198Fs WORST SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS

JAPAN'S NEW ROBOT CULTURE, SCIENCE VS. MALE STERILITY, BROWN FAT DIET, DECODING >*? NOSTRADAMUS,

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EDITOR & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE PRESIDENT: KATHY KEETON EDITO°IA._ D HFICTOFr 5FN 80VA EXECU1 IVE ED "OR- D CK TERESI ART DIRECTOR: F-l-'V.K DEVINO EUROPEAN EDITOR: DR. BERNARD DIXON ASSOCIATE P...BL SI IF = UARIAWE HCWATSON DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING: BEVERLEY WARDALE

CONTENTS PAGE FIRST WORD Opinion Hans A, Bethe 6 OMNIBUS Contributors 8 EARTH Environment Eric Schwartz 16 LIFE Biomedicine Bernard Dixon 18 SPACE Comment David Monagan 20 MIND Behavior Stacy N. Gould and Michael G. Patterson 24 FILM The Arts Robert Rivlin 26 EXPLORATIONS Travel Delta Willis 30 CONTINUUM Brown- Fat Diet, etc. 33 ROBOTS OF JAPAN Article R. Bruce McColm 42 ELEPHANT SONG Fiction Barry B. Longyear 46 THE HYDROGEN MAN Article Kenneth Jon Rose 50 TRIGGERING Fiction John Shirley 54 WHERE FLESH AND STEEL MESH Pictorial Douglas Colligan 58 MARTIN GARDNER Interview Scot Morris 66 SCIENCE VS. MALE STERILITY Article Carta Fine 70 WORST SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS Pictorial 74 ANTIMATTER Decoding Nostradamus, etc, 89 STARS Astronomy Patrick Moore 122 UNBORN KITTENS Phenomena Howare Sochurek 124 GAMES Ruled i'.-easure Scot Morris 126 Humor Gurney Williams III 128

Surrealism predominates Or/M. 1932 (ISSN Q-£9-8Ml). U.S. Volume4. N mbot 4. Copyright © 1981 by Qmn in German artist Fred-Jurgen r nai L:d . ?L9 Tn a Avenue. New Vo Rogner's coverlhis month. One of nark of Omni Pubiieaki-^liyiT-iai' Ess Europe's most prolific painters, Ctrculat on Company 21 - ": Henderson . .

1 . VI 'J. i.'fi .,1 Rogner has illustrated more than 701 1 :n.,l r;:, ., ,. 100 covers for vauo^s publications. Bf50n P ' U AF0-S24 onewsar His flamboyant work was GQpie6$2.S0lnU.5 UFO, and Canada. Address >Omr Wfajjaafriifc RC featured in a recent television show, tilmed in Bavaria. §§1 ill'! i Ml..' 4 OMNI repeated-errors by FIRST JUORD U.S. Department of Em

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have a special status in unpraised, Robots Omni announces its Laurels and thatwhen it's burned, the exhaust Japan's work-oriented culture. (and Hardys) awards, starting on page 74. product is water." His exclusive profile of Because of their increasing In "Where Flesh and Steel Mesh" (page "The Hydrogen Man" begins on page 50. intelligence, with coupled voice and tactile 58), Marshall Arisman offers a disturbing After 25 years of writing his popular recognition, these humanlike automatons vision of technology's influence on our games column in Scientific American, have come to be embraced with the lives. His same paintings, characterized by their Martin Gardner is retiring — to work harder affection given household pets— even aura of surrealism and violent themes, on other projects. In a rare, exclusive children. "Their acceptance in society is have been featured on the covers of Time interview Omni senior editor Scot Morris universal," reports/?, Bruce McColm , who magazine, in Penthouse, the New York talks to Gardner about Alice in Wonder- traveled via Air Japan Lines to Tokyo, robot Times, and numerous other publications. land, perpetual-motion machines, Uri center of the world, for a firsthand look at Arisman, whose cheerful countenance Geller, ESP, hoaxes (including Gardner's the impact of these new members of the belies his gloomy outlook—on modern life, own), Fermat's last theorem, the fourth labor force. While staying at the Tokyo explains that aggression "directed dimension, calculators, computers, and Hilton, next to the shogun's temple, against ourselves, our fellowman, and the nearly a googol other topics. Turn to page McColm quickly perceived that these environment"— is his major source of 66 for the fun and amusement when our mechanical servants were no longer inspiration. Would he still create had he games editor talks to their games editor. restricted to industry. The author details, been born into a world free of war, hunger, Barry B. Longyear's first attempt at beginning on page 42, their diverse and social unrest? "No," says the artist. science-fiction writing earned him a occupations, from robotic kendo players "I'd probably be playing the saxophone," nomination for the John W Campbell that thrust and parry bamboo staves, like Roger Billings converted his car engine Award in 1976. "The Tryouts" became the Samurai of old, to a new breed of metallic to run on hydrogen when he was sixteen basis for Longyear's many short stories men whose sole function is to produce years old. Since then he has become a and two novels that chronicle the more of their own kind. leader in the crusade to transform the adventures of a spacefaring circus There are Nobel prizes for the giants of United States into a hydrogen- powered shipwrecked on the planet Momus. science but few awards for those society. unsung Billings has already begun to Longyear fans will not want to miss Omni's heroes of the lower echelons — men, adapt the homes and vehicles in one small excerpt from his upcoming book, women, and even machines that have Missouri town to run on this abundant Elephant Song (page 46), which is about made lesser contributions to the noble, source of fuel. He hopes that his model the circus's. adventures before it is pursuit of progress. Consider, for example, community will set a national trend, freeing marooned on Momus— or, in Longyear's a group of dedicated battled doctors who us from OPEC domination. own words, "it's a 'prequel.' to save the life of their club's country "Billings isn't just spouting hot air," says Finally, John Shirley makes his debut in gravely ill golf course. Or take the first Kenneth Jon Rose, who became inter- these pages with his short story "Trigger- conscientious. objector of the silicon ested in the scientist's pioneering work ing" (page 54). Shirley has written a new variety— computer a that attempted while waiting on gas-station lines during novel, Cellars, due out this spring. He also suicide as a protest against nuclear his undergraduate years. "What turned performs as the lead singer for the New energy. In recognition of these and other me on to hydrogen," Rose recalls, "is York rock band Obsession, whose lyrics fine achievements that have hitherto gone :he fact hyi is obtained from water touch on fantasy themes. DO 3 OMNI Dnnrui

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Happy Anniversary Mystery Solved

I have read Omni's October 1981 issue I wish to identify the "mystery ship"

from to still cover cover and am as described in Antimatter [October 1981], It

I impressed as was when I read the very is a floating cultural arts center christened first issue three years ago. Omni's articles Point Counterpoint II, and Pittsburgh's capture the powerful feelings people have American Wind Symphony Orchestra uses for science and the future. it for concert performances at various Bruce Kauffman shoreside locations every warm-weather Gillette, Wyo. season. The photograph of the ship on

Lake Ontario caught it between Omni has now earned the respect of engagements. general readers and the scientific commu- The forward section of this extremely nity. Your unique blend of fact and fiction is interesting ship houses the crew The irresistible to one and all. middle serves as the stage, complete with Jerry Yule a roof that raises and lowers for concerts. Richardson, Tex. And the aft section holds a children's minitheater. The advent of Omni has probably done Hundreds of people along the banks of more to promote science than any other the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the media event. Your ability to explain the shores of the Great Lakes are familiar with latest advances in modern science to the this ship. nonscientist is very impressive. MarkT Epling Thomas Q Gillespie Columbus, Ohio Department of Geological Science Rutgers University We'd/ike to thank Mr. Epling for his ADVERTISING New Brunswick, M.J. information. The 20 photographs he sent us were quite convincing. We hope he can racter Reaction persuade other readers who have ideas of Chills ran up and down my spine as I read theirown. — Ed.

"Soft Ions" [October 1981], It's frustrating

to think that a its machine can get first May I point out that the "mystery ship" piece of fiction published while I sit here mentioned in Antimatter is quite definitely staring at a wall of rejection slips. Where a paddle steamer.

I for do go my silicon-chip implant? Anthony J. Remain MarletteWest Edinburgh, Scotland DlTORIAL OFFICES Oakland, Calif.

One morning last summer as I was driving racter is the first computer I've ever come along highway M-43, about two miles east rei 9Do;.-4 (=1 JSS4-9831 ! across with a sense of humor. "Soft Ions" of Bangor, Michigan, I saw ahead of me, West kensin . above the treetops, the "mystery ship" . RoyMilisa described in Omni's October 1981 issue. Oireaa-D/Fut .iavi oi'.^a St. Petersburg, Fla. There were portholes and what looked like Ba , battlements al both ends. It "to£fieBjSa was huge and Let people write stories and let computers. long and grayish-brown. I don't know BUREAUS crunch numbers. "Soft Ions" isthe poorest whether it is Was/wigttn, P the "mystery ship" you excuse for science fiction I've ever mentioned, but it was very similar slrasse 1 Berl .45 fto-cfe Janeiro.'-.- attempted to read. W V Krohn Rua Mexico. 151ft floor, Rifl.M: David L Senum Grand Junction, Mich. . BudaaeEJ- Pa 1 KMyliedgys, 5 Re Minneapolis, Minn. 'Budapest 5. Hi. : Erratum

THE CORPORATION If you had run "Soft Ions" in April, I'd have Omni regrets an error in last month's BobG.c said you were pulling my leg. Come back, feature "Biochip Revolution," which WeaghBE (uiGs-cfiaif HAL; all is forgiven. inaccurately reported that Bethesda Phil Stracchino Research Laboratories (BRL) had just Audubon, Pa. bought 30 percent ot the shares ". Macianne] of EMV S£S Associates. The correct account is that JANUARY BRL had made only a bid, which was subsequently declined. DO DIALOGUE FDRLJruT

In which the readers, editors, and cor- which involved the conversion oftheS.S. In short, your readers can save their $5 respondents discuss topics arising out Chepachet to an experimental Ocean and apply the following formula: Does rent of Omni and theories and speculation of Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) exceed the monthly payment for owning, general interest are brought forth. The facility, began operation in July 1980 and minus the interest payment times the views published are not necessarily those was decommissioned in April 1981. buyer's tax rate? (Rent = mortgage of the editors. Letters for publication Exactly why the Department of Energy payment - interest x marginal tax rate.) should If be mailed to Omni Forum, Omni decided to abandon this project yes, buy. If not, does it exceed the same Magazine. 909 Third Avenue, New York midstream remains a mystery. amount, less the interest that could be NY 10022. Although the project operated for less made on a down payment? If not, rent. than a year, its 1-milliwatt-rated heat W Lawrence Lipton Paradoxically Speaking exchangers proved capable of converting Harrington, Me. Mr. Ben Bova expounds on the either/or fourtimes that rating. Fears of excessive fallacy in Omni's October 1981 issue. But heat exchange, biofouling, and thermal The Phantom Knows in 1933 Count Alfred Korzybski wrote a pollution were largely negated. The only The morphogenetic hypothesis proposed book entitled Science and Sanity, in which side effect was the phenomenal fishing off by Dr. Rupert Sheldrake in Life [October he set forth the fundamentals of general the deck of OTEC-1 because of the 1981] may shed light on the phantom-limb semantics and non-Aristotelian release of nutrient-rich water. phenomenon. multivalued logic. Count Korzybski Michael Zahradnik Could it be that when a limb is repeatedly points out that one of the basic Alternative Directions in amputated, morphogenetic resonance is fallacies of Western thought is the Energy and Economics responsible for the sensation not only of either/or imperative: heredity or San Francisco, Calif. the nonexistent limb but also of the pain? environment, intellect or emotion, instinct A Kirlian photograph of a leaf that has or reason, true or false. Ant Update been cut in half shows an aura of the All action involves both intellect and I read about the unsuccessful attempt to whole leaf. Are "memories" lingering in the emotion, both instinct and reason. A launch an ant into outer space in Forum area where the leaf used to exist? Could a proposition may be true on one level and [September 1981] and decided to take up force field of some kind be transmitting the false on another. Discussing the either/or the challenge. pain from where the limb used to be to the fallacy, without mentioning Korzybski, is One Sunday my friend and I launched a intact portion of the body? like talking about relativity, without ten-stage model rocket with not one, but Donald A. Eisner meniioning Einstein. three, ant astronauts. Though they didn't Covina. Calif. WilliamS. Burroughs quite make it into outer space, they did fly New York, N.Y. to an altitude of 1.8 miles and were Lancelot Debunked recovered 3 miles from the launch site. We The magnificent "unicorn" goat pictured in Peace First found our antronauts A-OK. Antimatter [October 1981] is not, as Harry Omni's letter to President Reagan in the That's one small step for ant. an One Lebelson reports, "the first living unicorn in October 1981 issue is a masterpiece. giant step for insectkind. modern times." He's not Never "the result of have I seen such a succinct and Michael Sims duplicating past research through timely argument for space exploration. Memphis, Tenn, interbreeding," and he is not the offspring I fear, however, that any effort by space of an 'Angora goat and an as-yet- organizations will have little effect at time a Buy or Rent unidentified animal." when world leaders are more concerned As the originator of the real estate Lancelot is the offspring of two perfectly with global domination or the prevention of industry's first and most sophisticated ordinary goats. When he was a few weeks it. Our intercontinental differences will "Lease-Buy Analysis" I program, am old, his horn buds were removed in a have to be resolved before we can expect offended by Professor Michael S. routine way. Then the two buds were to tap the unlimited resources of space. Johnson's "Equivalent Rent Analysis" in bisected, half of each was discarded, and Lieutenant Steven R Smolinski, USN Omni's Continuum section [November the two remaining halves were placed U.S.S. Ma/ian (DDG 42) 1981], It is only because of the recent together in a small wound in Lancelot's availability of economically priced forehead. Pliny describes the technique Progress Postponed computer systems that Professor Johnson clearly in his Natural History. Book XI. As In the "Breakthroughs" feature [October is able to offer his service for a $5 fee. recently as 1933, Dr. Franklin Dove created 1981], Omni incorrectly reported that the When associate I my and introduced the a unicorn at the University of Maine. OTEC-1 project had just entered its program in 1970, the fee was a loss-leader Dr Draper Kauffman second year of operation. The project, at $250 per printout. St, Louis, Mo.OQ 12 OMNI ECO-BPIONAGE EARTH By Eric Schwartz

200-foot former North Sea a long sentence in a Soviet gulag.. The summer to feed on the plant life on the fishing Irawler Sea Shepherd II "This whole thing scares me," says Ben nutrient-rich bottom. It is here, along the leaves Glasgow, Scotland, in White, twenty-nine, a tree surgeon from Chukotskiy Peninsula, that the whales are April 1981, to attempt a rendezvous with Virginia. "I'm about to be married, and hunted down. the Soviet whaling ship Zevezdny in the there are a lot of other good reasons why I "The economics Bering of Russian whaling are Sea. Captained by thirty-year-old shouldn't here. be But I believe in Paul the economics of extinction," says Craig ecological activist Paul Watson [Earth, Watson, I and love these animals." Van Note, executive February vice-president of 1981], the Sea Shepherd li will But after several hours of scanning, Monitor, a consortium of 35 environmental head out on a mission to prevent the Watson's radar is unable to locate the groups. The Soviet Union has Zevezdny from carrying consistently out her annual Zevezdny. Still determined, he orders the voted with Japan and a few other slaughter of 200 California gray whales. Sea Shepherd II to head for the small The recalcitrant nations in IWC conventions to Soviet whalers, Watson contends, are Soviet port of Lorlno, where he suspects sabotage efforts at whale violating management. an International Whaling the illegally slaughtered whales are Van Note cites numerous examples Commission (IWC) of mandate that forbids processed as food for the nearby mink Soviet greed: destroying halibut fisheries the killing of the California gray whale farms. Drifting 1 .5 miles offshore, Watson in the Antarctic, engaging in pulse fishing except by natives, who use the whale meat scrutinizes the harbor through binoculars (a method whereby an area is fished until "exclusively for their own consumption," and decides to lower a boat to obtain a there are no more fish left), and the taking The whales taken by the Zevezdny , closer look. Watson, Bob Osborne, from of as much as twice the quota of whales. Watson maintains, are used commercially. the engine crew, I and descend gingerly "When it He comes to the oceans," Van Note plans to put the whaling ship out of through the barbed-wire defenses draped says, "the Russians have a record of commission by snagging its propeller with over the sides of the ship and get into a rapacity a that is unparalleled." steel cable. tiny, inflatable rubber boat and shove off. As head Four we toward shore, several gray months and 14,500 miles later, after Each year gray whales numbering whales surround our small boat, but none stopping at Los Angeles, Vancouver, and between 11,000 and 13,000 migrate along of us smile. We look toward Nome, the Sea the beach. Shepherd II enters Soviet the 6,000-mile coast between Baja Cali- "Two armed Russian soldiers!" calls waters. If arrested, Watson and his fornia, Mexico, and the Arctic. The animals Osborne. He peers again through his 29-member, all-volunteer crew might face congregate in the Bering Sea in the binoculars and nods grimly. We head away from the soldiers, but they follow slowly and casually. Thirty feet from shore, I stand in the boat and begin photographing the illegal whaling operation. Three women with sleeves rolled carve whale meat on the shore. Pens that could only house animals stand at the top of a nearby hill. The soldiers suddenly appear in my lens. Young and Mongolian in feature, they seem bored by our presence.

I realize that they think we are Russians. Some children come down on the beach. Watching us drift to within 15 feet of the shore, the soldiers begin motioning us to land. Within easy shouting (or shooting)

distance, Watson jovially calls to them in English and asks them what they want. "They're aiming their rifles!" Osborne exclaims. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

Back on board the Sea Shepherd II, Peter Woof, our chief engineer, from Australia, cranks up the engine and we are under way, An investment researcher, a director of marketing, A Soviet spotter and a harpsichord pk eye on the Sea Shepherd II builder listen to Watson's order to try 6 OMNI to IENTFIC SPIRITS

,By Dr. Bernard Dixon

j^^k curious galhering look place brands. Before doing so, Piggot scoured smooth, vanilla, soapy, sour, nutty buttery, #^^* recently at an imposing old the world's literature about this delectable grassy, phenolic, hydrocarbon, oily, woody, # %Scoltish holel, Dunblane Hydro. drink and developed record forms metallic, meaty, sulfury catty, fishy, and It was a meeting of scientists more incorporating the commonest epithets. sweet. Piggot has gone further

concerned to analyze (and sniff) whisky The assessors then tried to score each correlating each adjective with its than lo drink it. Their enthusiasm for the tipple on a 0-5 scale for each quality corresponding reference chemical.

Gaels' water of life was unbounded. Yet listed on the form. They did this for flavor Pungent is defined by formic acid, for this passionate interest centers on by mouth, after first testing the scented example, and buttery by a compound laboratories, not on bars where the flavor called diacetyl.

sublime liquid is consumed. Whisky, it Gradually, as his guinea pigs became This novel piece of applied biology can seems, is currently passing through a more discriminating, they were able to be used in quality control and to help paradigm shift. discern differences that were not apparent whisky blenders make delicate As with other serious alcoholic drinks, from the initial list as well as to discard adjustments when a raw material or the most important of terms component whisky that proved to be synonymous. Like process is altered. Most interesting of all, it is not alcohol. It is the myriad minor- well-trained tea tasters, they eventually can be harnessed in market research. ingredients that give any fine mali its acquired exquisite precision in Piggot has already discovered that people unique flavor. Unlike noble clarets, hocks, distinguishing closely related, but distinct, seem to fall into three distinct groups, with and burgundies, however, this great spirit flavor notes. preferences for corresponding whisky has attracted comparatively little scientific But, unlike tea tasters, they found that types. The opportunities for improving on attention. Enshrouded in the mists and odor itself was sufficient for their task. nature are now obvious. mystiques of antiquity, distillation had long Even untrained assessors can now use From other papers delivered at the art rather been revered as than precise Piggot's scale to fingerprint whisky with Dunblane conference, it's clear that this is technology. That is what is now changing. great accuracy and without even tasting it. only a "taste" of what's to come. One by And the pace of change is sufficientto So we now have the following list of one, products from Scotland's countless induceacute anxiety in anyone who descriptive terms tor scotch whisky: distilleries are being put through gas values both science and whisky. pungent, solvent, spicy, grainy, malty, . chromatographs, and their chemical Take those indescribably subtle flavors moldy, fruity (estery), fruity (other), floral. signatures are being charted. We now of a great malt. Over two centuries ago the know that the classic malt Laphroaig (best Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus tried to enjoyed, like brandy, in minuscule devise a system for classifying odors. But portions) is rich in isopentynol, together connoisseurs have never been keen about with significant traces of isobutanol and applying exactness to food or drink— [east N-propanol. Other precious fluids have of all to the Spirit of Scotland. In recent differing analyses, and manufacturers of years, however, computers have ordinary, blended whiskies are beginning advanced the science of identifying the to boast about the proportions of these individual odors that constitute complex more aristocratic spirits in their own mixtures in natural products. brands. By exploiting vi\s technology, one of the Where will it all end? With synthetic Dunblane researchers, John Piggot, from whiskies concocted in laboratories from Strathclyde University, Glasgow, has shelf chemicals, by law cataloged on the developed an entirely new language with label? No. This new scientific emphasis is which to describe whiskies. with He began actually good for scotch. It has already traditional terms, but then attained finer helped me to track down one constituent and finer discrimination by employing a that I don't like in certain blends (that catty of panel assessors. At first tasting-, but odor). And even the combined efforts of then simply smelling, different brands, odor experts and chromatographers are they evolved a vocabulary of 26 "flavor confirming the irreplaceable artistry of the notes" that trained assessors can reliably yeasts and the men who create the water employ to characterize particular tipples. ofiife. The way Qr.. Piggot worked to invite was Science can improve scotch, but it will a of assessors team to sample never succeed in quantifying the most commercially available whiskies — 10 at vital ingredient in any great spirit: a touch first, but eventually different as many as 70 Whisky is now passing through a paradigm shift. of alchemy. DO IB OMNI KY PAINTING

. By David Monagan

ne dawn last April a Virginia first mission and less thereafter as a times it echoes them :.c aisran; corners of sheriff pulled off the road to make cut-rate opportunity to explore the stuff of the earth: Much of our long-distance radio his stand against the red cloud infinity. The experiments' value could be communication reiies on such reflections. descending upon him from outer space. argued on aesthetic terms: Studies that Patterns in this flux were once all but As the huge, luminous sphere appeared to should our open eyes to the grandeur of impossible to comprehend. Then, in the dose on his car, the sheriff called in the heavens would cost as little as 4 cents early 1950s, scientists began to fire reinforcements —to no avail. What Ihey per U.S. citizen, a total equal to, say, the sounding rockets into the ionosphere. were watching was a brief and little-noted cost of 20 Jackson Pollock paintings. where they released clouds of lithium.

NASA experiment 115 miles out in it space. But now appears that this fundamental strontium, and — later— barium ions. Stranger close encounters are on the quest of science and the imagination is These gases take in solar energy and way. Sometime in 1986 the whole nation about to take a military turn. The it skies, reemit it as light. Drifting traces of these may wake to find vast crimson waves seems, will be splashed with color chemicals, the researchers found, co.uld glowing across the continent and brilliant primarily to reveal such things as the create swaths of gold dust in the sky yellow streaks arcing mightily toward the workings of spy satellites and the hundreds of miles long. Currents that no stars. Other mornings, gorgeous comets repercussions of nuclear war instrument could measure were now lit up may swirl out of nowhere and half the .Earth is like a bubble floating in an so that cameras on the ground could snap northern lights may go black. infinite sea of plasma— the electrons and their exact dimensions. To space This cosmic light show, if Earth bound positive ions that fill the emptiness of scientists across North America and budget-setters permit it, will be the space. Touching the outer limits of our Europe, it was as if the Elizabethan or culmination of 30 years of arcanely atmosphere— the ionosphere that reaches Spanish seafarers had learned to chart magnificent research. Its aim is to seed up to 250 miles into space— this plasma the Gulf Stream with dyes. Ihe faint winds of the ionosphere with bends and pulses before the magnetic It turned out that the chemical releases luminous chemicals so that j scientists can and electrical forces of the earth, moon, offered far more than the chance to watch track the invisible electromagnetic and sun. This dance of charged particles these once-invisible electric fields. By currents of space. can have strange side effects: It ignites altering the mass and velocity of the Physicists see these vast paintings, and douses the northern lights. releases scientists could generate which would cost about $15 million for the Sometimes it blocks radio signals; at other ionospheric winds and acoustic waves of their own, changing the movement of plasma at the fringes of our atmosphere. In more than 350 separate firings, the ionosphere became a physics laboratory in which scientists teased out answers to huge questions: What causes electric fields to form at the borders of space? How does the flow of solar plasma into the

ionosphere affect Earth's weather? How is plasma itself created? As some questions were answered, other unknowns appeared. Over the years many chemical releases knocked temporary plasmaless holes in the ionosphere— an effect that scientists figured was about as harmful and enduring as a footprint on the beach. But

then the biggest chemical release of all, the exhaust from the Saturn 5 Skylab launch in 1973, knocked out ionospheric layers from Chicago to Iceland for several

hours. In theory, it should have disrupted all Ihe long-distance radio signals reflected from the ionosphere.

For some reason not yet understood, it Strontium released in the ionosphere created pink o Wallops UFOs r Island, Virginia, last April. didn't. But, according to Dr. Morris 20 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGEI1B READING FACES ruiiruD

By Stacy N. Gould and Michael G. Patterson

inscrutable, enigmatic Mona Judging character The by reading faces can individual's experiences over a lifetime. Lisa! Is she smiling, smirking, or be traced back to Aristotle. Its leading 'Although one's face is influenced sneering, or is she merely being practitioner was an eighteenth-century primarily by genetic factors, experience coy? After centuries of puzzlement over Swiss theologian, Johann Kaspar Lavater, alters one's facial features considerably. Leonardo da Vinci's mystery masterpiece, Lavater was the first to propose that a These changes take place in the a new system of reading faces suggests person's "inner self" could be revealed underlying bone and muscle structure and why La Gioconda stirs such fascination. scientifically by scrutinizing facial are modified through the repetition of Dr. Leopold Bellak, a psychology characteristics. emotional responses." professor at York University New and In the twentieth century a German A fundamental part of the Zone System psychiatry professor at Albert Einstein psychiatrist, Dr Werner Wolff, discovered is the 101 Traits Checklist, comprising Medical College, has spent the past 30 that the human face is far from adjectives that describe both emotional years studying people's faces, with symmetrical. He juxtaposed two sides of and physical characteristics. The key is to interesting results. In his recent book the human face, using simple evaluate a face by employing the trait (coauthored with Samm Sinclair Baker) photographic techniques, and showed adjectives provided, Reading Faces (published in paperback that right and left halves were often Bellak practices his system on the faces by Bantam Books, Dr. 1982) Bellak offers dramatically different. Dr. Wolff's research of famous personalities, then compares an approach to evaluating people attracted the atiention of renowned his impressions with their public image. psychologically by using the Zone System Harvard psychologists P E. Vernon and For instance, it is well known that Marilyn of reading faces. Gordon W Allport. Monroe had a difficult childhood and "Splitting a face down the middle, By the 1940s, however, disciplines such several failed marriages and that she died vertically delineating the left half from the as behaviorism and psychoanalysis from a self-administered overdose of pills. right half, is first step," Bellak the says. rapidly dominated the mental health field. Using a newsphoto from a courtroom "On the picture of Mona Lisa [below], study The of bodily expression, appearance late in the actress's life. cover her left zone wilh a piece of paper. physiognomy, soon lost the attenlion of Bellak drew up the following analysis: Note that the expression in Mona Lisa's most psychological researchers. "Splitting the face vertically, her left zone right eye is subtly sardonic, perhaps even Bellak continues the research. He is appears sad. perplexed, pained, and disdainful. The right half of her is mouth convinced a person's face records that inward-looking. She seems vulnerable, set tight. As a psychiatrist, I interpret that lost. Her right zone bears a slight tightness as controlled sensuality. suggestion of a smile around the eye, "Now cover her right zone. Her left eye disclosing the likelihood of a sense of is slightly pensive, almost squinting. The humor. This side is more calm and left half of her mouth is relaxed, softened self-possessed, somewhat in the semblance of a smile," he notes. peaceful — with little sign of either "Repeating the process horizontally, depression, high spirits, or sensuality. In other characteristics become apparent: the top zone the eyebrows are curious. Bulging lower eyelids add intensity to her quizzical, drawn up in a kind of pain. Her gaze. The full cheeks, as wilh all eyes are inner-directed and roundness, transmit a simple kind of contemplative. Her nose is firm, with tight sensual pleasure. nostrils, suggesting an effort at "In the Mona Lisa "he says, "the self-conlrol. The bottom zone has a suggestion of sensual indulgence by the surprisingly tight mouth, in cheeks, and the implication of a lack of contradistinction to the many movie roles stricture by the weak chin, add up to a lot in which her lips looked softer, looser, and of promise to a roving male eye." especially sensuous. Her jaw is rather Whether La Gioconda is flirting with firm, belying the soft, rounded male viewers cannot be proved, Bellak appearance she portrayed." admits. The Zone System, with its 101 In short, Bellak has discerned Traits Checklist, needs a great deal of characteristics that fit neither the validation and consistent reliability to be stereotype of a sex queen nor the media accepted by]he psychological image of a suicidal actress. It is clear lhat community. But Bellak uses the system from an examination of a face's regularly and successfully in his own component parts, fascinating analytical work as a diagnostic tool. perceptions emerge. OO FILM THE ARTS By Robert Rivlin

the world of soecisl eftec;s. three- Albert Finney and James Coburn — with- they do on them if r.ney were not doing the Indimensional model making is one of the out the audience's realizing it. job. We've been bombarded with the most powerful illusion makers. From The computer's synthesis of the human manipulation for so long that we've carefully articulated dinosaurs and form actually is ot part the film's plot line, learned to deal with it. But what if someone monsters that appear to live and breathe, which director/writer Crichton describes with a bit more scientific information to brilliantly detailed spacecraft that as "a thriller, set against the world of started tampering with commercials? maneuver gracefully through space television commercials and technology." That's what ourfilm asks." operas, models enable movies to portray In the movie, Digital Matrix, Inc. (DMI), a A valid question, considering that the completely imaginary things as if they fictitious high-technology and research special-effects company that created the were real. And is the audience compelled company, sets out to produce computer- digital simulations in the film — Information to suspend disbelief. generated TV commercials that International, Inc. — began in part as a In Michael Crichlon's latest film, Looker, manipulate the viewers' minds far more special-effects producer for TV released last fall, viewers for the first time powerfully than the standard commercials. Consider also that the film is the laie-twentieth saw century advance hucksterings. To accomplish this, based on aTexas company that actually beyond the cinema's clay and plastic mod- actresses who are exceptionally beautiful creates human simulacra for commercials. eling of techniques ihe past. Special are brought to DMI to be "measured." "Looker is not an expose or a effects in Looker depend on three-dimen- Then the data base from their bodies is documentary." Crichton quickly points out. sional simulation, computer A model of employed to create computer simulations As the writer/director of such SF films as actress. Susan Dey— one of the live stars for use in political commercials. Once Westworld and Coma and the author of in the film— was created by program- replicated, the real actresses are put into a The Andromeda Strain , he ought to know mers and exists solely as a series of bits hypnotic trance by interfering with their his fact from fiction. But he is an M.Q, who and bytes inside the data-base memory brain-wave patterns; ultimately they are formerly worked ai the Salk Institute. His of a computer. But this model, including eliminated — via "suicide." scientific curiosity was piqued by the detailed renditions of Dey's hand, face, "Television commercials already anatomical possibilities, not to mention the entire and body is so accurate that the manipulate us." says Crichton. "That's license for cloning and replication, simulacrum, or copy, can almost play exactly what they're supposed to do. and inherent in computer modeling. alongside the other stars of the film- advertisers wouldn't spend the money For Richard Taylor, director of digital scene simulation at Triple-I — as

