Vorak gave his antennae the once-over in the mirror before stepping out of the latrine. He still had a few minutes to groom his unruly feelers before Cadet Assembly.
“A Cadet shall display his antennae in a uniform manner,” he repeated softly to himself. Outside he could hear the scurrying of dozens of pairs of feet in the hallway. But he still had a few minutes. The antennae had to form a tight, efficient arc of 270 degrees, which allowed them to hang straight down, parallel to but not touching the exterior wings. Proper curvature brought the tips of the antennae even with the posterior spiracles. Throughout their descent, the antennae maintained a constant distance of thirteen inches.
Vorak’s antennae did not have efficient curvature. They did not hang straight down. Their ends were not even with his abdomen. And they did not maintain a constant distance of thirteen inches. Patiently, Vorak smoothed his antennae with his front foreclaws to achieve the correct curvature. Eighteen passes. Nineteen. Twenty. They still bulged forward, upward, and then back in a maddening manner. Kolmar could put his antennae in order with five passes. Makan could do it in seven. The unit average was eleven. Even Momat and Kaynin could do it in seventeen. What the vart was the matter with him?
A mist of fumic oil coated his mandibles. One minute to Assembly. He had to get going. Damn it, damn it, damn it! His antennae looked like vart. He struggled to pull himself up to his full height of six foot two. What was wrong with him? Did he have curvature of the carapace? Relax, damn it, relax. Desperately, he focused on the Cadet Code of Conduct, pasted in lower right-hand corner of the mirror. 1. A Cadet is Confident. Vorak let the air flow through his spiracles. 2. A Cadet is Controlled. Vorak straightened his abdomen. 3. A Cadet is Aggressive. Vorak executed an about face, stumbling into the door. Time to emit entities!
He sprang out the door and joined the handful of scurrying Cadets racing down the hallway for Assembly. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten. He was going to be last again, damn it. If only he could beat out Kaynin! Kaynin was a damn wash-out, damn it! He sprinted for the door, but Kaynin, his haunted compound eyes glinting like three thousand mirrors of dread, reached it first. The heavy door swung open, almost knocking Vorak down. As he lurched clumsily around it, the Assembly note sounded.
If observed by the Cadet Commandant, entering Assembly after note was worth five demerits for the first offense, twenty-five for the second, and fifty for the third. Vorak already had his twenty-five, which, added to the one he accumulated each day for unruly antennae and improper abdomen, and the five a week he received for parade-ground inertia, amounted to a near-crushing burden of 185 demerits. Only his complete lack of academic demerits, his skill with the toran, and his surprisingly high score on inter-ship transfer maneuvers, kept him in the program. If he maintained his current rate of demerit accumulation over the next three months, he would graduate four days ahead of dismissal. In the three-thousand-year history of the Academy, only seven cadets had graduated with such a poor record of physical deportment.