I

NEUTRINOS:
-COSMIC
BULLETS

THAT

COULD REVOLUTIONIZE COMMUNICATIONS

WHO OWNS
THE PLANETS?
SPACE

LAW COMES OF AGE

ASTRONOMY AS ART:
-SOME OBSERVATORIES 'WORTH OBSERVING

MIND VS. NATURE:

.f
i

THE OUTER

LIMITS

OF HUMAN POTENTIAL -PLUS: HOW REAL DRAGONS BREATHE FIRE 'SNEAK PREVIEW OF HOLLYWOOD'S NEW HORROR FANTASY* "A CANDID CONVERSATION 'WITH THE WHITE HOUSE

^""ISSi?-.^

onnaii
EDITOR & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: FRANK KENDIG ART DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO EUROPEAN- ljTOFi: DR, BFRf-.ARD DIXON C-tCTORO: ADVi-RllSlNG BIVERLE: VARD&LE EXECUTIVE VIOr-PR-SDEM"- IRVV N E B1LLMAN
.

FIRST

WORD

OMNIBUS COMMUNICATIONS

FORUM
EARTH SPACE
LIFE

Environment

Kenneth Brower

Astronomy
Biomedicine

Mark

R. Ctiartrand

II

Bernard Dixon
Patrick

20
22

STARS

Comment
Media
Report

Moore

THE ARTS

24
Art Gartt

UFO UPDATE

32

CONTINUUM
ARTFUL DODGER OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD
THE MICKEY MOUSE OLYMPICS

Data Bank

35

Article

Hai Hellman

44

notion
Article
Pictorial

Tom

Sullivan

50 54 58 66
70 76

MIND AND NATURE

EYES

Gregory Bate son

Trudy
E. Bell

ON THE UNIVERSE

HALFJACK

notion
Interview
Article
Pictorial

Roger Zelazny
Daniel Greenberg

FRANK PRESS
THE MATTER OF SPACE LAW
ALIEN

George

S.

Robinson

Cynthia Grenier

80

THE WAY OF CROSS AND DRAGON FUTURE FARMING

FLIGHT OF THE

Fiction

George

R. R.

Martin
Jr.

86

Article Article
Fiction Article
travel

Alan Anderson,
Peter Dickinson

go 96
102 107 137 140
144 146

DRAGON

THE MADAGASCAR EVENT

Robert Hai sty

HOW TO
:
.

WRITE AN SF NOVEL

Sam J.

Lundwall

Roy A. Gallant

^a^

SYMBIOSIS
'

Phenomena
Diversions

Roman

Vlshniae

GAMES
LAST

Scot Morris

WORD
S.

Opinion
Ve umel,
!

Bruce Wallace
c.-

Zover art
s

tor this

month's

Omni

OMNI, 1979 (ISSN GHM7T1), U

Number

Ccpy-ghi
.'

i:i:-:!

by 0"-ni Inia-ialkna!
:!

l;l;

-.-.

-igtits

'eserved. Published
?

space

artist

Don

Dixon's
J.K
lo.

"

ision of our largest planet,

''

-ii

'
*
:

'

-,.-=,-=,

territorial

;i:.yCur!i:;-.r(:L..ar.vi:-.riipar-, 2:

Hsrr^.'ss-.D'i. West Caldwell. N. J 07006. Distribute!]

upiter

Seen from
:

Dixon,

'ho nov.' lives in California,

:;
;

na?
semilicticn

cc"i)j eiec a^liriaboii

,i-j,.

wyk

and

real

places or perse*
r.;.3:
: '

MM
Oi'.-U.S. Ci-iv-da.
ij ,'D
:

n a t^n f,y 1-jASJ, This

-,.:,.-

cow

-::i(l''.=Q
<-

;--.] i..rrr,

|.,

Farm

-i:;;i,

au;:resi. '-

n-r-^c *: veili iiiS 4iC- -5W :h:::. Ell

to return
=

"t

'=.= -

=!i Ql-.'d..

;"E : a

at

New
i

s ii-nffj

appearance in

- ted

ad

a = - aftS a no all rights

When

the

first

reports

infamous "accident"
larch at the Three Mile iwer plant near Pennsylvania, ii seemed like
iut

of

a novel a

reactor

gone

al radioactive dust and gas spewing out over the countryside, thousands of people evacuating the area
in

panic.

One

could envision the

Pennsylvania to pump up public confidence-. The concern, of course, is that the fear spreads, there may never be another nuclear-power plant licensed in the United States. The pro-nuclear position was. stated by Walter Creitz, president of. Metropolitan Edison, which runs the Three Mile Island reactor. According lo Creitz, the nuclear industry has operated for 30 years
if

science-fiction scenario,
the "Harrisburg Crater"
for

complete with cordoned off,

'without

a single- nuclear-related

injury,. let

guarded, completely abandoned except roving-bands of mutants. (The first fictional account of this incident should appear any day how,. if it hasn't already.) Luckily, it appears now to have been only" a close call. The resulting fallout was not so much radioactive as political, but. nevertheless, it may yet prove to be lethal. The Three Mile Island incident galvanized both critics and proponents of nuclear energy inio action. For the critics. the accident at Three Mile Island provided a distinct advantage in the nuclear

alone death, to any member of the public an enviable record Tor any technological industry.'Both sides of the nuclear debate. have approached the Three Mile Island incident as though it were the most crucial event in
. .

mofe
eh
"":
.

the history of nuclear power. The critics see it as t^e realization of the dangers of reiving on miciear fission and, perhaps important, as a crucial setbackto the

__:.--:: we* industry,

t

interestingly, not
in

the =-.:.'.sd activists

the antjnuelear

- -'

"

senators
.

but a nosier congressmen and abvtously seeing votes

:

mir
iTfoe concern, of

debate fear. As Henry Kendall, president of the Union of Concerned "There were a number of Scientists, put people who were terrified, and that's a new
it.

_;; -; - jnd Biis issue have mourned the soapbox. The pro-nuclear ices "" nurse, are running scared; and
:

-----

...

-.-

.i

--:_:r-

;.,iiie

ici=nc!

course,
there

is

that

if

the

fear spreads,

may never be another

nuclear-power plant licensed in the United States. 9

in the nuclear debate." The repercussions of this element of fear were throughout the country, At Columbia University in New York City some 100 students staged a sit-in in Seeley W. Mudd Hall, the engineering building, demanding that the. university's small, soon-to-be-

component
felt

accident are stressing the impending. :"-:: s and the necessity of building more nuciear-power plants to prepare
=:

.;

for

the day

when the oil pumps

finally

run dry Bofli groups are desperately

activated nuclear reactor be dismantled immediately. The school's engineering faculty responded by declaring "a

-= emotion of --.-.;_ :a: -= ze the moment Thus the real fallout from the Three Mile
Island affair
__.-:
. .
-

has been
J

fear,

and

with

it

an
.-

: ;

rhetoric ratharthan

reason

moratorium

that

would

forestall either

fromcotfi sides o-:ne nuclear debate.

activation- or- dismantling of the reactor"

From one camp we hear

,vr-^-:
=

that nuclear

The professors stressed that they were not concerned about questions of safety but rather were "very concerned about the growing apprehension on campus and
hat mis st'ess has reached serious dimensions,"' Dr. William J. McGill, president- of the university, capitulated further. "I cannot and will not agree to
l

::-

,,

earn that nuclear

even

emotion, not oy logic curse of our species.

It

ts

perhaps

trie

activation ol She reactor while

president.'"

serve as

he said. Proponents of nuclear power have recognized this, growing fear and are scrambling desperately to assuage it. President Carter himself, donning his hat as a nuclear engineer, went to

Whatever the outcome, it appears that Three Mile island has forced the issue. Before we make a final decision, we would

Wisdom of Solomon found in the Apocrypha "for

do weft
fear
that
is

to look

back on

the

come from

nothing but a surrender of the helps reason."

DO

ntri&jor:

Dnnruii

U vv
I

f%
|

e are at (he Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

(Fermilab)

in

Batavia,

Illinois,

where the world's largest particle accelis "making" neutrinos. What is a neutrino? Simply, a mysterious subatomic particle that may reshape our total
erator

and then there's the opposite view low-technology less meat, minimum tillage, and small machinery Large vs small. Whom are we supposed to
believe?"

;:-- ' 1 -:-t ;~: American, and Dutch

.1

Polish. Irisn.

origins.

Noted,

among other things, for his sureness of :" eZe;:" ose"o prominence by
r

understanding of the universe, force a rewrite of all the textbooks on how the sun works, and perhaps provide a final
explanation of fhe very nature of matter. Producing neutrinos "in captivity" is a complicated and astronomically expensive business, but as Hal Hellman,

date has dealt primarily with earth-oriented legalities, ranging from communications satellites lo product liability in the manufacture of space equipment. However, these issues paie
to

Space law

when compared
legal principles

with the far more exotic and guidelines that will

.' z ..:: \eo:s swa-'cs n the same year for his stories 'He Who Shapes" and "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps ot His Mouth." in 1969 he wrote Damnation Alley, which was later released as a major motion picture by 20th Century-Fox The cast was headed by Jan-Michael Vincent, George

manned

necessarily apply to long-duration missions, permanent space

author of more than 22 books on science technology and physics, explains, it does have its practical advantages. "Someday neutrino radios, because of their superior penetrating power, may allow us to send messages straight through the center of Earth, or may provide a more rapid means of communication with inhabitants of other
planets."
in

communities, and the environmental

alteration of other planets,

known as

Zelazny novels under

of Light,

Peppard. and Dominique Sanda. Roger did want us to mention that the film bore little resemblance to the book. Other film option are Lord

"terraforming."

Already a few pioneering attorneys have taken up the challenge of space law and are committed to the occupation of space as the next evolving phase in human destiny. George S. Robinson, the world's
first

The Dream Master, Sign of the Unicom, and Courts of Chaos George R. R. Martin ("The Way of Cross and Dragon," page 86) published his first science -fiction story in 1971. Martin has subsequently sold and published more
articles,

Dodger

The neutrino is the hottest story physics to date. Catch "The Artful of the Physical World" on page 44. Energy-intensive vs. energy-efficient: A

attorney to receive

a Ph.D.

in

space

than

heated debate has divided the agricultural community into two camps, each offering a conflicting view on the future of agriculture. Alan Anderson, a specialist in experimental agriculture, examines both sides in "Future Farming" (page 90). "There are two ways of thinking about the future," writes Anderson. "The hightechnology bag farming under bubbles and in skyscrapers, supertractors,
vast soilless layouts, that sort of thing;
10

law, files a provocative report. "The Matter Space Law," starting on page 76. P h os op h e r-a nt h ro polo g s t-c y bernetic ian Gregory Bateson offers some engaging thoughts in Omni's excerpt of his latest work (see page 54). "Mind and Nature." Bateson challenges all of us to become more aware of the pattern that connects all living things, a subject he will discuss further in an exclusive upcoming Omni

of

Winner
novella

40 pieces of short fiction, several and two short-story collections. of the Hugo Award in 1974 for his A Song for Lya, Martin was four

times a finalist for the Nebula Award. He also won the Locus Award for The Storms ofWindhaven, a novella published in 1975. Finally, don't miss Omni's exclusive pictorial on 20th Century-Fox's new science- fiction thriller Alien. Described as
"the dark side of Close Encounters," Alien promises to be the smash hit of the year. Film correspondent Cynthia Grenier's coverage begins on page SO. (Also see The Arts/Film, page 24,)DO

interview.

Considered one

of the

most respected

science-fiction writers of the past 15 years,

Roger Zelazny

("Halfjack,"

page 66) was

OMNI

CDonruiuaiicMTorus
Editor

Chi

Dorm.in; SeraO' Ed/to". Di

n -Editor-

Ben
Df.
!

;an fdilor.
;b

Editors:

Owen

Davie:

nications, February 1979]

Science or God? would like to ask Saul Kent [Commuhe believes

I

if

survival
so.
it

science
Mont Evans, Dr. Patrick Moore. Oi son, Sandy Shakociu:
Editors:

is

a substitute
list

for

God.
of in

must by all means continue to do perhaps behooves us to give serious

Mr. Kent's

of possible benefits

lowitwng

resulting from a
vitro

designed program
is

consideration to the only other alternative, this planet prove

fruitless:
It

reproduction

quite horrifying to me.

should our efforts on exodus.

What makes him

Lynda Chyhai; Designer

think that

man has

right

seems
be
of

to "unlimited youth, intelligence, wealth,

will

our any assistance, preoccupied as

unlikely that
politics,

governments

Perry

Colerr

and access
H
call that

to the universe" 9

they are with

finances, resources,
vast,

ditor: Hildegard Kron:

Staff

Photographer. Pal

ADMINISTRATIVE

Nature, God, or whatever one wishes to which controls us provides its own checks and balances and follows its own

and

war.

It

Project
likely

is up to us. Noah will certainly be

most

design. We, as humans, are not fully evolved; we are incapable of tapping our own total brain potential. To desire to control human evolution, using the limited human judgment of what is best for man, is nothing but folly. Stacy Jannis Providence, R.I.
Bod Guceione.
Jr

expensive, but definitely not impossible. If you have anything to

contribute, from practical suggestions, through financial assistance, to your own person as a colonist, urge you to contact me through this magazine. This appears to be a logical first step.
I

Toronto, Ont,

Tom Gale Canada

UFO Challenge
is to read these endless debates concerning UFO research. have only two questions. If Ufology employs an indefinite number of experts,
it

ADVERTISING OFFICES

How funny
literary
I

New

York (Beverley Wardale) Omni Public [ernational Lid. 909 Third Avenue. New 10028 Tel (212) 593-330' Tela* no.

23712

Impending Doom response to fiction editor Ben Bova's pitch for more money to NASA [March 1979], citing Skylab's final failure, would
In
I

like to

state that

NASA was criminally

why

hasn't over 30 years of investigation revealed a conclusive answer to who, why,

and what

for?

/1H7DH Tel(0i|262-033t Tele EDITORIAL OFFICES 9D9 Third Avenue. New York
it

Second, ever since 1948 investigators have been firing hard photographic evidence toward the UFO skeptics, not fazing their stubbornness a fraction. challenge you, Philip Klass, and you, James Oberg: What evidence do you possess that can convince me and the
I

negligent in sending up Skylab in the first If any space hardware cannot be 1 ,000-plus-percent safe to all inhabitants of this earth, then becomes outrageously irresponsible to launch it.
place.

made

it

More money

for

NASA

would not have

changed this total lack of irresponsibility, but probably would add more hardware
with which to threaten mankind.

NASA

world that the UFO phenomenon is nothing but a case of swamp gas, weather balloons, or a wild human imagination?

Henry Williamsport, Md.

Jeff
Paler Goldsmith; Press

people responsible for this space bomb should stand in court for criminal negligence and crimes against mankind. If conquest of space means possible disasters to mankind anywhere, anytime then let's not conquer space!

and

Public Relations Dire

Howard Meyer

Oberg
BUREAUS

replies: Taking the

second question
Behold the lowly
turtle;

Little

Neck, N.Y

a perversion of science to skeptic to disprove anything, especially a topic so nebulous that you've
first, it is

demand a

he only makes

progress by sticking his neck out!

Seriously, Skylab's troubles
totally

got to ask that

first

question about

it.

come

from

Gale's Ark? don't mean to be pessimistic, but, as as Lean tell, civilization as we know stands about a one-in-ten chance of
I

far

it

unforeseen solar storms that heated the earth's atmosphere enough to reach Skylab In its "safe" orbit and drag it earthward. Nobody on Earth could have forecast that; the mission was completely
CON" INLCD ON PAGE
133

FDRunn
In which the readers, editors, and correspondents discuss topics arising out of Omni and theories and speculation of general interest are brought forth. The views published are not necessarily those

and safeguards that are needed. However, in the case of the seal hunt, lack of consideration of all the factors involved
has led to ridiculous protests, which undermine the credibility "f such organizations as Greenpeace. The campaign against the seal hunt reminds me of a sad chapter in Canadian history around the turn of the century. At that time the federal government had
refused to sign treaties with Indians in northern Alberta. These Indians lived a traditional life-style of trapping, hunting,

Let the Newfoundlanders continue eke out a living without unnecessary harassment from the world!

to

Daniel

D.

Horsman

Fredericton, N.B.,

Canada

Of the editors. Letters for publication

should be mailed to Omni Forum, Omni Magazine. 909 Third Avenue. New York.
N.Y.

Loves Free Enterprise

In

the article "Planet Antarctica" [March

. .

10022.

In
I

am

Favor of the Hunt disconcerted that your prestigious

1979] Kenneth Brower states, ". it appears that our use of space will be pure exploitation. Mankind will not benefit from
it;

rich

men

will."

magazine appears to support the campaign against the seal hunt off the coast of Newfoundland IContinuum, February 1979], This campaign is a classic example of good intentions run
While may be an overstatement to say government's regulation has completely eliminated the cruel practices of several years ago, they have
it

and fishing. Because treaties had not been signed, the Indians did not "qualify" for government aid in the form of medical care or emergency provisions when they were starving. Many died from starvation, and many more died from the diseases
brought to this continent by the white immigrants (smallpox, tuberculosis, and
lime that the Indians' pleas for help were ignored the government decided that steps had to be taken to protect diminishing wildlife. A game reserve was created that took away the Indians' prime hunting grounds and an important source of food and
At the

Under free enterprise, that's impossible. None will invest unless there will be a and there will be no return unless
return,

others find

it

beneficial.

We certainly cannot say that space programs to date have enriched the aerospace industry to the detriment of
mankind.

that the federal

Charles M. Hart
Cranford, N.J.

certainly

been

drastically curtailed. To

same

oppose the

seal hunt per se is akin to opposing the "cattle slaughter" that provides us with our beef, or the "fish slaughter" off the east and west coasts of Canada and the United States. The seal hunt is an important part of Newfoundland life. To terminate would
it

Specific Pain
Mr. J. B. Tucker's

examination of the gains

being

made

in in

the area of research on the February

chronic pain
crucial

Omni [page

have serious social and economic effects Not only does the seal hunt provide an important supplement to the meager incomes of many Newfoundlanders, but
also allows them to retain their independence and self-respect. Some people have proposed that a ban on the seal hunt should be accompanied by compensation to the hunters. This glorified form of welfare, where the men would be paid to sit around and do nothing, would open the door to the problems that emerge whenever welfare
it

clothing the buffalo. Game laws were introduced regarding the hunting and trapping of other animals. All this was done without a care for the well-being of
the Indians!

sealers

Now, realize that opponents of the seal hunt do not desire such nhumane inconsideration for the Newfoundland and their families. Nevertheless,
I
i

financial

the single-minded pursuit of the antiseal-hunt campaign could very well have serious adverse repercussions on the
quality of

861 offers a vivid example of the most problem facing modem medical science, a basic lack of lateral thinking. The current approach to control of chronic pain involves the attempts to block transmission of the signal by removing the factor responsible for its generation. While information as to the psychological basis of pain has only recently come to light, we have long known that pain serves a specific purpose. Quite simply, pain informs us that a particular

human life in Newfoundland. There are many cases in the United

becomes

a chronic part of

life.

Loss of

self-esteem, alcoholism, and social instability are apt to be the "benefits"

reaped from such a scheme. am concerned about the quality of our environment and the preservation of our
I

and Canada that need our attensuch as the hazards of nuclearwaste disposal, the near-extinction of the peregrine falcon in the United States, and
States
tion,

the chemical spraying of

New

Brunswick's

forests for a quarter of a century to protect

body system or tissue has been injured or has ceased to function in a proper fashion. Similarly, a smoke detector that sounds off during the night is informing us that a potentially dangerous fire has occurred. To remove the battery of the detector in an attempt to return to a pleasant dream would be illogical. It is just as illogical to interrupt any pain signal without correcting the situation that created the pain. To throw
one's

wilderness areas.

groups
to
14

like

believe that we need Greenpeace to draw the

I

the trees (what about the people?). Let us

hands

in

the

air in frustration
is

and

public's attention to important issues

and

be more harm than good

not
-result of

apply

political

pressure for the changes

sidetracked by a nonissue where is apt to be the any further intervention.

seek the comfort

injustice.
If

of painkillers

an
;

we see

pain as the major problem and

OMNI

COMTIMUED ON FW3E 134

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Two
first

years ago we wrote a piece on the startling product of the decade. The personal computer. It actually brought miracle of computing power within reach of small businesses. At less than $1000, it was even affordable for home use. That was two years ago. Today, that same unit, and other second and third generation models are still being sold. Enter now Interacts fourth generation Americanmade personal computer with total sound. color, 16,000 bytes or words of usable memory, and superb ease of handling at hundreds ot dollars less than any compar-

most
the

That's why High/Scope, research foundation, was

an edu itional commiss ned to develop z gramfori The Lettei sscnooiers Beci through Word Root ar, Critical Reading and Writing .__ for the 8 to takenotesand 15 year old. Students prepare assigni ugh the comnilar math and foreign language ams are also being prepared. By comin, any one ot these courses given by u or commercial school could easily
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Knockdown'"
7

GIANT COMPUTER HARDWARE

Beneath its cover is the Intel 8080^ microprocessor brain a powerful logic component used in computers costing tens of thousands of dollars. Interact loads data up to 5 times faster than most other compacts. Its 8080 brain does all of the complex processing and retrieval data saving,
chores.
All that's left is

Dogfight1" centratlon

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"

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Data Tape.

Add-Em-Up'" Biorhythm" and 1 Blank

typing

in

the data

through the 9 inch, 53-key standard typewriter keyboard.

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IT

COSTS LESS

Fourteen programs are actually more than other computers have to offer. They're yours FREE with your purchase of the Interact. If, after 15 days you are not satisfied with your Interact, you may return it for a prompt refund of the purchase price. Sorry, but you'll have to return the 14 programs and the data cassette also. The unit is backed by a ninety-day parts and labor limited factory warranty.
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PHOENIX OF CRESTED BUTTE

EARTH
By Kenneth Brower
1971 cars
in

W Mitchell was driving to

San Francisco when a truck The cap to his gas tank and the gas ignited. Mitchell
hit

wheelchair through the town's

muddy

In work he was a gripman on the cable

his motorcycle.

flew open,

streets, campaigning for mayor, with just one issue on his mind. He spent $45 on advertising a bold and unprecedented move in Crested Butte. He won by 20

was,

in his

own words,

"burnt up." For

votes, a margin of victory greater,

months his eyes were bandaged. When the wrappings were removed, he round he could see. Plastic surgeons rebuilt his
lace as best they could. Mitchell taught the stubs of his hands first to hold cups and newspapers, then the controls of airplanes. He learned to fly. With the settlement money (rom the motorcycle crash he bought a Cessna 207. In 1975,
taking
off

proportionately, than

Jimmy

Carter's

margin in 1976. In 1978 Mayor Mitchell, still a glutton for punishment, announced his intention to fight the giant mining
corporation that wanted the molybdenum. Of his first accident, the mayor of

was not angry; his instinct was to explain. "I wanted to go into the schoolyard and tell them about what had happened to me that had been in a bad fire, but that could still do different things." Teachers ran up to hush the children. Mitchell changed his mind and just walked on. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1943. His career before his accidents had been
I I

Corps on turning seventeen, then selling insurance, substitute teaching, and taxi driving
varied: the Marine

Crested Butte remembers nothing. "The brain is too smart for that," he says. He

afterward.

He had worked

in

radio

in

from the

airfield at

Gunnison,
still

Colorado, Mitchell realized that his wings

were

icy.

He chopped power he

had

some runway left but the plane came down too fast and crashed, breaking his back. His legs paralyzed now, he moved to Cresled Butte, Colorado, a village of 1 ,000 few enough inhabitants that his face and wheelchair soon became familiar
everyone and ceased to draw stares. In 1977 a deposit of molybdenum valued at $7 billion was discovered under
to

does recall his four months in the hospital, and the many months of helplessness afterward, and the slowly departing hypersensitivity of his hand stubs, and" 20 sessions of plastic surgery. (He could never grow accustomed to going under the knife.) He does nof remember being
particularly

depressed.

the mountain just west of his adopted home. Later that year Mitchell rolled his

Mitchell did a lot of walking. An ex-Marine, on walks he wore his .government-issue, wide-brimmed Smokey the Bear hat, in order to shield his skin grafts from the sun. As he passed schoolyards, children ran to the fences, shouting, "Monster! Monster!" Mitchell

sales, newscasting, disc still has a radio announcer's resonance the fire may have charred him outside, but everything * inside emerged intact.) In Honolulu in 1964, on his discharge from service, he marched in protest against the Vietnam War. He had liked the Marine Corps, the parades, the discipline, the shooting he was an expert rifleman when he had hands but he felt perfectly comfortable in this new kind of parade. An affinity for liberal causes developed in him. As a campaign worker for Senator Robert Kennedy, he visited Colorado for the first time, and then California. Kennedy's

Hawaii

jockeying. (Today his voice

assassination temporarily soured, but

failed to
kill,

his affection for political

causes.

He was never much concerned with the environment. While he resided in California, he visited Yosemite National Park, cead John Muir, and joined the Sierra
Club, but he was not a great outdoorsman. "I was the laziest bum in the whole world. wasn't even a hiker was a walker." When he first got to know Colorado well, it was on the motorcycle with the faulty gas cap, the year before it failed him. "I was playing Easy Rider. drove up through
I

Mesa Verde, Durango, and Silverton. It was so green that thought was in a beer commercial." (As an aesthete, he was still mostly the ex-Marine.) He admits, a little
I I

Mining "Red Lady"

16

embarrassedly, that he seldom strayed more than 100 feet from the motorcycle. He first saw Crested Butte through the window of his Cessna, not long before crashed. "It was just the perfect place. found a
it
I

OMNI

CONTINUED ON PAGE

128

EYEINTHESK

'By Mark

R.

Chartrand

III

n a rainy afternoon ten years

siis at

from now an astronomer walks into a basement observatory and a televisionlike screen. An operator
dials,

occurrence by the end of the 1980s. The space telescope once the Large Space Telescope but now shrunken by budget problems is due to be launched in

view. All the

windows put together

give a

panorama

not visible from Earth.

Far from replacing earthly observatories, the space telescope will complement them. These thousands

pushes buttons, checks

makes adjustments.
screen

dozens

Stars

and appear on the

1983; that date could

change because

of

of

of them, in the heart of

a distant cluster.

The astronomer steers

problems with the space shuttle's engines. This new eye in space should help us answer many of the teasing problems of
the universe:
it and evolve? Are there really black holes? Where do Quasars get their energy? Viewed from far above Earth's turbulent air. the stars will appear one tenth the

telescopes are

still

the most cost-effective

way to make most astronomical new facility will be

observations. The

the telescope to the single point of light

he wants to observe, then

commands

How old is it? How did form How fast is expanding?

it

reserved for the crucial studies that peer at fainter objects or that pin down stellar
positions

the telescope to place the proper instrument in this case a spectro-

more

precisely.

graph in the light path. Hours later he walks out. his data stored on reels of magnetic tape, while the operator goes on to another researcher's program. A few weeks later two technicians prepare for some minor maintenance on the telescope, interrupting its usual round-the-clock operation. Carefully donning their space suits and picking up tools, they pass through the airlock of
the space shuttle, drifting at a speed of 29,000 kilometers per hour above the

.size

seen in ground-based instruments. Because the telescope puts the star's light
it

into a smaller area on a photograph, will be able to see fainter objects and scan a volume of space 350 times greater than

The space telescope contains a 2.4-meter mirror, with five major scientific instruments, their support devices, a power supply with solar panels, and a radio to relay the observations to Earth. Around all this is a shield to protect against stray light and micrometeoroids. The space telescope will be carried into
orbit

that

now open to us.

by the space

shuttle, the

"space
just

blue-and-white globe of Earth 600 kilometers below. Slowly they float over to the space telescope and begin working.
This scenario should be a

common

Unobstructed by the filtering atmoit will peer far into the ultraviolet and infrared regions of the spectrum on either side of the part we see. These wavelengths carry important information about the hottest and coolest objects in space. Each part of the spectrum is a window onto the universe with a unique
sphere,

truck" of the 1980s.

fit

into the shuttle's of

about the size

The telescope will cargo bay. which is a DC-9. During the

telescope's 10- to 15-year lifetime, shuttle missions will stop by occasionally for minor

maintenance and once

or twice to hring

the satellite to Earth for refurbishing. On the ground the Goddard Space
Flight Center, at Greenbelt. Maryland, will supply facilities for astronomers using the telescope Each investigator will have to ask for telescope time six months to a year
in

advance. A group of scientists

will

review the proposal's merits and. if they it. fit the project into an observing schedule. To make full use of the many astronomers

accept

telescope, the work of

will

be closely interleaved.
will

All

actual

telescope operations
specialist.

be handled by a

An

entire

the problems to

book could be written about be tackled by this new

astronomer's tool. We can say for certain will help us establish the distance that scale of the universe and improve our
it

knowledge
galaxies.

of the evolution of stars

and

It may even detect unseen planets circling nearby stars and confirm

or disprove the existence of black holes.

The most

exciting prospect

is

that

Free of Earth's distorting a

IS

the

space telescope

will

open

distant si

serendipitous discoveries, unguessable now. will add yet another piece to solving the puzzle of our fascinating universe.

OO

OMNI

FAT

FALLACIES

By

Dr.

Bernard Dixon

oes any government have the

right not simply lo advise citizens about healthy diet habits but to ensure that they consume precisely what it considers good for them? Norway is the outstanding example of a country that has chosen this brand of nutritional totalitarianism. Since 1975

Second,

it's

becoming abundantly

clear

that the saturated-versus-unsaiurated-fat

Norwegians have found themselves maneuvered by tax incentives and disincentives toward an officially endorsed diet. Farmers, importers, and the wholesale and retail trade have also been
regimented into line under the government's "integrated nutrition, food,

hypothesis is hopelessly vague. What seems to matter is not our consumption of either of these two broad categories of fat but our intake of specific fatty acids. We cannot yet be certain, but the latest evidence (British MedicalJoumal, 1979, Vol. 1, p. 484) suggests that one polyunsaturated fatty acid in particular may be important in the prevention of coronary disease. Eicosapentenoic

reduces the amount of fat and cholesterol in the bloodstream. The evidence has always been inconclusive; so two experimenters at the University of
circulating

Oslo,

Dr. E.

Rasmussen and
distinct

Dr.

A.

Hpstmark, set out

to resolve the issue.

They bred two

groups

of rats:

acid remember the name is common in fish oils. And Eskimos, whose diet is rich
in this substance, are known for treedom from coronary trouble.

their

"energetic" animals, keen to exercise voluntarily on a treadmill, and "lethargic" ones, reluctant to take exercise. Next they divided each group into two subgroups. Half were allowed access to a wheel, and the others were denied that pleasure. The result was that the energetic rats given exercise facilities ran 12 to 15 kilometers a

and agriculture policy" The main aim of the policy is to curb people's consumption of saturated animal fats and to increase their appetite tor the polyunsaturated vegetable variety The payoff Big Brother hopes will be a
dramatic
disease.
It is perhaps ironic that the four years that have seen the launching of the Norwegian program have also witnessed a damning scientific revolt against its principal tenets. Earlier this year one of the world's most distinguished experts on heart disease, Sir John McMichael, summarized the position in a major article in the Brrt/s/i MedicalJoumal (1979, Vo|.1, p. 173}. Pointing out that comparisons between different countries do not support the link between animal fats and coronary disease and that some vegetable fats are

day while the others ran only 2

kilometers.

to

Time

totalitarianism

Eicosapentenoic acid is certainly my candidate as a heart-attack preventer will tell. Meanwhile, nutritional based on incomplete, controversial data seems unwise, to say

animals' blood regularly,

Rasmussen and H0stmark analyzed the and their findings

were unambiguous. The amount of

exercise taken on the wheel had no effect

fall in

the incidence of coronary

the least. Coincidental^, it was from Norway that a report came recently to threaten another
fondly cherished myth about

body fats. An

important part of the ideology of exercise has been a belief that strenuous activity

on circulating cholesterol and fats within group supplied with a treadmill. But there was a difference between the two groups that were prevented from exercising. The energetic males had an
either

increasing concentration of fats

in

the

blood with age. At one year it was four times that in their lethargic brethren. The Oslo investigators conclude that the rats with an inherited desire to exercise had also inherited a tendency to develop high

blood fats and presumably cardiovascular disease {Circulation

Research,

Vol. 42, p. 598).

It's

likely

but

not absolutely certain, that these results

positively harmful,

time has

come to

reject

he concluded, "The advice to

can be extrapolated

to

human beings
in

substitute polyunsaturated fats for animal

conclusion that may once again put another piece of conventional wisdom

and dairy fats in the nation's diet." So much for a fashionable piece of health advice. And if the evidence is that
controversial,

jeopardy. If we are to accept that lesson, though, there is another implication of the Oslo
of consideration. Among the energetic rats, the two sexes contrasted dramatically in their choice of exercise. The females were very keen and played on

how much

less justified are

work worthy

government measures to dictate the gastronomic habits of an entire populace? But where does the scientific debate leave those of us who worry about heart disease? Two points emerge very strongly. First, there js no serious disagreement with orthodox advice about taking exercise and avoiding tobacco. Obesity is always
harmful, but diet
is

the wheel more as their life progressed. The males began less actively and took even less exercise as they grew older. Whether this "age-related tendency

towards sloth"
acid abundant in fish oil may be the Eskimos' secret tor preventing heart disease.

in

less important than

fatty

human
guess.

condition,

males is typical of the would not dare to

I

exercise and abstinence from tobacco.

20

DO

OMNI

HIDDEN EARTH

5TMRS
By
Patrick

Moore

For
there
is

now we have been hearing about "new

several years
planets." There are suggestions

home, moving

in

a path similar

to

our

own?

This brings us to "Counter-Earth." a

that our familiar

companions

Venus, Mars, and the rest

may not be
one

Mercury,

all

to the sun's family, that

hypothetical planet that used to be taken very seriously and still crops up occasionally in the literature. The theory is straightforward enough.

years ago. a science-fiction film portrayed a Counter-Earth so like our own planet that an astronaut landing there found what seemed to be his own wife and colleagues
waiting!
it

is

an

intriguing theory and, of course,

member

or

more

still

await discovery. This

Earth

moves round

idea is not new. A century ago it was widely thought that another planet could be found within the orbit of Mercury. It was

tance
plete

of slightly less

the sun at a mean disthan 148.8 million

quite true that a planet exactly

beyond the
all

sun would be
the
ly

invisible. This

applies to

kilometers, taking 365.25

its circuit.

even given a name: Vulcan. While Vulcan does not exist, the case
a planet orbiting at the outer rim of the

circular.
for

We

are

days to comThe orbit is not perfectly somewhat closer to the

but the vari-

"superior conjunction." Mars

cently,

known planets. When a planet is directbeyond the sun, it is said to be at passed

re-

sun

in

December than in June,

through superior conjunction quite

solar system is much stronger. This seems even more likely now that we have found remote Pluto to be more like a couple of ice balls than an Earth-style planet. can give no proof, but in my view, Planet Ten is probably real. However, it is bound to be so faint that its discovery will be largely a
I

matter of luck. (En passant, we must stop referring to Pluto as the outermost planet. Since January, it has been closer to the sun than Neptune is, and this will remain true until 1999. hasten to add that Pluto's path is tilted so sharply that there is no reason to fear a head-on collision with Neptune when they cross in their orbits.) But what about a planet much nearer to
I

is not great. The other planetary orapart from that enigmatic Pluto. Moreover, Earth's Our mean distance from the unchanging, with no suggestion that vary in the foreseeable future; consider a planet exactly on the far side of the sun, also moving at a distance of 148.8 million kilometers in a period of 365.25 days. Obviously, the earth, the sun, and the extra planet the CounterEarth would be lined up. We earthdwellers could not see Counter-Earth at all, because it would be drowned in the sun's glare. It was once said that conditions there might well be much the same as they are here, allowing for the existence of intelligent life. In fact, as recently as 15

ation

which

is

why

it

has been absent

it

bits are also nearly circular, of the

from the night sky. We will not see again until later this year.
tic.

well

orbit is stable.

sun
it

is

will

Now

Unfortunately, science can be unromanInteresting as would be to speculate* about conditions on Counter-Earth, would not be really profitable. There is an easy way to show that Counter-Earth does
it it

not exist.
All

planets are perturbed tugged in their orbits by the gravity fields bodies. Because Earth and Counter-Earth would be separated by the

aside

of other

whole diameter would

differ.

of their orbit,

297.6

million

kilometers, the perturbing effects

straight-line

on them

Result: Before long, the

arrangement would be dearc,

stroyed. Counter-Earth would swing out to the side of

its

and we would see

it.

Moreover, Counter-Earth would produce its own perturbing effects upon Venus and the other planets, and these influences would have been detected long ago. Nowadays, of course, there is direct proof that there is no massive, unknown body in our region of the solar system, Unmanned spacecraft have kept in touch with Earth even when almost on the far side of the sun, and their paths would have

been

violently twisted

lurking Counter-Earth.

by the gravity of any There could be

some

small asteroids moving more or less

in our own orbit, but nothing more significant than that, have always thought that the CounterEarth concept is one of the most fascinating in ancient lore. It is amusing to imagine a world perhaps identical to ours, with people of equal technological skill, less than 300 million kilometers away And such
I

w planets may yet be found.

pity to realize that there

is

none!

DO

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HLM

THE ARTS
By James Delson

Star

Trek The Motion

Picture,
is

now in

the works at Paramount,

one of the few real mysteries in a business where you can learn practically everything about any film by making a few

of outer space, and stacks of film. Production sketches litter the couch, several tentative advertisements cover a table, and some

mementos

to simulate weightlessness that get

all

material about the

phone calls. Though myriad rumors have

claimed to detail the picture's plot line, props, sets, and special effects, the studio has made an immense effort to keep the
facts

color paintings of the revamped starship Enterprise share a chair next !o his desk. He is calmly philosophical about the film, now three months over its original shooting

joggled up. There's nothing we can do but wait around, at thousands of dollars an hour, and have them put right. We're learning so much that feel like we've just finished a semester at college: Space Suit 101 Advanced EVA, and Special Effects
I ,

Seminar. Everything

in

science

fiction is

schedule.

new and
have any crises that held us
"It's

different."
for the cast.

under

tight security,

Guards have
all

"We

didn't

Except

Roddenberry has

been ordered
itors

to bar the

stages to

vis-

up," he reports.

just in the nature of

without proper identification.

science
at
"

fiction that

things tend to take

After having several visits to the Star

Trek sets

canceled without explanation

I

the last minute,

finally

with producer-coscreenwriter

managed to talk Gene Rodnow

in its

Of the half-dozen 5F pictures, shooting in Los Angeles, most have gone over budget or over schedule or have had to set back their announced
longer." He's right.

managed to reunite the entire crew of the TV show Even Leonard Nimoy, as the elusive Vulcan with a human heart, can be found on the new Enterprise bridge. This means more to Roddenberry than a guaranteed box-office draw What he
wants is the depth of characterization an actor can create after he's had ten yearslo
reflect

denberry about

his movie,

sixth

premieres.

month

of filming.

Roddenberry, a shaggypilot

haired ex-fighter

and perennial op-

timist, met me at Paramount's Building E, headquarters for his film. The creator-producer of theSIar Trek TV series seems an unlikely choice for cult hero, much less guru to the millions of devoted "Trekkies" who made the show the most popular

science-fiction

program

in

history

"We can storyboard every scene out," Roddenberry explains, "but that just doesn't work when there are so many variAll you have to do is go out with your new space helmet and find that the glass reflects the camera, and suddenly you're dead for the day. In a regular picture everyone knows how to use the telephone, catch a taxi, or whatever But we're dealing
ables. with

on his role. "The actors are older now" he says. "So

they have a broader grip on life. They'll be playing the same characters as before, but you'll see more of their insides here. This is particularly true with [William] Shatner and Nimoy. We got into deep discussions in polishing the script, and their
input

Roddenberry's office is crammed with memorabilia from the series, several real

space

suits that don't

fit,

space

meant a

lot in

making

this story

come

gloves that won't close properly, and wires

alive again."

the

Re-creating Srar Trek has been Roddenberry's dream for nearly a decade, but first day of shooting was more like a day doing The Twilight Zone than his own show. "It was a feeling of total dejavu," he recalls. "It took two or three days before we
finally

looked

at

each other and

said,

'We're really doing this again, aren't we.' thought there'd be exultation after the

We
it

first

day.

had planned a
It

came

off.

was just

party, but none of too big a shock after

ten years. "We're trying to remain true to the spirit of the show yet still create a feature film that will please audiences who have never heard of Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock," Roddenberry comments. "Our constant worryis how much Star Trek must be kept in Star Trek The Motion Picture "We would have had much easier we'd been able to design the film from scratch. It would have been a lot less trouble to work out the technical details. For example, everyone believed the old transporter on television, but after Star Wars
it it
it

Spock and Captain

24

OMNI

CONTINU-1G

ON PAGE

130

p'l

_,,.,.

l_

E N

TOMSKERRITT SIGOURNEY WEAVER VERONICA CARTWRIGHT HARRY DEAN STANTON JOHN HURT IAN HOLM.YAPHET KOTTOS
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER RONALD SHUSETT PRODUCED BY GORDON CARROLL, DAVID GILER AND WALTER HILL DIRECTED BY RIDLEY SCOTT S^ORY BY D ANOBAN NON S RONALD SHUSETT SCREENPLAY BY DAN O'BANNON MUSIC JERRY GOLDSMITH PANAVISION 4 EASTMAN KODAK COLOR* hol -g=?-gJ PRINTS BY DELUXE' , nnrSi^HKfl .,.. .,., ,. , . , ,,
I

:i.

