick the very words Lieutenant von Ritter used. An oldster can't tell you to violate a regulation-he can't tell you to take a poke at the captain and he can't order you to hold still while he takes a poke at you. But that's about all that limits him. Mr. von Ritter says that it's left up to the good judgment and discretion of the senior, and table manners were very definitely Mr. Dynowski's business and not to forget it! Then he told me to report back to Ski."
"Did he crow over you?"
"Not a bit." Tex's brow wrinkled. "That's the funny part about it. Ski treated the whole affair just as if he had been giving me a lesson in geometry. He said that now that I was assured that his orders were according to regulation he wanted me to know why he had told me how to eat my pie. He even said he could see that I would regard it as improper interference with my private life. I said I guessed I didn't have any private life any more. He said no, I had one all right, but it would feel pretty microscopic for a while.
"Then he explained the matter. A patrol officer is supposed to be able to move in all society-if your hostess eats with her knife, then you eat with your knife."
"Everybody knows that."
"Okay. He pointed out that candidates come from everywhere. Some of them even come from families and societies where it's good manners for everybody to eat out of one dish, with their fingers". . . some .of the* Moslem boys. But there is an over-all way to behave that is acceptable anywhere among the top crust."
"Nuts," said Matt. "I've seen the Governor of Iowa with a hot dog in one hand and a piece of pie in the other."
"I'll bet it wasn't at a state dinner," Tex countered. "No, Matt, it made sense the way he told it. He said pie wasn't important, but it was part of a larger pattern-for instance that you must never mention death on Mars or to a Martian."
"Is that a fact?"
"I guess so. He said that in time I would learn how to 'eat pie with a fork' as he put it, under any possible circumstances on any planet. He let it go at that."