"Never mind your Uncle Bodie. If I catch you taking another, I'll beat you to death with the bottle."
"Aw, shucks, Matt!"
Oscar looked at Matt quizzically. "Easy on that holier-than-thou stuff, kid. Maybe it could happen to you."
"Maybe it could. Maybe some day I'll get you to chapter-one me and find out what happens. But not in public."
"It's a date."
"Say," demanded Pete, "what goes on here? What's it all about?"
IX LONG HAUL
LIFE IN THE Randolph had a curious aspect of timelessness -or, rather, datelessness. There was no weather, there were no seasons. The very divisions into "night" and "day" were arbitrary and were continually being upset by night watches and by laboratory periods at any hour, in order to make maximum use of limited facilities. Meals were served every six hours around the clock and the meal at one in the "morning" was almost as well attended as breakfast at seven hundred.
Matt got used to sleeping when he could find time-and the "days" tumbled past. It seemed to him that there was never time enough for all that he was expected to do. Mathematics and the mathematical subjects, astrogation and atomic physics in particular, began to be a bugaboo; he was finding himself being rushed into practical applications of mathematics before he was solidly grounded.
He had fancied himself, before becoming a cadet, as rather bright in mathematics, and so he was-by ordinary standards. He had not anticipated what it would be like to be part of a group of which every member was unusually talented in the language of science. He signed up for personal coaching in mathematics and studied harder than ever. The additional effort kept him from failing, but that was all. 1 It is not possible to work all the time without cracking up, but the environment would have kept Matt from overworking even if he had been so disposed. Corridor number five of "A" deck, where Matt and his roommates lived, was known as "Hog Alley" and had acquired a ripe reputation for carefree conduct even before Tex Jarman added his talents.