BOOKS

THE AET5
By Robert Anton Wilson
years ago, old-timers may Thirty remember,
conservative scientists
It

solemnly proclaimed that we would never reach the moon. is a measure of technology's acceleration that most will now admit that we can reach the closer stars "eventually" But they add thai any
thought of crossing the entire galaxy is "mere science fiction." One wonders whether the same neophobic voices will be arguing in 2379 that, no matter how far we can travel in our galaxy, is ridiculous to imagine flight to another galaxy What brings this to mind is the distinguished English science writer Adrian Berry, whose mind-boggling new book, The iron Sun (Warner, New York), persuasively outlines a way to make interstellar flights of any distance without violating
it

What he does assume and makes a good case for is that within 200 years or so we will be able to exploit the technolog-

Berry can say that his Trans- Galactic Rapid Transit System is possible according to black-hole theory

ical

opportunities of black holes. This

is

matter of time
Berry's
sical

until
first

and that is only some latter-day Marit

only four

when you consider that decades separated Einstein's E= mc 3 and the first atomic bomb. Berry's plan for crossing space quickly
hardly a fantasy

coni builds the

working model.
in

arguments are not

if"

the

whim-

"what

style of

science fantasy.

They are

strictly in

the logical "if/then" style

calls on us to jumpoutofiheEinsteinian space-time continuum via a black hole

of inductive reasoning.

He

is

careful to

show that

his

system follows inevitably

and to

reenter

it

somewhere else. The

largest part of The Iron Sun is devoted to showing that the scheme must work if you approach the black hoie according to Berry's flight plan: you get sucked into and crushed by gravity only if you approach the event horizon in a different way,
it

from the Schwarzschild equations that first predicted the existence of black holes.

And
true

the Schwarzschild
if

model must be
To prove
refute

general

relativity is true.

that Berry's plan can't work,

we must

This

is

"speculative"

in

that

it

is

based
it.

on the Kerr theory of the rotating black

hole, and we have no way to test It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss it as being "only speculation." Radio was in exactly this sense when

Einstein's
I

speed -of-light

barrier.

ing,

can already hear elderly voices mutter"Mere science fiction." Not so fast,

Einstein's gravitational equations. Berry says that failure to achieve in"could bring about the stagnation and ruin of the human species. Yet if it can be solved ... the prospect will instead be of the establishment of a galactic community, a society in which our deterstellar travel

please. Berry is a thoughtful, wellinformed, and very hardheaded chap

speculative
J.

scendants
lions of
stars.

will

whose
Years,

first
is

book, The Next Ten Thousand already a classic of futurist ex-

He is not assuming any such breakthroughs as the antigravity devices beloved of flying-saucer buffs.
trapolation.
fanciful

C. Maxwell published his electromagnetic equations. An Adrian Berry then could only have argued that radio was possible. He could not have convinced the skeptics until Guglielmo Marconi built the first radio transmitter. In the same way,

worlds

in orbit

The race

threat of extinction,
limit

be scattered through milaround countless will be safe forever from the and there will be no

to the flowering of
this diversity will
is,

human

culture

which
This
the
ers.

produce."

of course, the real motive

if

behind

space program, even

it

the politicians

are afraid to say

It

openly

to terrestrial vot-

was

this vision that

motivated God-

dard. Ley, and Von Braun

when

rocketry
stuff.

was considered

science-fiction kid

Before 1914 the great Russian space pioneer Konsiantin Tsiolkovskiy wrote:

"The murky view which some scientists advocate as to the inevitable end of every living thing on Earth should not be regarded as axiomatic. The finer part of humanity will, in all likelihood, never perish they will migrate from sun to sun as the suns burn out. And so there is no end
.
.

to

life,

to intelligence,

and
this

to the perfection

of humanity. Its
It

progress

is

everlasting."

is

salutary to
is

have

cosmic

vision today,

restated. This

especially
of

needed
with

when many

antiscientitic intellectuals are

spreading a gospel
real

doom

what
it

sometimes seems ghoulish

pleasure to find
logic
is
it

joy.

And

is

a
like

stated by a writer

conception of a black hole, an area

in

space warped by powerful

gravitational'forces.

whose whose style has

Berry,

diamond-hard and

the clarity of cut glass.

Do

THE ARTS
By
Tricia Vita
the

shadow
slept
in

of the Capitol Building,

In what looked like a long,

pad

blue launching

the hours before dawn.

As

the

the sun inched over the horizon

and

with the

cloudy days and nighttime viewing did have a light. liked to have the lights on at same time the trackers were working sun because then got many
I I I

from an artist working with the medium." Although Dr. Dennis Gabor had invented holography in 1948, it was not
until scientific

climbed through a cloudless sky, a mirror-electronics system locked onto its path. Captured sunlight was beamed onto a row of glass plates mounted on the structure, and apparitions took shape a few meters in front of each glass.

clusters ot forks. Also, the sun

itself,

way

in

applications were well under the late 1960s that an artist was let

sometimes hit the hologram, and there would be three images floating around each plate. The
without the trackers, would

Spectrum-hued forks floated in midair magic circles. Prongs jutted out, but try karate-chop the dazzling tableware-weaponry and your fingers
sliced thin
air.

to

Scenario for a film about an alien takeover ot Washington, No, the unidentified objects are part of an environmental sculpture called Centerbeam, initially sighted at

DC?

on Centerbeam almost like arms beckoning to the spectators, drawing them into the piece." Around holograms, and holographers, these acts of technological magic are never unexpected. As spoke with Harriet Casdin-Silver in her CAVS studio, sun streamed through the skylight, reconstructing the reflection hologram she wore as a pendant. This third eye took in everything at once and then disappeared as often as Casdin-Silver moved to flick a
forks acted for
I

me

through the laboratory doors. In those pioneer days of 1969. Casdin-Silver remembers being called to work whenever lab space was iree after completion of a scientific project. For one of these spur-of-the-moment holographic sessions, she glanced around the house for some object to take along. And that was how a dishwasher basket laden with silverware became hertirst hologram. In a lab setup, a holographer bolts the objects down on the table because, as Casdin-Silver warns, "if anything moves,
the imagery
laser

can disappear
is split in

entirely."

A
hits

beam

two.

One beam

Documenta 77
again in the National Air

in Germany and seen summer of 78 outside the

cigarette ash.

"i

had complete

artistic

the emulsion on the photographic plate, the other lights the object. As Casdin-Silver explains, "The reference beam meets the object beam at the plate,

and Space Museum. The

freedom," she said of her training in holography with Dr. Raoul van Ligten

at

phantom

forks are Harriet Casdin-Siiver's

solar-tracked holograms lor the

collaborative project of artists from the

American Optical Research Laboratories. 'AO just wanted to see what would come

Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) and scientists and engineers from
MIT.

causing an interference pattern which in turn causes the recording of the light wave from the object in the emulsion." Casdin-Siiver's sculptures in light were
displayed
in

'Aesthetic Holography," a

CAVS
that

is

a small, modernistic building

the
of

makes sharp-angled gestures toward Cambridge sky. Inside may be the best
possible atmospheres lor the

one-person exhibition at the Polaroid Corporation in 1972. There she met Dr. Stephen Benton, inventor of
white-light-transmission holography.
artist

all

The

creation of the art of the future. "Every

and

the physicist collaborated on the

first

other art form is valid and will remain so. Painting will always be there, as will beautiful pencil drawings," artist-holographer Harriet Casdin-Silver told me. "Oi course, we all feel that the statement of this era will come out of the laboratory" Casdin-Silver, a Fellow at CAVS since 1976, has been exploring the
aesthetic possibilities of laser-light tor nearly a decade. Her

Cobweb Space,
In

white-light-transmission artwork.

1977, Casdin-Silver was the first person to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Holography in New York. This
year, with the

support Foundation grant, she is making holographic movies. On the subject

of a Rockefeller

oi

imagery

holography's future applications in art, Casdin-Silver has a multitude oi visions.

innovative concept oi displaying holograms outdoors, using the sun as a

source, adds to her impressive list of holographic firsts. The artist described the solar-trackers that the team ot an astrophysicisf," engineers, and graduate students designed and built. "Some trackers were operated electrically. Others were operated by the spectator. With
light

see environmental holography" "Holograms onstage holographic imagery that real actors walk in and oui of or real scenery that holographic actors walk in and out of. There's so much potential. And so much to happen." And so easy to venture a
"I'd like to

she said
, . .

longingly.

prediction that Harriet Casdin-Silver

will

Centerbeam: solar-tracked holograms

ir

make

it

happen

first.

DO

28

OMNI

THE ART5
By Tom Johnson

For

some

people, learning to read

music is a relatively simple matter. After a tew lessons, the lines and spaces take on significance, the sharps and flats make sense, and the fingers begin to respond appropriately. But many people are not so lucky. Western musical notation does not, after all, follow a particularly simple or direct logic. It arose
largely through a

those that were so graphically illustrated in the written notation. But they never mixed up note 6 with note 7, the way students
normally mix up F

Digit

Music Center, through which

and

F-sharp.
digit

everything from orcheslral scores and Beethoven sonatas to Cole Porter songs and kazoo books will be made available
his

in

There

is

no doubt that
to

music
it,

offers

unique notation system. At the

certain advantages.

does not have

built in,

As Berd puts "One know a sharp or a flat or

clefs or rest signs.

Even the fingering is taking guesswork off the mind.

moment, however, he seems more occupied with his Berdboard. The Berdboard is a new kind of piano
keyboard, and.
like

digit-music notation,

it

complex

series of

historical accidents,

quite well,

it

and while it works also forces the beginner to

number ot tricky concepts. % mean? Three fourths of what? Why the G clef, and why doesn't look like a G? Why do dots sometimes mean one thing and sometimes another? And why in the world is the same note sometimes called G-sharp and sometimes
confront a

are totally nonexistent. All it takes is reading numbers and colors." And the system seems clearly preferable to mechanical aids, such as the chord organ,

Modes

What does

it

A-flat?

For centuries, adults as well as children

since students of digit music must still physically play every note. The big "question is how much trouble those students will have later on if, or when, they try to switch to conventional notation. would If Berd has his way, such a switch never be necessary because in a matter of a few years all the music anyone will ever

stems from a basic contradiction that has concerned Berd for a long time. Berd, who has earned his income as a piano tuner for recording studios and rock groups, realized long ago that most ot our music
involves the entire chromatic scale of 12 equal notes. Yet we are still working with keyboards and a notation system that

now

came
seen

out of an era when the scale was ' to consist of seven important white notes and five less important black notes.

maze, and none of the attempts to write music in clearer and more graphic ways have ever caught on. Sam Berd's new method may
have been getting
lost in this

want to play will be available in digit-music notation. Berd is as ambitious as he is unconventional, and he is already making plans to form the publishing wing of the

too, but

not catch on, either, but

results for

some

it is achieving hopeful beginners in New

Others have observed this contradiction, Berd decided to try to do something about it. Thus digit-music notation, which reduces the pitches to 12 equal numbers, and the Berdboard, which reduces the keyboard to 12 equal keys.
While ordinary keyboards combine short black keys with long white keys, the Berdboard makes all keys exactly the

York, and, like Berd's new keyboard design, the Berdboard, the method has

advantages. Digit music is still a very new system. In was only last fall that Berd opened fact, his Digit Music Center on 57th Street in New York City, hired a small staff, outfitted several classrooms with small electronic keyboards, and began assembling a
distinct
it

same

size, retaining the colors

simply as a

convenient

means

of finding specific

repertoire of three-color editions for students to play. Students began arriving

at the

center

in

number

of revisions

December, and while a and improvements

arrangement brings the keys closer together than those on a standard keyboard, but on the demonstration model tried the tops of the keys are rounded off slightly so that, even if you have large is easy enough to play the note fingers, you want and not the ones next to as well. The Berdboard also has obvious
notes. Berd's
I

it

it

in

advantages when

it

comes

to transposing.

the materials are still being made, it already seems clear that the basic system works.

When observed two small boys who had been grappling with digit music for
I

only a few lessons, was particularly struck by the accuracy with which they found the notes they were looking for. They had the same, rhythmic problems that all
I

On a standard keyboard, playing in the key of is very different from playing in the key of D-flat, and many melodic and harmonic patterns that are easy in one of the keys are not possible at all in the others. On the Berdboard, however, all
keys
feel exactly the

same. Thus there

is

children

seem

to

have

in

their first

weeks

at

the keyboard, and, somewhat to my surprise, they also managed to invent their own awkward fingerings, instead of using
30

only one major scale to learn instead of 12; chords have the same finger positions regardless of what key you are in; transposing is simply a matter of starting

'i?jr:

0s"J'

300

're 3erdbcar,i.

a different place; and chromatic scales are duck soup.

in

OMNI

CONTINUED ON PAGE

132

,/UCER-EYEDSPE

UFO UPDATE
By Art
Gatti

The

recent release of (op-secret

files

secretive National Security Agency.

In

by the CIA, Air Force, DIA, and others has added the U.S. intelligence community to the throngs who are, if not believers in UFOs, at least
ardent collectors of sighting reports and related data. The inability of those files to explain the enigma can only bring us to a single, albeit vague, conclusion: Indeed, there's something there. As far as our national security forces are concerned,
the
or

a superficial way, the government has

judicial directives

been following

and
told

submitting to those

demands;

it

has

United States that year, including several and radar/ground observation returns. They also show the frequent flyovers in areas where atomic
pursuits by our planes

CAUS essentially what CAUS already

knows. But, like the ratio of knowns to unknowns in sightings, that's only 90percent true 10 percent of the information is news, and some of may have been inadvertently disclosed. The thousands of unexplained sightings in the CIA files are but the raw material from which one would assume some evaluations must have been made; yet most of the files are stamped THIS IS UNEVALUATED INFORMATION. CAUS hopes
it

materials were either manufactured or

stored.
In sifting through more than 1 ,000 CIA divided the material into two basic heaps: UFO sightings, theories, and miscellany including bureaucratic repetitions, red tape, correspondence, and the occasional
I

documents,
etc.;

UFOs

are not the creation of individual

mass

delusions.

"revelatory document."
of

It

is

this final,

With all due respect to those servants of pure science determined to keep the 10 percent of unexplainables at 10 percent and no higher, the time has
statistical

come to give up those mindless rituals with which we face the Unknown. It's time
to stop clutching at

further legal action will uncover evaluations of the rest of the material. What Ufologists have been referring to

those reassuring IFOs

and

to quit kidding ourselves that the

90:10 ratio of identitiables to unidentifiables can ever be reduced to the 100:zilch

years as "the 75 flap" has been verified by the documents that CAUS director Todd Zechel obtained in his separate FOI
for suit

minuscule collection that may prove to be most practical use to Ufologists. If you get a large number of documents sent to you by the CIA, you're likely to get one or two totally unintended enclosures. The CIA sends off documents haphazardly? Definitely CAUS got a four-page report on the 1950 resolutions of
the All-China Store Clerk Workers'

some debunkers want to

possible.
If

believe

is

against the Air Force. His files chronicle a near infestation by UFOs of sensitive military bases in the continental

anything settles the irreversible acceptance of the phenomenon, it's that stack of UFO tiles declassified in the current Freedom of Information (FOI) suit

one

Conference. Correspondence proves the agency lied as a matter of policy on UFOs. Referring to overly insistent citizen, the agency's

most

prolific letter writer,

memo
was perhaps

concludes: "... the extraordinarily noncommittal and evasive answer we were

instructed to give Davidson the only

brought against the CIA and USAF by the UFO Secrecy (CAUS). The declassification of the Air Force Blue Book files a few years back, intended to underplay UFOs by depriving them of their priority status, only served to convince once-uninterested citizens that there was something to UFOs. Maybe it was only a few hundred out of several thousand cases, but they were on official
Citizens Against record. That's stale information

one possible if we were to avoid crossing up previous statements of our own, and other involved agencies, to this man." A draft of a letter sent to then-Senator Lyndon Johnson advises him
precisely

how to answer a

constituent's

to

queries about UFOs. The letter outlines an uninformative 11-line reply, telling Johnson answer "along these lines" and "without direct reference to this agency."
There's evidence that the CIA regularly monitored private UFO groups while
disclaiming any interes! in them. File references were tound to such groups as the National Investigations Committee on
Aerial

now

however.

It's

been a decade since

the Air Force

stopped investigating. The current suit demands to know what is going on. Not only did the judge rule in favor of CAUS's basic action, but he attached a
subsidiary ruling that forces the agency to research files in other departments where
there

Phenomena (NICAP),

to

which
the

several
Aerial

pages were devoted, and

was any interagency communication on UFOs. Peter Gersten, CAUS's legal dynamo, plans to continue the suit against
every U.S. intelligence organization, including the "untouchable" and very
32

(APRO),

Phenomena Research Organization to which one agency official

"some crackpot group
in

refers as

the

Midwest."
Double disk over Huascaren Range, Yungay, Peru.

A February 1953 memo outlines a CIA policy that was never changed in
CON
I

OMNI

l:\UFD

ON PAGE 127

CDfUTiruuunn
A PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRA
the remole Yukon valley of Alaska, natives can

medical In

care irom a doctor That's quite a

(eat,

now get considering

Fort

our teachers, carry on debates,

and

think

up excuses

for

not

doing our ancillary materials.

the nearest

M.D

is

hundreds

of kilometers away.

I
Yukon

Inpatients entering the cabinlike clinics at

find that the

Galena and

-elevision studios.

examination rooms have been converted to Video pictures of (he patients are bounced off NASA's ATS-6 satellite to physicians at Tanana, Bethel, and Anchorage, Alaska. X rays, EKGs, and voices are relayed via RCA's

The AESP uses TV to communicate, an important point. True communication runs in two directions. Just how well we hold up our end of the teiecon versa! ion will determine whether television becomes our servant or our tyrant. Should we continue to let the tube babble at us, could be Our undoing. "If this is so," wrote
it

Satcom I. Patients' records can be retrieved from a computer in Tucson, Arizona. As the data come In, doctors make their diagnoses and instruct health aides at the remote clinics in how to
administer treatment. This is the Indian Health Service's ASTRO Program an experiment in telemedicine. It is not unique; there is another like it in
rhe

stroy,

Arthur C. Clarke in 1959, "then the epitaph of our race should read in fieeting.'fluorescent letters; Whom the Gods would dethey first give TV." There is evidence, however, that we may survive. Destruction
.

Southwest STARPAHC that uses microwave

transmitters

to relay television signals.

put together their

own

the Pacific Northwest States have medical-education satellite network.

And

Doctors aren't the only people taking advantage of recent in television technology. Educators are taking a hard look at as a teaching tool. AT&T. RCA, and Western Union "ave plans to revive the old videophone and set up teleconferfor businessmen. Everyone, from advertisers to zealots, is benefiting' from new video/satellite/computer applications. With the proliferation of telecommunications, we're seeing a cultural revolution as vast as any since the invention of writing. And we're listening to a storm of protests. Writing, legend has it, inspired a similar storm because, it was thought, literate men would forget how to remember. Now television is turning us into a 'ace of passive spectators. But is it really? In the Appalachian Mountains, the Appalachian Educational Satellite Program (AESP) broadcasts televised graduate courses via ATS-6 to some 45 rural sites. Students talk with their professors over telephone lines. AESP classes aren't easy; "anclary materials" (translation; homework) average 50 pages per *sek. Far from being passive watchers, these students find it's tA they can do to keep up with the work load. This teleducation experiment has been so successful that the -ESP has expanded to become the first nationwide public serice network. Soon we may go to college in our living rooms. But .ve won't just lie back and soak up taped lectures. We'll question

has yet to rain down upon Columbus, Ohio, where the Warner Cable Company has hooked home TV sets to a computer in an experimental system called QUBE. QUBE viewers can order products, purchase movies, attend college courses, watch cultural and sporting events not offered on conventional television, and be polled. The experiment incorporates televdting, teleshopping, teleducation, and telentertainment. Add a few on-air
doctors and a teleconferencing service, and CUBE might show us a preview of things to come: teleculture. To some, QUBE is reminiscent of E. M. Forster's SF classic "The Machine Stops," in which he portrays our descendants as confined to tiny rooms, watching one another on the boob tube. But it was television, remember, that brought us the first steps on the moon, a sunset on Mars, and Jupiter's Red Spot. Soon we'll get a video look at the Rings of Saturn There is nothing confining about a box that can bring the universe into our living rooms. And we can't really call it a boob tube anymore, not when we can obtain a graduate degree for watching it. For those of us who view the coming tidal wave of video technology with fear and reluctance, let's think about this: If used for interactive communication, these electronic miracles may greatly enrich our lives, may even reinstate a few of those old traditions we now view with nostalgia. By touching a button on our TV console, we might vote on important national issues as if we were at a town meeting. We could shop in a leisurely fashion again, finding what we want as quickly as we can change channels, instead of searching like detectives in clerkless discount department stores. And through the magic of television our doc.

advances

new

it

ences

tors

may once again make house

calls.

NICK ENGLER

"

corunruuunji
PLAYER PIANO
Roll ovBr,
tell

dollars,

and

they're not for

MOTHER'S MILK
Stepping gingerly

Fund, a Washington, D.C.,

sale.

Beethoven, and

In

addition to simulating

consumer group. For one thing, there are not enough

chemists to test breast milk for the 4 million babies born in the United States each

orchestra musicians the

news they

could be replaced by a portable keyboard synthesizer called

the Synclavier. The Synclavier
is capable sound of 25 musical instruments,

an orchestra, the Synclavier can transpose any piece of music from one key to another instantly It can speed up or slow down a
pitch.

between alarm and

assurance, federal officials year are telephoning 1 ,400 women across the country to ask whether their
this

of duplicating the

piece without distorting the It can transpose a melody to a non-Western or

entirely

breast-fed infants are

healthy.

The women, from 46

states, participated in

including the tuba, clarinet,

new

scale.
its

a 1975

drum, and

violin,

and the

According to
the Synclavier

inventors,

it can put together to create the sound of a full orchestra Invented by Dartmouth College composer Jon

human voice. And

them
all

is

important to

composers as a means by which they can orchestrate

compositions immediately as they create them, and is being used
their
it

study that found cancercausing pesticides, such as dieldrin and DDT, in breast milk. And in about 300 cases polychlorinated bi phenyls (PCBs) widely used as an
,

Appieton and engineers

electrical insulating fluid,

Cameron Jones and Sidney

Alonso, and manufactured

that

way

at

a number

of

by New England
synthesizer
is

Digital

colleges and conservatories. And it can be used to create

Corp., the minicomputerized

music never heard before.

one

of the

Kathleen
"Science

Stein

were found in levels that were higher than the standards proposed as safe by the Food and Drug Administration. Elevated levels were
found
in all

most sophisticated digital instruments on the market (for $13,000). Bell Labs and Stanford have more complex
polyphonic devices, but they cost around a quarter-million

U.S. regions.

means simply the

"It

was considered

serious

aggregate of the recipes that are always successful. All

the rest is literature."

that the levels in

mother's

milk

were not that much

from levels that
year.

different

Paul Valery

caused problems in rats and primates," says Jerome

BlondelloftheU.S. En v ron me nt a P rote ction Agency's human-effects monitoring branch. But the situation is complicated. On the one hand, breast milk gives nursing infants valuable natural antibodies for which
i

The group suggests

that

women who plan to breast-feed their babies not

eat fatty fish

and meat

(in

which the chemicals concentrate) and wash

to

fruits

and vegetables thoroughly

remove any traces
of

pesticides.

Stuart Diamond
Clarke's First Law:

is no substitute And the PCB amounts were a thousand times lower than

there

"When a

distinguished but elderly

scientist states that

levels that

lesions

caused skin and discoloration

something

is

possible,
right.

he

is

almost cerlainly
impossible, he

When
is

during a Japanese poisoning accident in 1968. On the other hand, officials

he states that something

is

very

probably wrong."

Jon Appieton at his Synclavier: The machine can duplicate the sounds of 25 musical instruments ...lor a price of only $13,000.
3B

consider any level of PCB in mother's milk to be unsafe. "There are no easy solutions," says the Environmental Defense

Arthur C. Clarke
"A

of

hen is only an egg's way making another egg.

Samuel

Butler

OMNI

THE ULTIMATE MAP

Amid
the

JET CLOUDS
Are the thousands of vapor trails from high-flying planes affecting local weather and crops?

pomp

surround-

ing the centennials of Albert

Einstein's birth

Midwest weather patterns He. claims that lately there have been more cloudy and fewer sunny days and that
the daily temperature range

that cavity-resistant

people

have a. lot of sialin and that cavity-prone people are

deficient
in

sialin

and Thomas
light

jet

The dental
Israel

Edison's invention oi the

bulb, a less

publicized but

equally significant centennial is also being marked this

year: that of the U.S.

smaller with warmer and cooler days There have also been fewer
is

expert, Dr Kleinberg, suggests

nights

that synthetic sialin could

be

added

to toothpaste,

rain-generating thunderstorms.

Geolog-

mouthwash, and even candy and soft drinks to offset theeffects of sugar. He isolated the substance in 1977, and

ical Survey (USGS), whose 13,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and genera!

Alton Biakeslee

CAVITY FIGHTER
Cavity-prone people

staff are

still

mapping and

remapping the country. Since it began on March 3, 1879, the USGS has compiled millions of page of data on surface and subsurface geology It h<
located mineral d<

may
the

be able
drink

to eat candy and soda without fear of

drill
if

charted earthqu?
""

a recently isolated compound proves as effective in daily life as has in a lab. A dental expert at the
dentist's

the Warner-Lambert pharmaceutical company has given him a six-year, $960,000 grant to enable him to continue his research.
Synthetic sialin can be

it

made

from almost any

protein Kleinberg plans to

find the appropriate dosage and check for any negative

measured the
major U.S. streamfindings are

State University of
to

New

York

used

drill

wells, build cities,

and plan

at Stony Brook has discovered a component of saliva

called sialin that

effects on his subjects before the substance is marketed.

If

crops. To celebrate
nial,

neutralizes tooth-decaying

Virginia,

its cententhe agency, headquartered in Reston, plans a year of

acids.

when
Illinois

bacteria

These acids form in the mouth

sugar He believes

ful,

the research is successhe says, tooth decay

may someday become a

rare

scientists are

react to

disease. S.D,

looking into the question

with financial aid from

exhibits, lectures,

and
in

publications. And,

Ihe National Science

October

it

will

international

sponsor an conference on

global resource requirements predicted for Ihe next

century.

Among its goals between now and 2079: predicting and controlling earthquakes. mapping the United States
down
to the

Foundation; Their research will cover a nine-state area, 2,013 kilometers in diameter, with Illinois-Indiana being the center of an air corridor used by some 2,000 jets
daily

around the compass. Sky photos show vapor

from early-morning jet merging to form cirrus

trails

contours on

flights

individual properties,
finding, wilh greater

and

clouds, turning what

may

accuracy, offshore energy supplies and

minerals.

have begun as a sunny.day into a cloudy day, says Or

Stanley A. Changnon,
Jr.,

S.D.

"What counts, however, in science is to be not so much the first as the last." EfWin Chargaft

head of the Atmospherics Sciences Section of the Illinois State Water Survey. Changnon says Water Survey weather records

Tooth bacteria, as piyrrayed by ihe zc:w,hkj eleci-on microscope, t

show marked changes

in

substance

in

Saliva

may be

ihe key to eliminating decay.

conrnruuuRJi
FORGERY DETECTOR
IBM
scientists

have

invented a device that will make it almost impossible ior someone to forge your

Noel Herbst, one of the system's inventors, says thai the chances of a forger imitating the dynamic characteristics of the real individual's signature are

FALLOUT
A shocking report from Utah indicates that atomicbomb testing may have
resulted
in

the present the death rate

a significant
in

.'

PI
=->

increase of leukemia deaths

11
*-'

among

children

that state.

dropped to preatomic around 1.97. The increased death rates were most dramatic in southern Utah, the area mosf exposed to the fallout. The study covered all
testing levels,

4n>

True

*~~7

From January 1951 to October 1958, 97 above-ground atomic tests were conducted in deserf areas in southern Nevada, at Frenchman Fiat and Yucca Flat. At least 26 of these blasts, according to records obtained from fhe Atomic Energy Commission,
in radioactive fallout over Utah, primarily in the southern half of the sfafe.

childhood malignancies but specifically concentrated on leukemia, the type of cancer

mosf easily attributable

radiation exposure.
Dr.

to

Lyon cautioned against

misinterpreting his findings.

"No matter what some

residents
is

may

believe, there

L
False

resulted
1

J.

It

A.

EEmBmI
JfCJDf
While the signatures above are similar, IBM's forgery through patterns of pen acceleration

^toj^^l

Now
in

fhis fallout is being for a 40-percent rise leukemia deaths among Utah children born during the 1951-58 testing period.

blamed

compute; detected the

Dr. Joseph L Lyon, assistant professor of family

no 'cancer epidemic' in Ulah now." Public health records show that one other study investigating leukemia deaths in the fallout area was prepared in 1965. The report was never published or made public until a copy was accidentally found in the Utah Public Health files
last

and pressure.
unlikely.

signature
it

Unlike the

and get away with methods used

writing

extremely

and community medicine at and

ihe University of Utah

December.

Richard Levitt

Such a system will have enormous practical

applications. Herbst thinks
that
it

codirector of the Utah

Cancer Registry, reported

these findings in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine "We can't say from this siudy that fallout causes cancer," Dr. Lyon noted, "but think we can say wiihout is an associI

sysfem e work while

'A

could be used to

actually

control

access

to credit

being written. Small acceleration meters ihat

detect
"

information, Social Security

changes

in

speed

i.clion, along with a e sensor inside fhe

II

records, and automatic teller machines at banks. Kenneth Jon Rose

question there

connected fo a -are used tospol

/een the reference
is

"Stand iirrn in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as
"

ation

between

fallout

and the

increased incidence of childhood deaths in Utah."

Lyon's report reveals Ihat
in the period 1944 to 1950 southern Utah's normally low average yearly leukemia death rate was 2.12 per 100,000 people. But in the

io reveal

algebra.

mpostor's
signature,

Fran
for

Lebowitz, "Tips

Teens."

Newsweek.

January 1,1979
"All

a familiar theiimings
virtually

that glitters

may
it
..

hand muscles are beyond conscious control. Because of this,

of the

gold, but at least

free electrons."

not be contains

period1959to1967,
following the atomic tesling,

the rate climbed to a

Nevada nuclear test cloud: Ulah

to

JohnD.

Bernal

startling 6.02.

From 1968

children have

felt

the impact.

38

OMNI

"

CHICKEN LITTLE
"NASA's been remarkably sanguine about the wholething

provided

io
in

il

by the
Ihe

NORAD
In

PET PERKS
Having and caring
for a

WALLET PAIN
Not only does carrying a heavy wallet in your hip pocket provide pickpockets

complex
addition,

Colorado,

when

day

finally

When
is

there

ihey say that nofhing to worry-

arrives that Skylab actually its descent, C, L. will telephone its subscribers
starts

pet can help you survive a heart attack That's the conclusion of Dr Erika

Friedmann, a biologist at Chestnut Hill (Pennsylvania)

College.

She and

her

associates found that people with pets dogs,

cats, birds, gerbils,

whatever were more

to survive the
first

likely

a tempting target, bul.it also give you a pain in back. to shrewd Obserd\' Dr E^mar G. Lutz Mary's Hospital in Passaic. New Jersey, we now' have "credit card-waltei
with

may

the.

Thanks

vations
oi St

year alter

sciatica," a painiul condition

being hospitalized for serious heart diseases lhan

non-pet owners

caused when an
wallet

extra-thick

The

correlation

seems
told

full ot credn cards presses on your sciatic nerve as you sit at your desk

Friedmann the American Heart

Strong. Dr.

or in your car

Association
social

Ittumedupas

This pressure can result in mild to moderate pain in the

lower back
is

part of a larger study of

and

thigh There
Dr.

and psychological data on heart-disease

patients

no need

for sufferers to be-

jnciijiv

alarmed, however.

A3.
is

Lulz, writing in the Journal

when
about, you have to ask, 'What don't they know?'

io

duck.
to

not the will tobeneve. but the wish fc>

iincjour
"

What we need

of the American Medical Association, prescribes a

and warn them

take cov

Berirand Russell

simple remedy: a "walletectomy" Erika Nargolwala

NASA spokesmen have

pointed out that Skylab's fall will be comparable to the total weight of meteorites that fall on the earth in a single year. What they neglect to mention, Frazier says, isthatit will take only 15 minutes for Skylab to

Alex Frazier, a

member of

Chicken Little Associates, thus describes his reasons a new watchdog group, one set up
for instituting

to

predict

Skylab

space

do what NASA refuses to: when and where will fait. The 84-ton station has been
is

come down.

slowly but surely deorbjting

Eric Rosen

and soon
scattering

expected

to
"Itis

reenter the atmosphere,

a profoundly erroneous
. .

wreckage

in

truism
of

that we. should

5,000-kilometer "footprint" across the surface of the

earth.

cultivate the habit of thinking

what wa are doing. The

oosite
is

the case.

For $100 a month Chicken

Civilization

advances by

provide subscribers with computer

Little will

information that gives up-to-date, localized

sightings of Skylab-,

extending the number of important operations which we can perform without " thinking about them. Alfred North Whitehead

Man's (or woman's) best tfierrf <^av indeed be a dag (or oai ry bud), according to shJdy liwincj heart-allac*- lu'vivai to ^sr ownership.

CDRJTIRJUUR/1
THE KILLING MECHANISM
If medical scientists could understand how the body's defense system recognizes

matching those

of the

IGNORED PREDICTION
In

signs that a major quake

shortly follow.

will

foreign cells. In the reaction

between

their surfaces that ensues, the foreign invaders

little- noticed

article

Apparently,

when

giant

published

in

1977, Gary

are destroyed. Several years

Latham

of the

Geophysics

ago

Laboratory of the University

landmasses along a "fault push past one another, some masses may slip rather

and destroys foreign cells and tissues, they could manipulate the system to kill off cancer cells. Now, thanks
to a

Granger and

his associates

new discovery, that dream may be moving closer

Gale Granger and
of California at Irvine

discovered a group of molecules known as lymphotoxins, which are released by the lymphocytes
during the destruction process. However, the behavior of the lymphotoxins was puzzling because they

to reality.

his

colleagues at the University

have

seemed

too

weak

to

kill

off

recently unraveled part of

the mystery surrounding this

cells by themselves and also had nonspecific killing

process, known as cell-mediated immunity. This refers to the way in which white blood cells, or lymphocytes, defend us against foreign cells. It
involves two steps:

properties, despite the fact

that only specific cells are

destroyed in the process. A major breakthrough came when it was learned that lymphotoxin molecules
form an association with both the lymphocytes and
the foreign invaders, enabling the lymphocytes to organize into a highmolecular-weight complex is a very powerful killing

recognition

Once

as foreign, populations of lymphocytes are formed that possess surface receptors

^
killing.

and

cells are

recognized

of

Texas

at

Galveston,

smoothly
"lock,"

in

a series

of

minor

that

system.

In

the

this association,

absence of the complex

working with two Japanese scientists, successfully predicted the major

tremors, while others

build
finally

may
it

causing tension to
at that point until
is

up

breaks back into weak pieces explaining why

healthy cells
in

the

same

area are not destroyed. A full understanding of the

killing

earthquake that struck the Oaxaca region of Mexico last November. The quake's magnitude, 7.9 on the
Richter Scale, was also very close to the strength

'eleased in a major quake. The absence of seismic activity observed during alpha is thus thought
to

be due

to

landmasses
in

mechanism may

lie

only a year or two away,

in

expected.

Granger's opinion.

And

this

opens up the

possibility of

controlling the assembly and disassembly of the killer molecules so that we could destroy a cancer cell or stop the killing process following organ transplants. Sharon McAuliffe

The scientists' predictions were based on observations of two distinct phases of

seismic activity occurring prior to a quake. In the first phase, known as "alpha," the small tremors that normally occur along a fault
line

having become locked this manner. At Oaxaca two major quakes had occurred,

separated by a
160-kilometer stretch of fault
that

stage.

had entered the alpha Latham and his

ominously disappear
region.

in

one
"Absolutum obsoletum If
V'.'

it

: ro g rfi
left)

'

s f i a a'S i yrrp h n - y e
;

works,

it's

out of date."

(fop

attacking tumor.

Stafford Beer

io the

phase, or by the return of small tremors area the telltale

The second "beta," is marked

colleagues recognized the immediate need to monitor the fault, because the two other quakes had occurred 1.5 to 2 years after entering the alpha stage. However, a month before the quake,

40

OMNI

monitoring

was Stopped

lany eases
ot

resuscita.'.-on

better the
survival,

chance

for

because the research team's application (or a renewal of government funding was rejected a! that time. "1 think they missed a good bet," said Latham. Tony Fusco

even

tried, Dr.

Nemirolf

he said

although

Diego, California, have discovered, by using

radioactive-tracers, that

said.

one survivor was forty-two

years
old,.

THE DIVING REFLEX'

Research by a Michigan pulmonary expert is
revolutionizing the Ireatmant
of

Bur he has found that In .later below 20*C (68F) drowning victims. may undergo the "diving reflex," during, which the amount of oxygen normally. sent to the i afrdmuscles is drastically reduced The oxygen is
"
'

arseniteis

removed by
sulfur in the

The findings are

controversial, particularly

combining with

paMv

tiiGQStad animal hair

since they raise serious legal quesvons such as the

po-ssibi ity thai some people who were pronounced dead

sent instead tot-he brain, to protect

it.

The

reaction

is

could havebeen'revived But the Red Cross has asked Dr. Nemiroff to.

drowning

victims-. Dr.

named after a reflex found in whales, dolphins, and other'

ssaaoing mammals that can swim underwater for half an
hour before Surfacing for air, Or Memiroff suggests that
Ihe diving reflex

Martin Nemiroff of the

University of Michigan has discovered that people who

suggest revisions to itsdrowning manual. And his plea for attempted

resuscitation of victims

are presumed drowned may actually be revived, without brain damage, up to more than half an hour after they

was

who've spent more than six minutes underwater is being heeded by an increasing

responsible for the survival of an eighteen-year-old boy

number of

localities

throughout the world. S.D.

submerge.
For decades medical experts have presumed that minutes underafter six

water a person

is

no!

38 minutes- More than a dozen otherswhowere underwater for more than 10 minutes have been successfully

who was submerged

for

MAGIC STONE
The mystery of the- "magic stone" has been solved.
Since ancient times

revivable. Pulled from the

revived at his hospital.

The

water, victims of

drowning

colder the water

and

the

members
their

are cold, blue, not breathing.

younger the victim, the

of royalty have dipped bezoar stones into wine to protect (hemselves aaainst being
'

that

is

contained

in

the

stones,

(The

as

rom two

arsenite."

"The hair can actually act a. chemical sponge for the Scripps biologist
A.

Andrew
"poison
")
I

Benson
stone"

explained.
Elizabeth

England's Queen wore the magic

in silver rings,

Somehow "magic

stones set

sounded more romantic, Don Fabun

"Engineering ...is the art doing that well with one dollar, which'any bungler can do with. two after a
"

dunked
itbiies

in

her
it.

-drinking

of,

are actuailv

jps'that

develop

in

the digestive tracts of goats and llamas and other ruminant animals. Nobody
:ed,

fashion-.

