Another carnivorous fish flopped over the edge, and snapped its jaws shut not three inches from Roberts’ left shoulder. He kept moving steadily to the side.
Finally, there was no moss up above, and no flying insects darting into view and back again.
Cautiously, he worked his way up onto the ledge.
To the side, where he would have come up if he had climbed straight up, was the edge of a shallow pool into which water flowed from a further, more gentle, incline of rock. Over this pool, flying insects darted irregularly back and forth, to vanish suddenly as the fish shot up and snapped their jaws.
Roberts straightened and drew a deep breath.
Provided he had understood the rules in the first place, he had finally made it.
* * *
Abruptly the scene vanished.
The familiar guide—who had been with them throughout the course—looked at him with a smile.
“Well, Roberts, you made it.”
“Thank you, sir. It’s over?”
“It’s over. And you are now a full member of the Interstellar Patrol. There will be a little ceremony later on, when the others join us.
“‘The others’?”
“Your fellow basic trainees. I regret to say, Roberts, that even among the best material for the Patrol, there are those who believe the sanction of authority is everything. Hence when they are told they will pass the last test if they merely plunge straight in, like so many sheep—Why, they do it! Even though it involves the sensations of being eaten alive by carnivorous fish.”
“Don’t they pass the test?”
“Oh, they barely pass the test. But the Board of Examiners immediately decides that their action brings into question prior indications of basic suitability for the Patrol. You see, we don’t encourage unthinking reliance on authority, or on the appearance of authority. Some of the great defeats and disasters of history have followed from exactly that cause. We have trouble enough without that. So, we pick this last test to give a little reminder that our men should have the courage to think. Consider this, Roberts. A recruit in the Interstellar Patrol is given disastrous advice by someone with an air of authority—advice that obviously means the recruit will fail to do what he is supposed to do—and the recruit does it! We can’t have that.”
“What happens?”
“The Board of Examiners grudgingly recommends that the trainee be allowed the opportunity to repeat the test. Thus, after having unthinkingly taken his supposed superior’s word for it, and having as a result experienced the sensations of being eaten alive by carnivorous fish, the trainee finds himself right back in the same spot all over again, with the same pool, the same fish, and the same electronic boob giving the same worthless advice. What do you suppose happens?”
Beside Roberts, his friend Hammell suddenly appeared, his face red, massaging his fists, and feeling tenderly of places low down on his legs.
“Well.” said the guide, smiling, “this time you made it.”
Hammell growled incoherently. There was another little blink of time, and there stood another friend and fellow trainee, Morrissey, electric-blue eyes blazing in anger. And there beside him suddenly stood Bergen, his blond hair on end. One after another now, they appeared, until the whole class was there; and then before them appeared a slight well-knit figure with a look of self-discipline and good humor.
“Gentlemen, in the Patrol, thought does not solely radiate from the top down, but takes place on all levels, including that lowest and hence closest to the facts. Any time you are tempted to pass the buck upward or to blindly accept obviously disastrous orders without objecting to them, remember this incident. Possibly by doing so, you may avoid an experience worse than this one.
“Very well, gentlemen, you have now passed the basic training course of the Interstellar Patrol, and you are full members in good standing of the Patrol, with all that this implies. You will now receive your weapons and full issue of uniforms, with appropriate insignia, in the order of your passing out of this course. As I call your names, step forward, salute, and receive your weapons and uniforms.
“Roberts, Vaughan N.”
Respectfully, Roberts stepped forward and saluted.
PART III: And the Others . . .
COMPOUND INTEREST
Nels Krojac lay flat on his back as the dizziness wore off, the ringing in his ears died away, and the tingling of his hands and feet told of returning circulation. Carefully he sat up, his gaze taking in the wide bed he lay on, the drawers along the walls to left and right, the emergency control console that filled the end wall, and, beside the bed, the communications screens that could put him in touch with any part of the ship by snapping a switch.
He sat at the edge of the bed, and the mirror on the right-hand wall showed him a broad-shouldered man with dark hair, massive chest, and watchful blue eyes, wearing a dark-blue dressing gown with dragon design on the chest. The slightly stubbled face was lean, broad-boned, and hard, and he recognized that face from long familiarity. What he didn’t recognize was the pallor of skin and hesitancy of expression as he tested his legs.
Cautiously, he walked the length of the room to the foot of the huge console, then back to the bed and the communications screens, back once more to the console, then to the door on the left wall of the room below the console, and back to the bed to look again in the mirror.
The paleness was fading away. Now he looked like a man who has walked into a glass door, and has just staggered back to his feet. A few seconds consideration told him it would never do to show that face to the universe.
He paced the room, opened the left-hand door, to his private swimming pool, where the water was pale-blue, still, and inviting, but he was afraid to use it. And then the realization that he was afraid struck home. He walked back to the bed and glared angrily in the mirror.
There. Now he looked like himself again.
He snapped on the bedside screen. A long-faced suave-looking individual with lightly-oiled wavy hair took a cigarette from his mouth, put it out in a nearby ash tray, and still exhaling smoke said, “Yes, Mr. Krojac?”
“Reagan, what happened down there yesterday while I was explaining the contract to that gang of feline aliens?”
“They watched every move you made, and they looked at you as if they were trying to drill their way into your head with their eyes. They look so much like tigers anyway, that I had my hand in my pocket, gripping that fusion gun, all the time we were there.”
“Did they stare much at you?”
“Just for a few seconds.”
“Did they seem to understand the contract?”
Reagan hesitated. “The impression I got was that they knew something was being put over on them, but they didn’t know what. Anyway—they agreed to it.”
” . . . With the verbal proviso that the written contract must match the verbal explanation.”
Reagan shrugged. “That has no legal force.”
“Yeah,” said Krojac sourly, remembering what had happened a few minutes ago. The dizziness hit him every time he planned to bend the contract terms. “Where do we stand if we do follow the verbal understanding?”
Reagan looked jarred, as if someone had suggested that he rob his mother.
“Well, we . . . I certainly wouldn’t recommend that.”
“We’d lose money on the deal?”
“It’s worse than that. We’re at the crux of a pyramiding of credit. We’ve got enormous assets and enormous debts. So long as the assets are part of a functioning concern, they’re worth more than the debts. Split up and sold piecemeal for cash, they wouldn’t cover half the indebtedness. We’ve had to go this far in debt to get a strategic position in this end of space.”
Krojac nodded. “Otherwise, Reed & Osborne would have moved in.”
“Exactly. Now, Reed & Osborne is conservative in their financing. To have blocked us directly would have required heavy risks. That company prefers to let us take the risks, and reach an agreement with us later if we succeed, or buy our depreciated assets if we fail. Reed & Osborne’s position is solid in the settled regions. It can afford to move in here just fast enough to force us to extend ourselves, or accept a permanent second-class position.”
“Yes,” said Krojac. That, he thought, was always the way it was. To try for safety meant that others took the big risks—and some of those others succeeded, and got the big gains. They were the first-rates, and with their resulting big assets, they could grip the central positions, and dominate the scene with ease. And, he told himself, the only way to break that dominance was to have big enough assets yourself to take big risks and make big gains, and in turn secure a dominant position. But since those already dominant would so cramp you that you could never acquire big assets, what was there to do but plan your move, and then borrow the assets to carry it out? In which case, if you made one bad slip, the whole house of cards folded up.