MARS HOW WE'RE GOING TO GET THERE AND WHAT WE'RE GOING TO FIND THE LONELINESS OF A LONG-DISTANCE ROBOT STAR QUEST: HUNTING FOR THE BIG BANG AND MISSING MATTER onnrui VOL. 12 NO. 10

EDITOR IN CHIEF & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE PRESIDENT: KATHY KEETON EDITOR: PATRICE ADGROFT GRAPHICS DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO MANAGING EDITOR: STEVE FOX ART DIRECTOR: DWAYNE FLINCHUM

6 20 First Word Space By Richard H. Truly By Mitch Berman This NASA Shift, Rover, shift. Like administrator and former all dogs, this astronaut believes one will dig in the dirt our destiny lies among and bring home the stars. But dust— Martian, that is. just what is required to take that next 22 leap back into space? Body By Victoria Y. Rab and 8 Geraldine Youcha Omnibus In the blink of an eye: The The Who's Who disabled and of contributing authors. severely handicapped now have a high-lech way to express themselves. Communications Readers' writes. 24 Artificial Intelligence 14 By Lloyd Chrein Forum B^^5'" ^^| The future of computers Congressmen Bill Nelson i^^^^^^ji ^^ lies in optics, and Bill Green not electronics. What are r^^^ar i .. n - offer opposing arguments ^^ —:— i m. the advantages of over sending a FiT^M light rays over electricity? manned mission to Mars. 25 18 Continuum Stars What goes through the By Devera Pine mind of an Mars died. Why? The red Cover art: Kazuaki Iwasaki has astronaut while floating planet may have produced more than 1.000 paintings of the through space? once been green, with cosmos, including Spaceships Finally, Parisians who water and a Approaching Mars, painted in acrylic. aren't rude; respectable atmosphere. Called the Bonestell of how to freeze your

Will the mystery Japan, Iwasaki is a self-taught painter organ and still

be solved by the Mars and amateur astronomer. keep it malleable; and Observer satellite? (Courtesy of Space Art International.) Holland's uprising.

OMNI (ISSN OM9-S711) is published monthly rr way, New York, NY 10023-5965 Second-class i address changes 10 Omm Maqajxie Posi 0"« °@ by Omni Publications Inter national Ltd. All rig

leU.K. byCOMAG. Tavi

persons mentioned m [he hciion AF0-S24 one year. Canada am

the sole property of Omni Public; nnrui 34 62 66 73 Voyage to a Far Planet Interview Fiction: Mosquito Antimatter By Brenda Forman By Paul Bagne By Richard Calder Are UFO abductees with Reaching Mars could lake Astronomer Sandra Faber A transvestite thief is detectable brain nearly ihree years helped shoot down hired to scour implants really the and $400 billion, so an established theories. Now the decadent and corrupt test subjects international joint she'll be sharing 300 streets of the of humans and not aliens? venture seems inevitable. hours' viewing time on the future city of Bangkok. Will spirits respond Whal can the Hubble telescope. Can Can s/he to the world of high tech? Soviet Union, Japan, and she confirm her theories survive the lustful journey The video is Canada contribule? on the origin and in the dangerous authentic, but are the Forman also delves into substance of Ihe universe? quest for the perfect doll? flying saucers? the potential And magnetic fields that problems facing the space conjure up ghosts. travelers on their extended journey. 98 Games 39 By Scot Morris Fiction: Einstein's Law The perpetual optimism of By Ben Bova inventors may An entrepreneur gets cloud their judgment but swallowed up not their drive by his own greedy scheme. to conquer the impossible. By looking at 42 their attempts, can you Pictorial: tell why their Raiders of the Lost Archives parade was rained on? By Ed Wyckerson The faces of aliens, as 100 portrayed by Video Scans Hollywood, have changed By Bob Lindstrom from inciting This month's column pitches fear to inspiring affection. the best of 50 the baseball programs. Latter-Day Martian 102 Chronicles Star Tech Suppose Mars was already By Tom B. Reiter colonized. What The road to an easy life. kind of experiences would its inhabitants 104 now be going through? Five Last Word science-fiction By Victoria Lacas writers — Isaac Asimov, * He was short and bald ^ v Pat Murphy. f and insisted his

.• Bruce Sterling. Gregory , alien friends watch

Benford, and ) once he got Joan D. Vinge— share me drunk, but I've had their visions. 'drse dates. " a2

On July 20, 1989, the twentieth ready for mission application. That anniversary of the Apollo lunar landing, underscores how urgent it is to invest President Bush set our country's direc- now in the advanced technology tion back to the moon and on course research we will require. will to develop . to Mars in the twenty-first century. The Clearly, we need a President proposed "a long-range new generation of heavy-lift vehicles to continuing commitment" to a bold new do this job. The current fleet of space course in spacer shuttles and expendable launch vehi- launch efficiently "First, for the coming decade—for cles is inadequate to the 1990's—Space Station Free- the millions of pounds of equipment, dom—our. critical next Step in all our supplies, and fuel required for an space endeavors. And next—for the ambitious project of human exploration. new century—back to the moon, back All preliminary NASA studies indicate to to the future. And this time, back to stay. that a heavy-lift rocket will be needed And then —a journey into tomorrow— deliver that material to space most journey to another planet—a manned efficiently and effectively., mission to Mars. Advanced technologies to provide "What Americans dream—Ameri- the tools for living and working in space will required. An internal NASA cans can do," the President said-. I also be assessment of key iechnologies re- believe that. I believe we humans are destined to become. a multiplane! quired for future human exploration species, with the moon and Mars in places high priority on investments in our future. We at NASA have been research in several key areas. working for years to understand the Examples are propellant transfer and best long-term approach to achieve refueling in space; closed life-sup- that goal. port systems: automated rendezvous

NASA is in the forefront of President and docking capabilities;, in-orbit UUDRD Bush's new thrust for the American assembly and construction; and ad- civil space program, known as the vanced chemical and possibly nu- By Richard H. Truly Space Exploration Initiative, orSEI. clear propulsion. But before men and women step off Another pressing need for a program

for sustained manned explora- and mental processes. It is vital io know on this journey into step tion." Space Station Freedom is more about whether crews can travel the twenty-first century we essential to our future efforts in space. long journeys in zero gravity and arrive first have work to Space Station Freedom will be a at their destination mentally and physical- permanent, large: hands-on laboratory ly capable of performing their mission. do in the twentieth century3 for materials and life sciences research The question of creating artificial gravi- in orbit. Later Space Station Freedom ty in space needs an answer. When

also will become a stepping-stone for we go to Mars, it is very possible that the ships that go to the moon and Mars such research will have an impact and a base for the laboratories to on the design of the spacecraft to get analyze what they bring back. On Free- us there. domwe will demonstrate new and Both the moon and Mars require advanced systems and technologies to further study as well. Where are the re- enable men and women to live and sources that we can use to sustain work productively and safely in space human presence? Where are the best and on other worlds. sites for human outposts? What are. We will begin the in-orbit assembly the environmental conditions on Mars? of Space Station Freedom in 1995 These questions will be addressed in a

and will begin effective use of it quickly, robotic exploration program that will along with our partners from Europe, pave the way for human missions, at the Canada, and Japan. By the turn of the same lime expanding our scientific century, people from many nations understanding of both planets. Robots will be living and learning aboard Free- will continue to be used during the dom, in orbit 250 miles above the earth. human exploration missions to extend At the same time, we will be developing human presence and assist astronauts the new technologies and searching for in the many challenges they will face. the new knowledge that must be.ac- NASA's vision is to expand the fron- quired to enable humans to reiurn to the tiers of discovery, understanding, hu- moon permanently and to explore Mars. man experience, and technology to The goal of human exploration of the enrich our country's future. By keep-

solar system is a goal that cannoi be ing alive that vision, together we can met overnight,, in a year, or even in a and will build a better tomorrow for the decade. This becomes clearer when young Americans of today. DO

we consider that it takes from eight to 1 years from the time technology re-

search is initiated until the results are MRIBU" Dnnruii

15 LJ

nee man stepped onto the science fiction at all but fantasy and is drove to her office at the University of moon, Mars became our really about small towns on Earth." California at Santa Cruz. "I walked right next frontier. Excited by the Datlow commissioned authors Isaac in and said, 'You can't turn us down. increasing feasibility of a mission Asimov, Gregory Benford, Pat Murphy, You're the only cosmologist who can to Mars, Omni president Kathy Keeton Bruce Sterling, and Joan D. Vinge to talk poetry.'" Flattered, Faber agreed to inspired this month's issue, devoted envision Mars today had we landed on an interview— but only if Bagne to our planetary neighbor, the red planet five years ago. Their conducted it during her flight to Hawaii. "If you took all the brainpower of all "Latter-Day Martian Chronicles" begins The author of more than 75 works of

the folks I talked to for 'Voyage to a on page 50. The editor of many fiction and nonfiction, former Omni Far Planet' [page 34], you could launch anthologies, including Blood Is Not editor Ben Bova ("Einstein's Law," me into low Earth orbit," Brenda Forman Enough (William Morrow) and the page 39) is currently collaborating with jokes. Having worked in the space field recently published Alien Sex(E. P. former astronaut William Pogue on a for the past 17 years in both the gov- Dutton), Datlow has been nominated thriller set on a space station. ernment and the industrial sectors, for a Hugo Award for best editor. Mother-daughter team Geraldine Forman says that a Mars mission should After speaking to many aerospace Youcha and Victoria Rab researched be our next priority. "I believe in the engineers and examining various blue- "Power Tools" (Body, page 22) after human desire to explore and 1 think thai prints for Rover, a robotic Martian Rab told her mother about a child space is ripe for human expansion." vehicle, Mitch Berman conjured up a named Leah. "I got chills as I listened Omni associate editor Tom Dworetz- plausible scenario (Space, page 20). to the story of this handicapped girl, ky, however, quips that we may not Author of Time Capsule (Ballantine, who can communicate only via have to visit the red planet to meet its 1988). Berman recently edited Children computers," says Youcha, whose work inhabitants, "if there are Martians they'll of the Dragon: The Story of Tiananmen has also appeared in' Woman's Day come through New York on their way to Square (Macmillan). and Parents. Rab teaches graduate wherever they're going," he says. Devera Pine (Stars, page 18) reports courses in special education at George Dworetzky's efforts in coordinating this on Mars Observer, a planetary Washington University. special issue were augmented by observation satellite that will study the When Lloyd Chrein (Artificial Intel- Omni consultants Ed Gutman, the U.S. Martian climate and atmosphere. ligence, page 24) first tried a computer, editor of Science in the USSR, and Specializing in space and health issues, he became instantly hooked. "It's Jerry Grey, the director of science and Pine has written for Air & Space. amazing what computers can do, and technology for the American Institute Life may once have made a valiant what they may be able to do in the future of Aeronautics and Astronautics in effort to thrive on Mars, but the planet is even more mind-boggling," says

Washington, DC. was too small to sustain it, says astrono- Chrein, who is managing editor of New Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chroni- mer Sandra Faber. When Paul Bagne York Habitat. cles inspired Omni fiction editor Ellen [Interview, page 62) first contacted "Mosquito" (page 66) is only the Datlow as a teenager. "It was one of the Faber, she refused to be interviewed, second published short story by Rich- first science-fiction books I ever read," pleading "monumental deadlines," ard Calder, a thirty-four-year-old author Thailand. she says. "Now I realize the novel isn't Bagne relates. So the intrepid Bagne living in DO

8 OMNI DfUlfUl

LETTERS . "HE.CORPORATlON cannnnuruicMToms

Teacher's Pet out someone borrowing- it. We all enjoy

the articles, but it's the art design I think your magazine is excellent and

it continues to improve. Your articles that blows us away. It is superb, and it

on education [April 1990] were of spe- just pleasantly surprises us how it

cial interest to me, since I am a high- tops itself from month to month. Staff school junior. I showed several of my Network/Telecommunications teachers the April issue of Omni Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and made them aware of the pressing New York need to change our educational process. Keep up the good work! The Not-so-good Earth

J. HoltKernodle In the warm summer evening I lie Albuquerque, NM awake, listening to truck after truck wind through its gears, The fumes and noise

A Less Than SAT-isfactory Test make me wish for winter, when I can Your article "Save Our Schools" [April sleep without gasping for a breath of 1990] contained worthwhile criticism of fresh air. Our town, Dunmore, in Penn- the SAT but overlooked the following sylvania's Lackawanna County, is

fundamental points: 1 ) The best predic- known for its boreholes, landfills, leach- tor of college success is not the SAT ate, and airfull of foul smells ["This Land

but high-school grades; 2) adding SAT Was Our Land," Earth, April 1990], I am

scores to high-school grade point a mother of four, and I have little hope average does not raise the correlation that my children will live a normal life with the criterion of college suc- unless we move. My parents and cess by very much; 3) in the vast ma- my grandparents died of cancer—al- jority of studies, the criterion of col- most everyone in town has lost some-

lege success is not some cumulative one to cancer. When a person here criterion of college success based on gets sick, we don't think it's a cold; we

four years of college but only on the first think it is cancer. It is a word we have

year of college. With all this as well as learned to live with and accept. Well, I

other misuses of SAT scores, it is refuse to accept it. I am not a corn- absolutely mind-boggling that society plainer by nature, but speaking of

tolerates the continued use of the SAT. nature, I'm afraid if I live here long Morris Stein enough, there will be no nature left. Professor of Psychology Helen Lancia New York University Dunmore, PA New York The article "This Land Was Our Land" Thriller failed to include some important infor-

I would like.to applaud everyone who mation. The EPA's Superfund Program

was involved with "The Chill of It AH" completed a cleanup of the Keyser

in your April issue. It's truly astounding Avenue borehole and is now taking the to me that even though we are in a site off the Superfund list. The EPA

progressive age of literature, it's very ordered the companies responsible for difficult to locate good or turn-up- the Taylor Landfill contamination to the-lights horror stories. clean up that site and removed 1,200

Derek Steele drums from it. That cleanup was com- Bel Air, CA pleted in 1988. And the EPA is in the final stageof the Lackawanna Refuse Staff Inspection Site cleanup and is also conducting a

I have hever written a complimentary cleanup at the Aladdin plating site. letter to a magazine before. Every Thomas Voltaggio Office month when Omni arrives, I bring it to Director, Superfund

III the office with me. Rarely have I EPA Region

been able to read it cover to cover with- Philadelphia

CONTINUED ON PAGE 32 A HOUSE DIVIDED FDRURTI

By Congressmen Bill Nelson and Bill Green

Should we send a manned mis- First, America must take decisive Even though our space program did sion to Mars? We posed the steps to maintain its leadership in high not end in the Seventies and Eighties, of lunar or question to two congressmen technology. I am convinced that the without the exciting draw exploration, the of in a position to influence the decision, leaders of space and land-based Martian number Congressman Bill Nelson, D-Florida, technology will be the leaders of Earth's graduates in the sciences dwindled Chairman, Space Science and Appli- economy. Other nations will not wait for during those years. And at a time when cations Subcommittee our leadership, as they might have America's future requires increased imperative The question America faces is not before the pursuit of high technology technological prowess, it.is whether men and women should go to became a worldwide race. The list that we offer, our fledgling engineers Mars, but who will go and when. Will of spacefaring nations since the Apollo and scientists an enticement worth men and women go to Mars as a joint program has grown to include China, building a career upon—that of a venture for the benefit of all mankind? Israel, Japan, and the European long-term goal for ongoing space trav- el, exploration, and development. Or will it be a divisive race, pitting one Community: less technologically ad- nation against another? vanced nations are showing strong Space exploration also offers an excit- Since the birth of science fiction, interest in joint ventures. To fall behind ing way to redirect the top talent that manned interplanetary travel has in spate exploration and exploitation has worked on our defense-related captivated our imagination as the hall- would cause us to lose our economic industries, as our nation makes use of mark of an almost unbelievable future and political clout throughout the world. the peace dividend created by de-

society. And that future has arrived. We If America stands on the sidelines, creased defense spending, now have the technological capability we will lose a surefire way of rapidly A second reason for a manned ex- within our grasp to reach Mars and increasing the number of engineers ploration of Mars is that the expense return. The very nature of humans—the and scientists available for our tech- would create a perfect opportunity for efforts United need to explore—makes it inevitable nological needs. We saw how the cooperative between the that we will travel to Earth's sister planet. Apollo program created excitement, States, the Soviet Union, and other

It's time America committed to lead- resulting in a dramatic rise in the num- nations. The ongoing partnerships ing the effort for Mars exploration. This ber of advanced science and engineer- between nations on simpler earth bound makes sense or severa reasons. ing degrees awarded to Americans. projects and robotic space exploration carry few penalties for early withdrawal. An international Mars effort would require long-term commitments, cement- ing beneficial partnerships between the rapidly changing Warsaw Pact nations and the West. Cooperative missions would build upon the relationships now forming between Japan, Canada, the United States, and the European Space Agency in the construction of Space Station Freedom. The third reason is that the explo- ration of Mars would yield facts about our universe currently indiscernible from near-Earth orbit or the moon. Mars is a dynamic world that may once have been very Earth-like, with bodies of water and an environment much

different from its present ice-age state. Understanding how Mars, with its broad parallels to Earth, became such

a bleak planet would be useful, as it becomes increasingly important for us to understand our own environment. The benefits reaped from the techno- logical breakthroughs needed to push —

MAKING MARS TALK

By Devera Pine

f% | hat killed Mars? Observa- sdc rocket was secured Meanwhile a take a look at vvnal is happening on Mars jl m\ons by Mariner and Viking Congress-mandated budget cap on today, how its atmosphere behaves, its | || U fcJ spacecraft suggest that the the mission systematically squeezed temperature, the patterns of its winds, planet once sported a respectable state-of-the-art instruments from as a key to understanding its past." atmosphere and that torrents of rushing the spacecraft. Most heartbreaking, Further inspiration has come from the water carved many of its surface says Evans, was the loss of the Visual new $1.3 billion space initiative pro- features. Today, as far as we can tell, and hrrared Mao pin;.] Spectrometer posed by President Bush. "From the the red planet is waterless and the (VIMS)—a sensitive detector that would standpoint of engineering people on atmosphere has largely vanished. What have given the team detailed surveys the team, it's been a real shot in the happened in the past that transformed of the meteorological and surface arm," says Dave Evans. "We were Mars into the sterile, cold, and lifeless compositions of Mars. "It's been going before that initiative started. By place that it appears to be today? extremely tough," says Evans. "We've virtue of having been underway, we are Theories abound, but with hard data spent an awful lot of energy saving the first Mars mission since that lacking, they remain weak, unproven costs. But we'll survive." program was instituted. It's exciting to possibilities. Enter the Mars Observer, a 'Survive suggests bare sustenance; all of a sudden have importance planetary observation satellite slated with most of the problems surround- attached to our mission and our data." for launch in 1992 that will study the ing design and budget restraint Success with this mission and the planet's chemical and atmospheric overcome, however, the team's hopes mounds of data scientists hope to structure, its climate, and its topog- are flying high. "This will be the longest procure will have a direct impact on the raphy with remote sensing instruments. plane:a'y mission "o date," says Pallu- future of a manned mission to Mars. "The objective is to understand the coni. "It will encompass a full Mars year "The data we are getting are absolutely present processes and circumstances [687 days]. Mars Observer represents vital to the next step —rovers on the of Mars so that we can understand with perhaps the first ot the planetary surface to do a detailed analysis of local some confidence what the history of orbiters to deepen our knowledge cl a conditions," says Evans. The informa- Mars has been—and then compare that planet this way," he points out. "The tion the Observer provides on the with ihe history of the earth and Venus," bi;i'-ic idea it -.ha: we can—from orbit Martian atmosphere will also lead to the says Frank Palluconi, Mars Observer's design of an aerobraking system so deputy project scientist at NASA's that forthcoming missions can actually Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasa- land on the planet. That has direct dena, California. use for robotic and human exploration, Comprehensive raw data are the notes Evans. goal of Ihe Mars Observer's mission; Not only that, but the Mars Observer the only data currently available to could be a model for future planetary planetary scientists with a longing to exploraion. Rather than design a whole study the planet come from the Viking new spacecraft, engineers are mission. "It will be seventeen years "recycling" tried-and-true designs: The between the launch of Viking in 1 975 vehicle itself is an updated version of and Mars Observer in 1992," Palluconi General Electric's successful Satcom says. "When you look at that kind satellite, first launched in 1975. "If we of gap, you can understand why people succeed in maintaining our costs with were willing to make sacrifices, es- fixed-price contracts and it turns out to pecially given that the other choice was be a productive mission," says Evans, no mission at all." "I think that NASA management would Sacrifices have earmarked the say that's the way to do business." mission. Following the Challenger dis- Besides the practical aspects of the aster in 1986, logistical and budget mission, though, there's the fascination problems hounded the team. "Chal- with Mars itself: "Mars catches the lenger caused a two-year delay," says imagination, It's part of the glamour: We Dave Evans, project manager at JPL could live there. We could get there and "There was a. period of uncertainty: We back in a reasonable time," says Evans. didn't know what sort of vehicle it "We know enough about Mars that we would be launched on." An alternative can start asking detailed questions and launch vehicle, the Titan 3 expend- get some detailed answers." DQ

18 OMNI Reach the worlds beyond Earth.

Astronomy invites yon on journeys to Mars. Jupiter and beyond. Find out all about black holes, pulsars, and enigmatic quasars. Learn how the universe really works!

No packing necessary... but bring your imagination.

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THE-RED PLANET'S LEAN MACHINE-

By Mitch Berman

ground control tells Rover. arid disaster will lie in how well it can Rove: can take the long way around." Bo,But ground control is manage the gritty—and potentially dead- Forty-eight hours and 17 minutes minutes of radio silence and ly—details. later Rover rolls westward from its 189 million miles (or 31 ,500 New York- The particular detail that concerns landing package. Constructed of three to-Los Angeles round-trips) away Rover now is how to skiri the articulated sections, each with its own and cannot know of the sudden dusl 310-mile-per-hour winds that will howl axle bearing two independent

storm tearing across the Cydonia beneath it. Blasting its deorbit rockets, one-meter conical wheels, flower looks

region of Mars. If Hover were an ordi- Rover maneuvers until it finds a clear like a cross between a small flatbed nary machine, it would simply go line of sight to the surface, slows its final truck and a jacked-up jeep. A pair of and become the most expensive ship- descent through the thin Martian at- samp: ng arms—one for chipping wreck in history. mosphere by unfurling an enormous and drilling, the other for manipulating J When lo go may be a ground parachute, and touches down safely on ne objects—jut from its front end decision, but how is left to Rover— the Cydonian plain. It is a perfect like pincers. because communication between ardirg in spite of the foul weather; Rover reaches the side of the Face, Earth and Mars takes 17 to 40 minutes Roverhas missed its primary target by a mile-long mesa discovered by the each way. Rover must, therefore, be just 11.3 kilometers. Viking mission and named for its able to reason independently. And it At ground control: "She hit a dust resemblance to human features. Rover faces challenges much greater than the storm and we find out seventeen min- extends its manipulation arm simple course corrections of early plan- utes later. Like we're reading backward; like a mother cat hoisting a etary explorers—such as Viking and yesterday's paper." kitten by the scruff of its neck, it lifts one Voyager. Its mission: to spend almost "Take your time. Rover's programmed of the "ants" that are riding on its broad three years alone on Mars, traversing to wait forty-eight hours to plot its midsection. Rover sets down all eight faulted, unknown terrain, deciding course toward the primary target." of its ants—foot-long, six-legged mini- which samples to collect and test. It will "Landing 1 1 .3 east puts Roveron the rovers, each painted a different color. have only the most general guidance wrong side of the Face," Then it proceeds around the Face from a distant ground control. For "The Face? Too steep for Rover," toward the primary target: what Carl Rover, the difference between success "Not for our army of ants, though. Sagan has called the "beckoning pyra- mids of Mars," some of them nearly a mile high. A deliberate creature, Rover has a top speed of only one-quarter mile per hour. Now, scoping out the Cydonian plain with a stereo camera, analyzing surface minerals with an imaging spectrometer, even plumbing the sub- soil with an electromagnetic sounder, Rover isn't going nearly that fast. The ants fan out across the Face. The red ant climbs over the chin-length hair, slowly fting and set", ng down one

oreleg a few inches until it (eels nothing

beneath it, then repeating the

procedure with each of its other five legs. The red ant stands on the nose of the Face. Here its chemical sniffer tells of the presence of loose soil, and the red ant picks up pebbles with its samoling claw. The black ant finds the topography of the Face considerably more treach- erous. On the low, primitive-looking

brow, it pauses at a steep crater—one Martian terrain. o( the Face's deep-sunk eyes. Unable to —

POWER TOOLS

By Victoria Y. Rab and Geraldine Youcha

f% I hen New York City police on a screen image of his body to nosed as mentally -etarded because I I officer Stephen McDonald indicate pain. traditional tests can't measure their %J %J was shot in 1 986, he was After several months of rehabilitation, intelligence. The new systems create left paralyzed from the neck down, McDonald regained partial use of his pathways for kids to express them- dependent on a respirator to breathe voice and breathing—enough to selves and for teachers to engage their and unable to speak. The twenty-eight- control a commercially available com- minds. Blind children write stories in year-old officer couldn't even tell doc- puter operated by sipping and puffing Braille and print them in English, tors where he hurt. Then his father saw on a straw. ERICA went to Thera take Braille classroom notes, and study a CNN report on biomedical engineer Thompson, an eight-year-old with them through^ a voice output; deaf Thomas Hutchinson and ERICA, the above-normal intelligence whose cere- children learn to speak and read; and eye-controlled computer he developed bral palsy limited her language to those with brain damage learn to at the University of Virginia (U Va). signaling "yes" or "no" by blinking her write and talk. Eventually, high-tech Hutchinson had designed the system eyes. Three years later, Thompson uses special education should allow a grow- which users operate by focusing their ERICA to keep up with academic pro- ing number of computer-literate users eyes on screen items to choose com- grams Hutchinson's team designs, play to take their places alongside their mands—to enable children with severe games, and conduct conversations. able-bodied peers. forms of paralysis to communicate and ERICA is the front-runner in a new '"Children who might have been rele- learn. Adaptations for use by adult category of computers designed gated to a residential hospital will grow quadriplegics would come later, he to transform the lives of blind and deaf up independentiy as productive mem- thought, until McDonald's lather children as well as those who can't bers of society," says Dolores Hagen, contacted him with a plea to make speak or hit a keyboard. In 1989 more cofounder of Closing the Gap, a Hen- ERICA— or the Eyegaze Response than 4 million youngsters with a wide derson, Minnesota, organization that Interface Computer Aid —available to range of disabilities— 10 to 15 percent publishes a bimonthly newsletter on his son. As the first individual to of them severely disabled—were en- computers and the disabled. "They will field-test an ERICA prototype, the young- rolled in special education programs be able to join the Information Age." er McDonald used his eyes to write across the United States. Many children Hutchinson started working on notes, play chess, and "point" to spots with severe disabilities are misdiag- eye-controlled communication in 1984 after watching patients with minimal motor control at U Va's Kluge Children's Rehabilitation Center struggle to control sip-and-puff and mouth stick systems. Many could not even attempt that much. Remembering that he'd been left temporarily paralyzed after an accident in his youth and had been able to move his eyes before any other part of his body, he focused on control- ling, eye power. His big breakthrough came in the form of a TV documentary on Kenyan elephants. Hutchinson noticed that the animals' eyes glowed when they looked into the camera, a phenomenon called retinal reflection, or "bright eye." In order to harness retinal reflection, Hutchinson connected a miniature infrared light-emitting diode to a com- pact video camera and mounted them beneath a monitor attached to an ordinary personal computer equipped with a digital image-processing card. When the light bathes the user's face,

