THE NEXT DAY HE TOOK THE SECOND TEST. IT WAS AGAIN with the buttons; this time it was a memory test. Two hundred and twenty-four of the buttons had to be matched, and the last used to open the door. Sally Morris told him that some people took hours to get out of the booth. If he wished to give up the Test at any time, he was to press a button on the door.
Each button now showed a number on the screen — quite independent of the numbers of the day before. Only one number appeared at a time, and when random or systematic pressing of numbers brought up a number previously noted, both were pressed together and both were eliminated from the test. The object was to eliminate the 112 pairs as quickly as possible, marks coming off when any button was touched more than twice. It was a simple game, but it was designed to reveal a lot.
Raigmore finished it in a little over eleven minutes. He had no marks against him, for he had been patient, taking time to remember and to try to work out a system if it was possible. It wasn’t. There was no system, the pairs being arranged in random pattern. Again he could not be sure that he had done particularly well. It seemed on consideration that it could be done in less time. He had taken about 690 seconds, pressing roughly two buttons a second when he hadn’t stopped to think. It could be done, theoretically, in five minutes or less. Each button had to be pressed only twice, which meant 450 in all. But on the whole he thought he had done well.
The operator thought so too. She seemed almost excited — as excited as she would ever allow herself to be. After all, she must have a natural desire to see what a superman could do, a wish which inevitably was unlikely to be granted many operators.
Raigmore went straight on to a Test which showed how he handled written instructions, and another which, rather obviously to him, gave him opportunities to cheat which he didn’t take.
Then Sally said: “The next item is the physical checkup. After that I can give you an interim rating.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing much, except that a Purple Star still In Test, say, can’t possibly finish below that and probably at least one grade higher. Are you going on now?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I call in a male operator?”
Raigmore referred to his mental encyclopedia, which told him that while it was usually left open to people to choose someone of their own sex for medical examinations and things of that sort, only very self-conscious men and women insisted.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
Sally had noticed his hesitation. “I can get one from the central Tests Depot in twenty minutes.”
“Never mind.”
Test operators were trained to be thoroughly impersonal — so impersonal that it seemed much more natural to call Sally Miss Morris than Sally.
She took him deeper into the Depot and showed him the checkup tank. It was just that, a glass tank two feet deep, seven feet long and four feet broad, filled with a green fluid which was half liquid, half vapor. He knew what to do. He stripped and climbed in, taking the tiny mask that fitted over his nose to enable him to breathe in the tank. Sally warned him not to open his mouth, but he knew that too. There was no secret about this. Knowledge of what was coming didn’t make the slightest difference.
The green vapor cut off all sensation. Floating in it, he could feel nothing, not even heat or cold. He sank until he was completely immersed, the liquid supporting him, the vapor covering the rest of him. He didn’t have to close his eyes. He could see dimly, as if through thick but flawless green glass.
He knew the process, not in detail, but with general accuracy. The liquid was a conductor of the P-ray. Where X-rays showed structure, P-rays showed texture as well. This Test would show his health, strength, weaknesses, physical structure, age, blood group, immunities — everything, in fact, that the most rigorous medical examination could discover. If he turned his head, slowly so as not to displace himself, he could see the operator running the various tests and collecting the data from the apparatus.
It didn’t take long. The P-ray discovered everything at one operation. Presently Sally tapped the glass to attract his attention, and he climbed from the tank. He wasn’t wet. The green fluid was utterly indifferent to the human body.
It was usual for various physical courses to be suggested at this point — suggested only, for the Tests were examinations and entailed no instructions or prohibitions.
But Sally had nothing to say. Raigmore had, as he suspected, that rare thing — the perfect human body. He was a little relieved, all the same. He had thought there was a slight chance that his body, though perfect, might not be perfectly human.
All was well, however. The test was exhaustive enough not only to show that he was human but that his children, if he had any, would be just as human as he was. That, he knew dimly, might possibly be important.
Sally left him while he dressed and he found her waiting in a small room off the P-ray Test department.
Silently she handed him a badge.
“You may wear this now if you wish,” she told him. It was a purple circle.
Raigmore took it and surveyed it thoughtfully. Millions of people would give anything short of their lives for the right to wear one of the upper badges — purple, red, orange, yellow, white in ascending order. Anyone who wore any of them was somebody. And he had won it, a stranger, in an hour or so of Tests. Worn with his green badge, it showed he was outstanding and still climbing.
But above the purple circle was the purple cross. And above that the purple star. Then the red circle, cross and star, and so on through thirteen groups to the white star.
The white star that Alison wore.
He had a long way to go yet.