“The gravity went off,” she announced, superfluously. “You didn’t set it properly, Teague.”
“Yes I did,” Teague objected, climbing out of the machine with some difficulty, “See, it’s still turned full ON — one full gravity.”
Fontana came and joined them. “Granted, I’m not quite the expert on DeMag technology that you are, Teague, I do know something about them, and a properly set DeMag doesn’t go off that way. There’s supposed to be a fail-safe device in them which lessens the gravity very slowly, to prevent just this kind of accident. Someone could have been hurt—”
Teague had already removed the panel over the unit and was peering into its interior. Fontana thought he looked very strange, as if he were swimming down toward it, his legs sticking straight up from inside the box. Moira shoved Fontana to one side and joined Teague there.
She said, “There’s nothing wrong with the unit. Are you sure you set it properly, Teague?”
“Positive,” he said, “and if I hadn’t, it couldn’t go off suddenly like that.” He withdrew his head slowly from the box. “It’s all tied into the central computer for Life Support, and when it lets go — and nothing is perfect — it’s backed up so that the changes in gravity are very, very gradual. It doesn’t matter so much when the gravity goes off — but suppose we’d all been in free-fall, doing acrobatics or something?” He pointed at Ching, still holding the barre. “Anyone who’d been in midair like that would have come down with an impact — one of us could have broken a leg, a kneecap, a shoulder — what’s the matter, Moira?” he asked, for the red-headed woman had gone white, her freckles standing out like blots.
Her smile wavered. She said, “I — I’m not sure. It’s like that other time—”
Teague looked grim. He said, “I think we treat Moira the way coal-miners used to treat their canaries — when the bird keels over, something’s wrong even if the miner doesn’t feel it yet. When Moira looks like this, we assume there’s a real emergency. Ching, if it’s something in the computer— ” remembering that free-fall bothered her, he pushed up, floating, took her hands and gently steadied her as she lowered herself toward the floor.
He said softly, for her ears alone, “It’s got to be in your mind, Ching. You’re a G-N; your inner-ear channels are by definition perfect.”
She said, shakily, “I think somehow the geneticists missed that one,” and unexpectedly, vomited messily into the air.
“Let her alone,” Peake said swiftly, “Get her down!”
Ching moaned, still retching, “There isn’t any down.!”
Peake came and took over, checking her pulse, wiping her face. The others, with varying expressions of disgust and exasperation, were dodging drifting globules of vomit. Fontana — she too, Peake recalled, was medically trained — came over to them, a dampened towel in one hand.
She wiped Ching’s face with it, gently. Ching was still retching emptily and crying, but as Fontana touched her she made a noticeable effort to control herself.
“I’m all right. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. Here, Teague, did you need help?”
“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the setup,” Moira said, her hands caressing the DeMag machinery. “It’s perfect, nothing wrong with it.”
Fontana said with asperity, “Maybe we all dreamed it.”
Moira’s voice was impatient. “No, no, that’s not what I mean. I mean, since there’s nothing wrong with the functioning of the DeMag, whatever it is, it’s got to be in the computer tie-in.”
“The DeMags are all programmed alike,” said Ching, holding herself down with one hand and peering into the box. “If there’s anything wrong with the way this one’s set, they’d all have been doing it. And they’re all fine.”
“Everybody hang on tight,” said Teague, “I’m going to try something.” He moved the stud on the DeMag unit all the way toward the OFF position. Then, firmly, he moved it again toward ON.
Ching felt herself slide toward the floor; the gym was, reassuringly, right side up again, and her insides settled into comfort. She made a face of disgust at her stained tunic, splattered with vomit and half-digested meat and salad.
Ravi said, “And this time it went on the way it was supposed to; slowly and gradually, so that nobody plunged down and sprained an ankle or anything.”
Teague was scowling at the switch. He said, “I’d better go and check out everything in the Life-Support module. And Ching, you check out everything in the computer tie-ins—”
“It couldn’t be the computer,” she said positively, but at Moira’s glare, she said, “All right! All right! I’ll check every linkage! But do you mind if I clean up this mess in here, and go and change my clothes first — and have a shower?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As she showered, Ching thought about that.
She had insisted on cleaning up the mess in the gymnasium unaided (it had rained to the floor in a smelly shower when the gravity came on) before going to clean herself. Now she stood under the shower and scrubbed fiercely, letting the hot water wash away disgust and filth, sudsing detergent vigorously through her short straight hair.
Was it all in her mind? Granted, she had not specialized in psychology and, in fact, considered it a sloppy and inexact science. But Teague was right; as a G-N, she should have had perfect inner-ear channels, and this sudden nausea was evidently some kind of failure. She found it both puzzling and frightening. She had had perfect health all her life, except for a broken finger when she was nine, and the occasional 24-hour-virus. Now her body had betrayed her, and done it in the most humiliating way possible. Well, not quite, she told herself with a touch of bleak humor. She could have wet herself, or her bowel sphincters could have failed her like that, in public; that would have been considerably worse!
But she expected herself to be perfect, had taken her perfect body’s co-operation for granted — she had never even had a cavity in a tooth! Feeling the comfort of the hot shower, flooding down, blessedly down on her, she felt a sudden surge of repeated panic, if the gravity suddenly went off in here, I’d drown, and firmly reminded herself not to be foolish. The DeMags were backed up by all sorts of fail-safe systems. She wouldn’t drown before she could get the water turned off. Why was she being such a fool?
She stepped out, air-dried and combed her hair, enjoying the feel of its cleanness, and slipped into a clean tunic and panties, slid her feet into paper slippers. She thought, I had better go and check the computer tie-ins. Though it can’t be in computer… and again she felt the feeling of sudden, wavery panic.
Unknown I’m supposed to have a perfect body, complete with perfect inner-ear labyrinths. If my own body can go back on me like this, can I trust the computer?
Teague had gone to check on the DeMag and Life-Support units, and Fontana, as his second, had gone with him. Ravi, whose shift it was, had gone up to the Bridge to make the routine check of course, chronometer time, and navigation instrument readings. Peake and Moira, having nothing else to do, had remained in the gym, Peake completing his running laps, and Moira working on gymnastic equipment.
Peake completed the hundredth lap — which gave him a day count of a two-mile run — and slid down, folding his long legs, to watch Moira whirling herself over the parallel bars. He thought; if the gravity failed when she’s doing that, she’d break her neck! and felt himself shudder.
She saw him watching her and jumped down.
“You’re practically good enough for the Olympics,” he said, smiling.
She said, with her throaty chuckle, “Quite a lot of us are. We train very hard, after all, and there are a lot of high-mesomorph types in the Academy — short, compact, muscular. It’s one of the physical arrangements that goes with high intelligence. The other kind is like you — long, scrawny, ectomorph. There’s even been some talk of entering a few of us. Only the question is, what country’s team would we join? Australia? The world would complain, if Australia had a gene-pool like ours to dip into. Our own? Nobody’s supposed to know where we come from, and this would bring us back into national politics again. So — no Olympic stars from the Academy.”
“What country would you have competed in, if you had?” Peake asked, “Would you have liked to?”
She shrugged. “I sometimes think it would have been nice. I do like the limelight. Only if I’d had that kind of