Arthur Melien WBHington

"There
c:i

but
is

ibeth

madman
to light the streets

proposing

London with what do~

-Sir Walter Soott, 1810. on the subject of gaslights
'

vou suppose with smote-;'"

who could have

tsari rtvivsn' 'Wi-: near; P""<

Scnpps Institute of Oceanography in San

coruTinjuufui
MEDICAL MILESTONES
This year has been one of strange medical breakthroughs. Here are some of
the strangest:
it's there," remarked an American specialist. New evidence indicates and
if

CHICKEN SOUP
So what's new? Mama
.

told

that mental illness

retardation lessen one's

you chicken soup helped cure colds But now there's

scientific proof.

tind that

chances of getting cancer. Jeanne Achterberg of the

University of Texas studied

the death records of 3,214

mentally disturbed and 'etarded patients

in

Texas
rate of

A study altheMt. Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach found that fresh chicken soup cleared mucus from nasal passages
at the rate of 9.2 millimeters

matzo balls, either" said Susanna Barger, a hospital representative. But he did was necessary to have chicken soup every half hour, because its curative powers wear off
it

quickly.

Why
in

decide
the

and found a cancer

Dr. Sackner to test chicken soup first place? Answer: "Why not?"-S. D

did

only 4 percent, one-fourth

the rate of the general population, Of

all

Ihe

disturbed patients, only paranoids had a high cancer

rate.

per minute, compared with and 4.5 for cold water. Dr. Marvin A. Sackner measured the
8.4 for hot water

"But to place a man in a multi-stage rocket and

project him into the
controlling gravitational Held

Rolling Stone guitarist

Keith Richards claims he has discovered a cure for Ihe common cold, an

progress with X rays. Sackner's findings, published in Cries!, a journal of

ofthemoon, wherethe passenger can make

scientific observations,

pulmonary disease, were subject to peer review and

perhaps land

alive,

and then

pronounced
significant."

"statistically

return to earth all that

unexpected side
his

effect of
"I

constitutes a wild

dream

years of heroin use

in all

must admit
the British

fairness to

The doctor did not test chicken soup against other

soups with his 15 subjects, does he plan further research. "He didn't check
nor

worthy of Jules Verne." Lee Deforest, the

"father of electronics,"

the poppy," he explained to

music weekly Melody Maker, "that never once did have a cold. The
I

quoted

in

the

June 1957
's

Digest

The Russian newspaper Pravda reports the discovery

of a "second," or lymphatic,

heart common

to

all

human beings by
headed by a
Dr.

team

cure to the cold is there but of course they daren't let anybody know because then we'd have a nation of dope addicts." (See also "Chicken

of Soviet radiologists

Soup," above
Extramarital

right.)

Tsyb of the
Institute of

sex might be
Dr.

USSR Research

dangerous
patients.

for heart

Radiology. Detected by

When

Gerald

X-ray techniques, the

Fletcher of Georgia Baptist

io

lymphatic

pump appears
be a long
segments

the Russians to
into individual

tube separated by 20 valves

aligned along the spine. This seems to serve Ihe same functions for the lymph system that the bloodhearl

Medical Center in Atlanta, Georgia, monitored the heartbeat of a recent surgical patient, he found
that

when

the

man had sex

with his wife his heart beat

pumping one does for

American

the

no faster than 92 times a minute within normal limits. But during a noontime
tryst

cardiovascular system. doctors

with his

girl

friend the

are

man's pulse
a warning
of

hii

150 and

skeptical. "You would have thought they'd have discovered it a long time ago

showed signs

of arrhythmia,

for

impending

heart attack. -K.S.

s what it looks like insids the gigantic ihe space shuttle. At bottom. P>'!a'!<r; kfei&tta Aerospace jeers inspect the slosh bafttes, which prevent-any disrupting merits of the liquid-oxygen fuel during flight.

42

OMNI

ARTFUL DODGER OFTHE

PHYSICAL

WORLD
The neutrino may help us stop earthquakes and even talk to alien worlds

BYHALHELLMAN

In1962 the American

physicist Philip Morrison predicted that the

neutrino might well "turn out to actor

In

be

the major

an unseen drama
is

o( the physical

world."

a subatomic, subnuclear particle, and, though most people have still not heard of it, Morrison may be right about its importance, considering the rapidly growing use of this particle in physics and astronomy The neutrino may end up doing nothing less than furthering our understanding of the universe, forcing a rewrite of all our textbooks on how the sun works, and perhaps may even provide a final explanation of the

The neutrino

nature of matter.

And,
straight

in

may someday

a practical vein, "neutrino radios" allow us to send messages through the center of the earth or to

PHOTOGRAPHS BY
DAN McCOY/RAINBOW
The Cap Tree (above), a capacitor. reduces the load on the community's power lines when Fermi lab turns on its accelerator. The Energy
Fountain
fright)

absorbs any excess power

To

make

a neutrino

collide with something,

we

would have

to

put over

150 million kilometers of lead in its path. 9

communicate more
of other planets.

rapidly with inhabitants

used

to

Neutrinos may even be prevent earthquakes,

senger than any of these. Specifically, we're already using this messenger quality of neutrinos to find out what's going on inside the sun.
surprises.

Like the Artful

Dodger

in

Oliver Twist, the

And

we're being

hit

with

some

neutrino
ing, But,

is

elusive, speedy,

while Dickens's Artful

and penetratDodger lim-

gentlemen's pockets, billions of neutrinos are zinging through your body every second. You needn't worry, though. Thanks to their extraordinary properties, they pass Ihrough your body just as weren't there. To make sure that a neutrino will collide wilh something, we would have to put over 150 million kilometers of
if it

ited his incursions to

For example, every budding physicist and astronomer learns that a star's light and heat are produced in a nuclear-fusion
"furnace" buried

deep within

its

core,

In this

furnace hydrogen nuclei (protons) are fused into helium, liberating energy in the
form of
light

and heat
is

something else

in the process. But also released in this re-

action: neutrinos.

lead

in iis

path.
It's

You can't capture a neutrino.

so small
its colli-

and

elusive that only the results of

This is a very neat theory, and for 40 years teachers have been teaching it and students have been learning it. But how do we

been recorded. Neutrinos are emitted wherever highsions with other matter have

energy particle collisions take place, including the sun, other stars, supernovas, pulsars, quasars, and neutron stars. You'll also find neutrinos being generated inside particle accelerators, such as those at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, and Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, Long
Island,

What evidence do we have? The evidence has come to us mostly in know

it's

correct?

the form of

light and other radiation emitted by the sun. Scientists have squeezed an amazing amount of information from that radiation. The problem is that the rays are

coming
within

to

us from the surface of the sun,

while the nuclear furnace lies deep,

deep

New

York.

Brookhaven's Ray Davis, Jr., one of the leading actors in Philip Morrison's "unseen drama," was recently explaining to me that
the neutrino's penetrating ability is attributable to. the fact that it comes as close to
neither

its heart. It takes the radiation produced there a million years to stagger through the dense layers around it before emerging at the surface and making the quick (about eight minutes) trip to Earth to report lo us. And what if the real message it got from the sun's interior is lost in the

being nothing as something can, for has mass nor charge. Trying to show how smart am, added that it does carry
it
I I

interval?

spin

and

that

"Actually,"

"light travels at

As

with
it.

truth to

it travels at the speed of light. he whispered confidentially, the speed of neutrinos." many jokes, this one has some After all. is really somewhat a
it

historic accident that light has taken on the basic aspect it possesses, inasmuch as we are biologically sensitive to it. But scientists have come to know that we can drag additional information out of the universe by

Remember that neutrinos are also proin the furnace, and these zip right in a couple of seconds. It was Ray Davis 15 years ago that it to use these neutrinos as a direct check on our theories of what's going on inside the sun. Just as a description of a happening is usually best told by a personal witness, so is the neutrino likely to be a more accurate storyteller than the other forms of the sun's radiation.
duced
out

who suggested some might be a good idea

turning our attention to other kinds of radiation,

including infrared, microwaves,

and X

Above: Fermilab employee scans particle tracks in film made in bubble chamber, a liquid-filled
neutrino-detection device.

rays,

Cosmic-particle radiation has also

of the

Neutrinos them-

been useful, The superior penetrating power

neutrino,
solar,

selves leave no tracks, but they produce other

particles that do. Right: In this neutrino experi-

however,

galactic,

makes a far better and intergalactic mesit

pipes) detect

ment, photomultiplier tubes (inside orange light created by lab's particles.

46

OMNI

 You needn't worry, but billions of

neutrinos are zinging through your

body

every second.?-

hopes
It

for

wrong: a
furnace
at
all.

terrifying

our energy future may also be idea to fusion experts.

has even been suggested that the solar may not be a nuclear-powered one Perhaps at the heart of our star and is a black hole that is producing the energy Though made of collapsed matter so dense that not even light can nevertheless may somehow be escape, radiating energy gained from the accretion
others there
it

of

surrounding gas.

Do the solar- neutrino physicists

really be-

lieve this? No, but as John Bahcall, a Princeton- based colleague of Davis's, told me, "To a physicist anything is possible until proved otherwise."

SAVING THE SOLAR MODEL?

In each fusion reaction, four aloms of hydrogen combine into one helium atom, and two neutrinos are set free. It was easy enough to calculate how many of these we should expect to receive on Earth. The figure comes out to a tidy 60 billion per square

was buried 1.6 kilometers deep in a still-functioning gold mine, called the Homestake mine, located in Lead, South Dakota. Davis told me the miners and the builders of the tank became interested in the
tank

While

Then again, maybe both sides are right takes neutrinos only seconds to takes them more travel through the sun, than eight minutes to conclude the trip to
it it

Earth.

Maybe something happens

to

them

centimeter per second. Davis also came with a method lor detecting some of them. Not many, mind you, but enough to provide a check on the theory. This is not easy to do, however. The neutrino's tremendous penetrating power, while sometimes useful, makes detecting

up

experiment, with many of them working overtime to help get it finished in time. One day, while talking to them, he mentioned that it was a 24-hour-a-day experiment.
"But,"

one

of

them protested
It

"the

sun goes

on the way, or even during their trip through the sun. Here we begin to see very clearly an intriguing phenomenon, how the physics of the macroworld the world and universe around us interacts with that of the mi-

down

at night,"

took a

bit of

patient ex-

plaining to convey the idea that because of the particles' penetrating power the Earth

even a few of them a gargantuan task. Davis's approach requires a huge 15-meter tank filled with 375,000 liters of perchloroethylene, a cleaning fluid. The trick Is that when an atom of chlohne-37 in the fluid is struck by a neutrino, it is changed to radioactive argon-37. Every couple of months the argon is extracted and the number of atoms counted (yes, it can be done), each one being an indication of a single "hit" by a neutrino. To be sure that the conversion process would not be fouled up by other incoming particles, such as cosmic-ray particles, the
Fermilab's particle

was almost

perfectly

permeable

to

them.

and as a result they were coming into the tank just about as often from the bottom as from the top. That really got to them. The upshot of the experiment'? Upsetting, to say the least. The number of neutrinos being received in Davis's tank is low by
a factor of three. Being off by a few percentage points is one thing. Being off by two thirds is quite another. The astronomers say there's probably something wrong with
the experiment. Davis and company shrug their shoulders and counter, "Maybe you've got
it wrong. Maybe your model of how the sun produces its energy is incorrect." The implications of a mistake in the solar

atoms and subatomic particles. croworld Let's consider the microworld first. One of the major unsolved mysteries in physical science is the apparently simple question, What is matter made of? It was long thought that protons, neutrons, and electrons were the fundamental building blocks of nature and that there was nothing smaller. Further work with particle accelerators, such as the one at Fermilab, showed that these particles, particularly the protons and neutrons, can be blasted apart and that they are

made up
cles.

of yet this

Does

more fundamental partigo on forever, with each

particle being

made up
some

of yet

smaller

ones? Though many new particles have been discovered, this doesn't seem likely.
Currently there
is

leaning toward

beam begins in cube (above)

in-

the idea that there are two fundamental

of-Cockroft-Walton Pre- Accelerator. Scientist

side replenishes hydrogen gas Irom which machine strips protons. These are fed into beam through column at lelt o! cube. Pre-Accelerator
sits

on tall legs with doughnutlike rings (left) to avoid high-voltage sparking in the laboratory,

model are staggering. The sun is just an ordinary star, but because it is the closest one to us, we feel we know it best, and we use information about it to construct theories about the more distant bodies indeed about the whole universe.

classes of particles: leptons which include our own neutrinos, and another group called quarks. Quarks are, as neutrinos were at one time, a purely theoretical idea. If they exist, Ihey are of several kinds and
,

are subunits of the N PAGE 108

more

familiar particles

MICKEY MOUSE OLYMPICS

to

Each athlete was developed be perfect for each event which was awful for the Olympics!

BY TOM SULLIVAN

world apart, two spechartered airliners took to the sky within an hour of each other First there was the Aeroflot Soviet colossus lifting off the runway of the secret development base near Minsk. Forty minutes later a Pan Am curl-winged behemoth left the maximum -security training complex at Prove Utah. Each flight maintained a fighter escort in international air space Each followed a path guaranteed free of man-made weather by its crisis-detection satellite overhead To the personnel on board it was unbreached boredom. Occasionally someone made a boast: "We will bury them, eh. Nikila?" "Hey. Stilt, when we start
cially

shootin',

those suckers gonna bleed red!"

The landings were accomplished on isolated runways of Havana's Jose Marti' Airport. The triple-wire fences were two hundred meters away. In each case
a telephoto lens foreshortened the distance.

"Podyelka!" screamed the Russian

the films of the

"Fraud!"

when he saw American disembarkment hours later echoed the American at his own private

screening of the Russians' arrival. The next afternoon they stood side by side in the jammed Olympic stadium, mouthing the oath of brotherhood and fair play A Babel. One hundred
sixteen countries. Sixty-eight languages

When

it

was done, and the crowd's roar had chilled the form, Duncan Sherman poured a syrupy smile
his "Mr.

plat-

onto

Russian counterpart. Smerdyakov." he said with benign formality, "I we can dispense with a translator." Smerdyakov allowed his own smile to fill speak a little English. Mr Shuer-mann." out. "Yes. Politely but boldly they took each other's measure. The Russian saw a scruffy, tweed-bearded man. white and gray, perhaps an ex-athlete, atrophied now. with an indoor skin a below-ground skin. The American observed a face like an omelette, panbelieve
Giorgi
I

PAINTING BY RAY

GOODBRED

shaped, slightly askew; the USSR executive chairman had never laced a sport shoe, he felt sure already, and he doubted that the cherubic Smerdyakov could even reach his socks without pulling a hamstring.
"1

stadium before the events officially started the next morning, watching the athletes ardictating notes to his Man Friday. As homogenized delegations cast off their suits for warm-up, he hit upon a for identifying those without numbers. "Autograph?" he would ask, tapping pad and pencil in the face of a select
rive,

"It's

the coach,

sir,"

said Felix.

Sherman held ground.

"She says,
again,
.

the

she'll
. .
.

if you come near her girls have Ludmilla kick you in the "

sweat

in

Ihe
it,

scheme
you had a pleasant
flight,"

"Got
girls

Felix."

Sherman grinned

falsely in

trust

said

retreat, saluting with his pencil.

Sherman,
landing,

"Ver^ pleasant. hope."

I

And you had a smooth

it?"

'Auto-graph, pl-lease?" .The flattered participant would then sign, while

athlete.

Felix.

A few of the giggled. Deeply "See that? See that? Touchy. No way, There's no way they can survive a
Sherman drew
"Fill
it

"Didn't you

see

mentarily,
flashed, laugh.

Smerdyakov was caught off guard mobut then Sherman's teeth and they shared a treacherous

"I hope the fog didn't spoil your pictures," the Russian said. "We had to use a computer to sharpen ours."

snapped a picture. This was necessary because no head-to-head international competition had taken place in fifteen months. That was because of the mandatory chromosome tests. And the chromosome tests were required because of genetic cheating. No one wanted a rulFriday
ing in an

Man

protest."

slowed

his voice.

himself erect, out, A blanket challater."

lenge. We'll get the

"What'll
I

names
sir?"

charge,

Olympic

year.
first

Smerdyakov, could a little fog keep us from seeing those weight lifters of yours the ones that had to get off the " plane sideways 7 "The suitcases were bulky." Smerdyakov waved his hand fussily. "We were concerned about that four-meter basketball player of yours, yes? He didn't bump his head, did he? Or was it a female high jumper? My trainer insists was wearing
"Ah,
it

Sherman saw his

sideshow when the

CCCP was

Russian women came out on the field. He could tell they were women because the on the left jacket breast as dis-

"Charge anything. Say you saw them their hind legs together and chirpSay their calves are longer than their thighs. We want a chromosome match-up with their parents, damn it! And if necessary their great-great-grandparents right back to the jackrabbits!"
rubbing
ing.

"Yes,

sir,"

said Felix.
translation
in

tinguished from the men's right-sided monogram. When the jackets were off,

The Russian

of

this

scene
1

concurrently took place

Gymnasium
call

of

the Multi-Sports Hall, to which

Smerdyakov
from

had gone

in

response to a panic
lay

the Soviet wrestling coach.

lipstick!"

"Youmust have seen

friend on his shoulders.

Stilt

carrying his

girl

Our tallest is barely nine feet. About three times the height of
of your dwarfs."

6The American team

lay

one

"Drawers ... ?" Smerdyakov feigned a language gap. "Munchkins. You know, mice midgets-.
. .
,

Little folk?"

"Our gymnastics team is young," Smerdyakov shrugged helplessly. "But let me congratulate you on that odd bone structure so many of your athletes have. For us to equal it, we would have to violate every rule laid down at the second Olympic Convention on Genetic Manipulation." Like all the Russian staff, Smerdyakov had a doctorate in genetic engineering. Sherman resented that. He couldn't afford to get into details. So he straightened dutifully as the Olympic torch passed by Round the track it went, an unruly presence in an otherwise respectful pavane. Up the steps it went, to the top of the stadium. There it, too, straightened. Flags fluttered. The Olympic chain ascended hydraulically a Walt Disney touch. Who else could afford to build the facilities? After the Games the second and tourth rings in the

basking like lizards at the side of a mat on which a paperweight match ensued between a thyroidal cretin from the Ukraine and a Yankee hump.9
-

basking like lizards at the side of a mat on which a freestyle paperweight match ensued between a thyroidal cretin from the Ukraine and a Yankee pyramidal hump. The pyramidal hump sported its apex between its
shoulder blades. "I could hang my hat on
sian
that!" the

The American team

freestyle

Rus,

coach pointed.
his chin re-

Smerdyakov's eyes bugged,

"We've won
all

tracting into the folds of his neck.

our contests but the Amercoach shrilled. "They are impossible to pin. Hunchbacks. All of them. We can't even win on points. Pankin
ican ones," the

bruised his chest executing a hug."

"Protest the losses.

there
jarred

When does

was no
ol'

distinction. But

what

really

Korolenko wrestle the American?"

"Next."

Sherman what

really filled

the
to

mold cast of suspicion and shaped nonhuman form were the jumpers. "My Gawd-d ..." he drawled.
"A flea circus,"

The Ukrainian

cretin

had the American

Man

Friday acknowl-

edged

tersely

by the legs and was wheeling him around the circle on his hump. Smerdyakov dropped to all fours and beat Ihe mat. The American promptly scissored his opponent

formly as

With piano-wire legs proportioned as unithe Russian

sausage

links,

bevy

looked like the insect equivalent of mermaids. In unison they began loosening up. Their jack-in-the-box knee bends, frenetic locomotive drill, and gazellelike bounding

chain would become mouse ears. The flame now leaped to its dish and pillared upward. Another roar avalanched onto the
platform where
stood.
reps.

erased any doubts.

"Protest,

protest,

protest," a
fistful

Sherman
of

whispered, rapidly snapping

his fingers.

Smerdyakov and Sherman

the

Man

Friday

grabbed

forms

Champagne was poured among

from his attache case. But salt 'n' pepper whiskers were already flowing amid the low
orbital ballet.

"To

my friend Shuer-mann," Smerdyakov

in

addressed. And delivered a toast

hysterics.

Rus-

'Autograph get the camera ready, Felix- autograph, please." Man Fri-

sian that sent his vestigial translator into

Sherman nedded
dyakov," he

gratefully

"To Smer-

said", lifting his

glass.

"ay-May

ightning-lay ike-stray is-hay ass-ay!"

day wrestled with attache, protest forms, and camera. Suddenly a basso profundo erupted and one of the females advanced on Sherman, rubbing the air in -front of her with bunched
fingers as
if

down for the count. "Korolenko!" called the Russian coach. Up stood Korolenko, stripping off his sweats. His coach massaged him with a pair of gloves, and the dry rasp was audible throughout the gym. "He's got scales!" came an incredulous whisper from the capitalist side. The Quasimodo of the moment balked at the edge of the circle, no longer sure of his quarry. "Is eczema contagious?" he was heard to quail. The American trainer assured him that the scruffy corn husk from Siberia had merely peeled in the Cuban sun. But at first touch the American wrung his hand, and, when the Russian clutched him with piggish grunts, he screamed as if impaled. "That ain't skin!" he appealed with a forlorn

wiping a splat from a wind-

look to the side. "This guy's an

al-

Sherman was
5?

at the

lck

and

field

shield.

ligator."

OMNI

In

search of the mysterious

m> wme
Bateson not an easy Gregory man to type. Best known as an
is

nmnd

link between mind and nature the pattern

which connects

he is the discoverer of the double-bind theory of schizophrenia, one of the founders of the science of cybernetics, and one of the original researchers (with John Lilly) in the field of interspecies communication. He is the son of the celebrated geneticist William Bateson. ex-husband of the late Margaret Mead, a regent of the
anthropologist,
University of California,
to

and

consultant

Governor Jerry Brown. The following essay is excerpted from his new book, Mind and Nature, in which he urges us " to "think as nature thinks. Ed
In June 1977 thought had the beginnings of two books. One called The Evolutionary Idea and the other Every
I I I

could be entitled, with a little irony, Every Schoolboy Knows. But as sat in Lindisfarne, working on these two manuscripts, sometimes adding a piece to one and sometimes a piece to the other, the two gradually came together, and the product of that coming together was what think is called a Platonic view. It seemed to me that in Schoolboy was laying down very elementary ideas about epistemology that is, about how we can know anything. In the pronoun we, of course
I I I
I

included the starfish and the redwood

forest, the segmenting egg, and the Senate of the United States. And in the anything which these crea-

tures variously know,

grow
still

into live-way

included "how to symmetry," "how to

I

survive a forest

fire,"

"how

to

grow and
to

Schoolboy Knows The first was to be an attempt to reexamine the theories of

biological evolution in the light of cybernetics and information theory. But as began to write that book. found il
I

stay the

same shape," "how

to write

learn,"

"how

a constitution,"

difficult to write

with a real audience in

mind who,
the formal

hoped, would understand

I

and therefore simple presupwhat was saying it beevident that schoolcountry and in England and, the entire Occident was so careful to avoid all crucial issues that
positions of
ing
in this

to invent and drive a car," "how to to seven." and so on. Marvelous creatures with almost miraculous knowledges and skills. Above all. included "how to evolve." because it seemed to me that both evolution and learning must fit the same

"how

count

came monstrously
suppose,
in

formal regularities or so-called laws.

would have to write a second book to explain what seemed to me elementary

any other biological or social thinking to daily life and to the eating of breakfast. Official education was telling
people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and on

ideas relevant to evolution

and

to

almost

grown-up persons with children of their own cannot give a reasonable account of concepts such as entropy, sacrament, syntax, number.
the plains. Even
quantity, pattern, linear relation,

was, you see. starting to use the ideas of Schoolboy to reflect not upon our own knowing but upon that Wider knowing which is the glue holding together the starfishes and sea anemones and redwood forests and human committees. My two manuscripts were becoming a single book because there is a single knowing which characterizes evolution, as well as which aggregates humans, even though committees and nations may seem stupid to two-legged genius'es like you and me. was transcending the line which is sometimes supposed to enclose the
\

human
writing,
tion of

being. In other words, as

was

name.

mind became,

for

me, a

reflec-

class,

relevance, energy redundancy.

force, probability, parts, whole, information,

tautology, homology,
Christian),

mass

(either

Newtonian or
type,

explanation,

description, rule of dimensions, logical

What What
It

some

metaphor, topology, and so on. are butterflies? What are starfish? are beauty and ugliness? seemecTfo me that the writing out of of these very elementary ideas

many parts of the natural world outside the thinker On the whole, it was not the crudest, the simplest, the most animalistic and primitive aspects of the human species which were reflected in the natural phenomena. It was, rather, the more
jEieo'ptec) iitm the

nook Mind ana Ni:ute, Bv Gregory

Ciipyntjn!

-;c,

1979 dy Giego'y Bawson

BY GREGORY BATESON
54

PAINTING BY BILL MARTIN

OMNI

complex, (he aesthetic, the intricate, and the elegant aspects of people that reflected nature. It was not my greed, my purposiveness, my so-called animal socalled instincts which was recognizing on the other side of that mirror, over there in
I

"nature
roots of

"

Rather,

was seeing

there the
ugli-

human symmetry, beauty and

ness, aesthetics, the human being's very aliveness and little bit of wisdom. His wisdom, his bodily grace, and even his habit of

telling them that by the end of the course they should understand the guestions in Question 1 asked for brief definitions of sacrament and entropy. The young psychiatrists in the 1950s were, in general, unable to answer either question. Today a few more could begin to talk about entropy. And suppose there are still some Christians who could say what a sacrament is.
it.
I

world of the living iwhe e distinctions are drawn and difference can be a cause) and
r

the world of nonliving billiard balls and galaxies (where forces and impacts are the

causes of events). These are the two worlds Jung (following the Gnostics) calls creature (the livingj. and plerorna (the nonthat
living). was asking, What is the difference between the physical world of the pleroma, where forces and impacts provide sufficient bases of explanation, and the creatura, where nothing can be understood until differences and distinctions are invoked? In my life, have put the descriptions of sticks and stones and billiard balls and galaxies in one box, the plerorna, and-have left them alone. In the other box, put living things: crabs, people, problems of beauty, and problems of difference. The ccnlenls of the second box are the subject of this
I
I I

making

beautiful objects are just as animal

as his cruelty. After all, the very word animal with mind or spirit

means "endowed

of

(animus )," Against this background, those theories man that start from the most animalistic and maladapled psychology turn out to be improbable first premises from which to

my class the core notions thought about religion and science. felt that if they were going to be doctors (medical doctors) of the human soul, they should at least have a foot on each side of the ancient arguments. They should be familiar with the central ideas of both religion and science.
I

was

offering

of

2,500 years
I

of

For the art students.

approach the psalmist's question, "Lord, what is man?" never could accept the first step of the Genesis story: "In the beginning the earth was withoui form and void." That primary tabula rasa would have set a formidable problem in thermodynamics for the next billion years. Perhaps the earth never was any more a tabula rasa than is a human
I

was a
dents,
into

was more direct. small group of about 10 to 15 stuand knew that would be walking an atmosphere of skepticism borderI

It

LarticleJ.

ing on hostility
that
I

When

entered,

if

was

clear
of

was expected

to

be an incarnation

griping recently about the shortcomings of Occidental education. It was in

I

was

letter to

my

fellow regents of the Univer-

sity of California,

and

the following phrase

zygote a fertilized egg. began to seem that the old-fashioned and still-established ideas about episIt

was
/

epistemology, were a reflection of an obsolete physics and contrasted in a curious way with the
temology, especially

human

who
'their

very lucky to be teaching people were not scientists. Unbias

"Break which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality." offer you the phrase the pattern which connects as a synonym, another possible
crept into
letter:
I

my

the pattern

title

for this [article].

is

trained as they were,

What

the pattern which connects

all

we seem to know about living things. It was as if members of the species man were supposed to be totally unique and totally materialistic against the background of a living universe which was generalized (rather than unique) and spiritual (rather
little

was

aesthetic.
/

By

the living creatures? Let me go back to my crab and my class was very lucky to be teaching people who were not scientists and the bias of whose minds was even antiscientific. All untrained as they were, fheir bias was aesthe'ic. By aesihetic. mean responsive to the pattern which connects. So you see, was lucky Perhaps by coincidence faced them with what was (though knew it not) an aesthetic question: How are you related to this creature? What is the pattern which connects you to it? By putting them on an imaginary planet. stripped them of all thought of Mars-, lobsters, amoebas, cabbages, and so on
of beatniks.
I
I

aesthetic,

mean

responsive to the pattern

which connects.?

than materialistic).

There seems to be something like a Gresham's law of cultural evolution, according to which the oversimplified ideas will always displace the sophislicafed and the vulgar and hateful will always displace the
beautiful.
It

And
I

yet the beautiful persists.

began

to

seem as

if

organized

matter and

nothing unorganized matter, if there is any in even such a simple set of relations as exists in a steam engine with a governor was wise and sophisticated compared with the picture of human spirit that orthodox materialism and

know

about

who would argue for the common of atomic warfare and pesticides. In those days (and even today 7 science was believed to be "value-free" and not guided by "emotions."
the devil,

sense

was prepared

for that.

had two paper

I

bags, and the first of these opened, producing a freshly cooked crab, which placed on the table. then challenged the class somewhat as follows: "I want you to
I
I

and forced the diagnosis

of

ife

back

into

identification with living self: "You carry the

bench marks,

the criteria, with which you

a large part of orthodox religion currently

drew.

produce arguments which

will

convince

me that this object

thing.
I

is

the remains of a living

The germ of these ideas had been in my mind since was a boy But let me start from two contexts in which these thoughts began to insist on utterance: In the 1950s was teaching had two teaching tasks. psychiatric residents at a Veterans Administration mental hospital in Palo Alto and young beatniks in the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. want to tell you how those two courses commenced, how approached those two contrasting audiI
I I

are Martians

You may imagine, if you will, that you and that on Mars you are familalive. But, of

iar with living things, being,

selves

seen crabs

or lobsters.

indeed, yourcourse, you have never A number of ob-

could look at the crab to find that it, too, carries the same marks." My question was much more sophisticated than knew. So they looked at the crab. And first of all, they came up with the observation that is symmetrical; that is, the right side resemI

it

bles the

left.
,

many of them fragmentary have arrived, perhaps by moloor You are to inspect fhem and arrive at the conclusion that they are the remains of living things. How would you arrive at that conclusion?"
jects like this,

ences. If you^put these two first lectures am side by side, you will see what it is
I

trying to say.

To the psychiatrists, presented a challenge in the shape ofa small exam paper,
I

Of course, the question set for the psychiatrists was the same question as that which set for the artists: Is there a biological species of entropy? Both questions concerned the underlying.-notion of a dividing line between the
I

"Very good. You mean it's composed. a painting?" (No response.) Then they observed that one claw was bigger than the other So the crab was not symmetrical. suggested that if a number of these objects had come by meteor, they would find that in almost all specimens it was the same side (right or left.) that carried the
like
I

'

'

-J

bigger claw. (No response

getting at?)

iV/iar's

Baleson
\

Going back
CON
I

fo
106

symmetry, somebody

55

OMNI

INUL:!

ON RAGE

EYES ON THE UNIVERSE

BY TRUDY
E.

BELL

Every nightfall at hundreds of observatories astronomers probe the

universe's frontiers.

Observatories themselves are sculptures of science where astronomy and

architecture meet

whether caught
of a lightning storm or
in

in

the crackling power

(left)

sunny quietude (below).

The

last

silver

darkening east
sky. This

copper rays of the setting sun glint off the rear wall ol the and white observatory domes, whose open shutters face the In an hour or so the temperature inside each dome will

equalize with the night airoutside, and overhead will arch the star-flung is the telescope's hour. Under the dome an astronomer uncaps the optics and slews the leviathan camera onto a distant galaxy or quasar, to gather light that may have begun its journey before the swirling primordial nebula condensed to form our sun and the earth. In this photographic celebration of the astronomer's quest, it is evident that not all observatories are the same: Some domes are short

and squat, others tower

all.

19 stories high,

and some

aren't

even domes

at

Yet

all

these designs have purpose. Indeed, observatories

embody

left silver dome of the Kiso Observatory, Tokyo, Japan; white of one of the 40-centimeter te'iecting (e/escopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona; panoramic view of four other Kitt Peak te

Clockwise from

dome

^Nightfall

is

the telescope's

hour when

it

gathers faint

light

emitted before the earth was formed^

the architectural premise that grace of form follows function. Observatories are found on remote mountaintops high above the dirty turbulence of lower air. From their lofty summits they unconsciously command the grand rugged beauty of mountain terrain. The

hemispherical dome is a recurrent form because it effectively shields and weather while permitting it to rotate freely in all directions. The structure housing the telescope is always painted white or silver, creating a daytime mood of shrinelike peace. These colors best reflect the sun's radiation and thus minimize stress on the telescope from the grueling daily cycle of heating and cooling. The most arresting astronomical instrument shown here is the white slanting shaft of the McMath solar telescope at Kitt Peak National
the telescope from wind
Clockwise from
Inside
Kitt
left:

six-meter reflecting telescope world's largestseen

its dome in trie -Caucasus Mountains; dome of a 2.1-meter reflector. Peak; corrugated building housing a 91 -centimeter reflector at Kitt Peak.

An observatory is

a prime

example

of the premise that the grace of form follows function.^

<mDomed shapes

shield the

telescope from wind and weather, while

permitting free rotation

Observatory

in

Arizona (page 65

).

the shaft tracks the sun across the sky

clock-driven mirror at the top of and reflects its image down the

shaft to an underground observing room 30 stories below. Since Ihe telescope shaft points toward the north celestial pole, the angle it makes with the horizon is equal to the telescope's geographical

the telescope were farther north, the shaft would steeply inclined. Thus, once again, form follows function.
latitude
If

be more

And

sacrificed

yet ihe aesthetic attraction of observatories never seems to be by stringent functional requirements. If anything, it seems to

be enhanced. Perhaps the awesome beauty of the universe is likewise deeply rooted in its function mystery that may someday be revealed to us through the eye of the telescope.

OO

traits of stars rising overa2. t-meter telescopedome at Kitt Peak, the time exposure blurring the bright image of Comet West in the morning sky; the and tower o! the McMath solar telescope at Kitt Peak.

Sstow

distinctive slanting shall

'<a*

FICTION

HALFJACK
Half-man, half-machine,

he roamed among the stars, seeking BY ROGER ZELAZNY

fulfillment

walked barefoot along the beach. Above the city several of the brighter stars held for a few final moments against the wash of light from the east. He fingered a stone, then hurled it in the direction from which the sun would come. He watched for a long while until had vanished from sight. Eventually it would begin skipping Before then, he had turned and was headed back, to the city, the apartment, the girl.
it

He

"Jack?'
"Yes. Good morning." "Come back."
'All

right."

He moved
was

to the

lying there, smiling.

bedroom door and entered the room. She She raised her arms slightly

Somewhere beyond the skyline a vehicle lifted, burning its way into the heavens. look the remainder of the night with
It

her.

"I've thought of a wonderful way to begin the day" He seated himself on the edge of the bed and embraced For a moment she was sleep-warm and sleep-soft against

it

as it faded Walking on. he smelled the countryside as well as the ocean, it was a pleasant world, and this a pleasant city spaceport as well as seaport here in this backwater limb of the galaxy A good place in which to rest and immerse the neglected portion of himself in the flow of humanity, the colors and sounds of the city the constant tugging of gravity But had been three months now He fingered the scar on his brow He had let two offers pass him by, to linger. There was another pending his consideration. As he walked up Kathi's street, he saw that her apartment was still dark. Good, she would not even have missed him.
it

moment. "You've got too much on," she said, unfastening his shirt. He peeled off and dropped it. He removed his trousers. Then he held her again. "More," she said, tracing the long fine scar that ran down his
him, but only for a
it

forehead, alongside his nose, traversing his chin, his neck, the chest and abdomen, passing to one side of his
right side of his

groin,

where

it

stopped.

"Come

on."

"You didn't even know about it until a few nights ago," She kissed him, brushing his cheek with her lips.
"It

really

does something

again. He pushed past the big front door, still not repaired since he had kicked it open the evening of the fire, two no, nights ago. He used the stairs. He let himself in quietly. three

"For almost three months "Take it off. Please."

for

me."

He sighed and gave a

'All

half-smile.

He

rose to his

feet,

He was
her

in

the kitchen preparing breakfast

when he heard

right,"

stirring.

He reached up and

put a

hand

to his long, black hair.

He

PAINTING BY MICHEL HENRICOT

took hold of

it.

He

raised his other

hand and

spread

scalp at the hairline. He pushed his fingers loward the back of his head and the entire hairpiece came free with a soft, crackling sound He dropped the hairpiece atop his shirt on the
his fingers along his
floor.

the ship's systems." He rose from the bed, went to the closet, drew out a duffel bag, pulled down an armful

"Yes."

of garments, and stuffed them into it. He crossed to the dresser, opened a drawer, and emptied its contents into the bag.

He turned and walked out of the room, left the apartment, used the siair again, and departed from the building. Some passersby gave him more than a casual look, cyborg pilots not being all that com-

"You're leaving?"
right

mon

in this

sector This did not bother him.

The
growth
faint

side of his
left

pletely bald; the

of

dark

hair.

head was comhad a beginning The two areas were

"Yes."

He entered
two
fistfuls of

the bathroom, emerged with personal items, and dropped

precisely divided by a continuation of the

them

into the

bag.
the

scar on his forehead. He placed his fingertips together on the crown of his head, then drew his right hand to the side and down. His face opened vertically, splitting apart along the scar, padded synthetic flesh tearing free from down over electrostatic bonds. He drew
it

"Why?"
bed, picked bodyglove and hairpiece, rolled them into a parcel, and put them inside the bag. "It's not what you may think," he said what thought until just a few
his
I

He rounded

up

then, "or even

as shoulder and biceps, rolling as his wrist. He played with the flesh of his hand as with a tight glove, finally withdrawing the hand with a soft, sucking sound. He drew away from his side. hip. and buttock, and separated at his groin. Then, again seating himself on the edge of the bed. he rolled it down his leg. over the thigh, knee, calf. heel. He treated his fool as he had his hand, pinching each toe free separately before pulling off the bodyout and placed it with glove. He shook
his right
far
it it it it

moments ago." She sat up.

"You think less of me," she said, "be-

His step lightened. He stopped in a paybooth and called the shipping company to tell them that he would haul the load in orbit; the sooner it was connected with his vessel, the better, he said. Loading, the controller told him, would begin shortly and he could ship up that same alternoon from the local field. Jack said that he would be there and then broke the connection. He gave the world half a smile as he put the sea to his back and swung on through the city, westward.
they had

cause seem to like you more now that know your secret. You think there's someI I

Blue-and-pink world below him, black

sky above, the stars a snapshot snowfall all about, he bade the shuttle pilot goodbye his airlock. Entering the Morand

thing pathological

about it" "No," he said, pulling on his

shirt, "that's

keyed gana, he sighed and set about stowing his gear. His cargo was already in place and

the ground computers had transferred course information to the ship's brain. He hung his clothing in a locker and placed his

his clothing.

Standing, he turned toward Kathi, whose eyes

,

bodyglove and hairpiece

in

compartments.

Standing, he turned toward Kathi, whose eyes had not left him during all this time. Again, the half-smile. The uncovered portions of his face and body were dark metal and plastic, precision-machined, with various openings and protuberances, some

had not left him. Again, the half-smile. The uncovered portions
. .

He hurried forward then and settled into the control web, which adjusted itself about him. A long, dark unit swung down from
overhead and dropped into position at his right. It moved slowly, making contact with
various points on that half of his body. Good to have you back. How was your

of his face

and body

gleaming,

some

dusky.
to her.

"Halfjack,"
I

she said as he came

"Now know what that man in the cafe meant when he called you that." "He was lucky you were with me. There
are places where that's an unfriendly term."
"You're beautiful," she said.
"I once knew a girl whose body was almost entirely prosthetic. She wanted me to keep the glove on at all times. It was the flesh and the semblance of flesh that she

plastic

were dark metal and machined. ...

. .
.

vacation, Jack?

Oh.

Fine.

Real

fine.

Meet any

nice girls?

A lew.
And here you are again. Did you miss things? You know it. How does this haul look to
not
it

at

all.

Yesterday

would have said so

I

and used that for an excuse to storm out of here and leave you feeling bad. But want to be honest with myself this time, and fair
to you. That's not
it."

found attractive." "What do you call that kind of operation?" "Lateral hemicorporectomy." After a time she said, "Could you be resome way?" paired? Can you replace He laughed. "Either way," he said. "My genes could be fractioned, and the proper replacement could be made parts could be grown. whole with grafts of my own flesh. Or could
it
I I

you? Easy, for us. I've already reviewed the course programs. Let's run over the systems. Check. Care for some coffee'7

He drew on
"It's

his trousers.

Jhat'd be

nice.

