From the left, at the end of the corridor, appeared Grigory Bystrov, a second-year cadet who was class representative. He was wearing a test suit. He walked slowly, running his finger along the wall, his face pensive. He stopped in front of Kondratev and Panin and said, “Hello, guys.” His voice was sad.
Sergei nodded. Panin condescended to say, “Hello, Grigory. Do you start vibrating before you ride the Centrifuge, Grigory?”
“Yeah,” Grigory answered. “A little.”
“Well,” Panin said to Sergei. “So Grigory vibrates just a little. But then of course he’s still a smallfry.”
“Smallfry” was what they called underclassmen at the school.
Grigory sighed and sat down on the windowsill too. “Sergei,” he said, “Are you really making your first try at eight Gs today?”
“Yeah,” said Sergei. He had not the least desire to talk, but he didn’t want to offend Grigory. “If they let me, of course,” he added.
“Probably they will,” Grigory said.
“Think of it, eight Gs!” Panin said flippantly.
“Have you tried pulling eight yourself?” Grigory asked with interest.
“No,” said Panin. “But then I’m not a jock.”
“But maybe you will try?” said Sergei. “Right now, together with me.”
“I’m a simple man, a guileless man,” Panin answered. “There is a norm. The norm is five gravities. My simple, uncomplicated organism cannot bear anything exceeding the norm. My organism tried six once, and got carried out at six minutes some seconds. With me along.”
“Who got carried out?” asked Grigory, confused.
“My organism,” Panin explained.
“Oh,” said Grigory with a weak smile. “And I haven’t even pulled five yet.”
“You don’t have to pull five in the second year,” said Sergei. He jumped off the windowsill and started doing knee-bends alternately on right and left legs.
“Well, I’m off,” Grigory said, and jumped off the windowsill too.
“What happened, Great Leader?” Panin asked him. “Why such melancholy?”
“Someone played a joke on Kopylov,” Grigory answered sadly.
“Again?” said Panin. “What kind of joke?”
Second-year cadet Valentin Kopylov was famous throughout the division for his devotion to computer technology. Recently a very good new LIANTO waveguide computer had been installed in the division, and Valentin spent all his free time at its side. He would have spent his nights there too, but at night LIANTO did calculations for the diplomats, and Valentin was heartlessly shown the door.
“One of our people programmed a love letter,” Grigory said. “Now on the last cycle LIANTO prints, ‘Kopylov fills my life with blisses / So from LIANTO, love and kisses.’ In simple letter code.”
“‘Love and kisses,’” said Sergei, massaging his shoulders. “Some poets. They should be put out of their misery.”
“Just think,” said Panin. “One of the current smallfry has gotten all jolly.”
“And witty,” said Sergei.
“What are you telling me for?” said Grigory. “Go tell those idiots. ‘Love and kisses,’ indeed! Last night Kan was running a calculation, and instead of an answer, zap!—’Love and kisses.’ Now he’s called me on the carpet.”
Todor Kan, Iron Kan, was the head of the Navigation Division.
“Wow!” said Panin. “You’re going to have an interesting half hour, Great Leader. Iron Kan is a very lively conversationalist.”
“Iron Kan is a lover of literature,” Sergei said. “He won’t tolerate a class representative with such rotten versifiers for classmates.”
“I’m a simple man, a guileless man…” Panin began. At that moment the door opened slightly and the trainer stuck his head through.
“Panin, Kondratev, get ready,” he said.
Panin stopped short and straightened out his jacket. “Let’s go,” he said.
Kondratev nodded to Grigory and followed on Panin’s heels into the training hall. The hall was enormous, and in the middle of it sparkled a thirteen-foot double arm resting on a fat cubical base-the Large Centrifuge. The arm was turning. The gondolas on its ends, thrown outward by centrifugal force, lay almost horizontal. There were no windows in the gondolas; observation of the cadets was carried out from inside the base with the help of a system of mirrors. By the wall several cadets were resting on a vaulting box. Craning their necks, they followed the hurtling gondolas.
“Four Gs,” said Panin, looking at the gondolas.
“Five,” said Kondratev. “Who’s in there now?”
“Nguyen and Gurgenidze,” the trainer said.
He brought two acceleration suits, helped Kondratev and Panin to put them on, and laced them up. The acceleration suits looked like silkworm cocoons.
“Wait,” the trainer said, and went over to the base.
Once a week every cadet rode the centrifuge, getting acceleration conditioning. One hour once a week for the whole five years. You had to sit there and stick it out, and listen to your bones creak, and feel the broad straps dig through the thick cloth of the suit into your soft body, feel your face droop, feel how hard it was to blink, because your eyelids were so heavy. And while this was going on you had to solve boring problems, or else assemble standard computer subprograms, and this wasn’t at all easy, even though the problems and the subprograms were ones you had had your first year. Some cadets could pull seven gravities, while others couldn’t manage even three—they couldn’t cope with vision blackouts. They were transferred to the Remote Control Division.
The arm turned more slowly, and the gondolas hung more nearly vertical. From one of them crawled skinny, dark Nguyen Phu Dat. He stopped, hanging onto the open door, rocking. Gurgenidze tumbled clumsily from the other gondola. The cadets on the vaulting box jumped to their feet, but the trainer had already helped him up, and he sat down on the floor, propping himself up with his arms.
“Step lively now, Gurgenidze,” one of the cadets shouted loudly.
Everyone laughed. Everyone except Panin.
“Never mind, guys,” Gurgenidze said hoarsely, and got up. “Nothing to it!” He contorted his face horribly, stretching the numbed muscles of his cheeks. “Nothing to it!” he repeated.
“Boy, they sure are going to carry you out today, superjock!” Panin said, softly but very energetically.
Kondratev made as if he were not listening. If they do carry me out, he thought, that will be the end. They can’t do it. They mustn’t. “He’s on the chubby side, Gurgenidze is,” he said aloud. “The heavy ones don’t take acceleration well.”
“He’ll thin down,” Panin said cheerfully. “If he wants to, he’ll thin down.”
Panin had lost fifteen pounds before he had managed to endure the five gravities established as the norm. It was an excruciating process. But he did not at all want to get sent to Remote Control. He wanted to be a navigator.
A hatch opened in the base. Out crawled an instructor in a white coat, who took the sheets of paper with Nguyen and Gurgenidze’s answers.
“Are Kondratev and Panin ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” said the trainer.
The instructor glanced cursorily over the sheets of paper. “Right,” he said. “Nguyen and Gurgenidze can go. You’ve passed.”
“Hey, great!” Gurgenidze said. He immediately began to look better. “You mean I passed too?”
“You too,” said the instructor.
Gurgenidze suddenly hiccuped resoundingly. Everyone laughed again, even Panin, and Gurgenidze was very embarrassed. Even Nguyen Phu Dat laughed, loosening the lacing of his suit at the waist. He obviously felt wonderful.