Pirx, it must be said, was not the most obliging of research subjects. He sat the whole time in stunned silence, batting his eyes like a halfwit. Everything seemed flat and two-dimensional, receding or moving closer the moment he tried to grasp it. A typical reaction. But his response to the doctor’s questioning aimed at prying further details out of him was anything but typical.

“Ever been in there yourself?” He answered a question with a question.

“No.” Grotius backed off in some astonishment. “Why do you ask?”

“You should try it sometime,” suggested Pirx. “That way you’d see firsthand what it’s like.”

By the second day he felt fit enough to joke about the “loony dip.” From then on, it was back and forth to the Main Building, where the summer training missions were posted daily on a glassed-in bulletin board. But when the weekend rolled around, his name was still not on the list.

On Monday he was told to report to the commandant’s office.

Pirx, though not immediately fazed, examined his conscience beforehand. Was it for sneaking that mouse aboard Osten’s ship? Nah, that was ancient history by now. Anyway, what was one measly mouse? Big deal. How about the time he hooked up the AC/DC to Maebius’s mattress springs, using an alarm clock for a timer? But that was just a lowerclassman’s prank, a twenty-two-year-old’s idea of a practical joke. The commandant was a bighearted guy; he’d understand. Up to a point. Or was it for Operation Zombie?

Operation Zombie was Pirx’s own brainstorm. He of course had help from friends—what were friends for, anyway? It was his smoothest, slickest job ever: a little gunpowder in a paper cone, a trail three times around the room, payload under the desk—there he might have overdone it a bit—then back out into the corridor through the slit under the door.