Information International, Inc., is called— the line between technical innovation and the commercial

exploitation of special effects is less clear. Triple-I's work on Looker is at the tip of the salient in the science of computer- simulated three-dimensional modeling. Though Looker advances the kind of technology that Triple-I used for such films as F'j;ursv,'oric [where its computer simulated Peier Fonda's face by using a data base provided from scanned-in photographs), Crichton's movie employs an electronically more complex approach. In Looker, the actress played by Dey stands nude on a lighted Plexiglas circle that is lowered into an "electronic chamber" while her body slowly rotates. DMI's computer projects a pattern of grid lines onto her body, then reads the

contours into its data base as it "measures" her Taylor's technique at Triple-I was remarkably similar Dey was dressed in a white body suit, her exposed The hand can be rotated a ;, compressed, sxiianaeci. parts painted white. Black grid lines were se OMNi drawn over her body and face, forming the three-dimensional ferna'e oocty; it could could walk right through a wall. characteristic polygons of mathematical rotated be along any axis a full 360 Another source of information for models. She was photographed from four degrees; it could be viewed from any three-dimensional modeling has been different angles, and the pictures were angle; and it could articulate with separate computer mapping programs, such as projected directly onto the computer's movements any of its limbs so specified. those developed by James Blinn, of the magnetic drawing tablet. From that it was This technique was used to chilling Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena a simple matter to trace overthe lines with effect in Looker. In one scene the rotation (who executed many computer the magnetic stylus, thus entering the of the computer-generated "model-Dey," simulations of Voyager's maneuvers results into the computer's memory. twisting slowly in a computer-generated around Saturn), Mapping is a technique At this point the mathematical cube, was matched precisely by the for projecting a flat texture pattern onto a information in the computer was rotation of the "real-Dey" as she was being three-dimensional surface— the essentially the same as it would be for any "measured" at DMI headquarters. equivalent of what happens when a light three-dimensional computer modeling However impressive Triple-I's work has beam from a slide projector spills off the project. That is, it consisted of a series of been with the Looker modeling, it still screen and is reflected on objects in the polygons and quadratic surfaces represents the firsl stage in computer- room. The difference, of course, is that the accompanied by rules for combining them generated 3-D figuration. Further bending and the shaping are done entirely into a specific torm or series of forms. As if innovation will soon enable a digitally in the computer's processing unit, based it . were the design of an automobile or an created image to share the spotlight with a on mathematical models and the airplane engine, Dey's skeletal model flesh-and-blood screen performer, and no description of the texture pattern and the could be rotated on any axis, one will be able tell to the difference object on which it is falling. compressed, expanded, torn apart, (except for the producer, who will find that This mapping technique will soon find reassembled, and viewed from any the digital character, despite the its way into movie theaters. At the New vantage point— all in mathematically enormous costs of creation, is still cheaper York Institute of Technology (NYIT), on precise representations of three- than the $1 million superstar). Long Island, work is under way on a film dimensionality. The computer simply featuring a computer-simulated robot that plotted the charging shape of each trundles down a simulated hall, the polygon as the model rotated and then simulated lights along the way reflecting displayed the result on a computer off its highly polished body in precise terminal's screen. With mathematical models of how such The process is exactly the same as tha! • grid lines and reflections would look if they were real. The used in CAD (computer-aided design), texture patches representing creation of NYlT's Lance Williams, the where models of machinery, for example, a figure, and the movie (entitled The Works) will also can be manipulated by iho computer to employ mapping techniques in making provide multiple perspectives and display motion program commanding the three-dimensional model of a gigantic the results of test conditions. And, as in the action, a ant. The construction machine of the modeling an airplane engine, the next future, with huge rock crushers for step is to put some kind ot covering on the computer-generated image mandibles and a control room in each frame. In this case, skin. Again the result could move with geodesically shaped eye, the robot ant, of advanced computer programming, total human verisimilitude.^ completely articulated, moves over the each polygon and quadratic surface is landscape with breathtaking precision. "filled in" with whatever "material" and The texture maps on its thorax reflect, in color the programmer selects — whether a mathematically accurate configurations, highly metallic-looking effect for engine the changing terrain around it. parts, a velvetlike effect for furniture, or trie Mapping can, of course, be used flesh tones for Dey's body. Tripie-I itself is the source of much effectively to clothe computer-generated Different polygons in Dey's body and advanced work. One of its most startling human models since one need only face models -were giver individual breakthroughs is- Adam Powers, a human fashion the "clothing" as a single small "patches" so that the lips and eyes, for figure attired in a tuxedo, who stands on a square, then "order" the computer to instance, could be treated differently from 3-D grid of squares projecting back into drape it about whatever part of the body the rest of her face. And each polygon infinity and who juggles brightly colored has to be covered. Mapping techniques was provided with a program to reflect cubes, spheres, and pyramidal can construct an incredibly lifelike light differently, allowing the nose to cast polyhedrons. The character, like the rendition of flesh itself. Further, as an shadows on the cheek if illuminated from geometric shapes he tosses, is outgrowth of some of the research in the the sides and the cheekbones to stand out completely simulated, yet his arms move visual properties of metals, one can now from the rest of the face. The computer with a realism never before realized in program with total realism a "map" of tin-, also simulated the source or sources of computer graphics, and he even flips a silver-, gold-, or copper-textured surface. illumination, and so it was possible to view ralher agile somersault. Metallic surfaces can be programmed "lit" the model from any angle, : with soft or Data on simulating the human form have ontoathree-d riensionai vase shape, a hard shadows, depending on what time of been supplied in part by robotics machine, or a human figure. The object day it was supposed to be, or on the research, which includes extensive will appear solid enough to touch. prevailing mood. mathematical analysis and the Today's Hollywood model maker is a At this stage the image resembled a systematization of every possible human combination of sculptor, computer cubist painting, with each of the polygons movement. Like Labonotation, a set of programmer, mathematician, and still keeping its original, angular shape, graphic symbols developed a century ago biotechnologist. This artist/scientist has at even though each was covered with the to describe dance movements, these hand all the tools and instruments skinlike flesh color. Another computer mathematical robotics data may soon be necessary to duplicate the human body program then rounded off the appropriate programmed into the graphics computer. and to make it move and interact with the angles, adding additional shading to With grid lines and texture patches most gifted cinema actors. In time the heighten the three-dimensional effect. The representing a figure model, and the reality of Hollywood might catch up with actual modeling of the form was movement program commanding action, that depicted in Looker. And how long completed with this step. Thus was a computer-generated image could move before the public queues up to see Adam generated an accurate, totally with complete human verisimilirucio. it Powers in his next tea~ure role?DO BEYOND THE NAKED EYE EXPLORMTIDRJS By Delta Willis

a picturesque village in Oxfordshire, When these talented scientists evolved application of equipment remain InEngland, a unique team of scientists is into talented filmmakers, they also unparalleled. Behemoth contraptions developing photographic techniques became crack engineers in the process. dubbed Cosmoscope, Pathfinder, that will change the way we view the world The hardware they needed simply didn't Asfroprobe, and Stellaglide loom from around us. Biologists by training, the exist. Designing and building their own steel rafters and dolly at the touch of a cinematographers of Oxford Scientific equipment, they fashioned lenses, optical finger They'glide across the studio floor, Films (OSF) employ time-lapse, benches, and special lighting from the filming one-eighth inch off the deck, or high-speed micrography and shelves of their in-house workshop. catapult over a model landscape, taking macrophotography to capture actions not Unversed, they tinkered and improvised, the viewer on a 360-degree ride. observable by the naked eye and achieving innovation one after another "It As masters of cinematic wizardry, OSF unknown to the common man. With lenses is sometimes best," says Gerald members have been called upon to that pitch, yaw, fly through, and encircle, Thompson, the senior member of the conjure special effects for such box-office the filmmakers catch the pounding group, "to not know what is considered hits as Altered States, Alien, Excalibur, muscles of an embryonic heart, pollination impossible." and Superman I and //. Yet these seen from a flower's point of view, or a Modestly resisting credit as the first.to commercial successes have not altered honeybee's bungled landings. ove'rcome various optical problems, Peter their scientific bent or their life-style, which What began 20 years ago research as Parks, recipient of the 1980 design award remains turn-of-the-century calm, has blossomed into award-winning films from the Society of Motion Picture and time-capsuled in the English countryside. for television and beyond. OSF credits Television Engineers, claims, "What we're Field research takes the men to locations include the BBC's Horizon series, really doing is combining a number of around the world, but most filming is done Jonathan Miller's The Body in Question, ideas known to other specialists in a under controlled conditions in their World o! Survival. David Attenborough's completely different context." informal studios, located nine miles from Life on Earth, a of and number hour-long Nevertheless, OSF's latest innovations historic Oxford. network specials, including an Emmy- are not patented, because of the detailed Few places on Earth could be farther winning documentary about their own drawings required, and parts mysteriously removed from the gilt and glamour of pioneering work at OSF's studios entitled disappear before a visitor can pull out a Hollywood. Designer jeans are replaced The Making of a Natural History Film. sketchbook. Certainly OSF's range and - by khaki shorts and knee stockings, starlets by tarantulas and beetles, and mogul jargon by fhe naturalist's terminology, equally baffling to the uninitiated. The founder of the group, Gerald Thompson, looks the part. Bespectacled, with a neat crop of white hair, he speaks with a master's demeanor about the rich variety of insect specimens that clutter his desktop. As a forest entomologist, Thompson was intent on filming the wood

wasp and its parasite, the ichneumon fly. In 1960, with little encouragement ("The

said, 'It's BBC too difficult; don't try it' "), Thompson invested his savings in a Bolex and recalls "studying the handbook to figure out how the camera worked. "That was the easy part. To film in color, you need bright lights that can generate enough heat to bake small specimens. "To an entomologist,"

Thompson remarks, "it was obvious that the caterpillar's wriggling in the Disney films was not normal behavior. Rather the subject was being fried alive." Thompson devised a set of clear filters CONTINUED ON PAGE 116 cofUTiruuufui Edited by Dick Teresi

NEAR DEATH

last exit. A buzzing in the ears, perhaps, then the journey all. he points out, even elephants may long for eternal life, judging It'sthe through a tunnel toward a radiant light. There is a fast-motion from the way they bury their companions with truit and flowers. slide show of your life ... an aerial view of your forlorn dis- No way, says Wenninger Clinic psychiatrist Glen Gabbard, out-of- carded body . . . unearthly serenity. But this is no land of who, with Stuart Twemlow, has scrutinized a hefty 339 vapors, no empyrean of cumulus clouds, though here and there body experiences (OBEs). "Siegel never supports his theory that are old friends, planning your reception. NDEs come from the same 'neural status' as hallucinations," he The prototypical near-death experience (NDE) was popular- argues. "NDEs have occurred in thoroughly oxygenated pa- ized a few years ago by Raymond A. Moody, M.D.,\nh\s Life After tients, in undrugged patients more often than in intoxicated ones, Life books. Dr. Moody's rapturous catalog of those who "died and and in people with unclouded minds." Ring reports that NDE returned to tell" didn't pretend to be objective, and most scien- travelers who had prior experience with hallucinogens "just tists scoffed. Now many have stifled those scoffs. laughed" at the notion thai the two were the same, "Something like forty percent of those who come close to But the most compelling case for NDEs comes from Sabom, death appear to have an NDE; it's a reliable phenomenon, not a the author of Recollections oi Death: A Medical Investigation. freak occurrence," notes psychologist Kenneth Ring, of the Uni- Sabom interviewed patients who had suffered "clinical death," versity of Connecticut, home of the International Association for but who were subsequently revived. "I thought Moody's claims Near-Death Studies. "We're no longer philosophizing: we're talk- were ridiculous," he recalls, but his attempts to refute Moody ing about empirical observations that can be verified." It was soon led him toward the other shore. Patients who "died" on the

Ring who codified the "core" features of the NDE: the sensation operating table and found themselves floating above it later gave of traveling through a dark tunnel, seeing a brilliant light, floating detailed accounts of the surgery, confirmed by the doctors in- out of the body, an uncommon peacefulness, and so on. volved. Another man. whose heart stopped beating for several The new favorite son of NDE researchers, however, is an Emory minutes, told Sabom about the intricate movements of the defib- University cardiologist named Michael Sabom, who is no rillator dial as his heart was shocked back into action. Since the

Raymond Moody. It is the very rigor ot Dr. Sabom's analyses of machine had been out of his visual range and an oxygen mask more than 100 NDEs that threatens to topple !he traditional skep- obscured his view anyway, the patient could only have been tical stance of doctors and hints, instead, that the NDE might be a describing the view from above, Sabom claims, as he hovered true foretaste of the hereafter. outside his body. These and about 30 other well-documented

Not everyone is convinced yet. The high prophet among NDE tales that Sabom has scrupulously compared with doctors' re- nonbelievers is probably Ronald Siegel, a UCLA psychophar- ports add up. "Of course we can't prove the afterlife, since these macologist. Laboring in the altered-state vineyards at UCLA's patients, though unconscious, didn't actually die," Sabom says.

Neuropsychiatry Institute, Siegel has mapped the visions of LSD "But Dr. Siegel admitted to me that my data wouldn't fit his users, returned war prisoners, isolation-chamber dreamers, hallucination theory." UFO "hostages," children who have imaginary playmates, Are NDEs a glimpse through the portals of the next world? hypoglycemic hallucinators, tertiary syphilis sufferers, and NDE Certainly those who have had one think so. "But we make a survivors He even claims to have severed the mind from the mistake in assuming that death has to be just one thing," notes body, NDE-fashion, with a potent relative of Angel Dust called Arizona State University death-and-dying researcher Robert ketamine. His conclusion? The so-called NDE is a hallucination Kastenbaum, an agnostic on the NDE question. "You might go to like any other and "just isn't an experience of the afterlife." Christian Heaven IB; I might be reincarnated as a shoehorn. I will Oxygen starvation, the progressive death of organs, or perhaps say that somewhere down the pike— and Sabom's work is bring- unbearable "deathbed anxiety turns the dying person's con- ing us ever closer— there's going to be a wonderful crisis in the sciousness inward to mirages of heaven, Siegel maintains. After minds of scientists."- JUDITH HOOPER CDruTiruuuRji

EMOTION trouble. Reich says, sjgoasi- BROWN-FAT DIET researchers AND SUDDEN DEATH like Elliot Dan- ing that it was emotional forth, of Vermont University, stress thaf triggered the Can a diet of high-carbo- and Lewis Landsburg, at II is a popular notion that attack. hydrate foods, such as Beth Israel Hospital, in Bos- emolional stress can induce Reich says that the heart pasta and cookies, help a ton, began investigating a heart attack. Until recently, attacks were prompted by person to lose weight? The ways to manipulate brown- however, doctors to rely had any one of a number of fat ievels through nutrition. on post-mortem reports from things: public humiliation, a Danforth demonstrated that distraught relatives when at- divorce, family, a death in the volunteers in prison who tempting to assess the role and even ordinary fights. were overfed gained less that emotions play in sudden One hospitalized patient ex- weight than expected, death. perienced a lire-threatening largely because their Now psychiatrist Peter arrhythmia (heartbeat irregu- brown-fat production sped Reich and a team of doctors larity) whenever his wife left up, burning off most of the at Brigham and Women's after visiting him; He feared extra calories. Skinny in- Hospital, in Boston, Mas- that she would be mugged mates had more difficulty sachusetts, have asked 117 on her way home. than obese ones both in survivors whether they expe- — Eric Mishara gaining weight and in keep- rienced an "acute emotional ing their new weight. One disturbance" during the 24 "Science is my passion, reason: They had more " hours preceding their heart politics my duly. brown fat. attack. Twenty-five of Ihe — Thomas Jefferson The researchers now survivors (21 percent) had agree that some people are been in an "intense emo- "It is no! the business of naturally obese and some tional state" before the onset science to inherit the earth, are naturally thin; fat people of their attack. Most of them but to inherit the moral do not produce sufficient were in this condition for less imagination; because idea may not be as crazy as brown fat to burn off extra than 1 hour, but some had without that man and beliefs it sounds, although dieters calories, but thin people been in a state of panic for and science will perish are advised not to trade in produce it in superabun- up to 24 hours. These 25 " pa- together. their cottage cheese for dance. tients had no previous heart — Jacob Bronowski Twinkies— not just yet. How can fat people have The secret is brown fat, more of what skinny people

which researchers may ulti- have? What foods, if any, mately exploit to fight obesi- might speed up the produc- ty. Unlike the familiar white tion of brown fat? One an- fat, which is merely a storage swer may be carbohydrates. depot for calories, brown fat In the Vermonl study, the test bums calories to provide subjects were led cafeteria heat. Found mainly in the diets high in carbohy- neck and kidney areas and drates— pasta, Spam. between ihe shoulders, it wienies, and cookies. The gives small mammals and carbohydrates activated an newborn humans vital pro- especially high volume of tection against the cold. brown fat. Still, it is not yet Until recently it was be- clear whether a high-carbo- lieved that adult humans, hydrate diet will someday be with limited need for defense a key to human weight re- against cold, have almost no duction; most of the studies brawn fat at all. But a cele- thus far have been done on brated British study showed rats, The important testing that overeating stimulates on human subjects is just Does emotional stress really lead to heart attack? A study of 117 brown fat production. getting underway survivors points linger a at humiliation, divorce, and ordinary tights. Spurred by these findings, — MarkTeich 3d OMNI STONE AGE SCALPELS modern techniques, such as amond scalpels cost $800 WHISTLING EARS cast-molding bronze and and up. The eye surgeon Surgeons may soon be improved glass composi- testing the blades finds them One day at the Central In- using a Stone Age tool up- tion, to get a tougher edge," vastly superior to what he stitute for the Deaf , in St. dated by modern tech- says Sheets can get on the ophthalmic- Louis, psychologist Patrick niques to perform delicate Though the blades are siill instrument market. Zurek stuck a microphone Sheets, who did graduate into his right ear canatto in- field work on ancient Mayan vestigate a rather routine technology in the early aural phenomenon To his Seventies, says the use of surprise he heard a distinct, idian blades has been high-pitched, teakettlelike ;ed as far back as 2000 whistling. They have been found Fascinated, Zurek tested om central Mexico to 32 volunteers. Amazingly, Guatemala and El Salvador. half of them also broadcast "So what we have here is al- sounds from one or both most four thousand years of ears. Most of the ear music research and development." was audible only by micro- he says. Most of them were phone, though a few sub- effectively eliminated by the jects' ears carried on so Spanish conquerors, who loudly as to be heard by the disliked the ritual aspects of naked ear. Biochemical the manufacture of stone events in the organ of Corti tools by the natives. They of the cochlea, Zurek says, only sharper than steel and also wanted to make the na- are responsible. diamond bi is but expensive to produce as well. tives dependent on steel so A twenty-two -year-old operations. Scalpels mod- experimental and Sheets thai they could trade for lo- Dutchwoman was cele- eled on blades that the an- produces them for free, he cally produced items. "It was brated in a medical journal cient Mayans crafted from believes it might be possible a bad time to be an Indian," for ears so noisy that her sis- obsidian (volcanic glass) not to make them commercially Sheets comments. ter complained of the din only are sharper, but they are available for about $20. Di- — Allan Maurer during their piano duets. also much less expensive to If Zurek's subjects are rep- produce than steel or dia- resentative of the general mond blades. populace, apparently half of Anthropologist Paeon us have noisy ears. Zurek Sheets, of the University of theorizes that the phenome- Colorado, practicing what non represents very subtle he calls "applied archaeol- ear damage caused by per- ogy," is currently working vasive noise pollution. A wilh an eye surgeon to lest goodly number of chinchillas the effectiveness of the ob- also betray the whistling-ear sidian knives. syndrome, Zurek reports, "The fractured glass edge but chinchillas raised in is vastly sharper than any- quieter environments do thing commercially available not. — Judith Hooper wilh a honed edge," Sheets says. The obsidian blades "We must treat ideas are roughly only ten silicon somewhat as if they were dioxide molecules in thick- baby fish. Throw thousands ness (three billionths to four out into the water. Only a billionlhs of a centimeter). handful will survive, but that "We're combining the best is plenty." qualities of the obsidian with — Anne Haywood

35 coruTiruuurm

RED-TAPE MEASURES of the specialists within a an agency director can feed converts the motors into department. bureaumetric data into a electrical generators. The Next time you confront a Because it injects statis- computer equipped with a train will slow down as its bureaucrat, take a careful tics into areas traditionally special program built by store of kinetic energy turns look. If his hair is thin, you clogged with folklore, Dunsire and Hood. the wheel of the generator, can reckon he has a big bureaumetrics can also be All this the researchers providing an entire city with budget behind him, A bushy to used make historical have put into their new book, power. pate means his department analyses. The researchers Bureaumetrics, which might Today most utilities store is penniless. A high fore- recently discovered, for become required reading for power with the help of hy- head? The chances are good example, that during the prime ministers and presi- droelectric systems: At night dents keen to cut the flab out they use their extra energy to of their governments. pump water up a mountain,

— Peter Evans where it is stored behind a dam. During the day they ENERGY TRAIN open the dam. and as the

water flows back down, it Imagine a train burrowing turns a generator that pro- deep under Paris or Rome at duces electricity. The chief

400 mph. Floating on a bed problem with this method is of magnetism, this speedy that you need a mountain vehicle will carry a quarter of handy a million tons of concrete in- Russell believes that

stead of passengers, and it KRESS will be far more prac- will never stop. It is intended tical for almost everyone. to provide 100,000 families The British researchers are with electricity during the studying the economics of busiest hours of each day by the system; they hope to storing excess energy dur- build a working model in ing the night. about three years. The train is called KRESS, — Anthony Tucker for Kinetic Ring Energy Stor-

age System, and if some British physicists are correct, that he directs droves of laissez-faire era of Queen it will soon be generating employees. Victoria, when minimal gov- power for people all around Theseunlikely images do ernment was the rule, the the world, not belong to real bureau- British civil service grew Mike Russell, of Ruther- crats. Instead, they are twice as fast as it would grow ford Laboratory in Didcot, symbols that come from the from 1920 to 1970, when England, explains: During new science of bureaumet- government participation is the night, when utilities pro- rics, the brainchild of social said to have reached un- duce more electricity than scientists Christopher Hood precedented proportions. anyone can use, they will and Andrew Dunsire, who What does all this have to funnel it into the motors that contend that bureaumetrics with do faces? Actually, the propel the train in a circle. does for public administra- faces are computer draw- As the train glides with ease tion what econometrics does ings meantio help analysts along the layer of magne- for the financial world. Their characterize individual tism, its huge concrete system subjects every as- bureaucracies. Each facial mass will literally absorb pect of bureaucracy to in- feature, like a bar on a bar the motion and store it in the tense scrutiny, analyzing graph, is the measure of one form of kinetic energy. In the every agency expenditure, critical quality, such as de- daytime, when consumers every employee's workload, partment size or efficiency. require extra electricity, the Paris at night; The real a< and even the qualifications To glimpse his-own image, utility will flip a switch that may someday be underground. 36 OMNI ' ; ; !,; ' ;. / :;.:. TALKING CHECKOUT Tests of talking scanners bui NASA kept a modest ef- began last summer in a San

If advanced civilization! fort alive under its exobiol- If the checkout counter Jose, California, supermar-

:- colonizing our gala ogy program. starts talking to you the next ket, and the first permanent

eard ft Proxmire, who recently time you visit the supermar- installations were to begin them?Tfiat,w the qui discovered (his remnant of ket, you're not hallucinating. this past fall, that Senator -\ SETI, obliterated it with an It's just the latest use of elec- The speech circuit is in- mire posed when he pei amendment to the Housing tronic technology to imitate tended to tell customers the suaded Congress to ax and Urban Development human speech. price of each item they buy. SETI NASA's Search for and Independent Agencies Electronic circuits that can With a 274-word vocabulary, iipproprlaiion&bill for the generate signals which, the circuit can also be pro- fiscal year 1982. Speaking when fed through a speaker, grammed to say such things on ihe floor of the Senate on become intelligible words as "Thank you for shopping July 30, he said, "We should have found increasing use with us today." The speech not fritter aw^ay precious during the past few years. capability "will bring back an federal dollars on a project Oneexample is the Speak old friend to the counter," thai is almost certain to fail." and Spell electronic toy, proclaims a National His main concern, however, made by Texas Instruments, Semiconductor press re- was that the wrong signal Inc. Another maker of lease. might be sem io the taxpayer speech-synfhesis circuits, However, the endless at a lime of budgetary cut- ihe National Semiconductor chattering of a bank of talk- backs. The appropriations Corporation, of Santa Clara, ing scanners might make

bill, including Proxmire's California, also makes laser customers long for what one .amendment, passed both scanners that automatically observer called "the sooth- houses of Congress In Sep- read the striped codes on ing banality of Muzak." So tember. food packages at supermar- might the clerks who would

This action eliminates ket checkout counters. So it be left with the traditionally NASA as a central point for was probably inevitable thai mechanical job of moving exiraterrestrial-lnielligence the two technologies would things while the machine did research, at least for the next get together the talking. — Jeff Hecht

year and it leaves the pro- gram without an institutional home. Nevertheless, the rraierrestriai intelligence. Planelary Society, headed The small research program, by Carl Sagan and Bruce headquartered al the Ames Murray, hopes it can raise Research- Center, in Califor- money to support SETI re- nia was trying to interpret search, to sponsor an inter- signals-detected by radio national conference on the subiecf and to develop a public-information program. Senator Prdxmire's aitack — Michael A.G, (vtichaud on the search for life in space began three years "A man must not swallow a.go, when NASA tried to gel m! ve beliefs than he can

311 from Congress to digest." examine radio signals — Havelock Ellis picked up by the tele- scopes. He gave the pro- "Howard Cose// is. being gram his Golden Fleece groomed asan

Award, claiming it was a intercontinental bombastic waste of the taxpayers' missile." money. The search failed to — Herb Caen coruTiruuurin

MICROWAVE DEATH FETAL KICKS then, if there is any imme- OM SWAT TEAM diate danger, quickly In- Samuel Yannon, a techni- During a normal preg- duces delivery. In Atlanta gentle Tran- cian who tuned transmitters nancy, a woman gets used it Some fetal health prob- scendental Meditators are atop the Empire State Build- the frequent kicks and lems. stem trom the compli- serving as a sort of astral ing, began to suffer the movements made by the cations of a mother's dis- auxiliary police force. bizarre symptoms of micro- A group of 28 to 40 TMers, wave sickness in 1965. He meditating together nightly lost weight and couldn't re- for two weeks, reduced vio- member details: blinded by lent crime— murder, rape, cataracts and prematurely and aggravated assault— by senile, he wasted away to his 20 percent in Atlanta's death in 1974, at sixty-two. crime-ridden Grant Park Recently Yannon's widow section, according to social was awarded the sum of psychologists Elaine and Ar- $30,000 plus $57 a week for thur Aron. Felonies report- life by the New York Work- edly jumped back to normal men's Compensation Board levels as soon as the medita- The board declared that tors returned to their own Yannon had died from 16 affluent neighborhood. years of exposure to micro- Arthur Aron claims, "The

waves. This decision marked probability is almost nil that the first time a state board these results happened by has admitted that such radi- chance." So what accounts ation can be lethal. for the "Maharishi effect" (aft- According to U.S. occupa- er TM founder and guru tional safety standards, Yan- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)? non was working in a safe fetus in her womb. The mo- The unseen "field of con- environment. The maximum tion tells her that the baby is sciousness" affected even

healthy and growing. But if nonmeditators within its dosage is 10 milliwatts per movement in the womb range, Aron says. In Atlanta centimeter, and he worked stops or slows, an Israeli the "neural coherence" gen- at a level of 1.5 milliwatts. gynecologist says, the baby erated by TM practitioners Milton Zaret, an ophthal- may be sending out a cry of permeated a neighborhood mologist who testified on distress. of 70,000 people with "pure Yannon's behalf, says his According to Dr. Eliahu consciousness," producing symptoms were similar to Sadovsky, of Hadassah "measurable social effects." those of other people he has Hospital, in Jerusalem, the All of the Atlanta medita- treated for microwave sick- average pregnant woman tors, like the Arons them- ness. The early signs, which feels between 50 and 2,000 selves, were graduates of Western doctors tend to weak and strong kicks and the TMSiddhi courses, shrug off as simple stress, rolling movements during which teach meditation-pro- include insomnia, poor sex- each week. pelled "flying" and other spir- ual performance, sweating, But if a woman reports itual powers {siddhis) like When a leius slops kicking, i and anxiety. By the time that movements have sud- "knowledge of hidden ' wonying. cataracts, heart pains, and denly decreased to half their things" and "growing larger memory loss set in. the dis- average rate within two or ease: d iabetes, for instance, or smaller at will." ease is no longer reversible. three days, her unborn baby or hype,, jr ~rtension. Other fetal In 1978 Maharishi sent "It's repeated, chronic low- may be critically ill or even problems are due to unpre- goodwill meditators to level exposure that does on the verge of death. To di- dictable conditions, such as transmit pure vibes in five people in," Dr. Zaret says. agnose the condition of ihe abnormal pressure on the world trouble spots, includ- "We don't know what 'safe' fetus, Dr. Sadovsky immedi- umbilical cord. ing Iran and Nicaragua. levels are yet."— Sandra Dorr ately performs lab tests and — Madeleine Lebwohl — Judith Hooper 38 OMNI "

FURNITURE iion, which has studied CRIB-DEATH CURE Schlaefke's solution is to TECHNOLOGY changing furniture technol- feach infants to react to ogy, "They want to sil lower. Most new parents are ter- changes in acidity without Did you ever wonder why and they want to slouch." rified by stories they have help from the control mech- even cheap furniture is in- Thus, straight, rigid couches heard about presumably anism. Her new system con- creasingly more comfort- and chairs have been re- healthy babies who sud- sists of a fan and an instru- able? The explanation is new placed by cushioned sofas furniture design, which and easy chairs, makes chairs and sofas as A change in clothing strong as their nineteenth- styles has also prompted century forerunners, yet less formal furniture. "A lady lighter and often less costly. wearing a bustle and sitting, The new furniture may in a sling chair is unthink- have parts of cardboard or able," says design expert plastic, pressed wood, tubu- Robert Lynes in the Smith- lar steel, or aluminum. sonian study Leisure suits Chairs may have hydraulic or and jeans have spurred pneumatic levers that allow canvas director's chairs and someone instantly to ad|ust pillowed furniture, replacing the height or the pitch of the the more severe models orig- back, Various firm yet resil- inally made for women in stiff ient foams have replaced corsets and men in dress springs. Better ball bearings suits, have made chairs and sofas The trend toward smaller more maneuverable. apartments and a more effi- Much of the impetus for cient use of space has led to change has come from new, multifunction designs. changing life-styles, re- including a freestanding searchers say. "People sit structure wifh a loft bed on differently today than in the top, bookshelves and a desk denly stop breathing during meni for injecting acid into Victorian Era," says a report underneath, and closets on the night. The syndn the lungs of sleeping infants. by theSmithsoniar Whenever the acid is ad- ministered, the fan (directed toward the baby's face) nine creates a slight breeze that stimulates breathing. The in- minds" babies to breathe. fant soon learns to associate According to inventor acid with breathing, and Marianne Schlaefke. of Ruhr after a while the device is no West longer needed. The instrument is now being tested in a Munich pens, hospital. According to the Schlaefke, however, parents iy will eventually be able to use labies the system at home. control mechanism in — David Clutterbuck ;he central nervous system.

