 Why is there a microphone in Craig's hotel room?
Rootless and footloose, a man in space can't help but dream of coming home. Flight Officer Robert Craig surrendered the tube containing his service record tapes and stood waiting while the bored process clerk examined the seal. He felt anxiety as the much-handled card refused for a time to match the instrument's metal contact points. He crossed the long, dreary room, knowing the eyes of the other men were upon him. "No specific destination," supplied the man as he punched a key on a small instrument, "Air-lock ahead and to your right. The knowledge that much of it was motivated by envy soothed him as he clumsily let himself into the lock. "Place your clothing in the receptacle provided and assume a stationary position on the raised podium in the center of the lock." Craig obeyed the robot voice and began reluctantly to remove his flight jacket. "Insert your right arm into the instrument on the central table," commanded the same voice he had heard before. He was uncomfortable; Wyandotte seemed to know all about him. "Mr. Craig, I suppose you've guessed that the next step in our little torture system here is psych." It helps suppress certain physiological reactions to an entirely new set of conditions. Channels of the ear, for example. During the days that followed, the psychologist seemed to Craig to become progressively more didactic. He had weathered difficult landings on worlds with rip-tide gravities, had felt the pull of the incredible star-tides imparted by twin and even triple star systems. He had been on Einstein IV, the planet of eight moons, and had felt the pulse of all eight of the satellites at once that no PON could completely nullify. But even if he could accept the psychologist's authority for the cumulative effect of a gravity system, he could not understand the unspoken warning he felt underlying all that the man said. "Mr. Craig," the psychologist said slowly, "you have my authorization for you to return to Terra as a private citizen of that planet. On the eighth day, two attendants, who showed the effects of massive doses of PON to protect themselves from the centrifugal force, had to carry a man out of the tank. Many others asked to be removed, begged to be allowed to withdraw their resignations. "The twelfth day is the worst," a grizzled spaceman told Craig. "How ... how do they know when you ought ... to come out?" "Can't they ... drop it down continuously?"
 Terran society has become increasingly controlling of its citizens.
 Terran society has become increasingly controlling of its citizens.  The hotel manager bugs all the rooms to blackmail the guests.  Wyandotte put the microphone there to monitor Craig's adjustment to Terran society.  The Intergalactic Space Service put the microphone in Craig's room to keep tabs on him.