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means that even after spending four years and about sixty kilocreds you’ll still have nothing.”
    “You’d have a degree,” he pointed out.
    “What good is a degree in being an officer? What if you don’t pass the test?”
    He laughed out loud at that. “Mr. Wang, you are a test taking machine. Do you seriously mean to sit there and tell me that, having completed four years of intensive, specialized training specifically established to teach you what you need to know in order to pass that test, you think you might actually fail it?”
    “Well, sar, when you put that way…”
    “Mr. Wang, I came through the academy myself, graduated just three stanyers ago. I’m going to sit for Second in a few months. I went because I wanted to sail in the Deep Dark. I could have been a deck hand, and we need deck hands, but somebody encouraged me to look beyond that. I’m not going to tell you it’s not hard. It’s damned hard. I’m not going to tell you it’s cheap. It’s not cheap. The question is whether or not it’s worth it, and you’re the only one who can decide that. I think you’d be a good officer. What you believe is totally up to you.”
    “Thanks, sar, I appreciate the candor.”



Chapter Four

Dunsany Roads System
2352-May-15
     
    We were twenty-one days out of Dunsany Roads and just securing for transition at about 10:30 when Brill broke the news that the captain was going to wait until Betrus to give me the promotion to spec three.
    “I’m sorry, Ish,” she said when she came back from the captain’s pre-jump briefing. “It’s the time-in-grade thing. You’re just so junior that they don’t want to move you up too fast.”
    “It’s all right. I told you before, it doesn’t matter to me. Thanks for pushing it forward, but don’t waste any more time on it.”
    “But it’s not fair,” Diane said. “There’s no minimum time-in-grade for that slot.”
    “It’s okay, Diane.”
    I wasn’t sure why she was so upset, but something had her all in a twist and Brill was still being weird about the whole academy thing. For the previous two weeks, I couldn’t get her to talk about it, even during the day when we were the only two in engineering. All she’d say was, “You have to make up your own mind.”
    “I have made up my mind. I’m not going.” I kept trying to tell her. But she wouldn’t pursue the subject further.
    We jumped into Betrus at 10:35 and secured to normal operations at 10:45, so I went on my VSI and tried to clear my head. It was a nice day for a walk and it got me out of the section for a little while. There would only be a few ticks left before Diane relieved me and I could go run a few laps and maybe take a nap. I’d already started on the Messman and Cargoman exams. By the next cycle in July, I’d be ready to take them and hopefully have the whole set of full share ratings.
    The ongoing problem was that I was no closer to figuring out who I was. I wasn’t even sure what that meant. Diane was right, though, this was one of those questions best left to puddle in the back of my mind. It didn’t make any difference if I decided today or even this week. We were twenty days out of Betrus and nothing was likely to change before that.
    The VSI was almost as good as a run, though. I had to concentrate on punching the test sequence buttons in order for more than a hundred of the sensor packages stretched across the length and breadth of the ship in the correct sequence. By this time I thought I could do a VSI in my sleep, but I kept getting distracted and had to back track. I made it back by 11:30 and had a few ticks to spare before Diane relieved me.
    That was a fast-flip day and I had to be back on watch at 18:00 so I grabbed a quick lunch. Cookie had made a delicious lamb with garlic dish which he served with egg noodles and sweet peapods. Going through the line, I noticed that Sarah Krugg was looking much better. She’d been pretty abused when we picked her up at St.