The control mechanism tells "It's unpleasant to be able to the lungs lo "restart," but in turn certain ideas over in some babies this mecha- your mind that nobody nism is defective, and in- suspects you of having. stant death occurs. — Ugo Betti

39 "

coruTiruuurui

JOGGING PIGS UPDATE bypassing the vessels dam- BLINDSIGHT ting distant, more taps as the aged by balloons. In the the object comes closer. Are pigs that jog less likely inactive pigs, however, crip- "Pole, eleven o'clock, "The cutting edge of elec- to suffer heart attacks? pled arteries changed only eight feet." tronic technology is being Three years ago researchers slightly, and the heart mus- That could be the mechan- utilized," says Dr. Collins. at the University of California cle deteriorated ically spoken message to a The prototype is bulky, but at San Diego studied healthy Conclusion: Exercise blind person wearing a de- an easily portable system. pigs and answered no. helps prevent More heart attacks, vice that warns about obsta- performing more recognition recently they repeated the especially when heart dis- cles and gently taps the tasks, is the goal, Collins experiment by using pigs ease is already present, be- wearer to indicate the direc- says. "We've already cdn- with heart trouble, and this cause exercise increases lime the answer was yes. circulation to the heart. But

To start the recent series be forewarned. If you have of experiments, Drs. Colin heart trouble, exercise only Bloor and Frank White on your doctor's approval.

placed a balloon around one And don't overdo it: Two pigs of the three main arteries died of excessive jogging. leading to each pig's heart. — Carol A. Johmann When expanded, the balloon squeezed the artery, restrict- "Violence breeds more ing of the flow blood, and in violence, and it is predicted a short time the pigs devel- that by 1990 kidnapping will oped heart disease. Ten of be the dominant mode of the diseased pigs exercised social interaction." daily by running on a tread- — Woody Allon mill: another ten iazed about. In the active pigs. Bloor "Thoughts, like fleas, jump Blindsight system: It not only verbally and White say, arteries lead- from man to man. Sut they i but also taps him to indicate direction ing to the heart enlarged and don't bite everybody." sent out new branches, —Stanislaw Lem iion and distance of the structed, debugged, and obstacle, demonstrated most of the A prototype of the system hardware and software for is being tested by Dr, Carter the present system, but G. Collins, a biophysicist, the more sophisticated, and Michael F. Deering, of miniaturized system will the Smith-Kettlewell Institute. need further develop- of Visual Sciences, in San ment."— Alton Blakeslee Francisco, with funds from

the National Science Foun- "Truth is the object of dation. philosophy, but not always of A TV camera on the blind philosophers. " person's shoulder produces —John Churton Collins an image of the path ahead. This information is instantly "The product of menial translated by microproces- labor — science — always sors into machine-generated stands far below its value, speech about obstacles or because the labor-lime landmarks and delivers gen- necessary to reproduce it tle taps on a belt the person has no relation a! alt to the wears. The taps clue the labor-time required for its Electronicatly monitored jogging pig: While ft user to the direction of the original production. overexertion, running seems ic benefit swine obstacle, one tap for some- — Karl Marx 10 OMNI Japan reaches for

j future world, written in this symbol for robots:

!©i h

BY R.BRUCE McCOLM

The silvery, six-loot-tall robot resem- bles a benign metallic Frankenstein monster, with television-camera eyes, an artificial ear built into the stomach, and a deep synthetic voice. It's made of high-strength aluminum alloy, weighs about 130 kilograms, and comes aparl easily; All last summer its long legs were stored in a laboratory filled with disembodied mechanical hands, arms, and computer compo- UnE nents. But the robot's maker, like many

modern Japanese, treats it as part of the family Witness the home movies. PHOTOGRAPHS BY MALCOLM KIRK 3

Qts skin sweats. The robot's

pupils dilate. But its health can be instantly reset to normal.

The films shot by kind of mammoth ex- Waseda University's penditure that might be Ichiro Kato, proud de- expected to make some • veloper of the Waseda people queasy, raising a Robot, or Wabot, are like specter once presented any rough chronicle of by Isaac Asimov that the early years of a new humans are the first baby. There are the first creatures capable of two uncertain steps, re- building their own re- quiring a full 110 sec- placements. But Japa- onds to complete. There nese futurists are quite is the later, smoother smug about the pros- gait, covering the same pects of turning robots ground in nine seconds. loose on the streets. The soundtrack (this is a "In Japan we have a modern Japanese home tradition of having things movie) preserves some similar to slaves in the vil- of the early words. "What lage, such as a horse is your order?" the Wa- and a cow" says Sakyo bot asks an operator, Komatsu, future planner who tells it to move a and science-fiction step to the right. And the writer. "These were con- machine does more than sidered a part of ihe fam- merely obey. I "Now ily. When machines such start," it boasts. as the automobile and In one scene the electric trains were in- Wabot moves its upper troduced into Japan, torso, and Kato, the wispy and paternal dreamed like Professor Ka:o of creating an they were considered living creatures. chairman of the graduate school of science intelligent machine to liberate him from the Even in the villages today, especially during and engineering at Waseda, could not be drudgery of work. No other country has Ihe New Year celebration, you can see cars more pleased if he were watching one of his pursued this vision quite so vigorously as being decorated with paper ornaments. students reinvent the transistor "There you Japan. Since it first imported an Ameri- So, for the Japanese, to wifness this emerg- have a one-and-a-half-year-old toddler," he . can-made industrial robot in 1967. Japan ing of robots is like watching small children says. And he dreams a father's dream has emerged as the robot center of the who are there to help their parents." about what his precocious toddler might world, the model of future societies. The motif was repeated during Omni's become as it grows up. Today there are more than 77,000 indus- visit as often as the musical theme from "When a child becomes seven years old, trial robots in Japan, nearly 70 percent of Star Wars, piped over Muzak: Robots are he has an ability equal to the adult. My goal the world's robot population, most of Ihem good for the family. Tokyo TV station NHK is to build a robot that will have a seven- tucked away and turning out products in broadcast one typical robot success story year-old's ability. Even though it's not pos- factories. But thousands of new robots in a documentary about a mom-and-pop sible, I'm trying to do if." never go to work. There's a Japanese cat manufacturing firm. Facing bankruptcy Kato is one of a number of Japanese robot for sale, for instance, that uses artifi- because of the cost of labor, the owners scientists working on the generations of cial vision to avoid obstacles. Masked and rented two robots and hired their son back robots to come of age in the twenty-first menacing robots (like the one on the previ- from a job in Tokyo to automate their century. They will be quite different, he pre- ous page) compete with humans in the parts-making plant. In an offbeat switch on dicts, from the rivet-punching drones of to- sport of kendo, thrusting and parrying with Alvin Toffler's electronic cottage-industry day. "The industrial robot today is the pliable bamboo swords. Students at a idea, the family was reunited, the business mainstay of all robots," Kato said over tea. Tokyo medical college give mouth-to- turned a profit, and the mother liked the "They are simply laborers or function mouth resuscitation and injections to a robots because she didn't have to serve oriented. But in the next twenty years we robot programmed to suffer cardiac arrest Ihem tea all the time. will witness the emergence of the robot in on demand. Its soft skin sweats. Its pupils Bigger Japanese companies are in service areas such as medicine. The robot dilate, and its pulse trips appropriately. A many ways simply extended families, with will take over in everyday situations and will monitor (in the photo above) provides a plenty of room for exotic mascot machines. closely resemble human beings with the readout of its health, which can be instantly "Instead of the great feudal families," one integration of artificial intelligence, voice, reset to normal. government employee says, "we now have tactile recognition, and bodily functions. The craze for machines like these is only the large corporations like Mitsubishi that Through this mechanization of the human just beginning. In 1980 Japan's businesses protect the country and their own workers." being, will we know more about ourselves. invested nearly $3 billion in robotization. In times of recession or runaway inflation, to And know yourself is the long pursuit." Japanese experts predict that in a mere these companies improve industrial effi- Ever since Ihe Czech novelist Karel three more years total investment in robots ciency instead of laying off workers: They Capek coined the word robot,, man has w.ill be at least 12 times as much. This is the buy more robots. Like Samurai warriors, 44 OMNI SONTIMjfcDON PAGE 107 FICTION

Utile Will was bom to survive— and to lead ELEPHANT SONG

BY BARRY B. LONGYEAR

Admiralty Office of Ihe Tenth Quadrant Federation Thetoday announced that the circus starship City of Baraboo, enroute to the planet H'dgva. in the Tenth Quadrant, failed to report in accordance with its flight plan four days ago. Ninth and Tenth Quadrant deep-space radio searches detected neither distress calls nor automatic

PAINTING BY MICHAEL PARKES " " " 3

emergency beacon signals. Standard control. It's diving into the atmosphere. ure out how tar we are from each other and trade-route sweeps have been begun. Signal's dead." in what relation." The ship, housing the entire company of He pushed himself up from the couch On the couch rested a meter-long, gold-

O'Hara's Greater Shows, the iirst of the in- and stumbled toward the voices. But now tipped hook. Bullhook Willy picked it up. terstellar circuses, is presumed to have Ihe control cabin was silent. turned, pulled himself through the'com- been lost with all hands. There was a breath of fresh air on his partment door, and headed down the dark

^-Billboard face, and he inhaled. His vision cleared a cornpanionway. The smell of it. Hot Insula- May 29, 2148, page 1 bit, and he could make out the shuttle crew tion, boiling hydraulic fluid, and, over- standing like statues before the controls. powering every other odor, the smell of In the darkness abovQ the atmosphere of "You. Fireball. What is it?" burning flesh. the strange planet, ten smaller craft de- The command pilot of the Number Three The frantic calls from the control cabin tached themselves from a great ship, fired car turned her head and looked at him. She were soon drowned out by the screams of their entry burns, and fell toward the seemed not to notice the blood dripping the animals. He fumed into the corn- planet's surface. When the shuttles were Irom her forehead. "The Saraboo. It-just got panionway that led to the huge cage of little more than points of reflected light, the exed. We got away just in time." rotating tubes that held the elephants. An

great ship seemed to wobble, then roll. For Fireball nodded at another crewmember. emergency light flashed in his face; then a moment the ship's movement seemed to "Try to raise the other cars." out of the darkness and smoke someone

. -stabilize; then its powerful engines gave a The crewmember slabbed at some but- yelled. brief, blinding flash; the ship nosed over tons. 'Any cars, this is Number Three, "Ponyl Pony Red! It's Bullhook! The boss and dived toward the planet. Where are you?" She listened, then tried elephant man is here!" again. "This is Number Three. Any cars, Bullhook held his hand between the light A huge man with a bandaged head where are you?" and his eyes. "Waxy, you want to get that moaned and opened his eyes as he felt the He rubbed his eyes, sat down on the damn light out of my face." reality around him shaking, then slamming edge of a couch, and looked at the shuttle's The beam of light dropped as Bullhook to a devastating halt. He closed his eyes as supported himself by placing a hand pains shot through his head. against a bulkhead. The bulkhead was hot. Noises, The smell of acid, The smell of Too hot. That was the smaller port carrousel smoke. containing half of the remaining Perches. He drove awareness from his mind. Bullhook withdrew his hand. "Waxy, what There was so much to drive away. A dying * The frantic about the horses?" ship, a dying show, a dying daughter— calls from the control cabin The dark shape holding the emergency "Get these two patched up fasti I need light shook his head. "No good. Pony Red were drowned out them back on the radios." had to seal off the port carrousel to try to "Are we down?" by the screams of animals. contain the fire. Doesn't look good. There's "Are we down, Mange? Hell, yes, we're An emergency light no fire in the starboard horse barn and in down! Just put a dent in a goddamned the main carrousel, but the smoke and lack flashed in mountain!" his face; then, of air are driving the nags and bulls crazy." So much to keep away: a dying show, a out of the darkness "There'll be air soon." dying daughter dying itself, the bulls- Another shape joined the one holding and smoke, a voice yelled He opened his eyes and stared blankly Ihe lamp. "Mother Machree, but it's the hell at the blur of rushing, screaming bodies. of Hartford down there." The voice be- Someone had said something about the longed to Pony Red Miira, boss animal bulls— man. "Waxy, why'd you put out the call?" "Fire control, down to the main carrousel! The one holding the lamp pointed at Pony? Pony Red, where are you?" pilot. "Somebo.iv sain sorr-cihing about the Bullhook. "The boss elephant man." Unintelligible crackles, words. bulls." Pony Red moved next to Bullhook and "Get down to the main carrousel! The Fireball Hanah Sanagi squatted next to placed a hand on the boss elephant man's

bulls and horses've broken loose and are him. "Bullhook, it's hell down there. The shoulder. "Are you okay? Last time I saw shredding the place. Fire control, where'n outside hatch to the loading runs Is you, the back of your skull was caved in." the hell are you? Flame in the port car- jammed. The bulls are going crazy." "I'm on my feet. We got to get the stock rousel!" Bullhook Willy got to his feet and sup- out of here. Why aren't the bay doors The bulls. Something about the bulls. ported himself againsl the couch's back- open?" And fire. rest as a crackle filled the compartment. The boss animal man shook his head. He lifted an arm, tingling numbness cov- "Hey! It's Number Ten! One, Four, Five, and "The last I heard from Ihe crew back there, ering his body. Data began to enter the Ten are within sight of each other near a big the doors are jammed. They can't get to the blank circuits of his mind. The bulls. Have body of water." The crewmember talked control that blows the damn doors off be- to get to the bulls. rapidly into the communications system. cause of the bulls. Two of 'em are loose in "What about the atmospheric readings?" "We're pretty bunged up. Came to a stop the runs, tearing up the place. Now we "Screw 'em! If the air out there's no good, against a mountain. Heard anything from can't raise the aft crew at all." it doesn't matter much, does it?" the others?" Bullhook rubbed his eyes. "Can the car-

"That was some great landing, Fireball. He squinted his eyes against the light rousel still rotate?" "You try and deadstick in one of these coming through the cockpit observation "Sure, but—" bastards, punk. It's got the glide angle of a ports. Through them he could see bright "Get some lights on and move Tube brick. sky, green trees hung with golden hair, a Number One fo the botlom, facing the — : "I it said was a good landing range of mountains. doors. I'll get em open." "Where'n the hell are the others?" "Wait! I'm getting a strong signal from Pony Red shook Bullhook's shoulder. "Try the radio, stupid. Wait. What's that Number Six. Six can see Number Eight. "You can't gel through any of the tubes, call?" Eight can'f see Nine but is getting a good especially Number One. Six of the eight "It — it's me'Baraboo, skipper It's out of signal. Number Two? Where are you, Num- bulls in there have broken loose. We're try- ber Two? Can anyone get a signal from ing to get a crew around now to open ihe © 1981 by Barry B. Longyear, from the book Ele- Two? What about Seven?" Crackles, des- doors from the outside." phant Song, to bo pubfeteti :,/ Berkley Books. perate calls, silence. "Okay, let's try to fig- Bullhook began to pull himself down the 43 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE96 His fuel of the future can be drawn from your faucet THE HYDROGEN

BY KENNETH JON ROSE

In Missouri there's a man who likes to drink his car's engine Energy Corporation in 1972. At the beginning it had only one exhaust in front of company He sips slowly, relishing its flavor employee: himself. Today it employs more than 250 people, as if he were sampling fine wine. Then he passes it around to including George Romney, a former governor ot Michigan and his wide-eyed guests. Most of Ihem politely decline the offer, former head of American Motors Corporation. but there's always someone curious enough to taste it. Any- In its short life the Billings Energy Corporation has become body who does is amazed at the discovery "It's water!" the one of the most respected and most successful hydrogen- person exclaims. "Plain, ordinary water!" technology companies in the United States — so successful

That's usually the reaction Roger Billings gets when he that several oil companies have tried to buy it, without any offers his guests a sip of exhaust from his hydrogen-fueled luck. "We want our technology to be bought, but we don't want car. It's been that way ever since he converted his first car to to be bought," Billings says. "Roger Billings and his little crew hydrogen when he was sixteen years of creative people are just not for sale." ~~ old. Since then he's converted just Since he built his first hydrogen- about every kind of engine, from car powered car, Billings has nurtured a engines to tractor engines, to run on dream of seeing the United States be- hydrogen. He's even built, and lived in, come energy independent. The fuel a hydrogen-powered home, that's going to give us that indepen- Billings is a man with a vision. He dence, he's convinced, is hydrogen. sees hydrogen as the fuel of the not- He has been devoting his expertise, too-distant future, and he's been and the profits from his computer cor- spending his time and energies com- poration, to bringing that about. His is ing up with a technology that makes it a fervor lhat impresses his colleagues. easier to use, whether for fueling the "We see hydrogen as a fuel for the vehicles we drive or heating our homes distant future. Billings sees it as being or generating electricity. used more immediately," physicist

At the age of thirty-three, Billings is Walter Stewart says. Stewart is a hy- a director ot the International Associ- drogen fuel expert at Los Alamos ation for Hydrogen Energy, an organi- Laboratory, in New Mexico. zation that includes some of the top As a future fuel, hydrogen has a lot hydrogen researchers in the world, to offer, It's the most abundant element and he's the president, chairman of the in the universe. On Earth it is mostly board, and director of two corpora- bound up in water, which makes it al- tions: Billings Computer Corporation most inexhaustible. It's also highly ef- and Billings Energy Corporation. ficient. It produces more energy per

Fresh out of college with nothing pound than fossil fuels do. Best of all, more than S400, he formed the Billings hydrogen can easily be substituted for PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOUGLAS KIRKLAND 3

iHydrogen is not a fuel

you convert a home to. It's a system you convert a community to

natural gas, diesel fuel, and gasoline. out converting the whole world," he ex- Century so it could run on hydrogen fuel. Up to now the greatest problem has been plains. So far he's converted ten automo- Billings has designed a ready source of

how to store it. Once it could be put only biles to his dual-gasoline-hydrogen system. at-home hydrogen, When the driver wants into a pressurized bottle in its gaseous As a car fuel, hydrogen can't be ex- to refuel, he simply connects his car to a form, or cooled to -253°C (-423° F), at celled. It's clean, and the engine also Billings electrolyzer. Overnight the unit which point it becomes a highly explosive wears better. "The gasoline engine," Bill- splits water coming from the tap and liquid, But in Ihe last 15 years there's been a ings says, "operates at almost the same pumps hydrogen into the tank. By morning breakthrough in what are called hydrides, efficiency on methane, methanol, or he's ready to go. But making hydrogen with meial alloys that absorb hydrogen gas the gasoline. But when you convert the engine house current is expensive — more expen- way a sponge does and release the gas to run on hydrogen, you get a forty percent sive in most places than getting gasoline at

when they're heated. Both the safety and boost in efficiency" The Environmental Pro- the pump. That would change if the country the limitations on the amount of gas that tection Agency rates the Omni's overall fuel converted to a hydrogen economy. can be squeezed into a container have economy at 30 miles per gallon of gasoline. Today the most exciting break in hydro- been improved so that it's now possible to The hydrogen-powered Omni averages 44 gen technology might come from solar- build hydrogen-fueled vehicles. miles per gallon and can hit a top speed of energy research. For instance, at the third While just a high-school senior, Billings 80 miles an hour. International Conference on Photochemi- converted his father's old Model A Ford Billings plans to sell his two-fuel Omnis to cal Conversion and Storage of Hydrogen ("he wouldn't let me touch his new Chev- anyone willing to pay the steep £30,000 Energy, sponsored by the Solar Energy Re- rolet") to run on hydrogen. That feat won price tag. After the first 10 have been tested search Institute (SERI), scientists an-

him the Gold and Silver Award at the 1966 out in the marketplace for a year, he hopes nounced that it may soon be possible to International Science Fair, in Dallas, Texas, to build 100 more, at less than half the origi- produce hydrogen from sunlight. and a scholarship. His fascination with hy- nal price. In the meantime he's designing For example, Nobel Prize-winning drogen continued when he studied sys- conversion sets for those who want to chemist Melvin Calvin, from the University tems engineering at Brigham Young Uni- change their engines to run on hydrogen. of California at Berkeley, announced that he versity in Utah. While there, he continued The kits might be out by the mid-1980s. had developed a synthetic chloroplast, a his work on hydrogen technology with a Meanwhile the news has got around that man-made copy of the part of the plant cell grant from the Ford Motor Company. what Billings does, works. "We have a lot of that is responsible for photosynthesis, con-

Today much of that has paid off in the people who write us letters, saying, 'I want verting solar energy into stored energy in

work he's done on hydrogen vehicles. One to convert my car today. I want lo convert the form of a sugar, glucose.

of his pet projects has been to take a com- my helicopter, my boat. How much will it In nature, the plant chloroplast uses the

pact car, a Dodge Omni, and make it a cost?' " He's even been contacted by the energy of sunlight to split water into hydro- two-fuel car that can use either gasoline or Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, asking gen and oxygen. The hydrogen then fuses hydrogen. In addition to a regular gas tank, him to help convert the engine of a Buick with carbon dioxide from the air to build

it has a hydride tank carbohydrates, and ox- specially designed by ygen is set free into the the engineers at the Bill- atmosphere. In Calvin's ings Corporation. About design, the man-made

the size of a spare tire, it chloroplast produces fits snugly under the molecular hydrogen in- trunk and has enough stead of carbohydrates. fuel capacity to take you Calvin has a way to go about 100 miles. before his process can To make you go be used commercially, farther, Billings installed but solar experts are a simple switch on the convinced that he, or

car's dashboard. Flick it someone equally in- one way and you're driv- genious, is going to

ing on gasoline, Flick it come up with a system back and you're on hy- that will effectively drogen again. Billings extract hydrogen from made the cars dual- water, using sun power fueled for the simple One SERI official adds, reason that it's tough to "We're almost there." buy hydrogen at your Meanwhile Billings ' neighborhood service has grand energy plans station. "If a driver hap- of his own. With ihe help pens to go on vacation, of an old technology, he he's got to-have some hopes to make this other fuel. So this is a country totally energy way of being able to get independent by the turn one foot in the door with- of the century. Billings

52 OMNI calls his master o I an -'or : his self-sufficiency Project Liberty. A sort of modern-day Manhattan Project. Project Liberty is Billings's answer to OPEC. Since we have vast coal reserves in this country, Billings wants to build coal- gasification plants to change coal into hy- drogen. The 40 coal-gasification plants now operating throughout Ihe world make only synlhetic natural gas, with hydrogen

as a by-product. Not only is it more energy efficient, Billings says, to gasify coal into

hydrogen, but it's also cheaper. By the year 1990 this hydrogen-minded Johnny Appleseed wants to sprinkle the country- with enough coal-gasification plants to offset all foreign oil imports. He

figures that it will take 50 hydrogen plants to replace just the gasoline made from im- ported oil and that another 50 will be needed to eliminate foreign oil imports completely by the year 2000. "We could do

it faster than that. And I'm unhappy to say."

he adds, "that we could have done it at least ten years ago." The U.S. government bears much of the blame for frustrating Billings's dream. There is a tinge of bitterness in his voice when he talks about the Department of En-

ergy, "The DOE is a joke. It really is," he complains. "Government research is so much less efficient than industrial re-

search. If a company were to spend money

like that on research, it would go broke.

When I see all those resources wasted, it really, really bothers me." Other nations, however, are more en- lightened. India has established a Hydro-

gen Energy Task Force as part of its gov- ernmental effort to reduce oil imports. Japan is planning to produce commercial

hydrogen; first it will use nuciear energy in the 1980s, Ihen solar energy in the 1990s. An Unforgettable West Germany already has hydrogen- . fueled buses in service in both Stuttgari and West Berlin, and the West Germans are Experience involved with newer hydrogen technology as well. Three years ago the West German government sponsored an international To see a Wild Turkey rising symposium on hydrogen in air transporta- tion, at which aerospace experts dis- from the forest floor is an awe- cussed developing a small fleet of hydro- some sight no man is likely to gen-fueled wide-body jets. Not one to be easily discouraged, Bill- forget. The bird's wing-beats ings is not waiting for our government to get going. In 1980 he moved his corporation resound like thunder claps, from Provo, Utah, to Independence, Mis- and its feathers fan out in souri, to begin Phase 1 of Project Liberty: a hydrogen-powered community. He is in the grand display. process of changing 20 homes and 100 vehicles in Independence to run on hydro- The Wild Turkey is the gen. Even the mail delivery vehicles, do- nated with the blessing of the U.S. Postal largest native bird capable Service, will be hydrogen-fueled. Since of flight and an apt symbol there isn't any coal-gasificalion plant in In- dependence, his company is going to for America's greatest native supply the city with hydrogen by piping it in from firms in the area that produce the gas whiskey-Wild Turkey. as a manufacturing by-product. Billings is modeling the homes after the one he and his family lived in for two-and- WILD TURKEY"/ 101 PROOF / 8 YEARS OLD a-half years before they moved to Missouri.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 95 Reincarnation is a tricky business and a costly one for some

BY JOHN SHIRLEY .^0'

one of those protectiplated Manhattan brownstones, rewired in the Nineties, every square inch evenly coated * « with a thin, flexible preserving plastic. The old building was a jarring sight, snugged between the glassy high- rises. It was the distant past all neatly wrapped up and embalmed. It seemed appropriate, considering the job I'd been sent there to do.

I went up the slippery hall siairs, one hand on the plastic-coated wooden railing, wondering what unpro- tected wood felt like. They'd even preserved the quaint twentieth-century graffiti spraypainted in bright crim- son on the faded walls: Nuke Reagan Before He Nukes You and Death to the Compromise Socialists. i I pressed 2-D's doorbell. An eye goggled through the k< old-fashioned glass peephole. The place apparently had no inspection cameras. The door opened —on real hinges — and I was looking down at a tour-year-old boy. m V f 1 < TRIGGERING * PAINTING BYPIERO FASSONI Behind him was the chair he'd been stand- spongy synthetic. The walls, floor, ceiling, gressing people, and I racing facts, to get ing on. He pushed it aside. and furniture were all of a piece, shaped by them to admit it was a bona fide science."

He glanced ai my clingsuil, at the de- the inhabitants. The room spoke to me "I don't know about science. But in my ." partment's suit-and-lie stenciled sharply about those inhabitants. current circumstances. . He made a bit- on the front (the painting of the white hankie "Who else lives here?" I asked. The de- ter face. "I'm forced to believe in reincarna- and the tie clip were beginning to fade), partment had told me nothing about the tion." He looked at me. "Why the hell are and chuckled grimly. He noticed my dark people involved in the Tangle, except the you here? Level with me." eyes, my short black hair, my duskiness, address. It's better that way "We had a report of a rather nasty Tangle and his recognition of me as an Ameri- Conrad took a silvery cigarette case from here. The lines of spiritual evolution tan- canized East Indian showed in his face: a a table, his infant fingers struggling for gled. Sometimes a gross emotional trauma flicker of suspicion. It was a very adult ex- smooth movements; he lit a thin Sherman from one life surfaces in the next. The pression. sulkily with a thumbnail lighter. 'A couple of people involved in the trauma are reborn in in next life, I stared. They hadn't told me what the degenerates live here," he said, blowing close circumstances the and

it cleared up." Tangle was. I had a feeling began here. smoke rings, "who call themselves my par- the next, until the thing's

With the boy. The boy had curly brown hair, ents. Fawiber is a musician. George Mar- I considered telling him more. I might big blue eyes, a.pug nose, and pursed lips. veil, snooty concert guitarist. Plays one of have said I came because a Tangle needs

He' wore a formal spiral-leg suit. It was an those hideous flesh guitars. They're both a Triggering. And they sent me, Rarnja, .adult's suit, in miniature. In his mouth was tlesh-machine fetishists. Mother works at specifically, because I'm part of the Tangle. clamped a blacK cigarette holder contain- the genvats, helping make more genetic- Not sure how yet, But I'm one of the few ing a Sherman's Real Tobacco burnt nearly manipulation horrors. She's not so bad, re- department staffers who can't remember to the butt. Smoke geysered at intervals ally, though it nauseates me when she looks his last life. Part of it's repressed irretrieva- from his nostrils. at me with her bg b'own eyes welling, hop- bly. The computer model connected me

A midget? But he wasn't. He was a four- ing I'll turn into her widdoo Ahmed again. with this tangle. They sent me, though they year-old boy. Her name's Senya. They named me know that there's a big probability that "You're staring at me," he said abruptly, someone involved will die. flesh his voice high-pitched but carefully articu- But I didn't say that. Instead; 'As for

lated, accented almost aristocratically. "Is machines, I don't know how much so- there some specific reason for this intrusive called soul they have. Or even how much scrutiny, or are you simply a man who prac- awareness. The department believes that • For a few tices his penetrating g-ance on any unsus- they're part of the evolution of the lower pecting citizen he encounters?" minutes t couldn't talk. I felt orders. Animal minds, animal souls." I

"I'm Rarnja," I said, nodding politely "I'm shook my head. "I'm not sure. Conrad, what as if I were " from the Department of Transmigratology do you remember of your death 7 it choking, though hadn't ... I And your name?" I covered my astonish- He shakily relit his cigarette. "I ment well. drowned. Scuba ... uh, scuba-diving. . been me who had He frowned at his cigarette, which had Sickening circumstances. Trapped un- drowned on that occasion. gone out. "Care for a smoke?" derwater. My air ran out. Big pain in my

"I don't smoke, thanks." I drowned chest. Gigantic buzzing in my ears. And a

"Self-righteous, the way you say that. But while rush. Next thing I remember is hear- later, years Iater3 you federal men are always self-righteous ing this sad guitar song. Only it was a flesh bastards. There was another here, fellow guitar; so it sounded like they do— like a named Hextupper or something. You're the guitar crossed with a human voice. Hooked follow-up. Very orderly. You can go and around, and-there was Senya looming over

dance with Dante for all I care, friend. But if me, her arms outstretched, and I was stag-

It you must know"— he gestured me inside Ahmed, but I maKe :nem call me by my real gering toward her. must have looked like and moved to close the door behind me— name," he said defensively. toddling. And then the guitar screamed.

"my name's Conrad Frampton. How-do- "I take it you don't approve of flesh ma- That's what brought me to myself. I re-

chines." I there flesh you-do, salutations, and etcetera." sensed was a ma- membered who I was ... My real parents "You're cvercompensating your self- chine near at hand, A big one. are Laura and Marvin Frampton. Were. consciousness about being a little boy," I He made a something-smells-bad face. They died together in a nursing-home fire, said, returning his hostility. "Soulless things. Ugly. I don't know which is I'm told."

He shrugged. "Could be. If you were a worse, the flesh guitar or that living pit they He crossed his small legs and propped forty-one-year-old man trapped in a four- call a bedroom. They are soulless, aren't an elbow on one knee, his cigarette holder year-old body, you'd feel like overcompen- they? You're from the Department of poised continentally between thumb and sating, too. You'd feel like leaping out the Transmigratology. So you're allegedly an forefinger "George would like to have me window now and then. Believe me." He led expert on souls. What's your stand on flesh adopted. He doesn't like me, and neither

me to a couch, and I sat beside him. machines, old boy?" does his room. But then the room is rude to

it, "When did you die?" I asked, watching "Depends on what you mean by soul. We George, too. It shakes when he strokes him. He made me nervous. don't use the word. We say plasma Held Unpleasantly. I'll show you the damn thing." 1982," of lightly "I died in he said, not even blink- composed interwoven subatomic We got up. I followed him to a doorway on ing, "Care for a drink?" particles, capable of recording its host's the right and into the bedroom. "No, thanks. You go ahead." sensory input. And capable of traveling The room was in pain.

"Damned right I will," There was a low from body to body, evolving psychically so The cavelike walls were all rosy mem- yellow table beside the couch. He punched that species survival is more likely. It's not branes, touched with blue, pulsing. Across for a cocktail on the table's programmer. religion. It's a function of the first law of the room and near the living floor was a

I looked around. The room wasn't an- thermodynamics, but we use certain mys- blue-black bruise, swollen and pustulent, a tique; it seemed like a broken promise after tical techniques to work with it. Training for half-meter across. Conrad carefully didn't the outside of the building. It was a stand- seeing life patterns, that sort of thing. Kar- look at it.

ard decorbubete,. done in various shades ma-buildup release. But if we use words "You're just full of hostility, Conrad," I said of pastel yellow, the curved walls blending like karma and soul in our reports to the softly. "You've been kicking the wall there. comerlessly into the concave ceiling; the National Academy of Sciences, we'll lose Or hitting it with something." floor was more or less flat but of the same our funding. It took us twelve years of re- He turned to me with a very adult look of 56 OMNI CONTI.SUFD ON PAGE 109 THE NEW FRONTIER

Three years ago OMNI magazine pioneered a revolu- tion in science publishing, travelling to and beyond the known horizons of our world, returning with fascinating and fantastic stories, in language we could all under- stand. OMNI looked inside the atom and across the breadth of the universe, discussed black holes, dis- sected the human mind, searched for UFO's soberly and described genetic engineering simply. And OMNI con- tinues to journey the new frontier—that space and mo- ment straddling our incredible todays and our even more exciting tomorrows.

Read the philosophies and fiction of B.F. Skinner, Ray Bradbury, Carl Sagan, Frederik Pohl, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Gerard K. O'Neill and Stephen King, and read obout the scientists and their science, the architects of our future. Imagination is the soul of our civilization.

OMNI is the magazine that best captures and reflects that spirit, that wonder, that imogination. annrui A one-year subscription is $24.00.

Fill in the attached card and subscribe today. That's a 20% saving from the newsstand cost. lures characterizes Ihe art of Marshall Arisman, whose inspiration springs from the social unrest wrought by science and technology. Arisman's paintings, with their surreal aura and futuristic sheen, convey the trapped, helpless feeling of men who hav>

i emotional reaction to the mechani- :y is perhaps best exemplified in his series Genetic Man Jing page and above), currently being exhibited at a o co gallery. The androidlike laces are

;. The pictui on assembly lines and the dispirited derelicts he sees so often wandering the streets near his Manhat- |E9 gagSafelffBzuacE Hi

( **s» .*(»,

:

I labs that were doing this work." he recalls, "I realized thai the real ility that we might all develop eight arms but that ^riments are being conducted on test animals in artificial situa- tions." Referring to The Cage, he adds, "That happens to be a dog, but it artist is not a fan of

I just as well be a man in there." Similarly Ti is that will relate to8art part of the hope people my not as fuzzy

, _ _) is the culmination of i 3 Arisman's : to their own lives here and now."DO ,

Baked Apple* Last Thanksgiving, a designer from a fire which, among other Lynn/Ohio Corporation took one of unpleasantries, melted the company's Apple Personal Computers his TV set all over his home for the holidays. computer. He thought

While he was out eating turkey, it his goose was cooked. got baked. But when he took the His cat, perhaps miffed at being left Apple to Cincinnati Computer Store, alone, knocked over a lamp which started mirabile dictu, it still worked. A new case and keyboard made it as good as new. Nearly 1,000 Apple dealers have complete service centers that can quickly fix just about anything that might go wrong, no matter how bizarre. So if you're looking for a personal computer that solves problems instead of creating them, look to your authorized Apple dealer. You'll find everything well-done.

