Scout's Progress Read Free Page B

case, if there were more students of history among us. But, there, scholarship is a dying art! No one memorizes the great events anymore—gossip and triviality is all."

    Halfway across the sun-washed patio, Anne paused, looking down at him from abruptly serious brown eyes.

    "How many is 'several'?"

    He lifted a brow. "I beg your pardon?"

    "You said you'd had to memorize 'several' documents, besides the Contract. I wondered—"

    "Ah." He bowed slightly. "I once calculated—in an idle moment, you know!—that it would require three-point-three relumma to transcribe the material I have memorized. You must understand that I have committed to memory only the most vital information, in case the resources of Jelaza Kazone's library be—unavailable—to me."

    "Three-point-three. . ." Anne shook her head sharply. "Are you—all right?"

    "I am Korval," Daav said, with an austerity that surprised him quite as much as her. "Sanity is a secondary consideration."

    "And Er Thom—Er Thom has had the same training."

    So that was what distressed her of a sudden. Daav smiled. "Much of the same training, yes. But you must remember that Er Thom memorizes entire manifests for the pleasure of it."

    She laughed. "Too true!" She bent in a swoop and kissed his cheek—a gesture of sisterly affection that warmed him profoundly. "Take care, Daav."

    "Take care, Anne. Until soon."

    She crossed the patio with her long stride and slipped into the waiting car. Daav watched until the car went 'round the first curve in the drive, then reluctantly went back into the house, to his desk and the delm's work.

CHAPTER THREE
 
Those who enter Scout Academy emerge after rigorous training capable of treating equitably with societies unimaginably alien, some savage beyond belief.

Scouts are by definition courageous, brilliant, supremely adaptable and endlessly resourceful.

    —Excerpted from "All About the Liaden Scouts"

    "THE QUESTION WE address in this scenario," Aelliana replied sharply, "is not, 'am I able to perform this level of math without a computer lab to back me up?' but, 'shall I acknowledge the effort to be impossible, and give myself up to die'?"

    The six students—five Scouts and a field engineer—exchanged glances, doubtless startled by her vehemence. So be it. If startlement bought them life, their instructor had served them well. She inclined her head and continued.

    "I consider that any student still enrolled at this point in the course will possess sufficient memory and strength of will to win through to life, provided they also possess a ship with a functioning Jump unit."

    Her students looked at her expectantly.

    "Availability of the ven'Tura Tables is useful, but the full tables are not required if the following can be determined: Your initial mass within three percent. Your initial Jump charge to within twenty percent as long as it falls within the pel'Endra Ratio—which, as you know by now, may be derived using the local intrinsic electron counterspin and approximate mass-curve of the nearest large mass. If you are outside a major gravity well you may ignore the Ratio and proceed." She paused to consider six rapt faces, six pairs of avid eyes, before concluding the list of necessaries.

    "You must, finally and most importantly, have lines one through twenty and one-ninety through one-ninety-nine of the basic table memorized."

    Someone groaned. Aelliana suspected Var Mon, youngest and least repressible of the six, and fixed him with a stern eye.

    "Recall the problem: You are stranded in an unexplored sector, coordinates lost, main comp and navigation computer destroyed or useless. Your goal must be to arrive within hailing distance of one or more space-going worlds. You will break many regulations by applying the approach I outline, but you will adhere to the highest regulation: Survive."

    She paused.

    "This approach requires thought before implementation: You must know the system-energy coordinates of the