Free 05-A Gift From Earth by Larry Niven Page A

him, and he pushed the throttles in a little to slow down. His stomach turned a flip-flop. For the first time since he'd gotten into the car, he had time to be sick. His stomach tried to turn over, his head was splitting from the sudden changes in pressure, and the Implementation sonics were having their revenge in twitching, jerking muscles. He kept the car more or less upright until the edge of the Plateau came level with him. There was a stone wall along the edge here. He eased the car sideways, eased it back when he was over the wall, tilted it by guess and hope until he was motionless in the air, then let it drop.
    The car fell about four feet. Matt opened the door but stopped himself from getting out. What he really wanted to do was faint, but he'd left the fans idling. He found the "Neutral..., Ground ... Air" toggle and shoved it forward without much care. He was tired and sick, and he wanted to lie down.
    The toggle fell in the "Ground" slot.
    Matt stumbled out the door ... stumbled because the car was rising. It rose four inches off the ground and began to slide. During his experimenting Matt must have set the ground altitude, so that the car was now a ground-effect vehicle. It slid away from him as he tried to reach for it. He watched on hands and knees as it glided away across the uneven ground, bounced against the wall and away, against the wall and away. It circled the end of the wall and went over the edge.
    Matt flopped on his back and closed his eyes. He didn't care if he never saw a car again.
    The motion sickness, the sonic aftereffects, the poisoned air he'd breathed, the pressure changes ... they gripped him hard, and he wanted to die. Then, by stages, they began to let go. Nobody found him there. A house was nearby, but it had a vacant look. After some time Matt sat up and took stock of himself.
    His throat hurt. There was a strange, unpleasant taste in his mouth.
    He was still on Alpha Plateau. Only crew would go to the trouble of building walls along a void edge. So he was committed. Without a car he could no more leave Alpha Plateau than he could have arrived there in the first place.
    But the house was architectural coral. Bigger than anything he was used to, it was still coral. Which meant that it should have been deserted about forty years.
    He'd have to risk it. He needed cover. There were no trees nearby, and trees were dangerous to hide in; they would probably be fruit trees, and someone might come. apple-picking. Matt got up and moved toward the house.

4: The Question Man
    The Hospital was the control nexus of a world. It was not a large world, and the settled region totalled a mere 20,000 square miles; but that region needed a lot of control. It also required considerable electricity, enormous quantities of water to be moved up from the Long Fall River, and a deal of medical attention. The Hospital was big and complex and diversified. Two fifty-six-man spacecraft were its east and west corners. Since the spacecraft were hollow cylinders with the airlocks opening to the inside (to the Attic, as that inner space had been called when the rotating ships were between stars and the ship's axis was Up), the corridors in that region were twisted and mazelike and hard to navigate.
    So the young man in Jesus Pietro's office had no idea where he was. Even if he'd managed to leave the office unguarded, he'd have been hopelessly lost. And he knew it. That was all to the good.
    "You were on the dead-man switch," said Jesus Pietro.
    The man nodded. His sandy hair was cut in the old Belter style, copied from the even older Mohawk. There were shadows under his eyes as if from lack of sleep, and the lie was borne out by a slump of utter depression, though he had been sleeping since his capture in Harry Kane's basement.
    "You funked it," Jesus Pietro accused. "You arranged to fall across the switch so that it wouldn't go off."
    The man looked up. Naked rage was in his face. He made no move, for there was nothing