Matt did not want another such-nor the five demerits that went with it. He settled his head in the neck rest of his study chair and concentrated on the recorded words of the lecturer while scenes in color-stereo passed in front of him, portraying in chill beauty the rich past of the ancient planet.
The projector was much like the study box he had used at home, except that it was more gadgeted,1 could project in three dimensions, and was hooked in with the voice writer. Matt found this a great time-saver. He could stop the lecture, dictate a summary, then cause the projector to throw his printed notes on the screen.
Stereo-projection was a time-saver for manual subjects as well. "You are now entering the control room of a type A-6 utility rocket," the unseen lecturer would say, "and will practice an airless landing on Luna"-while the camera moved through the door of the rocket's pilot room and panned down to a position corresponding to the pilot's head. From there on a pictured flight could be made very realistic.
Or it might be a spool on space suits. "This is a four-hour suit," the voice would say, "type M, and may be worn anywhere outside the orbit of Venus. It has a low-capacity rocket unit capable of producing a total change of speed in a 300-lb. mass of fifty foot-seconds. The built-in radio has a suit-to-suit range of fifty miles. Internal heating and cooling is-" By the time Matt's turn came for space-suit drill he knew as much about it as could be learned without practice.
His turn came when he passed the basic free-fall test. He was not finished with free-fall drill-there remained group
precision drill, hand-to-hand combat, use of personal weapons, and other refinements-but he was judged able to handle himself well enough. He was free, too, to go out for free-fall sports, wrestling, bank tennis, jaijilai, and several others -up to now he had been eligible only for the chess club. He picked space polo, a game combining water polo and assault with intent to maim, and joined the local league, in the lowest or "bloody nose" group.
He missed his first chance at space-suit drill because a battered nose had turned him into a mouth breather-the respirator for a type-M suit calls for inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. But he was ready and anxious the following week. The instructor ordered his group to "Suit up!" without preliminary, as it was assumed that they had studied the instruction spool.
The last of the ship's spin had been removed some days before. Matt curled himself into a ball, floating free, and spread open the front of his suit. It was an unhandy process; he found shortly that he was trying to get both legs down one leg of the suit. He backed out and tried again. This time the big fishbowl flopped forward into the opening.
Most of the section were already in their suits. The instructor swam over to Matt and looked at him sharply. "You've passed your free-fall basic?"
"Yes," Matt answered miserably.