 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. "No specific destination," supplied the man as he punched a key on a small instrument, "Air-lock ahead and to your right. "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. He was uncomfortable; Wyandotte seemed to know all about him. It helps suppress certain physiological reactions to an entirely new set of conditions. During the days that followed, the psychologist seemed to Craig to become progressively more didactic. 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?" "How ... many times ... do they drop it?" Two white-clad figures, ridiculously out of proportion, hovered wraithlike over him. By the fourteenth day, Craig knew he could stand Grav 1. Either that or they had begun to produce ultra-sonic waves. The huge headquarters base centrifuge aboard the man-made satellite had gradually caused their bodies to respond once more to a single source of pull. They were now ready to become inhabitants of planets again, instead of free-falling ships. On the eighteenth day, automatic machinery freed them from their imprisoning cots. Then they again began taking paraoxylnebutal in preparation for the free-fall flight to Terra. Only one of the score of men in the centrifuge tank remained voluntarily in his cot. "Not to Chociante, if that's what you mean.
 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.