ugh the pseudo-gravity of centrifugal force had
already fallen to a mere shadow of a shadow of itself, and some of the
personnel were feeling the combined squeamishness of the Coriolis
effect near the center of the ship, and the lessening of the gravity,
pseudo though it had been, that they had had with them in the rim.

As the last tardy technician arrived, the medics were already
selecting out the nearly ten per cent of the personnel who had been
exposed to abnormally dangerous quantities of radiation during the
withdrawal procedure, which included, of course, all the personnel
that had been aboard Project Hot Rod at the time of the flare.

Even as the medics went about injecting carefully controlled dosages
of sulph-hydral anti-radiation drugs, the beginnings of nausea were
evident among those who had been overexposed. However, only the
dosimeters could be relied on to determine whether the nausea was more
from the effects of radiation; the effects of the near-free-fall and
Coriolis experienced in the hub; or perhaps some of it was
psychosomatic, and had no real basis other than the fear engendered by
emergency conditions.

Major Steve Elbertson was already in such violent throes of nausea
that his attending medic was having difficulty reading his dosimeter
as he made use of the plastic bag attached to his hammock; and he was
obviously, for the moment at least, one of the least dignified of the
persons on board.

Displays of the various labs in the rim moved restlessly across most
of the thirty-six channels of the computer's video displays, as Bessie
scanned about, searching for dangerously loose equipment or personnel
that might somehow have been left behind.

[Illustration]

In the Biology lab, the white rabbit that had escaped was frantically
struggling in the near-zero centrifugal field with literally huge
bounds, seeking some haven wherein his disturbed senses might feel
more at home, and eventually finding a place in an overturned
wastebasket wedged between a chair and a desk, both suction-cupped to
the floor. Frightened and alone, with only his nose poking out of the
burrow beneath the trash of the wastebasket, he blinked back at the
silent camera through which Bessie observed him, and elicited from her
a murmur of pity.

Seven minutes and forty-five seconds. The digital readout at the
bottom of Bessie's console showed the computer's prediction of fifteen
seconds remaining until the expected flood of