: onnrui' SEPTEMBER 19/9 %2 D9 FANTASTIC^ HIGH-SCHOOL BEINGS: CONFIDENTIAL:

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IMhI(nWI onnrui SEPTEMBER 1979

EDITOR & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE EXECUTIVE EDITOR: FRANK KENDIG ARl DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO

EUROPEAN Eu "I OR: DR 3-^MARD DIXON FICTION EDITOR BEN BOVA DIRECTOR OF ADVI-P" S \'G BFVERLEY WARDALE EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT: IRWIN E. BILLMAN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER KATHY KEETON ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER (INTL): FRANCO ROSSELLINI

CONTENTS PAGE FIRST WORD Opinion Stan Kent 6 OMNIBUS Contributors 8

COMMUNICATIONS Correspondenc 10 FORUM Dialogue 12 EARTH Environment Kenneth Brawe r 16 SPACE Astronomy Mark R. Ctiartrand III ia LIFE Biomedicine Bernard Dixon 20 THE ARTS Media 22 UFO UPDATE Report James Oberg 32

CONTINUUM Data Bank 35

"DOC" Article Stephen Davis 44 KINSMAN Fiction Ben Bova 52

GEOSCAPES Pictorial Douglas Faulkner 56

LIFE IN DARWIN'S UNIVERSE Article Gene Bylinsky 63

GRAVESIDE WATCH Fiction Edward H. Gandy 66

B. E SKINNER Interview Michael Hollingshead 76

EYEWITNESS TO SPACE Pictorial FC. Durantlll 82 SARASWATI IN THE BRONX Article William K. Stuckey 90 THE VACUUM-PACKED PICNIC Fiction Rick Gauger 94 FOOD FOR ZERO-G Article Dava Sobel sa EXPLORATIONS Travel Dava Sobel 37

SCHLIEREN PHOTOGRAPHY Phenomena Gary Settles 40

GAMES Diversions Scot Morris 44

LAST WORD Opinion Stuart Diamond 46 PHOTO CREDITS

Cover art for this month's Omni OWN,. 1979 f:SSN 0-49-an ;. US v,-,lj-e \ Number 12 Coi xjnl-vy n ir-s Ut:«; =r«:s= aic £i''„. = Is a watercotor by the "snajjsiv r -TJanada 10022 Tel (2121 593-33D1 Prin-od ir :h B U.S> O; [i'ere::ii American artist Alan Magee. prasisaorE.-andtrfti-Mjria le -n i- , The painting was originally done for the cover of Henry "' i i " "! - Miller's Time of the Assassins : :.-..

C -,U P_Csinacid. dr-.:j .'..FC . id3-!?S:.;:!-;n~.-';. ci:.. ioCW'-. r..' , , ,! (Simon & Schuster). Magee is 1 ' i: I, '.: : ' ' ,il i i. , I .'iii i, a self-taught artist mho lives and paints in Maine. Whether the United States is first, second, space," unless some attempt is made to

or no-show in space depends upon many involve young people, if only so that they factors, but pervading all concerns, be can benefit from the experience of the first Ihey budgetary or otherwise, is a basic generation of space pioneers. lack of creativity. To ensure leadership in Involvement of young people in the

space, particularly during austere years, space program is a two-way street. It requires fresh, innovative thinking. New benefits not only the student but also the concepts and approaches need to be experienced planner or engineer. NASA's explored, but NASA, more comfortable advanced planning is becoming with a do-nothing, low-profile approach, is increasingly conservative and shirking grand concepts. Perhaps fearful shortsighted. A fresh approach to the of an Apollo-type backlash, NASA has complicated problems of future space done its best to decline funding for certain programs could relight the flame of advanced projects, prompting harsh creativity that was so evident in the days political criticism and review from the of Von Sraun. pro-space ranks of the Congress. To As NASA gets older, the agency quote Representative Don Fuqua of becomes increasingly resistant to Florida: "There is insufficient innovation and change—the classic commitment — The space program symptom of terminal bureaucracy. But, is dying on the vine." unlike most federal bureaucracies, NASA One real consequence of this backlash recognizes its own problem, Dr. Robert is the age crisis now facing the aerospace Frosch, NASA administrator, was quoted in industry. The aerospace slump that a recent interview in Business Week: "The followed funding reductions for Project system has now sharpened its pencils in a Apollo, apart from hurting the bank way that discourages changes that are balances and attitudes of many major. We have been so busy with other engineers, caused the industry to stop things thai we have inadvertently told the hiring young people because of an overall people who think up ideas to go away."

lack of jobs. This trend has started to Thus, NASA realizes it needs a £ There is an age crisis reverse, with boomlike hiring going on in transfusion of ideas, and the most obvious now facing the Seattle and Los Angeles, but most of these source for these ideas is the student bright new employees end up in the aero, community Students can contribute a aero-space business. rather than the space, side ol the different viewpoint, a fresh approach The likelihood that a business. The available jobs are in that the experienced eye may have commercial defense aircraft programs: overlooked. Such involvement would young engineer will or almost no newly graduated students go to prevent a loss of planning momentum, join NASA's space work in the space business. NASA itself is and perhaps end NASA's lack of program payroll is in a substantially worse position. Faced creativity. with federally mandated work-force The Space Age has passed its virtually nonexistent.^ reductions, a young engineer is unlikely twenty-first birthday, NASA is twenty years to be put on NASA's space-program old. and it's about time that government payroll. and industry realized that established The anti-space-expenditure lobby engineers and scientists do not have a (otherwise known as the Office of monopoly on creativity. If the United States Management and Budget) argues that is to maintain some semblance of cosmic

there is no need for concern. Proponents leadership, it will take more than say that there is no need for a dynamic presidential rhetoric. A serious attempt to space program Yet the pulse of the nation involve young people in all aspects of is throbbing with rockets' fire. Groups space— planning, hardware development, supportive of the space program are and flight operations— is essential to the

forming all over the country, and if NASA, vitality of future space programs. NASA's the Office of Management and Budget, current expenditures on educational and the President will open their eyes and programs are minuscule, and such funds ears, they will realize that the Apollo are usually the first items to be cut during backlash has been beaten. The public budget reductions. Even under the wants a strong, dynamic, and expanded President's tame space policy this state of space program, and government and affairs cannot be tolerated. If we are to industry should prepare to deliver. maintain our leadership in space, a

If the aerospace industry is to meet substantial commitment to a youthful,

public demands, if will need to replenish creative space program must be made. its work force as retiremenf and attrition Failure to do so will mean Humankind's take their inevitable toll. Many of the space Childhood's End will never occur. DO program's planners and chief protagonists will, like old soldiers, fade away. The Stan Ken!, a young engineer now program will lose direction and be unable employed by Aerojet Liquid Rocket to maintain what President Carter called Company, is a member oi the NASA the "leadership of the United Stales in advisory subcommittee on innovation. u DfinruiBU!

Seventy- six-year-old Harold "Doc" probabilities and improbabilities of the Dava Sobel informs us that space-shuttle Edgerton — inventor of every- appearance that alien beings are likely to crews won't revert to slurping out of plastic thing from Brownie flashcubes lo take. What do beings on other planets look bags like their predecessors. "There'll be a laser strobes— a folk is hero among the like? "Well, you wouldn't want to go up and fully operational galley on board, capable world's top photographers and something embrace one," Bylinsky remarks. Artist of preparing seven meals in just 23 of a legend around MIT, where he has Wayne McLoughlin illustrates. minutes," writes Sobel. "At least, there'll be been a professor for half a century It was When Omni decided to profile the Bronx variety." Sobel's fondness for space travel Edgerton who first introduced ultrahigh- High School of Science, in New York City, and her interest in food led her to NASA's speed photography developed high-speed Washington editor Bill Stuckey jumped at Johnson Space Flight Center, in Houston, motion pictures, took the first films of the assignment. Stuckey has more than just Texas, where she was introduced to some atomic explosions and the first close-ups of a passing interest in the high school, He of the leading diet and food specialists. the Loch Ness monster. This month Omni claims to know more about Nobel Prize The highlight of her trip was "sampling a presents a profile of Edgerton former by winners than just about anybody else in the bowl of dehydrated bananas." Sobel's Rolling Stone editor Stephen Davis. "I world, and Bronx just happens to be cook's tour of outer space begins on saw his photographs in the National considered "the breeding ground" for page 98.

Geographic when I five was years old," future Nobel laureates. Stuckey rightly In 1971 Lester saw Cooke . curator of says Davis. "I've been a fan ever since. The this as the perfect chance to meet some painting at the National Gallery of Art, in images were burned into my mind," Davis future prizewinners, as well as to pick up a Washington, DC, and NASA's James spent a month with Doc, attending his top story, In his article "Saraswati in the Dean authored a magnificent book, classes and meeting with many of his Bronx" (page 90), Stuckey profiles Arani Eyewitness to Space, containing colleagues. 'Another credit to the man," Bose, one of "Science" 's typical students reproductions and prints representing Davis says, "is that he's probably one of the brains whose and ability will probably NASA's art program. This volume is out ot most beloved men in scientific history," shape the future— if he so chooses. print now; however, original transparencies Davis's profile of this master illuminator "I don't like punishment," says famed of a selection of these works were made begins on page 44. behaviorist B. F Skinner. "One of the first available to Omni by Frederick C. Durant "One of the reasons why we have never tasks of behavioral science should be to III for this month's pictorial (page 80). been given an accurate picture of an alien find substitutes for traditional punitive Durant is assistant director for astronautics being's likely appearance," says author methods." The professor discusses his at the National Air and Space Museum, Gene Bylinsky, "is that has talked no one ideas on behavior modification in an Dozens of these fine works are on with the right people. It's the students of exclusive interview with Omni. continuing exhibit at the museum, evolution and the biologists who are likely to Skinner talks with writer Michael in Washington, DC. be more rigorous in their research, not the Hollingshead about planned communities, And back for a second time is astronomers and the physicists— with their programmed education, and current underwater photographer Douglas assumptions of manlike creatures." American attitudes and conditions— what Faulkner, who in the May issue of Omni In "Life in Darwin's Universe" (page 62), they could mean for the future — beginning brought us "The Universe Below." This Bylinsky tries to fuse together biological on page 76. month Faulkner offers "Geoscapes,"on and physiological methods r to examine the In "Food for Zero-G "roe-anoe ,vritc page 56. OQ a OMNI cDnnanunjiCMTorus

:; 1 k Kendig; M J Ande

.. re . Rosen'e

Ow, Bill jt Lee r Boundaries of Space because of the lead present in the glaze of .. ,

I was surprised to find in ihe law the containers in the pipes - .-.- space and that were

i article by Dr. George S. Robinson ["The in use at that time.

1 s.- Robert Bo , . ' Matter of Space Law," June 1979] no If garlic does indeed remove lead from -hnsi.;

' mention of the most basic loose in the body, it really . . end then could . :. onieDa have been a

:. . : Woofi OBE. son current space agreements— the definition strength inducement way back then. Sandy Shak of the near-earth boundary of space. To Joe Morgan date, there have been no explicit Bridgeton, Mo. agreements on where sovereign air space,

controlled by each nation as it is able, Comrades in Orbit

ends and the international arena called I refer to James Oberg's article "Red Star space begins. Since all space treaties are in Orbit" [May 1979] and the Soviet Union's relevant only in space, this unresolved rapid development of space-colonization question leaves the danger that as nations capabilities. become better able to control overhead Why couldn't this be used as an arena space traffic, nationalism will disrupt the for collaborative efforts between the best-laid plans of the United Nations and United States and the USSR? Since the

others. The 1976 Declaration of Bogota is two nations seem to be concentrating tfcieir a perfect example of how this ambiguity attention on different aspects of the overall

can influence the thinking of nations not "space effort," it would be a practical as favored by the current treaties. well as a humanistic goal. How about Steven J. Sloboda American shuttlecraft delivering astro/ Carol flossant; V.R/Ci Green Mountain Falls, Colo. cosmonauts to orbiting Russian-built stations where research could be carried

Garlic Power out cooperatively for the benefit of all

Thank you for the little article about garlic mankind? It might even set in motion a new

[Continuum, May 1979], I, for one, really era for international brotherhood, which

i) Omni Publications Inti enjoy these dabs of information presented could make further hostilities and global as human interest. warfare unthinkable. Well, maybe that 565-0466; Detn Two things that might be of interest to would be too much to hope for in the near

your readers about garlic: 1) it need not be future. At any rate, if the practical

smelly if in pill taken form with parsley; 2) it advantages are there, let's pursue them. I is also very helpful in forcing worms and think we're all sick of hearing about the set Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. 90069. Tel. (213' -S070. UK & Europe (Peter' Goldsmith) Omrv other parasites out of the body's system. continuing "space race." What purpose dieatiens Ltd,, 6B Upper Berkeley St.. London Wlh Studies by HEW have shown that a sur- does it serve? More important, who '7DH. Tel. (01)263-0331. Telex Mo. 919865. prisingly high percentage of people, both needs it? EDITORIAL OFFICES urban and rural dwellers, are hosts to Robert East »w York, NX 10022. intestinal parasites. With this in mind, more Chapel Hill, N.C. 37i2a, West Coast people ought to take the powers of garlic gales, Calif. 90069, 2 Bramber Road. more seriously. Political Scientist 14 9P8, England. Scott Evan Gershen I wondered whether a scientist could be a Fe, Santa N. Mex. politician (or vice versa) until I read the interview with Frank Press in your June

Your Continuum article on garlic reminded issue. Now that I know our President can

me that a week or two before I read it I had make immediate decisions on technical heard a chef on a local talk show relate matters after only a "very few words" of how he had prepared an ancient Roman explanation and that his technical adviser meal according to surviving documents. knows the laws of physics well enough to He found the meal unbearably salty. realize interstellar travel is "enormously

According to him, one of the first signs of difficult, if not impossible," I no longer lead acute poisoning is an inability to taste wonder. Mow I know he can't. salt. The chef said that many Romans Tim Newlin were suffering from this kind of poisoning Keyser, W. Va. a.iNTINUFDCN PAGE 142 dialogue fdrutuT

In which the readers, editors, and times that amount. Large animals have a Stopgap Comparisons problem in correspondents discuss topics arising out getting rid of their body heat; Ben Bova has got to be kiddingl Has he of Omni and theories and speculation ol some dinosaurs evolved bony plates along done a cost-analysis comparison between general interest are brought forth. The their backs to release heat, but dragons so-called soft-energy technology and views published are not necessarily those could simply have vented the excess heat building, equipping, manning, and of the editors. Letters for publication into their internal methane sacs. During operating a nuclear-power plant complete the early should be mailed to Omni Forum, Omni stages of their evolution, methane with zero-defect construction? There are Magazine, 909 Third Avenue, New York provided dragons with buoyancy in also the problems of training operators N.Y 10022. shallow seas. A dragon could beat its little and constructing rockets to fly the wastes wings and skim across the surface like an into space. If one compares the hazards-of Paper Mills airboat; eventually it evolved the ability to coal and liquefied natural gas[LNG] with Referring to Omni's interview with Frank rise into the air, like a hot-air balloon. radioactive contamination, the fossil fuels Press [June 1979]: Could it be that our Dickinson is correct in saying that a have a hazard range based on one-time, adversaries in the space race actually dragon had to In belch gas order to short-term exposure and then the threat is have their scientists and engineers descend, but he didn't have to imagine a gone. With radiation, as Bova says, the engaged in professional research, inslead method of igniting the gas. Methane often wastes will be "dangerously radioactive 5 of writing proposals, accounting, or filling ignites spontaneously in marshes. That not merely for centuries but for millennia." out government forms?There is a huge marsh gas has moved at high speeds in Enough of stopgap measures, unfilled demand, Dr. Press says. Perhaps, the upper atmosphere might be especially when the item in question is the but if he had gotten out of college attributable to high-flying dragons. most dangerous and most terrifying

anywhere from 1970 to 1975, 1 suspect that The author writes that dragons were energy alternative imaginable. For once, prospective employers would have told carnivorous, but their herbivorous nature is let's do the right thing the first time. Let's him, with his credentials, that he was demonstrated by the fact that they never apply the incredible amount of money that overqualified for present openings. ate the high-born young women they Bova advocates spending on nuclear I doubt that any scientist is penalized for captured. They simply kept them as pets. energy toward the utilization of free, safe overqualification in the There it is USSR. It is true that a punctured dragon could energy sources. recognized that one of the very few fly, this not but did not necessarily mean it Ryan Moses government programs that will pay for died. If a grounded dragon could crawl to Santa Barbara, Calif. itself in the long run is to get every a deep lake and submerge itself, it could qualified scientist, physicist, and engineer subsist indefinitely on underwater Ben Bova replies: Why must it be into the basic research that is the key to vegetation. Some dragons may haye either-or? Nuclear energy is here now; new technology. survived on lake bottoms to this very day. solar- and other soft-energy technologies Maybe the only hope is that our Eugene Marquis are at least a decade away Let's spend adversaries will prematurely accomplish - James Park DC Canaca the money necessary to train the people the equivalent of another Sputnik and who operate nuclear-power plants to the frighten us back into full utilization of our point where their competency is equal to scientific manpower their responsibility. It actually would not James R. Bruce take that much money, training people is Point Pleasant, N, J, cheap, compared to the cost of the power plants they operate. The plants them- Dragonian Physics selves are built well enough to be very "Flight of the Dragon" [June 1979], by safe. It's the performances of the people Peter Dickinson, was great. I read it three that need upgrading. And in the meantime times and talked about it for many days. we should also be pushing toward other I have a few quibbles, however. energy sources, even though none of I think the author was wrong as to what them are as "free" as you seem to think. type of gas formerly provided lift for

dragons. It would have been methane, not The Hunt hydrogen. All herbivorous animals In attacking opponents of the produce methane in their stomachs. Ten Newfoundland seal hunt, Daniel D. cows produce enough to supply the Horsman [Forum, June 1979] falls into a energy needs of an average family A number of traps common to many dinosaur would have produced many seal-hunt supporters. His suggestion that 12 OMNI CONTINUED ON RAQE 135 H BONE I IUNTER EARTH By Kenneth Brewer

Eiseley, who died two years paying Loren when he was Hai-lot io some sort to :ay his hand on the cool, lilhic hardness ago, had a following that was of Yorick's skull. of 3 Gaapagos tortoise's shell, as a larger than a cult bu! never quite As in the opening passages of The touchstone for his meditations, or to run his the horde he deserved. He was a writer Immense Journey, his book on evolution: "I fingers over the scales of a marine iguana

whose work might right, I suspect, for be squatted on my heels in the narrow ravine. for whatever tactile messages the Age of many readers of this magazine. Eiseley and we stared a little blankly at each other Reptiles might send him. As we made our was a citizen first of this planet, second. of the skuf and I. There were marks of appeal I .vas watching Eiseley's eyes, and the universe. His attention ranged widely, generalized primitiveness in that low. I think we almost had him. Then he bouncing between the fossiliferous strata pinched braincase and grinning jaw ... it remembered his many obligations. Several of Ihe Oligocene and the outer reaches of was the face of a creature who had spent months in the Galapagos was impossible. the galaxy. His ascents to the stars were his days following his nose, who was led He firmly refused. less frequent and less enduring than his by instinct rather than memory and whose Dr Eiseley's office was the spacious, descents into stone. If his mind's eye . . had powerof choice was very small. . The as: -appointed suite of a professor whom

a mean annual elevation, it was some- skull lay tilted in such a manner that it the university very much wanted to keep. I where just outsidethe troposphere. stared, sightless, up at me as though I, remembe* bones and stones on the desks Eiseley made sorties into the future:, but too, were already few feet caught a above arxi shelves, I as had expected. I most of his journeys were into the past. He him in the strata and, in my turn, were remember lots of books. But I recall often traveled in both directions simulta- staring upward at that strip of sky which Eisetey"s appurtenances less well than his neously— a prerogative reserved for ages were carrying farther away from me voice. If was deep and resonant, the students of evolution like himself. If any beneath the tumbling debris of 'falling delivery unbelievably slow. I have never single epoch had a hold on him. it was the mountains. The creature had never lived to met anyone who spoke with more Pleistocene. He spent much of his time I, see a man, and what was it I was never deliberation. His facial expressions were there, in the company of mastodons and going losee?" minimal, slow to surface, slow to subside. ape-men. capable, He was though, of For his leaps into abstraction, Eiseley It was as if the models for his behavior abrupt departures. The one cinematic liked to push off from something small. were not from society, or even from biology,

reference I can recall in his work is to hard, and particular. He was an but from geology Stanley Kubrick's 2001 , and the scene that anthropo/archaeo/bioliterary Aladdin, As he spoke of his obligations, sounding struck htm was that stunning transition good at finding something in the sand. (ike a man with the weight of the world on

where the bone club, tossed into the sky rubbing it, forth and summoning its genie. his shoulders. I remembered that he was protohominid, by a comes down as a I thought he should have Ihe opporiunily an insomniac. I was annoyed just the same space station. Kubrick's notion there is as by the Atlas pose. (I was a third his age, Eiseleyesque as anyihing that Eiseley entirely free of obligations, and I slept like himself ever tried. a tog.) His weighty sentences, bumping Thefollowing is an invitation to discover each other like tectonic plates, tired me Eiseley, if you haven't done so already.

In I 1965 met the poet-naturalist in the The black-and-white porlraits of Eiseley flesh. father, My David Brower. and ! satin on his book jackets are revealing. First Eiseley's office at the University of there is the face itself. Eiseley looks like Pennsylvania, trying to persuade him to Moses, or like an Easter Island monolith. go to the Galapagos Islands. In the 18 The features are strong, deeply chiseled, volumes then completed in my father's august, and grave— almost as if his visage "exhibit-format" series of photographic were trying to become like the stones thai books, and in the 12 we have done since, his big hands had spent a career digging Eiseley has been prrne a source of in. Not once does Eiseley face Ihe camera. quotation. We've ransacked him more He is always gazing off, like the poet at the thoroughly than any writer except, picnic, except with Eiseley there is no perhaps, Thoreau. Eiseley did not mind, picnic. Not once does he smile. His mouth and he had agreed to write the is turned permanently downward at the introduction to our Galapagos book. That corners, not in melancholy necessarily, but

should have been coup enough, I with that grimness sometimes attributed to suppose. It was my idea, though, that desert rocks— a grimness of aspect that Eiseley should in go person to the islands. may or may not hide an interior grimness. Eiseley was at his best, it seemed to me. Then there are Eiseley's poses. All are 16 OMNI COMPLIED ON PAGE 139 NIGHTLGHT

By Mark R. Chartrand III

Turn off your lights, turn on to This ever-present light comes from exciting them to glow This is the famous astronomy," proclaims a bumper several sources. The most important is aurora (often mistakenly translated as sticker distributed by the zodiacal light, sunlight scattered back to "dawn") that causes a spectacular show in Astronomical Society of the Pacific. But Earth by tiny dust grains that float in the middle and upper latitudes. Even when amateur astronomers aren't the only ones solar system close to the plane of Earth's auroral displays are not visible, a slight concerned about the serious problem of orbit. From a dark location you can see glow can be seen. light pollution of the dark night skies. some of this zodiacal light as a faint A small contribution is also made by the Skies were dark betore urban sprawl triangular glow along the horizon around light of distant stars and galaxies that has and the automobile came to dominate our the time of sunrise or sunset. In very dark been scattered around the sky by the gas society Today such pioneering regions you may be able to trace the glow and dust in interstellar space. observatories as Mount Wilson, near Los all the way around the sky and notice a We can't do anything about these Angeles, Lick, near San Jose, and even slightly brighter patch directly opposite effects, and astronomers are used to living Kitt Peak National Observatory, near the sun. This is the gegenschein. or with them. But the increase in man-made Tucson, are continually fighting an uphill counterglow, caused by the dust's illumination and in atmospheric pollution battle against increasing light levels. The . tendency to reflect light directly back by gases and dust is putting some venerable Greenwich Observatory has :cward the sun. observatories out of business. become a museum. Since Greenwich is • Another component of the night sky is To appreciate the effects of light and now a suburb of London, serious observ- the spread-out light ol the stars: astrono- atmospheric pollution, recall what it is like 1 ing is carried on at a distant field station. mers call it integrated starlight. If all the to drive down a highway with a dusty wind- There is no simple solution for this starlight were spread evenly over the sky. H shield. The more dirt on the glass, the more problem, because the light is a result of would be equivalent to having one star, the light ot an approaching car obscures attempts to make streets and highways just at the limit of visibility, for every square your vision when it hits the windshield. safer, to light outdoor patios, to sell cars in degree of the sky. Put another way. the The brighter the lights, the harder it is to outdoor lots, and for myriad other neces- light from all the stars would be equal to see faint objects at the side of the road. sary human activities. But the result is that the combined light of 51 stars as bright as Things can be done to reduce the the skies are not what they used to be. Sirius. the brightest in the sky. Its current problem. Sometimes the offending colors Ironically, the increase in light has been diffusiveness, however, presents a can be filtered out. The observatories near accompanied by a growing interest on the challenge to astronomers. Tucson got the city council to pass an part of astronomers in exploring fainter A third component of skylight is called ordinance requiring shields on all outdoor objects and by a technological improve- airglow. This is a faint light produced by lamps, to prevent the light trom shining ment in our ability to detect faint objects. chemical reactions high in the atmo- upward. The Batelle Observatory, near The artificial skylight seriously hinders sphere. When energetic solar particles are Richland. Washington, persuaded the city these delicate observations. captured by Earth's magnetic field, they not to install certain types of sodium-vapor

r Astrophysicists rely on spectroscopy— strike a .c-.Tis a ic molecu es in the air lamps, which emit light al wavelengths breaking light into its component especially detrimental to their work. coiors— to deduce the properties of These efforts are just delaying tactics, distant stars and galaxies. Modern though, for the use of artificial lighting will attempts to save energy on Earth have continue to grow. Astronomers are aghast produced new light sources that are more at the suggestion by some police officials efficient but that produce much of their light that we place huge mirrors in orbit to in the color patterns most critical for as- illuminate cities at night in the hope of tronomers; because of similar color patterns, reducing crime. Lurking over the horizon is astrophysicists can't always determine the possibility that in a couple of decades, what they're looking at. As Murphy's Law dozens, perhaps eventually hundreds, of would have it, lamps that are the best for solar-power satellites will enter orbit. Each society are the worst for astronomy. will be twice as bright as the planet Venus

Even if there were no artificial lights, and ever becomes. even if there were no moonlight, the night By then, however, the same technology sky would not be completely dark. Just that put power stations in orbit may hold up a piece of black paper some night provide the solution: observatories on the and compare its brightness --or dark- moon or in space, away from even the ness—with that of the sky. The paper will airglow of Earth. It's a possibility not to be be blacker by far. taken lightly. DO IB OMNi I MINERS

By Dr. Bernard Dixon

^^k ^^ ining for metals must be one of form that may have been one of the waters are circulated over bits of iron and I the filthiest activities earliest to inhabit the earth. It thrives by can be scraped off from time to time. I %J I associated with "civilization." oxidizing pyrites and making soluble the The Western Mining Corporation, in

People who work in this industry face iron and the copper they contain. When it Australia, has announced a health hazards and working conditions at works on the leftover wastes from microbiological method for extracting least as bad as those in coal mining. conventional mining, the bacillus causes another valuable metal, nickel, from Smelting and chemical-extraction plants considerable pollution in mines and in low-grade ores. The rock is sprayed with a are environmental insults to populated effluent waters from dumps. But harness diluted solution of sulfuric acid containing areas nearby, and the heaps of waste form this skill and you have a potent method of T. ferroxidans. Percolating through the ore, ugly blots on our landscape. exvac:ing those same metals from the liquid extracts high concentrations of Imagine a new technology that would low-grade and inaccessible ores. nickel, which in this case is removed from abolish all the negative aspects of mining Although pyrites are virtually insoluble, solution by electrolysis. In the USSR, and that would do so by exploiting something this humble bacillus increases the researchers a! the Irkutsk Institute of Rare that, elsewhere, is responsible for some of dissolution rate a million times The metal Metals have claimed similar success in the worst forms of pollution in rivers and itself can then be released from solution by microbial mining for gold. lakes. This could be done by using one of several simple techniques. Uranium leaching is even more bacteria capable of living in conditions A typical application, as pioneered in promising, in view of the rapidly escalating normally considered extremely hostile to the United States by Rio Tinto. is heap cost of this metal and the ease with whiph life. Then contemplate the advance of such leaching. Pieces of ore are simply placed bacteria scavenge it from the most bizarre technology, in just a few years, from on an impervious surface and sprayed unpromising materials. Although most theoretical speculation to big business. with water, There's no need to add uranium is extracted with chemicals, less

This is the story of microbial mining. In T. ferroxidans; it will be there already. The rich ores are already being treated with little more than a decade, the recondite bacteria promote a variety of chemical microbes. Mow a massive shift toward ability certain bacteria possess to leach reactions, solubilizing iron and copper and microbial methods is apparent throughout metals out of ores has been turned from generating sulfuric acid. Copper for the industry. Work at the Elliot Lake area in

' odd textbook knowledge into a burgeoning example, appears as copper sulfate. Canada is typical. About 30 percent of the industry in Canada and other countries. There are several ways of recovering the ore there is left behind to support the roof The microorganism at center stage is metals afterward. One of the easiest is of the workings. Afterward, water is

Thiobacillus ferroxidans, a primitive life "cementation," in which copper-rich pumped down, T. ferroxidans begins work. and. eventually, over 90 percent of the residual uranium dissolves. Taking this a stage further, mining engineers are beginning to see microbial mining as a total replacement for orthodox techniques. Water containing the mini-miners can be pumped into deep rocks and then can be brought back to the surface for metal recovery. Miners' lives are not put at risk, damage to the environment is negligible, and there are enormous savings in transporting, crushing, and grinding the ore. In a book of mine published only three years ago [Magnificent Microbes.

Atheneum). I wrote keenly but cautiously about future prospects for microbial mining. The rest of that book remains highly topical. But its assessment of the surprising application of bacterial talent has been quickly overtaken by events. Rarely can a science writer see an enthusiasm so rapidly outdated— or be so delighted that this should happen. DO FILM THEART5 By James Delson

Time travel has generally been ill Academy Award for special effects every best-selling author and Academy used in motion pictures. After time he made a movie during the Fifties. Award- nominated screenwriter of The enduring such embarrass- The Time Machine was his crowning Seven Percent Solution. Like William and ments as Manhunt of Mystery Island, achievement, the zenith of a career that James Goldman, whose pseudohistorical Terror from the Year 5000, and The Three spanned five decades. Though badly stories, such as Butch Cassidy and the

Stooges Meet 1 Hercules, think that time dated now because ot such unforeseen Sundance Kid and The Lion in Winter, have travel has rarely been exploited beyond its happenings as the women's liberation delighted audiences for years, Meyer is an obvious use as a device to get fictional movement and the technological ace purveyor ot creative anachronism. In characters from point to point and breakthroughs in special effects, it still his first directorial undertaking, he uses perhaps bring them back again. Having remains a box-ofiice draw In Paris last the chase-mystery form that served him so "arrived" in another time period, March for the eighth International Paris well in Solution to set H. G. Wells hot on the characters spend the remainder of their Festival of Fantasy and Science-Fiction trail of Jack Ihe Ripper. adventure with, not relating coping to, Films, I went to see The Time Machine, Time After Time relies heavily on the their strange new surroundings. which was revived at a theater that usually device that transports characters through To date, the best time-travel film is The screens first-run films. No longer able to the passages of time from Victorian Time Machine (1960), produced and satisfy a mass audience. The Time London to present-day San Francisco. "I directed by George Pal. A pioneer in the Machine endures as a classic children's had complete freedom to do as I wished in factually based science-liction film, Pal fantasy. creating our time machine," Meyer almost single-handedly launched the Largely by default, Pal's film remained explained. "But in coming up with the science-fiction film craze of the 1950s. His the yardstick against which all time-travel design, I imposed three restrictions ot my subject matter in the pictures preceding pictures were measured for 20 years. But own: First, it had to be enclosed, as The Time Machine ranged from voyages of Warner Brothers' Time After Time, which is opposed to the open-sled design used by discovery (Destination Moon, The being released this month, stands a good George Pal; second, it had to look Conquest of Space) to alien invasion {War chance of displacing The Time Machine improvised, as if Wells could have built it of the Worlds) to the forcible evacuation of as the leader in the genre. himself; finally, it Victorian. had to be I told Earth by spaceship (When Worlds Time After Time was written and our production designer. Edward Collide); these endeavors won him an directed Nicholas by Meyer the C,-]ri"ac;no. that I wanted a miniversion of Ihe submarine from Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the result was just right. "It looked fine, but there was a problem in the back of my head about what sort of

power it used in order to travel. This was solved when Carfagno suggested solar energy, which had been used to powera printing press as early as the eighteenth century. Carfagno put a catching dish on

the machine, and it worked fantastically. I even added a line mentioning the French engineer who had first come up with the printing press." Ironically, one of the major problems with films that employ time travel is that they date so badly. Even the Victorian sequences in The Time Machine have a distinctly Hollywood 1950s look. To most

filmmakers, the problem is of little importance. They set out to make pictures with which current audiences can identify, not enduring works of "artistic" merit.

Therefore, they include the latest styles in hair, makeup, clothes, and speech, as well Meyer's Time After Time. as references to current events or figures. 0NPAGE133 -"- ,

UB THE ART5 By James Delson

Science and science-fiction pro- into television production as he became "One of the other shows I'm partic- gramming on English television is one of the executive directors of Angiia. ularly happy with is The Atom Spies, an odd mix of American action One thing led to another, and for the last about the British scientists who passed shows, British-made documentaries, and few years I've produced all their drama. atomic secrets on to the Russians. Quite a a hybrid of both types called Tales of the "Looking back over the things I've done, different thing was Befsy. a lovely little Unexpected. Last spring one could have the film that stands out most was a fic- piece about Napoleon's last year on St. seen numerous U.S.-produced episodes tionalized 'documentary' called Alternative Helena and his love for the daughter of the

of Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Three. It was about the conspiracy of island's British East India Company several representative. Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, The governments on Earth to plant In addition, I had the

Adventures ol Captain Nemo , Salvage- survival colonies on Mars. We showed, pleasure of producing two series of a very

One, and Mork and Mindy , only the last very scientifically and realistically, that the successful light co—edy called Back to two of which are still in production. ecology of the earth's environment was the Land, about the 'Land Girls,' women Supplementing these relatively unsophis- gradually ceasing to support life. The tilm who were conscripted lo work on farms ticated programs are the excellent, literate caused a great furor over here. In fact, the during the last wan I've been working on

English documentary series Horizon, Life networks were rather scared of it. I've the Dahl shows lor the better part of the on Earth, The Long Search, Worlds Without never had such a response from the last two years. Sun, ahd Beyond the Moon, as well as audience. All the telephone lines were "7a/es of the Unexpected came into

fascinating individual studies on such jammed, and it proved to be a very being because Sir John Wool! and I were ,

subjects as the nature of time, the Turin worthwhile experience for me because I very interested in the work of Roald Dahl. Shroud, and cloning. But the surprise hit of myself spoke to so many people about the Although a few of his stories were the season was Tales olthe Unexpected program. The Americans were going to televised by Hitchcock in the Fifties,"

a series of 24 half-hour adaptations of buy it but then didn't, fearing, I would including the episode presented here, writer Roald Dahl's short stories. think, another Orson Welles/War of the entitled Lamb to the Slaughter, "no one Allhough not as informative as Horizon. Worlds incident, had ever done a whole anthology of Ihem the British equivalent of Public Broadcast- before. They lenc nernse ves peculiarly ing Service's Wova. or as historically well to television because of the economic important as Life on Earth, a 13-part way in which they are written.. [Dahl] history of evolution that ranks with The creates characters and stories in a kind of Ascent of Man as an educational shorthand. When you read them, you have document, 7a/es of the Unexpected is to be pretty quick-witted to grasp what's both artistically pleasing and commer- coming next, what his people are doing,

cially successful. Unlike most British series, and why they're, doing it. Motive is subtle

it has been picked up for American com- and often surprising. All these things were mercial syndics: on beginning this month. intriguing. We thought that something

I met with John Rosenberg, producer of worthwhile could be made of them. dramatic programming for Angiia Tele- "One of the first decisions we had to vision, one of Britain's "minor" networks, make was whether to produce the stories and the production company of 7a/es o! as hours or half-hours, this is always a the Unexpected. Sitting in his spartan question with anthology series, and with office, which overlooks London's Hyde short stories in particular. Given the type of Park, we sipped afternoon tea and talked stories they are and the awful problems about ihis series as well as some of the that resulted in the past when they were other projects he has been involved with m extended beyond their depth, we decided his term at the network. to go for compression, the quick

"I was MGM s rep'osorlaiivc in England conveying of information and character in

for some years before I became associ- the conception of the si one; Irernse-ves.

ated with Sir John Woolf, one ot the most So it may be, in some cases, that we are

t irn distinguished English producers of too tight, but on balance, I think, it's much the postwar period. His films include better to leave your viewers wanting more Room at the Top, The African Queen, than lo have them think the show went on a Oliver!, and Day of the Jackal, and I've little too long.

been with him for the past fifteen years. I "We shall produce. a total of twenty-four was gradually drawn from feature films progrgjrjs, The first nine have been MUSIC THE ARTS By Stephen Demorest

dislike producers nteisey. I can hear ing back to fhe days of acoustic ballads and his "supreme validation" came when a

(he limiters slipped in. I can hear the but perhaps rather a sort of musical passerby at Warner Brothers (the Roches" I E.Q. [equalization quotient] tweaked physicist, looking for more basic acoustic record label) mistook the record for a live up. This is the tyranny of the professionals. quanta. State-of-the-art machinery has so audition, "There's precious little gilding of There's no for to room mistakes happen." overwhelmed recording techniques that the lily" he says of the production he's Thus spake Robert Fripp. producer of musicians have begun to feel that the termed audio veriie. the highly acclaimed sisters' Roche sophistication of these gadgets threatens "! simply record what's going on without album. In recent years Fripp has done a their individuality. (In disco, for example, Ihe imposition of format thinking. For modest bit of producing himsell: albums the song's production mayonnaise has example, Suzzy Roche sang one note that of art rock (Peter Gabriel), blue-eyed soul become its true message, its singer was completely off-key and she didn't lik^ (Daryl Hall), and collaborations with fellow remaining in cases.) unknown most it. But I felt she'd subconsciously picked aestheticians Brian David Bowie and Eno. Consequently, just as painters like exactly the right note for the particular He's had a healthy exposure to the most Picasso and Braque abandoned repre- anguish required of that word; if she'd advanced elements of recording tech- for sentational virtuosity the seemingly sung it on pitch, there would be no agony. nology, in the process and he has made a primitive but powerful colors and forms of Another suggestion was that since we had bold departure again from once the status early Cubism, Fripp and his peers are three essentially acoustic singers with quoin pop music. attempting to recover an elemental force in acoustic guitars we should put them with "The records most people make now are music by emphasizing the essentials. "You an electric-rock rhythm section. I said , very polished," he asserts, "but they lack fill in don't have to all the details. You no— it's like suggesting Leonardo repaint the asperity of Beatles and [Jimil Hendrix simply have to indicate the most important the Mona Lisa with blond hair and bigger albums. Instead of making records that tell points, with intelligence and anyone any breasts. I leave what is recorded flat as far people how we are. we seem to give a will fill in the rest himself. more and more false, sterilized, deodor- "I don't do anything complicated," he "The Roches' album is an album of

ized impression. I personally think the claims. "The complication springs from the perspectives, and one of the main trend toward f aural exciters [devices hat details involved. The best approach is to approaches was the abandonment of fatten each note with a millisecond- Ihe art. the conceal And best example of center. If you make a stereo record to gel a delayed more, with echo] has to do people that is the Roches' album. Technically, it's radio hit, you mix everything to cluster going deaf from standing in front of stage the nearest io perfection I've ever come. around the middle, within a certain monitors too long." The producfion is incredibly sophisticated, frequency band, soil will jump out of one The radical guitarist becomes the but it doesn't show at all." liny car speaker with the strength of mono. archconservative of the electronic rev- Fripp's aim was to capture the immedi- This is absurd. The Roches are subtle olution? first At glance it might seem so. acy of the three sisters' live performance. people and didn't need that kind of crass In the 1970s Fripp, of King Crimson, was strength — to be loud in the middle. I the most progressive band leader in rock mixed the album so any point along a line and roll. He almost si ng'e iv-ndediy popu- from the left speaker to the right is equally larized the synthelic keyboard sound with valid as a listening perspective. his Mellotron, he transformed and song "When Ihe test pressing came along composition to fit this new instrument. and Ihe Roches played it against a Neil Many consider Fripp to be rock's most Young record, they were most upset that it accomplished guitar technician, picking didn't have the same presence. Of course up where Hendrix left off in the it will not compete against any profession- explorations of scorching solid-state ally produced album. It's in a different effects. As one critic commented, he's class entirely. Compared with the norm, it able, "through a combination of electronics seems to lack the immediacy — it only and superhumanly refined technique, to seems to. I say it doesn't." (Results? News- make a guitar sound like a violin, a flute, a week praised the album's "spontaneity wailing banshee— guitar." anything but a and sense of intimacy" and The New York Yel his equipment se".jp nas become very Times in April was predicting if would simple. At night in York's New avant-garde stand as the best pop record of 1979.) clubs you can-find him, a lone figure on Fripp's unorthodox approach also stage, creating a dazzling assortment of manifests itself on the trilogy of personal "found" sounds via guitar tapeloop. and solo albums that he's in the process of Robert Fripp is no reactionary hearken- in!c:i:gir:;. S(=:!-r.or,!y :r.ori Fripp: an : '"oOiie u- releasing. "I'm generally very happy to 26 OMNI THE ART5 By Eric Rosen

his new book, The Politics of Energy solar photovoltaics, cogeneration of waste solved some of the most fundamental