1 /.'! — fccijs. Kids and adults whoa a muscle use thoii eyes to opcr&c. a novel computer. it causes the bright eye effect as well as

22 OMNI CONTINJFD ON PAGE B6 COMPUTER LIGHT: BEAMS OF INFO ARTIFICIAL inJTELLIEERJCE By Lloyd Chrein

1981 AT&T Bell Laboratories set up construct an optical machine—light data- ntens:ve services as pay-per- Inits Optical Computing Research lenses known technically as Symmetric view home television with thousands of Department to prove that such ma- Self Electro-optic Effect Devices (S- movie titles. Engineers could even use chines couldn't work. "I was given the SEEDs). These control the amount of optical channels to link computers. assignment of investigating myself out information pass ng between proces- "You can have thousands of inputs to of a job," says dep-rtmert head Alan sors. "They work like photochromatic hook up different machines at different Huang. "They just wanted to minimize sung asses," says David Miller, head of times," says Huang. " their risks, and they wanted no the department. "They open and shut To further develop such applica- maybes." Science is full of surprises, according to the intensity of the light." tions, AT&T is now selling chips that however, and the researchers failed to The Bell Labs prototype optical contain 2,048 S-SEEDs— called com- accomplish their mission. The upshot: processor covers less than a square pact photonic integrated circuits—to Lasl January they fooled the smart yard and can operate at more than 1 universities. And some academic re- money and successfully built the billion cycles per second. Moreover, searchers have already found ways to world's first digital optical computer. each cycle contains a few thousand use them. With a two-year, $100,000

AT&T, recovering its corporate compo- beams of light, or bits, giving it the grant from the U.S. Army and Air Force, sure, now says Huang's achievement potential to be 1 ,000 times as powerful University of Connecticut electrical en- "points the way to future exploration." as a Cray supercomputer. gineering professor Bahram Javidi is Optical computers use beams of AT&T has big plans for its discovery. developing an easily programmable light, rather than electrical wires, to "Imagine all the telephone wires in the thinking and seeing optical computer carry information. This will provide world. Each lens in this system can able to handle thousands of inputs at designers with a way around the two- handle all those connections," says once. Optics are ideally suited to such fold problem they face when building Huang. "Calling would be cheaper a complex pattern recognition task; today's number crunchers. On the one because we would not have to install so physicists have tried for years to make hand, to make more powerful many wires." This higher capacity the concept work with electronics but machines, they must pack chips closer could permit companies to offer such have failed because the required together. Unfortunately, when the computations took too long. "Most a stance between these components is digital computers think in a serial way, too small, electromagnetic interference one piece of data at a time," says Javidi. starts to scramble the information they "Optics lets us process a large amount contain. On the other hand, just of information simultaneously" keeping these units a safe distance Such a computer might help a missile from one another is no answer: A system identify and home in on a target. machine's top speed is restricted to the Machines with the ability to see could length of time it takes for electrons to also work on .ndus'rial assembly lines to move data along its wires. identify defects and recognize tools. Researchers tried to use lasers in Such technology could even permit computers when the devices were first robots to perform simple household developed in 1960. But the technology chores without falling down stairs or was too primitive and power hungry: It running into walls. required about half a megawatt At this stage, however, many experts (enough to light 5,000 hundred-watt agree that today's computers have bulbs) for both power and cooling. In nothing to fear from optics. "Electronics the mid-Eighties, however, investiga- is still the tried-and-true field," says H. tors successfully created low-voltage John Caulfield, director of the Center lor units for use in CDs, and power con- Applied Optics at the University of sumption dropped to the microwatt Alabama in Huntsville. "Electronic su- range. This advance allowed the AT&T percomputers [which cost about $2 team to move ahead with its computer. million] remain the state of the art, as do In 1987 researchers ai AT&T's Pho- electronic personal computers. We _ tonic Switching Device Research may see optical supercomputers within

Department helped develop a second perhaps ten years, but l doubt we'll see piece of hardware they needed to optical PCs anytime soon." DO

2A OMNI coruTiruuunn

COURAGE, MY CHILD

seriously at this strange idea I was I ive years after my flight on Apollo 9, I began to As I began to look more -voice some of the musings born in me during struck by the fact that in human birth the end of gestation is my ten-day flight around the home planet in marked by an accelerating demand for resources from the the developing fetus. Similarly, the mother March 1969. As I floated outside of the lunar mod- mother to sustain ever-increasing quantities of waste. The natural ule, suspended between Earth and the cosmos, I was flood- processes "birthing ed with a wave of uninvited questions: How did I get here? resolution of this development is the process." enters into the world a new life- Why am I here? What does "I" mean? Through the' pain there of arbi- wondrous, full oi potential, quite miraculous. I was there largely by chance. Of the thousands life, differ- One need not belabor the analogy to the increasing de- trary decisions l had made in my any one chosen ently would have placed me elsewhere. How and why "I" got mand for resources and the production of wastes and toxins

is it of stretch to see the po- there was not even a question of "I," but rather "we." (If it in our world today. Nor much a environmental conflicts, or the global wasn't "me" it would certainly have been Alan Bean, or litical, economic, and some other astronaut.) "I" was there as a representative of climate changes, as planetary contractions. Cosmic birth "we." The fantastic thing was that "we" were there, ripping raises many difficult questions, which as an avowed envi-

dealing with. yet l can- through a total vacuum at 17,600 miles per hour, hundreds ronmental advocate I find difficulty And of miles above the earth—the biosphere that supports all life not shake the apparent validity of the concept. that we know exists. Easing my mind somewhat is the recognition that after "How" we get there is less interesting to me than "why." birth the child slowly begins recognizing and responding to in honored as one of the purest ex- What is if that draws us outward? Clearly, we reach outward the mother a manner with our new tools as an expression of the fascination peo- pressions of love. Having had a part in bringing back those

of our beautiful planet from space, I virtu- ple have had with the stars throughout history. When I was first photographs tenacity stars ally tingle with excitement as I see the breadth and nine years old I wondered aloud about life among the on of the environmental attitude developing around the as my parents and I meandered along country roads sum- new mer evenings near our farm. When my own teenage kids and world. People really do care and will sacrifice to see Earth's health protected. I camped In the High Sierras, the last hour before sleeping we always spread-eagled on the highest rock like bowsprits But just where are we in this confusing process? Are we on the ship of Earth racing across the cosmic seas. yet born? What are our responsibilities? Is it arrogant even that we might have a role to play? First, the full po- There is, I have come to believe, more than just simple implying life, its ultimate survival, lie in being born, not wonder with the stars or other life in the universe. I believe tential of and for this romance is linked directly with survival, but survival in a holding back. Second, we cannot truly love and provide maturing. Un- large and evolutionary sense. Though it is not entirely clear to the mother without growing up, developing and thoughtless destruction of the earth is no way me, I have formed a metaphor for this process. I see this on- necessary and

it. love respect her, or ourselves. ly "through a glass darkly," but I cannot shake the truth of to and our new cosmic environment, We are, it seems to me, the product of a planetary gesta- Ultimately, as we explore gifts of tion, approaching full term. One may choose labels such as there is no reason not to thank the Mother with ener- Gaia or biosphere to acknowledge the highly integrated and gy and materials to ease her recovery and honor her con- interactive nature of life on this planet. But if the earth is an tinuing beauty.

Courage, child, I tell myself, courage. The way ahead may organism, I thought, what do organisms do? They survive, or try to. And nature's primary means of survival is repro- not be easy or even obvious, but it is right, natural, and oh duction. Is the biosphere involved in such a process now? so wondrous!—RUSSELL L. SCHWEICKART caaiTiruuunn

THE (DOG) BANE OF human subjects due University, warns that it ,-*."* EXISTENCE by 10 percent after four would be foolhardy for any- :. \- H|hm| 9 weeks of use; when used one to wolf down dogbane ^^^^wQ : ! Asian medicine has a long for eight weeks, blood pres- just yef. "Apocynum venetum ^Hp*^«E]5 ; history of dabbling in immor- sure dropped by 13 percent. contains some very potent ^BL tality formulas. Gunpowder, The treated group also dis- compounds that influence ^B '' -b^dBV for example, was the side played a beneficial 24 per- heartbeat," he "It says. ^B •'' liSJ product of a tenth- century cent rise in blood levels of shouldn't be used without ' ^Bfe\' JTfifl Chinese alchemist who was high- density lipoproteins (the medical supervision." I ^Hb; ' ; fjM searching for the fountain of "good" cholesterol), and the —Mark Sunlin ' youth. More recently, in the researchers observed that il^fl June 1989 issue of the Chi- "cardiac performance im- "Unfailingly, humans pity ^^ ^B nese medical journal Chung proved." When cell cultures their ancestors for being so * 1 ^K 'jii.". "^^B I Hsi Chieh Ho Tsa Chin, re- were treated with the leaf ex- ignorant and forget that their "• y&istia/'i -jJ^H searchers reported that the tract, their life span increased descendants wilt pity them BB*!* ' /'^B herb Apocynum venetum, a by 4 percent. for the same thing." * Bft^ * ^1 member of the dogbane fam- While all this sounds en- —Edward Harrison ily, "might have some antiag- couraging for future study, BkV^^H ing effects." Varro Tyler, a professor of "Education is what survives Bmm A concoction extracted pharmacognosy (the study of when what has been learned Lollipops and kidneys: Both from the leaves of this plant pharmaceuticals derived 1 had been forgotten." turn solid without freezing. was found to lower blood from natural sources) at Pur- —B. E Skinner the same way lichens do,

CHILL OUT THE through vitrification. "In vitrifi- LOLLIPOP WAY cation the liquid becomes thicker and gooier like molas-

At least one species of li- ses," he says. "Essentially, chens, those heartiest of you're slowing everything

plant pioneers, manage to down rather than stopping it."

survive the winter by The process, still in an early converting the water in their phase, has shown promising root and vascular systems results with rabbit kidneys. from a liquid to a glassy solid The goal of Fahy's re- phase without freezing. Cryo- search is to buy time for pa- biologist Gregory Fahy is tients in need of organ trans- attempting to do the same plants. Currently kidneys, thing, not with plants, but with livers, and hearts must be human donor organs. transplanted within a few Fahy heads the Organ days after being removed, a Cryop reservation Project for constraint that makes these

the American Red Cross in operations expensive. "If we

Rockville, Maryland. Tradi- -, can store kidneys from six tional freezing, he explains, months to five years, , we causes severe damage to should be able to find a good human organs, "Kidneys, for match between donor and example, are very sensitive recipient in about ninety per- to ice," Fahy says. As liquid cent of the cases," he

water turns to ice, it "rips up says.— Steve Nadis the scaffolding material that

1 holds the cells together," de- "In the works of Nature, stroying the organs. purpose, not accident, is the Fahy is trying to control the main thing." damaging effects of freezing —Aristotle "

THE DAY THE EARTH been in years," says Dennis meteorologists suggest the SLOWED DOWN McCarthy, an astronomer at slowdown may be connected the U.S. Naval Observatory. to an abnormally high num- January 24, 1990, was a According to geologic rec- ber of "westerly bursts," off Asia typical day in most respects: ords, the earth has been strong winds coming Civil war flared in the Sudan, gradually slowing down for onto the Pacific. When the Japan launched its first millions of years, probably average speed of these rocket to the moon, and a because of an increase in winds increases, friction in- Long Island, New York, nurse the frictional tidal forces of creases, and the planet ro- was convicted of killing the oceans rubbing against tates more slowly. four patients. the planet's crust. The re- The longer day makes life interesting for those in the Atypical day—but a little cent slowdown was "more longer than most. From Janu- abrupt than usual," says measurement business. "We in ary 24 through February 3, McCarthy, "but not a once-in- added one leap second the earth's rotation slowed a-lifetime event. These things December of last year, and down, extending the length of can happen." another leap second two the day by five ten-thou- Although the El Nino cur- years ago," McCarthy says. of the sandths of a second. As a re- rent, which develops in the "If the lengthening day sult of the ten-day slowdown, central Pacific, has previ- continues, we'll probably seconds a day is now two thou- ously affected the length of have to put in leap sandths of a second longer. the day, it does not appear to more often—maybe once a Steve Nadis "That's as long as it has be the culprit this time. Some year."— State materials scientist Rus- SUPERMAN DID IT tum Roy, who repeated and WITH HIS BARE HANDS confirmed the experiment, the carbon does not have Nature creates diamonds time to expand normally and deep inside the earth by instead is compressed as if compressing carbon and under great pressure.

subjecting it to tremendous The Soviets' technique, heat and pressure. In labs, says Roy, converts only technicians make synthetic about 1 percent of the car-

diamonds, prized by industry bon into diamond, making it as supertough cutting and too inefficient to be useful in grinding aids, by heating and industry at present. But, he compressing graphite. In the says, materials scientists Soviet Union, scientists have working in concert with laser developed a way to make scientists could make the diamonds at room tempera- process more efficient and ture simply by shining a laser more profitable.—Bill Lawren beam on carbon soot. Soviet scientists Boris Der- "Why, sometimes I've jaguin and Dmitri Fedoseyev, believed as many as six at the tnstitute of Physical impossible things before Chemistry of the USSR breakfast." Academy of Sciences, pro- —Lewis Carroll duced diamond powders by passing a medium-powered "It's deja vu all over again. infrared laser (50 watts) over —Yogi Berra graphite and carbon soot. Because the laser pumps so "Too much of a good thing is much energy into the carbon wonderful." so quickly, explains Penn —Mae West "

CDRJTiruuunn

ADS IN ORBIT

For years entrepreneurs have been talking about the "commercialization" of space, but so far only millions of tiny plastic spheres, used to cali- brate scientific instruments, have been manufactured in orbit. Well, get ready for the real commercialization of space: The Soviet Union re- cently hired an advertising

agency to hawk its Mir space station as a one-of-a-kind lo- cation for TV commercials. "We have visions of cos- monauts munching on candy bars, wearing sneakers, writ- ing with pens," says Buckner Hightower, chairman of the Aerospace Marketing Group, which has exclusive North American rights to sell ad space on Mir, Ten companies are seri- ously pondering the offer, says Highlower, who hoped to sign at least one agree- PSYCHIC POOCH her, sometimes up to 45 min- the onset of a seizure. "Or," ment in time for the planned

utes before a seizure begins. says Berner, "it could be that change of crews on the After sustaining a head in- Soon after taking Harley the animal somehow picks space station in late June. jury in a 1984 car crash, Vic- home, Doroshenko was star- up changes in the electro- it will cost a minimum of toria Doroshenko suffered tled when the dog suddenly magnetic fields in the per- $500,000 to shoot a com- from daily, severe epileptic refused to obey commands son's brain." mercial aboard Mir. Compa- seizures. She often broke and began running around Berner would like to isolate nies will select the cameras bones or injured her head her. "I sat down and went into the cues Harley picks up on of their choice; the Soviets when she fell during these a grand mal," she says. "Ever so that other dogs can be will train the cosmonauts to episodes. Then she was fre- since, Harley has been fore- trained as safety companions use them. The Soviet Union quenlly confined to a wheel- warning me of seizures. He for people with epilepsy. "Be- has also agreed to lei cos- chair. That's when the Wash- breaks my falls. If I'm alone, fore I got my dog," says Do- monauts practice with the ington State woman began he'll go for help." roshenko, "I was afraid and cameras in its microgravity searching for a dog that How could a dog predict housebound. Harley gave me simulator in Star City outside could carry her belongings, epileptic seizures? Reina my life back."— Sherry Baker of Moscow. pick up her crutches, or pull Berner, executive director of The commercials will no her wheelchair. The dog she the New York-based Epilepsy "Except our own thoughts, doubt lack the studio -quality found, a golden retriever Institute, suggests several there is nothing absolutely in sheen that we've come to ex- named Harley, turned out to possible explanations. Berner our power. pect from ads. Nevertheless, be more help than Doro- says Harley may be able to —Rene Descartes Hightower hopes that the shenko could have ever detect mild behavioral or novelty of an on -location imagined; Harley, it seems, physiological changes—im- "Speak softly and own a big, space commercial will draw can sense when she is about perceptible to humans—that mean Doberman." ad agencies to new to have a seizure and warns a person may exhibit before —Dave Miliman heights.—Devera Pine 28 OMNi SIX-LOVE percent, improvement in fore- hand strokes and an almost Ever since Englishman 9 percent advancement in Walter C. Wingfield devised their backhands. the modern game of tennis in "Tennis pros always tell be- 1873, players have been flail- ginners to grip the racket as ing away with a racket that though they were shaking has an eight-sided grip. Now hands with it," says Brown, exercise scientists at the Uni- "but an eight-sided handle versity of Massachusetts- turns the racket faceup Amherst have cut two cor- slightly on a forehand shot ners, producing a six-sided and a bit down on a back- tennis grip that they say Is hand— unless you rotate measurably superior. your hand slightly. Beginners

The six-sider is the handi- usually hit forehands over the work of Andrew Brown, a re- fence and chop backhands formed Ping-Pong player and into the ground." mathematician from Cincin- Brown's grip forces a nati. In a study of 30 well- player to grasp the handle seasoned tennis players at correctly, eliminating the UMass, Brown used high- need to make the adjustment speed cameras and com- consciously. A six-sided grip, puters to chronicle the says Frank I. Katch, chair- torque, force, acceleration, man of the UMass exercise impact, and accuracy of their science department, pro- strokes with the new grip. In duces a "very strong ana- terms of shot placement ac- tomical position, the optimum Beehives turn out to toster a bee-eat-bee populace despite their curacy, they averaged a 13.9 position, in fact." Brown notes reputation as paragons of social cooperation. that his invention could ban- ish tennis elbow by eliminat- BEES OF THE ME tilized eggs develop into ing the slight rotation of the GENERATION drones, male bees whose forearm necessary to hit the sole purpose in life is mating. ball correctly, reducing stress The buzz around the bee- But they aren't left alone; the on the joint. The grip is cur- hive is that there is a workers' researchers observed other rently under evaluation by uprising—a new labor move- females "policing" the hive, two major racket manufactur- ment that's been spotted by seeking out the eggs of self- ers and could make its ap- two University of California promoting females and de- pearance this fait. (UC) scientists. vouring them. —George Nobbe In the honeybee colony the The workers can probably queen is the only female with tell a queen's egg by scent,

"Virtue is its own reward." license to reproduce. None- but entomologists believe —John Dryden theless, some female work- cheaters' eggs don't have this ers have been found laying odor; thus they become fair "Virtue is its own revenge." unfertilized eggs. This is game. The researchers be- workers —E. Y. Harburg cheating other members of lieve the predatory the hive, say entomologists may be safeguarding their investment. Be- A little ambiguity never hurt Kirk Visscher of UC Riverside own genetic anyone." and Francis Ratnieks of UC cause the honeybee queen with ten to 20 drones, . —Charles Suhor Berkeley. Neither the queen mates nor other hive members ben- each worker is likely to be "Almost anything is easier to efit from raising a renegade more closely related to her get into than out of." worker's offspring. brothers than to her neph- —Agnes Allen Left alone, workers' unfer- ews.— DavaSobel caruTiruuunn

SEA SPIT The easily synthesized AN ACID TRIP compound, called octopa- Ringo Starr may be per- mine, stimulates insects' Remember the little Dutch fectly comfortable in an octo- nerve cell receptors, deliver- boy who plugged a leaky pus's garden, but true beetles ing an overdose of activity to dike with his finger, saving his

would hate it. Aside from these cells the same way country from a ruinous flood?

drowning, these and other that caffeine produced by !f Olaf Schuiling's idea for bugs would find the octopus's coffee trees overstimulates keeping Holland high and dry presence lethal. insects that dare to munch is equally successful, he, too, Substances present in oc- their leaves. may become a well-known topus saliva, says neurologist The ideal organic pesti- national hero. James Nathanson of Bos- cide? Not just yet, says Na- Schuiling, a chemistry pro- ton's Massachusetts General thanson. The problem facing fessor from the University of

Hospital, "can induce behav- the neurologist is that each Utrecht, suggests using sul- ioral changes in insects." bug has different types of furic acid to raise land levels.

When these substances are nerve receptors, all of which It's a matter of simple chem- sprayed on the leaves of must be classified before istry: By boring holes some plants that bugs eat, for ex- anyone can design an octo- 1,500 feet into the ground ample, the insects "develop pamine elixir that wilt leave and injecting sulfuric acid into tremors, become uncoordi- beneficial insects alone while them, a chemical reaction nated, and fall off the plants." doing away with harmful occurs with the limestone The substance's use was ones. "Insects have dozens that underlies most of Hol- first discovered more than 40 of neural transmitters," says land. The reaction, in turn, years ago by an Italian phar- Nathanson, "We're searching expands the rock to twice its macologist looking for rare for the receptors that are original volume, lifting the

bioactive substances in ani- overloaded by the substance. ground above it out of the

mals such as snakes. "They It should work, but I can't say reach of the steadily en- all have venom that affects that tomorrow we'll have an croaching sea. the nervous systems of their octopamine pesticide." "When the idea first oc- prey," says Nathanson. —George Nobbe curred to me, I thought it was more science fiction than sci- ence," Schuiling recalls. "But Dutch authorities are opti-

when I playfully discussed it mistic but cautious about with some colleagues, they Schuiling's proposal. "We are took me more seriously than very interested in what he

I expected." suggests," says Pieterde The sulfuric acid for Wildt, a policy adviser at the Schuiling's plot would come Ministry of Transportation from Holland's industrial and Waterways. "But we waste. Schuiling calculates want to know much more

that one year's worth of about it before trying to apply waste acid would add three it."—Doron Pely feet of elevation to a stretch of land about seven miles "When we look at a rock long and 300 feet wide. "Lab- what we are seeing is not oratory tests have suc- the rock, but the effect of the

ceeded. Now I am trying to rock upon us." arrange a large-scale experi- —Bertrand Russell ment and a feasibility study," says Schuiling. As a test site, "Boredom is not only a he suggests Ameiand, a judgment about experience A spineless mollusk that packs a real punch: From the undersea world small island off the northwest but a sin against ourselves." comes what may be the perfect means for downing insect pests. coast of Holland. —Robert Grudin 30 OMNI THE ITSY-BITSY for the amount and quality of SPIDER LAB the silk they produce. After restraining a spider, Lewis

"What am I? I'm more draws silk from it with a vari- elastic than nylon, five times able-speed reversible drill, K| stronger than steel, and tend coaxing "as much as one to collect in corners and hundred yards" in a single £ eaves." If you guessed spider session. A single spider can handful of be "silked" up to three times $M^ give yourself a silk, ' so long as it's kept 9 jelly beans. a week Molecular biologist Randy well fed. a£»^^j Lewis of the University of Lewis has no problem get- m^Jm MjS; Wyoming says that spider ting the silk from anesthe- then get- *. silk would be ideal for su- tized arachnids, but kW w^ ligaments, air- ting the gene responsible for tures, artificial H|¥" . craft carriers' catch cables, silk production to reproduce body armor, wet suits, and in a bacteria culture has even space suits. Add it to proved to be a stumbling plastic car fenders and it block. "They (the bacteria] probably would "take a signif- don't seem to like it," he says. icant impact, flex, and Lewis adds, however, that as bounce right back again," soon as an amiable culture is says Lewis. found, the genes will un- £T \ Under a grant from the Of- doubtedly thrive in the culture "" fice of Naval Research, and produce fibers that can

to unlock be spun into an ail-purpose • Lewis is working f . , %;. ' the secrets of spider silk. His thread. He predicts that : \ Florida's super silk should be available j M favorite subjects are golden orb spinner and Wyo- for experimentation in about Look, Ma, no teeth: To stave off the woes of a rotting mouth, throw chemical engineer from Rome. ming's catface spider, prized a year.—Peggy Noonan away your toothbrush, says a

OPEN WIDE AND SAY stroys only microbes harmful sponds, "Phages are abso- MICROPHAGES to teeth. lutely harmless. They attack "Phages are pretty tough one specific bacterium and

little says Norris, produce no side effects. And It you worry about bacte- buggers," they are not drug, ria, plaque, and tooth decay, adding that they could easily because a probably won't need 3 take comfort in the knowl- be mixed with toothpaste and they edge that a mouthful of mi- -. mouthwash. Once in the FDA approval." crophages may do you more mouth the microphages Norris says that certain companies have good than all the toothpaste, could consume bacteria that tooth-care mouthwash, and dental floss breed on the surfaces of expressed interest in his pat- in the world. teeth. The Streptococcus ented method of combating Microphages are very tiny sanguis bacterium initiates tooth decay, but what's really viruses that attack and de- tooth decay, with S. faecalis needed is financial support to vour bacteria, and Alan H. and S. mutan joining in later. help him identify and then Norris, a chemical engineer "The implication," Norris custom-breed the proper from Rome, Georgia, be- says, "is that one need only phages.—George Nobbe lieves they can be applied to provide phages that eliminate fight tooth decay. Norris says S. sanguis to prevent ninety "If man could be crossed that because viruses develop percent of dental cavities." with the cat, it would improve 'naturally for virtually every For those of us reluctant to the man but deteriorate the kind of ceil, a specialized swish alien viruses in our cat" phage can be found that de- mouths, Norris quickly re- —Mark Twain coruTiruuurm