"What then?" she asked.

just the
I've

call

it.

gravity well.

wanderlust, or whatever you stayed too long at the bottom of a I'm restless. I've got to get
It's

A small unit descended on his left, stopping within easy reach of his mortal hand. He opened
rested
in
its

door.

A bulb

of

dark

liquid

going again.
realized this
to

my
1

nature, that's
I

all.

Timed your arrival.

Just
got.

a rack.
the

Had
it,

it

ready.
I

have much of the rest removed and replaced with biomechanical analogues. But

need a stomach and balls and lungs, because have to eat and screw and breathe
I I

when saw that was looking your feelings for an excuse to break us up and move on." "You can wear the bodyglove. It's not that important. It's really you that like." like you, too. Whether you "I believe you.
I I

way

like

too.

almost

for-

Thanks.
later,

hours he had already switched off a number of his left-side systems. He was merged even more closely with the vessel, absorbing
Several
left orbit,

when

they

believe

me or

not,

your reactions to
It's

my

bet-

to feel

human."
ran her

ter half don't matter.

what

said, though.
I

data at a frantic rate. Their expanded perceptions took in the near-ship vicinity and

She
metal,
"I

hands down
flesh.

his

back, one on

Nothing else.
won't be
like

one on
drew

And now I've got this feeling much fun anymore. you really
If

moved
and

out to

encompass

the extrasolar

panorama
taneously

with greater than

human

clarity

don't understand," she said

a_part.

when they

me,

you'll let

me go

without

lot

of

precision.
to

finally

"What

sort of accident

fuss."

was
said.
I

it?"

He
"If

finished dressing.

She got out

to be,"

of the

It

is

good

They reacted almost instandecisions great and small. to be back together again.

'Accident? There was no accident." he "I paid a lot of money for this work, so that could pilot a special sort of ship. am a cyborg. hook myself directly into each of
I I

bed and faced

that's the

him.

Jack.
it

way

has

she said.

I'd
built.

say. tightly Their velocity

"Okay"
"I'd

Morgana held him

better just go, then.

Now"

OO

Our one
is

scientist

closest to the President

anxious

to

reverse the

downward curve
research

of fiscal support
for scientific

IRJTERVyiElAJ

made Frankmechanism and

Press
the

his scientific reputation

bv researching

prediction of earthquakes, a par-

Policy

ticularly appropriate background for the position he now holds: science adviser to the President o! the United States and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology The position has had a tumultuous history, Established by

Soviet Union orbited the

President Dwight Eisenhower to help calm public fears after the first man-made satellite and elevated in

new President's uncertain attitude were not happily received by the elders. of American science, many of whom had lobbied Gerald Ford to undo Richard Nixon's axing of their principal conWashington. From across the country, leading researchers signaled their distress, and cautious Jimmy Carter, who tends to ask around before making a serious move, responded by appointing a science adviser; Frank Press, fifty-two, chairman of
the
tact point in

the federal hierarchy by John F. Kennedy, the post was abused by Lyndon Johnson {who resented scientists' opposition to the Viet= nam War), abolished by Richard Nixon, and, finally, revived by E Gerald Ford. % When Jimmy Carter took office -determined to fulfill his campaign pledges and cut the federal payroll -the Office of Science | I and Technology Policy seemed a prime candidate for obliteration, I After all, a President trained as an engineer didn't need a proies sor on board to counsel him on science and technology, Rumors of

the department of earth and planetary sciences at MIT His selection puzzled most observers because Press had not been connected with Carter's presidential campaign. Born in New York City Frank Press received his undergraduate degree from the College of the City of New York and a Ph.D. in geophysics from Columbia in 1949 and was off to a swiftly rising career. He has since authored 160 papers and at the tender age of
thirty-three

won election to the National Academy of Sciences. Press's pioneering work in seismology and deep-earth structures appointment as a member of the U.S. delegation to
led to his

nuclear-lesl-ban riGgotiations

in

the late Fifties

and

early Sixties.

He subsequently became a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, a now-defunct council of senior scientisis attached to the office of the President's science adviser. After two years as President Carter's science adviser (since May 1977), Press holds an established position in Washington's scheme of things. Neither a political operator nor a member of any particular faction in the administration, he is valued by the President as a reliable source of information and analysis on an everwidening range of issues. "He's one of the people whose word we can trust at face value," says a senior member of the Office of Management and Budget. Press played a key part in the opening of relations with China, heading one of the first U.S. delegations
Omni: There have been many warnings recently that American science is facing a crisis, that our ability to develop new technology is falling apart, that federal funding is inadequate. How do you assess the health of our science and technology? What's strong, and what's weak ? Press: When you travel through other countries and ask them how we are doing, you find that they are in awe of us. Look at the Nobel prizes; look at where some of the startling new ideas are coming from. Our science and technology are strong in comparison with the rest of the world, and any1

to plan collaborative efforts with the Chinese. As our government's top official in science, he has reversed the decline of support for research. might be for If any criticism exists as to Press's performance, his passionless support of the President. The scientist's own views on research and development are impossible to distinguish from official administration positions. Frank Press doesn't dispute the like a badge of honor stressing that he was charge; he wears hired to work for the President, not to serve as the scientific community's lobbyist in Washington. Dr. Press recently had the following conversation with Daniel S. Greenberg, a frequent contributor to Omni and a longtime observer of the science and government scene in Washington.

formed

financial

it

it

doing what they know best. That's not an

efficient

way

to

do

scientific research.

Omni: Much
originate

of the red tape seems to in the executive branch of the government. The Office of Management and Budget, for example, now has the universities up in arms about accounting

What does R and D have to offer in that area? Press: There's fusion, geothermal and ocean thermal power, windmills, waves and tides; there's fission, including breeders and advanced converters, which use uranium more
all its

efficiently; there's solar

power

in

methods for their research. A great deal of time and effort is going into a bureaucratic fight on this, mainly on the subject of indirect costs for research.
Press: We're trying to find nonbudgetary ways to improve the research climate, such as encouraging shorter proposals and re-

to photovoltaics to solar thermal.

forms, from hydroelectric to biomass We can't

invest in all of these; we have to make prudent judgments, and those judgments have to take into account the environment,

the competitive position of U.S. industry, and other factors, as well as the the costs,

body who says

crying wolf.
I

that they are falling apart

is

am concerned

not about our present

position but about trends

which might

ducing reporting requirements. We want to simplify the regulations on indirect cosfs while taking into account the different procedures of different universities big and
small, private

technology. These

cause us some problems if they continue. Are our young scientists employed to the lop of their abilities? Are those with the best ideas able to raise research funds io prosecute those ideas? Omni: Is this a good time for a bright young person to go into science?
Press: We don't have an unemployment for young scientists and enhuge unfilled demand for engineers. Most of the basic research, however, is done at universities, and our universities have the problem of

and state. Many congressmen believe errone-

that universities are ously, in my opinion using indirect costs to enrich themselves.

questions complex, and yet we have to make decisions today. We're spending more money on fusion than the rest of the world is, more money on breeder technology, more money on synthetic fuels, right on down the line and we can't keep doing that.

are terribly

problem

There are some cases where their performance doesn't stand up when it comes to accountability, and we have to show Congress that we are reviewing these cases and that the new regulations will work to
correct the situation. If we don't get regulations that are more efficient and consistent

money

product

The President doesn't want to put federal into demonstration plants where the will be twice as expensive as alter-

native sources. However, fusion or solar

when comes to energy the long-lead-time

it

gineers. In fact, there's a

the

modern accounting procedures, Conso we're taking the initiative. gress will do
with
it;

too great there

role.

but highly important research areas where industry can't afford to invest yet, because payback is too distant or the risks are we have an appropriate

And those

are precisely the areas

aging faculties: The

rigidity of

tenure

Omni: This

makes

it

difficult

for

universities to hire

is the first administration long time that has proposed no big

in

new
to

young people. Some try to deal with the problem by bringing in young people for postdoctorate work or other nonfaculty positions. That provides jobs, which is good, but it also means that these young scientists lack independence. They can't
raise

technology initiatives, where. To the contrary,

in
it

space

or else-

has attempted

stop some existing projects, such as the Clinch River breeder reactor. Why doesn't President Carter have any grandiose plans
for big

technology, as most of his prede-

money

for their

own ideas from gov-

cessors did?
Press: First of all, he understands technology; so nobody is going to sell him a bill of goods. If you want a big technological effort in energy, say, or in space, he's going to help? ask, Why are we doing it? How will Is ft cost-efficient? Is it environmentally
it

ernment research agencies when they are employed, by senior people, as helpers
highly professional helpers, but not always
in

which are treated very well in the budget. Omni: What about space? Press: We have reached a transition point in our space program. We now have the tools to use space in important ways for the good of mankind, with all the things that remote sensing can do for us: monitoring pollution and atmospheric changes, mapping developing countries, verifying arms-controi agreements, locating mineral resources. That's where we want to put our

money
We're not going to shortchange the space sciences, which have a very high priority. There's the big telescope, the Pioneer probes of Venus and the Voyagers and beyond, the high-energy astronomy satellites, the solar-polar mission. We protected all of these programs in the face of a very tight budget, even with space-shuttle overruns, which will require
to Jupiter

a situation

where the best use

is

being

made

of their talents.

Omni: What about the procedures for obtaining government funding? Press;' Visit scientists and ask what their
lives are like.

They're writing proposals

of

all

the time.

It's

a frantic effort to get so

many

commitments

ferent sources, just to

-money from so many difkeep up a common

on a treadmill to together, rather than

consistent with other goals, sound? Is such as non proliferation, for example? In the case of the Clinch River plant, he was worried that a similar course, if adopted by other nations, would lead to nuclearit

weapons
Omni:
ress
in

proliferation.

laboratory. They're running

Why

haven't

we seen more

progoil?

keep

their

teams

reducing our

dependence on

one hundred eighty million were going to use for other

J0NW3E111

dollars that things.

we

distance south; if one man owned that belt of Earth it s roughly the tropic zone then he'd own the 7'( he? By all the

all

ownership

Heinlein's classic novel

The Man Who

When we opened
West,
it

the American you can believe Hollywood,

then had to be forced on

unwillingi

thieves at six-gun point. We're doing

things a
little
ti

more

neatly these days.

Laws and

_ r jce law tails

into

two categories
i

Many
of

legal issues deal with the

on our hoi The work that went into up the communicalions-satelliti companies in the mid-Sixties is a good
exploitation
planet.

space

THE MATTER
OF SPACE

LAW

example. In the long run. though, the second category may be more important: How we govern the space colonies themselves? All through space law, there are far more questions than answers. However much respect we have for such concepts as "human rights" and "natural law." it is clear that we cannot hope to carry our legal traditions beyond Earth's atmosphere. The laws that govern our colonists must grow naturally out of the demands that space itself makes on people who would live in it. Obvious as this principle is, there is little evidence that today's lawmakers understand it. The international treaties on which space law is based all center on earthly concerns and approach them in traditional ways.
will

of

space are

least as the

The 'regions

not really "space" at all. at Outer Space Treaty means it. question are the highly dein

the

way

for several

very practica- agree-

sirable equatorial geostationary orbits, positions 35.903 kilometers over the equator, where a satellite will remain above the

ments. For example, the International Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space makes manit

same
tion

point on the planet's surface at

all

times. Unlike the rest of space, the declara-

wquld have us believe, these

orbits are

datory to register launchings and report such data as the satellite's identifying features, orbital data~ and general function. Without such reports, it is all too possible to mistake a new, peaceable satellite for an
orbital

rare and limited natural resources owned by the countries lying beneath them. It is
unlikely that other nations will

weapon

or nuclear missile.

accept

this

assertion,

At the root of all space law is the U.N. Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. Known casually as the Outer Space Treaty, it provides that: Space exploration shall be conducted for the benefit of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind.

Then there is the question of what military can be allowed in space. For that matter. Just what activities are military? And is there any effective way to prohibit the undesirable ones? These may be the most difficult questions in space law. The United States itself provides two good examples of the problem. The Outer Space Treaty bars "weapons of mass destruction" from space, and technically we have obeyed that edict. But military navigaactivities

The 1971 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects was an equally useful accord or so it seemed. As larger satellites are built, their chances of surviving reentry also increase, escalating the risk that they will cause major damage when they crash back to Earth. Under this convention, spacefaring nations would pay for any destruction caused by their reentering space vehicles. Until last summer the convention seemed to guarantee that plummeting spacecraft would at loasl cause their unwitting recipients no permanent financial damage. Then came the fall of Cosmos 954 into the Canadian wilderness last

Outer space and celestial bodies cannot be nationalized. Space research must further the interests
understanding,

of international cooperation,

and peace

not merely in

space

but
it.

particularly

on Earth,

mass
tions

Nuclear weapons and other weapons of destruction, military bases, installaor

fortifications,

<m The shuttle is a peaceful research vehicle, to hear us tell Yet the Soviet Union sees it as

a
killer,

maneuvers, and

manned satellite

weapons testing are all banned from space. - Astronauts are envoys of mankind and must be given assistance and protection in their endeavors. States, governments, and international organizations accept certain liabilities for activities and accidents arising from their
space

a versatile space weapon, most deadly military tool ever devised.}

potentially the

satellite was nuclear-powered and aimed at gathering military intelligence, the Soviet Union was anything but helpful in tracking the object and locating its fragments. Only months later did the USSR agree to pay some of the retrieval costs a commitment the Russian government has since renounced. The United States may well be tested on this point when Skylab 4 tears back into our

summer. Because the

atmosphere.
is the 1968 Treaty on the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space. Under this agreement, any country whose astronauts encounter any trouble must promptly notify the United Nations. Other

Then there

explorations.

tion satellites are

a key part

of

Celestial bodies must not be contaminated with earthly life forms, nor may Earth be contaminated with extraterrestrial organisms, Governments must consult one another when a planned experiment might interfere

guidance systems. As
explain
it.

military

our ICBM planners

endangered astronauts all reasonable help and immediately return downed space crews to their homelands.
nations must give

the treaty, not the

only warheads are banned under means of delivering them. And what about the space shuttle, recipient of NASA's almost entire budget? As we

Unmanned spacecraft must also be returned to the country that launched them,
and the launching covery expenses.
authority

must pay

re-

with the activities or interests of countries

not involved

in

the projected undertaking.

it

These are noble sentiments, and seems that the diplomats who drafted the treaty sincerely hoped to keep space free
of the national bickering that

threatens
Yet,

human

survival here

sometimes on Earth.
for sign-

since the treaty

was opened
and

ing, lawyers, politicians,

military planit

ners have consistently tried to reinterpret

to their

economic and
,

military

advantage.
at the

it. the shuttle is strictly a peaceful research vehicle. But. when Alexei Leonov. head of the Soviet Union's cosmonaut corps, visited this country several years ago and looked at a shuttle mock-up. he couldn't understand why we objected to his nation's kilier-satc lite program. The shuffle. Leonov pointed out, could be the mqst efficient satellite destroyer yet devised. In fact, could carry out virtually any offensive chore a military tactician might want done. Russia has yet to demand that we abandon the shuttle as a potentially offen-

tell

ers' fear that

Again, this is a truly humanitarian accord on the surface. Underneath, however, it is not hard to sense the space pow^ astronauts and spacecraf:

it

possessing valuable military and economic secrets could be lost, with no legal to retrieve them, There are any number of earth-oriented legal problems that no one has even begun deal with. How do the laws of product and contract liability apply to space efforts? How do insurance regulations, neg-

way

to

ligence statutes, labor laws,

and work-

"Damnation nationalism should stop

stratosphere."

Ha rrlma n
space

sive

space weapon.

For example, though the treaty prohibits

bodies, one form of nationalization has already been attempted. In December 1976 eight equatorial countries signed the Declaration of Bogota, which claims that certain parts
nationalization-of
or celestial

One painful lesson becomes clear There is no practical way to ban from space any a technologically able nation wants to put there. The Outer Space Treaty will be effective only if nations obey it of their own will, policed by an informed pubactivity that
lic

men's compensatiqn translate into space? And how do domestic rules and standards apply? The Occupational Safety and
Health Act alone has been a baffling legal
tangle on Earth. Adapting it for space industries will be even more chaotic. One thorny problem is how we regulate satellites that threaten national sovereignty
in

opinion.
its

limitations, the treaty

paved

nonmilitary ways: orbital transmitters that

78

OMNI

UONTirvjED

ON PAGE I"

ALIEN
A close encounter
of the

most hideous kind.

horrifyingly lethal.

Obscene. Elegant. And

Out
computer,

in deep space, a commercial starship is cruising toward home. ltscrewofsevenastronauts(fivemen.two

women)
The space

is

safely
is

ensconced

in

suspended animation.

freighter

named
its

ably controlled by its superintelligent Mother. Suddenly an uncharted planet rouses

the crew from

inlergalactic slumber.

explore the planet

controls.

and

the skeleton of the pilot

a 4.3-meter
giant's

find a

The astronauts set out to huge abandoned spacecraft with

(14-foot) giant

still

at the

One

a mystery. of the astronauts then discovers hundreds of huge

life is

What ended the

BY CYNTHIA GRENiER

m
# *f,i
dmk

&.:*>-*;

20th Century -Fox has taken extreme measures to keep the Alien's identity a secret.^

seeds
of

egglike leather sacs. He sees something moving inside

them and puts his (ace close to to get a better look. And The seeds eventually confront the crew with utterly unknown and horribly, violently lethal In tact,
it
. . .

the terror begins.

something something

alien.

Twentieth Cenlury-Fox's new SF thriller. Alien, has been described as "the dark side ot Cose Encounters." And dark it is as
the Alien grows into somelhing more and more horrible and obscene as the motion picture progresses. What does the Alien look like? We can't show you. Fox has measures keep

taken extraordinary security to the Alien's visual identity a secret until the film is released. But we do know that the Alien, including all of his terrifying metamorphoses as he grows

 The seeds

eventually confront the crew with something utterly

unknown and

violently lethal.

has been designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, often been featured in Omni. Director Ridley Scott claims the creature will grip audiences with terror: "Giger's work combines the. organic and the technological in a disturbing, almost hideous manner. His paintings are both elegant and obscene." Twentieth Century-Fox is obviously high on the picture: The studio has given a publicity budget to match its other space film Star Wars. (For more details, see The Arts/Film, page 24 ,)'00
to maturity,

whose work has

it

Below: An astronaut discovers hundreds of strange, phallic seeds. Bottom right: He moves in tor a cioser look, and the terror begins. Three other photos show Giger's "organic technology" approach to set design.

9*7

THE WAY

OF CROSS
-

>j

;/

',

BY GEORGER,

R.

MARTIN
tie "toJ4
-.--

;"

Wmeresy,"
'

me..
'

The brackish waters

gently,
-

of his pool

;.-

it
I

by that comment.

He

shifted

tiles of

and down the pool. One broke over the side, and a sheet of water slid across the the receiving chamber. My boots accepted that were soaked yet again. philosophically had worn my worst boots, well aware that wet feet are among the inescapable consequences of paying call
I
I

the air hot and humid and thick with the rancid-butter smell characteristic of the ka-Thane. My collar was chafing my neck

"Certainly."

said. "And the nature of this

I

heresy? What must

indication of
that
I

my own

disprove?" It is a sad troubled faith to add

I

was sweating beneath my cassock, my feet were thoroughly soaked, and my stomach was beginning to churn. pushed ahead to the business at hand.
raw,
I I

on Torgathon Nine-Klariis Tun, elder of the ka-Thane people, and also Archbishop of Vess, Most Holy Father of the Four Vows, Grand Inquisitor of the Order Militant of the Knights of Jesus Christ, and counselor to His Holiness Pope Daryn XXI of New Rome. "Be there as many heresies as stars in the sky, each single one is no less dangerous. Father." the archbishop said solemnly. 'As Knights of Christ, it is our ordained task must add to fight them one and all. And that this new heresy is particularly foul."
I

"You say this new heresy is unusually foul, Lord Commander?" "It is," he said "Where has it started?" "On Arion, a world some three weeks' distance from Vess. A human world entirely cannot understand why you humans are

my

have dealt with did not really care. too many heresies. Their beliefs and their questionings echo in my head and trouble my dreams at night How can be sure of my own faith? The very edict that had admitted Torgathon into the clergy had caused a half-dozen worlds to repudiate the Bishop of New Rome, and those who
I

had followed
larly

that path
in

would find a particuthe massive

ugly heresy before

naked

(save for a
floated

so easily corrupted. Once a ka-Thane has found the faith, he would scarcely abandon
it."

damp Roman me and

Church
in
is

collar) alien

who

wielded the au-

thority of the

four great

webbed

hands. Christianity
is

the greatest single

"That

well known,"

replied politely.

"Yes,

my

Lord Commander,"

replied.

"I

did not mention that the number of kaThane to find the faith was vanishingly
small. They were a slow ponderous people, and most of their vast millions showed no interest in learning any ways other than own, or following any creed but their

human religion, but that means little. The non-Christians outnumber us five to one.
and there are
Christian sects,
the
well over

seven hundred
large as

did not intend to

make
I

light of

it.

my

apologies.

The mission

to

You have Finnegan

I

some almost as

One

True Interstellar Catholic Church of

was most taxing. had hoped to ask you for a leave of absence from my duties. need rest, a time for thought and restoration." "Rest?" The archbishop moved again in his pool, only a slight shift of his immense bulk, but was enough to send a fresh
it

their

and the Thousand Worlds. Even Daryn XXI, powerful as he is, is only one of seven to claim the title of Pope. My own have moved belief was strong once, but
Earth
I

too long

sheet of water across [he floor. His black, pupilless eyes blinked at me. "No. Father, am afraid that is out of the question. Your
I

and nonbelievers. and even my prayers do not make the doubts go away now. So was that felt no
heretics
it
I

among

The very edict

that

horror
interest

only

had admitted Torgathon

into the clergy

skills

and your experience are

mission." His bass tones

vital for this

when the archbishop told nature of the heresy on Arion.

"They have
of

sudden

intellectual

me

the

new
to

seemed

to

made

saint,"

he said, "out

soften

somewhat then.

"I

have not had time

had caused a half-dozen

worlds to repudiate
the

Judas

Iscariot."

go

over your reports on Finnegan," he

said. think

"How
I

did your work go?"

told him,

"Badly,"

we

will prevail.

on Finnegan.
ciliation

When

were rebuffed,

dards

into the right

able to shut down and broadcasting

"though ultimately The Church is strong our attempts at reconput some stanhands, and we were the heretics' newspaper
I I

Bishop of New Rome and find a particularly ugly heresy. ... 9

. . .

As a senior
pleases
the
St.

in

the Knights Inquisitor.

command my own starship. which me to call Truth of Chris!. Before

the craft

it

was assigned

to

me,

it

was named
I

Thomas,

after the apostle, but

did

not feel a saint notorious for doubting

was
in

an appropriate patron

for a
I

ship enlisted

facilities.

Our friends

the fight against heresy

made certain came to nothing."

also

that their legal actions

aboard the

Truth,

which

is

own ancient

religion.

Torgathon Nine-Klariis

brothers

and

sisters of the

have no duties crewed by six Order of St,

"That is not badly," the archbishop said. "You won a considerable victory for the Lord and the Church." "There were riots, my Lord Commander," said. "More than a hundred of the heretics were killed, and a dozen of our own people. fear there will be more violence before the matter is finished. Our priests are attacked if they so much as enter the city where the heresy has taken root. Their leaders risk
I

their lives to avoid

if

they leave that

city.

had hoped

such hatreds, such bloodshed."

not realistic," said

Tun was an anomaly. He had been among the first converts almost two centuries ago. when Pope Vidas L had ruled that nonhurnans might serve as clergy. Given his great life span and the iron certainty of his belief. it was no wonder that Torgathon had risen as far as he had. despite the fact that fewer than a thousand of his race had followed him into the Church. He had at least a century of life remaining to him. No doubt he would someday be Torgathon Cardinal Tun, should he squelch enough heresies. The
times are
like that.

tained by a

Christopher the Far-Traveling and capyoung woman hired away from

I

a merchant
I

Irader.

was

therefore able to devote the entire

three-week voyage from Vess to Arion to a study of the heretical Bible, a copy of which had been given to me by the archbishop's administrative assistant. It was a thick. heavy, handsome book, bound in dark leather, its pages edged with gold leaf, with

many splendid

interior illustrations in full

"Commendable, but
again, and
tience.
I

enhancement. Remarkable work, clearly done by someone

color with holographic

Archbishop Torgathon. He blinked at

me

remembered

that

among

people of his race blinking is a sign of impa"The blood of martyrs must sometimes be spilled, and the blood of heretics as well. What matters it if a being surrenders his life, so long as his soul is saved''" agreed. Despite his impa"Indeed."
I

tience, Torgathon

would lecture

me

for

was

another hour If "given a chance. That prospect dismayed me. The receiving chamber nof designed for human comfort, and did not wish to remain any longer than necessary. The walls were damp and moldy.
I

"We have little influence on Arion," the archbishop was saying. His arms moved as he spoke, four ponderous clubs of mottled green-gray flesh churning the water, and the dirty white cilia around his breathing hole trembled' with each word. "A few priests, a few churches, some believers, but no power to speak of. The heretics already outnumber us on this world. rely on your intellect, your shrewdness. Turn this calamity into an opportunity. This heresy is so palpable that you can easily disprove Perhaps some of the deluded will turn to
I

who

loved the all-but-forgotten

arl

of

it.

the' true way."

bookmaking. The paintings reproduced the originals were to be found on inside the walls of the House of St. Judas on Arion, blasphegathered were masterful, mous, as much high art as the Tarnmerwens and RoHallidays that adorn the Great Cathedral of St. John on New Rome. Inside, the book bore an imprimatur indicating that it had been approved by Lukyan Judasson, First Scholar of the order of St. Judas Iscariot. It was called The Way of Cross and Dragon.

if

88

OMNI

CONilNUEUON PAGE

115

FARMING
The big issue in agriculture today is simply " Will Buck Rogers replace Farmer Brown?"

BY ALAN ANDERSON,

JR.

ry to envision one huge machine running in a Held of wheat, precision planting a second crop at the same time it is harvesting. The machine could be made of new supermetats and have a computer-controlled, automated operator's station with the precision at

modem-day

manufacturing machine tools in all its operations, it would have high productivity and would reduce unit production cost to a fraction of present expenses-"

Robert Tweedy,

Allis-Chalmers

Company

"For twenty years the world

has pursued a dead-

in agriculture. There is no way of avoiding form of pervasive change in what we are doing. To meet new energy realities farmers must begin Such to supply large fractions of their own energy self-sufficient farms would tend to be smaller and to provide more employment than those that prevailed

end path

some

in the oil era."

Denis Hayes, Worldwatch

Institute

Large farms or small farms? Energy-intensive technologies or energy-efficient ones? These quesa heated debate that has divided the agricultural community into two distinct camps, each of which offers a conflicting view of the future of farming. Whereas the opposing sides in this
tions are at the core of

debate do not agree on

the problems:

solutions, they

do concur on

1978, according to Business

bly continue to

Food prices are steadily rising 10 percent in Week and will probado so. The world's population may well double by the turn

/ think the

whole idea of going back to old-time

is

farming
of the century, leaving the American agricultural industry with having to feed 3 to 4 billion more people,
-

a lot of baloney.^

er and designed

to

The

fossil fuels

now

burn other, more exotic, fuels, if necessary (perhaps mixtures of alcohol and lowgrade petroleum), The
ethyl
tractor will

used to run most farm machinery are getting

cost over a

quarter of a million dollars, but for his money the farmer will get an array of on-board com-

both expensive and

scarce.

HIGH TECH
The futuristic scenario that Robert Tweedy envisions above should not

puter functions and

electronic monitors that

would do justice

to the

starship Enterprise

The
will

come as a surprise to anyone who has followed ihe growth of

twentieth -century

farmer/operator

farm-

ing. The trend toward mechanization began in

the 1930s,
tor first

when the tracreached the

and we are better than halfway toward complete mechanization today Back in 1935
farm,

have digital displays for every tractor operation, from the rate of plow spin to actual seed-planting depth, and will be able to choose to make adjustments automatically if he feels like reading the morning

news-

paper. Indeed, the only

foi to be aboard at all will be that he prefers driving the
i
i

a headline

in

the

Illinois

State Journal

bannered

a new wine-grape harvester Big tomato growers (is there any other kind?) are buying S200.000 infrared scanners to sort the
fruit

once CROPS WERE PLANTED. HARVESTED BY TEDIOUS HAND METHODSFARMERS happy The tune is much the same today. In 1976 an enthusiastic article in Successful Farming magazine began; "Brawny tractors and sleek implements have replaced tired horses and awkward
the pleasures of the machine; farming
PRIMITIVE: EARLY ILLINOIS tools."

tractor to sitting at his desk.

and complement
is

their

mechanical

pickers.

To help monitor his farming operation, the farmer wiil use a home computer that has a direct link to a global satellite system. This system will help him estimate, by measuring reflected solar radiation,

Nor

glected.

He can now talk

distant fields via

the farmer himself being newith his wife from CB radio, hitch a motor-

acreages

to

be planted, warn him of

incipient diseases,

Today we feel the effects of mechanization more than ever before. Little on the farm has been left to the human hand. No more weeding, for example, since a wide-tired truck can "dope" as much as 200 hectares per day with herbicide. Nine-ton combines can cut a 7 5-meter swath of grain, combining the reaping and threshing operations, and blow it all into grain carts. Mechanical cotton pickers can pluck 9,000 kilograms of cotton a day it would take 100 humans iripe pods in to do that and leave the Ihefield'to mature. A Rube Goldberg-like potato harvester can excavate five tons of dirt and potatoes a minute, shovel the cut roots and lift the potatoes, spit out the vines. and whisk the potatoes into sacks. Haying, which used to help thousands of high-school football players get ready for fall, is automated now, One man and a machine can collect, stack, and haul some 3.100 bales about 100 tons of hay a day Even the most tender crops are now harvested by machine. Ernest and Julio Gallo, who produce 35 percent of all California wine, approved the purchase of

bike to his tractor so he can scoot back to the house far lunch, and ride in a quiet, air-conditioned cab on a plush seat de-

predict harvest figures, and schedule his irrigation times. In addition, daily readouts

signed by orthopedic specialists. John Deere recently set up a Human Factors research section to study the farmer's "operator environment." The farmer's land is worth more than he ever dreamed possible, and his business is being courted by everyone from tape-deck salesmen to travel agenis. And with specialization has come more leisure time; Farm Journal, one of the most widely read farm magazines, carries a regular feature called Travel News. The farmer keeps up on his own specialty by leafing through such journals as Weeds Today. Wines & Vines. Pig International, Peanut Science, and Hoofs & Horns: The Magazine of the American Cowboy. What can we expecl of Ihe future? Everything will continue to grow as before, but the farmer will own nearly twice as much land as he does today perhaps 400 hectares in the Corn Belt. His tractor will still be diesel-powered in the near future, but it will be bigger around 500 horsepow-

on international market conditions (both financial and commodity) and new agricultural products will be available. His computer will also help him decide what lo grow each season. Several years ago the computer analyzed his operation and decided that the small amount of beef cattle that he was raising was actually hurting his profits. After getting rid of the cattle,
his profits rose,

much as his neighbor's had

that

when

his

computer recommended

he

increase his small turkey operation. 'His neighbor now raises more than 80,000 birds per year and delivers Ihem (rozen,
stuffed,

and wrapped

to the

supermarket

chain that bought his farm. Indeed, electronics will change much of life on the farm, Computers will control feeding, slaughter, waste removal, and other "barnyard" chores with electronically powered gates, shockers, cutters, conveyor belts, washers, blowers, dumpers, and
Cattle will wear "cowboots" handmade leather booties with fancy buck-

haulers.
les

and

electronic sensors that

will

transmit

the weight

and whereabouts

of the

cow

______

wearing them. Or the cattle

transmitters
in

will

have radio
that

their

stomachs

beep

when
will

radio-interrogated with special units

will carry.

become industrialized has acquired a vast superstructure ot researchers, and spokesmen.

farming has
suppliers,
it

But are we really, as agribusiness claims, feeding the world? Not really, it seems. We export huge
of grain, but most is bought for animal feed by wealthy countries like

that the farmers

These beepers

Fewer people work on farms (farm population

amounts

and

enable individual cows to be separated identified and will act as deterrents to

it

the 1960s),

shrank 4.8 percent a year throughout and farmers must depend more

cattle rustlers.
In light ot all this,

ask what the purpose'

seems reasonable to of farming is. The

conventional definition is "to produce food and fiber," but that definition is already partially out of date. More and more of our fiber comes not from sheep and cotton fields but from synthetics, via our dwindling petroleum stocks. An updated definition is "to feed the world" a purpose promoted throughout the network of manufacturers and marketers known as agribusiness. And at the heart of agribusiness is the farm-machinery business. Gordon Millar, a vice-

on outsiders for things they used to do for themselves. They depend on the petrochemical industry lor billions of.dollars' worth of ammonia fertilizer, herbicides, in-

France, West Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union not~as food for the poor. Could we teed the world even if we wanted to give away grain? "No way," answers Angus Hanson, director of the USDA's
Beltsville Agricultural

and fungicides each year. They depend on drug companies for the huge amounts of hormones and antibiotics now
secticides,

Research

Station

in

used in animal feed. They buy their planting seed from seed companies. Supermarkets supply their food. All of these suppliers and the prices they chargeare beyond the control of the farmer.
With this dependence on outsiders have both indebtedness and a consequent loss of freedom. The total farm debt rose last year by 16 percent above the

Even most generous thropist will agree that mass giveaways would trap poor countries into a fatal deMaryland.
the
philan-

pendency on food from abroad. What really seems to be bothering agribusiness

is

the catastrophic balance-of-

come

president

for

engineering
largest

Company, the
chinery
in

at Deere and producer of farm ma-

the United States,

makes the

case

for agribusiness.
is

previous year's total to $118.7 billion, A farmer who wants to buy more land or buy

payments drain caused by our petrogluttony a habit for which there seems to be no cure. Grain exports go a long way toward offsetting this drain, and one can only guess what would happen to our economy if they stopped.

"There

whole set

of

a whole set of historical facts, a reasonably quantifiable proall

SOFT TECH
The
Small
late
Is E.

F Schumacher (author

of

jections, that

Millar recently at

Moline,

Illinois

have to fit together," said Deere headquarters in "In order to survive, people
It

Beautiful)
in

and other

critics

have

seen dangers
farming
is

the highly centralized

In

way

coordinated today.
of farmers,

reducing

amount of food. looks like we'll have between six and a half and eight billion people at the end of this century.
need a
certain

6/ think agriculture
will

the

number

That's about twice as

have now And

ers

this

from somewhere.

Who

many people as we food has got to come should these, farm-

continue to become more businesslike. We've never found a way to refute

the

depopulates rural farmers into already-overcrowded cities. In even the richest farming areas of the Corn

modern agriculture areas and moves the

economies

of

Belt, small towns are becoming poorer. As unprofitable farms are sold, banks and

be? Now here's where the cheese gets hard. Should they be farmers who live on six to ten acres of land and practice lowproductivity,

scale of the larger farms.

primary agriculture simply

to

feed themselves and their family? Or should we have intensive, high-energy farmers who can feed twenty, thirty, fifty people? Is farming a way of life, like a recreational activity, or is the primary purpose
of farming the production of food, so that the billions of people who are not farmers can have plenty to eat? The position I've

Farmers wilt just be better businesspeopleJ

neighboring farmers buy them up and then them to other farmers. Such nonowning landholders give less attention to soil maintenance and fertility than do owners who live upon the land they work. Farmrent

ers are also encouraged to grow cash crops for export, diminishing their ability to

or refinance a loan must a banker, who, usually, wants a guarantee that the farmer is going to follow

more machinery

support themselves and thus the ability to survive on anything less than a large scale. Schumacher pleaded for what he called
"appropriate technology" methods that could be managed and fueled by the

go

to

taken
Is

is

that

we can have

both.

The

'Small

And

Beautiful' people can have their farms, because there won't be very many of them. others can, for economic or moral or

accepted practices of plowing, planting, fertilizing, and spraying. This policy effectively

old) ideas

whatever reasons, have high-energy agriculture."

discourages the testing of new (and on the farm. As farming has become more capitalintensive, it has also become harder to be a

mant
ing.

Other officers at Deere are more adain their support of large-scale farm-

farmer. In

some

a farmer
ing land

is all

regions, in fact, becoming but impossible without inheritIllinois

"I think agriculture will continue to businesslike," said Fred Stickler, director of Deere's think-tank-like Technical Center. "We've never found a way to refute the economies of scale of larger farms. Farmers will be better managers think the and better businesspeople. whole idea about going back to the old

and/or machinery A 120-hectare

central

independence and Such methods might include warm barns and houses; power irrigation pumps; alcohol from crop residues to power tractors; methane from manure to dry grain; oldfashioned manure spreading to enrich soil; and rotating crops and using natural predators to control pests. As long as petfarmer, increasing his
self-reliance.

solar heating to solar cells to

become more

spread

in

smaller than the

average would
today's prices.

cost about $900,000 at The machinery to grow soybeans and corn on this ground would be at least $100,000 more. A down payment on all this would come to better than a

of these

rochemicals remain cheap, however, many techniques will not be costcompetitive with

modern

farming.

coherent complaints conventional agriculture came from the so-called organic movement, whose pracearliest

The

about

ways

a lot of baloney" High-technology, energy-intensive agriculture, however, is not without problems. "I see no way for modern technology to meet the need for a doubling or quadrusupply of the earth over pling of the food
of agriculture is just
fifty years," says Congressman George Brown (D.-Calif .), a senior member House Agriculture Committee. As

quarter of a million dollars, and interest on a loan for the rest, assuming it could be found, would be about $60,000 a year. In the midst of all these forces, the farmer has nowhere to turn but to farm magazines,

supported by the same people who sell him sprays and drugs and tractors and to

eschew petroleum-based fertilizand pesticides in favor of renewable, on-farm sources of energy and pest control. Robert Rodale, editor and publisher of Organic Gardening, Prevention, and The New Farm, is perhaps the senior spokestitioners

ers

the next
of the

government and university researchers, who get much" of their research monies
from those

for the movement today. Rodale is predicting a steady trend toward selfreliance not a rapid reversal of conven-

man

same

sellers.

tional agripractices.

"My guess

is

that large

CONT NIJEDOM PAGE

126

FUG T
OFT DRAG N
A bold confirmation
bestial evolution

of

BY PETER DICKINSON

I here are three possible views about winged. fire-breathing dragons: (1) They are completely legendary; (2) they are largely legendary but contain elements based on fantasized accounts of real animals; (3)

they really existed.

I

take the third view.

don't intend to prove that 27-meter lizards once floated in the skies of Earth and scorched whole villages with
I

plumes

of

flame,

don't think that

because can be proved.

I

And
fossil
will is

don't think

it

possible that

unlikely that
tribal

remains of a true dragon ever be found. Moreover, it cave paintings

showing
Stone cious
light.

heroes of the

Age battling this feroenemy will ever come to

I

But

can present a coher-

ent theory at least as probable as the theory that dragons

are completely legendary.

One cannot

infer

a possible

mechanism by which dragons could have breathed fire, another by which they could have flown, and another to account for the supposed magical nature of dragon's blood,

without focusing on the principal

tion:

dynamic of animal evoluThe life form a species

1979 sv Pe:er DLckinsoi
^ilusrratici-s

lexi

.'iS

. -a ?H by WSvr-e AraerSG-i EvierpliSd ''om

the dcok 'he Flight of Q.'scvns. :o !;c cub-

-**$&

PAINTINGS BY WAYNE ANDERSON

^Piercing a dragon releases

the hydrogen in his centra) cavity, rendering

him unable
evolves, no matter how strange, centers upon a

to fly

9
they fall into a certain river which springs from Paradise, and therein they perish wholly. All

particular specialization. My theory is that the

particular specialization

dragons evolved as a unique mode ot flight. They grew to their enormous size because great size was necessary if they were to fly They successfully. breathed fire because they had to. Their "blood" had seemingly magical properties because a particular chemical reaction was
of

those who dwell round about attend the season of the dragons, and

when

they

see

that

one

has fallen they wait yet seventy days. Then they go down and discover the bare bones of the dragon, that they may take the carbuncle that is rooted in the forehead
thereof."

Jordanus.in

The Wonders of the East

necessary

for

their
All

We
way

mode
these

of flight.
traits

ot

the question the

have been asking wrong

connected.
I

As to the remoter fringes of the theory,

think
I

round, We should be asking not How could an animal so big possibly fly? but

how

the

can demonstrate life form that

Why should
needed to
a size?
'

an animal
fly

that

evolved through this

specialization
its

evolve to

such

came
diet

to

Jordanus talked of "desfrom the Lonely Mountain to Laketown journey that had taken Bilbo and the dwarfs three days in the opposite direction) and there within the first half of one night are no thermals to provide free lift at night, either. The dragon Kalessin took Ged and half the Arren from Selidor to Ravnor width of Earthsea in a few days. But even
flight

young ladies of noble prefer for breeding. For our immediate purposes, however, the problem can be put very simply.

