Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

"Naw, you can keep your jumbos, with their automated everything," Harris said as he turned to face his copilot, Janis. "I'd rather pilot one of these MC 27's any day. Look, you've got small enough size, you can go anywhere with it - no hassleing with lighters at the small spaceports. And yet, you can haul enough cargo to make a decent profit. If I was in business for myself, this is the kind of ship I'd want. Crew of two can maintain it, engines are simple, good sturdy construction, and just look at that instrument panel. What a display. You've got data there telling you everything that's going on in the entire ship. On a jumbo, all you see is what the computer thinks you should see. What if the computer is the problem? You're out of luck then!"

"There's never been a computer failure in a jumbo in all the years they've have been around," replied Janis. "Besides, there's always the back up computer. I bet you'd change your tune if somebody was waving a jumbo pilot's paycheck under your nose. All you'd be saying then was how glad you were to get away from these retched little tin cans. You're always talking about going into business for yourself. How come you don't take the big plunge? You've been talking about it long enough."

Janis' question brought Harris up short. He wasn't used to having his fantasies challenged. He regarded her coolly. She was a plain looking woman, with little effort invested in hair style and none on makeup. Dressed in the standard Alterus Transit Company white uniform, he couldn't have even guessed her sex from a distance. He suspected that was the intention of the uniform designers. After all, a cargo run could take several weeks, and the inside of a ship was no place for unnecessary tensions. The company smiled benevolently on crews that got along exceptionally well - even going out of their way to schedule those crews together consistently. But such close relations were not considered necessary to the efficient operation of a starship, so crews were ordinarily matched by abilities. He was good pilot, but weak in navigation. So he had drawn Janis, who was an excellent navigator.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm going to do it someday," began Harris defensively. "But, you gotta remember that the war wiped out a lot of ships. Right now, it's a seller's market in used ships. Why even one of these MC 27's with burnt out engines, is worth 30 million credits. Buy that at today's interest rates - if you can find the money to borrow in the first place - and you can't make enough hauling cargo to keep up the payments. No, I gotta' wait 'till the market loosens up a bit. 'Course then everybody and his brother will be trying to do the same thing I want to do, but I'll give it a good try anyway."

Harris was interrupt by the mass proximity alarm. Silencing the clanging in his ears, he scanned the instruments as he exclaimed , "Computer! Status report!"

As figures began to scroll across the control panel screens, the loudspeaker announced, "LARGE MASS APPROACHING, REAR QUADRANT, 12 DEGREES OFF STERN, CLOSING SPEED 3 LIGHTS, OBJECT WILL CLOSE WITHIN 00:15:27 - SHIP TIME, SUGGEST EVASIVE MANEUVERS."

As he scanned the instruments, Harris said, "3 lights! Damn, he's coming on fast." He quickly flipped the row of switches across the bottom of the panel as he called out, "Manual directional control override - on."

"Check," Janis replied.

"Manual engine control override - on."

"Check."

"Acceleration limiter override - on."

"Check."

"Main generators up to max power."

"Check."

"Meteor screens up to max standby."

"Check."

"Force compensators up to max standby."

"Check."

"Hang on!"

Harris gripped the joy stick with a sweaty palm as he twisted it violently forward and to the left. Old memories of terror and violent death during the war returned unwanted as he felt the ship lurch sickeningly, responding to his commands. Lagging slightly behind, the force compensators cut in and relieved the gee forces before he was crushed into his acceleration couch. Harris kept the stick pegged over until the directional indicators spun to a new heading that would take them at right angles to the flight path of what ever was overtaking them. "There's one of your hot shot jumbo pilots now," he said venomously. "Just cruising down the space lanes like his owned 'em. Probably doesn't even have his mass meter on. Computer! Status report!"

The loudspeaker announced, "APPROACHING MASS CHANGING COURSE TO COMPENSATE FOR EVASIVE MANEUVERS. CLOSING SPEED 4 LIGHTS. APPROACHING MASS WILL INTERSECT PRESENT COURSE 00:12:27 SHIP TIME. SUGGEST FURTHER EVASIVE MANEUVERS.

Harris yanked the joy stick back and to the left. The ship creaked and groaned with the sudden change, and Harris heard a moan, but he wasn't sure if it came from Janis or himself. When the compensators cut in and he could breath again, he exclaimed, "What's that idiot doing? You'd think he was trying to run us down, the way he's acting. Even a junior cadet knows that the ship in the lead turns towards the center of the galaxy, and the overtaker turns away! Computer! Status report!"

APPROACHING MASS CHANGING COURSE TO COMPENSATE FOR EVASIVE MANEUVERS. CLOSING SPEED 4 LIGHTS. APPROACHING MASS WILL INTERSECT PRESENT COURSE 00:7:33 SHIP TIME. SUGGEST FURTHER EVASIVE MANEUVERS.

A cold chill crept up Harris's spine as what ever it was out there continued to track their attempts to get out of the way. As he wrenched the joy stick back and to the right, he tried to suppress the thought that the mass out there was intentionally tracking them. But that can't be, he reasoned. The war's been over for 3 years. After 25 years of destruction and hardship, the whole of human occupied space was so worn and exhausted that further conflict was unthinkable. But the reflexes and trained reactions that kept him alive through all the years of violence and death were slow to fade. If he corrects again I'll know, he told himself. Twice might have been coincidence - three would have to be intentional. "Computer! Status report!"

APPROACHING MASS CHANGING COURSE TO COMPENSATE FOR EVASIVE MANEUVERS. CLOSING SPEED 4 LIGHTS. APPROACHING MASS WILL INTERSECT PRESENT COURSE 00:04:53 SHIP TIME. SUGGEST FURTHER EVASIVE MANEUVERS.

"He's tracking us!" Harris exclaimed. "Pirate, maybe. Well, we'll give him a run for him money." He pushed the engine power knob in to its stop.

Harris felt himself slammed back against his couch. The over head lights and the ventilators shut down as the engines greedily sucked in all the power they could get. A heavy throb vibrated up through the deck plates. In the dim emergency lighting, he struggled against the gee forces to keep his eyes on the gauges. The gee meter was climbing rapidly towards the glaring red line at 30 gees. The row of engine gauges were already at their at their limits - they would only go higher if he over rode the safeties. Creaks and groans filtered up from the fabric of the ship, and somewhere he heard a brittle crash. As the gee meter kissed the red line, he eased the power knob back a little. With the acceleration curve flattening out, the lagging compensators caught up, and the crushing weight on his chest eased.

Watching the time to intersect clock display on the screen, he waited until there were only 20 seconds left. Then he slammed the engines into full reverse while jamming the joystick down and to the right. The world seemed to suddenly stand on its head as he felt himself thrown out against the restraining harness, and his blood rushed to his head. Fighting back a wave of nausea as his insides tried to respond to the forces and empty out through the lowest point, he managed to croak out, "Computer! Status report!"

APPROACHING MASS DECELERATING. CHANGING COURSE. MASS PASSING ACROSS BOW NOW. MASS CONTINUES TO DECELERATE, CHANGING COURSE. ESTIMATE MASS WILL COMPLETE FULL TURN 0O:05:27 SHIP TIME.

Harris moved the joy stick back to neutral and shifted the engine controls back to positive thrust. With the throb in his head easing as the blood drained, and the lights and ventilation coming back on, he said, "Looks like he's coming back for another try. I can't figure what his game is, but I don't think we want to play it. The only thing on this ship worth hijacking is the ship itself. The bulk enzymes we're hauling are hardly worth the freight charges, let alone stealing. Plot us a course to the nearest group of large masses. Maybe we can lose him in an asteroid swarm or something. Computer! Did you get anything on the sensors as the mass crossed our bow?"

