Tom Corbett Space Cadet

by Carey Rockwell

"Meet Space Cadet Corbett—an Earthworm who's just passed his control-deck manual operations exam!"

  Astro looked up from a book of tables on astrogation and gave Tom a wan smile.

  "Congratulations, Tom," he said, and turned back to his book, adding bitterly, "but if I don't get these tables down by this afternoon for my power-deck manual, you're sunk."

  "Say—what's going on here?" asked Tom. "Where's Roger? Didn't he help you with them?"

  "He left. Said he had to see someone before taking his radar-bridge manual. He helped me a little. But when I'd ask him a question, he'd just rattle the answer off so fast—well, I just couldn't follow him."

  Suddenly slamming the book shut, he got up. "Me and these tables"—he indicated the book—"just don't mix!"

  "What's the trouble?"

  "Ah—I can get the easy ones about astrogation. They're simple. But it's the ones where I have to combine it with the power deck."

  "Well—I mean—what specifically?" asked Tom softly.

  "For instance, I've got to find the ratio for compression on the main firing tubes, using a given amount of fuel, heading for a given destination, and taking a given time for the passage."

  "But that's control-deck operations—as well as astrogation and power!" exclaimed Tom.

  "Yeah—I know," answered Astro, "but I've still got to be able to do it. If anything happened to you two guys and I didn't know how to get you home, then what?"

  Tom hesitated. Astro was right. Each member of the unit had to depend on the other in any emergency. And if one of them failed…? Tom saw why the ground manuals were so important now.

  "Look," offered Tom. "Suppose we go over the whole thing again together. Maybe you're fouled up on the basic concept."

  Tom grabbed a chair, hitched it close to the desk and pulled Astro down beside him. He opened the book and began studying the problem.

  "Now look—you have twenty-two tons of fuel—and considering the position of your ship in space—"

  As the two boys, their shoulders hunched over the table, began reviewing the table of ratios, across the quadrangle in the examination hall Roger Manning stood in a replica of a rocket ship's radar bridge and faced Captain Strong.

  "Cadet Manning reporting for manual examination, sir." Roger brought up his arm in a crisp salute to Captain Strong, who returned it casually.

  "Stand easy, Manning," replied Strong. "Do you recognize this room?"

  "Yes, sir. It's a mock-up of a radar bridge."

  "A workable mock-up, cadet!" Strong was vaguely irritated by Roger's nonchalance in accepting a situation that Tom had marveled at. "You will take your manuals here!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "On these tests you will be timed for both efficiency and speed and you'll use all the tables, charts and astrogation equipment that you'd find in a spaceship. Your problems are purely mathematical. There are no decisions to make. Just use your head."

  Strong handed Roger several sheets of paper containing written problems. Roger shuffled them around in his fingers, giving each a quick glance.

  "You may begin any time you are ready, Manning," said Strong.

  "I'm ready now, sir," replied Roger calmly. He turned to the swivel chair located between the huge communications board, the adjustable chart table and the astrogation prism. Directly in front of him was the huge radar scanner, and to one side and overhead was a tube mounted on a swivel joint that looked like a small telescope, but which was actually an astrogation prism for taking sights on the celestial bodies in space.

  Roger concentrated on the first problem.

  "… you are now in the northwest quadrant of Mars, chart M, area twenty-eight. You have been notified by the control deck that it has been necessary to jettison three quarters of your fuel supply. For the last five hundred and seventy-nine seconds you have been blasting at one-quarter space speed. The four main drive rockets were cut out at thirty-second intervals. Making adjustment for degree of slip on each successive rocket cutout, find present position by using cross-fix with Regulus as your starboard fix, Alpha Centauri as your port fix."

  Suddenly a bell began to ring in front of Roger. Without hesitation he adjusted a dial that brought the radar scanner into focus. When the screen remained blank, he made a second adjustment, and then a third and fourth, until the bright white flash of a meteor was seen on the scanner. He quickly grabbed two knobs, one in each hand, and twisted them to move two thin, plotting lines, one horizontal and one vertical, across the surface of the scanner. Setting the vertical line, he fingered a tabulating machine with his right hand, as he adjusted the second line with his left, thus cross-fixing the meteor. Then he turned his whole attention to the tabulator, ripped off the answer with lightning moves of his fingers and began talking rapidly into the microphone.

