Around her were scores of young trainees standing by piles of baggage or looking hopelessly at the incoming field carts, watching for some last item among the confusion of the large hall. There were two large bags where the girl in the green jacket had been standing—and here she came back, dragging two more!

More carts arrived. Theo made herself stand patiently: her bag was well marked and would be easy enough to see once everything was brought in by the quick-moving workers. They all moved so easily, so much like pilots—

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, feeling more than a little bit dumb. Of course they all moved like pilots: she'd been told that most of the work at Anlingdin Piloting Academy was performed by pilots-in-training; eventually she'd be doing the same thing herself.

Looking around, Theo wondered how some of her fellow students could possibly have moved all their stuff between ship and shuttle. Could they really need piles and piles of whatever it was they'd brought?

True, she had shed some solemn tears in making the first hard decisions for herself, but as time went on she'd thought about the Melchiza trip and the extra carrying she'd done for that, and about how little of what was in her room would be going with her after she was a pilot, so it might as well stay home now. Like Coyster, and Father, and Kamele. They, like her things, would be there when she came home to visit; that would never change.

Kamele's reaction to Theo's first attempt at packing had been an astonished, "Two bags? But you have an allowance for three times that much!"

Father had laughed. "Be gentle—it is her first attempt! She'll soon learn better," he told Kamele, at the same time flashing a bright bit of hand-talk to Theo—pilot to pilot—and she'd laughed, then, though a heartbeat before she'd been ready to cry.

He'd managed to get much of the contents of her second bag into the first with astute repacking, and had eliminated other things with quick questions and comments like, "No library on Eylot?" and, "Outworld is not the same as frontier, youngster: I am almost certain that they will have tea;" and even "This mumu will be inappropriate on Eylot. Perhaps you should take your files with you and turn this back into the Wall for reuse."