Earth Girl by Janet Edwards

Author:Janet Edwards
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, General
ISBN: 9780007443529
Publisher: Pyr
Published: 2012-08-15T23:00:00+00:00

16

I knew that surviving the next three days would be hard. I’m good at doing things, not sitting around and waiting for them to happen. There was an extra complication as well. At breakfast the next morning, Playdon called Fian and me away from the rest of the class for a quiet word.

‘I’m going to swap your two roles,’ he said, with his most evil smile. ‘Fian, you’re going to tag lead, and Jarra will act as your tag support.’

I felt an instinctive surge of anger, but caught myself. I’d made this mistake before, and wasn’t going to repeat it. Playdon knew what he was doing and I should trust him. It was Fian who objected.

‘I don’t want to be tag leader.’

Playdon laughed. ‘It’s only for a few days.’

Fian developed a stubborn look. ‘Then why bother? I want to get better at my own job.’

‘Because this will help you both to get better at your jobs.’ Playdon turned to me. ‘Jarra, for a Foundation course tag leader, you’re outstanding, but you can be better still. It’s my job to help you achieve that. It’s perfectly obvious you’ve worked as a heavy lift operator, but never on tag support.’

‘It is?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve talked to Earth 19 about your work during the rescue of Cassandra 2, and they said exactly what I was thinking. You’re a dream tag leader for a heavy lift operator; you don’t just tag any stable point on a rock, but go for somewhere convenient for the heavy lift beams.’

I flushed with pleasure, but of course he followed the compliment with a criticism.

‘You’re a dream for the heavy lift operators, but a nightmare for your tag support. A few days changing roles with Fian will fix that. You’ll learn about blind spots and awkward beam angles that can make it hard for your tag support to pull you out of trouble. You’ll learn to avoid putting yourself in those places, and that will make the second or two of difference which might save your life one day.’

I was going to hate doing this, but I trusted him so … ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Fian, this is your chance to see things through a tag leader’s eyes. What they need to do, how they need to do it, the decisions they need to make. It’ll help you anticipate Jarra’s movements on a dig site, so you see the dangers coming before they actually happen.’

Fian reluctantly nodded.

‘And when team 1 aren’t working, I’ll try and get both of you spending some time watching sensors with me,’ Playdon continued. ‘If either of you progress to be a research or teaching team leader one day, you must be experts on sensors. That may be five or ten years away, but learning sensors takes time.’

So for the next three days I spent my dig site time doing things I hated, and couldn’t even resent it because I soon realized Playdon was right. I hadn’t known just how difficult the tag support job was. I sat tensely

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