HE SWEEPS, HE for the Bush proposal from SCRUBS, BUT HOW'S aerospace companies, the science-fiction community, HIS FRENCH? the astronomy community, and the pro-space public, There's a new figure in the says Mark Hopkins, Space- Paris underground these cause's president. days. He's a fully automated "If you look at peak space robot that goes by the name funding in the Sixties," says of Cab-X, and he cheerfully Hopkins, "it was one percent (well, at least uncomplain- of the gross national product; ingly) does a job no one else now it's about a quarter of wants to do: He cleans those one percent. The space pro- endless expanses of pave- gram didn't break us then ment in Paris's metro system. even though we were fighting Cab-X, who stands about the Vietnam War. We think six feet tall and weighs in at the country can afford it." close to 200 pounds, gets his Funding the space pro- power from a battery pack gram is imperative for many and moves about on tanklike reasons, says Hopkins, "if treads. He's guided by clus- the lunar-Mars program gets ters of magnetic discs shut down, humanity's push embedded in the station's into space is going to be seri- pavement and by an artificial ously curtailed. We're making vision system that allows him a choice about our space to avoid such obstacles as program's future; Is It going passengers. . scurrying He lo be relatively small or is it sweeps and vacuums (no, he going to be aggressive?" doesn't do windows), and Hopkins urges anyone who when he's through tidying wants to register support for one station, a human in- the president's space pro- structs him to hop a train, posal to contact those head- ride on to the next stop, and ing the space budget com- clean up there. mittee: Senator Barbara Cab-X, who was designed Mikulski, 320 Hart Senate and built by the French firm Office Building, Washington, Comatech, is actually part of DC 20510, (202) 224-4654; an ambitious research pro- or Congressman Bob Traxler, gram launched by the RATP 2364 Rayburn Building, (the Paris transit authority} in Iz zis zee ansair to Paree's prayers? Bossing a. Washington, DC, (202) 225- 1983. He costs about way for the French to get their work done. 2806.— Shari Rudavsky $82,000, and now that his may curtail testing period has been com- SUPPORT YOUR But Congress plans after reviewing "The health of the eye seems pleted successfully, he and LOCAL MARS PROBE Bush's budget this summer, trim- to demand a horizon. We are four other robots are slated to the rather than bolster- never tired, so long as we start a regular work schedule Last January President ming— re- ing spacefunding. can see far enough." later this year. But will he and Bush took the first step to — Enter Space cause, a lob- —Ralph Waldo Emerson his pals be abie to survive a vive America's flagging that to Parisian rush hour? "We space exploration program, bying group hopes powerful grass-roots " The greatest obstacle to haven't used him at rush proposing a 22.8 percent in- forge a movement to persuade Con- discovery is not ignorance- hour," says RATP spokes- crease fpr NASAs 1981 it is the illusion of man Bernard Loescher. "Too budget, $1.3 billion of which gress to leave the space The organiza- knowledge." many obstacles." would underwrite a lunar- budget alone. —DanielJ. Boorstin —Bill Lawren Mars exploration program. tion hopes to garner support mlMMMmMwm

Colonizing the red planet will take the combined efforts of the world's best space brains. The $400 billion question: Can nations cooperate well enough to make this dream come true? VOYAGE TO A FAR PLANET ARTICLE BY BRENDA FORMAN

Aboard the spaceship Giasnost, 23 million

miles on its way to Mars, Baryshnikov (so dubbed for his annoying habit ra of repeating the Swan Lake adagio for hours

in the low-g exercise module) had

stopped shaving his face. He had

elected to use his electricity ration to do his armpits once a Bp== week instead. Spi-

derman was indif- r^ ' ferent to this. He

was more interested in the web of Kevlar

monofilament he'd woven in the

.radiation shelter. Besides, he hadn't

changed out of his black tights for half a year

a I and Baryshnikov was the only one

^ 1 who had said nothing—so a silent

bargain had been struck. Baryshnikov, a.k.a.

F. Povich, cosmo- K^H naut of the USSR, and Spiderman, H^H a.k.a. P. Hoffman, astronaut from Houston, had shown ^ PAINTING BY MICHAEL CARROLL m ^Besides the $400 billion sticker

shock, the space technoiogy needed for the trip is no longer exclusively Made in America.^

the unmistakable signs of irreversible spaces, r ihe meantime. pohLii;cr; will be maneuvering back on Earth, persuad- The six other crewmen had their f-a- ing half a dozen nations to split the tab c-u-l-t-i-e-s somewhat more intact. on this pricey journey. The $400 billion They had gathered in the galley to (NASA's preliminary estimate) sticker make the decision. shock, however, isn't the only reason "They could sabotage the entire that the United States is unlikely to go ship," Akira from Nagano, Japan, had to the red planet on its own: The pointed out. space technology that such a big jour- "We must not act in an uncivilized ney demands is no longer exclusively and immoral fashion, however," advised Made in America, Mohan from Bombay. The Soviet Union, the European "We must conform to due process of Space Agency (ESA), Canada, Japan, law," Jean-Paul the Parisian agreed. and China ail have. very impressive They decided to isolate Baryshnikov space capabilities—including rockets, and Spiderman in the exercise and shel- The six were having a little trouble robotics, and space-medicine exper-

ter modules. That way, if they blew an with the isolation, too. tise. Recognizing this, President Bush airlock, started an electrical fire, or announced in March that the United found a more novel method to merge "A trip to Mars will be the most chal- States plans to seek an "exploratory di- their souls with the black void, they lenging high-technology adventure of alogue" with Europe, Canada, Japan, wouldn't take the other six astronauts the twenty-first century," says Tom the Soviet Union, and other nations on along with them. Paine, former NASA administrator and international cooperation in the Space The six did not discuss their decision chairman of President Reagan's Nation- Exploration Initiative. with ground control. After all, who al Commission on Space. Getting Even though no one knows what knew what the others back at the lunar there, however, makes a lunar flight shape such "international cooperation" base, or at mission control, might do? look like a jaunt to the corner store. will ultimately take, there's certainly While the moon is a "mere" 250,000 enough scientific and technological miles away, Mars can be anywhere work to involve everybody. A foaming holiday: At the Martian outpost from 49 million to 235 million miles "Every way you look at SEI [Space (toe left), spacepersons prepare to board a from Earth, depending on the time of Exploration Initiative, i.e., moon-Mars in surface craft. To get to Mars, voyagers will year. One round-trip could take three governmentspeakj, it's a whole cluster iy aboard a transfer valve:? (lop right). To years or chart new territories or. the surface, explor- more, not counting time spent of cooperative opportunities," says Pe- ers use a large' surface craft (right). Colo- .on the surface. ter G. Smith, director of international re- nists descend from orbit to the red planet Along the way, human colonists will lations for NASA. Fitting the pieces to- aboard a reentry vehicle (below). live for months or years in cramped gether will be the most complex sys- 36 OMNI terns integration job ever. Meanwhile The politics of moon-Mars will prob- cording to a high NASA official who re- the project's international organization- ably be absolutely Byzantine. "The tech- quested anonymity, Japan is already al structure will have to function for 30 nological challenge is probably equaled deeply interested in lunar resources, so

years or more— a staggering prospect by the institutional challenge: to orga- it might want to participate in a moon given the routine mulishness of politi- nize a sustained international effort ex- base. The Soviets, on the other hand, cians and the vagaries of history. (Re- tending over decades," explains prefer a Mars mission over a return to member the furor last year when NASA Paine. Sending voyagers to Mars will in- the moon. Each piece of the action, offered Congress a scaled-down space volve a broad consortium of nations and therefore, will probably e.nd up tailored station design without first consulting stretch over three decades or more. to the various participants' goals. the other nations involved with Free- The only project remotely resembling Paine says a good management mod- dom?) Even before the first crew such an ambitious endeavor, Space Sta- el might be Intelsat (International Tele- leaves for Mars, there's a formidable tion Freedom, has the United States as communications Satellite), to which clutch of technologies to master—both its leader, manager, and ultimate arbi- each nation contributes to the degree

"hard" ones for hardware and systems, ter of operating decisions. "That could it uses the system: "Pay your dues and

and "soft" ones for keeping space col- be the Mars model— if the United get your ride." Another model: the ap- onists sane and healthy. States cares to pay the bulk of the gi- proach ESA has pioneered in coordinat-

gantic amount of money involved, as it ing the space efforts of 13 countries is doing with the space station," says with different technology levels, funding Ben Huberman, President Carter's dep- resources, and policy objectives. "The Americans are talking about cut- uty science adviser and now a Wash- But would the United States agree to ting their Mars mission budget once ington consultant on technology issues. any arrangement in which it would be again, sir." Even more important, the nation would a mere partner rather than the leader?

"They do this to us" every year, don't have to commit to paying out that mon- "I don't think we'll go to Mars as part of they? You'd think they'd persevere in ey consistently over the extended time an organization in which we lose the per- something they started themselves, but period of a Mars mission, a condition ception of the lead," says the same

they never do. I suppose we should Congress will undoubtedly reject. anonymous NASA official. "That tugs at have learned that back in Space Sta- The Freedom model may not prove the U.S. heartstrings. Leadership is one tion Freedom days." flexible enough for the moon-Mars ini- of the main reasons the President put "Minister says we should think tiative. Although big and complex, ihe forward the program." about redesigning our module to be space station is essentially just one sin- Such nationalistic fervor could pre- completely independent. Then we can gle piece of hardware. Moon-Mars will vent Earthlings from ever reaching our let the Americans diiher without queer- require a very large number of separate red neighbor. Should the world's ing our own projects." elements—bases, stations, launchers, spacefaring nations overcome their in-

"Mmm. More expensive that way, of and landers—each of which could in- stincts to go it alone, however, here's course. But worth looking at." volve different players. For example, ac- what a joint effort might lead to in the next 40 years. GOING MY WAY?

"Ten, nine, eight..." The mammoth rock- UNITED STATES POST OFFICE et sits on the Baikonur launchpad deep in the south central region of the LUNAR STATION Soviet Union, poised to truck another 100 metric tons of hardware to low Earth orbit, This is the twentieth such launch, and astronauts and cosmo- nauts in orbit are busily assembling all the payloads into a convoy headed for the moon. The booster is the Energia, pride of the Soviet launch stable and the biggest vehicle to rise from a pad since the Saturn 5 of Apollo days. In- deed the two rockets are in the same

class: Energia can lift 220,000 pounds to low Earth orbit; the Saturn 5 lofted the 165,000-pound Skylab.

rocket motors, spacecraft components,

life-support systems, living modules, air, water, food, and humanity out of Earth's gravity well and into space. Nei-

ther the shuttle, with its 48,000-pound capacity, nor the biggest U.S. rocket, the Titan 4, which carries 40,000 pounds to orbit, could deliver such a massive amount of equipment. And what will be ESA's largest launcher, the

Ariane 5, will lift only 46,200 pounds.

Comparing the Mars mission's lift re-

' this one., either "No postage necessary on quirements with those of the space sta- tion gives some feel for the magnitude OSTEIN'S " ! — "

center or our ship like crazed chip- hatch Einstein to give a of a special ship he had commis- stein. I grinned and nodded agreement from your most recent bankruptcy. To Sam gave a screech that would know enough about you darting along madly, propelling sioned. firm parameters,..." hu* Only the two of us as crew: I with his choice. It took nearly eleven date..." She droned on while Sam's make an ax murderer shudder and - '-.self by grabbing at handgrips, con- was to do the navigating; Sam did ev- hours for Sam's message to get to face went from angry red to ashy gray. flung himself at the dead screen. He Sam was no fool. He listened to my sc* -inobs, viewport edges, anything erything else, including the cooking. Be- Earth and another eleven for their reply This far from Earth, all messages were bounced off and scooted weightlessly instructions. He released the instruments that could give him a pur- I gibber- well clear of the event horizon. But the moment's fore I the control center again, could ask myself why was doing to reach us. I spent the time studying one-way. You can't hold a conversation around

chase as he whirled by. this, I was being flattened into the ac- Einstein while Sam proclaimed to the uni- with an eleven-hour wait between each ing, jabbering, screaming insults and ob- pod just orbited around the faint violet

I was sweating over my instruments. celeration couch as we roared out into verse how he was going to build an or- transmission. The blond went into infi- scenities at the blond, the IAA, the haze that marked Einstein's position. It Every nine seconds Sam whizzed past the wild black.yonder. biting hotel just outside Ejnstein's event nite detail about how much money Sam whole solar system in general, and all didn't go spiraNng into it. like me a demented monkey, jabbering, But Planet * wasn't there. horizon and invent a new pastime for owed, and to whom. Even though I was the lawyers on Earth in particular. "Goddamn mother-humping no-

"it's gotta there. It's gotta there!" "I'll of a lawyer!" be be Sam slowed down,_ puffing, until he the danger nuts. only half listening, I learned that our show. 'em all!" he raged. good son "There's craft into something out there," I was dangling right behind me, his feet "Space surfing! A jetpack on your ship was not paid for. and my own uni- "They want an operational facility. Sam jockeyed the EVA a yelled over my shoulder, annoyed with half a meter off the floor. My softboots back and good old Einstein in front of versity was suing Sam for taking my they'll get an operational facility!" matching orbit and gave it a push in- him. at myself, really. It another, Angry was my were locked in the foot restraints .and you. See how close you can skim to the instrumentation without authorization! I wrenched free of the foot restraints ward. Not enough. Then swear- calculations that had put us inlo this fix. still he barely came up to my height. He event horizon without getting sucked in Finally she smiled slightly and deliv- so fast I twisted an ankle and went div- ing a blue streak every instant.

instruments "That's I yelled into The were showing a def- was wheezing, and I realized there was It'll make billions!" ered the knockout. "Now, Mr. Gunn ing after him. close enough," inite gravitational flux, damned close to lot of in his hell thinking the microphone, "The event horizon fluc- a gray reddish hair. His face "Until somebody gets stretched into aside from all the above unpleasantness, "Sam, what the are you — what I had calculated when I was still looked tired, old, sad. it interest to realize that your of?" He was already unlocking the tuates, Sam, You mustn't eyes baggy and a bloody string of spaghetti," I said. may you

back on campus. But out here, well "Just my luck," Sam groaned. "Of "That gray field out there is powerful. claim to this alleged black hole is with- hatch of our EVA scooter, a little one- I swear the black hole reached out past the orbit of Pluto farther all utility craft and grabbed him. The event horizon — than any- the eggheads in all the universities And I think it fluctuates...." out merit or substance." man with a big bubble cano-

body had gone before—what I needed in all the solar system, you've..." "All the better," said Sam, clapping Sam growled from deep in his throat. py and so many extendable arms it sort of burped and engulfed Sam's

to I impossible, that's see was a planet, a fat little world or- Suddenly I real- looked like a met- craft. know it's but biting out in that darkness more than sev- ized what the in- al spider, what happened. I ARGUED en billion miles from Earth. struments were tell- "I'm gonna pop "Hey!" he yelled. "Heyyyyyy!" X. to knew Planet The tenth planet. Astrono- ing me. I shouted, an instrument pod According everything we

mers had been searching for it since be- "It's a black hole!" down Einstein's about black holes up to then, Sam was

fore Lowell's time, but I had worked out "And I'm the throat. We've got- being squeezed by Einstein's gravita-

exactly where it should be, me and the tooth fairy." ta have our facil- tional forces, torn apart, crushed, WHILE HE GOT Caltech/MIT/Osaka-linked computers. "No, really! It's ity going before mashed, squashed, pulverized. And Sam Gunn had furnished not tin-can law- going onnnn?" Sam's radio the mon- a planet at all. THE POD those "What's ey and the ship to go out and find it. It's a black hole. yers get here!" voice stretched out eerily, like in an echo Only it wasn't there. Look!" TOGETHER AND "But it'll just chamber. "It's gotta be there." Sam orbited Sam snarled, disappear into the "What's going on?" I asked back. past me again. "Gotta be. "How in hell can REVVED "It's like sliding down a chuuute!"

first I The time met Sam, I thought he 1 see something "You're not being pulled apart?" UP THE EVA. was nuts. Wiry little guy. Hair like a nest that's invisible by "Then it wont "Hell, nooo! But I can't see anything. of rusted wire. Darting, probing eyes. definition?" WHAT HE WAS be an operational Like falling down an elevator shaaaft!" Kind of shifty. The eyes of a politician. With tremblir facility." Sam should have been crushed. But

I to laugh, Or a confidence man. fingers I pointed to "How do you he wasn't. started We had

"Fly out there?" That startled me. "Why the gravitational know what it'll be named the black hole exactly right. In- not just rent time on an orbital— telescope flux meters and DANGEROUS. doing inside the side the event horizon space-time was or use the lunar observa high-energy de- event horizon? If being warped. But Sam was now part

"To claim it, egghead!" Sam had tectors. We even the mother-hump- of that continuum, and to him everything

snapped. "A whole planet. I want it." went over to the ing lawyers want seemed normal. Our universe, the one

He couldn't be that dumb, I thought. optical telescope, to prove that it's I'm in, would have seemed weirdly dis-

He'd amassed several fortunes and bumping heads not working, just torted to him if he could see it. It had all lost all but the latest one. To tly out be- like Laurel and let 'em jump in been there in old Albert's equations, if yond Pluto would cost every penny he Hardy, trying to after it. And kiss we had only had the sense enough to had and more. "You can't claim a plan- squint through the my ass on the way realize it. Sam Gunn— feisty, foul- et," I explained patiently. "International eyepiece togeth- down!" mouthed, womanizing, fast-talking Sam agreements Irom back in—" er. Nothing to see. We argued for Gunn—had discovered a shortcut to the international that "Puke on agreements!" Except a faint violet glow, the last visi- his hands like a kid in front of a Christ- 'Although international law allows one more than an hour while he got the in- stars, a space-time warp one day he shouted. "I'm the limits not a national govern- ble remains of the thin interplanetary gas mas tree. "Let a couple of the risk to claim the use of a body found in strument pod together and revved up would allow us to get around ment. I'm travel. gave S. Gunn Enterprises, Inc. And that was being sucked into the black freaks kill themselves and all the others space, the law clearly states that you the EVA craft. What he wanted to do was of speed-of-light But Sam a whole planet's gotta be worth a for- hole on a one-way trip to oblivion. will come boiling out here like lemmings must establish an operational facility on dangerous. Maybe adventure freaks his life to his discovery. He was on a tune," Sam had a reputation for shady It really was a black hole. The final on migration." the body in question before such a would like to skim around the event ho- one-way trip to God knows where. May-

I for life schemes, but couldn't the of me grave of star that collapsed, rizon of black hole. I don't feel there'd be kindly aliens at the other a had God I shook my head in wonder. claim will be recognized." a Me, be give see how he planned to profit from claim- knows how many eons ago, A black When the comm signal finally Sam snorted like a bull about to really safe unless there's good Califor- end of the warp to greet him and ing Planet X. Nor any reason for to hole! Practically their version of the Nobel prize, me in our I I s'oil shaking beneath feet. But him backyard! And chimed, I was still trying to dope out the charge. Me, thought about establish- nia my leave Nobel, of course. and I my home job at the university had discovered it! Visions of the Nobel basic parameters of our black hole. Yes, ing an operational facility on the body Sam would not be denied. Maybe he got the terrestrial to go out to the end of the solar system prize he I'm heading up an enormous made me giddy. I was thinking of Einstein as ours: that's attached to that beautiful face. was a danger freak himself. Maybe And now with him. Sam sprang straight to the communi- what being near Sam does to you. "So I'm afraid, my dear Mr. Gunn"— was desperate for the money. team of scientists who're studying Ein-

I didn't reckon on Sam's persuasive- cations console and started fran- make our claim stick," he stein and trying to figure out how to put tapping His round little face went pugnacious her smile widened— to show dazzlingly "We gotta ness, He didn't have a silver tongue. Far tically at its keyboard, muttering about the instant he saw the woman on the perfect teeth "that unless you estab- kept muttBring. "It's our only chance!" black-hole warps to practical use. from it. His language was more often he pressure Sam? Who knows where he is? how could rent time to astronomers screen. I felt an entirely different reac- lish an operational facility on your alleged He didn't even put on a And crude than eloquent. Even obscene. But to study the only black hole close tion. She was beautiful, with thick plati- black hole, your claim is worthless. And, suit. He just clambered up into the cock- But you can still hear him, thanks to he was a nonstop needier, wheedler, enough to Earth to see firsthand. num blond hair and the kind of eyes oh, yes! One more thing—an automat- pit of the EVA craft, slammed its hatch, Einstein's time-stretching effects, swear- pleader, all seducer. In the language of my "It's worth a fuckin' fortune," he chor- that promised paradise. ed ship is on its way to you, filled with and worked one of its spidery arms to ing and cussing every moment, the forefathers, he was a nudzh. His tled, his fingers racing along the keys But her voice was as cold as a ro- robot lawyers who will have authoriza- pick up the instrument pod. way down that long, long slide to what- tongue didn't to silver: it on the other side of the warp. have be was like a concert pianist trying to do Cho- bot's. "Mr. Gunn. we meet again. Your tion to take possession of your ship and Reluctantly, I went back to the con- ever's heavy-duty, long-wearing, Einstein (Albert), blister-proof, pin's "Minute Waltz" in thirty seconds. claim has been noted and filed with the all its equipment, in the name of your trol center to monitor Sam's mission. And according to yelling diamond-coated solid muscle. "Lots of fortunes!" He filed his claim and Interplanetary Astronautical Authority. In creditors. Good-bye. Have a nice day." "Stay well clear of the event horizon," we'll be able to hear Sam forev-

So I found myself ducking the radio. don't er. Forever. Forever. through the I the "I DO even gave black hole a name: Ein- the meantime, I represent the creditors The screen went blank. warned him over 40 OMNI i=*iill=i=5=S3

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mission is not the right idea now. There are those who promote the That mission, spread over its lifetime Mars mission as the logical extension FDRunn of 25 to 30 years, will. cost more than of mankind's desire to explore the un- CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14 half a trillion dollars. Yes, as a percent- known, to "go where no one has gone

us to understand our own environment. age of gross national product it's slight- before." I do not disagree with that no-

The benefits reaped from the tech- ly less than the Apollo program, but Sen- tion, but I do think that since we have nological breakthroughs needed to ators Gramm, Rudman, and Hollings done such a good job. of fouling our push man to another planet would were unheard of in the Sixties, and the own nest, perhaps we should' look to have direct applications on Earth, just annual deficit ranged. from $507 million those needs first. as the microminiaturization of space to $27 billion, a fraction of both today's The National Academy of Sciences' equipment improved our lives in numer- deficit of $161 billion and the annual in- recent report Human Exploration of ous ways. These breakthroughs would terest on the national debt, which is Space has been used by some as sup- not only fuel America's economy but cre- $180 billion. port for the Mars mission. It should be ate new business and jobs. In the Sixties the race to the moon pointed out, however, that the report, as

' The question, as I see it, is not wheth- was virtually the only item on NASA's requested by Vice-president Quayle in er we can afford to explore Mars, but plate. Today we have the $30 billion his role as chairman of the National how long we can afford to delay this ex- space station; Mission to Planet Earth Space Council, began from the prem- citing, inevitable venture. a series of unmanned platforms to mon- ise that a manned moon-Mars mission itor environmental changes on Earth' was a national goal. The report, there-

it The Case Against Mars which I consider to be NASA's highest fore, never addressed whether Congressman Bill Green, Ranking Re- priority; the great observatories and plan- should be a national goal. Thai goal has publican on She House Appropriations etary-probe astronomical programs; yet to be agreed upon in Washington Subcommittee, which funds NASA and the existing shutlle program. This and is also the subject of active dispute Last year on the twentieth anni- wll assure the agency of a healthy an- in the scientific community. versary of the landing of Apollo 11 on nual increase throughout the Nineties. Last year the vice-president invited the moon, President Bush called for a What are the compelling reasons for me and about a dozen other members return to the moon and a manned mis- a mission to Mars? From a scientific of the House and Senate most active sion to Mars. Although he wanted this standpoint, we can do most of the sci- in space policy to the White House to

speech to have the same propulsive ef- ence we want from unmanned probes get a preview of the plan. I think I can fect on the national will as President Ken- witness the spectacular success of the charitably characterize the response to nedy's 1961 speech, it clearly has not. Voyager satellite. Unmanned probes the proposal as mixed. For many of us,

It is not that Bush lacks the ability to in- not only would be cheaper, but the sci- NASA has many more important roles. spire, but rather that there are other im- ence they could do would not be com- For this member, the mission to Mars portant reasons why the moon-Mars piomised by the intrusion of man. is the last float in the parade. DO

iQESttAPABlEl j CAPABLE )

[PE6RAP,QB)-£| fc£6KAUABLEJ_ rF* (•Working, living, and loving—authors LflTTERDflU mflRTMn EHROfflCLES Isaac Asimov, Pat Murphy, Bruce Sterling, Joan D. Vinge, and Gregory Benford show us a day In the lives of the red planet pioneers. 9 PAINTINGS BY GREG MANCHESS

of writers Asi- able. Valles Marineris sounds good as an address, but Consider the following scenario: The Vice-President of Had we followed its most ambitious advice, American neighbor, we have enlisted the aid Isaac

it I don't know why the United States chairs a group to plan the country's astronauts would now be dwelling on a distant planet. mov, Pat Murphy, Bruce Sterling, Joan D. Vinge, and we just call the Canyon, and points they de- they're so worried about its being livable. It's the Mar- space future. It reports on three possible long-range While the flagging courage of our pundits and po- Gregory Benford. From their vantage Riviera, if you ask me. programs. The first is a mission to Mars that will put liticos thwarted such a grand vision, Omni has decid- pict a place where the living is exciting, the going tian In the first place, it's warmer down here than it is in men on the red planet in two decades; the second pro- ed to draw a picture of what life would have' been like hard, and the potential unlimited.—Tom Dworetzky (Celsius) warm- poses orbiting lunar and space stations and a shuttle; (or the Martian colonists had such a commitment the rest of Mars, a good ten degrees er. The air is thicker—still thin enough, heaven knows, and the third keeps costs down by suggesting just the been made. Think of it as an alternative reality—what Dear Mabel, thicker and a better protection against ultraviolet. space station and the shuttle. might have been had we spent an extra £10 billion a Well, here we are, as promised. They've given us a but Of course, the main difficulty is getting in and out Sounds pretty much like today's news, doesn't it? year on the space program over the last two decades. permit to live in the Valles Marineris, and don't think of the Canyon. It's four miles deep in places, and Surprise: The VP in question was Spiro T. ("nattering Had we made this investment, mankind would have we haven't been waiting for a year and a half because they talking about they've built roads here and there so that you can get nabobs of negativism") Agnew, and the space task settled Mars in 1985 (year 1, Tempus Mars). we have. They're so slow and keep place liv- in special mobiles. Getting up and out is more group he headed made its report in September 1969. To report back to Earth about life on our planetary the capital investment required to make the down