Janis was dubious about Harris's reactions as she applied herself to her keyboard. Sure the mass had overtaken them at high speed, and had countered in the same directions as they had. Well, it had all happened before. The other mass was obviously another ship, and realizing what happened, they were turning around to see if any damage was done. For Harris to have immediately thought of pirates was just more evidence of his paranoia. She thought of all the other men she knew who'd seen action in the front line ships, and they all seemed to have been effected the same way. Hardened, cruel in some ways, jumpy, and above all quick to mount a maximum respond to even the slightest threat. They all shared a sunken hollowness in their faces, and in unguarded moments there was a haunted look of desperate fear in their eyes. No one seemed to have survived for long without acquiring these traits. Since women were barred from the front line ships - at least on this side of the war - She'd done her part as a navigator, on a crew ferrying ships from the industrial planets to the bases at the rear of the war zone. At first she spent her spare time at the clubs for men R&R'ing from the front. But after a while, the look on their faces began to get to her. She repeatedly woke up at night after dreaming of endless lines of haunted desperate faces marching off to doom. She began to spend her port time locked in her cabin.

But that was years ago, thought Janis. The war's been over for a long time. Time enough to forget the unpleasant memories. Time enough for Harris to get over his paranoia. "There's a cluster of asteroids within range. The coordinates are in the nav computer now." Having fulfilled her duties in the situation, she sat back and studied Harris for a moment before she said, "Hey, don't you think you're over reacting. He's probably coming back to see if he shook us up. Running off to hide in the asteroid swarm will just make him think we're smugglers or something."

"No! There's something about this bogey that's different," said Harris distractedly as he studied the data that was flashing on his screen. "There it is, there's proof if you need it!" he shouted, pointing at the screen.

Janis flipped the selector to mimic Harris's screen. On the screen she saw:

MASS READINGS: 35,761.29 UNITS
ENERGY OUTPUT: NONE
DRIVE OUTPUT: NONE
REFLECTIVITY: NONE

LACK OF RESPONSE TO SENSORS MAKES DETAILED ANALYSIS IMPOSSIBLE.

CLOSING SPEED AND ABSORPTION OF SENSOR OUTPUT SUGGESTS OBJECT
MILITARY WITH BLANKING SCREEN.

ANALYSIS OF SHIP'S SYSTEMS AT TIME OF OBJECT'S PASSAGE ACROSS BOW,
INDICATES 7 OBJECTS IMPACTED METEOR SCREEN, AND EXPLODED ON IMPACT.

METEOR SCREEN CIRCUITS REGISTERED NEAR OVERLOAD TO COMPENSATE FOR EXPLOSIONS.

SUGGEST AVOID FURTHER CONTACT WITH OBJECT.

As Janis finished reading the screen, she felt herself thrown against her couch as Harris wrenched the ship around to the new coordinates. "But that can't be!" she managed to grunt out. "There aren't any pirates in this sector! There must be some other explanation."

As he slammed the power knob back in, and the ship leaped towards the asteroid swarm, Harris hissed out between clenched teeth, "I read it to say that he fired 7 missiles at us as he passed. How can there be any doubt in your mind? Might be a privateer, or maybe a military ship that went renegade. It's happened before. You ready to take over? We're at the edge of the swarm."

Harris cut back the thrust, and Janis had to push all other thoughts out of her mind as the data began to appear on her screen. Piloting through the swarm meant recalculating a new course every time they cleared an obstacle. If the asteroids were small, correcting the course from rock to rock meant constant calculations. To Janis's dismay, the swarm was a dense cluster of mixed sizes, from dust to chunks larger then their ship. The sweat beaded on her brow as she frantically tried to keep up with the ship's progress. The meteor impact alarm sounded over and over again, accusingly announcing every collision with the rocks that she didn't manage to get around. During a brief lull, she stole a glance over at Harris, and saw that he was absorbed in maintaining a balance of power flow between the meteor screens and the drive. Sweat flowed from his face, and formed large stains on his white coveralls. She could feel his intensity all the way across the cabin. The moment passed, and she had to return her attentions to her task.

Harris's whole world telescoped into just the three gauges and knobs. In his mind, he constantly sought a balance between his desire to get through the swarm as quickly as possible, and the need to counter the readings on the mass meter with power to the meteor screens. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he was surprised that Janis was handling the navigation so well. Jamming through a swarm was not something they taught in the commercial schools. He pushed the speed a little faster, trying to keep at bay the memories that threatened to erupt into his consciousness.

"Clear space ahead," announced Janis, wondering what Harris would decided to do now.

As the last large mass passed clear, Harris fed full power to the engines and watched the gee meter climb. He twitched the joy stick back and forth, zigzagging the ship with in the safe limits for gees they were pulling. Then the meteor impact alarm rang out with the sound he was dreading. First a short burst of two or three, then a flurry of half a dozen. Then a barrage that kept the alarm ringing, accompanied by the overload klaxon. Stressed to the limit, he felt a sudden shudder pass through the structure of the ship. He saw the control panel lights change from green to blinking red, and his ears were filled with the blare of the emergency alarms. And then blackness washed over him.

The alarms were still going when his mind floated up out of the dark pit. He had no idea how long he'd been out, but it was long enough for the ship to stabilize. A quick scan of the instruments told him that the ship was dead. Without even looking, he knew that a missile got through the meteor screen when the screen overloaded, and hit the engines. Only the emergency power circuits were live. He silenced the alarms and looked over at Janis. She was coming around, wiping at the thin trail of blood trickling from one nostril. A sharp clang on the hull roused him from his thoughts.

Harris jerked his harness loose and pulled himself out of the acceleration couch. "Come on, Janis!" he shouted. "They're boarding! Get into a suit!"

Harris launched himself at the rack of space suits on the back wall of the cabin. He grabbed his and moved to the side as Janis followed closely behind. The sounds of cutting were already coming through the hull as they clamped on their helmets. Harris led the way to the weapons locker, passing Janis a hand blaster in a holster, and a shoulder fired particle beam projector. Arming himself similarly, he motioned for them to take up positions at opposite ends of the cabin.

Seeing Harris cutting loose equipment and piling it up as a shield, Janis set about doing the same at her end. She still had trouble believing that this was all happening to her, but she no longer doubted that Harris's paranoia was justified. It took a tremendous effort to suppress the panic that was welling up inside her, and a bitter acid taste filled her mouth as fear gripped her stomach. She tried not to think about the fates most crews of hijacked ships suffered. She tried to remember the government pronouncement that this sector was safe for commercial traffic, but its reassuring tone rang hollow in her ears.

Gripping her beamer with grim determination, Janis stared with morbid fascination as a round section of the hull began to glow and ripple. Just in time, she remembered to shut her eyes and turn away as the disk flashed into brilliant white light. Looking back quickly, she saw shapes entering the ship through the murk left behind by the vaporized hull metal. The two shapes in the lead flashed into dust as Harris opened fire. Drawing a bead on the following shapes, she saw the next two flash into dust as the beamer hummed in her arms. Another wave followed the first, and she felt her shield shudder as a section vaporized. A moment later, she could hardly believe her eyes as Harris, fanning his blaster in front of him, launched himself through the hole in the hull. Janis was seized with indecision for a moment, then before she could think too much about it, she pushed off after him.

-----------------------------------------------------

When the disk of hull metal began to glow, Harris felt a knot of fear growing in his gut. His hands were trembling and he had to grip his beamer tightly to keep them still. But with the flash of light and the appearance of the first boarders, the old feeling returned. He became again the highly trained soldier, the efficient killer. Without a thought, his beamer snapped up to his shoulder and he felt the familiar hum. The lead attackers disappeared in a cloud of dust. Something struck his shield and he knew his position was marked. The words of his old captain echoed in his brain, "No defense will hold against a sustained attack. Under all conditions, attack. If you're going to die anyway, take as many of them with you as you can." He switched to his blaster, and spraying the hole with it, pushed off.

Harris swept his blaster in a broad circle as he came out of the tunnel bridging the two ships. He was dimly away of the images of dozens of little machines flitting through the air and then exploding as his blaster found them. His momentum carried him to the far wall, and he tumbled expertly to strike with his feet and push off again. Twisting to fire at a moving shape to his left, the corner of his eye caught the image of a muzzle aimed at him from the right. Even as he hit his target, he felt a dull blankness close over him.