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65 OMNI 7 ^>>M%*i** *

The quiet wizard of recreationai mathematics reflects on 25 years of brain-twisting the scientific establishment irUTERVIELAJ

Washington Post once called Martin Gardner's mately 40,000 copies a year, 22 years after it was first published. Thehome office "the mathematical center of the earth." An accomplished amateur magician, Gardner has designed Gardner laughs at such hyperbole, but to followers of numerous magical effects! and many of his books and pam- only in his Mathematical Games columns in Scientific American, it is not phlets, often written under other names, a're available so outrageous a description at all. As chief guide through the magic stores. In Confessions of a Psychic, for example, written endless labyrinth of mathematics. Gardner has led millions under the calculated pseudonym Uriah Fuller. Gardner divulges gently down the fascinating corridors — games, paradoxes, some of the most carefully guarded secrets of the phony-psychic higher dimensions, infinity— illuminating all with clarity, wonder, trade. Writing in The Ambidextrous Universe on abstruse areas of is extraordinaire, enlightening > and a sense of fun. Last year some of the top mathematicians in modern science, he the explainer there is Science: Good, i the country, all devoted Gardner fans, gave him a surprise birth- without overpowering. Most recently of collection of irreverent articles on talking 5 day present by publishing The Mathematical Gardner, a book Bad, and Bogus, a animals, psychic surgeons, children who see through their I papers all dedicated to him. Even outside the realm of mathematics, Gardner's range of fingertips, and other pseudoscientific phenomena that Gardner interest and his expertise are remarkable, His most successful first wrote about in the 1950s in Fads and Fallacies in the Name I in his new book are served , and amplifications on of Science, As always, the subjects \ work. The Annotated Alice with comments " Lewis Carroll's timeless Wonderland tales, still sells approxi- up with wit, understanding, and ruthless devotion to the truth. Last month Scientific American printed specialized only in recreational malhemat- wrote about those three things in an article

Gardner's farewell piece— a refinement of ics, which is very, very low-level math. I for Antioch Review., then expanded that ar- the mathematics behind "Reaganom- could teach a course in recreational math- ticle into a book by adding chapters on

ics"— marking the end of 25 years of Math- ematics, but that's like saying I could teach dowsing, flying saucers, the hollow-earth ematical Games. At sixty-seven, Gardner a course in puzzles. I couldn't solve a prob- theories^ pyramidology Atlantis, early ESP

has "retired," with his wife, Charlotte, to a lem in calculus if my life depended on it. research, and so on. It took a long time for

new home in the hills of North Carolina to Omni: Just a few minutes ago you were on the book to start selTIng, but it really took off

devote his attention to a book about his first the phone saying, "Oh, this is embarrass- when they started attacking it on the Long

love— not mathematics, but philosophy ing. You've caught me off guard. .This is John Nebel Show. quiet, private A man, Gardner shies from terrible. I don't know what to say." And, Omni: The radio talk show from New York?

publicity. He never performs his magic overhearing you, I thought someone had Gardner: Yes. For about a year, almost tricks in public, never gives speeches, and, called to say, "Listen, you made a terrible every night, the book would be mentioned so far, has turned down all invilations to goof in your column." And you get off the on ihe show by'sorne guest who was at-

make public appearances. And although phone and tell me that a university in Penn- tacking it.

he rarely gives interviews or poses for pic- sylvania wants to name you Scientist of the Omni: Is it time for a sequel? tures, did for he both Omni senior editor Year and have you go down and accept an Gardner: I have pasted up a kind of sequel.

Scot Morris. award that had previously been given to It's called Science; Good, Bad, and Bogus.

"Knowing Martin Gardner has been one such people as Carl Sagan, Margaret It's a collection of all the articles and book of Ihe delights of my life," says Morris. "I first Mead, and Linus Pauling. reviews I've done on eccentric science nearly wrote to him twenty years ago, and Gardner: They shouldn't have offered me over ihe pas! Ihirty years. I really don't take the generosity he showed then, in writing such a thing in the first place. That was a pseudoscience very seriously, in spite of back to a presumptuous fan, continues lo mistake on their part. I think they were the fact that lots of people think I spend this day in the regular of sharing ideas and fooled by my writing into thinking that I am a most of my time aitacking it, brain teasers, many of which find their way highly trained and true mathematician. Omni: What's wrong with pseudoscience? into the Omni Games column." Is there any harm in believing something Gardner is shown here perched on the ihat's not true?

statue of Alice in New York's Central Gardner: Generally, I think a culture is bet-

Park— an updating of the jacket photo on ter off if people are well educated and able the original Annotated Alice. Morris's inter- to disiinguish good science from bad. For iSome people at view begins wilh a subject appropriate to example, pseudoanthropology conlrib- the setting. Scientific American suspect uted largely to the rise of Nazism. Once the Omni". How did a mathematical games ex- of me of deliberately Nazis got control the German educa- pert come to write a book about Alice in tional system, they were able to bring up Wonderland? making mistakes to increase "almost a whole generation who took for

Gardner: I have always found Lewis Carroll my mail. Of course granted that the Aryan race was superior to a fascinating person. He was a profes- all other races, and that blacks, Jews, and I don't, but occasionally I sional mathematician whose books are gypsies were geneticaly inferior. There was filled with all kinds ot logical and mathemat- give a problem no way a young person in Germany could ical jokes. The chapters of Through the that has never been solved* find out that Aryan anthropology was Looking-Glass actually are- based on a pseudoanthropology, because orthodox series of chess moves. anthropology was excluded from German Omni: Will you ever revise your book? textbooks.

Gardner; I have a big carton filled with let- Another general point is that a modern ters, pointing out things that could supply society has to make decisions constantly me with additional notes. Enlarging Alice is Omni: Many people ca. ! themselves math- about where funding should go. A culture just one of-the projects I'll be able to do now ematicians and teach in colleges, and they with a poorly educated citizenry will waste that I don't have to worry about preparing a would defer to your opinions. large sums of money on crank research, monthly column. Gardner: That's true, and it's embarrass- The spread of Lysenkolsm in the Soviet

Omni; You were recently awarded an hon- ing. They overestimate my knowledge. Pro- Union under Stalin is a prime example. The orary life membership in ihe Mathematical fessors write to ask me technical questions science of genetics disappeared in that Association of America, yet you say that that I'm absolutely incapable of answering. country, because of widespread accept-

you don't consider yourself a mathema- Sometimes I don't even understand the ance of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko's tician or a scientist. questions. crackpot theory that you can inherit certain

Gardner: I can't think of any definition of the Omni: What got you interested in writing traits from your ancestors. words mathematician or scientist that about eccentrics and frauds and Omni: What effect does pseudoscience would apply to me. I think of myself as only pseudoscience? have on individuals? a journalist just Ever since I who knows enough about Gardner: was a boy, I've been Gardner: I think the only serious damage is mathematics to be able to take low-level fascinated by crazy science and such done to persons who believe something math and make it clear and interesting to things as perpetual-motion machines and crazy in the health field. Quack medical nonmalhematicians. Let me say that I think logical paradoxes. I've always enjoyed beliefs— "psychic" surgery, fad diets, Lae- not knowing is I too much about a subject an keeping up with those ideas. suppose I trile, and so forth — can be definitely harm- asset for a journalist, not liability. really didn't get into it a The seriously until I wrote ful to your health if they prevent you from great secret of my column is that I know so my first book, Fads and Fallacies in the going to a reputable doctor. Some popular

little I about mathematics that have to work Name of Science. I was influenced by the reducing diets can be very damaging to hard to understand the subject myself. Dianetics movement, now called Scientol- those who try them. The Beverly Hills Diet is

Maybe I can explain things more clearly ogy, that was then being promoted by John the latest instance. than a professional mathematician Campbell in can. Astounding Science Fiction. I Omni: What about a pseudoscience such Omni: You've taught mathematics to mil- was astonished at how rapidly the thing as inventing a perpetual-motion machine? lions. Surely that makes you a mathema- had become a cult. I had friends who were Gardner: Well, that's nonsense, of course, tician, wouldn't agree? sitting you in Wilhelm Reich's orgone energy but I don't see that it does any social harm.

Gardner: I wouldn't be capable of teaching accumulators. And the Immanuel Veli- One should be tolerant of most pseudosci- mathematics on the college level. I have kovsky business had just started, too. I ence, because there's always the possibil- 68 OMNI it y someone with a weird point of view may Protestant fundamentalism. There are mil- Gardner: My mother was a devout, or- have latched on to an important truth that lions of people who now think there is sub- thodox Methodist, but my father was more

scientists are disregarding. It's a small stantial scientit c evidence against evolu- of a pantheist and skeptic.

price to pay, I think. I am violently opposed tion. They believe that fossils found in the Omni: Did you ever follow your mother's to any kind 'of government legislation that ground are from animals and plants buried direction?

would prevent pseudoscience from being by Noah's flood. I' call it pseudoscience, Gardner: I was a Protestant fundamentalist

published, either in magazines or in books. because the evidence against a worldwide when I was in hlgn schoo . This is reflected Omni: Does a widespread belief in such flood's having produced all the fossils is in my only novel, The Flight of Peter Fromm.

psychics as Uri Geller do any harm? overwhelming. And Ihe evidence-that But I got over that when I went to the Uni- Gardner: Ironically, the greatest harm that evolution actually took place is likewise versity of Chicago.

Geller has done has been what he has overwhelming. True, there is scientific de- Omni: Getting back to your thirty-year

done to parapsychology. Almost all para- bale about the mechanisms by which campaign again*", pscudc science, do you

psychologists now recognize that Geller is evolution operates, but that's not a dis- think you're 'making a deni?

. a charlatan and a fraud. Bui they didn't at agreement over the fact of evolution. The Gardner: Oh, I think not much of a dent. Our first, So many parapsychologists went on number of intelligent people who promote Committee forthe Scientific Investigation of

record saying he was a genuine psychic this fundamentalism is rising very rapidly, I Claims of the Paranormal puts out a lively

that they made fools of themselves. And a imagine if you took a poll to find out how quarterly journal, The Skeptical Inquirer, for believe first lot of people-lost respect them. many people the theory of evolution which, so far as I know, is ihe magazine

Omni: Some mainstream scientists were is false, you'd find millions of people saying devoted to pseudoscience from a skeptical taken in, too, yes, they believe that. We even have a Pres- point of view. But the circulation is still

Gardner: Yes, and I think their reputations ident in the While House who is dubious small. I think Fads and Fallacies was read

were damaged, most notably. John Taylor, about evolution. He's on record as calling it and enjoyed mainly by people who shared the mathematical physicist in England, only a theory, one with great flaws, and my poinl of view before they read the book.

Omni: What are the most popular areas of saying that creationism should enjoy equal I doubt that it had much influence on pseudoscience today? time in the classroom. changing anyone's opinions.

Gardner: Of course people are still inter- Omni: Do you believe in God? I have always gone on the assumption

ested in occult phenomena and para- Gardner: Yes, I do. But that answer doesn't that it's impossible to convince a person ot

I rational psychology. I regard most parapsychology mean much unless I explain what mean by anything by argument. Take a doesn't believe in the as not sufficiently confirmed to justify call- God. I'm writing a book in which I will de- prominent figure who Oral ing it kinc of I theory evolution, Roberts, say. It's a science. Aside from that, I suppose fend the theoogy oolievein, but for of geologist ufology is the most widely believed bit of now I'll just say I don't consider myself an inconceivable to me that a could pseudoscience. atheist and that my beliefs are not con- sit down with Oral and present a series of A fast-rising branch of pseudoscience is nected with any established religion. arguments that would cause him to say, the revival of the creationist view ot evolu- Omni: You were raised In a fundamentalist "Amazing! Evolution must be true after all! tion, which is part of the recrudescence of family, weren't you? You've given me so many facts and so

The paip stirs with

Seagrams

a party. *<*S u makes for the

X;Sty^deratm . Ingenious doctors are putting new technology to work against

WHEN TECHNOLOGY BEGETS THE FATHER

BYCARLAFINE 1

procedures , doctors are Jfl applying mi )dern

reproductive% problems the it from organic disorders. the tube through

? it fron until recenil •j were almost Now that they know can sperm travel

unknown. Fi 3r centuries thi 3 be done, physicians ,-;r^ tcsticio to Ihe va: i woman alore bore the blame for a barren gfflW^M marriage. Ir ipotence, it 1 was though t, must be attributable solely to Mw psychologic isl problems, first recipieni of a testicle Suddenly these incorrei

transplant. Donated attitudes arc ; changing, by his otherwise Doctors hav e found that

in it least V" nMBI identical Iwin, the gland the man i halfOf i In this and many other in another 3 percent of some men. varicose Infancy to Old At. revolutionary medical childless ur ions both testicular veins, called (Scribner's, 1981 PAINTING BY PAUL WU NDERLICH devised many of these delicate operations. from end to end. because it's coiled up like

OMNI. THE NEW FRONTIER Il was Dr. Silber who performed. the testicle spaghetti. We must find the point where the

STATION LISTINGS transplant for Jim-Stevens (not his real blockage is, then go beyond it in order to name). When Jim first consulted him, Jim find sperm. had been receiving monthly leslosterone "The tubule there is tiny, only one three- WRGB/NBC Albany/Schenectady injections, which helped keep him healthy hundredths of an inch in diameter, with KLKK/IND Albuquerque/ but caused severe mood swings from wall's one one-thousandth of an inch thick. Farmington which he was desperate to escape. In ad- Looking under the microscope and using WBAL/CBS Baltimore dition, Jim had recently got married and thread five times smaller than a strand of WBMG/CBS Birmingham wanted lo have children. hair, we can actually stitch the inner canal WCVB/ABC Boston His brother, who already had three chil- of the vas deferens directly to the opening WLS/ABC Chicago dren, was eager to give Jim a chance to of the epididymal tubule in order to bypass WCPO/CBS Cincinnati lead a normal life. "These men are more the blockage. Then, for extra strength and muscle layer the . WKYC/NBC Cleveland than brothers; they're good friends as well," support, we stitch the of

KRDO/ABC Colorado Springs Silber says. "I -had been thinking about vas to the outer wall of the epididymis." KOMU/NBC Columbia/ such a case for a long time, and we all Silber has used this procedure on more Jefferson City decided to go ahead." than 1.500 men and made 9 out of 10 of

WFAA/ABC Dallas/ Fort Worth Using microsurgery for the eight-hour them fertile. He has also begun to test it on WXYZ/ABC Detroit operation, Silber removed one of Jim's men who have few sperms in iheir ejaculate

KVIQ/ABC Eureka brother's testicles and placed it into Jim's but many normal sperm precursors in the WFFT/IND Fort Wayne empty scrotal sac. Then he connected testicle. This is common in infertile men. KJCT/ABC Grand Junction Jim's spermatic artery, neighboring veins, "In the field of fertility, all this is brand- WOTV/NBC Grand Rapids and the vas deferens to the donated organ. new," Silber asserts. "In three or four years

WLRBIND Green Bay Within seconds after the transplant was most urologists will still think of it as the

WGHP/ABC Greensboro/ completed. Jim's testosterone supply went future, even though it is already happening."

' High Point; from castration levels to normal levels. And yet a few- other urologists are also Winston-Salem Three months later normal sperm produc- pioneering new fertility operations. One is WCTI/ABC Greenville/New Bern tion began. Dr. Richard Amelar, at the New York Univer- WLYH/ABC Harrisburg/ "The blood vessels that supply the testi- sity (NYU) School of Medicine. Dr, Amelar, Lancaster cle are one seventieth of an inch in diame- working with Dr. Lawrence Dubin, has per-

WVIT/NBC Hartford ter, the size ol a pinpoint," Silber com- fected the varicocelectomy. Varicose tes- KPRC/NBC Houston ments. The inner channel of the vas defer- ticular veins are a leading cause of infertil-

WJKS/NBC Jacksonville ens is even smaller. "There is no way you ity. Varicocelectomy disconnects these WJAC/NBC Johnstown/Altoona can' do a transplant without using micro- from the rest of the testicle, improving the KMBC/ABC Kansas City surgery to hook up these tiny vessels." number and quality of sperm. KADN/IND Laiayeite The body will reject a testicle from any- "In the next decade," Amelar predicts, KWU/IND Las Vegas one but an identical twin, and so the opera- "we'll learn more about the varicocele and

KABC/ABC Los Angeles tion is rarely possible iluiSiioer has found how it interferes with sperm production and

WLVY/ABC Louisville another use for it; autotransplants. A few develop new ways to deal wifh it. Some WTVJ/CBS Miami/Ft. Lauderdale boys are born with undescended testicles radiologists are now trying to block var- WIT1/CBS Milwaukee lodged in the abdomen. Left untreated, this icoceles with probes and catheters from KMSP/IND Minneapolis condition can cause life-threatening com- outside the body. This is very exciting." WABG'ABC New York plications. But the only treatment has been Fven mere exciting is the possibility of WAVY/NBC Norfolk /Portsmouth to remove the testicles. restoring fertility without operating at all- KETV/ABC Omaha "Now we can take the testicles out," Sil- One nonsurgical approacn comes from Dr KMIR/ABC Palm Springs ber says, "and replant them in the scrotal sac. Adrian Zorgniotti. also at NYU. The testicles

WEEK/NBC Peoria The patient still has his own testicles, but are located outside the body itself, be- KYW/NBC Philadelphia now they're where they belong instead of cause they must' be relatively cool in order

KPHO/IMD Phoenix up near his kidneys. This operation can be to procuoe vigorous sperm. While the body . WTAE/ABC Pittsburgh done on patients at any age. Our patients temperature is 36,7"C, the testicles' tem- KPTV/IND Portland range from two to twenty-one years old." perature should be at 33.5°C or lower. WDDD/IND Paducah Several of the urologist's operations are Some physicians believe that varicoceles WPTF/NBC Raleigh/ Durham fantastically delicate, in one, he restores and certain other conditions cause infertil- WROC/NBC Rochester fertility after sterilization. During a vasec- ity because they warm the testicles. WQRF/IND Rockford tomy the vas deferens is cut and the sev- Dr. Zorgniotti's answer is to cool'them. He KOVR/ABC Sacramento ered ends are turned back on themselves and Andrew Sealfon, an engineer, have de- KPLR/IND St. Louis and sealed. To rejoin them, the obstruc- vised a scrotal covering that resembles a KUTV/NBC Salt Lake City tions must be clipped away and the ends jockstrap. A small pump worn on the waist

KFMB/CBS San Diego stitched together. If the tube's inner chan- moistens the covering with water and al- KGO/ABC San Francisco nel, only one hundredth of an inch in diam- cohol, and' evaporation cools the testicles.

' KCOY/CBS Santa Barbara eter, is not perfect y aligned, there is noway So far, 30 men have worn the device — Santa Maria for sperm to pass through. Before micro- during the day only— after more conven- KING/NBC Seattle surgery the patier;: had pothaps a 10 per- tional treatments had failed. One in four WTOG/IND Tampa cent chance of regaining his fertility. Silber now has a child or one on the way. "Inter- WWTV'CBS TraverseCify/Cadillac by using the microscope, has given his estingly enough," Zorgniotti says, "four of KVOA/NBC Tucson patients about a 90 percent chance of the five children born so far have been girls.

KGCT/IND Tulsa being fertile. It seems that the Y chromosome may not be

WRC/NBG Washington, D.C An even more delicate operation, called able to survive if one wears the device. If

KTVH/CBS Wichita /Hutchinson the vasoepididymostomy, is used to re- this is so, we might use this device to better WKBN/CBS Young st own move obstructions from the epididymis, "Al- the chances of having a girl baby." though the epididymis is twenty feei long," Zorgniotti also expects the cooler to aid

Silber explains, "it extends only one inch such people as pizza chefs and brick-kiln

PAGE.94 Nobel made a bang. Now we offer a blast with our own set of prizes. To the victors go Omni's LAUEEL5 (AflJD HARDYS)

OMNIBUST SILVER LINING

A! the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, the Our award for supreme optimism, a medallion formed of rose-colored glass set in a California Pavilion displayed a statue of frame of silver, is presented to the firm of Hark Northgreaves, Ltd., of England. a medieval knight on horseback made Engineer K. R. Northgreaves has perfected a splendidly hopeful invention: a portable entirely of prunes. A brochure informed pop-up nuclear shelter that fits inside a valise. visitors that the soft-skinned stalue The shelter consists of an inflatable plastic room with a low-power ventilation represented fact that of the "prunes unit that, according to the developers, will filter radioactive dust or chemical- that state are being introduced warfare gases from the family's air supply, keeping living quarters springtime fresh. victoriously into all lands." People can remain safely inside their snug plastic bag for two weeks, the II is with something of the spirit of that engineers say, after which they can emerge into a smoldering and desolate world statue that we selected the first and use snippets of the plastic to open a dry-cleaning business. soon-to-be-lionized winners of the' Omni Laurels (and Hardys). These

winners are the fruits thai fell from the

great tree of 1981 . And beneath appearances, these are the pits— the seeds of future and comparable : achievements. To anticipate your question, several WW ^km\ features distinguish the Omni Laurels (and Hardys) from the Nobel prizes. For one thing, Omni did not mm mmWWmii-; . invent dynamile. Alfred Nobel did. For another, our winners retain amateur : HI ' m' 'Mm status: They receive nothing at all. It is doubtful lhai reporters will wake them In Vfl up, or TV crews trample their grass. Our winners don't have to fly to Stockholm. How you might ask, did we cull the award-winners from the thousands of

scenusts, inventors, technicians, big "'' ;*'—* -w *•* _ wheels, and their spokespersons who Lib .^huUfil^L tried lo leave their footprints on the ponds of time? Like some of the Nobel Prize committees, our chief judge — ! ONE-UPMANSHIP CUP writer Mike Edelhart— would not reveal anyihirg but his expense account. It was inevitable that the wave of high- But the final choice could not have tech high-rise architecture that has been difficult. all, After 1981 was the recently swept the country should break year when politicians decided life when into the bedroom as well. begins and survivalists advised us to Biosonics, Inc., fittingly of Philadel- stay alive by putting a plastic over bag phia, has announced plans to sell our heads. It was a year when doctors shares for development of a device foughl to save the lives of their golf called MEGS (for male electronic geni- greens, when a robot recovered from tal stimulator). an attempted suicide, ate books, cows Delicately put, a MEGS, when inserted and a diet expert convinced, millions into the male posterior, is supposed that fruit can make you free. to enliven the male anterior. All of these' millsfories and others on Tne Omni judges thought that the the path of progress receive a just company's plans were brave, consid- citation on the pages that follow ering the softness of the market. GOLDEN HAYES AWARD

When organizers of the Ohio Hazardous Materials Workshops and Exposition began scouling for speakers, their thoughts turned naturally to football.

Getting rid of hazardous wastes is, after all, something like sacking the quarterback. As conference officials, including people from the Ohio

Environmental Protection Agency, realized, i! takes a team to generate and use dangerous material and then pun! it when you're done. That's why the organizers of the technical conference and trade show on hazardous materials — a sort of superbowlof sludge — chose Woody Hayes as its keynote speaker. The choice of Hayes, former football coach at Ohio State University, makes eminent sense: After striking an ABC television cameraman.in 1977 and punching a Clemson University player during the 1978 Gator Bowl. Hayes himself was declared something of a hazard, and he was dumped from his job.

PRESTO PRIZE

It's heartwarming to see so great a return to the use of under-the-table imagination in reporting research results. Ourwinneris Elias A.K. Alsabti, not because he was any worse than dozens of other contenders, but

because he came first. It was Alsabti's quick and unceremonious departure from medical programs

affi : :a:od with the University of Virginia and Boston University that released the INTERFACE MARRIAGE KEY spate of plagiarism and cheating accusations that Want to get married with no muss, fuss, or human have animated the past few participation? Try the Reverend Apple, of Sunnyvale,

months. It was claimed that California. The Reverend Apple is a computer Alsabti had built his career program, devised by Ron Jaenisch, that performs most cleverly upon other weddings. Man and woman come before the video people's work, in one case screen. There they respond to all the usual questions mag caNy getting his own by pressing the Y button, signifying yes. version of a paper by two After the groom has placed the ring on his bride's other researchers into print finger, the computer prints, "Now you may kiss the well before the original bride." Unhappily, Jaenisch has not yet figured out how authors were able to. to get his computer to throw rice. LMURELB Card hardys)

BRAZEN BRICK

When the Air Force built itself a laboratory in

Tennessee recently, it gave the building contract to one firm and the interior- equipment contract to another. Everything went smoothly until they tried to insert B (equipment) into A (the building). B turned

out to be too big to fit into A. The Air Force's response? In the spirit

of any child not able to assemble a new toy, it

pouted. It said legislators could ante up more

money to redo the building. Or else it would leave all the expensive equipment sitting outside to be rained on while generals sulked inside, refusing to play.

GREEN RIBBON

One of the main concerns of the according to one doctor battling the medical profession today is not problem, "would be like all the Lincoln

interferon, Laetrile, or vitamin C. It's Continentals and Mercedes-Benzes C-1 5. C-1 5 is a special kind of grass dying atthesameiime." Luckily,

developed for goif courses. And it's science has found an antidote:

dying, meaning that doctors on their tetracycline. And it's nice that doctors days off are obliged to gaze on the still make house calls, provided the horror of brown golf greens. patient is green and close-cropped Failure to save the greens, and nasa nag ;n i:s hole.

TREMORLESS PREDICTION AWARD

No contest on this one. Brian Brady, a U.S. government geo-

physicist, puts all others to shame. It was Brady who pre- dicted about a year ago that an earthquake ot 7.5 on the Kanamori scale would occur in Peru on June 28, 1981, to be followed by two others later in the summer. Thanks to his amazing willingness to foretell events, Brady single-handedly terrified the Peruvians for an entire summer. Of course, in the end, no earthquake struck, not even the

teeniest subterranean tummy rumble. (You can see it not hap- pening in the photo at left.) Brady blames some of the prob-

lems caused by his prediction on the press, which reported it, and he says he will make no further predictions, which we think is too bad. We wish he'd predict a major recession and drought, famine and pestilence, followed by the end of the world. HEMLOCK CUP

If you don't think machines are becoming smarter, considerthecaseof a Florida robot designed for missions inside nuclear-power plants. Apparently

after considering this perilous future, it "worked its arm into an unnatural posture," a lab worker told us, and then began beating itself to pieces — the world's first attempted electronic suicide. Happy ending; The robot is back together and lately has been dating one of the Stepford wives.

LEAKY SPACE SUIT LAUREL

We have heard rumors that the writers of science-fiction films have gone off en masse to study under a great yogi, so that they may more easily type with their feel in Iheir mouths. The winner of this year's commendation for

shallow thinking in deep space is (Jutland, a film about blood and guts in a mining colony on Jupiter's moon lo, a place as dreary as Sandusky, Ohio. The plot was a ripoff of High Noon: a sheriff In a tough town, corrupt officials, and the big gunfight that confirms the good

guy's manhood. The only thing missing is the horseman hollering, "lo, Silver, awa-a-y." The boners come with simple, practical matters. For instance, the space mine is supposed to be a thin, pressurized shell, GRANGE-BUT-TRUE PRIZE surrounded by zero atmosphere. At one point in the film a big deal is made about breaking a Down on a federal research farm in garnished with succulent shredded piece of the shell, leading to the evacuation of Beltsville, Maryland, uncomplaining telephone books. Rumor has it one of the baddies into the void. cattle are learning to eat a tasty diet they're in training to dispose ot back But throughout the movie dozens of of manure, dried into pellets and issues of the Congressional Record. characters are running around shooting rifles, with bullets. One stray shot could puncture a wall and suck the whole cast out into space, but naturally it doesn't. How convenient. And Outland cowboys wear helmets that have rows of lights running around the edges so they can work-in the dark. Next time you're driving your car at night, turn on the inside light and see how much you can still see outside. No wonder they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. LMURELB (MfUD HAEDY5)

SENATORIAL SALUTE

'"."'' H We present a pair of endanger Ihe life of the H handsome golden nitpicks to woman carrying it, scoffers H Senator Jesse A. Helms like Dr. Leon E. Rosenberg, of H (Republican of North the Yale University School of H Carolina) for his proposed Medicine, pointed out. H legislation defining life as But what is the woman's life H starting af conception. in comparison with life itself The bill, aimed at ouflawing And, besides, the bill would H aborlions. drew predictable boost the flagging economy. H fire from those who had not It would engender dozens H had the benefit of two full days of exciting products, from H of hearings into the subject, concepfion-day cards to H conducted by Senator John presents for conception H East, also a Republican and showers. Sales of cakes, H from North Carolina. candles, funny hats, and 1 Doubters pointed out that noisemakers would double. H the bill would prohibit the use Lawyers would be able to H of intrauterine devices, buy a third BMW from all the H because they prevent the wrangling over citizenship H implantation of fertilized eggs. cases that will flood the ..'" H The law would also make it courtrooms when life begins H illegal for surgeons to Operaie in London but gets born in H on a possible malignant group New York. H of cells called a hydatid mole. (To settle such cases, Sen- H actually a fertilized egg gone ators Helms and East are H wrong in the uterus. Not about to announce whore Hi removing the mole could life begins: at' third base.)

KUDOS D'ETAT

A juggling-and-contortion award goes to the many in Washington who used strong-arm tactics to get government off the backs of the people while they spoke out of both sides of their mouths. The Office of Management and Budget, for instance, was reported ready to seek a $1 billion-a-year slash in NASA's budget, grounding the space program, while politicians continued to vote for farm price supports, boosting consumer costs into high and stable orbits. Meanwhile the Transportation Department recently

advertised that it was seeking design specifications for an "advanced anthropomorphic dummy family" Have they taken a good look around Washington lately?

