"That won't be their first order," Bickel said. "Seven nations invested one hell of a pile of money and effort and dreams in this business. They have a purpose which they won't give up easily."

Too crystal sharp, Flattery thought. And he asked: "Who're you nominating for dehyb?"

"Prudence Weygand, M.D.," Bickel said.

"You think we need another doctor, eh?" Flattery asked.

"I think we need Prudence Weygand. She's a doctor, sure, but she can also function as a nurse to replace... Maida. She's a woman and we may need female thinking. You have any objections to Weygand, Tim?"

"What's my opinion worth?" Timberlake muttered. "You two've decided it, haven't you?"

Bickel already had turned toward his own action couch. He hesitated at the petulance in Timberlake's voice, then went on to the couch, pulled the full-vacuum suit from the rack beneath the couch, and began suiting up: He spoke without turning: "I'll take over here while you and Raj bring her out of hyb. You'd both better suit up, too, and stay suited. Without an OMC at the controls -" He shrugged, finished sealing the suit, and stretched out in his action couch. "I'll take the red switch on the count."

Timberlake was caught up then in the changeover. The master board swung across on its travelers, stopped as it made junction with Bickel's console.

"What if Moonbase answers while we're in the tanks?" Flattery asked. "We won't be able to stop the dehyb and come up for a -"

"What's to do except record the message?" Bickel asked.

He began adjusting hull-integrity sensors, finished that, checked the Accept-And-Translate system, swung the AAT board close beside him where he could see its telltale when Moonbase replied.

Flattery shrugged, got out his own full-vacuum suit. He noted that Timberlake already was suiting up - but with a fumbling reluctance.

Tim senses Bickel taking absolute command, Flattery thought, but he doesn't know the necessity for it... and he cannot bring himself to like it. He will, though.

Bickel satisfied himself the ship was functioning as well as it could without the homeostatic control of an OMC. He sank back to watch the board as the others left Comcentral. The hatch seals hissed and there came the metallic slap of the magnetic locks as the hatch closed and resealed itself.

Now, Bickel felt the ship around him as though he had neural connections to every sensor revealed on his board. The Earthling lay spread out for him...onstrous juggernaut... yet fragile as an egg...in egg.

Against his will, Bickel's attention drifted toward that dead light on the lower left corner of his board - the light that should have been glowing a live yellow to denote that all was well with the OMC.

But all was not well with the OMC; the unsleeping brains had failed.

They were stress-tested for every conceivable situation, Bickel told himself. Something inconceivable happened. Or did it?

Timberlake's question nagged at him. "Why didn't they prepare us for it?"

The master board above him grew a line of yellow lights that told him the ship's gravity center had shifted. A wild shift in the gravity field had torn colony cargo from its holdowns and killed Maida. Gently, to avoid oscillations, Bickel began adjusting controls to bring the field back into line.

How much simpler it would have been to get along without gravity, he thought. But medical science had never really solved the problem of the human physical deterioration that resulted from existence in prolonged null-gravity. The balance mechanism of the inner ear still was the most susceptible. Four to five weeks without gravity brought permanent damage for some subjects. So they lived with the minimal field system - the gravity-field mechanism that had developed an unexpected deadly bug out here.

The telltale lights began to wink out.

Bickel followed the balance readjustment carefully. They had only the most tenuous theory on what caused that field to shift this way. They suspected local anomalies as they moved through the solar system's own gravitational field.

The last telltale went dark.

Bickel sank back onto the couch, drew a deep, ragged breath. Perspiration covered his body and he felt his suit system laboring to compensate.

This watch on Com-central could become a particular kind of hell, Bickel realized. The suspenseful responsibility, duel with an unknown death, wore you down. You controlled only the most essential ship functions from here. Monitor instruments had never been intended for this work. Fine adjustments and delicate repairs had to be ignored until they reached that point of gross demand where a crewman had to be sent out to direct the servos in their work.

An increment of damage could be computed - the kind of damage, one thing added to another, where the ship itself would cease operating. There was a death point for the ship out ahead of them and it could be computed as a function of damage.

Bickel avoided feeding the problem into the computer. He knew his own limits. Precise knowledge of that unknown moment would hamper him unless it became a matter of immediacy. They had months yet - perhaps the full ten. And ten months was forever, the way things now stood. The ship was far more likely to meet disaster in some other form; he could feel it.

Something about the Tin Egg was sour - Big Sour. It did not make sense to Bickel that a man had to sit here in Com-central, the strain of responsibility increasing with each heartbeat, waiting and knowing some mechanism or balancing function of the ship was headed for trouble - yet unable to meet the problem with more than a gross, clumsy makeshift.

With the OMCs, this ship balance had been a finely tuned neuro-servo reflex, almost automatic - as homeostatic in response as that of a healthy human body.

Bickel added his own corollary question now to the one Timberlake had posed: Why were all the eggs put in one basket?

AS SHE AWOKE, Prudence thought: We made it!

Excitement filled her at the thought of stepping out onto a virgin world with all its strange newness and never-before problems. Six failures were worth it. The seventh try was a charm. We have succeeded. Otherwise... otherwise...

Her mind bogged down in sluggishness. Otherwise was a concept with several pathways out of it.

The tingle-ache of dehyb ran along the muscles of her arms and legs, produced transient knots of pain. She knew as a doctor the reasons for the pain, could rationalize the fact of it: human hybernation was a far different process from animal hibernation. Not a drop of water could remain in the body - and you went so close to the borders of death that some contended you were suspended within death.

She tried to sit up.

It was then she saw Timberlake and Flattery looking down at her where she lay on the lab shuttle. Their expressions brought otherwise to full focus. For a moment, she looked beyond them to the tubes and stimulant plugs that had been removed from functional contact with her body.

Flattery restrained her. "Easy now, Dr. Weygand," he said.

Dr. Weygand, she thought. Not Prudence. Not Prue. Dr. Weygand. Cold formality.

She began losing that first elation.

Then Flattery began explaining in his soft, soothing voice and she knew her elation had to be put away. The contingency problem had arisen. She had been awakened for that.

"Just tell me who we lost," she said, and her throat hurt from its months of disuse.