I tried to get my breath and stop trembling. “Miss Russell-I am very sorry-but please-don’t turn that on again. I can’t stand Martians.”
She looked at me as if she could not believe what she saw but despised it anyhow. “I told them,” she said slowly and scornfully, “that this ridiculous scheme would not work.”
“I am very sorry. I cannot help it.”
She did not answer but climbed heavily out of the cider press. She did not walk as easily at two gravities as Dak did, but she managed. She left without another word, closing the door as she went.
She did not return. Instead the door was opened by a man who appeared to be inhabiting a giant kiddie stroller. “Howdy there, young fellow!” he boomed out. He was sixtyish, a bit too heavy, and bland; I did not have to see his diploma to be aware that his was a “bedside” manner.
“How do you do, sir?”
“Well enough. Better at lower acceleration.” He glanced down at the contrivance he was strapped into. “How do you like my corset-on-wheels? Not stylish, perhaps, but it takes some of the strain off my heart. By the way, just to keep the record straight, I’m Dr. Capek, Mr. Bonforte’s personal therapist. I know who you are. Now what’s this we hear about you and Martians?”
I tried to explain it clearly and unemotionally.
Dr. Capek nodded. “Captain Broadbent should have told me. I would have changed the order of your indoctrination program. The captain is a competent young fellow in his way but his muscles run ahead of his brain on occasion . . . He is so perfectly normal an extrovert that he frightens me. But no harm done. Mr. Smythe, 1 want your permission to hypnotize you. You have my word as a physician that it will be used only to help you in this matter and that I will in no wise tamper with your personal integration.” He pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch of the sort that is almost a badge of his profession and took my pulse.
I answered, “You have my permission readily, sir-but it won’t do any good. I can’t go under.” I had learned hypnotic techniques myself during the time I was showing my mentalist act, but my teachers had never had any luck hypnotizing me. A touch of hypnotism is very useful to such an act, especially if the local police aren’t too fussy about the laws the medical association has hampered us with.
“So? Well, we’ll just have to do the best we can, then. Suppose you relax, get comfortable, and we’ll talk about your problem.” He still kept the watch in his hand, fiddling with it and twisting the chain, after he had stopped taking my pulse. I started to mention it, since it was catching the reading light just over my head, but decided that it was probably a nervous habit of which he was not aware and really too trivial a matter to call to the attention of a stranger.
“I’m relaxed,” I assured him. “Ask me anything you wish. Or free association, if you prefer.”
“Just let yourself float,” he said softly. “Two gravities makes you feel heavy, doesn’t it? I usually just sleep through it myself. It pulls the blood out of the brain, makes one sleepy. They are beginning to boost the drive again. We’ll all have to sleep . . . We’ll be heavy . . . We’ll have to sleep. .
I started to tell him that he had better put his watch away-or it would spin right out of his hand. Instead I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the other acceleration bunk was occupied by Dr. Capek. “Howdy, bub,” he greeted me. “I got tired of that confounded perambulator and decided to stretch out here and distribute the strain.”
“Uh, are we back on two gravities again?”
“Eh? Oh yes! We’re on two gravities.”
“I’m sorry I blacked out. How long was I asleep?”
“Oh, not very long. How do you feel?”
“Fine. Wonderfully rested, in fact.”
“It frequently has that effect. Heavy boost, I mean. Feel like seeing some more pictures?”