To tell you the truth,” the quiet voice of the Monitor went on, your case is incidental to my main work here. My job is to arrange accommodation and so on for the various life-forms who will shortly be arriving to staff this hospital, and to do everything possible to avoid friction developing between them when they do come. There are a lot of finicky details to attend to, but at the moment I’m free. And I’m curious about you, O’Mara. I’d like to ask some questions.”
This is one smooth operator! thought one half of O’Mara’s mind. The other half noted that the air-supply controls were set to suit the conditions he had in mind. He left the panel hanging loose and began pulling up a floor section to get at the artificial gravity grid underneath. A little absently he said, “You’ll have to excuse me if I work while we talk. Caxton will explain-”
“I’ve told him about the kid,” Caxton broke in, “and if you think you’re fooling him by pretending to be the harassed mother type. . .
“I understand,” said the Monitor. “I’d also like to say that forcing you to live with an FROB infant when such a course was unnecessary comes under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment, and that about ten years should be knocked off your sentence for what you’ve taken this past five weeks-that is, of course, if you’re found guilty. And now, I always think it’s better to see who one is talking to. Can we have vision, please?”
The suddenness with which the artificial gravity grids switched from one to two Gs caught O’Mara by surprise. His arms folded under him and his chest thumped the floor. A frightened bawl from his patient in the next room must have disguised the noise he made from his listeners because they didn’t mention it. He did the great-grand-daddy of all pressups and heaved himself to his knees.
He fought to keep from gasping. “Sorry, my vision transmitter is on the blink.”
The Monitor was silent just long enough to let O’Mara know that he knew he was lying, and that he would disregard the lie for the moment. He said finally, “Well, at least you can see me,” and O’Mara’s vision plate
lit up. (
It showed a youngish man with close-cropped hair whose eyes seemed twenty years older than the rest of his features. The shoulder tabs of a Major were visible on the trim, dark-green tunic and the collar bone bore a caduceus. O’Mara thought that in different circumstances he would have liked this man.
“I’ve something to do in the next room,” O’Mara lied again. “Be with you in a minute.~~
He began the job of setting the anti-gravity belt on his suit to two Gs repulsion, which would exactly counteract the floor’s present attraction and allow him to increase the pull to four Gs without too much discomfort to himself. He would then reset the belt for three Gs, and that would give him back a normal gravity apparent of one G.
At least that was what should have happened.
Instead the G-belt or the floor grids or both started producing half-G fluctuations, and the room went mad. It was like being in an express elevator which was constantly being started and stopped. The frequency of the surges built up rapidly until O’Mara was being shaken up and down so hard his teeth rattled. Before he could react to this a new and more devastating complication occurred. As well as variations in strength the floor grids were no longer acting at right angles to their surface, but yawed erratically from ten to thirty degrees from the vertical. No storm tossed ship had ever pitched and rolled as viciously as this. O’Mara staggered, grabbed frantically for the couch, missed and was flung heavily against the wall. The next surge sent him skidding against the opposite wall before he was able to switch off the G-belt.
The room settled down to a steady gravity-pull of two Gs again.
“Will this take long?” asked the Monitor suddenly.
O’Mara had almost forgotten the Major during the past hectic seconds. He did his best to make his voice sound both natural and as if it was coming from the next room as he replied, “It might. Could you call back later?”