In(Alfred A, Knopf, 1979), Dr. Barry heats, wind power, hydropower, and the riddles of life. offers his Commoner version of what production of methane from biomass. He Judson compares the past 25 years in has gone wrong with our energy policies. looks to the government to invest in solar biology (roughly the time since James His analysis of President Carter's national technologies and thus provide the lead, as Watson and Francis Crick deduced the energy plan is a stinging indictment of a it has done in so many other industries (he structure of DNA) to a similar period in plan that doesn't conserve energy but cites integrated circuits as a recent physics more than 50 years ago, when the actually increases energy consumption example). With large-scale investments, ideas of Einstein, Rutherford, and over and above what Commoner, at least, costs would drop rapidly, creating new Heisenberg changed our concepts of the feels is needed. markets, further decreasing costs, and so physical world. Molecular biologists, Dr. Commoner believes that a solution to on, until the technologies were found in all though, have changed the way in which our "energy crisis" can be broughl about of life. aspects . we view life itself. The towering by a changeover in the resources we In Commoner's opinion, the solution to achievements of Watson, Crick, Jacques depend on for energy. Instead of relying on the energy crisis is affordable and Monod, Max Perutz, and others have led nonrenewable and capital-intensive possible. His outline is a detailed one. He us to the creation of new worlds— cloning sources (oil, natural gas. and nuclear claims that if we do not follow this path, and recombinant DMA, for instance. energy), we should begin using renew- there will be little real economic growth in All of the discoveries, Judson writes, able, environmentally benign resources the future. To continue to grow and better took place "not by overturnings but by (solar-based energies). our standard of living, we must enter the openings-up"; that is, not by a grand The energy crisis has not been caused solar transition. He points out that the revolution but by new ideas and concepts by price increases demanded by OPEC, United States is in a situation similar to that slowly emerging and being assimilated

he asserts, but by a feature inherent in our just prior to the abolition of slavery- into current scientific thought. He writes in patterns of energy exploration, production, economic stagnation, a crisis in leadership, the introduction; "In the act of discovery, and consumption. We have been forced to and dim prospects for the future. And, like ideas and personal styles fuse." rely upon increasingly scarce resources- the abolition of slavery, a transition to Judson follows the scientists along each resources that have become more and solar-based energies can be the catalyst step of the way, showing us how they make more expensive to find and produce. This for a new and different type of life and their mistakes and then backtrack for the forces into us a never-ending cycle, a economy. right answer His narrative weaves in and classic catch-22. It is this cycle, Commoner supplies his readers with a out between different research centers Commoner writes, that is the fundamental view that is almost a 180-degree opposite and personalities with an ease and grace cause of our rate of inflation. The only way of what we generally read in the that is surprising, considering the

to solve both inflation and our energy woes newspapers or see on the evening news. complexity of the story he tells. is to go oufside this cycle— to enter a Whether or not his dream of a renewable He concludes that the rise of molecular transition era. economy will become reality depends, in biology was due in large part to the fusion Commoner describes three theoretical large part, on how strong he makes his of several disparate fields — microbiology, renewable resources: solar-based case to the public. The Politics of Energy genetics, biochemistry, crystallography, energies, breeder-based nuclear (fission) is his attempt. and physical chemistry Ideas flowed from power, and nuclear fusion. He dismisses each field, and any research team worth its

fusion it because has not yet been Scientists are commonly pictured as salt had to have someone well versed in achieved. (His first criterion for a transition white-coated, ultraserious. and totally each field close at hand. It is the fusion of

fuel is that it available be today) He also dedicated . They are usually all of these, concepts from these diverse fields that dismisses breeder-based nuclear energy, and more. But most of all they are human, has led to our modern ideas of gene painting a picture of possible Harrisburgs, and it is their joy in being human, and their structure and function. inadequate storage facilities, and the joy in life, that makes Horace Freeland This is the triumph of the revolution in threat of weapons proliferation. Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation biology. One hesitates to suppose what That leaves solar-based energies, and (Simon and Schuster, 1979)such a the field of molecular biology would be like Commoner outlines his scenario for a pleasure to read. without this cross-fertilization of ideas. Buf transition based on solar power. He argues Judson spent seven years talking with, what it/ias become is clearly outlined in that most solar power is specifically suited and learning from, the scientists who The Eighth Day of Creation . For anyone for on-site, localized problems and does created the field of molecular biology. looking for a primer in this field, for a look not lend itself to Centralized, capital- What he has come up with is nothing less at scientific history in the making, or intensive structures. The market already than an authoritative history of molecular simply for an absorbing account of scien- exists, or could be readily created, for biology, tribute' a to the scientists who tists at work, this is the place to start. DO TRUE UFOs UFD By James Oberg

People who crave dogmatic "But sometimes it takes hard work to confirmed by the low "UFO residue" certainties should avoid the unmask the masquerader. ..." statistics thai CUFOS reports. UFO arena, whether they are Reports published by Dr. Hynek's own Yet not even the most skilled and diligent

believers or skeptics. Since it is the viewer, research center suggest that the line investigator can reduce the unexplained not the UFO, who must identify any between insoluble UFOs and trivial IFOs cases to zero. A good example of why sighting, our less-than-perfect information may not be as clear as he would like to such a residue will always exist is flow virtually ensures that a small traction think. Early in 1977, for example, Hynek's provided by an interesting case from of UFO appearances will never be managing editor, Allan Hendry, published California, reported in detail in the explained. Despite this, there exists the an editorial "to illustrate the thin veil that International UFO Reporter after distinct and never-disprovable possibility can exist between UFOs and IFOs." superficial and sensationalized treatment

that UFO sightings are truly extraordinary Describing his attempt to solve some elsewhere in the news media. It's called hitherto-unknown phenomena— and these nighttime UFO reports from Las Vegas, the Colusa UFO, or the Pecha are the possible pearls that UFO Nevada, on January 19, 1977, Hendry (pronounced peck-ah)case. investigators have been seeking in a recounted a series of frustrating dead UFO sightings have often inspired awe. mountain of oysters. ends. Then, by "sheer luck," he stumbled curiosity, puzzlement, and excitement. However, as scientist Hudson Hoagland onjhe bizarre explanation; The They have also been known to incite terror. pointed out in Science in 1969, Environmental Protection Agency had Whatever the original stimulus — and there

unexplained cases are not evidence for been using an illuminated balloon on a are many IFOs among these cases— the > any theory. "The basic difficulty inherent in half-mile tether to collect samples of air fear that UFOs instill in some witnesses is

any investigation of phenomena such as pollution, This was the object that had set all too real.

those of UFOs," he writes, "is that it is off the reports, Hendry concluded The primary witness in this case was a impossible for science ever to prove a confidently thii ty-nine-year-old heavy-machine universal negative. There will be cases But without Hendry's lucky break no mechanic named Bill Pecha, who lives [that] remain unexplained because of lack amount of the hard work Hynek prescribes with his family in a mobile home on a farm of data, lack ot repeatability, false could ever have converted that UFO into 3.2 kilometers west of Colusa. California, reporting, wishful thinking, deluded ah IFO. To be sure, without his persistence northwest of Sacramento. Pecha's observers, rumors, lies, and fraud Hendry would never have had a shot at his neighbors see him as calm, trustworthy,

Unexplained cases are simply luck. Hendry is considered one of the most and strong, not easily frightened, it would unexplained. They can never constitute hardworking and most diligent UFO take something extraordinary to scare him. evidence for any hypothesis." researchers in the world; his reputation is Shortly after midnight on September 10, Even if all UFO reports were based on 1976, Pecha's TV and air conditioner went explainable occurrences, human off. Stepping outside to check the circuit perception, memory, and behavior would breakers, he glanced up and saw a introduce an honest residue of completely glowing, domed "flying saucer" filling the unexplainable reports set off by ordinary sky above his barn. Later Pecha estimated but undiscoverable phenomena. that the UFO, about 45 meters wide, was Prominent UFO proponents reject the only 15 meters above the ground. skeptic's attempt to lump the residual "true As soon as he stepped forward, the UFOs" into the "IFO" (identified flying UFO retreated toward the west, covering object) column by assuming that the about 60 meters in four or five minutes. witnesses' perception and recollection Hendry's report reads: "The dome was were sloppy True UFOs, they insist, are vertically ribbed with concave sections inherently different from IFOs, this and like a lemon-juice squeezer. . . . Both the difference can be proved. dome and its base had a dark silver-gray Dr. J. Allen Hynek. of the Center for UFO appearance, like porous slag. The upper Studies (CUFOS), in Evanston, Illinois, is body of the saucer was like porcelain, one leading researcher who believes while the outer rim was like stainless steel. entirely new theories are needed to The rim was seen to rotate in a clockwise account for unexplainable UFOs. direction, in contrast to the central area of "Experienced-investigators quickly the white, flat underside, which rotated recognize IFOs for what they are." he counterclockwise. wrote recently in his group's monthly 'A'large-diameter light source occupied newsletter, International UFO Reporter. Ut-0 -ipoiiea m-jneuveiir.g stcvs Japan, 197' the center of the underside, emitting a dim 32 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE 11B MY CASIO LETS ME PLAY EINSTEIN AND CHOPIN. This tiny wonder is both a full-fledged calculator and an 11-note musical instrument.

I can do percentages and polonaises with it. Square roots and mazurkas. Etudes and my income tax. When I balance the family budget like a wizard with it, I also play"Hail to the Chief." It's called the Casio Music Card. It enabled my son to get a grip on geometry. And its lovely chimes gave my daughter a new lease on her piano lessons. At $29.95, 1 think I got myself a

Renaissance Machine. • Now I think I'll look into a Casio Melody Card (S49.95), a four-function calculator which lets me tell time, play pre- recorded melodies, has two different alarms, a count-down timer, stopwatch, and I can play the same beautiful music as I do on my Casio Music Card.

111 bet I could charge admission.

ML-720Music Card

AT CASIO, MIRACLES NEVER CEASE. Casiojnc. Consumer Products Dwison.Executrve Offices: 15 Gardner Road, Fairfield. NJ. 07006 New Jersey (201) 575-7400, Los Angeles(213) 923-5564. conjTiruuunn

WONDER DRUG OR HORSE DINIMEN

t was called the wonder drug of the Sixties. Cheap to make racehorses or greyhounds to get a few more miles out of them.

and easily available, it could treat everything from arthritis to But people also wanted the drug. So, in defiance of FDA rulings, menial retardation, according to its backers. Then the Food some doctors risked their licenses and prescribed DMSO for I and Drug Administration (FDA) stepped in and the wonder some patients, operating a "gray" market of drug treatments drug of the Sixties became the horse liniment of the Seventies. DMSO clinics, some of them total frauds, opened up in Mexico Now, despite underwhelming FDA support, the drug, dimethyl for arthritic patients, making the drug a kind of laetrile for arthritis. sulfoxide, or DMSO for short, is making a comeback. Finally in the spring of 1978 the FDA, after ten years of studies, DMSO has a strange history filled with the elements of a approved DMSO in a weak concentration as a prescription drug political thriller; abrupt government bans, rumors of a cover-up, a for treating interstitial cystitis, a tormenting bladder problem in high-level official suddenly "reassigned" to lesser duties, mys- which the victim feels the constant need to urinate. This was the tifying government investigations— all against a background of a first time a banned substance ever made it back to "approved" "gray" market in drugs and phony sure-cure clinics in Mexico. status. But Dr. Jacob wants more, He and a small drug company It began innocently enough in 1962. when Dr. Stanley W Jacob, named Research Industries Corporation are pushing the FDA to associate professor of surgery at the University of Oregon, heard approve DMSO in stronger dosages. about an industrial solvent. DMSO, that he could use as a kind of The momentum of research with DMSO has also picked up. At antifreeze \o prevent cellular damage when deepfreezing Kid- the Cleveland Clinic doctors are testing the drug for a variety of neys for storage. Since the solvent was a cheap by-product of the ailments and diseases. Dr. Arthur L Scherbel has had tremen- wood-and-pulp industry, he got his samples from a paper com- dous success helping victims of scleroderma, also known as pany. Jacob made a few intriguing discoveries while working with hidebound disease. Dr. Carl Groppe, also at Cleveland, plans to the chemical. One was that the colorless, oily liquid was ab- mix DMSO with cancer-killing chemicals to speed up their action sorbed into his body with amazing speed. Within minutes of on severe breast cancers. National Cancer Institute researchers v^Wowig a W.\te so Hs. awi, he VasSfeti \"ri% gwWicy tow t& *rne timg aie \ryvng a sirrta \ac\>c on \iea\ing ^ng cancers. in his mouth. Drugs mixed with DMSO had the same speedy Despite this rebirth of interest, the FDA did a mysterious thing permeability — a feature Dr, Jacob thought could be used to treat in early 1979. It launched an investigation into its own approved internal ailments and injuries. research, claiming that researchers had covered up or ignored

He and others soon found that DMSO could be used to treat eye problems. It went after one doctor with a court order because

bursitis, arthritis, sinusitis, headaches, and miid burns and that it he told FDA investigators he could talk to them only after hours, had the ability to heal severe bruises literally overnight. An The investigators accused him of being uncooperative. Some of avalanche of experiments followed in which others cfaimed the them even disturbed the man's patients by Insinuating they might drug worked on various cancers, skin conditions from shingles to soon have eye probiems as a result of taking DMSO. When Dr. K.

acne, and even mental retardation. It was fantastic. C. Pani, the FDA's top DMSO expert, got wind of these tactics, he

It was also dangerous, the FDA claimed. As evidence, the complained to his superiors, In response, they relieved him of his agency pointed to studies in which the lenses in the eyes of test duties. In the end the agency found no evidence of a cover-up. animals clouded over after they were overdosed with DMSO. In Today Dr. Jacob is worried. A personal believer in the drug, he

1965 the FDA banned any further human experimentation. told Omni, "I was very encouraged by the FDA until [that doctor]

But by that time close to 100,000 people had already been was harassed. I am not so encouraged now. I just don't think the treated with the drug and none had developed eye problems— atmosphere is favorable for DMSO." Depending on the govern- a fact that made the ban a little hard to take. By the early Seventies ment's next moves, DMSO may get that second chance to prove the FDA had relaxed its position and approved DMSO as a itself as a wonder drug— or become one of the most controversial

prescriptioadrug ... for animals. Trainers rubbed it on their lame horse liniments in history -DOUGLAS COLUGAN coruTinjuunn

THE SOURCE The installation charge for I BRAIN GRAFTS jected with the cells from the the hookup is $100, The subsiantia nigra of healthy First there was "The normal charge for the use of Like skin grafts on a burn, rats. The cells were not Force" (in the movie Star the system is $15 per hour brain grafts may someday transplanted into Ihe dam- Wars). Now there is "The.' But after 6:00 p.m. and up heal Parkinson's disease aged area but into a cavily Source," the first iniormalion until 7:00 AM the rate drops and other nerve disorders closer to the caudate, an utility for your home. to $2.75 per hour. area associated with motor Wan! to know the latest The Source can also be control, where dopamine news and weather? Your used as an electronic mail appears to work. biorhythms?Need income-tax service, sending and receiv- A month later all the test heip? Airline reservations? ing messages nationwide. animals showed at least And how about access to all TCA leases home termi- some improvement. Five of United Press International nals to those who do not the rats showed a 70-per- news stories written in the have their own. You can con- cent decrease in circling past seven years? You can tact TCA at 1616 Anderson when given apomorphine. summon up this information, Road, McLean. Virginia Three control animals, given and 2,000 other types, by 22102.— Eric Rosen cells from the sciatic nerve, using your phone to lap into showed no improvement. the giant computers of the COMPULSORY After nine months none of Telecomputing Corporation COMPUTING the substantia-nigra grafts of America (TCA). had been rejected. All had What you need is a home If you can't program a begun to send nerve fibers video-display terminal, your computer, you're nearly ob- into the surrounding tissue, telephone, and a special solete. Thais the dear mes- and all were still counteract- coupler that uses the sage from Harvard. ing the Parkinson's dis- phone's headset to transmit After nearly a decade of ease-like circling. and receive information from wrangling, the university has The scientists are now Gralt h thriving in rat brain nine TCA, A printer is optional, jusi revamped its core cur- working with monkeys, but it months alter transplant. depending on whether you riculum, and the result won't will probably be a long time int a hard copy of the data. soothe the future -shocked. Working with rats, re- before the technique is used From now on, noi even a searchers at the National In- on humans. So far, no one specialist in medieval stitute of Mental Health have has been able fo find an French poetry will be able to grafted working brain cells ethically acceptable source graduate without passing into damaged brains, of human brain cells for basic computer courses thereby restoring normal transplant, — O.D. Another change: Gone are function. the survey courses that once The scientists, led by Dr. "Of course, behaviorism carried honmajors painlessly Richard Wyatt, destroyed 'works' So does torture. Give through the sciences. Even part of the substantia nigra me a no-nonsense, the most reluclant scholars in the brains of a dozen male down-to-earth behavhrist, a must now take at least one rais. Dopamine produced by few drugs, and simple science course thai requires these cells helps control electrical appliances, and in

memorization— taxonomy, motor activity, and its loss six months I will have him say— and one that demands causes the equivalent of reciting the Athanasian fjrt scientific reasoning. Parkinson's disease. When Creed in public." The new curriculum is ex- such rats are given a drug -WH.Auden pected to become a model called apomorphine, they for other schools. move involuntarily in an odd "The abolishment of pain in — Owen Davies circular pattern— a reaction surgery is a chimera. Knife scientists say is equivalent to and pain are two words in "Where there is no vision, the the tremors suffered by surgery that must forever be people perish.'' Parkinson's human victims. associated." —Proverbs 29:18 Nine of the rats were in- —Dr. Alfred Velpeau, 1839 "

QUAKE LIGHTS such as meteors or twilight. ON MOTHERHOOD litter in tour months if she The strongest illumination misplaces her old one. For many years people came during the earthquake The lion often saves i!s — Stuart Diamond have reported seeing that hit China in 1976. One cubs from starvation by shar- strange lights in the skies seismologist reported that ing its food after the lioness SPACE MESSENGERS the lights at the center of the has either abandoned her lit- ter or decided the cubs Meteorites tailing to Earth won't eat. A study by George might furnish valuable infor- B. Schaller, of the New York mation about how the earth Zoological Society, has and the rest of the solar sys- found that female lions are tem were formed. A great rotten mothers who often collecting ground for these allow their cubs to die of space messengers turns out hunger while they gorge to be frozen Antarciica. themselves with food. where everything can be Schaller also found that found perfectly preserved. lionesses often forget about Dr. William A. Cassidy of the their cubs, moving on with- University of Piltsburgh, had out them He once observed a hunch Antarctica's frigid • a lioness eating an entire climate would be ideal for 18-kilogram gazelle while finding meteorites. refusing to let her litter eat. In research funded by Ihe Lions, meanwhile, usually National Science Founda- share their kills with the tion, American and cubs. Otherwise, Schaller Japanese scientists last win- says, "few cubs would ter found 309 specimens, survive." One reason for the including two very rare behavior of lion mothers, carbon-bearing types and

researchers believe, Is that a one weighing aboui 135 earthquake. Dr. John S. Derr, earthquake were bright lioness can produce a new kilograms. of the U.S. Geological Sur- enough to turn night into day. Carbon- bearing meteor- vey, recently said that the Even up to 320 kilometers ites "contain possibly the existence of earthquake from Ihe epicenter of the best records of conditions in lights is now well established quake, the lights were bright the solar system at the time it -and that the subject should enough to wake people up, was formed" some 4.5 billion no longer be ignored. thinking their room lights had years ago, Dr. Cassidy says. The lights are more been turned on. "The fact that amino acids pronounced in the middle of Experts have come up are found in carbonaceous- the shock. Some people who with two possible causes: chondrite material suggests have viewed them say they violent, low-level air oscilla- that these compounds look like searchlights; others tion and the piezoelectric ef- [were]formed in the original say they look like fireballs. fect in quartz-bearing rock. primordial cloud from which

Yutaka Yasui, of Japan, If the second possibility the sun, planets, and moons collected the only known proves to be the cause, it condensed." photographs of earthquake may be possible to develop The meteorite collection is lights (above) during the electrical monitoring being kept in moon-style Matsushiro earthquake methods for earthquake storage equipment supplied swarm in Japan, between predictions — Tom R Kovach by NASA. — Alton Blakeslee 1965 and 1967. He claimed that .at least 18 of the 35 "Things are mGre like they "It has taken the planet Earth sightings reported during are now than they ever were 4.5 billion years to discover it ..." that period could not be ex- before. is 4.5 billion years old. plained by known lights. —Dwight D. Eisenhower —George Waid CDfUTirUUUR/l

OLYMPIC LIGHTWAVES nals from the Olympic ice would be released by the ESPANDPh.D.s arena to a broadcast center unit af a preprogrammed A radical new technology serving 26 mass-media rate, but the user could step will help bring the Winter agencies. up the dosage electronically

Olympics to your television Someday, if you have ca- before meals and during among college professors screen. Hockey and figure- ble-television service, opti- stress. than among the general pub-

cal tibers may bring televi- Once the system is lic. That's the surprising sion signals right up to the implanted, the insulin supply conclusion of a recent sur- back of your set. This winter, would have to be replen- vey conducted by Mahlon W however, the signals from the ished only every four to six Wagner, a psychology Winter Olympics will travel months by a single injection professor, and researcher only the first two miles of through the skin into the Mary Monnet, both 'from the their way to your home on self-sealing reservoir. State University of New York optical fibers. From the Lake The current practice of at Oswego.

Placid broadcast center, the treating diabetes by daily in- Of the 1 ,100 professors signals will be transmitted. by jections ot insulin "cannot surveyed, two thirds— most- microwaves to the normal prevent blood-sugar levels ly those in the arts, television-broadcasting sys- from exceeding the critical humanities, and educa- tem.— Jeff Hecht point at which tissue dam- tion—had positive attitudes age occurs," says Dr. Peter toward extrasensory percep- A DEVICE FOR H Forsham, director of the tion. A recent Gallup poll DIABETICS Metabolic Research Unit found that only half of the and himself a diabetic. By Americans interviewed were An implantable device overcoming this serious favorably inclined toward that simulates the function of dra-AoacK. the new device, parapsychology. the pancreas is expected to which the developers feel The only thing the profes- have a major impact on the will be ready for human use sors had reservations about control of diabetes. The de- in three years, could extend was the notion of plants and vice, known as the Andros the lives of millions of dia- animals having ESP Those skating events will be Implantable Insulin Delivery betics.— Kathleen McAuliffe who were skeptical were broadcast in part via light System, is still in the experi- mostly in the social sci- signals transmitted through mental stage, but, according ences, And the majority of hair-thin fibers of glass. to George A. Shapiro, presi- those showing outright hostil- The key to optical-fiber dent of Andros, Incorporated, ity to the idea of ESP were communication is the fiber it has already proved func- psychologists. itself. A 300-meter length is tionally successful in Wagner and Monnet sug- so transparent that it preliminary tests on a dog at gest that psychologists, who transmits about the same the Metabolic Research Unit are actually better read on percentage of incident light of the University of Califor- ESP than many of their col- as an ordinary window. A tiny nia, San Francisco. leagues in other fields, are a made of a semicon- The insulin-delivery sys- not satisfied with the design tor compound generates tem consists of a tiny micro- of many ot the experiments ight signals. Another processor, a power supply, a used in parapsychology. miconductor device at the reservoir, and a small pump Wagner and Monnet's other end of the fiber contained within a pocket study will be published in the changes the light signal watch-size unit that weighs October issue of Zetetic back into electrical form. only a few ounces. In hu- Scholar. — Douglas Colligan This month New York Tele- mans the entire system phone will install a tempo- would be implanted under "// the human brain were so rary fiber-optic system for the skin at a site yet to be simple that we could the Winter Olympics in Lake determined further by understand it, we would be Placid, New York, The sys- anatomical study Finely con- so simple that we couldn't." tem will carry television sig- trolled amounts ot insulin —Lyall Watson EAU DE ROACH Laboratorium in Delft, the GEODESIC DOMES The domes are actually Netherlands, succeeded in composed of numerous pre- After 30 years of trying, an obtaining the pheromone by The geodesic dome for cisely engineered triangles international team of scien- collecting 75,000 virgin home or business, proposed fastened together with bolts tists has finally come up with female roaches, from which by P. Buckminster Fuller in and by similar simple This allows virtually a perfume that no healthy, he got a grand total of 200 1951 , is finally gaining wide means. micrograms of the elusive acceptance. Spurred by the all of the domes to be periplanone B. dome's cheaper construc- prefabricated and saves on This small sample was tion cost and energy use, construction costs. In some sent to DrW Clark Sill, thousands of people are areas a complete dome chemistry professor at Co- building domed shelters house costs half as much as lumbia University in New covered with everything from a conventional model. York City Dr Sill and a team aluminum to cedar shingles, Federal studies say the of scientists from Columbia In San Juan. Puerto Rico, domes use up to a third less and Cornell analyzed the a metallic, silver-domed, energy for heating and cool- sample and isolated and 23-meter diameter ing than rectangular struc- copied two chemical discotheque opened this tures because each cubic compounds. past April. A 32-meter domed foot of interior volume They sent back the com- theater is being finished at requires less surface area pounds to Persoons for test- Caesars Palace, in Las (for heat to leak in or out). ing. One ol them turned out Vegas. Even a domed church The National Association to be a foolproof copy ol is being built in Beaver Dam, of Dome Home Manufactur-

periplanone B. In fact, it was Wisconsin. They are among ers, in Chicago, has doubled so potent, Persoons found, 250 commercial domes by its membership to 100 since that just 100 femtograms of Space Structures, a Long 1976, Technological ad- the chemical— that's Island firm. A California vances and high resale .00000000000001 gram— company, Monterey Domes, prices have curbed early was enough to set his male claims to have sold over problems, such as leaks and roaches off on amating 4,000 geodesic domes for difficulty in obtaining mort- hot-blooded male cock- dance. Scientists estimate private residences in 1978. gages.— S.D. roach can resist. that one hundredth of a gram

It's a totally synthetic copy of this substance is enough of periplanone B, the sex at- to attract 100 billion male tractant exuded by the fe- roaches. male Periplaneta americana, Once testing is better known as the Ameri- completed, scientists hope can cockroach. The syn- to develop better bait for thetic was developed roach traps or even to dis- through the cooperation of a rupt the cockroach's repro- very patient Dutch en- ductive cycle. tomologist and a group of In the meantime, scientists American chemists. are working on duplicating The first step in the re- another female sex attrac- search program was obtain- tant, periplanone A, and a ing a large enough sample male one called— and this is of the pheromone to study its real name— seducin. and copy. Army scientists -D.C. had tried and failed to do that at the governments "The outcome of any serious Natick 'Laboratory back research can only be to in 1948. make two questions grow Entomologist C. J. Per- where only one grew before." soons. of Centraal —Thorstein Veblen coruTiruuunn

RECYCLING BLOOD Dr Fleming claims that neither he nor anyone else land and Marcus B. Waller even though patients have using this technique has say the common thread The next transfusion you been drained o! a unit of ever gotten a patient into among adult fire setters is gel may consist ot your own blood a few days before their trouble. "social ineffectiveness." blood. At Walter Reed Army operations, they goto "We have not yet reached including sexual, marital, Hospital, in Washington, D.C., surgery with their blood the limits," he says, "of how occupational, and drinking pressures and pulses pump- much blood we can problems. Youthful arsonists, ing away "per normal." Even drain."— Mary Beazley conversely, are most typi- ^£ ihose with bad hearts and cally thieves and truants, the blood-pressure problems, FIERY PROFILES researchers said. And only and patients undergoing about 15 percent of arsonists open-heart surgery, he says. A beautifully dressed are female, do well. woman appears outside the The study was commis- In a related development, house that she's set afire, as sioned because of the in arson in- ** some surgeons are draining if in a drama. A man gets marked increase up to 90 percent of their exquisite "sensual" satisfac- cidents and damage. From patients' blood during tion from torching a building. 1964 to 1975 annual damage operations. Soon after the A six-year-old child burns from known or suspected anesthetic has taken effect, down his house because his arson rose from $60 million doctors drain the bulk ot a parents withhold love, to $633 million; the number person's blood and replace These are some of the ot fires increased from

it with a balanced salt solu- profiles of arsonists detailed 30,900 to 144.000, tion, in the first comprehensive The most rapidly increas- Then, should the patient sludy of fire setters, done for ing fire-setting group is the bleed during surgery, few [he National Bureau of Stan- arson-for-profit group, the blood cells are-lost, because dards by two researchers at researchers said. These ar- he's bleeding mostly salt wa- the University of North sonists range from the rich

ter. The patient's whole Carolina. In The Psychology housewife who sets a smoky blood is stored in the operat- of fires el ting: A Review and fire to collect money for surgeons are giving patients ing room, ready to be put Appraisal, Robert G. Vree- redecorating to the welfare back [heir own previously back into his body, recipient who burns down donated blood during opera- When the patient's blood his apartment to collect relo- tions. Unlike blood from is returned to him at the end cation expenses. The report that certain entrepre- donors, one's own blood of the operation , he is given adds doesn't contain unfriendly a megadose of diuretics, neurs treat arson "as a hepatitis viruses or anti- which cause his kidneys to normal business activity," bodies that won't get along excrete the salt water. with a low risk of arrest and with the immunological The main danger of blood conviction. system. draining is the possibility The suggested remedies Dr. Arthur Fleming, chief ot that the brain and heart vary from counseling to psy- surgery at Walter Reed, says won't get enough oxygen, chiatric help to incarcera- his staff draw's two to three which is carried by red tion, depending on the ar- units ot blood (a unit is about blood cells. So doctors re- sonist's frame of mind. Some :entot total blood duce the body's need for pyromaniacs, the research- jut of a patient, one oxygen by cooling the pa- ers found, claimed they set time, overathree- tient down to 32°C, giving fires to provide employment ;riod before surgery, biood-pressure-lowering for firemen. — S.D. blood can keep for up drugs, and using a very to 35 days in a 4°C refriger- strong anesthetic. "As far as we know, our com- ator or be pulinto deep Dr. Eric Furman, head of puter has never had an freeze, where it can be anesthesiology at Children's undetected error." stockpiled safely (or Orthopedic Hospital, in Seat- —Conrad H. Weisert, s long as seven years. tle. Washington, claims that Union Carbide Corporation QUIET TOWN : noisy within ten years unless The Quiet Town experi- lected by the National measures were taken to curb ment is expected to be used Wildlife Federation. Am.ong are: II increasing clamor. as fhe basis for a national them is only half as noisy in ; the in next • Young giraffes can grow parts of Darlington, England, ! Studies have shown that ex- program England he said. In the United up to half an inch per hour as it was three years ago, cessive noise, in addition to year j States the federal govern- • The Venus's-flytrap. an after a unique experiment. I causing hearing damage, ment has instituted regula- insect-eating plant, takes tions to reduce noise from between 10 and 35 days to trucks, lawn mowers, digest one small bug. airplanes, andjackham- • Starting with one fertile mers, but there has not been female, Italian bees can a massive public-education produce 75.000 offspring in campaign to create an anti- 13 weeks. noise ethic like the one that Killer whales will ofien use has developed in Darling- their enormous tail to flip ton. -S.D. their prey 30 feet into the air

before eating it. The prey ANIMAL TRIVIA includes seals, dolphins,

and penguins. , The world's most finicky • You don't feel the pain and eaters are not the food critics itching of a black fly's bite of various newspapers and until after it's gone, because magazines. They are, it applies a temporary anes- instead, caterpillars, which thetic before biting. would rather starve to death • Contrary to common be- than eat a plant they find dis- lief, cats can see in color, but tasteful, researchers have not always accurately For found. example, they see an apple This tidbit and other amus- as red but a cherry as with international implica- leads to an increase in heart ing ones have been col- gray — S.D. tions, was conducted. attacks, strokes, and other The town council decided health problems and to a in 1976 to find out just how decrease in learning ability quiet the community could In Darlington the differ- become. So it began a mas- ence is pronounced not only sive public-education pro- in the noise level but in the gram aimed at reducing quality of life. "You can stand noise from cars, construction on the sidewalk in the center sites, factories, clubs, and of town and have a normal other sources. Local laws conversation with someone, ordered mufflers on instead of having to shout or pneumatic drills and better go into a shop," said Keith shielding of machinery in Atkinson, head of the Quiet factories. Traffic was Town experiment. "You can rerouted from the center of tell, just by the way people the town. Schools, civic act, that there have been groups, and businesses psychological benefits." He supported the project. said the town is more relax- The experiment, known as ing, and many more people Quiet Town, was a national are now conscious of the showcase, following a 1974 damaging effects of noise. study that predicted En- and so they curb their own gland would be-twice as noisy behavior. cDruTiruuurui

STUN GUN strong enough to shoot to viruses a communications DID YOU KNOW? through layers of heavy method already attempted

It looks like a flashlight, clothing but not so powerful by American radio- • Snowmobiles use over 117 bangs like a gun, and stings that it would disrupt a astronomers. million gallons of fuel each like a bee— a very big bee. pacemaker. Each Taser is The technique involves year in the United States.

Called the Taser. it is an elec- completely rechargeable coding a message, either as • Five percent of all the en- and has the flashlight built in radio pulses or as DNA ergy in the United States is

the front so that it can be bases, whose total number used in supermarkets. aimed in the dark. is a multiple of two prime • We use more than 80 gal- Already used by 24 police numbers. The signals are lons of gasoline to produce departments around the laid out in rows iike those in a one acre of corn. country, the Taser was re- television picture. A mes- • A 50-percent replacement cently approved as a defen- sage 899 (29 times 31) sig- of oil by nuclear power by sive weapon for civilians. nals long, for example, the year 2000 would require

Even though it shoots elec- would be arranged as 29 ordering one large power

tricity and is not lethal, it is rows of 31 siqnals or as 31 station every 3.5 days (and classified by federal law as a rows of 29 signals, to form no new power plants have firearm and can be sold only a picture. been ordered in the past two by government-licensed gun There are three possible years). dealers. — DC. messages in !he PhiX-174 • About 1.5 quadrillion genes. One is 121 {11 times megawatt-hours of solar en-

VIRUSES FROM 1 1) units long, one is 91 (7 ergy bombards the earth OUTER SPACE times 13) units long, and one every year, more than 28,000 is 533 (13 times 41) units times the amount of com- There may be no need to long. Yokoo and Oshima mercial energy used. search for messages from have already tested the first • Up to 60 percent of the space with radiotelescopes. two. "Unfortunately, nothing heat that commercial air Two Japanese biologists of significance has been conditioners must displace think interstellar "telegrams" found," they report Tne is generated by electric light- tric stun gun used by police may already be here, waiting scientists are currently work- ing.- E.R. since 1975 and now avail- to be identified— in laborato- ing on the third possibility able to civilians as well. ries all over the world and in A message -by-virus sys- The Taser was developed our own digestive tracts. tem would have several ad- originally as a non lethal al- The proposed messenger vantages over radio, the ternative to the police of- is a phage, a virus that in- biologists point out. There is ficer's pistol. Instead of fects intestinal bacteria, no need for a receiver and wounding a victim, it merely called PhiX-174. When an antenna aimed in the stuns him. It uses electricity, British scientists deciphered right direction at the right not bullets. its complete gene structure time. There needn't even be All a user has to do is aim two years ago, they found anyone waiting to receive a the Taser and press a button. that parts of its DMA code message. Landing in a suit- A small gunpowder charge could be read three different able environment, the vi- then propels one or two ways, depending on where ruses would simply repro- darts at the target. Con- the translation began. duce until intelligent life nected to these darts are The Tokyo researchers, evolves to decipher thread-fine wires. When a Hiromitsu Yokoo, of Kyorin them. — O.D. dart hits, a small charge of University, and Tairo Oshima. electricity— three watts- of the Mitsubishi-Kasei Insti- "A bit beyond perception's jolts into the target. This is tute of Life Sciences, think reach/I sometimes believe I enough to stun but not injure the code seems more artifi- see/that life is two locked anyone, according to the cial than natural. An ad- boxes, /each containing the Taser's manufacturer. vanced civilization, they other's key." Gas guzzlers: Snowmobiles u The charge of electricity is suspect, may have applied —Piet Hein more fuel than you might IK Welcome to the world of Harold "Doc" Edgerton- photographers'

cult hero, grizzled explorer, distinguished professor, millionaire industrialist, inventor of everything from Brownie flashcubes to laser strobes

BY STEPHEN DAVIS

-^- *»• »!• v ^ i' ^ lang around with pho- tographers and you willHinevitably hear Doc Edgerton stories. I've worked with some of Ihe best-the hottest shots in the world— and eventually they all began to wax rhapsodic over this aging, bespectacled MIT pro- fessor and his incredible career. They speak of his Arthur Conan Doylesque exploits and cite his principal accomplishments: the first ultrahigh-speed photogra- phy, ttie first high-speed moving pictures, the first accu-

rate night aerial reconnaissance during World War II.

the first films of atomic explosions, the directing of Jacques Cousteau to underwater photography, the de- velopment of the side-scanning sonar, the first close-up pictures of Ihe Loch Ness monster, and the list goes on and on. Doc Edgerton is a man seventy-six years old and still going strong. Here's a typical Edgerton story, told to me by National Geographic photographer David Doubilet in a little bar not far from the society's Washington, DC-

headquarters. This story is typical in that it shows the awe with which many young men regard the stamina and skill of a man old enough to be their grandfather (which, in a figurative sense. Edgerton is): "Back in 1974 Doc and some associates discovered the wreck of the Monitor [the Union Navy ironclad that sank in a storm after its epic battle with the Confedera- cy's ironclad Merrimac in 1862], They had outfitted the Alcoa Sea Probe with Edgerton's side-scanning sonar and found the Monitor's hulk lying upside down two hundred fifty feet under. So I'm assigned to work on the story, and we motor out to the site in a little boat. "Edgerton wanted to test a new underwater 'deep- drop' TV system he had developed in order to retrieve a multiple-exposure camera that had snagged on the Monitor's gun turret during a previous trip and had been

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BEN ROSE "

lost. there are, you'll certain reverential respect So we twenty-eight miles off Cape Hatteras in Ihe You sleep by wedging your neck against the bulkhead and your He's pulling my foot and sayi Dave. Dave, wake up! I've got entitle superstars, and detect a roughest water in the Atlantic. can't operate voices as they direct you to the fourth floor. We when conditions feel against the bottom of the bunk. It's not really sleep, it's two things to tell you.' in the students' are bad. So we're constantly motoring around, changing posi- For years Harold Eugene Edgerton has used the fourth floor isometrics. '"What is it, Doc?' 50 for tion, and we finally anchor up near the site for the nighl. We're in " laboratory, classroom, consulting office, and base camp "Suddenly Ihe wind shifts, we're broadside against the swells, 'First thing is. I hate boats. Terrible place to work, always as the as Ihe father middle of the shipping lanes. So its important that everybody and everything is breaking loose. Total chaos. Doc, who then was moving. Terrible place.' hundreds ot experiments and expeditions. Famous keeps watch. " is still relatively un- seventy-one years old, is up like a shot, tying everything down. 'What's the second thing?' of ultrahigh-speed strobe photography. Doc 'Around " !' midnight the sea begins to roll in huge swells; the wind It's pitch-black, barrels and generators are thumping around, the Second thing is. your watch is howling, the boat is rocking like crazy, and the current is circus couple on a unicycle. a speeding bullet frt sonar 'fish' is rolling around the deck completely loose. I hear Try to find Doc Edgerton's lab at MIT in Cambridge, Mas- Ben Rose captures a against us. I'm wedged in a lower bunk. Doc is in an upper bunk. unimpressed by its own sci- mid-flight, and a moving tennis ball with Harold Edgerton's stroboscope. Doc bumping around I'm half-awake. I slowly open my eyes, sachusetts, an institution generally known outside scientific and photographic years he worked with French aguanaut stone of both technological brilliance and fraternities. His strobe' light, invented in Jacques-Yves Cousteau, building cam- old-fashioned midwestern openness. 1930, gave the world a system o( fast, por- eras and their underwater housings, de- "Doc is very much a pure scientist," one table light that is vital for science, industry sighing bathyscaphes, exploring for sunk- of his students told us later that day. "That and medicine, as well as for routine pho- en treasure ships, rare fish, and vanished means he's more interested in solutions to tography. The strobe illuminates, beacons, civilizations. After he "lost interest" in pho- a problem than in the theories behind the

regulates, and heals. It has even photo- tography in the Sixties, Edgerton turned to problem itself." Edgerton's life in fact has typeset the page that you're reading. Doc sonar taking pictures electronically with been dedicated to-creating technology for also pioneered nighttime and underwater sound instead of with light. practical problem solving, a consequence photography. In "fact, almost everything we Despite his protean reputation as inven- of which likens his career to an extended take for granted about artificial light for tor and adventurer for generations of MIT Conan Doyle tale. More than one of his MIT photography, from Brownie flashcubes to students, Edgerton has left his mark as a associates compares him to Doyle's flam- 16 laser strobes that blink at 10 second, is teacher: not your standard theory-ob- boyant Professor Challenger - a sort of an invention of Doc Edgerton's. sessed science professor slapping differ- scientilic Sherlock Holmes. Doc is a master of the optical uncon- ential equaiions on the blackboard but a MAKER OF SMOKE AND FIRE scious, illuminating minute shards of lime hands-on practical "experimentalist" {his

we previously didn't know existed. You've word) with a real power to inspire his stu- Doc was born in Nebraska in 1903. He seen some of his masterpieces— they've dents. Doc retired from his electrical en- recollects, "My father got me a summer job been burned into the minds of millions in gineering professorship in 1966. This at Nebraska Power and Light, when I was a such magazines as Life, and National meant that he relinquished his day-to-day University of Nebraska unde 'graduate. I'm

Geographic: the tiara-shaped milk droplet, teaching load, but he was immediately still very grateful because i was thrown into the bullet smashing through the apple, the given the title of Institute Professor, an the hassles of running an early electric- golfer's frozen swing, the aerialist's stop- extraordinary distinction and one rarely light plant with all the pressures and confu- time multiple flip, Stonehenge by night. bestowed by MIT. Perhaps the one im- sion. I learned a tremendous amount.

