like chafing bark. "I believe I'll take an estimation."
As Dillingham returned to the main room with an armful of the box-like texts, the elevator loosed another creature. This was a four-legged cylinder with a head tapered like that of an anteater, and peculiarly thin jointed arms terminating in a series of thorns.
It seemed to him that such physical structure would be virtually ideal for dentistry. The thorns were probably animate rotary burrs, and the elongated snout might reach directly into the patient's mouth for inspection of close work without the imposition of a mirror. After the initial introductions he asked Anteater how his probability stood.
"Ninety-eight per cent," the creature replied in an offhand manner. "Our kind seldom miss. We're specialized for this sort of thing."
Specialization—there was the liability of the human form, Dillingham thought. Men were among the most generalized of Earth's denizens, except for their developed brains—and obviously these galactics had equivalent intellectual potential, and had been in space so long they had been able to adapt physically for something as narrow as dentistry. The outlook for him remained bleak, competitively.
A robot-like individual and a native from Electrolus completed the apartment's complement. Dillingham hadn't known that his sponsor-planet was entering one of its own in the same curriculum, though this didn't affect him particularly.
Six diverse creatures, counting himself—all dentists on their home worlds, all specializing in prosthodontics, all eager to pass the entrance examinations. All male, within reasonable definition—the university was very strict about the proprieties. This was only one apartment in a small city reserved for applicants. The university proper covered the rest of the planet.
They learned all about it that evening at the indoctrination briefing, guided to the lecture-hall by a blue glow manifested on each identification band. The hall was monstrous; only the oxygen-breathers attended this session, but they numbered almost fifty thousand. Other halls catered to differing life-forms simultaneously.
The university graduated over a million highly skilled dentists every term, and had a constant enrollment of twenty million. Dillingham didn't know how many terms it took to graduate—the programmes might be variable—but the incidence of depletion seemed high. Even the total figure represented a very minor proportion of the dentistry in the galaxy. This fraction was extremely important, however, since mere admission as a freshman student here was equivalent to graduation elsewhere.
There were generally only a handful of DU graduates on any civilized planet. These were automatically granted life tenures as instructors at the foremost planetary colleges, or established as consultants for the most challenging cases available. Even the drop-outs had healthy futures.
Instructors for the U itself were drawn from its own most gifted graduates. The top one hundred, approximately—of each class of a million—were siphoned off for special training and retained, and a great number were recruited from the lower ranking body of graduates: individuals who demonstrated superior qualifications in subsequent galactic practice. A few instructors were even recruited from non-graduates, when their specialities were so restricted and their skills so great that such exceptions seemed warranted.
The administrators came largely from the University of Administration, dental division, situated on another planet, and they wielded enormous power. The University President was the virtual dictator of the planet, and his pronouncements had the force of law in dental matters throughout the galaxy. Indeed, Dillingham thought as he absorbed the information, if there were any organization that approached galactic overlordship, it would be the Association of University Presidents. AUP had the authority and the power to quarantine any world found guilty
As Dillingham returned to the main room with an armful of the box-like texts, the elevator loosed another creature. This was a four-legged cylinder with a head tapered like that of an anteater, and peculiarly thin jointed arms terminating in a series of thorns.
It seemed to him that such physical structure would be virtually ideal for dentistry. The thorns were probably animate rotary burrs, and the elongated snout might reach directly into the patient's mouth for inspection of close work without the imposition of a mirror. After the initial introductions he asked Anteater how his probability stood.
"Ninety-eight per cent," the creature replied in an offhand manner. "Our kind seldom miss. We're specialized for this sort of thing."
Specialization—there was the liability of the human form, Dillingham thought. Men were among the most generalized of Earth's denizens, except for their developed brains—and obviously these galactics had equivalent intellectual potential, and had been in space so long they had been able to adapt physically for something as narrow as dentistry. The outlook for him remained bleak, competitively.
A robot-like individual and a native from Electrolus completed the apartment's complement. Dillingham hadn't known that his sponsor-planet was entering one of its own in the same curriculum, though this didn't affect him particularly.
Six diverse creatures, counting himself—all dentists on their home worlds, all specializing in prosthodontics, all eager to pass the entrance examinations. All male, within reasonable definition—the university was very strict about the proprieties. This was only one apartment in a small city reserved for applicants. The university proper covered the rest of the planet.
They learned all about it that evening at the indoctrination briefing, guided to the lecture-hall by a blue glow manifested on each identification band. The hall was monstrous; only the oxygen-breathers attended this session, but they numbered almost fifty thousand. Other halls catered to differing life-forms simultaneously.
The university graduated over a million highly skilled dentists every term, and had a constant enrollment of twenty million. Dillingham didn't know how many terms it took to graduate—the programmes might be variable—but the incidence of depletion seemed high. Even the total figure represented a very minor proportion of the dentistry in the galaxy. This fraction was extremely important, however, since mere admission as a freshman student here was equivalent to graduation elsewhere.
There were generally only a handful of DU graduates on any civilized planet. These were automatically granted life tenures as instructors at the foremost planetary colleges, or established as consultants for the most challenging cases available. Even the drop-outs had healthy futures.
Instructors for the U itself were drawn from its own most gifted graduates. The top one hundred, approximately—of each class of a million—were siphoned off for special training and retained, and a great number were recruited from the lower ranking body of graduates: individuals who demonstrated superior qualifications in subsequent galactic practice. A few instructors were even recruited from non-graduates, when their specialities were so restricted and their skills so great that such exceptions seemed warranted.
The administrators came largely from the University of Administration, dental division, situated on another planet, and they wielded enormous power. The University President was the virtual dictator of the planet, and his pronouncements had the force of law in dental matters throughout the galaxy. Indeed, Dillingham thought as he absorbed the information, if there were any organization that approached galactic overlordship, it would be the Association of University Presidents. AUP had the authority and the power to quarantine any world found guilty
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