Something changed, hardened, in Vaillant's flat face. He said, "I expected it. I'll be right there. You know what to do."
He did something to the disk and spoke into it again. "Paula, take over here."
He stood up. Kieran looked up at him, feeling numb and stupid. "I'd like to know some things."
"Later," said Vaillant. "We've got troubles. Stay where you are."
He went rapidly out of the room. Kieran looked after him, wondering. Troubles—troubles in a starship? And a century had passed—
He suddenly felt an emotion that shook his nerves and tightened his guts. It was beginning to hit him now. He sat up in the bunk and swung his legs out of it and tried to stand but could not, he was too weak. All he could do was to sit there, shaking.
His mind could not take it in. It seemed only minutes ago that he had been walking along the corridor in Wheel Five. It seemed that Wheel Five must exist, that the Earth, the people, the time he knew, must still be somewhere out there. This could be some kind of a joke, or some kind of psychological experiment. That was it—the space-medicine boys were always making way-out experiments to find out how men would bear up in unusual conditions, and this must be one of them—
A woman came into the room. She was a dark woman who might have been thirty years old, and who wore a white shirt and slacks. She would, he thought, have been good-looking if she had not looked so tired and so edgy.
She came over and looked down at him and said to him,
"Don't try to get up yet. You'll feel better very soon."