Article 23

by William R. Forstchen

  "OK, try it again."

  Malady tossed the bat back and returned to the middle of the circle. Nervously Justin gripped the bat the way Malady had shown him. He edged into the circle, trying to focus on Malady's eyes as the instructor had told them to, while watching the movement of his hands and feet with peripheral vision.

  He tried a blow to his opponent's shoulder with the spiked end, but Malady easily danced out of the way. For Justin the whole ritual was very disconcerting. He liked and admired Malady; during the summer the instructor had taken him aside to share a few stories about Justin's father. Malady's creased features had crinkled with delight when he had talked about "the skipper," and how Justin's dad had once saved his life in a barroom brawl on Mars. Yet now he was supposed to try and beat the life out of him. Of course he knew the attempt was futile, no plebe had ever bested Malady with any weapon let alone with bare hands. He wondered if Malady ever boasted about how he had most likely thrashed every officer in the service at some time during his or her career.

  Justin tried again, this time jabbing for Malady's face. Malady stepped past the blow and moved to close in. Justin danced backwards, moving clumsily in the heavy gravity. He reversed his hold on the bat with his left hand and now used it to jab straight at the instructor. He almost connected, but Malady dodged so that the handle of the bat just scraped across his arm.

  Malady grabbed the bat just below the spikes and jerked it back, dragging Justin along with it. His foot lashed out, tripping Justin so that he went down hard. Malady then jerked the bat up, trying to wrench it out of Justin's hands, but he refused to let go.

  Justin felt the light tap of a knee go into his solar plexus, just enough to let him know that if it had been for real his spleen would most likely be wrapped around his backbone.

  Justin let go and backed away, holding his stomach.

  "All right, son?"

  Justin nodded, not willing to admit that the blow hurt.

  "Good move there, cadet, coming in with the butt of the handle. Don't go for an arm though unless you hit it square it'll skid off the way it did with me. Go for the ribs, face or stomach."

  Justin nodded, wondering how he'd react if this situation were ever for real. These exercise periods with Malady always made him feel clumsy; he wondered if the legendary Marine looked at him and felt he would never match up to the legend of Captain Jason Bell.

  Malady casually tossed the bat to the side of the circle.

  "All right, kiddies, let's get down to some basics here. Now, the Old Man talks about the lofty vision of the Corps and all that, but when you cut out all the fancy talk and gold braid it comes down to guts. It might be nothing more than dealing with a couple of drunk miners in a bar who don't like a uniform and decide to express their antisocial behavior on your face. Or it might be a riot on a habitat like we had last year when a rumor spread about Kelson's Disease and everyone was trying to break quarantine and get out. Or it might be a nest of Thugees and you gotta clean 'em out. Your fancy book-learning down below in the classrooms or whether you're the best pilot in the universe won't mean squat.

  "And you people make me wanna puke. All of you huffing and puffing just because there's a little pull on. Hell, you think this is bad wait until we thin the air outta here, put you in pressure suits and have you fight!"

  He blew out noisily.

  "All of you, extra exercise detail up here in the one-and-a-halfer, an hour each day for the next two weeks you're all as flabby as my big Aunt Sally."

  Everyone knew better than to groan or express the slightest dismay. The regulations were clear on personnel hitting each other, but Malady wasn't above a bit of a rough "demo" if he took a dislike to someone.

  "We're going back to straight old FT, then to open hand combat; these little toys will hafta wait till you've grown up a bit.

  "Now give me twenty, then dismissed!"

  Justin felt like his arms were turning to jelly as he struggled through the last push up, made worse by Malady kneeling beside him and barking out his dismay over Justin's performance.

  Staggering with fatigue, he hurried to shower and change, glad to see that Matt was waiting for him in the corridor.

  "Man, was he tough!" Justin groaned.

  "Yeah, I got a bruise on my butt to match the bump on my head for the last session. Jeez, you'd think we were trying out for the Shore Patrol units."

