hy don't you say 'with the rest of the children'--that's what your
tone implies? And don't try walking out, there are some things we have
to settle first--"

Jason made the mistake of putting out his hand to stop her. He didn't
really know what happened next. One instant he was standing--the next he
sprawled suddenly on the floor. His shoulder was badly bruised, and Meta
had vanished down the corridor.

Limping back to his own room he cursed women in general and Meta in
particular. Dropping onto his rock-hard bed he tried to remember the
reasons that had brought him here in the first place. And weighed them
against the perpetual torture of the gravity, the fear-filled dreams it
inspired, the automatic contempt of these people for any outsider. He
quickly checked the growing tendency to feel sorry for himself. By
Pyrran standards he _was_ soft and helpless. If he wanted them to think
any better of him, he would have to change a good deal.

He sank into a fatigue-drugged sleep then, that was broken only by the
screaming fear of his dreams.

VII.

In the morning Jason awoke with a bad headache and the feeling he had
never been to sleep. As he took some of the carefully portioned
stimulants that Brucco had given him, he wondered again about the
combination of factors that filled his sleep with such horror.

"Eat quickly," Brucco told him when they met in the dining room. "I can
no longer spare you time for individual instruction. You will join the
regular classes and take the prescribed courses. Only come to me if
there is some special problem that the instructors or trainers can't
handle."

The classes--as Jason should have expected--were composed of stern-faced
little children. With their compact bodies and no-nonsense mannerisms
they were recognizably Pyrran. But they were still children enough to
consider it very funny to have an adult in their classes. Jammed behind
one of the tiny desks, the red-faced Jason did not think it was much of
a joke.

All resemblance to a normal school ended with the physical form of the
classroom. For one thing, every child--no matter how small--packed a
gun. And the courses were all involved with survival. The only possible
grade in a curriculum like this was one hundred per cent and students
stayed with a lesson until they mastered it perfectly. No courses were
offered in the normal scholastic subjects. Presumably these were studied
after the child graduated survival sch