ago
that they had gone through the terrifying experience of being hazed by
stern upperclassmen and they knew how the three pink-cheeked boys in
front of them felt.

"So," bawled Astro, "you want to blast off, do you?"

Neither of the three boys answered.

"Speak when you're spoken to, Mister!" snapped Roger at the boy in the
middle.

"Answer the question!" barked Tom, finding it difficult to maintain his
role of stern disciplinarian.

"Y-y-yes, sir," finally came a mumbled reply.

"What's your name? And don't say 'sir' to me!" roared Astro.

"Coglin, sir," gulped the boy.

"Don't say 'SIR'!"

"Yes, sir--er--I mean, O.K.," stuttered Coglin.

"And don't say O.K., either," Roger chimed in.

"Yes ... all right ... fine." The boy's face was flushed with
desperation.

Astro stepped forward, his chin jutting out. "For your information," he
bawled, "the correct manner of address is 'Very well.'"

"Very well," stammered Coglin.

Astro shook his head and turned back to Tom and Roger. "Have you ever
seen a greater display of audacity and sheer gall?" he demanded. "The
nerve of these three infants assuming that they could ever become Space
Cadets!"

Tom and Roger laughed, not at the three Earthworms, but at Astro's
sudden eloquence. The giant Venusian cadet usually limited his comments
to a gruff Yes or No, or at most, a garbled sentence full of a veteran
spaceman's oaths. Then, resuming his stern expression, Roger faced the
three boys.

"Sound off! Quick!" he demanded.

"Coglin, John."

"Spears, Albert."

"Duke, Phineas."

"You call those _names_?" Roger snorted incredulously. "Which of you
ground crawlers is radar officer?"

"I am, very well," replied Spears.

The blond-haired cadet stared at him in amazement.

"Very well, what?" he demanded.

"You said that's the correct form of address," replied Spears doggedly.

Roger turned to Tom. "Well, thump my rockets," he exclaimed, "I didn't
know they made them that dumb any more!"

"Who is the command cadet?" asked Tom, suppressing a grin.

"I am, very well," replied Duke.

"How fast is fast?"

"Fast is as fast must be, without being either supersonic or turgid.
Fast is necessarily that amount of speed that will not be the most nor
the least, yet will be sufficient unto the demands of fast ..." Duke
quoted directly from the _Earthworm Manual_, a book that was not
prescribed learning in the Academy, but woe unto the Earthworm who did
not know it