No one answered; he went on: "All right, go out and look around the ship- but try to behave yourselves and not bump into anybody so you'll be a credit to deck three."
The third deck had no ports of any sort, but the Bolivar was a long-jump transport; she possessed recreation rooms and viewports. Matt started forward, seeking a place from which to get a glimpse of the Earth.
He remembered to pass outboard as he pulled himself along, but apparently some passengers had not been indoctrinated. Each hatchway was a traffic jam of youngsters, each trying to leave his own deck to sight-see in some other deck, any deck.
The sixth deck, he found, was a recreation room. It contained the ship's library-locked-and games equipment, also locked. But it did have six large viewports.
The recreation deck had carried a full load of passengers. Now, in free fall, cadets from all other decks gradually ' found their way to the recreation deck, just as Matt had, seeking a view of outside; at the same time the original roster of that deck showed no tendency to want to leave their favored billet.
It was crowded.
Crowded as a basket full of kittens-Matt removed someone's space boot from his left eye and tried to worm his way toward one of the ports. Judicious work with his knees and elbows and a total disregard of the rules of the road got him to the second or third layer near one port. He placed a hand on a shoulder in front of him. The cadet twisted around. "Hey! Who do you think you're shoving? Oh-hello, Matt."
"Hi, Tex. How's it going?"
"All right. Say, you should have been here a few minutes ago. We passed one of the television relay stations, close by. Boy, oh, boy, are we traveling!"
"We did, huh? What did it look like?"