 After being drafted into the working force reserves, how many trips did Si have to complete in order to retire?
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. It was better to retire on a limited crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard. His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot training forty years ago, Lofting. His industrial aptitude dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the very few who still participate in travel to the planets. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now free from toil for the balance of his life. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space Exploration." All the long months at sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk of his retirement and his dream. Twenty-two others had taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed the finals. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run. Law prevented him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor needs again. It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working but two days a week, two hours a day. It became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none of them ever really becoming efficient. The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees were needed, a draft lottery was held.
 6 trips
 1 trip  6 trips  5 trips  15 trips