“You think I’ve messed things up?”
“I hope not. Well, let’s look up Doc Archibald and see what can be done.”
Our troop master was holding clinic; we waited until the patients were out of the way, then went in. He said, “Are you two sick, or just looking for a ticket to gold brick?”
“Doc,” I said, “we were wrong. There are so Scouts on Ganymede.”
“So I know,” he answered.
I said, “Huh?”
“Mr. Ginsberg and Mr. Bruhn and I have been negotiating with the senior Scout officials here to determine just how our troops will be taken into the parent organization. It’s a bit complicated as there are actually more Mayflower Scouts than there are in the local troop. But they have jurisdiction, of course.”
I said, “Oh.”
“Well have a joint meeting in a few days, after we get the rules ironed out.”
I thought it over and decided I had better tell him what had happened, so I did.
He listened, not saying anything. Finally I said, “Hank seems to think I’ve messed things up. What do you think, Doc?”
“Mmmm—” he said. “Well, I hope he’s wrong. But I think I may say you haven’t helped the situation any.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Don’t look so tragic about it,” he urged. “You’ll get well. Now run along and forget it. It may not make any difference.”
But it did make a difference. Doc and the others had been pitching for our troops to be recognized as properly constituted troops, with all ratings acknowledged. But after Sergei spread the word around, the regular Ganymede Scouts all squawked that we were nothing but a bunch of tenderfeet, no matter what we had been back on Earth. The place for us to start was the bottom; if we were any good, we could prove it— by tests.
It was compromised; George says things like that are always compromised. Ratings were confirmed on probation, with one G-year to make up any tests that were different. Our troops were kept intact But there was one major change:
All patrol leaders had to be from the original Ganymede Scouts; they were transferred from the Leda troop. I had to admit the justice of it. How could I be a patrol leader on Ganymede when I was still so green that I didn’t know northwest from next week? But it didn’t set well with the other fellows who had been patrol leaders when the word got around that I was responsible for the flies in the soup.
Hank talked it over with me. “Billy my boy,” he told me, “I suppose you realize that you are about as popular as ants at a picnic?”
“Who cares?” I objected.
“You care. Now is the time for all good men to perform an auto da fé”
“What in great blazing moons is an auto da fé?”
“In this case it means for you to transfer to the Leda Troop.”
“Have you gone crazy? You know what those guys think of us, especially me. I’d be lucky to get away with my life.”
“Which just goes to show how little you know about human nature. Sure, it would be a little rough for a while, but it’s the quickest way to gain back some respect.”
“Hank, you really are nuts. In that troop I really would be a tenderfoot—and how!”
“That’s just the point,” Hank went on quietly, “We’re all tenderfeet—only here in our own troop it doesn’t show. If we stay here, we’ll keep on being tenderfeet for a long time. But if we transfer, we’ll be with a bunch who really know their way around—and some of it will rub off on us.”
“Did you say ‘we’?”
“I said ‘we’.”
“I catch on. You want to transfer, so you worked tip this gag about how I ought to do so, so you would have company. A fine chum you are!”
He just grinned, completely unembarrassed. “Good old Bill! Hit him in the head eight or nine times and he can latch on to any idea. It won’t be so bad, Bill. In precisely four months and nine days we won’t be tenderfeet; we’ll be old timers.”