PRONE
MACK REYNOLDS
SupCom Bull Underwood said in a voice ominously mild, “I continually get the impression that every other sentence is being left out of this conversation. Now, tell me, General what do you mean things happen around him?”
“Well, for instance, the first clay Mitchie got to the Academy a cannon burst at a demonstration.”
“What’s a cannon?”
“A pre-guided-missile weapon,” the commander of the Terra Military Academy told him. “You know, shells propelled by gunpowder. We usually demonstrate them in our history classes. This time four students were injured. The next day sixteen were hurt in ground-war maneuvers.”
There was an element of respect in the SupCom’s tone. “Your course must be rugged.”
General Bentley wiped his forehead with a snowy handkerchief even as he shook it negatively. “It was the first time any such thing happened. I tell you, sir, since Mitchie Farthingworth has been at the academy things have been chaotic. Fires in the dormitories, small arms exploding, cadets feeing hospitalized right and left. We’ve just got to expel that boy!”
. . .
