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fear of it will subside. After a year of this
you’ll avoid injury, but you won’t fear the injury itself. It will
still hurt, but you won’t shy away from it if it’s something you
need to do.”
    “ So I’ll be able to think
clearly about it, and suppress my instincts?”
    “ Yes. The decision, for
instance, about whether or not to fight will be a rational one, and
it won’t be made based on your fear of injury.”
    Having learned the proper form for the
rolls and the falls, she left the pure VR environment and they went
to the gym. There Magnus fitted her with a pseudo VR helmet that
provided her with fake sights and sounds along with an
instructional program. The first time she tried the roll, it was
much clumsier and more painful than she had last achieved in the VR
trials; now she was rolling with her own body in the real universe.
Magnus said that the pseudo helmet was extremely useful for
conducting mock fights with ranged weapons, and useful to a lesser
degree for practicing unarmed combat moves. Here she would train
her muscles and increase the stamina of her real body while still
in environments generated by the computer.
    Finally the helmet was put aside, and
Magnus ushered her into the center of the mat that covered the
floor of the tiny gym. Without warning he pushed her backward
violently, and she fell hard, slapping the mat too late.
    “ We can’t do that with the
pseudo VR,” he said, “at least not at this facility. You did well
enough for the first time, at least you tucked your chin to your
chest.”
    Telisa stood back up, regarding Magnus
carefully now. She was slightly intimidated by the attack, and
dreaded that he might hit her next. Was this to be another lesson
in pain? He looked so strong, so invincible, the cut of his muscles
visible even through the heavy skinsuit.
    “ Let’s see some forward
rolls without the helmet,” he said. “Your body already knows how to
do this, so it shouldn’t be that much different than the
pseudo.”
    Telisa finished up the rolls and falls.
Magnus didn’t attack her again and he seemed satisfied, although he
didn’t say anything encouraging, either. She wobbled back to her
quarters completely exhausted. She went to sleep that night trying
to decide if she was mad at Magnus for pushing her, or grateful
that he took her lessons so seriously. The next morning was an
agony of sore muscles and bruises, but Telisa remained determined.
She would not shirk from these lessons no matter how difficult they
became. If she did that, the others would just decide that she was
a spoiled academic brat, someone useless for anything except
writing esoteric papers about extinct alien races.
    The voyage stretched out into weeks as
Telisa trained an hour in VR, an hour with the PR helmet, and an
hour in real training in the gym every other day. She learned
falls, strikes, locks, and throws for unarmed combat. Soon she
added training programs to assemble, clean, and fire various ranged
weapons, and took part in mock firefights in the PR
helmet.
    She felt good about in her new skills,
and came to realize that she was lucky to have been selected as
Magnus’s secondary. She could not imagine medical or piloting
programs to be as varied and interesting as what she was learning.
Never before had she realized the almost infinite array of moves
and countermoves mankind had developed for shooting, sparring,
throwing, and grappling. Telisa wondered if the Talosians or the
Trilisks had spent so much time figuring out how to destroy their
fellows.
    As time went on no one questioned her
combat studies. She wondered what, if anything, Magnus had told
them about her performance. Since she was a solitary student, she
had no one with whom to compare her progress. She looked forward to
the physical sessions as a welcome release from the tedium of the
voyage.
    She also realized that she
was starting to become attached to Magnus. She found herself
staring at his image in her mind’s eye,