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of the Earth, sentence him to space service. The buffers abraded his skin and pushed him forward as the next two unfortunates entered the dock behind him.
    Alderdice emerged just a few seconds after Johnsmith. His sentencing partner, an enormously fat woman whose jiggling, steatopygial buttocks resembled nothing so much as oatmeal, was herded off to some unknown destination, while Alderdice was shoved by the buffers toward Johnsmith. The two men were forced onto a conveyor belt flanked by more buffers. By the time they were dumped unceremoniously in a small chamber bathed in purplish UV, Johnsmith felt as though his skin had been rubbed raw.
    Olivier's voice instructed them to leave the UV chamber after a couple of minutes. They entered a long, narrow room with benches lining the extended walls. Felicia Burst sat, still naked, on a bench about a third of the way from the door.
    Johnsmith joined her, and even though she glared at him, he had the distinct impression that she was relieved to have him join her after the preceding ordeal.
    Alderdice sat down next to Johnsmith. The three Triple-S inductees waited in silence for some time. At last Felicia said, "Where the hell are the rest of them?"
    "You mean the others who were queued up?" Johnsmith said.
    "They were sent to different parts of the building," Alderdice offered. "Possibly for screening, or tests, or . . .something."
    Felicia stared straight ahead, as if she hadn't heard Alderdice speak. "There's something weird about this," she said.
    A door in the far end of the narrow room opened. A woman stepped in, wearing a formfitting uniform of red and white stripes. Her helmet was electric blue, with glowing stars that winked on and off as she spoke. Her bland good looks and perfectly cadenced speech suggested to Johnsmith that she was actually an android. Her words were punctuated by slapping a swagger stick against the nearest bench. Handing them three paper overall outfits, she introduced herself.
    "I'm Captain Vuh," she said. "I've been assigned to initiate you into the space service. Please put on these overalls and follow me."
    They dressed and stepped onto a ramp complete with an accordion-shaped plastic covering that led into the interior of a bus. They sat down with Captain Vuh and the bus whooshed off to the spaceport.
    Johnsmith looked longingly at the city flying by, as the captain spoke: "Many people see space service as an onerous duty, but we think you'll find that this will be the most rewarding time of your life."
    "Right," said Felicia Burst sarcastically.
    "Important work is accomplished in space that simply cannot be done on Earth," she said. "Alloys are mixed in zero gravity, or in the moon's lower gravity, that cannot be mixed on Earth. Minerals are found there that are in short supply on our mother planet, or have never existed at all. Industry that would pollute our atmosphere is now transacted offworld, making it possible for us to clean up our environment, a dream that has been postponed for a century."
    Johnsmith tuned out the android's speech. He'd heard it all before, in high school when the kids who weren't cut out for any real careers were being conditioned to accept their unhappy lot.
    The bus went underground, and Johnsmith was grateful for the cessation of images flying past the window. It only depressed him to see the city for this one final time.
    Slowing, the bus began to climb up into the spaceport as Captain Vuh finished her speech: "In a few moments we'll be in sight of the shuttle that will take you to a colony where a ship will be waiting to take you to Mars."
    What she didn't mention, Johnsmith thought bitterly, was that they would merely be part of the cargo on the shuttle, not really passengers. He looked out the window as they emerged into the sulfurous light, huge rockets standing around them in rows like cemetery stones. They headed straight for one, a graceful, thrusting shape bound to its gantry by a skein of pipes and