By the entrance a second-year man was watering the flowers with a hose. As he passed him, Panin declaimed, with exaggerated gestures, “Kopylov fills my life with blisses / So from LIANTO, love and kisses.” The second-year man smiled with embarrassment and glanced at a window on the second floor.
They walked along a narrow lane planted with bird-cherry bushes. Panin was about to begin a loud song, but a group of girls in shorts and T-shirts came out from around a bend, walking towards them. The girls were coming back from the volleyball court. In front, with the ball under her arm, walked Katya. That’s just what I needed, thought Sergei. Now she’ll stare at me out of those round eyes. And she’ll start the thousand-words-with-a-glance routine. He even stopped for a second. He had a fierce desire to jump through the bird-cherry bushes and crawl away somewhere. He glanced sidelong at Panin.
Panin smiled pleasantly, straightened his shoulders, and said in a velvet voice, “Hello, girls!”
The Remote Control Division vouchsafed him closed-mouthed smiles. Katya had eyes only for Sergei.
Oh, lord, he thought, and said, “Hi, Katya.”
“Hi, Sergei,” said Katya. She lowered her head and walked on.
Panin stopped.
“Well, what’s your problem?” Sergei asked.
“It’s her,” said Panin.
Sergei looked back. Katya was standing there, arranging her tousled hair and looking at him. Her right knee was wrapped in a dusty bandage. They looked at each other for several seconds—Katya’s eyes opened wide. Sergei bit his lip, turned, and went on without waiting for Panin. Panin caught up with him.
“Such beautiful eyes,” he said.
“Sheep’s eyes,” said Sergei.
“Sheep yourself,” Panin snapped. “She’s a very, very beautiful girl. Hold it,” he said. “How come she knows you?”
Sergei didn’t answer, and Panin kept silent.
In the center of the park was a broad meadow with thick soft grass. Here the cadets usually crammed before theory exams and rested after acceleration conditioning, and here couples met on summer nights. At present the place was occupied by the fifth-year men of the Navigation Division. Most of them were under a white awning, where a game of four-dimensional chess was in progress. This highly intellectual game, in which the board and pieces had four spatial dimensions and existed only in the imaginations of the players, had been introduced to the school several years before by Zhilin, the same Zhilin who was now engineer on the trans-Martian voyager Takhmasik. The senior classmen were quite fond of the game, but by no means could everyone play it. On the other hand, anyone who felt like it could kibitz. The shouts of the kibitzers filled the entire park.
“Should’ve moved the pawn to E-one-delta-H.”
“Then you lose the fourth knight!”
“So? The pawns move into the bishops’ volume—”
“What bishops’ volume? Where do you get bishops’ volume? You’ve got the ninth move down wrong!”
“Listen, guys, take old Sasha away and tie him to a tree. And leave him there.”
Someone, probably one of the players, yelled excitedly, “Shut up! I can’t think!”
“Let’s go watch,” said Panin. He was a great fan of four-dimensional chess.
“I don’t want to,” said Sergei. He stepped over Gurgenidze, who was lying on Malyshev and twisting his arm up toward his neck. Malyshev was still struggling, but it was clear who had won. Sergei walked a few paces away from them and collapsed on the grass, stretching out full length. It was a little painful to stretch muscles after acceleration, but it was very helpful, and Sergei did a neck bridge, then a handstand, then another neck bridge, and finally lay down on his back and gazed at the sky. Panin sat down beside him and listened to the shouts of the kibitzers while he chewed on a stem of grass.
Maybe I should go see Kan? Sergei thought. Go to him and say, “Comrade Kan, what do you think about interstellar travel?” No—not like that. “Comrade Kan, I want to conquer the universe.” Damn—what nonsense! Sergei turned over on his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows.
Gurgenidze and Malyshev had quit fighting, and they sat down near Panin. Malyshev caught his breath and asked, “What was on the SV yesterday?”
“Blue Fields,” Panin said. “Relayed from Argentina.”
“So how was it?” asked Gurgenidze.
“They should’ve kept it,” said Panin.
“Oh,” said Malyshev. “Is that where he keeps dropping the refrigerator?”
“The vacuum cleaner,” Panin corrected.
“Then I’ve seen it,” said Malyshev. “Why didn’t you like it? It’s not a bad film. The music is good, and it has a good odor scale. Remember, when they’re by the sea?”
“Maybe,” said Panin. “Only the olfactor on my set’s broken. It reeks of smoked fish all the time. It was really something when they went into the florist shop and smelled the roses.”
Gurgenidze laughed. “Why don’t you fix it?”
Malyshev said thoughtfully, “It would be something if they could figure out a way to broadcast tactile sensations in movies. Imagine—somebody is kissing somebody on the screen, and you feel like you’re getting slapped in the face…”
“I can imagine,” said Panin. “That’s already happened to me. Without any movie.”
And then I’d pick my crew, Sergei thought. Even now I could pick good guys for this. Mamedov, Petrov, Zavialov from Engineering. Briushkov from the third year can pull twelve gravities. He didn’t even need conditioning—he has some special sort of middle ear. But of course he’s a smallfry and doesn’t understand anything yet. Sergei remembered how, when Panin had asked him what the point of it was, Briushkov had puffed up self-importantly and said, “You try it, like me.” A smallfry, and too little to eat at that—a minnow smallfry. Yes, anyway, all of them are jocks, the smallfry and the final-year men. Maybe Valentin Petrov…
Sergei turned over on his back again. Valentin Petrov. Transactions of the Academy of Nonclassical Mechanics, Volume Seven. Valentin Petrov eats and sleeps with that book. And of course other people read it too. They’re always reading it! There are three copies in the library, all of them thumbed to pieces, and most of the time they’re all checked out. So I’m not alone? Does that mean other people too are interested in “The Behavior of Pi-Quanta in Accelerators” and that they’re drawing conclusions too? I should take Petrov aside, Sergei thought, and have a talk with him.
“Well, what are you staring at me for?” said Panin. “Guys, how come he’s staring at me? I’m terrified.”
Sergei only now realized that he was up on all fours, and looking straight into Panin’s face.
“Ah, the foreshortening!” said Gurgenidze. “I could use you as a model for ‘Reverie’.”
Sergei got up and looked around the meadow. Petrov wasn’t in sight. He lay back down and pressed his cheek against the grass.
“Sergei,” called Malyshev, “what’s your analysis of all this?”
“Of all what?” Sergei asked into the grass.
“The nationalization of United Rocket Construction.” He gave the name in English.
“‘Approve Mr. Hopkins’ present action. Expect more same spirit. Stop, Kondratev,’” said Sergei. “Send the telegram collect, payment through the Soviet State Bank.”
United Rocket has good engineers. We have good engineers too. And this is the time for all of them to get together and build ramscoops. It’s all up to the engineers now—we’ll do our part. We’re ready. Sergei imagined squadrons of gigantic starships at the launch, and then in deep space, at the edge of the light barrier, accelerating at ten or twelve gravities, devouring diffuse matter, tons of interstellar dust and gas. Enormous accelerations, powerful artificial-gravity fields.