(a

How did

a creature of this size stay aloft

and "falling," notable phrases. The first thing that occurred to me when read this passage was that described a mating flight. The phrase developing wings
tined time"
I

it

and, indeed, hover? The question of weight is crucial so the next step is to attempt to estimate a dragon's weigh!. Only the roughest calculations are possible, but they will do. The record for kingdom is held by the lift in the animal Canada goose, which hefts 2 grams ot body weight for every square centimeter of wing. The swallow, by comparison, lifts only 135 grams. Apart from birds, the record
;

supports this notion. thought perhaps that dragons flew only for the mating flights (like
I

some

more noteworthy than

ability to hover.

their

speed

is their

bird the size of a pigeon

can manage it for a few seconds. Anything cannot achieve the rapid wingbeat
larger

required.

of the social insects) and that afterward the successful males died. was still mind when one day happened to see on television an old newsreel film of the wreck of the airship Hindenburg. In a flash all my ideas changed. As watched the monstrous shape crumpling and tumbling
I

of this

Clearly there
not simply

is

something badly wrong

in fiery

fragments, with the

I

smoke clouds
It

belongs to the bumblebee, which lifts 1,125 grams. The difference is accounted for by the peculiarity ot feathers, which allow air to pass through them from above to below but not in the opposite direction, and so increase the pressure difference. Some artists have drawn dragons with feathered wings, but they always look is fair to allow our dragon a wrong; so lifting ability equivalent to that of the bumblebee. To lift 9,000 kilograms, a dragon would need 720 square meters of wing. Give it a relatively normal wing shape, and it would have to have a wing span of nigh on 150 meters. This is impossible. And yet they did fly. They were no mere soarers, either, relying on cliffs, as the prehistoric Pteranodon did, or on wave effects, as the albatross does. They tlew efficiently and quickly. The dragon Smaug made the
it

with our assumptions, something that canoriginal description.

swirling above,

said to myself,

flamed

be put down to an error in the Reduce the length of a

it

and

dragon to, say, 6 meters and give it a 12meter wingspan and still cannot be made to fly. Increase the efficiency of the wing beyond anything else known in the natural kingdom and the same is true. What does
that leave?

it fell, and my mind made the leap to All the pieces had been conshook themselves into a different shape. saw that the Hindenburg was not merely a very big machine that flew was a machine that could fly only because it very was big. Other answers slotted into

Jordanus.
sidering

it

place:

leaves weight. order to fly. dragons must have been almost weightless.
It

In

A dragon could fly because most of its body was hollow and filled with a lighterthan-air gas.

A dragon needed
and Irom
"These dragons grow exceedingly big, their mouths cast forth a most
pestilential breath, like unto thick
rising from a
fire.

an enormous body to hold enough gas to provide lift for the total weight of the beast.
*

smoke

A dragon
It

breathed

fire

because
its

it

had

to.

At their destined time they gather together, and developing wings they begin to raise themselves into the air. Then, by God's good judgment, being too heavy,

was a necessary
of flight.

part of

specialized

mode
raise

Jordanus says that the dragons began to themselves into the air, and then,"be-

98

OMNI

3
fell, It is immediately describing something he doesn't understand. No animal has gone to the lengths ot evolving flight only to be loo

ing too heavy," they clear that he

is

What means"' One is tempted by the idea of an electric spa^K. but existing animals, such as the electric eel, that are able to produce the necessary voltage tor a spark
are specialists
reluctant to
in electricity.
I

needed to ignite the gas when was vented. The innards of the dragon were a comit

plex chemical factory, with not only hydrogen as the end product but all sorts of other

heavy

to fly

Suppose Jordanus was indeed

am

extremely
that

substances

that

had

to

be

either

used

or

describing a mating flight. We can make sense ofthe scene by linking this sentence
with the one
in

propose any adaptation

it

does not
I

arise from the original specializa-

front of

it,

about the dragons

like that of

breathing out their fiery breath.

The flight would

not

have been

ihe males of a social-insect species competing in pursuit of their new-hatched

queen;
in

it

must have been something more

tion: so think more likely that the ignition system was chemical. In order to produce the hydrogen, the dragon's body must have already been a series of chemical retorts; so the notion of some mixture's leading to spontaneous combustion on contact

excreted. There have been accounts of the "pestilential" nature of cragon breath, even when not ignited, and of the notorious trail
of slime that

dragons

left

that defiled ihe countryside

behind them and anywhere near

their

iairs.

Despite these chemical complexities,

the main body structure of the dragon consisted of a series of cavities, or vats, filled mostly with hydrogen. Should one of these

the right to

comparable to the behavior of rutting deer, which males battle with one another for fertilize females. But whereas stags tight with their antlers, Ihe dragons fought with their flaming breath. As in most mating contests, this would have been a highly ritualized form of battle, with little

with air

is

much more

plausible.

Whatever the mechanism, dragons learned to breathe tlame because they had For reasons will describe later, the habit of lairing in safe caves was essential to their survival, and unless the explosive gases they produced were burned off, those
to.
I

chambers be pierced from below and remember thai these cavities composed
most of the dragon's body, so that a stroke from below would have every chance of piercing a cavity two things would happen. First, the acid would flow out and react with anything it touched the blade that had made the wound, the arm thai held ihe
blade, even the dragon's

damage

inflicted

and most

ot the struggle

vast plumes of consisting of pure display noxious smoke, great blasts of flame as impressive in its way as the tail feathers of

caves would cease to be habitable. The use of flaming breath as a weapon, and as a form of sexual display, evolved from something that already existed as part of

the

peacock

or the

song

of the nightingale.

ond, the cavity

itself

own flesh, Secwould become use-

There was, however, a danger. Should a dragon in an excess of sexual fervor flame off too much of its gas, it would lose buoyancy and plummet to the ground and die. The curious detail about the dragons' "developing wings" now makes sense. Dragon wings were comparatively small (though still far larger than the wings of any other flying creature). As they were not needed to support the weight of the dragon, they were probably comparatively fragile and so would have been folded
close along the

less, and this in turn would haveiwo results: The dragon would no longer be able to fly, and would no longer have excess gas to
it

breathe out as flame.

^Dragons learned

to

shall return later to

the essential vul-

breathe flame because they had to. As a weapon and as a form of sexual
display, this ability

nerability of

dragons
I

to cutting

weapons.

For the moment, must emphasize a different consequence of the violent chemistry
ot the dragon's metabolism. Flight was achieved by a controlled digestion of parts of ihe bone structure. When the dragon
-

they were needed.

observer of the mating ritual would likely have been so impressed by the sheer size of the dragon's body that he might not even have noticed the wings until they were suddenly
original

body The

for protection until

evolved because It existed as part of the

mechanism

of flight

mechanism ceased to opand ihe whole structure corroded. passage from Jordanus who went to look for jewels in the body of a fallen dragon found only the skeleton, If they had waited longer they would have
died, the control
erate,

The

natives in Ihe

found nothing
unlikely that

at

all.

This

is

why consider
I

it

spread for flight. (Anybody who has watched a small beetle produce, as if from nowhere, its filmy wings and float on the wind can perhaps imagine the effect.} must provide. There is one more link Why did the dragons burn their excess gas, instead of simply belching it out? The answer lies in another well-known custom of dragons. They laired in caves and stayed there for long periods. imagine they must have had some control over their gas production and been able to manufacture more or less, according to need; but there would have had to be both upper and lower limits to this control a major metabolic process cannot be completely shut down. So even when they were at rest in their caves, there would have been a need to vent gas from time to time. If, as propose to show, the gas was mainly hydrogen, an extremely explosive mixture would have been formed unless the hydrogen was burned in a controlled fashion as left the
I I

my theory of dragon

flight

can

mechanism of flight. To the Stone Age hero confronting those pulses of fury at the mouth of the cave, fire must have seemed the primary aspect of the dragon, but like
the
everything else in nature, however strange. it had evolved along a logical path.

ever

be proved ny

ihe discovery of fossils.

As no

fossils are likely io be found, any reconsiruction of the dragon's actual body
is

We

have seen

that the flight of

dragons

depended on their ability to make their body weightless, or almost weightless, in large cavTo do this they needed to itiescavities that composed the major part of their body structure with a lighterthan-air gas. Helium is light enough to do
air.
fill

is a most unlikely ingredient, being an inert gas found in minute quanthe atmosphere but not known to play much part in the metabolism of any animal. Hydrogen is tar more plausible very light, abundant gas, violently inflammable when mixed with oxygen, and present in an accessible form in a sub-

the job but

tities in

guesswork. Dragons clearly evolved from lizardshaped dinosaurs. envisage cavities that were extreme modifications of the vertebrae of that long spine, each of the selected vertebrae becoming a large, ihin-walled urn of bone closed at ihe top with a muscular membrane. This membrane, and any other surface needing protection from the acid, would be coated with a resistant mucus, which is the normal way in which digestive systems are prevented

system

from digesting the body they feed. For maximum hydrogen production, the acid gland would open and the acid would flow

down the walls of the cavity, reacting with ihe calcium deposited there from the bone
structure.

The bone

itself

would be con-

it

stance already

common

in

the digestive

tinually self-renewing.

tion

dragon's body. Where a major specializarequires" "some further adaptation to effective, that adaptation usually make
it

systems
acid.

of

all

vertebrates hydrochloric
is

Of course, biological chemistry

never"

burn their breath in order to survive, nature would provide a means.

evolves.
If

dragons needed

to

as simple as that. There would have to be all.sorts of other substances to control and

The various cavities would, of course, be interconnected by valves, and by adjustment of the tension of the upper membrane, transfer of gas throughout ihe body, for balance and other purposes, could take
place.

modify the reactions, as well as substances

The membranes would serve a

fur-

100

OMNI

vital function. Normally the gas in the would be under mild pressure, and in air would be positive. would not actually would be light, but keep floating upward, For flight, the membranes would relax and the gas volume would expand. The volume of the dragon would increase, but its mass would remain the same, and it would become buoyant in air On a smaller scale, a fish's swim bladder operates in the same way. In fact, when aloft, the dragon would be swimming in air, rather than flying. When say the volume of the dragon increased, this need not have been apparent to an observer, though records of Chinese dragons specifically remark on their ability io vary their size. Another pos-

ther

body were

self-supporting, the question

arise,

cavities

would not even

the dragon's weight

It

Owing

to the

absence

of fossils,

it

is

im-

it

possible to trace the stages by which to fhe air. (It's worth pointing though, that the same is almost true of birds all we have are rare finds of two related species of Archaeopteryx and one disputed case of an unrelated species.)

dragons took
out,

lighter and lighter Bones became hollow and slight. The armoriike scales of the ancestral dinosaur were discarded, except from the head. We can" assume that this ancestor was one of the kangaroolike big predators that already leaped after their prey, rather than ran, These leaps, as

But

we can produce a

plausible set of

steps. At least thing that

we can begin with size somewas already there. Many dino-

weight decreased, would become more and more dramatic until the kilometer-high bounds recorded in The Dragon of the North were not impossible. By this stage, some form of control of the path of the leap through the air would become essential.

saurs were very large, for reasons still in dispute. Then there appears to have come a time when smaller, quicker creatures

The

rib

cage would be modified

into

came

"wings," and, imperceptibly, leaping begliding and gliding became flight.

were

at

sibility is thai

the

membrane expanded

into

tion was for the some achieved

an advantage. One obvious solularger species to shrink; this, but most died out.

with

Dragons could never have been a dominant species: Their specialization carried it too many disadvanlages. But they

a space normally

have the same

crease

attractive, is that the great

down

menace

filled with air This would effec! as an external infind in volume. A third idea, which row of spines the dragon's back was not for or defense but was the protective
I

cover for the expanded membranes. When the dragon was at minimum buoyancy, the spines would lie flat, but they were
raised for
that
fight. like this would solve a problem have not so far mentioned, dealing with dragon flight: If the body were long and narrow but supported solely by the wings, would need considerable muscular power

A system
I

Another possibility was the retention of size but a reduction in weight; this would make the animal speedier and at the same time reduce Its energy needs. At first, simple cavities developed and then, once the advantage of lightness had begun to tell, the production of hydrogen began. These early steps need not have been dramatic. Small improvements, taking place through many generations, would still have paid off. In a period of evolutionary frenzy, such as
the
to

to have achieved a balance, an ecological niche, and like the birds survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, They would never have been creatures of the forests; their bodies were too large and vulnerable, and above all the.y needed safe cave lairs. They were inevitably inhabitants

seem

of cliffs

and crags, swooping out

to scour

one that preceded the extinction of dinosaurs, any process that has begun tends

the plains for prey among the vast herds of the grass eaters. The fact that suitable habitats were comparatively few reinforced a trait that was perhaps already there in fhe

it

go

fellows
frills,

to

maintain

itself rigid in

the

air.

But

if

the

to extremes. While its earthbound were experimenting with horns and the protodragon was becoming

dinosaur dragons became one of the most territory-possessive species on record This is something on which all sources agree DO
ancestral

FICTION

No deaths. No births. The whole world hung suspended, waiting.

. .

THE

MADAGASCAR EVENT
shake your p-ecious copy in your face: "... lousy chicken
Christ!

BY ROBERT HAISTY
sat very still and closed his eyes and tried to imagine being smaller as if he could slep into the large end of a telescope and recede through the eyepiece on and on until he was a speck, apoinl.gone.

He

doughnuts and gulping cold colfee between phrases.

without ever looking
if

Ihe

way down
still

the hall you

yelling al

scatchings .. you
. .

Je-eezus
a

up

as

could

hear him

call this

everything were perfectly

someone, usually several times a day: "This is

reporting?"
yiv'sr ss

In

less than

normal. Mark shook his

sharply, trying to clear

head

totally

but

Mark Wynette was not a unseasoned reporter. now he had two fears in
sicknesses
rolling
like

Ihe Morning News. Mark had seen three pretty capable- guys thrown out, and each time Thompson had said, "The story is always out there. If by some
:

it.

There could be no more

delaying. The midnight deadline was now exactly nine minutes away. He should have acted before this. Long before this.

supposed to be a newspaper ot'ice. goddamn: circus,

.

not a

office

schoolhouse insurance "or whatever else

.
,

seemed

to

tit

the

his belly,

miracle there's not a story. -\ s your job tg find out by God,

,

He made a
cubicle

right lurn

misdemeanor at hand. An aura of Prohibition -and. crime reporters permeated

the

against each other

virulent

the

clouds which had enveloped them through the day and on into the night.

Mark stood up and shoved his chair back without even

pulling from his typewriter

which brought Thompson's in view straight

space

within his

half-walls,

evoked probably

ahead

of him.

Thompson

by the ancient hangings,

clippings, and photographs and by Thompson's own skinny frame and balding head. A slightjy built man. he more lhan made up for it by the power of his lungs and

One was

the indescribable

the

page on which he had

the line of

offices,

hated the antiseptic new hated being

uneasiness about the thing itself. The olher was Thompson. Thompson would be in no mood for it. -Never. Sure, he was afraid of

written a single sentence.

Up and down
reporters'

Thompson
scream

City editors

desks the machines were rattling along frantically, and the people pecking at them were
stealing hurried bites of stale

removed from the traditional center of the newsroom. Everybody knew what a fight he had put up before he was finally allowed to hold on to his battered old maple desk

the sharpness of his words..

al their

desks. They

and

his

green eyeshade.

All

The queasiness in Mark's stomach reached a new

PAINTING BY GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN

done something about

easy
to

height as he entered. Sure, he should have it hours ago. It was

seems to require no nourishment at all. The other side says yes, but would you

Then drugs recovered. The sale of painkillers and tranquilizers has skyrocketed. If is
calmer around the hospital now For a while was a panic rush to have major operadone before this thing, whatever it is, to an end. Then we saw it was not ending, and people began to fear they might come out of Ihe operation as permanent hiberoids, though ii has happened so far only in accidents involving severe burns or massive tissue destruction. Even so, the
there
tions

Call the

see that now But what, actually ? Herald? Christ!

.

condemn

the poor

woman

in

the ninth

about the obits, Mr, "Uhh Thompson" "Yeah. Where the hell are they?"
.
.

asks.

Thompson was pad and scarcely looked up when Mark

scribbling on his yellow

month to go around like that forever? "How do we know it is forever?" the first school "We must wait and see what happens." This argument seems reasonable to hurt to wait? But Ann is me. What can
it

came

strongly with the Cesareanists...

it

"Who

came

in.

"You're an hour late with 'em,

Wynette." To Mark, it was entirely as if someone else's voice responded. He was numb, and
frozen.

Even

his

cheeks were numb. He

said, "I'm afraid

nobody died

"

yesterday.

MARK'S CHRONICLE
The
first

may ultimately do to the knows what mother's health and the baby's, for that matter? Who knows if it will end? How long should we wait?" do not have the answers. have only a vague thought that, given an infinite time, everything will happen. We have evidently entered a segment of infinity
I I

undertaking establishments all rapidly converted their facilities

of

which

into stor-

in

which

births

thought
get the

had First Day: It wasn't as bad as would be. Thompson choked at and grabbed at his chest. He told me to hell out, he didn't have time for any
I

It

follows that
In

and deaths are not allowed. this arrangement will also

billion

vaults for the hiberoids are reaching capacity limits. Imagine! Only five days left, you believe the fringies. don't. But you can't help thinking about it. There is much talk about time warps, but no evidence.

age
if

it

change.

years? Perhaps even

trillion?

goddamn comedians.
Then Thompson called Herby Squires at the Star. And the hospitals. was right, He
I

The Sixth Day: The burn victims and the drowned and the ones who have lost too

that

Atomic clocks, relative to mechanical movements, or crystal oscillators or for matter sundials have not shown the
slightest deviation.

much
ing
in

blood they fill the hospitals, remaina state of hibernation, just like the

was

hadn't said only mildly furious that anything earlier. He knows nobody ever on the obits before the last hour, No time to do a story on it. We just ran the line "No deaths reported." The other morning papers did the same thing, even on the West Coast. Wire services started picking it
I

starts

nothing hapThe Forty-first Day: Well pened. If we counted right, we should have had it by now. The fringe groups are refiguring. noticed an item on the wire service today about something called the Mossbauer Effect. don't think we put it in the
.

Trading

Panic growing. suspended on

, , ,

paper.

the

up about 8 a.m. The Second Day; It is worldwide! There've been no births reported, either. The Third Day: Panic growing. Trading suspended on the major markets. DJI down over a hundred points. Most schools closed Government offices ordered to stay open. President on TV twice a day. Says nothing to be frightened about. We don't
.

major markets
day.
to

The Forty-second Day: Who has ever heard of the Mossbauer Effect? The Nobel committee must have. They awarded the guy
the prize
in

physics

in

1958.

Thompson
it.

di-

President on TV twice a

Says nothing
. .

rected me to find out about The Forty-fourth Day; A graduate assistant

in

be frightened about.
Fringe groups say
.

agrees
Effect.

the physics laboratory at the university to talk to me about the Mossbauer

"It

is

based on the

recoilless reso-

the

end

of the world.?

understand
eral

it yet, but scientists have sevpossible explanations. May be the

nance fluorescence of gamma rays," he me. did not understand. He went through it again. ''When a radioactive atom emits a gamma," he said more slowly, poktold
I

of a new era. Fringe groups say forty days to the end of the world. The Fourth Day: Not much else in the news. You get used to it. The creepy feeling can't go on forever. Forever what's that? Thompson is amazingly mild. Almost This cherubic. We don't understand thing has gotten to him. We never used to have staff meetings; now we have them all the time. He wants human interest. God, there's enough of that. He assigned me to cover Parkland Hospital. Then he decided Annshouldworkwithmeonit, because".
it.
.

dawn

cesarean babies, until they are revived with oxygen or plasma or medications. But the

number of hiberoids, as doctors

them,
is

are calling

steadily increasing. There

have

been reports of several accidental decapitations being repaired, but in every case the victim has not come out of the hiber state. There are also bizarre rumors of unsuccessful experiments with tanks of hydrochloric acid.

there may be some women-stuff." My heart almost red-lined. Me, a seasoned reporter. gulped, and probably squeaked, when am so crazy about Ann's said, "Yes, sir." would be level blue eyes and perky hips happy doing a story with her in the depths
I

of hell.

Which may be where we

Day:

are.

The

Fifth

the hospital.
figure out

Thompson was right about What they're mostly trying to has to do with babies. There are
starting.

The Twenty-second Day; There has been no time for journal entries. Too much to cover, and we are too few. Ann is practically try to batty about this cesarean thing. humor her, and she knows that's what I'm doing, and she hates it. The little bit of progress had made toward sleeping with her is totally lost. She doesn't want to think about love now. A lot of women don't. Some men, too. We are doing stories on impoI

ing his finger at the desk pad with each word, "the energy of the gamma is that of the excited state of the emitting nucleus minus the recoil energy imparted to the nucleus itself." "Like when you shoot a gun," isaid, and nodded wisely "Like when you shoot a gun," he agreed. "Now if the gamma passes through an absorber where it could give up its energy conserve enby exciting an atom ergy and momentum there to the same state, the probability of its being absorbed would be very high, That would be a resonance absorption. It wasn'l observed originally, because the recoil energies were too variable. Mossbauer showed that by embedding the source and absorber nuclei in a crystal lattice, he could make the recoil energy equal to zero in a large fraction of the transitions. Thus, he could observe greatly enhanced absorp-

tion.

tence.

It
it

no labor pains
cies.

No new pregnan-

Maybe

is

hasn't affected me that way. thewailings of the fringe groups

We hear it from the nurses there is already feverish debate in medical circles
about doing cesareans. Some say amounts to abortion. The baby remains
it

that bother them.

They say we have

only

"Now, if he arranged for a Doppler shift by moving the source relative to the absorber even by as little as a few millimeters per second, he could cause the absorption
to

eighteen more days.

Many have

joined

be measurably decreased. From the way

in

the fetal position, has a slow but steady heartbeat, does not respond to stimuli,
104

their movement. The Thirty-fifth -.Day: The markets have opened again. Drug stocks crashed. Airlines and entertainment went up sharply.

this reduction

occurs, we can deduce a great many things about the structure of the material and the position of the active atoms."

OMNI

"That is the Mossbauer Effect," said, could explain to secretly hoping

I I

least

believe.

The Mossbauer measurelo dispute.

it

ments are hard

yellow paper^ Roger Foreman was on his way back from the Coke machine, and he

Thompson with some reasonable degree of

lucidity.

Ann was

right

about the cesareans,

I

of

course, as the

women everywhere have

If

way

must have noticed something about the was looking. Roger-is one of the old
I

"That was the

Mossbauer

Effect," the as-

long realized.

sistant said dryly.

woman
Effect,"
I

today, I'd

could find a pregnant have quite a story for the

"Was

the

Mossbauer
it

said, cor-

front

page.

hands, and he can put a story together from a mosquito belch and a chigger egg. bull don't think it took that kind of ability for

recting myself.

"We

don't see

anymore. That can only

there is no Doppler shift. The Mossbauer lines are so sharp we used to be able to see energy shifts so small they would correspond to a temperature of one

mean

The Three Hundredth Day: Something big has happened. We felt the vibrations here, halfway around the world. Communications are still sketchy, The first satellite photos show as a white blob in the region where
it

him to see there was something

wrong.
"Hey.

terribly

Mark" he

said.

hadn't noticed
I

he was behind me, and

inches,
"It's

jumped

six

ten-millionth of a degree.

Now

there

is

something funny with the Doppler shift. Time is screwed up." The Seventy-third Day; Apparently, the graduate assistant was right. Scientists all over the world seem to agree; We are at a nodal point in an extended geocentral time warp. Which is another way of saying we
are an intermediate stop for some kind of space voyagers. It's not entirely as physicists

Madagascar should be. Pilots in the area reported a water funnel that opened the ocean five miles down, all the way to the bottom. One of them claimed to have seen a flash of greenish-yellow streamer, curving in a parabolic arc as far as the eye could
see.

over.

Roger

Like

somebody

pulled

the stopper Hundreds are dead. Thousands! And some of them are "You better get this in to Thompson."

There was an eternal instant of vacuum,

then the horrible, grinding
tidal

quake and

the

used

to Ihink

no way
if

of telling

would whether it
it

not,

how

long

ii

will last.

and there is is permanent or, It could all end in

be,

the last minute.

The Two Hundred Sixty-tirst Day; Suddenly it's summer, and so beautiful again. don't know how we got through the winter. Mostly
I

wave. The Three Hundred First Day: It was nearly midnight when got the call from Parkland Hospital. sat there nodding, the instrument clamped tight against my ear upon my right shoulder; as mechanically took it all down on the yellow pad. even managed to ask a couple of questions. "Okay, thanks. Keep me posted," said, incredibly as if
I

Roger snapped. looked up at the clock and headed out a run. The deadline! There was still time. We've got obituaries, Mr. Thompson," shouted as rounded the corner to his of"People are dying everywhere. But the weird thing is, it's like a lot of them have
1

in
"

fice.

already been
I

dead for a long ti stopped, because Thompson was not there. Only a chalky skeleton in rotting, shredded garments was sprawled in his
"

with liquor,
first

guess.
first

And

that

was

only the

there

was

nothing else to say. Then

hundred million, perhaps, they say. The theories about the warp are beginning to congeal into something can almost understand or at
winter.

The

of eight

up and

sat there struggling with

hung com-

chair, with the bony fingers still clutching at the rib cage, and the green eyeshade all askew Roger had come up beside me, and after a minute he said, "God, there's going to be

prehension, staring unfocused at my notes. How is it possible that a thing like this can be reduced to a few scribbles on a piece of

lot
I

to sort out."
I

didn't answer. of praying.

had the feeling

it

was

his

way

00

iwuRe
said,
other,

quence

in

time; In embryology, the

tail.

head

is
is

mounted as a
I

ring.
it

older than the

flow of information
rear.

asked her what

I

She was wearing and was. She said was a

it,
it

possible, from tront io

cat's-eye
said, "But
I

'Yes; one claw is bigger than the but both claws are made of the same

facts of

Professional biologists talk about phylogenetic homology for that class of which one example is the formal

what
it's

is it?"

"Well,

know

not the eye of a cat.

guess
I

it's

some

sort of stone."

parts.

that

the trash

Ah, what a beautiful and noble statement is, how the speaker politely flung into can the idea that size could be of

those

primary or profound importance and went which connects] He discarded an asymmetry in size in favor of a
after the pattern

resemblance between my limb bones and of a horse. Another example is the resemblance between the appendof a crab and those of a lobster. That is one class of facts. Another (somehow similar?) class of facts is what they call serial homology One example is
formal

said, "Take

She

did that

it off and look at the back." and exclaimed, "Oh, it's got

ages

deeper symmetry

in

formal relations.

the rhythmic repetition of

relations

Yes. indeed, the two claws are characby embodying similar between parts, Never quantities, always shapes, forms, and relations. This was, indeed, something that characterized the crab as a member of creatura, a living

pendage
not quite

to

change from apappendage down the length of

a spiral on it! It must have belonged to something alive." Actually, these greenish disks are the operciila (lids) of a species of tropical marine snail. Soldiers brought lots of them back from the Pacific at the end of World

War
all

II.

terized (ugly word)

the beast (crab or man); another (perhaps

Cathy was
spirals

right in her

major premise that

ference
bilateral

in

comparable because of the difrelation to time) would be the

of the

in this

world, except whirlpools,

galaxies,
literature

and
on

spiral

symmetry

man

or the crab. of

made by living
ers

things.

Let

me

start again.

The parts

a crab
bilat-

this subject,
in

winds, are indeed There is an extensive which some readlooking

thing.

are connected by various patterns of

eral

may be interested

up

(the key

Later it appeared not only that the two claws are built on the same "ground plan" (i.e., upon corresponding sets of relations

these
legs.

between corresponding parts) but that relations between corresponding

parts extend down the series of the walking

symmetry, of serial homology, and so on. Let us call these patterns within the individual growing crab first-order connections. But now we look at crab and lobster and we again find connection by pattern.

words are Fibonacci series and golden

section).

What comes out

is

of

all

this is that

spiral

a figure that retains

it

proportions) as

We could recognize in every leg pieces that corresponded to the pieces in

the

second-order connection, or phylogenetic homology Mow we look at man or horse and find
Call
it

by addition are no truly

for all

at the

its shape (i.e., its grows in one dimension open end. You see, there

static spirals.

daw
the the

And in your own body, of course, same sort of thing is true. Humerus in
thigh,

upper arm corresponds to femur in the and radius-ulna corresponds to

tibia-fibula;

the carpals

in

the wrist corre-

spond to tarsals in the foot; fingers correspond to toes. The anatomy of the crab is repetitive and
It is, like music, repetitive with modulation. Indeed, the direction from tail corresponds to a se-

here again, we can see symmetries and serial homologies. When we look at the two together, we find the same crossspecies sharing of pattern with a difference (phylogenetic homology). And, of course, we also find the same discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations. In other words, as this distribution
that,

difficulty. They looked the beautiful formal characteristics that they had joyfully found in the crab, They had the idea that formal symmetry,

But the class had

repetition of parts,

modulated

repetition,

and so on were what teacher wanted. But the spiral was not bilaterally symmetrical; it was not segmented. * They had to discover (1) that all symmetry and segmentation were
result of,

rhythmical.

resemblances is spelled out, it turns out that gross anatomy exhibits three
of formal
levels, or logical

somehow a

types, of descriptive prop-

head toward

ositions;
1
.

to

Wealth, however vast, can never buy back thepast...but

same
tions.

The parts of any member of creatura are be compared with other parts of the individual to give first-order connecCrabs are
to

a payoff from, the fact of growth; (2) that growth makes its formal demands; (3) that one of these is satisfied (in a mathematical, an ideal, sense) by spiral and
form.

So
past,

the

conch

shell carries the snail's

prochronism

its

record of how,

in its

own

2
or

be compared with lobsters

(i.e.,

men

with horses to find similar relations

to give

between parts
connections).
3.

second-order

lobster

The comparison between crab and is to be compared with the com-

parison between

man and

horse to provide

third-order connections.

think
tern

have constructed a ladder of how to about about what? Oh, yes, the patwhich connects. central thesis can now be approached in words; The pattern which conis a pattern of nects is a metapattem. patterns. It is that metapattem which de-

We

My

It

fines the vast generalization that, indeed,

is

it

patterns which conned.

Let

me go back
artists.
I

to the

classroom

of

young
You

future!
See page 109 for details

will recall that had two paper bags. one of them was the crab. In Ihe other had a beautiful large conch shell. By what token, asked them, could they know that the spiral shell had been part of a living

it successively solved a formal probin pattern formation. It, too, proclaims its affiliation under that pattern of patterns which connects. We have been trained to think of patterns, with the exception of those of music, as fixed affairs. It is easier and lazier that way but, of course, all nonsense. In truth, the right way to begin to think about the pattern which connects is to think of it as primarily (whatever that means) a dance of inleracting parts and only secondarily pegged down by various sorts of physical limits and by those limits which organisms characteristically impose. There is a story which have used before and shall use again; A man wanted to know about mind, not in nature, but in his private large computer He asked (no doubt in his best Fortran). "Do you compute that you

lem

it

In

will

ever think

like

a human being?" The

work
to

machine then

set to

analyze
the

its

own

computational habits.

Finally,

machine

thing?

When my daughter Cathy was about

seven,

somebody gave

her a cat's-eye

printed its answer on a piece of paper, as such machines do. The man ran to get the answer and found, neatly typed, the words: THAT REMINDS ME OF A STORY. QQ

HOUU TD UURITE M SCIEfUCE-FICTOfU QJOV/EL

For years the aerospace industry has used flowcharts to organize and simplify the task of developing complex Space Age hardware. Here is a flowchart that organizes and simplifies the taskof writing a science-fiction novel. By using this chart. anyone can write one! All you need is talent, imagination, and skill. Start at the top and go through to the end.
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A'

them may have transformed

into "ne

two

beefing up the Homestake gold mine. They

ARTFUL DODGER
CONllNUhD FROM PAGE 13

other types by a process called oscillation This phenomenon has been observed in

have added a superstructure of pyramidand-cube-shaped neutrino detectors

will

something called 'ho K partic

yet
in

e.

ihcucn

no:

Leading physicisls. including Leon Lederman, the new director of Fermilab, hold that there are six different quarks and
six different lepfons.

neutrinos.

The quarks,

for rea-

sons only theoretical physicists would appreciate, have been named up, down, charm, strange, top. ano bettor The leplons are named electron, electron neutrino, rnuon, muon neutrino., tau, and tau
neutrino.

The two thirds of the neutrinos that appear to be missing may really be there but may have transformed into the two other types and are simply not being picked up in Davis's

Do you see

the implications?

experiment.
If

this

can be shown

to

be the case, the

As you can

see, this

means

there are

model will be saved; the sixquark/si x-!epton theory will get a strong shot in the arm; and the oscillation theory
solar-nuclear

three different kinds of neutrinos-electron, muon, and tau (this last neutrino being
theoretical,

willbeahletoincludeneutrinosinilscastof
characfers.

having yet

to

though
If

its

companion, fhe tau

is

be discovered, particle, was

A NEW ERA
So what the world needs
is

____
bigger and
of the prob-

around Davis's tank of cleaning fluid. This theoretically turn the mine into a better "neutrino telescope." The group is making a similar effort in another mine in Ohio And two new" approaches to detecting neutrinos were described at a recent meeting of fhe American Physical Society: one Dostrovsky of the Weizmann Institute by of Science in Israel and the other by R, S. Raghavan of Bell Labs in New Jersey. Dr. Fowler, commenting on the proposals, went so far as to say that we have entered a "new era in neutrino astronomy." Afterward asked him why it took so long for this to come about. Weren't all these problems and questions about missing neutrinos
I.
I

recently detected).
this

evident, say, five years

ago?

theory

correct, the six leptons

better neutrino catchers,

One

and sx quarks may be the fundamental

particles from which

Though

ple model,

all matter is built. this may not sound like a very simit is probably simpler than we have any real reason to hope for. Evidence? Not a great deal. Bui William Fowler, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, has suggested a more intriguing possibility. And

lems with Davis's equipment at the Homestake mine is that, being an early experiment, it was designed to go after the
easiest to detect of several possible types
of nuclear reactions that take place in the

sun. Unfortunately, that

one happens

to

be
still

a very rare type numbers in this

of reaction,

And

while the

rare reaction should

is

come

out right, there

a greater likelihood

here,

finally,

we

tie in

with the solar-neutrino

of error

"Man," he almost exploded, "think of the equipment needed for these experiments. Dostrovsky's calls for fifty tons of gallium. Present world production is fhree or four tons a year. And Raghavan's will use one hundred tons of plastic scintillating material divided into a thousand independent modules, each with its own image read-out system." (Davis describes the latter as a "gigantic super club-sandwich.") "Sure," Fowler went on, "we've been asking the questions, but it's only in the last year that good equipment designs have been produced. And until now Davis has been able to provide us only with limits, wifhin which we had to believe or disbelieve. Last year; relying on his ten years of data collecting, he was able to provide a
solid figure,

question the macroworld. Although only

electron neutrinos are being ejected from

the sun

and detected in the Homestake mine, by the lime they arrive here some of

To help remedy the situation, Kenneth Lande and his coworkers at the University of Pennsylvania, along with a group of collaborators from the University of Texas, are

and

it's

held

firm.

We kept thinkit

ing

So now

something would turn up, but hasn't. it's time to do something else."

MANUFACTURING NEUTRINOS
All of

these proposals

for

studying neu-

trinos
that

concern themselves with particles

from "out there." But

come

some

of the

most important work being done concerns neutrinos that are produced in giant particle accelerators here on Earth.

The largest accelerator in the world is the one at Fermilab in Batavia, 'ust a few dozen kilometers west of Chicago. "Making" neua particle accelerator is a complicated business. At Fermilab, protons are and round the 6.4-kilometer main ring until they reach an energy of 500 billion electron volts. The protons are then guided down a 1,000-meter tube, "where they strike a thick metal target and produce particles. There is one burst of a shower of these particles every eight seconds. Among these particles are pions and kaons, which are led down another tube 400 meters long. During this flight the pions and kaons decay into other particles, intrinos in

whirled round

tube,

cluding muons and neutrinos, Now all four types of particles are speeding down the and the trick is to get rid of everything except the neutrinos. Some of the particles are stopped by an absorber at the end of the tube, and the rest by a one-kilometer-long earth-fill shield.

It's
The neutron
cepr, bul
s:a

not

Studied for further clues to -he nature of the

elusive neutrino.

Producing one's own neutrinos "in cap-ivity" nas cer-air- advantages for theoretical physicists, and, what's more, the ability to produce a neutrino beam may someday have important practical applications, a
topic we'll get to later

how can neu Thanks to the su| have a kind of radis

solar model,

too late
.;.;:.!..
;

SLJSS'iny Ihrducn
that

to buy

were produced when the protons beneutrons.

In

came

other words, the collaps-

back some
of the future!
nnnfUjianrsfuill

HIGH-ENER G Y NEUTRINOS Even so, the most adventuresome

search involves neutrinos arriving from outer space. It also involves a billion tons of water around the Hawaiian Islands. An International group of scientists in-

ends o build the crarcoadcy

i

o''all

"ieUri-

"o telescopes. Called project

(for

DUMAND

Deep Underwater Muon and Neutrino

it

ing core of such a star is a prodigious source of neutrinos for something under a second. And when all the other material and energy have finally been lost or scattered in the depths ct space Ithe Crao Nebula is a leftover from a supernova that flared in 1054), the neutrinos will continue on their merry way forever? If we could but catch a bunch of them in our net. these theories would be strongly supported Several groups around the world are "lis-

Detection),

will,

il

implemented, Involve

tening" for such

an
two
are

event, including
instclla:

Ken
ine
four-

the instrumentation of .a cubic kilomeler of

La-N-e

wilt-

his

ons.

end

five

seawater that's a cube with sides measuring more than half a mile eachkilometers beneath the surface, Pronosed by Psde-ick Reines of the University

Russians,

who

now digging a
if

kilometer tunnel into a mountain tor their

equipment.
will

When and

built,

DUMAND

become

part of the network.

of

California at Irvine,

and

others,

DUMAND
tive

will entail a bevy of photosensidevices, and perhaps even micro-

seem

phones, spread about the ocean floor. DUMAND will record the clicks and flashes thai result from neutrino interactions with water

parcles Hemes, who

firs
-

ticipated

in

the world's
it

parneutrino detec-

tion in 1953,

But

if

says the cost

will is

cost
big,

$35
it's

million.

because
will

DUMAND's backers
set

are after big

high-energy neutrinos.

DUMAND

game: be

of making such a catch Only four supernovas have in our galaxy in the past thousand years These were detected by visible light, of course; they were seen as brighi lights in the sky for a few months, after which they dimmed and finally disappeared. But when viewed by neutrino "light " supernovas should urn our >.q be more frequent occurrences. Estimates range as high as one every ten yearsfairly slim.

