Ayers stood up, jaw squared, back ram-rod straight. 'Sir!"

'Flightline Five."

Ayers saluted and ran.

'Brickman - ?"

Steve Brickman shot to his feet, stamped his right heel into line with

his left and braced his shoulderblades together. 'Sir!" 'Flightline

Six."

The Snake Pit.

Despite his tensed neck and jaw muscles, Bricknmn let slip a brief

involuntary gasp of dismay.

The Adjudicator's grey eyes fastened on him. 'Anything wrong?"

'No, sirr!" 'Okay, get moving."

Brickman picked up his helmet from the desk top and saluted smartly.

The Flight Adjudicator's attention was already elsewhere.

'Bridges - ?"

'Sir!" Brickman cursed his luck as he ran along the corridor which led

to the simulators and free-flight rigs. The end-of-course exam

consisted of eight segments. Like all the other candidates, he had

been hoping to warm up on one of the easier rigs. Instead, his first

test was to be over the toughest hurdle.

The Snake Pit - as it had been christened by a long-&ad generation of

flight cadets - was described officially in the Academy's training

manual as the Double Helix, and listed in Daily Or&rs as Flightline

Six.

The rig consisted of two circular ramps wrapped around massive central

pillars housed side-by-side in a sausage-shaped shaft. In elevation,

they looked like two giant corkscrews with opposing threads; the

left-hand ramp descending eleven full turns in a clockwise direction;

the right-hand one, anticlockwise.

As each ramp wound down the shaft around its central pillar, it created

a rectangular tunnel of air space one hundred and thirty feet wide and

ninety feet high. In the centre of the shaft the two ramps touched rim

to rim enabling a pupil pilot aboard one of the Academy's Skyhawks to

fly from one to the other, weaving his way up and down the shaft in an

almost infinitely variable series of ascending or descending

figure-eights and tight right- or left-hand turns around the two

pillars.

Runways for take-off and landing were situated in flight access tunnels

at the top and bottom of the rig and these were linked by express

elevators able to carry two Skyhawks with their wings folded.

The overall height of the Snake Pit was some twelve hundred feet. The

shaft containing the spiral ramps measured seven hundred by three

hundred and fifty feet.

Each flight access tunnel was one hundred and fifty feet wide, one

hundred feet high, and a quarter of a mile long.

And the whole colossal structure, together with the other rigs and the

rest of the Flight Academy had been drilled, hammered and blasted out

of the bedrock several hundred feet beneath the desert sands of New

Mexico near the ruins of a city that, in the prehistory of the

Federation, had been known as Alamogordo.

Already rated above-average, Brickman knew every twist and turn of the

Snake Pit. He knew he would make it through to the finish line,

out-performing the rest of the senior year in the process. But that

wasn't enough.

Brickman was intent on gaining the maximum possible points.

That was the difficult part. It meant his performance had to be

faultless. Not only on the Snake Pit but on all the other rigs and

flight simulators too. For Brickman was not only aiming to finish top

of his class; he wanted to rack up a perfect score. Something no

wingman had ever achieved in the hundred year history of the Academy.

Fate had ordained that the graduation date of Brickman's class

COincided with his seventeenth birthday and the one hundredth

anniversary of the Academy. The traditional passing out parade in

which the senior third-year cadets were awarded their wings was

scheduled to be part of the celebrations. When he had learned of this

providential conjunction upon his enrolment as a Freshman, Brickman had

determined to provide the Academy and his guardians with something

extra to celebrate.

Steven Roosevelt Brickman. The first double century wingman. Leader

of the