  "Radar bridge to control deck! Alien body bearing zero-one-five, one-point-seven degrees over plane of the ecliptic. On intersecting orbit. Change course two degrees, hold for fifteen seconds, then resume original heading. Will compensate for change nearer destination!"

  Roger watched the scanner a moment longer. When the rumbling blast of the steering jets sounded in the chamber and the meteor flash shifted on the scanner screen, he returned to the problem in his hand.

  Seven minutes later he turned to Strong and handed him the answer.

  "Present position by dead reckoning is northwest quadrant of Mars, chart O, area thirty-nine, sir," he announced confidently.

  "I was unable to get a sight on Alpha Centauri"

  Strong tried to mask his surprise, but a lifted eyebrow gave him away. "And how did you arrive at this conclusion, Manning?"

  "I was unable to get a sight on Alpha Centauri due to the present position of Jupiter, sir," replied Roger easily. "So I took a fix on Earth, allowed for its rotational speed around the sun and took the cross-fix with Regulus as ordered in the problem. Of course, I included all the other factors of the speed and heading of our ship. That was routine."

  Strong accepted the answer with a curt nod, motioning for Roger to continue. It would not do, thought Strong, to let Manning know that he was the first cadet in thirty-nine years to make the correct selection of Earth in working up the fix with Regulus, and still have the presence of mind to plot a meteor without so much as a half-degree error. Of course the problem varied with each cadet, but it remained essentially the same.

  "Seven-and-a-half minutes. Commander Walters will be surprised, to say the least," thought Steve.

  Forty-five minutes later, Roger, as unruffled as if he had been sitting listening to a lecture from a sound slide, handed in the rest of his papers, executed a sharp salute and walked out.

  "Two down and one to go," thought Strong, and the toughest one of them all coming up. Astro. The big Venusian was unable to understand anything that couldn't be turned with a wrench. The only thing that would prevent Unit 42-D from taking Academy unit honors over Unit 77-K, the unit assigned to Lieutenant Wolcheck, would be Astro. While none of the members of the other units could come up to the individual brilliance of Corbett or Manning, they worked together as a unit, helping one another. They might make a higher unit rating, simply because they were better balanced.

  He shrugged his shoulders and collected the papers. It was as much torture for him, as it was for any cadet, he thought, and turned to the door. "All right, Astro," he said to himself, "in ten minutes it'll be your turn and I'm going to make it tough!"

  Back in the quarters of Unit 42-D, Tom and Astro still pored over the books and papers on the desk.

  "Let's try again, Astro," sighed Tom as he hitched his chair closer to the desk. "You've got thirty tons of fuel—you want to find the compression ratio of the number-one firing-tube chamber—so what do you do?"

  "Start up the auxiliary, burn a little of the stuff and judge what it'll be," the big cadet replied. "That's the way I did it on the space freighters."

  "But you're not on a space freighter now!" exclaimed Tom. "You've got to do things the way th
ey want it done here at the Academy. By the book! These tables have been figured out by great minds to help you, and you just want to burn a little of the stuff and guess at what it'll be!" Tom threw up his hands in disgust.

  "Seems to me I heard of an old saying back in the teen centuries about leading a horse to water, but not being able to make him drink!" drawled Roger from the doorway. He strolled in and kicked at the crumpled sheets of paper that littered the floor, stark evidence of Tom's efforts with Astro.

  "All right, wise guy," said Tom, "suppose you explain it to him!"

  "No can do," replied Roger. "I tried. I explained it to him twenty times this morning while you were taking your control-deck manual." He tapped his head delicately with his forefinger. "Can't get through—too thick!"

  Astro turned to the window to hide the mist in his eyes.

  "Lay off, Roger," snapped Tom. He got up and walked over to the big cadet. "Come on, Astro, we haven't got much time. You're due in the examination hall in a few minutes."