78 OMNI DIM-BULB MEDAL

The 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville; systems wl-'s? downgraded o^ removed. Tennessee, will focus on the theme A report from Energy Department "Energy turns the world." A government officials said the building could turn out study suggests the United States to be "a significant embarrassment," Pavilion at the fair could turn the world requiring a lot of utility-supplied power. off. The building was supposed to have Cutting the solar collectors and other all gotten the energy it needed on a energy items means the new pavilion will yearly basis from rooftop solar collectors have to rely more on a traditional energy and other components. But several of the source: the old tax collector

EQUINE RIGHTS PRIZE

The trophy this year goes to a one-horse vehicle from England that actually uses one horse. Philip Barnes, of Cambridgeshire, filed a paieni application for a minibus powered by a horse tied up in the center aisle. The horse walks on a loop connected to a gearbox and an alternator EMPTY BOWL Barnes asserts that his bus idea is a boon for horses. They would no longer Judy Mazel used to be just a have to walk on soiled streets, tor in- workaday diet consultant, telling stance, or be subject to the jarring her clients' pounds to get lost. din of trucks and autos. Nor would they Now she is making gravy. Her be forced to ride in the back of the book, The Beverly Hills Diet, is a six-person bus. course, the Of back of runaway best seller about how the horse would be in the back of the pineapples and papayas can bus, but its nose would be in the front. make your body look less like a Horses wouldn't have to worry about watermelon and more like a steering themselves. The driverwould banana. Mazel deserves a giant do all the. turning with a wheel. raspberry for devising a regime The accelerator is a marvel of that sells millions of books and, simplicity: It's a mop that can be jiggled doctors say, is lean on science. by the driver to prod the horse, Dr. Sami Hashim. of St. Luke's We hope-NASA picks up on the idea. Hospital, in New York City, offers Horses are reusable and, unlike the a testimonial to her achieve- shuttle's engines, make only the most ment: "I can't find one single sci- meager whinnying noise at launch. entific fact in the book," he says. ability of being true, depending on the dence to warrant my belief in it. When I look

inJTERV/IEUU weight of the evidence. For example, it's at the reports of parapsychologists, I find it extremely unlikely that the earth is hollow easier to explain their results in terms of and open at the poles and inhabited by fraud, self-delusion, and sloppy controls

many good arguments, I'll change my point people on the inside. If I believe a theory than to explain them by postulating a force

of view." It's inconceivable he would do has a very high probability of being false — called ESP.

that. His mind-set is something he's ac- if the evidence against it seems to me Omni: Looking back on your Mathematical quired over a lifetime, and he probably overwhelming — then I'm close-minded Games columns, which ones stand out?

doesn't know enough-geology even to un- about it in the sense that I'm not going to Gardner: I should mention one article, on

derstand the arguments. I think if was John change my opinion unless there is very hexaflagons, that predated the column. Dewey who said that nobody is ever con- very strong evidence to make me change These are fascinating structures folded out vinced by argument to give up a foolish my mind. The sociologist Marcello Truzzi of strips of paper that were invented by a

belief, that the most you can hope for is that has a crisp way of putting it. He says, "Ex- group of Princeton students, including

a person will outgrow it. By outgrow, I think traordinary claims demand extraordinary Richard Feynman, who later won a Nobel h'e meant that people may go through a evidence." Prize for his work in quantum mechanics.

process of self-education that will cause I regard myself as being open-minded This was a feature article that ran in the

them to change a point of view. If they don't on all questions about which there is no December 1956 issue of Scientific Ameri-

' go through that process, they're not likely to overwhelming evidence. For example, if can. It inspired the publisher Gerard Piel to

I regular change. you ask me whether I think there are black ask me whether wanted to do a

Omni: Certain people say, "Martin Gardner holes out in space, I'll have to say I don't column on mathematical games. I said yes

is close-minded. You couldn't convince know. I hope there are. Isthere some type of and rushed out to put together a column in

him that UFOs exist if one landed on his microscopic life on Mars? I have no opinion time for the next issue, That was what

porch. He wouldn't believe in ESP if he ex- one way or the other. But on the main hy- started it all.

perienced it every day" How would you pothesis of Velikovsky, for example, that a I have been fortunate enough to do the respond? Do you feel you're close-minded comet erupted from Jupiter, swung around first popular articles on some topics — John on these subjects? close to the earth within historic times, and Conway's computer game Life, for exam-

Gardner; That's a complicated question. became the planet Venus, I'm very dog- ple—and I was first to report on the devel- Let's go back a bit and say that, in science, matic in calling that nonsense. The scien- opment of new kinds of' unbreakable

nothing is ever known with certainty Every tific evidence that Venus is an old, old codes. I devoted two columns to New- statement in science has a certain degree planet is just too overwhelming. comb's paradox, a curiosity of decision

if ot probability of being true. 11 can always be However, you ask me whether I think theory that seems to touch on questions

contradicted by a future counterexample. ESP is a possibility, I would have to say yes, about free will and determinism. Those of You can say of scientific statements that of course it is. The only reason why I don't columns drew a tremendous amounl

they have, in your opinion, a very high believe in ESP is that I haven't seen any- mail. But I suppose the column that caused probability of being true or a very low prob- thing yet that strikes me as sufficient evi- the biggest stir was my April Fool's hoax article in the April 1975 issue, Omni: That was the one about break- throughs thai some'now had escaped pub-

lic attention. Didn't you have Leonardo da Vinci inventing the flush toilet?

Gardner: That's right, and I told how to build a psychic engine that rotated when you put

your hands near it and concentrated. I said that computer scientists had proved that the player who moved first in a chess match

could win every game, and I prinied a map that supposedly required five colors. What came as a complete surprise to me was that so many people took these things seri-

ously. I got several thousand letters, most of which said something like, "Thank you for the very interesting column about new

breakthroughs, but I think you made a mis- take on one of them," and that would be the one in which the person had some exper- tise. Physicists wrote to question my "dis- proof of the relativity theory," but they ac-

cepted everything else. I couldn't believe it. Omni: Have you ever made a big mistake in your column?

Gardner: Oh, yes. Wasn't it Fiorello

LaGuardia who said, "When I make a mis-

take, it's a beaut"? Well, when I make a goof

in the column, it's usually a whopper. One of my recent mistakes involved trisecting a cube, that is, cutting a cube into three iden-

tical and equal parts. I gave a rather tricky

method of doing it, then asked readers to

find a second method. The solution I had in mind was the obvious one of just cutting Rudolf "Nol the Nureyev?' straight slices through the cube, which a lot

of people don't think of. But I made the mistake of saying that, so far as I knew, there was no third method of cutting a cube

into three congruent shapes. As it turns out, there are an infinite number of ways to trisect a cube. So 1 missed by a long way Soma errors are just careless ones, or are due to the fact that I'm usually writing a

bit over my head. I love to do a column on a

topic I don't understand very well, because

il gives me an incentive to read up on it.

One nice thing, of course, is that if I make a blunder, hundreds of readers write me about it, and then 1 can correct it before a column goes into a book. Omni: Is that when you get the most mail— when you make a mistake? Gardner: Yes, that always brings a flood of letters. Some people at Scientific American have suspected me of deliberately making mistakes to increase my mail and to im-

press the editors with how many readers I

have. But of course I don't do that. Also, occasionally 1 give a problem that hasn't been solved but that can be cracked with a fairly simple computer program. That will bring lots oi letters from people with access to a computer. Omni: How much mail do you estimate you receive in a week?

Gardner: It varies enormously, but I guess it would average about one hundred letters a

1 try I week, to answer as many as can, but I can't answer them all. I have a form letter

that I use for certain stock replies. It says, "Mr. Gardner regrets that he cannot ..."

and I check off an appropriate reply, Omni: For example?

Gardner: If someone sends me a ten-page proof that he's trisected an angle, I don't even read it. There's an easy-to-under- stand and ironclad proof that an angle can't be trisected using only a straightedge and compass. People have been working on that problem for centuries. So it's un- likely the person has even found a clever new bogus way of doing ii. Omni; Are there other classic problems you don't look at?

Gardner: Yes. Another ancient problem is squaring the circle, that is, finding a method by which you can, with a compass and straightedge, draw a square that will have exactly the same area as a given cir- cle, or vice versa. Another classic problem is duplicating the cube. Given a cube of a certain dimension, you try to construct the side of a cube that would have exactly twice the volume ot the original one, again with compass and straightedge. That's also been proved impossible, Omni: Do people send you proofs of Fer- mat's last theorem? Gardner: They do. That's the famous con- jecture that the formula A n +B"=C n — which is the model for the Pythagorean theo- rem—has no integral solution tor expo- nents larger than two. This is still an open problem-,- But the probability that an amateur wlli find a proof is so remote- considering that the world's greatest number theorists have worked on it for such

a long time — that I don't bother to follow . —«

(Si f*i ffil (SI 1S1 ffii y X '>_ b£ 'j:* V

;t.

ATARI MISSILE COMMAND" -

ATARI CONCENTRATION I CODKREAKET-—I THERE'S NO «Hf CASINO f- COMPARING IT WITH ANY OTHsuo f fOOTBAji * OTHER VIDEO GAME.

Only ATARI makes the games the world wants most. Games that are innovative. Intense. Incredibly involving. And totally original. In 1980 ATARI invaded the minds of millions with

Space Invaders* It went on to become the single most popular video game in the world and thereby launched the space age game category. Today ATARI Missile Command" and Asteroids" are the fastest selling home video games in the country. And

: 1 1I judging by its current success in the III arcades, ATARI Pac Man** is ^V stated forthe same next; ATARI proofs I get in the mail. It might take me two classroom is a good thing in the long run. A divisible by three, and so on, until the entire

or three days to work through it, just to find great deal of time is wasted in math classes nine-digit number was divisible by nine.

out where it went wrong. Life is just too learning how to do such chores as extract- There is only one solution. I have now re- short to waste that much time going ing roots to solve trigonometry problems ceived about three hundred letters saying,

through a complicated proof when the and so on. There really isn't any need even "I read there was a unique solution. I have

probability that it's wrong is so extremely for a great mathematician to be skilled at found two more!" Well, none of the new

great. I return them unread also, although this kind of drudgery when a calculator will numbers sent to me had the first eight dig-

there is a very, very faint possibility that do it instantly. If mathematics is taught right, its divisible by eight. For a long time, I some amateur might' hit on a proof and the teacher can concentrate on basic couldn't figure out why so many readers

might send it to me: ideas, not computation, and students will made this obvious mistake. Then it dawned Omni: The four-color theorem? come out with a much better knowledge of on me. They were all using calculators with Gardner: This is the classic conjecture thai mathematics. eight-digit readouts. When they divided by four colors are sufficient for coloring any Omni: What about the shortcomings? eight, the calculator didn't show any re- kjnd of map on the plane— that you can'! Gardner: One shortcoming is the risk, in the mainder. Not one of them bothered to di- have a map that requires five colors. That lower grades, that children will grow so de- vide by eight on his own.

has recently been shown true, although it pendent on the calculator that they don't Omni: Do you have a computer?

. was still unproved when I did my April learn how to perform basic arithmetical op- Gardner: No. I have just a cheap, fifteen- Fool's column in 1975. The theorem's truth erations—the multiplication tables, for in- dollar pocket calculator.

wasn't a surprise. Almost everyone be- stance. The result is that they'll make all Omni: And an abacus, I see.

lieved that it was just a matter of time before kinds of trivial, stupid errors. If they happen Gardner: Yes. Actually I prefer the Chinese a proof could be found. The surprise was to hit a wrong button and make a big blun- abacus when I'm adding up my checks at that the proof was so horrendously compli- der, they won't even know it. the end of the month. It's more fun. I like the cated that it required massive computer Omni: Or if they find themselves without a feel of the beads and the way they click. printouts. It's such a simple theorem that calculator. You can use the abacus in all kinds of you would think there would be some sim- Gardner: Yes, but that's becoming increas- strange ways. For example, you can turn it

ple way of proving it. The computer proof is ingly unlikely upside down and flick those double beads so complicated there's still a faint possibil- Omni: You dont have to be a pre-high- to do operations in the binary system.

ity it might not even be valid. Also, it's still schooler to become too dependent on the That's the level the Chinese call heaven. possible someone will come along tomor- calculator. Omni: Have you ever been tempted to pur- row and' invent a simple, tricky, intuitive Gardner: Oh, no. I had a problem in my chase a computer? proof that won't require a computer. column recently— to arrange the first nine Gardner: I've been tempted to buy an inex-

Omni: What's your opinion on the use of positive integers to form a nine-digit pensive, programmable computer, but I

electronic calculators in the classroom? number such that the number formed by haven't got around to it. At this stage of life,

Gardner: I side with those people who think the first two digits was divisible by two, the I'll probably just pass it up. the introduction of calculators into the number formed by the first three digits was Omni: Do you find thai Ihe kinds of prob- lems dealt with in your column are different now because of the widespread use of computers?

Gardner: I haven't much changed the sort

it of problems I write about, but certainly is

true that in the last ten years I have heard more and more from readers who have programmed a computer to solve a prob-

lem. In many cases it will be a problem so simple that they don't need a computer, bui they'll use one anyway. Omni: What are some examples? Gardner: Well, one problem comes to mind

that I ran across recently: Can you take the nine positive digits and scramble them in

such a way as to make a number that is a

prime? Is there a prime that consists of just the nine digits? Now you know that the number can't end in an even integer, be-

cause then it would be divisible by two. It also can't end in five. Most people know some of these divisibility rules. But there is

a tendency, if you have a computer, to run

through all combinations of the nine digits, and let the computer determine whether

any numbers on the list are prime. But you

can instantly know the answer if you re- member the rule for testing a number for divisibility by nine. You sum all the digits

and if you get another number of more than one digit, you sum those, and finally you come out with a single number which is called the digital root of the number, The

rule is that any number with a digital root of nine is divisible by nine. Now no matter how the nine digits are scrambled, they're going to add to forty-five. And four plus five equals nine. So any number formed by the a small circle, then as larger and larger at creative solutions io puzzles, will they be nine digits will be divisible by nine and circles, then as smaller circles, again down creative in other areas, too?

therefore can't be a prime. If you don't know to a point, and then it Would disappear, in a Gardner: There may be some connections, that divisibility rule, you might be tempted similar way, if a hypersphere- a four- but most studies I've seen are inconclu- to write that a complicated program could dimensional sphere— passed through this sive. When I think aboul the lives of famous

take iong time to tell that the to it a you answer room, we would first see as a tiny spot, mathematicians, I don't see much indica- the question is no. and then it would expand and become a tion that their creativity extended outside

Omni: How important is recreational math- little ball. II would- grow larger and larger their particular field.

ematics for children who are learning the until it reached a maximum size. Then it Omni: Will machines ever think creatively? basics of mathematics? would contract again down to a pea-sized Gardner: I'm not sure we'll ever recognize

Gardner: I've always thought that one of the ball, then to a point, and then it would van- what a machine does as being truly cre-

best ways to motivate young students is to ish completely ative, but, of course, it all depends on what give them recreational problems— prob- Omni: Has anyone ever worked out a way to we mean by the word creative. Right now lems with a strong element of play. They visualize four dimensions? the game. of chess, which is a form of rec-

enjoy working on them and can learn some Gardner: I don't believe so. Some people reational mathematics, is playing an impor-

significant math in the process. I think the have claimed they can visualize four di- tant role in the investigation of artificial intel-

value of recreational math is coming to be mensions, but I think they are just so famil- ligence. It's not just that people in A.I. are recognized more and more by teachers iar with the mathematics of four dimensions trying to write programs that will play good and by textbook writers. that if you give them a four-dimensional chess. It's not that frivolous. It's that finding Omni; Do you find areas of recreational geometry problem, they can intuitively see a way to play good chess on a machine is are math that especially appealing to stu- how to go about solving it. I don't think fhey basic to a thousand other problems that dents, as opposed to professionals? really visualize it in their mind, but there's no involve artificial intelligence. The com-

Gardner: I think children like mathematical way of knowing. You can't get inside a per- binatorial possibilities of chess are so great games that are competitive— games they son's mind to know what he or she is visu- that it's absolutely impossible in any future can play with each other. Many such to construct a machine that will play a per- games can lead into significanl areas of fect strategy. The challenge is to devise a higher math. The simple game of tic-tac- machine that will play chess by doing toe, for example, can lead to a dozen something similar lo what grand masiers branches of important math— into topol- do when they think about chess. It may be or •77?e "aha!" experience ogy, game theory, or combinatorial math, something peculiar lo the human mind, or it or set theory or theory. number is a psychological mystery. may not be. I think it's likely that machines

Omni: I found in school that the notion of a will play grand-master chess before the You can't train fourth dimension was far more interesting century ends. But I -still doubt that they will than algebra or plane geometry. people to think creatively. make moves that we would call creative in

Gardner: Yes, lots of young' students get - ' Whether it's a the same sense that we would apply the interested in that. For example, there is a word to moves made by a grand master. genetic trait or the product theorem that if you draw any two closed Airplanes don't fly like birds. Computers figures of any shape on a two-dimensional of childhood may win chess games against masters plane, you can always find at least one line only because they can process information experiences, I don't know.? that will exactly bisect the two figures. In faster Most chess programs.now will beat three dimensions, you can take any three any grand master if the time limit is a few objects of any shape and place them any- seconds per move, playing what is called where in space, and you can always find a blitz chess or rapid-transit chess. The rea- plane that will exaclly bisect their volumes. son is thai the kind of creative human think- It's called the ham-sandwich theorem, be- alizing. That's truly impossible. ing lhat goes into playing top-level chess cause it's like bisecting two pieces of bread Omni: is there any serious speculation that requires a certain amount 'of time. and one piece of ham with one slice of the there may really be a fourth dimension? Omni: How would you like to be remem- knife, even though the three pieces are Gardner: Oh, yes, lots of speculation, both bered by posterity? placed anywhere in space. Then you go to by scientists and by people who are into Gardner: As a writer, but not for writing on four dimensions. If four four-dimensional spiritualism and psychic phenomena. But parapsychology and pseu.doscience. I'm shapes are placed anywhere in four- the idea that there are actual hyperbeings tired of that. I'm really bored by it. And space, you can always bisect them with .a who can enter our three-space is not taken actually not for my Mathematical Games

1 single three-space hyperplane. The seriously by anyone I know. columns, either, though I've had great tun theorem for all has- been proved dimen- Omni: You have written a book entitled doing them. I would probably most like to sions: four, five, six, and on up. Aha!, about puzzles that can be solved be remembered for a book I haven't written

Omni: Most people, when you speak of a only through sudden flashes of insight, yet. It's a philosophical book I've entitled fourth dimension, say, "Oh, you mean time? where the pieces suddenly fit together. Is The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, in Einstein meant time." But you're talking this kind of thinking — the "aha!" experi- which I'll sound off on ail my philosophical about fouTh spaiiai dimension. a ence—something people can learn? views. It will be a sort of culmination of Gardner: Yes, these are all di- Gardner: I it Euclidean don't think is. 1 think the "aha" everything I've thought hard about for the mensions. You just imagine that there's experience is pretty much a total psycho- last forty or fifty years. I'll be lucky if it sells another coordinate that's perpendicular to logical mystery I don't think you can train five hundred copies, but from the way the the three familiar coordinates of to space. people think creatively It's something writing is going, I think I'll be more pleased

Omni: If there were a four-dimensional some people do and some don't do. with it than with anything' else I've done. I creature, what would it look like to us? Whether it's a genetic trait or a product of intend to discuss such things as truth, sci-

Could we see it? childhood experience, I really don't know, ence, beauty, goodness, free will, econom-

If it Gardner: passed through our space, we and I don't think anybody else does, either. ics, politics— the big questions— topics would be able to if in three-dimensional I'm see skeptical about books that purport to about which I have nothing new to say, but cross sections. analogy, By imagine a train people to think creatively, or courses maybe some new ways of saying it. sphere passing through a plane. two- Any that teach creative thinking. And then, well, maybe I'll finally have a dimensional beings on the plane would see Omni: How does the "aha!" experience chance to get back to The Annotated Alice it in cross sections first as a point, — then as translate into daily life? If people are good and do her up right. DO B6 OMNI •L/p to a dozen UFQs maneuvered overhead, rising and falling in organized formation?

AfUTI^nilATTER

A U.S. Air Force cap- tion Act. They soon tain employed by the learned that nearly 10 Los Angeles Air De- percent of Blue Book fense Sector noticed sightings had never unusual jolt's of light been scientifically moving across his explained; some of radar screen with a the most jarring re- rhythm that seemed ports had come from eerily intelligent. The officers stationed at bewildered military U.S. military installa- officer directed his tions. One of the most first, tentative com-" enigmatic accounts ment to the control was the Edwards in- tower at Edwards Air cident. Force Base, in south- According to Cap- ern California. "We're tain John Balent, the getting a radar signal Edwards officer who just east of [you]," he produced the written said. Immediately he report for Blue Book, received a reply. he and a tew others "There should be watched up to a doz- two there," barked a en UFOs for four- deep voice, cracking and-a-half hours. The with excitement. "I've unknown objects been observing them looked like "ordinary for almost three UPDATE stars," he wrote, but hours," UFD he added. ihey kept "rising and

"I have two more north of those, over the racket site," the falling" in organized formation; their flight paths varied agilated captain in Los Angeles blurted out. constantly, and one of the bright moving objects even

"I can see three more," said the observer at Edwards. seemed to be pushing a small cloud in front of it. "[Our radar] is painting all kinds of data." An Air Force jet finally attempted to intercept the moving

The conversation comes from a tape made on October lights, but as soon as the jet swept close to one UFO, it rase 7, 1965, when a group of servicemen watched a dozen out of reach and disappeared. unknown objects maneuver above an airstrip at Edwards. If one accepts Balent's report, those who saw ihe UFOs The tape, and an accompanying written report, were made at Edwards were sane, reliable, and "proficient at their in conjunction with Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force jobs." They could not have been confused by stray air investigation of unidentified flying objects. traffic or by balloon releases, for there were none that night. During its 20-year probe, Blue Book amassed .13,000 There were, moreover, several eyewitnesses, and visual UFO accounts. When its inquiry ended in 1969, the find- observations were confirmed by radar. ings were classified; then it became impossible for per- This was not the only UFO story to come out of Edwards: sons without special authorization to examine Blue Book Ex-astronaut Gordon Cooper, stationed at the base in the documents— or to check the government's assertion that early 1960s, remembers the day when something "landed there was no evidence of any alien presence. out on the dry lake bed in front of a camera crew, who

Then, in 1976, a team of civilian investigators gained filmed it." The film was then sent to Washington for access to the material through the Freedom of Informa- "never to be seen again."— LEE SPEIGEL MERMEN AND VOODOO TRAFFIC MERMAIDS British drivers nettled by When Waldemar Lehn saw receiving many traffic- an armless figure with a violation tickets have found a bulging head rise above way to needle the traffic the surface of Lake Winni- wardens: They are display- peg, in Canada, he knew ing voodoo dolls that look exactly whai he was look- like constables. ing at. It was a merman, and In the area ot Nottingham he took a photo to prove it. motorists have purchased Lehn's picture, in combi- hundreds of Witch Doctor nation with a clever com- kits. Each package contains puter program, showed that dolls attired to resemble ancient sailors who reported police officers. There are mermaids and mermen were also five voodoo needles in telling truth. the The men did each kit. Pinning their hopes see something: ordinary on the psychological effect, marine creatures whose im- drivers hang the dolls from ages were distorted by rear-view mirrors or dangle changes in the atmosphere. them from the windshield. Lehn, an electrical en- This, the Glasgow Herald gineer at the University of reports, warns the police

Manitoba, developed a that the motorist is "ready for

computer program to simu- ASCENT OF MAN a rigorous life on the plains, action" and will seek pointed late image distortions under eventually evolving into up- revenge. — Allan Maurer a variety of weather condi- Jeremy Cherfas and John right protohumans. The tions. When he duplicated Gribbin, two British science other branch preferred to "Me are waiting stormy -weal her images of a writers, are monkeying hang out in the trees and eat fortheUFOs. walrus and a killer whale on around with a new theory of fruit. They "de-evolved" into We know that the computer, he wound up evolution. The monkey de- the simians of today. they're there."

with merman shapes. Thus, scended from man, they If this sounds like sheer — Graham Parker

he concluded that sea suggest, not vice versa. monkey business, it is. "We mammals, seen in a storm, Their argument is based don't really believe in the DOGU SPACE SUITS would fit the descriptions of on evidence that the DNA in descending-ape theory." half-human and half-fish both monkeys and humans Cherfas says. "We simply Dogus are small clay creatures. was rather alike a mere 4.5 wanted to show how many statues with pointy heads, The cause of the distor- million years ago. This con- gray areas there are in fossil insect eyes, and torsos tion, according to Lehn, is a tradicts the fossil record, evidence. We'd like paleon- marked by intricate patterns temperature inversion that which suggests that a close tologists to consult the of dots and stripes. They

occurs when a mass of kinship between man and molecular clock and then were made in Japan, be- warm air moves over cold air. monkey has not existed for -scensider their findings." tween 7000 B.C. and 520 B.C. This bends the light, so that 20 million years. So far the writers have Some people think they rep- objects are distorted beyond To account for the new ge- heard from preachers and resent Japanese fertility the horizon. As the inversion reiic- evidence, Cherfas and politicians, but the fossil peo- gods. But, according to disntegrates, the image be- Gribbin hypothesized that ple have remained silent. Vaughn Greene, author of gins to look fuzzy. approximately 4,5 million — Phoebe Hoban the book Astronauts of An- As forthe merman of Lake years ago a common ances- cient Japan , these artifacts Winnipeg,' Lehn finally tor of man, chimpanzee, and "That which is incapable of actually depict space-suit- learned that it was a foot- gorilla— a race of walking proof itself is no proof of clad visitors from another " high boulder on the shore of apes — split into two groups. anything else. planet. The most striking the lake. — Douglas Colligan One branch adapted itself to — Percy Bysshe Sheiley evidence to dale. Greene 90 OMNI AnJTI*[UlATTER

' says, is the similarity be- SOLE ON FIRE ccas h;~self I 'igured that URIGELLER, WHERE psychologi- tween dogu markings and if I had the right ARE YOU? the new NASA space suit— cal attitude. I could beat it the extravehicular mobility and get off with merely a few In November19B0 the Is- unit (EMU) — to be worn by Hospital, stucisc n-swalkers minor burns." he says. But, raeli psychic Uri Geller of- space shuttle astronauts in Langadhas, Greece, he likeXenakis, Mills was un- fered $100,000 to James outside (heirship. assumed that prolonged able to fathom the fire- "the Amazing" Randi or any- For instance, Greene contact between human feet walkers' secret. He is now one else who could dupli- says, the chest-pack control and scorching coals would convalescing from third- cate the "miraculous" acts of units on the EMU are in cause ihkd-degree burns. degree burns on both of his telepathy Geller performed But physical examination of feet, and, adding insult to in- the firewalkers, he says, jury, the firewalkers have ac- "proved that exposure of cused him of profaning their less than one second pro- duced only small blisters on Nevertheless, skeptics the sole of the foot." After continue to offer scientific monitoring the Langadhas explanations for the prac- firewalkers with thermome- tice, including hallucination, ters and film, the neurologist pain-inhibiting drugs, and concluded that "no decep- the use of ash to insulate the tion was involved in their coals. According to re- ritual; they used their searcher James Randi, who minds," he says, "to combat investigated the ritual thor- the feeling of pain." oughly, the successful fire- 'cucjhly the same place as Xenakis's claims were re- walker uses "coals so hot at Sta-'iforc: Research Insti- circular knobs on a dogu cently bolstered by George they emit a blanket of dry tute during the 1970s. Randi chest. These knobs proba- Mills, a vacationing Ameri- steam to protect the feet." accepted the offer on behalf bly controlled life-support can EC'Sr'-iisr who tested the — Harry Lebelson of Omni, and we have been systems on the dogu space waiting ever since for the suit, he asserts, just as they chance to watch him repro- do on the EMU, And the duce Geller's feats. Randi Stripes surrounding the says that he, like Geller, can dogu knobs are simply "appear" to bend a spoon or markers to calibrate the read the contents of a quantity of water or oxygen sealed envelope with the being dispensed to the per- skills of the professional son in the space suit. Greene magician — not magic, just theorizes that the top and trickery. A year has passed bottom of the dogu space since Randi accepted the of- suit were put on separately, fer, and there's still no word just as the EMU is. from Geller We're not hold- One NASA scientist notes ing our breath. that an advanced civilization would probably design space 7 feel there is a real world suits far more sophisticated corresponding to our sense than what Greene sees on of perceptions / believe the dogu. But Greene sug- that Minneapolis is a realcity gests that if our space suits and not simply a city of my could get us to the moon, dreams." they could also get us to —John Zeteny. former another planet. chairman of the Yale — Madeleine Lebwohl Physics Department AnJTI*nflATTER

br.ine published a book in REMEMBERING BIRTH 1980 on his findings, but at first nobody much noticed. In our mother's womb we Then chaos broke loose, were kept warm and secure, Nostradamus, de Font- No pain, no fear, just peace brune's book showed, had and quiet., and a comforting

oredicted that "the year the heartbeat to soothe its. Rose flourished" would Then, suddenly, we were coincide with an uprising of thrust into a new environ- Moslems against the West- ment. Noise, light, pain, ter-

ern powers. When the ror, all came crashing down Socialists (whose symbol on us at once. To say the was the rose) took power in least, being born was trau- France and when the U.S. matic. Why then don't we embassy in Tehran was remember that event? seized, the eyes of Paris "The fact is," says clinical hastily turned to de Font- psychologist David Cham- brune's pages. Readers berlain, "we do." Chamber- soon realized that Nostra- lain, of the Anxiety Treatment damus had prophesied the Center, in San Diego, hyp-

death of Henry II in a tour- notized children and found NOSTRADAMUS nament, the rise of Napo- they remembered their birth INTERPRETED leon Bonaparte, and the in detail. Many recalled overthrow of the shah of Iran their mother's hairstyle and The cryptic prophecies o! by "religious zealots." emotional state, the sur- the astrologer-mysiic Nos- The book has now caused gical instruments used, tradamus confounded inter- a panic in Paris; people are and even conversations preters in France for five even pulling up roots and among hospital attendants. centuries. To escape the leaving. According to de In most cases, according menacing eye of the Catho- Fontbrune's interpretation, to Chamberlain, descrip- lic Inquisition, Nostradamus, before this century ends, tions given by both mother a Christian who claimed to Islam will destroy the Roman and child were nearly identi- be inspired by God, em- Catholic Church. Then the cal. "The accuracy of recall." ployed a baffling array of Arab world will team with' the he says, "suggests sophisti- rhetorical stratagems that USSR and invade Western cated mental activity from disguised his predictions rspeti: on rf etters, words, Europe. Paris will swim with the beginning of life." and ensured their perpetua- phrases, and other key lin- blood, and the world will be Most other obstetricians tion. Throughout the years guistic devices. plunged into a terrible war anc psycho-og sts say hog- his verses sparked some De Fontbrune realized that De Fontbrune says that wash. They attribute these 400 works of interpretation, Nc-sfadamus thought in Nostradamus's predictions "memories" to pure fantasy, none of which apparently Latin structures and wrote were intended only as a explaining that infants sim- broke the code. those structures directly into warning, however, and if all ply do not have the intellec- Then entered the com- French. He also plumbed the nations simply shake tual ability to remember any- puter. Jean Charles de Latin poets, such as hands, the cataclysm will not thing occurring so early. Fontbrune, a pharmaceuti- Vergil, for countless word- occur — Mark Teich Nevertheless, Chamberlain cals manager who had play techniques, such as is adamant; His research picked up the hobby of anagrams and aphaeresis "An abnormal number of has convinced him, he says, "Nostradamizing" from his (dropping the initial letter or all reported paranormal that "memory probably can father, fed the fruits of his syllable from a word). phenomena appear to have go all the way back to the years of labor into a national Soon de Fontbrune had happened to holy idiots, womb and may even go computer network. Thus, he solved 600 of Nostrada- fools, orcrooks." back as far as conception." was able to measure the mus's 1 ,100 verses. De Font- - C.P. Snow — Marc McCutcheon 92 OMNI tions a night, each lasting from five to ten Antiimpotence drugs are further off. "We TEGHNDLOGY minutes," Dr. Melman says. "If these erec- are looking at the neurotransmitters in the tions do not occur, we can usually assume tissue of the penis itself," Melman reports. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 72 the problem has a likely organic cause." "One cause of impotence is nerve damage workers, whose overheated professions Vascular problems are a probable sus- that prevents nerve signals from reaching may induce infertility. "There are many men pect. Nearly one third of all impotent men the erectile tissues during stimulation. who are infertile for unknown causes. Now cannot sustain an erection, because too Perhaps the receptors for the chemicals maybe they can be helped." little blood reaches the penis during stimu- that carry these signals in the penile tissue

For some men, however, simple infertility lation. Here, too, microsurgery is helping. were lost or damaged through disease. If might even be an. improvement. These Dr. Vaclav Michal, of Prague, has" discov- we can find ways to improve receptor func- men, some 10 million in the United States ered that many of these patients suffer from tion, there's a real possibility that we may alone, are impotent. For years most were obstructed arteries in the penis. discover drugs that produce an erection," shunted to the psychiatrist's office to un- To correct this problem, he has devised a At London's Hammersmith Hospital, Dr. cover emotional problems that probably two-hour operation much like a coronary- Julia Polak and her colleagues have al- didn't even 1 exist. Poor circulation, the artery bypass. He takes a vein from the leg ready made what could prove to be the nerves and glands, and developmental and attaches it on one side to a branch of crucial breakthrough. Most nerve impulses disorders may all cause impotence. "We the groin's main artery and on the other to are carried from cell to cell by either of two can find an organic, as opposed to a psy- the delicate arteries in the penis. The pro- chemicals, acetylcholine or adrenaline. chological, cause for impotence in ninety- cedure can more than double the flow of Physicians have always assumed that one five percent of the patients we see," reports blood to the region. Dr. Harry Reiss, a New or the other controlled erection. But there is urologist William Furlow, of the Mayo Clinic, York urologist studying the penile blood a third kind of drug, discovered only ten in Rochester, Minnesota. vessels, believes that it will soon be possi- years ago at Sweden's famed Karolinska When a healthy man with an active sex ble to perform a similar "revascularization" Institute, the home of the Nobel Prize. life finds himself slipping into impotence for with a single incision. These drugs transmit their messages using six months or a year, it's time to discover Surgery is not the final answer, however. a protein called vasoactive intestinal whether there is a bodily cause for it, ac- Physicians are looking for drugs to cure polypeptide (VIP). In the digestive system, cording to Dr. Arnold Melman, director of both infertility and impotence. Amelar be- VIP relaxes smooth muscles and opens up the Center for Male Sexual Dysfunction at lieves that male fertility drugs may be only a arteries and veins, allowing blood in. New York's Beth Israel Medical Center He'll few years away, "Some of these drugs What the Hammersmith physicians did find a host of physical and psychological might not be hormones, but chemicals that was look for VIP-sensitive nerves In 30 sets tests to help make the diagnosis. stimulate hormone production," he sug- of male genitalia removed during sex-

One of the newest is the center's sleep gests. Already a male fertility pill, called change operations. The nerves are pres- clinic, -where patients spend the night in Tamoxifen, is being tested in Europe and ent, and they are strongly concentrated in orderto have their nocturnal erections mon- evaluated by the Food and Drug Adminis- the erectile tissue. Someday soon. Dr. itored. "Normal men have four to five erec- tration in the United States. Polak believes, a drug that mimics VIP will produce an erection even when the body won't cooperate. And a VIP inhibitor might spell relief for the rare sufferers of priapism, a permanent and painful erection. But drugs to control the workings of the male reproductive system have long proved elusive. Researchers have sought practical male birth-control drugs for nearly 20 years, with (rustratingly little suc- cess. Even mechanical devices to give men reversible birth control are only now being tested. One of the most promising is a valve developed by Dr. Charles Lynne, a urologist at the University of Miami, in Florida. Implanted into the vas deferens through a small incision in the scrotum, the valve is a half-inch piece of gold and stain- less steel. "It's like putting a valve in a gar- den hose," Dr. Lynne notes. "If the patient wants his fertility restored, the valve can be opened with an electromagnet, allowing sperm to pass." At the University of Illinois Medical Cen- ter, in Chicago, biophysicist Lourens Zanaveld is working on a removable silicone plug that could also block the flow

of sperm. "The plug is much easier to re- verse than a vasectomy, because we don't havetoseverthevas,"hesays. Tested only in monkeys, the plug has proved very ef- fective but is hardly ready for human use. These new medical techniques will help millions of men who once were forced to accept sterility and impotence. For the pa-

tient, it means a normal life. For sexual

medicine. ;l means a revolution. DO HYDROGEN MAN

Everything in it, from the hot-water heater and the barbecue to the garden tractor and the family car, ran on hydrogen. A com- puter system that the Billings Computer Corporation manufactures monitored the hydrogen production and storage as well as the inside controls ior heating and cool- ing and even the security of the place. Be- sides the 19 homes he is converting in the community, Billings is building a new hy-

' drogen home tor himself; this is not some- thing he recommends to the individual homeowner. "Hydrogen is not a fuel you convert a home to," he says, "It's a system you convert a community to."

