We in the Ships learned our lesson, and though our Ship has only a small, closed population, we won’t degenerate. We won’t become overpopulated, either. We have a safety valve. Within three months of the day you turn fourteen, they take you from the ship and drop you on one of the colony planets to survive as best you can for thirty days. There are no exceptions and a reasonably high percentage of deaths. If you are stupid, foolish, immature, or simply unlucky, you won’t live through the month. If you do come home, you are an adult. My problem was that at twelve I wasn’t afraid to die, but I was afraid to leave the Ship. I couldn’t even face leaving the quad we lived in.

We call that month of survival “Trial,” and I don’t think there was a day from the time I was eleven that it wasn’t in my thoughts at least once. When I was eleven, a man named Chatterji had a son due to go on Trial, and he had serious doubts that the boy would make it. So he went to a great deal of trouble to try to ease the boy through. He found out where his son was to be dropped and then he coached him on every danger that he knew the planet had to offer. Then, before the boy left, he slipped him a whole range of weapons that are not allowed to be carried on Trial, and he advised him to find a protected spot as soon as he landed and to hole up there for a month, not stirring at all, thinking the boy might have more of a chance that way.

The boy still didn’t make it. He wasn’t very bright. I don’t know how he died — he may not have been able to cope with one of the dangers he knew was there; he may have run into something unexpected; he may accidently have blown his head off with one of those weapons he wasn’t supposed to have; or he may simply have tripped over his own feet and broken his neck — but he didn’t live to come home.