The chances

been recorded

enough

to

keeo invostgarors interested

up to capture cosmic neutrinos, perhaps the most numerous particles in the universe. They will have, energies beyond 10 trillion electron volts, far greater than that available from even the largest .::;; -do accei&rax'? -n existence , -?y..>r planned. These high-powered neutrinos are messengers om :hc dis'am reaches of the universe and perhaps can tell us aboul
I

EXPENSIVE?
Now, does a nagging doubt creep into your mind? That enormous use of materials, for example? It's true that Davis's experiment required a dozen tank cars full Of cleaning fluid. But the stuff is fairly common and, more important, it doesn't get

galaxies,

neutron stars, quasars, black holes, active and the like. Where do high-energy neutrinos come
like

used up. Overthe course of a month about atoms are destroyed, The rest is all still
15

from? Stars,

living things, have a lite cycle: They are born; they live and grow; and they die. As sometimes happens in human life, their deaths may be far more

spectacular than their lives. Neutrinos are intimately involved in these death throes, Consider a star that is more than half again as massive as our sun. When the hydrogen fuel at its center is used up, the core collapses and the outer layers are blown off in a guperspociscuar exolosior called a supernova. With no more heat being produced in the core by nuclear reactions, the enormous gravitation of the still-remaining core material is unopposed; rhe electrons and protons are smashed together to become neutrons, and the whole

there and in good condition. Bahcall once pointed out that even if the whole idea proved a failure. The exper meniers could still go into the cleaning business. Indeed. adds Fowler the fluid is worth far more today than when was bought. "It may well be," he chuckles, "the best investment the United States has made in a long time." But the costs are still undoubtedly high.
it

There's

DUMAND's

S35-million price tag,

and the gallium for the Dostrovsky device is worth about $20 million at today's prices,
though clearly the whole experiment is not going to go into operation at once. Neutrino research is definitely expensive. Then again, no one expected the search for thesecrets oi the universe to be cheap. Unlocking such mysteries, however, will more than justify the cost,

Still,

some obvious
cles.
ful

it would be convenient if there were practical use for these partiBui physicists tend to turn a bit resent-

when asked about such things. Leon Lederman. lor example, replies,

"If

But the neutrino s greaies' promise may be in the area of communication. J. M. Pasachoff of Williams College and M. L. Kulner of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute suggest that neutrinos are a more desirable
'

neutrino interacts with a nucleus,

it

will

proof

duce

a.

shower

of particles that,

because
will

the great energy given to them,

emit tiny

somebody had asked Fermi whelhef neutrons had a use when he first slarted playing with

than radio for interstellar communication, in which case current radio

medium

blue flashes in their passage through the water These are detected electronically, and information can thereby be sent by Morse code. Distan.ce is no problem, but
bit

them

in

the 1930s, he would have

n

said, 1 don't know. But the neutron eventually

taught us much about the nucleus and nuclear physics, and this eventually led to

fission and fusion. Almost half our program at Fermilab involves studies of neutrinos.

searches for extraterrestrial civilizations may be misguided. "The discovery of a regularly modulated neutrino beam would surely indicate the presence of an advanced civilization," they write. An additional advantage is that the neutrino receiver
ing from
is omnidirectional; thus a signal comany direction will be detected. Earthbound communication by neutrino similarly interesting. The main advanis that the communication

rate the amount

of information

sent

equipment, probably no more than a word or two could be sent with each pulse of neutrinos every eight seconds. This will change as neutrino research becomes more sophisticated.
per unit
With current

time is.

"As for high-energy neutrinos, as

they'll

in

cos-

'

mic studies, we have even less idea of how prove useful. If more neutrinos are found than expected, our whole picture of how the universe was formed will be wrong. We find that prospect very exciting. But high-energy neutrinos are also helping us develop an understanding of the next lower level of matter We don't know what crises of
the twenty-first century this information

is

tage, of course,

could take place in a straight line right through the earth fast, direct, and without

may

get us out

of."

Actually, there

have already been sug-

gestions

for

Lande suggests that phenomenon in neulrinos

useful
in

putting neutrinos to work. if the oscillation

is real,
it

might be

studies of the earth's core. The way the neutrinos transform might give us a belter idea of densities and composition in

interference from weather, magnetic storms, or jamming. The basic idea is simple. The transmitter would be a high-energy proton accelerator, similar to the present one at Fermilab, together with the equipment necessary to direct a narrow beam in the desired direction. While the neutrinos cannot be aimed, Ihe protons can; because momentum must be conserved, the neutrinos produced by
the protons
will

continue to travel

in

the

space of Earth, which could lead to better understanding of earthquakes and how to predict, or even prevent, them.
the still-strange inner

same
tors

direction.

The only practical use right now is miliespecially for submerged nuclear submarines. No good way has yet been found to communicate with them. The neubeam would act as a paging device similar to those carried by many doctors. As Davis explains it, "The 'beep' would tell the submarine commander 'Something important has happened; surface now arid contact us.' " When asked him whether he thought neutrinos might one day be useful as a communicaiions pathway for, purposes otherthan military he answered, "It's very possible, particularly if an accelerator were designed for the purpose." But, as Leon Lederman pointed, out, neutrinos are already being used for personal communication; "Just let the particle beam at Fermilab stop for a minute. In no
tary,

trino

terway, in the

The receiver would be an array of detecimmersed in some sizable body of waocean or a deep lake. When a

time at

all

the neutrino physicists are

it,

screaming, 'Goddamn beam?!' Communication,

where's the
-

right ?"

OO

inJTERVyiEUU
"RCV
G8WS/5
in
FftGh
"J

to

ahead
commiiied
to

keep up to date, to ensure that the technology base is adequate for us to move rapidly in ease that situation

Are

we

still

leadership
is

space?
increas-

Press: Yes, and (he competition

ing;

so we are going to have to do a lot. We we can maintain the present level of space science a handsome level and develop the use of the shuttle for all sorts of things, and yet not say the nation needs a man on Mars or a return to the moon or a
feel

changes. DoD has assembled the best high-energy and atmospheric physicists in the country to look at these questions; so am confident that they are oh top of the situation. The par tele oea m is a weapon for
I

Back,

the distant future, if ever, and there are better ways of spending major-weapons

money

at present.

Omni: The

latest rash of

UFG sightings

in-

by popular demand.
Just
a

man

in orbit for

umpteen days,
that

just fo re-

cludes some from military bases, corroborated by radar. These reports are from
trained, qualified

few years ago,

illegal

and encroaching
south.
list

civilization

capture the record from the Russians,

observers and seem to

had

destroyed the alligator population

of

hunting all but in the

when we

don't

see where

goes

or

its

have more
past.
Is

solidity

practical or scientific importance.

The

this

than many reports in the anything that concerns the

to look into it?

They were added to the official endangered species in the United

have made a

"new frontier" in space is not going to be one big, glamorous, expensive thing; it is
going to be many, many projects ol moderate scale, which together will do more for us

President?

Has he asked you

States.

Now alligators
comeback.

Press: No. he hasn't. As you know, the number of sightings is enormous, including

many cases where such

as

trained observers

and

for the world.

Omni: What aboul Rand D spending in the biggest category of all, national defense? Will there be major breakthroughs in the
next generation of

weapons

or refinements

of existing systems'?

airline and military pilots have seen UFOs. Jack Schmitt [ex-astronaut, jet pilot, and Republican senator from New Mexico] said the other day that one tir oho .vaBri-i.r-;he had a UFO trailing him on his wing and turned out to be Venus. There are atmoit

intent on preserving legendary reptile helped the

alligator get

Press: don't want to speculate about whal the Russians are going to do, but they
I

spheric

phenomena density

inversions,

back on

its feet.

spend an enormous amount ot money on R and D more than we do, believe, combining civil and military R and D. They are building forces of such strength, beyond
I

charged areas, ball lighining which can be visible and reflect radar signals; there are weather balloons and images of planes distorled by atmospheric optical effects. These must account for a great many reports.

Once again some souther

swamps and marshes a. teeming with alliaators With wise

conser.ation policies,
other endangered species have also made

defensive needs, fhat we simply don't understand their purposes. don't think go to war with us, because they realize that a nuclear conflict would just kill everybody. But they are building very great forces, perhaps as a poliiical threat. Western Europe is deeply concerned about the Russians' huge tank forces, their troop concentrations, their expanding navy, their
their
I

they'll

As ic the sich-'ngs from military bases haven't looked into them. If there were concern within the Defense Department, I'm sure they would have told me or the Resident; that they haven't leads me to believe they're skeptical. The laws of physics impose such dethat you mention,
I

comebacks the cougar, gray whale,

.

Paciric walrus,

duck, to
tf

wood name a few.

you want to help

save our endangered

species, join the National

Wi dlife Federation, Department 106, 1412

mandsin energy
ficult,

required, in

time on

Atlb.

Sin Street,

NW,

large

numbers

of

new

missiles.

Omni: What is our response going to be? Press: While we don't understand the Russians' aims, would be a serious politiit

it's enormously difif not impossible. Since we have no direct manifestations other than sightings, no positive evidence of physical effects on,

interstellar travel lhat

SS3&& Washington. 81318 20036.

DC

blunder and possibly also a serious military one to dp nothing. The administration feels thai is prudent to approach defense through high technology because we excel in that. Dollar for dollar, man for man, we are the best in the world at thaf. So we will take a high-technology approach to
cal
it

harm to, people, it's really not a great cause for concern. would say that in most of the scientific community and in ihe government there is a great deal of skepticism,
or
I

not thatthey give

it

zero probability, but they

are waiting for a demonstration that these things exist.

defense in the years ahead; lhat's why you see a major increase in defense R and D in
the budget,
tribute:

Omni: Since World War

When

it

comes

to other things

tank, the British

connected with defense, ourallies can conThe Germans have a very good have very good things in several different areas. But the whole Western alliance looks to us for the hightechnology R and D approach to defense, Omni: What can you reliably tell the public
about particle-beam weapons as missile destroyers? Press: The Defense Department [DoD] people

there have been technological innovations that have had decisive effects on society. Is anything that coming along now? Press: Yes. There is just as much excitement and potential now as there has ever been in the past, if not more. Take microprocessors: The increase in productivity
II

many
like

they

make possible is really fantastic. That microprocessors the size of your thumbnail can be inserted into every piece of complex machinery we have opens up tremendous
potential.
If

that potential

is

capital-

beam
near

a nutshell, that particleweapons face such enormous diftell

me,

in

ized on,

of "smart"

we can produce a new generation machines that may do signifi-

ficulties that

they are not

weapons
feel

for

the

future.

They don't

there could

possibly

be

a Russian breakthrough that

cant things tor our exports I'm la-kmc about everything from automobiles we almost have that already to toasters, refrigerators, thermostats, drills, manufactur-

ing

equipment just about everything.

dent's science adviser a

little

Just about every machine will have a brain in it; no industry will be unaffected. We need to reduce the size and increase

couraging.
Press:

On

rhat SLibicct. |ust

more enwhat does

a different

the .job entail?

I

What do you do?

think you'd'have to give

speed of these microprocessors, and where the research money is going. have an initiative involving the Bureau of Standards, the Defense Department, and the National Science Foundation to ensure that this research is undertaken for government projects, as well as to provide a research foundation for industry, which is also investing large sums, as it should. Omni: What about biology and medicine? Press: We've already had the antibiotic revolution; now we're beginning to think about antiviral drugs think of what they could do! Then there's parasitic disease, which afflicts two billion people throughout the world; the solution lo that problem is perhaps the single most important contribution we could make to developing counthe
this is

job descriplion for

think

We

each president, because each one perceives differently. have the easiest job of any science
it
I I

tists

standing council of wise men called the President's Science Advisory Committee LPSAC]. You don't have that committee. Would your standing in the White House be strengthened you had those senior scienand university presidents on call?
if

adviser
I

in

the history of the office, because,

as said earlier, the President understands technology. He understands its role, its vo-

When

tion of

was on the PSAC during the Kennedy administration; so know how works. think of what it did, there isnoquesits value and importance at that time.
Press:
I I

it

and he is not intimidated by sciand engineers. He has worked with the past and doesn't find this area exotic or esoteric. So in a very few words you can explain to him why you're proposing certain things, and he understands and can say yes or no immediately. The President understands the importance of science and technology in maincabulary,
entists

But that

was almost twenty years ago.

don't
of

Today

need one PSAC;

need a

them

in

number
the

them. In those days sixty to eighty percent of PSAC's concerns were in

however,

it

aerospace and defense areas. Today, we need to look at questions of the

environment, energy, health, foreign aid, and our developing technological relationships with China, the Soviet Union, and the Third World. simply couldn't assemble a
I

taining our position in world affairs of

kinds,

all

and he feels that support of research

tries.

The

total

world budget

in this

thirty million dollars.

billion

dollars

Compare we spend each year

area is that with the

for

is a wise investment. He wants to make it a hallmark of his administration. He supports it not in a wild, uninhibited fashion be-

cancer alone. Omni: How responsive is the budget thai the President has just submitted for these endeavors? For example, we're spending
scarcely anything on tropical medicine. Press; We have these goals in mind. We are increasing the tropical-medicine budget. Last year and this year we've tried to tilt HEW and NIH research toward a more conceptual understanding of disease, by reprogramming within a constant budget. The President aims to help developing countries through science and technology. In the overall scheme of things this kind of research is not that expensive; it makes good sense in terms of economics, health,
is

come in two days a month and advise me across the board; I'd need a specialist in all these areas, and would be a Tower of Babel. Instead, have groups coming in to consider each of these areas, each group with enough specialists lo give me a "critical mass" of expertise.
single panel to
it
I

6 The role of technology understood by the President, and he is not intimidated

scientists.
this

Omni: Your initial involvement with the federal government was in connection with
of the first nuclear-test ban. Have you stayed close to that issue? What's your view on a comprehensive test ban? Press: You know if we could have had a comprehensive test ban twenty years ago,

verification

by

He doesn't find in area esoteric.

.

a few words you can explain

to

the impact would have been much greater. The cat's out of the bag to a certain extent today. We still have a proliferation problem,

him why you're

proposing certain things.^

though. We promised the other signatories to the non proliferation treaty that the United States and the USSR would stop testing,

and national
agriculture.
to

security.
in

and eventually we have to deliver on that promise. The symbolic significance of

stopping nuclear testing still makes it worthwhile. There are near-nuclear nations which can still be convinced not to go the nuclear-weapons route if we set the exam-

Consider the long-term developments

Some fifty years ago we began reap huge returns from small investin developing hybrid corn, and more seen the impact of the new Today four farmers feed one hundred Americans; our grain surpluses alone represent a major fraction of the USSR's total production. That's fine, but it's an energy-intensive, chemical-intensive technology. We are ready for the next stage of the agricultural revolution, when we can start creating crops that need little or no fertilizer, that can use not ten percent of incident solar energy but twenty percent or
ments
recently we've
strains of rice.

to what we can a sensible way. He challenges throughout the governpay proper attention to how research can help their departments. Omni: What about the connections between technology and other activities of government, such as international affairs?

cause there are bounds

do but
ment
to

in

his administrators

when you

to stop unilaterally."

Press: Well, take the question of technology transfer to other countries and its pluses and minuses. It earns good money
for

ple. They are now saying, "Come talk to us stop testing yourself. Don't ask us If India goes to largescale nuclear-weapons development, then Pakistan does, and so on. We could bring pressure to bear against proliferation to a degree that we cannot in the absence of a comprehensive test ban. We are so close to
it,

American industry, but we have to be concerned with what technology we make

available to potential adversaries. There's a role for the science adviser, among others,
in this question. And in our relations with developing countries we have to do things will help them "get off the welfare roll"; if

more, that have the ability to use irrigation water far more efficiently than today's crops. With genetic engineering we might do these
the returns would be enormous. Omni: Do you believe the public has turned against science and technology? Press: No. That may have been the case
things;
for certain

that

we don't, it's going to be handouts, for humane purposes, forever. We can't turn
our back on the terrible problems of disease and hunger that they face, but we have to do more than simply give them material to help them past this food shortage or that epidemic. We have to help them help themselves, and science and technology will be major tools in that. Omni: Previous science advisers had a

sectors of the public ten or twelve years ago. But four recent polls have

asked, "What institutions do you expect will contribute most to the solution of the naserious problems?" Science and technology were at the top of the list of answers each time. Omni: That must make being the Presition's

and we should pursue Omni: What about the technology for detecting nuclear-bomb tests? Press: Any country can, under certain circumstances, test at a very low level and possibly evade detection. But there are many ways secrecy can be broken. We have seismography and other techniques, there are people who defect and say they were witnesses to certain things, and so on. All that adds up to a powerful disincentive to testing at any level. Probably a nation could defy all these things and conduct a test at a fraction of a kiloton but if does develop any advantage that that, would
that,
it it

sincerely could threaten our security? doubt And the possibility of being caught
I

it.

is

far too great.

OO

Wild Should Wild Remain.

"Man always
kills

the

"Integrity

is

wholeness,
is

and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be
thing he loves,

the greatest beauty

organic-wholeness, the

"The love of wilderness e than a hunger for what is always beyond

reach;
it is

"We need wilderness

preserved as much of it
as
is still left,

and as many

we had

wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty

of the universe. Love that, not man apart

also

an

ex-

kinds. ..Itis important to

pression of loyalty to the earth, (the earth which

simply because it is there important, thatis,

us.
.

bore us and sustains

the only

us),

simply as an

idea'.'

from

that. ..."

home we shall
WALLACE STEGNER

young in'.'
ALDO LEOPOLD

ever know, the only paradise

only

we ever need if we had the eyes

SierraClub

^cmmu

,-...

mw

illtl!

M''

'

^m^^^^^^ ^l^'-''

'-v.':

SPACE LAW
can broadcast
directly into

and earth-resources

satellites

home TV sets whose

sophisticated scanners can assess economic resources with unprecedented precision. No country wants its rivals beaming propaganda uncensored into its citizens'

samples probably were unconstitutional. "Outbound contamination," though not dangerous to man, is no less important under the law. Our own spacecraft have always been rigorously sterilized before launching, but the Soviet Union has not always been so conscientious. Sending bacteria-laden probes to other planets, is a clear violation of the Outer Space'Treaty
tions for the Apollo lunar

a space colony may demand psychotropic drugs to control undesirable behavior. erase traumatic memories, and even tailor sexual preferences to suit the colony's population balance. All such manipulative
possibilities

raise

profound ethical and

legal issues.

travel

The classic ethical dilemma of space has already come perilously close to

reality.

The near-deaths

of our ^po//o 13

rooms. And highly accurate mineral surveys and crop predictions could give technologically advanced countries a tremendous economic and military advantage over less advanced nations.
living

Whether countries can

of satellite

really limit the

use

their political

technology depends on how efcan punish or defend against who use and on how well they argue and ideological cases. One is to sell satellite data openly to any buyer who can pay for it. In this way, NASA has shared information about earth resources, weather patterns, natural disasfectively they

no effective way to enforce this ban. NASA has recently confirmed thatterraforming Mars would be entirely practical if we were willing to do over hundreds of years. Whatever the benefits, such plans would be an even more flagrant violation of this clause
but there
is
it

those

it

approach

"I'm going to se! up a lunar colony and then nurse it along until It's big enough to stand on its own feet." Harriman

For

all

the questions that remain unanin

crew could easily have become the first case in which an astronaut was sacrificed to permit the survival of his fellow crewmen. You can be sure that, as fuel and oxygen slowly ran out on that aborted mission, each crew member did plenty of worrying about who was most expendable! One possible approach is to write standards of behavior and performance into the contracts under which space colonists are hired. The legal principles under which these problems would then be handled are well established. But how willing would we

swered

earth-oriented

space

law.

the

ters,

Brazil,

and the like, with Chile. Zaire, Italy, Canada, and many other nations. To

date, remote sensing has forced international

of

cooperation under the close scrutiny a free public. Let us hope this continues.

"Do you know what we may find up there? People I" Harriman

i Space colonists may need mind-altering drugs to

control behavior, erase painful

have had trouble enough trying to mundane aspects of space exploration. The exotic problems of deeper space and permanent habitats wilt be even more challenging. A few serious attempts are already being made to prepare for condeal with the
tact with intelligent aliens.

We

memories, and tailor sexual preferences to suit the

population. Doctors

may create

be to write or sign a contract that in dire straits called for "survival homicide"? We must also figure out how to govern space colonies as societies. Many practical legal" problems have cropped up. even in these early stages of space law. To date, spacecraft and their crews have been ruled by mission regulations dictated by NASA and by the Soviet space authority. But how well can this principle be maintained? Research programs will eventually share space habitats with manufacturing facilities. Their practical needs will differ. and the personalities of scientists and
business-oriented

them, but

will

such methods

crewmen may

clash.

The

late

Andrew

be

ethically

acceptable? 9

G. Haley, a Washington, D.C., attorney and counsel for the prestigious International Astronautical Federation, formulated what he called the Interstellar Golden Rule, which holds that sentient beings must "do unto others as they would have you do unto them." How well it will be followed remains to be seen. Closer to home, the possibility of life existing on other planets already poses some grave legal problems. We have the technology to bring Martian soil samples back to Earth for analysis. Yet, if an alien life form escaped from a space probe, it could cause anything from low-grade infections to a biological catastrophe. There is probably no legal way to prevent such an accident from occurring. Quarantine laws have often been used to imprison people tor their political, religious,
or social beliefs without their

will govern space dwellers Permanent space habitats will raise a vast array of and legal problems that must be solved within the next few decades. There will be many approaches to the social. political, ethical, and legal theory of space exploitation. Until our second or third generation of space citizens, extraterrestrial cultures will be shaped purely by economics and by our technological and physio-

principles that

One of the most serious conflicts in the American space program developed when scientists in the astronaut corps suggested that the former test pilots among them were unneeded and possibly undesirable. No one knows how to resolve such problems. Some space colonies will probably conclusters of interconnected modules, each sent into space by different nations. companies, or launching authorities. During the ApolloiSoyuz flight, astronauts followed NASA regulations while in the American capsule. Soviet rules while in the Russian craft. It seems unlikely that such a system could work in a long-term habitat or
sist of

are even less well developed.

ethical

one that answered

to

many

different

logical capabilities.

being given a

public hearing.

Modern

statutes have

been

carefully drafted to prevent this sort ot abuse. One provision stipulates thai a con-

tagious disease be known and identifiable before possible carriers are quarantined. There are no laws dealing with unknown diseases Federal or state agencies that were to quarantine a planetary surface

Simply enabling men to live in space could raise some of the most difficult ethical questions man has ever faced. Longterm colonists may have to be genetically adapted to survive their synthetic alien environment. Fitting colonists for permanent life in space could require anything from eugenic counseling of their parents to outright genetic engineering. Will such meth-

launching authorities. And then what principles would govern the relationships between the cluster as a whole and Earth societies or other space stations'' So far, no one can predict. The diplomats who signed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty clearly meant for space
colonies to benefit the common welfare of mankind. To ensure that their wish is carried out.

convention.
of
tion.

ods be
creating,
first

ethically
.in

effect,

acceptable? Will we be a new species? Will our

intelli-

we need yet another international Space habitats will be places unique social and political experimentaWe must first guarantee that space

contact with extraterrestrial

sample would probably be

tion.
In fact,

violating the

gence come when we meet our own genetically refabricated children? No one has the
answers. Again, the high-pressure environment
of

due-process clauses of the U.S. Constituthe

NASA

quarantine regula-

stations are governed as the cultural province of the colonists who live in them, then establish space as an economic resource for the common good of earth and space dwellers alike.

DO

114

OMNI

CROSS & DRAGON

read it as the Truth of Christ slid between the stars., at first taking copious notes lo better understand the heresy that must fight, but later simply absorbed by the strange, convoluted, grotesque story it told. The words of the text had passion and power and poetry. Thus it was that first encountered the striking figure of St. Judas Iscariot, a comI
I I

tongues, recal.ed and 'isnoiified the dragons that Judas had' sent away, and sent his disciple forth on a solitary ministry across "to spread My Word where cannot go." There came a day when the sun went dark at noon and the ground trembled, and Judas swung his dragon around on ponderous wings and flew back across the raging seas. But when he reached the city of Jerusalem, he found Christ dead on the
the oceans,
I

life, during which he might travel and think his sins and finally come to forgiveness, and only then die.

on

And that was the beginning of the last chapter in the life of Judas Iscariot, but it was a very long chapter indeed. Once Dragon-King, once the friend of Christ, now he became only a blind traveler, outcast
and
cities

friendless,

wandering

all

the .cold

cross.
In

that

moment

hisiaith faltered,

and

for

ambitious, contradictory, and altogether extraordinary human being. He was born of a whore in the fabled ancient city-state of Babylon on the- same day that the Savior was bom in Bethlehem, and he spent his childhood in the alleys and gutters, selling his own body when he
plex,

the next three days the- Great Wrath of Judas was like a storm across the. ancient

city

pimping when he became older. As a youth, he began to experiment with the dark arts, and before the age of twenty he was a skilled necromancer. That was when he became Judas the Dragon-Tamer,

had

to,

dragons razed the Temple in Jerusalem and drove the people from the and struck as well at the great seats of power in Rome and Babylon, And when he found the others of the Twelve and questioned them and learned of hpw the one named Simon -callec -Peter had three times betrayed the Lord, he strangled Peter with his own hands and led the corpse to his
world, His

roads of the earth, living even when all the and people and things he had known were dead. And Peter, the first Pope and far and wide the tale of how Judas had sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver, until Judas dared not even use his true name, For a. time he called himself just Wandering Ju', and afterward
ever his enemy, spread

many other names. He lived more than a thousand years, and became a preacher, and a healer, and a lover of animals, and was hunted and persecuted when the Church that Peter had founded became bloated and corrupt.
But he had a great deal of time, and at last he found wisdom and a sense of peace, and finally Jesus came to him on. a longpostponed deathbed, and they were reconciled, and Judas wept once again. And before he died. Christ promised that He would permit a few to remember who and what Judas had been, and that with the passage of centuries the news would
spread,
until

the

first and only manto bend to his will the of God's creatures, the great winged fire lizards of Old Earth. The book held a marvelous painting of Judas in

most fearsome

some great dank cavern, his eyes aflame as he wielded a glowing lash to keep at bay a mountainous green-gold dragon. Beneath his arm is a woven basket, its lid slightly ajar, and the tiny scaled heads of three dragon chicks are peering from within. A fourth infant dragon is crawling up
his sleeve. his
life.

6 In

that

faltered,

moment his faith and for the next

like

three days the Great Wrath of

finally Peter's

Lie

was

dis-

Judas was

placed and forgotten.

Such was

the

life

of St.

Judas

Iscariot,

as

storm across the ancient world.

His dragons razed
the Temple in Jerusalem

That was

in

the

first

chapter

of

In the second, he was Judas the Conqueror. Judas the Dragon-King, Judas of

related in The Way of Cross and Dragon. His teachings were there as well, and the apocryphal books that he had allegedly
written.

When had
I

finished the volume.

lent

it

to

Babylon, the Great Usurper. Astride the greatest of his dragons, with an iron crown

on his head and a sword in his hand, he made Babylon the capital of the greatest empire Old Earth had ever known, a realm that stretched from Spain to India. He reigned from a dragon throne amid the

Hanging Gardens he had caused

he tried Jesus

to

be

constructed, and it was there he sat when of Nazareth, the troublemaking prophet who had been dragged before him bound and bleeding. Judas was not a

man. and he made Christ bleed still more before he was through with Him. And when Jesus would not answer his questions, Judas contemptuous. had Him cast back out into the streets, But first Judas ordered his guards to cut off Christ's
patient

dragons. Then he sent those dragons forth to start fires throughout the world, funeral pyres for Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus rose on the third day, and Judas wepi, but his tears could not turn Christ's anger, for in his wrath he had betrayed all of Christ's teachings. So Jesus called back the dragons, and they came, and. everywhere the fires went out. And from their bellies he called forth Peterand made him whole ac -v-j g.iv:: him dominion over the Church. Then the dragons died, and so. too. did all dragons everywhere, for they were the
-I!
"i.

Arla-k-Bau. fhe captain of the Truth of was a gaunt, pragmatic woman of no particular faith, but valued her opinion. The Others of my crew, the good sisters and brothers of St. Christopher, would only hav- "::n:-,:---..l :v> -ir./.h Pi chop's ^hgous
Christ. Aria
I ;

horror.

"interesting,"

Aria said
to

when she

re-

turned the
I

book

me.

chuckled.

"Is that all?"

"It

She shrugged.
more dramatic as
I

makes a nice

story.

easier read than your Bible. Damien.

wci:

An and

"True," admitted, "But it's absurd. An unbelievable tangle of doctrine, apoc-

rypha, mythology,
taining,

and

superstition. Enter-

yes.

certainly.

Imaginative, even

dating Bui

nocuous,

don't you think?

How

legs. "Healer"

in Then came and Judas Iscariot gave up his crown and his dark arts and his riches, to follow the man he had crippled. Despised and taunted by those he had tyrannized. Judas became the Legs of the Lord, and for a year he earner, Jfjsus on nis back to the far corners of the realm he had once ruled. When Jesus did finally heal Himself, then Judas walked at His side, and from that lime forth he was Jesus' trusted friend and counselor, the first and foremost of the Twelve. Finally, Jesus gave Judas the gift of

he said, "heal thyself." the Repentance, the vision

the night,

power and wisdom of Judas Iscariot, who had sinned greatly. And He took from Judas the gift of tongues and the power of healing He had given, and even his eyesight, for Judas had acted as a
living
sigll

of the

dragons? A legless Christ? Peter being pieced together after being devoured by four monsters?"

can you

credit

Aria's grin
lier

was

taunting, "is that

any

sil-

man blind (there was a fine painting of the blinded Judas weeping over the' bodies of his dragons). And He told Judas that for long ages he would be remembered only
as Betrayer, and people would curse his

than water changing into wine, or Christ walking on the waves, or a man living in the
belly of

fish?"

Arla-k-Bau liked to jab at

I

name, and all lhat he had been and done would be forgotten. But then, because Judas had loved Him so, Christ gave him a boon, an extended

It had been a scandal when selected a nonbeliever as my captain, but she was very good at her |oo and liken her around to keep, me sharp. She had a good mind, Aria did. an:d valued that more than blind obedience. Perhaps that was a sin in me.

me.

"There

is

a difference."

said.

"Is there?" she snapped back. Her eyes saw through my masks. "Ah, Damien, admit
it.

Judas worshipers."

woman,
angry
at the rebuke,

slight of build

even

in

He looked
a bishop

briefly

coveralls of the Order of

St.

the cowled Christopher.

You rather
I

liked this book."

throat.
"It
I

but quickly he swallowed his temper. Even

cleared
I

my

piqued
I

my

inter-

can fear a Knight

Inquisitor.

"We

est,"
self.

acknowledged,

had

to justify

my-

"You

know the
Dreary

kind of matter

deal with

are concerned, of course," he said. "We do all we can to combat the heresy If you have

ordinarily.

little

doctrinal deviations,

obscure quibblings on theology somehow blown all out of proportion, bald-faced political maneuverings designed to set some
ambitious planetary bishop up as a new pope, or to wring some concession or other from New Rome or Vess. The war is endless, but the battles are dull

advice that will help us, will be more than glad to listen." "I am an Inquisitor of the Order Militant of the Knights of Jesus Christ," saidjoluntly. "I do not give advice, Excellency. take acI

and

dirty.

They
I

exhaust me. spiritually, emotionally, physifeel drained and guilty." cally. Afterward
I

tapped the book's leather cover. "This The heresy must be crushed, course, but admit that am anxious meet this Lukyan Judasson."
different.
I
I

is

of

to

To that end was sent to Arion, and that what shall do. Now tell me what you know about this heresy and this First Scholar, this Lukyan Judasson." "Of course, Father Damien," the bishop began. He signaled for a servant to bring us a tray of wine and cheese, and began to summarize the short, but explosive, history
tion.
is
I

Her face is meek and kind, her eyes wide and youthful and innocent. find her useful. Four times now she has killed those who attempted to assault me. The House itself was newly built. Ramrose from amid gardens bling and stately, of small bright flowers and seas of golden grass, and the gardens were surrounded by a high wall. Murals covered both the outer wall around the property and the exI

-rt

itself. recognized a few of them from The Way of Cross and briefly to admire them before walking on through the main gate. No one tried to stop us. There were no guards, not even a receptionist. Within the

terior of

the building

Dragon and stopped

walls,

men and women

strolled languidly

of the

Judas

cult.

listened, polishing
of

my
until

"The artwork is lovely as well." Aria said, flipping through the pages of The Way of Cross and Dragon and stopping to study

nails

on the crimson lapel

my jacket,

the black paint

gleamed

brilliantly,

inter-

through the flowers, or sat on benches beneath silverwoods and whisperwinds, Sister Judith and paused, then made
1

rupting from lime to time with a question.

our way directly to the

House

itself.

Judas weeping over his dragons. think. smiled to see that had affected her as much as me. Then frowned. had of the That was the first inkling
one especially
it

striking plate.
I

Before he had half-finished,

was

deter-

We had just started up the

man appeared
ing
in

steps when a from within; he stood wait-

with a great wiry

smile,
his

difficulties

ahead.

He looked briefly angry at the

rebuke but
quickly swallowed his temper.

He was blond and fat. beard that framed a slow and he wore a flimsy robe that fell to sandaled feet, and on the robe were
the doorway.
of

dragons bearing the silhouette

holding a cross.
I

man

So. it was that the Truth of Christ came to the porcelain city Ammadon on the world of Arion, where the Order of St. Judas Iscariot

When reached the top of the steps, the man bowed to me. "Father Damien Har
Veris of the Knights Inquisitor," he said. His

kept its House. Arion was a pleasant, gentle world, inhabited for these past three centuries. Its population was under nine million; Ammadon, the only real city, was home to two of those millions. The technological level was medium high, but chiefly imported. Arion had little industry and was not an innovative

Even a bishop can

fear a Knight Inquisitor.

"We are

smile widened.

"I

greet you
I

in

the

name

of

concerned, of
course.
.
.

Jesus, and
I

We

combat

of

Judas. am Lukyan." made a note to myself to find out which the bishop's staff was feeding informaSt.

the heresy."^

tion to the

Judas
I

cult,

but

my composure
In-

did not break.

quisitor for

have been a Knight

perhaps artistically. The arts were quite important here, flourishing and vital. Religious freedom was a basic tenet
world, except
of the society, but Arion was not a religious world either, and the majority of the populace lived devoutly secular lives. The most popular religion was Aesiheticism, which hardly counts as a religion at all. There were also laosto.Erikaners, Old True Christers, and Children of the Dreamer, along with a dozen lesser sects. And finally there were nine churches of

kyan Mo,"

a long, long time. "Father Lusaid, taking his hand, "I have
I

questions to ask of you." did not smile. He did. "I thought you might," he said.

mined

to visif

Lukyan

personally.
to

It

seemed
Lukyan's office was large but spartan.
Heretics often have a simplicity that the
officers of the true

the best course of action.

And

had wanted

do

it

all

along.

the

One

True Interstellar Catholic

faith.

There had been twelve. The three others were now houses of Arion's fastest-growing faith, the Order of St. Judas Iscariot, which also had a dozen newly built churches of its own. The bishop of Arion was a dark, severe man with close-cropped black hair who was not at all happy to see me. "Damien Har Verisl" he exclaimed in some wonder when called on him at his residence. "We have heard of you, of course, but never thought to meet or host you. Our numbers
I I

Appearances were important on Arion, gathered, and deemed it necessary to impress Lukyan with my self and my station. wore my best boots, sleek dark handmade boots of Roman leather that had never seen the inside of Torgathon's receiving chamber, and a severe black suit
I I
I

Church seem to have lost. He did have one indulgence, however. Dominating the wall behind his desk/ console was the painting had already fallen in love with, the blinded Judas weeping
I

over his dragons.

Lukyan sat down heavily and motioned

me

to

a second
in

chair.

We had

left

Sister

with

deep burgundy lapels and stiff collar. From around my neck hung a splendid crucifix of pure gold; my collar pin was a
matching golden sword, the sigil of the Knights Inquisitor. Brother Denis painted my nails carefully, all black as ebony, and

Judith outside,

the waiting chamber. "I said, prefer to stand, Father Lukyan,"

I

knowing
prefer.

it

gave
have

me
little

an advantage.

are small

here"
I

'And growing smaller," said. "A matter of some concern -to my Lord Commander. Archbishop Torgathon. Apparently you are less Iroubled, Excellency, since you did not see fit to report the activities of this sect of
116

darkened my eyes as well, and used a fine white powder on my face. When glanced in the mirror frightened even myself. smiled, but Only briefly. It ruined the effect. walked to the House of St. Judas. Iscariot. The streets of Ammadon were wide and spacious and golden, lined by scarlet
I

if you use for titles here." "You are Father Lukyan Mo, born here on Arion, educated in the seminary on Cafhaday, a former priest of the One True In-

"Just Lukyan." he said. "Or Luke,

We

Church of Earth and the Thousand Worlds," said. "I will address
terstellar Catholic
I

whisperwinds, whose long, drooping tendrils did indeed seem to whisper secrets to the gentle breeze. Sister Judith came with me. She is a small
trees called

you as befits your station, Father. expect you to reciprocate. Is that understood?" "Oh, yes," he said amiably. "I am empowered to strip you of your right to administer the sacraments, to order you shunned and excommunicated for f his heresy you have formulated. On certain
I

OMNI

worlds could even order your death." "But not on Arion," Lukyan said quickly "We're very tolerant here. Besides, we outnumber you." He smiled. 'As for the rest, don't perform those sacraments anyway, you know. Not for years. I'm First Scholar now. A teacher, a thinker, show others the way, help them find the
I

well,

much

closest dared ".erne to 4 by-line." was speechless only for a moment. grimaced. "You startle me," admitted, "I expected to find an inventive madman, some poor self-deluded fool firm in his belief that he had spoken to God. I've dealt with such fanatics before. Instead find a cheerful cynic who has invented a
I 1

Then

says that, you can believe him. How else could we trust each other?" said. was "There are many of you." starting to think that Lukyan was a madman after all. as fanatic as any heretic, but in a more complex way. Here was a heresy recognized my within a heresy. _but duty to find the Truth of things and set
i I
I

faith.

Excommunicate me

if it

will

make you

religion for his

own

profit.

think

prefer the

happy. Father Damien. Happiness is what ail of us seek." "You have given up the faith then, Father Lukyan?" said. deposited my copy of The
I
I

fanatics.

Lukyan. You
"I

doubt
1

You are beneath contempt. Father will burn in hell for eternity" it," Lukyan said, "but you do
I

them right. "Many of us." Lukyan said, smiling. "You would be surprised. Father Damien. really
you would. But there are some things dare
I

Way of Cross and Dragon on his desk. "But see you have found a new one." Now did smile, but was all ice, all menace, all mockery. 'A more ridiculous creed have yet to encounter. suppose you will tell me that you have spoken to God, that He trusted you with this new revelation, so that you might clear the good name, such that
I I

it

mistake me. Father Damien. am no cynic, nor do profit from my dear St. Judas. Truthlived more comfortably as a priest of your own Church". do this because it is my
fully
I

not

tell

you."

"Tell

me
we

"Happily." said
Liars, like

what you dare, then." Lukyan Judassoh, "We

vocation."
I

truths
I

all other religions, have several take on faith. Faith is always re-

sat

down. "You confuse me,"

I

said,

"Explain."

quired. There are some things that cannot be proved. We believe that fe is worth liv:

it

is, of Holy Judas?" Now Lukyan's smile was very broad indeed. He picked up the book and beamed at me. "Oh, no," he said. "No, made it all up." That stopped me. "What?" "I made all up." he repeated. He hefted the book fondly. "1 drew on many sources,
I

"Now am going to tell you the truth," he He said it in an odd way. almost as a "I am a liar," he added. "You want to confuse me with child's paradoxes." snapped. "No, no," he smiled. 'A Liar. Wth a capital. It is an organization, Father Damien. A religion, you might call it. A great and powsaid.

ing. of

That

is

an

article of faith.

life is

to live, to resist death,

said,

The purpose perhaps to

inter-

cant.

defy entropy."

"Go

on,"

growing even more

ested despite myself.

"We also believe that happiness is a good, something ic be sought after" "The Church does not oppose happisaid dryly. "I wonder," Lukyan said. "But let us not quibble. Whatever the Church's position on happiness, does preach belief in an afterlife, in a supreme being, and a complex moral code."
ness,"
I

it

erful faith.

And am
I

the smallest part of

I

it."

of course, especially the Bible,

think of

but

do

Cross and Dragon mostly as my It's rather good, don't you agree? Of course, could hardly put my name on proud as am of it, but did include my imprimatur. Did you notice that? It was the

own work.

it.

"I know of no such church," said. "Oh, no, you wouldn't. It's secret. It has to be. You can understand that, can't you? People don't like being lied to." "I do not like being lied to," said. Lukyan looked wounded. "1 told you this would be the truth, didn't I? When a Liar
I

it

"True."

"The Liars be eve

in

no

afterlife,

no God.

F-

6-

JttgM
{nPfi!

(j

\OJR ^SSFORT TO
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We see the universe as

and these naked

it

is

Father Damien.

truths are cruel ones.

We
die.

who

believe

in life,

and treasure

it.

will"

Afterward there will be nothing, eternal emptiness, blackness, nonexistence. In our living there has been no purpose, no poetry no meaning. Nor do our deaths possess these qualities. When we are gone, the universe will not long remember will be as if we had never us, and shortly lived at all. Our worlds and our universe will not long outlive us. Ultimately entropy will consume all. and our puny efforts cannot stay that awful end. It will be gone. It has never been. It has never mattered. The universe itself is doomed, transitory, and cerit

much." said with a cold, even fervor. "My whole life has been a quest for truth." Lukyan was indulgent. "Father Damien HarVeris. Knight Inquisitor. know you better than that. You are a Liar yourself. You do good work. You ship from world to world. and on each you destroy the foolish, the rebels, the questioners who would bring down the edifice of the vast lie that you
I
I

"You are as fanatical as any heretic have ever met. Lukyan Judasson." told him. "I pity you the loss ot your faith."
I

Lukyan rose with me. "Pity yourself. Damien Har Veris," he said. "I have found a new faith and a new cause, and am a happy man. You. my dear friend, are tor1

lured

and miserable."
1 I

serve."
"If

my

lie is

so admirable."
it?"
fit

said, "then

"That is a lie!" am afraid screamed. "Come with me," Lukyan said. He touched a panel on his wall, and the great

why have you abandoned

'A religion

must

its

culture

and
It

society,

work with them, not against them.

conflict, contradiction,

there

is

Judas weeping over his dragup out of sight, and there was a stairway leading down into the ground.
painting of

ons

slid

down, and the

faith falters.

then the lie breaks Your Church is

"Follow me," he said.

