No, the story is not yet over. Lester del Rey and Judy-Lynn, similarly boosted out of their jobs, got married, and she got a new job as editor at Ballantine Books, where I was unwelcome, and she proceeded to prove that nepotism pays by installing her husband as fantasy editor where he proceeded to prove just how good an editor he was, and suddenly fantasy took off for new heights. At last there was someone in charge who knew what he was doing. Lester and Judy-Lynn welcomed me back to Ballantine, and so I started writing fantasy for Del Rey Books. Today that is one of the most successful connections extant; we are all getting famous. But we had gotten together at "University"—and gotten through.
He entered the booth when his turn came and waited somewhat apprehensively for it to perform. The panel behind shut him in and ground tight.
The interior was dark and unbearably hot, making sweat break out and stream down his body. Then the temperature dropped so precipitously that the moisture crystallized upon his skin and flaked away with the violence of his shivering. The air grew thick and bitter, then gaspingly rare. Light blazed, then faded into impenetrable black. A complete sonic spectrum of noise smote him, followed by crushing silence. His nose reacted to a gamut of irritation. He sneezed.
Abruptly it was spring on a clover hillside, waft of nectar and hum of bumblebee. The air was refreshingly brisk. The booth had zeroed in on his metabolism.
"Identity?" a deceptively feminine voice inquired from nowhere, and a sign flashed with the word printed in italics, English.
"My name is Dillingham," he said clearly, remembering his instructions. "I am a male mammalian biped evolved on planet Earth. I am applying for admission to the School of Prosthodontics as an initiate of the appropriate level."
After a pause the booth replied sweetly: "Misinformation. You are a quadruped."
"Correction." Dillingham said quickly. "I am evolved from quadruped." he spread his hands and touched the wall. "Technically tetrapod, anterior limbs no longer employed for locomotion. Digits possess sensitivity, dexterity—"
"Noted." But before he could breathe relief, it had another objection: "Earth planet has not yet achieved galactic accreditation. Application invalid."
"I have been sponsored by the Dental League of Electrolus," he said. He saw already how far he would have gotten without that potent endorsement.
"Verified. Provisional application granted. Probability of acceptance after preliminary investigation: twenty-one per cent. Fee: Thirteen thousand, two hundred five dollars, four cents, seven mills, payable immediately."
"Agreed," he said, appalled at both the machine's efficiency in adapting to his language and conventions and the cost of application. He knew that the fee covered only the seventy-hour investigation of his credentials; if finally admitted as a student, he would have to pay another fee of as much as a hundred thousand dollars for the first term. If rejected, he would get no rebate.
His sponsor, Electrolus, was paying for it, finding it expedient to ship him here rather than to keep him where his presence might be an embarrassment. Electrolus did not want him on hand to give further advice that might show up the oversights of its own practitioners.
If he failed to gain admission, there would be no consequences—except that his chance to really improve himself would be gone. He could never afford training at the University on his own, even if the sponsorship requirement should be waived. He had traveled all over the galaxy since unexpectedly leaving Earth, solving alien dental problems by luck and approximation, but he was not the type of man to relish such uncertainties. He had to have advanced training.
Even so, he hoped that what the university had to offer was worth it. Over thirteen thousand dollars had already been drained from the Electrolus account here by his verbal agreement—for a twenty-one per cent probability of acceptance!
"Present your anterior limb, buccal surface forward."
He put out his left hand again, deciding that buccal in this context equated with the back of the hand. He was nervous in spite of the assurance he had been given that this process was harmless. A mist appeared around it, puffed and vanished, leaving an iridescent band clasped around, or perhaps bonded into, the skin of his wrist.
The opposite side of the booth opened, and he stepped into a lighted corridor. He held up his hand and saw that the left of it was bright while the right was dead. This remained even when he twisted his wrist, the glow independent of his motion. He proceeded left.
At the end of the passage was a row of elevators. Other creatures of diverse proportions moved toward these, guided by glows on their appendages. His own guided him to a particular unit. Its panel was open, and he entered.
The door closed as he took hold of the supportive bars. The unit moved, not up or down as he had expected, but backwards. He clung desperately to the support as the fierce acceleration hurled him at the door.
There was something like a porthole in the side through which he could make out racing lights and darknesses. If these were stationary sources of contrast, his velocity was phenomenal. His stomach jumped as the vehicle dipped and tilted; then it was plummeting down as though dropped from a cliff.
Dillingham was reminded of an amusement park he had visited as a child on Earth; there had been a ride through the dark something like this. He was sure that the transport system of the university had not been designed for thrills, however; it merely reflected the fact that there was a long way to go and many others in line. The elevators would not function at all for any creature not wearing University identification. Established galactics took such things in stride without even noticing.
Finally it decelerated and stopped. The door opened, and he stepped dizzily into his residence for the duration, suppressing incipient motion-sickness.
The apartment was attractive enough. The air was sweet, the light moderate, the temperature comfortable. Earthlike vines decorated the trellises, and couches fit for humanoids were placed against the walls. In the center of the main room stood a handsome but mysterious device.
Something emerged from an alcove. It was a creature resembling an oversized pincushion with legs, one of which sported the ubiquitous iridescent band. It honked.
"Greetings, roommate," a speaker from the central artifact said. Dillingham realized that it was a multiple-dialect translator.
"How do you do," he said. The translator honked, and the pincushion came all the way into the room.
"I am from no equivalent term," it said in tootles.
Dillingham hesitated to comment, until he realized that the confusion was the translator's fault. There was no name in English for Pincushion's planet, since Earth knew little of galactic geography and nothing of interspecies commerce. "Substitute 'Pincushion' for the missing term," he advised the machine, "and make the same kind of adjustment for any of my terms which may not be renderable into Pincushion's dialect." He turned to the creature. "I am from Earth. I presume you are also here to make application for admittance to the School of Prosthodontics?"
The translator honked, once. Dillingham waited, but that was all.
Pincushion honked. "Yes, of course. I'm sure all beings assigned to this dormitory are 1.0 gravity, oxygen-imbibing ambulators applying as students. The administration is very careful to group compatible species."
Apparently a single honk could convey a paragraph. Perhaps there were frequencies he couldn't hear. Then again, it might be the inefficiency of his own tongue. "I'm new to all this," he admitted. "I know very little of the ways of the galaxy, or what is expected of me here."