  "Heard it gets worse," Justin sighed. The dreaded full contact training would start later this year. Even though everyone wore padded protection, it still sent some cadets to the infirmary or worse yet, right out of the program if they backed out of a fight no matter how bad a mismatch Malady might have set up. Justin knew that some of the mismatches were deliberate, to see if a smaller or weaker cadet had the guts to go into a fight he knew he would lose. Backing out was not an option if you wanted to stay in the Academy.

  "Hey, cheer up, we're getting off ship today. Come on, we got to hustle to be on the other end of the ship in ten minutes."

  Justin followed Mart's lead as his friend ducked into a down tube. Staying on the steps since they were still in the one-and-a-half-gravity zone, the two followed a rush of cadets heading towards the low and zero-gravity areas in the center of the ship. Matt handled the descent like an old hand, but Justin still found the gravity shift to be slightly disconcerting. As they reached the quarter gravity level Matt was bounding and floating down three and four steps at a time, while Justin hung on to the hand rail. When they finally reached the one-tenth-gravity floor, a number of cadets around them split off down side corridors to head to their next class. Justin recognized some friends from his own platoon, all of them going in his direction.

  Matt, still leading the way, stepped into one of the tubes that ran the length of the ship. He touched down on the moving walkway heading to the stern of the ship and called for Justin to follow.

  Justin eyed the moving walkways. They were nearly identical to those found in any large airport or shopping district, the only difference being that here hand straps, suspended frpm the ceiling, traveled at the same speed and gave nervous cadets something secure to hang on to. Stepping onto one was as easy as walking when done on Earth, but here in the one-tenth gravity near the center of the ship it was an entirely different matter.

  "Come on, Bell, you're holding up the line," someone shouted behind him.

  Justin saw an opening between two groups of cadets and took a shuffling step out onto the moving path. He started to lose his footing, and reaching up, he grabbed a handle, which jerked him along. Other cadets piled in around him, the more experienced setting off with leaping bounds down the track.

  "Heard Major Davis got you on your Astro-Navigation problem this morning."

  Startled, Justin saw Tanya standing beside him, holding on to a strap. Ever since their return she had been coolly formal. Perhaps the kiss she had planted on him during the summer was now a cause of embarrassment.

  He tried to think of something witty to say. Having become a fan of old Bogart movies during the summer leave he tried a "Bogey" shrug and uttered a non-committal "Yeah, it happens."

  The nervous squeak in his voice ruined the Bogart effect and he felt himself reddening.

  "Study together tonight?" she asked. "Maybe we can figure out what Davis has up his sleeve."

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Great. Come on, we're losing the group."

  Tanya bounded ahead on the walkway, taking twenty-foot strides. Justin tried to follow, noticing once again how gracefully she moved. She was, after all, part of the Academy's low- and zero-gravity ballet troupe, and her lithe, easy moves kept diverting Justin's attention as he struggled to keep up. There were times when looking at her made his heart skip a beat, and then there were other times when he wished she'd simply disappear. The way she was moving now definitely did not make Justin wish she would disappear. Watching her, he missed his strap and awkwardly tumbled into a group of upperclassmen. They soundly dressed him down until they ju
mped off the track into a side corridor.

  His own group was now more than a hundred meters away and Justin struggled ahead, breathing a sigh of relief when he reached the end of the track and stepped off into the EVA prep area.

  Their instructor, Senior Cadet Barker, was already calling the group to attention as Justin came through the doorway. Barker spared Justin a cold look but said nothing as he fell into line.

  "All right you plebes, you got lucky today. Standard EVA has been scrubbed for the afternoon."

  Some of the group looked disappointed, wondering if they were going to get stuck with another indoor suit drill, though Justin hoped Barker might opt for a game of falcon flying instead.

  "We're in a near-orbital intersect with a Habitat Unit," Barker continued, "and the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, have scheduled you pukes to go over for a look-see. We'd be making the run anyhow since we got some spare parts they need, so there's no sense wasting the tug space. We're taking a standard K-class open rig tug, so suit up."

