"Oh, I wasn't criticizing!"
"No, but you were thinking it. You stick with it, Senator. You're just the sort of serious-minded young squirt they want and need. But not for me-I'm not going to be an archangel, charging around the sky and brandishing a flaming sword. Did you ever stop to think what it would feel like to atom bomb a city? Have you ever really thought about it?"
"Why, I don't know. It hasn't been necessary for the Patrol actually to use a bomb since they got it rolling right. I don't suppose it ever will be."
"But that's what you signed up for, just the same. It's your reason for being, my boy." He stopped and picked up his guitar. "Forget it. Now what can I do with this? I'll sell it to you cheap, Earth-side price."
"I couldn't even pay Earth-side prices right now."
"Take it as a gift." Arensa chucked it at him. "The Hog Alley band ought to have a gitter and I can get another. In thirty minutes I shall be in Terra Station, Senator, and six hours later I shall be back with the ground crawlers, the little people who don't know how to play God-and wouldn't want to!"
Matt couldn't think of anything to say.
It seemed odd thereafter not to have Arensa's bellowing voice across the passageway, but Matt did not have time to think about it. Matt's drill section in piloting was ordered to the Moon for airless-landing.
The section had progressed from scooters to drill in an A-6 utility rocket rigged for instruction. The cargo space of this ship-P.R.S. Shakysides to the cadets; drill craft #106 on the rolls of the Randolph-had been fitted as a dozen duplicate control rooms, similar in every visible detail to the real control rooms, to the last switch, dial, scope and key. The instruments in the duplicate rooms showed the same data as their twins in the master room but when a cadet touched a control in one of the instruction rooms, it had no effect on the ship; instead the operation was recorded on tape.
The pilot's operations were recorded, too, so that each student pilot could compare what he did with what he should have done, after having practiced under conditions identical with those experienced by the actual pilot.