auri due to the present
position of Jupiter, sir," replied Roger easily. "So I took a fix on
Earth, allowed for its rotational speed around the sun and took the
cross-fix with Regulus as ordered in the problem. Of course, I included
all the other factors of the speed and heading of our ship. That was
routine."

Strong accepted the answer with a curt nod, motioning for Roger to
continue. It would not do, thought Strong, to let Manning know that he
was the first cadet in thirty-nine years to make the correct selection
of Earth in working up the fix with Regulus, and still have the presence
of mind to plot a meteor without so much as a half-degree error. Of
course the problem varied with each cadet, but it remained essentially
the same.

"Seven-and-a-half minutes. Commander Walters will be surprised, to say
the least," thought Steve.

Forty-five minutes later, Roger, as unruffled as if he had been sitting
listening to a lecture from a sound slide, handed in the rest of his
papers, executed a sharp salute and walked out.

"Two down and one to go," thought Strong, and the toughest one of them
all coming up. Astro. The big Venusian was unable to understand anything
that couldn't be turned with a wrench. The only thing that would prevent
Unit 42-D from taking Academy unit honors over Unit 77-K, the unit
assigned to Lieutenant Wolcheck, would be Astro. While none of the
members of the other units could come up to the individual brilliance of
Corbett or Manning, they worked together as a unit, helping one another.
They might make a higher unit rating, simply because they were better
balanced.

He shrugged his shoulders and collected the papers. It was as much
torture for him, as it was for any cadet, he thought, and turned to the
door. "All right, Astro," he said to himself, "in ten minutes it'll be
your turn and I'm going to make it tough!"

Back in the quarters of Unit 42-D, Tom and Astro still pored over the
books and papers on the desk.

"Let's try again, Astro," sighed Tom as he hitched his chair closer to
the desk. "You've got thirty tons of fuel--you want to find the
compression ratio of the number-one firing-tube chamber--so what do you
do?"

"Start up the auxiliary, burn a little of the stuff and judge what it'll
be," the big cadet replied. "That's the way I did it on the space
freighters."

"But you're not on a space freighter now!" exclaimed Tom. "You've got to
do things the way they want it done here at