A shudder ripped through the station, so strong Quentin grabbed at the stool to keep his balance.
[WARNING, STATION DECOMPRESSION IMMINENT, EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY]
The door opposite the one he had entered slid open with a hiss. He fought down panic — somehow he’d gone from a simple test to a sudden run for his life. Quentin looked above the door. The orange circle — the universal symbol for a path to an escape pod — emitted a welcoming glow. If he just followed doors marked with that circle, the path would lead him to a way out.
He sprinted through the door, which led into a long hall. At the end of the hall he saw another orange circle. Strong legs pumped beneath him and he ate up the distance in seconds. At the end of the second hall, the door slid open for him and he jumped through. This room looked like a medical bay, full of tables and cabinets.
The floor shifted below him, tilting to the left.
[DECOMPRESSION IMMINENT. MOVE TO THE NEAREST EVACUATION STATION]
The lights started to flicker. Quentin had seen enough newscasts to know decompression wasn’t a pretty sight. He scanned the three doors in the room — the one at the far end showed the welcome orange circle. Just as he ran forward, the room tilted steeply to the right. He kept his balance and kept moving forward, but the tables rolled into his path. He hopped backwards as one rolled just in front of him and slammed against the wall. He took three steps forward before the room shifted again, this time hard to the left.
The tables rolled back across his path. He hurdled the first and kept moving forward, but the second table caught him on the hip. The solid metal surface dug into him and tossed him into the far wall. Quentin barely managed to stay on his feet. The floor shifted yet again, but this time he was ready for it, angling his body to the left to compensate.
[DECOMPRESSION IN FIFTEEN SECONDS]
The door opened and he again looked down a hall, this one much shorter — and at the end sat an open airlock door leading into an escape pod. Inside the pod he saw the welcome sight of shock-webbing designed to hold him in place during the rough ejection process.
Quentin sprinted down the hall and launched himself through the door, slapping the “close” button in mid-air. The door hissed shut behind him as he flew into the shock-webbing. The webbing bent elastically under his weight, absorbing his momentum even as free strands of the pliable biomechanical material wrapped around his body, ready to hold him securely against the wild and unpredictable G-forces that accompanied any emergency escape.
He breathed hard from exertion and from stress, from fear. He waited for the sudden, jarring impact of jettison.
But none came.
Instead, one wall of the rounded pod smoothly lifted up. Quentin gasped in disbelief. The other side of that wall should have been nothing but the deepness of space. Instead, he looked into a large room filled with flying and fidgeting Creterakians, two blue-skinned Humans, a Quyth Leader, and three huge Humans wearing silver security uniforms and holding shock-wands. They weren’t moving towards him, but their stance made quite clear what they would do if Quentin tried to get past them to the Quyth Leader beyond. More than a dozen holotanks hung on the walls. It only took a second to realize that the small three-dimensional images were of him during various stages of his frantic evacuation.
“Candidate 113, please rise,” said one of the blue-boys. The shock webbing slithered off him like a thing alive, gently lowering him to the ground, then returning to its dormant, hanging state. Quentin stood up, adrenaline still racing through his body, his muscles on fire with exertion. Sweat soaked his yellow body suit. His eyebrows knitted together in deep anger.
“This was all a test?”
The blue-boy nodded. “Yes, that is the first test of the Combine. While it is not the last, it is the most important, because it tests to see if you’re pure. If you’re not pure, there is no point in the other tests. If you’ll step to the staging area,” the man said, gesturing to a yellow circle painted on the floor in the middle of the room, “we’ll review your performance.”
Quentin shook his head in amazement. He’d been fighting for his life, awash in near heart-attack panic, only to find it was all part of the Combine. Well la-de-da. Someday he’d kick someone’s rear for this. He didn’t know who, and he didn’t know when, but someday.
He walked to the circle. As he did, the hinged “escape pod” hissed shut behind him.
“You tested very high for your position.”
“What did you test?”
“The stings you felt were bio-samples: skin, blood, muscle, bone. You have been tested for biomechanics, cybernetics, biotech, drugs and stimulants. You passed all those tests.”
“Of course I passed,” Quentin spat, the fury flowing through him like molten magma. “You think I would have come here if I had any mods?”
The man simply nodded. “You are the 113th candidate. You’d be interested to know that twenty-seven of the candidates before you have already been dismissed.”
“Twenty-seven…” Quentin said in a surprised whisper. “That many?”
The man nodded again. “Yes. It is a statistically common amount. Some were eliminated immediately from the instant testing of the bio samples. Others were eliminated because of unnatural strength.”
Quentin nodded slowly. “The restraints?”
“Yes, the restraints are sophisticated strength-measurement devices. Historically we find that only conditions of severe stress induce full-strength exertions.”
“What about the run to the escape pod?”
“Again, severe stress tests the Human body to the utmost of its potential, be it natural or augmented. The computers recorded your strength, your speed, your mental acuity, your stress levels and your resistance to pain. The rolling tables, for example, let us test your reflexes and acceleration from a complete stop.”
Quentin thought back to the long hallway. “Let me guess, the hallway is exactly 40-yards long?”
“Yes. And you set a position record for the Combine — a 3.6 second 40-yard dash.”
Quentin’s jaw dropped. He’d been timed at 4.0 before, but his fastest speed was a 3.8. A 3.6? That was fast for a running back, but he’d never even heard of a quarterback with such speed.
“Does everyone go through this?”
“The tests are different based on position,” the man said. “With your record-setting performances in the PNFL, you were assigned the most demanding tests we have to offer.”
Quentin swallowed, knowing his next question held the key to his fate. “But I passed, right? I qualified for Tier Two?”
The man nodded. “Yes, you qualified. You are finished for the day. Please exit out the blue door and follow the blue path back to your room. There will be more tests tomorrow, but rest assured nothing as stressful as today.”
Quentin let out a long breath. He still wanted to kick someone’s butt, and the blue-skinned League of Planets native would have done just as well as the next guy. The three giant men with the shock-sticks, however, stood between him and any of the test monitoring staff.
The escape pod hissed open. Before Quentin left the room, he saw a new man — his suit numbered 114 — tangled in the shock webbing. Quentin shook his head and walked out, following the blue path.
The civilized galaxy consists of sixty-two populated planets, hundreds of colonies and thousands of intergalactic vessels with populations the size of small cities. With such diverse habitations, each with its own length of day, measurements of “weeks” and “months” or their cultural equivalents, and completely different “seasons,” deciding on a calendar-based GFL season seemed fraught with difficulty.