Slices of pure time, frozen instants measurable in life is at as quantity Edgerton's- That's why they flvllT] hired me here. I knew short as a millionth of a second. the respect and love given to him by the how to run the machinery, see things hap- Edgerton's experiments in the related h ghly competitive MIT community. pen, make the smoke and fire come out."

fields of stroboscopy, ultrahigh-speed pho- We tried to maintain Edgerton's brisk It was Edgerton's curiosity about the tography, and sonar have led to an ex- pace one day recently as he crossed MIT's plant's huge generators, with their rotating haustive career that has leaped from one central quadrangle, dominated by its mas- and vibrating components, that initiated his adventure to another He's taken pictures sive black Alexander Calder stabile. An interest in the stroboscope, The basic of everything from hydrogen-bomb fire- impressive-number of colleagues and stu- stroboscope had already been in existence , balls to bats on the wing, from grim rock- dents yelled out. "Hey, Doc," and some lor at least 100 years; however, before scapes of the ocean's floor to the delicate came over to shake his hand or touch him Edgerton started lo tinker withjhem, they

rhythms of hummingbirds in flight. For lightly on the back, as if he were a touch- were little more than scientific toys used for games and optical illusions. (The illusion performed by the primitive stroboscope is, based o.n a phenomenon of human vision: The retina of the eye retains the image of an object in one position for about a tenth of a -second after the object moves to another position.) Early stroboscopes were rotating wheels observed through a hole in a spinning disk. The wheel appeared stationary when seen through a disk thai permitted a view of the wheel only once per revolution, with the wheel in the same position each time. Edgerton reasoned that he could achieve the same effect by flashing a light at the

wheel at regular intervals if the light were bright enough and precisely synchronized with the movement of the wheel. Under conditions as they existed in 1925 at Nebraska P&L, and later at the General Electric works in Schenectady, New York, where Edgerton took a job after gradua- tion, technicians were unable to discern the motions of speeding parts in their genera- tors. When the inevitable problems oc- curred, the cause could only be guessed at. Edgerton figured that with some kind of stroboscobic-light effect the pistons and

flywheels could be examined while in full motion.

Doc went to Cambridge in 1926 to study motors. While working on his doctorate the following year he tried to find an industrial application for his stroboscopes. When he I suggest that in today's "May group-therapy session we worked at GE. he had found a weak flash- ail work on our contact with reality.". ing lamp that one of the engineers had built in an oak box. "It was very crude," Doc remembers. "They had taken a neon-sign Edgerton has had a lifetime partnership) had become a basic iool in both science transformer thai gives a little peak and put a developed reservoirlike condensers, in and industry. Edgerton also published his small capacitor across the lamp and stuck which energy cou d oe slowly accumulated first article about high-speed movies in

it on the secondary so every half-cycle and'from which it would then be released 1934. By replacing the movie camera's

would give little oscillations. It was just very quickly. They found that if they placed mechanical shutter with a strobe timed to another way of getting stroboscopic ef- a xenon gas lube between the condensers, flash for each frame of film, Edgerton came fects. The theory had been worked out a they could control the ntervals at which the up with a uniform continuous Him speed hundred years before. What got me was electricity flowed from the condensers thai raised the number of frames per sec- that many of these transients happen in a across the open gap of the tube; thus ond from 250 to 6,000. Eventually the Hol- tenth of a second or 'less. You can't see Edgerton and his partners could, regulate lywood movie studios lured Edgerton to

them; you have to use photography to get it the flash duration {as short as a millionth of California io adapt some of his techniques

on paper so you can take it apart at your a second] and intensity, which proved ca- for special-effects purposes Alas, it was

leisure and plot it up. pable of a brightness greater than that of fate, in the guise of World War II, that kept "The equipment we had for that in those (he sun. him away from Lotusland.

days was zero. So I got a mercury tube Edgerton published the first description SECRETS OF 'STROBE ALLEY' that was made for a rectifier, not tor a of his strobe in the May 1931 issue of Elec- stroboscope at all. But mercury vapor gives trical Engineering, causing something of a The material that Edgerton published

.off a nice blue high-energy light; if you put it sensation. The National Geographic used during the war years reflected his fascina- in a big enough condenser and get the the technique to get pictures of hum- tion with unlocking natural secrets through

circuits right, you can get flashes in less mingbird wings beating 55 times a second. his strobe light; it also masked the top- than ten microseconds. We found we could Engineers began to adapt the strobe to secret war work that he and his team were do photography right off! Movies, se- examine their machinery in motion. Still in performing up in Strobe Alley, Doc's quence pictures, almost anything at all." his twenties, Edgerton- was hailed as one ot fourth-floor chambers at MIT. Behind 'An

I asked what problem was the first to be the century's lechnogeniuses — a designa- Analysis of the Locomotion of the Seahorse resolved using ulirahigh-speed strobe by Means of High-Speed Cinematog- light. raphy," Edgerton was inventing aerial "We were working at the time L1929-30] strobe-reconnaissance techniques that on what happens when you put a sudden became one of the deciding factors in the

load on a motor. It swings in time with the defeat ol Nazi Germany

phase angle, and we measured the phase mHis strobe light, "I was working in the lab one Saturday in

angle, correctly. I wrote up a mathematical 1938," recalls, "and a stranger walked invented in 1930, gave the Doc treatment, using the first computer here at in and said he wsi Majc Goddard from the worid a system of MIT— the first one, I still can hardly believe Army Air Corps. They had been using it— but/this was our first practical problem, fast, portable light that flash-powder bombs left over from World\ nonlinear with a second-degree equation War I to get aerial pictures at night, and he is totally vital cosine function in it. Vou can't solve it with wanted to know whether we could adapt formal mathematics, but you can with a for science, industry and our strobe lamps '.cake nigh: pictures from, computer, although caHcd the we machine medicine, as well two thousand feet high. I said, 'Sure we can a differential analyzer in those days. So I build one, but you don't have an airplane as for routine photography *f had all these solutions for the technical big enough to take it up.' He said that times

I paper we'd written, but I knew that when were changing and that they were working

presented it to the big electrical engineer- on a new plane, something like a DC-3, that

ing convention, it would be almost incom- could carry four to five tons. So we figured prehensible. the specifications on the slide rule, extrapo- "The solution was to make a movie with tion he views with amused reservation. lated them into an unknown region forty or the electrical this new lamp that showed "You must realize that what I did wasn't all fifty times bigger, and sent it over to the Air motor and the pc e oscillating and showed that new," he maintains. "The first spark Corps.

the load put on, it out to Talbot sudden and turned photo was made by Fox with a "A few days later I received a two-

be very graphic. Then people around here windburst machine in 1851 , and before that hundred-page contract in the mail from the started coming in for help with other prob- there were lightning strokes. All you had to War Department [now Department of the

lems. I remember I went over to Professor do was open your camera and let nature Army] to build this thing, I got myself a red

it Draper's lab and they said, 'Edgerton, why give a whack Scoecpleask me whether I pencil and crossed out the whole contract

7 ' don't you take pictures of other things I invented the strobe, and I say, No. it came except for about four lines at the end, which

in I from heaven. The was naive those days, and said, 'What only improvements we stated the objective of the job. I wrote back

else is there?' Draper said he had valve made were to make it go off when and that we accepted the contract except tor

it springs that did all kinds of crazy things. So where we wanted to. The thing that really the parts blocked out in red. A little later I

I loaded the whole system in my station tickles me is that you could hardly pick up got a call from some lieutenant saying you

wagon, set it up, and ran it. But it ran too the first strobe, Now they make them so can't mess around with a War Department

hot. So we just punched some holes in the small thai you can get a half-dozen in your contract like that. I told him, 'I don't waste side of the box. We looked at these valve pocket." my time with lieutenants; get me a general!'

springs with the strobe, and they were fan- Throughout the Thirlies Edgerton con- I didn't have any more trouble with them tastic. Then Draper wanted to know what tinued to develop and promote the strobe after that." happened to the fuel spray inside the die- light. He held dozens of demonstrations for Edgerton was sent to Italy in 1943, where sel engine. So we built a lamp right inside scientists, businessmen, and the press. he supervised the Air Corps's use of the the cylinder, and they squirted the juice in One of these yielded the famous 1938 aerial strobe in more than 80 missions, as there, and we got real nice pictures of this photo of the tiara-shaped milk drop that the German troops were being pushed spray at one five-thousandth of a second. can be seen in New York's Museum of north. In England in June 1944, with his And that was the beginning." Modern Art. Life photographer Gjon Mili, equipment mounted in six A-20 night fight- To provide-the requisite energy for the using an Edgerton-built studio, began pub- ers, on the night before D-Day Edgerton brilliant flash they needed for the strobe. lishing spectacular stop-motion pictures of produced clear pictures of a cloud-cov- Doc and his associates (Kenneth Ger- dancers, ice skaters, and circus perform- ered Normandy by piercing the murk with meshausen and Horbor. Grier, with whom ers. By the end of the decade the strobe incredibly quick bursts of intense light. The rushing over he rode up to Boston on strobe had gone to war. And the strobe lyptic fireballs, shock waves up and see me. So He was contributed to the Allied victory. the darkened ocean, and mushroom the train, and we got acquainted. restful, narcot- eager-looking guy with a big schnozzle. To some extent, the postwar generation clouds produced an almost an said his Cousieau. He had I whether he name was was raised on Edgerton's next project, the ic effect on me. asked Doc He

the nuclear the aqualung, I had just utterly chilling films of A-bomb and had felt any queasiness about worked on and

after the one. as soon as he arrived, I had hydrogen-bomb tests. In 1946 Doc was program in those days, so soon gotten So ex- of the pool the test approached by the Atomic Energy Com- horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki him on the bottom MIT as of nuclear for underwater camera. He mission (AEC) to design a testing camera posed the world to the endgame pilot my new projector and with .wife and me that night, and for atomic explosions, whose blinding light weaponry. He turned off the stayed my I've always lot of plans." rendered conventional photographic ap- sank back into his chair "Well. we just made a war Every- the next five years Edgerton and paratus useless. (The light from the first said it's a lousy way to fight a During the earth and get the Frenchman worked on the techniques atomic blasts was so hot that it actually body loses. You poison also have to equipment that would open up the burned tiny holes into the exposed film.) nothing but overkill. But you and Edgerton came up with a strobe-activated remember the feeling at the time. The Rus- mysteries of the undersea world. Doc de- got it undersea flash system capable shutter that allowed exposures for as short sians had stolen our big secret. They signed an going ahead, of operating in the deepest parts of the as one microsecond. In 1947 the AEC sug- through spies and were these concurrently he also had to design gested to Edgerton and his partners (Grier, building the weapons and banging oceans; years to do it, and it underwater housings that could withstand who was working on A-bomb circuitry, and things oft. It took us ten didn't of to 8.5 tons per I even pressures Germeshausen, involved in radar) that they took them only six months. But subsea up Edgerton's adventures with form a company to consult on and man- have that much to do with the actual test- square inch. busi- to the invention of ul- ufacture devices for atomic testing. The ing. The government started us in Cousteau also led there to photography. In 1957 Cousteau AEC gave- the firm of EG&G (Edgerton, ness, andl took a term off here and trasonar to me achieved a mid-Atlantic anchorage, using Grier, and'. Germeshausen) an exclusive work on it, but mostly they'd just come kilometers depth franchise on postwar nuclear testing; the when they had a problem. Frankly, af that a nylon rope at eight interested in getting Trying to get pictures of the ocean bot- company has supplied the detonators and time I was much more positioned his with a trigger systems and has measured the clear shots of hummingbirds." tom, Edgerton camera "pinger." a device on strobascopic AEC's tests ever since. based NEW FOCUS ON THE DEEP using sound instead of light. Edgerton headed the corporation from principles, but Edgerton the Cold Warrior soon The sound waves from the pinger returned its founding to his retirement in 1966. Sitting But indicating the re- found another diversion and application for as echoes from the seabed, tri his laboratory earlier this year, in position relative to the bottom. sponse to my request, he darkened the his strobe light, "The National Geographic camera sonic pulses not room and projected a series of H-bomb Society called me one time, about 1953. Edgerton noticed that the only reached but penetrated the muddy films he had made during the Eniwetok and said they had a young man in their of the ocean floor. He began Atoll tests of the early Fifties. Somehow the office who was interested in underwater layer on top repetitive black-and-white films of apoca- photography, and they wanted him to come FICTION

The astronaut trainees had to be taken down a peg — or so their officers thought KINSMAN BY BEN BOVA

Kinsman is a young keep us after school." Colt ChetAir Force lieutenant, said, "for being naughty training to bs an yesterday." astronaut. His first mis- "Pierce'll find a way to lake sion in orbit, aboard a you guys down a notch." Jill space shuttle, teams him with said. "He's gol ihal kind of Lieutenant Frank Colt: black, mind." brilliant, quick-tempered. "Democracy in action." Since Kinsman and Colt have Kinsman said. "Reduce scored highest among the everybody to the same low astronaut trainees so far, the level." older officers in charge of the "Hey!" Art Douglas shuttle have decided to take snapped, from across Ihe them down a peg. Colt sees compartment, where he was this as discrimination against helping Colt into his suit. "Your him. And Kinsman realizes scores weren't that much that his own chances to be an higher than ours, you know." Air Force astronaut are "Tell you what," Coli said. 'A inextricably linked with Colt's. couple of you guys black your From the forthcoming novel Kinsman, published by Dial Press. When he finally slid out of his bunk, Kinsman fell too keyed up to be tired. Coll seemed lensed like a coiled spring, too, as they pulled on their pressure suits. "So the Golddusi Twins finally gel iheir chance lo go EVA," Smitty kidded Ihem as he helped Kinsman with the zippers and seals of his suit.

"I thought they were gonna

PAINTING BY JOHNSCHOENHERR .

faces and see how you get treated." Colt tapped Howard on the shoulder and the largest antenna, in the center of the They laughed, but there was a nervous pointed to Kinsman. Like scuba divers in an drumhead. undertone to it. underwater movie, Kinsman said to him- Kinsman hung head-down over the satel- Kinsman raised his helmet over his head self' Howard turned, tapped the keyboard lite and read the assembly instruction

and slid it "Still fits left down into place. okay," on his wrist, and held up four fingers. printed on it by the light of his helmet lamp. he said through the open visor. "Guess my Kinsman touched the button marked The antenna support arms swung up easily head hasn't swollen too much." Four on his own wrist keyboard. and locked into place. Then he opened the Captain Howard slid down the ladder Howard's voice immediately came parasol-folded parabolic. dish that was the railing, already suited up, but with his hel- through his earphones. "We're using chan- antenna itself. met visor open, The' pouches under his nel four for suit-to-suit chatter. Ship's fre- "Now the waveguide," Howard com-

eyes looked darker lhan usual; his face had quency is three; don't use it unless you manded laconically. a gray prison pallor, have to talk to the flight deck." "It's .not an observation satellite," "You both checked out?" "Yes, sir," said Kinsman. Kinsman said as he worked, "No ports for Mr. Personality, thought Kinsman. "Okay. Lei's get to work." cameras or sensors." Howard wasn't satisfied with the Under Howard's direction. Colt and "Keep your mind on your work." trainees' check of their suits. He went over Kinsman peeled away the protective "But what the hell's it for?" Kinsman them personally Finally, with a sour nod, he aluminized sheeting from the third and final blurted. waved Colt to the airlock. The lock cycled, satellite in the bay. It was a large, fat drum, With an exasperated sigh, Howard said, then and Howard himself went through, tall as a man and so wide that Kinsman "Strategic Command didn't bother to tell closing the metal hatch behind him. Colt it knew he and could not girdle with rpe, kid. So I don't know. Except that it's top Kinsman slid his visor down and sealed their outstrelched arms. The outer surface secret and none of our damned business." it, turned fo wave a halfhearted "so long" to of the satellite was covered with dead black "Ohh ... a ferret." the others, then clumped into the airlock. solar cells. "A what?" The heavy hatch swung shut, and he could "Kinsman, you come up top here with me "Scuttlebutt that we heard back at the hear, faintly, the clatter of the pump sucking to unfold the antennas," Howard ordered. academy," Kinsman explained. "Satellites the air out of the phone booth-sized "Colt, gel back io the main bulkhead and that gather electronic in;e ligence from chamber. The red light went on, signaling open the doors." other satellites. This bird's going into a high vacuum. He opened fhe other hatch and Floating up to the iop of the satellite with orbit, right?" stepped out into the payload bay the captain beside him, Kinsman asked. Howard hesitated before answering. Colt and Howard seemed to be deep in "What kind of a satellite is this? Communi- "Yes," he replied. conversation, back beside the only remain- cations?" Nodding inside his helmet. Kinsman ing satellite in the bay Kinsman shuffled "In a polar orbit?" went on; "She'll hang up there and listen on toward them, keeping the lightly mag- "Oh. No, I guess not. We've changed or- a wide band of frequencies, mostly the netized soles of his boots in contact with bital planes so often that I didn't realize . freaks the Soviets use. Maybe some the steel strips set into the deck plates. _"Start with that one," Howard pointed to Chinese and European bands, too. She

just sits in orbit and passively collects all

their chatter, recording it. Then when she, passes over a command station in the States, they send up an order and she spits out everything she's recorded over the course of a day or a week. All data-com- pressed so they can get the whole wad of poop in a few seconds." "Really." Howard's voice was as flat and cold as an ice tray.

"Yes, sir. The Russians have knocked a few of ours down, or so they told us at the academy." Howard's response was unintelligible. "Sir?" Kinsman asked.

"I said," he snapped, "that I never went to

the academy. 1 came up the hard way So I don't have as much inside information as you bright boys." Touchy! "Colt, when the hell are you going to get them doors open?" "I'm ready anytime, sir," Colt's voice came through the earphones. "Been wait- ing for your order."

"Well, open 'em up, damn it, and get back here." Soundlessly the big clamshell doors began- to swing open. Kinsman started to return his attention to the satellite, but as the doors swung farther and farther back, he saw more and more stars staring at him: hard, unwinking points of light, not like jewels set in black velvet, as he had ex- pected, not like anything he had ever seen

before in his life. "Glory to ." God in the highest . . Kinsman .

beard himself whisper the words as he rose, work forgotten, drifting up toward the infinitely beautiful stars. "Get your ass back here, Kinsman!"

Howard shouted, it was like ice picks jab- bing at his eardrums. ." "But I never thought . . Kinsman found himself drifting halfway down the payload bay, high enough so that his head and shoulders were out in the open. He grabbed a hinge of the open door to steady himself. Colt was beside him, "Fantastic!" Kinsman realized his mouth was hang- ing open. But he didn't care. Inside the helmet, in the utter privacy of his impervi- ous personal suit, he stared at the universe, seeing it for the first time. It was endless, shining, hypnotically beautiful. "All right, all right." Howard's voice was

softer, gentler "Sometimes I forget how it hits some people the first time. You've got five minutes to -see the show. Then we've got to get back to work or we'll miss the orbit-injection time. Here"— and Kinsman felt a hand on his shoulder— "don't go drift- ing loose. Use these for tethers." He felt a line being hooked into one of the loops at the waist of his suit. Looking around, he saw Howard do the same thing for Colt. "Go out and take a good look," Howard said. "Five minutes. Then we've got to count down the satellite." Kinsman floated free, outside the con- fines of the ship, and let the full light of Earth shine on his face. It was dazzling, over- powering, an all-engulfing expanse of curv- ing blue decked with brilliant white clouds. Hardly any land to be seen, just unbeliev- ably blue seas and the pure white of the clouds.

It was huge, filling the sky. spreading as far as he could see: serene blue and spar- Wild Ttirkey Lore: kling white, warm, alive, glowing, a beckon- ing, beautiful world, the ancient mother of mankind. The earth looked untroubled To see a Wild Turkey rise from this distance. No divisions marred her face; not the slightest trace of the frantic from the brush and soar works of her children soiled the eternal beauty of the planet. It took a wrenching away at fifty miles per hour effort of will for Kinsman to turn his face away from her. or more, is an unforgettable By turning his body, Kinsman could see the sun shining so fiercely that even his experience. heavily tinted photochromic visor wasn't The is enough protection. He squeezed his tear- Wild Turkey ing eyes shut and spun away.'angry yellow the symbol of America's splotches flecking his vision. "Can't see the moon," he heard Colt say. finest Bourbon whiskey, an "Must be on the other side of the earth," he answered. unforgettable experience

"Look! That red star. I think it's Mars." "No," Kinsman said. "It's Antares ... in in its own right. Scorpius."

"Christ, it's beautiful."

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which

thou hast ordained . . 'All right, all right," Howard's voice broke through to them. "Time to get back to work. You'll get plenty of chances to see more,.

:d on page 107 Avast, frozen wasteland lies in the glare of a far-off sun.

Everything is silent. In the deep cold, no organism moves, Gases billow forth from fissures in the ground, blanketing the sur- rounding area with a dense mist. Enormous palaces of crystal and ice slowly grow in endless layers of colors and shapes. This could be a description of our outermost planet, Pluto, or of

some light-years-distant world. It

is, in fact, the wintry landscape of Yellowstone National Park, our

first, and perhaps grandest, natu-

ral preserve. Created in 1872 by an act ot Congress, Yellowstone

is the interlace between the heat of the earth's core and the cold of the atmosphere— a place where an explorer can find spouting geysers, steaming fumaroles, and molten mud pots. The otherworldly appearance

of Yellowstone is heightened dramatically in the winter, especially with the absence of .visitors from the park, in striking contrast to the traffic jams of summer. Douglas Faulkner, best known for his underwater photog- raphy (Omni, May 1979), made a cold-season pilgrimage to capture the splendor that is Yellowstone. The geology of Yellowstone gives scientists clues to the inner workings of our planet and, by inference, to the secrets of other worlds. Jupiter's satellite lo, for instance, appears to have an active volcanic surface. The

Bubbling paint pots (tight) by steam rising through GEOSCAPES groundwater; Mammoth Springs (above). BY ERIC ROSEN

Sculpted by heat and cold, these awesome terrains may yield universal secrets

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOUGLAS FAULKNER geysers of Yellowstone are indicative of (he volcanic activity lhat formed the Rocky Mountains. Similarly, the crystalline structures that make up Ihe various hot springs of Yellowstone can help us understand what happens to chemical compounds under extreme conditions. Space, probably the harshest environment of all, furnishes a unique set of

circumstances to those who want to explore it. Yet space, too, is ruled by the same physical and chemical laws that govern the geology of Yellowstone. By first understanding Yellowstone, we may be able to ease our iransition to other, possibly habitable, worlds. Biologists also go to Yellowstone to study and discover. There, algae and bacteria live in close symbiotic relationships- on the surfaces of rocks as well as in the depths of pools. The various colors seen in these photographs are actually of different species of algae; each color corresponds to a temperature and acidity gradation within the pool.

* ^Deciphering Yellowstone's secrets may shed light on other worlds. The studies of contrast and changes in both plant and animal life in Above I he ic-"accs e: Yellowstone may be of great importance in the future. For example, Mammoth Springs are "perfect" environments may not be needed to support the huge algal actual:''/ layers of trav- ertine calcium protein factories we may eventually build in space; perhaps algae can a car- bonate rock carried In be adapted to a wide range of acidic environments much like those in solution ana deposited the pools of Yellowstone. It is possible thai a close examination of the ey water. Tiip. Syrnbiol- thermal gradients in the pools and surrounding areas will yield solu- ic -iigae and bacteria situation; tions to our energy machines may be designed to take advan- inhabit the surfaces of tage of gradients like these to produce electricity. Thus today's studies the rock terraces. of these earthly environments may provide tomorrow's answers. Middle: Snow crusts Yellowstone is a land of extreme contrasts— a land where the torrid over the edges of a heart of the earth is mingled with the cold of the air The awe and wonder hot pool. Bottom: that a visitor experiences there may be surpassed only by the unimag- Snow-covered terraces at Mammoth Springs. inable beauty of a planet's frozen landscape in deepest space. OO

Uf€ IN DrtRWIN's mivose BYGENEBYLINSKY

Tantalizing' perturbations in the motion of dis- est bodies visible through the 508-ceniirncie 1 tant stars suggest that planetary systems are telescope atop Mount Palomar, in California. For common. When theveil is finally lifted from the first time astronomers should be able fo pho- these faraway planets, whaf will we find? To start tograph planets of other stars. with, there are two kinds of life we probably won't Even before we see these planets, however, we find: exact replicas of man and those darlings of can rule out any hope of finding silicon-based life early science fiction, silicon-eating monsters with on them. That notion fails to stand up under the ammonia flowing through their veins. now-certain knowledge that the same chemical The famed Harvard paleontologist George elements exist everywhere in the universe and Gaylord Simpson wrote in his book This View of that the physical laws that apply here also govern

Life, in 1963, that "there is increasing recognition planets millions of light-years away. The recent of a new science of extraterrestrial life, some- discovery by radioastronomers that the universe times called exobiology— a curious development is teeming with carbon-based molecules, which in view of the fact lhal this 'science' has yet to are the building blocks of life, sfrongly suggests demonstrate that its subject matter exists!" that carbon is life's central element everywhere.

Simpson, -now retired in Tucson. Arizona, is still Silicon-based life simply doesn't work. Silicon waiting tor exobiology to show that its subject molecules don't have (he properties of organic, matter exists. carbon-based molecules. They don't react readi-

The surprising thing today is that Dr. Simpson, ly, they don't combine, and they don't have double and the rest of us, may not have long to wait. An or triple bonds — all the things that allow urgent new drive to locate planets circling distant biochemistry to take place. suns is getting under way. The great space tele- "It looks as if God is an organic chemist," says scope that NASA plans to put intoorbil in 1983 will Dr. Cyril Ponnamperuma, a prominent student of have a mirror 241 centimeters across, almost half life's chemical evolution, at Ihe University of Mary- the size of the largest Earth-based telescopes. It land. "Anywhere you direct your radiotelescopes, will see objects one-fittieth as bright as the faint- what do you see? You see these two molecules, hydrogen cyanide and formaldehyde. These two

Given stronger exoskelelons and a more efficient air can provide the pathway for everything else. And supply, there is no reason why insect organisms could they are the very things we get in laboratory mix- not grow large enough to carry a man-sized brain. tures that imitate the primitive conditions under

PAINTINGS BY WAYNE McLOUGHLIN 4 Intelligent beings may look humanoid, but the differences will be fundamental and profound. 9

which life as we know il arose on more convenient than lumber- Earth billions of years ago." ing along on more legs The In recent years radioastron- pitter-patter of more than four

' omers have identified 50 chem- feet may work for insects and icals in interstellar space. Of arachnids, but larger or- those, no fewer than 45 have ganisms would stumble all over biological significance— all themselves. Some of the early carbon compounds. "There is a fish that came onto the land simplicity in the whole may have had six fins, but their w scheme." Dr. Ponnamperuma descendants have four. Nature comments, "so much so that favors simplicity and centraliza- you almost feel the whole uni- tion as key survival patterns.

verse is trying to mate life. With Similarly, to swim rapidly, a the knowledge of organic creature has to assume a fish-

chemistry from the work we've like shape. To fly. it needs a done, I'm willing to say that streamlined, somewhat fishlike eventually we'll define life as a shape with wings. There is no property of the carbon atom. getting around these physical

The first thing I tell my students constraints, and there is no rea- is that a professor in the constel- son to believe that such limita- lation Andromeda is teaching tions will not exist on other

the same course I am." worlds. They may be somewhat

If carbon substitutes don't different, to be sure— trees on a work, neither do substitutes for larger planet, for instance,

water. Not only is there a lot would be short and squat— but ' more water than ammonia in they will be there. the universe, but the tempera- Physical requirements will ture range in which water re- dictate even seemingly minor mains liquid is much wider than details. A striking example on that o' ammonia. To take place, Earth is the development of biochemical reactions require a camera eyes in mammals and liquid solvent, such as water. in cephalopods such as the oc- And while intelligent extrater- topus and squid. Although dif- restrials may look somewhat ferent in details, the eyes in human, the differences will be both cephalopods and mam- fundamental and obvious. mals exploit the same princi- There is nothing in nature that ples. They are called camera dictates the emergence of eyes because, like a camera. brainy apes. Instead, evolution the lens focuses an image of has acted like a living, super- the object being viewed onto a sensitive tree, sending out intri- plane of light receptors, which cate, ever-changing branches take the place of film. Nature into the environment. There is discovered those principles nothing preordained about the success of these branches. In (act. long before man did and applied them to two radically different most evolutionary experiments wither and die in short order. kinds of organism because it's the only way to construct a nearly Dr. Simpson, our Harvard paleontologist, likens evolution to a perfect eye. Again, because all worlds are governed by the same lottery in which most of the ticket holders are losers— they become physical laws, parallel developments elsewhere seem inevitable. extinct— while some receive small prizes and a few become big In short, biologists see life forms on other planets following winners. "Man simply happens to be the descendant of a long line evolutionary paths that coincide to some extent with ours. Yet they of organisms that drew winning tickets in every successive adap- will differ significantly; exact duplicates of earthly evolution are tive radiation," he writes. "The basic adaptations of his ancestors highly unlikely. Although other life-bearing planets are expected to have proved, in hindsight, not to have closed out the evolutionary resemble Earth closely, even to have blue skies, they won't be future.'' Can a similar lottery take place on other planets? perfect replicas. Some may be smaller, some larger. Some may be The forms of animals everywhere are governed by the same completely covered with water.

physical laws. They will dictate some major similarities between life On planets without dry land, the ocean would still teem with life on other planets and that on Earth. For mammals, as well as for forms strangely similar to our mollusks. Whalelike and dolphinlike amphibians and some reptiles, one head, two eyes, and four limbs creatures would be absent, for those are mammals that went back are ideal. In the sea, such creaturesas the octopus and the starfish took on a radial form that enables them to see in all directions at Giraffelike beings (above) might inhabit a low-gravity, forested planet; the once. Yet on land even an octopus would find walking on all fours Batman's hands would limit technological skill despite his potent mind, 64 OMNI a

to the sea. Biologisls call such creatures hoglike wombat, and even an anteater. Al- Even the skeptical Dr, Simpson con- reentrants. An ocean planet would also though all these animals except the kan- cedes a long-shot possibility that manlike have primitive fishlike creatures, crusta- garoo and the koala resemble their placen- creatures might emerge on other planets. ceans, starfish, urchins, and similar spiny- tal-counterparts on other continents, they We would have to assume that they skinned creatures. are only distantly related to them. evolved from ancestors somewhat similar On the landmasses of other planets, too, Elsewhere, the placental mammals— the to those of man and that they passed we can expect to find organisms that seem "true" mammals— radiated to fill the eco- through the arboreal environment that faintly familiar. The history of life on Earth logical niches available to them. In Austra- gave man his stereoscopic vision, skillful clearly shows that animals of different an- lia the pouched marsupials did it because hands, and the beginnings of a large brain. cestries will seize any evolutionary oppor- there were no mammals ot significance to Humanoids, most scientists agree, are tunity and will solve whatever problems compete with them. Australia "had only likely to compose only a tiny minority of the face them in essentially the same way. On some rats and bats as early representa- intelligent life in the universe. Most other Earth three different vertebrates have de- tivesof the mammalian legions. intelligent beings will almost surely have veloped wings; the reptilian pterodactyls: A fascinating lesson can be learned from started from very different stock and will birds, which grew from a different flightless these earthly examples of what to expect therefore not resemble man. reptile; and the mammalian bats, insects on other worlds. There is no reason to be- We already know, however, that animals were geared for flight, too, of course, but lieve, for instance, that life elsewhere, need not climb trees to develop impressive they approached it somewhat differently, given the opportunity, will not try to fill intelligence. The noted biologist Norman J. Instead ot restructuring a quadruped ecological niches similar to those on Earth. Berrill observes: "The fact that the por- frame for flight, insects somehow grew Dr, Simpson and other biologists have poise, without having enjoyed living in the wings as original equipment, argued persuasively that evolution is non- treeiops, without having become a hunter

Millions of years have separated basi- repeatable and irreversible. If evolution on the plains, has. somehow managed to cally unrelated creatures that ventured into were starting over again on a primitive produce a brain whose complexity is com- similar "occupations" and wound up look- Earth, neither man nor other animals would parable to that of man is a puzzlement. It ing very similar. Two such creatures are the does show that we must not base every- extinct ichthyosaur and the dolphin. Dol- thing on human experience. And, there- phins evolved tens of millions of years after fore, large, intelligent brains are possible the ichthyosaurs were gone. Like all life on without having gone through our story." Earth, these two animals once had com- There might be another, more complex, QLife such as ours, with mon stock— but ancestors very much un- route to highly intelligent land dwellers — like either of them and dating back more water and carbon, return from the sea. Such an evolutionary than 200 million years, The dolphin, of reversal would require unimaginable mil- is just an ephemera! stage. course, is a mammal that went back to the lennia. It would take perhaps 100 million sea. while the ichthyosaur was a reptile that Most life is either years to reshape the seal into the doglike transition. also made the disembodied mind only or landlubber it appears once to have been. This fascinating evolutionary phenome- Unfortunately, the dolphin seems to have the silicon form non is known as convergence, though the gone too far to reshape the vestiges of its term is usually reserved for developments we call the computer, an hind flippers into legs again. It appears that that occur at about the same time. For immortal species.* the dolphin must have been an intelligent example, on three different continents, four-legged animal before it returned to the more or less simultaneously, there evolved sea that nurtured its ancestors. wolflike carnivores: the "true" wolt of And yet it seems most likely that land Eurasia and North America and ihe marsu- animals elsewhere develop their brains as pial, or pouched, "wolves" of South man did, in the trees. Because their envi- America and Australia. There is good rea- again evolve into their present form, Too ronment is similar to ours, these other- son for such convergence. All these carni- many unprecctabie happenings contrib- worldly beings will have features we'll rec- vores evolved to chase other creatures, uted to man and the other mammals now ognize—heads, eyes, ears, noses, and so and the wolflike shape fits that role best. living. If, as one scientist has commented, on. Yet few of the intelligent creatures In another striking example, the hum- a planet must be exactly the right distance elsewhere will be attractive by our stan-

,, mingbird and the humming moth have only from just the right type of star if it is to bear dards. You wouldn't necessarily go up the remotest common ancestry. Yet they life, then man just barely squeezed through and embrace one," Dr. Berrill says. have converged so remarkably in physical a crack in the evolutionary door. Some De- What kind of intelligent being evolves appearance, in flying habits, and in feedr vonian fish fortuitously developed depends, of course, on the ancestor that ing on the nectar c: flowers that at dusk and lungs— not to become landlubbers but to ascended into ihe trees. Many species at a distance it is difficult ior us to tell one cope with their own oceanic problems. other than man are possible, If a marsupial from the other. Climatic changes, solar and cosmic radia- "ape" descended from the trees to walk Convergence doesn't always lead to tion, and many other factors all influenced upright, the being that evolved would re- similar forms, however. The kangaroo is the the mutations that led to higher animals. semble man, but the females would come Australian counterpart of the cow and other There were altogether too many random equipped with pouches to carry their pre- hoofed grass-grazers— a hint of how crea- events in this history for it to be duplicated maturely born babies. tures on other worlds may differ from our exactly on another planet. Such equipment would neatly solve a fellow Earth dwellers. Yet physical niches mold the animals problem that may block the further evolu- Finally, a single creature, given enough that will inhabit them. The air calls for flying tion of man's brain. At birth, our brains are time and a big enough stage on which to creatures, the land for vertebrates that walk already so large that they barely fit through act, can give rise to a veritable zoo. The on all fours or on two hind feet, the sea for the pelvic opening. If the brain is to grow wildlife of Australia radiated from a primi- swimmers. Animals evolving at different further, future humankind must either en- tive pouched opossum that somehow times in distant places will vary in the size ot large the birth canal or manipulate the de- managed to island-hop from Asia perhaps their brains and in skeletal details, just as velopmental processes so that the brain 70 million years ago. From that single an- the three different "wolves" and the ich- can continue to grow long after birth. Our cestor developed the kangaroo, the koala, thyosaur and dolphin did. But their general marsupial cousins, though, could grow the flying-squirrellike phalanger, a native shape and function could come surpris- much bigger heads and perhaps be much mouse, a cat, a mole, a sloth, the ground- ingly close to those of earthly beasts, smarter than we are. They might be as far

66 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE 116 • . GRAVESIDE WATCH

The time capsule would be buried there — but who would dig

it up again? And when?

BY EDWARD H. GANDY

I heyhe jus! finished dig- ging [he grave today. We could bring our sleep- ing bags and lie beneath the stars all night," said Frank, pressing the phone receiver to his ear and watting for her answer. He peeked in- side the coin-return mouse hole of the public phone. There were no forgotten dimes, but someone had left in it a dead fly to discourage refunds to the more timid. "Hell, every teacher gets bummed out at the end of spring term.

That's why you're so depressed. Elaine. It hap- pens to me, too. But a good view of the Milky Way puts the whole college year in perspective.

What do you say? I hear it's very proletarian." Using his shoulder to pin the receiver to his ear; Frank finished reading the graffiti on the side of the phone booth. Graffiti were important elements in anthropology. A bulletin board for the anonymous. A scratch pad for the long min- utes on hold. Raw thoughts Raw art. Raw life. He checked on the fly again. Still dead. He started to lean against the glass wall of the phone booth, but he slumped down, dejected. "What? What do you mean? It's not like we're spending the night in a cemetery. It's the only grave there is on Raven Hill. And besides, it's not really a grave, just a huge hole.''

It was hot in that little glass house on the sidewalk. After a couple of minutes he was perspiring and speculating about photosyn-

PAINTING BY GAGE TAYLOR 68 OMNI thesis. Damn. Two days in this phone fort toward casualty prevention. More spe- gine, soft shoulders, loose gravel, rocking booth would have saved Elaine's African cifically, it was a good excuse to spend the back and forth in a hole that gets deeper- violets. They died today. She was telling night under the stars with Elaine. it was all too Freudian. He would walk. him about it for the fourth time. He opened He could just see her white skin glowing Frank shook his head to nudge his the door, stepping back to try to catch in the moonlight, her softness contrasting thoughts in another direction. Too much some of the early evening breeze, but the with the ruggedness of the outdoors. He idle speculation, he reminded himself as he phone cord wasn't long enough. They could see them slipping into the lush forest, shouldered his backpack. Always specu- never were. rolling naked in the grass, bits of straw and lating on this or that. Problem was, "this or

"I'll buy a loaf of bread and some wine," pebbles clinging briefly to her dreamlike that" could run from the rational to the he cut in, "What do you say?" After a polite flesh, which fluttered at the slightest touch. ridiculous in a flash.

pause, Elaine took up the slack in the con- . . . Unfortunately, the idea of exposing one- He took a deep breath of pine-scented versation with some straight talk about sun- self to the universe next to an open grave air to clear his head and then walked up light and humidity. Not to mention bugs— did not sizzle when it hit the tire of other the road to the grave. which she did. people's imagination. Although the hill was thick with trees, .Frank extended his arm, braced his 'Ah, c'mon, Elaine." there was a grassy clearing at the very top. hand on the phone, and did some more Reality was no match against Frank's Frank was almost there when, suddenly, he leaning. What else was there to do in a remarkable imagination. Never was and smelled smoke. He looked up and noticed

.phone booth? He began thinking about to- never would be. Even the psychiatrists had a light. It was the glow of a flickering morrow's burial. After all, he had a right to been unable to help. Frank had stopped campfire. He moved to the side of the road be proud of his efforts. He was only a teach- seeing them long ago, but he was still pay- and walked toward the edge of the clear- ing assistant, and, yet he was the one who ing the bills. ing. As he got closer, he heard the crack- put in for the grant, landed it, formed a "Yeah, "I understand. Maybe some other ling of the fire. Peering through a bush, he committee, and launched the whole time- time. Right. Talk to you later." He slammed saw an old man in a tight vest and baggy capsule project, He even wrote up the the receiver down on its cradle. Great, he pants bending overto pour himself a cup of press releases. Not to mention licking the thought, as he jumped into his car with his coffee. Frank could see the open grave a postage stamps— which he did. Hundreds camping gear. Cut to the quick by a dead couple of feet from the fire and a large ot them. plant. The world was definitely after him. mound of dirt next to the hole. The old man

And Ihere were other drawbacks. Like Frank raced through town as if the world sat down and spoke without bothering to camping out on the top of Raven Hil! to- was gaining on him, although he knew he look up. night, to keep an eye on the hole. Not that shouldn't be treating his Pontiac like this. "Not five minutes ago I saw a snake glide anyone was going to steal it— the college He downshifted to take the steep incline of into that bush you're hiding behind, son." president had assured him with a smile- the hill. Frank gingerly stepped into the open but liability-insurance rates dictated the He finally stopped his car when the and then became embarrassed at being presence of a hole watcher. Trying to make pavement ended. The last quarter mile to flushed out of the brush like a common the best of a bad situation, Frank had the top was bare dirt. He decided against quail. thought two hole watchers would better allowing his car to get down on the flesh of "Excuse me," said Frank, trying to ap- demonstrate a genuine hand-in-hand ef- the earth, Spinning wheels, groaning en- pear casual. "But what are you doing, here?" The old man looked away. Frank's eyes followed his until they came upon a wagon, a medicine-show wagon. A lantern, attract- ing the attention of a number of flying in- sects, hung from a rusty hook at a corner of the old wagon. Frank could barely make out the dimly lighted sign painted on one side of the rig. The red lettering formed two half circles, one inside the other; G. o. SAGEHORN AND HIS TRAVELS MEDICINE SHOW, "Want some coffee, son?" "Wha-?" "Coffee." He whistled sharply, and Frank stepped back at the sound of movement under the wagon. A German shepherd came trotting out. Frank thought the dog

was beautiful even though it was quite dusty. The old man banged the side of the coffeepot with a stick, and the dog jumped

into the back of the wagon. Moments later it came out with a tin cup in its mouth and ran up to him. "Sit down, son." He took the cup and

filled it. "Whal's your name?" "Frank," he said, hesitating. "Frank Hen- derson."

