Hindsight by A. Bertram Chandler

Hindsight by A. Bertram Chandler

Author:A. Bertram Chandler [Chandler, A. Bertram]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-02-24T18:29:04+00:00


He set the dish of white powder down on the stained surface of the laboratory bench. Solubility, he thought. The first step. But I have to wait until Miss Maybury gives the go ahead . . . He looked up to where the instructor was seated on her dais, handing out jars and dishes to the other candidates. He thought, as he watched her thin, handsome face, I wish that I were older or that she were younger . . .

Harry Wilkins came with the dish of pink goo that he had been given, set it down with a faint clatter on his half of the bench. He glared at it as though it wore a deadly enemy, scowling ferociously. A big, dumb ox, thought Lacey contemptuously, face to face with modern science . . .

All the students were back at their benches. Miss Maybury raised a slim wrist, looked at her watch. She said, in her clear voice, "You may begin.

The rest of her words were drowned by a screaming roar from outside, a sound that rose rapidly to crescendo and as rapidly diminished. The Lunar Mail, thought Lacey. But who'd be a spaceman, anyhow? And then, before his mind's eye, there was the blackness of Outer Space, a blackness in which the sparse stars were queerly distorted whorls of glimmering light, and in his ears was the shrill, high whining of the ever-precessing gyroscopes of the Interstellar Drive. But how do I know? he asked himself, with the beginnings of panic. How do I know what it's like?

Wilkins was whispering something. Lacey heard it vaguely, paid no attention, was still engrossed with the vision of Deep Space. Wilkins repeated his question in a louder voice. "What do I do with this?" "Wilkins," asked Miss Maybury severely, "were you talking?"

"No Miss Maybury."

"Not only are you a cheat," she told him, "but you are also a liar. Leave the laboratory at once, and report to the Headmaster."

"But, Miss Maybury ..."

"Leave the laboratory, I said."

I'd hate to be on the wrong side of her, thought Lacey. But the bloody fool. asked for it. Now, let me see . . . Solubility first …



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