For a long time, Harris couldn't tell how long, his mind floated in a black void. He was awake and aware, but he couldn't feel his body or his senses. It was as if only his consciousness existed in the universe. After a while, a new sensation entered his world - the top of his head began to tingle painfully. It was a very strange sensation, the top of his head floating in the void, unattached to anything else. Slowly, the tingling crept down the rest of his body, first his head, then chest, waist, hips, arms and legs. His whole body burned as the nerves returned to activity. The sounds of distant machinery reached his ears. Opening his eyes, a pattern swam and shifted before snapping into focus. It took him a moment to realize that he was looking at the springs of a bunk bed. And from the sag in the springs, the bed above was occupied.

It took an effort, but Harris held himself still until his nerves settled down. Moving slowly, he turned his head from side to side, and saw that he was in a dormitory, with bunk beds in rows on both sides of the long room. None of the other beds were occupied. Pausing often to let the dizziness pass, he rolled off the bed and stood up. He wasn't overly surprised to find that the upper bunk was occupied by Janis. Looking at Janis, he realized for the first time that their space suits had been removed, and they were wearing standard military coveralls. Her eyes were just fluttering open, and he said, "Don't try to move until the burning goes away."

"Wa...What happened?" she whispered between rigid lips.

"Stunner," replied Harris. "The effects will wear off in a couple of minutes. For some reason, they must have wanted to take us alive. I don't remember seeing anything but attack robots. Did you see anything that could tell us who we're dealing with?"

"No, just robots," Janis replied, starting to move her head. "I followed you through the tunnel, and I zapped the robot that hit you. I didn't see the one that got me."

"Too bad," said Harris as he looked around the room. A display screen a one end caught his eye, and he staggered over to it. "I'll be damned," he exclaimed as he read it.

Harris's exclamation stirred Janis to half lower, half fall out of her bunk, and stagger over to see what was on the screen. When she reached his side, she saw:

TRAINING UNIT ONE TEST SCORES:
SHIP TO SHIP EVASIVE MANEUVERS 95 POINTS
SHIP DEFENSE 93 POINTS
SHIP TO SHIP ASSAULT 93 POINTS

NEXT EXERCISE: OBSTACLE COURSE
TIME TO NEXT EXERCISE: 9:27:34 SHIP TIME

Next to the screen, scratched into the paint on the bulkhead, were the words:

This ship has gone crazy. Attacked our ship. We're trapped in here. It keeps running us thru the program. Can't get out. No sign of ship's crew - must be dead. Main computer must be damaged. Can't find control room. God help you if you're reading this.

Harris, was leaning against the bulkhead, began laughing as he slowly sank down to the floor. The cutting edge in Harris's laughter unsettled Janis, and she had to read through the screen twice before she could make out what it said. And still it didn't make any sense. The one thing that was obvious was that the seconds were ticking off on the clock.

"What does this mean?" she asked Harris.

Harris struggled to control himself. Gaining the upper hand, he said, "It means that this is a training ship, something's gone wrong with it, and we're not the first that it's trapped. Can you picture it? This ship has gone bonkers. It's programmed to train, and since no one is coming to it, it's going around grabbing ships and running their crews thru its training program. Only you don't graduate from this course. It keeps you here until you're trained to death. Then I suppose it goes out and looks for more students."

Kneeling down next to Harris, Janis asked him, "Surely there's a way out of here. There must be something we can do."

Harris was studying his hands as he said, "To have come through all that hell, just to end like this." With an ironic sigh, he looked up and said, "You don't understand the nature of these ships. It never occurred to me before, but this is the perfect trap. Look, think back to the the last part of the war. We were losing men as well as ships, and they needed as many replacements as they could get. In order not to scare away the prospective draftees, the government censored the reports about conditions in the front line ships. So the unsuspecting men, mostly young boys and old men as the war went on, full of patriotism from the propaganda, came here. This is where they got their first taste of what it was going to be like. After that first taste, a lot of them decided that they didn't want any more. But the front needed more men - or what ever they could get. So these ships were built more like prisons than training camps. The draftees got aboard near their home world, and if they were still alive when the hatches opened again, they were at the front. In the mean time, they'd been run through the training program, and theoretically they were highly trained soldiers. In practical terms, it didn't really matter whether they were trained or not. By that stage in the war, the outcome of an action was determined by strategy and the formation of the ships going in. Once the action started, all they needed humans for was to do the dieing. So you see, once the recruits found out the score, they could get pretty hard to handle. Which is why these ships were built the way they were. You won't find anything that can be used as a weapon, or as a tool to escape. Everything is controlled."

Janis was shocked by Harris's analysis of the situation. "Surely there's something we can do," she said distractedly.

"You said that before," replied Harris. "Sure there's something we can do. We can go through the obstacle course in a little over 9 hours. As we run the course, we can watch for any opportunity to break out. But I suspect that's what the crew that scratched the message on the wall did. And from the sound of it, they didn't find a way out."

"You may be right," said Janis. "But I'm going to search this room anyway. There might be something that the others over looked."

"Can't hurt to look," agreed Harris, rising. "I'll help you search, then we'd better get as much rest as we can. We'll want to be as clear headed tomorrow as possible."

After overturning every mattress, and opening every storage locker, Janis had to agree that the room was devoid of anything useful. Filled with apprehension about the coming day, they laid down and tried to sleep. Mostly they tossed and turned.

-----------------------------------------------------

A clanging bell shattered the quiet and Harris came awake abruptly, feeling like he just fell asleep a moment before. Shuffling over to the control panel below the display screen, he jabbed the alarm silence button. In the calm that followed, he noticed that the clock was down to 00:27:49. A whir and a click to his left drew his attention, and he saw a panel slide open. Two trays of food slid out, and the panel slid closed again.

"What is it?" inquired Janis from her bunk.

"The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast," replied Harris. "At least we're not going to be starved to death. You'd better hurry, the clock says we've got less than half and hour before it starts."

Harris picked cautiously at the food on his tray. It seemed to be normal ship food, bland and tasteless, endlessly recycled out of the ship's organic wastes. He wondered for a moment whether the bodies of the ship's previous victims had been included in the cycle. Shoving those thoughts from his mind, he concentrated on the fact that he wouldn't have the strength to escape even if they did find a way, if he didn't eat. He took a tentative taste. It tasted like all the other meals he ate in the long years aboard ship. Resolutely, he began shoveling it in. Janis wasted little time in following Harris's example.

Having finished breakfast, and with a few minutes left on the clock, Janis said, "What would happen if we just refused to run the course? What if we just stayed here?"

"I don't know," replied Harris. "When I came through, they had sargents who came along and roused everyone out. The message on the wall said there wasn't any sign of the crew, so maybe that's an idea. Guess we'll find out."

When the clock ran down to 00:00:00, a hatch opened at the other end of the dormitory. An electronic voice came over the loudspeaker and announced, "TRAINING UNIT ONE, REPORT TO OBSTACLE COURSE." The voice repeated the announcement over and over, increasing the volume each time. The lights in the dormitory blinked on and off blindingly. Standing near a ventilator, Harris felt a sudden blast of bitingly cold air. When the fire sprinklers let loose with a torrential downpour, and foam began oozing out the walls, Janis and Harris gave up and ran thru the open hatch.

Harris and Janis found themselves in a large room with a sign saying:

OBSTACLE COURSE STAGING AREA, PICK UP EQUIPMENT HERE

Below the sign were racks of gear. Pulling out bins, they found helmets, gas masks, gloves, flashlights, and other miscellaneous gear. "This stuff's here for a reason," advised Harris. "Better take at least one of each." Pulling out a small knapsack, he began filling it with gear. As they were stuffing the last items in their packs, they heard a clank, and the hatch under the sign OBSTACLE COURSE, swung open.

