Charles Sheffield - Higher Education

That should have been enough to make Rick suspicious. Polly should be anything but pleased with the labor ahead—labor enough to bring a swarm of civil liberties’ lawyers if you forced convicted murderers to do it back on Earth.

Barney waited until everyone was there, then took Polly’s hand and raised it above her head.

“The winner—and the only one. You ought to give her three cheers.”

And, when that was greeted with baffled silence, “The only one to win what and do what, you ask? The only person to use her brains. Did you enjoy yesterday’s work? No, I’ll bet you didn’t, not unless there’s something wrong with you. But it wasn’t enough to make you think. What’s the most important quality in this phase of your training?”

“Initiative.” The muttered word came from everyone in the group.

“Exactly. Initiative. I’ll let you get away with a lot of other things if you show enough of that. Polly, tell them what you did last night.”

Polly gave Barney French an imploring “Do I have to?” look, but was offered no way out. She shrugged.

“Like everybody else, I spent two hours trying to remove grit from my hair. After that I went to the data banks, and I made an inquiry. We know that the interior of the SM can be heated, because it is able to smelt ore bodies. We also know that it can be filled with air, because we were there all day yesterday. I asked for the maximum temperature that the inside of the SM can be taken to when it’s filled with air—or oxygen—without damaging any part of the structure or the instruments. The answer is, over four thousand degrees. That would be enough to oxidize all the junk on the inside walls, and turn it to gas. Then if you opened up the end of the SM, which we know you can, all the cruddy gas would blow out into space. You’d have a perfectly clean interior. And one person could do the whole job—without even breaking a nail. That’s when I went and asked Barney French if what I was thinking of was forbidden, for some reason I did not understand. And it isn’t.”

It had been dawning on the rest of them, sentence by sentence, that they had been granted a reprieve. Weeks of horrible grimy labor was about to vanish, puffed into space in a cloud of metallic and silicon oxides. What Polly received was not exactly three cheers, but it was lots of whistles, waving arms, and “Yay, Polly.”

“Thanks, you beauty,” Chick Teazle shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I’ll love you forever.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” she called back. “They say you can’t last thirty seconds.”

His reply was lost in jeers and catcalls.

“All right.” Barney clapped her hands. “Anybody have a question for Polly?”

“How did you come up with the idea so quick?” called Goggles Landau.

“You ought to ask, what took me so long?” Polly grimaced in self-disgust. “As soon as I could walk and talk, my stepmother had me helping her in the shelter kitchen. I’ve known how to use a self-cleaning oven since I was six. It didn’t take much brains to apply the same idea to the smelter.”

“But you were the only one who did it,” Barney said. “Take credit from me when you can get it—I’m not that way inclined. For the rest of you. since there’s no more scraping to be done you are all dismissed for the rest of the morning. Polly will direct the superheated cleanout of the smelter later today, and you will all help. Meet at the main lock at two, in your suits. Until then your time is your own.”

The apprentices dispersed in a good humor. Thanks to Polly they were off the hook from days or weeks of pointless labor. In Rick’s case the satisfaction lasted only a few minutes. The true situation hit him when he reached his cabin, and found waiting there his solution of the spinning hoop problem along with Barney French’s comments.

This is really rather good, she had written on his answer—extravagant praise by Barney’s standards. No one else in the group has managed a solution, and from what I have seen so far I suspect that no one else will. Yon are still hindered by your lack of mathematics, but that will come with perseverance. You are not a born mathematician, like Henrik Voelker, but I’m rather glad you’re not—if you were you’ll have been grabbed by the central office—

Henrik? The Carolina Kid. The central office? It occurred to Rick for the first time that there might be other paths to success in Vanguard Mining. Henrik had flunked the training course, back on CM-2. Rick had felt sorry for him, because he was an OK type but such a goofball. Apparently he was still with the company, performing a different job. The East Coasters who said that Henrik was a mad genius must have been right after all.

— but there are more important things than mathematical talent if you want to be a good mining engineer. Remember, the purpose of mathematical calculation in the physical sciences is not numbers, it is insight. Your discussion of this question displays both insight and ingenuity.

If Rick had received that note earlier in the day, he would have been ecstatic. Now, though, he had to compare what he had done with Polly’s achievement.

It was no contest. His problem had been explicitly stated and identified. Its solution had to be in a hundred data banks and a thousand textbooks. But Polly had taken a real-world situation, identified it as a problem without being told it was a problem, and produced a real-world solution.

No wonder that she had received applause and praise.

And if achievement counted for anything, she was now far ahead of the rest—including Rick—as a candidate for the fabulous expedition to the Jovian moons.

You may feel SICK, you may feel SAD, you may feel STUPID, you may feel SUPERIOR, you may even feel SEXY. . . The sign hung prominently displayed at the entrance to the airlock.

… but unless you are feeling SUICIDAL you will check every element of your suit before you operate this lock. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Rick was feeling somber, which was not on the list, but he did not ignore the sign. He carefully made sure of every seal and function of his suit. He had not felt much like eating, and less like talking, and while all the others were still at lunch he had left to come straight here. It would be another hour before the operation at the SM was due to begin, but he wanted to spend time alone. The best place for quiet solo thinking, better even than his cabin, was outside the busy main body of CM-26. Inside the asteroid there was always the subterranean grumble and growl of heavy machinery, a reminder that apart from being a training facility CM-26 was also a producing mine.

It was a surprise and a nuisance to Rick to make his exit from the airlock and see the faint beacon of another suited figure flashing red near the smelter. While he watched it disappeared around the curve of the cylinder, then a couple of minutes later came into view again on the other side.

Who on earth was it? All the apprentices had been in the dining-room. He saw no way that they could have arrived here ahead of him.

There was an easy way to find out: use his suit radio. But then he would be forced into unwanted conversation. Maybe the other would simply go farther away, off toward the cluster of small waiting asteroids beyond the SM, or perhaps around to the other side of CM-26 where the final products of the mine were launched on their trajectories toward distant Earth.

Rick dimmed his own beacon, hovered in space, and watched. The other person’s suit was invisible whenever it was in shadow, but the beacon allowed Rick to track every movement. It went round and round the smelter, starting at the bottom and steadily spiraling up to the top. When that was done the flashing red light made a double traverse of each end of the cylinder, and finally the suited figure turned to jet back toward Rick and the main airlock.