A nightmare of visual sensations ebbed into Craig's mind. He was vaguely aware of the moans of other men in the vaultlike room. Wave upon wave of nausea swept him as he watched the seam lines bend and warp fantastically. He snapped his eyelids shut, only to begin feeling the nightmarish bodily sensations once more. He felt the cot slowly rise longitudinally, felt himself upside down, then the snap of turning right side up once more--and he knew that neither he nor the cot had moved so much as an inch. Craig heard the voices around him, muffled, as though talking through wadding. "... got it bad." "We better take him out." "... pretty bad." "He'll go into shock." "... never make it the twelfth." "We better yank him." "I'm ... all right," Craig mumbled at the voices. He struggled with the bonds of his cot. With terrible effort he forced his eyes open. Two white-clad figures, ridiculously out of proportion, hovered wraithlike over him. Four elongated eyes peered at him. _Attendants coming for to take me home...._ "Touch me and I'll kick your teeth in!" he yelled. "I'm going to Terra. Wish you were going to Terra?" Then it was better. Oddly, he passed the twelfth day easily. By the fourteenth day, Craig knew he could stand Grav 1. The whine of the centrifuge's motors had diminished to a low hum. Either that or they had begun to produce ultra-sonic waves. Craig was not sure. Most of the men had passed through the torments of gravitational conditioning. The huge headquarters base centrifuge aboard the man-made satellite had gradually caused their bodies to respond once more to a single source of pull. They were now ready to become inhabitants of planets again, instead of free-falling ships. On the eighteenth day, automatic machinery freed them from their imprisoning cots. Clumsily and awkwardly at first, the men began to walk, to hold their heads and arms in proper attitudes. They laughed and joked about it and kidded those who were slow at adjusting. Then they again began taking paraoxylnebutal in preparation for the free-fall flight to Terra. Only one of the score of men in the centrifuge tank remained voluntarily in his cot. "Space article violator," the old man informed Craig. "Psycho, I think. Went amuck with some extraterritorials. Killed a dozen." "What will they do, exile him?" "Not to Chociante, if that's what you mean. They just jerked his space card and gave him a one-way ticket to Terra." "For twelve murders?" asked Craig incredulously. "That's enough, son." The old man eyed Craig for an instant before looking away. "Pick something to talk about. What do you figure on doing when you get to Terra, for instance?" "I'm going into Import. My father was in it for twenty years." "Sure," said the old spaceman, watching a group of young crewmen engaged in an animated conversation. "It's a good job. There's a future to it." "Yeah." Why did he have to explain anything at all to the old space tramp?