Harris paused at the door and looked in. Instead of a floor, he saw the sharply sloping sides of a funnel. At the bottom of the funnel were the flashing teeth of a pulper. Looking for a way past the funnel, his eyes fastened on the rungs suspended from the ceiling. The rungs were close enough for easy hand over hand, but the first rung was far enough from the door to require a jump. He was tensing his muscles to spring, when he remembered his own voice saying all the gear was there for a purpose. He pulled on the pair of gloves.

As he grabbed the first rung, Harris heard his gloves sizzle. Swinging back into the doorway would have been impossible, so he swung hand over hand to the other side as fast as he could. Dropping down on the narrow ledge hanging from the opposite wall, he ripped the steaming gloves off, fanning his hands through the air to cool them. When Janis dropped down on the ledge next to him, he said, "Nasty little trick, that. Do well to keep it in mind as we go along."

A small hatch in the bulkhead led to a long cylindrical chamber. Easing thru the hatch, they found themselves in a zero gravity chamber. Lining the walls and pointing inward, were long stakes that tapered to needle sharp points. The stakes nearly filled the chamber, leaving only a small tube of clear space through the center.

"Doesn't look too difficult, just accurate flying," said Janis. "That is, on the surface it doesn't look too bad," she added, remembering the blistering hot rungs in the previous room.

"Wouldn't want to slip up and touch one of those points," observed Harris. "What have we got we can use to test it?"

They fished in their packs for suitable equipment, and Janis came up first with a rubber ball. "I couldn't figure what this was for, but you said take one of each." Taking careful aim, she launched the ball down the center of the clear space. The ball flew straight and true down the tube until it was about half way to the end. Then, as if seized by an invisible hand, the ball whipped itself violently against the stakes on one side, and then the other. In seconds, the ball had shredded into a cloud of particles that continued to shift and flow with the conflicting forces.

"Whew! Not so easy as it seems. Must be some other way," Harris said, looking around. After a bit of study, he noticed that the gap at the base of the stakes, was slightly wider between two rows than the others. Pointing out the gap to Janis, he said, "Think we can squeeze through there?"

They had to take off their backpacks and helmets, and turn sideways, but they squeezed through. Being the largest, Harris led the way. Once he started, he found that he couldn't turn his head back to see if Janis was following. Reaching the zone of conflicting energy flows, he felt his helmet ripped from his grasp. The helmet flew up and clanged against the constricting stakes. A second later, the helmet worked loose and crashed to the floor at his feet. As the helmet passed his hand the second time, he grabbed, but only caught an edge and it got away. On the next try he got a solid hold. With the bucking helmet in one hand, and his pack in the other, he felt the helmet drawing him into the oscillating zone. Letting go of the pack, he grabbed on to the closest stake, and thrust the helmet as far as he could. At arms length, he could feel his arm and shoulder trying to lift and fall, but the helmet was motionless. He gave the helmet a little shove with his finger tips and pulled his arm back.

"The zone is only a few feet thick," announced Harris. When I get through, pass me my pack and your helmet. I'll help you through so that you can hang on to your pack. Gotta' have at least one hand free to get through."

Harris gripped the stakes tightly as he eased into the zone. He felt his body drawn upward, and then suddenly pushed down. His hands slipped on the smooth stakes, and he had to jam his legs into the gaps to hold himself in place. Inch by inch, he traversed the zone, coming at last to the other side. Taking a moment to fight down the nausea, he reached back and pulled first his pack, and then Janis's helmet across. Wedging his body tightly between the stakes, he felt Janis take his hand. Pulling with all his might, he drew her across the gap so quickly that she was barely effected. A few minutes later, they emerged at the end of the forest of stakes, recaptured Harris's helmet, and looked around, wondering what came next.

The hatch at the end of the chamber was different than the others they'd passed thru. The gaskets were larger and were green instead of black. The dogging mechanism was more complex, with heavy clamps arranged all the way around. Harris looked at the hatch for a moment before he said, "Green seals mean poison gas. There weren't any full exposure suits in the bins, so it must not be absorbable through the skin." Snugging on his gas mask, and getting the ready signal from Janis, he undogged the hatch.

A thick cloud of yellow vapor boiled out of the opening as Harris pulled the hatch back. Cautiously poking his head around the hatch frame, his eyes were met by blackness. Groping around in his pack, he pulled out his flashlight. The intense beam of light only penetrated the thick yellow vapor a few inches. Just in case, he checked again for any other ways out of the zero gravity chamber, and found none. With a shrug directed at Janis, he cautiously entered the yellow fog.

Harris discovered the room had gravity as he passed through the hatch. Picking himself up off the floor, he felt around blindly until he located the wall, and then the hatch. Dragging his body half way through the chest high hatch, he used hand signals to tell Janis about the gravity, and he kept a hold on her hand as she came through. To become separated in the dark would be disastrous. Lacking a piece of rope, he had to use one hand to maintain contact with Janis, while he felt along the wall with his other.

Harris adopted a pattern of movement. First he felt along the smooth wall as far as he could reach. Then he shuffled his lead foot forward, feeling for holes in the floor. Then he pulled his body up to his hand and foot and paused. When Janis finished moving up, he stood shock still and listened. Hearing nothing, he groped forward another step and stopped again to listen. Inch by inch, they made their way along the wall to the first corner. Feeling his way around the corner, he proceeded along next wall. It was hard to judge distances, but he thought they'd traveled about 20 yards down the second wall, when he thought he heard something. Signaling Janis to be as quiet as possible, he held his breath to silence his noisy respirator. And then he was sure. A faint whooshing sound.

Harris took out his worthless flashlight, and slid it along the wall. With his arm nearly extended, he felt a slight tremor in the flashlight. Pulling his arm back, he felt along the length of the light. The end cap had been sheared off, leaving a clean straight edge.

Probing with the stump of the flashlight, Harris determined that it was safe up to the edge of a slot in the wall. Holding the increasingly shortened stump in line with the slot, he counted the seconds between cuts. In his mind, he pictured a razor sharp pendulum that swung through the dark, in line with the slot in the wall. Timing the swing of the image in his mind with the tremors he felt as the unseen force cut through the flashlight, he began to get a feel for the rhythm of the cycle.

Passing the flashlight stump to Janis to feel, Harris used hand signals to tell her what they faced. When he thought she had the idea, he used the short piece of the flashlight that was left to sense three more cycles. Then, when the pendulum was just passing away, he jumped across the narrow slot, pulling Janis along with him.

Scurrying along the wall just far enough for Janis to clear the slot, Harris stopped, listened, and returned to his groping pattern of movement. Another 20 yard of tensely inching along brought them to a corner. They turned the corner, and after another stretch of smooth wall, found the exit hatch.

Cautiously opening the hatch and stumbling through, Harris and Janis entered a small well lit room. Benches lined one wall, and they collapse on the one closest at hand as the tension that gripped them through the last trial released. The hatch slammed shut on its own, and Harris heard a powerful blower start up. The yellow murk that accompanied them into the room cleared rapidly, and he could see the rest of the walls. A blinking sign over the hatch in the opposite wall read: AIR LOCK CONTAMINATED, DO NOT REMOVE PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT. That's pretty obvious, he thought as he peered thru the murk. Next to the hatch was a small swinging door. As he was wondering what the small door was for, the blinking sign changed to: AIR LOCK CLEAR, PLACE ALL EQUIPMENT AND CLOTHING IN DISPOSAL AND PROCEED TO DECONTAMINATION CHAMBER.

Harris stripped off his pack, helmet and clothing. As he stuffed them down the disposal, he regretted that he couldn't hold on to some of the equipment. But standing naked, he didn't have many places to hide things. The hatch lead to what looked like a shower room. As alternating water and chemicals washed down from above, he idly noticed that Janis had a woman's body under her uniform after all. He also noticed that in his current state of fatigue, it didn't seem to matter.