  "It's no good, Tom, I just can't understand that stuff." Astro turned and faced his unit-mates, his voice charged with sudden emotion. "Just fifteen minutes on the power deck of anything with rockets in her and I'll run her from here to the next galaxy. I—I can't explain it, but when I look at those motors, I can read 'em like you read an astrogation chart, Roger, or you the gauges on the control deck, Tom. But I just can't get those ratios out of a book. I gotta put my hands on those motors—touch 'em—I mean really touch 'em—then I know what to do!"

  As suddenly as he had started, he stopped and turned, leaving Tom and Roger staring at him, startled by this unusual outburst.

  "Cadets—stand to!" roared a voice from the doorway.

  The three cadets snapped to attention and faced the entrance.

  "Take it easy, Earthworms!" said Tony Richards. A tall cadet with closely cut black hair and a lazy, smiling face stood in the doorway.

  "Lay off, Richards," said Tom. "We haven't time for gags now. Astro's going to take his power-deck manual in a few minutes and we're cramming with him."

  "O.K.—O.K.—don't blow your jets," said Richards. "I just wanted to see if there were any bets on which unit would cop honors in the manuals this afternoon."

  "I suppose you think your Unit 77-K will finish on top?" drawled Roger.

  "I'd like to bet all the galley demerits we have in 77-K against yours."

  "With Astro on our team?" complained Roger.

  "What's the matter with Astro?" asked Richards. "From what I hear, he's hot stuff!" It wasn't a compliment, but a sharp dig made with a sly smile. Astro balled his huge hands into fists.

  "Astro," said Roger, "is the type that can smell out trouble on any power deck. But today he came down with a cold. No, I'm afraid it's no bet, Richards."

  "I'll give you two to one," Richards offered.

  "Nothing doing," replied Roger. "Not even at five to one. Not with Astro."

  Richards grinned, nodded and disappeared.

  Roger turned to face the hard stare of Tom.

  "That was the dirtiest sellout I've ever heard, Manning," Tom growled.

  "Sorry, Corbett," said Roger. "I only bet on sure things."

  "That's O.K. with me, Manning," said Astro, "but I'm afraid you sold yourself a hot rocket, because I'm going to pass!"

  "Who are you kidding?" Roger laughed and sprawled on his bunk.

  Astro took a quick step forward, his fists clenched, his face a mask of burning anger, but Tom quickly jumped in front of him.

  "You'll be late for the exam, Astro!" he shouted. "Get going or it'll count against your mark!"

  "Huh. What's a few points more or less when you're going to fail anyway," snorted Roger from the bunk.

  Again, Astro started to lunge forward and Tom braced himself against the Venusian's charge, but suddenly the burly cadet stopped. Disengaging Tom's restraining arms, he spoke coldly to the sneering boy on the bed.

  "I'm going to pass the exam, Manning. Get that? I'm going to pass and then come back and beat your head off!" Turning on his heel, he stalked out of the room.

  Tom immediately wheeled to face Roger, fire in his eyes, and the arrogant cadet, sensing trouble, jumped to his feet to meet him.

  "What's the idea of giving Astro a hard time?" demanded Tom.

  "Cool off, Corbett," replied Roger warily. "You're fusing your tubes you're so hot."

  "You bet I'm hot! Hot enough to blast you—again!" Tom deliberately spat out the last word.

  Roger flushed and brought his fists up quickly as though to charge in, then suddenly dropped them again. He turned to the door and slowly walked out.

  "Go blow your jets," his voice drifted back to Tom as he disappeared.

  Tom stood there, looking at the empty door, almost blind with rage and frustration. He was failing in the main job assigned to him, that of keeping the unit on an even keel and working together. How could he command a crew out in space if he couldn't keep the friction of his own unit under control?

  Slowly, he left the room to wait for Astro in the recreation hall where the results of the manuals would be announced. He thought of Astro, now probably deep in his exam, and wondered how bad it would be for him. Then another thought crossed his mind. Roger had said nothing of his own test and neither he nor Astro had even inquired.

  He shook his head. No matter where the unit placed in the manuals, it just couldn't stay together.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was customary for all Earthworm cadets to gather in the main recreation hall to wait for the results of the manuals which would be announced on the huge teleceiver screen. Since all the units were taking their tests that afternoon, the hall was crowded with green-clad cadets, talking in low murmurs and waiting tensely for the outcome of the exam.

