Higher Education

by Charles Sheffield

  "That's good enough for me," said Gladys. She stood up from the table. "I don't know about you people, but from now on I'm a reformed character. No binges, no partying, no screwing around, private or otherwise. I'm going to work my tail off—no cracks from you, Vido—and be on my best behavior until further notice. Can you imagine it, being one of the first humans to explore the moons of Jupiter? You know, if you are the first person to land on a body it's usually named after you. How about that? Maybe there will be a Jupiter moon called de Witt."

  "More likely de half-wit." Vido fended off her lunge. "Hey! I thought you were on your best behavior."

  He ran for the exit pursued by Gladys. Polly soon followed. Rick and Deedee were left sitting alone.

  "You look pretty wiped out," she said. "Do you feel too tired to talk?"

  The peculiar tone in her voice woke him up at once. "Talk? About what?"

  "Not here." Deedee stood up. "If you don't mind, I'd like this to be private. Let's go to my cabin."

  Whatever she had in mind, it was surely not what it sounded like. That was just as well. And just as well that she had not suggested his cabin. His bunk still looked as though it had been struck by a tornado. Rick trailed along after Deedee on weary legs, feeling a little uncomfortable as they passed Alice's cabin.

  "What's the big mystery?" he said as she closed and locked her door. "Getting paranoid?"

  "Maybe I am." She sat down on her bed and gestured to him to use the chair. "I haven't told anyone else about this, because it sounds so crazy. Promise me that what I say to you now won't go any farther."

  "I promise. I won't talk."

  "Not to anyone. Not even to Alice Klein."

  "Alice? What makes you think that I might. . ." Rick saw Deedee's expression, and swallowed the rest of the sentence. "I promise. Not to Alice, not to anyone."

  "Thank you. I want to ask you a question about somebody—don't worry, it's not about Alice."

  "Go ahead."

  "What do you think of Jigger Tait?"

  "Jigger?" It was the last name that Rick had expected. He had to stop and analyze his own feelings before he could answer. "You probably know him as well as I do," he said at last. "I think very well of him. He helped me a lot back on CM-2, when I did something really stupid, and he never mentioned it to anyone. He keeps himself to himself, but he's always there when you need him. What are you getting at, Deedee?"

  "I'm not sure. Until two days ago I'd have agreed with everything you just said. We've seen a lot of weird things since we shipped up from Earth, and Jigger has been one of our only points of continuity. It's almost uncanny, the way he shows up when anything is happening—like when you had your fight with Vido—but you always felt you could rely on him."

  "So what happened two days ago?" It seemed to Rick that she was having trouble getting to the point. Diffidence and uncertainty were not the usual Deedee. "Spit it out, Dee."

  "Remember the big group meeting with Barney, the first one we had after we got here? She started to talk about assignments, and I had left my problem set in my room. I sneaked out while she was going over the list of what came next, and I came back here to pick it up. And I saw Jigger. He didn't see me, but it looked as though he had just come out of my room and was heading away along the corridor."

  "Why didn't you say something to him?"

  "I was too surprised—and I was in a hurry to get back to the meeting. But it looked like he was going into Goggles Landau's room. After the meeting with Barney was over, I asked Goggles if he had been doing any work with Jigger. He said 'Work? No. I haven't spoken to Jigger since we got here,' and he stared at me as though I was off the wall."

  "Why didn't you talk to Barney?"

  "And tell her what? I couldn't see any sign in my room that Jigger had been there. I wasn't even sure he had. Barney would have ripped me to pieces."

  "She might." Rick tried to sound sympathetic, and failed. "She certainly ought to. You didn't see anything. Nothing happened to your room, or Goggles's. You don't have a thing to go on, except some weird suspicion."

  "I haven't finished," Deedee said quietly. "I knew all that, but I was still worried. Today we were all together in the smelter, and it was the first time the whole group had met in two days. I don't know if you noticed, but Gina Styan was there as well as Barney French. Everybody who came out to CM-26 with us was there—except Jigger."

  "So? He was busy elsewhere."

  "He was. I sneaked out of the SM before the meeting ended, and came back here to my room. I left my door open, but I stayed out of sight on my bunk. If Jigger came along and saw me I was going to say I wasn't feeling good. And he did come along."

  "Into your room?"

  "No. But he went into Alice Klein's, and he went into Skip Chung's. He was about ten minutes in each one."

  "Why didn't you go in after him?" It was the obvious thing to do, and Rick was losing patience. "Just ask him what he was doing there."

  "This is going to sound stupid, Rick, but I was scared. I am scared. It's like you feel you know someone really well, and then they suddenly do something so out of character that you realize you don't know them at all. Can you understand that?"

  Rick thought he understood exactly. It was his own feeling, right now. This wasn't the Deedee Mao that he knew and liked.

  "What do you want me to do, Dee?"

