"Excuse me, please," Ben Starbuck said, tapping the junior officer on the epaulet. "Get away from me, scum," the lieutenant said conversationally, his eyes on the clipboard in his hands.
Starbuck rocked back on his heels and set his spacebag down on the loading platform. He angled his head up at the spire of the inter-atmosphere ship, the Gorgon. This was only a sample of what he could expect once he canted into that hull. It would be rough. But he had made up his mind to take it.
All tight little groups, like the crew of a spaceship, always resented the intrusion of a newcomer. The initiations sometimes made it a test to see whether a man would live over them, and the probation period, the time of discipline and deference to old members of the group could be a memorably nasty experience. He didn't have direct knowledge of such customs in the rather shadowy, enigmatic Space Service, but it was basic sociology.
Starbuck knew he would have an even rougher time of it since he wasn't a spaceman—not even a cadet, properly. He was only a fledgling ethnologist on his field trip to gather material for his Master's thesis. The university and the government had arranged for his berth on the Gorgon.
An exploration ship, he thought acidly. That meant he might come back in a few months, or ten years, or never. All because he had the bad luck to be born in a cultural cycle that demanded hard standards of education from professional men. Thirty years before or after, he could have cribbed all the information he needed out of a book.
He stood with his hands clasped behind him, waiting for the lieutenant or somebody to deign to notice him. Somebody would have to pay some attention to him sooner or later.
Or would they?
Wouldn't it be just like the old timers to let him stand around and let the ship take off without him, all because he hadn't followed the proper procedure—a procedure he couldn't know? All he had been instructed to do was "report to the Gorgon." How do you report to a spaceship? Say, "Hello, spaceship?" Speak to the captain? The first mate? And where did he find them?
Starbuck felt a moment of panic. He could see himself standing on the platform while the Gorgon blasted off, carrying with it his Swabber's rating, his Master's degree and his future.
The lieutenant's back, in uniform black, loomed up before him. He would have to try approaching him again. It might mean solitary confinement for a month or two where no member of the crew would speak to him. It might even mean a flogging. Nobody knew much about what went on on board an exploration ship, despite all the stories. But Starbuck knew he would have to risk it.
He marched up behind the officer. "Sir," he said. "I'm the new man."
The lieutenant whirled. "The new man!"
For the first time, Starbuck noticed that the junior officer carried a swagger stick under his left arm, black, about a foot and a half long, tipped with silver at both ends. Quite possibly it was standard procedure to rap a man with it three times sharply across the mouth for speaking out of turn, during his probationary period. Cautiously, he filled a little pocket of air between his lips and his teeth to try to keep them from being knocked loose.
The lieutenant dropped his clipboard and swagger stick on the platform. "Why didn't you say so! New man, eh?" He gripped Starbuck by the shoulders of his new, store-bought uniform. "Let me look at you, son. Got some muscles there, haven't you? Ha, ha. Don't expect you'll need them too much on board. We don't work our men too hard. My name's Sam Frawley. Call me Sam. Come on, let me show you around."
Sam Frawley scooped up his stick and board with one hand and draped the other arm around Starbuck's shoulders, leading him towards a hoist.
It was not quite what Starbuck had expected for a reception.
The spaceship was big, bigger than Starbuck had expected or realized. He had known some well-fixed people who had visited Mars and Venus and talked knowingly of an older culture, but he had never been off of Earth himself. He had been thinking in terms of an airliner or a submarine. The Gorgon was more like an ocean liner. Or like an ocean.
His and the lieutenant's footsteps echoed and bounced around the huge corridor. "They haven't got the mats down yet," Sam Frawley explained.
"Sure."
"Well, what would you like to see first? The brain?"
"You mean the captain?"
Sam slapped him on the back. "Bless you, son, no. I mean the electronic brain. The cybernetic calculator."
"You've got one of those things?" Starbuck asked in unconcealed surprise.
"You know what the trouble with the human race is, Ben? We're all still living in the Ellisonian Age."
"Oh, I don't know. I think most of us are pretty sophisticated and modern," Starbuck said.
"Not on your life. Most people still think leisure is a sin. Hard work and more hard work, that's the ticket. Don't let a calculator solve a problem for you; do it yourself with a slipstick. Otherwise it's immoral."
"That's silly," Ben said awkwardly. "It's just a throwback to a time of protest against the Automational Revolution. It has nothing to do with us today."
"You say that, but you don't really believe it. The old morality is too deeply ingrained. That's why cybernetics have so long been out of fashion. This one is new to us on the Gorgon. But we like new things. We're for progress. All spacemen are like that, son."
"Have you had this machine long?" Starbuck asked his progressive officer.
"They installed it on the trip in. We've never really had a chance to use it."
"What's it supposed to do?"
"You know our job is exploration, finding new worlds," Sam explained. "Not just any world the human race hasn't landed upon, but a world that is a significantly different type than we've ever touched before.............