The Space Pioneers | Page 2

and spiraled in every direction,
with the cadets kicking, lunging, and scrambling for a clean shot.
Finally Astro reached the tumbling sphere and booted it away from the
group. There was a roar of laughter from the Arcturus unit and a low
groan from Tom and Roger. Astro saw that he had kicked the ball over
his own goal line.
[Illustration]
"Why, you clobber-headed Venusian hick!" yelled Roger. "Can't you
tell the difference between our goal and theirs?"
Astro grinned sheepishly as the three jogged back to their own goal to
line up once more.
"Lay off, Roger," said Tom. "How come you didn't get Richards on that
play?"

"I slipped," replied the blond cadet.
"Yeah, you slipped all right," growled Astro good-naturedly, "with a
great big assist from Richards."
"Ah, go blast your jets," grumbled Roger. "Come on! Let's show those
space crawlers what this game is all about!"
But before the cadet referee could drop his hand, a powerful, low-slung
jet car, its exhaust howling, pulled to a screeching stop at the edge of
the field and a scarlet-clad enlisted Solar Guardsman jumped out and
spoke to him. Sensing that it was something important, the two teams
jogged over to surround the messenger.
"What's up, Joe?" asked Roger.
The enlisted spaceman, an Earthworm cadet who had washed out of the
Academy but had re-enlisted in the Solar Guard, smiled. "Orders for
the Polaris unit," he said, "from Captain Strong."
"What about?" asked Roger.
"Report on the double for new assignments," replied the guardsman.
"Yeeeeooooow!" Astro roared in jubilation. "At last we can get out of
here. I've been doing so blamed much classroom work, I've forgotten
what space looks like."
"Know where we're going, Joe?" asked Tom.
"Uh-uh." Joe shook his head. He turned away, then stopped, and called
back, "Want a lift back to the Tower?"
Before Tom could answer, Richards, the captain of the Arcturus unit
spoke up. "How about finishing the game, Tom? It's been so long since
we've had such good competition we hate to lose you. Come on. Only a
few more minutes."
Tom hesitated. It had been a long time since the two units had played

together, but orders were orders. He looked at Roger and Astro. "Well,
what about it?"
"Sure," said Roger. "We'll wipe up these space jokers in nothing flat!
Come on!"
There was a mock yell of anger from the Arcturus unit and the two
teams raced back to their starting positions. In the remaining minutes of
play, the cadets played hard and rough. First one team would score and
then the other. A sizable crowd of cadets had gathered to watch the
game and cheered lustily as the players tore up and down the field.
Finally, when both teams were nearly exhausted, the game was over
and the score was eight to seven in favor of the Polaris unit. Roger had
made the final point after Tony Richards had left the game with a badly
bruised hip. A substitute called in from the bystanders, an Earthworm
cadet, had eagerly joined the Arcturus team for the last minutes of play
but had been hopelessly outclassed by the teamwork of the Polaris unit.
Promising a return match soon, Roger, Tom, and Astro hurried to their
lockers, showered, and dressed in their senior cadet uniforms of vivid
blue, then raced to the nearest slidewalk to head toward the main group
of buildings that made up Space Academy.
Whisked along on the moving belt of plastic that formed the principle
method of transportation in and around the Academy grounds, Tom
turned to his unit mates. "What do you think it'll be?" he asked.
"You mean the assignment?" asked Roger, answering his own question
in the next breath. "I don't know. But anything to get out of here. I've
been on Earth so long that I'm getting gravity-itis!"
Tom smiled. "It'll sure be nice to get up in the wide, high, and deep
again," he said, glancing up at the cloudless sky.
"Say it again, spaceman," breathed Astro. "One more lesson on the
differential potential between chemical-burning rocket fuels and
reactant energy and I'll blast off without a spaceship!"

Roger and Tom laughed. They both sympathized with the big cadet's
inability to cope with the theory of atomic energy and fuel conservation
in spaceships. In charge of the power deck on the Polaris, Astro earlier
had gained firsthand experience in commercial rocket ships as an able
spaceman and later had been accepted in the Academy for cadet
training. The son of colonists on Venus, the misty planet, his formal
education was limited, and though he had no equal while on the power
deck of a rocket ship, in theory and classroom study he had to depend
on Roger and Tom to help him get passing