The Bay Room Door

The drill sergeant didn't need to shout – he was six feet seven inches tall with shoulders wide as a train track, nut brown skin, and a set of gimlet eyes that I knew, instinctively, not only saw when the sparrow in the wood fell, but had probably lasered the damn thing.

The sergeant did not need to shout, but he did.

"Who can tell me what this is?"

A gaggle of idiots raised their hands.

"You, Private Volunteer," said the Sergeant, pointing at one of the brownnosers.

"It's a door, Drill Sergeant."

"A door? A door? You think this is a door!?" screamed the man who had a few minutes before introduced himself as our new mommy, daddy and sweet Aunt Agnus. "You got to be hosing me, Private. Get up here!"

The boy – he was no more than eighteen and looked perhaps a big thirteen – jumped to his feet from the cold bay room floor and stood at attention before the sergeant. His forehead barely reached the five rows of brilliant Terran Army ribbons on the big man's chest.

"Put your nose against it, private."

"Sergeant?"

"Put your nose against that door, private, before I do it for you. Good. Now take a good whiff, does it smell like a door?"

The boy sniffed. That might have been funny if I had seen it on TV or at a movie, but not now, not here.

"Um, yes, sergeant?" quavered the boy.

The sergeant keyed the door open with a badge he flipped from his pants pocket. The bay room door whizzed upward, scraping the boy's nose in the process. To his credit the private flinched, but did not step back.

Bright sunlight spilled into the barracks, mitigated from deathly rays of burning heat and radiation to mere comforting splashes of yellowish beams by the highly polarized plasma shields encasing this end of the station. Our mother star hung, partially eclipsed, just over the darkened disc of the Earth in a black blanket of stars. Collectively we blinked, but no one was dumb enough to "Ooo" or "Ahh".

In the near view, a green steel walkway lay beyond the door with a cement stairwell leading downward. Below us our brother unit was probably receiving the same object lesson in the lower bay.

"That like any door in your mama's house?" asked the sergeant.

"No sir," said the boy.

"'Cause it ain't just a door. Look out there, all of you. The only thing between you and a case of the cold explodies is a thin shield of energized plasma. If that shield should ever fail, this door could save your lives. Go sit down, private."

The sergeant keyed the door shut.

"Each of you will take turns manning this portal. It has been programmed to recognize your bio-signatures and my keycard. It will NOT open from the outside. When you perform portal post, you WILL ask anyone, AND I MEAN ANYONE, who approaches this portal for proof or identification. If that person cannot produce a red card like this one, you will refer him or her to the CQ."

The sergeant passed around his keycard for each of us to handle. He also showed us how the person requesting entry should pass the card through a secure drawer beside the entryway. Then we each took a turn opening and closing the door.

"Now that you have all mastered portal post, it's time for a little run. Out to the track, the lot of ya, and don't forget your water! Except you."

My heart froze. Despite my best efforts to blend into the crowd, to become as invisible to non-commissioned eyes as a speck of cotton on snow, the sergeant was looking at me.

"You got portal post, Private."

I swallowed. "Yes, Sergeant."

The others filed out, sparing me no backward glances. In less than a minute I was alone in the bay with its smell of bleached floors and young men's sweat. I turned to look around my new home.

"DOOR GUARD!"

I jumped. Hell, I almost wet myself.

The voice had come from outside.

"DOOR GUARD, GET OUT HERE!"

My heart launched from rest to Olympic sprint in the space of three seconds and I instantly began to sweat in my new Terran Army fatigues.

Had I done something wrong?

"DOOR GUARD, YOU HEAR ME?!"

The sergeant had said not to open the door… except he was the sergeant. Shouldn't I open the door for him? He had that red badge. I had handled it not five minutes ago.

"DOOR GUARD! GET OUT HERE NOW!!"

I opened the door and stepped out. I was shaking.

"Yes… sir?"

No one stood on the green balcony, or on the stairs. Tentatively, I peered over the railing.

A sergeant stood there bedecked in Terran Blue, but not my sergeant. It was my brother unit's sergeant. And he wasn't looking at me.

I was safe. I was not in the rough. I was –

The door swooshed closed behind me before I could half turn around.

Frantic, I tried pushing it open, but to no avail. On this side the door was as seamless as the surface of a still pond.

I turned and gazed into space beyond the plasma shields, despairing. I would have to find the sergeant and tell him I had locked myself out of our bay room. I would probably be washed out of the Army, and on my first day. I'd probably have to go back to Kentucky and work on my brother-in-law's chicken farm. Chickens really, really stink.

The door swooshed open behind me.

A soldier, the one the sergeant had made a spectacle of earlier, stood there, wide-eyed.

"I forgot my canteen," he said, as if apologizing.

I dove through the open doorway, stood, and keyed it shut in his face. Only once the door was sealed and silence descended, did I dare breathe.

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