He patted the stump. "This, and all the others you see here, were designed for five Heechees in the crews. As far as we can tell. But we send them out with three human beings. It seems the Heechee were more tolerant of each other's company in confined spaces than people are. There are bigger and smaller ships, but the no-return rate on them has been very bad the last couple of orbits. It's probably just a string of bad luck, but. . . Anyway, I personally would stick with a Three. You people, you do what you want.

"So you come to your second choice, which is who you go with. Keep your eyes open. Look for companions-- What?"

Sheri had been semaphoring her hand until she got his attention. "You said 'very bad," she said. "How bad is that?"

The instructor said patiently, "In the last fiscal orbit about three out of ten Fives came back. Those are the biggest ships. In several cases the crews were dead when we got them open, even so."

"Yeah," said Sheri, "that's very bad."

"No, that's not bad at all, compared to the one-man ships. Two orbits ago we went a whole orbit and only two Ones came back at all. That's bad."

"Why is that?" asked the father of the tunnel-rat family. Their name was Forehand. The instructor looked at him for a moment.

"If you ever find out," he said, "be sure and tell somebody. Now. As far as selecting a crew is concerned, you're better off if you can get somebody who's already been out. Maybe you can, maybe you can't. Prospectors who strike it rich generally quit; the ones that are still hungry may not want to break up their teams. So a lot of you fish are going to have to go out with other virgins. Umm." He looked around thoughtfully. "Well, let's get our feet wet. Sort yourselves out into groups of three -- don't worry about who's in your group, this isn't where you pick your partners -- and climb into one of those open landers. Don't touch anything. They're supposed to be in deactive mode, but I have to tell you they don't always stay deactive. Just go in, climb down to the control cabin and wait for an instructor to join you."

That was the first I'd heard that there were other instructors. I looked around, trying to work out which were teachers and which were fish, while he said, "Are there any questions?"

Sheri again. "Yeah. What's your name?"

"Did I forget that again? I'm Jimmy Chou. Pleased to meet you all. Now let's go."

Now I know a lot more than my instructor did, including what happened to him half an orbit later -- poor old Jimmy Chou, he went out before I did, and came back while I was on my second trip, very dead. Flare burns, they say his eyes were boiled out of his bead. But at that time he knew it all, and it was all very strange and wonderful to me.