Tunnel in the Sky - Tapa blanda

A high school senior goes through the gate to an unknown planet for a two-to-ten day final exam in Advanced Survival, and realizes, after a period of fighting the elements and wildlife, that something has gone wrong with the gate and what was a brief survival exam is an endless struggle for life.A high school senior goes through the gate to an unknown planet for a two-to-ten day final exam in Advanced Survival, but soon realizes that something is wrong with the gate and what was an exam is now a struggle for life.

It was just a test . . .
But something had gone wrong. Terribly wrong. What was to have been a standard ten-day survival test had suddenly become an indefinite life-or-death nightmare.
Now they were stranded somewhere in the universe, beyond contact with Earth . . . at the other end of a tunnel in the sky. This small group of young men and women, divested of all civilized luxuries and laws, were being forced to forge a future of their own . . . a strange future in a strange land where sometimes not even the fittest could survive!
". . . fascinating . . . ingenious . . . this a book in the grand tradition of high literature!"
-- The New York Times
From the Paperback edition.