"Well, punch it."
Matt pressed the button; the alcove filled with the first bars of Beethoven's Fifth. The music gave way to a voice: "The Patrol was originally made up of officers sent to it by each of the nations then in the Western Federation. Some were trustworthy, some were not. In 1996 came a day shameful and glorious in the history of the Patrol, an attempted coup d'etat, the so-called Revolt of the Colonels. A cabal of high-ranking officers, acting from Moon Base, tried to seize power over the entire world. The plot would have been successful had not Lieutenant Dahlquist disabled every atom-bomb rocket at Moon Base by removing the fissionable material from each and wrecking the triggering mechanisms. In so doing he received so much radiation that he died of his burns." The voice stopped and was followed by the Valhalla theme from Götterdammerung.
Tex let out a long sigh; Matt realized that he had been holding his own breath. He let it go, then took another; it seemed to relieve the ache in his chest.
They heard a chuckle behind them. Girard Burke was leaning against the frame of the alcove. "They go to a lot of trouble to sell it around here," he remarked. "Better watch it, me lads, or you will find yourselves buying it."
"What do you mean by that? Sell what?"
Burke gestured toward the picture. "That. And the plug that goes with it. If you care for that sort of thing, there are three more, one at each cardinal point of the compass."
Matt stared at him. "What's the matter with you, Burke? Don't you want to be in the Patrol?"
Burke laughed. "Sure I do. But I'm a practical man; I don't have to bamboozled into it by a lot of emotional propaganda." He pointed to the picture of Ezra Dahlquist. "Take him. They don't tell you he disobeyed orders of his superior officer-if things had fallen the other way, he'd be called a traitor. Besides that, they don't mention that it was sheer clumsiness that got him burned. Do you expect me to think he was a superman?"
Matt turned red. "No, I wouldn't expect it." He took a step forward. "But, since you are a practical man, how would you like a nice, practical punch in the snoot?"
Burke was no larger than Matt and a shade shorter, but he leaned forward, balanced on the balls of his feet, and said softly, "I'd love it. You and who else?"
Tex stepped forward. "I'm the 'who else.' "
"Stay out of this, Tex!" Matt snapped.
"I will not! I don't believe in wasting fair fighting on my social inferiors."
"Stay out, I tell you!"
"Nope, I want a piece of this. You slug him and I'll kick him in the stomach as he goes down."
Burke looked at Jarman, and relaxed, as if he knew that the fighting moment was past. "Tut, tut, Gentlemen! You're squabbling among yourselves." He turned away. "Goodnight, Dodson. Don't wake me coming in."
Tex was still fuming. "We should have let him have it. He'll make your life miserable until you slap him down. My Uncle Bodie says the way to deal with that sort of pimple is to belt him around until he apologizes."
"And get kicked out of the Patrol before we're in it? I let him get me mad, so that puts him one up. Come on- let's see what else there is to see."
But Call-to-Quarters sounded before they worked .around to the next of the four alcoves. Matt said good night to Tex at his door and went inside. Burke was asleep or shamming. Matt peeled off his clothes, shinnied up into his bunk, looked for the light switch, spotted it, and ordered it to switch off.
The unfriendly presence under him made him restless, but he was almost asleep when he recalled that he had not called his father back. The thought awakened him. Presently he became aware of a vague ache somewhere inside him. Was he coming down with something?
Could it be that he was homesick? At his age? The longer he considered it the more likely it seemed, much as he hated to admit it. He was still pondering it when he fell asleep.
III OVER THE BUMPS
THE NEXT MORNING Burke ignored the trouble they had had; he made no mention of it. He was even moderately cooperative about sharing the 'fresher. But Matt was glad to hear the call to breakfast.
Table 147 was not where it should be. Puzzled, Matt moved down the line until he found a table marked "147-149," with Cadet Sabbatello in charge. He found a place and sat down, to find himself sitting next to Pierre Armand. "Well! Pete!" he greeted him. "How are things going?"
"Glad to see you, Matt. Well enough, I guess." His tone seemed doubtful.
Matt looked him over. Pete seemed-"dragged through a knothole" was the phrase Matt settled on. He was about to ask what was wrong when Cadet Sabbatello rapped on the table. "Apparently," said the cadet, "some of you gentlemen have forgotten my advice last night, to eat sparingly this morning. You are about to go over the bumps today-and ground-hogs have been known to lose their breakfasts as well as their dignity."
Matt looked startled. He had intended to order his usual lavish breakfast; he settled for milk toast and tea. He noticed that Pete had ignored the cadet's advice; he was working on a steak, potatoes, and fried eggs-whatever ailed Pete, Matt decided, it had not affected his appetite.
Cadet Sabbatello had also noticed it. He leaned toward Pete. "Mister, uh-"
"Armand, sir," Pete answered between bites.
"Mr. Armand, either you have the digestion of a Martian sandworm, or you thought I was joking. Don't you expect to be dropsick?"
"No, sir."
"No?"
"You see, sir, I was born on Ganymede."
"Oh! I beg your pardon. Have another steak. How are you doing?"
"Pretty well, on the whole, sir."
"Don't be afraid to ask for dispensations. You'll find that everyone around here understands your situation."
"Thank you, sir."
"I mean it. Don't play 'iron man.' There's no sense in it."
After breakfast, Matt fell in step with Armand. "Say, Pete, I see why Oscar carried your bag yesterday. Excuse me for being a stupe."
Pete looked self-conscious. "Not at all. Oscar has been looking out for me-I met him on the trip down from Terra Station."
Matt nodded. "I see." He had no expert knowledge of interplanetary schedules, but he realized that Oscar, coming from Venus, and Pete, coming from one of Jupiter's moons, would-have to change ships at the artificial satellite of Earth called Terra Station, before taking the shuttle rocket down.
It accounted for the two boys being well acquainted despite cosmically different backgrounds. "How do you feel?" he went on.
Pete hesitated. "As a matter of fact, I feel as if I were wading in quicksand up to my neck. Every move is an effort."
"Gee, that's too bad! Just what is the surface gravity on Ganymede? About one-third V isn't it?"
"Thirty-two per cent. Or from my point of view, everything here weighs three times as much as it ought to. Including me."
Matt nodded. "As if two other guys were riding on you, one on your shoulders, and one on your back."
"That's about it. The worst of it is, my feet hurt all the time. I'll get over it-"
"Sure you will!
"-since. I'm of Earth ancestry and potentially just as strong as my grandfather was. Back home, I'd been working out in the centrifuge the last couple of earth-years. I'm a lot stronger than I used to be. There's Oscar." Matt greeted Oscar, then hurried to his room to phone his father in private.
A copter transport hopped Matt and some fifty other candidates to the site of the variable acceleration test-in cadet slang, the "Bumps." It was west of the base, in the mountains, in order to have a sheer cliff for free fall. They landed on a loading platform at the edge of this cliff and joined a throng of other candidates. It was a crisp Colorado morning. They were near the timberline; gaunt evergreens, twisted by the winds, surrounded the clearing.
From a building just beyond the platform two steel skeletons ran vertically down the face of the two-thousand-foot cliff. They looked like open frames for elevators, which one of them was. The other was a guide for the testing car during the drop down the cliff.