Project Liberty is a small step in that direction. His next project is a wholly hy- drogen-powered town in Iowa. A few years ago the town leaders of Forest City, Iowa, heard of Billings's work. They wanted some kind of inexpensive energy alternative. They couldn't produce their own electricity because the town's generating plant needed expensive, hard-to-get diesel fuel. Their only alternative was to buy Ihe elec- tricity they needed, at high rates, from another utility system. They told Billings about their situanon. He went m and looked the place over and decided to build his first Project Liberty coal-gasification plant in Corp.. Garden Ciiy, N.Y their town. Iowa coal is so cheap that Billings esti-

mates it would be the equivalent of produc- ing gas at 50 cents a gallon. The hydro- SPECTACULAR RESULTS FROM NASA!

gen-fueled plant is expecled to provide all the industrial and domestic electrical SPACE SHUTTLE/VOYAGER-SATURN needs of Forest City's 4,000 residents and SPACE SHUTTLE SLIDE SETS still have powerto spare to heat every home 20-Slid9Ser-Sl2.95 there and to fuel every car. Billings is confi- 40-SLIDE SET fine jcirg No-Civ* Ccissorlo: -Sid ?5 '- dent that his plant is going to be up and "o

• coal and pipe it to facilities 2,000 miles SPACE SHUTTLE POSTER SET Three 24 x 36 Color Posters- $12.95 away, and another large plant he wants to :, oslcpe end -end rig "or I: AC- pest©' sel-53 00 construct in southern California. There he envisions a hydrogen-powered VOYAGER ll-SATURN SLIDE SET city that Los Angeles: a has no energy Just Released! shortages, no gasoline lines, and, ulti- (;::..:- $';-?; mately, no smog. DO VOYAGER l-SATURN SLIDE SET 20 Slides ;WUh Fl oiO.Ar-a vi:= IVsc-!li-$12.95 MINI SET For Further Reading VOYAGER-SATURN POSTER two11 x17 Color Poslers-S5.00 Bova, Ben, "Hydrogen Fuel." The High Road, VOYAGER-SATURN POSTER SET Boston, Houghton Miftlin, 1981. Five 24 x 36 Color Posters- $14.95 Postage and Handling Escher, W, "Hydrogen Energy Readying a New For EACH Slide or Poster Set-$3.00 Energy Option," Technology Tomorrow, Vol. 2, No. 2. April 1979. NEW! Space Catalog-S.75 Hydrogen Progress, Billings Energy Corpora- California Residents Add 6% Tax tion, 18600 East T-n-ty-seventh Terrace South, Foreign Orders Add an Additional S2.00 Independence, MO 64057. Allow 3 Weeks for Delivery and Handling MUST Accompany Order The International Journal ot Hydrogen Energy, We Accept Master Cord and Visa, official journal ot the International Association for Hydroge'n Energy, P.O. Box 243266, Coral SPACE GRAPHICS

G;;oes, I- L 33124. 3

the Pot toward the maintenance port, As or dying. The five remaining bulls were ELEPHANT SONG the pair moved toward the opening, Bull- stampeding in the confined area. hook pointed at the body "Packy, grab "Ming! Damn it, Ming!" Bullhook sagged Haystack and get out of here." against the open door. One of the five bulls

companionway "Damn it, Pony, if Ihey won't .Packy Dern shook his head. "I heard the paused, turned toward the forward end,

open from the inside, they sure as hell can't big cage turning, Bullhook. If you open then began walking toward the compart-

be opened from the outside. Not in time. those doors, it'll take about two seconds for ment. "Ming. That's it, baby. Right here."

Just get Tube Number One facing the this compartment lo fill up with damned Bullhook felt a thunderous whack across doors. I'll get through." mad pachyderms." his shoulders, his face, smashed against "Why Number One?" The boss elephant man moiioned with the bulkhead. He stopped himself from "Ming is in Number One." his bullhook toward the body. "Get Hay- dropping to the deck, grabbed the rungs of

Bullhook walked between the two men stack and beat it. I have to get to the other an access ladder, and began pulling him- and felt his way down the corridor until he end and open the main hatch." self out of danger. Queenie rushed at him

reached the port to the main bay. He pulled "There's a crew working on it now" again and tried to pull him down, but she himself through and began working his way "Packy there's- no time to work through could not raise her injured trunk. Just as he down the access ladder. Half the way from the outside. Now get moving." managed to pull himself above her, down, nausea and dizziness washed over "You can't make it!" Queenie rammed the ladder.

him as the pain in his head flashed lights "Ming and I can. So beat it." Ming entered the compartment and before his eyes. He hung on to the ladder, Packy lifted the dead bullhand's shoul- trumpeted. Bullhook called from his perch

resting his cheek against one of its cleated ders. "Maybe I can help." upon the ladder, "Ming! Over here, girl! Get rungs. The smoke covered him like a hot Bullhook stared at the closed doors lead- Queenie away from the' ladder! C'mon,

blanket; the screams from the animals ing to the main carrousel. "Beat it. And get Ming, you beautiful thing!" numbed his ears. that crew away from the doors." Ming looked up at him. The sound she Crying. Just barely audible, there was Packy pulled Haystack's body away, and made was a blast of relief and joy. crying among the screams. Lights went on "That's right, Ming. I'm here. Come on in the access tube, turning the blackness over and save old Bullhook's ass," into a dark gray pall. Bullhook Willy lowered Ming lowered her head, tucked her trunk himself another rung, then another, until he down, and charged at Queenie's side. The stood in the lower-deck-access compart- impact shook the entire compartment, al-

"Waco and I managed to pull him out of the port, Bullhook called out, "Hey, Packy!" with his bullhook. "Shy, babe! Shy!" Number Four tube. Too late. There's some "What?" The elephant turned to the right, and others still in there." "Little Will. Take care of her. You know." when she was facing the doors, Bullhook

"What about the rest of the bullhands?" "Yeah, I know." The bullhand lowered lowered himself until his right cheek was Packy shook his head. "I don't know. Haystack's body through the port, then against Ming's head. The stink of burned They must be out of the shuttle by now." dropped himself through to the outside. flesh filled his nostrils. "Let's go, babe!" Bullhook closed his eyes. "Waco, Get Bullhook weaved before the closed Ming went through the doors and en- Dot out of here. Go through that open main- doors, looking at the red square that tered the Number One tube of the main tenance port." needed lo be pressed to open them. "Just carrousel, first at a fast walk, then at a trot. The snake charmer looked over his hope to hell Ming is the first one out." With screamed commands and taps with shoulder at the boss elephant man. "What He reached out his left hand, slapped his bullhook, the boss elephant man about you?" the red square, and stumbled to the right of steered Ming around the three dead Bullhook moved over and pulled Dot the the doors as they hissed open. The sound elephants. With butts of her head, swats Pot to her feet. "Haystack's been exed. Dot. of the screaming bulls deafened him. A with her trunk, and goads with her tusks, You have to get out of here." panic-driven elephant thundered through Ming bulldozed the frightened elephants Dot wiped the tears from her cheeks. "I ie open doorway, her shredded left ear out of her path. One of the bulls fought can't just leave him." dripping blood. It took only a split second back, and Bullhook felt a tusk enter the calf

"Packy and I'll take care of him. You go for Bullhook to recognize Cambo. As of his left leg. "Go, damn it! Go, Ming!" with Waco now" Cam bo rumbled around the compartment At the other end of the tube, the smoke The snake charmer studied Bullhook looking for a pachyderm-sized exit, she was still thick. "Tut, babe. Park that thing with narrowed dark, eyes. "There aren'l any was immediately followed by Queenie, until I can find the doorknob." heroes in the circus, Bullhook; just dead whose trunk was almost severed, Ming stopped, and the boss elephant troupers and -rive, ones." Bullhook looked around the edge of the man tried to clear his vision. "Great "Get going, Waco." He placed a hand on door and screamed. "Ming! Here, Ming! Boolabong, show me the doorknob. Show the snake charmer's shoulder. "I'll be all God damn it, Ming, where are you?" me." He shook his head, but the motion did right." D.own the length of the tube, three bulls moretoincreasethepainin his head than it Waco spat on Ihe deck and turned Dot were in the aisle on Iheir sides, either dead did to clarify his vision. "Hell!" He leaned to .

his right, reached down, and tapped the The huge beast shuddered and then Beat it, boy, you bother me. front of the elephant's shoulder. lowered her head, depositing the boss ele- Now, folks, slither right up. "Give old Bullhook a kneel, babe. Let's phant man. on the grass. Her head lifted,

go. Down, Ming." and she stood, snorting and shaking her On the evening of that first day, across As the elephant slowly knelt, Bullhook head. "Good girl. Good girl." the huge lake, into the thin edge of the slid from her until his feet neck touched the The voices again. Louder, Feet running swamp just visible beyond it, the sun was hot deck plates. His left leg collapsed, and through the grass. Bullhook opened his setting. Packy Dern sat on the dew- he crawled on his hands and knees until he eyes and looked at the clear, blue sky. weighted grass with his arms wrapped came to the aft-tu.be doors. Pulling himself Parade weather. Damn, but it's a beautiful around his knees. The few clouds in the sky up, he felt for the. door panel. Once he day Packy Dern's face came into view as were black-red, edged with gold, placed found it, he pounded it with his fist, causing the bullhand knelt and quickly examined against a sky as scarlet as blood. And, the doors to hiss open. On the other side of the boss elephant man. Bullhook sensed lordy, there had been plenty of blood. the door, the two bulls that had broken something being placed beneath his head He closed his eyes and held his head loose from the Number Four tube were and felt pressure being applied to his left down for a moment. "Hell, yes." He lifted his screaming and stampeding up and down leg. Other hands, other faces. Waco, Dot head and looked at the near shore of the the runs that from . led the three carrousel the Pot, Madman, Pony Red, Moll . lake. The V-shaped trough cut by the me- doors to the main hatch. The bulkhead Packy's face looked at him and smiled. nagerie shuttle's belly began there. It

panels above the port carrousel door "Whatcha been up to, Bullhook?" ended in the trees far to his left. To the right

radiated orange heat. The remains of two "A little this, a little that." of the trough were rock-capped hills. To the human bodies smeared against the Bullhook felt a needle being poked into left was a ravine cut by the exiting waters of

cleated surface of the runs explained why his arm. Packy nodded. "Well, it sure looks the lake as they flowed downhill toward the Pony Red Miira hadn't been able to raise like it was fun." south. Considering the alternatives, Fire- the aft watch. "You know what they say, Packy. Life with ball had made a great landing. Bullhook pushed away from the bulk- the circus is just one long dee-light." A practical landing, too. head, collapsing on the deck. He looked at Bullhook Willy and the thirty-two other the bull. Ming stood patiently awaiting fur- troupers who had died had been laid out in ther Instructions. The boss elephant man the short stretch of trough a hundred yards thought he blacked out for a second, then from the shore. There weren't any dozers or was brought wide awake by the blinding shovels with which to dig graves. And after »77?e elephant pains coursing through his leg, back, and boss the bodies were arranged at the bottom of head. The pains for a eased moment, and man thought he had blacked the trough, all those -who weren't injured

Bullhook called out, "Ming, I can't make it. gathered on the two sides. The boss animal out for a few Get that durante out and log me out of man had stared at the bodies for an instant here!" He smacked his bullhook against seconds; then he was brought and then began kicking clods of dirt and the deck. "Ming, let's go!" wide awake grass into the cut. The two hundred twen- Ming stood still for a moment; then she ty-six troupers standing with him then be- by the blinding that lowered her head, lifted her trunk, and pains came animated. With feet, hands, sticks, gently shoved her tusks beneath Bull- coursed through and tears they covered the dead. hook's body. The boss elephant man held Packy shook the image from his mind. his legs, his back, and head* out gold-tipped bullhook so that it would Without looking at it, he picked up the ma- not be out of the elephant's sight. "Re- hogany-handled, gold-tipped bullhook member me, Ming. You gore me and it's that was on the grass next to his own steel- liable to ruin my whole day." and-rubber affair. With the warmth of the The elephant's trunk wrapped gently fine wood against his rough hands, he re- around Bullhook's waist as her head came The blue sky grew black, Packy's lace membered'. Poison Jim Bolger used to up. "Okay, babe. Let's lead this parade out faded, and the sharp jags and angles of carry that hook before his trunk was put on of here. Go, babe, go!" pain smoothed into a calm night sea of slow the lot. Poison Jim was a lush, and nobody Ming moved out toward the main hatch. motions and soft sounds. wants a bullhand with a nose like a fire The two bulls rampaging in the runs moved There was more touching againsf his alarm in control of tons of pachyderms. her. toward Ming crossed the runs and body, dim voices, a bullhand singing "Ele- So he was fired. Then, fifteen years later, stopped before door. the huge hatch The phant Kindergarten" to her pachyderm. the gold-tipped bullhook returned. It was in heavy metal door was warped from the im- That's Kim's voice. That's right, honey. The the hands of a skinny eighteen-year-old pact against the bottom of the shuttle. Noth- car crashed. I don't know where in the hell Johnny-come-lately named Willy Kole. The ing short of blowing the whole thing off its we are. No one will ever find us. Don't know kid never let that bullhook out of his sight. bolts would open it. "Shy, babe! Shy! Get where our next meal is coming from, but That's why they called him Bullhook Willy. me over! Shy!" calm down. Some things are still the same. And only ten years later, Pony Red made The elephant moved Bullhook to the I'm still here, and mule up still means trot. Bullhook boss elephant man, even though right, and the boss elephant man reached And life? It's !he same as it's always there were other hands older and carrying out and flipped open the cover on the been: Life with the circus is jus! one long, more years with the bulls. No one ever emergency switch. He pulled down the uninterrupted dee -light. questioned, the boss animal man's deci- bright red handle inside and then blacked Yowzuh! Yowzuh! sion, because the bullhands knew Bull- out as two hundred exploding bolts went off Step right up and feast your Utile bug hook Willy, and Bullhook Willy knew which at the same moment a bull smashed into eyes on the wondrous monsters from the end of a bull the tail was on. Ming's side. When Bullhook opened his planet Earth! Peruse the ponderous "Hell!" Packy picked up his own bull- eyes, his body was being shaken unmerci- pachyderms — hook, pushed himself to his feet, and fully as Ming stampeded through the open That's what I said, sir, or madame, or brushed the seat of his trousers. He turned air and tall grass of the strange planet. thing, as the case may be. Pachyderms — and moved up the gentle incline, halting at Voices called after them, but Ming wasn't 'Cause thaf's what they're called, sonny. the crude fence that the bullhands had listening. One quarter credit, a mere twenty-five constructed out of rocks and the trunks of "Ming! Ming!" The elephant slowed to a percent of a one note, will admit you to feast trees uprooted by the landing of the Num- trot, then to a walk. "Tut, babe! Put me your eyes, bulbs, sensors, or whatever the ber Three car. The fence formed one side of down, honey. Tut!" hell it is you use — a rough triangle. The second was formed 98 OMNI . . a

by a sheer wall of stone that seemed to was holding her left hand. The hand hold- then a second, then pulled out and dis- extend forever upward. The third side was ing hers was large, warm, and gentle. She carded a third. "Chew on that, Bullhook." formed by a cliff. cautiously rose from the blackness, just a The big man put down his cards next to "You don'! have to worry about a bull little, ready to recoil if the pain returned. Her the dark one's discard, "Ain't they pretty? walking off a cliff, boy. Bull's got head but that searing, shattering more ached, How many did I catch you with?" sense'n a man. Don't you, I say. don't you bolt of agony that had always waited for her The dark one tossed his cards on the know nothiri?" to open her eyes appeared to be gone. She table. "I'm over. That's game." And Bullhook would laugh. let more of that cotton of blackness drop The big man wrapped his arms around Packy reached the. fence and climbed from her and opened her eyes to tiny slits. her and jiggled her on his knee. "How up ihe rocks and logs until he could look Above her were poles and thatch. They about that, Little Will? Your old man just over the top. Ghostly beams of white light in seemed to move in the flickering yellow whipped the drawers off of that horse mer- the shadows below the reflected red of the light She turned her head slightly to the chant over there." rock wall testified that the show's vet, left. A shadow hovered over her — She giggled.. Mange Ranger, was still working on sewing shadow and half of a face. The face was The dark one gathered up the cards. together Queenie's trunk. Several hands familiar. Wispy gray hair, long face. She 'Another game?" were helping the vet work on the anes- opened her eyes the rest of the way and The big man shook his head. "I can't. I thetized pachyderm while two builhands tried to call out io the man with her have to go soon."

. stood between the operation and the re- thoughts. "Do you think you'll have much trouble maining bulls. Just in case. The man's eyes were closed, his face rounding up the bulls?" Packy's bull, Robber, was contentedly relaxed. Little Will tried to project her The big man shrugged. "Can't tell yet. yanking up and munching the grass of the thought into the man's mind as Nhissia had Eco-Watch doesn't want to let anything off compound. Thank Ihe Boolabong for small trained her to do. She frowned as the Earth— officially." favors. The grass was edible. Most of the thought refused to form. She tried harder The dark one leaned back in his chair. hay and grain feed had been tossed out to and then gasped when the pain returned. "Unofficially?" lighten ship long before the Baraboo had "Money talks. I'm supposed to come up

burned. with around two hundred bulls. I'll probably Out of seventy-five bulls, thirty-four sur- be away for two, three months." He mussed vived. Most of the others had died in the up her hair. "I sure hate to go right after you parent ship's bad air, and their carcasses and me found each other." He kissed her were tossed out to lighten ship. Nine had

none of them had made it down. "Wandered around. I saw a couple of The human survivors were setting up planets, Mendik and Ourylim. Handled housekeeping in grass shacks and caves. She gripped the man's hand as she cov- some animals there." He pushed a lock of felt chill, Packy a climbed down from the ered herself with the blackness. black hair from the little girl's eyes. fence, and looked toward the rough long "Did you ever find what you were looking

house that had been put up as a makeshift in her dream she looked for another face, for, Bullhook?" infirmary to shelter the injured. Somewhere another man. The one who had deserted The big man studied her and then in there, fighting life, Little Will, for her was her. Long before she could speak hugged her again. "I think so," He looked Bullhook's twelve-year-old daughter. In the brightly lit hotel room, she sat on back at the dark one. "How come you came Footsteps came from the direction of the the big man's knee, his arms around her back to the show, Waco? Ssendiss sounded still-smoldering shuttle. It was Pony Red resting on the edge of the table, his large like snake heaven." Miira, the boss animal man. hands holding four cards. She looked into The dark one laughed, then sipped at a "Packy?" his sad face, then turned to see Ihe man on cup of herb tea. "I was a flop as a teacher, "Yeah?" the other side of the table. He was dark and Bullhook. My course on Earth snakes

"You're boss elephant man." was also holding four cards. His face was bored my students stiff. The trouble with "I don't want the job, Pony." also sad. "Your draw, Bullhook," telepaths is that they have some rather star- "Who asked you?" Pony Red climbed the The large man reached forward, picked tling ways to let you know that they're bored. fence, went over the top, down the other up a card from a stack of cards, looked at it, I can tell you that the novelty of juvenile side, and continued toward the white lights. then tossed it upon the table. telepathic pranksters wears off quickly." Mange Ranger was still working on Queenie. The dark man frowned as he drew a card. The big man bounced her on his knee. Packy glanced at the final red of the sun The dark man put the new card into his "How did you get your act together?" against the sky, then looked down at the hand and hesitated. "The ones I have with me are adults. They gold-tipped bullhook in his hands. "Throw anything you want, Waco. Any- know better than to mess with someone's And he walked toward the infirmary thing at all." mind. In between classes I guess I prattled Little Will held herself motionless in the The dark man raised his eyebrows with- to them about the circus. When Mr. John dark. She knew that all she had to do was out looking away from his cards. "You put out the call for the star show, I decided open her eyes'and the blackness would go sound awfully smug for a man with bull plop to see what I could put together. What I away. Bui then would come the hurt. for brains." have with me, Bullhook, is.almost the entire She smelled woodsmoke, heard fire's "Sticks stones, a and Waco. C'mon." faculty of the Surissa, the school where I quiet crackle, then noticed that someone The dark man touched first one card, was teaching." 100 OMNI " " "

"When do I get to meet them?" very sad tome." "This ain't my first May, Pony." The dark one shrugged. "They should be "I am not surprised. The boss animal man looked to his right, soon. up Ssendissians sleep about fifty Little Will frowned. "I do not understand." then to his left. In the light from a fire, Little percent of the time. Are you sure you can't The serpent reared up again. 7 meant Will could see that Pony's eyes were dark- stick around a little longer?" nothing." The serpent's head turned to- circled, his leather-brown face deeply Thebigmanshookhishead."Meandmy ward the dark one. The dark one turned lined. "There's an empty spot." He turned crew have to be at Eastern Regional in half toward the serpent, then picked up his his head back toward Packy an hour lo catch the Burma shuttle." He fresh cup of tea. He nodded at the serpent, "They get hold o? Number Two yet?" lifted her and placed her on the floor. The then left the room. The serpent turned back The boss animal man slowly shook his to door the hotel room opened, and she to face the little girl. "What is yourname?" head. "They finally got a fix on Number saw her mother standing in the doorway "Mommy calls me Wilhelmina. Everyone Seven. Kuumic says that he's in the middle Kristina looked at the big man. "I see you else calls me Little Will." of some damned desert." He rubbed the two found each other. How've you been, The serpent's head bobbed up and back of his neck. "I'm for some sleep." Willy?" down, '7am called Hassih. Little Will. Would "Pony"'" ,Bullhook stood up. "Fine. You're looking you like, to be friends?" "What?" Kris." good, Little Will clapped her hands. "Oh. yes/ "What's the name of this planet? Just in "No thanks to you." Oh, yes!" case someone should ask."

The big man looked down. "I guess I had The serpent's head bobbed again. The boss animal man stared off into the that coming." "Then we shall be friends, Little Will. Watch darkness for a long time. "Funny Back on Kristina snorted out a laugh. "That and a as I tie myself into a knot. Ihe Baraboo when the route-book man was lot more, you bastard. Two-and-a-half years Little Will clapped her hands and running that damned-fool name-the-planet without a damned word." opened her mouth to a silent laugh. contest, I had more important things on my The big man turned to the dark one. "I got And the dream faded as the smell of mind. Never did find out what name won. A to be going, Waco." He looked at Kristina, smoko relumed. name seems a lot more important now." He then averted his glance and walked around looked down at the boss elephant man. her, leaving the room. "What did you pick?" The dark one drummed his fingertips on "Nowhere." the tabletop but remained silent. Kristina "That stinks." looked at him. "Waco, can you look after "What did you pick?"

Wilhelmina for another hour or so? I have a QThrough the "Philadelphia." Pony Red shrugged and few things to iron out about the delivery of let his fall door came a long, gray hands to his sides. "I thought it my new cat." was funny," serpent. It The dark one shrugged. "No problem." "Go get some sleep." Kristina looked at the dark one for a mo- halted in the doorway As the boss animal man turned and ment. "Do you think I'm too rough on Willy?" stumbled into to study her. off the darkness, Packy "It's none of my business." looked down at Little Will. His long, sorrow- Kristina nodded. "You're damned right." She crawled toward it, ful face frowned for an instant, then smiled. She turned and left, closing the door be- reaching out "I'll be—" He turned away and whispered hind her. loudly "Mange! Mange! Come here." to touch its warm skin. 3 Little Will sat on. the room's carpet, and Another shadow rushed up and she watched as the dark one got up to brew stopped. "Packy. will you pipe down?" another cup of tea. Through the open bed- "I whispered." room door came a long, gray serpent. It "Like a foghorn!" The shadow nodded in halted the doorway and studied her She toward Little Will. "What is it?" crawled toward the serpent. When she was Little Will did not see; she did not hear. "She's awake. Her eyes are open." within arm's length, she reached out a hand But she felt the man's presence next to her. Mange moved to the right, bent over, and and touched its warm skin. She looked up And there was another. They talked. placed a warm hand against Little Will's at the triangular head weaving on that "I got the gang work : ng on beeting up the face. The hand quickly moved down her slender gray body kraal. Alt the dead stock is out of Number left arm and held her wrist. "Little Will?" "You are pretty." Three. God, what a mess." Silence. "Pony, She opened her mouth and tried to of the The head serpen! weaved down some of the troupers're talking like we speak. Pain; white, stunning pain. She felt until it was at the same level as Little Will's ought to cut up and preserve the meat." herself falling end over end into a universe head. The-serpent's eyes were violet; the A longer silence. "Put 'em in the trench, where pain was not allowed. pupils catlike. "To me do you speak?" Packy. We've found enough edible stuff to It-was a beautiful universe. All of it lights, She stroked the serpent again. "You are get by. We're not eating our damned ani- laughter, and glitter. It was a straw house on pretty. So very pretty." mals!" Silence. "Hell, Packy, we've been a hard lot and a warm evening. It was the ." The serpent reared up, the lit- in examined covered crap before, but this . . windjammers playing "The Governor's tle girl, then again brought down its head. "I don't have no answers, Pony. Except Waltz" while seventy-five bulls turned,

"Thank you. I think you are pretty too." we do like always: Don't think about it—" hind-ended, and kootched in unison. It was giggled She and hid her face in her 'And just move on to the next stand, thousands of cheering voices, and they all I'm hands. "Oh, not pretty Kristina says I Packy? Just where is thai next stand? And cheered for her. Covered in spangles, she am a horror. when in blood-eyed damnation is the city sat astride Ming's neck in the spectacular. The serpent looked at the dark one. The going lo kick us off this lot?" Her father would steal an instant and look dark one was absorbed in brewing his tea. Little Will opened her eyes to narrow slits. up at her. The serpent looked back at the little girl. It was night again. Packy Dern was still She would always sneak a peek during "Who is Kristina?" sitting on the platform to her left. Pony Red the Lion Lady's performance. Center ring, "She's my mommy" Miira's huge form stood between the two the spots all turned toward her mother and The serpent's head racked up and down. platforms. He was rubbing his eyes. He the cats, the crowd hushed, applauding, "She is your mother." The serpent hissed. lowered his hand and jabbed Packy's gasping, cheering. No matter where they "Who is father?" your shoulder. "Look, you. Keep your trap shut played, however alien the planet or its She held her hands on her "I this. I cheeks. about just need a little sleep. Haven't people, this universe stayed the same. It ." think it is the left. man who just He looks slept since . . was like the dog that buried a bone be- 102 OMNI "

neath the treasury wagon and then at ihe can't think of anyone I'd rather be with." stare remained fixed for a moment upon the next stand, on another planet, went be- "I'm going to see Reg." thatched roof above. She turned her head

neath the treasury wagon lo dig it up again. Packy nodded. "Good luck." and saw Packy Dern sitting on the platform Once she saw her father sneaking a peek Little Will walked around the bucket and next to her own. Little Will closed her eyes. at the Lion Lady's acl, and from then on headed toward the back of the tube. When "Little Will, now that Bullhook's gone, I'm they watched together. she got to Reg's stall, she looked up at the going to take care of you." Packy's voice On the City of Baraboo, between great pachyderm. "Reg? Do you hear me?" broke. "Bullhook— he asked me to take planets, the universe was huge gray pets, The bull turned her head, then reached care of you. Is that all right?" Goofy Joe gossiping, Mooch Movill telling out her trunk and caressed Little Will. The A stone does not love; a stone does not funny stories, clowns, canvasmen, tack- trunk moved back to its hay suffer loss; a stone does not hurt. spitters, bullhands,- hostlers, and a white- "Please, Reg! Say something to me." Packy took her hand in both of his. "We'll bearded giant that everyone called Mr. The bull continued eating. be okay together, Little Will. You'll see." He

: John. Little Will moved in next to the bull, reached to his s de and placed something But the universe had some special mo- reached up, and stroked the animal's in Little Will's hand. She opened her eyes as ments. Little Will watched porter Pickle cheek. "Nhissia says that touching helps she lifted the object. It was her father's Nose Porse set up the table, champagne, mind-talk with people. Can you hear me golden-tipped bullhook. and glasses in the exercise run next to the now, Reg?" No one loves a stone; no one cares main carrousel in shuttle Number Three.' The bull stopped eating. She stood mo- whether a stone suffers. Bullhook Willy was sitting on a haybale with tionless; then Little Will closed her eyes and Little Will clutched the bullhook to her his around Kristina, arm and both of them felt a flood of warmth, an ocean of love. It breast and cried. were talking to Red. walked Pony She covered her. "Oh, Regi You talked to me! I Packy put his arms beneath her knees through the crowd of handlers, medics, love you, Reg. And you love me. " Little Will and shoulders, lifted her, and held her. and animal-act performers until she stood felt a tremble beneath her feet. She opened next to Bullhook. "Daddy, is it all right if I go her eyes and looked at Packy. It seems that the winner of the name- see the bulls?" the-planet contest was the late John J. Bullhook looked down at her "Just for a O'Hara. Before he died in the bad air of the little while. You don't want to miss the line- Baraboo, the Governor had picked the crossing ceremony." name Momus, after the ancient Earth god "I won't." She stood on her toes and of ridicule. And they called the planet kissed him, then turned and kissed Kris- 477)e universe is Momus. tina. "I'll be right back, Mommy." ail laughter, bright colors, In the days that passed, other things took The Lion Lady kissed Little Will. "All right, on names. Car Number Three, the menag- and cotton candy. but don't get your clothes dirty. I want you erie shuttle, looked out upon the body of pretty tor the ceremony" And it's mud, broken bones, water they called Table Lake. The waters

"Yes, Mommy." She turned and ran ' came from the surrounding mountains, , fights with through the crowd. She waved as she saw which formed a huge basin they called the rubes, frustration, Waco and his twenty Ssendissians. When hard work, Great Muck Swamp. At the edge of the she reached the port to the main carrousel, poisoned animals, swamp was the lake. At the southeast edge she stepped in and walked to the center of and crooked governments* of the lake its waters drained over rocky the great rotatable tube. Within the large falls, forming the headwaters of what they tube were more tubes, each one independ- called the Fake Foot River. ently rotatable, and each one containing The metal panels from the shuttle that ten or more elephants. She climbed the formed the blades of the waterwheel were ladder and catwalk and entered one of the strangely shaped, roughly resembling the tubes. Inside, the smells of elephant and ' The bullhand was standing, looking to- oversized fake feet some of the Joeys once hay were strong. In their separate stalls, the ward the entrance to the tube. wore, The waterwheel drove the stripped bulls contentedly munched their rations. The deck pulled out from beneath Little armature taken from the shuttle, upon Seated on a bucket in front of Robber's stall Will's feet, and she saw Packy being which, speed-gear-mounted, were the was Packy Dern. "Hi, Packy!" knocked to his knees just before her head abrasive. core blades that had been taken The bullhand jumped, turned round, struck the deck. "Daddy! Daddy! Mommy! from the port-engine boring assembly The then shook his head. "You shouldn't ought Oh, rt hurtsl" She looked up, her vision blades could cut the almost indestructible to sneak up on a man that way, Little Will. blurred with tears, and saw Reg's enor- metal that formed the shuttle's skin. To build Give a fellow time to get used to you yelling mous foot swinging toward her. a road, there must be tools. To have tools, at his eardrums from the inside." And the universe is all laughter, bright there must be metal. To have metal, Num-

Little Will held her hands behind her. "I'm colors, and cotton candy. And it's mud, ber Three was devoured. sorry. broken bones, fights with rubes, pain, end- The road would stretch from the three Packy waved a hand. "It's all right." He less hard work, frustration, poisoned ani- cars north of Number Three, through the resumed his seat on the bucket. 'Are you mals, crooked governments. It's wind- mountains, south past Table Lake, to the gonna try and talk to Reg again?" blown ice shredding the main top on a dark fourcarsnexttothesea. The northernmost

She nodded . "Someday I bet I can talk to night: it's maimed, crippled, and dead car was run by cross-eyed Mike Ikona, the the bulls. I get a feeling from Reg. She's friends; it's the Lion Lady putting a gun to boss reporter The southernmost car was really trying to say something." her head an instant after killing her cats; it's run by the boss canvasman, Duckfool Tar-

Packy shrugged and looked up at Rob- Bullhook Willy broken and bleeding on the zak. Before it was constructed, it was ber. "I been talking to Robber a lot of years grass of an unknown planet; it's a little girl, called the Ikona-Tarzak Road. now I think she understands." hurt, alone, and afraid. They were making shovel blades, "How come you aren't with everybody The universe is what it's always been: dredges, parts for the scoop assembly the else?" one long, uninterrupted dee-light. bulls would pull as they carved their way He looked at the little girl. "Big moment through the gap in the mountains to the coming up, Little Will. We're going to be the "Little Will? Little Will? It's me. Packy" north. A rivulet from the north edge of Table very first starshow to cross the quadrant She opened her eyes. The light said that Lake fell and twisted its way through the line. Important occasion." He nodded, then it was morning. There were no feelings. If gorge at the bottom of the gap. The sheer looked back at Robber. "At a time like this I you don't feel, you don't hurt. The little girl's walls of the gorge meant putting in a climb- TEM OMNI .