"Well, I hope you like your coffee black." 'Ah ... yeah," Frank said, sitting down rather slowly and eyeing the man.

"Good. Sagehorn's the name, and this is Plato." The dog raised its head at the sound "He said, 'Thy laith hath made thee whole' and told me to come of its name. Frank nodded to both of them back in two weeks for a checkup." as Sagehorn handed him his coffee. Sagehorn was an odd-looking man, His, long hair and bushy eyebrows were white, his eyes watered, his nose iwitched, and his face was pushed forward slightly, as if he were squinting into a strong wind. In- deed, Frank would bet that the old man could stand in front of a closed window and make it appear to be windy "Quite a hole," said Sagehorn, gazing at the grave, "Yeah." Frank turned to look back at the wagon again, not sure of what to think. He noticed a horse by the trees. He could feel his boyish imagination rioting inside him, trying to get out but not succeeding. Frank was too edgy in these strange surround- ings to be anything less than alert, A though! occurred to him. "Did you come to see the burial?" he asked.

"Most assuredly. As soon as I heard

about this time capsule, I packed in my show put my horse and wagon in a truck, and headed for Oregon." Frank gave Sagehorn a cold look. "Buri- al's not until tomorrow. Are you camping here tonight?" Sagehorn surveyed Frank's sleeping bag and backpack. "I might ask you the same question." He seemed offended. "Lighthouse keeper." Frank explained.

"It seems that I've been elected to come up here and throw a light on the hole. Make sure some poor astronomy student doesn't drop out of sight in mid-stride." "Yes, that would be a nasty fall." Frank nodded. "Yeah, it's a deep one, all right. But the time capsule will be there for a long time." Sagehorn smiled, "Yes, indeed. I'm sure it will. And, as a matter of fact, I have a plan that will determine whether the capsule will be found and opened a thousand years from now." "Well, we've taken a few steps to make sure it will be found." "Such as?"

"Nabbed a government grant. Need I say more?" But Frank did, for he never passed up a chance to talk about his cap- sule. "The capsule wasn't built in metal shop," he concluded, after running through a list of problems the subcontractors had had in building something that could sur- vive for a thousand years. Sagehorn seemed to be really inter- ested. Intensely, almost like a child would have been. "What other steps have you taken to ensure its discovery?" Sagehorn asked. Frank looked up in time to see a shooting star over the trees. He remembered search- ing the sky for them for hours when he was a boy. But shooting stars aren't really stars at all. He knew that now. Sometimes it was better to have a child's faith. At least it didn't get bruised as badly. He looked at Sagehorn and studied his wind-blown face for any hint of a second childhood. The old man certainly had one foot in the past, with that wagon. Question was, Where was his other foot? "Well," said Frank, "we've printed up .

hundreds of small books. They describe He heard the wind start to blow— first in the doing the revolving." He pulled his stick out

Ihe time capsule's location and ask that it trees to Ihe left, and then in the trees over of the coals and lit his cigar with it, 'Ah," he not be opened until the year 2980. In fact," the wagon. He wished he was here with continued between puffs, "but that appar- and his tongue grew dry at the memory, "1 Elaine instead of this crazy old ... con ent contradiction didn't disturb Pythagoras spent most of last week mailing them out to man? Maybe. Sagehorn was obviously try- in the least, not in the least." museums and the rare-book sections of ing to arouse his curiosity. But why? Frank "Truly admirable of him, but we've pro- libraries all over the world. Even a few finally relented a bit. "What's your theory gressed a little since then." monasteries." He shrugged. "The time about time travel?" "Exactly! In the ^ast thirty years we've capsule will probably survive and be re- Sagehorn poked at the fire with a stick advanced more in science than in all of membered." and smiled. "Simply put, that there are time history. For the first time we're experiencing

"Well, if it is found and opened a travelers among us right now." a geometric progression of knowledge. thousand years from now, I'll know about it Frank began swirling his coffee again, Our scientific information is doubling every within two weeks." and the fire crackled in agreement. five years. My God, if that acceleration rate Frank concealed a smile behind his cup. "Really," Sagehorn said, "it's a most logi- remains the same, then we're talking about

"Oh? How?" cal theory if you assume that man will even- doubling something two hundred different

"I'll show you." Sagehorn got up and tually accomplish anything he puts his times before that capsule will be opened. walked over to his wagon. Brushing by the mind to. In a thousand years he will most Why, take a single penny, double it twenty- lantern and the insects, he climbed into the assuredly discover the secret of time travel. seven limes, and you're a millionaire! Twen-' front of the rig and disappeared over the He will journey into his past to discover how ty-seven times! With that kind of accelera- seat. the Pyramids were built, to attend the trial of tion of learning, can you imagine what will With cup in hand. Frank wandered over Socrates, to witness the crucifixion of happen alter doubling our knowledge two to examine the old sign more closely but Christ. So it must be logical to assume that hundred times'" Can you

But it didn't work. Through a break in the outclassed anyway. Sagehorn might be trees he could see the lights of the city in crazy, but he was also well prepared to it Frank could see the distance. He searched through the pat- defend his theory. tern of quiet lights until he recognized those the open grave a couple of "So, what's in the box?" Frank asked, of the university. There was the glitter of Sagehorn grinned, picked up the box, feet from the fire Washington Boulevard, the street he and and brushed some imaginary dust off the Elaine walked down on the way to the cam- and a large mound of dirt on lid with the back of his hand. 'A scroll that pus—talking about their students, sharing the other side tells a most interesting story. Used a special the morning air. And over there— three paper and ink to ensure that it survives the of the hole. The old man sat streets down, just this side of the neon thousand years. Yes. I've baited this hook carefully." lights of Manchester Boulevard — that was down , . . without very her street. And over there, that dark area "What are you using for bait?" bothering to look up* must be the park. No . . . the golf course "Well, what better way to lure a time

maybe . . . no . . . not big enough . . traveler out into the open than with another Sagehorn swung back over the seat and time traveler? Specifically, a supposedly dropped to the ground. The wagon stranded time traveler in need of rescue, i squeaked and nodded its relief. "Just put mean, if they do any kind of exploring in this this inside your time capsule." He held out open. And I have a plan that will do just time dimension, they're bound to lose a few a small metal box. that." poor souls. People who never come back "Capsule's already full Invention of "I see. What's your plan got to do with my from their journey through the past. People yours?" time capsule?" lost in a strange dimension, stranded in

"Hardly. To talk to someone from our fu- "Your time capsule, if it survives a some ancient era. An Amelia Earhart- type ture does not require some sort of inven- thousand years, will be opened by a soci- of disappearance in the oceans of time. I tion.'' He raised, or rather hoisted, his heavy ety that has the ability to travel back think it's safe to assume such an occur- eyebrows. "Simple logic will suffice." through time." rence." Frank looked down and aimlessly Frank rolled his eyes up in disbelief. "Murphy's Law." swirled the coffee around in his cup. "Impossible?" said Sagehorn. "Precisely. And suppose you were a time "Logic? To talk to someone from our fu- "What, time travel? The whole concept traveler grounded in ihe twentieth century. ture?" contains too many contradictions." How else to get a message to the future,

"It's based upon a simple theory of time Sagehorn looked down at his metal box telling of your plight, than through a time travel. Lecture circuit, you know." He and rubbed the edge of it with his index capsule?" tugged at his vest. "Speak at colleges, finger as if there was a smudge on it. "Con- How else, indeed? It struck Frank as an . county fairs, outdoor festivals, and such, tradiction is a most tricky word, son. After interesting notion. He couldn't help thinking using the frontier medicine show as my all, what's in a contradiction?" about it for a moment. "One question," he

it, format, Adds a bit of flavor to my lectures. Sagehorn let the question dangle in the said. 'As I understand your scroll por-

Although, I confess, it's my card tricks that wind for a moment while he pulled a cigar trays a time traveler stuck in this century " bring the people to my wagon out of his vest. He bit off one end and em- Now, it seems to me that our language is "Well," said Frank, looking back over his ployed the grave as a spittoon. "Point of bound to go through some drastic changes shoulder, "I think the wagon itself would view." in the next few centuries. Wouldn't a real suffice, I mean, draw the crowds." "Oh?" time traveler jot down his S.O.S. in some

. Sagehorn didn't see the humor. So Frank "For example, twenty-five hundred years language of the future?" cleared his threat to suppress the tickle in ago Pythagoras claimed the earth revolved 'Ah, but the scroll is never purported to his thoughts They both walked back to the around the sun. Well, anyone could see it be written by Ihe time traveler himself. It's grave and sat down. The fire was warm, was the sun rising and setting. So obvi- written by a friend who knows of his true and Frank was glad to be next to it again. ously, from their point of view, it was the sun origin, who helps him survive in this primi- 72 OMNI CO\.nNUfnONPAGF114

America's most influential psychologist wonders whether we take the future seriously enough to survive. What counts, says B. F. Skinner, is not our beliefs or our ideals but our behavior. irUTER\yiEWJ

one of his essays. Professor B. F Skinner reprints a cartoon insisted, thai the psychologist : can observe and measure; there- Inlhat shows one mouse exc aiming io another "Boy, have I got fore, only stimuli and behavior (rather than motives, drives, that guy up there emo- fixed! Every time I press this bar. he gives me tions, or other abstractions) food!" could be the foundations of a Who is controlled, and how? Is the experimenter in his genuinely scientific psychology. desire The goal of such a discipline to verity a theory or fo win the acclaim of colleagues, really would be the prediction and control of behavior. No one since any more -free" or autonomous than the mouse? Questions like Watson has done more to develop techniques for achieving those these— questions that concern the causes, conditions, and con- intriguing if controversial goals than B. R Skinner has. trol of behavior— have been Burrhus Frederic Skinner's absorbing He has been a researcher (the "Skinner box" for operant condi- sludy for 50 years. And his answers directly have challenged our tioning of animals, the first leaching machines, the "air crib" for most cherished belief— that we are essentially self-directing be- efficient and heallhy infant care); writer {The Behavior of Or- - ings lenaciously grasping the reins of our own destinies. ganisms. Walden Two, Beyond Freedom and Dignity): and teacher E After a Pennsylvania boyhood marked by a wide-ranging (at Harvard, the University of Minnesota, Indiana University, and "curiosity" (he rejects the label; | see p. 79), Skinner began his finally Harvard again, where he has been Pierce Professor of % career asa graduate instructor at Harvard in 1931. At that time the Psychology since 1958). While his experimental techniques and | school of psychology known as behaviorism had been developing findings are widely accepted, his interpretation of ihem — and his f for two decades along lines laid down by its founder John B. advocacy o1 their application to social goals — has kept him at the It Walson. It is only stimuli and the resultanl behavior, Watson had center of controversy. Skinner, however remains unflappable. propose to defend it. They do so not out of wounded Critics have charged that his approach denies all that is most those who the scientific formulation has destroyed accus- important about human beings and that its influence could lead to vanity but because reinforcers"— such as the reassuring but unprovable notion a society of puppets continually manipulated by rewards and tomed accomplished and deliberately provocative con- punishments, or "positive and negative reinforcements." But we of free will. An Skinner feigns surprise at the sometimes violent reac- are already manipulated, Skinner rejoins, by parents, institutions, troversialist, Utopian community depicted in Walden Two. "I've often and such economic forces as advertising. "The best defense I can tion to the Let myself, What's eating these people? Apparently, the main see is to make all behavioral processes as familiar as possible. asked difficulty is that my 'good life' was planned"by someone." everyone know what is possible, what can be used against him. planning and control are so loaded that it is some- When people are being pushed around, controlled by methods The ideas of remember Skinner's first and lasting commitment: that are obvious to them, and when things become too aversive, times difficult*} scientific understanding of human behavior in accord they turn against the controller," to attain a rather than with what we might like to believe. That Skinner wants to see behavioral principles used to fulfill with the evidence, owing to Skinner's influence, that understanding is grow- human potential has not spared him vehement opposition. "What Largely for future was explored between Pro- people do about such a scientific picture of man," he says, "is call ing steadily. Its promise the interviewer Michael Hollingshead. it, attack fessor Skinner and Omni it wrong, demeaning, and dangerous, argue against and

build a equipment for recorded music. There was Omni: Can there ever be a genuine sci- Skinner: I think the goal there is to no television set, but they are now putting in ence of human behavior? "prosthetic" environment. Eyeglasses, are prosthetic de- a single color set with a video recorder, so Skinner: It all depends on how complete a hearing aids, crutches program can be put on a cassette science you mean, There are things the vices that enable people to function well that a in at any time and biochemists can't explain, and the. as- despite deficiencies. Why can't a whole and people can drop

play it. I suggested also that by adding a tronomers know how difficult it is to make institution be a prosthetic environment, a video camera they could record their own sense of the radiation coming in from the world in which a retarded person can lead a plays other programs. universe. Their fields are obviously much reasonably dignified: happy life? It won't be and high turnover is much I don't think their as more advanced. Butthereisatleasta"core the everyday world. Unfortunately, it also of implicit criticism as you might sup- science" of behavior won't be the world of most institutions for an Twin Oaks, spend a that we'll ever retarded persons, because they are politi- pose. People go to I don't think for a moment year or two, and leave, but they leave in be able to predict what an individual will do cal footballs and don't have the money they much better shape than when they arrived. next, because that depends on his genetic need to work along these lines. It's a therapeutic experience for many makeup and personal history, and we can Omni: In Walden Two you envisioned a people who learn how to get along well never know enough about that for detailed "controlled" environment that would stimu- enough to adjust to the outside world, prediction. But we can discover general late growth and happiness. Today there are ideas. which is where they may eventually prefer processes at work in every individual, and several communities based on those that this would happen? to be. with those we can conduct experiments to Did you imagine might be Omni: The idea of an extensively planned improve our knowledge and develop a Skinner: I was guessing at what in 1945, before there community worries many people, perhaps , technology of behavior: better ways of done. I wrote the book they associate planning with teaching, of inducing people to work care- was any behavior modification based on because been some despotism and associate "muddling fully and well and to enjoy what they're do- operant principles. There had of fears, the through" with democracy. ing, of solving psychological problems, work on the desensitization but There's nothing necessarily au- and so on. background of work we have now just didn't Skinner:

I it as a of the exist. tocratic about planning. don't see Omni : Perhaps the best-known tools time, but if I'm to judge from the com- behavioral technology you've envisioned I guessed wrong some of the problem, large part of the munities that are modeled a bit on the pat- are negative and positive reinforce- right, I think, a surprisingly of con- tern of Walden Two — not completely, of ment—punishment and reward. There time. I described a world minimal they're too small, for one thing, nor seems to be a long-term tendency in your sumption and minimal pollution and of course; for are the residents all good behaviorists. I work to move toward the latter. maximal socializing and opportunity Wind, a similar behavior. It substitutes direct in- understand that at East I creative Skinner: Yes. I don't like punishment. community in Missouri, they tried for a few don't like to be punished or to see others teraction for economic exchanges and months, as an experiment, to get a consen- punished. One of the first tasks of a science police action. Instead of punishing your sus every decision. If it works better, then of behavior should be to find substitutes for neighbor by going to the police, you cen- on that way; that's how things traditional punitive methods. Over the cen- sure with a frown. There are no contrived you adopt should be done. Twin Oaks has had groups turies we've successfully moved away from reinforcers: Mo one passes out tokens or the who practiced meditation. At one point many of them, as in education and psycho- candies. It's a world so designed that strong anti -Walden Two group, industry, needed to keep it going are au- there was a therapy. Now it is being done in behaviors it was tolerated. No one suppressed it. too. Many people feel that a worker's tomatically reinforced. and Omni: But the question of control keeps wages are positive reinforcement, but they Omni: A recent documentary film showed of arising, because the planned environment aren't, really. You don't work on Monday your visit lo Twin Oaks, one the com- ques- seems to presuppose a controller. morning for the paycheck on Friday after- munities based on Walden Two. The Skinner: Quis custodiet ipsos cusrodes"? I noon; you work to avoid being discharged tion of "defection" was raised, where don't see my answer to that isn't more and missing the paycheck. In other words, people come for a short time but don't stay why understood The control, you see, an industrial-wage system establishes a on. In fact, only one of the founding mem- easily Did in the evolution of cultural prac- level of existence from which you can be bers was still there after twelve years. emerges social Dar- advice on to create a more tices. I'm not talking about cut off if you don't work. they ask for how emergence of a culture that will Systems that involve positive reinforce- stable community? winism, the they asking "take over," but about successful practices ment yield better results and remove the Skinner: I don't believe were atten- within culture. If you design a better way side effects of negative reinforcement that me for advice, but I thought they paid a for of teaching, who is to put it into effect? people try to, escape: absenteeism, tion when I made some suggestions— profit from good frequent job cfTanges, and so forth. example, about their scarcity of entertain- Those, obviously, who the educational estab- Omni: You've spoken of the possibility of a ment. There was almost no money in their teaching. At present is so inert that no one is controlled environment for retarded budget to make life interesting. They had a lishment in America anything except a tradition that people. Can you expand on that? fiddler for square dancing but very littlr in control of squanders half the lives of millions of people. The thing about a small community is

that everyone is asking, "Will it work? Will it survive?" We don't ask those questions about, say, the American way of life, be-

cause we think it's going to survive long enough that we needn'l worry. In a small

community when it appears that a practice increases the chance of survival, that prac- tice is adopted. You don't need a controller: The demonstrated advance takes control through action that furthers the adoption of Ihe practice.

If the survival of America were really threatened by a twenty-percent illiteracy rate, or whatever it is today, then new ways of teaching reading and writing would be adopted quickly. But we're not worried enough. If you have a culture that takes the future into account, then steps are taken before you reach the stage where some totalitarian "controller" steps in and talks, about destruction to make survival impor- tant to people. Omni: The word survive has been very im- portant in the recent transformation of China. The Chinese people were told the nation wouldn't survive if they didn't work toward certain social goals. Skinner: Any revolution brings that into play almost immediately. The Soviet Union has never gotten over its fear of attack since 1917. The whole question is. What kind of conformity contributes to the survi- val of a culture, and what kind threatens it?

After all, we want conformity in paying our taxes, obeying the law, respecting the rights and properly of others, and so on. Omni: What about education? People re- sist the idea of teaching machines, which they think of as leading to too much con- formity in the students. Philips Skinner: I object to teaching everyone Only helps you pro- precisely the same thing, because diver- ct them both. Bee sity is essential. A system that doesn't rec- lips turn ognize this threatens survival.

. -.a. built-in stylus force gauge. Omni: You have said that we should teach things more important than geography, To let you see at a glance the arithmetic, and such like — things such as ight of the styius on your ways of memorizing, clear thinking, three- cords. So the Philips touch dimensional thinking.

Skinner: I don't think anyone has ade- quately analyzed the behavior we call think- ing; certainly no one I know of is working on the most effective ways of teaching it. Try- ing to teach people to think would be a good way to discover what thinking really is. ich operation. Omni: Are you describing the teaching of i get the Philips abilities rather than teaching facts? nearest Philips Skinner: I don't believe in "abilities." To say at $140,* that an artist is creative because he pos- I sesses creativity is double-talk. If you look ;h for you, too. at what the creative artist does that is dif- ferent from what others do, you might find out something that would suggest ways of producing more creative behavior. Or take "curiosity." People don't look WHO KNOWS, KNOWS about them because they possess a trait or faculty of "curiosity." They look about be- cause looking about has been reinforced, because surprising things have turned up I PHILIPS underneath objects and around corners. If force of habit? io be deprogrammed. How do you feel you grow Up in a world in which everything Skinner: "Force of habit" doesn't tell you about this question of reconditioning is visible, you go through life accepting anything. Of course it's important to get people?

whatever you see and never exploring. something published, but that's not the re- Skinner: In a way, all psychotherapy is re- Omni: How do you distinguish between inforcer when you're at your desk. The main programming. You aren't curing a disorder. operant conditioning and what Konrad thing is getting sentences to say what you you're adding something to the history of

Lorenz calls imprints— genetic, neurologi- have to say; getting something straight for the individual. If what you add is powerful

cally determined behavior that seems lo be the first time, seeing a manuscript grow enough, it will almost certainly lead to dif- released accidentally and is very power- And you punish yourself when you discover ferent behavior. ful? Doesn't conditioned behavior require that a section is badly written and_must be Omni: One prospect for the design of envi- continual reinforcement? done over The critical response after pub- ronments arises in the current discussion of Skinner: You don't ask why one goes on lication undoubtedly has some effect. But space habitats; that's an area where your eating sweet things all one's life! The sweet when, say. you're practicing on a tram- work could have important applications. things- are thereto reirtorco the behavior of poline, it's not the award at the Olympics Have you talked with Gerard K. O'Neill or ealing. It has been clearly shown by Neil that makes the difference between coming others working on thai? of is right Peterson, one rny students, tha! what down and. coming down wrong. It's Skinner: No. although I have thought

inherited in the case of imprinting is not a doing it right and not cracking your skull. about it. I think it's go ng to be a long time tendency to follow the mother or another Omni: You have debated publicly with Carl before space solves the problem of over- imprinted figure, as Lorenz's gosling fol- Rogers, the psychologist. Where do you population here, but we are probably going

lowed him; it is a susceptibility to rein- stand on the "ideal person," the desirable to have space platforms for small popula- forcement by proximity. Peterson showed end product of any scheme of growth? tions, and their survival raises the question

that if, when a duckling pecks al a spot on Skinner: I think, in looking at things such of design. If things went bad, you'd be in the wall, you bring the- imprinted object as health and physical and mental enjoy- real trouble, So you must think very care-

, closer, the duckling will continue lo peck. In' ment, Carl and I would call the same fully aboul how people are to interact.

' nature, the behavior that brings an object Wouldn't it be wonderful if we thought as

closer is walking toward it. But Peterson seriously about a classroom, a factory, or a

went on to show that if you arrange things family? But our sense of the future is still too so that the object moves away when the far away.

duckling walks toward it and comes around Omni: Is that because awareness of a fu- 6/ don't believe in in front when the duckling walks away, the ture is not a motivation in itself? People can duckling will walk away. So even that "in- "abilities." To say that an artist be aware of the connection between smok-

nate" behavior depends on appropriate re- ing cigarettes and lung cancer, but it is creative because inforcement. doesn't stop them from smoking.

There may well be redundant mecha- he possesses creativity is Skinner: It's the whole question of whether nisms, though. coll struggles A to its feet double-talk. If remote consequences can have any effect after being born and stays close to its upon people. Obviously they can't, in a lit- you look at what he does, mother, probably as a result of natural eral sense, because a future event does noi_

selection, although I daresay we could also you might affect anything. But some cultures have

gel it to stamp its hoof to make -its mother managed to give find out something, 9 those who belong to them come close, as Peterson did with the duck- reasons for behaving now in ways that have ling in another experiment. a bearing on the future. Successful cultures Omni: Do you apply your findings to moti- give the best current reasons for behaving

vate yourself? in ways that make a future possible. Skinner: Yes, quite definitely. Most of my Omni: Do you see anything developing in

professional life these days is verbal — I no people successful. We would agree that current American atti:udes or behavior that

it longer have a laboratory— and I have care- you should enjoy what you're doing, do might threaten our future? Do you delect

fully designed a world in which I can come because you want lo rather lhan because any promising signs?

up with as much verbal behavior that is you have to. I would put that down to the Skinner: If you think about threats to the

strictly mine as possible. I could write consequences involved— whether you act human species, there are many areas in books by commenting on or revising what to avoid punishment or for positive conse- which Ihe United Stales plays an important

I others have said and written; could get quences—but Rogers, as far as I know, role. First of all, our stockpiles of nuclear

books out of books, but I don't. 1 get them would talk in terms of the fulfillment of the weapons and our general unwillingness lo out of my own research, my own books, person. We are about as tar apart on ques- reduce them, and particularly to make sure and my own life. tions of means as any two people could be, that not one nuclear bomb tails into the

Omni: Can you extrapolate to others? Are but I think we are quite close on ends. wrong hands. Second, our consumption of there general principles by which we can Omni: Have you paid attention to. such resources: We are using up critical materi- learn to guide ourselves 7 modification programs as est? als and energy at a very high rate com-

Skinner: Oh, yes. Several books have re- Skinner: Yes. Three of my friends have pared with the i ale o- their consumption by,

cently been published in the field of self- been Ihrough ii. Two of them wrote a report, say, the people of India. This poses a threat

management. You don't control yourself by saying that it might have favorable conse- to the whole world.

using your willpower, but by arranging a quences, and they felt that it had been so However,- there are things in our favor:

world in which behavior Lhat is important to for them. I suppose any rather violent Our technology is superior to most nations', you actually occurs. You control your be- episode in one's life might have favorable and we are far ahead in the analysis of

havior precisely as you would that of some- effects, but it can also be dangerous. behavior. No other country comes near us

- one else. I'm not saying that I do this per- I'm not going io try to explain the Guyana in this field. Interest is spreading now, but fectly or that anyone can. But, by noting the tragedy, or to explain the almost equal the technology of behavior has been

conditions under which we work well and tragedies of the Moonies and Scien- primarily an American achievement. If it by making every effort to maintain them, we tologists. They're still alive— some part of proves to be the case that our only hope is can maximizefhe probability of the behav- them, at least— but it's a kind of behavioral to catch ourselves before it's too late and to ior that is important to us. death. apply scientific analysis to our problems, Omni: Is writing conditioned by the reward Omni: People, talk loosely about how ihen perhaps we can be forgiven our of seeing it in print, or would you say it's others have been programmed and need carelessness in other areas. DQ 80 OMNI

EYEWITNESS TO SPACE

BYF. C. DURANT III

The artist discerns not only with his eyes but with all his physical senses. Emotional impact adds emphasis, color, and mood to the mental image.

^< "*vT* V* 'Hey Joe! Who are those guys with sketch pads down at the gantry?"

The scene: Cape Canaveral. Spring 1963. It was, indeed, incon- gruous—artists recording space history in the midst of technicians and the world's most complex and advanced machines. Were not cameras good enough to record these momentous events? No. Too chancy. The lifetime of photographic film and prints— particularly color— was un- known and suspect. Oil paintings, canvas, and inks, however have survived for centuries. This set the stage for a unique collaboration. To record the manned space program for posterity, James E. Webb,

Clockwise from bottom iefl: Celestial Journey, by Lamar Dodd, visualizes the distant lunar target tor Apollo missions; Within Saturn's Rings. byLudek Pesek, a well-known astronomical artist. Czech e'migre' Pesek now resides in Switzerland. Moonscape, Yeftee Kimball's ethereal moon; Mars from Deimos, by Pesek.

* The artist's vision is colored by memory, technique, and emotional response. 9 * Wonderfully, each artist sees and interprets the same scene differently. 9

then administrator of NASA, asked H. Lester Cooke (at the National Gallery of Art) to enlist the help of top American artists. Cooke, himself an artist, and James Dean, NASA's leading graphic designer, set up a program that resulted in the submission of hundreds of drawings, lithographs, and paintings. Some were illustrative, others abstract. NASA extended to the artists invitations to visit Cape Canaveral for a launch, or Mission Control, at Houston, or to await splashdown, aboard a recovery ship. Desired were "emotional impact, interpretation, and hidden significance of these events that lie within the scope of the

Clockwise from right: VAB Bay, NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, in which Lowell Nesbitt looks up into the 150-meter bays: Apollo 11, final nighttime preparations lor launch, by Mario Cooper; Ladders, by Mitchell Jamleson; Apollo 11 —One, Two, Three, by James Wyeth, rescue vehicles on standby, rixyVrria/n fixyofaunM

artist's vision." Positive response to these invitations was immediate. Since 1963 small groups of the finest American artists have inter- preted each manned space mission. Next year astronauts Young and Crippen will be launched into orbit aboard the space shuttle. Colum- bia. A select group with sketch pads will be at the Cape, at Mission Control, and at the landing strip in California, recording the event. OO

Clockwise iron ie!'; We grr.less. a ooruayi ng free-fall in space, by Robert Shore; First Step on the Moon, by Norman Rockwell; Suiting Up. with astronauts Grissom and Young, oil on canvas by Norman Rockwell.

^American artists will record the shuttle's flight from blast-off to touchdown $ s

Tomorrow's Einsteins may be among the graffitied walls of a New York high school SARASWATI IN THE BRONX

BY WILLIAM K. STUCKEY

Alert is too weak 3 word for these students. They gulp a teacher's facts down raw and drink them dry. They are single-minded knowledge cannibals, and you'd better get out of the way. Once, for example, a teacher here — at the Bronx High School of Science— called on a student to solve some mathematical problems at the blackboard, and the student leaped to his feet. Meanwhile, a second student tainted and thudded to the floor. The first student merely stepped over the body and began a Euclidean straight-line course to the blackboard. On a grassy and suburb- like campus on West 207th Street, not far from the upper- middle-class community of Riverdale or the rugged turf of the Villa Avenue. gang, is perhaps the finest public high

school in the nation. It is one of a select few that require an enfrance examination. Students at Bronx Science are a group of driven adolescents who live to have their 1.0. (usually around 130) stretched and to post grade averages as close as possible to the ultimate 100. Afterward, they go on to be tapped by the Harvards, Princetons, and Sfanfords of the world. Bronx Science students. generally, come from house- holds like that of Arani Bose, a seventeen-year-old graduating senior who was bom in India. To understand one of Ihe Bose household's rituals is to understand Arani and many of his fellow students. Arani's father, Professor Anindya

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL SOMOROFF Bose, is an information 'scientist and former or other noted brilliance factories to join ic achievement alone appeared to be medical illustrator. He once painted, in his that top-1-percent elite who shape the fu- qualified.)

spare time, a striking portrait ot Saraswati, ture and generally arrange things for the Sciencers receive extensive practice in the Hindu goddess of education and wis- planet. For instance; one alumnus is Leon the game of science. In addition lo being dom, which, of course, includes science. Cooper, a Nobel Prize winner in physics. offered college-level courses and broad Every year, on Saraswati's holy day the Another is Harold Brown, the former presi- experimental opportunities, they are Bose family ritual ly offers her gifts, in the dent of Caltech, who currently serves as trained to write scientific papers and have form of textbooks. secretary of Defense for President Carter three high-level school journals in which io "I've often wondered if Jews aren't sub- (One former Sciencer who in the 1960s publish. Science's facilities include an ob- ject to similar conditioning," speculates the reached for similar power and failed is the servatory and a radio station and the first easygoing principal of Bronx Science, Mil- black activist Stokeley Carmichael.) We will sophisticated computer to be purchased Ion Kopelman. "On high holy days, you soon be hearing from yet another Bronx by a high school. Yet experimentation at know, the Torah is taken from the ark and Science graduate, Professor Steven Wein- Science differs sharply from that on the each member of Ihe synagogue kisses it. berg, of Harvard, who is a sure-shot for the university level in that no student has a Perhaps (his reverence for the Bible ex- Nobel Prize in physics for his bold attempt government grant. Sciencers must simply tends to all books. Anyway, it explains a lot at what Einstein assayed and failed to scrounge for their supplies and computer of what we see here." achieve, the development of a unified-field time. (One Science wag was spotted wear- This extraordinary . results theory. university book worship Scratch many presidents, ing a T-shirt saying, i am a teen-age science in an extremely high student grade aver- provosts, deans, and professors — even HUSTLER.) age. But when a university inquires about a New York politicians— and you'll find Bronx Since Bronx Science is part of the New student's grade standing, Kopelman sim- Science beneath their surface. York public-school system — an unusual ply doesn'l tell. Maybe all Sciencers don't run the world, part, however to which a number of stu- "Class standings are meaningless here," but the world, at least, is watching them dents in private and parochial schools he "In closely. Dr. says. another high school, an aver- Alexander Taffel, who was the transfer— it doesn't have a flashy PR de- age of ninety would put you near the top of partment to prepare its lists of "firsts" and the class. Here it would make you about "mosts" and keep the lists up to date. How- four hundred twenty-fifth out of our eight ever, one can gather random data, col- hundred fifty graduates." lected from the memories of Science's fac- What you don't often see at "Science" ulty, that give a rough idea of the school's (ihe students' appropriate label for their * Scratch many position in the world of scientific achieve- school) is the wild student who writes The ment. Equation on toilet paper, yells for God to university presidents, provosts, For instance, a twenty-year-old study come out and fight, scrawls filthy graffiti deans, and (never updated) placed Bronx Science first about Sir Isaac Newton on rest-room walls, in the nation on the basis of the number professors— even New York of and somehow stays sober enough for ten graduates who went on for doctoral de- years or so to a university job — keep and win City politicians grees in science (and it was noted that only the Nobel Prize. 60 percent of Science's graduates and you'll find Bronx Science entered . Nor are there many science-fiction read- into careers of a scientific nature). their ers, although two SF journals are published beneath surface.^ Another way to judge Science's impact is at the school. "Our kids are rather tradi- the Westinghouse Talent Search, which re- tional." explained Mark Rifkin, chairman of ceives about 15,000 experiments, papers, the English department, "and they demand devices, or demonstrations from the na- ihe classics." That conservative Science tion's adolescent research hopefuls each character was highlighted a few years ago, year. Of these 15,000, only 40 go on to when a film on a "possible" space experi- principal of Science tor 20 years until his become national finalists. In the almost ment was shown. The students' general recent retirement and replacement by 40-year history of the Talent Search, Sci- reaction was that the experiment was too Kopelman, recalls that a number of Rus- ence has far outstripped every olher Amer- "farfetched" to carry out. They were then sian delegations came in the early 1960s to ican high school in the number of its informed that the experiment had already observe Science's winning ways, The re- finalists (74). In 1979 four Sciencers made been performed by NASA. sult is that there are now four educational the top 40: Brian Sheppard for mathemat- No, at Science you'll find the more stable replicas of Bronx Science in the Soviet ics and three students for biology, Ken Liu, and systematic type of student, one who Union, Also, there are Science-modeled Samuel Shaffer, and the star of this story; takes the experiments and assignments institutions in the Philippines, Turkey and that typical Bronx Science quality product; seriously and prefers his or her humor dry. the distant land of North Carolina, and that not-lhe-top-but-near-the-top systemat- For example, a former student, now a noted study delegations from South Korea and ic and stable student and researcher; that astronomer, built a telescope and donated the People's Republic of China are on the prober into the chemical mysteries that un- it to Science, naming it Luna-C; and one of way derlie memory and learning; that devotee the headlines in the April Fools' issue of the Certainly the major universities are of the goddess Saraswati, Arani Bose. school paper Science Survey (rechris- watching Science. MIT admissions officials Fifteen years ago Arani's top-achieving- teneti Science Scurvy) read, poor turnout report that Science and its prime competi- counterpart at Science would have been at apathy rally. However, there are also tor in New York, Stuyvesant High Jewish. About 85 percent of the students juice-filled leen-agers at Science, and oc- School— which also requires an entrance who scored well on the entrance exam were casionally the raunchiness hangs out. Sci- exam— are in a dead tie for the title ot Jews. But many of 'the Jews moved to the ence Scurvy, for example, printed a bogus "American High School That Feeds the suburbs, and the egalitarians of the 1960s ad that read, "Under 18? You can count on Most Freshmen to MIT." And a few years (who now probably hope their children will us. Questions about sex, birth control, VD, ago Columbia University accepfed 100 be accepted by Science) began to raise pregnancy or places to get medical ser- Sciencers out of a graduating class of 700. hell about "elitism" at the school. Particu- vices? Call 555-6969. Facts by phone, (It is rumored around Science that the Co- larly galling to them was the entrance Strictly between you and us. for a really lumbia admissions official responsible was exam, which they described as out of place GOOD TIME. CALL 555-6969," fired for this, since he failed to apply the in a public-school system (8,000 students Those givo priority who second to a really proper affirmative -action criteria and in- take it each year; 1,000 are accepted). An good time, however, go on to MIT, Caltech, stead accepted students who by academ- effort to create a Science-type entrance on page 120"

It was an innocent

little "outing" —on the bare lunar surface THE VACUUM- PACKED PICNIC BY RICK GAUGER ssSsf As she approached my table across Ihe pilots' crowded ready room with her

teacup in her hand, I telt an

urge coming over me. I had an urge to bite her— on the smooth, ivory neck, which emerged from the heavy aluminum collar ring of her close-fitting pilot's vacuum

suit. Maybe it was the way she jangled all those pockets, tubes, clipboards, and electronic terminals as she made her way through the mob toward me. The typical space pilot's swagger— but

female. Maybe it was the merry brown eyes and the humorous twist of her lips as she sat down in front of me. "You're Captain Suarez, aren't you?" "Yeah. My friends call me—" "Pancho. Right?"

"Right. I hope you're one of

my friends," I said, my figurative tail wagging furiously. Worst case of vibes

I'd ever had. It seemed to be mutual. She studied me amusedly while her tea cooled.

I said. "Surely we've never

met before. I know I'm pretty ." absent-minded, but .. "Your friend Arunis Pittman -=•!*?" told me about you. I met him l£ on the polar sky station. He

thought I should look you up

PAINTING BY LUDEK PESEK "

it this when I got to West Limb. He said you would It's not far, just a short walk from the base." into with both feet time. probably offer to keep me amused. You Her reaction was everything I could have Well, the business I had handed her were highly recommended." hoped for. Her delicate mouth dropped about a picnic wasn't one-hundred- "Old Arunls! Damn! How is he?" open-a little. "You're kidding. An outdoor percent baloney. No one had ever really picnic the before, but "He's fine. He said I should ask you picnic?" been on a on moon whetheryoLj're still keeping the high in "Why, sure," I lied. "It's a new recrealion the West Limb intellectual elite (my pals CO z your spacecraft life-support system, in- we have come up with here on the moon. and I) had been discussing the idea for stead of doing the regulation aerobic exer- Gets us away from the madding crowd. A quite a while. We regarded our project as a cises, the way you're supposed to." great view, the hills, some nice rock colors. noble pioneering effort, an expansion of

"Damn again! How could he know about Perfect time of the month for it, too." man's capability in the space environment, that? I'll bet he's trying to warn me that the Bridges were flaming behind me. Why do I but, mainly, as a way to get some privacy agency is monitoring my life-support sys- do these things? "Of course you'd proba- with our female colleagues. The base at the luxurious tem again. I appreciate that. Thanks, Cap- bly rather not go to the (rouble. You're West Limb hadn't yet become

. it it tain . . . er . . probably too tired, right?" suburb that is today. In those days was locker the "Cramblitt. I prefer Stacy, however." Her excitement showed on her face. Her more like a big room on moon, a

After a pause she asked, "Well, are you?" eyes began to twinkle. "Oh, no! I wouldn't crowded, noisy set of tunnels and domes,

"Not anymore. I don't want to be miss this for anything!" she exclaimed. "A which reeked of old socks and new paint. grounded again. I'll do my exercises like a picnic on the moon! That's fantastic! Arunis We all lived in this warren like so many rats good boy—" was right about you, Pancho." in a hole. The transients among us, from barbar- "I don't mean that," she said. "I mean, "Aw," I mumbled, standing up and giv- months of isolation, were nearly are you going to amuse me? This is the first ing her my boyish grin. "Just leave it all to ians,- while the permanent residents were able time I've been on the moon, I don't have me. Meet me at Hatch Seven-Charlie-- antagonistic from never being to get anything to do until the passenger shuttle anyone can tell you where it is — at ten away from one another. Life on the old high begins its preflight countdown tomorrow hours tomorrow. Put on your vacuum suit frontier was rough, yes, sir! night." and bring a fully charged backpack. I'll Unfortunately, plans for outings a deux

An opening big enough to drive a truck take care of the rest. I have to make a hadn't gotten past the speculative stage yet. of friends had analyzed the into. I had to think of something, im- hopper run now. See you then." One my mediately, that would capture her imagina- Her smile followed me across the ready problem of picnic-site selection. Using lots deter- tion. She tucked an errant strand of glossy room as I made mywayio the hopper dock. of stolen computer time, he had black hair into her chignon as my mind I waved goodbye before turning into fhe mined which areas on the lunar surface raced. corridor. Male residents o1 the base who around West Limb could be inhabited by a "A picnic. How would you like to go on a happened to be in the ready room watched man — and a woman — tor a reasonable

picnic? With me," I said, blurting out the all this enviously. They didn't see the length of time in a standard vacuum- first idiocy that came into my mind. "If you grimace that appeared on my face as soon survival tent. Of course, the idea was to comfortable shirt-sleeves-or-less like, I'll take you to one of my favorite spots. as I was out of sight. I had really jumped obtain a habitat. You know what survival tents are. They're what's inside those emergency boxes you * see everywhere on the moon. Buggies have to carry one per passenger; so do the rocket hoppers. You've undoubtedly got several small ones under the bed in your hotel room. Solo prospectors and other outdoor workers use them regularly when they can't get to any other pressurized shelter. They climb into a tent, seal the

opening, and inflate it with their reserve air. The tents blow up into a transparent plasiic

dome. Once the dome is pressurized, you can take off your vacuum suit and relax a

bit. The old-timers say. they're for leaks, whether you get one or have to take one. That's a joke. Anyway, the most important element of my friend's analysis was fhe temperature inside the tent. Sunshine was everything. Anyone exposing his ass to the direct rays coming through the plastic would be rapidly rump-roasted. Complete lunar nighttime would be a glacial and gloomy experience, to say the least. No, what we wanted was a cheerful, sunshiny, picnicky sort of experience, with lots of scenery, close to, but not in sight of, the base or any of the main trails. A flat, shady spot on a slope lacing a sunlit landscape, with an illuminated boulder nearby to reflect warmth toward the picnickers, would be ideal. The computer in my friend's office, prop- erly (and illegally) stroked, coughed up a number of map overlays, one for each

CONTINUE DON PAGE 122 . .' Nfitt IS !