At the end of the decontamination cycle, the hatch at the other end of the chamber opened. Stepping though, they found themselves back in the dormitory. Clean towels and uniforms were laid out on their bunks, and the mess they'd fled earlier was cleaned up. Just to be sure, Harris walked over to the display screen. The message was still scratched in the paint, but the display on the screen had changed. It now read:

TRAINING UNIT ONE TEST SCORES:
SHIP TO SHIP EVASIVE MANEUVERS 95 POINTS
SHIP DEFENSE 93 POINTS
SHIP TO SHIP ASSAULT 93 POINTS
OBSTACLE COURSE 98 POINTS

NORMAL DROPOUT RATE: 50%
UNIT ONE DROPOUT RATE: 0%

UNIT ONE WILL SKIP INTERMEDIATE COURSES

NEXT EXERCISE: ADVANCED HAND TO HAND COMBAT
TIME TO NEXT EXERCISE: 10:48:37 SHIP TIME

Without comment Harris turned, walked over to his bunk, and crawled in. Janis read the screen and said, "50% drop out rate normal. Does that mean..."

"Yeah," replied Harris. "The obstacle course usually kills half of each group going through. Looks like the machine's pissed off one of us didn't get it, 'cause it's jumping us up to advanced courses. Hand to hand wasn't any picnic the last time I went through, and I imagine the machine's made some changes to make it more interesting."

"You've been on one of these ship's before?" asked Janis.

"When I went through it, the training camp was on a planet near the front, but the same programs were installed in these ships," said Harris. "'Course, when I went through, they wanted as many to pass as possible, so the course was easier - and the dropouts didn't usually die in the process. The computer that's running things on this ship has a different idea. So now, it you don't mind, I'd like to get some sleep. I'm thinking that the machine wants to adjust the statistics on our group, and I want to be as prepared as possible. You'd do well to get some sleep yourself."

"But I don't know anything about hand to hand combat!" exclaimed Janis. "I took the standard basic course in the service, but that was years ago. And we just threw dummies around."

Harris turned over and looked at her. "That's all the training you've had?" When Janis nodded, the expression on his face made her feel like she was already lost. Covering up his momentary lapse of control, Harris said quietly, "Sleep now. We'll go over some basics when we wake up."

Crawling into her bunk, Janis felt the terror welling up. 50% dropout rate! That meant one of them was supposed to be dead already. Her mind rebelled at the thought of which one of them would probably have died if they had gone through the obstacle course one at a time. For the first time, she felt envious of the haunted look in Harris's eyes, the mind set that caused him to question what seemed obvious, the inner tension that made instant response to danger automatic. Even through the rising panic over her own fate, she suddenly understood what all those young men must have been going though in the war. Hollow faces hiding the raging terror, trying to party away the knowledge of what awaited them the next day. They, just as she now, had been facing an unknown tomorrow, knowing only that the odds were they would die. And they had the right idea for the night before. Better to relax and let the tension ease, let the body recuperate from the stresses of today - so that when the stress returns tomorrow, the body will be better able to respond to the coming threats. She laid down and tried to calm herself enough to sleep. She tossed and turned for a long time, but exhaustion finally won out, and she drifted off.

-----------------------------------------------------

Harris fought to still the trembling as the old feeling returned. Suddenly it seemed that the war had never ended, that the brief period of peace was nothing but a dream, and he was back at the front. He could almost smell the fear in the air, and the electric charge of tension that sharpened every sense. He noticed things, like the feel of his clothes, the dampness of sweat on his brow, the look of the dormitory. Almost as though his mind knew it might not taste life for much longer, and it wanted to get as much out of the days and hours left. But at the same time as the terror was returning, the old determination to over come the odds and triumph in spite of what ever he faced was returning as well. His mind began to search out any hidden advantages he might have overlooked. Approaching the situation from different angles, his intellect probed for exploitable weakness in the enemy's position. When he added up the factors in his favor, a feeling of helplessness began to rise in his gut, but he pressed it back down. Janis was careful and willing to listen during the obstacle course, but she wasn't much help. He knew the next course would be a different matter. He thought of the chances an untrained recruit would have had in the hand to hand course he went through, and he knew that Janis's chances of being alive at the end of this exercise were slim. But maybe something would happen, he told himself. Maybe they would luck out. It never did any good to start out expecting failure. He tried to push the thoughts out of his mind and slip down into sleep. As he drifted off, he reassured himself that the practice in the morning would help.

-----------------------------------------------------

After waking up and hurrying through breakfast, Janis and Harris practiced the basic moves of hand to hand combat right up to when the hatch opened and the loudspeaker began its announcement. Stepping through the hatch, Harris tried not to think about their chances. The practice had gone well for a first lesson, but it would have taken many more sessions to turn Janis into a proficient fighter. Not to mention that women were usually taught a different style of fighting than men, one that down played upper body strength and relied more on finesse, speed and leverage. He didn't know enough of the details of the women's style, so he had to teach Janis a modified men's style. The throws and holds that she'd been taught during the war were amusing and flamboyant, but utterly useless in real life situations - good for demonstrations for the top brass in the safety of the rear lines. But it was too late to worry about it now, he told himself. They would have to make the best of what they had in hand.

The hatch lead to the same little room where they started the obstacle course, only now the sign said, ADVANCED HAND TO HAND COMBAT STAGING AREA, PICK UP EQUIPMENT HERE. In the bins, Janis and Harris found helmets, gloves, and long slender knives. They picked out appropriate sizes, then stepped through the hatch under the sign, HAND TO HAND COMBAT.

Harris quickly surveyed the room, seeing first the two fighting robots standing against the far wall. The robots were shaped as men, only with smooth metal skin except for the kill areas, which were covered by a membrane. As he entered the room, the robots stirred to life, moving with a sinister yet fluid grace. Instead of the usual blunt rubber training batons, protruding from each hand of the robots were slender blades that glinted in the light as they moved, seeming to reach out for soft flesh to slice and blood to quench their glittering sharpness.

Harris felt a sinking feeling, and quickly scanned the rest of the room, desperate for anything that could be turned to an advantage. The walls of the room were smooth, devoid of even the usual beams and braces of the ship's structure. the only interruption to the smooth white surface was in the ceiling, where the fire sprinkler heads protruded. His eyes fastened on the sprinkler heads as his only possibility, and his mind raced to find some way to make use of them. And then it hit him - the robots were electronic, were not sealed for outside use, and the sprinkler heads put out water. The ceiling was about 10 feet up, too high to jump. He turned to Janis and said, "Stand on my shoulders and pry out the trigger block on the sprinkler head. I'm betting our friends here can't swim very well."

Janis, standing frozen by the sight of the killer robots advancing across the room, shook herself out of her paralysis at the thought that Harris had a plan. Kicking off her shoes and scrambling up on his back, she had a bad moment teetering with her knees on his shoulders, but she made it. Balancing precariously, she pulled the knife from her pocket. Trying to keep the fingers she was using to steady herself out of the way of the blade, she jammed the knife into the sprinkler head and began prying at the trigger block. The metal in the block was soft, but it wasn't meant to be pried out. As she struggled, she could feel Harris staggering under the load. Glancing down, she saw that the robots were only 20 feet away, and advancing cautiously. The thought flashed through her mind that they must think that she and Harris were using some special form of fighting, and were holding back as they calculated all the possibilities. She redoubled her effort to dislodge the block. She'd whittled away most of the substance, but it still held. She hacked at it a few more desperate strokes, and seeing the robots almost in striking distance, jammed the knife in sprinkler head and jumped down off Harris's shoulders. Gripping the knife handle with both hands, she hung suspended for a long moment. Then slowly, inch by inch, she sank, until there was a grating noise and she fell to the floor.

