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the time the tractor and pressor crews kept perfect time with him...
Something like this had occurred before, not to mention other things which, it
was rumored, had driven one engineer to drink and at least four off it. But it
was not until the size factor had been taken into consideration as it had
today with this monster tri-di projection that there had been such promising
results. Previously it had been as if a mouse were manhandling a St. Bernard
during the past week or so-no wonder the brontosaurus had been in a frenzy of
panic when all sorts of inexplicable things had been happening to it and the
only reason it could see for them was two tiny creatures that were just barely
visible to it!
But the patient's species had roamed its home planet for a hundred million
years, and it personally was immensely long-lived. Although its two brains
were tiny it was really much smarter than a dog, so that very soon Conway had
it trying to sit and beg.
And two hours later the brontosaurus took off.
It rose rapidly from the ground, a monstrous, ungainly and indescribable
object with its massive legs making involuntary walking movements and the
great neck and tail hanging down and waving slowly. Obviously it was the brain
in the sacral area and not the cranium which was handling the levitation,
Conway thought, as the great reptile approached the bunch of palm fronds which
were balanced tantalizingly two hundred feet above its head. But that was a
detail, it was levitating, that was the main thing. Unless- "Are you helping?"
Conway said sharply to Arretapec.
The reply was flat and emotionless by necessity, but had the VUXG been human
it would have been a yell of sheer triumph.
"Good old Emily!" somebody shouted in Conway's phones, probably one of the
beam operators, then, "Look, she's passing it!"
The brontosaur had missed the suspended bundle of foliage and was still rising
fast. It made a clumsy, convulsive attempt to reach it in passing, which had
set up a definite spin. Further wild movements of neck and tail were
aggravating it.
"Better get her down out of there," said a second voice urgently. "That
artificial sun could scorch her tail off."
And that spin is making it panicky," agreed Conway. "Tractor beam men...!"
But he was too late. Sun, earth and sky were careening in wild, twisting loops
around a being which had been hitherto accustomed to solid ground under its
feet. It wanted down or up, or somewhere. Despite Arretapec's frantic attempts
to soothe it, it teleported again.
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Conway saw the great mountain of flesh and bone go hurtling off at a tangent,
at least four times faster than its original speed. He yelled, "H
sector men! Cushion it down, gently."
But there was neither time nor space for the pressor beam men to slow it down
gently. To keep it from crashing fatally to the surface-also through the
underlying plating and out into space outside-they had to slow it down
steadily but firmly, and to the brontosaurus that necessarily sharp braking
must have felt like a physical blow. It teleported again.
"C-sector, it's coming at you!"
But at C it was a repetition of what happened with H, the beast panicked and
shot off in another direction. And so it went on, with the great reptile
rocketing from one side of the ship's interior to the other until...
"Skempton here," said a brisk authoritative voice. "My men say the pressor
beam mounts were not designed to stand this sort of thing. Insufficiently
braced. The hull plating has sprung in eight places."
"Can't you-"
"We're sealing the leaks as fast as we can, Skempton cut in, answering
Conway's question before he could ask it. "But this battering is shaking the
ship apart...
Dr. Arretapec joined in at that point.
"Doctor Conway," the being said, "while it is obvious that the patient has
shown a surprising aptitude with its new talent, its use is uncontrolled
because of its fear and confusion. This traumatic experience will cause
irreparable damage, I am convinced, to the being's thinking processes...
"Conway, look out!"
The reptile had come to a halt near ground level a few hundred yards away,
then shot off at right angles toward Conway's position. But it was traveling a
straight line inside a hollow sphere, and the surface was curving up to meet
it.
Conway saw the hurtling body lurch and spin as the beam operators sought
desperately to check its velocity. Then suddenly the mighty body was ripping
through the low, thickly-growing trees, then it was plowing a wide, shallow
furrow through the soft, swampy ground and with a small mountain of earth-
uprooted vegetation piling up in front of it, Conway was right in its path.
Before he could adjust the control of his anti-gravity pack the ground came up
and fell on him. For a few minutes he was too dazed to realize why it was he
couldn't move, then he saw that he was buried to the waist in a sticky cement
of splintered branches and muddy earth. The heavings and shudderings he felt
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