Scout's Progress by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee

again it will be some days too soon for my taste!"

    "Well." Var Mon allowed himself a tender smile as he set his cha'leket back. "Mind you stay wary. You'd best get on, now. We're bound for piloting practice—and you have your afternoon classes to consider."

    "Monster." Lyn Den grinned, sobered. "Shall I see you again, before you leave for your solo?"

    "Of course," Var Mon said. "You know I daren't leave planet without making my bow to my mother your aunt."

    "True enough," Lyn Den laughed and swept a bow. "Pilots. Good lifting."

    "Take care, Lyn Den," Rema called, as he ran lightly down the Academy's front ramp. She glanced aside and met Var Mon's puzzled eyes.

    "A peculiar course for His Lordship to plot," she commented.

    Var Mon sighed. "Do you know, I was only just now thinking that exact thought."

CHAPTER TEN
 
There shall be four levels of pilot acknowledged by the Guild. The base level, or Third Class, shall be qualified for work within system and orbit, operating ships not above Class B.

Mid-level, or Second Class, shall be qualified to lift any ship to Class AA within system and orbit.

A pilot holding a First Class license shall be competent in accomplishing the Jump into and out of hyperspace.

Master Pilot is one able to perform all aspects of piloting with excellence. This grade may undertake to train and test any of the lower three levels.

For the purposes of these by-laws, Scout-trained pilots shall be understood to hold a license equal to Master Pilot.

    —Excerpted from the By-laws of the Pilots Guild

    THE TESTING CHAMBER was familiar, even comforting. In just such a cubicle had she taken her university placement tests, winning a full mathematics scholarship to the University of Liad.

    Even the problems that flashed so quickly across the screen were comforting. There were no mysteries here; no danger. No doubt.

    Aelliana's fingers flew across the keyboard, structuring and restructuring the piloting equations as required. She hesitated when the focus of testing shifted from practical application to law and regulation, blinked, shifted thought-mode and went on, speed building toward a crescendo.

    The screen went blank. A chime sounded, startling in the sudden absence of key-clicks.

    "Part One of your examination is completed," a mechanical voice announced from the general area of the cubicle's ceiling. "Please await your examiner with the results."

    Aelliana sat back in the squeaky chair, hands folded sternly in her lap, head slightly bent, eyes on the quiet keys.

    She felt no anxiety regarding this initial phase of testing. The piloting problems had been quite ordinary, almost bland. The abrupt change from math systems to regulatory language had startled her, but the questions themselves had been entirely straightforward.

    She was less sanguine regarding her ability to perform satisfactorily at a live board. It was true that she had lifted and landed a Jump-ship. It was equally true that she had done so exactly thrice, each time monitored closely by Scout Lieutenant Lys Fidin, one of her most brilliant—and outrageous—students.

    Within the shelter of her hair, Aelliana smiled. Lys had taken advanced training, gaining for herself the ultimate prize. When she left Liad it had been as a First-In, among the best the Scouts possessed, trained to go alone into uncharted space, to make initial contact with unknown cultures, to map unexplored worlds and star systems.

    It had been Lys who attempted to convince her teacher to "go for Scout", and would hear nothing like 'no' when it came to Aelliana's lifting a live ship.

    "Theory's all very well," the Scout insisted. "But, damn it, Aelli, you can't teach pilots survival math without ever having a ship in your hands!"

    Lys won that effort, and lift a ship Aelliana did.

    The next campaign had been for Aelliana's enlistment in a piloting course, which came to a draw: Ran Eld would certainly have denied such an expenditure from his sister's