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said.
    He unlocked his safety cocoon, shifted his suit to por-table, launched himself diagonally across Com-central to the Tool & Repair hatch. The weightless drifting reminded him they had a time limit on returning to gravity conditions. Too long without gravity and the crew would suffer permanent physical damage.

Chapter 7
    I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror … A being whom I myself had formed, and imbued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain.
    —Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    Bickel grabbed a hatch handle to steady himself and swung out the repair traveler. He opened a panel to get at the gravity system, identified the cables, and bent to his work. He went about it silently, angrily, with swift, decisive movements, and all the time he thought about their dilemma.
    Iron. Free ions of iron out here?
    Possible, but was there a simpler answer to the anomaly, something that would produce an illusory report on their instruments?
    Was it possible that some part of the ship’s computer/ reporting system had been concealed from them, shielded away from their prying? He knew it not only was possible but probable. Why would Moonbase do that?
    The complete answer escaped him, but he knew he would have to continue probing for it.
    Presently, he had an improvised cage switch clamped into the main power cable into the gravity generator. He made the connections to the breaker, tested the circuits with a false load, replaced the cover plate.
    “It’ll have to be reset manually each time,” he said. He put a foot against the bulkhead, propelled himself back to his couch, locked in, glanced at Timberlake. “System balanced?”
    “Near as you can tell from here,” Timberlake said. “Give it a try, Raj.”
    Flattery checked to see that both Timberlake and Bickel were sealed in their cocoons, closed the gravity switch. The sound of the generators building up grew to a faint hiss that subsided as the system stabilized. Flattery felt the pressure against his shoulder blades, reached up to the board, slowly refined Timberlake’s settings.
    “Tim,” Bickel said, “I want the schematics for the OMC chamber—every sensor tie coded for function—and laid out in layers from gross to fine. I’ll need the same thing for servo control, a complete—”
    “Why?” Timberlake asked.
    “Are you thinking of tying in a colonist’s brain?” Flattery demanded, trying to hide his feelings of outrage at the idea.
    “A mature human brain probably wouldn’t survive such a transfer,” Timberlake said. And he felt shame at how much the thought had appealed to him. Every inhibition of his training cried out against such a move. But if the OMC system were restored, none of them here ever again would have to undergo the nerve-crushing responsibility of that Com-central master board. He looked up at the live green arrow denoting that Flattery had the controls, felt himself go clammy with fear at the thought of that arrow swinging back to his position.
    “What the hell!” Bickel snapped. “Where’d you two get that idea? Not from anything I said.” He lifted his head from the cocoon clamps, looked from Timberlake to Flattery. “We don’t know what happened to our three perfect brains . Why the devil’d I want to tie in an untested one?” He sank back. “It’s impossible anyway. A man should have some say in what’s done to him. How could we poll everyone in the hyb tanks? We can’t wake them all.”
    “You thinking of dismantling the OMC controls and converting us to a closed ecological system?” Flattery asked. “If you are, you should—”
    He broke off as the high-pitched hummm-buzzz-hummmm of the AAT receiver filled the room, alerting them that a message was being processed.
    Bickel followed the play of lights across his board as the message was gulped by the receivers, fed through the comparison