50 OMNI difficult, but with gravity only two fifths what it is on

could almost believe in Sita's yeti. I thoughl I saw some- Earth, it isn't as bad as it sounds, and they do say thing moving, out there in the middle of the ice field.' they're going to build elevators that will take you at

the light, I know. here a smudge of frost least partway up and down. Dearest Nicholas, A trick of Out on your faceplate can become a shape that moves Another problem is that dust from the storms does We leave in a few hours. The others are still asleep, with each turn of your head. The shadow of a wind- tend to accumulate in the Canyon more than on the but I woke up an hour ago. With fuck and continued

etched hufnmock can take on solidity. I know that, but ordinary surface, and there are landslides now and good weather, we'll reach the far side of the polar cap in this cold and lonely place, it is hard not to believe then, but heavens, we don't worry about that. We in just over a month. We'll be the first to cross the in shifting shadows and fantastic creatures. know where the faults are and where the landslides pole, the first to map the hidden lands that lie beneath

The sun went down and I headed back to camp, are likely to occur, and no one digs in there. the ice. How can anyone sleep? following the path of my own bootprints. The beam of That's the thing, Mabel. After all, everyone on Mars Yesterday we drew lots: For the first leg of the trip, my headlamp glittered on the carbon dioxide frost lives under a dome or underground, but here in the Paul and Yuri will drive the Sno-Cat that tows the jump-

that forms each night. As I walked I found myself Canyon, we can dig in sideways, which I understand ing truck; Sita and I will tow the Caboose, the ungain- if studying the bootprints carefully, as I expected to is much preferable from an engineering standpoint, ly box that will serve as our living quarters. I've see something different. Another kind of print, perhaps. though I've asked Bill not to try to explain it to me. stashed the bottle of French champagne you gave me

But I found only my own tracks. For one thing, we can heat oul some of the ice crys- in my duffel and I'll break it out when we reach the Back at the station the living dome was fragrant tals, so that we don't have to depend on the govern- North Pole. with curry, Paul was cooking our farewell dinner. Yuri ment for all the water we need. There is more ice I'm eager to get under way. The confinement of the was repairing a strap on his pressure suit. Sita was down in the Canyon than elsewhere. And for another, station is getting on my nerves. We have ten research- examining her charts. Thoughts of yeti fled, banished it's easier to manufacture the air, keep it inside the dig- ers in a space meant for six, and tempers are wearing by the warmth and light and companionship. But gings, and circulate it when you're in horizontally in- thin, The constant rumbling of the drilling rig shakes yeti. Their long when I slept, I dreamed again of the stead of down vertically. the ground, Sure, the core samples will provide valu- white fur was streaked with the rusty red of Martian That's what Bill says. able information about the Martian climate over the dust, and they watched me with eyes as black as the And I've been thinking about it, Mabel. Where's the last few thousand years— but .right now I'd trade all sky at night. Silently they slipped through caves of ice, need to leave the Canyon, anyway? It's over three thou- that for a good night's sleep, The air of the living making their way to the hidden lands beneath the sand miles long, and in the end there are going to be dome reeks of yesterday's dinner. My pressure suit snow and daring me to follow. diggings all along it. It's going to be a huge city, and reeks, too—the stale stink of yesterday's sweat— but In just a few hours I will follow them. We have your I'll bet you most of the population of Mars will end up at least that's my own personal sweat. Besides, the bottle of champagne to drink at the North Pole, when here. Can't you see it? There'll be some kind of view through the faceplate makes it all worthwhile. we find it. And we have dreams. Somehow that maglev rail running the length of the Canyon, and Yesterday, at sunset, I climbed a hill near the sta- seems like enough. Wish me luck. communication will be easy. The government ought to tion. The setting sun painted the salmon-colored sky Love, put every bit of money it can into developing it. It will with streaks of brilliant green and pale blue. Beyond Maria make Mars a great world. our tiny cluster of buildings, odt across the vast ice —By Pat Murphy Bill says (you know what he's like— all enthusiasm) fields, massive ice cliffs rose from the snow-covered that the time will come when they will roof in the whole, plain. The cliff faces were streaked with red, the lega- FROM: OFFICER YANO: INCIDENT IN VALLES MARINERIS COL- Canyon and instead of having air just in separate dig- cy of long-ago dust storms. ONY COMPLEX, 3/10/3 TM gings and having lo put on a space suit when you Below me I could see Sno-Cat tracks from last Fridays are often bad in the arcade. The Japanese want to travel about, we will have a huge world of nor- week's reconnaissance mission. Yuri and I towed the personnel, the vast majority here, are proud to work mal air and low gravity. jumping truck out there, powered up the flywheel, and six full days a week. But the American miners are re- I said to him that the landslides might break the watched as the truck thumped the ground vigorously, leased every Friday for two days of trouble and up- dome and we would lose all the air. He said that the sending sound waves through Ihe ice to echo from the roar. Our colony's corporate board has forbidden li- dome could be built in separate sections and that any bedrock below. The array of geophones that we had quor to the rough and unruly miners, but their elab- break would automatically shut off the affected areas placed near the station recorded the echoes. Comput- orate computer simulation rigs seem to affect them I asked him how much all that would cost. He said, er analysis revealed a network of interlocking canyons more strongly than drink. Last Friday I witnessed six "What's the difference? It will be done little by little, two thousand meters beneath our feet, a secret land miners, just off work, bounding and tumbling wildly over the centuries." that no human eyes have ever seen. By the time we're down the shopping arcade, howling, stumbling, and Anyway, that's his job here now. He's got his mas- done, our map will show all the secret-valleys, the hid- waving their arms. The colony's rail launcher was fir- ter's license as an area-engineer, and he's got to den peaks beneath the ice. ing a cargo of ore a! the lime, creating a tremendous work out new ways to make the Canyon diggings even We joke sometimes about what we will find out rumble that shook the colony from end to end, like a better. That's why we got our new place here, and it there. On the wrapping that covers her book of satel- Tokyo earth tremor. It is true, as the miners protested looks as though Mars is going to be our oyster. lite photos, Sita has delicately penned, here be drag- afterward, that no one could actually hear their rude We may not live to see it ourselves, but if our great- ons. Sita promised we will find the tracks of the yeti in bellows and foul cursing in the English language. Never- great-grandchildren make it to 103 TM, a century some distant canyon. The snowfields, she said, remind theless the arcade owners and shopping colonists from now, we'll have a world that may well overshadow her of the Himalayas, where she grew up. We them publicly misbehaving, and this was itself. could witness Earth laughed with her. "What did they eat, these yeti?" I unnerving. The dress of the miners is deliberately pro- It would be wonderful. We're very excited, Mabel. asked. "That is, before we came along." She smiled. vocative. Unlike the rest of us, ihe miners sport rough Yours, "They feed on dreams, of co,urse," she said. "That is American pioneer garb: "coonskin caps" (of simulat- Gladys always what has sustained the yeti." — ed nylon plush), fringed "buckskin" jackets (of tattered By Isaac Asimov Standing up there, looking out toward the cliffs. I brown vinyl). They rather neglect their personal hygiene

47/?e Canyon's over 3,000 miles long, and I'll bet you most of the population of Mars will end up here. Bill says someday they will roof in the whole Canyon. 9 tried to aside, as if his strength were still gigantic.^ tThe large miner had been linked to a mining robot for 12 hours and he was still confused; he swat me

gigantic canyons, and painted deserts, PDR INDUSTRIES 3-7.6Cu8'.3.LPK@ CANTU and sport long, stringy hair and bristling beards. Their tacked me— clumsily swatting at me with his bare, raved about buttes, and mesas, and arroyos, and other terms FLIGHT LOG: 17 JUNE 3 TM faces are ferociously blackened, too—their eyelids clawed hands. He had been linked to a mining robot and alien. They screamed that they were "the only AGENT: R.F.X. BRODY sprayed daily with a black antiglare grease, then for twelve hours, clawing up ore in a canyon hundreds equally real pioneers" and the only colonists among us who REPORT; ARRIVED MARS LAURENCE/PETROV BASE streaked with sweat from their long hours clamped un- of kilometers away, and he was still confused and were actually "experiencing Mars at all." 16:13 HOURS, LOCAL TIME der the videophones. tried to swat me aside, as if his strength were still gigan- Maknamara was fined, though the other miners BEGAN CARGO OFFLOADING PROCEDURE. REMANDED HIJACK- I would never deny the Americans their ethnic self- tic. But his normal reflexes and perception were if were a hero. Doubtless there will be ERS TO AUTHORITIES. expression. Still, this rough clothing looks quite ridic- warped and distorted, for he missed me completely treat him as he situation ulous the soft, ot the miners, more trouble in weekends to come. But the on pudgy bodies who and almost fell down. I subdued him swiftly with a grap- worse, for in their queer way the miners LINKNET ACCOUNT: 45467311MARS spend all their working hours lounging in fat padded pling throw, though in the light gravity he was scarce- might be own seem to care sincerely about their work. On Mon- PERSONNEL: R O'DONNELL chairs, with their eyes, ears, and arms entirely ly harmed. The others, in foul English and worse Jap- do they all safely back in the world- SEND: SHIPBOARD MAIL, CANTU, REG PDR INDUSTRIES swathed in robot tele-operating rigs. anese, began to curse me and to curse our snug col- day morning were wrapping grip of their televisions. TO: SERINA BRODY When I chided the miners for their rudeness, one of ony, with its tight sealed walls, tasteful decorator pas- Bruce Sterling 4355 APPLE MEADOW LN. them, the large one named Maknamara. actually at- tels, and (as they say) cramped spaces. And they —By " "

is the supply shipment And the fact that somebody tried to take your ship at all, which means we're im- portant enough to have something worth stealing. The this will be great!" DEAR SERINA BRODY: media on "Shit." He sat up frowning. "Don't start." t HAVE KNOWN YOUR HUSBAND FOR A LONG TIME NOW. AND "It's important to us here. To me. It's our survival at THERE IS SOMETHING I HAVE TO TELL YOU. BECAUSE I KNOW

stake, I want you to do a tape—" HE WILL NEVER TELL YOU HIMSELF.... "I want you," he said, pulling her over on top of him. "Don't change the subject." She resisted halfheart- "How did you do it, Brady?" she asked, doing her edly and then gave in, still hungry after three days, A best to appear noncommittal. He hadn't said more wave broke around them; she imagined she heard than iive words about the hijacking at the docks. The pedestrian tunnel between the shipping area and her flesh sizzle. "No secrets here, huh?" he whispered afterward. office was not crowded, but she saw the tension fur- "Not even when we're all alone?" His hand caressed rowing his brows, under his unkempt dark hair. He need- her cheek. She saw his wedding ring in the light. ed a haircut. He stank. He hadn't seen another human "Just you and me and your wife," she said, sudden- being in three months. He glanced at her, avoiding her ly restless. "How are the kids, Rick? Did Johnny's sim eyes, looking at her uniform, as if he was reading the team make it to the environment play-offs?" patch on her pocket: R. O'DONNEll. security. He knew He sighed; she felt his frown come back. "What do what it said. He was looking at her breasls. After all you want from me, Rosie?" this time she knew the signs. She held him, kissed him with fierce longing. "I He shrugged. "I hit one with a wrench. I took his — want to be your wife if I gun and told the rest I could blow up the ship fired "You had your chance." He sat up, pushing her it, Then I locked them in the hold. They believed me, gently aside. He touched the control box, and they the stupid bastards. I thought crooks were only stu- were sitting on the floor in the empty environment cu- pid in the vids." bicle again, so suddenly that the change brought "Don't kid yourself," she said. "That's all?" tears to her eyes. He got to his feet behind her. pull- He shrugged again. His eyes were blue. She ing up his trunks. "You wanted this." He gestured at thought of Earth's skies. the far wall. Beyond a transparent panel the south po- They reached her office. She shut the door. She lock- lar ice cap shone, a fragile film of white on a field of ed it. And then he was holding her, so close she relentless rust. "You can't raise a family here." He could feel every bone in his body bruising her, "Ro- looked back at her, with eyes .as bleak as the view. sie..." he said into the red curls behind her ear, "I She blinked the humiliating burn of tears from her kill thought I was dead. I thought they were gonna me." own eyes. "Well, then," she said wearily, "will you Her nails dug into his back; she kissed him. a tape for the media?" Knowing how he felt openmouthed, as he pushed her up against the wall. make about this place; knowing that facing down hijackers The floors of Laurence/Petrov Base were metal, as was easier for someone tike him than facing a media cold as ice, The walls looked solid, but there was only crew, still she had to ask it. "For me?" compressed air behind those smooth, faintly yielding "No," he said, surfaces. Her frantic hands unfastened his pants. "Oh, — "Damn you " She broke off. "You know we need Rick, oh, Rick...." She said his name like a prayer as news! We are making progress! In another twenty his fingers slid inside her shirt. For fifteen minutes, up — years, mining will make us economically viable against the wall, she forgot to mind that she was liv- "Laurence/Petrov," he said bitterly, "The Town ing in a balloon. That Wouldn't Die," ....YOU NEVER SEE THE RICHARD BRODY THAT I KNOW. OUT "You selfish prick." HERE HE IS A DIFFERENT MAN.... "That's all you ever wanted from me." He was al- turning away. He left the room. "Unbelievable," he said, half wondering and half in- ready stood with her arms folded across her breasts. credulous. They lay side by side on the warm sand, She staring out at the ice fields, the ruddy alien sky. feeling the cool waves kiss their feet. "Free beers for three days. Player credit in the rec center. And now HUSBAND IS... we have the beach to ourselves." He squinted at the ....YOUR sun, high overhead in the blue dome of sky. stared at the screen, as she had been staring "Word got out, rocket man. More than two hundred She at it all day, unable to finish the final sentence. She people here now.. .but still no secrets." She stretched rubbed her eyes and took another gulp of warm beer, blissfully. The apartment doorbell rang. "Who is it?" she asked, "This's all because of the hijacking?" of the screen showed her his face. "The attempted hijacking." and a corner "You changed the lock," he said. "They're that glad I saved my ass." issK*f"**w^*^^^5^|W'i "Rick?" She leaned to kiss him. "I am. All they care about

iBrody hadn't said more than five words about the hijacking at the docks. He needed a haircut. He stank. He hadn't seen another human being in three months.^ .

"Will you marry me, Rosie?" He sounded drunk. "You're already married."

"Then can i come in?" She tried to see whether there was anything in his hand. A tape, maybe, about the hijacking.... She couldn't see anything, She sighed and opened the out- er door. "Come on in, Rick."

YOUR husband is. She stared at the screen. She put her hands to the touchboard. A HERO TO THE CITIZENS of mars. She pressed send before she could change her mfnd.

PDR INDUSTRIES 347 .600943. CPK@ CANTU FLIGHT LOG: 31 JUNE 3 TM AGENT: R.F.X. 8RODY REPORT: DEPARTED MARS LAURENCE/PETROV BASE 08:00 HOURS, LOCAL TIME, WITH FULL CARGO. COMMENTS: —By Joan D. Vinge

FROM: BIOENGJNEER CHIEF CLAY TO: OR. SANDERS. OASIS CRATERS, INC. (ONE-WAY VOICE TRANS- MISSION. MARS-EARTH COMPRESSED SQUIRT)

It worked like a charm, sir, The orbital guys brought the icesteroid right in on sked. How they can deliver ice hunks the size of a football field, clear from the rings of Saturn, and drop them smack on target on

Mars, I dunno. But they did.

You shoulda seen it! Like God got. mad and finally put His foot down, The icesteroid blasted a hole a ki- lometer wide. We were hunkered down in a bunker way over the horizon, and I still couldn't hear right for an hour. They took three holB punctures at the dome in Hellas Central, and that's five hundred klicks away, That bioteched dog you sent us was the first out on- to the plain to watch the show. He scampered around in the streams and mud, yapping and carrying on. We sure liked him. sir, and we think he's the forerunner of a whole line of products that'll really hit it big here.

I was in the first tractor that reached the lip of the crater. It was just like you'd said in the brochures—all the subtundra ice melted, big pretty yellow geysers, mud flowing like chocolate rivers. I got good footage. Lassie—that's the dog—took off, those big lungs suck- ing in the oxy and nitrogen liberated by the impact. ing in the oxy and nitrogen liberated by the impact. One of your best beasts, sir3 ^Lassie took off, those big lungs suck- Frisked, barked—one of your best beasts, sir. We got right to work rigging the plastic projectors along the crater rim. Took a day, but when we sighted them in and blew the bubble, it worked fine, just fine. like carpet everywhere. Could hard- So I figure it's an uncus. ned success, sir. You can grew, spreading a The crater was still outgassing real well, so we just iet made the biomat grow like crazy. In two days those see that from the attached data. Time to franchise the ly beat the thing off with a stick. Thick, too. Wearing it fill it patches of yours out covered the whole the bubble, pull tight. Lot faster than when we spread and I it like it rug, looking operation, I'd say. I hope those Saturn ring guys can steel boots, walked over was a blew the Hellas Central dome, I tell you. crater. We gol clouds forming at the top of the bubble deliver a hundred or so icesteroids per year, 'cause for Lassie. So then we spread the biomat, just like you said. dome, and then rain—the first on Mars in a couple bil- we can blow bubbles for that many right now—and you So maybe you're going to have to do some fine- Thai blue algae stuff flat out loved the fog bubbling lion years. just wait'll the whole crater oasis idea catches on! tuning on the mat. Or on Lassie 2, assuming there'll up everywhere. Had to throw down a patch and step Right now we're sowing that new wheat you sent. Well, almost unqualified. We lost track of Lassie in be an update in that product line. back quick, 'cause it grew fast as it could eat. Looks like a good product, uses the UV real well. Plant- Lassie, sir, all the rush. I figured, Hell, where can he go, right? We finally found out what happened to

Just the UV gorged on the free chem- ed a field right next to the centra] lake. I figure we got all here are real sorry. sopped up and He ran off into the crater, happy as any bioteched and I want you to know of us icals. Beautiful white geysers spewed up like fountains a century's worth of water here, all from tundra ice, don't like lose After all. that cuts in- beastie I ever saw. But when I called. Lassie, he didn't We to equipment. all over the floor of the crater. That watered the mats Dome pressure is half an Earth atmosphere. I can come. We were having trouble with the biomat then, to our profit sharing, too. even more. walk around in just long Johns and an oxy mask. Yes- sir. that the ate your so I got busy. But I'm afraid, rug dog.

I at an actual rainbow inside the — And you were right about the rocks, too. could ferday sunset we got Thing was, it was too good. Gobbled up mud and By Gregory Benford feel the heat through my glove. That impact warmth dome, both ends standing on the crater rim. IRJTERVIELAJ Winds blow cold across the summit of Mauna Kea, a Faber stands ready to use two radical new telescopes dead volcano rising 14,000 feet from the big island of Ha- that promise to make this decade the most revealing ever in waii. Far below, puffs of clouds hang in calmer air. The astronomy. As cochair of the Keck Observatory science com- domes of nine observatories, sprung up like mushrooms mittee, she will be among the first to point a ten-meter mir- from the bleak landscape, are shuttered against the sun. But ror at the night sky. As a member of the wide-field camera

one is open. From it drift the sound of rock music and the design team for the Hubble Space Telescope, she will periodic report of an air-driven impact wrench. Astronomer share in 300 hours of coveted viewing time. She will find gal- Sandra Faber is here to view progress in constructing axies so far away and back in time that she can test her the- Keck, the world's largest optical telescope. Red lava rack ories on how they formed in a universe of cold dark matter. The Great Attractor, thousands of crunches under her feet as she walks around the glossy- That Faber is poised to solve key problems with the new- white building she helped design. "I insisted on this door," est telescopes at the right moment is no surprise to col- this galaxies 150 million light-years away, says she says, adjusting her hard hat at the entrance to the tele- leagues. As an astronomer and professor at Lick Observatory,

astronomer, is pulling us toward it scope control room. "At other observatories I have to climb University of California at Santa Cruz, she is known as the

down two flights of stairs to see if it's clear. Here I'll just step consummate opportunist. For years she declined to take PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB LEWINE outside." She laughs and looks up at the pristine sky. sides in the argument raging over dark matter. In 1979, decid- ing lhat the facts were in, she and Jay Faber had seen computer simulations that she is on the right track, Faber is Gallagher, then a University of Illinois of a neutrino universe. It showed gal- mulling over a startling new idea: that astronomer, wrote one. of the most axies forming into many layers of thin dark matter consists of two new parti- influential astrophysics papers of the walls, through her telescope she saw cles, one massive and one light. A new time. It virtually proved that invisible mat- another universe entirely. computer model of this brew predicts ter makes up nine tenths of the uni- In 1984 she introduced the now-stan- clumping on a grand scale, matching verse. Widely regarded as an observ- dard theory of dark matter with theoret- her observations. Astronomers are now er, she took her first stab at theory ical physicist Martin Rees of Cambridge searching the microwave- background— when she was thirty-six, at the first Vat- as well as particle physicist Joel Pri an afterglow of the Big Bang—for evi- ican cosmology conference in Rome in mack and astronomer George Blumen- dence of the tiny fluctuations that gave 1981. In the company of such giants as thai, both of Santa Cruz. Invisible mat- rise to galaxies. If these are detected, Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking ter, they said, consisted not of neutri- the inflationary Big Bang theory lives; if and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, nos, which were considered "hot," bu' not, it dies. Cosmologists such as Fa- Faber said scientists could discover of "cold" dark stuff. These were mas- ber intend to prove how it all began. properties of the early universe by learn- sive, weakly interacting particles thai Born in Boston and raised in the Mid- ing how galaxies form. clumped and clustered together to west, Faber was trained at Swarthmore "Galaxies can properly be described much later form the majestic galaxies College in Pennsylvania and at Harvard as the building blocks of the universe," spinning through space. University. She joined the UC Santa Faber says. "We think they are the first Ironically, Faber and six other astron- Cruz faculty in 1972 and is among the coherent structures to form out of the omers, known as the Seven Samurai, lat- few women elected'to both the Nation- Big Bang." In the beginning, goes cur- er made a discovery that challenged al Academy of Sciences and the Amer- rent thinking, a space the size of a their own cold dark matter theory. ican Academy of Arts and Sciences. quark— of almost unthinkable density— They observed a vast clustering of She is, according to one colleague, fear- suddenly inflated faster than the tens of thousands of galaxies 150 mil- less, confident, and competitive. In- speed of light to something about the lion light-years away, which became terviewer Paul Bagne experienced in of Ping- size of a softball. Within it, quantum fluc- known as the Great Attractor. By the that competitive force a game tuations, subatomic particles in parox- force of its gravity it seems to be pull- Pong at the astronomers' dormitory on ysms of energy and motion, created ing other galaxies toward it. Even our Mauna Kea. ."Stand back!" Faber or- seedlike cores that ultimately evolved own Milky Way is streaming toward it al dered, ready to serve. "There's not as into galaxies. Dominating this process 1.3 million miles an hour, the Great At- much gravity at this altitude." was the same matter that still composes tractor's force slowing the outward ex- 90 percent of the universe—the unde- pansion of this huge area of the uni Omni: What do you expect to discover tected dark matter. Most cosmologists verse. But their cold dark matter theo- from the Keck telescope? thought this original matter was made ry said this clumping should not occui Faber: Sometimes to solve problems in up of tiny particles called neutrinos. But on such a grand scale. Still confident astronomy we simply need to see more detail. For years we thought the very bright Beta Pictoris was a pretty bor- ing star. Then we got infrared pictures showing a disc of dust grains orbiting

it rather like planets in our solar system. Then with a satellite infrared telescope we saw a giant disc around the very bright star Vega. Scattered along the arms of the Milky Way are dark knots of gas and dust. Within these clouds, we think pockets of gas are collapsing under their own gravity, shrinking and Til? spinning and finally igniting as new stars. Often a disc of dust bits is left be- compute hind. We think they coagulate into ob- jects that grow into planets. There may be more planets in our uni- £&U verse than there are stars! Our solar sys- tem is probably typical, with small, rocky planets in the middle and big, gas-

eous ones farther out. I think Mars was

a little too small to hold its atmosphere and just missed being habitable for

life. If we could see through the clouds around a young star, we could see plan- ets forming. In the infrared, the ability to make a sharp image is not affected by the atmosphere, only by the size of the mirror. Keck will give infrared imag- es two or three times sharper and with finer detail than any existing telescope.

I will go out on a limb and say that Keck will be the first telescope to find absolute, undisputed evidence of plan- ets around other stars. Omni: When did you first become inter- ested in astronomy?

CON I -.NUFr) ON PAGE 88 READERS COMPUTE?

Since you have a copy of Omni in your hands we can predict (scientifically, of course!) thai you also have a big interest in the world of computers.

- So we take great pleasure in announcing the newest addition to General Media Publishing's family ol maga- zines: COMPUTE. COMPUTE will be bigger and better than ever because it will combine four magazines into one... Along with COMPUTE, you will get COMPUTE's PC, COMPUTE'S Amiga Resource, and COMPUTE'S Gazette. So, in addition to all the MS-DOS tutorials, home office reports, programming tips, educational strategies, product reviews, and entertainment news COMPUTE is famous for, you now will find all the latest about IBM, Tandy, PC-compatible. Amiga, Macintosh, Apple, and Commodore computers. All written in the easy-to-understand, lively style you've come to expect from COMPUTE. As an Omni reader and member of our publishing group, we'd like to give you a chance to subscribe to the new Compute at the lowest possible price - $9.97 for 12 issues. Prices will be going up, so acf now and ENTER the world of computers. A Bangkok thief is hired to steal \the perfect living doll mosquito

f\x rendezvous, the Cafe Gung-Ho; he, iridescent in the one shaft \ of light to breach its happy hour shade,

and I, seeing that beauty for the first time, poised in the doorway, thinking, Fatal, oh so fatal.