FOOD FOR

IBH8

,, i, no beer. Nothing freshly cooked, either— jusf a i picnic packed mm

wind up working at a s| >ace sta tion or moving to an extrafer cording to the latest projections from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a box lunch of dehy- drated bananas will be heaver

foods fabricated from human : ils special pa< aging, longer shelf life, and the used lo them, though, beating down my cravings for raw J together in the i string beans as successfully as them

; of gravity. 1 've beaten down my desire for cigarettes.

And all of you who don t plan 0F^^:

one was sure that man could swallow food end products of eating — urine and fe- tronauts to remove their helmets inside the Preceding page: Skylab warming in zero-g. Many observers had judged the ces— returned to Earth for complete scien- spacecraft, they advanced from sucking to tray holds (Row 1) turkey-and-rice chili, asparagus. 2: feat impossible, fearing that Glenn would tific analysis. chewing on all manner of bite-sized cubes: soup, Row strawberries, biscuits, orange choke in the effort, conlract foreign-body Pureed concoclions went into space coconut cubes, peanut cubes, bacon drink. Row 3: minis and pudding. pneumonia by inhaling food particles or first, packed in silvery toothpaste tubes squares, brownies, chicken-sandwich Above: On shuttle test flights, food droplets, or find himself unable to digest with a durable straw that the astronaut bites, potato-chip blocks, even fruit-and- will be packed in suitcase-sized absorb nutrients in a weightless envi- could pass through the feed port in his cereal cinnamon-toast tidbits, and combos and container. Top right: Simple square ronment. These ideas couldn't be tested helmet. Marooned inside his pressurized each coated with gelatin or a mixture of containers, proposed tor shuttle preflight because no earthbound simulator suit, he had to squeeze his meals into his protein and oil that reduced crumbling and galley, are compared to was capable ol mimicking zero-g. mouth without seeing or smelling what he added extra calories. (A man may require rehydratable package and its apparatus (at top) and earlier It turns out thai ealing and eliminating was eating. Dining this way was barely one less energy for locomotion in zero-g, but . posed no problem, but containing step above intravenous feeding, because performing even simple tasks without ben- thermostabilized package (left). Center right: Rehydratable veal foodstuffs and wastes in- zero-g did. Early without color cues, aromas, or differences efit of friction makes extra work for his mus- sauce (left) is compared with space loods were engineered as carefully- in texture, nobody can tell tuna from to- cles. To flip a switch while weightless, an thermostabilized turkey. Bottom: as spacecraft, built to maximize nourish- mato. astronaut has to grab a handhold first, lest Gemini astronauts ate ment convenience, with little flavor the Mercury missions continued flip himself well. astronauts and and As and he as Some cubes of bread, cheese, cereal. absolutely no aesthetic appeal. And all the improvements in design allowed the as- consumed as many as 3,000 calories a day chicken sandwiches. in space and still managed to lose weight.) to use the running water to rehydrate or And then nausea and vomiting on Astronauts could pick cubes out of a reconstitute .anything from powders like Apollo 9, caused by motion sickness, had plastic casing' or pop them into their mouth lemonade and cocoa to freeze-dried pot the astronauts appealing for a way to make with a spring-action dispenser. All cube roast. They shof water trom a narrow-nozzle on-the-spot menu changes, so a gueasy foods were dry, their bulky natural moisture gun through a one-way valve on each plas- astronaut wouldn't have to eat that day's removed to reduce the expense oi launch- tic food packet, shook or kneaded the assigned meals. One mission later, an on-

ing them. (Even in the 1960s it cost NASA "zero-g feeder" until the contents were well board pantry appeared, containing slices $75,000 to place one pound ol anything mixed, inserted the mouthpiece, and rolled of bread (prepacked in a nitrogen atmo-

into orbit.) Of course, the astronauts had the envelope up from the bottom to serve sphere so it would last at least four weeks) water to drink but only their saliva to wash themselves. They ate all their.meals at room and tins of meat-salad sandwich fillings, as down the food cubes— like eating corn- temperature, too, since the reconstitu- well as mustard, ketchup, peanut butter,

flakes without milk. tion water never got warmer or cooler than and jelly. Although no official meals were 26.6" C. There was no hot water in space until Thermostabiliz.ed frankfurters landed on launched on the short flight of Gemini 3, a Apollo 7, and even then the food didn't stay the moon with Apollo 11, freeze-dried corned-beef sandwich from the celebrated hot during the 10 or 15 minutes needed to scrambled eggs, with Apollo 12. And

Wolfie's Delicatessen, in Cocoa Beach, or- rehydrate some items. Apollo 13, though it never reached the bited the earth with John Young and Virgil By the time the Apollo 8 crew was ready moon, carried enough water-containing

Grissom. It had been smuggled aboard the for the first Christmas dinner in space, foods to keep the crew alive during the spacecraft, surreptitiously brought and NASA's food specialists had learned emergency that crippled the spacecraft's handed to Young on the launchpad by fel- enough about zero-g to serve a traditional fuel cells. Also, the first dehydrated natural low astronaut Wally Schirra. Young kept the holiday meal that could be eaten from a orange juice flew on Apollo 13. sandwich in a zippered leg pocket of his food pouch, with a spoon. Foods with the While touring the lunar surface. Apollo 14 spacesuit until splashdown, when he of- right-degree of stickiness adhered to one astronauts refreshed themselves with in- fered it to Grissom, who ate it while waiting another and to their containers enough to sult drinking devices that hooked a porta- for the rescue ship. They were both im- be lifted into the mouth like Earth food, to let ble beverage bag (they called it Gunga mediately sorry. For, as any astronaut will their aromas out at last, 'and to go aloft in Din) to a mouthpiece with a till valve inside tell you, Gemini 3 wasn't much of a boat, their own juices; the weight penalty was the helmet. And Apollo 15 explorers fared

and it pitched about sicke.ningly in the justified by the crew's pleasure. even better, snacking on high-nutrient food waves. ."Hello. Houston," Apollo 8 Commander bars installed right in the neck rings of their During later Gemini missions, changes Frank Borman radioed back on Christmas moon suits. This no-hands system worked in spacecraft technology facilitated im- night 1968. "It appears that we did a great well until Charles Duke, Apollo 76's lunar- provements in space food. New fuel cells, injustice to the food people. Santa Claus module pilot, spilled some orange drink in- which generated electrical energy in flight, just brought us a dinner each, and it was side his helmet, where it matted his hair

. . released water as a by-product of their delicious . turkey and gravy, cranberry and nearly interacted with the visor-

normal operation. The astronauts were able sauce, grape punch, . . . Outstanding!" defogging compound.

"I wouldn't give you two cents for that orange juice as a hair tonic," he guipped. On the final flight to the moon there was shelf-stable ham steak, ste'ilized by irradi- ation with cobalt-60, and nutritionally com- 4K*3-, plete fruitcake, designed to last indefinitely, packed n 'eady-io-eat moist form, and ap- Rt>5 parently palatable, too. What had once been achieved by food processing could now be handled by ' Vr processing. better f package A cookie con- 6ATH- ' tainer allowed dietitians to launch a Pecan ' CASH ROOM Sandie or a graham cracker without first i Tissue compressing it into a cube— to the crew's TAPES everlasting delight. The sugar cookies on Skylab, in fact, were such a hit that the 6ETWELL astronauts laughingly hoarded them and : carks bartered with them. Skylab boasted most varied _„-~-, the and well-tolerated menus that astronauts had ever enjoyed. Real heated iood was avail- > able in space for the first time. Each crew £S I member picked his own meal plan, and for six days he would not have the same dinner twice. Even so, the men complained of "wandering flavors." They ate their Skylab provisions on the ground for 21 days before the mission and 18 days afterward, yet some found the foods tasted inexplicably blander in space. One possible explana- --.WALLPAPER,. tion is that the zero-g environment allows

more fluid to fill the head, and this condition may dull one's taste sensations.

"What I missed most," recalls Skylab science pilot Ed Gibson, "was pepperoni pizza." Because Skylab was an extended exper-

3 ON PAGE ISO

carlographers map their sea floor; like the sonar-trace presence oi large moving crea- ironclad Monitor; like Ihe 100-year-old mer- tures, but nothing concrete. Three years chantman that Edgerton found in the muck later Doc incorporated new techniques into below Lake Champlain last summer; and a. sonar-triggered system that was duly using Ihe pinger i ; "( subbottom seismic like the mysterious stone circles he acci- lowered onlo an underwater shelf in the probes, making photoprofiles of objects dentally discovered on the bottom of Loch loch during the summer. Edgerton's origi- under the seabed; these were pictures Mess while he was hunting the monster in nal 1972 camera was also deployed on the made electronically with sound instead of 1975. shelf as a backup system. with light. It was also one of Edgerton's camera- The main camera was later found to have Doc's pinger and later "boomer" instru- strobe systems that got the fabled, blurry been blocked up by silt that had been ments completely revolutionized underwa- (but undeniably something) underwater stirred up when the sonar again indicated ter archaeological research. Edgerton and photos of Nessie that year, under the aus- large moving objects near the apparatus. Cousteau used them to find the wreck of pices of Boston's Academy of Applied Sci- Gut the old backup camera scored big. H.M.S. Britannic, torpedoed in Ihe Dar- ences (AAS). One of three frames (out of thousands) con- danelles during World War I. and later Ihey The first record of some kind of creature tained what was interpreted as a close-up were used on Cousteau's long search for in the loch dates from a.d. 565, when Saint ot Nessie's face, complete with bilateral possible sites of Atlantis. After his retire- Columba is alleged to have Irightened one symmetry and several hornlike projections ment, Doc turned to sonar almosl full time. off. Ever since, people have been seeing over the eyes, taken at a distance of about "Photography had gotten boring ior me," things moving along the surface, usually 1.5 meters. Another showed what ap- he said. "It seemed as if everyone else was described as about six meters in length, peared to be the upper torso, neck, and doing it, and it just got very limiting. With with a couple of humps and a long neck head of the creature about 7.5 meters away. sonar, you can go ten times further; and topped by a small head. Tourists and mon- One looks at the "head" shot in utter disbe- that's the kind of exploration I like. The last ster hunters have produced pictures of lief. It resembles a demon or an evil spirit part of the world to be explored is under- Nessie. from time to time, However, none more than anything else. neath the floors of the oceans. It's our last has ever proved indisputably to be a pic- "To me, those pictures a-e really terrific," real frontier. With our hydrographic meth- ture of the animal. Edgerton said exultantly, "it's true that the ods, we know what's on the surface of the Enter Doc Edgerton. In 1972 he lent the quality lol the pictures) is terrible, but the bottom, but not what's underneath. And AAS a came.'a-strobe system that he'd orig- really important thing is that they're that's where we're starting to find interest- inaMy built with Geographic Society money genuine. There seem to be a lot of people ing things." to take time-lapse movies of aquatic life in who think the whole Loch Ness story is Things like the lost G'eek city of Helice, Boston Harbor. The system snapped a pic- fake, and you can get better pictures of the sunk in the Gulf of Corinth, which Edgerton ture, underwater every 30 seconds, Fully creature from them than you can from the has been exploring since 1966; like a series loaded, it could take 2,000 strobe-lit pic- real thing. The fake pictures are justifiably of sunken Phoenician vessels, which Doc tures in 24 hours. That summer's work part of the skepticism. But these are real." found while he was helping some Israeli yielded some tantalizing data, including a Real enough for Edgerton and the AAS to conclude (in MIT's Technology Review. March 1976) that: "Taken together ... the

1975 pholographs and the sonar evidence - agree that there is a species of large aquat- ic creatures in Loch Ness." They named this species Nessiteras rhombopteryx and published a picture of one of them on the front page of The New York Times. 'OLD TECK PERSONA

Many of Edgerton's colleagues and stu- dents tend to describe him as being very "Old Tech" (at MIT. this means he is one of

the last of the gentleman scientists). I dis- covered the significance of this last Janu- ary, when Edgerton conducted a week- long lecture series in one of his Strobe Alley classrooms. The lectures were part of MIT's free-form Independent Activities period, during which students are encour-

aged to take an interest in matters outside the scope of their usual pursuits. True to his reputation as a teacher who arouses obsessive curiosity in students, Edgerton packed them in. Long-haired undergraduates, serious graduate stu- dents, and uitrarospeen.il visiting profes-

sors from all over the country filled the chairs and stood several rows deep at the back of the room as Doc, attired in his cus- tomary tweeds (but sporting a jaunty silver "Monitor Expedition" belt buckle), ex- pounded in his folksy manner on the vari- ous areas of his interest— strobes for or- nithological-research photography xenon flash lamps, the magneto-optical slrobes

used for underwater archaoo : ogy His style was. relaxed and plain. Using humor and am supposed to be. Tremendous amount when the great armed -services contracts anecdotes that evoked the Old Tech of people from all over the world, all kinds of began to dry up in the early Sixties. Now days, the lectures were basic how-to, backgrounds. Some of them come to class we're very bound into the common reality of

hands-on advice for anyone who grasped and Know more than I do about the projects dollars and cents. Nobody has that old

the basics of strobe -ass is ted photographic I'm working on. I don't consider myself freedom anymore. Being at MIT used to be like techniques. much of a teacher, but I always try to bring swimming in a big, open, free ocean. Every question received a detailed an- in practical things, give demonstrations, Now it's more like being in a very compli- swer, and understatement was the rule. If get their hands on things. Because MIT is cated swimming pool."

Doc likes something, he says it's "very in- noted for people who get up there and slap Why, I asked, has Edgerton, though teresting." Someone asked him his theory; integral signs and differential signs and much honored, not received the Nobel and on some subject, and his kindly midwest- equations all over the board and nobody other major international prizes for the em features cracked'into a dry, homespun knows what it's about. And when you get strobe, and other inventions? grin. "Oh, no theories here, please. I'm just through and learn this fancy stuff— but if "Because Doc is a rare bird," Dr Lettvin an experimentalist." you have to fix a fuse or solder a wire, you said. "He doesn't want prizes. He doesn't

Anyone auditing an Edgerton seminar is don't have a trade." care a bit about appearances and stature. immediately impressed by the superb rap- "What we mean by 'Old Tech,'" says He doesn't even bother with patents any- port Doc shares with his students. There's Edgerton's friend Professor Jerome more. Edgerton is just a man who really never a trace of condescension in Doc's Lettvin. "is that MIT used to be a place that enjoys his work." was a lot of fun. You worked on whatever manner as he banters and trades observa- FUTURE VIEW tions and techniques with undergraduates you pleased, worked hard, and got big

lectures I in his more than 50 years his junior In fact, Doc kicks. There was a 'fun-with-nature, go- After the cornered Doc future does his best to put the kids at ease and ahead-and-do-it' attitude in the old days. office one afternoon to talk about the cluttered jumble make them feel at home. He and his wife, Your work was unstructured. No problem of his work. He sat amid a Esther ("Mrs. Doc," as she is also known), was too small or too large. You made a of framed photos, ancient G reek amphoras live just off campus, and their doors are as booboo, you made a booboo. So what? on tripods, and underwater cameras, so- nar, housings in various stages of con- open to students as if Doc were still rooted That was the aimosphere that Doc came up and pro- in rural Nebraska. Equally legendary are in and helped create. You'd build your struction. So what does the respected the electrical engineering department equipment out of shoe boxes; your work fessor have to say about the future? steak-and-beer feasts at the end of each wasn't highly cost-accounted and special- "Well, of course, the strobe is here to stay. term, during which Doc is given to strolling ized. And everyone was a gentleman sci- It's everywhere you want quantized energy among the diners with his guitar strapped entist then. People were fascinated by one to do a certain job. I was watching a dem- on, serenading them with his favorite coun- another's work. Criticism was free and easy onstration of phototypesetting the other try and Western tunes, and often valuable. It was much less of a day that was very interesting. And of "I'm really scared of the students," Doc shoe factory course the strobe is being used in space.

I says. 'A lot of them are more brilliant than I "When did all that change? suppose Buzz Aldrin was a student here, and he worked on the strobe beacon system for the Apollo missions. When you're flying around

in outer space, everything is black, and all « you have to go on are little pinpoints of light.

If you want to rendezvous with something,

it's important that you be able to pick it out. Strobes do the trick." As we talked about the future, a medical student dropped in to chat with Doc about a cure for the herpes virus that he was working on, using an infrared laser-strobe

system to kill viruses that had been treated with a special dye. So strobe-related re- search continues all the time. Experi- menters have obtained pictures of dynamite-cap blasts at 10-,D second, and have to 10" 16 the laser people gone down , but they, haven't yet found any practical

application for it. Edgerton says he's more interested in underwater archaeology these days and doesn't have much to do with strobes anymore. He did admit, when pressed, that the previous day he had sketched out some ideas for a new lamp to increase the efficiency of an underwater plankton camera he'd been working on in recent months.

Before I left, 1 asked him what his im- mediate plans were. He said he was going back to the Gulf of Corinth, for the sixth time, to look for Helice. "My wife's com- plaining that I'm seventy-six years old and

retired and I ought to quit working Saturday

it If CZS&fxlO and Sunday. But I can't help anymore. you're stupid enough to be persistent in this "If you're an organic chemist, why are you wearing polyester?" kind of job, you usually get what you're looking for." DO KINSMAN CONTINUED FROM P)

soon enough. Come on. Hurry it up." Reluctantly Kinsman turned away from the stars and back to the dark interior of the payload bay. Colt trailed behind him. Work- ing with Captain Howard, ihey set the satel-

lite on the shuttle's payload-deployment arm, a long metal boom that swung the squat drumlike mechanism up and com- pletely outside the emptied cargo bay. "Good work," Howard said. He touched his keyboard and reported back to the flight deck. "Now we wait," he said to Colt and Kinsman. "You guys were so good, we finished eight minuies ahead of schedule." Kinsman felt himself smiling at the cap- tain. Not that they could see each other's faces through the tinted visors. But some- thing had softened Howard. He's just as wiped out by all this grandeur as we are. Only he won't let his emotions show. They switched their suit radios to the flight deck's frequency and listened io the final orbital maneuvering that placed the shuttle in the right spot for launching the satellite. Twice the control jets at the rear of the ship, near the root of the big tail fin, flared — such quick puffs of light that they were gone before they had truly registered on Kinsman's eyes. When the moment came to release the satellite, it was utterly unspectacular.

". . . three, two, one," said Major Jakes's heavy voice. There was no sound, just a brief puff of escaping gas as the tiny thruster built into A SLIGHT DISTURBANCE of the earth the bottom end of the satellite pushed the drum away from the boom arm. The satellite created the Jack Daniel's cave spring some quickly dwindled into the distance and dis- appeared among the stars. 400 million years ago. As the boom swung back inside the payload bay and folded itself into place along the deck, Captain Howard said. The disturbance, so say geologists, caused a "Now for the final chore. It's a big one; we've crack in the surface of the earth and allowed a been saving it for you boys." Kinsman tried to glance over at Coit, but stream of iron-free water to spring up from when he turned his head, all he saw was the inside lining of his helmet. underground. Luckily, Jack Daniel discovered the "You were too excited to notice." Howard was explaining, "but we haven't detached stream in 1866 and we've the booster fuel tank that we rode up on. It's still strapped to the orbiter's belly" been using it to make our "Can't reenter with that thing hanging onto us," Colt said. whiskey ever since. Today, a CHARCOAL "Right. We have no intention of doing MELLOWED that. We're heading now for a rendezvous second movement of earth point where the last six missions have sep- 6 arated their booster tanks and left them in could seal off our water orbit. One of these days, when the Air Force DROP gets enough astronauts and enough entirely. But, to a Jack money, we're going fo convert all those empty tanks into a permanent, full-sized Daniel's lover, that would BY DROP space station."

"I'll be damned," Kinsman said, grinning be no slight disturbance. to himself.--

• Daniel Distillery "Your mission," Howard went on, "is to Tennessee Whiskey 90 Proof Distilled and Bottled by Jack separate our tank and attach it to the as- Lent Motlow, Prop., Inc., Lynchburg (Pop. 361), Tennessee 37352 sembly that's already there." Placed in the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Government .

looks pissed off most of "Simple enough," Colt said- "We did won't have time tor stargazing. Now fill your "No wonder he time," something like that at the neutral-buoyancy propellant and air tanks. I'm going inside to the "Mos; of the time?" tank in Alabama." check with the flight deck." Kinsman said, "I got the feeling he en- "It sounds easy" Howard said. "Bui I "YeB, sir," over the won't be there to help you. You're going to "He's pretty edgy," Kinsman said on their joyed watching us go bananas be on your own with this one." suit-to-suit frequency after Howard had stars."

"Hey, yeah, I forgot all about that." "Okay," Kinsman said. "We can handle it disappeared through the airlock. rose slightly off the withoui any trouble." "Just puttin' us on. man." Kinsman turned and plates so that he could look out at the Howard said nothing for a long moment. "I don't know. He said this is the most deck quickly the miraculous be- Kinsman saw him floating before them, his difficult task of the whole mission." sky again. How ordinary! dark visor looking like the dead, empty eye "That's why they saved it for us, fiuh?" comes sight," Colt said from be- of some deformed cyclops. "Maybe." "Sure is some side him. 'All right," the captain said at last. "But He could sense Colt shaking his head, "Makes want to just drift out of here listen to me. If something happens out frowning, "Don't let 'em get to you. He had me back," said Kinsman. there, don't panic. Do you hear me? Don't other jobs . . . like inspecting that Russian and never come panic." satellite. That was tougher than what we're "Just go on and on forever." big air tank." "We won't," Colt said. gonna be doing," "You'd need a damned What's he worried about? Kinsman won- "That was a one-man task," Kinsman "Not a bad way to die, if you've got to go. Drifting silent, going to sleep among dered briefly. said. "He didn't need a couple of rookies alone, ,"

. But he put the thought aside as Howard getting in his way. And the Reds probably the stars .

for maybe, but I intend began testing them on their proficiency have all sorts of alarm and detection sys- "That's okay you, when I'm with their suit-maneuvering units. They jet- tems on their birds." to be shot by a jealous husband ." in nineties," Colt said. "That's how I ted themselves back and forth along the "Yeah, maybe . . my bare-assed humpin'." length of the empty payload bay, did "He's a strange little guy." wanna go; and pirouettes, planted their feet at precise "You'd think he'd have made major by "White or black?" of 'em.. spots that the captain called out to now." Colt said. "The husband or the wife? Both old Murdock. honkies, man. Screwin' white folks is the them— all on puffs of cold gas from the "Or light colonel. He's as as pistollike thruster units. Maybe older." best part of life." his partner's "There'll be no umbilicals or tethers on "Yeah, but he's got no wings. Flunked out Kinsman could hear happy this task," Howard warned them. "Too of flight training when he was a kid." chuckling. ever much tankage hanging around to foul up "Really?" "Frank," he asked, "have you the time you're ninety there your lines. You'll be operating indepen- "That's what Art was telling me. He's thought that by race problems anymore?" dently. On your own. Do you understand?" nothing more than a glorified tech special- might not be any laughter "Sure, Just "Sure." ist. No academy. Lucky he made captain. Colt's deepened. wars all God's "No funny stuff and no sightseeing. You He was almost passed over." like we won't have any and chillun got shoes. That's just how it'll be." "Yeah. Me, too. But no trouble."

"All right, there it is," Captain Howard told "Maybe Howard's worried about us them. being so far from the ship without tethers." The three men were hovering just above "Maybe." But Colt didn't sound con- the open clamshell doors of the payload vinced. liernai-onal Center oi P-.i/ocrae'iy '130 Fiii-iAve-jeal 94th Street bay, looking out at what seemed to "How's your end going?" Kinsman New York, New Yoft 10025 Kinsman to be a giant stack of beer bottles. asked. "I'm almost finished here."

Except that they're aluminum, not glass. "I oughtta be done in another ten min- Six empty propellant tanks, each of them utes. Three hours! This damned job's a

if nearly twice the size of the orbiter. itself, piece of cake ever . . . Holy shit!" were arranged in two neat rows. From this Kinsman's whole body jerked at the distance they could not see the connecting urgency in Colt's voice. "What? What is it?" rods that held the assembly together. "Lookit the shuttle!" "You've got three hours," Howard told Turning so rapidiy that he bounced his them. "The booster-tank linkages that hold shoulder into the tank, Kinsman peered out

it to the orbiter are built to come apart and toward the spacecraft, some seventy-five ."

reattach . to the other tanks . meters away from them. "Yeah, yeah, we know," Colt said impa- "They've closed the payload bay doors. tiently. Why the hell would they do that?" Kinsman was thinking, This shouldn't Colt jetted down the length of the tank, lake more than an hour. Why give us three? stopping himself as neatly as an ice skater "Working in zero-g on a task like this ain't with a countering puff of cold gas from the

easy," Howard said, as if in answer to thruster gun. Kinsman reached out and Kinsman's unspoken question. "It's differ- touched his arm. ent from the water tank. You'll be floating "What the hell are they doing?" he asked, free — no resistance al all. Every move you bewildered. Weston Poster of Pepper make will make you keep on moving until Colt said. "Whatever it is, I don't like it." you make a countermove to cancel the mo- Suddenly a cloud of white gas jetted SSMTHESIS(syn. thesis) PHOTO tion." from the shuttle's nose. The spacecraft 1. the bringing toge-thei" of separate "We learned all that in training," Colt in- dipped down and away from them. Another t'lenx-nih esp. of conrept ions... into sisted. 'And how we shouldn't overheat soundless gasp from the reaction jets back a connected whole. Gk-synthesis ourselves inside the suits." near the tail and the shuttle slewed side-

: did. I ways. - "Yeah, sure you Pardon me. The Internal oral Ceni- o Pn;:;ography has

Lj'o-jgh: t;;gr.-:-"i:j- ;i il-io sesrr rgyos-ji-iK should've remembered you guys know ev- "What the hell they doin'?" Colt shouted. e,eiron:s -hat ;n- ;-.-;! rr^ke ';:.: the whole of erything already." Howard's voice was acid The shuttle was sliding away from them, .~-0!'Xii-rphy...The Art. again. "All right, you're on your own. Just scuttling crabwise farther from the propel- .-"ologr ann !! ih' i id nagira ho'i ol 'he :;asuai observe ; --.o connoisssi.r don't panic if anything goes wrong." lant lanks where they were stranded.

- S r ." Pi j; 1 C-L-.l'~:E lis OOlleCl:/ . ;;:n i 00 1 ' VO p0.3 iO "They got trouble! Somethin's wrong . , in- led iidron rip ea.-OMns -~ai already or

SOo'i wii '..0'ii' ; ':hd IhOL.L-and; c' oollars at Almost an hour later, as they were attach- Kinsman punched the stud on his wrist

,

~; i ii..;;i(j and sa'os :o:::n"j ing the empty propellant tank to the six keyboard for the flight deck's radio fre- ;, A library ina; H lo: voj car through the others, Colt asked, "How many times we quency.

- ; "0 i ab::!ia::;ioii- ;"/ Sis-si :: ':r poierr ca' real- practice this stunt in training?" "Kinsman to flight deck. What's wrong? Cart.e,'Bresso"i Rooks wh ch will soon ism of "This particular business?" Why are you maneuvering?"

. . shuttle Yo'^ will fine inexpensive posters, rare "Naw . just taking pieces apart and No answer. The was dwindling

;";"' -: -. " ifii.l iin.iier; 5(1:: j i i.i -.voi'S prc-mnron: reassembling them." away from them rapidly now (>\io'-:.q;tii;\- : aihm. ra:i: -a:aloo„os of lo-g

- - "-: '•::. Kinsman looked up from the bolt- "Jesus Christ!" Colt yelled. "They're i- -,! ii : i:;. iioi arc nuch -nee The new hiaTaho-ia Co':or of Photoga tightening job he was doing. Colt was float- gonna leave us here!"

- -

: . « ' ! I . .i Oil . ! I' I :: -J\ llheSPE Of ing some forty meters away, up at the nose "Captain Howard!" Kinsman said into his ph;.i;:grac'coo - ondiotyor - s scale never

. | I i of the fat . ! propellant tank. mike, trying to the out i ,!.. end He looked helmet keep tremble 200 i-c tiny next to the huge stack of tanks, gleam- of his voice. "Major Podolski, Major Pierce Center of Photography museum and library.

- . t ing brightly in the strong sunlight. But his . , come in! This is Kinsman. Coll and are It is profusely illustrated arc designed to o :S day oo-oor-e a oo lectors item itself. voice in Kinsman's earphones sounded as still outside the spacecraft! Answer, lowinyou as a friend of the International if he was inside the helmet with htm. please!" Center of Photography, you may have one of these catalogues by sensing a dollar ;o "Hell." Kinsman answered, "we did so Nothing but the crackling hum of the defray our postage rests, or you can come to much of this monkey work I thought they radio's carrier wave. o'..r I ri lei national Ce'iloi oi '-'O'.ootaphv C'. Ho- were training us to "Those sons of bitches are stranding us!" mo., see the ourrop- ox-,10 tic- oi RECC'LLEC open a garage."

TIONS: TEN WOMEN OF PHOTOGRAPHY "Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Then Kinsman watched the shuttle getting (Admission S1.00) and a copy of the cata- why was Howard so shaky about us doing smaller and smaller. It seemed to be hur- logue is yours for the asking. this? You havin' any troubles?" tling madly away from them, although the Kinsman shrugged inside his suit, and rational part of his mind told him that the

the motion made him drift slightly away spacecraft was only drifting; it hadn't fired from the strut he was working on. He its main engines at all. But the difference in

reached out and grabbed it to steady him- relative velocities between the tankage as- self. sembly and the shuttle was enough to "I've spun myself around a couple make the two fly apart from each other.

times," he admitted. "It gets a little confus- Colt was moving. Kinsman saw that he ing, THE INTERNATIONAL CE with no up or down. Takes some getting was aiming his thruster gun. used to." Grabbing Colt's arm to stop him, Colt's answer was a soft grunt. Kinsman snapped. "No!" Then he realized

"The suit heats up, too," Kinsman went that his suit radio was still tuned to the flight

on. "I've had to stop and let it cool down a deck's frequency. couple times." Banging the stud on his wrist, Kinsman and jetted said, "Don't panic. Remember? That's what "They'll think we panicked THE INCREDIBLE CASIO Howard warned us about." away" "We gotta get back to the shuttle, man! "Right." CALCULATOR We can't hang here!" "Maybe that's what they want." TIME MACHINE CAN DO explaining "You'll never reach the shuttle with the "Maybe. But think of the EVERYTHING BUT maneuvering gun," Kinsman said. "Not they'd have to do back at Vandenberg if enough range." they lost the two of us. Four officers' careers TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE! ."

something's wrong . . down the drain." . "But gone Watch . . . Calculator . . Calendar Kinsman looked out toward the dwin- Colt giggled. "Almost worth dyin' for." . . . 2-Alarms . . . Stopwatch . . . Dual dling speck that was the shuttle. It was hard "We'll let them know we're here. Time . . . Future Appoint to see now against the glaring white of the Kinsman said, "after they've worked up minder . . . Countdown A earth. They were passing over the vast enough of a sweat. I'm not dying for any- Weighs Less Than 2 Oz Cr cloud-covered expanse of Antarctica. With one's joke, not even my own." Card Size . . . Fits In Any Pocket! a shudder, Kinsman felt the cold seeping They waited, while the immense pan- into him. orama of the earth flowed beneath them THE CASIO TIME MACHINE '"Listen. Maybe nothing's gone wrong. and the stern stars watched silently They "MQ-11" Maybe this is their idea of a joke." waited and they talked. "A joke?" "Maybe that's what Howard was trying to "I thought she split because we were

tell us." down in Houston and Huntsville and she ." it," saying. "She . Colt was "That's crazy . couldn't take was

"No. They've been sticking it to us all white, you know, and the pressure was on through the mission, haven't they? Pierce is her a lot more than me." a snotty bastard, and this looks like some- "I didn't think Houston was that prej- thing he mighl dream up." udiced. And Huntsville struck me as being ." "You don't joke around with lives, man!" pretty cosmopolitan . . "We're safe enough. We've got tour "Yeah? Try it with my color, man. Try buy-

hours' worth of air. As long as we don't ing some flesh-colored Band-Aids if you panic, we'll be okay. That's what Howard wanna see how cosmopolitan everybody was trying to tell us." is." 95 "Guess I really don't know much about "But why the hell would they do some- All this for only $49 thing like this?" Colt's voice sounded it," Kinsman admitted. "Must've been pret- THE VALUABLE CARD IN YOUR POCKET calmer, as if he wanted to believe Kinsman, ty rough on you." MOST

it, that I think on as if he needed to believe. "Yeah, but now back we 0L' r tunc! ' were having our troubles in Colorado, too. Your paranoia's deserted you just when ;.j rtelUV I' !; ilisre 'or r start .ins.vrri to live with." you need it most. Kinsman thought. He an- I'm not an easy man to persi -y 3|ipo-r.trnents Banerses (included) times they called "Who the hell is?" riiriimcer iri-c-tirta-'l swered. "How many have .., . i .:, year. ii lately 1 t us hotshots. the Golddust Twins? We're the Colt chuckled. "You are, man. You're CHECK THESE EXTRAORDINARY FEATURES: in top men on the list. They just want to rub supercool. Never saw anybody so much two Time is shown h: -ours milium; se;onds, AM/Pfvt, day big bucket of ice s. Super accuracy of + 15 . . of himself. Like our noses in the dirt a little . just like the charge a upperclassmen used to do at the academy." water." ftlarm can be preset lor any a 34 hour period! "You think so?" ice water? Me? "You're mistaking slow Stopwatch rsccds t: rjih of a seco nd accuracy with reflexes for self-control." It's either that or we're dead. Kinsman elapsed time up to 23 hou s. 59 minute . 59.9 seconds'

it glanced at the digital watch set into his "Yeah, I bet. Is true you're a Quaker?" 8-Digil Calculator features constants, memory calculations,

wrist keyboard. "They allowed three hours . "Used to be," he said automatically, try- Calendar shows year, rranlh, day and date ind iinniay for our task. They'll be back before that time ing to shut out the image of his father. cally adjusts for 28, 30. or 31 day months, and It even subject! "I I kid." the is up. Less than two hours." "When was a Change adjusts automatically for leap years III! 2099! that shuttle started operates to i/10lh of a second accuracy "And if they're not?" was when damned Countdown alarm !fie end of a, presel perioQ for 10 seconds! "Then we can panic." moving away from us. A real Quaker." and buzzes ai Dual Time shows the time lny.'.'i'.:'- ill he world that you "Lotta good it'll do then." With a laugh, Colt asked, "How come 9 ." Gooc-ooking, rich . . "Won't do much good for us now, either. you're not married Future appointment catnuht) .: ireset up to three yMrindinj'rjIyi u when they come We're stranded here until they come back "Too busy having fun. Flying, training for (I rJsiSrttli^r.j.:?.5"a' up! for us," this. I've got no time for marriage. Besides, I "Bastards," Colt muttered. Now he was like girls too much to marry one of them." Why Shop By Mail? convinced. "You wanna get laid, but you don't wanna Shopping by mail is coive d fun. We ship all your With a sudden grin, Kinsman said, "Yeah, get screwed." :. aei: prcmrihy In you' ran iii „;'icf Vc can charge

i or products are but maybe we can turn the tables on them." "Something like that. Like you said, order to any majo' crsd'i

your loca ytr.». And i hal isn't enough, "How?" there's lots of chicks in the world." not available at "Follow me, my man." "Yeah, Can't concentrate on a career and

Without using his thruster gun, Kinsman a marriage at the same time. Leastways, I clambered up the side of "their" propellant can't." tank and then drifted slowly into the nest "Not if you want to be really good at either CHEDIT CARD BUYERS: TO ORDER CALL TOLL FREE six tanks. one," Kinsman agreed. Oh, we are being created by the other 24 HO JRS A SAY wise. not iooking at our watches. loll (SOD) 432-7*51 Like a pair of skin divers floating in the so And To orde r in California call free midst of a pod of whales, Colt and Kinsman Cool, man. Supercool. But out beyond the tanks the sky hung in emptiness, surrounded by the big, curving bulk of the propellant 1111(800) 854-3831 for stars. curving, hollow tanks. was empty except the solemn ,al, Deri. 99. 350-A Fischer * 13 mn "Now when they come back, they won't They talked, so that the sound of their :ll lies r-iimzier id' n/.tcesl sei be able to see us on radar," Kinsman ex- voices could steady their nerves, each of in the plained. "And the tanks ought to block our them staying calm and brave pres- :ng lor lira products 11.00 suit-to-suit chatter. So they won't hear us, ence of the other. either. That should throw a scare into them." Kinsman's mind drifted as he hung sus- _

pended in space, talking and listening with or so back, last time he came home." only the frontmosl reflexive part of his mind. "What for?" "A superb He watched the earth sliding by like some "Hit a bank ... to raise money for the huge diorama, and his thoughts wandered People's Liberation Army." sourcebook, back to Diane, to the firs! night he had met "He's one of those?" her, to that first lovemaking in the misty, "Not anymore. There ain'l no PLA any- the most compre- dreaming light of earliest dawn back in her more. Most of 'em are dead, the rest scat- hensive survey of room in Berkeley. tered. I watched my brother playin' cops He remembered coming out of the iiny and robbers. DidnTlook like much fun to

Einstein's work bathroom later that morning, to see that she me. So I decided I ain't gonna fight the ever made... had set up toast and a jar of Smucker's Man. I'm gonna be the Man." ." jelly grape on the table by the window. The "If you can't beat 'em . . "Throws a full spotlight on Ein- teakettle was on the two-burner stove, and "Looks like I'm joinin' 'em, yeah," Colt stein's masterpiece by means a pair of chipped mugs and a jar of instant said, with real passion building in his voice. of nearly 40 reprints ^ coffee stood alongside. "But I'm just workin' my way up the ladder to and articles— by jt ^''''h Einstein himself F They sat facing each other, washing get to the top. Then I'll start givin' the or- and some 30-odd % down the crunchy toast with hot, bitter cof- ders. And there are others like me, too. scientists." f fee. Diane watched the people moving We're gonna have a black president one of —Publishers t along the street below fhem. Kinsman these days, you know." Weekly # stared at the clean, bright sky. 'And you'll be his chief of staff." Glossary-index. "How long can you slay?" she asked. "Could be." appendixes. "I've got ... I leave tonight." "Where does that leave us?" "Oh." A small, sharp, beeping sound shrilled in ALBERT "Got to report back to the Academy to- Kinsman's earphones. Emergency signal! morrow morning." Automatically both he and Colt switched to EINSTEIN'S "You have to." the shuttle's flight-deck frequency. THEORY OF He nodded. "Kinsman! Colt! Can you hear me? This is

GENERAL RELATIVITY "I was going to let you stay here ... if you Major Jakes. Do you read me?" /^YEARSQFITS wanted to quit the Air Force." The major's voice sounded distant, dis- He started to answer, but his mouth was torted by ragged static, and very con- MAN ANDTHE suddenly dry. He thought of the Academy. cerned. UNIVERSE The cold, gray mountains and ranks of uni- Kinsman held up a hand to keep Colt Edited by GERALD TAUBER forms marching mechanically across the silent. Then, switching to their suit-to-suit frozen parade ground. The starkly func- frequency, he whispered, "They can't see tional classrooms, the remorselessly effi- us in here among the tanks. And they cient architecture devoid of all individual haven't picked up our suit-to-suit talk. The

expression. tanks are blocking it." And he Ihought of his father; cold, im- "We're getting their freak scattered off

placable. Was it pride and anger .that the tanks?" It was a rhetorical question.

moved him. or was it fear? "Kinsman! Colt! Do you read me? This is Then he turned back, looked past the Major Jakes." woman across the table from him, and saw Their two helmeted heads were close the sky once again. A pale ghost of a moon enough for Kinsman to see the grin glitter- Sincere people from all walks was grinning lopsidedly at him. ing on Colt's dark face. of life have found it helps "I can't stay with you," he said quietly, "Let 'em eat shit for a coupla minutes, yet finally. huh?" government agencies That was probably the biggest mistake of "Right." and vested interest yourlife, he said to himself. The shuttle pulled into view and seemed Frank Colt's sharp-edged voice brought to hover about a hundred meters away from groups snarl at it. him back to reality, to the world he had the tanks. Switching back to the flight chosen for himself. deck's frequency, the two lieutenants

"I don't just wanna be good," Colt was heard: "Pierce, goddammit, if those two

saying. "I got to be the best. I got to show kids have been lost, I'll put you up for a What these honkies that a black man is better murder charge." than they are." "Now, you were in on it, too, Harry"

"You're not going to win many friends thai Howard's voice cut in. "I'm suited up. Is way." Going out the airlock." "Don't give a shit. I'm gonna be a general "Should we get one of the trainees out to someday. Then you'll see how many friends help search for them?" Pierce's voice. Scientology? ' get." "You've got two of them missing now," Kinsman shook his head, chuckling. 'A Jakes snarled. "Isn't that enough? How get the book and find out. general. Jeez, you've sure got some long- about you getting your ass outside to 9"xll " hardbound. S16.50 range plans in your head." help?" "Damn right! My brother he's all hot and "Me? But I'm..." Orderfrom fired up to be a revolutionary. Goin' around "I think it would be a good idea," said a Publications Organization, Dept W the world looking for wars to fight against new voice, with such weighty authority that 4833 Fountain Ave., East Annex colonialists and injustice. Wanted me to join Kinsman knew it had to be the mission Los Angeles, California 90029 the underground here in the States and commander. Major Podolski. Among the fight for justice against the Man." three majors he was the longest in Air Force "Why doesn't he stay in the States?" service and therefore as senior as God. Kinsman asked. "Eh, yes, sir," Pierce answered quickly

"The FBI damn near grabbed him a year "And you. too. Jakes. You were all in on this, and it hasn't turned out very funny." voice as Kinsman turned back toward him.