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C ry Markatlng nc. S37 e, Bensenv le, IL 6010£ CMI1982-263 ing, twisting road to gel above the walls. "A baby what?" "I don't feel like doing anything," But Ihe fact regis- The scouts reported that there was a lot of 'A baby human, plopbrain." She was talking now tered on no one, including herself. She digging to do to make it to what the troup- talk ers in the three northern cars were calling Gangs in the Emerald Valley and in Tar- talked because the thoughts wouldn't deal, the Emerald Valley. zak would connect their own cars with for her. That's all she knew No big Southeast, toward Tarzak, the expedition roads the best they could without bulls or Packy reached out a hand and gave Lit- their tle Will's back an unacknowledged pat. He reported that it was mostly brush and trees horses and would then begin cutting to clear, bridges to throw across streams, way toward the gangs working north and studied her for a moment, shook his head, bits of swamp to drain.The Fake Foot River south from Miira. Pony Red Miira bossed then shouted, "Mile up, girl!" Robber lum- where Packy turned her did flow all the way to Tarzak. It was not the road gang working south toward Tar- bered forward suitable for navigation except for very short zak, while Packy Dern bossed the gang around to hitch her harness to a wagon stretches. Midway between Miira and Tar- that worked its way through the shorter, but recently filled with dirt and rock. zak, the river cascaded down a great cliff. more treacherous, Snake Mountain Gap. Little Will wiped her eyes with the backs At nighl Packy Dern's gang would hud- of her hands 'and turned to see Stub -Packy Dern sat on a rock outside the dle around fires and talk about nothing- Jacobs backing Reg's wagonload of fill to door of the sick shack. He was looking old show stories, idle speculations about the edge of the cliff that formed the gap across the dusty way at one of the crude the next day's work, anything but the fix wall. She saw him call Reg to a halt. Then hootches that had been built. The particu- they were in. Little Will would remain silent, Stub went back to the wagon to watch as behind wheels. lar hootch he had built had done worlds to watching. Ming was with the Snake Moun- two men placed rocks the bullhand convince him that his calling was pushing tain Gang, and it seemed that at any time They waved at "Stub, and the bull. Years earlier his career as husband Bullhook Willy might appear, swinging his called to Reg to back up. As the bull and father had convinced him of the same gold-tipped bullhook, bellowing out his or- backed toward the cliff's edge, the front of rest of the bullhands. Then she the wagon rose, causing the wagon to . thing as wife and son hit the lot and jumped ders to the the gate to look for what they hoped would would see Madman Mulligan pushing begin emptying its load. be saner surroundings. Packy kicked a She saw It before it happened. The rock small stone and clasped his hands. "Can't disappearing in a cloud of dust, the wagon falling over the cliff— say I much blame 'em." "Blame who?" "Wait!" Her tiny scream was drowned by Packy looked around and saw Mange the roar from the Push. She began climbing "Wait! Ranger standing in the sick shack's door- £At night Packy up the side of the wagon. Stop!" As dirt falling down the way, "Nothin'." He looked back at his Dern's gang would huddle the and rock began face of the cliff, the rock behind the wag- hootch. "How's it goin' in there, Mange?" around fires and The veterinarian sat upon a stump and on's left wheel crumbled, slewing the around. Stub called to Reg, but the grinned. "I think we're going to do just fine, talk about nothing — old wagon other wheel jumped the rock be- in there is on the mend, and I wagon's Everybody show stories, idle hind it, and the wagon went over the cliff. just had my first good night's sleep since I don't know when." speculations about the Reg dug in as the weight of the wagon rushed Packy nodded once, then bent over, next day, anything pulled her toward the gap. Stub trying to free the picked up a stick, and began breaking it behind her and began but the fix they were in. 9 into tiny pieces. "Maybe we can go a harness from the wagon. One of the men couple days at a time now without burying threw Stub a knife, and in seconds the har- ness parted. The wagon fell, and Stub The boss elephant man tossed the re- Jacobs fell with it, his screams muffled by mains of the stick to the ground. "Little Will. the roar of the water. Reg stood alone on waiting for Stub to She just sits there in the hootch. Now that Ming. Then she would look at the bullhook the edge of the cliff, she can talk like everybody else, she don't in her hands and softly cry. hand out the next order. the and talk at all. Even that think-talk. It's like livin' The sun would rise, the gang would Work stopped, and bullhands cliff with a ghost, her sittin' around starin' at that begin the next day's work, and Little Will hostlers gathered at the edge of the damned bullhook." would remain at the camp, either staring at and looked down. Little Will climbed down Mange bent over, placed his elbows on her bullhook or into the depths of the gorge. and walked over to Reg. She stood in front his knees, and clasped his hands together. Thirty days into the cut, and Packy began of the bull, reached out a hand, and stroked "She's lost, Packy. Her parents are dead. A bringing Little Will with him to work. her trunk. "It's me, Reg." lot of her friends are dead. The show is Reg gently wrapped her trunk around gone. Her whole world is different." Little Wll sat quietly in the back of the Little Will's shoulders. Little Will looked up "For a man that sticks his arm up a bull's wagon, watching the bullhands and at Reg's eyes. "i have to go get something hind end for a living, Mange, you sure are hostlers work their animals. With harness first, Reg." talking up a shrink storm." and carefully planned avalanches, but Little Will went back to the wagon and Mange looked toward Packy's hootch. "I more often with shovels and backs, the returned, carrying a mahogany-handled, make a better shrink than you do an ar- crew cut their way up the steep incline to gold-tipped bullhook. She stood by Reg's chitect." get above the walls of the gap. The boiling right front leg. "Let's go, Reg. There's still Packy snorted. "That's no damned lie." river at the bottom of the gorge made a work to do." He looked at the show's veterinarian. constant background roar, causing both She led the elephant away from the cliff hostlers to their in- and backed her up to the next wagon in "Mange, what am I going to do with her?" bullhands and shout to Mange thought upon it for a long time. He structions to their animals. The noise the line. Little Will looked back see Packy

looked up at the boss elephant man. "Tell river made sounded like the crowd in the staring at her, "Packy, I need someone to her about what she does for a living." blues on a good night. The river was repair Reg's harness." "You mean the show? The show's dead." named the Push. Packy continued staring at her, then he at standing around at the Mange shook his head. "No. I don't mean Packy Dern brought Robber to a stop looked those at the show. Tell her about the bulls and the next to the wagon. "Little Will?" cliff's edge. Shiner Pete Adnelli nodded bullhands." Mange pushed himself to his She remained motionless. "Yes?" Packy and moved off to repairthe harness. feet, "I'd better get back." He grinned. "I'm "Honey, you can't just sit around all the The rest returned to their animals and going to deliver a baby." time. It's not good." shovels. DO

106 OMNI . . aPvh Now NRI takes you inside the new TRS-80 Model III microcomputer who value honor over life, these machines to train you at home as the work tirelessly, make few demands, and go unflinchingly to pieces when newer and new breed ofcomputer specialist! more efficient generations of robots come along to replace them, NRI teams up with Radio Shack advanced technology to teach you They also make a lot of money for their how to use, program and service state-of-the-art microcomputers. . masters. Productivity in the Japanese auto industry quintupled — from a daily rate of 5 it's no longer enough to be just a You Get Your Own Computer or 6 cars per worker to 30 or 40— with the programmer or a technician. With mi- to Learn introduction of industrial robots. The Nis- On and Keep crocomputers moving into the fabric of NRI training is hands-on training, with san Motor Company, in Zama, about 35 our lives (over 250,000 of the TRS-80™ practical experiment; and demonstrations kilometers south of Tokyo, turns out 1,300 alone have been sold), interdisciplinary as the very foundation of your knowledge. cars a day, wifh 150 robots performing the re demanded. And You don't just program your computer, work of 300 men. NR1 can prepare you you go inside it.. . watch hoiutircuits in- Attracted by figures like these, dozens of teract. . . interface with other systems. . .gain companies outside of Japan's robust au- real insight into its nature. tomotive industry have put robots to work. You also work with an advanced by' Fuji Electric Machines made Company liquid crystal display hand- held now sort out defective drugs, grade fruit, miiMmeter and and crate eggs. Hitachi, besides making the NRI Discovery its own robots, uses them to assemble vac- Lab, performing uum cleaners and other appliances, and over 60 separate Mitsubishi and Kawasaki are developing experiments. You

robotic divers to inspect deep-sea oil lines. I earn trouble- And last January Fujitsu Fanuc opened a shooting proce- S38 million plant beneath the slopes of dures and gain Fujiyama, where robots produce orner greater under- standing of the robots in a factory coming close to full au- informariorL tomation and the ability to operate nonstop. with the first course of its kind, covering the Both micro computer and equipment Western visitors are often surprised at complete world of the microcomputer. come as part of your training for you to the warmth between Japanese people and use and keep. the proliferating machines. Workers tag Learn At Home robots with the nicknames of movie stars in Your Spare Time Send for Free Catalog. . and rock singers and remain fascinated With NRI training, the programmer No Salesman Will Call with devices that frequently outperform gains practical knowledge of hardware, Get all the details on this exciting them. By contrast, many American blue- enabling him to design simpler, more effec- course in NRI's free, 100-page catalog. It tive collar workers are tearful of losing their jobs programs. And, with advanced pro- shows all equipment, lesson outlines, and gramming skills, the technician can test facts on other electronics courses such as to hydraulic muscle and cold circuitry. The and debug systems quickly and easily. Complete Communications with CB, fears have some foundation: By some es- Only NRI gives you both kinds of TV/Audio and Video, Digital Electronics, timates, the number of blue-collar workers training with the convenience of home and more. Send today, no salesman will in the U.S. auto industry will decrease as study. No classroom pressures, no night ever bother you. Keep up with the latest much as 25 percent by the year 2000 be- school, no gasoline wasted. You leam at technology as you leam on the latest cause of robots. Japanese industrial ex- your convenience, at your own pace. Yet model of the world's most popular com- perts are well aware of the potential prob- you're always backed by the NRI staff and puter. If coupon has been used, write lems of transferring tasks to robots too fast. your instructor, answering questions, giv- to NRI Schools, 3939 Wisconsin Ave., "An all-robotized environment is not ing you guidance, and available for special Washington, D.C. 20016. healthy," necessarily says Yukio Hase- help if you need it. gawa, a professor at the System Science Institute of Waseda University. "While work- ers, particularly in the auto industry, have good relationships with the robots, if you decrease the of the work force number too (I NRI Schools rapidly, the workers may get demoralized. If inNF McGraw-Hi Conti you decrease the number of workers from Educatio Cente sixty to twenty, for example, * the remaining Washington D.C. 20016 work force might feel surrounded by robots, i k which are then seen as their competitors." NO SALESMAN WILL CALL. But to some extent in Japan the problem solves itself, because there aren't enough laborers: The government estimates that Japan currently needs some 840,000 more skilled workers, mostly for smaller enter- prises, The shortage is likely to become severe, to Kanji more according Yonemoto, Clly/Siate/Zip executive director of the Japan Industrial Accredited by the A- Association. By 1985 about 60 percent of the Japanese work force will be involved in J service or information-oriented industries, ,

not in production work, Yonemoto says. vested by robot lumberjacks, to automated

Most young people won't enter the pool of mills. Humans will have little to do with the

skilled labor because 60 percent of them loggi/ig operations but plan and think. shape will have to be similar to that of a today are attending universities, headed Perhaps the most novel development in human being. In the case of the factory, you for white-collar offices. The situation has Dr, Nakano's Mechanical Engineering Lab can lay out the plant in such a way as to

it made somewhat easier for robots to enter (MEL) is the Japanese version of My make it suitable to the working conditions of larger factories, and smaller enlerprises Mother (he Car, an automobile steered by the robot. But when robots come into our

require them desperately. microprocessor. The robot auto uses tele- houses, if we change our house for a robot,

It is against this backdrop of familial ac- vision cameras for eyes, and it brakes and then it really should be the other way ceptance and economic need that re- accelerates on cue to miss oncoming traf- around." searchers like Kato are planning the intelli- fic, "It won't be very practical for at least A colleague cf Professor Kato's, who

gent robots of the twenty-first century. And twenty years," Nakano says, "because it shares many of his ideas about the future in their work they're challenging the will demand such a social investment. human robot, is Shunichi Mizuno, a robot stereotype of the robot as a clunky, bland- Perhaps it will be useful for long-distance artist who works in a small studio and work- vaiced android. driving. But in Japan, as elsewhere, driving shop in the suburbs of Tokyo. His creations

In one project at the Tokyo Institute of is after all a very personal affair." are Disney-like characters, exhibited all Technology, Dr. Shigeo Hirose has built a Other MEL projects are prototypes for over Japan, most recently at Portopia, the

. series of intelligent robots that walk on four aids to disabled people, One is a small scientific exposition held on a man-made legs and propel themselves like snakes. vehicle on wheels, with a microcomputer island off Kobe, in southern Japan. For the Originally fhe snakelike robots were builf brain and ultrasonic eye, the main compo- Tsukuba Expo in 1985, he is building a simply as interesting experiments. But nents of what might become a wheelchair Robot Theater, presenting intelligent robots today they are being manufactured as in- to carry a handicapped person through equipped with pattern-recognition de- dustrial machines, and they may serve a narrow corridors. Another MEL project is a vices, voice, and sensors to form dancing wide variety of functions, from inspecting robotic guide dog for the blind, a small, chorus lines like the Rockettes. An earlier nuclear-power plants to moving patients creation elicited a mild sensation in Japan: around in a hospital. Mizuno constructed a robotic Marilyn Mon- Abandoning the human metaphor often roe, which played a guitar and danced on used in robotics research, Dr. Hirose spent national television. five to six years studying the movements of "In robotics, art and technology con- 6 Art and technology snakes. "We thought of making robots by verge," he asserts while pulling the vinyl taking living organisms as an example," merge. We can have Marilyn face off an old man built to promote solar Hirose recalls. "Human beings are too energy. "Ultimately we can have Marilyn Monroe sitting at a complicated. So we looked at animals; we Monroe sitting at a reception desk and an- thought the snake would allow the robot to reception desk. Robot actors swering our telephones. Robot actors may

have a wider function than it does now." may replace Faye replace Faye Dunaway. Basically, if a robot The results are the "activated cord is an entertainer, it's human, with all the Dunaway. Basically, if a mechanism," or ACM, a meter-long articu- appropriate facial expressions. Once we lated pipe that may be twisted at joints to robot is an begin to use the human form and place a

form any shape. Computer-operated cords computer in it, we are finally raising ques- entertainer, it's human.f inside the pipe act like tendons. Someday tions about the definition of life. If I thought these sinews may be used for aiming an about that very long, I'd be afraid to make endoscopic camera at the end of a tiny robots." robot injected into the lower intestines. But Mizuno will not stop making them, not is Another snakelike robot the "soft grip- even if robots become indistinguishable per," which can grasp an object of any scooting machine that warns of obstacles from people. Already robots are on the shape or hardness. It may be called into detected by ultrasonic sensors. Initially the verge of taking over manufacturing, from service soon by the Tokyo Fire Department robot is "taught" to use local landmarks to the processing of raw materials to the final for rescuing people from burning buildings guide its master, but in the future the blind storage of the product in an automated or places filled with poisonous gas. will be able to program the robot automati- warehouse. Soon coal miners will be re- Hirose moved on to a boxlike structure cally with directions for local errands. placed by snakelike robots that burrow into

supported by four spindly legs. "Here I was Touring the grounds of Tsukuba is a les- the earth, controlled from a command cen- inspired by the movement of the spider," he son in specialization. In the electrotechni- ter aboveground. Diagnostic robots, pro- says. The robot creeps, guided by a laser cal laboratory, across a highway from MEL, pelled by magnets, will inspect nuclear- sensory system that fires 100 light pulses Dr. Seiji Wakamatsu and his colleagues power plants, and their cousins will paint per second to provide a picture of surfaces have developed one robot capable of saw- the sides of ocean liners. Robotic migrant up to a meter away. The next generation of ing wood and building a box, another pos- workers will be sent to the ocean's bottom the spider will carry 20 kilograms, and sessing the dexterity of the human hand, and into space as Earth's natural resources

Hirose predicts that ultimately it might re- and still others capable of sensing moving become depleted. place the baby carriage. objects. One afternoon in Tokyo Masaya Naka- In Ibaraki Prefecture, some 60 kilometers While Dr. Wakamafsu believes that ro-' mura, president of IMamco, Ltd., a maker of northeast of Tokyo, is Tsukuba Science City, bots will continue to be developed accord- computer games and robots for promo- a future metropolis of some 200,000 ing to their projected industrial use, Kato tional campaigns, gathered his staff people, mostly scientists, built in 1979 by believes that all-purpose robots imitating around him. It was a tradition at the end of order of the Japanese government. There, humans in intelligence and bodily func- the day. The staff listened, and Nakamura amid the farmlands and the creeping sub- tions are more necessary. "There is a con- mused. "What Toffler said about the Third of tract urbs houses with pagoda roofs, Dr. stant theme in science fiction that robots Wave is beginning to be true in Japan," he Eiji Nakano, the director of robot engineer- will destroy human beings," he muses. told them. "The development of technology ing, is working on a host of projects to meld "They do so only at the point when they is meant to bring happiness to human be- artificial intelligence with the brute strength acquire emotion. If I consider emotion part ings. Machines are a part of us, like a part- of the robot. of intelligence, Ihen I don't think we can ner. When you put a coin into a pinball Some foresee a time of build when teams me- a robot with equal, ability. But for now, machine, you know how it feels. It is not just chanical spiders will cart fallen trees, har- the more versatile a robot becomes, the a machine, but just like us."DQ I0B OMNI BOOK LOVERS LOVE THIS! OMNI PRESENTS TRIGGERING THE ONLY BALL POINT C0NTINUEDFR0MPAGE56 PEN THAT EVER outrage. "If I have, it's in self-defense. I WENT TO THE MOON. sleep in the next room, but I can feel this

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let me sleep! It wants something from me. I'm half-crazy living in this kid's body any-

way, and this thing makes it worse. I can

feel it nagging .at me." ~**K\\

'And you kicked it to make it stop. In the same spot. Repeatedly." "What do you know about it?" Conrad

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I felt uncomfortable in the room, too. It

wasn't hostility that I felt from the walls. It was the shock of recognition. The moist ceiling was not far over my

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. 1 sipped my plastic cup of martini, for the

moment relaxing. Silting beside Conrad, I said, "YoiTsaid something about George's (NOP.0 BOX. PLEASE) guitar being sick." '"STATIONERY HOUSE!

Conrad smirked. "George is hoping his T, 1 000 Florida Ave., Hagersiown, Maryland 21 7 guitar will be better today. But it won't sing .

screaming lucrative chain ol fast-food restaurants. the current that pulls things in, and all three for him. I know it won't. It'll start what he called a of you were sucked into the mousetrap again as soon as he plays it. It sounds "His yacht had mouse- closed the gate behind you, vicious— the most awful screams you can trap aquarium built into it. The boat had a aquarium. He in the hold, over your imagine. He may have to go bach to playing deep draft, and by pressing a button, he and then he stood chuckling quietly now electric guitar." opened a chamber in the hull. Water would heads, watching, little fish then. As you ran out of air." "It's screaming of its own volition? Maybe be sucked into it, along with and and felt if small shark. For a few minutes I couldn't talk. I as it's allergic to him." sometimes squid or even a choking, it hadn't been me bottom would close, I were though "Possibly. It doesn't scream when Senya Then the gates at the trapping the creatures in there, who'd drowned on that occasion. I'd plays it." temporarily out- and we would watch them ihrough-a glass drowned later, choking to death on my own I felt my trance level deepening. The vomit: overdose. Years later. lines ot the furniture seemed halluci no gen- pane in the deck of the hold. drug were five of us on the cruise. Lana Conrad's irritation visibly became as- ically to expand, softly strobing. I glimpsed "There ghostly human figures on flickering paths; Lilac, Billy's teen-aged wife, thirty years tonishment.

peripherally of him. I I only aware the apartment's inhabitants had left their younger than Billy; his secretary, Lucille But was myself, as fifteen-year-old life patterns on the room's electric field. In Winchester; Lucille's son Lancer—" was seeing did you say? The last two?" Lancer Winchester, hands cuffed behind those subtly .glowing lines I could seethe "Who? Who glass floor, Triggering foreshadowed. My interruption was too eager. me, lying facedown on the not to looked at me strangely. "Lucille watching as my mother drowned. My gasp- "Conrad," 1 said carefully, trying Conrad tears misted the glass, blurring show my excitement, "tell me about your and Lancer Winchester," he said impa- ing and my for me. But somehow the blur life just before transition. Give me details of tiently. "Anyway, Billy asked a bunch of us to the scene scare some octopuses into emphasized their frantic movements as the death itself." I waited, breathless. go down and they tried to pry the gate. Their frenzied Conrad was pleased. He lit another the aquarium. We were over a certain Their fingers clawing at the cigarette and watched the smoke cur! up Jamaican reef where they were quite com- hand signals. in gear. There glass. as he spoke. "I was a copy editor for a book mon. So we went down scuba " and — While Billy Lilac stood with his hands in I me and Lana publisher. I was a good one, but was be- were like man mildly 1 in- his beside me, a coming bored with the work. I'd accumu- 'And Lucille. You three went down," pocket whirlpool. amused by a zoo, chuckling occasionally lated a lot of vacation time; so I accepted terrupted. My head contained a sweetly chatting to me, politely ex- Billy Lilac's invitation to go on a cruise with Calm. Perceive objectively. Perceive in the and perspective of time. Evolutionary patterns plaining that he'd killed Conrad because him and his friends. I felt sort of funny about having an affair with his mummified hurt. Tonight I would re- Conrad had been it,. because 1 was having an affair with The Lana. And he'd killed my mother .because wife. But she insisted that it would be good solve the hurt. keep the secret and had because we would remain casual for the "You three went down," I repeated, "and she helped them and Conrad to use her duration of the trip— four days— and that when you approached [he ga;e where the permitted Lana would cool Blly s susp'cions about us. Billy hull opened, good old Billy pressed the apartment. I'd expected him to kill me. But he simply was rolling in the Right Stuff. He owned a button that opens the gate and makes uncuffed me and put me ashore. He knew that my history ot emotional disturbance destroyed my credibility. No one would be- lieve me when there were three others tes- tifying differently. He'd bribed his two crewpeople handsomely. They claimed a mechanical failure had caused the gate to open prematurely, and Billy had been on

deck and hadn't seen it. They'd been with him the whole time. Craig and Judy Lormer. husband and wife, were his crew Only, after a while, Judy began to have nightmares about the people drowning in the hold. Judy had threatened to go to the police. Craig told Billy, asking for more money to help keep her quiet. Billy had Judy kid-

napped. Craig took another bribe and left. I knew this, because Billy came to me in the asylum and told me in the visitors room. He enjoyed talking about it. Billy was the quintessential son of a bitch. "I drowned Judy in the aquarium in my house, Lancer," he'd said, his voice mild and pleasant. Like a taxidermist talking shop. "You want to explain yourself, friend, hmm?" Conrad said, in the present. thinking my own death. I'd I was about been in and out of institutions for the four years after my mother drowned. Treated for paranoid dementia and drug abuse— the

drug abuse, heroin, was real— till I won- Billy's dered whether I had hallucinated CtoBJ- quiet enjoyment as he stood on the glass, watching the bubbles, forced from his exhausted lungs, shatter on the pane be- tween his teet. in 1987. I died ot an overdose "

I "No coincidences, Conrad," said sud- Senya. She was lovely. I had a disquielingly motions set off reverberations containing

denly. "I'm here because I knew you in your powerful sense of d6ja vu, taking in her within them, coded, all the actions of his

life. I last was Lancer Winchester. I watched strong, willowy shape; an anomalously litetime. And implications of earlier life- you die. You and Lana Lilac and Molher. carflpy Old Glory flag pattern was worked times.

Strangling under glass." I paused to clear into the thick spill of flaxen hair flipped to 'Actually, I'm not here to 'clear' anything

throat. I to "Really, my tranced calmness. fall onto her right shoulder. Something in from Conrad in particular," I said, crossing

Conrad," I said distantly, gazing down the the gauntness of her face excited me. my legs and leaning back against the corridors time, down of "you ought to slow There was both curiosity and empathy in couch. Watching Senya, I went on, "In this drinking." on the her expression, seeming out of place with lifetime my name's Rarnja; in the last it was Ignoring my advice", he gulped another her black, clinging Addams Family Revival Lancer." Her eyes met mine. She was puz- cocktail, swearing softly gown and her transparent spike heels. zled. I hadn't hit the Trigger yet. I smiled at

I turned my eyes toward the doors, first "Who the hell is f?e?" George pufted, her, felt a flush ot pleasure run through me the front door and then the door to the bed- looking me over as they carried the flesh when she smiled back. orifice in womb-room room. The the had guitar's case into the bedroom. "No. George,- I'm here," I continued, try- contracted a little, twitching, so that its "He'd be the man from the Department of ing to keep the fervor from my voice, "to blue-pink tlesh showed at the open door's Transmigratology, George," she replied deal with a rather complex transmigrational

corners. offhandedly. "I had them send someone entanglement. It results from a past-life

I felt its excitement subliminally, and I over about, umm, about Conrad," trauma shared by everyone here. A mem- its shared half-slumbering yearning. Con- The d£j& vu resurged when I listened to ory that brought us back together. For Trig-

rad felt it, too, and glanced at it, irritated. voice. it her The tone of wasn't familiar. The gering. And the funny thing is, George, I

But only the womb-room and I were familiarity was in the way she used it. don't really have to do much of anything. aware that George and Senya Marvell were George and Senya returned from the My being here completes the karmic equa- climbing the plastic-coated steps to the In contrast bedroom. to Senya, George tion. I'm not sure how it's going to trigger." I

apartment. Now I felt them stopping on the was stocky and pallid, his hair permaset sipped my drink and asked, "How did your

landing to rest, and to quarrel. I telt the into a solid yellow block over his head. His guitar perform today, George?"

Trigger near I hadn't quite located it. smoky-blue eyes swept over me, then George just shook his head at me. He

"Conrad," I began, "Senya is— flicked angrily at Conrad. "The kid's drunk was close to throwing me out.

The door opened. Senya came in, toting again." His voice, when he spoke to me, Senya answered for him. "It screamed.

something behind her. She and the man I was a distillation of condescension: "So As usual! Every time George touched it." took to be George were carrying a large you. think you can clear the garbage from She looked at George as if she could un- transparent plasglass case between them. the kid's head here?" derstand perfectly why anyone would

Within the case's thick liquids, something "If there is any garbage to be cleared in scream if George touched them. like pink animal. flesh wallowed a sea A this room," Conrad interrupted, "it spills "I rather suspected that," I said. 'And I guitar. An expensive one, too. from your mouth, George." suspect, too, that there's a growing aliena-

But I could hardly take my eyes from As George bent to punch for a drink, his tion between you and George lately, Senya.

JeJftfCBf*^ Since the day the guitar started scream- ing—and Conrad appeared in your son." "What the bad-credit do you know about it?" George blurted. He was tense with fear. He, too, could feel the Triggering coming. "The man's right, George," Conrad put in, grinding his cigarette out on the table, his little-boy fingers trembling. "The guitar's screaming and my, ah, my coming out came close together. And then the tension

between you and Senya got nasty I saw it.

But it's not like it's my fault. The damn guitar may not have more than the brains of a

squirrel, but it knows a creep when it

senses one. George was playing it, and this

scream came out of it, II finally got fed up with the creep." George said suddenly, "If you think there's some link between him"— he jabbed a thumb at Conrad without looking at him— "and what's wrong with my guitar, then maybe you can — Idunno, uh— clear it away so the guitar works again?"

"Maybe," I said, smiling. "Let's go into the bedroom. And — clear it away." A moment later we were standing around the plasglass case, beside the bed-sized, upthrust lips at one end of the womb-room. Senya opened the case and lifted the guitar free as the floor's lips quivered and the room's walls twitched. The guitar dried almost immediately. It was the approximate shape of an acoustic guitar, but composed of human flesh, covered in pink-white skin, showing blue veins. The neck of the guitar was actually fashioned after a human arm, with the elbow fused so that it was always outstretched. The tendonlike strings were stretched from the truncated fingers, which served as string pegs. But the guitar's small brain kept the strings always in tune.

Its lines were soft, feminine, its lower end suggesting a woman's hips. Where the sound hole would be on an acoustic guitar was a woman's mouth, permanently wide open, its lips thin and pearly-pink; tooth- less; but with a small tongue and throat. There were no eyes, no other physical sug- gestions of humanity.

Senya held it in her arms, leaning its lower end on her lifted knee, her right foot propped on the brim of the open guitar case. She played an E chord, her fingers lightly brushing the tendonlike strings. The strings vibrated, and the guitar's mouth sang the note. The tone was hauntingly human, melancholy, sympathetic. An odd look came over Senya's face. She glanced up at me, and then at Conrad, who reeled, That's the reaction that's made Make sure the rum is from drunk, to one side. And back at me. Puerto Rican gold rum one of the Puerto Rico. "Well?" George said. most popular and fastest growing li- Great rum has been made in

"You play I the guitar. George," said. "Go quors in America today. Puerto Rico for almost five centuries. on. I think all the inlegers of the equation Either on the rocks, or with a dash Our specialized skills and dedication are here, in place. You play it." of soda or your favorite mixer, gold result in rums of exceptional dryness "No, thanks," he said, looking at the pink, rum is a smooth alternative to blends, and purity No wonder over infantlike guitar in his wife's arms. bourbons, Canadians— even scotch. 88% of the rum sold in this I could feel the lines of karmic influence tightening the room. Unconsciously we'd Try the delicious gold rums of country is Puerto Rican. moved into 'symmetrical formation around Puerto Rico. The first sip will amaze RUIIIS OF PUERTO RKO the glass case: myself, Conrad, Senya, you. The second will convert you. George, and the guitar which Senya held over the case, her arms trembling with its weight. We were the five points of a penta- ently now ali his self-assurance gone. So it screamed. The guitar is Judy Lormer cle, encircled by the waiting, brooding I said, loudly, staring hard at George, Remember Judy? The crewwoman you presence of the womb-room. "Yours was ihe sort of crime that required a drowned when she threatened to talk?"

