“Only one way,” said Chick Teazle at last. “Barney French is in charge of us. We have to tell her, all of us.”
“All of us?” Vido repeated. He sounded as skeptical as Rick felt. “Forget it. You know what she says about committee decisions.”
Barney had told them often enough: “Work in ones, work in twos, even work in threes. But don’t form a committee, or you’ll never get anything done. A committee is a dead-end street down which ideas are lured and quietly strangled.”
“All right, not all of us,” Chick said defensively. “Not a committee, a deputation. Four people, representing everybody. Who’ll volunteer?”
“You will,” said Goggles Landau, and everyone laughed.
“I guess I have to, if I suggest it.” Chick grimaced. “Who else?”
There was another long pause. “I nominate Rick Luban,” Gladys de Witt said at last, while Rick stared at her in surprise. “He’s one of Barney’s pets, you can tell by the way she talks about him.”
“Hey!” But Rick’s outrage was lost in the buzz of general agreement.
“That’s two,” said Chick.
“Wait a minute! You said volunteer!”
“You’ve been volunteered.” And before Rick could speak again, Chick went on. “Need two more. Who else? Vido Valdez, will you do it?”
“Hold on,” Polly Quint said before Vido could reply. “I have nothing at all against Valdez, but you need balance. Better have two of the quartet females.”
“Agreed.” Vido grinned at her. “Thanks, Polly. Accepted, everyone?”
“Me? I never said me!”
But Chick was already looking around the group. “So it’s agreed on Polly. Just one more. Gladys?”
“Bad choice. Barney says I complain all the time.” Gladys stared around the room. “You need somebody who never bitches. How about Deedee. Will you? You know Barney thinks you walk on water.”
“She does not!” But Deedee bit her lip, then slowly nodded. “All right. If you want me to.”
“Which makes four. Good.” Chick Teazle clapped his hands together briskly. “So there’s only one other question: when?”
“Now,” chorused a dozen voices.
“I was afraid you’d say that. Rick, Polly, Deedee?” Chick looked to each of them in turn. “All right with you? Then let’s get it over with.” He started for the door.
“Give ’em hell, guys,” Skip Chung shouted after them as they left.
Brave words, but Rick felt the steam going out of him as they approached Barney’s office.
She was in. He had rather hoped she would be somewhere else. She greeted them with a raised eyebrow, seated them on uncomfortable chairs made of bare metal struts and mesh, and listened in silence while Chick, with prompting from the other three, explained why they were there.
“I see,” she said when he finished. “Level Five.” She walked over to the inner door to her office and disappeared through it.
Polly and Deedee looked at each other. “Bad news,” Deedee mouthed, and Polly nodded.
“Why?” Rick had seen the exchange.
“Can’t you tell?” Deedee was whispering. “She’s really angry.”
“Or upset.”
“Or both.”
They were talking only to each other. Before Rick could ask how they knew, Barney was back. She was holding two polished metal cylinders about two feet long. One was thin, the other fat.
“So you’re not happy,” she said. Rick could see it now, there was a twisted look to the always-asymmetrical face that was new and frightening. “So you don’t want to be treated as trainees anymore.”
Trainees, not apprentices? They had been demoted, but no one was going to correct her.
“Well,” Barney went on, “I have a question for all of you. What job do you expect to get when all your training is over?”
The four looked at each other. “Mining engineer?” said Chick Teazle at last.
“Mining engineer.” Barney French nodded. “Do you know why you say that? Well, I do. You say it, you overgrown ape, because it’s the only goddamn job any of you can imagine. So let me tell you something about Vanguard Mining. Maybe one person in a hundred makes mining engineer. Before you aspire to that, you have to be a real hot-shot—you have to know math, and mechanics, and physics, and metallurgy, and engineering. Most people don’t make it. I didn’t make it, and I bust my guts trying. Do you think any of you will make it?”
There was a dead silence.
“Well, it’s not my job to tell you that you won’t. In fact, it’s usually my job to tell you that you can. But right now you’re a million miles away from competence.” Barney tossed a sheet of paper across to Chick Teazle. “Read that, and tell me what it says.”
He stared at it and shook his head. “I can’t. I mean, I can read the words, most of’ em. But it’s full of big equations.”
“Damn right it is.” Barney’s face was growing redder. “Those are the equations of motion that describe the stability of a right circular cylinder under forced rotation, with off-axis disturbing forces. In other words, they describe a mining facility like CM-31. Unless you can read that, and maybe write something like it yourself, you’ll never make a top-flight mining engineer. And if you do, you won’t be getting an easy job. Better men than you’ll ever be—and better women—have given their lives for that research.” She glared at them, and her voice rose. “You think you’re ready for Level Five, do you? You don’t know what Level Five means. It means brains and dedication and endless hard work. It means devotion to duty, and sometimes it means sacrifice. The best engineer I ever met, Rusty Keck, was killed in the blow-up of CM-31.”
“I was there when he died,” Deedee said in a very small voice.
It halted the outburst. Barney stared at her. “So you were,” she said at last. “That makes me surprised that you are here.”
She put the two cylinders down on her desk, stood up, and left the room again. This time she was gone for more than five minutes, while her visitors sat and asked each other in hushed tones if the meeting was over and they were supposed to leave.
When she returned her face was unreadable. She picked up the two cylinders from her desk as though they weighed a ton each. “The episode at CM-31 gave you a false idea of your own status,” she said quietly. “You behaved well, and for an hour or two you did act at Level Five. But in terms of real training, you’re still Level Three beginners. Can you tell me why one of these cylinders is stable when it’s rotating about its main axis, and the other one isn’t? No, you can’t. Can you tell me how the stability changes, as the mass distribution changes from being mostly on the central axis to being near the outer curved surface? Again, you can’t. But you will know those things, before you leave here, because we’ll have done a dozen practical experiments with the centrifuge mining test facility that’s waiting outside this station. You’ll know what happens in practice. You’ll also be able to calculate it, so you don’t have to do expensive physical tests before you reach the final design stage. You’ll know and do all these things, or your future jobs in Vanguard Mining will be cleaning toilets and recycling sewage. If you’re lucky.”
She sighed, and tossed one cylinder to Rick and the other to Deedee. “Take these and think about them. I should never have told you that you did well. And I ought not to have lost control of myself. I hope you’ll forget that. I’m going to forget what you said to me. So far as I’m concerned, you never came here, and you never complained about anything. Now get out—before you make me real mad.”