PAINTING BY BERNARD DURIN —

The bar was deserted, save Har- have here." Harry picked up a ry, a few girls (humans, no gy- copy of the Bangkok Post and noids; Harry is purist), the vkjly a and pretended to scan it. radiant one—tall, blond, and co- a maxj covld imitate "You know where you can

bra-eyed. Breathless, I stepped find me...." into the light. Dressed like a a doll. for "And good to meet you, Mos- man, I tried to walk like a man. dolls ar€ "kjot wow«k) quito." His right hand was But I was restive; I wanted to gloved, concealing, perhaps, flirt. My alter ego, imprisoned by TH€YAR€ a prosthesis. Teasingly he day within this safe-house of MASJS squeezed my arm. It was an inti- masculinity, rattled the bars of DR€AM OF mation of fellowship, of under- her cage and sulked. WOM€KI. standing. "Mosquito: Why do

I "Kuhn Harry, sorry," I said they call you that?"

in my best Charlie Chan, "Zip- "Just a name," I said, "a silly

per not tell me you want. I name." come straight here." We as- And then he was gone.

I sumed our roles. played the all- When he had touched me, I purpose Oriental; Harry, the had felt a pinprick in my arm,

street-smart Brooklyn babe to like a discharge of static. I lift- whom, far from home, unsure of ed my shirtsleeve and recog- yourself, you could confess nized the telltale mark— like your appetites and trust your that of an insect bite—left by an money. epidermic tracer,

"Yeah. Don't worry about it. "What's wrong?" said Harry.

Lord Chandos here don't want "Mosquito bite Mosquito," I to hear about Zipper." I had said, scratching, Harry bur- abandoned myself to Milord's rowed into his paper. A nasty, bodice-ripping eyes. Harry, who unidentified virus simply called was acquainted with my schoolgirl crush- no longer afford. Automata were the play- klong fever was ravaging Bangkok. It es, briskly continued, "Let's talk busi- things of the rich; but here in sex city was said to be transmitted by insect ness," and ordered drinks, I made the (where the boys are so pretty), city of bites, only affect males, and leave its wai, sat down; a Mekong appeared be- angels, dolls, and of night, we fake ev- victims impotent. But since no farang fore me. erything —TVs, software, designer had been known to succumb, Harry "Lord Chandos wants to take a girl jeans, life. had shown little concern.

back to London." The boss paused lor "In all-world," I said, "you cannot get The tracer could be removed with sales-pitch effect. "A dtook-gah-dtah." better price. And anyone tell you, Mr. tweezers; but its itch, counterpointing

I Of course. Why else was here? Milord James, Thai lady dolls number one." that which I felt in my loins, made me

wanted a windup toy, a doll; I stole "We're putting ourselves at consid- reluctant to destroy it. I wanted him; and them; Harry fenced them. Our custom- erable risk. Apart from the trouble of lift- he, it seemed, wanted me. Did I ask my- er— despite the insistence of his beau- ing a doll, the Eurobunnies— sorry, self why? No, my darlings. Mosquito ty—was just another farang exhausted James— are down on us for copyright has an extravagant heart. Closing my

by human love, one whose lack of cred- infringement, Someone out there has eyes, I beheld the blazing lines of Mr. it had led him east to seek the services killed three doll rustlers this month James dancing across my retina, like of a rustler. But what beauty it was: a alone." Our customer looked uncertain, the afterimage of a fierce summer's day beauty from the land of ice and snow and Harry proceeded with the hard your aching eyes have forestalled on.

I where, once, had been happy. sell. "Mosquito's just amazing. He'll get I saw him, incandescent among dark

"Dtook-gah-dtah?" I said. "No prob- you a Cartier doll, no sweat. He can London streets, a lean man dressed in lem. My specialty. What kind of girls you pass through the pornocracies light, window-shopping for automata. like, sir?" Patphong, Nana, Cowboy, Suriwong His cold eyes appraise their wonderful. "Bad girls," he said, deadpan. "And like a ghost through walls." jeweled forms as he walks down Piccadil- call me James." "As you say," said the stranger, in- ly and into Bond Street. And there, in a "Yes, Mr. James. Cartier? Rolex? Tif- haling languorously on his cigarette, Cartier showroom, he sees me and fany? All fake, of course. All imitation. "amazing." He looked askance, ready falls hopelessly in love.

But very good quality. Very reasonable to snare my reaction, adding, with stud- I heard Harry throw aside his paper, price," ied disinterest, "What's the secret?" the scrape of his chair. "Make hoochie- "Harry tells me half a million gets me Against my will, ravished, a sad, sad coochie with a customer again," he

Cartier." slave to lust, I smiled conspiratorially. said, "and I'll break your arms." "You have good taste. Cartier' doll Harry saw (he knows my little ways) and That's Harry. very nice. Very Deco. Very bad. But drummed his fingers on the table. doll have no right, no civil status. You "Secret is seven hundred thousand That evening, back at my condo, I pre- need passport or you never get her out baht. Half of it up front. Secret is no one pared for work. Seiko mechanettes of country," knows outside this room. Secret is let- (they of the regenerative maidenhead) "Passport's my department," said Har- ting us do our job with no questions had recently been decanted for bars in ry. "It'll need a visa, too. I do both for asked. Then you get your dtook-gah- the Silom Road, and Harry wanted a re- two hundred thousand baht." dtah and everyone's happy." port. On the heat-ruptured surface of

The Englishman sighed. "I'm no long- Milord swept back his golden hair. my dresser 1 placed my creams, er a wealthy man, Harry." Sweet farang, "Seven hundred thousand baht," he re- paints, and powders, my unguents and

I could believe it. You seemed one of flected. '"I'll' have to think it over." Har- emollients; then, laying out my she- those ruined European aristocrats who, lips didn't move, but his face clothes, I sloughed off my daytime impoverished by debts, sought out '"screamed, Time waster! The stranger skin and became The Doll. My alias cheap imitations of the toys to which pushed aside his glass and rose. "I've winked at me from the other side of the they had become addicted but cduid some things to do.... Nice bar you mirror. She has a delicate, childlike 68 OMNI —

face, my sister, with vestiges of puppy dolls are not women; they are man's ble as the Mapplethorpe portraits that fat about the cheeks. Bobbed hair dream of women. Made in man's im- lined my walls. Hands on hips, lips quiv- gives her an appearance of delinquen- age, they are an extension of his sex, ering like a spoilt, refractory child's, I

cy, as do the eyes, crescent and puck- female impersonators built to confirm cued in: "You want kill me, too?" His ish, like burning black suns. The lips are his prejudices. Sexual illusionists. I, too, eyes grazed my body like the feather- in pout, set a communicating both de- was practiced in sexual sleight of light tips of rapiers. It was a good body, sire disdain. the compiexion and And hand, my womanhood as unreal and as I reassured myself, an expensive body, the faultless, flesh of the lacquered gy- pathologically exquisite as a doll's. So a body I always regretted having to cam- noid —proclaims her synthetic. Her sar- exquisite, it was almost grotesque. ouflage by day. Exaggeratedly femi- torial ensemble? A leopard-print body The intercom buzzed. "Someone to nine, it was grafted onto a small- stocking and six-inch stilettos. The gen- see you, Madame," said Zip. "A Mr.—" boned, somewhat adolescent infrastruc- itals, of course (always a problem), But Zip was given no time to complete ture, like a piquant allegory of inno- have to be secured with Scotch tape, the formalities. Instead of "James" fmy cence burdened by desire.

giving the appearance of a distended heart lurched, telling me it was so) "You very naughty, Mr. James. Just

mons veneris. I smiled, checking my came the announcement of electromag- look at poor Zipper!" fangs. Perfect. netic crackle and bar-brawl sound ef- "Mosquito?" I curtsied in acknowledg-

I lay on the bed and browsed fects. I rolled off the bed, nauseous ment. "Good God, I've seen lots of he- through some physical culture maga- with anticipation. The hallway stank of shes in Bangkok and some of them zines while the radio murmured of love roasted Bakelite. Mr. James had been were fantastic... but you.... Seems you lost and found to the indifferent whup, unnecessarily heavy-handed; Zip was might be worth all this trouble."

whup, whup of the fan. The microscop- a valet, not a security guard (though his "I think Trouble your middle name, ic transmitter throbbed, caterwauling cosmetic musculature and barrel Mr. James."

across the city to Milord. I pressed it to chest often led people to conclude oth- "Sorry about Man Friday."

my lips. Instantly the imperative of that erwise). 1 breathed deeply, trying to re- "Not organic. Not modern doll. Back- evening's work was subverted by a pre- member my lines, quell my stage ed up. Running in an hour." He straight- monition that he would call, not tomor- fright, ignore the anxious clickety- ened his hat and fumbled in his pock-

row, not next but tonight. I week, And clack of my high heels on the teak- ets. "Chocolates? Flowers?" I asked,

preened myself, again and again, jittery wood parquetry. I made my entrance. mock expectant. girl for first date. as a preparing her My Milord stood over a broken coffee ta- "Seem to have lost my cigarettes." I deceptions were unrivaled, if incom- ble, silk jacket ripped, Panama askew, bent down, retrieving a silver cigarette plete, Harry, who had paid for my im- his leather-gloved prosthesis smoking; case lying beneath a scree of broken plants other, and more radical surgery, and Zip, horizontal amid the debris, glass. I helped myself. had insisted I retain a flow of testoster- scorch marks either side of his shaven "Light me." Like a tiny, nervous drag- one in my veins. Only a man could imi- head, looked up at him dead-eyed on, a Dupont flickered and withdrew. tate a doll. Women were too real. For with a demeanor as hard and vulnera- "Nice lighter." "Nice workmanship," he said, screw- ing a monocle into his eye, awarding me a detailed examination. "Unreal." "Unreal as a doll. Unreal as love..." "And cool. I'm impressed."

"Tracer. Stung me in Gung-Ho. I

know you come. I not stupid."

"I don't believe you are, dear boy, or you would never have allowed me to find you." "Curiosity, Mr. James."

"Desperation, I'd guess. Oh, I know all about you, Mosquito...." He turned his back to me, stepping over Zipper and walking to the window to stare down at the night-transfigured city thir- ty floors below, "Aren't you tired of work- ing for that American pimp? Is he the one who tells you to speak and act like some second-rate Suzie Wong?"

I let fall a tear, not altogether croco- dile, but prompted more by the exigen- cies of coquetry than by genuine sor-

row or regret, It was wasted. He did not deign to look me in the face.

"Harry likes me to talk that way," I said, throwing off my Third World

guise. "Says it reassures the clients. What exactly do you know about me, James?"

"Everything, little Mosquito...." A blue- gray nimbus of spent nicotine was form- ing above his head, like the signature of a prosecuting angel. "How would you "Thank you for calling the lycanlhrope hot tine. describe your childhood?" Ail of our operators are busy right now, so if you will p/eas> "Idyllic." He laughed. "Spoilt little rich boy. Your father a big name in sericulture. And your youth?" "Gilded." "But oh so soon tarnished! You stud- ied at Cambridge, yes?" "I was happy there...." "I'm an Oxford man myself. Anyway,

you took a postgrad in comparative lit- erature. Your thesis: 'The Second Dec- adence; Literature of the 1990's.' Then you got into that scrape with Lord Dagen- ham's son. And he only fourteen. How wicked. Your father ordered you back to Thailand. Cut you off without a sa-

tang. Poor Mosquito, it's been downhill ever since...," "How do you know all this? And why tell me?" "Because I'm feeling philanthropic, dear boy. How much money do you get from the American?" "Not enough to leave him. This apart-

ment's his. He keeps nearly all the mon- ey from our jobs. Even Zipper's on

loan. My father's made it impossible for me to get a decent job,..."

"I wouldn't have you wasted on de-

cency, Mosquito. The next job it'll be just you and me. And this time you'll take enough of the percentage to en- able you to shake Harry off for good," "So much?"

"I need my doll, Mosquito. My Car-

tier doll. And I need her tonight. Pass-

port, visa— I have my contacts for that.

But I must have her before morning." "Do you need your doll so bad, James?" "Name your price." He about-faced; ONE OF OUR FAVORITE SITTING PLACES

I held his reptilian stare. There had been other Englishmen. Some quite pret- is under the sign Jack Daniel and Lem Modow

ty. None had offered me escape. But I had known that one would come who put up over a century ago.

would be special, who I would recog- nize by his incomparable beauty, who Jack Daniel setded on this very spot in 1866, for would, at last, carry me off to his castle for his - in the sky. My prince. here's where he found ironfree water perfect

"I don't want money, James," I said needs. The spring still flows at our distillery today, tremulously, "I want to go back to the land of ice and snow. Take me with you, not ten yards from where these James, Take me to England." In petu- lance he swung open the plate-glass gendemen are chatting. And we still doors and stepped onto the veranda. The tropical night crashed into the make whiskey the way Jack and Lem

room. I followed him outside, "Dear boy, what sort of foolishness once made it, charcoal mellowed drop is this?" by drop. Keeping their sign in place I "The first time I saw you..." began, but he cut me short. keeps us faithful to their old "Please—let's not make this compli- cated. Mosquito, you don't want to go methods. A sip, we believe, will to Europe." He waved his hand over the roofs of Bangkok. "Look out there. You keep you faithful to them too. think Europe can compete with this?" Below us the city glistened like a well- oiled body, rippling under the stars. It SMOOTH SIPPIN' offered forbidden technologies, flaunt- TENNESSEE WHISKEY ed stolen ideas. It mocked the impotent West. Europe had sickened, its econo- Tennessee WhisXei • 40-43% alcohol b» voium? .-SC-Si :'»:!> Citillet 2nd Bottled by

my in misrule. An empire of style, it had l :, ; Jack Daniel DiiSillfy Ur .l*r !:«. ijpneto'. fcu,o !. ,y-i;lit,„-j; (Per: jrh. T;;rin (;•.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 93 ^The abductions are real. The fear is real. But the little gray men may actually be hypmwoticatty implanted memory screens.

Listen carefullytothe is also real. But the tit- slories Of those who tle gray men are not. insist they have been They are con- shanghaied by other- icts," he says, worldly visitors, says Halloween masks Martin Cannon. Then eant to disguise take a close look at :he real faces of the the horror stories told controllers. By hyp- by those who claim notically Implanting a to be victims ot the screen memory In- government's clan- volving aliens and destine mind control spaceships to cover programs. What you their own tracks, the care will Find, he says, are controllers take some very surprising of the nagging dispos- similarities. al problem—what to Cannon, a com- do with all the victims mercial illustrator of electroshock, hyp- nosis, ex- working in Los An- and drug geles, spells out his perimentation." The just talk- findings in a provoc- victims are ative 53-page manu- ing about space broth- script called "The ers, he says, "rather Controllers," which than Big Brother." has been circulated Those not wed to informally to mem- UPDffTE an out-of-this-world UFO explanation for bers of the UFO com- UFO munity. Cannon is convinced that the CIA and other govern- abductions seem willing to entertain Cannon's hypothesis. ment agencies have made "striking advances" in thought "What takes place during the abduction scenario is more manipulation, despite their denials to Congress, and that consistent with what humans do to other humans," says clandestine research on this topic did not end, as claimed, New York criminal defense attorney Peter Gersten, 'than In 1963. He then proposes, as a "working hypothesis," what aliens might do to us." that "the UFO abduction phenomenon might be a contin- Most CIA experts, however, dismiss the notion out of uation of clandestine mind control operations." hand. William Lear, a University of Georgia historian spe- The technology to pull this off, says Cannon, seems to cializing in CIA matters, says. "People who see the CIA In exist. For example, the implants that UFOlogists such as everything seem to have the same kind of mind-set as Budd Hopkins say are visible in the brain scans of some those who are prone to believe in the presence of aliens. abductees strongly resemble devices our own scientists They give the CIA credit for far too much. Ills not an om- have worked on since the early Sixties. For years, in fact, nipresent organization." Meanwhile, John Marks, the au- neuroscientists have been able to induce emotions and thor of The Search tor the Manchurian Candidate, a book behavior in animals and people using miniaturized elec- about the CIA's secret mind control program, says he trodes implanted in the brain. Such devices have report- knows nothing on the subject of UFO abductions and has edly caused floating sensations and sexual arousal as no interest in it. And the CIA? Spokesperson Mark Mans- welt as an altered sense of time. field's reply was unequivocal: "I've never heard anything So, Cannon declares, the abductions are real. The fear so ridiculous in my life."—PATRICK HUYGHE " " — ——

needle-shaped objects. But what exactly do the 7 If alien craft visit Earth films show So far, experts regularly, why do UFO buffs asked to examine them have such a hard time taking aren't sure. Richard Powell, good photographs of them? professor of criminal justice Gary Levine. who has re- at Columbia-Greene, stud- searched UFO sightings for ied the original movie, frame more than 20 years, thinks by frame, with an electron he has discovered at least microscope. "The document

one cause. The photogra- is authentic. It had not been phers don't have ESP. cut or altered in any way,"

if Levine's proof? The UFO he says. "But I can't tell movies taken by Patricia these are pinpoints of light in Baldwin, anurseand mother front of the camera or huge From rural upstate New York. objects at a distance; Baldwin, who doesn't there's noway to tell." consider herself clairvoyant, As for Baldwin, she now had her first UFO experience insists she has observed two years ago, when she several thousand UFOs The drop in melatonin spied an unusual light from including a disc that

induces small seizures that her bedroom window. "It appeared to have brightly lit

When a loved one dies, transform memory frag- changed from red to white to windows. "I feel I shouldn't the grieving survivors ments into visual images. green," she says. Hearing be afraid," Baldwin says. often report visions of the To validate his theory, that Levine, a professor at "But 1 can't help it. I'm deceased. And now neuro- Persinger has been applying nearby Columbia-Greene definitely not driving by scientist Michael Persinger magnetic field pulses across Community College, investi- myself at night anymore." has linked these visions to the temporal lobes of gated UFOs in his spare —Sherry Baker changes in the earth's subjects while they wear time, Baldwin approached magnetic field. opaque lenses and sit In a him with her tales. "One always has to spoil a To reach this conclusion, quiet room. "They report "I questioned her and picture a little bit, in order to Persinger, who works at their subjective experiences concluded she possessed finish it" Laurentian University of but don't know whether the some psychic ability," Le- —Eugene Delacroix Sudbury, Ontario, gathered pulse is on or off," says vine recalls. Long interested 203 reports spanning a Persinger. "People report a in paranormal photographs 37-year period and com- lot of visual imagery," he supposedly taken by clair- pared them with the amount says, "and they think that voyants in the nineteenth of geomagnetic activity that there is a presence, that, century, Levine suspected occurred before, on, and some entity is in there with Baldwin's psychic abilities after the day of the them when the pulse is on." might somehow help her apparition. His finding: —Paul McCarthy capture UFOs on film. So These "bereavement Levine loaned Baldwin a hallucinations" usually took "You know what scares me? camera. Eventually she place when magnetic activity When you have to be nice to photographed two triangles was relatively high. some paranoid one above the other—along Persinger suspects that schizophrenic just because with the broken light streaks the increase in geomagnetic she lives In your body. associated with UFOs. activity electrically stimu- —Steven Wright Levine quickly gave Bald- lates the temporal lobes of win a super-8 movie camera, the brain. This, in turn, "The breaking of a wave and she soon produced causes a drop in the level of cannot explain the whale eight reels of UFO footage the biochemical melatonin, sea. including images of blinking found in the pineal gland. — Vladimir Nabokov lights and two very large 74 OMNI — "

number of women listed as also uses a free-moving the user's concentration ithors declined by 13 indicator, or ptanchette, unbroken, since it will not be

rcent. And if you compare which is pushed across the necessary to stop and write the most frequent women surface of the board down each and every letter contributors for the two until—guided by some after it has been chosen."

periods, it's clear that 40 subconscious or super- While never using the years ago their output was natural force—it stops above device as a psychic tool greater than today. a series of characters and himself. O'Brian takes his ThislsZingrone's first spells out a message. Invention seriously: '"These analysis of the information, But there the similarity things are not toys and she doesn't delve into ends. O'Brian's planchette, way, shape, or form. The the ramifications: Why, for which is magnetic, triggers a messages may come only instance, with presumably different metal switch every from the subconscious, but

greater opportunities in time it stops over a differ- the inventive ability of this modern times, are women ent symbol of the board. part of the mind is vast." losing ground? With further "When activated, the switch- —Edward Duensing investigation Zingrone es send electrical impulses hopes to shed some light on through a cable to a key- "An idea had just came into why gender differences board encoder that trans- her mind, but had not yet persist in parapsychology lates the signal into a form reached her lips." and science in general. that can be read by a —Lawrence Durrell —Steve Fishman computer or electronic typewriter." says O'Brian. "People think of the inventor Parapsychology is just "My breasts aren't "Essentially, when a charac- as a screwball, but no one inventor i he mainstream science in at actresses. ter is selected it is instantly ever asks the what least one regard: Men recorded. Being able to he thinks of other people." publish far more frequently automalically print the char- —Charles F. Kettering " than women. To reach this "Anatomy is destiny. acters will increase the conclusion Nancy L. Zin- —Sigmund Freud speed messages can be "People will accept your grone, a Duke University received and make psy- idea much more readily if graduate student in history, "Ex ovo omnia. Everything chographlc devices easier to you tell them Benjamin " " checked two journals from an egg. use," he explains. The Franklin said it first. Parapsychology and the —William Harvey Psychograph will also leave —David H. Comins Journal of the American Society for Psychical Re- search. Sampling two dec- ades, including the years 1937 to 1946 and 1977 to Thanks to an attorney 1986, Zingrone found that from Huntington Beach, though women make up California, we may soon be slightly more than half the communing with spirits by general population, they computer. The lawyer, E. D. have never made up more O'Brian. has patented the than a quarter of the roster "Message Type Recording of publishing parapsycholo- Psycbograph," a sort of gists. In other disciplines, electronic Ouija board. women comprise closer to According to the patent, one third of the authors. O'Brian's invention resem- More distressing is the bles the classic Ouija board. fact that in parapsychology, Jt is rectangular and has at least, women continue to letters, numbers, and punctu- lose ground to men. Over ation marks printed in curved the past 40 years, the rows on- its upper surface. It The late Berkeley psychol ogist Helen Wambach be- Mix a tall, dark, hand- lieved lhal under hypnosis some alien with a sensitive, the dreaming mind could virginal earthling pianist, add accurately describe previous forbidden love, nasal incarnations. During the probes, and Interspecies late Seventies and early breeding, and what do you Eighties she guided more get? Intimate Abduction, than 10,000 men and Ann Carol Ulrich's new UFO women through such past- romance novel, published by life regressions. But before Earth Star Publications in her death in 1985, Wam- Paonia, Colorado. bach embarked on an The idea for the novel more extraordinary project: came to Ulrich after she had to progress a group of volui the disconcerting experi- teers into the future for ence of waking to the sound a look at the world to come. of people speaking in a One of these volunteers, foreign tongue. "Itjustsort of Chet B. Snow, is now rattled me," she says. It continuing Wambach's work wasn't that big a leap, then, and has already collected to have her heroine awaken, some 500 trance-induced only to find herself speaking accounts of life over -the next a gibberish that no one five centuries. The basic understands. She lands In a scenario for the near future, mental institution and soon explains Snow, includes begins encountering other such totally devastating speakers of the same natural disasters as massive language. As it turns out, climate shifts and worldwide she isn't crazy; she has just earthquakes. met up with some E.T's. In the wake of these Working by day as asso- cataclysmic events, re- ciate director of the UFO spondents predicted four Contact Center Internationa! basic living situations: in in Delta, Colorado, Ulrich space, aboard rudimentary helps people deal with UFO space stations; in New Age sightings in their everyday communes, eating foods like clairvoyant Insight may dreams represent at least lives. Her organization, she tofu and green beans; in account for the pessimistic partial glimpses of the says, fills the void left by wrecked landscapes, forag- near-term forecasts of so future. "If these are pure UFO groups that focus on ing for weapons and tood; or many of Snow's subjects. fantasies." he asks, "why do the sightings "but don't in domed high-tech cities, "People often see the future they fail into such cohesive always pay thai much protected from the poison- in the bleakest possible groups? Why isn't there attention to the emotions of ous atmosphere outside terms as a defense more variety? Why do so the people themselves." After the year 2250. a mechanism to cope with many people see the same Delving into her everyday brighter vision kicks in. disappointment," says psy- thing?" work, Ulrich wrote her story Respondents predicted life chotherapist Rinaldo Pe- —Jeff Goldberg with the human experience spans of 150 years or more tronio. "It doesn't mean that in mind. The story line. and described future lives it will actually happen." "There will be no nuclear she says, "will reach those spent in colonies on Mars But Snow isn't so sure. war. There's too much real who would not normally read and in the universe beyond. His research has convinced estate involved." about UFOs." Explanations other than him (hat his subjects* mass —Frank Zappa —Paul McCarthy The Berlitz Guarantee: Speak A Foreign Language In 30 Days Or Your Money Back.

