Fleet of the Damned (Sten #4). Allan Cole

and headed for their rooms and the omnipresent studying.

      At least most of them did.

      Possibly the herbal tea had no reported effects. Sten and Victoria bade Sh’aarl’t good night at her door. Sten meant to walk Victoria to her room but found himself asking her into his own room.

      Victoria accepted.

      Inside, Sten gloried and dismayed. Victoria pressured the bed and plumped the pillows. She touched a finger to her flight suit zip, and the coverall dropped away from her tiny, absolutely perfect body.

      Sten had fantasized about making love to a ballerina—specifically Victoria. He hadn’t suggested it because he had the rough idea that if he suggested and she accepted, his capabilities would be exactly as impotent as Mason daily suggested.

      Tension and all that.

      Sten may have been accurate about his own potential. But he had no idea how creative an ex-professional dancer could be.

      The next day both Victoria and Sten tested very, very low on the various challenges.

      They’d had less than an hour’s sleep.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      SELECTION MOVED ON from written or livie tests to live problems, giving Ferrari and Mason a chance for real hands-on harassment.

      Sten had the idea that the particular situation he was facing would be a real piece, since Ferrari was beaming and even Mason had allowed his slash of a mouth to creep up on one side.

      “This is what we call a Groupstacle,” Ferrari explained genially.

      Group. Obstacle.

      The group was Bishop, Victoria, Lotor, Sten, and six others.

      The obstacle was:

      “We’re standing here,” Ferrari said, “in the control room of a destroyer. Flower class, in case you’re curious. It looks terrible, does it not?”

      He waited for the chorus of agreement from the candidates.

      “The reason it looks so bad is because it has crash-landed on a certain planetoid. This planetoid has acceptable atmosphere and water. But there is nothing to eat and very little which can be made into shelter.”

      Ferrari smiled.

      “Any of you who are eco-trained, do not bother to explain how illogical this planetoid must be. I do not set up these problems, I merely administer them.

      “At any rate, you see this control room we are standing in? Yes. Terribly ruined by the crash. You see this open hatchway, exiting onto the planetoid, which is quite colorfully provided.

      “Personally, I must say that I do not believe that trees can ever be purple. But I wander. Mr. Mason, would you care to continue?”

      “Thank you, sir.

      “I’ll cut it short. You losers have crashed. The only way you’re gonna live is by getting your survival kits out. The kits are down this passageway. You got two problems—the passageway is blocked.”

      No kidding, Sten thought, staring down the corridor. He admired how carefully the problem had been set up. As they entered the huge chamber, it did look as if half of a ship was crashed into a jungle, crumpled and battered.

      The inside of the ship was, with some exceptions—and Sten was noting those exceptions carefully—exactly like the flight deck and nearby passageways of a destroyer.

      Sten wondered why, before the IPs had led the group into the chamber, Mason had taken Bishop aside and told him something—something very important from the way that Grunt had reacted.

      Mason continued. “Second problem is that the power plant is in a self-destruct mode. You’ve got twenty minutes until this ship blows higher’n Haman.

      “If you don’t get to your supplies, you fail the problem. All of you.

      “If you’re still working on the problem when the twenty minutes run out, you fail the problem. All of you.”

      “Thank you, Mr. Mason.”

      “Yessir.”

      “The problem begins… now!”

      There was a stammer of ideas.

      Victoria had cut in—clot everything. What did they have to take out?

      Grunt had said that was stupid—first they needed some kind of plan.

      Lotor said that if they didn’t know how deep the drakh was, how could any plan be possible?

      The situation was simple. The corridor to the survival kits was blocked by assorted ship rubble that could be easily cleared. But x-ed across the corridor were two enormous steel beams, impossible to move without assistance.

      Two candidates proved that, straining their backs trying to wedge the beams free.

      Lotor was standing beside a much smaller beam in the corridor ahead of the blockage.

      “This,” he said, “might make a lever. If we had a fulcrum.”

      “Come on, Lotor,” Grunt put in. “We don’t have any clottin’ fulcrum.”

      “Hell we don’t,” Victoria said. “Couple of you clowns grab that big chart chest up on the flight deck.”

      “Never work,” Bishop said.

      Sten eyed him. What the hell was the matter with Grunt? Normally he was the first to go for new ideas.

      While two men shoved the map chest down toward the block, Sten did his own recon around the “ship.”

      By the time he came back to the corridor, the map chest sat close to the blocking beams. The small beam went under one, and everybody leaned.

      The first beam lifted, swiveled, and crashed sideways. The team gave a minor cheer and moved their lever forward.

      “This is not going to work,” Bishop said.

      Another candidate stepped back. “You’re probably right.”

      He spotted a red-painted panel in the metal corridor, clearly marked environment control inspection

      point. Do not enter without Class 11 Clearance. Do not enter unless ship is deactivated. The candidate shoved the panel open. A ductway led along the corridor’s path.”Okay. This is it,” the candidate announced.”Didn’t you read the panel?” Sten asked.

      “So? This ship’s about as deactivated as possible.”

      “You’re right,” Bishop agreed.

      Again, Sten wondered.

      The candidate forced himself into the ductway. The panel clicked closed behind him. After five seconds, they heard a howl of pain.

      The demons who set up the Selection tests had provided for that. In that ductway should have been superheated steam. But this was a dummy, so all the candidate got was a mild blast of hot water—enough for first-degree burns—and then the ductway opened and dumped him out on the other side of the set, where Ferrari told him he was dead and disqualified from the test.

      After the “death” of the candidate, the team redoubled efforts to lever the second beam free.

      Sten did his basic physics, said “no way,” and looked for another solution. He went through the ship and then outside, looking for anything that could become a tool.

      He found it.

      By the time he’d dragged the forty meters of control cable that must have exploded from the ship’s skin into the jungle back into the corridor, the others were panting in defeat.

      There was seven minutes remaining.

      Sten did not bother explaining. He ran the 2-cm cable down to the beam, looped it, and wrapped a series of half hitches around it. Then he