Scrambling to her feet, Janis looked first up at the sprinkler head, which still with held its flow; and then at Harris, who wore a look of grim determination as he pulled out his knives and turned to face the robots. She picked up her bent blade, and pulled her other knife out of her pocket. Facing the robots, she slowly moved back, keeping even with Harris. Something warm and wet struck her on the head, and she thought for moment that she'd been hit by a blow she hadn't seen coming. Putting her hand to her head, expecting to find blood, she found water. Another drop fell on the floor in front of her. And then another.

The killer robots closed in, sensing in their opponents a hesitancy to engage. Their programming directed them to meet any hesitancy with an overwhelming offense, pushing aside an ineffectual defense to go for a quick kill. Slowed only by their caution over being lured into a trap, the robots moved in. Synchronizing their movements, they loaded their accumulators for the final spring. Zeroing in on their targets, only a moment more and it would be all over. Then there was water cascading down from the ceiling. The robots suddenly knew what the humans had been doing, stacked up on each other. The danger poised by the water was quickly analyzed, but it took several nanoseconds because the problem had never been encountered before. The main computer came to a decision, and the robots shifted quickly to the withdrawal program. But it was already too late. The water soaked through the seams and moving joints, and even as they started to draw back, sparks were flaring. A series of bright flashes blew holes in their smooth metal skins, and flames briefly licked out of the gaps and holes. With a growl of protest, and a fit of violent twitching, the robots fell to the floor. The water rapidly accumulating on the floor splashed as they fell, seeping in and finishing the job on the robots with a last brilliant flash.

And then it was over. Janis and Harris stood looking at the scene with disbelief. The torrential down pour continued, falling to dance and sizzle on the smoking bodies of the robots. And they were both still alive. The release of tension struck Harris as exceedingly funny. He laughed and capered about, bending down to scoop up handfuls of water and fling them joyously into the air. His eyes fastened on Janis, standing watching him with the rain washing down over her. On impulse, he grabbed her and planted a kiss on her shocked lips. Jarred out of her disbelief, she joined him in splashing in the water. Until the exit hatch opened.

The opening of the hatch sobered Janis and Harris up in an instant. They looked at the hatch, and they looked at each other. "Hey, we're doing ok as a team," said Harris, gesturing to the charred ruins of the killer robots. "What ever's waiting for us out there, we've done ourselves proud so far."

Grasping the preferred hand, Janis felt the pride of their accomplishments push aside the terror for a moment. A smile almost crossed her lips as she said, "Yeah, we did pretty good, didn't we. Team, huh? Yeah, that sounds good to me."

The hatch led to another staging room. On the wall a sign read:

NAVIGATION AND PILOTING TEST
ENTER MAZE HERE
PERFECT MAZE TIME 1:23:45

On a table were pens and pads of paper. Taking up most of the staging room, a curious looking cart sat parked in front of the exit hatch. Checking out the cart, Harris wondered about its purpose. The cart ran on rubber tires, sat two abreast, and appeared to be electrically powered. Bright copper bumpers wrapped completely around the body, and a heavy cable connected the bumpers to the metal driver and navigator seats. And then his eyes seized on the dashboard. Encased in a clear protective cover, were a cluster of red sticks with wires sticking out of their ends. The wires all connected to a black box that sported a clock face. The clock said 03:28:46, and it was running backwards.

Janis spotted the bomb at the same time as Harris, and she said, "Looks like we'd better hurry. You drive, I navigate, right?"

"Right," agreed Harris, jumping behind the wheel.

Janis grabbed up a handful of pens and a wad of paper, and jumped in next to him. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the exit hatch slid open and Harris suddenly knew the reason for the bumpers. The walls and floor of the maze were composed of strips of metal, separated by black insulators. Just to be sure, he tore off a piece of his wet shirt and threw it onto the floor. The wet cloth flashed as the power arced through, crisping to a cinder in a moment. Harris swallowed hard, and sat motionless for several seconds, looking at the charred bit of cloth. Then he gathered himself together, and started the cart rolling slowly forward.

Harris concentrated all his attention on keeping the cart away from the walls, grateful to leave all the navigating to Janis. He could feel the sweat practically pouring off his brow as he concentrated on the task. His whole world telescoped down into just the cart, the 6 inches of clearance on either side, and the clock slowly running down on the dash. He kept the cart rolling as fast as he could, either forward or reverse, turning where Janis indicated. The thoughts that floated in the haze of his concentration were the words "Faster" and "Hurry".

-----------------------------------------------------

Janis swept the fear and panic she felt when she first saw the bomb from her mind. Solving the maze gave her something to occupy her over active imagination, and she quickly lost herself in the task. Starting out tentatively, she directed Harris down a path picked at random. As Harris backed out of the dead end, she carefully recorded the results. By probing and backing out, she began to develop a map of that section of the maze. Slowly but surely, a pattern began to appear on the paper. In the beginning, she probed enough to plot every passage, but as she saw the pattern develop, she wasted less and less time on dead ends. Where the map was almost complete at the beginning, large blank spaces now appeared and were bypassed. Her fingers developed cramps, a stabbing pain centered in her lower back from hunching over her pad, and her head ached from the intense concentration, but a brief glance at the clock made her forget her pain and redouble her efforts.

As the clock ticked over 00:09:59, Harris's mouth was dry, and he had to repeatedly wipe his hands on his pant legs to keep his grip on the wheel. He noticed that Janis's voice had gotten sharp and brittle as she spit out the directions. The minutes ticked away, and he found himself staring more and more at the bomb. Actually, it's rather pretty, in a macabre sort of way, he thought to himself. The red sticks, black box, and neatly arranged multicolored wires possessed a pleasing symmetry, a sort of deadly elegance.

Harris's thoughts were interrupted by Janis's exclamation, "I've got it! Quick, back up two passages and turn right."

Harris rammed the cart into reverse and jabbed the accelerator. The cart sped back, and he dared to hope that Janis knew what she was talking about. Slamming on the brakes, he spun the wheel to the right, and hit the accelerator. Straightening out, he pushed the sled up to the safe limit.

"Turn left here."

"Left again."

"Right and then left again, and we should be there."

Harris complied with the directions in a haze, his attention caught up in the clock which had just clicked over 00:00:59. Dimly, Janis's statement that they should be there filtered through, but he kept his eyes on the bumpers of the cart. Only when he heard Janis's shout did he look up from his task. There, on the wall at the end of the passageway they had just entered, the exit hatch beckoned them. He floored the accelerator, careening dangerously down the passage. At the last moment, he saw that the wall around the exit was lined with the conductive strips. Jamming on the brakes, he brought the cart to a halt inches from the wall. "Have to jump from here." he shouted as he pulled himself stiffly out of his chair.

The exit hatch opened at their approach, and Harris jumped across and through without a moments hesitation. Janis followed on his heels. The hatch closed quickly behind them, seconds before the explosion that knocked them off their feet.

Sitting up and disentangling themselves, they looked at the hatch, at the room around them, at each other, and started to laugh. They made it. The bomb went off on schedule, and they were still alive. Almost with a sense of disbelief, they picked themselves up and brushed off the dust, needing to feel with their hands that their bodies were still intact.

A hatch led from the room back to their barracks. Once again, the barracks were spotless, with the bunks freshly made, and the breakfast dishes cleaned up. Walking over to the display screen, they saw:

TRAINING UNIT ONE TEST SCORES:
SHIP TO SHIP EVASIVE MANEUVERS 95 POINTS
SHIP DEFENSE 93 POINTS
SHIP TO SHIP ASSAULT 93 POINTS
OBSTACLE COURSE 98 POINTS
HAND TO HAND COMBAT 98 POINTS
NAVIGATION AND PILOTING 92 POINTS

NORMAL DROPOUT RATE: 50%
UNIT ONE DROPOUT RATE 00%

NEXT EXERCISE: HEAVY WEAPONS
TIME TO NEXT EXERCISE: 09:38:27 SHIP TIME

"Nine hours!" exclaimed Harris. "It couldn't have taken that long to get through those last two exercises. The machine must be messing with the length of the day to put us off balance. That means we're going to have to break out of here soon, or we won't be in shape to do it. Better eat, then try to get some sleep. Heavy weapons may offer the opportunity we're looking for."

