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"Lucky seven! Congratulations. Your name, please." Rod gave his name and turned away, looking for a seat, since it appeared that he had twenty minutes or so to wait. He walked back, staring with interest at what his schoolmates deemed appropriate for survival, any and all conditions. Johann Braun was seated with empty seats on each side of him. The reason for the empty seats crouched at his feet- a big, lean, heavily-muscled boxer dog with unfriendly eyes. Slung over Braun's shoulder was a General Electric Thunderbolt, a shoulder model with telescopic sights and cone-of-fire control; its power pack Braun wore as a back pack. At his belt were binoculars, knife, first aid kit, and three pouches. Rod stopped and admired the gun, wondering how much the lovely thing had cost.
The dog raised his head and growled. Braun put a hand on the dog's head. "Keep your distance," he warned. "Thor is a one-man dog." Rod gave back a pace. "Yo, you are certainly equipped." The big blond youth gave a satisfied smile. "Thor and I are going to live off the country." "You don't need him, with that cannon. "Oh, yes, I do. Thor's my burglar alarm. With him at my side I can sleep sound. You'd be surprised at the things he can do. Thor's smarter than most people." "Shouldn't wonder." "The Deacon gave me some guff that the two of us made a team and should go through separately. I explained to him that Thor would tear the joint apart if they tried to separate us." Braun caressed the dog's ears. "I'd rather team with Thor than with a platoon of Combat Pioneers." "Say, Yo, how about letting me try that stinger? After we come out, I mean. "I don't mind. It really is a honey. You can pick off a sparrow in the air as easily as you can drop a moose at a thousand meters. Say, you're making Thor nervous. See you later." Rod took the hint, moved on and sat down. He looked around, having in mind that he might still arrange a survival team. Near the shuttered arch of the gateway there was a priest with a boy kneeling in front of him, with four others waiting.
The boy who had been receiving the blessing stood up- and Rod stood up hastily. "Hey! Jimmy!" Jimmy Throxton looked around, caught his eye and grinned, hurried over. "Rod!" he said, "I thought you had ducked out on me. Look, you haven't teamed?" "Still want to?" "Huh? Sure." "Swell! I can declare the team as I go through as long as you don't have number two. You don't, do you?" "No" "Good! Because I'm-" "NUMBER ONE!" the gate attendant called out. "'Throxton, James.'" Jimmy Throxton looked startled. "Oh, gee!" He hitched at his gun belt and turned quickly away, then called over his shoulder, "See you on the other side!" He trotted toward the gate, now unshuttered. Rod called out, "Hey, Jimmy! How are we going to find-" But it was too late. Well, if Jimmy had sense enough to drive nails, he would keep an eye on the exit. "Number two! Mshiyeni, Caroline." Across the room the big Zulu girl who had occurred to Rod as a possible team mate got up and headed for the gate. She was dressed simply in shirt and shorts, with her feet and legs and hands bare. She did not appear to be armed but she was carrying an overnight bag. Someone called out, "Hey, Carol! What you got in the trunk?" She threw him a grin. "Rocks." "Ham sandwiches, I'll bet. Save me one. "I'll save you a rock, sweetheart." Too soon the attendant called out, "Number seven- Walker, Roderick L." Rod went quickly to the gate.
The attendant shoved a paper into his hand, then shook hands. "Good luck, kid. Keep your eyes open." He gave Rod a slap on the back that urged him through the opening, dilated to man size. Rod found himself on the other side and, to his surprise, still indoors. But that shock was not as great as immediate unsteadiness and nausea; the gravity acceleration was much less than earthnormal. He fought to keep from throwing up and tried to figure things out. Where was he? On Luna? On one of Jupiter's moons? Or somewhere 'way out there? The Moon, most likely- Luna. Many of the longer jumps were relayed through Luna because of the danger of mixing with a primary, particularly with binaries. But surely they weren't going to leave him here; Matson had promised them no airless test areas. On the floor lay an open valise; he recognized it absent-mindedly as the one Caroline had been carrying. At last he remembered to look at the paper he had been handed. It read: SOLO SURVIVAL TEST-Recall Instructions
1. You must pass through the door ahead in the three minutes allowed you before another candidate is started through. An overlapping delay will disqualify you. 2. The recall will be by standard visual and sound signals. You are warned that the area remains hazardous even after recall is sounded. 3. The exit gate will not be the entrance gate. Exit may be as much as twenty kilometers in the direction of sunrise. 4. There is no truce zone outside the gate. The test starts at once. Watch out for stobor. Good luck! -B. P.M. Rod was still gulping at low gravity and staring at the paper when a door opened at the far end of the long, narrow room he was in. A man shouted, "Hurry up! You'll lose your place." Rod tried to hurry, staggered and then recovered too much and almost fell. He had experienced low gravity on field trips and his family had once vacationed on Luna, but he was not used to it; with difficulty he managed to skate toward the far door. Beyond the door was another gate room. The attendant glanced at the timer over the gate and said, "Twenty seconds. Give me that instruction sheet." Rod hung onto it. "I'll use the twenty seconds."-as much as twenty kilometers in the direction of sunrise. A nominal eastward direction-call it "east." But what the deuce was, or were, "stobor"? "Time! Through you go." The attendant snatched the paper, shutters rolled back, and Rod was shoved through a dilated gate. He fell to his hands and knees; the gravity beyond was something close to earth-normal and the change had caught him unprepared. But he stayed down, held perfectly still and made no sound while he quickly looked around him. He was in a wide clearing covered with high grass and containing scattered trees and bushes; beyond was dense forest. He twisted his neck in a hasty survey. Earth-type planet, near normal acceleration, probably a G-type sun in the sky . . . heavy vegetation, no fauna in sight- but that didn't mean anything; there might be hundreds within hearing. Even a stobor, whatever that was. The gate was behind him, tall dark-green shutters which were in reality a long way off.