In the cellar was a great glass vat iull of pale green fluid, and in it a thing was a thing very like an ancient embryo, aged and infantile at the same time,

tainly
I

it

is

uncaring."

good
stern.

for

many
is

worlds, Father, but not for

slid back in my chair, and a shiver went through me as listened to poor Lukyan's dark words. found myself fingering my said, "as crucifix. "A bleak philosophy." well as a false one. have had that fearful vision myself. think all of us do, at some point. But it is not so. Father. My faith sustains me against such nihilism. Faith is a shield against despair." "Oh, know that, my friend, my Knight Inquisitor," Lukyan said. "I'm glad to see you understand so well. You are almost one
I I
I

Arion. Life

too kind here,

and your

faith is taith

floating

offers too

Here we love beauty, and your little. So we have improved

it.

We

studied this world for a long time. We know its psychological profile. St. Judas will
thrive here.

He offers drama, and color, and much beauty the aesthetics are admira-

naked, with a huge head and a tiny atrophied body. Tubes ran from its arms and legs and genitals, connecting it to the maalive. chinery that kept When Lukyan turned on the lights, it
it

opened its eyes. They were large and dark, and they looked into my soul. "This is my colleague," Lukyan said, patting the side of the vat.

"Jon Azure Cross, a

Liar ot the fourth circle."

of
I

us already." frowned

"You've touched the heart of it," Lukyan continued. "The truths, the great truths of the lesser ones as well they are unbearable for most men. We find our

and most
shield
It

6 "The Liars believe in no afterlife, no God. We see the universe as it is, Father Damien, and these

"And a telepath,"
tainty
I

said with a sick cer-

had led pogroms against other telepaths, children mostly, on other worlds.
The Church teaches
tioned
in

that the psionic

ers are a trap of Satan's.

the Bible.

powThey are not menhave never felt good

entered"

in faith.

Yourtaith.

doesn't matter, so long as

my faith, any faith. we believe,

naked

truths are cruel ones.

We

and truly believe, in whatever lie we cling to." He fingered the ragged edges of his great blond beard. "Our psychs have always told us that believers are the happy ones, you know. They may believe in Christ
really

who believe in
and
treasure
it,

life,

about those killings. "Jon read you the

the

moment you

will die.

"5.

compound," Lukyan said, "and notified me. Only a few of us know that he is here. He helps us lie most efficiently. He knows when faith is true and when is feigned. have an implant in my skull. Jon can talk to
it
I

or

Buddha

or Erika Stormjones, in reincarin

nation or immortality or nature,

of love or the platform of

the

power
They
ble. His is a tragedy with a happy ending, and Arion dotes on such stories. And the dragons are a nice touch, think your own Church ought to find a way to work in dragons. They are marvelous creatures."
I

political faction,

but

it

all

comes

to the

same

thing.

believe.

selves.
little,

They are happy. It is the ones who truth who despair, and kill themThe truths are so vast, the faiths so so poorly made, so riddled with errors and contradictions. We see around them
have seen

"Mythical,"
"Hardly,"

said,
replied.

he

"Look
really,

it it

up."

He

and through them, and then we feel the weight of darkness on us, and we can no longer be happy." am not a slow man. knew, by then, where Lukyan Judasson was going. "Your
I I

all comes know what happened three thousand years ago? You

grinned at me. "You see,

back

to faith.

Can you
I

really

Liars invent faiths."

have one Judas, have another. Both of us have books. Is yours true? Can you really believe that? have been admitted only to
I

was he who initially reat all times. cruited me into the Liars. He knew my faith was hollow. He felt the depth of my despair." Then the thing in the tank spoke, its metallic voice coming from a speaker-grill in the base of the machine that nurtured "And feel yours, Damien Har Veris, empty priest. Inquisitor, you have asked too many questions. You are sick at heart, and tired, and you do not believe. Join us, Damien. You have been a Liar for a long, longtime!" For a moment hesitated, looking deep was did into myself, wondering what
It
it.

me

it

He

smiled. "Of
it.

all

sorts.

Not only

reli-

the
not

first

circle of the order of Liars.

all
I

So do
I

gious. Think of

We know truth for the cruel

is infinitely

instrument
ble to truth.
cal

it

is.

Beauty

preferapoliti-

We

invent beauty. Faiths,

movements, high
fellowship. All of

ideals, belief in love

and

them are

lies.

We

tell

our secrets, but know that we are very old. It would not surprise me to learn that the gospels were written by men very much like me. Perhaps there never was a Judas at all. Or a Jesus."

know

those lies, and others, endless others. We improve on history and myth and religion, make each more beautiful, better, easier to believe in. Our lies are not perfect, ot course. The truths are too big. But perhaps someday we wilt find one great lie that all humanity can use. Until then, a thousand small lies will do." "I think do not care for you Liars very
I

"I

have

faith that that is not so,"

said.

searched for my taith, the fire that had once sustained me, the certainty in the ot the Church, the presence oi Christ within me. found none of it, none. was empty inside, burned out, full of questions and pain. But as was about to answer Jon Azure Cross and the smiling Lukyan Judasson, found something else, something did believe in, something had albelieve.
I

teachings

ing
St.

on,"

thing.

"There are a hundred people in this buildwho have a deep and very real faith in Judas and the Way of Cross and DragLukyan said. "Faith is a very good Do you know that the suicide rate on

ways believed
Truth.
1

in.

believed

in truth,

even when

it

hurt.

"He

is

lost to us,"

said the telepath with the

of Cross.
I

mocking name

Arion has decreased by almost a third since the Orderof St. Judas was founded?" remember rising slowly from my chair.
I-

Lukyan's smile faded. "Oh, really?

had

hoped you would be one

of us,

Damien. You

seemed ready"

was suddenly afraid, and considered up the stairs to Sister Judith, Lume so very much, and now had rejected them. The telepath felt my fear "You cannot hurt Damien," said. "Go in peace. Lukyan told you nothing." Lukyan was frowning. "I fold him a good deal, Jon," he said. "Yes. But can he trust the words of such a Liar as you?" The small misshapen mouth of the thing in the vat twitched in a smile, and its great eyes closed, and Lukyan Judasson sighed and led me up the
I
I

brarians,

and academics would

credit that

sprinting

kyan had told

the differences were anything more than a question of religious preference. By then the Order of St. Judas had withered in the glare of exposure. Lukyan

us,

it

stairs.

It

was

not until
it

some years

later that

realized
lying,

was Jon Azure Cross who was and the victim of his lie was Lukyan.
I

could hurt them. did. bishop had It was almost simple. The friends in government and the media. With some money in the right places, made some friends of my own. Then exposed Cross in his cellar, charging that he had
I I
I

Judasson had grown gaunt and angry, and at least half ot his churches had closed. The heresy never died completely, of course. There are always those who believe, no matter what. And so to this day The Way of Cross and Dragon is read on Arion. in the porcelain city Ammadon. amid murmuring whisperwinds. Arla-k-Bau and the Truth of Christ carried me back to Vess a year after my departure. and Archbishop Torgaihon finally gave me the leave of absence had asked for, before sending me out to fight still other heresies. So had my victory, and the Church continued on much as before, and the Order of St. Judas Iscariot was thoroughly crushed. The telepath Jon Azure Cross had been wrong, thought then. He had sadly underestimated the power of a Knight Inquisitor
I
I I

paranoia, and had no proof at all. The telepath lied for Lukyan's benefit so he would let me go. am certain of that now. Cross risked much to ensnare me. Failing, he was willing to sacrifice Lukyan Judasson and his lie, pawns in some greater
I

game. carried within me the So left, and knowledge that was empty of faith, but for
I
I I

a blind faith in truth- truth could no longer my Church. grew certain of that in my year of rest, which spent reading and studying on Vess
I

find in
I

and Cathaday and

Celia's- World. Finally

returned to the archbishop's receiving room, and stood again before Torgathon Nine-Klariis Tun in my very worst pair of boots. "My Lord Commander," said to him, "I can accept no further assignments. ask that be retired from active service." "For what cause?" Torgathon rumbled, splashing feebly.
I I I

"I

have

lost

the

faith."

He regarded me for a
less
faith is

said to him, simply. longtime, his pupil-

Later,

though,

remembered

his words.

used his psionic powers to tamper with the minds of Lukyan's followers. My friends were receptive to the charges. The guardians conducted a raid, took the telepath
into custody, and later tried him. He was innocent, of course. My charge was nonsense; human teiepaths can read minds in close proximity, but seldom anything more. But they are rare, and much feared, and Cross was hideous enough so that was easy to make him a victim of superstition. In the end. he was acquitted, and he left the city of Ammadon and perhaps Arion itself, bound for regions un-

You cannot hurt us, Damien.

Cross

The Order of St. Judas? Or the Liars? He lied, think, deliberately knowing would go forth and destroy the Way of Cross and Dragon, knowing, too, that
I I I

eyes blinking. At last he said, "Your a matter between you and your concare only about your results You have done good work. Damien You may not and we will no! allow you to resign."
fessor.
I
.

retire,

The

truth will set

is

us

free.

But freedom
frightening,
beautiful.

cold,

could not touch the Liars, would not even dare mention them. How could 1? Who would credit it? A grand star-spanning conspiracy as old as history? reeks of
It

and

lies

and empty, and can often be warm and

Last year the Church granted

ship.
I

me

a new

named

this

one Dragon

QQ

it

known, But it had never been

convict him,

my

intention to

cracks began

The charge was enough. The to show in the lie that he and
built together. Faith is

Lukyan had

hard

to

come

by, and easy to lose, and the merest doubt can begin to erode even the

strongest foundation of belief. The bishop and labored together to

I

further doubts.

It

have thought. work well, Ammadon, like most civilized cities, had a great pool of knowledge, a computer system that linked the schools and universities and libraries together, and

sow was not as easy as might The Liars had done their
I

the ei&

HAND

ISOIM

made

their

combined wisdom
it.
I

available to

THE SIX.

any who needed But. when checked,

soon discovered that the histories of Rome and Babylon had been subtly reshaped, and there were three listings for Judas Iscariot one for the betrayer, one for the saint, and one for
1

the conqueror-king of Babylon. His

name

was also mentioned in connection with the Hanging Gardens, and there is an entry for
a so-called Codex Ju^Jas. And according to the Ammadon
library,

dragons became extinct on Old Earth around the time of Christ. We purged all those lies finally, wiped them from the memories of the computers, though we had to cite authorities on a halfdozen non-Christian worlds before the li-

MICKEY MOUSE
The referee spoxe
Korolenko close
!

rnos'.ly

Japanese but

understood screams. He motioned

for

examination.

"He s been fiberglassed," the American

clamored, indicating the rows of abrasions on his torso. "I ain'twrestling no pineapple." By this time both teams had edged forward in bilingual outrage. The official, who refrained from touching the specimen, suddenly straightened and announced in Oriental English, "No-o foe-lin sub-stints." He then chopped the air smartly with both hands, bidding the bout resume, and,

"The one with the cast-iron forearms." 'All our field athletes have fine supinator and pronator development," declared Smerdyakov. "Then want scans of all of them.'" 'And what do you expect to find? Evidence of chemical synthesis?" "You wouldn't be that clumsy." Smerdyakov laughed smugly. A laugh
I

Popeye. Could be the Eng:ish equivalent of the actual sources they had used? "... and unless convincing genealogies are forthcoming for all the entrants under
it

question, they

must be

disqualified

stripped of their medals,"

and Sherman was

concluding.

deep inside the neck and shoulders. Internal peep show. "We suspect they are chimeras" Sherman said slowly. "Reaggregated genes
you've somehow controlled at the blastocyst stage four parents, eight parents, whatever, pick and choose
"Ab-surdl"

A touch

too

much

anger.

when

jacket

American gingerly donned his and savagely denoi inced his foe as a "Communist cactus," the beleaguered ref
the
forfeit.

Smerdyakov attempted

to cover it with reckless scorn. "Eight parents! Of course. Eight models of mediocrity instead of two.

declared a

Makes sense. Something from

Shuer-mann? model for this kind
yes,
If

nothing,

"Genealogies?" Smerdyakov sopranoed. "The American neurotic wants us lo have pedigrees! Incredible. First he invents an army of mutations, insulting the flower of Soviet youth; then he finds an ancestor for them this ... this mysterious Poop-eye, who probably exists only in imperialist folklore; and now now he takes upon himself to strip us of our medals! Curiously he makes no mention of Soviet protests. But too have a list." He waved the paper loose from his jacket pocket. "Fencers whose arms are longer than their legs, water polo players with dewclaws who secrete oil like
. . .

it

Smerdyakov shrugged and sat down opposite the American coach at the scorers' table to
fill

out another protest.

you find the genetic of development in anyone's ancestors, I'll be glad to call Inber

seals,

and

this goalie

of theirs they call to

tell

Pon-toon!
a.m.

No need

to

go on. No need

And so it went the first week until the Olympic Committee, as a sign of helplessness, convened a private meeting of the
two antagonists
at the

you about the phone call to Spadunka at 3 announcing that his pregnant wife, Vera, had been arrested naked on a statue of Lenin in Novgorod. No need to mention the anonymous gifts our athletes re-

Havana

Libre Hotel.

ceiveradios

that don't turn off,

exit!

an ant

Sherman, more tweed than ever, his skin a deeper-below-ground skin than before, inhabiting a blue blazer he had not climbed out of for thirty-six hours, appeared first. Smerdyakov dallied psychologically long at a nearby coffee shop but showed up equally worn, his fat and flexible face delivered of cherubic charm, a postpregnancy landscape, rilled, jellied. The two of them faced each other across the polished table, regarding each other's

iHe waved the paper loose

from his jacket
their legs,

farm with a secret

the

No,
list

merely ask that

Americans on

my

be suspended

and

"Fencers

whose arms are longer than

water
polo players with dewclaws secrete oil like seals,

from further competition until their gene scans are also approved. We look for Poop-eyes, too!"

who

Sherman snapped
medal count,
Felix."

his

fingers.

"The

and

this

goalie of theirs!"^

lapel pins.

"Gentlemen," began the wise old Olympic patriarch sitting peripherally to them.

"we are all sorely tried. ..." Whatever else he said was inconsequenSmerdyakov knew it. Sherman knew The two other Executive Committee members knew The grinning Cuban who seemed to have wandered in by mistake knew Each loathed the transcultural experience of an old man's speech. They had not come to be assuaged. They had come to cross swords, to bleed, and then if enough blood of the right color was
tial.
it. it. it.

and Izmaylov home myself. Why not? can simply enter their parents!"

We

"Gold: twenty-eight/twenty-eight. Silver: sixteen/eleven, them. Bronze: twentyus. That's without any protests upheld, of course." "And without the fifteen hundred free, which is in the bag." Sherman stirred a lime rickey and eyed the swimming pool on TV He had given up troubleshooting on the

three/twenty-two,

front line

"No, we won't find the right genetic model," Sherman agreed, "But we should be able to prove that their gene scans don't meet any possible permutations of the gene scans ol any human parents you produce."

and turned his hotel suite nerve center with five phones and a
it

into

televi-

sion after finding out his blood

to
all

was nectar Cuban mosquitoes. "How does figure

the protests are upheld, Felix?"
Friday sighed
like

if

Smerdyakov began thumping

"Proof, proof, proof,

the table.

spilled to bury, "On behalf of the United States," Sherman flickered to life at the proper moment, "and for the sake of the integrity of the

Shuer-mann! None of this guilt by omission of evidence. Would your capitalist justice admit such foolishness? Where is the sire for this genetic circus you accuse us of?"
"Popeye!" Sherman blurted sarcastically.

a steamed lobster. "Just about a dead heat in gold and silver. They might edge us in bronze." "Nobody looks at bronze. The way see
I

Man

it,

when
I

all

the dust settles today, this fifteen

way

Games, demand gene scans of the followI

seen Thompson swim

.

hundred will be the difference. That's the You see it that way Felix?" see "I don't know, sir The Russians haven't yet. They might proit.
I
. .

ing Soviet entries; Ivan Spadunka, center" "Spadunka!"

test.

is

"Pup-eye?" Smerdyakov blinked. Pup-eye?"

"Who

A long pause
"What?"
"Isn't that

brought Sherman's glance.

sir?"

"... center forward, Soviet basketball team," Sherman overrode Smerdyakov's dismay. "We'll trade you a gene scan of Spadunka for a gene scan of the humanoid

"We

aren't dealing with legalities," said

Smerdyakov,

Sherman, "We're dealing with Olympic

admissibility."

"Where?"
"There.

"Who

is

Pup-eye?" Smerdyakov asked

Back of the starting blocks." Sherman leaned close enough to count

you

call StiltLl-

the patriarch. "Pop-eye," thai august being informed

him.

the electronic dots on the TV, several of which, it seemed to him, did approximate the silly-putty face of Giorgi Smerdyakov.

"... and of pole vaulters Olka K. and Mikhail C." Sherman continued un" daunted, "discus thrower Pyotr "Inber or Izmaylov?"
I.

"Pope-eye," the Cuban was heard to peat with inner amusement.

re-

"That no-good-nik. That

crummy Com-

"Smerdyakov looked concerned. The

mie!" Sherman felt a transcendental tingle flowing down the back of his neck. Eupho-

122

OMNI

ria

before death.

Thompson was

the last
If

;ure thing the United States had.

they
it

IfPACi
finely

couldn't pull this out before tomorrow,

He.

LOH>7 ILLUSTRATIONS
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acknowledging defeat at cocktail parties, vaguely introduced, shunned, whispered about "That's Sherman; he blew in Havana."
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Sherman arrived bloodless at the natatorium but managed to stroll casually through the press of dewed flesh and crisp white linen on the deck. The pool was a caldron of warm-up; the officials were trying to organize back-up timers behind the automatic touch-pads. Smerdyakov regarded his approach with cynicism,
"Giorgi-ii!"

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Sherman

affected,

"I

just

had

ed stock, the 17x22

reproductions

to

see you to tell you I'm glad we got that awful protest meeting behind us. It was. a chance to get rid of our frustrations, eh?

day of competition and all is forgiven the committee has forgotten us, the athletes have done their thing, the spirit of the Games has come
next-to-!ast

And now it's the

5x20 image area) may be advantageously displayed in numerous ways.

(1

Whether

for your-

self or for

other

through, eh, Giorgi?"

technology and
his lips into a

Smerdyakov sucked
thoughtful moue. "Oh, come now,"
lescently. "we've
just sit

Sherman laughed adodone our jobs. We should

lips

back and let things happen," Smerdyakov continued to inhale his

until one of the freestylers flip-turned and laid a wave at their feet. "Hey!" Sherman said as they backed away. "Guess what. just came from the diving annex, where withdrew our protest
I I

against your
the

diver,

Baba

Babalus

breathe, though often through a biowhole

in

Uncle

Sam had
"It's

another

gold temporarily

one that looks like a flying squirrel." "The one that took fifth?" Giorgi smiled. "Fifth? Oh, did he? Fifth, he took. Well, he might move up if there are any other proAnyway, we thought it was time to uh, in fact. in fact, we've been thinking of withdrawing all our protests. Of course, that could only be part of a mutual
tests.
. .

the top of the head."

Fool's gold.
I

down

to the boxing, Felix,"

"He breathes very

it,

rapidly. Giorgi.

swear

And

his

mouth

is

unusually elastic.
will

He

can catch

air

with the slightest turn."

"How remarkable. We

be

filming the

Someone kicked into the wall. Aquatic A waiting teammate launched off the block. Slap! The sound seemed to
thunder,
fit

race to see." They sat on deck chairs twenty feet apart behind the timers. When the pool was cleared and the officials readied, the championship heat was marshaled to ihe blocks. Thompson, aided by teammates on either side, and wearing footgear resem-

the sting on Smerdyakov's face. "Eat

spinach," he said. Sherman's eyelids fluttered. "No need to

get vulgar, Giorgi" "Eat spinach, Poop-eye. You see, we have our sources. The Soviet- Am eric an Cultural Society in Armenia traced down your imperialist mythology. We are not stupid. And we can keep medal counts as well as you. suppose you think we will just overlook this this amphibian Thompson of yours. The one who doesn't warm up. The one with the special shoes he appears to have very few bones below the ankles. Shuer-mann."""
I . . .

doddered to lane 4, The long, limp appendages that emerged from the boots could have been windsocks or, as Smerdyakov said with a
bling calf-length
ski

boots,

he said, "Look at that nag. She doesn't jump, she hops. Shguld've been destroyed. Would you let a protest like that go by? It's down to the boxing, Felix." One of the phones rang. Felix answered. 'Smerdyakov" he said. Sherman took the phone and clamped on his head like a hot compress. "Hello. Popeye." he said wearily. "How dare you call that animal a horse!" screamed Smerdyakov. "It's got four legs and a tail, doesn't it?
it

That qualifies

It

in

the Soviet stable."

"Shuer-mann.
x-rayed I" "Sorry The race She's dead."

We want

that creature

lustrous grin, albino galoshes. Hardly less intriguing to the Russian was Thompson's topknot. Except for a circular thicket at the

was over two hours ago.

"Dead?" Smerdyakov's frayed voice

cracked. "Broke a leg on the way back to the stable. Had to shoot her" "Remarkable! An autopsy will do."
"Already buried."

crown

of his

head, the swimmer was

smoothly bald.

"Amphibians!" Smerdyakov called

sprightly,

tapping the top of his head.,

Soviet

cameras

rolled.

"We
The Last Day. Thompson's world-record performance was under protest. The Olympic Committee procrastinated.

will

exhume

"Cremated.
"Really,

We

the beast." buried the urn."

Shuer-mann"

"Thompson? Thompson. The one with osteogenesis

of the feet?"

"Quite select of the disease, wouldn't you

say? And another thing, we are told he doesn't breathe during the race. Is that so. Shuer-mann? For fifteen hundred meters

sent Smerdyakov seven Popeye comics and a package of frozen spinach. The- mosquitoes around Sherman fed.

Someone had

"You can autopsy yours, though." "Ours?" "The thing that took the silver a rump, a tail, sort of a head? The one we are protesting. He's dead, right?"
"... of course."

Sherman was watching a

final

replay of the

he doesn't breathe? Even amphibians

equestrian event, grand prix jumping.

"Thought

so.

We

figured

one

of your cos123

sacks spurred him

"Very funny.

to death."

He

We put him on
Bermuda
"It's

a plane that crashed

talking to you."

died of natural causes. in your

interference, and the two men barked goodbye. But he needn't have bothered to call. The

forming them that alt protests had been upheld. 'All?" said Sherman. "But that's inconceivable!"

Triangle."

been nice

"Nice talking to you, Shuer-mann. How are your mosquito bites?" "Fine. How are your Popeye comics?" "Excellent. This Bluto ha, ha. Well ...

chugged out of his corner at the bell like toy. For the first round he purnmeled, lambasted, and blasted. The Ruskid

a wind-up

"What kind
this?"

of

Poop-eye Olympics

is

sian

flitted

and and

flicked.

It

couldn't
lash,

last.

choked Smerdyakov. Stunned, they slumped in their separate

Round 2 saw
strike, cuff,

the

American

beat,

chairs in separate suites.

goodbye." "Goodbye, Popeye."

day.

Crushing hits. The brittle nose became a Chuckle. But, except for that, the Soviet boxer
buffet. Solid hits.

"How could they uphold every protest?" Sherman said to himself. "I thought they
might turn them all down, but uphold them? How could they uphold every protest? How could they?" Felix dragged in twenty minutes later
with a torn computer printout of the complete international protest results and medal redistribution. "Every major country with a genetic-development program ..."

Sherman handed the phone down

"It's

to

Man

Fri-

seemed completely undaunted, He

danced the same blithe dance, scored the same powdery tattoos, even stared the same serene stare. "He's been hypnotized," the Americans complained. A
short but profound conversation with the

to the

boxing, Felix," he said.

fitting

'

He thought

it

was

that the final

in in

the brotherhood ot nations friendly competition should be two guys

distillation of

the ring trying to beat

out.

each other's brains Even with headgear the heavyweights could deliver mickey finns. And the American boy had dynamite hands. So far as

Russian convinced the ref otherwise. Monotonously the American's assault continued. He smote. He thwacked. He Thumped, Thrashed, Drubbed, Pelted,
Finally he FLOGGED and SCOURGED his sashaying enemy, gloves whipping like windmills, then minnow tails, then dropping to his sides. ... In came the feminine taps. Down went the American, physically and emotionally exhausted, crying and clutching the great Isadora's

he

tried to begin,

and then

let

the

paper

fall

into

Sherman's
felt

lap.

Sherman

his hair

going white as he

Ihey could tell, the Soviet was a ballroom dancer. He glided, bowed, swept, dipped, and occasionally peppered his opponents with pretty but ineffectual volleys. His boxing

and Trounced.

read. He was looking into his grave. "Twenty-eighth?" he whispered hoarsely. "We finished twenty-eighth?" "Tied with the Soviet Union," said Felix.
"Sri Lanka? Sri Lanka won?" "Just ahead of Liechtenstein." The phone rang.

was

elegant, but

no one had seen him

take a punch in the qualifying matches. He had the brittle features of a ballerina. Wellscrubbed. Cleanly sculpted eyes. A porcelain jaw Sherman got on the phone to the team manager at the arena. "The head, Branson," he said. "Make sure he goes to the head. He can't outbox the man. He's got to put his lights out." Branson let Sherman know how much he appreciated the

knees.
"I

"Shuer-mann,"
it,"

came

soothingly over the

don't believe

Sherman murmured.
in

"I'll

deliver the protest

person," Felix

line. "My dear Shuer-mann. We are ruined." Smerdyakov vented a few tight sobs. "For-

said, reaching for the attache case.

give me, Duncan. May call you Duncan? know your pain is great, too. What are we to
I

One

The phone calls came to Smerdyakov, one

late in the

to

day Sherman, in-

do?"

Sherman choked, swallowed. "The first announced un"is to open the windows of this" room and let all the mosquitoes in. Then I'm going to take off my clothes and lie down on the bed ..." 'Ah, Duncan no." "... and I'm still alive in the morning, I'm
thing I'm going to do," he
steadily,
. . .

if

going to shave off my beard, buy a ticket for a public flight, and go back to my farm in
Virginia."
"1

wish
will

it

were so easy

for

me, Duncan.
apartment,

They

take

away my

car,

my

think ...

free tickets to the Bolshoi. ... Do you do you think the American em.?" bassy in Havana might uh, might "They would be very glad to see you, Giorgi. Very glad. Just don't mention my name, and they will be very glad to see

my

you."
"Yes, yes, understand. And do you think you might need a farmhand that is, I'm very good at developing hybrids" Giorgi. No ques"No question about tion well, one question." 'Anything, comra er, Duncan." "How the hell did your boy take so much punishment in that fight today? He was like a thumb puppet in there. thought he was
I

it,

getting his brains

knocked

out."

COCW&U!

"Our next guest

is

a gentleman

ivrco

claims to have actually

..."

been taken

aboard a U.F.O.
OMNI

Giorgi sighed. "A thumb puppet, Not bad. A thumb puppet has no brains, yes? Not in his head, yes? Kuchka has no brains in his head, either," ?" "Giorgi. You didn't. But where "You didn't see him sit down, did you?" "Ah, Giorgi, Giorgi," Sherman chuckled. "See you in Virginia. "OO
.
. .

124

FARMING
larms will gel larger." says Rodale, "and there will be more small (arms. That is not as contradictory as it seems. Large farms will get larger because the deck is stacked in that direction. The new wave ol small farms
fill in the chinks ol land made available some of Ihe old-style farmers quit the business. Much land that could be used to grow vegetables, fruits, and specialty

greenhouse, where catfish are raised in Ihe summer, trout in the winter, and vegetables during nine months of the year The sun provides heal for the water which in turn acts as an energy sink, releasing heal at
night.

The

fish

produce the

fertilizer thai

nourishes the vegetables.

And

in

even

more elaborale
like

will

as

tightened
directly

multiculture' experiments, those at the New Alchemy Institute in Massachusetts, the input-output cycle is slill further by raising chickens

above the

fish tanks.

The manure

crops
lo

is

lying idle.

These acres growing up

inlo profitable

weeds could be made

farms if the proper plants and cropping systems for efficient small farms were developed."

been ignored Such systems have by government programmers and big aglargely

research firms, who have put Iheir money on large tools for large farmers. So Rodale
is

trying to

do

it

himself. His organization

drops into the water and fertilizes the algae, which, in turn, is eaten by the fish. Efforts to minimize energy use are by no means confined to the backyard. More and more commercial farmers are frying to get by on less. Typical are three Missouri brothers who, when petroleum prices began to soar six years ago, quickly found themselves paying $45,000 to $60,000 a year for fertilizer and pesticides on their 1.400-hectare farm. They decided to go

Contrary to popular assumption. Scully's is not unusual among organic farms. A group of scienWashington University in St. Louis has found that modern farmers can indeed high-energy inputs. Since 1974, William LockeTetz and his coworkers have studied 14 crop/liveslock organic farms (mean size; 170 hectares) and 14 conventional farms similar in size, location, and machinery, Although the per-hectare value of the crops has been about 11 percent lower on the organic farms, those yields have required some 60 percent less fossil energy to produce. So the net income per hectare has been about the same.

economic success
full-size
tists al

thrive without

It

is

ironic that the price of fossil

energy

is

making the difference between

profit

and

has evolved considerably over the past ten moving away from the "health nul" image once had. Instead, it has emerged as a smoothly run business enterprise that supports a 120-hectare experimental farm, along with a staff of researchers trained in
years,
it

back

lo

spreading manure, planting

loss to more and more farmers despite the fact that farms are tremendous energy producers. Indeed, energy seems to be the key to the way that agriculture will go in the next 10, 20, or even 30 years. If abundant
tute) are available,

follow current trends.

supplies of fossil tuels (or a suitable substi(arming will continue to But if we lose our

botany, plant breeding, nutrition, horticulture, and ecology. The primary goal of the

^Although
will

his tractor

cost over a quarter of

a million dollars,
will

program is lo gather and test new ideas for inexpensive, appropriate technologies suited to the backyard or the homestead. A typical "backyard" product of the Rodale farm, in Maxatawny, Pennsylvania, is a 4. 8-by-4. 8-meter solar-heated greenhouse, which has produced vegetables year round for the past three years (including the two coldest winters on record]. This building, along with a sister structure in Flagstaff, Arizona, was designed by physicist David McKinnon to cost the doit-yourself iarmer only $400 to $1,000, depending on location. The cost would be even less it the greenhouse were set against the south side of a house, where the existing structure would lend its insulating qualities to the greenhouse. And no

the farmer of the future

have computer functions

and

electronic monitors that

would do justice
to the

starship Enterprise.

of cheap energy, we will be forced methods. And whether these methods will be able to produce as much grain as current techniques do remains to be seen. One small indication oi the quandary facing agricultural planners is reflecled at a tiny educational /research exhibit outside Des Moines, Iowa, called Living History Farms. The independent project (funding comes from such diverse sources as Pioneer Seed and John Deere) now has two farms operating one in the year 1840; one in 1900. A third is planned to display possibilities for the year 2000. "There are basically two ways ot thinking about the future," says Jay Anderson, who

sources

to turn to the "alternative"

nitrogen-fixing

legumes, rotating crops,

and other "old-fashioned" measures.

Today they pay $15,000
ral

joined the project last year to help plan the future farm. "There's the high-technology

backup heating

is

needed.

yields of milo, wheat,

a larger scale David Mears of Rutgers University has been experimenting with solar-heated greenhouses for five years and is now building one that covers 4.8 hectares to grow such warm-weather crops as cucumbers, tomatoes, and ornamentals. Mears's group has managed to reduce the heat requirement by a factor of three by using better insulation and a mov-

On

to $20,000 tor a combination of organic fertilizers and natupest controls. They report that their and hay are about the same; corn (the crop most responsive to powerful ammonia fertilizer) is "down a little,"

bag Star Wars, closed confinement.

farming under bubbles and in skyscrapers, vast soilless layouts, that sort of thing. Then there's the opposite low technology, less

and soybeans are

up.

And

their soil

is

improving in structure and of degrading.

fertility,

instead

future farm. For

meat, more grains, minimum tillage, crop rotation, small machinery. "We're debating which way to go with our some time people wanted a high-technology approach. When came a
I

Another experiment in self-sufficiency has been guided for more than 20 years by Michael Scully, a central Illinois farmer.
Scully raises about 135 beef cattle

and 350

The Department ot Energy and the Kube Pak Vegetable Company both are helping Mears with funding, for good reason; Greenhouses can achieve
able plastic curtain.

pigs a year on 160 hectares. To feed his

stock, he grows about 13,000 bushels of corn and 3,000 bushels of oats all without

questioned that idea. don't year ago, read the trends that way, and it's very, very expensive. We want to pay a lot of attention lo energy and soil conservation. We might put the farmhouse underground, where the year-round temperature is fifty-five degrees. The prevailing winds here blow at
I I

about ten times the productivity per square an outdoor field. Other experimenters are broadening the concept of the greenhouse to achieve multiple chains of "production. The goal is to maximize food production with minimal space and energy. In Norwich, Vermont, for example, Robert and Ellie Huke have enclosed a 5,600-liter fish tank in a geodesic
foot of

lo control pests.

commercial fertilizers or pesticides. Instead, he makes about 600 tons of compost a year from the manure of his own animals and relies upon natural predators "Our corn yields are about fifteen to twenty percent below convensays
Scully, "but

twelve miles per hour; we'd want to use

that.

this

We're gets very hot

building a solar pond,

in

domed;

the summer, and we'll

tional yields in the area,"

our

fertilizing

costs are about

half.

meat has

better quality than regular

And our com-

use the heat, We'd like to make ethanol as tractor fuel. from cornstalks and use "We're toying around with all these things. We'll have the emphasis on what's simple, reparable. We're not in Ihe business of advocating; we're a museum. But
it

mercial meat. So

we

still

come

out ahead."

we wanl

to

show what's

possible. "OO

126

OMNI

UFO
subsequent

emphasizes the defiles. pendence the agency was developing on

It

information supplied by scientists

who

were members of UFO groups. As its example, the memo cites the findings submitted by Dr. Walter Riedel of the California Committee for Saucer Investigation.
In 1952 we were told that the Air Force Scientific Advisory Committee on Unidentified Flying Objects. We were given the names of five scientists who sat on the so-called Robertson Panel, named for its chairman, H. P. "Bob" Robertson. These names were put to the committee's final report to this day rejected by most Ufologists as an outright deception of the American public. We were not told then that J. Allen Hynek had anything to do with the panel. People began much later to remember that he was an

had convened the

pages, and two similar reports from the U.S. Army near the Afghan border. Some earlier, a 1955 sighting report from an Afghan army officer had been passed on through U. S. intelligence channels. Dozens of sightings in 1965 by an Argentinean weather team in the Antarctic. A two-page report, dated July 1960, on a sighting by a U.S. Army Geographical Specialist team in Northern Iran. A two-page reporl from Finland on four separate sightings of UFOs, one of which created a near-blinding light. An October 1962 report on a sighting from Czechoslovakia, six pages, five of which are blacked out; a report from within the USSR, three pages, with two blacked out; a summer of 1962 report on several sightings over Kamchatka in the eastern USSR, with sketches enclosed.
years
Descriptions of color slides, also not included, taken by an Argentinean weath-

interesting to note that such unknown returns [armed-forces terrrf for UFOs on radar] have been reported since 1965, and yet no unidentified aircraft has ever crashed or been physically observed so it can be identified. Friendly suppression forces have never shot down or hit those
"It is

ters

unknown intruders, whereas U.S. helicopand aircraft in Vietnam and Laos have suffered many hits and losses." The data are patchy because the CIA,
responding to major flap-year public alarm, gathered information only during certain

periods. For this reason, the early

and

late

erman-astronomer, showing
-

UFOs

adviser to the panel. But the files show that some people's recollections aren't quite so good. The panel officially consisted of Robertson, S. A. Goudsmit, Thornton Page, Louis Al-

and Lloyd Berkner. Yet, in a letter to agency assistant director Phil Strong, "I wonder my memory is failing. do not remember
varez,

around an eclipse. sighting by hundreds of witnesses in Czechoslovakia in 1965. A brilliant UFO over a Russian city in 1977 that shed light like rain on the town. The 1952 flap in North Africa, which elicited hundreds of reports. And perhaps the most cryptic snatch of

incomplete data
of the

comes

to

us from the

files

Goudsmit, now deceased, asks,

if
I

at all that Lloyd Berkner was a member of do remember our committee, but Hynek." Has the Air Force's old Blue Book adviser always been the agency's scientist out in the Ufological cold? It is now acknowledged that was the CIA, not the USAF, that set up the Robertson Panel. One of Hynek's right-hand investigators is Brad Ayers, a CIA hero of the early 1960s; and 1976 documents included in the batch, but heavily censored, suggest that Hynek's group, the Center for UFO Studies, includes someone who has been monitoring
I

Defense Intelligence Agency. Dated November1968, this dossier contains three pages of a report
heavily edited legal-size

Fifties are disproportionately represented. The flap of 1975 is being analyzed by Zechel, who has the Air Force's records of those months. His book about those sightings will be published soon. Meanwhile, Gersten is trying to obtain the same information from the CIA. But more "unevaluated information" is not enough. No one believes we scramble jets against things we never bother to evaluate. Are they, as the occasional Ufologist hints, afraid of panicking us with some terrifying analysis or revelation? Do they realize that they terrify some of us more by seeming not to know what to say? But that's probably it in a nutshell: They don't know what to make of the UFO thing. One thing they will have to accept: UFOs are real, and they won't go away

OO

it

group for the intelligence community These revelations may do more than any
the

others to shake up the UFO scene. But, for the newly awakening, the files offer more worldwide, more officially moni-

tored sightings than anything in recent times. I've characterized a few: A 1958 report of a sighting sent to the U.S. State Department by the British commissioner of the Cayman Islands. A sighting that same year by the Brazilian Navy that included photos not given to

CAUS.

Dozens of sightings along the Soviet border from as far north as Finland to as far south as Afghanistan, during the 1950s. In 1959 the U.S. Navy intercepted two Soviet reports of UFO sightings over the Afghani -Soviet border. According to one, a UFO was seen exploding in midair. That
incident

was

later

connected

to earth-

tremor reports.

A1957 sighting
viet

report from the Finnish-So-

border consisting of three long

EMRTH
there. wouldn't be surprised if my being burned didn't have something to do with it. In a big city you spend a lot of time explaining what happened to you. You see a lot of eyes asking what happened. After had been six months in Crested Butte, everybody knew me." Crested Butte is a rustic mining town that has had a recent rebirth as a National Historic District. Some of its buildings are genuinely old structures that have been treated kindly by time and the elements. Others are new, but of a nineteenth-century

biggest

in

the world.

Under the

U.S. Mining

used

to

it,

but the idea of exposing

my

face

Law

of

1872

piece

of rip-off legislation

to tens of

Similar to laws that the railroads of that

pretty strange.
really
ful.

period arranged for

themselves AMAX

sensitized

thousands of people was still The Washington Post story me to how might be useI I I I

house

mine the ore. Many of Mitchincluding a group called High Country Citizens Alliance, are directing their energies toward muffling the Doom in
has a
right to
ell's allies,

By the time TV came, realized was acceptable. The more concentrated on my unacceptability, the more was acceptI

able."
Mitchell
to

boom-town syndrome, toward ensuring from the mine will be disof in a way that makes some sort of environmental sense. This is, Mitchell bethe
that the tailings

now spends 8

to 12 hours

a day

posed

combat the mine. He travels throughout the country, bringing Crested Butte's dilemma to the attention of the nation. He has
conferred with Senators Church,
Hart,

lieves, wishful thinking.

