Part
Eleven
No More A Young Angel
As North's third year of training began, their Simulator work doubled. Less and less they got classroom work. More and more they practiced and learned in the Simulators....no longer the Ground Simulators, but the several vessels that personally orbited The Academy. Each day they would beam up and take every position that a crewman could handle. One day, North even found himself in the kitchen preparing lunch! He was glad one of his hobbies was cooking. The meal he prepared was so good, that even the instructors enjoyed it, and jokingly said they were going to transfer him to their kitchen! Then a day came that both terrified and fascinated each cadet. For months they had been measured for the fitting of space suits. Now, they would put them on and for the first time, go outside a vessel. It took North a great deal of effort to fold his wings flat, and slip the specially made suit over his back and seal the seams. The trousers were easy. He could understand why their early space travelers had had their wings surgically removed so they could move easily about in their tiny ships. Finally they were taken to an airlock and six at a time, with no instructor in charge, taken outside. The minute they left the door, they left the ship's artificial gravity and floated, weightless. The instructor showed them how to move about in the condition by using the magnetic thrust unit on the metal hull of the ship.
"Just point it in the direction you want to go," he instructed, "and you'll be drawn that way. To slow down, point it at something in the opposite direction and it will break you, but don't build up too much speed. You'll either slam into something, or go sailing off into space."
North practiced with the device for a couple of hours and was really getting the hang of it when they called him back in. But that was only the first day. They would be out many more times, learning to make repairs outside the vessel and transferring from ship to ship, when transporting and link up were not possible.
In the third year, too, cadets were allowed for the first time, to take part in The Academy sports program, and North and Morn, being loyal cadets, remembered their Commandant's order. After a tremendous battle, they returned The Inner Service Trophy to The Academy. They continued to do this for the next two years, much to the dismay of The Ground Service School!
One day North was sitting at his desk across from Morn, when he shut off his viewer and laid his head on the desk top.
"What's the matter?" asked Morn.
"I'm having trouble," North explained, "remembering the crew counts of the various classes of ships. I can remember that it's three hundred and ninety seven for a Class A1, two hundred and eight for a Class B1, and one-hundred and fifty one for a Class C1, but when I try to break them down, into how many people per section, and then how many people