  Tom entered the huge room, looked around and then drifted toward Al Dixon, the senior cadet who had greeted them as a unit after passing classification tests. The blue-clad cadet was listening to a story spool, a device that told a story, rather than let the person read it from a book.

  "Hiya, Corbett," said Dixon, smiling. "Drag up a chair. Listening to a terrific yarn about a guy stranded on an asteroid and then he finds—" The redheaded cadet's voice trailed off when he noticed that Tom wasn't listening.

  "Say, what's the matter with you? You look like you just lost your best friend."

  "Not yet, but it won't be long now," commented Tom, a trace of bitterness creeping into his voice. "Astro's taking his power-deck manual. What he knows about those compression ratios just isn't known. But he just can't get it on paper."

  "Don't sell your unit-mate short," said Dixon, sensing something beneath Tom's comment. "I've heard that big fellow knows more about a rocket deck than McKenny."

  "Yeah, that's true," said Tom, "but—"

  "You know, Corbett," said Dixon, switching off the story spool, "there's something screwy in that outfit of yours."

  "You can say that again," agreed Tom bitterly.

  "You come in here with a face dragging on the floor, and Manning—"

  Tom's head jerked up. "Manning! What about that space-gassing hot-shot?"

  "—Manning just tore through the rec hall trying to get some of the other Earthworm units to bet their galley demerits against your outfit."

  Tom's mouth sagged open. "You mean, he actually wanted to bet that Astro would pass?"

  "Not just pass, Corbett, but he wanted to bet that your unit would be top rocket of the Earthworms! The head of the list!"

  "But he told Astro that—" he stopped.

  "Told him what?" Dixon asked.

  "Ah—nothing—nothing—" said Tom. He jumped up and headed for the door.

  "Hey, where are you going?"

  "To find Manning. There are a couple of things I want to clear up."

  Tom left Dixon shaking his head in bewilderment and jumped on the slidestairs. He was going to have it out with Roger once and for all. Hopping off the slidestairs onto the forty-second floor, he started
down the long hall to his quarters.

  Nearing the door, he heard Roger's laugh, and then his lazy voice talking to someone inside.

  "Sure, they're dumb, but they're not bad guys," said Roger.

  Tom walked into the room. Roger was sitting on the side of his bunk facing Tony Richards.

  "Hiya, Corbett," said Roger, "did you hear how Astro made out yet?"

  Tom ignored the question.

  "I want to talk to you, Roger."

  Roger eyed him suspiciously. "Sure, Corbett, go ahead."

  "Well, I'll be going along," said Richards. He had heard about the previous fight between Manning and Corbett and didn't want to be hauled up as a witness later if they started again. "Remember, Manning," he called from the doorway, "the bet is two to one, and are you going to get tired of washing pots and pans!" He waved his hand at Corbett and disappeared.

  "All right, Corbett," Roger turned to Tom. "What's frying you?"

  "I just saw Al Dixon down in the rec hall," answered Tom. "He told me you were looking for bets on the unit ratings. Is that why Richards was here?"

  "That's right," nodded Roger.

  "What made you say the things you did to Astro before he went for his manual?"

  "Very simple. I wanted to make him pass and that was the only way."

  "You're pretty sure of yourself, Roger."

  "I'm always sure of myself, Corbett. And the sooner you learn that, the easier it'll be for all of us. I never bet unless it's in the bag. I know Astro's going to pass. Some guys have to have a fire built under them before they get moving. Astro's one of them."

  "That doesn't answer my question," said Tom. "Why did you say the things you did before a guy goes to take an exam?"

  "I said what I did to make Tony Richards give me odds. And to make Astro mad enough to pass. We're a cinch to win and Richards' outfit will be indebted to us for a year's worth of galley demerits." He smiled easily. "Smooth, huh?"

  "I think it's rotten," said Tom. "Astro left here feeling like a plugged credit! And if he does fail, it'll be because you made him think he was the dumbest guy in the universe!"