"No more questions?" said Dr. Farquharson, "All right. Just press that button by the side of the bed if you need anything."

Tom went back to worrying about what would happen next. "Best case, I'm off the project. As weird as this is, do I really want to go back to my basement suite just scraping by, without even a ordinary wetsuit? The payment in my contract at the end of four years was quite substantial."

"Second-best case, there's nothing in the contract that says they *can't* just lock me in a room for four years." he went over in his head "Then there's more worrisome punishments ... horrible experiments ... could they just make someone disappear?"

Tom turned to more mundane thoughts "How am I going to use the bathroom?" he looked down and realized he was cathethered. "Makes sense they'd do that while I was unconscious."

Sgt. Sweet arrived. "You awake? Are you feeling well enough to talk?"

"Yes." replied Tom.

"Any idea what happened to you down there?" asked the sargeant.

"No. I don't remember." lied Tom.

"Hmm. I'm supposed to debrief you shortly after the test, but you're still out of it. The debrief can wait. Just listen. You're on a large US Navy ship. It's where the technicians that worked on your test are based. They're going to restore the base back to normal and bring the test data back here. Then we'll be in here a few days. We'll dock, and then go back to the hotel." explained Sgt. Sweet.

"A few days? It took less than an hour for us to get to the base." said Tom, confused.

"There's nowhere for a ship this big to dock near the cabin. It has to dock at a major port, and it's not making a special trip for us."

"We could take the small boat back?" wondered Tom.

"We'll be taking some equipment and additional people back with us. Too much for that boat. We're not in any rush, and we thought it would be good for you to learn about a large ship like this first-hand."

"What about our stuff back at the cabin? We'd be leaving it unguarded for days." asked Tom with concern.

"Oh Tom, this was all planned ahead of time. A couple of soldiers were ready to come in and guard our stuff at the cabin as soon as we were out of sight. They'll be packing and delivering it to the hotel too, so that we don't have to make a special trip."

"You really thought of everything, huh?" said Tom finally.

"Yes. Another thing we already thought of: Once you're discharged from sickbay, you'll get your own cabin until we dock. Normally this ship sleeps six to a cabin, but we want to keep your situation on a need-to-know, so you'll get a private cabin." explained Sgt. Sweet "Any other questions?"