The section had completed all it could learn from practice contacts at the Randolph and at Terra Station. They needed the hazard of a planet. The two- day trip to Moon Base was made in the Shakysides herself, under conditions only a little worse than those encountered by an emigrant.
Matt and his companions saw nothing of the Lunar colonies. There was no liberty; they lived for two weeks in pressurized underground barracks at the Base and went up to the field each day for landing drill, first in the dummy control rooms of the Shakysides, then in dual-controlled A-6 rockets for actual piloting.
Matt soloed at the end of the first week. He had the "feel" for piloting; given a pre-calculated flight plan he could make his craft respond. It was as natural to him as mathematical astrogation was difficult.
Soloing left him with time on his hands. He explored the Base and took a space-suited walk on the burned and airless Lunar plain. The student pilots were quartered in a corner of the marine barracks. Matt killed time by watching the space marines and chinning with the non-coms.
He liked the spit-and-polish style with which the space marines did "things, the strutting self-confidence with which they handled themselves. There is no more resplendent sight in the solar system than an old space- marine sergeant in full dress, covered with stripes, hash marks, and ribbons, the silver at his temples matching the blazing sunburst on his chest. Matt began to feel dowdy in the one plain, insignia-less uniform he had thought in his jump bag.
He enjoyed their frequent ceremonials. At first it startled him to hear a unit mustered without the ghostly repetition of the names of the Four-"Dahlquist! Martin! Rivera! Wheeler!"-but the marines had traditional rites of their own and more of them.
Faithful to his intention of swotting astrogation as hard as possible, Matt had brought some typical problems along. Reluctantly he tackled them one day. "Given: Departure from the orbit of Deimos, Mars, not earlier than 1200 Greenwich, 15 May 2087; chemical fuel, exhaust velocity 10,000 meters per second; destination, suprastratospheric orbit around Venus. Required: Most economical orbit to destination and quickest orbit, mass-ratios and times of departure and arrival for each. Prepare flight plan and designate checkpoints, with pre-calculation for each point, using stars of 2nd magnitude or brighter. Questions: Is it possible to save time or fuel by tacking on the Terra-Luna pair? What known meteor drifts will be encountered and what evasive plans, if any, should be made? All answers must conform to space regulations as well as to ballistic principles."
The problem could not be solved in any reasonable length of time without machine calculation. However, Matt could set it up and then, with luck, sweet- talk the officer in charge of the Base's computation room into letting him use a ballistic integrator. He got to work.
The sweet voice of a bugle reached him, first call for changing the guard. He ignored it.
He was sweating over his preliminary standard approximation when the bugle again interrupted him with call-to-muster. It completely disrupted his chain of reasoning. Confounded problem-why would they assign such a silly problem anyhow? The Patrol didn't fiddle around with chemical fuels and most economical orbits-that was merchant service stuff.