  "I don't know. I guess for the moment, nothing. I'm going to keep an eye on Jigger, and on anyone else who comes prowling near my room for the next few days." She paused. "But if anything bad should happen to me—well, I want to be sure that at least one person around here will be asking questions."

  Rick didn't forget what Deedee had said, but the activities of the next few days pushed it away from the center of his attention.

  For one thing, he had grappled hard with the problem of the spinning ring, to the point where he believed that he knew what must happen. After many hours he could see that hoop, rotating in front of his eyes. It was spinning about the center of attraction. Then you cut all the strings. At that point the ring would wobble, just the tiniest bit, because any real system always did. One side of the hoop would move a fraction closer to the center of attraction. Once that happened that same part would be pulled a little bit harder toward the center by the gravitational force, because gravity was stronger with decreasing distance. At the same time, because that side was closer to the center of rotation but the rotation speed hadn't changed, the outward centrifugal force on it would become a tiny bit less. Both those would act to make that part of the hoop move toward the center of attraction.

  Meanwhile, because the hoop was strong and solid, the part on the opposite side had to be pushed a little bit farther away from the center of attraction. The gravity force on it would be less, and the centrifugal force bigger. That part of the hoop would feel a force to move it away from the center of attraction. In other words, both sides of the hoop would feel forces that amplified the original wobble. The hoop would move more and more off-center, until part of it hit the central attracting point. The strings had been absolutely essential, to prevent any asymmetry in the movement growing and growing.

  That was the mental picture. Unfortunately, Rick knew there was no way he could put it into mathematics. The tools were still far beyond him, and his deadline for submission of an answer was close. He wrote out, carefully and laboriously, his train of logic, and added a note: For the same reason, if the rings of Saturn were solid hoops, their motion would be unstable. They would move until a part of every ring hit the planet and the whole thing would disintegrate.

  He checked the spelling of every doubtful word, worried about what he might have missed, and handed his efforts over to Barney French. She looked at him skeptically when he said he thought he had the answer, but she offered no comment. Even after he had handed in his solution he could not stop thinking about the problem. His obsession ended only when the time came to leave the main body of the station to work on the cleanup of the SM.
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  The smelter had been filled with air, and after the apprentices had stripped off their suits each one of them was assigned a section of the inner wall to scrape clean.

  "Good enough to see your face in every bit," Barney French announced. "Until it's like that, you're not finished. It's possible, because it's been done before. The last group of apprentices managed the whole thing in two days."

  She might have meant to encourage, but after four hours of unpleasant work her words had the opposite effect. Every apprentice was filthy, covered by a layer of metallic ash and gritty powder. It was in their eyes, ears, and hair, and when they paused for a meal break they could feel it grinding between their teeth. Rick, looking at the section assigned to him, realized that he had done no more than five percent of the work. At this rate he would be at it for weeks.

  When the work first started the apprentices had been cheerful and talkative. During the second four-hour stint they were all looking at their neighbors, wondering if someone else had been given an easier or a smaller section to work on. Not one of them could see any hope of finishing the job in two days.

  Finally Barney told them it was time to quit. She was still cheerful—and clean. She had kept her suit on, and ash and grit did not stick to it. Exposed skin was another matter. The grime that went on so easily was the very devil to get off. Rick, after half an hour of effort, still went to bed with matted hair and the taste of metallic oxides in his mouth.

  The next morning he returned to the main hall, reluctantly ready to go back to work. He was a little surprised to see Polly Quint already there and standing next to Barney French. Polly was a notorious sluggard, usually the last to arrive at any event beginning before noon. She was grinning all over her face.

  That should have been enough to make Rick suspicious. Polly should be anything but pleased with the labor ahead—labor enough to bring a swarm of civil liberties' lawyers if you forced convicted murderers to do it back on Earth.

  Barney waited until everyone was there, then took Polly's hand and raised it above her head.

  "The winner—and the only one. You ought to give her three cheers."

  And, when that was greeted with baffled silence, "The only one to win what and do what, you ask? The only person to use her brains. Did you enjoy yesterday's work? No, I'll bet you didn't, not unless there's something wrong with you. But it wasn't enough to make you think. What's the most important quality in this phase of your training?"

  "Initiative." The muttered word came from everyone in the group.

  "Exactly. Initiative. I'll let you get away with a lot of other things if you show enough of that. Polly, tell them what you did last night."

  Polly gave Barney French an imploring "Do I have to?" look, but was offered no way out. She shrugged.

  "Like everybody else, I spent two hours trying to remove grit from my hair. After that I went to the data banks, and I made an inquiry. We know that the interior of the SM can be heated, because it is able to smelt ore bodies. We also know that it can be filled with air, because we were there all day yesterday. I asked for the maximum temperature that the inside of the SM can be taken to when it's filled with air—or oxygen—without damaging any part of the structure or the instruments. The answer is, over four thousand degrees. That would be enough to oxidize all the junk on the inside walls, and turn it to gas. Then if you opened up the end of the SM, which we know you can, all the cruddy gas would blow out into space. You'd have a perfectly clean interior. And one person could do the whole job—without even breaking a nail. That's when I went and asked Barney French if what I was thinking of was forbidden, for some reason I did not understand. And it isn't."