They stood unsupported in the tall grass, an anomalism unrelated to the primitive scene. Rod considered wriggling around behind the gate, knowing that the tangency was one-sided and that he would be able to see through the locus from the other side, see anyone who came out without himself being seen. Which reminded him that he himself could be seen from that exceptional point; he decided to move. Where was Jimmy? Jimmy ought to be behind the gate, watching for him to come out. .. or watching from some other spy point.
The only certain method of rendezvous was for Jimmy to have waited for Rod's appearance; Rod had no way to find him now. Rod looked around more slowly and tried to spot anything that might give a hint as to Jimmy's whereabouts. Nothing . . . but when his scanning came back to the gate, the gate was no longer there. Rod felt cold ripple of adrenalin shock trickle down his back and out his finger tips.
He forced himself to quiet down and told himself that it was better this way. He had a theory to account for the disappearance of the gate; they were, he decided, refocusing it between each pair of students, scattering them possibly kilometers apart. No, that could not be true- "twenty kilometers toward sunrise" had to relate to a small area. Or did it? He reminded himself that the orientation given in the sheet handed him might not be that which appeared in some other student's instruction sheet. He relaxed to the fact that he did not really know anything. . . he did not know where he was, nor where Jimmy was, nor any other member of the class, he did not know what he might find here, save that it was a place where a man might stay alive if he were smart- and lucky. Just now his business was to stay alive, for a period that he might as well figure as ten Earth days. He wiped Jimmy Throxton out of his mind, wiped out everything but the necessity of remaining unceasingly alert to all of his surroundings. He noted wind direction as shown by grass plumes and started crawling cautiously down wind. The decision to go down wind had been difficult.
To go up wind had been his first thought, that being the natural direction for a stalk. But his sister's advice had already paid off; he felt naked and helpless without a gun and it had reminded him that he was not the hunter. His scent would carry in any case; if he went downwind he stood a chance of seeing what might be stalking him, while his unguarded rear would be comparatively safe. Something ahead in the grass! He froze and watched. It had been the tiniest movement; he waited. There it was again, moving slowly from right to left across his front. It looked like a dark spike with a tuft of hair on the tip, a tail possibly, carried aloft.
He never saw what manner of creature owned the tail, if it was a tail. It stopped suddenly at a point Rod judged to be directly down wind, then moved off rapidly and he lost Sight of it. He waited a few minutes, then resumed crawling. It was extremely hot work and sweat poured down him and soaked his overshirt and trousers. He began to want a drink very badly but reminded himself that five litres of water would not last long if he started drinking the first hour of the test. The sky was overcast with high cirrus haze, but the primary or "sun"- he decided to call it the Sun- seemed to burn through fiercely. It was low in the sky behind him; he wondered what it would be like overhead? Kill a man, maybe. Oh, well, it would be cooler in that forest ahead, or at least not be the same chance of sunstroke. There was lower ground ahead of him and hawklike birds were circling above the spot, round and round.
He held still and watched. Brothers, he said softly, if you are behaving like vultures back home, there is something dead ahead of me and you are waiting to make sure it stays dead before you drop in for lunch. If so, I had better swing wide, for it is bound to attract other things. . . some of which I might not want to meet. He started easing to the right, quartering the light breeze. It took him onto higher ground and close to a rock outcropping. Rod decided to spy out what was in the lower place below, making use of cover to let him reach an overhanging rock. It looked mightily like a man on the ground and a child near him. Rod reached, fumbled in his vest pack, got out a tiny 8-power monocular, took a better look. The man was Johann Braun, the "child" was his boxer dog. There was no doubt but that they were dead, for Braun was lying like a tossed rag doll, with his head twisted around and one leg bent under. His throat and the side of his head were a dark red stain.
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