Nineteen.
What are you doing?
I—I'm a cadet, I—
What kind of cadet?
... SpaServ ...
All right, now we'll move ahead two years. You are twenty-one years old. Twenty-one. How old are you?
Gradually Colin brought Harkins forward in time, carefully, feeling his way gingerly along the dark corridors of his mind. He brought him through cadets, graduation, his marriage to Martha (touchy: gently, gently)—his service in the planetary fleet.
Then: a mysterious phrase; rumors—Phoenix Project.
—nobody seems to know. Something secret, but no telling. Everything's secret this year. Testing officers right and left and up and down. But nobody knows what for....