Colt and Kinsman, holding on to one of "The first thing I must do is see Major the struts that connected the empty tanks, Podolski," Kinsman said evenly. "He's in- could barely suppress their laughter as volved in this, too." they watched the shuttle's cargo doors With a resigned shrug, Jakes pointed swing slowly open and three spacesuiled toward the ladder, figures emerge. Kinsman glanced at Colt, and the two of ''Maybe we oughtta play dead," Colt them glided over to the ladder and swam whispered. up to the flight deck, leaving absolute si- "No. Enough is too much. Let's go out lence behind them. now and greet our rescuers." Major Podolski was a big, florid-faced They worked their way clear of the tanks man with an old-style RAF mustache. His and drifted into the open. bulk barely fitted into the commander's

"There they are!" The voice sounded so left-hand seat. He was half-turned in it, one jubilant in Kinsman's earphones that he heavy arm draped across the seat's back,

couldn't tell who said it. as Kinsman rose through the hatch. 'Are you all right?" "I've been listening to what you had to ."

"Is everything . . say down there, Lieutenant, and if you "We're fine, sir," Kinsman said calmly think..." A fascinating "But we were beginning to wonder if the But Kinsman put a finger to his lips. spacecraft malfunctioned." Podolski frowned. Dead silence for several moments. Sitting lightly on the payload specialist's adVenture. ." "Uh, no . . Jakes said as he jetted up to chair, behind the commander Kinsman let "Do not limit your thought to one

Colt and Kinsman. "We . . . uh, well, we sort himself grin. brief life and one earth;' Parama- of played a little prank fellas." "Sir," "I on you two he whispered, thought one good hansa Yogananda said. "You are here "Nothing personal," Pierce added. joke deserved another. My uncle was voted for only a little while, then depart for Sure, Kinsman thought. Nothing per- out of the Senate years ago." a dissimilar and fascinating world. sonal in getting bitten by a snake, either. He could see a struggle of emotions play Rememberthevastness of the Spirit They were great buddies now as they across Podolski's face. Finally a curious that dwells within you. Try to realize jetted back to the shuttle. Kinsman played it smile won out. "I see . . . you want fhem to straight, keeping himself very formal and stew in their own juices, eh?" you are a divine traveler." correct. Colt-followed Kinsman's lead. Glancing up at Colt, Kinsman answered, The awakening of such an under-

If we were a couple of hysterical, gibber- "Not exactly, sir. I want reparations." standing helps you to discover your ing, scared tenderfeet, they'd be laughing "Repa— What're you talking about, Mis- true place in the great adventure of their off at us. But the shaft heads now has ter?" life. The key to this understanding

- turned. "This is the first time Frank and I have is meditation. It shows you through Once through the airlock and into the been allowed up on the flight deck." personal experience that you are far passenger compartment. Colt and Kins- "So?" more than a physical vehicle. man were grabbed by the four trainees. "So we want to sit up here while you fly Through steady practice of scientific Chattering, laughing with them, they her back through reentry and landing." techniques you perceive your body, helped the two lieutenants out of their hel- Podolski looked as if he had just swal- but temporary mets and suits. Pierce. Jakes, and Howard lowed a lemon, whole. "Oh, you do? And mind, and feelings as unsuited without help. maybe you want to take over the controls, instruments for the expression Finally Kinsman turned to Major Pierce too." of your real nature—ever existing,

and said, tightlipped, "Sir. I must make a Colt bobbed his head vigorously. "Yes, ever conscious, ever new joy. "

1 report to the commanding officer." sir . ." For more than half a century, Self- "Podolski knows all about . . "Don't make me laugh." Real ization Fellowship, founded by Looking Pierce in the eye, Kinsman said, "Sir ... I meant it about the judge advo- ," Paramahansa Yogananda, has of- "I don't mean Major Podolski, sir, [ mean cate general. I have another And uncle. . f fered a program of se I -development Colonel Murdock. Or, if necessary, the "Never mind!" Podolski snapped. "You you achieve— through judge advocate general." can sit up here during reentry and landing. that helps

Jill meditation life-force control- Everything stopped. Meyers, who had And that's all I You sit and watch and be and somehow wound up with Kinsman's hel- quiet and forget this whole stupid incident. energy, wisdom, peace, and inner met, let it slip from her fingers. It simply That's an order!" happiness. hung there in midair as she watched, "That's all we want, sir," Kinsman said. SEND FOR FREE BOOKLET. wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The only He turned toward Colt, who was beaming. sound in the compartment was the faint "You guys'll go far in the Air Force," hum of electrical equipment. Podolski grumbled. "A pair of smart asses Self Realization

. . "The . judge advocate general?" with the guts of burglars. Just what the fuck Pierce looked slightly green. this outfit needs." But there was a trace of a Fellowship

"Yes, sir I grin flitting his Or could telephone my uncle, around mustache. 3S80 San Rafael Aue., DEFT, 90MA-2 the senior senator from Pennsylvania." "Glad you think so, sir" said Kinsman. Los Aneeles. California 90D65 Please send me a free copy of your bookie- Now even the trainees looked scared. "Okay . . . we're due to break orbit in two "Undreamed-of Possibilities I' "Now see here, Kinsman," Jakes started. hours. You guys might as well sit up here Turning to face the major, close enough through the whole routine and watch how to smell the fear on him, Kinsman said, it's done." "This may have seemed like a joke to you, "Thank you, sir" sir, but it has the look of racial discrimina- The major's expression sobered. "Only

. . tell tion about it. And it was a damned danger- . who's going to Pierce and Howard ous stunt, 'And a waste of the taxpayers' thai they've got to sit with the trainees?" READ "Autobiography of a Yogi" money, too." "Oh, I will," Colt said, with the biggest ." by Porantthansa Yogananda "You can't . . Pierce somehow lost his smile of all. "I'll be glad to!" DO AT BOOKSTORES EVERYWHERE "

Frank was disappointed, although he tieth century has the same message in it, this isn't GRAVESIDE WATCH didn't know why. "You mean, your they may find il most disquieting." first?" 'And -; you're counting on that, aren't you?" 1 \ '. r. r-y p.rt ". CON 1 . r r.! F G i "Ah, no, son. I'm afraid it isn't." He Sagehorn raised his shoulders and live century. Unfortunately, the time traveler frowned, but then his face brightened. "But made his neck disappear. "Sure. That's the himself has become delirious, and the yours shows the most promise for survival. kind of mystery that legends and myths are friend is worried aboul him having a mental Prospects are as good as those for Ihe spun from. If my time caps don't survive breakdown, going crazy, becoming most capsule Ihe Northingale Corporation hundreds of years, maybe a fascinating dangerous. So he tries to get a message to buried back in Sixty-three. However," he legend or two may." the future." looked off to the side for a moment, "appar- This was too well thought out for Frank to

Frank pressed the palm of one hand ently it will never be found." simply dismiss it. The plan had some depth against the knuckles of the other. Three "You've been testing this theory for the to it. Suddenly Frank realized that he was in knuckles discharged, each at a different past twenty years, ana it's never worked?" the presence of an imagination as wild as pitch. There was a dangerous logic to "Time caps are tricky. Some will be dug his. A fellow sufferer! Was thfs the old man Sagehorn's theory. In a weaker moment, up much too soon. Say, one or two hundred that he would become in thirty years? A Frank might have embraced that logic. years at the most. Well before the age of hopeless dreamer with a curious obses- Maybe. He glanced up at the stars. One of time travel." sion? them seemed brighter than [he others, but Frank felt sorry for the crazy old guy. Instinctively he picked up the box and light he knew that the he was seeing had Twenty years! He wondered how many he carefully tried to open it, as if it would allow left that star thousands of years ago. For all had "seeded" and then chuckled at the him a glimpse into the future. he knew the star might not be there any- thought of future scientists scratching their "It's sealed," said Sagehorn.

it "1 more. Sometimes was better not collective heads. just wish I could be "Why?" knowing, around when they open up a capsule and 'An extra precaution. The scroll is pre-

"Well, even if I believed in your theory, I find one of your scrolls." served in a vacuum." couldn't get your box in that capsule any- "Oh, they'll probably start popping them "Oh?" way. The contents are already laid in there open in the next century. Course. Ihey Frank turned the box over in his hands a like a three-dimensional puzzle. Molhing might think the first one amusing, as you couple of times. It had an oily film on it. like more will fit." do." a new pair of garden shears. He could even "Smuggle it in. Remove something and Frank raised his eyebrows in a polite pro- smell the greasy freshness of the metal. He put my box in its place." test. set the box down. "Remove something — for a box and "But when they discover that the second, "Just curious about what you had written some half-baked theory?" third, fourth — " He stopped and extended on the scroll." "I'm a time-capsule seeder. Been seed- his arm to indicate a whole crop of cap- "Time and place is the essential part. But ing fime caps for the past twenty years. My sules. "When they see that almost every most of the scroll is simply a carefully writ- theory is hardly . . . half-baked." long-range time capsule buried in the twen- ten portrait of a delirious time traveler

"Of course I'm listening to you, Harriet. You said you were a Martian. stranded in this century. However the gist

of the matter is that I promise — in the scroll— to bring my time traveler friend to a specific location at a certain date and time to await a rescue attempt. Exact time and place, mind you. Therefore, when they re- ceive this message, some time travelers will be dispatched to the Raven Hili Tavern." "The tavern?"

"That's where I'll be at exactly five p.m., a week from Friday I've already described my physical features in the scroll. So, if my plan works, then some actual time travelers will contact me there." 'And you'll prove their existence." ,

Frank raised the cup to his lips and eyed Sagehorn over the rim. So far he had man- aged to confine his observations to just the theory. The theory held up, but what about the old man himself? He hesitated when it came to Sagehorn. Somehow he could sense a magic in his face. Or his voice. Or was it just his own imagination? Well, sometimes it was better not to know how the trick was done. SperryTbp^Siders. So classic, But the questions kept coming. Who was this old man? Where did he come from? some people never wear anything else. Was he crazy or brilliant? There were too There isonlyoneSperryTbp-Sider^ouIand many questions, and despite the man's or at sea. Hand-sewn, leather- laced, durable and / appearance, Frank knew that Sagehorn extraordinarily handsome. had the razor-sharp, steel-trap mind that Write, for our complete catalogue. could tear the meat off a convoluted ques- And read the classics. Authentic!- tion. He paused and then held out a bony Speny Top- r, "Why?" Side 30 Rubber Avenue, Naiigscuek, CT. 0677O "Why what?"

"Well , why have you speni twenty years—"

Suddenly it hit him. What Ihe whole con-

versation had been leading up to but i quite touching. The thought burst into focus, stunning him for just a moment. Was reality finally outstripping his imagination? Had he been overlooking his basic an- thropology? He had to know for sure. "Okay, Mr. Sagehorn," he said, finding his voice again. "I'll get it in the capsule." Sagehorn smiled, reached down to pet his dog, and then raised his cup to Frank.

"But I just had an interesting thought," said Frank, recovering somewhat and join- ing in the toast. He took a sip of his coffee and then set it down next to the fire. "Don't

know why I didn't think of it before," "What's that?" asked Sagehorn. With hands clasped behind his head, Frank leaned back against his camping gear and gazed up at the glittering stars. They glistened with the polish of time. A few even winked at him. "Well, Mr Sagehorn, suppose there re- ally was a time traveler stuck in this century. And suppose that a time capsule was, in- deed, the only way he could get a message to the future. Now, the question is," he glanced back at Sagehorn, "How would this time traveler go about convincing someone lo smuggle his message into the capsule?" Sagehorrr"shrugged, but he couldn't hide the twinkle in his eye. "Oh, he'd prob- ably think of something," he said with a wink. OO Nol even insects can be excluded. On other planets and other stars. Most of the UMNerce Earth two factors keep their size down: stars are, in round numbers, three or four Their-skeletons are on the outside, and be- billion years younger or older than we. cause they have no lungs, they must pump Younger planets, of course, are nothing, removed from us in brainpower as we are oxygen to their bodily tissues through air and the older ones— where are they? A from ape-men. tubes. Doubling an insect's size under billion years ago man was a worm in his Another lype of branching is possible. these conditions would cube the mass of ancestry. A billion _years from now we will On Earth both man and bat evolved from a its tissues, making them too heavy for the have evolved as far from our present form

shrewlike tree-climbing mammal. If the bat chitinous exoskelelon to support' and re- as we have from a worm." dominated evolution on another planet, its quiring more oxygen than the afr tubes Only a tiny fraction of the civilizations on large-brained descendants could do most could supply. other planets will communicate as we do. of the things we can and. would be able to Yet there is no reason why an insectlike Younger ones will not yet have developed fly as well. creature on another planet could not technology. Older ones will have relegated Then again, an animal need not be some evolve a good brain. With appendages de- radio to their attics millions of years ago. kind of mammal to walk upright. Some di- signed to manipulate things easily, they Communication by radio will probably re- nosaurs walked on their hind legs and could build more complex structures than main just a dream. evolved squirrellike hands. If reptiles be- terrestrial insects do, and they could What might we learn from such crea- came a planet's dominant life form, there is evolve much more complex societies. tures? Mot the usual pap that people spec-

no reason why they could not develop At some stage in thei' evolution, it would ulate about. Nontechnological societies superior brains. Unless they also acquired be possible for us to talk with such other- will not tell us how to cure cancer or to

full-fledged hands, however, it might be worldly creatures. Most would probably control thermonuclear arms. We may learn difficult for them to create a technological have evolved vocal cords, or some equiva- instead, to our shame, what we should civilization. lent, and developed some form of lan- have learned from our own not always

The octopus is an intelligent and emo- guage. It we could learn to talk to the dol- humane history long before we started on tional creature. It turns white when fright- phins, we would be well prepared for the road to the stars— that the survival of an ened, red when angry. It could well be a extraterrestrial dialogues. intelligent species requires not higher good candidate for life's crowning We will probably have to talk with our technology but greater humanity. To have achievement on anotherworld, despite the cosmic cousins in person. Dr. Robert Jas- that demonstrated to us by nonhuman earthly model's walnut-sized brain. This trow, director of NASA's Goddard Institute creatures could be the ultimate insult to our would be especially likely if it came to live for Space Sciences and author of the re- human vanity.

1 on land. "If an octopus can evolve from a cent best-seller God and the Astronomers, But there could also be a positive lesser . slug," Dr. Berrill says, "then all kinds of explains: "The four billion years during in the discovery that man is alone in the things are possible. Any form of life could which life has been evolving along the car- universe, a unique, unrepeatable being. conceivably become intelligent under fa- bon chain in its present form are them- The knowledge that intelligent life is found vorable conditions." selves a very small fraction of the age of only on one frag e pianei could drive some 'sense into the heads of politicians 3= ;nov tinker with their lethal arsenals.

Beyond physical life forms, there may be other be-.ngs. bi lions of years ahead of us.

"It's difficult to imagine the unimaginable," Dr. Berrill says. Yet able people have tried.

"I don't think lite such as ours, with- a lot of water and the carbon chain, is more than an ephemeral stage," Dr. Jastrow asserts. "Knowing the length of the universe's exis- tence and the short time the earth has

existed, I don't think that life in the cosmos,

more than a fraction of it, is some distorted

replica of our chemistry. I think it's either

disembodied life of mind entirely or in the silicon form — not the sand-eating mon-

sters, but what we call the computer, I would put my ,T!oney or the silicon memory

bank as an immortal form of life and on the disembodied form as the ultimate. "My belief is that every planet with suit- able water and temperature goes through four or five billion years of carbon evolution. As Dr. Ponnamperuma says, the ingre- dients are abundant, the reactions go well, and the Urey-Miller experiment Iwhich simulated conditions on Earth billions of years ago] showed that everything starts off nicely.

"And then I think after four or five billion years life passes on to a less vulnerable and more expandable framework for hous-

ing its intelligence. And it leaves the car-

bon-based life behind it. So there are crea- tures like us around, but they must be very " "it's a monument to the inventor of the throwiwsy. thinly scattered and not the majority. We humans are a very small slice of lime."OQ Experienced UFO investigators know raw perceptions. CUFOS investigator that Pecha's description of the apparition Hendry, who worked with reports from Paul UFD as zooming forth then follow- Cerny, a CUFOS representative, and with back and and CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32 ing his pickup truck is common when an Mutual UFO Network members Robert light while hovering, and a bright light when honest observer misjudges the range to a Neville and Lois Williams, found that the accelerating. There was a large, red light in large, distant light— a very convincing illu- power lines Pecha cited had nothing to do front, two retractable sidelights, like clus- sion once some unconscious and subtle with his own electrical supply. Though Co- ters of cubes mounted on curved tubing, wrong assumptions take root in the wit- lusa County was blacked out by an over- six dangling cables with frayed ends, and ness's mind. The jump to the foothills 32 loaded transformer eight kilometers west ot two hooklike arms. No rivets, bolts, screws, kilometers away would have required an Pecha's mobile home, the power line he seams, or patterns could be seen." acceleration in excess of four million times mentioned led to a power system, named

Pecha described the UFO's movements, the force of gravity, if Pecha's range esti- the Central Valley Project, maintained by

giving his estimates of distance, as it re- mates were accurate. And the object Pe- the federal government. It had experi- ceded from his home. (Experienced UFO cha's neighbors described was at least 30 enced no power problems at all on the night investigators realize that the only things a times smaller than the one Pecha told of— of September 10. witness can really perceive are direction unless the witnesses were making wrong Although odd. this discovery does not and angular size and that distance is a assumptions about the distance. Unfortu- suggest that Pecha was deliberately fab-

subjective judgment in such a case.) The nately, this happens all too often. ricating his story But it does hint that his con- 'hooklike arms partially retracted; the The dangling tentacles and the UFO's clusions about what he had seen probably sidelights swung out; and a powerful overall measurements are strikingly remi- affected his memories. This happens all too searchlight projected downward but cut off niscent of high-altitude rocket plumes. The frequently, much to the sorrow of serious in midair. Suddenly the UFO swooped off to inhabitants of Petrozavodsk, in the Soviet UFO investigators whose work the effect some foothills about 32 kilometers to the Union, were terrified by a "glowing jellyfish obstructs. west, reaching them in only a few seconds. UFO" late in 1977. The apparition was ac- The major problem in explaining many Pecha had also seen two other UFOs in UFOs seen by honest, clearheaded wit- the distance hovering over some 500,000- nesses is the hundreds of ways in which volt power lines. From an interplay of blue people can be fooled by their own senses. beams and an arc of light, Pecha con- The result can be as fantastic as any sight- cluded that the UFOs "might have been ing of a "true UFO." i/n panic, Pecha packed his zapping power," which he thought would A good example comes from the files account for his electrical failure. Mean- family into maintained by CUFOS. On April 29, 1978, while, large UFO abruptly leaped back ten people called the Aurora. Illinois, police the the pickup and sped off at across the 32 kilometers, looming again department to report a "saucer" flying at near Pecha's property. The two smaller 150 kilometers treetop Heights. The object hovered motion- electricity in less, then shot oft "in the blink of UFOs then vanished, and the an hour. "I thought we were eastward Pecha's home came back on. an eye." going to get At this point Pecha had seen enough. "I The case, according to Hendry's final thought we were going to get destroyed," destroyed," the normally calm report, was "rich in elements that are tradi- he recalled. In panic, he roused his family, mechanic recalls.^ tionally supposed to underwrite the value loaded them into his pickup, and drove off of a genuine sighting." Yet Hendry proved at 150 kilometers an hour, and the object that the UFO was really a 315-bulb advertis- continued to follow him. He stopped at a ing sign slung under a small plane. friend's home a short distance away and The plane became a UFO, Hendry says, pounded on the door. His friends came out because of "the pervasive emotional cli- and also saw a "domed saucer with an tually caused by a Soviet space shot. mate that appears to be surrounding the illuminated underside," larger than the full The direction taken by Pecha's UFO entire UFO subject, one that succeeds in dis- moon, which sped off toward the west and seems to point toward the rocket range torting even the most commonplace sight- then southward, disappearing suddenly. at Vandenberg Air Force Base, several ings into exaggerated miracles." This trap

Three other independent witnesses soon hundred kilometers to the south and west. is one that UFO investigators for the most appeared, each calling the Colusa County And indeed there had been a rocket launch part fail to avoid when faced with the task of

sheriff to report an extremely bright light at the appropriate time, but it was made evaluating earnest, honest UFO reports. whose movements closely matched those one day later. Neither Pecha nor the Air Whatever the problems with Pecha's tes- of the UFO Pecha had observed. Pecha Force information officer who told of the timony, he had the courage to talk about his remained shaken. "It was a bad nightmare, rocket had confused the dates, because encounter— a courage all too rare. Inves-

and I don't want to go through that again, both events occurred near midnight. The tigators suspect that the risk of ridicule by never!" he declared. But neighbors repeat- rocket hypothesis, too, thus proved to be a friends and neighbors has silenced the edly vouched for his honesty and calm, dead end. majority of UFO witnesses and has robbed So something very odd seems to have Pecha also mentioned feeling an im- serious researchers of the data they need happened. In analyzing the case, CUFOS mense charge of static electricity, which to explain many cases or to establish their checked out nearby radar sites, helicopter led to a suggestion that the mysterious inexplicability. services, and the U.S. Weather Bureau. phenomenon of ball lightning could have What actually happened, then, is un- Nothing had been tracked by radar at Sac- been involved. Some damage to vegetation clear, Granting that physical evidence is ramento or Oakland or Beale Air Force was found near Pecha's home, but a check inconclusive, a number of independenl Base, and there had been no illuminated for radioactivity in the surrounding area and presumably honest witnesses have balloons in the area. CUFOS determined found nothing abnormal. testified to the event. Though their interpre- that there were four possible solutions and One puzzle involves Pecha's description tations of the size, distance, and motiva-

estimated the probabilities of each: hoax, 1 of the two small UFOs "zapping" the distant tions of what they saw served only to con- percent; misperceived aircraft, 4 percent; power lines. Pecha clearly believed, and fuse their narratives, their descriptiot exaggerated -fantasy, 35 percent; and many investigators would have assumed angular size and movement might be valu- genuine UFO, 60 percent. But the term gen- without question, that this activity caused able. There was a UFO over Colusa County

uine UFO is not an explanation, merely an ad- his power failure.. He told his story accord- that night. The dispute still rages over what,

mission that no explanation has been found. ingly, and the belief may have colored his if anything, it proved. DO HOW MUCH WOULDYOU PAYTOSEE THE FUTURE?

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true relief from the pressures and tensions Arani has become one of the few re- of Science. Although we speak only Ben- searchers anywhere who still work on a SARASWATI biological that hot gali at home, the house itself is not self- mystery was very among CONTINUED FROM PAGE SZ consciously Hindu. It's your average, nice, scientists in the 1960s but declined as the exam in Philadelphia a few years ago was white two-story home in a good part of scientific community began to cry misfire defeated on the same grounds. Then Sci- the Bronx— my parents moved here from or fraud; the brain chemistry of memory ence's alumni organization, one of the most Queens after I was accepted at Sci- and learning, dedicated in the 50 states, struck back. A ence—with a small backyard and Daku, Remember the researchers who played bill was lobbied through the New York State my German shepherd, in it. The only indica- with planaria worms? Ground up right- legislature that required that the entrance tions that we are Indian are a small Hindu turning planaria, fed the mush to left exam be retained as long as the school mask on the living-room wall, a Buddha in turning planaria, and then announced that promised to search oul and admit the the dining room, my father's sitar, a little their left-turners had become right-turners'? "talented deprived" (read, minorities). table with a painting of the goddess Lak- Remember how this meant that learning Bronx Science agreed, and that's one rea- shmi [the goddess of wealth], and photo- could be passed on chemically, that maybe son why Arani Bose was al Science. (At graphs of two devotees of Kali [the god- there was a "smart pill" in our future? Well, present 10 percent of the school's 3,000- dess of destruction]. On the wall, of course, very few scientists were able to reproduce plus students are Asian. 11 percent are is Saraswati. My mother prays here every the results. Some believed the experiments Hispanic, 15 percent are black, and Jews day without fail." were so tunny that they founded one of constitute most of the remainder.) Arani's mother. Bani, garbed in a sari and history's very few science-humor journals, The resulting melting pot at Science is as with a red spot on her forehead— she and The Worm-Runners Digest. good a reason as any why Science her husband are members of the Kayastha Even Arani's eighth-grade biology graduates will have their shot at planning caste, the Hindu pigeonhole for the profes- teacher had to suppress a giggle when he the fulure and running the world. It's also a sional and business classes— reveals that told the class about the pianaria-memory reason that partially explains why Arani's Arani, surprisingly, is really not all that debacle. Arani, however, was not amused. current girl friend, Lynn King, is Chinese, He was fascinated and read all the perti- and why his best friend — who was ac- nent scientific papers. When he was cepted by MIT, Yale, and Johns Hopkins selected for Science's highly impressive but opted for a fourth school, instead— is "Creativity in Biology" program — a pro- Manny Rosen. With the exception of Lynn, gram the U.S. Office of the Gifted and

Arani explains, all his best friends are Jews. •C/ass standings are Talented (read, the Office of Education) has Kiss the book and pray to Saraswati. meaningless at Bronx Science. selected as a national model for other high Arani Bose will go to Stanford this fall, his schools to follow— he resolved to pursue in another high school first choice over several other glamour uni- the planaria question further than anyone versities. He will probably concentrate on an average else in the world. During the early part of his research, immunology instead of on his standby, the of 90 would put you at the chemistry of memory and learning, "unless Arani was able to duplicate the original

top of the it I find the right faculty person in that field." planaria work perfectly yet found subject

certain to criticism when he entered it in a science Sciencers are used to exercising a class. Here, it would make you selectivity fair. He then switched to goldfish but even- 425th out of 8503 Arani's eyes are almond-shaped and sel tually returned to planaria, since a similar in a head that is compressed, with a face organism would yield clearer results. Fi- that is almost as wide as it is long and a nally, the young scientist hit upon the idea head that runs more than the average that memory and learning were related to length from fronl lo back. He carries this increased synthesis of protein by the brain around gracefully on broad shoulders and bookish. In a high, birdlike voice, she tells and began a long search— "I bothered a lot short legs. He is an only child, very close to how he kicks a fierce soccer ball, plays of people at Einstein Medical College and his mother and father, and is a breathing tennis, and likes to go to museums and the New York University Medical Center"— example of that ultimate goal of Eastern serious movies (he loved Woody Allen's for a drug that would effect increased pro- philosophy, "detachment with empathy" In Manhattan) and watch TV [Lou Grant and tein synthesis. He finally hit upon "Poly-I.C," his research projects, he is meticulous and The Paper Chase are, predictably his favor- When the drug was fed to his planaria, attentive to detail. Arani is certain to be a ites). For light reading, he skims Scientitic Arani noticed a striking increase in their

it cautious and above-average academic re- American, Modern Photography , the jour- short-term learning ability, but disap- searcher. He strikes you as a possible fu- nal of the junior branch of the New York peared soon afterward. ture prime minister of India, if intelligence is Academy of Sciences, and Omni. "Poly-I.C. is just a short-term memory any indication of political bent. Lynn King, who is not very interested in booster, something like amphetamines,"

The name Arani is Bengali for "flint science and would rather study Chinese, is Arani explains, "and I really don't know if stones," used to start the holy fires of the another smiling diversion from the "pres- there would be any useful human applica- Hindu religion. In matters of Hindu culture, sures and tensions." Together, the two are tions here. The interest of the experiments, Arani displays the drive of a convert. He mad about New York's welter of ethnic res- however, is that they dearly demonstrated was brought to America at the age of five. taurants. "On our first date we ate Indian; that an improvement of memory is related Later he returned to Calcutta for two years, on the second, Chinese; and by the third to protein synthesis." and he hopes to visit Calcutta again soon. we compromised on French," Arani de- That finding propelled him into the Wesi-

Though in his short life he has been ex- clared. inghouse finals. posed to little more than American schools The Bose basement holds yet another and the counterparts of Manny Rosen, part of Arani's world. Forfouryears he has The planaria work in the basement usu- more and more a sitar buzzes in his brain, worked there with petri dishes, wires, bat- ally ends Arani's day. Here is how it begins; Tagore sings, and Watson, Crick, and The teries, goldfish, and planaria worms to find He gets up at 7:00 a.m., takes Daku for a Worm-Runners Digest provide Muzak, some previously unknown tacts of nature. walk, sips a little juice, eats a cookie, and His to "When I come home from Science and findings have made him a frequent takes a brown-bag lunch Science, where enter that front door," Arani explains, "I winner of New York area science fairs and he arrives at 8:20 a.m. The broad plaza in enter another world. It's totally Bengali. have propelled- him into Westinghouse's front of the four-story, red-and-white-brick Very stable, comfortable, and warm — 197.9 top 40, box that is Science teems with jeaned stu- 120 OMNI dents, not as many smoking as in most high television-production course, taught by Arani digs Science. "We have a very safe schools, nor as many scuffling. Readers of English-department chairman Rifkin. and pacific atmosphere here," he said. the New York Daily News seem to out- "This is a bit of a disappointment," said "I've never been mugged. [Note: Arani number readers o( The New York Times. Arani, once again displaying that Science hadn't even heard of the frightful Villa Av-

is it One's first impression that these are selectivity. "Many students take to get out enue gang until I mentioned it, although it is rather small kids, and that is correct. Many of senior English, and this hurts the quality well known to the faculty] There is much of them have been double-promoted in the of our productions. Our current project, in- more freedom here than at other high past and are younger than their same- cidentally." he said, "[was] to make an schools. It's mpre like a junior-college at- grade counterparts elsewhere (which is orientation film for first-year students." mosphere than a high-school one." one reason why Science does not have a After the tube session, Arani plunges into football team). The absentee rate is unusu- another long-term interest, physics, fol- Yet Science is indeed a high school, al-

ally low. for any high school. When the lowed by biology, where, he laments, "the though certainly a unique one. If Arani and doors open, walky-talkied security men teacher isn't terribly well informed about his fellow students had gone to PS. 1000 look the kids over closely to be sure that no molecular biology." Gym class is next, and instead, would they have been pounded

nonstudents are infiltrating. A loudspeaker Arani admits, "I am not very good." into dullness by anti-intellectual peer pres- sounds, making the pertinent announce- Later in the day he takes social studies. A sure, inferior facilities, student violence, ments of the day, beginning with, "Ladies while ago the class began to deal with Hin- bullied teachers, confrontation-minded ." and gentlemen . . duism. "We've been asked to discuss the unions, and drugs? Would their alertness On an average Monday Arani begins his effect of Hinduism on life in India," he and curiosity have been turned off by a day with a highly advanced calculus class notes. "Now isn't that ludicrous? Hinduism system that produces high-school grad- under math-department chairman Mrs. is life in India." uates who caiMOt read? Probably. At the

Henrietta Mazen. During the latter part ol the day he works same time would it be fair to create a two- "That class is as intense as a whole day in his beloved biology lab under the guid- tiered system in which the non-entrance- of school," Arani said. "Mrs. Mazen is rigor- ance of one of his favorite teachers. Mrs. exam schools would be generally dis- ously challenging, yet outside of class Pearl Strom. She was extremely helpful, missed as idiot factories? Certainly not. she's like your grandmother." said Arani, in showing him how to write the The property tax -payers of the nation, {Math, incidentally ranks with biology as paper on the planaria research. however— who are already voting with their

Science's academic jewel. Science stu- "Helpful? 1 don't know about that," Mrs. feet for private schooling and institutions

dents are repeatedly successful in mathe- Strom said. "I had him cut it down by two like Science— will probably increase pres- matical competitions, and the mathemat- thirds." sure on public officials to abandon such ical journal published there is, according to Arani's day ends with art class, a first- distressing "norms" altogether.

one faculty member, so advanced that only year course in which he was the only senior. Who really knows? In the meantime, all professional mathematicians can under- He doesn't say much about this activity we can be certain of is that Arani and his stand it.) except that he has "an extreme lack of in- peers at Science are being groomed to Then Arani changes his pace with a terest in the way our instructor teaches it." shape the twenty-first century for us. DO

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. {415)673-4320 8:00AM to7:00PMCaliforniatirr AstroVideo, inc. 90 Golden Gate Avenue San Francisco, California 94102 . kitchen, looked around carefully, and "Nonsense, After you." leered at me. We stepped into the airlock and went "Suarez," he said confidentially, "what through the rest of the suit-checkout pro- CONTINUED FROM PJ

are you up to? I mean; really?" cedure. I locked us through to the outside. standard in the lunar month, day showing "Porkner," I said, "a gentleman, who is The sun was glaring in the west. The struc- " where such sites might be looked for in the entrusted — tures scattered on the surface extended

Limb. It brilliant area around West was a "No, I mean, really. No kidding. Is it—" inky shadows across the rutted,

piece of applied astronomy. "You got it. It's a technical operation. pockmarked ground. As we walked, Sta-

That afternoon my rocket hopper was Something new," I said, leering back at him. cy's helmet swiveled. She was taking in the of scheduled to haul a load hung-over en- I made my escape while he was oh-ho- torn-up ground, the glinting litter of

gineers back to Polar Solar from .their ho-ing at me. It doesn't do to antagonize aluminum scraps and shards, the awkward monthly spree at Grimaldi, and we had to the cafeteria manager, or to tell him any- tangle of antenna towers and guy wires,

I let make a lot of local trips, too. my copilot thing, either, I went to bed early that eve- and the humped and ugly buildings.

all the flying while I studied of it do one those ning. Lucky for me, was my turn in the "It's not very pretty," I said.

maps. Each time we boosted out of the shower. "The human race takes its mess with it

West Limb hopper pad, I compared the Stacy Cramblitt was waiting for me at the everywhere it goes," she said,

map with the territory (or is it lunitory?) I hatch when got there at ten hours. All the "Better here than on the earth," I said.

round quitting time, I about. By had running around and plotting I had done "Besides, it's not all like this. This is a little

selected a promising rock field a short dis- had seemed a little sordid to me, I guess. ziton the face of a whole world. We're just a tance north of the base. It all seemed so But the way she looked, standing there, short walk from the real moon, where no safe and easy. cool and amused, in her tailor-made, one has ever set foot. Give it a chance." I

That night I cashed in on the accumu- fluorescent-pink pilot's vacuum suit, made took hold of one of her gloved hands. lated favors that people on the base owed my conscience clear up right away. "Okay," she said, looking at me, I

me. I got the next day off and a free re- "Everything set?" she asked. couldn't see her face through her mirrored

I charge of my vacuum-suit backpack, and "Not quite I said, putting load of yet," my sun visor, but I felt her squeeze my hand. borrowed two one-man vacuum-survival survival tents, blankets, and the food case We- must have been an odd sight as we

tents. I arranged for an airtight case into the airlock. For once there wasn't any- hiked out of view over the first ridge north of

packed with cold chicken, potato salad, one in the corridor near the hatch. I held her the base. There were undoubtedly a cole slaw, some vegetables, a fresh loaf of by the arms and drew her close to me. hundred people peeking at us from the French bread with real butter, lemonade, "I'm setting suit radio private your on my windows of the base buildings. I was lug-

bottles of Vineyards' vin I and two Boordy channel," I said. She looked at my face as ging the rolled-up tents and the food case. gris. West Limb may have been a real sty in clicked the knob on her chest module. A Stacy had a blanket over each shoulder. those days, but the pigs ate and drank well. delicate perfume rose from her 'collar ring. One of the blankets was a garish plaid; the The cafeteria manager had heard "You have nice eyes," she said. "Now other was white with green and orange rumors. He drew me into a corner of the you're blushing." stripes and the words fuerzas armadas de

Mexico printed on it. An hour later we were crossing the vast, boulder-strewn slopes of Hevelius Crater,

overlooking the flat Oceanus to our right, I noted that our feet were in the shade, but -S* the tallest boulders reflected a lot of sun- light onto the ground. We could see well enough to pick our way along, and my blackbody thermometer registered in the middle teens. The map supplied by my computer-pushing pal was proving re- markably reliable.

"You know, it's not just all gray, black, and white," Stacy said. "I can see all kinds of subtle colors. Look at that greenish streak in the rocks over there. See it?"

"I sure do. You've really got good eyes. Most people can't see these things until they've been on the moon for a year or more. Most don't care. There's a lot of

beauty here. It just doesn't smack you in

the eye the way it does back on Earth. God didn't make this scenery for clods. You

have to have some talent and sensitivity." I

was laying it on a bit thick, but it wasn't all crap. Stacy was having a good time in the low

gravity, bouncing around me as I went striding along. She kicked up a big cloud of dust in front of us. "Look at that," she said. "That dust set-

tled so quickly that I could almost hear the

thump it made on the ground. I've logged a lot of hours in space, but this is the first time I've ever been on my feet like this on " "This nitrous oxide leak will cost the thousands. Barnes.. You're tired. company another world. Do you ever get used to the really," I "Not answered. "I never really Stacy said, "You know, it seems odd to that their door openings faced each other.

gel completely to it. I'm always find- thai there should used me be so much fine dust The openings in tents of Ihe kind I had are

ing things I new to look at." stopped sud- on the ground around here. I thought the round, surrounded by a complicated, flex- denly and stooped to look at the ground. lunar soil wasn't supposed to be ible gasket. You can seal up a single tent "Look here." differentiated — no wind or water to sort it with its own door, or double up two tents by

As she bent over, I pointed out a circular out into particles of varying sizes, and so pressing their door gaskets together. The pattern in the dust. In the center of the forth." gaskets are supposed lo interlock tightly

circle was a tiny grain of shiny glass. Hair- "That's right," I said. "Somebody's not when the tents are filled with air.

like lines radiated from the center of the following Ihe rules." I held up the entrance of one of the tents

pattern. The lines looked as if someone had We marched along in silence. I.kept look- !o allow Stacy to crawl in. dragging Ihe food

drawn them in the dust with a fine needle. ing for an open spot to pitch the tents in. case and the blankets. Then I crawled into

it. The entire formation was about the size of a After a while Stacy and I emerged, so to Crouching on my knees. I carefully dime. There were also concentric arcs in speak, from a forest of boulders into a sealed the two tents together.

the pattern I had discovered. clearing. The scene was extraordinary, re- "That looks airtight," I said. "Lets see

"What is it?" Stacy asked. ally. It was like a natural Stonehenge, with a what happens when I let the air out of one of

"I call them dust flowers," I said. "Don't circle of rough columns surrounding a sort these reserve bottles. If it doesn't hold, we it " touch it; it'll fall apart if you do. A friend of of terrace in the hillside, The circle was have to call it off and go back to the base mine thinks they're mi era meteorite craters. open to the east, and we could see far out "That would be miserable," Stacy said, Where the glass is in the middle is where over the flatlands. A nearly full Earth hung poking me playfully in the backside.

the struck, the pattern I micrometeorite and low over the razor horizon. I almost ex- opened the valve on the air bottle. The

around it was formed by shock waves pected to see a sail on that dappled, tents stirred like living things, then bal- traveling in the dust. My friend says they oceanlike expanse and surf rolling in on the looned into a pair of dome shapes. can form only on this kind of fine-dust sur- beach several kilometers below us. "It's like being inside a waterbed mat-

face. He's writing a paper about it." Stacy was superimpressed. She just tress," Stacy remarked.

"What do you think they are?" stood there and said, "Glorious. Glorious. It "Or two jellyfish kissing," I answered, "I think they're dust flowers. We'll proba- really is." She turned to me. "No one else watching the other tent through the trans-

bly find more of them if we look around has ever been here, have they?" parent plastic walls of our tent. carefully," "Don't see any footprints, do you? I've Stacy began to spread the blankets on

"I'd hate to step on something that's been saving it for someone special." the tent floor. "Why did we bring two tents?"

maybe been waiting here for millions of Someday God is going to punish me, I she asked. years." thought. "For storage. When we takeour suits off,

"Let's keep our eyes open." "Let's get out of these suits and have it'll be like having two extra people in here."

