The others were having trouble too. He could see them humped over their tables, or under them, depending on physiology, scribbling notes as they figured ratios and tolerances and indices of material properties. Even Treetrunk looked hard-pressed. If Treetrunk, with a galactic library of dental information filed in his celluloid brain, could wilt with the effort, how could a poor humanoid from a backward planet hope to succeed?
But he carried on to the discouraging end, knowing that his score would damn him but determined to do his best whatever the situation. It seemed increasingly ridiculous, but he still wanted to be admitted to the university. The thought of deserting this stupendous reservoir of information and technique was appalling.
During the afternoon break he collapsed on his bunk and slept. One day remained, one final trial—the interrogation by the Admissions Advisory Council. This, he understood, was the roughest gantlet of all; more applications were rejected on the basis of this interview than from both other tests combined.
An outcry woke him in the evening. "The probabilities are being posted!" Pincushion honked, prodding him with a spine that was not, despite its appearance, sharp.
"Mine's twenty-one per cent, not a penny more," Dillingham muttered sleepily. "Low—too low."
"The revised probs!" Pincushion said. "Based on the test scores. The warning buzzer just sounded."
Dillingham snapped awake. He remembered now; no results were posted for the field and written exams. Instead the original estimates of acceptance were modified in the light of individual data. This provided unlikely applicants with a graceful opportunity to bow out before subjecting themselves to the indignity of a negative recommendation by the AA Council. It also undoubtedly simplified the work of that council by cutting down on the number of interviewees.
They clustered in a tense semicircle around the main translator. The results would be given in descending order. Dillingham wondered why more privacy in such matters wasn't provided, but assumed that the University had its reasons. Possibly the constant comparisons encouraged better effort, or weeded out the quitters that much sooner.
"Anteater," the speaker said. It paused. "Ninety-six per cent."
Anteater twitched his nose in relief. "I must have guessed right on those stress formulations," he said. "I knew I was in trouble on those computations."
"Treetrunk—eighty-five per cent." Treetrunk almost uprooted himself with glee. "A twenty-five per cent increase!" he exulted. "I must have maxed the written portion after all!"
"Robot—sixty-eight per cent." The robotoid took the news impassively.
The remaining three fidgeted, knowing their scores had to be lower.
"Pincushion—fifty per cent." The creature congratulated himself on an even chance, though he obviously had hoped to do better.
"Electrolyte—twenty-three per cent."
The rocklike individual rolled toward his compartment. "I was afraid of that. I'm going home."
The rest watched Dillingham sympathetically, anticipating the worst. It came. "Earthman—three per cent," the speaker said plainly.
The last reasonable hope was gone. The odds were thirty to one against him, and his faith in miracles was small. The others scattered, embarrassed for him, while Dillingham stood rigid.
He had known he was in trouble—but this! To be given, on the basis of thorough testing, practically no chance of admission...
He was forty-one years old. He felt like crying.
The Admissions Advisory Council was alien even by the standards he had learned in the galaxy. There were only three members—but as soon as this occurred to him, he realized that this would be only the fraction of the Council assigned to his case. There were probably hundreds of interviews going on at this moment, as thousands of applicants were processed.
One member was a honeycomb of gelatinous tissue suspended on a trellislike framework. The second was a mass of purple sponge. The third was an undulating something confined within a tank—a water-breather, if that liquid were water. If it breathed.
The speaker set in the wall of the tank came to life. This was evidently the spokesman, if any were required. "We do not interview many with so low a probability of admission as students," Tank said. "Why did you persist?"
Why, indeed? Well, he had nothing further to lose by forthrightness. "I still want to enter the University. There is still a chance."
"Your examination results are hardly conducive to admission as a student," Tank said, and it was amazing how much scorn could be infused into the tone of the mechanical translation. "While your field exercises were fair, your written production was incompetent. You appear to be ignorant of all but the most primitive and limited aspects of prosthodontistry. Why should you wish to undertake training for which your capacity is plainly insufficient?"
"Most of the questions of the second examination struck me as relating to basic information, rather than potential," Dillingham said woodenly. "If I had that information already, I would not stand in such need of the training. I came here to learn."
"An intriguing attitude. We expect, nevertheless, a certain minimum background. Otherwise our efforts are wastefully diluted."
For this Dillingham had no answer. Obviously the ranking specialists of the galaxy should not be used for elementary instruction. He understood the point—yet something in him would not capitulate. There had to be more to this hearing than an automatic decision on the basis of tests whose results could be distorted by participant cooperation on the one hand, and circumstantial denial of study-time on the other. Why have an advisory board at all, if that were all?
"I am concerned with certain aspects of your field work," the honeycomb creature said. He spoke by vibrating his tissue in the air, but the voice emerged from his translator. "Why did you neglect particular items?"
"Do you mean number seventeen? I was unfamiliar with the specimen and therefore could not repair it competently."
"You refused to work on it merely because it was new to your experience?" Again the towering scorn.
That did make it sound bad. "No. I would have done something if I had had more evidence of its nature. But the specimen was not complete. I felt that there was insufficient information presented to justify attempted repairs."
"You could not have hurt an inert model very much. Surely you realized that even an incorrect repair would have brought you a better score than total failure?"
He had not known that. "I assumed that these specimens stood in lieu of actual patients. I gave them the same consideration I would have given a living, feeling creature. Neglect of a cavity in the tooth of a live patient might lead to the eventual loss of that tooth—but an incorrect repair could have caused more serious damage. Sometimes it is better not to interfere."
"Explain."
"When I visited the planet Electrolus I saw that the metallic restorations in native teeth were indirectly interfering with communication, which was disastrous to the well-being of the individual. This impressed upon me how dangerous well-meaning ignorance could be, even in so simple a matter as a filling."
"The chairman of the Dental League of planet Electrolus is a University graduate. Are you accusing him of ignorance?"
Oh-oh. "Perhaps the problem had not come to his attention," Dillingham said, trying to evade the trap.
"We will return to that at another time," the purple sponge said grimly. The applicant's reasoning hardly seemed to impress this group.