  It had been dawning on the rest of them, sentence by sentence, that they had been granted a reprieve. Weeks of horrible grimy labor was about to vanish, puffed into space in a cloud of metallic and silicon oxides. What Polly received was not exactly three cheers, but it was lots of whistles, waving arms, and "Yay, Polly."

  "Thanks, you beauty," Chick Teazle shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I'll love you forever."

  "That's not what I've heard," she called back. "They say you can't last thirty seconds."

  His reply was lost in jeers and catcalls.

  "All right." Barney clapped her hands. "Anybody have a question for Polly?"

  "How did you come up with the idea so quick?" called Goggles Landau.

  "You ought to ask, what took me so long?" Polly grimaced in self-disgust. "As soon as I could walk and talk, my stepmother had me helping her in the shelter kitchen. I've known how to use a self-cleaning oven since I was six. It didn't take much brains to apply the same idea to the smelter."

  "But you were the only one who did it," Barney said. "Take credit from me when you can get it—I'm not that way inclined. For the rest of you. since there's no more scraping to be done you are all dismissed for the rest of the morning. Polly will direct the superheated cleanout of the smelter later today, and you will all help. Meet at the main lock at two, in your suits. Until then your time is your own."

  The apprentices dispersed in a good humor. Thanks to Polly they were off the hook from days or weeks of pointless labor. In Rick's case the satisfaction lasted only a few minutes. The true situation hit him when he reached his cabin, and found waiting there his solution of the spinning hoop problem along with Barney French's comments.

  This is really rather good, she had written on his answer—extravagant praise by Barney's standards. No one else in the group has managed a solution, and from what I have seen so far I suspect that no one else will. Yon are still hindered by your lack of mathematics, but that will come with perseverance. You are not a born mathematician, like Henrik Voelker, but I'm rather glad you 're not—if you were you'll have been grabbed by the central office—

  Henrik? The Carolina Kid. The central office? It occurred to Rick for the first time that there might be other paths to success in Vanguard Mining. Henrik had flunked the training course, back on CM-2. Rick had felt sorry for him, because he was an OK type but such a goofball. Apparently he was still with the company, performing a different job. The East Coasters who said that Henrik was a mad genius must have been right after all.

  —but there are more important things than mathematical talent if you want to be a good mining engineer. Remember, the purpose of mathematical calculation in the physical sciences is not numbers, it is insight. Your discussion of this question displays both insight and ingenuity.

  If Rick had received that note earlier in the day, he would have been ecstatic. Now, though, he had to compare what he had done with Polly's achievement.

  It was no contest. His problem had been explicitly stated and identified. Its solution had to be in a hundred data banks and a thousand textbooks. But Polly had taken a real-world situation, identified it as a problem without being told it was a problem, and produced a real-world solution.

  No wonder that she had received applause and praise.

  And if achievement counted for anything, she was now far ahead of the rest—including Rick—as a candidate for the fabulous expedition to the Jovian moons.

  Chapter Seventeen

  YOU may feel SICK, you may feel SAD, you may feel STUPID, you may feel SUPERIOR, you may even feel SEXY. . . The sign hung prominently displayed at the entrance to the airlock.

  . . . but unless you are feeling SUICIDAL you will check every element of your suit before you operate this lock. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

  Rick was feeling somber, which was not on the list, but he did not ignore the sign. He carefully made sure of every seal and function of his suit. He had not felt much like eating, and less like talking, and while all the others were still at lunch he had left to come straight here. It would be another hour before the operation at the SM was due to begin, but he wanted to spend time alone. The best place for quiet solo thinking, better even than his cabin, was outside the busy main body of CM-26. Inside the asteroid there was always the subterranean grumble and growl of heavy m
achinery, a reminder that apart from being a training facility CM-26 was also a producing mine.

  It was a surprise and a nuisance to Rick to make his exit from the airlock and see the faint beacon of another suited figure flashing red near the smelter. While he watched it disappeared around the curve of the cylinder, then a couple of minutes later came into view again on the other side.

  Who on earth was it? All the apprentices had been in the dining-room. He saw no way that they could have arrived here ahead of him.

  There was an easy way to find out: use his suit radio. But then he would be forced into unwanted conversation. Maybe the other would simply go farther away, off toward the cluster of small waiting asteroids beyond the SM, or perhaps around to the other side of CM-26 where the final products of the mine were launched on their trajectories toward distant Earth.

  Rick dimmed his own beacon, hovered in space, and watched. The other person's suit was invisible whenever it was in shadow, but the beacon allowed Rick to track every movement. It went round and round the smelter, starting at the bottom and steadily spiraling up to the top. When that was done the flashing red light made a double traverse of each end of the cylinder, and finally the suited figure turned to jet back toward Rick and the main airlock.