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of ten. Lately the effort has had its fund- The computerized voice echoes FAR PLANET ing cut for lack of a clearly defined mis- through the spacecraft; the impact sion. Moon-Mars just might turn out to shakes the structure. Everything neces- CONTINUED FROM W be that mission. sary to repair the ship must be either of the effort. At present there are more Ultimately, nuclear fission or some- available onboard or jury-rigged by an than 380 station assembly elements thing even more advanced—such as fu- ingenious crew. There is no alternative: scheduled for delivery to low Earth or- sion—will probably be the only way to The voyagers are 3 million miles from bit on about 30 shuttle flights over a pe- bring down the cost and one-way trav- Earth, and Mars is another 45 million riod of four and a half years, scheduled el time. Nuclear propulsion might cut miles ahead. to begin in the mid-Nineties. Such an the trip to 100 days from the 550 days orbiting platform would be just one a chemical rocket would take. Although "You- can't have a Cape Kennedy in part of a moon-Mars program. A lunar Westinghouse started working with Los orbit," declares Mark Craig, NASA's spe- base itself would need far more launch Alamos laboratories on this approach cial assistant for exploration and point capacity than the station. Besides the in the late Sixties, according to an in- man for the moon-Mars initiative. "So living modules, rockets would also dustry insider who requested anonym- how do you build a spacecraft that will have to hoist heavier power plants, sur- ity, the technology is still not operation- exist in space for years with little or no face rovers, and more complex commu- al. To get the voyage down to 50 days human intervention? You need self- nications gear. would take even more advanced mo- diagnostic ability and repairability." Only the Energia has the capacity to tors—such as those using helium 3 for Current manned space vehicles boost such tonnage to space. "The So- nuclear fusion. .Unfortunately, after mil- have an average MTBF (mean time be- viets have built a heavy cargo vehicle," lions of dollars of government-funded re- tween failures) of 10,000 hours; in oth- says Art Dula, president of Space Com- search, scientists are still unable to con- er words, more than half of them may merce Corporation, which is marketing trol fusion reactions. fail within a year. Even on the Soviet Mir Soviet launch services in the United NASA's Lunar Energy Enterprise space station, where replacement States. "We need a dump truck and all Case Study Task Force recently issued parts can arrive within 30 days, the we have is the family Rolls'" a report on helium 3, which is rare on crew spends large amounts of time re- Mere technical grounds rarely win Earth but plentiful on the moon. The pairing equipment, observes Nicholas this sort of argument, however, so don't group suggested that in the future the L. Johnson, advisory scientist at Tele- expect the United States to depend on element could fuel fusion reactors to dyne Brown Engineering and author of the Energia for its heavy-lift needs. It power spacecraft. the annual compendium The Soviet would be more likely to revive work on Year in Space. "The Soviets have had FIX IT OR DIE the Advanced Launch System (ALS). significant problems, especially after ALS started in 1 987 as a program to rev- "Mass approaching twelve o'clock, di- the first two to three years, in maintain- olutionize American rocket technology ameter ten centimeters, speed six kilo- ing the Mir," he says. "They've done a and lower the cost to orbit by a factor meters per second, impact imminent!" great job, but it's been at the cost of a 80 OMNI SHOULD WE JOIN WITH THE SOVIETS IN A JOINT MISSION TO MARS? ;K UP A TELEPHONE ANC URVEY. OUR CC»

THE RESULTS OF OUR POLL OF OMNI READERS WILL 3E SENT DIRECTLY TO VICE PRESIDENT DAN QUAYLE CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL SPACE COUNCIL, WILL APPEAR IN AN UPCOMING ISSUE OF OMNI MAGA,

VOTE BY TELEPHONE IN THE OMNI MARS MISSION SURVEY -annrui

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lot ol losl cosmonaut time for conduct- more power than the station. "I think nu- ing experiments." That's in low Earth or- clear power will be needed." says Huber- bit. For any deep-space mission, repair- man. "The United States is working on POLAR ICE. ability is essential. "If you can't fix some- the SP-100 nuclear power source, and thing," says Johnson, "you'd better the Soviets run their Rorsat with nucle- VODKA have another one along with you." ar reactors. So to the extent that nucle-

ar is required, it will be an American- R2-D2, CALL YOUR OFFICE Soviet show." The robotic servicing unit's TV optical system transmits the faint glow of the ruptured nuclear power plant to the op- erator bent over her screen three kilo- "Two dozen suits in the locker and not meters away in the lunar module. a damn one working in my size!" Damn, she thinks, yesterday's meteor fumes the geologist intent on getting out impact breached the first two layers of onto the Martian surface while the pink

the triple shielding; any more damage Martian sky is still bright with sunlight. would have caused a meltdown. Within limits, the suits can be resized

No human could go near a reactor to fit different human frames, but right in this condition and survive. Closeup now all the ones suitable to her height repairs of the shielding are no problem and build are out of commission. Wheth- for her teleoperated robot, however. Its er in the vacuum of space, the airless "eyes" let her zoom in on the damage; surface of the moon, or the tenuous the "smart" gloves she wears let her atmosphere of Mars, the fragile human move Ihe robot's "hands" to feel the re- body must be sheathed and support- actor wall. Thanks to the dexterity with ed by the elaborate protection and life- which she can manipulate her distant support systems of a space suit. partner, repairs are finished in a single eight-hour shift. The International Latex Corporation space suit used on ihe shuttle is a re- Making repairs outside a ship in markable piece of gear— but is too del- space is a risky business for humans. icate for regular wear in space or on the When possible, spacefarers will employ dirty surfaces of the moon or Mars. The futuristic teleoperated or fully independ- garment needs hundreds of hours of re- ent robots equipped with sensors able pair and reconditioning after every to distinguish texture, "hands" with "fin- spacewalk and takes days to resize to

gers" that can feel delicate gradations a differently proportioned person. It al- in pressure, plus enough artificial intel- so takes hours to get into one and pre- ligence to learn from experience and pro- pare to leave the ship. gram themselves. "This is an area To avoid developing the bends, even where Japan can contribute a lot," before dressing, the intrepid traveler says Hajime Furuta, M1TI representative must spend from 40 minutes to four in New York, referring to Japan's dem- hours breathing oxygen before setting onstrated virtuosity in robotics. out on the EVA. The reason: Shuttle Canada, the nation that gave the shut- space suits operate at a very low 4.3

tle its manipulator arm, is also a major pounds per square inch (psi). " player in robotics and automation. At First an astronaut dons a liquid cool- present Canada-based Spar Aero- ing and ventilation garment, designed space is developing the Mobile Ser- to keep internal temperature bearable, vicing System that astronauts will use laced with a network of flexible tubing. to build and maintain the space station. At this time the urine collection device

Furthermore, robotics will play a major is also put on. Next come the lower tor-

role in mining the lunar regolith for con- so pants, boots, hip, knee, and ankle struction materials and rocket fuel, and joints. Then follows the upper torso, in- in covering habitation modules with cluding arms, the umbilical and electri- soil to protect against radiation. "We cal harness containing communica- have an active mining community," tions, power and oxygen lines, connec- says Dr. Frank Vigneron, who chairs the tions to the portable life-support sys- Canadian Space Agency's Working tems—and the Hamilton Standard life- Group on Moon-Mars Exploration, "so support backpack. Finally the spacefar- there's possibly a role for us in the pro- er slips into gloves, helmet, and visors. duction of robotic vehicles to do simi- Unfortunately, shuttle suits are too lar work on the moon." heavy for use in the lunar or Martian grav- Mining, construction, and other robot- ity fields. Built for zero gravity, one ic activities, however, will consume weighs more than 200 pounds on more energy than existing power-gen- Earth. "The weight has to come eration techniques can supply. Space down," says Lee Weaver, a California Station Freedom's big solar arrays, for consulting pilot engineer who has example, are expected to provide a to- worked in every EVA program (and tal of about 75 kilowatts—.barely worn these suits) since Gemini. "T enough to keep the station running and suit has to have better lower body pr

do any work onboard. bility and it has to be able to stand up A moon-Mars mission will require far to the lunar or Martian environment. "EVA is going to be a make-or- and a counterweight) connected by a Are you interested in wide break factor in assembly and surface long "string." variety of Subjects? operations," he continues. "Unless and Such tethers will be long cables of Technology, Space, Science. Environment, until we'have nuclear power to support woven Kevlar deployed like huge fish- Energy Conservation, Quality, Productivity. planetary surface operations, human ing lines from space platforms. Re- Creativity, Innovation & Much More! muscle is going to be one of the prima- search into this technology has pro- The Final Frontier ry ways to make things happen." That gressed quietly in recent years—to the ' =.= !:::;.:/ will require major advances in space point where the shuttle is- slated to test suit design. one in September 1991. Plans call for Launched the Space NASA is now working on better gar- astronauts to uncoil a 20-kilometer- ments. At Johnson Space Center a long tether with an Italian satellite at its

A jnique look ai what i he team is developing an 8.6 psi outfit end. How much time might it take to future can be. that would eliminate the need to scale up from this demonstration level Must Reading breathe oxygen for hours before an to an artificial gravity system for a #0301 pbk. S9.95 EVA. Unfortunately, the suit has to be functioning spacecraft? sturdier to handle the increased pres- "Not too long," predicts AI Schal- The Miracle Planet \i)KAi.;u; sure. "That, in turn, makes glove dex- lenmuller from Martin Marietta, which PBS television series terity a problem," says Weaver, "And has been working with NASA for years Examines the processes you can't use pure oxygen at that pres- on tethers. "The main areas that we that have shaped our sure because it's too flammable, so you need to master are some of the dynam- planet into a home for have to use both nitrogen and oxygen, ics in the cable and some of the elec-

which requires the addition of pumps, trostatic charges generated in it when

regulators, and gas sensors. That it's flying in space." #0373 29.98 HC $ adds to the weight—and we need light- Another way to simulate gravity: Cre- er, not heavier, suits to operate in the ate centrifugal force by spinning the Order Now ! VISA/MC, AMEX gravity fields of the or Mars." alone. if that," Add $ 2.50 per book (or shipping & handling moon spacecraft "But you do A completely hard suit, the AX5, is says Larry Bell, director of the Sasaka- To request a complete catalog of Books, in the works at NASA's Ames Research wa International Center for Space Ar- Softwa re , V i d eo s, P o sters , Patches Center. Its all-aluminum shell offers a chitecture at the University of Houston, Games and Motel vast safety improvement over soft "you also create problems with orient- Call, Fax or Write suits, according to Weaver. It does ing communications antennas, radia- Our Planet Publications have a challenge to meet, however: In tors, and solar power arrays." Beyond 806 Lawnwood, DeKalb, lL 60115 a gravity environment the AX5 will these difficulties, the craft must rotate have to be modified to stand up by it- in a wide enough arc to avoid causing i (708) 553-0624 : Fax (708) 553-0629 self when inflated (as a soft suit will). an inner ear disorder called the Corlo- catalog is inted (Our pr on Recycled Paper) , lls effect, which results in a loss of bal- STRING THING ance. "With a radius of fifty-six feet, we "Ahhh, that's better! Gravity at last. Ten can reach six revolutions per minute,

years in the space biz and I still get which provides two thirds the earth's

spacesick when we hit orbit!" The com- gravity, " says Schallenmuller. "But high- puter systems troubleshooter relaxes er rotation rates," he adds, "would re- grateful y onto her couch and lets her quire a longer radius and create a stomach settle down as the habita: mod- need to shore up .the structure to

ule starts to spin at the end of its kilo- brace it against propulsion stresses." meter-long Kevlar tether and the result- GLOW FOR THE GOLD ing centrifugal force creates a modest level of gravity. Tomorrow an elevator "How many -""ore flights are they going will crawl up that cable, taking her to to allow you?" weightlessness again at the spin cen- "Only one. I'm already pushing the ter of gravity, where she will attempt to radiation dosage limit." coax a balky computer system into func- "That's a heartbreaker. Who's going tioning properly. For now, at least, she'll to finish out your experimental series?" Now fhe magazine of the future can be

able to relax in comfort of students, I kept for the future. Store your issues of be —and keep "One my graduate OMNI in a new Custom Bound Library Cose her dinner down. think. He's smart enough— if he decides made of black simulated leather. Ifs built to he wants to risk the possible chromo- last, and It will keep 12 issues in mint The absence of gravity coes very nas- some damage. I think he wants kids condition indefinitely. The spine is embossed ty things to the human body. After even eventually. He just doesn't want them with trie gold OMNI logo, and in each case

there is a gold transfer for a few days, astronauts lose bone cal- to have two heads!" recording the date. cium, cardiovascular conditioning, and The two scientists la jgn nollowly, con- Send your check or money order electrolytes. The most commonly used templating the difficulties of conducting ($8.95 each; 3 for $24.95; 6 for S 45.95) preventive measure discovered to research in space. After all, some nec- postpaid USA orders only. Foreign date: two to four hours of strenuous ex- essary experiments take longer than hu- orders add $1.50 additional for ercise every three-year tissue withstand the onslaught postage and handling per case. day. On a mis- man can sion such a workout schedule might of solar and cosmic radiation. To: OMNI MAGAZINE prove both hard to maintain and inad- Jesse Jones Industries 499 E. Erie Ave. Phila. PA 19134 equate to the cumulative health impact Experts in space medicine now of zero g. form of artificial gravi- place such risks at the top of the CREDIT CARD HOLDERS (orders Over $15) Some CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-972-5S58 ty, therefore, may play an essential health hazards list. "We're using stan- Or mall yaur. order, clearly showing your role in the Mars voyage. dards ihat are very, very speculative," account number and signature, Pa, I One way to create gravity is through warns Bell. "We're already allowing dos- centrifugal SATISFACTION GUARANTEED the force generated by spin- ages for astronauts that are ten times ning two objects (such as a spacecraft what we allow for radiation workers on Earth, it's not simply a matter of add- er Who's Been EVERYwherel") safely months and years cooped up in space- ing shielding, either. That increases the and comfortably to the red planet. craft or surface structures the size of big- ship's weight, and far worse, spacecraft gish school buses, in a hostile environ- walls can become ionized, making the To stay alive, in orbit and on the lu- ment, away from family, friends, fresh radiation problem worse. This issue is nar and Martian surfaces, people will air, blue skies, and the earth's gravity a potential showstopper—and it's the need closed life-support systems that field. "The human being is the weak one we know the least about'" can recycle air and water, grow food, link in the chain, and it's a very weak NASA is now talking to the Soviets and slay habitable for years or even dec- link," says Susanne Churchill, asso- about their space medicine experi- ades at a time. There is nothing of the ciate director of the Institute for Circadi- ences. The agency has even discussed sort available now. Neither the shuttle an Physiology in Boston. "We typically joint research efforts—such as flying nor Mr has closed life support; both de- put enormous effort and money into U.S. astronauts and using American pend on resupply from Earth. The shut- building spacecraft but nowhere near medical protocols aboard Mir. Two Im- tle lands between missions. Approxi- the necessary level of work into the mat- portant areas in which such a program mately every 60 days the Soviets ter of the crew. Unless we focus on the would help: an assessment of the launch a Progress to Mr carrying two human aspects, we may engineer our- need for artificial gravity and research and a half metric tons of various sup- selves a perfectly elegant ship to on radiation effects. plies—such as propellants, water, air, launch to Mars—and find we can't in food, film, and space suit spare parts. good conscience put people in it." FARMER IN A DRUM "To support a two-man crew for a year TIGHT QUARTERS "Well, let's see, you raise the fish in the takes five to six such flights," says rice paddy tanks, and you filter the wa- Johnson. "That's about fifteen tons of "I can't stand it any longer!! If you whis- ter by running it through the soil in material every year for just two people." tle that tune one more time, I'll kill you!" your vegetable garden—you better Although Space Station Freedom origi- The technician clings to a hand brace have enough termites in there to clean nally had a closed oxygen system, last on the wall of the spacecraft's galley, up the dirt, by the way—and oh, yes, year that idea was dropped in favor of menacing his shipmates with a knife, I'd stock some chickens thai still know the Mir approach, to save money. No his eyes wild. The others hover at a cau- how to sit their eggs—they bred it out such option will be available for a Mars tious distance while the ship's psychol- of the stock twenty years ago, you journey; there aren't any supply depots ogist tries to calm the distraught man know—and..." The space ecologist along the way. It's recycle or die. down. It's his third crack-up this week. talks on, while his listener strives to Let's assume engineers master all The trip's too long; we're too far away grasp the complexity and expense of these problems of equipment and hard- from home, she worries. Even the best equipping a completely self-contained ware. The hardest part still remains: prelaunch psychological profiles can't spaceship capable of taking his Mar- keeping fragile; ornery humans physi- predict what will drive people crazy sev- tian Tours customers ("For the Travel- cally and psychologically healthy for eral million miles from Earth.

MISSION POSSIBLE: HOW TO GET TO MARS

As the argument grows roogy program." Its salient over the best way to go to characteristic is a reliance Mars, the White House Na- on inflatables instead of tional Space Council re- heavy, rigid structures, fuses to be rushed into a thereby drastically lowering

premature decision about projected lift requirements.

mission architecture. It has Price tag: about $10 billion

already stated that it will but at the cost of a much take several years to define higher level of risk. This two or maybe even more gives the proposal a cer- mission plans. In the mean- tain,air of dash and adven- time there are already ture. Everybody seems to

three major proposals: admit that it deserves at • NASA's "90-Day Study," least further study.

done in 1 989 at the request of the Na- timates that it will take a decade or "Bridge Between Worlds," laid out tional Space Council. Its chief char- more to research ways to counteract in the 1986 report of Ihe President's acteristics are caution and the mini- the effects of low or zero gravity on National Commission on Space, Pio- mization of risk. Plans call for the de- the human organism. During this neering the Space Frontier (the velopment of heavy-lift vehicles to time a permanent base established "Paine Commission Report"): The truck equipment and humans to low on the moon will serve as a proving grandest vision of all calls for a full- Earth orbit for assembly operations at ground for the move to Mars. Price fledged interplanetary infrastructure Space Station Freedom. Unmanned tag: a cool $400 billion over 30 years linking Earth, the moon, and Mars.

robotic precursor missions to case by NASA's preliminary estimate. The When completed, it would include the lunar and Martian surfaces in de- final cost is likely to be a lot higher. spaceports orbiting each body and

tail would also be scheduled. (Apol- • Lawrence Livermore National Lab- permanent bases on the lunar and lo mapped only part of an equatorial oratory's "Great Exploration" propos- Martian surfaces—all tied together by strip between roughly 40° north and al concentrates on getting to Mars by a fully equipped cycling spaceship south on the moon, and we know the end of the century, because permanently orbiting both the earth even less about the closeup details "there has never been a successful and Mars. No price tag estimated but of the Martian surface.) The study es- twenty-five- to thirty-year federal tech- sure to be. a humdinger. DQ —

Spaceflight is tough duty even Leah, a child whose cerebral palsy pre- close to home in low Earth orbit. When vents her from walking, talking, or even this reporter first met Dr. Oleg Atkov, the IBDDV sitting effectively, might have been one Soviet cardiologist who spent nearly of those who never tried. But in first eight months in orbit on Salyut 7, she a glint from the reflection off the cornea. grade she began participating in a pio- mistakenly complimented him on endur- Because the glint is a direct reflection of neering experiment to permit word proc-

ing 236 days there. "Two hundred thirty- infrared light, il remains stationary, but essing without hitting a keyboard. The ap- seven," he ruefully corrected, "because the bright eye—an indirect reflection of proach worked: Today Leah is an active every day you count!" With cosmonauts light bounced off the retina—fills the pu- member of her junior high school class. staying in orbit for as much as a year pil and moves as the person shifts bis The program she used, called Kid- at a time, the Soviets have accumulat- gaze. The camera tracks the distance be- Word, runs on an Apple lie computer. ed more experience lhan any other na- tween the center of the retinal reflection Leah controls the computer by leaning tion in the psychological problems of and the center of the glint to determine the side of her head against a single

spaceflight. The techniques they've de- the exact spot on the screen the user is switch mounted on her wheelchair's head- veloped attest to the complexity of the focusing on—his "gaze point." When the rest. An adaptive firmware card—hard- problem. Every mission has a full-time user's gaze point remains steady for ware that tricks the computer into think-

ground-based psychological support half a second, il signals the digital imago- ing the switch is the keyboard—scans group. Cameras onboard the space sta- processing card in the computer to com- the alphabet in groups of five letters; tion allow psychologists on the ground ply with the command on that area of the when the desired group is highlighted, to monitor crew interactions, watching screen, much as a Macintosh user a gentle touch of the head activates the for indications of tension. Cosmonauis' might move and click his mouse. space bar and selects thai group. The voices are monitored for signs of Hutchinson has already produced six program then scans the letters inside the stress. Regular radio and TV contacts ERICA systems in his lab; within five group. The first sentence Leah tapped with families, friends, and prominent So- years, he says, he hopes to miniaturize out—at the age of six: its about time viet personalities boost crew morale. the unit so it can control a motorized Further down the line, kids may wear Mail, pictures, and tapes of Earth wheelchair and go wherever its user baseball caps that activate computers, sounds go up on every Progress resup- goes. In 1988 U Va licensed the ERICA says Paul Snayd, special needs program ply module. Thus far, it's worked. No- design to LC Technologies of Fairfax, Vir- manager for IBM. With the cap aimed at body has murdered anybody else in ginia; the company calls its model the the screen, a slight movement of a fore- space. But that's only in low Earth or- Eyegaze System and has already sold head muscle could enable the user to se- bit. Psychologists will need a whole new nine of the $25,000 units. According to lect an item from those scrolling past. set of techniques to deal with people company owner Joseph Lahoud, further "The head is the last place to lose mus- who are many millions of miles away for apolicatons include installing Eyegaze cle control," Snayd explains, "so children years at a time. Perhaps by the time peo- in'operating rooms so surgeons can who can think but not move could use ple venture to Mars, advances in com- call up computerized information using the computer." DO puter and other technologies will let only their eyes. them talk to Hal-like psychologists IBM recently unveiled SpeechViewer, CREDITS based in the ship's computers, gaze at a program developed to motivate deaf holograms of their loved ones and and speech-impaired kids—and adults in Greg Man- their favorite vistas, or dream in some to use their voices and speak clearly. of animation to pass them to translate form suspended SpeechViewer teaches McCall, page 1S, Micna

. the time. graphics into sounds, form understand- , , able vowels, and modulate their voices, DO SVIDANYA, Y'ALL using colorful displays like balloons that

If we overcome all ihtsue iechnical and expand as voice volume increases, ther- jilromleft,-iliirleyRic .!.-.,-!: '! -: political hurdles, the day may come mometers that register pitch, and trains when, finally, humankind sets out for that indicate the onset of speech. Anoth-

Mars. The journey might go something er IBM device still in the research stage like this: Dateline 2030: Built by the big- could help profoundly deaf kids make VU„:r gest consortium of nations in history, pi- the jump from American Sign Language

,,, , ,. loted by a multinational crew, support- (ASL) to reading written speech. Deaf ::. M9""0'v Shop w^.^-.'-o ed by an international lunar base, and kids tend to have a tough time learning fueled by.propulsion materials mined to read because ASL and English have ('.":";''.;^: from the lunar regolith, the huge space- different grammatical structures and uOtMUM. l-feliC.'i li'QEC craft, assembled in lunar orbit, is final- they can't bear where one word stops ly poised to depart for Mars. Supplies and another starts. The new system fea- 1 V Bnbart ArSwa are waiting for it there, pre-positioned tures a touch -sensitive screen that lets K by unmanned vehicles on the surface the user ask questions by touching the of the planet. puzzling part of a story. If he's still con- To have gotten this far is a triumph fused, the program signs the response, of technological wizardry. But even grow- much as closed-caption TV programs er is the political triumph. Persevering feature simultaneous Im; dation into ASL. somehow through four decades of na- On a strictly human level, the new com- tional rivalries, budget crunches, and puters work miracles by improving kids' conflicting priorities, the participants lives. "A lot of kids in special ed have on- have built cooperative institutions and ly learned to fail over and over again," techniques for managing conflict that says Dr. Linda Tsantis, senior planner for pages 73 and 74, Movie Sill Archives; page 75, Ram look oddly like the. nucleus of a Washington Center for Technology may IBM's <::(! 70. j>si)e •:} IOC world government. History may note in Education. "Through the combination that in going lo Mars together, the of technology and software, they sudden- Lllien. Jason Empire.Correclion, May 1990: Page 30, world finally discovered how to work to- ly find themselves succeeding—and gether on Earth. DO enjoying it." 86 OMNI 1 *%AMft Wi" 1 mm WU r * ^ & m-f^'J..^

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1 . BoB eutxy. ) \ — irUTERWIEUU axies. Moving along its body in powers have the same laws and look essential- often are stars, planets, then atoms, pro- ly like ours. Or we may find out there tons, and quarks. Near the tail we are a zillion ways to make things. Who's Faber: As an only child growing up in reach the realm of quantum gravity and to say fhe mass of the proton has to be

Cleveland, I found that science was as the particles of the grand unified force 1,6 times ten to the minus twenty-four

it ten natural to me as breathing. I had a mi- the first instant of the universe—where grams? Maybe could be 1 .5 times croscope, looked at tiny pond animals, the tail goes into the snake's mouth. By to the minus twenty-four without mess- thought about dinosaurs, and lay in my knowing the very small we account for ing things up. Maybe you could have a backyard, looking al the night sky the very large. six-dimensional space-time instead of through binoculars. My parents' older Omni: Do you believe the universe four or three different kinds of time. this col- friends asked what I wanted to do evolved from nothing? Then the metauniverse, whole

if universes, in- when I grew up. I said be an astrono- Faber: In general relativity, you run lection of could have an is mer. I thought the information in chil- time backward, the logical conse- finite number of examples. Ours pick- dren's books on astronomy was com- quence of the expanding universe is a ed out merely by our existence in it, ing by magic or from giants like Ein- mathematical point with absolutely no just as the earth is selected among all stein. It never occurred to me that peo- physical size or interior structure: a sin- possible planets by our being here. Rus- ple in real jobs were getting paid to dis- gularity. I don't regard that as real but sian physicist Andre Linde's picture of cover what was in the books. as a question mark. It is a space so what we call eternal inflation leads you In an entrance essay for Swarthmore, small that we don't know what's going to universes that beget universes, its inflationary I said I wanted to discover the origins on inside. The point is something on the each going through of the universe and why it's the way it order of the Planck length, ten to the mi- stage. It's like an infinitely branching with universe of is. To do this, I wrote, you could study nus thirty-two centimeters. tree, each budding out large-scale features, like galaxies. But Omni: So something existed before the a precursor. Little universes appear all you could also deduce its basic physi- over the place. There are probably fluc- cal laws from a microscopic examina- tuations that start with too little boost, tion of nature. Swarthmore accepted collapse, and disappear; others that ex-

life. me and I started out majoring in the pand but could never contain small-scale stuff through chemistry. One Omni: Could we find evidence of a co- day I went to see the old observatory, existing universe? ^Astronomy makes a I built out of Pennsylvania fieldstone. I Faber: used to think of the universe came through an old-style classroom to difference if people carry as everything that is. I now think of it of climb some creaky stairs. At the top I as all regions space-time accessible this image of a found a domed room maybe fifty feet to me, given infinife time to visit. Say two across. In the middle was a long gray tiny Earth floating in space people in our universe fall into separate black holes. never come telescope— a classic refracting tele- • next to a small They can

other. I of scope. I can still remember that rush of back out and visit each think star, light-years away from -in the excitement. At that moment I knew I each universe metauniverse as something like a black hole, re- would be an astronomer. I started ob- outside help. We finite, a serving nights, more entranced by gion of trapped and localized space- at are very much on our own3 the vistas in the sky than by the chem- time. If that's how it is, we might never istry lab. In retrospect I think I made a be able to get observational evidence mistake. In trying to come to grips with of other universes. It would have to cosmology now, I'm paying the price for come from sheer logic. not having pursued the underpinnings Omni: If our universe is finite, will it col- of it all —particle physics. Faber: To say what happened we lapse sooner or later?

