“Fifty-five, sixty million.”
“Did you know that the first four colonies here starved to death? ‘S truthl How is it that fifty-odd million can live here and not starve? Barring short rations, of course.”
He answered it himself. “We’ve got four atomic power plants along the coast just to turn sea water into fresh water. We use every drop of the Colorado River and every foot of snow that falls on the Sierras. And we use a million other gadgets. If those gadgets went bad—say a really big earthquake knocked out all four atomic plants—the country would go back to desert. I doubt if we could evacuate that many people before most of them died from thirst. Yet I don’t think Mr. Miller is lying awake nights worrying about it. He regards Southern California as a good ‘natural’ environment.
“Depend on it, Bill. Wherever Man has mass and energy to work with and enough savvy to know how to manipulate them, he can create any environment he needs.”
I didn’t see much of Duck after that. About then we got our preliminary notices to take tests for eligibility for the Ganymede colony and that had us pretty busy. Besides, Duck seemed different—or maybe it was me. I had the trip on my mind and he didn’t want to talk about it. Or if he did, he’d make some crack that rubbed me the wrong way.
Dad wouldn’t let me quit school while it was still uncertain as to whether or not we would qualify, but I was out a lot, taking tests. There was the usual physical examination, of course, with some added wrinkles. A g test, for example—I could take up to eight gravities before I blacked out, the test showed. And a test for low-pressure tolerance and hemorrhaging—they didn’t want people who ran to red noses and varicose veins. There were lots more.
But we passed them. Then came the psycho tests which were a lot worse because you never knew what was expected of you and half the time you didn’t even know you were being tested. It started off with hypno-analysis, which really puts a fellow at a disadvantage. How do you know what you’ve blabbed while they’ve got you asleep?
Once I sat around endlessly waiting for a psychiatrist to get around to seeing me. There were a couple of clerks there; when I came in one of them dug my medical and psycho record out of file and laid it on a desk. Then the other one, a red-headed guy with a permanent sneer, said, “Okay, Shorty, sit down on that bench and wait.”
After quite a while the redhead picked up my folder and started to read it. Presently he snickered and turned to the other clerk and said, “Hey, Ned—get a load of this!”
The other one read what he was pointing to and seemed to think it was funny, too. I could see they were watching me and I pretended not to pay any attention.
The second clerk went back to his desk, but presently the redhead went over to him, carrying my folder, and read aloud to him, but in such a low voice that I couldn’t catch many of the words. What I did catch made me squirm.
When he had finished the redhead looked right at me and laughed. I stood up and said, “What’s so funny?”
He said, “None of your business, Shorty. Sit down.”
I walked over and said, “Let me see that.”
The second clerk stuffed it into a drawer of his desk. The redhead said, “Mamma’s boy wants to see it, Ned. Why don’t you give it to him?”
“He doesn’t really want to see it,” the other one said.
“No, I guess not.” The redhead laughed again and added, “And to think he wants to be a big bold colonist.”
The other one looked at me while chewing a thumbnail and said, “I don’t think that’s so funny. They could take him along to cook.”
This seemed to convulse the redhead. “Ill bet he looks cute in an apron.”
A year earlier I would have poked him, even though he outweighed me and outreached me. That “Mamma’s boy” remark made me forget all about wanting to go to Ganymede; I just wanted to wipe the silly smirk off his face.