The group started to drift away; Rod got up to leave.
Matson caught his eye and said, “Walker, are you planning to take the test?”
“Why, yes, of course, sir.”
“Come here a moment.” He led him into his office, closed the door and sat down. He looked up at Rod, fiddled with a paperweight on his desk and said slowly, “Rod, you’re a good boy but sometimes that isn’t enough.”
Rod said nothing.
“Tell me,” Matson continued, “why you want to take this test?”
“Sir?”
“‘Sir’ yourself,” Matson answered grumpily. “Answer my question.”
Rod stared, knowing that he had gone over this with Matson before he was accepted for the course. But he explained again his ambition to study for an Outlands profession. “So I have to qualify in survival. I couldn’t even get a degree in colonial administration without it, much less any of the planetography or planetology specialities.”
“Want to be an explorer, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Like me.”
“Yes, Sir. Like you.”
“Hmm., would you believe me if I told you that it was the worst mistake I ever made?”
“Huh? No, sir!”
“I didn’t think you would. Son, the cutest trick of all is how to know then what you know now. No way to, of course. But I’m telling you straight: I think you’ve been born into the wrong age.
“Sir?”
“I think you are a romantic. Now this is a very romantic age, so there is no room in it for romantics; it calls for practical men. A hundred years ago you would have made a banker or lawyer or professor and you could have worked out your romanticism by reading fanciful tales and dreaming about what you might have been if you hadn’t had the misfortune to be born into a humdrum period. But this happens to be a period when adventure and romance are a part of daily existence. Naturally it takes very practical people to cope with it.”
Rod was beginning to get annoyed. “What’s the matter with me?”
“Nothing. I like you. I don’t want to see you get hurt. But you are ‘way too emotional, too sentimental to be a real survivor type.”
Matson pushed a hand toward him. “Now keep your shirt on. I know you can make fire by rubbing a couple of dry words together. I’m well aware that you won merit badges in practically everything. I’m sure you can devise a water filter with your bare hands and know which side of the tree the moss grows on. But I’m not sure that you can beware of the Truce of the Bear.”
“‘The Truce of the Bear?'”
“Never mind. Son, I think you ought to cancel this course. If you must, you can repeat it in college.”
Rod looked stubborn. Matson sighed. “I could drop you. Perhaps I should.”
“But why, sir?”
“That’s the point. I couldn’t give a reason. On the record, you’re as promising a student as I have ever had.” He stood up and put out his hand. “Good luck. And remember when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears.”
Rod should have gone straight home. His family lived in an out-county of Greater New York City, located on the Grand Canyon plateau through Hoboken Gate. But his commuting route required him to change at Emigrants’ Gap and he found himself unable to resist stopping to rubberneck.
When he stepped out of the tube from school he should have turned right, taken the rotary lift to the level above, and stepped through to Arizona Strip. But he was thinking about supplies, equipment, and weapons for tomorrow’s examination; his steps automatically bore left, he got on the slideway leading to the great hall of the planetary gates.
He told himself that he would watch for only ten minutes; he would not be late for dinner. He picked his way through the crowd and entered the great hall, not onto the emigration floor itself, but onto the spectator’s balcony facing the gates. This was the new gate house he was in, the one opened for traffic in ’68; the original Emigrants’ Gap, now used for Terran traffic and trade with Luna, stood on the Jersey Flats a few kilometers east alongside the pile that powered it.