The remainder of the tests proceeded like assembly-line operations, each person taking each alone, in the order of his casual position in the waiting line.
First there was the dizzying, mind-blackening centrifuge test, to see if you could take enough Gs of acceleration, and still be alert enough to fit a simple block puzzle together.
Then came the free fall test, from the top of a thousand foot tower. A parachute-arrangement broke your speed at the bottom of the track. As in the centrifuge, instruments incorporated into the fabric of a coverall suit with a hood, were recording your emotional and bodily reactions. The medics wanted to be sure that your panic level was high and cool. Nelsen didn't find free fall very hard to take, either.
Right after that came the scramble to see how fast you could get into an Archer, unfold and inflate a bubb and rig its gear.
"That's all, Mister," the observer with the camera told Nelsen in a bored tone.
"Results will be mailed to your home within twelve hours—Mr. Nelsen," a girl informed him as she read his name from a printed card.
So the Bunch returned tensely to Jarviston, with more time to sweat out. Everybody looked at Gimp Hines—and then looked away. Even Jig Hollins didn't make any comments. Gimp, himself, seemed pretty subdued.
The small, green space-fitness cards were arriving at Jarviston addresses in the morning.
Near the end of the noon hour, Two-and-Two Baines was waving his around the Tech campus, having gone home to look, as of course everybody else who could, had also done. "Cripes!—Hi-di-ho—here it is!" he was yelling at the frosty sky, when Frank came with his own ticket.
The Kuzaks had theirs, and were calm about it. Eileen Sands' card was tucked neatly into her sweater pocket, as she joined those who were waiting for the others on the front steps of Tech's Carver Hall.