"My feet hurt already," said Maria.
"This stinks," said the redhead tersely. "I knew I should have quit yesterday—"
"Not me," said Cleveland. "I got this far. They won't bully me out of it now!"
The field trucks drove back just fourteen girls from the Play Area. Lt. Hartwig was surprised at the low number, after his first hard-eyed appraisal of the women. But a hundred and sixty-six of them had stuck it out, with a perseverance that didn't quite fit his preconceived idea about the durability of young women—particularly the kind of young women who entered beauty contests.
But they stuck. They walked the four-mile distance to the test grounds with playful good humor. They took the hurdles of the obstacle course with only minor accidents. They joined in the water trials with gleeful abandon. And they even forgot their aching feet when the whistle blew for the running events.
The blonde that Hartwig had dated proved a frost in the first ten minutes of the exercises. She balked at the obstacle course, and pulled a fit of weeping. Hartwig himself helped her off the grounds, and tried to be nice about it. But she seemed to want to blame him for everything, and gave the young officer a tongue-lashing that brought a blush to his face. She sat out the rest of the field trials in a truck, waiting to be driven home. But that other blonde one, the pert one with the curls and the stunning figure, the one from Cleveland; now that was something more to Hartwig's liking. And the way she had taken the whole thing with such dignity and good grace. He'd have to talk with her on the way back....
"Okay, girls!" he called to them cheerfully, as they began the weary trudge back to the spaceport. "I know you're all bushed, but if we put a little pep into it, we can get back at two-thirty or so. That will give you some time to freshen up before the outer-space question period. You'll probably want to do some repair work on the makeup."
They made the march in less than half an hour.