Profession

The board above Contestant Five flashed a frantic red signal. Contestant Five ran off the floor and returned a moment later. The audience laughed good-naturedly.

“Are all contestants ready?”

The boards remained blank.

“Any questions?”

Still blank.

“You may begin.”

There was, of course, no way anyone in the audience could tell how any contestant was progressing except for whatever notations went up on the notice board. But then, that didn’t matter. Except for what professional Metallurgists there might be in the audience, none would understand anything about the contest professionally in any case. What was important was who won, who was second, who was third. For those who had bets on the standings (illegal, but unpreventable) that was all-important. Everything else might go hang.

George watched as eagerly as the rest, glancing from one contestant to the next, observing how this one had removed the cover from his microspectrograph with deft strokes of a small instrument; how that one was peering into the face of the thing; how still a third was setting his alloy bar into its holder; and how a fourth adjusted a vernier with such small touches that he seemed momentarily frozen.

Trevelyan was as absorbed as the rest. George had no wav of telling how he was doing.

The notice board over Contestant Seventeen flashed: Focus plate out of adjustment.

The audience cheered wildly.

Contestant Seventeen might be right and he might, of course, be wrong. If the latter, he would have to correct his diagnosis later and lose time. Or he might never correct his diagnosis and be unable to complete his analysis or, worse still, end with a completely wrong analysis.

Never mind. For the moment, the audience cheered.

Other boards lit up. George watched for Board Twelve. That came on finally: “Sample holder off-center. New clamp depresser needed.”

An attendant went ru

Results were begi

Here and there, other boards began sprouting figures.

The audience was in bedlam.

George wondered how the contestants could work in such pandemonium, then wondered if that were not even a good thing. A first-class technician should work best under pressure.

Seventeen rose from his place as his board went red-rimmed to signify completion. Four was only two seconds behind him. Another, then another.

Trevelyan was still working, the minor constituents of his alloy bar still unreported. With nearly all contestants standing, Trevelyan finally rose, also. Then, tailing off, Five rose, and received an ironic cheer.

It wasn’t over. Official a

Finally, the a

What followed was drowned in the screaming. Number Eight was next and then Four, whose good time was spoiled by a five part in ten thousand error in the niobium figure. Twelve was never mentioned. He was an also-ran.

George made his way through the crowd to the Contestant’s Door and found a large clot of humanity ahead of him. There would be weeping relatives (joy or sorrow, depending) to greet them, newsmen to interview the top-scorers, or the home-town boys, autograph hounds, publicity seekers and the just plain curious. Girls, too, who might hope to catch the eye of a top-scorer, almost certainly headed for Novia (or perhaps a low-scorer who needed consolation and had the cash to afford it).

George hung back. He saw no one he knew. With San Francisco so far from home, it seemed pretty safe to assume that there would be no relatives to condole with Trev on the spot.

Contestants emerged, smiling weakly, nodding at shouts of approval. Policemen kept the crowds far enough away to allow a lane for walking. Each high-scorer drew a portion of the crowd off with him, like a magnet pushing through a mound of iron filings.

When Trevelyan walked out, scarcely anyone was left, (George felt somehow that he had delayed coming out until just that had come to pass.) There was a cigarette in his dour mouth and he turned, eyes downcast, to walk off.

It was the first hint of home George had had in what was almost a year and a half and seemed almost a decade and a half. He was almost amazed that Trevelyan hadn’t aged, that he was the same Trev he had last seen.

George sprang forward. “Trev!”

Trevelyan spun about, astonished. He stared at George and then his hand shot out “George Platen, what the devil—”

And almost as soon as the look of pleasure had crossed his face, it left. His hand dropped before George had quite the chance of seizing it.

“Were you in there?” A curt jerk of Trev’s head indicated the hall.

“I was.”

’To see me?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t do so well, did I?” He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, staring off to the street, where the emerging crowd was slowly eddying and finding its way into skimmers, while new lines were forming for the next scheduled Olympics.

Trevelyan said heavily, “So what? It’s only the second time I missed. Novia can go shove after the deal I got today. There are planets that would jump at me fast enough—But, listen, I haven’t seen you since Education Day. Where did you go? Your folks said you were on special assignment but gave no details and you never wrote. You might have written.”

“I should have,” said George uneasily. “Anyway, I came to say I was sorry the way things went just now.”

“Don’t be,” said Trevelyan. “I told you. Novia can go shove—At that I should have known. They’ve been saying for weeks that the Beeman machine would be used. All the wise money was on Beeman machines. The damned Education tapes they ran through me were for Henslers and who uses Henslers? The worlds in the Go-man Cluster if you want to call them worlds. Wasn’t that a nice deal they gave me?”

“Can’t you complain to—”

“Don’t be a fool. They’ll tell me my brain was built for Henslers. Go argue. Everything went wrong. I was the only one who had to send out for a piece of equipment. Notice that?”

“They deducted the time for that, though.”

“Sure, but I lost time wondering if I could be right in my diagnosis when I noticed there wasn’t any clamp depresser in the parts they had supplied. They don’t deduct for that. If it had been a Hensler, I would have known I was right. How could I match up then? The top wi

He wasn’t speaking to George. He wasn’t speaking to anyone. He was just uncorked and frothing. George realized that.

George said, “If you knew in advance that the Beemans were going to be used, couldn’t you have studied up on them?”

“They weren’t in my tapes, I tell you,”

“You could have read—books.”

The last word had tailed off under Trevelyan’s suddenly sharp look.