  Justin teamed up with Matt. Drawing two standard EVA suits from the lockers Justin helped Matt step into his suit, zip it up and connect his back pack. Matt then helped Justin into his suit. He clipped on his helmet, then finally his gloves. Justin checked the LCD readout inside his helmet and with a touch on the arm pad activated the system and ran a diagnostic. Everything checked out positive. The two then double-checked each other's suits, signaled a thumbs-up to Barker, and lined up by the door.

  Following the senior cadet, the plebes filed into the airlock. The door slid shut behind them and Justin felt a momentary tightening in his gut. Since returning tathe Academy his platoon had gone on half a dozen EVAs, all of them review-and-checkouts of what they had learned during the summer, but it still made him nervous.

  The sound of the alarm bell, the warning of depressurization, grew fainter as the air thinned, and then there was silence except for the low hum from his suit pump and a whisper of static in his headset.

  "By the numbers, check off."

  Justin scanned the LCD all functions were nominal, and he waited until the roll call was complete.

  Barker opened the inner airlock door and led the way into the docking bay. He pointed out a tug and ordered the group to scramble aboard and strap in.

  Justin eyed the craft cautiously. It was designed for short range ship to ship operations; the tug was really nothing more than a titanium girder a dozen meters long, with five-hundred-pound thrust engines mounted on either end, and smaller hundred-pounder thrusters mounted to fire along the Y- and Z-axes. A fuel tank was located amidships, and a chair for the pilot was at one end. Bucket seats lined either side of the girder down its length, and the seats could be snapped off to be replaced by hold-downs for cargo containers. There was no hull; everything was fully exposed to the vacuum of space.

  For this run two canisters packed with spare parts for their destination were mounted above the fuel tank. Barker walked down the length of his ship, giving it a thorough pre-flight and double-checking that each cadet was strapped in. Justin settled into the chair directly behind Barker, and turned to watch as he powered the system up.

  The outer airlock door opened. Barker gave a short burst of power to the stern engine and the tug lurched forward. While the tug was nosing out of the bay, Justin looked up relative to the rotational axis of the ship, becoming momentarily disoriented as he saw the center of the ship above him. The angular momentum imparted by the ship's rotation caused the tug to fall outward or upward relative to the central axis of the ship as it cleared the dock, the one-tenth gravity instantly replaced by the stomach lurch of free fall.

  Barker expertly conned the tug, rolling it over and lining up on his target, Habitat Franciscan Three, which hovered like a white pencil just above Orion's belt. Justin gulped hard, trying to ignore the momentary flutter in his stomach.

  "Everyone all right?" Barker asked.

  There were no replies and Justin silently wondered if any of his comrades were worried about getting sick, what would happen if the fuel tank ruptured, or any of a hundred other prospects that could certainly ruin someone's day.

  "It's a straight-out run," Barker announced. "Forty-two minutes, so hang on while I power up."

  Now clear of the Academy, Barker gave the tug full throttle and Justin felt the slight kick of the engine straining against the several tons of mass it was pushing. Looking back he saw the Academy, silhouetted by the Moon. Forty-five degrees off was Earth, with North America shimmering under the noonday sun. He clicked on his faceplate magnifier; as he powered it up to maximum,

  Earth appeared to leap towards him. A front of clouds was drifting across the Midwest. Most likely by sunset, he thought, there'll be a line of thunderstorms rolling through Indiana. A touch of homesickness hit him. He loved that time of day, when the air became still, hushed, the sky overhead darkening and then the first faint cool breeze swirling in from the west to break the humid heat. The slanting rays of the evening sun would disappear behind the towering thunderheads and then the storm would come lashing in, chilling the evening air.

  He clicked the magnifier off and looked back at the Academy. They were starting to pick up speed; the Academy ship was already smaller.

  Everything was silent, stark, highlighted by the brilliant glare of the sun. Yet all he had to do was put his hand up to block the streaming light and the stars appeared on either side of his hand.

  Again it started to catch him; he remembered the lyrical stories of his father and grandfather. They talked about the early days of space exploration at the beginning of the 21st century, when humanity finally set itself the goal of reaching for the stars.