"Go on, George," said Conrad, slurring major effort at karmlc justice, Billy." I didn't mention the fact that young ." in love . genuinely his words. "Don't be a simpering coward. "You call him Billy . Conrad said, star- Lancer had been with Play the guitar." Like a defiant midget, he ing at George. Lana Lilac. sneered up at George. "Billy Lilac," I said, smiling at Senya. "By George aka Billy Lilac wasn't listening. George snorted and took the guitar from now you should be remembering. And He was backing into a corner, making odd,

Senya. Its strings contracted with a faint wondering, maybe, why. a man should be subhuman sounds and swiping at his eyes. whine when he touched it. He strummed a punished for things he did in another life. Overwhelmed by the sudden remem- chord and relaxed as the notes came out Was Billy the same man as George, really? brance I'd triggered. Rea nation: who he normally. He strummed again, shrugged, He is the same man, at the root. Remember was and what he'd done and how It had

. influence his life. and glanced nervously at the living blue- what he did? That sort of crime, Billy. . ah! always been a shaping on pink ceiling and the bruise low on the ceil- The- womb-room remembers, on some The room's walls were closing in around ing walls. level. The. guitar remembers. Their brains us. The room itself was undergoing con- are small, but their memories are long. You tractions, squeezing us. We felt waves of air drowned three people,, and, perhaps pressuring us, slapping us toward the door. and made me clap my hands over my ears. worse, you chuckled while you watched. We staggered. almost lost in the The walls rippled and from somewhere You destroyed my life. Me? I was Lancer Howling, his voice gave a long sigh. Blood ran from the lower Winchester." I waited for the full impact of room's keening and the dis-chording of the edge of the closed eyelids, like crimson my words to hit the others. dying guitar, Conrad struggled on all fours tears. An ugly, ripping sound made me look The red mist sifted down on us. The after us. He looked like a frightened child. up; the ceiling had ruptured. Blood rained floor's lips snapped open and shut sound- Senya and I stumbled out into the main on us in fine droplets. Conrad began to lessly. Senya and Conrad listened raplly, room, both of us fighting panic, shuddering laugh hysterically his voice piping mani- their eyes strange. "You killed my mother, with identity disorientation. caily. His eyes rolled back, into his head. Billy, But she's here with us. Everyone you Gasping, I turned and looked through

George flung the guitar down furiously. I killed is here. It's going to be a big shock to the shrinking entranceway. The aperture had to look away as ihe flesh guitar struck' the gehvat industry when I tell them we've was irising shut. I glimpsed George stand- the edge of its case. It howled again as got evidence that human spirit-plasma ing over the guitar case. The bleeding flesh something vital within it snapped. It rolled fields can incarnate into flesh machines. It guitar yowled at his feet. George swayed onto the floor, facedown, moaning, The will shake up my department, too. My toward us as the room got smaller around room moaned with it. Panic enlarging his mother? She incarnated into the room that him, his arms outstretched plaintively, face eyes, George looked at each of us. He surrounds us, Billy. And Lana is here in white, his expression alternating terror and looked as if we'd suddenly become Senya. The guitar woke up in your arms one confusion, mouth open in a scream lost in strange to him. He was seeing us differ- day 'and remembered what you had done. the room's own clamor Behind him, the fused lower edges of the lids over the room's eyes tore free: the lids snapped abruptly open. The eyes glared, pupils brimmed with blood. The room contracted again, and George tripped. He fell against the open plasglass guitar case, facedown over churning liquids. The aperture closed. "Ahmed!" Senya shouted, recovering herself. "Ahmed's trapped!" She was calling Conrad by the name she'd given him. The doorway was blocked by a convex wall of tense, damp human

tissue; it was puckered into a sort of closed cervix at the middle. But slowly the "cervix" dilated. The top of a head poked through. Conrad's head. His eyes were closed, his face blank. Gradually the room pressed him out. He was unconscious but breath- ing. Senya held him in her arms. His cloth- ing was badly torn and slick-wet with the room's blood. When he opened his eyes a minute later, he said nothing, but gazed up

at her. all trace of Conrad gone. Conrad had withdrawn to whatever closet of the

human brain it is that erstwhile personali-

ties are kept in. The womb-room had shrunk to a bruised, agonized ball of flesh less than two meters across, clamped rigidly around the plasglass case. Itdied, mangled by the corners of the big glass case, and inwardly burst from its own convulsions.

George, Billy Lilac- died within it. He'd coatesiu. been forced by the shrinking enclosure into the glass case, into its glutinous, transpar- ent fluids. He died under glass. He died by drowning. OQ tric eyes to triage ire 'lashes, freezing tri- ple exposures of sequential motion in one THE BEST OF 35mm frame. His illustrated Miracle of Flight, designed as a coffee-table book but used as a textbook, compares our own fly- ing machines to insect flight. The very first

creatures to fly, insects were aloft more than 350 million years ago, defying the laws of Dnnrui aerodynamics. Researchers at Cambridge University were able to discern the dynam- SCIENCE FICTION NO. 3 ics of unsteady airflow from Dalton's still photographs. of time and space unfold Storied vistas The Cosmoscope, a 1.5-ton, electroni- as the BESTOFOMNI SCIENCE FICTION cally operated, hydraulically powered rig, NO. 3 journeys to the infinite starfields of requires up to 11 people to control it. Its the universe. As the nexus between to- multiaxial head is capable of pulling focus day's speculation and tomorrow's reality, from infinity to the head of a fly and, with a science fiction provides multiple entries snorkel lens, can submerge under water into a future of unlimited possibilities. without taking the rest of the camera There's a tale of haunting reality when body— an advantage in maneuvering and Voyager 1 in contact with alien lite comes reloading. Parks also sees potential medi- forms in 1994, and a story that foretells the cal applications, such as employing the temporary adventure of one Leonard snorkel lens to film heart surgery: "You Nisher in a future of pure sex. could get right in there and not be in any- third in the best-selling se- This volume one's way." is features and with ries packed with new The Cosmoscope boasts video monitors four never-before-published stories. for remote control, and it shoots in actual, or There are 14 highly acclaimed stories real, time, "Most special-effects people from OMNI and 5 spectacular space pic- work in stop frame and motion control, or torials. With 144 pages, 63 in color.lhis lux- they mat things in," Parks explains. "All our uriously bound volume commemorates equipment is designed to view the results fourth year of publication. OMNI's straightaway rather than to wait for a lab to combine the images." In fact, Parks and Ian Mpar, a specialist in solitary bees, have NOW AVAILABLE AT YOUR NEWSSTAND developed a system capable of combining two or three images on film on the spot. Their aerial-image relay device has the abil- EXPLORMTiarUS order to film marine organisms no bigger ity to shoot separate planes of action, all in than one-tenth the size of this comma, OSF focus, such as miniaturized men grappling CONTINUED FROM ft employs an optical-bench system that with a seemingly gigantic scorpion. mat absorbed the infrared spectrum, re- weighs 560 pounds and that took over ten Another innovaiion, the Astroprobe, ducing the heat by 90 percent. Then the years to refine. executes visual "flythrough," shooting wide- stage was set with environmental props in Micrography, which films the micro- through a 1mm pinhole to give a hopes that the subject would perform. "Pa- scopic, and macrophotography, which angle view of the other side. The Astro- secret to the flower's point of tience is essential to the natural-history films the slightly larger, are processes that probe is the cameraman," says Thompson, who once even the merest vibrations will upset. With view of a visiting bee. The instrument is waited a marathon stretch of 209 hours for magnifications of 400 times or greater, the inserted through a nick in the flower's cup, a shot that lasted ten seconds. simple breathing of the cameraman, or a which opens the vista. With limited funds, Thompson edited the truck passing in the distance, can trans- In that touted experiment gone mad, in Dr. Jessup a film himself, viewing it on a projector, un- form the image into a frustrating blur. The Altered States, when makes threading, snipping frames, rethreading, bearded and Lincolnesque Peter Parks verb out of the word atavistic, the screen and testing his cut by the full screen. overcame this by linking subject and cam- blasts forth with colorful vortices that Thompson was inspired by the pioneering era so rigidly that when they vibrate, at climax in a perfectly formed molecule. efforts of Percy Smith, "who rigged alarm least they vibrate together, and the image "Simply a combination of chemical reac- reveals. just before Super- clocks to odds and ends for time lapse; if remains sharp. tions," Parks Or he needed more distance from his subject, Dark-field background; a technique of man flies into your- heart, those pulsating he never hesitated about knocking a hole in Victorian rnicroscopisfs, allows such titles? "Brewer's yeast cells." Highly mag- the wall." transparent creatures as starfish larvae to nified, in both cases. Thompson's wood-wasp film remains a be seen as brilliant little jewels. Illuminated More than 80,000 slides for still photo- classic of natural-history documentaries, from behind by a hollow cone of light, the graphs are copyrighted by OSF They are to latest, and the wasp itself stayed on as the logo for subject is seen by the camera only when be found in more than 20 books, the Oxford Scientific Films, Ltd., incorporated and where the light strikes, as with a flash in Focus on Nature, written by the scientists features in Geo, in 1968. The seven directors, having drifted total darkness. themselves, and pictorial flash to Geographic, and Omni's own together at Oxford University out of their Specialized techniques, down National , mutual interest in filming research, sur- 0.025 second, were developed by Stephen Phenomena. vived a filming expedition to Africa the pre- Dalton, the newesl member of OSF When The head of the stills department, Dr. vious- year, considered the ultimate test of Dalton set out to photograph insects in free John Cooke is a living caricature of an compatibility,. flight, he discovered ihat the fastest flash arachnologist. A breathless enthusiast with Though expedition logistics may de- was far too slow, as was the speediest shut- a penchant for anecdotes, Cooke was a Dick Cavett Show crease when one films one insect instead ter. Operating at 0.1 second, it allowed regular guest on the old of a herd of elephants, the amount of hard- enough time for an insect to fly inches or when he was a curator at New York's Amer- ware tends to increase dramatically. In even feet. Dalton incorporated photoelec- ican Museum of Natural History. In safari 116 OMNI khakis, he sits beneavn a shelf of books, one entitled British Bloodsucking Flies. On location beside a river, Cqoke and a colleague noted a raft spider dangling a leg in the water. It was not what they had come to film, but since their other star was not performing, the spider stole the show. Fish, attracted by movements in the water, were captured and eaten by the crafty spider. The behavior "had never been ob- served, and certainly never filmed. Sean Morris, a specialist in time lapse, spent the last ~:ve years f lining the intricate process of pollination. He went to Western Australia, where for six weeks he focused on the hammer orchid. Enler wasp. The male wasp, intent on wooing, mis- takes a hammer orchid for a female wasp. As the wasp tries to copulate with the or- chid, a hinged stalk throws him forward into ripe pollinia, which adhere to his head, Take two, fooled again, the wasp suc- cessfully pollinates the receiving hammer orchid. Somewhere there's bound to be a very impatient female wasp. If indeed there is, the cameras of OSF will record her story, too, for small, often-overlooked details are OSF's forte. Since much of what OSF tends to focus on has never been caught on film, keen observation of the celluloid record often reveals unknown behavior or explains phenomena that have long baffled natu- ralists. Technical difficulties notwithstand- ing, the biologists' perspective of the world is always related with wil and in living color Now we can alt share their sense of wonder at the vast kingdom of the tiny Visitors are welcome to Oxford Scientific Films, but some knowledge of filmmaking ATTENTION STUDENTS! techniques or of natural history is encour- aged. British Rail offers regular train ser- vice to Oxford for about $1 one way. If you FOR rent a car, yo.u might consider staying over- night in nearby Woodstock, and visiting Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill's FUTURE REFERENCE birthplace. Phone 0993-881-881 in ad- vance to arrange a tour of OSF studios. DO Moving? We need' 4-6 weeks CREDITS Dnnrui notice of a change of address. Fill PO. Box 908. Farmingdale, N.Y 11737 in the attached form. 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from this mailing list please check the appropriate box on the page 9! bottom, jiea: rj.oi-iisiii/Syqrna: page 122. Ludek P ,,< page 126. -.:. ,.,..-.. Magnum. coupon, satellites put out of action c selv because; of such unknowns. tions might be Other scientists have drawn up elaborate temporarily by sudden ionospheric disturb- been one plans to create artificial comets— one of ances. Chemical releases have CONTINUED FROM P* the many grand space paintings likely to means to test the sensitivity of ultrahigh- chemical re- frequency radio channels to brief, natural Pomgralz, of the Los Alamos Scientific become reality as soon as space pulses of plasma in the ionosphere. Laboratories, that launch was a needed leases can be conducted from the and his Some releases by such groups as the warning that the ionosphere is not immune shuttle. Physicist James Heppner Flight Defense Nuclear Agency have been used to man's chemicals. Without that warning, colleagues at the Goddard Space been drawing up to simulate the electromagnetic side ef- some of our plans might have done far Center, in Maryland, have atomic war on strategic defense more damage. plans for a special Chemical Release fects of lofted by the shuttle. communications. According to Heppner, A case in point, Dr. Pomgratz says, is the Module (CRM) to be chemicals still other studies have been designed to proposed solar-power satellite (SPS) sys- Using hundreds of pounds of module is mimic the release of miniature bombs di- tem. "In the original scenario," he recalls, instead of just a few pounds, the ionospheric rectly inio the ionosphere, a bizarre possi- "they were talking about vehicles eight designed to explain the exotic bility, but real one to military planners. size of the Saturn 5. Each had a data that physicists have been trying to a times the Department Heppner, it Because many Defense trajectory such that the exhaust gases piece together According to Dr. shuttle missions will be almost exclusively .would have removed something like one would also be far cheaper than the parade that will have pre- military, some researchers worry that the third of the ionosphere. They were going to of rocket-based releases scientific promise of exploring the heavens do this eight times a day for thirty years. ceded it. Unfortunately, federal money for pure could be lost from the revised program. Then it might be that no one would have than rapidly. It "They certainly have different interests major radio stations, because you couldn't space research is dwindling will saved we do," one plasma physicist says of the get any reception off the ionosphere." SPS seems that the CRM program be "They start out talking about basic plans have already been changed to avert only because the Defense Department military. mysterious but when they get down to it, they thisfar-oft problem. wants the device for its own science, makers." Dr. Rita Sagalyn, a staff scientist at want .us to be tool-and-die Still, Pomgratz notes that even smaller ends. research could still solve many mys- chemical releases involve many unknowns. the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory, in This is helping to re- teries, and scientists are understandably Last year, in an experiment called Water Bedford, Massachusetts, miss out the opportunity. Canadian scientists sought vise the project for the department. She reluctant to on Hole 1 , he and military's proposed One recalls Stephen Daedalus, James to study the northern lights. They ended up Insists that the same fun- Joyce's young artist, who filled the sky with by punching a brief 50-kilometer hole in the launches in 1986 will probe the that excited NASA, his imaginings and reflected: "Signature of aurora. "That was a little embarrassing," he damental mysteries

; is chemical all things. I am." The question now says with a laugh. "When we designed the Other scient sls involved with whether man's signature in the sky will be experiment, we thought we'd strengthen releases over the years paint a different Defense Department, they say, as grand as the heavens themselves or as it." Pomgratz and his colleagues plan to picture. The shabby as our fears. DO continue their aurora experiments pre- is'worried that spy and military communica- DAYS OF FUTURE PAST COMPLETE YOUR COLLECTION OF OMNI NOW. FILL OUT THE COUPON AND MAIL WITH YOUR PAYMENT TODAY

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Total amount enclosed S EARTH VoyagerVisious 0L-."l\:.'E:'f=O',l ->i;Of 'r

spot the Zevezdny. He still hasn't given up his objective of snagging her propeller.

"Sometimes it takes outlaws to stop out- laws," says Watson, who once sank a pirate whaler off the coast of Portugal. "When he sank that whaler, Watson saved a lot of whales," says Brian Davies, head of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a group that endorses nonvio- lence. "He has the very best credentials." But Watson's unorthodox methods often prompt environmentalists to label him a ter- rorist, "We support the intent of what Paul does," says Douglas Mulhall, Canadian administrative coordinator of Greenpeace, nd are suitable tor framing. "but we do not condone the methods. APVJ-1 Jupiter Greenpeace has proved that direct nonvio- D APVS-1 Saturn lent action, combined with political action, D APVJ-2 Jupiter wlthFour Moons

is effective. It is our contention that if you The Ancients called it D APVS-2 Saturn with Six Moons D APVS-3 Final Look at Saturn use force, you become part of the thing you SE. 50 for three posters are trying to stop," COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS $13.00 for all five posters

"When I was with Greenpeace," Watson, There are no physical limita- ($2.00 for complete catalog, credit a founding member of that group, says, applied toward next purchase) tions to inner vision . . . the "we never saved a single whale by stand- psychic faculties of man know ing in front of a harpoon. The whalers would no barriers of space or time. A Send elieck or money order to: just shoot over our heads." world of marvelous phenomena "At some point your tolerance level is awaits your command. Within Hansen Planetarium reached," says Edward Unterman, thirty- the natural — but unused — one, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, "and functions of your mind are dor- when I decided that it was intolerable to kill mant powers which can bring whales on this planet, I decided that what about a transformation of your the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society life. was doing was most effective." Know the mysterious world The search for the Zevezdny- halts dra- within you and learn the secrets matically when the lookout in the crow's of a full and peaceful life! nest spots a helicopter gunship in the dis- The Rosicrucians tance. Over the ham radio word reaches us (not a reli- gion) are an age-old that the Kremlin has sent a diplomatic note brother- hood of learning. For centuries to the U.S. embassy in Moscow, informing they have shown our officials there that we will be arrested men and for espionage. The U.S. State Department women how to utilize the full- ness of their being. This is an immediately responds by declaring it is age of daring "maintaining an observer's status." adventure . . . but the The red star on the helicopter's fuselage greatest of all is the ex- ploration self. becomes clearly visible as the aircraft cir- of Determine cles overhead. "Wave! Keep waving!" your purpose, function and shouts one of our officers. powers as a human being. Write for Another helicopter appears, and to- your FREE copy of gether they shadow us like vultures afler "The Mastery of Life" — Today! No obligation. No sales- A ship shows up on our radar, moving men. A nonprofit organization. rapidly toward our position. Watson says Address: Scribe di,a it's a warship capable of making three times our speed. He decides to turn back. The ROSICRUCIANS (AMORC) Minutes later we watch the warship pull San Jose, California 95191 U.S.A. up alongside us. We can see the serious SEND THIS COUPON faces of the crew and the barrels of their Scribe DLA 75mm cannons. The ROSICRUCIANS (AMORC) "Sea Shepherd, stop!" shouts a thick San Jose, California 95191 U.S.A. Russian accent over our radio. Please Bend me the free book, The Mas- "Why?" Watson asks innocently. tery of Life, which explains how I may "I am boarding ship! Stop! I am boarding y faculties and powers of ship!" "Negative...We are going home." Clip And Some of our crew apply grease to the Mail Coupon Today To: Edmund Scientific Co., Dept. 821 1 KN02 sides of the ship underneath the barbed Edscorp Bldg., Barrington, N.J. 08007 wire to dissuade the Soviet party from at- No. 3455 *196! Edmund Scientific Co. tempting to board us. Almost at once the helicopters dive at our ship, firing flares, and the warship plows across our bow. ruEXT onnrui They seem undeterred. "Sea Shepherd" shouts the Russian saman again, "stop immediately!" "Stop killing whales!" Watson shouts back. As we look at our adversaries, pre- pared for the worst, a whale, glorious, enormous, surfaces and swims steadily

between our ship and theirs as if drawing

I with his body a line of truce. Almost imme- diately the Russians stop dead in the water. They seem uncertain of what to do next. They drop back farther. The two helicopters

Jubilant and somewhat dazed, we reenter American territorial waters. But the mission is not yet over. Watson tacks a note to the mess-hall door, listing the objectives that have been accom- plished and the single objective that has not: "Finding and intercepting the whaling vessel Zevezdny."

The question of whether to return is put to a vote, and the majority decide on continu- ing our mission. We spend the entire night and the next day anchored in American waters near St. Lawrence Island; early the following morning we head for the Soviet coast again. Once again the Zevezdny is nowhere to be found, and as we leave Soviet waters a second time, a lone Soviet helicopter gun- ship appears and pursues us, We have now repeatedly covered the en- tire area in which the Zevezdny operates, and Watson suspects that the Russians have taken the ship out of service because E -Briton Clive Sinclair got very big INCREDIBLE SHRINKING SINCLAIR has of our presence. "Every attempt must be /thinking small. Sinclair makes TV tubes of the thickness of a magazine. Smash! made to find the Zevezdny," Watson vows. -tiny computet with a. price below $200. As-Omni shp> Crunch! He turns out a home The next morning a third mission begins, risive profile next month, Sinclair is (ike' of the small, wily i one but radar indicates two warships blocking when dinosaurs still ruled: He invents in the shadow of giant corporal the Sea Shepherd ll's path. Running low on survives on his wits. Next, learned, Sinclair may take Of and Omni has fuel and provisions, Captain Watson calls

it quits. OUR LADY OF THE ENDORPHINS- In 1973, when Candace Pert was He describes the mission as "eighty six -year-old- pharmacology graduate student working under Solomon Snydi percent successful" and decides to take startled the her discovery Johns Hopkins, she neu.roscience community with o the photographic proof of the illegal Soviet opiate receptor. In the ensuing, she's to decade continued make groundbreah operation to the infractions committee of discoveries in brain chemistry. Next month in Omni's interview Pert discusses si the International Whaling Commission. vital the brain regulate behavior? is the It questions as; How does What "If what Watson says is true," says Tom 7 Valium (or Hoffmann-La Roche) receptor Why does Angel Dust twist percepl Garrett, acting whaling commissioner for

the United States, "it certainly makes liars SPARE GENES— Within the next ten years machines may routinely scan tbag- out of the Russians. The United States has of a fetus, searching for odd "fingerprints" that warn of problems ranging from c< asked the Russians several times for detect problem, doctors will blindness-io cystic fibrosis. And when scanners a goto documentation of what is going on there, for replacements. today inject into a stock of "good" genes Researchers can DMA but we have not received it." Garrett says cell's In the fu- a cell by using wispy glass needles, changing the "blueprints." that when the IWC meets next summer in ture they may be able to combat human disease with related techniques'. I England, the United States will ask that in- month's Omni reports the potential— and potential problems — of. gene thei ternational observers be allowed to visit that part of Siberia. RECOLLECTIONS OF DEATH— A brilliant light, a serene landscape, the spirit Finding no shortage of challenges, Wat- long-departed loved ones— all' these figure in the tales told by people w" son and his crew will carry on. In February clinical In B. irom death. next monih's Omni, cardiologist Michael Sabom discusses the ship will reach Iki Island, northwest of the results of his five-year investigation into NDEs.or near-death experiences. Or. Kyushu, Japan, and try to stop Japanese Sabom's study, the first scientifically rigorous examination of the NDE, calls into and clubbing "" fishermen from spearing question our beliefs about the practice of medicine and the nature of human hundreds of dolphins that, they claim, are cutting into their profits. — In February, historian chronicles events after the at SCIENCE FICTION a de "There is no justification for killing any

God, in Greg Bear's "Petra"; two exobiologists discover a mystery on t! marine mammals," Watson asserts, "and I victim rare Aton-17, in Scott Sanders's "The Audubon Effect"; and a ofa will do whatever is necessary to end the driven to capitalize on his affliction, in Gregg Keizer's "I Am the Burning £ killing everywhere it exists. "OO 120 OMNI .

THOUGHT TRAVEL FAE5 By Patrick Moore

interstellar iravel possible? My answer stars are those of the Alpha Centauri sys- prepared for a journey of many thousands Isis always the same: By our present tem, not much over four light-years away, of years. Space arks are beloved of

methods, it isn't. This is quite different but candidly they aren't very promising. storytellers, but I doubt that they will ever from claiming that reaching the stars will Instead I would prefer to consider become practical. There would probably of initial volunteers, but be permanently out of the question. , Barnard's Star, two light-years farther off be no shortage Let me start by briefly looking back. In than Alpha Centauri. Here we have a dim what would happen after a prolonged 1840 Dr. Dionysius Lardner, an eminent red dwarf, possibly attended by several period? As generation succeeded- scientist, stated that reaching the moon planets. To find stars similar to our sun, we generation, the whole aim of the mission was an idea as absurd, and as unlikely, as must go beyond ten light-years, but I am would be lost.

' crossing the Atlantic by steam power Even content with choosing Barnard's Star. Six Hibernation is another alternative. earlier the prospect of traveling in a train at light-years is the critical distance- Putting a crew into deep freeze is also a the staggering speed of 30 mph had something between 30 million million and popular theme. Whether the human body caused misgivings. And after the Wright 40 million million miles. would stand up to such treatment is, I brothers had successfully flown, Dr. Simon An unmanned rocket probe does not believe, very questionable. Newcomb, another eminent scientist, seem particularly useful in reaching Space warps, time warps, and so on, claimed that the only possible Barnard's Star, simply because it would have become popular as suggested heavier-than-air machine was one take a very long time and we would have methods of interstellar travel, particularly

powered by birds. As for space travel . . no hope of keeping track of it, Actually since the arrival of black holes in well, it was ridiculed right up to the time of several probes have been launched astronomical science. But how does one already. will enter of kind? have to admit Sputnik 1 , and that was a mere quarter Voyager 2 bypass Uranus and a warp any We century ago. Neptune before 1990 and will then leave that we have absolutely no idea: so, for My point here is that once a proposed the solar system; we can keep in touch now, speculation is endless. experiment goes beyond the range of with it for only another few years. About Rather less implausible is the concept contemporary science, it is bound to be 340,000 years hence the probe will be of a spacecraft that can move at a velocity greeted with skepticism. So it is today with within one light-year of Sirius, approaching that of light. Here we have to the concept of interstellar travel, If we are to make an interstellar journey cope with the time-dilation effect. Where are we likely to go? The nearest in a spacecraft by 1982, we must be So where does this leave us if we really believe in a community of worlds many light-years apart, and yet in close contact with one another?

This is where I become controversial! It

seems we have no chance if we restrict ourselves to sublight speeds. Material things cannot exceed this limit. So travel must be nonmatertal. How fast is the

speed of thought? I can easily conjure up a picture of the surface of Mars, with the Viking lander sitting placidly in the middle

of the rocky, orange desert of Chryse; it takes me no time at all to transport myself

there mentally. And if we could adapt this ability to transferring our bodies as well, every obstacle in the way of interstellar travel would disappear.

It sounds like science fiction. At the

moment it is science fiction. Yet cast your mind back to the time of Julius Caesar, or William the Conqueror, or even Shakespeare. What would these gentlemen have said about the idea of sitting in one's study, twiddling a knob, looking at a screen, and seeing men Tiie sxepiicisir' cxf;o specuM/on of ignite the n-.cnis: v/ig/cs-s:.'' in!?.: i/eiia: ;^ave/ walking on the surface of the moon? DQ 122 OMNI :

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Solve these riddles, find the gold!

By Scot Morris

The pure challenge of an unsolved puzzle, Ihe satisfaction of wrapping one's

mind around a problem and seeking a way Is the treasure si ill ir its nici^ng place? "It

through it, the sheer intellectual joy of is," Williams says. "I went to the site finding a solution! Set aside such noble recently, and the ground was emotions this month while we look at three undisturbed." Has anyone come close? unsolved puzzles that appeal to a more "Someone has gotten about eighteen feet

universal motive — greed. away from it." For the past two years puzzle fans and . Schocken Books is at 200 Madison treasure hunters have been digging up the Avenue, New York, NY 10016 English countryside. They have tried to

WILL. . . dredge a lake in Derbyshire and to dig up WHERE THERE'S A a topiary in Tewkesbury. One woman was As Williams's royalties approach the $1 arrested after breaking into the Taunton million mark, the financial potential of fire station, where she believed the exploiting gold fever is not going treasure would be found. unnoliced. Three New Jersey What they're all looking for, in case you authors — Thomas Dowd, Ronald Franks, haven't heard, is the lost prize of Kit and Dorothy Newton— have published Williams's charming children's book, their book, The Will: A Modem Day

Masquerade (Schocken Books, $9.95). It Treasure Hunt. In it are clues based on is a gold-filigree rabbit with a ruby eye, chess, astronomy, astrology, mathematics,

fashioned by Williams himself and buried geography, and hieroglyphics, all leading by the light of a full moon in August 1979, you to their treasure, a box containing 49 "somewhere in ihe British Isles." The jewel, one-o.unce South African krugerra.nds, a Miiiriius with pair.!::i

code does contain a message and is not just a random series of numbers. Analysis also suggests that the method used for

encoding the unsolved ciphers 1 and 3 was similar to that used for 2. For those who think there is no gold to

be found , or never was. the fascination of the Beale cipher is basic: the pure

challenge of an unsolved puzzle. There it sits, a cipher purportedly 160 years old Independence. Beale had numbered and backwards, from various starting this year taunting our sophisticated each word consecutively from 1 to 1.322: points, using first letters, second letters, technology daring us to try to crack it. When, 1; in, 2; the, 3; course, 4;. of, 5; and last letters. Some still think the answer For more information on the cipher, and human, 6; events, 7; and so on. He then is in the Declaration, but in a way yet to be for literature available on it, send a replaced the letters of his message with discovered. stamped, self-addressed, business-size the appropriate .numbers. The letter W, for Most who seek the Beale fortune work envelope, and $1 , to The Beale Cipher example, could be encoded with 3 1 or alone, but a few have opted to pool their Association, P.O. Box 216, Medfield, with thenumber of any oiher word findings and ideas. Last September we MA 02052. beginning with W. sat in on a meeting of the Beale Cipher Cipher 2 told exactly what buried: COMPETITION #22: HEADLINES was Association (BCA), in Arlington, Virginia. It 2,921 pounds (not ounces) of gold, 5,100 was a lively, curious that crew included Years ago, it was reported, a California pounds of silver, and a quantity of jewels, David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, newspaper printed a picture of Aristotle "securely packed in iron pots with iron Carl Hammer, director of computer Onassis being shown Buster Keaton's covers ... six feet below the surface of the sciences at Sperry-Univac, a former CIA estate for possible purchase. The caption ground." It said that message 3 gave the cryplanalyst, a code expert from the under the photograph: aristotle names of the men to whom the treasure National Security Agency, and a CONTEMPLATING THE HOME OF BUSTER. belonged. It concluded, "Paper number hodgepodge of other fortune seekers, A bare-breasted woman caused a one describes the exact locality of the including college professors, researchers, ten-car collision when she went for a drive vault, so that no difficulty will be had in students, clairvoyants, and dowsers. along the Hollywood Freeway in an open 'finding it." The opinions expressed at BCA were as convertible. The incident was reported in Interest, naturally has centered on diverse'as the members' backgrounds, a local paper with this headline: bares 2, cipher 1,. at right. Would-be crypt- Some argued that Beale never went west, RAMS 10. analysts have tried to unlock it by using a that he was a pirate with Jean Laffite in Here's your chance to enter the variety of documents that might have been Orleans, New and that the vault contains challenging and rewarding world of available to a Lynchburg innkeeper in plunder from the high seas. A few felt headline and caption writing. Set the the 1820s—.tna Constitution the Mayflower that the code has already been scene, real or imagined, and compose Compact, the Magna Carta, parts of cracked — perhaps by the National one devilishly clever headline. Postcards Shakespeare and the Bible, "The Security Agency — and that the vault, only please, with one entry per card. All Siar-Spangled Banner," the Virginia when found, will be empty. Some wonder entries become the property of Omni; Charter, even the 1733 Molasses Act. whetherthere ever was a vault — or a none will be returned. The grand prize- Nothing has worked. They have tried Thomas Beale. Maybe the tale was winner will receive $100; runners-up (2-10) complicated and unlikely cryptographic concocted the by government in order to will receive $25 each. Send entries, techniques— offsets, add-ons, generate the methodology to crack this which must be postmarked by February multiplicative factors, group n.umberings. kind of code, or perhaps it was a hoax 15. 1982, to Omni Competition #22, 909 They have fried the Declaration forwards perpetrated by Edgar Allan Poe, who was Third Avenue. New York, NY 10022. DO LAJDRD

' By Gurhey Williams ill

4 Jules Verne's classic will become a brief story called Two-and-a-harf Leagues Under the Sea * .arid-Ready for Launch

136 OMNI