Omni: Yet Stephen Hawking says the an- need a theory of quantum gravity that Faber: I have a hard time embedding swers. will come from astronomy, since tells us what goes on inside the Planck an infinite and open [forever expand- particle accelerators can never reach length, and we don't have that. But we ing] universe in the metauniverse, but the temperatures at the Big Bang. do know that very funny things happen maybe it's mathematically possible. How-

Faber: But the thinking and creative in tiny spaces on short time scales, ever, if it's slightly closed [destined to urges are coming from the physicists. even in vacuums. Virtual particles collapse], this leads naturally to a finite They're using the tools astronomers [each consisting of a particle and its geometry separating us from the sur- have developed to prove their theories. paired antiparticle] appear and disap- roundings of the metauniverse. Meas-

I left physics in the late Sixties because pear continuously in sort of quantum fluc- urements will likely never answer the fa- it seemed like a zoo of unrelated and tuations. It's a violently active medium, mous question, Is the universe open or

unsatisfactory theories. I didn't know and we think the ylem [Greek for primor- cloBBd? In his classic paper on inflation, great minds at that moment were think- dial stuff] was also. Princeton physicist [MIT physicist] Alan Guth [see Inter- ing of unifying forces, and concocting John Wheeler has called it space-time view, November 1988] said that ome- grand unified theories. [University of Tex- foam. By these same sorts of quantum ga [the ratio of expansion rate to grav- as physicist] Steven Weinberg at that fluctuations, things appear and disap- ity of total mass] should be close to one,

very point was doing the work that pear in this foam. I think the region like about .999999 out to fifty or sixty would win him the Nobel prize, but his that made the universe was like a virtu- decimal places, or just over one. Infla- ideas had not trickled down to classes al particle that happened to survive. It tion says we are close to omega equals at liberal arts colleges. appeared, and by great good luck, its one, but not whether we are above or

Now comes the marriage of astron- properties and physical laws allowed it below. We'll never have the tools to omy and particle physics to produce a to evolve away from a tiny instability in- measure so precisely. So we can nev- new cosmology. We like to sum up the to the universe we call our own. er find out by direct observation. May- idea with the image of Ouroboros, the Omni: Is ours the only universe? be the metauniverse theory will show ancient symbol of the snake that swal- Faber: Say we develop a good quan- that a universe like ours must be slight- lows its tail. The head represents the tum gravity theory, take our physical ly overdense [closed] to exist. Then whole universe. On its throat are paint- laws, and find out there is an ylem. We ours should collapse at some time un- ed superclusters of galaxies, then "gal- might discover that all universes must less some effects of our connection to as OMNI di- the cloud would move through the the metauniverse outside prevent it. pull of gravity grew and grew in the strike you Omni: How did quantum fluctuations rection of bigger density. The dense re- walls. If more mosquitoes in direction, you create galaxies?. gions clumped together into galaxies in when you face one can deduce Faber: Here we are on firmer ground. the still-expanding universe. know you're moving and the by how fast they hit you. The In the instant the fluctuations existed, Omni: Does this clumping continue? speed dipole effect is like that. We are getting the universe was inflating faster than the Faber: Yes, we think this process will for a microwave photons from one speed of light. Before the fluctuations make even larger aggregates more galaxy is could die away as they normally long time, perhaps as long as the uni- part of the sky .because our that direction. would, the universe blew them up to verse expands. Gravitational instability moving through space in radiation as par- macroscopic size and they got frozen occurs on all scales, like big and tiny Think of the background instabili- ticles uniformly carried apart from one in, creating clumps of higher density. waves in the ocean. The little expansion. Their con- As the universe exited from inflation, ties collapsed first to make galaxies. another by the galaxies fell together into clusters. stant uniform motion with respect to one it was a dense gas filled with radiation The another defines a co-moving rest and particles at a temperature around Then later the clusters collapsed to frame. And the peculiar motions of gal- ten to the twenty-seventh kelvins. The make superclusters. measured against it. We fluctuations couldn't grow then because Omni: How do the Seven Samurai try to axies can be the earth goes around gravity came mostly from photons measure this vast streaming of galax- know how fast the sun and the sun goes around the [light rays] that don't collapse under ies toward a Great Attractor? center of the galaxy. We have a guess their own gravity. Gradually the universe Faber: When the microwave back- speed our galaxy goes through cooled, leaving ionized [charged] hy- ground radiation was discovered in at the Local Group [of some drogen, helium, and their electrons 1965. everyone asked, Is this left over the center of the it's light 20 neighboring galaxies]. Knowing trapped in a matrix of photons. Further from the Big Bang? We know these velocities, we can calculate the cDOling to about three thousand K from an early time when the universe motion of the Local Group against the brought the universe to a watershed was as bright as the surface of the sun. microwave background: six hundred ki- event called recombination. Here the uni- The radiation isn't entirely uniform. In lometers per second [1.3 million mph] verse—about one thousandth its pres- one direction it's bright, in the other di- Hemisphere. That's People realized it was off in our Southern ent size—went from opaque to trans- rection it's faint. hefty motion. parent, from ionized to neutral. Matter the dipole effect of our galaxy stream- a People once thought the nearby clus- particles broke free from photons, their ing through space. ter of galaxies called Virgo was the at- gravity began to dominate, and all of Omni: The dipole effect? mass. But it was found to be those lurking fluctuations saw each oth- Faber: Imagine you're flying through tracting with mosqui- moving, too, and its pull is in the er for the first timel That is, their en- an immense room filled is at wrong direction. For more than five hanced gravity started pulling in near- toes. The cloud of mosquitoes walls, otherwise years we've studied the distances and by particles in a runaway effect; A little rest with respect to the DNVIDED THE MOST DAZZLING VIEWS OF FUTURE! FRONTIER THE I THE NEW

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peculiar motions of about four hundred here, coming through the walls. But we tells you what fluctuations it made in the galaxies out to several hundred million can't see any sign of this stuff; experi- early universe, and the kinds of galax-

light-years. We suspected, the attract- ments fail to detect it. How can this be? ies and clusters you should see today. ing mass might be Hydra-Centaurus, it's probably collisionless, like the neu- The interesting masses fall into two dis- the next closest supercluster. But we dis- trino that can go through six light- tinct sizes: the hot one in the range of

covered it, too, was falling toward an years of lead before colliding with an- the putative neutrino, say, three elec-

overdensity even more massive and far- other particle. So it passes right tron volts up to a hundred; the cold ther away. The mystery mass is called through the detector. When an experi- mass is up near the mass- of a proton.

.;. . , , .1,! the Great Attractor. But the motions them- ment out of the Soviet Union claimed to I in.

selves are not a mystery. They occur sim- detect mass in the neutrino, it became ber, these particles can't collide, so ply because matter is-not uniformly dis- the leading candidate for the missing they aren't trapped in the photon ma- tributed. The dense places pull hard- mass. This came to be known as the the- trix as charged particles are. At around er; the empty places pull less. The ory of hot dark matter. a billion degrees the hot particles are

streaming motion is caused by gravity. Omni: That was a theory you helped still relativistic—rushing around. If the

Omni: What is dark matter? shoot down. hot one makes a fluctuation, it and its

Faber: Astronomers think only about Faber: Yes, I helped write the first pa- gravity just evaporate as the relativistic ten percent of matter in the universe per on galaxy formation in a cold dark particles just free-stream away at the comes from the hot hydrogen and heli- matter universe. I've been extolling the speed of light. Structures needed to

' um of the primeval fireball that made the joys of this theory, and It has become make galaxies just go poof. But the

stars and then cooked inside of them the paradigm, if you will. The particles cold particles are moving too slowly to to become carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, of these competing theories are not re- escape [their own gravity], and their fluc-

you and me. If we observe a cluster of ally hot or cold. At the high tempera- tuations endure.

galaxies and add up the luminous tures of the early universe all particles If you look at computer simulations

mass in their stars, we discover that it become relativlstic. They get excited to of the two scenarios, the cold dark mat- should fly apart— unless it's bound to- velocities near the speed of light. As the ter universe looks much more like the

gether by much more gravity coming universe expands, it cools to a temper- real thing. Hot dark matter does not from mass we can't see. Also, the sta- ature where the heaviest particles slow make the maiesiio spiraling galaxies we bility of spiral galaxies can be explained down; we call them "cold." The light- see. A hot dark matter universe would

only if they're embedded in a halo of est particles are still excited and rush have incredibly thin walls of galaxies. dark matter. around at the speed of light. These are With cold dark matter so many things That dark matter does exist will like- relativistic; we call them "hot." match our observations: the size of gal- ly endure as one of the major findings We studied a three-component axies, their rotation speeds, the cluster- of modern astronomy. Many people brew of photons and ordinary and ing, and the voids.

think it's a new elementary particle. If cold dark matter. As long as you make Omni: But you raise doubts about the

so, it should be everywhere, even the dark particle collisionless, its mass cold dark matter theory, too. Faber: Unfortunately, yes. We predict- ed how far along clustering should be on every scale and predicted the large- scale flow velocity with cold dark mat- ter. After the Great Attractor studies, though, people began asking how like-

ly it is that such a big patch of the uni-

verse should move so. fast. It's very un- likely. The Great Attractor should not ex- ist in a universe evolved from cold dark matter. Omni: What gives? Faber; Well, suppose the dark matter isn't just one kind of particle but a mix- ture of hot and cold. The hot dark mat- ter particles give more oomph to the large-scale density fluctuations [like the Great Attractor] and match the velocity of Great Attractor flows. And the cold dark matter nicely makes galaxies on the small scale. In one recently proposed model, the dark matter consists of one massive par- ticle roughly two times the size of a pro- ton and one light particle about three

electron volts, big enough that it might be detected someday. The neutrino

with very little mass is a good candi- date. Some people find this hot and cold mixture very ugly. But physicists have so many candidates for new parti- cles that could exist, why should the un- seen matter magically be made of just one particle? "/ can accept the fact that we haven't.seen anything new in the past live Omni: When will your observations years. What I can't accept is that no one ever removed the iens cap. give you answers to the big questions about the universe's origins? .

The wheelchair you see able way to get around here is made from a super light- This innovation for disabled weight material developed for persons is just one of the down- space vehicles. to-earth applications of space

It weighs halt what a stan- technology. To find out more dard chair weighs. Yet it's just as about it, call the U.S. Space strong. And a lot easier to maneu- Foundation at 1-800-255-1000. ver, fold up, and store away. It Or write to: United States Space promises to provide wheelchair Foundation, P.O. Box 1838, users with a far more comfort- Colorado Springs, CO 80901.

SPACE TECHNOLOGY. THIS IS WHRTS IN ITFOR YOU. Faber: When we can see back far connnnuruicMTorus

enough. Looking oul to a distant gal- Ari:nv-..i i. n, ON' WGE r axy, we see back in time, the time it Omni: To you, the universe is so vast

takes the light to reach us. If you strain it's mind altering, the Milky Way just a From Russia With Love to make out the Andromeda galaxy, the pinpoint of light. Do planets around near- Thanks to the agreement between the most distant object visible to the naked by stars seem insignificant to you? academic magazine Science in the

eye, you look back two million years. Faber: I think of superclusters of gal- USSR and the widely read American Om- With a good-sized telescope we can axies out to six hundred million light- ni magazine, we now have the oppor-

look back ten billion years. If you point years as fairly insignificant. Earth and tunity to receive and read this popular

this telescope at random into the night humankind strike me.as minor events. magazine. I have had the pleasure of

sky and take a picture, you see a few Still, I have a feeling of oneness with the reading it and would like to thank you

fuzzy things on the photograph. But universe as it unfolds in such a stately for your easy reading style.

mostly it looks blank, if instead of film manner. In a deeply satisfying way, one K. M. Dubachev you use a vastly more sensitive CCD event has led to another and here we Vice-President [electronic charge-coupled device], sud- are—the product of what seems in ret- USSR State Committee denly the same sky is alive with faint rospect to be an inevitable process. An- on Science and Technology blobs of light. The entire celestial other universe might be different, but in sphere is filled with them—a hundred ours people are a natural phenomenon. The agreement between Omni and the billion strong, so thick their images over- From quantum fluctuations to galaxies Soviet-published Science in the USSR lap. We know they're outside our gal- that obligingly made stars that cooked to circulate one another's magazines is axy because they're too faint and nu- hydrogen and helium into heavy ele- a bright example of the widening cul-

merous to be local stars. . ments that formed solar systems and tural exchange between the USSR and

The theory of cold dark matter pre- planets with water— it's perfect! the United States. I am fortunate to re- dicts that galaxies agglomerate out of We have every right to feel at home ceive both magazines; their scientific val- many small fragments. With new instru- here. And that's what Eastern religions ue is accompanied by recommenda-

ments we will soon look back a crucial are all about, the unity of everything. I tions on inventions and discoveries. two or three billion years or more—to a once got a letter from a Christian Fun- V. A. Bykov time when all the pieces of the galax- da.remalist unhappy with my account Minister of the Medical ies haven't fallen together yet. So they of the Big Bang and evolution of the uni- Industry of the USSR

should be smaller and there shouldn't verse. She said it ruined the beauty of

I with great be a lot of them. I hope these blobs of the Old Testament story for her. She read all of Omni magazine

it light are galaxies forming. If we can see sent me Xerox copies of the Bible with fascination, I think that is one of the

them clearly, we'll begin to understand particularly lovely passages under- most interesting magazines that I have

in exguisiie detail how structures in the scored. It got me thinking. We scientists ever seen. I learn a lot of information

universe form. This is the work of the are talking about fluctuations at ten to from it. I'm very interested in environ-

next twenty years. the minus thirty-two centimeters that mental problems, so I find your many Omni: With the perfect telescope, how grew up to make galaxies. Talk about articles devoted to this issue particularly close to the Big Bang could you see? beauty! Talk about awe inspiring! The interesting. The fiction, paintings, ad- Faber: Looking back in time, we see modern story of creation is infinitely vertisements, and illustrations are de- through a clear space for a long way. more subtle and grand than any cre- lightful. Omni strengthens my faith in hu- But then we come to this wall, the cos- ation myth. The language is beautiful in man intelligence and helps me to be- mic background radiation when the uni- Genesis, but the thoughts are essential- lieve ihat in the future scientific and tech- verse was as hot as the surface of the ly mundane. nological progress will improve living

sun. We cannot see through it; we can't But there is one neat thing. It says in standards in our country.

see beyond it to the first three hundred the beginning there was light. That's Igor Stefanovich Konovalov thousand years or so. actually right! Rostov-on-Don, USSR Omni: What will the Hubble Space Tele- Omni: What difference does astronomy scope do' for astronomy? really make? We are two of your readers from the

Faber: For decades we've dreamed of Faber: It doesn't put food on the table. USSR. We live in Leningrad, where you

putting an optical telescope above the It did give us the atomic bomb, though can buy the Soviet Omni. We like Omni

image-smearmg atmosphere. While the some people don't like that much. As- because it features interesting discus-

Hubble's primary mirror is only of aver- tronomy is basically ideas. I listened to sions about problems mankind may age size, about ninety-five inches in di- a priest some weeks ago on a radio pro- face in the future and how certain peo-

ameter, it will give us images ten times gram. He said he was rejecting tradi- ple propose to solve them. Many of

sharper than we get from Earth. It will tional religion because it didn't help him these problems are important for the So- also sample ultraviolet wavelengths deal with the most pressing moral prob- viet people as well as Americans. We that don't reach the ground, so we can lem of the world—to what extent we want to correspond with our American study young stars. should destroy' the planet to have the friends so that we can all understand We should see stunning detail in all life-style we .want. He was profoundly one another better. Now some words kinds of celestial bodies. We may be moved to find that we came out of the about ourselves: Andrey is eighteen

able to tell if quasars really are black stars. This helped him see that we are years old and a student at the Lenin- holes, shining as they swallow up gas, just a little planet and that we've got to grad Shipbuilding Institute. He plans to

and if black holes exist at the center of preserve our future all by ourselves Pi"s be an engineer. Please write to him at nearby galaxies. a long future— billions of years if we si. Tchaikovsky 50, Apt. 43, Leningrad I'm part of a team that will finally meas- choose to be around. Astronomy 1-91194, USSR. A student at Leningrad

ure the Hubble constant, the scale makes a difference if people get a gut State University, nineteen-year-old size of the universe. When we observe level feeling for our long history and our Paul is studying to be a sociologist. He

a galaxy that's moving four thousand ki- separateness, if they carry around in can be reached at pr. M. Toreza 2/40, lometers per.second, we want to study their heads this image of tiny Earth float- Apt. 40, Leningrad 194021, USSR.

--> its structure, how big it is, how much it ing in space next to ore small star, ghl- Thank you for all your help! weighs. For the first time we'll measure years away from outside help. We are Andrey Anoshko and Paul Rozanov really accurate distances to galaxies very much on our own. DO Leningrad DO 92 OMNI were falling to earth in swarms, unload- M0SQV/1T0 ing cargoes of sweet-toothed breeders

eager tor Nana's delights. I paid my fer- Handbook for CCWTIMUED FROM PAGE 71 ryman and alighted. Aerospace Education goods coveted by the Information Rev- Nana was doll city, very gynoidal, olution's arrivistes: jewels and perfumes, very het. It still possessed some of the aerospace elegancies of cloth and design, and shantytown ambience of sixty years The "How To" book on most perverse of tabulations, the auto- ago, when it had soothed the night- education for schools, mata. But with the passing of the aube mares of American GIs; but now super- communities, and Young its skyline of poured con- du miilenaire, Europe's fashion masters imposed upon Astronaut Programs. were confronted by a world increasing- crete and twentieth-century slum were This Handbook provides a wealth ly fickle, increasingly philistine. Japa- undulating whiplash curves and nese disinvestment prompted reces- geometric lines copied from the Europe- of. knowledge including start-up sion, and from the Atlantic to the Urals an Art Nouveau and Art Deco renais- and curriculum ideas with over the continent was eclipsed by foreign sance of the aube du millenaire. This 270 listings for resource stylistic heterogeneity was exemplified vulgarizations of its genius. materials. Introduction by in the person of Nana's mammasan, Ma- James was very still. I rested my Astronaut Charles Walker, NSS. head on his shoulder. Like so many of dame Kito, Kite, the daughter of a far- Richard MacLeod, his kind, he'd come to ask the sweat- ang and a doll, belonged to that caste Preface by shops of Bangkok to provide consola- of half humans we called bijouterie: hy- Space Foundation. tion for his lost toys. Outside, tattooed brid jewels as distinguished from all- upon towers of glass and jade, vast holo- precious joailierie. Ostracized by hu- grams of Buddha recalled the transi- mans and automata alike, bijouterie hating toriness of all things, lived as pariahs, envying and integrity so re- "I can do it, James." those whose holistic

I to "I used to have a collection. Even as buked them. Whenever came a child," he said, in childlike reverie. "Be- Nana, Kito's lonely, jealous, violent ing without them these last few heart called to mine. confluence of Aerospace Educational Development years..." And those cold, gray eyes I moved through a softened, "It's been hard," he said, dolls. A few repros were at work—ball- Program. 6991 S. Madison Way, porcelain-skinned "antiques" "hard." His flesh was hard. I felt its pan- jointed, Littleton, CO 80122 el-beaten contours through the cool who offered their brass umbilical keys 8.95 plus $2.05 postage/handling. well handful of silk of his Italian suit; and on tiptoes, I to passersby— as as a 0-9620988-0-9 sought his mouth. He arched an 'eye- aboriginals—nonref lective pieces of walk- ISBN brow, his face hectic with the effort, it ing, talking Al, who, like Zipper, were seemed, to at once express irony, con- from a time before nanotechnology re- tempt, and desire. "So little Mosquito placed microelectronics. In one door- wants to be my R and R?" way a matching pair of crystal torsos— deep-sea trop- I Lalique? displayed, like "I want— I want to be your doll." — pulled his head down and found his ical fish, neural networks of polychro- matic liquids. (The opposite, of lips. "Please," I said, "I want to be part of your collection...." course, of most configurations. Dolls, "Cartier? Tonight?" he mumbled, like my favorite candies, are usually soft the outside, hard within.) But "Yes," I answered, "anything." And on not unreluctantly, he allowed me to enough of Nana's denizens approximat- for me to cruise the kiss him. In time I was sure I could ed my own design make him love me. doll-saturated streets in anonymity. Walking with a gynoid's sexual pre- bar A tuk-tuk sped me along the Sukum- cision, I checked off each name, vit Road. Before leaving I'd thrown on seeking my prey. There was House of Columbine's, Club Pu- a skirt—just long enough to conceal the Dolls, Tin Lizzie, bifurcation of my thighs—and put in my berty, and an S-M parlor, Judy's. green, luminous contacts: trademark of Some crew-cut boys eating at a noo- dle stall called out, "Where you going, a Cartier doll. I had arranged to meet James later at the Honey Hotel, where pretty sex doll?" and "Over here, clock-

I'd present him with my catch. Nana Pla- work poo-ying." Ahead, the bar I za would be my hunting ground. sought signaled its wares via a sign fea- Retinitis pigmentosa is a eyes, beneath progressive, inherited eye disease At Soi Asoke l hailed a long-tailed turing neon-green blindness, boat, the klongs having reclaimed which, in Gothic script, flickered willy that causes night Willy was tunnel vision, and, ultimately, much of the city, making it once more HOFMANNSTHAL'S DOLL KELLER. blindness. Today there's no the Venice of the East. The taxi a Cartier aficionado. treatment or cure. churned the dark waters of Sukumvit, In the acid noon of the Keller's light it doesn't have to he that way. scattering the reflected images of pa- show, amber-skinned dolls with incon- But godas and shopping malls that sat like gruous jade-green eyes performed, in Intensive research is under way. of Foundation peroxide lilies on a black pond stained bamboo cages above my head, Iheir ge- Your support the RP the great save for white by the city's glare. The traffic thick- neric dance, The Lordosis. Many of could be thousands of people. ened, and before me rose Nana, a gi- these girls were state-of-the-art Cartier: gantic lily pad, pale and bright, a night poo-ying mee-ow (or, in European no- bloom releasing its bouquet of sex into menclature, Felis femelia), the results of the smog-filled air. Above, an insect cross-species genetic splicing. They ^ffi^ RP Foundation Rghiing susurration: Autogyros, caught like sported whiskers, tails, and pointy or moths in searchlights panning the sky, ears or else were leopard-spotted striped like tigresses. Compared to bathe in the laptop's green effulgence. bitha. My kleinkunst. In whose arms do them my reshaped lines were passe. "It all used to be so different. But you lie now? Oh, Gudrun, she was so But Willy's dolls seemed unconcerned. home is so far, far away... Do you re- very beautiful. Lookl What architecture!

They were too busy lifting beer glass- member' what it was like, Gudrun? This What supernatural clockwork! Peerless es to the lips of their farangs and prat- doll here—competent workmanship, but somatics, faultless autonomics. The sa- tling their babyish subtongue, their pro- a quasihuman structure like the rest. Un- crum, the ilium, the acetabulum of

grams—inspired by an aesthetic of cute- redeemed carbon! Now, I remember re- chrysoprase, mother-ot-pearl, and ver- ness—stage-managing their mimes al Cartier dolls: joaillerie whose insides meil. The bloodstones of" the abdomi-

little-girl adoration. I found the number gleamed with jewels and ivory, plati- nal aorta. She was an angel, Miss Cat,

one girl and told her I had a message num, and gold. But Thai protein engi- a living jewel. Genitalia? Oh, no! Not from Madame for Mr. Willy. I was led up- neers have no skill with ribosomes or like these imitations made today, just stairs. He' was an old man, sitting on the RNA. No skill with catalytic antibodies. sex, sex, sex. She was an angel...." He bare boards of a room naked but for a They just shuffle the genome, or what passed a hand across his face. "All the

rice-paper screen. On his knees was a little they know about it, then pin it all money, Gudrun, that our science gave laptop. The green spectral light of its together with polymers and steel. They us, spent on status symbols: arts and

VDU had him mesmerized. I coughed; do not understand the alchemy of the objets and toys. Now we farangs have his head turned with a rheumatic flesh! In Europe, Gudrun, we build at- forgotten how to make anything except scrunch, and while his watery eyes fo- om by atom, nanocomputers controlling toys, and nobody wants to buy them, cused on my loveliness, the powder- molecular tools to make gears, motors, Gudrun, nobody wants to buy." The ho- blue visage of a cat peeped inquisitive- levers, little molecular-sized compo- logram continued to revolve, like a ly from the folds of his dressing gown. nents that have the same kind of struc- ride in a deserted fairgrounds.

He stroked its head. "Ah, Gudrun, one ture as metals and stones, ceramics "Madame Kito..." I ventured.

of your sisters has come to call. What and resins, each one programmed to "Yes, Miss Cat, I know, I know. A can we do for you, Miss Cat?" replicate itself, to take its place in the doll for Madame. Take one. They took "Madame Kito want doll. She have divine clockwork...." my doll a long time ago. MyTabitha. My friend come stay. Yakuza." The por- His spine had become upright, and Tabs. They cannot harm me anymore." nocracies guarded their dolls well his body spasmed, as if galvanized by (when renting a doll, a farang was re- an unseen puppet master. Long, skel- Through the. streets we walked, two quired to leave his passport with the bar etal fingers tapped the keyboard, and cat girls arm in arm, invisible amid the

as surety); but in the six months I had as from a magic lamp, a hologram ma- midnight crush of Nana. I had chosen doll-rustled no one had called my terialized above us, glowing like ecto- one of Willy's more conservative mod- bluff. Willy would be an easy sting. plasm in the darkened room. It was a els; Felis femella is difficult to smuggle.