  And I'm part of this now, he thought. Fearful as I am of it all, still I am part of it. He wondered if his father, too, had been afraid of the simplest things at first; whether he would get sick in zero gravity, if he was nagged by the anxiety that something would go wrong and bring him to a terrible end. And pulling a Hansen that was a dread as well. I might someday screw up, and then the honored name of my father would be eclipsed by the foolishness of his son.

  The engine finally cut off and he felt himself floating in his chair although he was strapped in, arms and legs lifting up. It felt peculiarly pleasant out there with the vastness of the universe encircling him.

  His grandfather and he would sit on the back porch and gaze up at the night sky while they listened to Hoist's Planets. He imagined his favorite piece, "Neptune," playing softly as he gazed out upon the pearly glow of the Milky Way. Out here, at least for the moment, all of the clinical study, the number crunching, classes, late hours of study, the hazing and harsh discipline were forgotten. The music played in his head; there was a quiet soothing rapture to it all, a timeless sense of floating through eternity. He found it strangely hypnotic, and his thoughts drifted and floated out across space.

  "Hard dock!"

  Startled, Justin jerked upright in his chair; had it not been for the seatbelt he would have vaulted right off the side of the ship.

  He looked ahead, surprised by the massive bulk of the habitat now blocking the view. The tug was anchored to a beam projecting from an airlock door and Barker cautiously stood up, reaching for a guideline.

  "All right, people. Listen sharply now. Unbuckle, stand up slowly, and be sure to grab the guideline I don't want to have to undock and go chasing around after you. If you do float free don't use your unit thrusters; we're too close in and you fools would most likely wind up banging into something. Bell, Leonov, wait for the others to pass then give me a hand with the canisters.

  "The rest of you, go through decontamination, leave your suits, and you've got two hours liberty. I want you suited up and ready to go at 1530 standard."

  Justin clicked an acknowledgment and waited while the rest of his platoon reached out for the walkway, then carefully descended to the open, waiting airlock.

  Justin saw Matt turn back and wave. Darn, his buddy obviously was not going to wait.
>
  Barker came aft, motioning for Justin to follow him. Bracing his feet on the walkway Barker leaned over, undipped the tie downs and handed a canister to Justin. It had several hundred pounds of mass to it and Justin handled it gingerly. He knew that if he jerked it too hard it would be very difficult to stop and might cause him to lose his own foothold.

  He waited for Barker to hand the second canister to Tanya, then they followed the senior cadet's lead as they slowly moved along the walkway. They made sure each sticky-bottom boot was firmly locked onto the surface before lifting the other one.

  Justin breathed a sigh of relief as they passed through the airlock door and it swung shut. Seconds later he heard the ringing of the alarm bell signaling pressurization. The light over the door to the ship flashed green to indicate equalization of pressure, and they followed Barker into the suit-up room.

  After double-checking to make sure pressure inside his suit was equalized with internal ship pressure, Justin unsnapped his helmet and took it off.

  "Good work, you two," Barker announced. "Don't like chasing plebes or supply canisters when we're visiting neighbors it's embarrassing!"

  "Sir, why didn't we just dock inside? It would have been a lot easier."

  "Practice, cadet do it the hard way. Had to make this little trip worth something besides a romp aboard a passing habitat."

  Barker peeled out of his suit and hung it up in a locker. Justin could not help but give a surreptitious look over at Tanya as she wiggled out of her suit and brushed an errant wisp of hair back from her face.

  "Ah, the supplies!"

  Justin looked up and started at the appearance of the elderly rotund man, dressed in the brown habit of the ancient order of Franciscans, who came into the room. The monk was filled with good cheer, delighted by the sight of the canisters. He patted them affectionately.

  Barker drew himself to attention. Justin and Tanya followed suit.

  "I'm Brother Bartholomew. Now, no need for formality. You children over at the Academy, always so formal. Glad to have some youngsters drop by for a visit. One of the boys told me you can only stay a couple of hours."