"Quite natural. But it being your first time—in quite a number of ways, I might add—it will be necessary for you to undergo some conditioning."
"Conditioning?" asked Craig.
"Yes. You have spent eleven years in space. Your body is conditioned to a normal state of free fall, or at best to a state of acceleration."
"Yeah, I know. Once on Gerymeade...."
"You were ill, couldn't keep your balance, felt dizzy. That is why all spacemen carry PON, paraoxylnebutal, with them. It helps suppress certain physiological reactions to an entirely new set of conditions. Channels of the ear, for example. They play an important part in our awareness of balance. They operate on a simple gravity principle. Without gravity they act up for a time, then gradually lose function. Returning to gravity is rather frightening at first."
"I know all about this, Captain."
"You've undoubtedly read popularizations in tapezines. But you have experienced it briefly."
"I expect to have some trouble at first." Craig was disturbed by the wordy psychologist. What was the man actually saying?
"Do you know what sailors of ancient times meant by 'sea legs?'" asked Wyandotte. "Men on a rolling ocean acclimated themselves to a rolling horizontal. They had trouble when they went ashore and the horizontal didn't roll any more.
"It meant more than that. There were excellent psychological reasons for the old stereotype, the 'drunken sailor.' A port city was a frightening thing to an old sailor—but let's begin our little job at the beginning. I'll turn you over to psychometry for the usual tests and pick you up tomorrow morning at, say, 0900."