We started off again, passing among some lunch," I said. "I'm starving." "So long as they don't want any lunch.

shattered heaps of rocks and skirting I untied the roll of survival tents and laid Did you notice what's happening to the around the lesser craters. them out on the ground, arranging them so blankets?" she asked, holding up a An Artist's View of the Universe

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ripped-off handful. "Looks like vacuum and container, "luncheon is served at noon, Well, I never kiss and tell, but I will say sunlight aren't good for wool." under the stars, We have chicken, cold, that Stacy and I peeled each other out of

"They were getting pretty worn out any- and French bread, hot. We have slaw, to- our remaining clothing. I threw the iood box way." matoes, and chilis. Have a glass of this and our long Johns into the other tent with

"How's the inflation going?" she said. good rose, my dear Captain Cramblitt." I the other stuff. Infrared from the ground

into our glasses. Then I the surrounding boulders shone on our "Looks okay so far," I answered. The two poured some wine and tents, joined at their doorways, had be- dished up big platefuls of everything. We naked bodies, but it was nothing com- come rigid. The air temperature had lay down together on the blankets, resting pared to the glow that was in the tent al- leveled off at twenty-five degrees centi- our backs on my backpack. ready. Her breasts flushing dark rose, grade, and the air pressure was holding "Pancho, this is delicious," Stacy mum- Stacy spread herself on the blankets and steady at an alpine two hundred thirteen bled through a mouthful of Porkner's warm held her arms out to me. millibars. bread. Now you're not going to believe this, but I

"Can we take off our suits now?" "Yep. My compliments to Cookie, and hesitated at this point. I was, after all, an old

I lead- I I'm so glad he's not here now," joked. hand, the open doorway "Let me go first," I said. Cautiously ro- space and tated the locking ring on my suit collar. After two hours I was feeling pleasantly ing to the other tent had been troubling me.

it, but Nothing happened. So I removed my hel- tight around fhe middle. Stacy was pouring There was no reason to worry about met. The air In the tent felt fine. On my refills for us from our second bottle. The open hatches of any kind hover in my

in tropical. The mind's eye until I get up and close them. cheeks I could feel the cheery warmth of atmosphere the tent was the nearest boulders. brilliant earth, blazing cobalt, turquoise, Most of us out here are like that.

lay, "Don't go away," I said, rising to my "It's great," I said, disconnecting my and white, shone down on us. We hips backpack hoses. Soon we were both touching, Stacy's head on my shoulder. knees. I found the tent's door, a flat disk of planet. flexible, transparent plastic, rolled up in a shucking ourselves out of our vacuum I raised my glass to the home

it its suits. "Here's to everybody who happens to be corner. I unrolled and pressed gasket In her long Johns, Stacy looked like a looking at us right now. Here's looking at into place around the circumference of the tax-free million. She removed her inner them." My speech was only a little slurred. doorway between the two tents.

I the attention you gloves and socks and sat, twiddling her "They can't see us," Stacy whispered, "Now can give you

I in the deserve," I said, and embraced her. Stacy toes at me and smiling. I gathered up our finishing her wine. "We're new-moon suits, helmets, and boots and passed them phase right now." snuggled in my arms and gave me a kiss. I here's really was enjoying every moment of this, through the now-rigid doorway into the I turned to her and said, "Well, of other tent. That made enough room in our looking at you, anyway," and, what the hell, While Slacy was tickling the lobes my kissed ears, we were interrupted by a strange tent for us to spread out the blankets. I kept I kissed her on the mouth. She me my backpack with us and shoved Stacy's back, clutching at my neck. noise. It sounded like a sudden release of through the doorway into the other tent with "Guess what we're having for dessert," steam. The total silence of the lunar moun- the rest otour gear. she whispered into my ear, sending goose tainside had seeped into our unconscious back. during the afternoon, and this uncanny "All righty," I said, unlatching the food bumps along my arms and down my sound made us leap off the floor. There was

one second of panicky thrashing as we .

disentangled our arms and legs. I crouched like a cornered alley cat, glaring around at the motionless landscape out-

side the tent. I didn't see anything. Then I noticed Stacy was staring goggle-eyed at the entrance of our tent.

"Holy Moiher of God," I moaned, The

other tent, the one with our stuff in it, had

r ,v become detacnecl f o i I he lent we were in. The two door gaskets had separated, the air had escaped, and now the other tent was lying collapsed over our suits, our helmets, our boots, our underwear, the food container, Stacy's backpack, the dirty

dishes. All of it was out there in the clean,

fresh vacuum I had been talking about, We were left buck-naked in the tent, with noth- ing but the blankets and my backpack. Stacy gulped for several seconds. "Well," she finally said in a small voice, "now we won't have to wash the dishes." There was only one reason we weren't already dead of explosive decompression:

I had sealed fhe door of our tent after get-

ting rid of the last of our clothes. I could see my vacuum suii and helmet less than a meter away through the transparent plastic

of the tent. I studied Siacy's backpack. A

little red fag was sticking out of the air- regulator compartment. For some reason, the safety on her air bottle had blown, allow- ing the bottle to vent freely in the sealed tent. The excess pressure had blown the door gaskets of the two tents apart. The

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iery way, I may return the materials hadn't had all our equipment in it, it proba- "Only two. The first one is, we say the hell couldn't face it right away. She was a better

it, bly would have flown away like a released with hope for rescue, and have a good, man than I was. short, balloon. Our own tent was holding air just but time." Stacy started to droop a liltle. I hugged fine, although the plastic door was bulging "I'm not up to it."' her more tightly, and she straightened up

it. outward unnervingly. "Forget The other idea is to open the again. Damn it! I visualized the path we had

I dragged my backpack toward me and entrance of our tent and try to grab one of walked from West Limb. Just a short walk, if looked at the readouts. Four hours, at the the helmets before the decompression kills we didn't stop for sightseeing and fooling most, of reserve air and absorption. around. Betweerrthe rocks, the ground CO ? The arm's length of vacuum that separated "Now I'm really not up lo-it." was smoother than usual for the moon, like

us from the radios in our helmets might as "Nothing to it. You get fhe heJmet and a beach made of fine ash instead of sand.

well have been millions of kilometers. Our ."eseal the door. I let out all the air from your We could do it barefooted. I was beginning ass was really in a sling, and my face backpack reserve bottle to repressurize to have a thought.

musl've shown if as I looked up trom the our tent. One, two, three. Then we radio for "Stacy—" backpack. help." She responded with a loud sniff. Then

"I reclose the I , Stacy covered my hand with hers. As could never door gasket she said, "I'm sorry. thought I was being calm and beautiful as an angel, she said to fast enough." brave. It's just such a damn rotten break—" afraid, me, "Don'l be Pancho." "We could wrap ourselves in strips of "I should be shot for getting you into Guilt replaced lerror in my wretched blanket, mummy-style, really tight, to pre- this," I said. "When we get back to the

soul. "N-no." I said. "We're not dead yet, vent embolism." base, you should turn me in for disciplinary eh, Stacy." "Darling, it sounds like a brave way to action." "Although well disregard we might as commit suicide. If we can't think of anything "I d-definitely will. Corrupting my of the chances anybody finding us out here else, we'll try it, all right?" morals—" By this time tears were running by accident," she said firmly. "Okay," she said, crestfallen. down my face, too. Oh, yes. And my own stupid fault, too. "Besides, the blankets are falling apart," "Listen. Stacy, there's another thing we

I "Well. shouldn't have pressured you I said, holding one up. The blankets had can do. We can try to walk back to the info bringing here." she said. me out become so dried out and flimsy that they base. We could stand the tent on its edge

"Don't say that, Stacy. I always think I were turning to shreds as we moved and roll it along from the inside. We'll just I'm this know what doing." Don'! lever! By around in the tent. leave all our stuff here. There's enough air time she was holding me. stroking me. There a long silence. was We sat hud- in my backpack for us to make it if we start

There I was, lower than a crater's bottom, dled, arms around each other, like a pair of and she. was trying to comfort me. monkeys in a thunderstorm. Stacy had She thought aboul it for a moment. "Why The sky over our heads was black. The to been doing her best encourage me. Her not?" she said, finally. "Even if the tent rips stars were waiting to see what I could come proposal, to chance letting the air out of our and we depressuhze, we won't be any

with. we'll it up "Whatever we do. have to do tent, was a long shot, but it was basically worse off than we are now, will we?"

I soon," quavered. "Any suggestions?" practical. Definitely worth a try. But I "Nope."

"Let's do it," she said, lumping up and pulling me to my feet.

I lifted up my backpack and hung it on my back, tucking the dangling air and coolant hoses under one of the shoulder straps. Stacy helped me ad|usi the harness

to fit my naked torso. Stooping, we both pushed against the

wall on one side of the tent, trying to tip it over. The plastic felt icy cold against my hands. "Try to shuffle your feet toward the edge

of the floor," I said. The tent slowly rolled

onto its side, the scraps of blanket sliding downward as the tent floor tilted upward. The rim of the tent flattened on the ground.

It was like standing inside a huge flat tire. The floor of the tent was now a wall to my

right. Since it was no jonger resting on the

ground, it was bulging outward almost as much as the dome roof on my left side. The floor was made of the same kind of trans-

parent plastic as the dome was. I tapped

on it to knock off the dust that stuck to its

outside surface. Very little dust actually fell off, but at least we could see through the material.

"Okay," I said. "Luckily, we're already facing the way we want to go. Stacy, stay close behind me. The idea is to step along f—>- carefully and make the tent roll like a wheel on its edge." "I hope we don't have to make any sharp turns."

We took a tentative step, As I put my

"Take a ... card ... any ...card-" weight on the plastic thai curved up in front

of me, it siretched until my foot was on the ground. Alarming stress wrinkles devel- taking bigger chances, leading us into un- oped in the dome and floor. Abruptly the familiar ground, trying to make our return to tent lurched forward. Stacy fell against me West Limb along a more nearly slraight line from behind. We both staggered, but we than the route we had taken to reach the managed to keep the tent upright. place where we had our picnic. closer the the sloping "What happened?" I asked Stacy over As we got to base, my shoulder. side of Hevelius trended more to the west. rolled "When I picked up my foot, the tent The sun began to peep among the undulat- handbook forward and bushed me into you." she ing hills on our right horizon, When, we The said. "If we want the tent to roll smoothly. came to the first long strip of sunlight shin-

"off the the ground, it was like step- for survival. I've got to take my trailing foot ing directly dn ground at the same lime you put your lead- ping on a hot griddle. The facts you ing foot down on the plastic, We'll have to "Yew! Back up, quick!" march in step. I'll have to hold on to your "Is your fbot burnt?" Siacy asked. need to know. backpack." "No, thank God," "Jesus Christ! All right, forward, march. "Will the tent plastic be able to stand the

right, left, right ..." heat?" How much is too much? Left, right, left, it's for hotter And sa it went. The tent rolled along like a "Oh, sure, designed use on pot sun This book g;ves a rase nq V big wheel, wobbling this way and that, bul surfaces than this. Bui we'll need to protect maiyohheerrec'ss-sso'oier never quite falling over, Whenever we our feet with something." Oo-h rien-e ! 'v ona D-vs re.] y The came to one of the huge boulders', we We allowed the tent to topple over. Then would walk a little to one side of the edge of we sat down. for a breather, the. dome, forcing the tent to curve its path "How far do we still have to go?" Stacy in thai direction. Occasionally we had to asked me as we bound our bruised and stop and put the tent into reverse. Gener- blistered feet with strips of disintegrating he is<;ssce s":

ally, I followed the footprints we had made blanket. oh our way to the picnic site, but, as we "Less than a. kilometer. The base is righi that Good came to more open country, I started tak- around the. corner of ridge." of halt ing shortcuts. I carefully avoidedthe rims of thing, too. I had taken advantage our any craters more than a few meters across; to inspeci the conditioh of our tent. The plastic frosty scratched and was I didn't care to find out whether we could was and develop enough traction to climb up out of obviously starling to wear out. we I All About one of them. After tying up our makeshift booties, Things went better, than I'd hoped. We got the tent up and rolling again. The re- Radiation moved steddily down hi i.withmestill counting maining distance, had to be covered more f cadence until Siacy yelled a; rne to shut Up. slowly than we had been proceeding. We On and on we trUndled the tent, my were forced to go from one patch of shade arches flattening in Utile craters, sharp little to another. C'css;ng the strips of sunlight-

If I roasted in rocks jabbing my soles. As we tramped out was hell. I felt as was being a

of the dust area into coarser soil, I started bonfire. At each stopping place in the

worrying about puncturing the tent. There shade I tried to plan the next sunlight cross- avoid wasn't a single damn thing I could do about ing so we could as much as possible

it at all. Stacy was cussing under her breath running Over rocks. The tent plastic was with pain as she marched behind me. beginning to make little crackling noises

The blankets had turned to scraps and with each step we took. I kept slogging fuzz by this time, sliding down to the lowest away on my throbbing feet. Whatever was

I part of the tent as it rotated. I attempted to bad for me was worse, for Stacy, knew. walk on the stuff, but the effort threw Stacy At last, the base buildings came in sight,

and me out of step. I never thought I could be so happy to see

1 I "Even if we had our boots with us," I said, that dump as was just then, "Stacy!" "we probably couldn't wear them in this cried. "You see thai? We're almost there!" "Fascine rig. ''eveai ng. easy

I tent. The cleats wpuld hurt the tent worse I couldn't see her behind me, but could io-,,nge'3"cncl reao rig than the ground outside does." feel her leaning heavily 6f\ my backpack. Today's Professionals "Yeah," said Stacy. "Let's keep moving." "Don't stop now, honey. We're getting

I said, pacing, on. There Use this order form I didn't have a watch, but we must have there," doggedly

gone on that way about three hours. We left were no more sunt places :c cross. 1 had the boulders behind us, and the air grew to consider ihe problem of how to get in- Publications Organization Dept OR chilly in the tent. If the ground hadn't been side the buildings. The quickest thing to do 4833 Fountain Avenue warm, we would have had trouble with would be to head for the buggy hatch, the East Annex frostbiie. The pocked fields of the moon only airlock big enough to allow us to roll Los Angeles, Calif. 90029 were around us. It seemed as if we were the tent inside wihout collapsing it first. P east; send me copies of All making our way down the sides of an end- I explained all ihis to Siacy while we ap- All About Radiation @ SIO each. less ash heap. My bare skin cringed from proached the buildings. "Fortunately, it'll Enclosed is my check/money order. the sharp stars overhead. be easy io get somebody to cycle the air-

"At least it's a nice cloudy day," Siacy lock for lis," 1 Said. "The trail to the buggy Name . said. hatch runs right under ihe picture window Address "What?" of the staff bar and iounge. My instincts tell ' Cily/St/Zip "On Earth. We can see where we're go- me it must be about Happy Hour now, The

Satisfaction guaranteed, All orders ing." bar will be full of people, It'll be easy to shipped within 24 hours of receipt. " "Oh." attract iheir attention — Stacy came to an abrupt halt, jerking' on

my backpack so hard that I almost fell. 7 " Whai did vou say she ^aid thickly time!" I barked. "Leftrightleftrightleftright!" "Hey! Suarez! You all right?" It was Pork- "Huh?" We were lucky again. Though fog was ner's voice, coming over the airlock "You expect me to walk in front ot the forming in the tent, I could see that the speaker. He had won the footrace down the West Limb Base staff bar and lounge dur- buggy hatch stood wide open. This was in corridor from the bar to the buggy hatch. I ing Happy Hour Friday night on stark- violation of base safety directives, but I'll be jumped out of the tent and palmed the lens naked?" eternally grateful to whoever was responsi- of the TV camera that surveilled the airlock,

"Stacy," I said, turning to face her, "we're ble. With me in front "We're and Stacy clinging all right," I said into the intercom lucky to baalive, and—" behind, we bustled across the open space grille, "We. uh, we need-some clothes." burst She into tears. "I can't. I won't." in front of the window "Already taken care of." Porkner's voice

She had been carrying me through an I caught a glimpse ot round eyes, open answered. "We've got a red light on the ordeal so harrowing that it siill gives me the mouths, and hands holding drinks in sus- airlock panel out here. We'll have to open creeps just thinking about it, We were sun- pended animation. Porkner jjbi happened the hatch by hand. Stand by." burned salmon-pink; feet bleed- to be the our were tending bar that night, He. later Stacy and I stood to one side. After much ing; we were in deadly danger just standing told me that it was the only dead silence he talk and clanking, the hatch opened a there. She had bolstered my morale and had ever heard in that place. crack, and Porkner's arm came through, kept me from despair. This was the first Stacy and I ran into the airlock so fast thai proffering a couple of white tablecloths. crack in her bravery and her sense of I gol a black eye colliding with the inside Blessed be the name of Porkner. and 111

I door. Icepicks in humor had seen during the whole terrible my ears, heart slamming. I never malign his spaghetti again. thing. Some other short-tempered son of a pounded at the airlock controls through the Stacy and I emerged discreetly togaed. bitch might have raised his voice at that tent plastic. I managed to hit the emergency to the plaudits of the multitude, and entered point, but not I. close button; the outer door clanged down. the dusty buggy bay Stacy was escorted

I held her close, The tent folded then looked her up and around us as the airlock to her quarters, and I had to answer a lot of down. My hands ran up her back, caressed roared itself full of that wonderful air. questions. There were some sly remarks her hair, fondled her breasts, rubbed I staggered against the wall, fighting the about my, ah, alleged physical state, which against her downy belly. I almost wasn't tent. Stacy sat down hard on the floor. We had not gone unnoticed as we sprinted

aware of I doing. both what was were gasping for ai r. I picture was about to say past the window, I always say that

"Stacy, Stacy, darling," I choked. "You'll we had made it, or words to that effect, it's up to us pioneers to point the way for- be the most beautiful thing any of them has when I became aware ot the sound of ward, as it were. ever seen, you know" Just then my left ear trampling feet and the murmur of voices As for my relationship with Captain popped. It had always been the sensitive from behind the inner door The Happy Cramblitt, her goodbye kiss at the shuttle one. The air pressure in the tent was falling. Hour stampede had arrived. pad the next day seemed promising. The We had finally sprung the dreaded leak! Stacy ripped the plastic off door the her. I en- next time I saw she asked me whether Stacy felt it, too. She grabbed the straps trance of the tent and stepped out. She wanted to go skiing. We were on the north of my backpack and whirled me around. said through clenched teeth, I'll kill the first polar icecap of Mars at the time, but that's

I stifled the impulse to bolt "Double bastard who—" another story. OQ

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imeni in human nutrition, as well as in solar physics and Earth resources, astronauts had to record everything they ate, or didn't eat, and why. "For the food people," the first crew re- ported from orbit. "The chili has been the most troublesome dish in the whole menu

. from the standpoint of mess. When , . you

open the cellophane top ... it explodes, and great cubettes and gobbets of chili go

flying all over; it's bad news, It's so bad that we've decided that the next and last time we have chili on the menu, which is on day twenty-eight— and we've already cleaned up and are in the process of deactivat- ing—we can't afford that kind of nonsense. So we're going to substitute fillets from the frozen overage for the chili and you can make your menu calculations accordingly. End of message." When astronauts met cosmonauts aboard the Apollo-Soyuz Space Test Proj- ect in 1975, they sampled the Russians' tubes of caviar, dried fish, citrus candy, and

miniature loaves of pumpernickel bread. It the end of an era in manned space- flight and the last time Americans would see such variety in space foods. Space-shuttle crews won't revert to slurp- ing out of plastic bags or subsisting on uniform food packets, but their menus won't be nearly as bold or individualized as those of the Skylab astronauts. With four to seven people on each flight, to be picked from an international pool of applicants, the job of tailoring perscoal-oie ; crence menus ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE- A.C'ompUf gets too complicated. Instead, everybody inasions by analyzing patients' words an will be served the same meals, and menus ence as a model, a physician at the Ui will be repeated every six days. If you don't computer to make clinical diagnoses; a like what you get for breakfast, you can go international, sports both eyes and a sens to the contingency s:cage 'ocker and ex- it's doing but also- io sense when a boll is change your sausage for bran flakes. In all. Age ot Artificial Intelligence, in which m there'll be. 100 food items and 20 bever- month Omni details breakthroughs that s ages to choose from. On the first six shuttle missions— the or- EAST MEETS WEST- Robert A. Heinle bital flight tests (OFTs) — crews will be offers the first installment of his latest checking the handling characteristics of October Omni Sianisisw Lem, the most the vehicle. They will fly without the shuttle sented by a recent short story. Ursula K. galley, now being built at General Electric's of time, energy, and anxiety. And Walter Valley Forge Space Center, in Pennsylva- Who- Fell ie Earth, rounds out the issue w nia. This means there'll be no hot water and no oven; so all menus have been designed ROCKET IN HIS POCKET-Around the to be eaten at room temperature. Even good old count rai but rocket expert R though a suitcase-size warmer has been barnstorming — ins pace. Truax is asse developed that will be carried along to heat d spaceship. Made foods and beverages, the meal plan has an missile, a gulda not been changed: math a brain al sp" is just about reac Meal 1: dried apricots, breakfast roll. up Omn, takes ic the final countdo granoia with blueberries, vanilla instant breakfast, grapefruit drink. ALIEN LANDSCAPES— Science-fetio Meal 2S ground beef with pickle sauce. fantastic adventure. Often they becor noodles and chicken, stewed tomatoes. Herbert's Dune, for example, is a world pears, almonds, strawberry drink. the principal local life, form — giant sane Meal 3: tuna, macaroni and cheese, peas distant future in which the moon has bet with butter sauce, peach ambrosia. webs between the lunar surface and E chocolate pudding, lemonade, and Life vision of a dying world suggestediby H. Savers in assorted flavors. gallery of interpretive landscapes, ren The fully operational galley will be a transport readers of our anniversary iss model of efficiency, where one crew Whatever wizardry has been applied to member can prepare seven meals in 23 space food thus tar— whether to sterilize, minutes. Part of the convenience comes compress, or dehydrate it— some natural from the fact that you can't really cook in food has always been the starting point. zero-g. Imagine trying to chop a weightless But for its newest project, just funded in onion, sift flour, or attempt any of a zillion fiscal year 1979. NASA will try to build food recipes that count gravity as their unwritten from scratch, thinking ahead to the days but essential ingredient. Shuttle meals are when soiourns may give way to long- assembled from precooked food modules, duration space missions or even settle- with one-person portions of every selection ments in space. Most unusual for NASA. packed in stackable containers that snap whose scientists are used to focusing on into oven or serving trays. To be a mess the present mission and perhaps the one sergeant on the space shuttle, you need after, the new program has an experi-

never have boiled water, although facility mental time frame of several decades. It's with jigsaw puzzles might help. called CELSS (soundslike "sells"), for Con- Some of this enviable simplicity, as well trolled Ecology Life Support Systems, and

as many foods for zero-g, has already ap- it combines audacious dreams of space peared on the commercial market. Tang, conquest with fundamental questions practically synonymous with astronaut, ac- about human survival: What are the basic tually predates the moon shots by years. nutritional requirements? (No one knows

NASA purchased it from General Foods, the precise answer to this one. beyond and General Foods capitalized on the "recommended daily allowances" and good press of the space program in those time-honored guidelines about basic food days. The opposite fortune befell Pillsbury. groups. We endure because our bodies which developed Space Food Sticks under can extract the nutrients they need from Air Force contract and recently had to natural foods. Bui creating foods with the change the product's name to Diet Sticks right ingredients will demand much more to boost sales. Space isn't the selling point understanding.) Also, what combination of

it used to be. texture, flavor, color, and smell makes a In 1974 NASA cooperated with the Texas palatable food? And how cleverly can Department of Public Welfare and other foods be combined into menus, at low cost. agencies on a pilot project called Meal Sys- to keep people thriving? How should foods

tem for the Elderly, distributing 10,000 be produced? Is it best to copy Earih ag- SAy/afo-type dinners to appreciative men riculture? Could you synthesize accept- and women from Austin to Galveston, all Of able food substitutes? How will crews re- whom lived outside the reach of urban spond to drinking water recycled from their meals-on-wheels programs. Aside from own urine? Will their fecal wastes be con- their ease of preparation and high nutri- verted to fertilizer or be used as raw mate- tional standards, the products needed no rial for chemical food synthesis? refrigeration; so a month of menus could be Russian investigators tested a ground- shipped by parcel post with no risk of based closed environment. Bios 3, for a spoilage or contamination. Now Oregon six-month period, from December 24. Freeze Dry Foods, Inc., a long-time NASA 1972, to June 22, 1973. The success of the contractor, markets "Easy Meal" to retired experiment — the degree to which the sys- people, boaters, and homeowners in tem stayed closed — ranged from 82 to 91 disaster-prone areas. Similar suppers are percent, depending on the type of green available from Sky-Lab Foods. Inc., of plants used. The men tended the plants. Elmsford, Mew York. A case of six dinners, which turned exhaled Garbon dioxide into all different, costs about $12. oxygen, which the men breathed while they The secret of long shelf life is a flexible harvested, ate, and digested their crops. foil package originally developed by the and the water went round and round. U.S. Army Natick Research and Develop- Within the next ten years, predicts Frank ment Command, in Massachusetts. Col- Samonski, chief of the Environmental Con- loquially called a wetpack, this pouch will trol and Life Support Systems Branch at the probably replace the tin can within your Johnson Space Center, in Houston. Ameri- lifetime. Anything that can be canned cans will achieve 95-percent closure in a (cooked under heat and pressure and similar attempt. And according to biochem- sealed in its own liquid) can be wet- ist Paul Rambaut. of JSC's Medical Re- packed— with some added advantages. search Branch, we may see a limited ap- Foods processed for foil packages require plication in space by the turn of the century, less cooking, which means they retain when NASA might need to support large more of their natural texture and color. The numbers of people for months ai a time toil envelopes take up less space, but so far while they build a solar-powered station or industry can't fill them at the tin-can speed something similar. of 1,000 per minute. "If we mounted such a construction proj- The irradiation process NASA uses to ect today," Rambaut says, "we'd have to preserve meats is now used in Germany send stored food. But in a couple of dec- and Japan. But not here. Although cobalt- ades clear alternatives may exist. And if we TELESCOPE CENTER 60-treated feeds are not radioactive, the can't provide fresh food in orbit, I'm betting Food and Drug Administration considers that we'll get around the psychological them research products not yet approved hang-up of recycling wastes." for general distribution. So am 1. DO " .

their production needs. 'Lamb to the the locations are, how much studio time is Slaughter' lent itself to studio presentation needed, and what ihe character of the pro- [REVISION and was, in fact, the only program shot gram is in ierms of weather requirements, CO\'~l-JJED PACF ",z FHOM exclusively indoors, it was the least expen- size of cast, location, and so forth. The networked here, and Ihe next eight are to sive program we did. On the other end was shortest we've done is two or three days, be shown this autumn. The rest will be 'Man from the South,' our first episode. Shot while the longest is two weeks. For us it's shown after next Christmas, in the United entirely on location in Jamaica, it's the most the only way of doing it. States they're going to start in September oxponsive show to date. "Now that we.lv e made our sale to are always and be shown right through. We're in pro- "When Tales of the Unexpected was first America, the people over there advice, little tips duction on number fourteen now and in scheduled for the spring, we were rather giving us little words of with the great haste to finish, as our American de- disappointed with the time slot chosen for about what we should do show us to alter our presentation of livery date is so soon. it. We had hoped for a weekday evening, They want "We did the shows originally without when audiences are generally home and in sex, our presenlaiionoi vioerce, and of her please their audience more. That American participation. With all due re- for the night. Instead, we were placed things, to spect, we wanted to do our own thing, to do around ten on Saturday nights, opposite always surprises me because we think of the Day, one of the most popular we've produced quite a civilized series, it our own way, and so we stuck our necks Match out and spent the money without any com- shows in the country. The network told us despite the element of the macabre. But

it really audi- mitment on foreign distribution, which is the that they were trying to build up their Satur- there is. One cannot please only way we have of turning any profit. day-evening lineup and thought we could ences over there with exactly the same will please our viewers. It's a We've tried to make each show individually, be a plus to them there. I'm happy to say material that rather than to use the conveyor-belt that most of ihe Dahls beat out Match of the difference in attitude toward sex and vio- method." Day. That had never been done before. lence but more than that it's a difference in There have generally been different di- Nothing ever came near it. attitude about ways of approaching the rectors, designers, and casts in each show, "When we started out, we were doing television medium. create entertainment, but though Dahl serves as host for each pro- one show at a time, finishing it before we "We want to gram and only two writers, Robin Chapman began the next. Now, because of the time there is also a good deal of lime spent trying to this entertainment convey and Ronald Harwood, wrote the initial nine pressures over delivery, we've had to over- make a episodes. "Each program," said Rosen- lap. At this point I've just completed one; few other things, whether they're ideas or original designs. try to berg, "was a creature of its own, which fairly I'm in the early stages of rehearsal for a even production We little often had a different approach, mounting, second; and I finish shooting a third later give our viewers a more than just the characierizes style, and pace from the others. this week. Again, because each program is surface excitement that "Whereas American series have a con- an entity apart from the others, each takes most of American commercial television." stant week-to-week or episode-to-episode different amounts of time to shoot. It varies If his shows do well, Rosenberg expects budget, the individual episode costs of from show to show, depending on how a second series to follow. The only hitch is Tales of the Unexpected were dictated by much film or videotape we're using, where that while the first 24 episodes are all based on Dahl's stories, the next will not have that advantage. "We'd love Roald to do more, but he's a slow, meticulous worker* The stories we've done have been the product of thirty years of his work. He's written others, but the ones that we haven't

done were out of the question , like his World

War II flying stories. Our American distribu- tors are keen on the idea of our continuing,

and we're all for It. Our only qualification is that we must have time to do them properly Choosing the material, writing the scripts, getting the cast, and so on. We shall press along at speed, but we won't sacrifice qual- ity to reach an impossible deadline." Rosenberg poured another cup of tea and pondered the sugar bowl. "It's not worth the aggravation," The plots of Tales of the Unexpected are disarmingly simple for the most part, and this may hurt the series in the constant bat- tle for high ratings. Viewers who will be tuning in should be warned that mystery and suspense are not delivered on a par with contemporary American work. Even Charlie's Angels episodes are more deftly structured for the "unexpected" element.

Watching Ihe Dahl series is much like tuning into a vintage Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock episode. You'll probably figure out the plots and the twist endings without much trouble. The pleasures of this series can be found in the fine performances and the particularly well-designed look of the sets, costumes, and locations. The British "The bad news is, you've got the worst case of trapped gas I've ever encountered- The here again demonstrate the high quality of good news Is, I'm prepared to offer you a thousand dollars for the mineral rights. their video productions. DO ! 95 Guest Bed On A Shelf! FIL/ 49 &L

Meyer readily admits that the idea of removing several timely elements from his

picture was not his own. "I owe a great debt of gratitude to Mary Steenburgen, who plays Amy in the film. Because she was absolutely convinced that Time After Time was going to be a classic, she insisted on

changing things to make it more timeless. When she was picking her clothes, for example, she chose things that wouldn't date. On several occasions she changed lines of dialogue to make them more 'clas- sic' For example, she was supposed to

say, 'I don't know if I'm crazy or on Candid Camera: Mary insisted on dropping 'Can- did Camera' because no one would know ,,.. /* PlBaseaendmslhBlollofollowing AIR BED(S): ^\ it is in twenty years. what is air (^TwInSIzs (Item•m 2333)23 S4B.85 ^ DauBleSfca (Itam2354) "At its best, the Victorian Era represented ._ | Queen Slie (Item 2360} a period of civilized rationality that is lost '!, im. The ideal :.!s-2374) 199.95 now And H. G. Wells is the perfect incarna- ',"' the lightweight A:'f Bed ."U;"^ i- tion of that age. a man for whom no topic was too dangerous to talk or think about. His reason, coupled with compassion. makes for a very civilized person. The character of Wells in Time After Time is a bit arrogant at the beginning, stuffy He has all these outlandish theories about the future-as-Utopia, which turn out to be to- tally wrong. His most terrible discovery is that going forward to 1979 is actually a Contemporary regression of human progress, as evi- marketing, he* m. «J denced by the i'rationa! iy that he sees. "He can't look at an advertisement for laxatives on television without seeing that he knows less about the human anatomy than do millions of American schoolchil- WHY BUY FROM US? dren who watch this ridiculous stuff on tele- vision every day. In that way the movie pro- vided me with a vehicle for my own anger and disgust with a great deal of the pres- ent, from rock and roll to the misuse of the ..our free English language. Trying totalkwith people becomes an obstacle course for Wells in the film." catalog Time After Time is a wonderful adven- ture, richly veined with humor and given will tell added depth by its unlikely but charming love story. The cast, headed by Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, and Mary Steen- you why. burgen, is superb, The men mix a blend of Victorian prudery, madness, and ingenuity while Ms. Steenburgen projects a liberated innocence reminiscent of Jean Arthu Meyer's career, on the rise since The Seven Percent Solution, has been given a classy shove forward. A sequel to The Time Machine has beei in the planning stage for years. Titled The Return of the Time Traveler, it will mark WAREHOUSE! George Pal's return to the screen afler a series of failed films during the Seventies. SOUND CO. State Asked whether he would be interested in doing a follow-up to Time After Time, Meyer call toll free smiled mischievously "If there is a sequel, Send to WAREHOUSE SOU

it won't be made by me. But I know what il Square 800-235-4160 San Lu will be about. It's the adventures of Wells in Calif. 805-544-9700 and Amy in the pasl when she becomes Susan B. Anthony" DO a _

playback across on the right. This playback

is returned to the first machine and fed into MUSIC the current signal, so that a layered sound

is built up. The result— whether hovering, work with any form and to IwGak its vocabu- pulsing, echoing, or revolving — is a stead- to lary," he says, "to find out whether it's pos- ily ambient effect (thus Fripp's reference sible to express a wider band of proposi- Muzak), unlike conventional melodies that tions than is normal within that tormat. Ex- "go" somewhere. posure [released this spring] is having a "My written music has releases." he look at whether rock music can appeal to says, "but Fripperfronics, which is impro- the head as well as to the foot, Frippertron- vised, doesn't necessari y have a climax, ics [an instrumental LP slated for Septem- That churning inevitability has to do with ber] tries to extend the emotional and in- the actual technique, but it also has to do

tellectual dynamic of Muzak. with a personal sense oi who I am. Novelisl

"The third album, in the fall of 1980, will Thomas Hardy who came from Dorset, as I that relentless quality of the be Discotronics. One approach I mighl try did, had same ot on it, for example, would be to use en- remorselessness fate." vironmentally derived sounds as an alter- There are two kinds of Frippertronics— native to the traditional rhythm section— previewed on the Exposure album "pure" baking tray as a snare drum, a doorbell pieces, such as "Water Music II," and a very speeded down to give you the bass wide variety of "applied" tones designed to drum, the sound of a sewing machine. accompany previously written songs. "If only one Each of these forms of music has its' own you have a piece of music with expectations thai one can work with. You mode all the way through, that'sfine." Fripp Frippertronics have to have the friction, and expectation is noted. "But using applied a good friction." with rapid changes in modulation within a Fripp assembled the vocals on Exposure sore can be incredibly hard work. from readily available sources to produce "For example, since 'Here Comes the an uncommon form of personal documen- Flood' takes a minute or two to change key, tation. Besides having former clients Ga- on the loop process one has to work gradu- thirty briel, Hall, the Roches, and others handle ally with the decay. I had to make the studio singing, he constructed a different loops— record one for the period a strange yet simple collage of verbal chord existed. Stop. Record the next loop, curiosities collected on a modes! Sony which would be appropriate to another pocket-cassette machine. "NY3," for in- chord— all the way through the song, side stance, contains a neighborhood .quarrel by side, building up different harmonies." that Fripp bootlegged through an open In concert Fripp can either incorporate window last summer; "street" people are successive guitar oassages nto a gradu-* doing "real" vocal lines over the backing ally woven aural tapestry or press a foot track. The discussion that begins "Disen- switch to take himself out of the circuit to gage" has Fripp's mother being inter- solo over his own backdrop. One night in viewed about his early toilet training, and Canada, though, the technology broke "You Burn Me Up" results from a tape he down, and Fripp had to clamp two paper had of the Shivapuri Baba, a one-hundred- clips and a wooden spatula for stirring cof- thirty-six -year-old Indian swami who knew fee onto the left Revox in order to save the Queen Victoria. One track comprises an show entire 40-minute lecture by Fripp's mentor, "One gracefully concedes to the inevita- the philosopher J. G. Bennett, compressed ble," he said with a shrug. "In five years'

generally will and if I to three seconds by running it some 800 time life be a bodge, times faster. am able to deal with things at hand — the Considering the sometimes bizarre science of bodging, which is a real art— I'll sounds he achieves, Fripp's musical be able to do things the dinosaurs won't be equipment is minimal. He plays a 1959 Les able to handle," Paul Black Beauty guitar, a pedal board with the cheapest volume pedal he could Below: a "friendly" statement issued by find ten years ago, a Cry Baby wah-wah, Fripp in his own writ and a partial discog- and a Foxy Lady fuzz box. They're all stan- raphy of post-Crimson albums on which he dard models: netting, is modified at all. The played a major role; only technological addition Fripp came up "Leaving the [music] industry between with was a knock-oit switch, which gave 1974 and 1977 to pursue alternative educa- him another circuit carrying an extension tion, notably at the International Academy pedal board with seven extra-effect items. for Continuous Education, Sherbourne Unfortunately, he could never remember House, me returned to music gradually in

which of about 12 foot switches was de- New York, and during the summer of 1978 I pressed; so he abandoned the devices a undertook to work in the marketplace for a few yea r s ago. period of three years. This commitment will The unique Frippertronics instrumental complete in September 1981 during the sound is obtained through a tape-looping Year of the Fripp." process developed by friend Brian Eno. Albums: Exposure (Polydor); Evening Star Placing two Revox tape recorders side by (Island); No Pussyfooting (Island); Here side, Fripp records his guitar playing on the Comes the Warm Jets (with Brian Eno, on leit machine and almost instantly has a Island records). DO Certainly, we may see a carry-over from animal rituals to human ceremonies. How- On self-help FDRUfUl ever, remains man the only known species CON r-.JEDi-RO'.l l-'ACi; 12 that deliberately and consciously links and awareness the slaughter of baby seals is not different himself with his Creator. from the slaughter of beef cattle is the David M. Bowring biggest of these traps, despite the vast and Toronto, Ont., Canada substantia! difference between two such

concepts. When cattle are slaughtered, it is Ocean Encounters to provide meat for eating, hides lor cloth- "Gulf Dream" [May 1979] is one of the most ing, and, when the carcass is processed, informative pieces of scientific 'research bone meal for fertilizer so that the whole I've ever encountered. cycle may begin anew. The same general The concept rates with the Manhattan case exists for fish ["Horsman cites fish as Project in its potential for being man's next undergoing a similar "slaughter"]: In addi- major source of unlimited energy, minus the tion to the meat provided by fish, oil is risks and deadly side effects that we are extracted from some species, and fish, too, now experiencing with conventional forms can be used for fertilizer. But, can the same of nuclear energy. s Kuypers, M.D., Hous-

' be said of seals? Not to my knowledge. I The lack of funds to investigate the viabil- "I'd had enough of philosophy class

debates. I looking have yet to seal available ity of Coriolis 1 was tor something to apt see meat on was mentioned. I suggest in both my professional and personal life," grocery shelves; the only people on this that its engineers contact the Ocean and sev;:; Misteut Keyeers. M.D. continent who depend daily of on a diet Energy Systems at TRW, in Redondo "A person I respected recommended seal meat are the Indians of the north and Beach, California. TRW's theory that en- Dianetics. It explained how human beings function and interact. It laid out techniques the Inuit, neither of whom are at issue here. ergy can be extracted from the oceans dif-

No, the baby seals are hunted primarily, if fers somewhat from theories mentioned in not exclusively, for their lovely white pelts, Scot Morris's article, but there may be "Dianetics made from which expensive fur coats are made. some room for for collaboration and com- me more alert, To equate the slaughter of baby seals, paring ideas. TRW's project deals with the then, with fisheries and livestock ranching systems aspect of ocean thermal energy more alive." is a gross distortion of the facts. conversion, The time is right to explore all for handling psychosamalic illness. Horsman points to the importance of avenues. "I tried it and it worked. sealing on the Newfoundland economy Cit- Robert M. Rice "I got rid of severe tension headaches. I ing the disastrous alert, supposed effect a ban Washington, DC. was more able to get more ot what I would have on the incomes of Newfound- wanted from lite.

"I had more energy. I ccUd necomp ish n a landers, he makes it appear that New- Off Target day what I would have put off for two Ot flree foundlanders can do nothing but hunt I wish to point out a fundamental error in.the days before.

Even friends noticed I seals. I don't imagine that Horsman would first paragraph of Roy A. Gallant's "Target: my seemed more alive want to offend the very people he is trying Earth" [Explorations, June 1979J. "Dianetics opened my eyes to the world to defend; yet this condescending attitude The event of 30, 1908, in June Tun- I the ground re Sec^u^e (eel good every day, I

of his cannot be very encouraging. What guska region of central Siberia, Russia, did enjoy life and experience it more fully than ever before." sort of self-esteem is there to be found in not involve a meteorite, as Gallant asserts. Dianetics is the first effective science of the clubbing baby seals over the head? What it was is the subject ol much heated mind anyone can understand and use. There are those who defend the seal hunt discussion, it certainly not but was a mete- Find out tor yourself how Dianetics has as being an integral part of the Canadian orite—unless meteorites change course leiperi :-;u many people reel Us iheir own poten- heritage. This is true. But, reminiscent of after reaching the earth's atmosphere. tials and abilities.

the white man's treatment of the Indians, it More than 200 observers in the region gave Buy it. is part of our heritage a of which we can detailed descriptions, showing that the Read it. hardly be proud. Tunguska object had actually changed Use it. Drew Snider course from an eastward approach to a DIANETICS West Vancouver, B.C., Canada •vest ward one. Ballistic-wave evidence indicates that Binding Religions the object performed flight correction a in \i your bookstore or I would like to reply to Eugene Marquis's the atmosphere. No natural object can letter in the May 1979 Communications. carry out a maneuver. Its approach into a Marquis implies, incorrectly, that the es- trajectory angle nearly identical to the reen- sence of religion is ritual. Actually, rituals try path used by modern space vehicles, Send me Dianetics: are characteristic not only of religion but along with its cylindrical shape, indicates The Modern Science of Mental Health

also of politics (e.g., saluting the flag), that it may have been a controlled craft from by L. Ron Hubbard

common courtesy (e.g., "May I help you?"), some other planet. The evidence on this Dept. 05A Publications and many other aspects of life. comes from a series of studies done by Organization 4833 Fountain Avenue, East Annex What distinguishes religious ceremonies Professor Felix Zigel, aerodynamics pro- Los Angeles, California 90029 from other human and animal activities is fessor at the Moscow Institute of Aviation. the reality to which they refer. Religious Other Soviet rocket and aviation experts, ritual refers not only to the visible reality of such as Kazantsev, Manotskov, and the group and its history but also to that Liapunov, have confirmed Professor Zigel's invisible reality that the Judeo-Christian opinion, based on similar studies of the tradition calls God.