"Kito, Kito. Always Kito," he sighed. cutaway diagram ot a gynoid, its flesh 1 looked at my companion. Why did

"It isn't fair, is it, Gudrun?" The cat stripped away to reveal its brazen in- James want her? A biochip-and-steel, jumped from its silken enclave to genuities.' Slowly it began to revolve. "Ta- glycerin-hulled fake? Her scent was cheap. Her makeup overdone. How could her sexual obviousness, her sen- sationalism, console him for the loss of

a genuine Cartier doll? Still the Europe- an sons came to Bangkok, their taste either hopelessly corrupted or forfeit to an overweening desire to again pos- sess a mechanical love, however non- pareil. Back in London, tiring of his new

mistress, it would be I who Milord would turn to for consolation. And in me he would find a real doll. Soon a water taxi was speeding us through the night's swelter and toward the Honey, where Milord awaited deliv- ery of his dtook-gah-dtah. "Cute," he said, after he had had her perform a few party pieces and tricks, "but not a spiritual toy. Not like..." "Like a real doll?" "Sleep," he told her, and she stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes. The room, brothelscaped in red and gold, was giddy with mirrors. A poster of one of the latest automaton starlets hung from a flocked wall, her flesh transposed to the glossy world of a photomechanical: a 2-D limbo as deathlessly precious as the world of a pressed flower. The poster, like the TV Ttalk RODE.O~] that covered half the ceiling, was inter- active and ran jeux v&rit&s software. Mi- lord stroked his doll's overextended thighs, as smooth and glistening as yel- low wax. "She'll do. For my purposes." The photomechanical was sniggering

at me. I couldn't see the joke. The air- conditioning was broken, the room hot James, just wanted to be part of your fool, my sister, her red-lipped mouth

and airless, and I needed a drink. collection. But no time for self-pity, He agape in a comic-book cliche of "pain

"When do we leave, James?" loves me, he loves me not. So it goes. and surprise." Milord was enjoying him- "Little Mosquito," he said tenderly. He was just like the rest, only prettier. self. He was a nasty boy. His leather- sheathed hand reached out Smile. Keep him talking. This psycho "People seem to prefer the second-

to offer a caress. I tilted my head, was maneuvering for the coup de rate. Copies. Imitations. We thought at closed my eyes, and saw us, together, grace. Delay. first President Kennedy would help. But in the rain-shiny London streets. His cop- "You were supposed to take me all he did was pontificate about protec- per-tipped index finger and thumb with you." My lips were as numb as my tionism and the need for free trade. As clasped my temples. arms and legs. long as no one pirated American intel- "Are you pleased with me?" London "What a revolting idea." lectual property, Washington didn't melted in a blue-white flash, and dark- "Then let me go. There's no need for seem to care. Then Brasilia vetoed us

ness, cold and impassioned, slapped this. I won't tell...." at the GATT. The world was flooded me to the floor, tied me up, stood back "Oh? And you seemed to have such with dolls from Bangkok and Manila.

to watch me twitch and convulse, then a crush on me. Truly, I was flattered..,." Why couldn't you have stuck with your

embraced me, like a repentant lover. "I'm not worth it. I'm just a romantic radios and TVs, your cameras and wash-

When I came to, Milord was pouring him- fool. Why are you doing this?" ing machines'"- Why manufacture auto-

self a scotch from the minibar, his smok- "Perhaps you think it's the money? mata? It was all we had left. The only

ing claw plucking ice from a thermos. You think I circumvented Harry because thing that made us special. You stole "Sorry about the ECT, dear boy, but I'm a poor, penniless Europunk? It's our copyrights, our names. Cartier, Gi-

: I fear this really is the only way to 'say true, money was a problem, once. My venchy, Lalique. . aberge. Coty— all the good-bye.' Don't try to get up. Your ver- family had shares in Cartier. When the houses from London to St, Petersburg.

tical hold's rather wonky." crash came, we were ruined. I had to And now we have nothing left. But that

I I sell including, if I knew had lost. would always everything, of course, my will change, Mosquito. I am, you like, lose. Because I'm not the real thing. Be- dolls. But now Cartier pays me very part of the vanguard of quality control, cause I'm not even a poor fake. Just a well. Very well indeed." A recruit-to the guerilla army of taste.

fake of a fake. Not even bijouterie. "I don't understand." I buy dolls for the house of Cartier, Coun-

How I longed for genuineness.... "Mosquito, you don't understand terfeit dolls. And in Paris, Mosquito, The photomechanical, startled by the anything." He sat astride me, a play- they change them. Thai dolls aren't commotion, had stepped out of frame; ground lout, the copper electrodes like their Western originals. Nanoengi- now she peeped round the borders of held tauntingly before my eyes, like neers here use fetal tissue as a tem-

her world, angry at having been dis- creepy-crawlies he might at any mo- plate. A dtook-gah-dtah is, in many re- turbed from her little death. ment put down my blouse. Reflected in specis, remarkably human. We have, af-

I just wanted to be your doll, Mr. his monocle I saw a green-eyed little- ter all, the evidence of bijouterie. Car-

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--.-. ::-M\. kay-.c-r.i irus- .-.j coc m pa ny r; I 6% sales to*. I SATISFACTION GUARANTEED | tlesn transposed to'the g.ossy world o a photomechanical: a 2-D limbo as deathlessly precious as the world of a pressed flower. The poster, like the TV that covered half the ceiling, was inter- active and ran jeux verites software. Mi- lord stroked his doll's overextended thighs, as smooth and glistening as yel- low wax. "She'll do. For my purposes." The photomechanical was snint-ierino tier Paris set out to bridge the hardware- A fatal beauty. "Didn't you even like wetware divide, to write a computer vi- me," I said, "a little?" rus that could be transmitted from ma- c CONTINULD FROM PI over chine to man...." I left the hetel with his Panama with mouth still filled get an accurate reading of the grade "Klong fever?" I said, finding my my eyes, and my tongue. with the saline taste of blood, still echo- with its rudimentary black-and-white cam-

foreleg, sets it "Of course. It's an STD: computer lan- ing with his scream. His voluminous era, the black ant lifts a guage translated into biology through clothes undermined any attempt at slowly down, down; it does the same enzymes man and machine both inconspicuousness. But the concierge with its other foreleg, then lifts a middle sprawling, flailing share. Every doll, alter its program has had seen a'dolf enter, a man leave. Af- leg—and goes sliding, of been infected, is shipped back to Thai- ter they had found the body, they into the eye the Face. land, a man-hungry pathogen. But would ponder how a Cartier doll had In the red dust at the crater's bottom, of none of you will suspect: Dolls are sup- come to murder her client; they would the black ant methodically lifts each posed to be disease-free. And the real open her up, look for faults, scratch Its legs, its accelerometer still gauging for- pull of gravity underfoot. But the ac- beauty of all this, Mosquito, is that the their heads, destroy her; they would the celerometer was actually broken by the virus is. an ethnic weapon. Only Orien- get about the ill-dressed man, the black ant is turned on its- tals are affected. It's' prejudiced against In the small hours, above the Gung- fall, and

it lies helpless unable certain kinks in your DNA: the gene, for Ho in Harry's private rooms, I changed back, where and and to right itself. The black ant rests in instance, that givos you I hose pretty, slit- into some spare he-clothes sending a homing ty eyes-]" He forked his fingers and sprawled but on the sofa while the deep shadow, futilely those new signal until its solar battery runs out. made to gouge me. I flinched; he re- boss quizzed me about Rover goes, constantly checking laxed his threat, "The virus only com- Seiko dolls I was supposed to have And encoders, which measure its rel- I its wheel mandeers cells displaying those idiosyn- checked out. I lied fantastically. was orientation, and incli- crasies that characterize your poor, over- in no mood to talk of mad farang sci- ative position and confident race. Then the pogrom be- entists and their poisonous girls. nometer againsr the traverse plotted by said, after ground control. Eight radio signals are gins, it replicates, targets the hypothal- "That Englishman," he we amus, and creates a hormonal imbal- had finished a bottle of Mekong. "Hear beeping at Rover, but only seven ants the west side of the Face ance, causing impotence in the male. from him again?" clamber down hid to wait patiently as Rover pries open In, say, three generations, your gene "No." I flushed, but the shadows but em- their sampling claws. pool won't fill a petri dish." me. It was not shame, of course, Viking billed as "the "Revenge. Is that all you want?" Mr. barrassment. I had been such an idiot. Though was search for life on Mars," the mission James was a considerable disappoint- "Good. Why is it always Englishmen inconclusive. If there is— or ever ment. "I thought you had more imagi- with you, Mosquito?" proved Rover can find ft. nation. More fascination." "Because..." But I was so tired. was—life on Mars, differential scanning calorimeter "I want," he said, wiping a han.d' Tired of this ridiculous body, this extrav- With a temperature of mineral across my mouth and smearing my agant heart. A fly droned lazily in the (to measure the high-resolution optical micro- cheek with lipstick, "to see your indus- torpid confines of the lounge; moonlight samples), a gas analyzer seeping through the blinds. I remem- scope, and an advanced try suffer. I want an end to cheap im- was moonlit world, the land {to determine the composition of volatile I bered another ports. I want a world know only as a Rover is rolling labora- I a memory to return, a world of grace, of of ice and snow where, once, had compounds), carbonic re- beautiful automata...." The black, leath- been happy. Even in the last days of tory, capable of finding any or soil microbes that might have er-sheathed hand descended. empire, it was a land of masques and mains of the earlier search. "This is too impromptu, Mr. James." bergomasques, of enchantment, eluded "The others—they were just petty moonlight calm, sad, and beautiful. Finally Rover hoists the ants onto its onward to the primary tar- thieves. They didn't have your class. It's Life then was a long fete galante, a fairy back and rolls part of that get, the tests under way inside its belly, a pity you have to share their fate...." tale, I had wanted to be world, that land of satisfied Rover will not know whether it has dis- And it was then that those same ele- marvelous Mars; it will merely trans- ments of irony, contempt, and desire desire, part of its genuineness. More covered life on the data to ground control, in his than a woman, I had wanted to be joaili- mit that I had earlier seen at war there ever face reappeared to continue their strug- erie. They were not like their Eastern sis- At ground control: "Was life on Mars? Rover can tell us soon. She gle. He bent down to kiss me. Not mere- ters, but elegant courtesans with the samples." ly the will to survive, not merely ihe bit- most ethereal of manners, the beloved has her is only life on Mars." terness of a jilted heart, but lust, thick mistresses of lords, the trusted confi- "Rover the and muddy, prompted me to draw dantes of ladies. "We'll see. Open my briefcase."

I shall never return. "Champagne?" back my lips and bite deep, deep, my I sometimes think California champagne. In sev- cruel dental work injecting customized "I'm through with Englishmen/' I "Warm whether we I minutes we'll know protozoans, my mouth filling with said. It was doll world, not they, that enteen

it blood and his scream. had been enamored of. Ah, I am a can crack open." life, a ba- "I'll get some ice." He jerked backward, as if shot by a fake of fakes, an impostor; my v6rite. "Don't bother. The ice machine is on high-powered rifle, and fell trembling nal porno flick; a cheap jeu and shivering by my side. Already he But sometimes, half awake, half asleep, the blink,"

I this unwieldy had passed from a mild sweat to chron- I dream that have put off signals, ants: One of Rov- I Eight seven ic dehydration. His mad, beautiful flesh, that, more than a woman, have is stranded somewhere on the eyes—delirious with the last stages of become a doll. A real doll, beloved of er's ants formation Rover knows simply as malarial fever—regarded me with puz- princes and kings. Face, a valentine," laughed Har- a set of parameters that it is forbidden zlement. "That, darling," I said, "is why "My funny within. With a great ef ry. "We'll have another customer tomor- to travel they call me Mosquito." : Another Englishman, perhaps. Go. Rover proceeds toward the primary tar- fort I managed to sit up so that I was row. get, testing the samples and transmitting able to cradle his head in my arms, His Go home. Go home to Zipper. Go on, to the test results to ground control as it blood was thickening, turning his brain before. I break your arms. Go home dream, unreal to ground control, to Earth, into a stew. He was so. beautiful. One bed." And I did. But the goes— persists. where they wait. DO of the most beautiful men I had known. as love, DO Perpetual motion: Why do these machines come to a standstill?

By Scot Morris

On July 31, 1790, the first sealed box with a light bulb example, steel balls roll cal about the way a magnet U.S. patent was granted inside, surrounded by along tracks in curved attracts iron. Inventors by President George Wash- solar collectors, which spokes so that they are have tried to. find a way to ington and Secretary of power the bulb. Or a motor near the rim of the wheel interrupt the magnetism so State Thomas Jefferson. that boils water with heat on the right side, forcing that attractions could be Both men signed the doc- from its own exhaust pipe. that side downward; then repeated endlessly. In the ument, which recog- These are called perpetual they roll back closer to the simple machine proposed nized an improved proc- motion machines of the hub on the ascending side. by the Bishop of Chester in ess of making potash (a second kind, because they The wheel is supposed to the.1670's (figure Cat chemical compound), in- violate the second law of keep turning clockwise right), a magnet at the top vented by Samuel Hopkins thermodynamics (as forever. In another version of the column pulls the iron of Philadelphia. distinct from the previ- (figure A, shown at right), ball up the ramp. The ball On this two-hundredth ous perpetual motion weighted arms are fully falls through the hole at the anniversary we salute the machines). extended on the down- top, rolls back to the start, spirit of inventors to whom The second law says swing but hang limp on the and is pulled up again. Will

nothing is impossible, that heat can't be other side. These scheme: it work? those eternal optimists who completely converted into look good on paper—so 4. HEAT PUMP. In the feel personally challenged work: Some energy is good that hundreds of Seventies and early Eight- when others say, "It can't irrecoverable and escapes variations on this plan have ies, Stewart Energy Sys- be done." One such as waste heat. Just as been proposed and some tems of Idaho raised pursuit considered fruit- water won't run uphill even patented. What is the millions in investments for less is the search for a naturally, heat won't run fatal flaw in them all? an irrigation pump that

perpetual motion ma- uphill from a cold body to a 2. SELF-PROPELLED worked without fuel. It was

chine—one that, once set hotter body. It goes only WATERWHEEL. Millers to get its power by in motion, will continue with the other way. who used waterwheels extracting heat from water

no additional energy The third law of thermo- often wondered whether it in a well. A simple required to maintain it. But, dynamics says that the would be possible to calculation shows that a by definition, such a one-way flow of heat never collect water from the race 3°F drop in one pound of machine violates the laws ends. The three laws at the bottom of the wheel water can release three

ofthermodynamics. have been succinctly sum- and somehow put it back British thermal units of heat

The first law, known as marized as 1) you can't into the reservoir above to energy, enough to lift the conservation of ener- win; 2) you can't break be used over again, thus that pound of water more gy, states (as an axiom even; and 3) you can't get eliminating the need for a than 2,300 feet in order to without proof) that energy out of the game. source of running water. irrigate a field. The cannot be created or Most people know that One way to make water go calculations are sound. destroyed; it can only be perpetual motion is sup- uphill is to use Archi- But why isn't the pump in transformed into work or posed to be impossible but medes' invention of a use today? heat. You can't get can't always say what's screw in a tube. Dip one 5. PERPETUAL CLOCK. something from nothing. wrong with a particular end of the tube in water, Around 1760 James Cox There is a loophole in the scheme. Here are some turn the screw, and water built a clock powered by a first law: Granted energy classic candidates for the rises. In 1618 English giant barometer. A reser- can't be created, but chimera. Can you figure physician Robert Fludd voir held 150 pounds of maybe it can be recap- out what's wrong with proposed the plan shown mercury, and an ingenious tured and used over and them? (The answers to all at right (figure B). A linkage turned the clock's over. Perhaps the work and seven problems will ap- waterwheel turns an Archi- winding wheel whenever the heat can be converted pear next month.) medes' screw to pump the mercury level back into energy to 1. THE OVERBAL- the water back up and into changed—either up or perform the work over ANCED WHEEL. The most the wheel again, recy- down, whether the mercury again. This assumption lies common proposal- is a cling the water supply rose or fell. Arthur W.J, G. behind designs of a battery wheel that turns forever indefinitely. Why won't the Ord-Hume reported in

that powers' a motor that because it is always machine work? Perpetual Motion: The runs a generator that heavier on one side than 3. MAGIC MAGNETS. History of an Obsession recharges the battery. Or a the other. In atypical There is something magi- that the clock worked perfectly. Ord-Hume the glass, the action w (the patent will probably be early next year), guessed that it would have continue indefinitely. awarded continued running for a Could a perpetual mo- we salute all inventors for their perpet- "few hundred years" had it tion machine be built everywhere not been dismantled and utilizing this principle? ual drive to create new and the expensive mercury 7. THESCHADEWALD' useful things. As a tribute removed more than a GRAVITY ENGINE. The to inventors' creativity, we century ago. Cox, who late physicist RA.M. will be running a pictorial in called his timepiece The Dirac conjectured that the an upcoming issue featur- Perpetual Motion, was a universal force of gravity is ing some of the more fa- man before his time. But slowly decreasing. If this mous inventions patented his clock wouldn't qualify is true, consider a wheel in the United States. DQ as a perpetual motion with one heavy weight at world. machine, even if it ran the top. As the weight prosperity to the forever. Why not? rotates to the bottom, the ask only that my initials be 6. DUNKING DUCK. wheel picks up kinetic inscribed on the wheel of The toy at right (D) has energy, which transfers every engine, so that my been around for about back to potential energy as genius may get the sort of 40 years. The bird's head is the weight swings up the recognition it deserves. .initially wet by dunking. other side. Since gravity is —Bob Schadewald." Despite bold hints Once it starts drying, the decreasing, the value of g such evaporation causes cool- is less on the second part that this was an April Fools' ing, and the vapor inside of the revolution. From the joke, Schadewald was seriously: peo- condenses, causing a formula mg,H>mgsH, it taken Some partial vacuum, which follows that there'should be ple wrote him and asked makes the red fluid (ethyl a net gain in kinetic energy, for more information, ether) rise in the tube from causing the wheel to. others sent drawings of the tail bulb to the head. speed up indefinitely with their own machines, and The bird becomes top- every revolution. one person even tele- heavy and tips to "drink" Science writer Robert phoned and offered to buy from the giass, wetting its Schadewald reported this the plans. The physics beak again. The tube in the breakthrough as his own in and mathematics of the tail rises above the liquid, Science Digest'm April Schadewald Engine are breaking the vacuum; the 1978. He closed the article valid. What's wrong with fluid flows back down the this way: "As of April 1, the machine? patent office tube into the tail section; 1978, 1 yield my invention As the U.S. and the bird rights itself 1o the public domain, that it enters its third century and again to repeat the cycle. may solve the energy crisis as patent number As long as there is water in and bring peace and 5,000,000 approaches VIDEO SCANS BAfinES

Not long after Pong, the ty. Electronic Arts' Earl

first successful video Weaver Baseball (IBM PC, game character, rico- Amiga, Apple II) goes for cheted across TV screens, Ihe pennant with split-

little video guys were screen visuals, full-season Slugging, pitching, and league play, trading and fielding on electronic drafting, more than 50 baseball diamonds. And fielding and hitting stats, the great American and more than 30 pitching pastime quickly became a stats, plus statistics on touchstone for sports- Mickey Mantle and other

related video games. historical players. It re- The. first baseball simu- creates the actual design lations put as much and dimensions of several demand on the imagina- ball lields and takes such tion ason the technology. realities as weather and The players were primitive wind into account. stick figures. The playing Accolade's original Hard- fields were crudely geo- ballwas a great baseball metric. And the games action game with limited delivered arcade action siratocic ele-rertts. Hard- but overlooked any simula- ball II (IBM PC, Amiga) tion of reality. The latest keeps the terrific play ac- baseball video games, tion, dresses up the

however, have it all: sports graphics, improves the action, managing strategy, animation, and enhances and real player simulation. the simulation with more Jaieco's Bases Loaded numbers, actually updat-

is just one of several ing your players' perform- baseball games for the ance for each at bat.

Nintendo Entertainment If you're not into System (NES) that hit deep joyslicks but love Straf-o- with action and simulation. matic, the paper-based Check out the bullpens of statistics game, take a teams from Boston to swing at MicroLeague Washington, DC, and you'll Sports Association's Micro-

find a stats-packed mix of to the Sega Master System. League's Baseball II, one fictional heavy hitters and In single-gameexhi.bition position of the outfielders. of the best statistical flyswatters. (Be sure to or tournament play, you On the Genesis system, management simulations exploit the muscie of the can choose from 26 teams Sega's Tommy- Lasorda on the market. Use one of Bases Loaded character modeled on the stats of Baseball boasts inset the program's historical known as Paste from real-world ball clubs. screens that display extra teams, or draft and trade Jersey.) Once you're on Ball games on the more field views as well as player your own lineup of the the field, Bases Loaded powerful 16-bit systems stats. Pick up a quick greatest players of all time.

fills the roster with action get even closer to broad- one-game exhibition or opt Manage a game and print features that include a cast quality. Hudson Soft's for a 30-game season. out a full box score with choice of pitching options, World Class Baseball for (The cartridge can save sports-page detail. batting styles, base steal- the IMECTurboGrafx-16 not seasons .in progress.) Okay, sluggers, All ing, and fielding. (Jaleco only provides more de- Computer owners can that's missing is for you to

has also-released Bases tailed graphics; it can also take their pick of baseball leap out of the dugout,

Loaded II.)' provide video screen inset temptations from pure brandishing that Power Reggie Jackson Base- pictures to help you keep a statistical simulation to Pad, joystick, or key- ball brings visual glamour "pitcher's- eye on the joystick-pummeling intensi- board.—Bob Lindstrom 100 OMNI STAR TECH

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into walls. He wasn't exac: : the i first saw him in a parking lot-outside a set the y

club. He came right up to my car out . most romantic guy I'd ever been with. of nowhere, and just stood there staring And -sured dr'ti kc- having all the lights at me With these big, black hypnotic on' or his friends watching. His body, eyes for what seemed like an eternity. well, a body's not everything—this guy

Then, wouldn't you know it, the car had a brain. If head size means wouldn't start right away. The whole anything, he's.a genius-. He really liked

lit It lightning body. all did, in fact. Finally . parking. lot up. started and my They left thundering.. I was scared at first—of they us alone. intense expe- course no one was around. I could see It must have been an

lights behind me until I lost him when rience for him because then he we hit traffic. gave me a little gift. It's probably really

It valuable where he comes from. He I couldn't stop thinking about him.

figured I'd io.se it, since he was so weird! 1 hadn't. seen him in must have

; for safekeep- the clu.b—you would have noticed this put it inside my head it's flowers here. guy right away. He was short, but I ing.-Maybe like giving

figured, Sowhat?Andaweekin Florida Or maybe we're.- engaged. I mean, he wouldn't have hurt him. The hair started to get real serious, talking about thing—the no-hair thing—was a radical settling down'here'and having chil- departure for me, but all men lose dren with me. This being our first date,

it their hair eventually, right? He had a I told him I'd have to give some- determined, no-nonsense, authoritative thought. After all, we come from very Our parents way about him, which f kind of liked. different backgrounds. And he was definitely new' to the area. would -have to meet first; Would our able to get along? I kept .thinking, How am I ever going friends be

I it,-. I home. And.four to see himagain? 1 looked for him Before knew was

every time I went out. Did he think I had hours had passed!

He said I'd; see him again, that I was WORD all the time in the world? I started •.ytasizing about him—what it would' "special" and "chosen." I wasn't so By Victc? a Lacas all' be like, what we would talk about. And sure I. believed him. Don't they say . coaming about 'him! You know, those things like that, afterward? Sure enough, (•Ho said thai I .viicky dreams where nothing makes it's been Ihree weeks and still no

1 I ^shouldn't have would see him again, that a iy sense and nothing's familiar but sign of him. knew

the first date. I 1 yCufit right in? gone to his place.on I was "special' and Wet!* he found me (he probably has guess it's the same rules all over.

' "chosen. " But don't they a i'iend who works for the-Motor Vehicle I started hearing that he'd been seen

3i.reau). He picked me.up (literally), upstate. I even went out late one all say things like nrd.l live way out in the suburbs. He night looking for him. I met a few ladies it's that? Sure enough, been ~-'jst have a good job because he had who were looking for him, too-. They saying he forced, three weeks and a hunch of people with him. I bet it's were really mad, -,\ didn t look like th the government— I mean, he was himself on them. They still there 's no sign of him. 9 wearing a uniform. the- type of ladies who would make up didn't look'like they It was real late. He must have come stories. But they

' •"aight from work. He was in a real should be doing so much complaining- hurry, too, and not very subtle. He came either. (They probably have the

r ant into my bedroom and whisked wrong guy anyhow.] I' tried to straighten iti-j away. There was a chauffeur-driven them out, you know, how. there's a something or other waiting outside. shortage of eligible men with respon-

O'ice inside the thing, we had a drink. sible jobs. "Hey, girls, wake up!" I said'. there." Woll, I did. It was really strong stuff "It's hand-to-hand combat out and made me kind of dizzy and light- Why didn't they just cool out about it? If 'leaded. He took me to a very inter- they'd be honest with !hernselves : for really esting place, but I was too dizzy to really a minute, didn't they have a oroy myself. He practically had to interesting time? They'd probably had right? carry me. I'felt like I was floating! a tot worse dates, He didn't talk about himseif but Somehow!. left reassured. So what everything that asKed me lots of questions. He seemed if I can't remember really interested. He just stared at me happened? Was it just a one-night intergalac- 'ho whole time, I felt like he was reading stand? Was he. just another extraterres- my. mind! He must have thought I tic playboy, playing the

was real smart because he asked me trial field? I'm pretty sure I had a good els of questions about, science, time. Maybe our evening together— alien .a n-ysics, and mathematics. I don't re- my big night of courtship—was member everything we talked about, lifelong commitment for him. Like a but he asked me questions like, "What 50-year marriage, you know?

I it, there's only one ma- is :ime?" I mean, how do I know Well, as see travels lot but .-.rat time is? But I guess I impressed jor drawback—he a — rvm because then he asked me lots of all things considered, a good "man" is o ;estions about religion. hard to find. DO Afterward we went to his room. The

•.lyle was like, I don't know, Cosmic Victoria iacasbas never seen a UFO. but- Zen—just a table with lots of gadgets she win aa;a short, interesting rutin