"Do you really think we can break out?" asked Janis, the look in her eyes begging for a certain answer.

"Hey, we've come this far," replied Harris, pumping up the slight glimmer of confidence that he really felt. "That machine has thrown some pretty nasty tricks at us, and we beat 'em all. If anybody can make it, we can. All we need is for the machine to slip up once, and we already know it's damaged. The slip could come at any time, and we have to keep ourselves ready to jump on it when it comes, but I'm sure it'll happen. All we need is a forgotten tool, or the wrong door left open. Besides, it doesn't do any good to start out thinking you're going to fail."

Cheered a bit by Harris's apparent confidence, Janis punched the buttons for her dinner, and began eating - realizing for the first time just how ravenous she'd become. Watching Janis, Harris felt justified at having exaggerated his confidence. Picking up his dinner and starting to eat, he thought about what he'd said. The more he thought about it, the truer his words rang in his own ears. Having survived this far together proved they were a good team. There wasn't any doubt in his mind that without him, Janis would have died in the early excersizes. At the same time, he knew he wouldn't have been able to find his way though the maze without her. One look at the scores on the screen confirmed his opinion - they were getting straight A's. Let's see, he calculated, if a unit started out with 8 members...50% dropout rate...3 exercises that the rate seemed to apply to...4 men left after the first one...then 2...only one left at this point. Damn machine would have killed off 7 out of 8 by now. The thought brought up feelings of anger and outrage over the injustice, but he also felt a surge of real confidence over how well they'd done. Maybe they would beat the system after all.

They finished their meal and retired to their bunks. As she tried to still her mind enough to sleep, Janis thought over what she'd been through, and what Harris had said. The thought that they were going to make it stilled her terror a bit, allowing a faint pride over how well they were doing so far to seep into her consciousness. Along with the pride, she felt a twinge of excitement. The almost giddy feeling she felt when she thought about the dangers they'd already faced and would face the next day, surprised her. She'd always wondered what possible attraction dangerous sports could have, and now she began to understand. To stand next to death, to edge ever closer, all the while holding in the back of one's mind the knowledge that one would survive, was a heady experience. Without a doubt, surviving the experience was the key to enjoying it, and she heard again in her mind Harris's voice saying that if anybody could make it, they could. Concentrating on that thought, she drifted off.

Harris replayed the actions of the day in his mind, pleased with the twists and turns events had taken. More and more, in his mind, the machine came to represent all the faceless terror that built up in the crevices of his brain during the war. He'd often wondered who the real enemy was. The men inside the ships facing each other were the same - flesh and blood, just trying to stay alive amidst the violence and destruction. And just as the training ship had become callous with the lives of the humans it ran through its exercises, he often thought during the war that his own general staff had a callous disregard for his life. Many times it seemed that he lost more friends to the incompetence of the his own officers, than to actions of the supposed enemy. And there wasn't any doubt in his mind that the conditions were the same on the other side of the line.

To the men in the front line ships, the grandiose causes and high minded talk of the politicians was meaningless. At the front, all trace of civilization was stripped away, and it was kill or be killed. And after all the death and destruction, nothing was settled, no problems were solved. After most of his friends died for the high minded causes, the politicians suddenly declared that the causes weren't important any more. The old men, who were willing to cause the deaths of many more worthy then themselves, with great fanfair, claimed to have created a solution to all the problems. While the politicians held vast conferences, bartering, selling out, and giving away the human rights of billions, the burnt out and broken men who'd done the fighting came back to their blasted homes silently. No one asked their opinions. No one asked what they thought should be done. Their usefulness ended with the last of the dieing, and no one wanted to hear what it had really been like out there.

The demented computer in the training ship came to represent all the feelings of helpless terror he'd suppressed during the war. All the hate and fear he felt towards the malicious authority that had seized control of his life, as well as his fear of the unknown enemy, rose up out of his subconscious, and were channeled in with his current feelings. A spark, and his mind was ablaze with a fervid desire to beat the training computer - to not only survive the exercises, but to stand triumphant over the smoldering hulk of the machine itself. A grim determination to win this contest, even if it took everything he had, grew to solid resolve in his mind. In his mind, if he could beat the training computer, in one stoke he would triumph over all the unseen forces that had caused him so much pain and fear. In one stroke, he would put to rest all the unresolved terrors and frustrations that lurked deep in his mind, emerging only when he awakened soaked with sweat in the middle of the night. As he felt sleep creeping up on him, he held on to the thought that tomorrow might be the day, tomorrow they might get their chance.

-----------------------------------------------------

The next morning, Harris and Janis awoke feeling refreshed, invigorated more by their altered attitudes than the hours of fitful sleep. They rushed through breakfast and then watched with feelings verging on anticipation as the clock tick off the minutes. It was almost a relief when the hatch opened and the loudspeaker began its announcement.

The staging room contained helmets with flash goggles and noise mufflers, gloves with long gauntlets, and flak jackets. They equipped themselves and turned to the exit hatch.

The hatch led to a shooting gallery. Harris recognized immediately the two weapons mounted on pedestals. One was a disintegrator and the other was an obsolete minicannon. Turning down range, he saw a tube stretching at least a hundred yards, lined with absorber fields. Turning his head at the clank of the hatch slamming shut, he saw absorber fields appear behind him as well. He only had a moment to wonder why the fields were necessary behind the guns, before his question was graphically answered by something whizzing by his ear. A small machine in the target zone was advancing, firing little darts as it rolled. Harris grabbed the closest weapon, the minicannon, racked a round into the chamber, and swung the sights onto the attacking machine. Pulling the trigger, he was rewarded by a thudding vibration in his hands, a mechanical clatter in his ears, and a line of explosions stitched across the target.

Shrapnel from the first target was still falling out of the air when the next machine popped up through the absorber field. Harris swung the minicannon and pulled the trigger. He felt the gun come to life, the well oiled, precisely machined action racking round after round of death and destruction through the receiver. His hate and determination to win projected along the fiery path of the tracers, guiding the stream of violence with deadly accuracy. The second target became a cloud of flash and flying pieces of torn metal.

The third target disappeared before Harris could swing the minicannon. He looked over and saw that Janis had brought the disintegrator up to power. The faint blue glow of the excited crystal cast an strange pallor over her face. She let off another bolt, and the flash of the high voltage arc passing through the crystal caught the glint in her eye, the set of her jaw. In the moment after the flash, while his eyes were recovering, Harris could have sworn he saw a death's head grinning as it beamed down the targets. Before he could think too much about it, his vision cleared and Janis stood before him in her violet pallor. He told himself it was all a trick of the lighting as he returned his attentions down range.

Targets popped up faster and faster. Flyers dropped down out of the upper absorber field, and climbers came out of the walls. Some of the targets rolled on wheels, some slithered, some crawled along on spider legs. They all carried weapons, and they started firing as soon as they appeared. By unspoken agreement, Janis took care of the large targets with the more powerful disintegrator, while Harris sprayed everything else with the minicannon.

Racking another belt of cartridges into the minicannon, Harris tried to hold out part of his brain to think about finding an escape route. Between targets, he desperately studied the detail of the gallery. The pedestals were identical, as were the gimbal mounts. Stops bolted on to the swivels so that the weapons could only be pointed down range. A plan began to form in his mind. If only I had a tool, he thought. Surely there's something I can use as a tool here somewhere. Between bursts, he searched his mind for any bit of information he could put to use. A memory floated into his consciousness, the memory of training with the minicannon. He remembered the long hours of learning how to field strip the gun - well enough to tear it down and put it back together with his eyes closed. He remembered in detail the shape and feel of the pieces, and an inspiration grew in his mind. Yes, he was sure it would work - but only if they both survived to the end of the exercise.