It is interesting that Marquis refers to bonding rituals, because the root of the word religion means a binding together. The elements linked in religious binding are Look for an up-to-the-minute report on Tun- not only man and the creation but also God. guska in an upcoming Omni. — Ed. 3

Speeding Galaxies cepts as a "talking bomb" was pure genius. ence-tiction writers (and editors) have no used in adver- Among the list of Honorable Mentions for Dark Star was also, years ahead of its controt over the words Omni Competition #3 published in your time. Mo one thought about the possibilities tisements. -Ed. June issue was a submission by Jim of human transportation at the speed of Walker, of Miami, Florida, in which the writer light (except the producers of Star Trek) or Tending Our Gardens wife asserts, "Evidence shows that the distant even about "hyperdrive," but the writers of I once had a friend whose was con- stars are moving oulward with accelera- Dark Star did, and whether possible or not, tinually persuading him to move from town effects were just as good as to town. "Things just aren't quite right here," tion." I would be most grateful if you could the special shortly thereafter inform me whether this statement is factual, they were in Star Wars, although not quite she would say, and they However, [his is understand- would move on in search of that "right and not a misstatement by Walker. I am as extensive. mentioning to him that aware of the discovery by astronomers- able, considering the budget differences place." I remember using red-shift measurements — that between the two. perhaps no place would ever be the right

her. it the places galaxies are generally speeding away from Merrill E. Tilley III place for Perhaps was not in. people they us at a velocity in direct proportion to their Syracuse, N.Y. these people were but the were, as they visiied those places, always distance from us. I was not aware, however, looking elsewhere. that it has been discovered that they are Morbid Obesity

"Ulti- toward the stars, I can't accelerating. If that were the case, it would Dan Ross's Continuum review of the As man looks seem to contradict the Second Law of mate Diet" [April 1979] combines fact with help but wonder whether much bf the ridicu- Thermodynamics or, at least, imply that the fiction. cause behind thai stargazing is the for ourselves universe is not a closed system. "The best way to lose weight is to make lous mess we've created

it to complaints of hav- If Walker was correct in his assertion, your stomach smaller," Ross reports in his here. When comes would you please inform me of the evi- enthusiastic review of the gaslhc-bypass ing lost our desire to seek the stars, I fail to obesity certainly see how expanding our species out into the dence he refers to. If he was incorrect, I operation. And experts believe you should inform your readers, agree. The surgical approach to massive, galaxies will serve any purpose since we since, by printing his question, Omni im- or morbid, obesity is based upon the dual have yet to prove thai we humans can live anolher our planet. plies that it has scientific merit. premise that severe obesity represents a with one on own R. Peet Brown serious life-shortening severity and that America was once an unexplored new Upper Montclair, N.J. long-term medical therapy usually proves frontier. Look at it now. How horribly sad to ineffective. think that we have come so far and learned Scot Morris replies: Mr. Brown's point is well Dr. Edward Mason, a surgeon at the Uni- so little! gar- taken. The outer galaxies are receding from versity of Iowa, first performed the three- For myself, I prefer to try tending my Earth at a faster pace than the nearer hour operation in 1969. Dr. Mason believes den here on Earth to some degree of suc- galaxies, but whether their speed is chang- bypass surgery for obesity can be justified cess before expanding it elsewhere, Daniel Preston ing or is not, no one knows. only if the risks are higher than those of W surgery "Indications for surgery need to be St. Cloud, Minn. Catalyst carefully defined, and the patient and his The diverse articles on intelligence drugs, family should clearly understand the po- Shades of Scales cybernetic wars, penetrating the micro- tential risk and benefits." Finally picked up my first copy [May 1879}

cosmos, harnessing the Gulf Stream, and Medical experts agree that reducing of Omni today. I would like to comment on Red Star in orbit featured in the May issue caloric inlake and expending more calories the letter from Ivor Darreg, of San Diego, of Omni had the impact of further awaken- through exercise constitute the safest who thinks that pianos and everything else ing my mind to the significant forces that weight-loss method. Ye! even this ap- that use the old 12-tone scaie are obsolete. or are shaping the world in which we live. proach demands dedication and determi- Thirty-one- or nineteen- or seventeen- One of the central questions facing our nation, thus often ending in failure lo lose thousand-tone instruments aren't about to may be" nice civilization is, How do we magnify our po- weight. replace (he piano. While they tential and ability to promote the healthy Like so much other faddish information, as novelties, they simply don't have any development of individuals, organizations, Ross's reporting pushes glamour and musical tradition behind them. When you yoli stand on societies, and nations? Omni's contribution miracles. Thefe is a real difference be- sit down at a piano, you know has been to serve as an intellectual catalyst tween "ultimate" and "last choice" reduc- a firm foundation laid down by Beethoven. in further stimulating new perceptions and ing methods. Chopin, Joplin, Fats Waller, and Chick alternatives that can contribute to this pro- Amy Barr Corea. The 12-tone scale's possibilities cess of development. Boston, Mass. have by no means been exhausted. Roberto Anson W C. Myrvold Gaithersburg, Md. Monetary Monster? Signal Mountain, Tenn. DO

I regret I must question the depth of your Likes 'Dark Star' commitment to the equality movement for PHOTO CREDITS In reference to The Arts column on film science-fiction writers. "nonnegotiable Page 6 JimMur '.'jPl Pal Hill, page 12. & Wayne And er- [June 1979], I would like to add my appre- You have violated the

ciation to Dan O'Bannon lor cowriting the demands" of your own call to arms within Inc.:pag"e16. Fra nk Ross; pagelfl. Ken ge20.B.C. Research; pag film Dark Star. Although O'Bannon seems the pages of your sanctum. I refer to the ..Aligns /in. page 26. obby Grossman; page in April discouraged by its popularity, which, ac- Last Word by Ben Bova the 1979 page 36 light. Lars cording to his beliefs, simply does not exist issue. Number 4 states, in part, "The term Olsen en;page37left. .S. Geological Survey

in the slightest, I would like to offer some Sci-fi must be rooted out." 1 e 37 right. Toni flngra- '. ." . °,^ left. consolation if I may. I saw this film for the first Please look again at the advertisement ^wf fC';°B page 38 Sven ji-'ji-. Young; page 39 eft. Dr. Louis M. Rath time a few months ago when it was shown on page 17 of the same issue. Alas, can it EUl4b : d .'.•- by one of the cinema clubs at Syracuse be that you also bend a knee to the mone-

i> ti- i s '.': :!•: Medical Center, Seat- University, where I go to college. I encour- tary monster? sh.: page 40 right. Wide orld Photos; page 41 age people to see it, as it is extremely well Sara Davene Stroup led, c Westberg: page 41 right Ylla 1976/Ptiota Fte- made, considering it was produced in its Fulfurrias, Tex. age 42 right Jo entirety on a budget of only $50,000. page 130. Dan M d; pages 137 end 13B That's a campaign to elimi- O'Bannon claims it did not make people why we need MUSe" n o( Histc y of Science. FK "" '"* sci-fi, sci- laugh, but I laughed. The idea of such con- nate the usage of (ugh!) The 136 OMNI ITALY'S GOLDEN AGL OF SOENOE EXPLDRMTIDRJS By Dava Sobel

never liked science museums that tion and experiment. There are I've so many denounce Earth's motion around the sun. offer nothing but mural-sized pages tools of discovery housed here that only a Galileo died in 1642, at the age of sev- from textbooks and "please touch' 1 fraction of them are behind glass; the rest enty-eight. But strange things continued exhibits blinking and whirring and stand- out in the open, without so much as to happen to him. "In the early eighteenth explaining themselves in tape-recorded a sneeze guard to protect them. The lens century," the museum's English-lan- messages. Those places are too pat, too through which Galileo first saw the four guage guidebook says, "Galileo's body neat. They throw you a plastic replica of large of moons Jupiter is on display, was moved from its initial resting place to some dinosaur skeleton in a bow to broken his by own hand, along with its present location in the main body of the evolution, but they never admit that two of his small telescopes (only about Church of Santa Croce. In that move science itself has a history— full fits a meter of and long), one covered with paper. several fingers and a vertebra were taken starts and theories that went extinct the in the other with fine Italian leather tooled and preserved independently. This one

night. As a child, I would come in gold. away from remains a testament to certain tastes of such magic shows with terribly distorted Not only was science once upon a time that century." ideas: that the universe had all lavishly been decorated, fluted, carved, Probably the oldest item in the figured out, for example, and that nature's painted, and gilded, but it hung for a while museum's collection is an Arabic globe laws were innately obvious (to everybody on mysticism and sacred relics. Witness, made in Spain around 1080. Instead of but me), and that the whole scientific in the room commemorating Galileo's depicting the landmasses of the planet, enterprise had sprung full-blown from prize the achievements, a case that contains the surface of the sphere represents the head of Isaac Newton or Benjamin the middle finger of his right hand. Mum- constellations. (Celestial globes like this Franklin or somebody like that. my-pale, with the bones showing through one are believed io date back to ancient But at the Museum of History of Science. the translucent skin, it rests inside a gold- Greece, some 550 years before Christ and in Florence, Italy, among ancient instru- adorned glass egg, atop an inscribed 400 years before the first terrestrial globe.) ments that occupy three floors of pedestal an even of wood and ivory. The finger One of its two meridians bears the

more ancient building, I gel a real sense of points upward, I and like to think it still inscription: "This globe with its pedestal the sweaty, human struggle for explora- protests the powers that made Galileo was made ... by ... the weigher in Valencia, and Muhammad his son, and the

fixed stars are placed on it according io their magnitudes and diameters. It was completed in the beginning of the month of Safar in the 473rd year of the Hegira of the Prophet. God bless him and grant him perfect peace." The museum's several dozen celestial globes were built on the idea that the earth was at the center of the universe and that the orbits of the stars formed concentric

rings around it. Astrologers, astronomers, and master craftsmen constructed ever more elaborate models of this cosmic structure, even after Copernicus tried to put the sun at the center in 1543. One such armillary sphere, on the museum's second floor, stands tallerthan two men and is supported on a base ot four bare- breasted, golden mermaids. At first glance, its wheels within wheels appear to be the cogs of a giant clock, but peering through them reveals a tiny painted model of Earth at the core. This globe is surrounded by the spheres of the seven wanderers— the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Next is This bras:: quadrant, wads at J 563. height of heavenly bodies above horizon. the eighth sphere, that of the "fixed stars" and ihe band of the zodiac. The ninth unique shapes. Some of them look far too followed by Ihe National Library in the circle represents the Primum Mobile, or fragile to have endured three centuries, nineteenfh century and the museum in the the Prime Mover (you know who He is), The accademia's clinical thermometers, twentieth. The museum had existed at city since whose shell is politically decorated with called tadpoles, were festooned with rib- various addresses around the the coats of arms of the Medici and Lorena bons that lied them to the patient's arm. 1775, moving as the collection was families. Santucci dalle Pomerance Inside the frog-snapcd gass vial, small enlarged and more money became

available. Today it includes a library for started this work in 1588 and finished it in solid spheres of various colors, each one 1593. Unlike the many armillary spheres of a different density, floated in liquid. As visiting scholars^Soon it will also have a films, that were used to teach cosmology or to the patient's body heat warmed the liquid, small projection room for showing make observations or mathematical the practitioner read his temperature from and there will be a planetarium. descriptions of celestial mechanics, this the depths of the spheres. The price of admission is cheap, only the one he built was purely for ornament. Later medical developments repre- 1,000 lire (about $1.20), not counting Other museum pieces based on heav- sented in the museum are plush-lined airfare to Italy. And if you like art right enly motions are sundials of all description cases of ivory-handled surgical instru- museums, the Uffizi Gallery is next and their less well known counterparts, the ments and an entire wall of detailed door. ' dials, or nocturnals, which indicated models depicting obstetrical night SCIENCE ATTRACTIONS IN FLORENCE the hours of darkness by the relative posi- complications observed at the Ospedale tions of certain stars. di Santa Maria Nuova. "La Specola" Zoological Museum — Via During those years when the workings of On the third floor, above the surveying Romana 17. Clemente Susini's famous nature were so far from obvious, the lives fools and the microscopes, is the "sala di wax models of anatomical details are on and work habits of scientists were much rneccanica"— a fun house full of whirligigs display here along with a vast zoological more solitary than they are today and that demonstrate physical principles such collection including beautiful corals, much more subject to scorn and censure. as acceleration and inertia. Of course, Somalian fauna, and many rare But between 1657 and 1677 a collabora- these are hand-carved and inlaid, and marsupials and birds. Instruments- tive group of experimentalists met regu- some are fiendishly clever— like the model Museum of Old Musical Via degli larly in Florence to conduct research in the that shows how to draw water Library of the Conservatory, mathematical, physical, and natural sci- simultaneously from four wells by using Alfani. Includes instruments from before ences. The men called themselves the only two horses. the French invasion and a fine collection of Accademia del Cimento, from the word The museum itself is among the oldest stringed instruments by Stradivarius, Galliani, others. cimentare, which is what goldsmiths do to buildings in Florence — a twelfth-century Amati, and test the purity of precious metals. The castle that was once part of the city walls. Museum of Geology, Paleontology, and Via Lamarmora. accademia was out to test and establish It spent time as a fortress and was partially Physical Geography— the purity of nature's laws. The museum destroyed when the Arno overflowed its Contains the richest paleontological and displays some of their beautiful glass banks in 1333. In 1574 the magistrates of geological collections in Italy. The museum Medici period. thermometers, wove'"' and coiled into the Tuscan government occupied it, dates from the DO only by the harsh, discordant jangling of a usually the sole protagonist— Eiseley and voice that could not hear itself. My mother whatever plain or wasteland he is standing

EARTH had lost her hearing as a young girl. I never on at the moment. (Other humans in his CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16 learned what had attracted my father to her. stories always fee! distant and much small- melodramatic. On (he back cover of The I never learned by what fantastic chance I er. They come alive only when, as in writing Night Country, for example, he stands had come to exist at all. Only the cloud of Charles Darwin, Eiseley is discussing starkly under a streetlamp, af night, his would know, I sometimes think to this day, their intellectual component.) overcoat collar turned up against the cold. only the yellow loess cloud rolling, impene- The Mind as Nature is Eiseley's plea for

Mickey Spillane might have struck such a trable as it was when our ancestors first the strange child — for the gueer, seemingly pose for a dust jacket. Professor Eiseley emerged from it on the Ice Age steppes of stunted, late-blooming genius like his own. stood for these photos, and he must have Europe, or when they followed the bison Such may seem a prescription for genius in helped choose them. He saw himself this into its heart on the wide American plains. many fields, but it applies especially, if I'm way— as a stern lawgiver in a trenchcoat. "I turned overthe bricks of our front side- not mistaken, to writers of science fiction. You almost want to laugh, despite the nobil- walk and watched ants with a vague inter- Had Eiseley been born anywhere but under ity of the face. est. There grew up between my mother the "loess cloud," I think, he would have Eiseley often referred to himself as a ref- and myself an improvised system of com- written that species of fiction and would ugee, a perpetual stranger. I think he was, munication consisting of hand signals, have written it as well as anyone has done. of and I think he had the blindness of the stampings on the floor to create vibrations, His stories often verge on it. He has some perpetual stranger in how he went over with exaggerated lip movements vaguely the flaws, even, of a Kilgore Trout. Eiseley's others. To get the good out of any writer, reminiscent of an anthropoid society..." dialogue, as in much science fiction, often one must put up with a little something or And then his father came home. Clyde reads corny and unlikely. I suspect he over- other, and with Eiseley that something is Eiseley, his son writes, had been an itiner- heard most conversation in his imagi nation, often the Grand Pose. ant actor, declaiming "raw Shakespearean not in real life.

The dedications of his books are interest- melodrama to unsophisticated audiences His gift was to see his own planet as if it ing, too. Only one, "For Mabel," his wife, is were another. He was the perpetual alien on addressed to a living person. The rest are his natal sphere. He was able to see Earth's to the dead. It's as if Eiseley had been more true miracles as truly miraculous. Some comfortable with people when they had sort of earthly miracle is at the core of each become geological, returning to dust of his essays. Eiseley's gift again. The Unexpected Universe is dedi- • was In his story "The Judgment of the Birds." cated "To Wolf, who sleeps forever with an to see his own planet as if Eiseley is standing, once again, in the Bad- Ice Age bone across his heart, the last gift lands. He looks at the stark country around it were another. He of one who loved him." The Night Country him. "The ash of ancient volcanic outbursts to "My Grandmother, Malvina McKee was the perpetual alien on still sterilizes its soil, and its colors in that Corey, who sleeps, as all my people sleep, his natal sphere. waste are the colors of that flame in the by the ways of the westward crossing." The lonely sunsets of dead planets. Men come sort of earthly miracle immense Journey to "Clyde Edwin Eiseley, Some there but rarely, and for one purpose only' who lies in the grass of the prairie frontier, is at the core of the collection of bones." A flight of birds but is not forgotten by his son." The dedica- races southward toward him. Eiseley has a each of his essays. tions are remarkable for their unashamed 5 revelation. emotion, for their melodrama, and for a cer- "It may not strike you as a marvel. It would tain ambiguity Is he addressing Wolf, or not. perhaps, unless you stood in the mid- that Ice Age bone across Wolf's chest? Is dle of a dead "world at sunset, but that was

he addressing his father, or the grass of the where I stood. Fifty million years lay under prairie frontier? Which one. Clyde Eiseley or in the little Midwestern 'opera houses.' He my feet, fifty million years of bellowing the frontier grass, is he crediting with his had a beautiful, resonant speaking voice." monsters moving in a green world now paternity? That voice greeted a "curiously deprived gone so utterly that its very light was travel-

The key to a lot about Eiseley, I think, lies and solitary child— a child whose mother's ing on the farther edge of space. The in The Mind as Nature, his slimmest book, speech was negligible and disordered and chemicals of all that vanished age lay but one of his best. In it he writes of his which left him for the greater part of his about me in the ground." childhood: "I was born in the first decade of early childhood involved with only rudimen- He looks down at the chemicals— black this century conceived in, and part of, the tary communication and the conscious re- streaks of carbon, the stain of iron in the rolling yellow cloud that occasionally raises buffs of neighbors." The voice recited clay. "The iron did not remember the blood up a rainy silver eye to look upon itself be- Shakespeare to the boy, contributing it had once moved within, the phosphorus fore subsiding into dust again. That cloud "another ill-understood world of haunting had forgot the savage brain. has been blowing in my pari of the Middle grandiloguent words at which his play- "I had lifted up a fistful of that ground. I

West since the Ice Age. Only a few months mates laughed." held it while that wild flight of southbound ago, flying across the continent, I knew we Thus, if Eiseley has steered us right, the warblers hurtled over me into the oncoming were passing over it in its customary place. strong, sometimes archaic poetry of his dark.

It was still there, and its taste was still upon prose is the Bard's; the resonance of his "There went phosphorus, there went iron, my tongue. voice, Clyde Eiseley's; the deliberation of there went carbon, there beat the calcium "We never had visitors. No minister ever his speech, a vestige of that anthropoid in those hurrying wings. Alone on a dead called on us; so the curtains were never communication with Daisy Eiseley. (For planet I watched that incredible miracle raised. We were, in a sense, social out- Joseph Conrad, English was a second lan- speeding past. It ran by some true com- casts. We were not bad people, nor did we guage, and partly because of that, partly in pass over field and waste land. It cried its belong to a racial minority. We were simply spite of it, Conrad became a great English individual ecstasies into the air until the shunned as unimportant and odd. stylist. For Loren Eiseley language was his gullies rang. It swerved like a single body, it

"The neighbors were justified in this view. second language. Words had more weight knew itself, and lonely it bunched close in My mother was stone-deaf, my father with him because they came so late.) Thus, the racing darkness, its individual entities worked the long hours of a time when labor too, the lack of humor in his writing, (A feeling about them in the rising night. And

still was labor. I was growing up alone in a strange, solitary, unhappy boyhood is not so, crying out to each other their identity, house whose dead silence was broken good for jokes.) Thus in his books Eiseley is they passed away out of my view." OO PHERJOfUIERJM

One of the most difficult problems of aerodynamics is captured in this extraordinary photograph by Dr. G< Settles. Using the schlieren techniqi

photograpl

i of the space shuttle breaking tl

be highlighted by the schlieren technique.

rflr« '.i »it," tj ii ., !4*»j , I passenger. And CDfuinnuruiCATiarus its own terms. suggest going one better: using one or two and add a Use minisubs to search out the deeper the passenger wouldn't be so much dead depths of the loch. This would, at the very weight, either. There could be an agree- Hands Tied least, rouse the aquatic animal and make ment on the lottery ticket, some kind of

If we continue to curtail our NASA explora- information more easily accessible. Even- liability waiver, whereby he would agree to tion program, and if we sign the SALT II tually science and exploration will triumph participate in certain medical experiments. pacts placing limits upon the development in solving the riddle of Loch Ness. You'd never be short of guinea pigs, of space-exploration technology, is that not Jason MacCallum Actually, I think everybody in the country like tying both our hands behind our back Brome, PQ., Canada is going to buy a ticket, not to mention the and promising the bully that we won't hit people who buy 10, 20, or 1,000. him first? Minisubs and similar submersibles have al- Roberta Gluzband in Chestnut Hill, Mass. I could accept a strategic-arms- limita- ready been used the loch. Unfortunately, tion treaty if it were coupled with a national the great depth and murkiness of the water commitment to explore space vigorously, have rendered them ineffectual. —Ed. Human Software much in the same manner as we once put a In the January interview, I. J. Good pro- man on the moon after seeing Sputnik in Magic Birds poses that we create a computer more intel- ligent would the sky Otherwise, no way do I want us to Tully Scott [Forum, June 1979] was wrong than a man, which then be give up without a struggle. when he said that the "magic birds" (air- programmed to design a still more intelli- William J. Cox planes) never returned and that the Cargo gent computer, and so on.

Long Beach, Calif. Cult died. If you watched In Search Of or A computer's intelligence is determined read National Geographic, you would know primarily by its software. Producing a more

Faulknerized that the Cargo Cult is still going strong in intelligent computer means devising new As a certified scuba diver who has experi New Guinea — because of the "magic languages and programs. The nature of enced the rapturous beauty of coral-ree birds" bearing the television and photo- the hardware is not critical, although a film with human intelligence would diving, I have a word to say about the un- graphic crews to them. computer derwater photography of Douglas Faulk After all these years the Cargo Cult actu- presumably need a memory capacity in- ner ["The Universe Below," May 1979] ally got airplanes to fly to New Guinea, pay comparable with that of the human brain. More! a lot of attention to them, film them, pay The hardware would not even have to be Ron El kins them, and generally make life more inter- electronic. The human brain itself could be Bloomington, Ind. esting for them. used instead of a computer

Alan Vaughan If we can produce software that would Satisfaction Guaranteed San Francisco, Calif. make a computer more intelligent than a Paul J. Nahin's narrative of imagined man, we might as well produce better events adorning the pages of your May Partly Baked Idea software for ourselves and thus create a issue brought me to an unequivocal state This is a suggestion concerning Omni man more intelligent than any man is at of decided sensory gratification and intel- Competition #6 [April 1979], present. These first ultraintelligent men lectual stimulation. A successful competition will produce a (and women) could then carry on the work.

Or, as the Language Clarifier would put it: great number of partly baked ideas. The just as the ultraintelligent computer is sup-

I liked the story! Thanks. winners' names will be published in this posed to do in Dr.Good's scenario. James Tucker magazine, and perhaps many another Anyone who would like to participate in Blackstone, Va. reader will wish he had sent in his own such a project is invited to write to The M.S. entry. I propose that this contest be made a Bootstrap Society, RO. Box 42999,

Raw Meat permanent feature of Omni if the response 620, Houston, Texas 77042. LyleBurkhead I wonder whether you, or anyone else famil- justifies it. iar with Alien, questioned the meaning of "The Scientist Speculates" was a Four- Houston, Tex. DO the name of the starship Nostromos. Well, I Star Establishment in a field of greasy did, and if my translation is correct, it was spoons. Maybe Omni will become a con- an appropriate, although morbid, name for tinual feast for those who have the time and the astronauts' craft. resources to investigate partly baked BMRJ1ES Nostromos (Latin, neuter of noster, "our," ANSWERS TO GAMES (page 144) and omos, Greek, "raw meat") literally POTPOURRI: translates to our raw meat. 1. HORSE RACE. Switch horses— each er, Sorry, Dan O'Bannon. I let the cat, knight rides the other's horse. Alien out of the bag. Space Lottery excuse me, 2. REUNION. Four persons: A brother Bruce E. Linderman Because priorities have changed or bud- is present without his wife but with his Arnold, Pa. gets have tightened, or for whatever rea- son, and his sister is present without her son, does not flow the it money same way husband but with her daughter. Concerning the movie Alien, your write- did in the Sixties. Because of this, NASA 3. BACKWARDS. Disregarding such of to cut back. up [June 1979J shows you are a master has had economize and esoterica as the backdive, the Fosbury

I can $100 million understatement! know a way you get Flop high-jump technique, and the de- Donald Wright easily. Just sell lottery tickets at $10 a shot. molition derby, the three events won by Garland, Tex. Winner gets a "ride" [on the space shuttle] moving backward are: rowing, back- medical qualifi- (assuming he has proper stroke swimming, and tug-of-war. Loch Look cations). If 10 million people buy a ticket 4. NUMBER. 6,210,001,000.

I find the Loch Ness monster one of the (which isn't many out of a nation of 220 5. NINES. 99 99/99. more interesting earthbound mysteries, million), you'll have your 100 million. But 6. MISPRIT. "NINE MEN FANNED IN which still and I was intrigued by the efforts of those let's say 50 million buy a ticket, NINE INNINGS." scientists who. took part in "Return to Loch isn't that unreasonable, then right away Ness" [May 1979]. They themselves real- you'll have half a billion dollars, To get more TOP TEN FORMULAS ized their inability to obtain on land data money than that, just run another lottery. A=1,B = 5,C = 8,D = 9, E = 10. F = 3, concerning the creature. So they put re- If the shuttle nas room for four payload G -7, H =4. I =6, J -2. cording devices underwater to meet it on specialists, just pick a flight that's only 142 OMNI DESIGNATES CDR/lPETITOrU

By Scot Morris

Scott Kim, a young graduate student at inverted "0." Finally, the crossbar of the axis, with all letters upright. The five letters Stanford University's computer science "E" serves an ambiguous role, suggesting in merry form an exact mirror image of the depariment, has developed a remarkable a left edge in the "D" of down. It was, in nine letters in Christmas, especially talent— the ability to twist letters into fact, the dual role of this crossbar that remarkable because boih words are unexpectedly plastic forms and to shape prompted Scott to use a "fattened" scanned in the same direction. As if to words into beautiful symmetric designs. lettering style in the first place, which celebrate his achievement, he signed the Consider the strange lettering on a cake maintains the ambiguity better than does card with a bilaterally symmetric kim. Scott baked for his parents' wedding a style made of thin lines. anniversary. His father's name, iester, What's the purpose of such a design? was in chocolate frosting, Turn the cake "It's just fun," Scott says. "I like to see how

far I can push a letter before it becomes

unreadable. It's a challenge to make a design work visually and conceptually." Some famous names illustrate the These "desig natures"— half-design, various sorts of symmetry possible. half-signature — have an immediate visual Mozart fits neatly into the upside-down form, appropriate for a man who upside down and his mother's name, composed two-part canons that could be pearl, appears in white. played in both directions simultaneously Scott's own signature is an elegant the second melody being the first example of his curious art: It reads exactly inverted. J. S. Bach is symmetric around a and intellectual appeal A'ter seeing them, the same upside down. diagonal line, prompted by the 90-degree many people can't wait to take out pen orientation of the curves in "J" and "S" and by the lucky coincidence that ail the letters

. in Bach are already bilaterally symmetric. The signature for Kurt Godel, the mathematician famous for his incompleteness theorem that Scott's most elegant creation is upside revolutionized mathematical theory, has and pad to see what they can do. After I down, a word picture that describes its showed a photo of Scott Kim's own symmetry. Examine the design lester/pearl anniversary cake around, closely. Turning the "U" of upside into the Chuck Black, a Colorado, high-school "N" of down was simple enough, but then student, was inspired to intermesh omni came the task of making three letters into one— turning a "PSI" into an upside-down "W" Scott did this by emphasizing the nirror symmetry around a vertical axis. downstrokes of the "P" and the "I," to set Some of Scott's other letterings can't be boundaries on the "W," and he snugly nested the curves of "P" and "S" to weld and games in a similar way. the middle of the "W." He separated the "I" M IH The Competition: Send a designature and the "S" by employing a favorite for any famous person, or a unique visual trick— the dot over the "i" is a strong cue 6h play on words of the type discussed when it is at the top of a word (the only Vr. above. Print in black ink on white paper, other letter that has a dot is "j") but is Isabel n with your name and address attached, and identify the meaning of the lettering, if called symmetrical but are unique in their necessary. Neatness counts. All entries jxajfefc. neat, appropriate forms. Part ot his false is must be postmarked by October 15. 1979. ^OpJ®(§ true, and his dream fades off like a reverie First-prize winner will receive $100. to a vanishing point on the horizon. Runners-up (2 through 10) will receive $25 completely ignored when it is at the He continues to explore new each. All entries become the property of bottom. A single squared-off corner is possibilities. Last year his Christmas card Omni and will not be returned. Send sufficient to suggest the "D" in upside. The introduced a new kind of lettering— entries to: Omni Competition #9, 909 eye doesn't notice this corner in the top-bottom symmetry around a horizontal Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022. The Top Ten Equations . plus puzzles

By Scot Morris

THE FORMULA HALL OF FAME A. A rudimentary equation allowing exact the distance of a sea voyage or the height

"The human animal differs from the lesser tallying and exchange. Without it, primitive of a building, and advanced the sciences primates in his passion for lists of Ten man couldn't know the exact number of of surveying and mapmaking. It is com- Best."— H. Allen Smith sheep and cows he had or how many monly known as the Pythagorean theorem. The Top Ten Tunes, the Ten Most Wanted Men, the Ten Best Dressed, the Ten Commandments — everywhere can be found confirmations of Smith's astute anthropological observation. Even the Central American country of

Nicaragua has gotten into the act. It has issued a series of postage stamps commemorating las 10 formulas mate- maticas que cambiaron la faz de la tierra ("the ten mathematical formulas that

- changed the face of the world"). It was a 1.« 10 FOmWUS MATEMATICAS queCAMCIARm m Ffll 0£ LA nEKRA US 10 FORMULAS M31EMATO QUE C1MBKW0N LA FAZ HE LA1IERF1A noble and worthy gesture for the tiny nation to honor not nationalism but the spirit of the highest intellectual achievements of all mankind. Nicaragua's ten "formula stamps" are displayed here. The equations themselves are presented in the upper-left-hand corner of each stamp. Also given here are verbal descriptions (A-J) of the Top Ten Formulas. Can you match them up? ^J COBREO

3 142. z Answers: [ „L LAS 10 FWtMULAS HATBHATICASQtS CAMB4ARON I A FAZ DE U LAS lDFORMIJUlSIMTEHATICISQUECAMBtAfiONLA FAZ DE LATJERM

people were in his tribe. The discovery of C. Louis deBroglie's 1923 equation show- this formula led directly to the rapid ing the wavelike nature of all particles— Q development of commerce and, later, "matter waves." It led to the development measurement. of modem optics and transistors, with great implications for the development of .s's formula for the relation- radio, television, computers, spaceships, 6 ship between the fhree sides of a right military weapons, and the powerful triangle. This most central principle of electron microscope. z JSL geometry provided a way of computing

IjTS IfJIOHMUl ,1SHflTfMftTICaS{JUECAMBPflFiONLJ> FUZDELil TiEflflfl length indirectly, allowed one to calculate D. Archimedes's formula for the principle of the lever, which underlies engineering devices, including brakes, door hinges, crowbars, and even nuts and bolts.

E. James Clerk Maxwell's formula equat- : Q Q ing electricity and magnetism. Visible light T3_'i: :;: ;7&j3& Ui-LLd-l was placed in relationship to other forms of radiation, such as X rays, and the & formula predicted the existence of radio 6 ""~""^ waves that could make possible long- 15 Z ™2L ~g distance communications on land and sea and in air and space, ft was one of the few LSS MFOHMOLAS MATEMATICAS CUE CAM8IAB0N LA FAZDE LftTIEBM LAS 10 FORMULAS MATEMATICAS QUE CAMBIARON LAFAI DE LA TIERRA "classic" equations untouched by Einstein.

144 OMNI F Albert Einstein's formula lor the Without it, launching spaceships to the ahead of the other But Princess Priscilla, equivalence of matter energy, the and root moon and planets and into orbit around eager for marriage, thinks of a way to of the nuclear age. It says thai a small the earth would be impossible. outwit her overprotective father. She quantity of material into can be converted whispers instructions to the two knights H. John Napier's logarithm formula, which that ensure that the race will be fair What allows us to multiply or divide large does she say? numbers rapidly by simply adding or sub- 2. FAMILY REUNION. tracting their logarithms. The impact of the Norman Pos tells of formula on astronomy and navigation was a gathering attended by a father, mother, son, enormous and comparable to today's daughter, brother sister, cousins, niece, computer revolution. nephew, uncle, and aunt. If all have a common ancestor and there has been no consanguine marriage, what is the I. Ludwig Boltzmann's equation revealing minimum number of persons who could how the behavior of gases depends on the be present at such a reunion? constant movement of atoms and mole- LAS ]OF0ffttEFLA& M4TEWATICAS QUf CAM6tAR0M tft FflZ DE LI rtE«RA Gules. It is applied in steam and internal- 3. BACKWARDS Name three sporting combustion engines, in the gaseous events that are won by moving backwards, a large amount of energy, which we can reaction used to make modern drugs and see in spectacular and violent form, in the plastics, in understanding the weather, 4. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NUMBER. Write atomic and hydrogen bombs, or in more and in exploring the violent processes of a ten-digit number so that the first digit peaceful form, in reactors that generate the sun, stars, and distant galaxies. tells how many zeros are in the number, electricity for homes and factories. the second digit tells how many ones, the J. Sir Isaac Newton's formula for gravi- third how many twos, and so on. G, Konsiantin Tsiolkovsky's equation, tation. Before Newton's time, people had derived from one of Newton's laws of little idea of what forces held the planets in motion, giving the changing speed of a their orbits around the sun or the moon 5. NINES. Using only six nines, write a vessel it as burns the weight of its fuel. around the earth or even what kept men number that equals 100. from flying off the surface of the earth into 6. the sky Newton demonstrated that all TYPIG MISPRIT, The exasperated bodies attract one another by a force sportswriter is ready to call it quits and proportionate to their masses and the cancel his column for the day. The teletype distance between"them. machine has spewed out the following incomprehensible string of letters as the headline for a sports story:

IEMEFAEDII E I I GS You. as an alert up-and-coming reporter, deduce that one of the teletype keys must E = _ J = _ be broken. You translate the message and

save the day. Add one letter 1 1 times to the A PUZZLE POTPOURRI string of letters to produce an intelligible, 1. SLOW HORSE RACE. Two knights seek albeit unspectacular, headline. the hand of Princess Priscilla in marriage. Each boasts that he owns the fastest horse Answers: page 142 in all the land. So the king arranges a

horse race. The king, however, is not eager OMNI COMPETITION. Next month we will to have his little girl marry, and he is present the results of Omni Competition especially unimpressed with her two #6— partly baked ideas— in a thought- suitors; so he decrees that the winner of provoking selection of far-out specu- the race, who will receive the princess's lations, judged with the assistance' of hand, will be the knight whose horse Dr. I. J. Good, the master chef of the partly crosses finish the line last. It would seem baked idea. Meanwhile, try your hand at a that the race would never get under way: new kind of art form in Competition #9, Neither horseman would want to ride out which appears 6n page 143. DO .

NUCH IAJDRD

I Stuart Diamond

^^iddletown, Pa.— The tourists using the details of Three Mile Island as an indicated the dosage they had received. f^ instructive example. Seldom did the badges show any I still flock to this small town ill heroes natural levels. I \m I near the damaged Three Mile 1. THE PLAYERS. Always look for radiation above you hear Island nuclear reactor. The pizza parlors, ancrwfla/ns. In general, the heroes favor 3. THE ACCIDENT. As soonas newsstands, and clothing stores do a •people and the villains favor profit. Thus, at about a nuclear accident, lose weight. were: Thin look better on the television brisk business in nuclear-accident Three Mile Island the heroes Harold people mementos: inscribed T-shirts, bumper Denton, the federal government's.chief stickers/dinner plates, and drinking problem solver, who saved the people from For clergymen, it is chic to give last rites. disaster; the embattled Many priests in the Harrisburg area did mugs. It is yet another example of the Jack Lemmon, life perhaps ingenuity and diversity ot American nuclear-reactor operator, who gave his this, getting a lot of publicity and congregants. capitalism after any major event, however for safety in the movie The China winning new in the face oi cepressing ot disastrous. Syndrome; and the Pennsylvania A sense of humor relax At the main: intersection, of town, Judy Consumer Advocate's Office, which adversity Is always.chic. It helps to News, a tobacconist, made handsome persuaded the state not to make utility people. Thus: What melts in the ground Hershey, profits on newspapers following the March cuslomers pay all the costs incurred as a and not in your mouth? Answer: forecast? 28 accident. Today the store also sells result of the accident. Pa, Or: What's the weather

"Original- Canned Radiation," inscribed in . The villain is usually the company that Answer: Partly cloudy with a 40-percent black and red letters on a white soda can. owns the errant reactor In this case, it was chance of survival. local radio station reported that a Filled with air, Cost: $2: $2.12 with tax. Metropolitan Edison, which violated . One

it safe The bumper stickers ($1 each) say, iederal regulations and then tried to woman caller asked whether was to of "Radiation City, Middletown, Pa.," or, "Hell, charge its customers tor millions of dollars have sex within 25. miles the damaged in damage. Other villains were the doctors reactor. no, I don't glow." There are other snappy leaving It is chic to know the definition of China . slogans that will tell your neighbors back and nurses who evacuated, reactor fuel melts into ',' home that you were at the front. behind hospital and nursing-home Syndrome, whereby China. But it is even The local Elks Club serves a concoction patients— and also the Hippocratic Oath. the ground toward precise antipodal Called the Bubble Buster, consisting of a Some players are neither here nor there more chic to know the shot of Scotch, a shot of tequila, and a Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thomburgh, point of the reactor. In the case of Three China but shot of vodka, on the rocks. Club manager (or example, professed ignorance of Mile Island, it was not Indian David Deimler says, "The survival rate is atomic energy throughout most of the Diamantina, a trench in the Ocean, slogans are chic. very low," Poetry and fancy Pennsylvania Governor Milton But the real chic is reserved for T-shirts: 2. PREPARING FOR A NUCLEAR Former to'leave, find out Shapp wrote, "Obviously all bond "A little nukey is good for you," says one. ACCIDENT. If you plan the best evacuation routes. This may be holders /Must be better protected /Before . For three Mile Island workers, the chic difficult, since most localities in the any new 'nuclear plants /Are ever again shirt proclaims, "TMI Staff: I stayed to save your ass," country don't know them. If you stay, stock erected." Others chanted, "Two, four, six, radiate." Although no official estimates of nuclear up on bread and milk, and reserve eight, we don't want to radiation tourists are available, most observers say out-of-town newspapers: There is always a . It is chic to know some good they number in the thousands. The David run on them during any disaster. stories. Example: Sleeping with someone Martin clothing store alone sells from 500 Get a radiation monitor. You can buy a gives you an extra 20 millir.ems each dental X to 700 T-shirts a week for $4 or $6 apiece. colorful, pen-shaped one that you can year— as much as two yourself for $150. Or you can rent one rays— because all of us have radioactive "The best thing I can tell you is that we're read trying to make lemonade out of a lemon," that has to be read by a professional. potassium in our bones. says Jack Baker, the store's manager. Hundreds ot reporters and officials rented But the height of NUCHIC is to play with Some scientists now predict that more them at Three Mile Island from an obliging numbers in a new and revealing way. The nuclear power means more nuclear nuclear businessman, David Katzman, of prize for NUCHIC during this first accident accidents. This provides a challenge for Philadelphia's Radiation Monitoring goes to the Atomic Industrial Forum (AIF). chronic trend setters, who are, however, Corporation. the trade association oi the nuclear unfamiliar with the technology By ob- Katzman set up shop in his hotel room. industry. AIF engineers calculated that serving the rules ofnuclear-accident chic, Each day the potentially injured filed in the heat from the damaged reactor raised surrounding areas they can gain tn'e desired status and acclaim, and gave Katzman their badges to be the temperature of the amid general panic and contusion. analyzed— like urine samples— for $3.50 5/18° C. Thus, it said, local homeowners We divide nuclear-accident chic per readout. Katzman insertedthe saved a total of 275 gallons of heating oil (NUCHIC. tor short) into three categories, badges into a computer, and the computer each day DO