On the home planet this involved something like a major sandblasting operation, but O’Mara thought that this was probably due to the pressure and stickiness of the atmosphere. Another problem which he would have to solve was how to administer a hard enough consoling pat. He doubted very much if he could fly into a temper every time the baby needed its equivalent of a nursing.
But at least he would have plenty of time to work out something, because one of the things he had found out about them was that they were wakeful for two full days at a stretch, and slept for five.
During the first five-day period of sleep O’Mara was able to devise methods of petting and bathing his charge, and even had a couple of days free to relax and gather his strength for the two days of hard labor ahead when the infant woke up. It would have been a killing routine for a man of ordinary strength, but O’Mara discovered that after the first two weeks of it he seemed to make the necessary physical and mental adjustment to it. And at the end of four weeks the pain and stiffness had gone out of his leg and he had no worries regarding the baby at all.
Outside, the project neared completion. The vast, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle was finished except for a few unimportant pieces around the edges. A Monitor Corps investigator had arrived and was asking questions-of everybody, apparently, except O’Mara.
He couldn’t help wondering if Waring had been questioned yet, and if he had, what the tractor man had said. The investigator was a psychologist, unlike the mere Engineer officers already on the project, and very likely no fool. O’Mara thought that he, himself, was no fool either; he had worked things out and by rights he should feel no anxiety over the outcome of the Monitor’s investigations. O’Mara had sized up the situation here and the people in it, and the reactions of everyone were predictable. But it all depended on what Waring told that Monitor.
You’re turning yellow! O’Mara thought in angry self-disgust. Now that your pet theories are being put to the test you’re scared silly they won’t work. You want to crawl to Waring and lick his boots!
And that course, O’Mara knew, would be introducing a wild variable into what should be a predictable situation, and it would almost certainly wreck everything. Yet the temptation was strong nevertheless.
It was at the beginning of the sixth week of his enforced guardianship of the infant, while he was reading up on some of the weird and wonderful diseases to which baby FROBs were prone, his airlock telltale indicated a visitor. He got off the couch quickly and faced the opening seal, trying hard to look as if he hadn’t a worry in the world.
But it was only Caxton.
“I was expecting the Monitor,” said O’Mara.
Caxton grunted. “Hasn’t seen you yet, eh? Maybe he figures it would be a waste of time. After what we’ve told him he probably thinks the case is open and shut. He’ll have cuffs with him when he comes.”
O’Mara just looked at him. He was tempted to ask Caxton if the Corpsman had questioned Waring yet, but it was only a small temptation.
“My reason for coming,” said Caxton harshly, “is to find out about the water. Stores department tells me you’ve been requisitioning treble the amount of water that you could conceivably use. You starting an aquarium or something?”
Deliberately O’Mara avoided giving a direct answer. He said, “It’s time for the baby’s bath, would you like to watch?”
He bent down, deftly removed a section of floor plating and reached inside.
“What are you doing?” Caxton burst out. “Those are the gravity grids, you’re not allowed to touch-”
Suddenly the floor took on a thirty degree list. Caxton staggered against a wall, swearing. O’Mara straightened up, opened the inner seal of the airlock, then started up what was now a stiff gradient toward the bedroom. Still insisting loudly that O’Mara was neither allowed nor qualified to alter the artificial gravity settings, Caxton followed.
Inside, O’Mara said, “This is the spare food sprayer with the nozzle modified to project a high pressure jet of water.” He pointed the instrument and began to demonstrate, playing the jet against a small area of the infant’s hide. The subject of the demonstration was engaged in pushing what was left of one of O’Mara’s chairs into even more unrecognizable shapes, and ignored them.