Having a plan in mind gave Harris added incentive to win. His accuracy honed down to a fine edge, and his heart gave a little jump with every kill. Adrenalin poured into his bloodstream, and his time sense speeded up to where his mind shifted off the current target and was looking for the next as his finger was just tightening on the trigger.

Harris was so caught up in the exercise that it took him a moment to realize that the targets weren't appearing anymore. His first reaction was anger at not having anything to shoot at. But then he remembered his plan. His fingers whipped through the motions they'd practiced so many times, and in a moment he was holding the breach block, receiver, and action bars of the minicannon. Moving over to the pedestal under the disintegrator, he gripped the first bolt between the breach block and the receiver. Levering the block up tight with the action bars, he turned the whole assembly. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, he swung the improvised wrench - pulling it as far as he could, then loosening it and reseting for another bite. The first bolt loosened enough to turn by hand, and he moved on to the next. Three bolts held the stop block in place, and Janis had the first two out as Harris felt the third loosen in his hands. "Get the trigger," he shouted, spinning the bolt out the rest of the way with his fingers.

Janis jumped up to comply. She didn't have any idea what Harris had in mind, so she tried to be ready for what ever happened. Her nimbleness paid off as Harris pulled the disintegrator around to face the rear wall. The absorber field had gone down as soon as the exercise ended, and she understood in a flash what Harris had in mind. She heard him shout "Fire!" Before she realized it, she pulled the trigger, and a round hole appeared in the wall. The heat of the flash back was severe, but even before the spots cleared in her eyes, she heard "fire" again, and pulled the trigger. The second flash back was tempered by the first wall, and the third was diminished even more. She kept the trigger pulled, and a tunnel appeared stretching into the distance. Harris gestured frantically and she released the trigger.

"Hey, we don't want to burn all the way through the ship!" he exclaimed. "There's a whole lot of cold vacuum out there!"

Janis released the disintegrator and stepped away. Harris moved towards the tunnel, and as a parting shot, threw his wrench at the disintegrator, shattering the crystal. Then they ran.

They ran through a dozen rooms, dodging around wrecked equipment, jumping though the hole in the wall into the next room. Harris lost count of the rooms they passed through, but he noticed a change. The rooms they were passing through now were different than the training sections. Here, unguarded tool chests lay open, weapons filled racks in the walls. He paused long enough to sling a heavy duty cutting laser over his shoulder and shove another into Janis's hands. When they were well into the functional part of the ship, and they could see the end of the tunnel ahead, they turned off and started running down the ship's corridors. Harris pulled up panting in front of a directory. Between gasps, he searched the map for the mark that indicated where they were. Just as he spotted the mark, he felt himself elbowed out of the way. "Navigating is my job, remember?" said Janis as she studied the map and the chart of departments. In a moment, she said, "Ok, I got it. See this mark? That's where we are now. Now over here is the control room, and over here is the computer. Which do you want to go after?"

"If we hit the control room, the ship's completely dead," considered Harris. "If we hit the computer itself, we can still fly the ship manually. Go for the computer."

"Right! Follow me," Janis called out over her shoulder as she set off down the corridor.

Harris ran after her, hopeing she was as sure of herself as she sounded. After several turns, and countless level changes, he was so lost that he couldn't have found his way back to save his life. He consoled himself with the thought that he was concentrating on burning any machines they came upon. Still, Janis's value in his eyes rose as he realized just how much the success of their effort rested on her finding the computer.

And then they saw it. The sign on the wall said:

TRAINING COMPUTER ROOM >

Harris, feeling suddenly cautious, grabbed Janis's arm and held her back. Lying on the floor, he peeked around the corner. There, in front of the hatchway marked TRAINING COMPUTER, were clustered an assortment of machines. "Damn, figured it out already," Harris whispered under his breath. Pulling back, he whispered to Janis, "Hatch's defended. Got to move now before reinforcements arrive. Go for the ones aimed this way first."

Harris gathered himself up for the spring, then launched his body across the corridor. Sliding to a halt, he already had the laser at his shoulder and the slender beam slicing across the opposing machines. A second beam lanced out from the other corner, and between them, the defenders were cut to ribbons in seconds. Long after any sign of activity ceased, he continued to cut and burn with the humming laser. Releasing the trigger, the beam winked out, and in a moment he was up and running for the hatch.

The hatch was dogged tight on the inside, so Harris backed up a step and began cutting a man sized circle in the bulkhead. Janis understood his intentions immediately, and set her laser humming, cutting the circle in the opposite direction. When their paths connected, they took another step back and kicked the panel in. As the panel fell, Harris swept his laser through the opening. A brief scattering of beams lanced out of the computer room, but they were extinguished by the heat of Harris's laser. Without a moment's pause, Harris stepped into the room, laser humming and hot in his hand, and reduced the computer to molten slag.

The main lighting shut down, and the dim emergency lighting came on. Harris stood looking at the glowing lump that had been the central processing unit of the computer. He felt strangely light headed, like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. And then he knew what it was. The fear was gone. The nagging, deep down terror that never completely faded. Even after the peace settlement, he wasn't able to shake the feeling that somehow the war would come back to claim him. And now it had, and he'd won. Never again would he wake up in the middle of the night, soaked with sweat, with some unnamed terror sinking back into his subconscious. Gone were the dreams.

Harris turned to Janis just in time to see the flame glinting in her eyes soften to relief. They looked at each other for a long silent moment before Harris could think to exclaim, "We did it! We killed the bastard!"

After a several minutes of cheering, laughing, and embracing, Harris continued, "Now, can you get us to the control room?"

"Are you kidding?" Janis responded incredulously. "I plotted a course through hell and back in the maze, and you want to know if I can handle a walk around the block! Just follow me."

-----------------------------------------------------

Janis sat in the officers mess on the spacecruiser Ajax, and played with her food. She looked across the table and studied Harris's face for the hundredth time. Yes, she was sure of it, the haunted look was gone from his eyes, and there was something different about the way he carried himself - with his shoulders straight, and an added spring in his step. She thought back over the events following the destruction of the computer. Finding the control room was easy, even in the dim emergency lighting. It took a little thought, but they managed to figure out how to set off the emergency beacon. The speed of response to the beacon still amazed her. With in 20 hours of reaching the control room, they were aboard the Ajax, being questioned by legions of intelligence officers. And now, after being pumped dry of information, they were being ignored. Well that was all right with her, she had something important to think about.

Janis considered the changes the ordeal had made in her most basic concepts of the universe in general, and herself in particular. The thought of a soft bar of alloy being hardened in in the heat and flames of a forge came to mind. Just as the metal drew strength from the fires of its ordeal, so she felt stronger for her experience. And she also saw that life truly belongs to those who have the courage to reach out, grab a hold, and bend it to their needs. She thought of all the previous victims of the ship, trapped in the deadly course that the computer laid out for them, unable to stretch their imaginations far enough to break out. She thought of the similarities to her life before - how she'd been trapped into a role, unable to break out, even though she knew the role was smothering her. She thought of all the years she numbly followed the groove, bored with her dull life, yet unable to change. Well now she'd tasted a different attitude, and she was determined to adopt it. She put down the fork she'd been stirring her dinner with, and looking Harris in the eye, she said, "I've been doing a lot of thinking...we've been through a lot...we work together well. Harris, what would you say to crewing together permanent?"

Harris was a little startled by the proposal, but as he thought about it, tried it on for size in his mind, he found he liked the sound of it. Since that moment in the computer room, he felt like he'd been born into a new world. He found he could think about the future, plan on things days, weeks, even years in the future, without the doubts and fears setting in. He looked across at Janis, and wondered how he could ever have considered her plain. Crew together permanently, that's what she said. For so long, relationships were things to avoid. People died in the war, and it was much worse if it was a friend, devastating if it was a lover. But now, he could think of the future, he could think of relationships, and his long suppressed needs poured out. "Yes...yes I'd like that very much," he said, the moisture glistening in his clear, untroubled eyes. Life was going to be much better from now on, he just knew it.