Kennedy

completely," he says. "Any kind of mine will be a disaster. It's not just visual. To grind up the mountain is bad
it

"We can beat

enough; to

fill

up

valleys with the tailings

is

the mercury-vapor

When Mitchell bought his streetlamps and had them installed, replacing lamps that had illuminated Elk Avenue when he first arrived, his deed was part of a larger movement. In the past decade progress for Crested Butte has amounted to a gradual stepping backward in time. The town has become a
design.

equally bad. But to take a healthy community and destroy it; to give us crime, rape,

Taimadge, and Gravel. ("We'll help you on Crested Butte if you'll help us on Misty Fjords," said Senator Gravel. Both places were possible sites for molybdenum mines. "You mean you're against molyb-

denum

in

both places?" asked Mitchell.

I

unemployment, overcrowded schools, and snowmobiles and jeeps carving up the countryside is unconscionable. AMAX says they're 'environmentally aware.' [Here Mitchell makes rabbit ears, indicat-

monument

to the old

minerals of

its birth:

coal, lead, gold, silver,

and zinc. The metal of the future apparently is molybdenum. It is a rare, silver-gray element with a melting point of 2,606C (4,730F). Molybdenum was first used in
II

Gravel paused. "That's not quite what meant," said the senator.) He has had meetings with Representatives Udall, Brown, and both the Burtons. He has met VicePresident Walter Mondale briefly, and he once bumped into President Carter in a hallway. ("I had the presence of mind, just as he was pulling away, to speak to him about Amy's skiing in Crested Butte. kept
I

i^ny kind of mine

disaster
to give
. .

will

be a

.to take

the 1890s in cannons and armored plate. it was the most imporDuring World War tant strategic metal of the U.S. war machine; soldiers

ahealthy community and'destroy

it;

us crime,

him for fifteen minutes that way.") He has with Cecil Andrus and Bob Herbst. enlisted the support of John Denver and Robert Redford. Mitchell enjoys dropping names. He has lunched with Jack Anderson. ("He asked me why

spoken

And he has

were assigned

to

Colorado

to guard molybdenum lodes. Resistant to corrosion and ultrahigh temperatures, the metal hardens steel, yet at the same time lightens it. It is ever-present in technologi-

unemployment, overcrowded schools, and jeeps

carving up the countryside is unconscionable. 9

wasn't running for Congress," Mitchell recalled. "I've been asked a thousand times

why

don't run.

or six years from now,

elective office?

Maybe will. Someday, four why shouldn't seek It's an important message
I I I

society in tools, jet engines, and nuclear reactors. The world demand for the metal doubles every 14 years. A 165million-ton lode, the third-largest deposit in the world, lies 1,500 feet under the summit of Mount Emmons, or "Red Lady," the mountain west of town. Mitchell is not alone in opposing the search for molybdenum in the core of the mountain. Most of the citizenry of Crested Butte are with him in his resistance to the mine. A few older townspeople are former miners who fondly remember the bustle of the old days; they favor a comeback for mining. (Several of these old-timers wish could be a coal mine. Coal, unfortunately, is not the mineral buried beneath Red
cal
it

lustrated
zine.

have to get out.") Stories about the mayor of Crested Butte have appeared in Sports iland The New York Times MagaHe serves on the Presidential Committee for the Handicapped. He is Colorado's

ing quotation marks.

benefit of fingers.
just

He does so without He has made the sign

Handicapped Citizen of the Year. ("I don't want to be Colorado's Handicapped Citizen of the Year. Colorado's citizen of the year, maybe. I'm in a wheelchair and burnt
up, but I'm not that different from other

by a wiggling in what was left of his hands, but that does the job. J And they say
If

they're the best.

ried

that's the best, I'm worIt's

Lady.)

Mitchell, transplanted easterners.

Many of the newer residents are, like A dis-

a tremendous indictment of the system if a place like Crested Butte is devastated because of an old mining law. There is nothing that AMAX is going to do for Gunnison County. Nothing. Nothing that's going to benefit us. Crested Butte is the perfect cause. At least think is. If it's not, then really fear in my heart for what this country considers valu-

about

this

country

people walking around.") To defeat the mine at Crested Butte

will

it

proportionate number of the transplants, including Myles Rademan, the town planner and a leader of the resistance to the

able."

molybdenum mine, are lawyers. There is more sophistication and political know-how in Crested Butte than any mining executive could have expected to discover in a small Colorado community Not all the molybdenophobes, however, are as confident as Mitchell is that the mine can be defeated. Seven billion dollars' worth of metal, after all, has a way of finding
its

The mayor has become his town's prinweapon. "He's a one-man media Rademan, the town planner, has In the beginning Mitchell never guessed that this might happen.
cipal
event,"

no longer satisfy Mitchell. "I feel I'm on the track of something far beyond Crested Butte. If we are able to save Crested Butte, I'd say to AMAX, This is just a symbol.' I'd like to talk about the whole mining law. It's like the old Homestead Act. I'd like to demonstrate that by lining up a lot of Volkswagens at the edge of Yosemite and saying, 'Everybody gets an acre,' I'd like to speak on this whole issue of
growth."
It is unlikely, of course, that any of this would have happened to the mayor had not fate burned him so badly. The defeat of the mine, if it comes to pass, may have had its origins in that brief inferno on a San Francisco street. Win or lose, the mayor has risen like a human phoenix from his own ashes Time will tell. The flame that consumed him may prove too bright even for

said,

"After

my
I

sumed

was

motorcycle accident, aspretty much unacceptable.

I

Unphotographable,

for sure.

certainly
I

way to light. AMAX,

OMNI

the mining
is

company
of the

that plans to
128

work the lode,

one

the

wasn't suitable for mass audiences. When got in the wheelchair, was even more strange. never liked being photographed, even before got burned. With the story in Rocky Mountain News, began to get
I I
I

that heat-resistant metal

molybdenum. OO

Jaws was released by a

Aftate for
Athlete's Foot
is

FILM
CONTINUED FROM PAGE
24

looks pretty primitive. Sound is something people remember very well. They may not be able to do a transporter sound, but
they'll

know

if

it's

not the transporter

sound

better

we used to use. From the first day we had arguments over the Star Trek insignia. There was a faction who favored turning it on its side because looked more streamit

rival studio, but the monster we have here is a lot worse than anything you'd see in hell." O'Bannon, a science-fiction fanatic since he learned to read, has a big stake in He wrote the original story with the film's executive-producer, Ronald Shusett, then did the first-draft screenplay O'Bannon's work on Alien will be his third outing in the field of science-fiction adventure. Back in the early Seventies he cowrote, codirected, designed, edited, created the ef-

Alien.

than

lined. Eventually

said no.

Enterprise

Desenex:
Really better.
If you've got athlete's foot and you're still using Desenex, you should know that Aftate

of improvements on the though. For instance, betorpedo, we'll have a interior of the photontorpedo tube. Our old bridge was put together out of plasterboard, two-by-fours, and salvaged instrument faces. For the film we completely redesigned it. We wanted our actors to be able to push their own buttons and actually make their consoles respond. You get better acting when the performer wants a navigational readout

"There are a

iot

itself,

fore

shot

we fire a photon down the hellfire

for, and costarred in a brilliant little outer-space parody called Dark Star. Then he served for six months on an ill-fated production of Frank Herbert's Dune. Though was produced on the incredibly low budget of $50,000, Dark Star featured sophisticated model work, matte

fects

it

paintings,

and other special-effects

post-2O0J period.

trapof the

pings

of the

Many

picture's technicians

have become leaders

is

better.

and can punch up himself. more honest than having a technician stand behind the fake set and start a piece
it

It

just feels

in the field, making contribufions tb such films as Flesh Gordon, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, and Alien. But, the technicians were working on Dark

when

Star, they

were

all

unknowns.

"When we
recalled,

started the film,"

it

O'Bannon
to

In independent studies, the medication in Aftate has been proven to be more effective in fungus thanthe medication in Desenex. In fact, doctors recommend the medication in Aftate 14 to 1 over the medication in

of film

on cue."

"we were doing

of our talents.

primarily as a

Technically, Star Trek

reflects the years

The Motion Picture

its

showcase
prove that
tion.

We wanted

between

TV demise

we could make a movie

with the

killing athlete's foot

and

Desenex. 14 to

cinematic rebirth. Following in the footsteps of 2001 Silent Running, and Star Wars, the film will have a "hardware" look. Special effects, originally to be handled by Robert Abel and Associates, are now in limbo. Roddenberry and director Robert
its
,

professional look of a big-budget producdollars for the

Since we had only five or six thousand first two years, we learned
to

how

l.

Aftate is better than Desenex. Really better. It's the killer.

Wise are searching out a new learn

to pro-

do everything economically." Dark Star's other director, John Carpenter, has gone on to make Halloween and is well on his way toward becoming one
of the leading filmmakers of the 1980s. But here he cowrote the script, scored the music for the picture, and also served as

the

duce the complex visuals the film demands. Front-runner is Douglas Trumbull, man responsible for Silent Running and major portions of 2007 and Cfose Encoun-

ters of the Third Kind,

who was brought

in

as an adviser early

in

Roddenberry

is

facing

production. stiff competition

producer. Greg Jein, who would later build the "mothership" in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, carved the model of the film's starship from a block of polyurethane

from other "hardware" films being released this year. Among them are Walt Disney's The Black Hole, 20th Cenfury-Fox's Alien (see below], Columbia's reworked version
of Close Encounters, Universal's Buck Rogers, American International's Meteor, and a horde of lesser rivals. As a result, Star Trek's, budget has almost doubled since the film went into production. We looked out the window at the bright red bicycle on which Roddenberry commutes from office to sound stage. He shook his head and smiled. "Those guys never stop," he said. "Someone came in here looking for something to use as a control handle in a shot of the bridge. told him to improlook around for something else
I .

foam, using a pocketknife. John Wash, who went on to do the graphic visual displays in Sfar Wars, hand-built an animation camera
to create

Dark

Star's

computer

printouts.

Jim Davenforth, later responsible for work on Di Laurentiis's King Kong, did a number of paintings on ordinary window glass, showing planets in deep space. Lacking money to hire help, and wanting to ensure
the proper feeling of a control-room set, O'Bannon built it alone, working 20-hour days for two weeks, driving himself to the
point of exhaustion. finished that set, was "By the time ready to.collapse, but still had other work
I I
I

to do.

was

acting

in

the

film,

making

all

the
all

props and costumes, and coordinating

the special effects as well."

vise. off

Those guys

just stole

one

of the grips

The costumes
torso

my

handlebar."

No one can say

doesn't give his

that
for

were incredibly

difficult.

The

was
flexi-

Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek

all

taken from an asbestos

ble

fire suit,

while the

The Motion Picture

arms and legs were improvised from

air-conditioning

Aftate

is

odorless.

"Alien is my vision of Jaws in outer space," says Dan O'Bannon, the film's writer and special-visual-concepts consultant. "Twentieth

Ordinary ski gloves, enormous overshoes, and a clear

tubing.
plastic bubble with vacuum hoses coming completed the suit. The life-support system was made from an oven baking

out of

it

;ad and follow label directions.

Century-Fox space, 'cause that

calls

it

The

Omen

in

outer

was

their picture

and

pan, a baby's bassinet, and a piece

of-

130

OMNI

molded Siyrofoam Irom a typewriter packing carton. Each piece was kept in place
with heavy-duty cloth tape

"He
in

reluctantly agreed,
it,
I

and while he was

I

there watching

wound around
Unfortunately,
for

thought. Oh. he's European

sibilities. He'll

and around the costumes.

this resulted in
tors.
air

near-suffocation
this

the ac-

When
about
"I

he
it.

O'Bannon solved

by giving them

was sweating bullets. and has senhate it and think I'm a jerk, came out, he couldn't stop raving He thought was great. He said,
it

Aftate for
Jock Itch
is

through half-inch plastic tubing that ran from their mouths down under their costumes to their wrists. Sweating profusely, the actors would be cooled down between shots by having O'Bannon pour ice water down their backs. Dark Star was released by a company

'Alien's got to

be like that but better!' knew we'd be friends after that. All the

drafts of the script after

my
I

first

screenplay
the film he

were
shot

ultimately cast aside,

and

was

basically the

one

better

wrote."

As

this

goes

to press, a Writers Guild arbitration

went into receivership shortly after the film was purchased. Though the movie has gained an enormous cult following as the best science-fiction spoof to date, relatively few people have seen "That's why wrote Alien," O'Bannon explains. "Here I'd put three and a half years of my life into Dark Star, and nobody outside the business knew existed. "We'd tried to make it a spoof of the genre, but, because we had so little money,
that,
it.
I

committee is deciding whether to uphold an earlier ruling that O'Bannon should have
solo screen credit as writer. "We're trying to show how down-to-earth

than
Cruex:
Really better.
If you've got jock itch and you're still using Cruex, you

outer space can be," O'Bannon says. "Except for the Alien. That's what's going to

make this
I

picture

did Dark Star,

go through the roof. After was designer and

I

special-effects director on a planned pro-

it

we had

to cut too many corners, The Alien in that film was an orange beach ball with Creature from the Black Lagoon feet. When went to work for George Lucas on Star Wars, he said, 'Dan, why didn't you put some of that plastic vomit on it? Would've made all the difference.' said, 'George, why didn't you come over and help out instead of making American Graffiti?' "We tried to make people laugh in Dark Star. That didn't work. So decided to try to make people scream. Alien is as horrifying as possible, the exact opposite of Dark
I

duction of Dune, to be directed by Alexander Jodorowsky [El Topo, The Holy Mountain], "When went over to Paris to work on the
I

film,

met

[H. R.] Giger,

brilliant

artist

should know that Aftate

better.

is

whose work was

bizarre, frightening, gor-

geous, sick, perverse, and wonderful. I'd found something I'd been looking for all of my filmmaking career. Here was someone who could create nightmares beyond what anyone else could visually imagine. He was the graphic equivalent of H. R Lovecraft. Lovgcraft on the page says, 'It was nightmarish beyond imagination.' But what does look like? Giger whips out his airbrush,
it

Aftate's medication has

been

tested and found to be more effective than the medication in Cruex for killing jock itch fungus.
Aftate's powerful medication

and
"I

there

it

is.

Star.

It's

essentially the

for several plot twists

For those

who have seen

same film, except here and there." both Dark Star

he
readily

came back

to the States

and
all

told

friends about Giger,

Shusett.

and they

went,

not only kills all major types of jock itch fungus, but also helps prevent reinfection. For the relief of painful itching and chafing of jock itch,
getAftate. It'sthe
killer.

'Yeah, yeah, fat chancel'

I

Even Ronnie

and up
the

Alien,

O'Bannon's visual stamp and

story style are obvious. Yet

owns

to the collaborative effort that

new

picture

went into "We'd have been sunk

artists'

were

wasn't able to bring back any of Giger's pictures with me, and so, while we writing Alien, I'd keep telling him,

'Look,

when you see these

Giger sent
I

pictures, you'll
of his art

without our director, Ridley Scott," he says.

believe me.'
"Finally,

"He took our visual brought them to life."

Nonetheless,
it

ideas and

me

a couple

is

O'Bannon's vision of

Alien

outer space that colors the picture. His spaceship interiors in both Dark Star and are darkly claustrophobic, almost

books, and shoved them at Ronnie. When he opened them up, he said, 'Oh my God! It's more than you said! can't believe it!' Of course Ridley said the same, which was great. Ridley didn't pick the

Oh my God!

submarinelike in their cramped control rooms, cabins, and passageways. When O'Bannon wrote the original screenplay, he planned it as a vehicle he could direct. "It was written to be shot on a $500,000 budget, but Ronald Shuseit

exact creature did, but that's minor. Audiences are going to just scream when they see it. Whatever you imagine, you can't imagine it. "The guy who's reading this interview right now will say the same thing Ronnie
I

co-owned
be a studio
lars for 20th
still

the rights
picture.
It

and wanted it to cost nine million dolto

did. He'll

horn.

Century-Fox

make
I

it,

and

Giger

say 'Listen to O'Bannon honk his The only reason he's pumping up is because he found him and it's a

feel

twentieth of the budget.

I'd

could have done as well for a But can't say

reflection of his
I

own
I

age. Yeah,

it'll

probably

made

have done any better. Ridley just himself a power in the film busithis picture.
I I

look good. go to the movies. saw Close Encounters. saw the little Pillsbury
I

doughboy

at

the end. That

was okay. know

I

ness with

"When met Ridley, kept bugging him to see a movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one-of the crudest films ever made, but one of the scariest as well. said, 'Look, you haven't made a horror movie before. You've got to see what the state of
I

what movie monsters look like.' "Then you, dear reader, will go in and sit down, and you'll tap your toe and say,

the art

is.'

show me the monster, show me the monster' And when we show you the monster, you will jump up and run out of the theater." (For more on the Alien, see pictorial beginning on page 80.) DO
'Okay,

Aftate

is

odorless.

sad and follow label directions.

\USIC
For practical reasons, the thirty-nineyear-old inventor would like his keyboards
to
fit

DIBIT RJ1USIC
GREENSLEEVES
_>---->;.--.

neatly over standard keyboards. That

not

way one need

purchase a whole new

instrument simply to have the new keyboard. In spite of the fact that piano actions are always rather delicate, and the leverage required to push down standard black keys is somewhat different from that required to push down standard white keys, the Berdboard does fit securely and is easily removable at the same time; the mechanical problems have thus far proved to be surmountable.

jjjJ'ri Hi
z

-_

..'--

t+
.J.

ri

v-

Even then, however, the Berdboard will have a long way to go in order to become generally accepted. Keyboardists who have already invested many years in learning the standard arrangement won't be
anxious to start all over with a new arrangement, despite certain advantages. It
is

questionable, too, whether music educaif it

tors are flexible

enough to adopt a radical proves to be new piano keyboard, even

generally better than the current one.
Berd's digit-music notation system
is

likely

to run into similar resistance.

We
when

don't like to

change our ways, even

there

may be good reasons why we

should. Typewriters are another case in point. The standard typewriter arrangement, which is known as "qwerty" because
of the
row,
is

arrangement

of the letters

on

its

top

now technologically

obsolete.

The

vant,

qwerty arrangement was designed for mechanical reasons that are no longer releand has been proved that one can type faster on present-day typewriters if the letters are arranged in other ways. But we continue typing on qwerty keyboards, and we might continue playing the piano on our traditional seven-note keyboards. Still, he does not strike me as a man who like to think about Sam gives up easily
it
I

sitting in his office at the Music Center, working on his Berdboard, making subtle improvements in his

Berd, the pioneer,

Digit

notation system,

dreaming up new ideas,

odds,
to

and

trying, against sizable

make

us change.

of "Greensleeves," written in Berd's digit-music system (above), may look complicated at first, but it is actually quite simple. The upper five boxes define the activity of the fingers on the right hand, and the five rows below tell you what to do with your left hand. The numbers 1 through 12 indicate specific pitches, with C corresponding to 1, C-sharpto2, Dto 3, and so on. Thus the opening bars of the right hand would be interpreted as E with the thumb, G

The accompanying example

The following are selections from the growing list of Digit Music transcriptions, ranging from the classics to show tunes and popular hits. Available from Digit Music 57th Street, New York, N.Y 10019, are: Liszt's "Liebestraum"; Beethoven's "Fur Elise" and "Moonlight Sonata"; Chopin's "Minute Waltz"; J. S. Bach's Minuet No. 1; Strauss's "Blue Danube"; the theme from The Godfather; "Send In the Clowns"; The Beatles' "Yesterday" and "Let It Be"; Joe Brook's "You Light Up My Life"; "When the Saints Go Marchin' In"; and selecCenter, 157

with the
finger,

that,

second finger, A with the third finger, E with the fourth finger, high C with the fifth and soon. Blue digits are played in the octave below middle C, red ones in the octave above and green digits in the octave above that. Additional colors would be used in more advanced pieces with wider ranges. The bar lines function as in ordinary music notation, and the subdivisions within the bars clarify quite graphically the exact duration of each note. The little horizontal lines mean to sustain the previous note, the vertical dotted lines simply clarify when keys are to be struck simultaneously, and that's about all you need to know in order to sit down at the piano and play this simple arrangement. You'll you probably find that you can pick out the tune in a matter of minutes, although, already have some facility with standard notation, may take you a few more minutes, because you will find yourself trying to translate instead of fully trusting the new
if
if

tions from'fiddter on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, and West Side Story.

symbols.

The system should be computerized

within six months,
at

which time longer

music offers certain advantages, compared with the standard notational system music the player does not have to knowa sharp or a flat or a clef or rest signs. The fingering is built in, taking guesswork off the mind.
Digit

(below). With digit

pieces
132

will

be

"digitized."

DO

OMNI

connrmuruicMTiorus
C0M:iNi.iH-;Fr'Oyr'.ir.:
'?

safe
|

when Skylab was launched. But it we

restrict

space to

on Earth or in our activities only what is completely safe, we'll never get out of bed in the

French Volcano While Dr. Eaton [Continuum, February 1979] may be an excellent volcanologist, his comments about the 1976 French evacuation of Guadeloupe earn low marks in psychology and political science.
France, after
that
all. is

March 19791 reminds us of Ihe battle between Andrew Victor Schally and Roger
[Life.

Guillemin, the Nobel Prize winners IJanu-

ary 1979].

the only

modern

nation

Competition and attempts to find different solutions are obviously good. However, the personality conflicts and unnecessary

morning. Ed.

has

lost

volcano.

When Mount

an entire colonial capital to a Pelee destroyed St.

waste of energy described

clarify

in

your articles

the distinction

between technical

friend of

solution to the Skylab

heard:
with
I

Why
our

mine came up with the best problem that I've not let our fine armed forces

Pierre, Martinique,

on May

8,

1902,

a'

pru-

power and

scientific maturity.

dent evacuation had been opposed by

local politicians.

all

weapons

capability just blow

Skylab to smithereens

when

it

starts to re-

enter the earth's atmosphere?

L.

might reasonably predict that the French government learned a bitter lesson. Expert volcanologists notwithstanding, er-

One

Are these isolated cases? How are research tunds being used? What can be to increase efficiency?

done

Owen and Noreen

Kerr

Buffalo, N.Y.

M. Yeutter
Fla.

Tampa,

on the side of caution ate likely to be repeated every time a volcano sneezes in
rors

the French West Indies.

An
I

excellent idea, except that

it

is illegal to

Dean

R.

Lam be

deploy or use nuclear weapons in spaceBoth the United States and the Soviet Union signed an international treaty to that effect. And nothing less than a nuclear weapon would do the job with any certainty. Ed.
Aesthetic

Vincent, Ohio

Deep Doubt
have read with interest the article "Deep Quest" by Stephen Schwartz in the March 1979 Omni. commend Mr. Schwartz's goal of trying to develop a practical test for psychic skills that would eliminate as many objections as possible. However, must challenge the could statement that "the area selected not have been found through old papers
I I

Small In the February 1979 Continuum, you have a short piece called "Let's Get Small." The column makes reference to Thomas Samara's article in The Futurist about the energy advantages of short people, Unfortunately, his numbers, which you quote, are incorrect. He made a fundamental error.
In his article entitled

Power

"Short

Is

Beautiful,"
of

Space
Poefs" [March 1979]
is someand cosmonauts alike

Samara

writes:

"A

modest increase

"Space

for

thing that astronauts

for, almost since the beginning of manned space flight. "I know that the sea of space through which our world swims awaits not only scientists and technicians for testing and analyzing," said Gherman Titov, the second man in space, "but also the poets, the artists, and the

have been waiting

percent in height raises the weight of a person by almost 16 percent, with the result he
that
(or

she) requires significantly more

food, oxygen, water, clothing, metal, paper and other vital resources. Therefore, the

."
. .

and

the conclusion that

."
.
.

".

it

rules out

benefits of population control

stature."

can be canin

cheating.
It

celled by progressive growth

human
al-

seems
in

to

me

that since the sinking

occurred

modern

times,
is

some form
all

of

This observation

is

basically correct,

composers." Space has evoked a profound aesthetic response in many spacefarers, But few have found the words to describe what they have seen. "Test pilots don't do so good

influence on the test

not at

ruled out.

How

when comes Gus Grissom.

it

to rich, lyrical prose," said

could such an event explosion, fire, sinking, lives probably lost have happened so close to shore and completely have escaped the papers? Not likely. Raoul E. Drapeau
Vienna, Va.

though the benefits of population would not be canceled but only

cantly reduced.

control
signifi-

However, Samara then states: "People generally increase their weight as the cube of the increase in their height. Therefore, if

human

Some have lamented

poets
in

came
. .

the absence of space. The most poignant lament from Mike Collins, as he recounted
Flight":
lifting

stature were to double in the future, people would weigh eight times as much

An Opinion
have always concerned myself with science from a layman's point of view had concluded that scientists considered accuracy to be crucial. Perhaps this analysis holds true only in the minds of Ihe scientists and in their laboratories.
I
I

and would
food." This

require roughly eight times the

is

not true.

John Magee's classic "High

.while with the silent,
trod

mind

I've

tion

the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touched the face
of

Although weight does increase as the cube of height, food and energy consumpdo not. such were the case, a whale's or elephanf's appetite would be enormous.
If

God.

"All that from the cockpit of a Spitfire," said a sorrowful Collins. "What could he have said after one orbit? cry that he was
I

killed."

There are those who have tried. Edgar Mitchell put his feelings down in psychological terms as a "peak experience." Al

became alarmed when read the opening paragraphs of James Oberg's "Farmam Planets" [February 1979]. of accuracy; therefore state that Mr. Oberg would have been more precise by beginning: In my opinion. am nol saying that Mr. Oberg shouldn't his right and write this material it is support his right. am merely saying that
I
I

ing the

speaking

Since animals are essentially heat engines, heat loss is a vital aspect of energy (food) consumption. To stay alive, an animal must replace heal los: from its surface. In Continuum, you say Ricardo Montalban is "more energy-intensive" than his pint-sized cosla' HerveVi lechaize. Not so, even though taller Mohtalban uses more total energy; Villechaize is fhe one wasting more energy in heal loss, and he is thus

Worden published poetry; Aleksei Leonov turned to painting. (One of his canvases hangs in the Smithsonian.) Still, no spacemanor spacewoman has been able to

the majority of material

satisfy the imaginations of the

millions.

earthbound

is accepted as fact, because those three words are omitted. only want people to find their own answers from the research that the scientific community performs. This way, learning goes on. and we don't suffer another Dark
I

more energy-intensive.
Mark Mills Rome, N.Y.
Angular Errata
In

the

May Omni

Interview,

quoted Richard
exper-

Trudy E. Bell's article contains not just a fruitful suggestion but an imperative. The
world anxiously.awaits the articulate space let us share in

Age

of education.

R Feynman on the

Lam b-Rether ford

Gina Cohen

Rome, N.Y
Medical Rivalry

voyager someone who can

the dream.

iments measuring the "shifts in angular momentum of the electron in hydrogen atoms." The shifts were in energy, not angular,

momentum.
Monte Davis

Nick Engler

The

rivalry

between Jonas Salk and Albert

in

Mountain Home, N.C.

Sabin- as described

"Irksome Vaccine"

New

York, N.Y

DO

FORURJ1
CONTINUED FROM MGE
nol as a
11

symptom

of

another problem,

ii

is

word ball shoulo' be spelled out in Morse Code, using a variable oscillator and an underwater speaker. This should be repeated using vari'ous amplitudes, pitches, and speeds ot Iransmission to assist the
dolphin
in

or clenchers of primitive teeth.

will be expanded io alleviate the causative problem. do-not deny that any endeavor that provides information about the function of the body is valuable, but the true value of that

unlikely that

excess energy

understanding

that the intelli-

gence

carried on the "dots and dashes" rather than on one of the other variables.
is

The current understanding ot genetics and inheritance dictates that no trace or predisposition can be passed on to succeeding generations unless it can be. coded and incorporated by DNA and, for most species, transmitted during sexual
union.

David Edelschick

Our present-day jaw

size

and

tooth mor-

Woodbridge.

Va.

research

lies in

the use

made

of the inforin-

phology are determined not so much by what we eat as they are by whom we meet.
L. S.

mation obtained. Optimum use of any formation requires a lateral approach.

Sex and Mouths

Referring to the article "Future Mouth" [Continuum. February 19791. it is perhaps
only reasonable that folks with
little

Davis, DD.S.

Monticello, Minn.

David

J.

Leprich, D.C.

Ontario,

Canada

s'cien-

Nonverbal Dolphins
read wilh interest John Lilly's article on communicating with dolphins in your No1

vember
After

issue.

success in communicating with chimpanzees was finally achieved through the use of nonverbal human language, American Sign Language, which utilized the chimpanzees'
years of
failure,

many

lific bent should confound and confuse adaptation with accommodation. The former operates through mutation and natural selection, while the latter operates through environmental stresses. Milford Wolpoff should be given a knock on the noggin with a piece of the Piltdown Man and then should review general biology with special emphasis on three men; Lamarck, who was wrong; Mendel, who was right; and Darwin,

Mr. Alan Vaughn's in his letter in the March Omni as term Cargo Cult, by Richard Feynman. True, Dr. Feynman may actually origihave used that term, but nated in New Guinea shortly after the end of the Second World War and was coined in fact by anthropologists studying some of the effects of the impact of the American war machine upon certain hill tribesmen
1

Cargo Cult must take issue with

statement

to the "coinage" of the

it

natural abilities.

A nonverbal human
could possibly

lan-

who was
It

very observant.
that high-

there.

guage

exists that

utilize

has often been observed

The New Guinea tribesmen, seeing

air-

dolphins' ability to

communicate

with

one

fiber diets, not unlike the postulated diet of

another, using a series of clicks. This lan-

guage
I

is the International Morse Code. propose the following experiment

tor

any

of your readers

engaged

in

dolphin

research:

A ball should be thrown into the water where the dolphin is swimming; then the

primitive man. would and do bring about muscular hypertrophy and an enlargement the skeletal attachment. Chronic jaw clenching may in some cases do the same thing. But this is not to say that these acquired characteristics will be transmitted to
of

craft for the first time, unloading war and other materials at landing bases, and apparently being tremendously impressed by this heavenly manna delivered giftlike from

gigantic birds, sought the return of such

manna

-the offspring of the eaters of primitive diets

after the war's end and the disappearance of the U.S. forces. Their method, one of faith, was to clear a

build a "replica" of the

miniature landing area on a mountaintop, C-47 out of straw,

place it on the landing strip with fires burning day and night for attention, and, ever watching, prayed to entice the "magic birds" to return with more heavenly manna and material. Being a behavior built upon
faith

and

name

the "Cargo Cult."

return of rich

"primitive" interpretation, the given them by anthropologists was The cultists believed so

firmly in their straw

their prior hunting

except

in

C-47 as a method of cargoes that Ihey abandoned and gathering economy, extremes. Unfortunately, the

"magic birds" never returned, and the Cargo Cult slowly died away.
Tully Scott

West Palm Beach,

E.

Fla.

O. Wilson's

Dilemma

The points of si/niaaiy between hum&i and

f&YiLO
"Gosh, they're doing so well on the fish trick. Do you think we might them on something more advanced?"
.

chimpanzee social behavior, when joined with the compelling anatomical and biochemical traces of relatively recent genetic divergence, form a body of evidence too strong to be dismissed as coincidence. I now believe that they are based at least in part on the possession of identical genes. E. O, Wilson

"On Human

Nature"'

Apparent conlradictions, paradoxes, and dilemmas often prove to be the scientist's most valuable challenge. A synthesis that
try

reconciles seemingly contradictory facts

and combines them into a general theory or model is an exceedingly valuable one.

Thus, to

cite

an example Irom an

earlier

century, "adaptivG radiation"

and "conver-

gent evolution" have proved to be two sides of one coin: the ecological niche. Two niches differ if there are features of each that are not shared by the other. Adaptive radiation merely'reflects adaptations to the
dissimilar features
of

rjext Dnnrui

several

ecological

niches, while convergent evolution involves adaptations to those features that are

common to the several niches. A more modern contradiction, one

that

has not yet been neatly resolved, is to be found in molecular genetics. Two great principles have emerged during the past two or three decades of genetic study: One is the unity of genetic mechanisms in all forms of life-. Not only are the nucleic acids the genetic material of all organisms, not only is the machinery by which genetic information is retrieved and acted upon
within cells the

same, but also the

lan-

tion

virtually

of genetics the genetic code is same in all organisms. The contradicis the variety of gene forms found in all populations of all species that have been studied. Despite a unity that

guage
the

blankets the genetic mechanisms of all living things, an infinite variety of details
exists both within individuals

and among

individuals of every known species. At times dilemmas are self-generated: J.B.S. Haldane once concluded that one gene could be substituted for another only every 300 generations. Unfortunately, as some mammalogists and others quickly pointed out. elephants and other large,
long-lived
tion

THE ONCE AND FUTURE MOON Next

NASA
scientist

Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind," To help, data, photographic

mammals

are

among

the most

rapidly evolving organisms. This contradicis

month will mark the tenth anniversary of commemorate the occasion^ Bevan French looks at what we've learned from the seismic maps, and more than 2.000 rod* samples collected by the

known as Haldane's dilemma.

I

Wilson has,

believe, also generated a

it

Apollo missions; then he peers into man's future oh the moon. You'll also find a spectacular, gallery of photos of our moon and the satellites of distant planets.

dilemma;

shall call

E.

O. Wilson's

di-

FUTURE BIKES
engineering

lemma.

It

lion cited

can be identified within the quotaabove and can be summarized

When walking

ing :25 horsepower. With that

tional bicycle 19 miles
ical

as follows: Evidence ostensibly supporting

the claim that social behavior has a genetic basis does not do so, and evidence that could do so cannot long exist in populations. What is seen is no proof; what would be proof cannot be seen. This dilemma,
I

at California State University,

at a five-mile-per.-bour clip, your body is producsame-power output you could be pedaling a convenper hour. But, says Chester Ft. Kyle, a professor of mechangiven a properly streamlined bicycle,

you could be zipping off to work at 30 miles per hour using that same measly quarter-horsepower. In the July Qmni Kyle, a founder of the International HumanPowered Speed Championships, tells how bicycles now hit speeds over 50 rhph and how your "commuter car" of the future may be a supersophisticated tricycle.

might add, is quite apart from any quibble that might arise over the words identical

THE MIND MACHINE-Will

according
to

genes The argument can be

illustrated by an attempt to detect cheaters among students who have taken an examination. Cheating concerns the independence or nonindependence of answers submitted in re-

computer

to work,

Stine explores the intriguing possibility

and computational powers through

the electronic computer eventually replace man? Not G. Harry Stine, who believes that we will shortly be putting the as a very fast supplement to the human brain. In the next Omni of- vastly expanding our thinking, memory the direct linkage of the brain to a computer

sponse

to test questions. In cheating, information generated by one student is copied by a second; the answers are not independent in origin. Otherwise the answers are honest that is, independently

INTERVIEW/GERARD O'NEILL 'A great many things we do as a technological society can tie better and more easily done in space, with little or no pollution." So says Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill, in an exclusive Omni inierview, as he continues his planning for space settlements and industry. O'Neill discusses automated mining of the moon, creating' new environments in space, and the building of -Space colonies on a less grandiose scale, some to have as few as a dozen people. Journey to the stars and beyond through the mind of Professor Gerard O'Neill.

arrived

at.

Suppose that a class is tested on elementary arithmetic by means of such questions as 12 + 37 = ?or18 x 39 = ?The possibility of detecting cheaters is limited who answer questions incorrectly; cheaters among those answering correctly cannot be identified. Because there is a correct answer to each of these
to those students

INTERFERON
interferon, the

.invading, viruses,

A new picture is emerging of that unique intercellular messenger hormone that triggers the protective substances cells use to destroy Now comes The. discovery that interferon can also retard the

growth of malignant- cells.. The substance neutralizes certain cancer cells as if they had. been infected. by a virus, a fact that wasn't widely recognized until last year. Today agrowing.nurnber of experiments are confirming the hormone's effectiveness as a cancer killer. In the July Omni, read why the American Cancer Society has just bequeathed its largest grant ever to the tantalizing promise of interferon.

questions, correct answers of noninde-

pendent
situation

origin
is

cannot be

identified.
if

The
two

quite. different, however,

and animals are logical solutions to posed by their environments, these solutions should be similar whether
plants the problems
arrived at genetically or intellectually (via the nervous system). Consequently, as was the case in the arithmetic class, similar an-

students 13 + 11

sitting

side by side respond that

47; two identical incorrect re-

sponses are good evidence that these responses were not independently arrived at. In examinations where logic does not predominate but where lengthy descriptive passages are required, the opportunity to identify those who have shared answers is exceptionally high. As in the case with incorrect answers to mathematical questions, the sheer improbability that two answers in response to a noniogical question should be identical is low; this low probability is in turn the basis for concluding that such answers could not have been generated independently Living organisms have over the past several billion years developed two systems

swers provide no evidence as to whether origins are independent or nonindependent.

Conversely, two species that exhibited

identical illogical solutions to a

common

problem would provide excellent evidence for a common genetic basis (just as one or the other of two students, both of whom
claimed
that

2 x 4

17,

could be accused
that arrive at illog-

of cheating).

Organisms

ical solutions to environmental problems (such as maple trees that flower and develop leaves in midwinter in upstate Mew York), though, do not survive and reproduce. Illogical solutions of both the genetic

that are capable of arriving at logical solutions to various problems. The one system is based on the genetic material, DNA, it-

and

intellectual sort lower the fitnesses of

their perpetrators

and cause

their

own
I

The Lunar Photograph above was

self.

The second, a
is

characteristic of ani-

elimination from populations. That is why have said in regard to social behavior,

made with a most remarkable lens the Quantum "100". Notice the detail along
-

mals,

Plants, with

the nervous system. no nervous system, solve an

of

the lunar terminator, on the crater floors,

enormous number

problems

solely

by

that E. 0. Wilson

and

in

the crater walls.

Of course,
at

this

reproduction only hints

detail

the wealth of

shown on the

original printorthat

can be seen visually with the instrument.

For the amateur astronomer who wishes to obtain exquisite results like this, we can think of no other telescope which gives such fine resolution, high
contrast, and flatness of field for and photographic observation.
visual

genetic means (not necessarily by single genes, however). Winter, with its sub-zero weather, presents a problem that some plants have solved by means of an annual habit plus dormant, cold-resistant seeds, and that others (perennials) have solved by

"What is seen is no proof; what would be proof cannot be seen." This is the dilemma has created. The above account in no way weakens the argument of Wilson and others that the nervous systems of man and other organisms are genetically determined. There
is

reason

to believe that the construction of

a dormancy

of the plant itself

retreat

to

the roots deep beneath the g round in some instances, simple dormancy of the aboveground structures in others. The nervous system of animals is a device, built

an elaborate, properly functioning nervous system is a most difficult genetic feat. Norbelieve, are under genetic mal brains,
I

control, not only in their general develop-,

merit, but also (as in the

case

of the

two

And

if

your interests
1

lie in thi
,

under the control

ot

genes, that

is

the

the

Quantum "100"
terrestrial

feet in

will show you nature's wonders from as close as 14 the same breathtaking detail isn't
itl

remarkable,

designed to provide logical solutions to pressing problems of short duration. A brain, even an insect's brain, may analyze a problem and cause the body in which it is housed to react accordingly within a fraction of a second; direct gene-controlled responses, in contrast, may take minutes,
hours, or days to run their course. A shot of estrogen will evoke the production of one protein in three hours. A handful of grain

hemispheres of each person's brain) in the nature of their intellectual functioning. What have called E, O. Wilson's dilemma does not concern this problem.
I

Bruce Wallace
Ithaca, N.Y

Static
all the problems of our times can be blamed on "staticon projectors," let us also blame them for the Crucifixion, the War of
If

1812,

Lincoln's assassination, the Fall of

tossed
ever, is

in front of

a hungry chicken, how-

Rome, and

the Great Flood.

identified almost at

once and the

Anthony

D.

Blokzyl

Prices

on the Quantum "100" tele

$460.
information

scope

start at

For additional

on

thi

remarkable our descripth

i

chicken immediately begins to feed. Here, then, is the basis of E. 0. Wilson's dilemma. Having seen that individuals of botrvspecies A and B behave in similar ways, Wilson would like to conclude that the basis for this behavior in the two species is genetic; furthermore, he would like to say that the behavior resides in identical genes. Referring once more to the classroom analogy, if species A and B are closely related (as chimpanzees and human beings are), the situation does resemble that in which two students submitting identical answers sat side by side. The opportunity for nonindependent responses
is enhanced by both evolutionary and classroom proximity; opportunity, however, is not proof that two responses are in fact nonindependent. Because the solutions arrived at by
...

Minneapolis, Minn.

OQ

PHOTO CREDITS

je32. .VFO. page 36 right

?;i:,ni

3E8

PaHie

SfiBvets

..

Gitotofi

OPTICAL TECHNIQUES, INC.

205 PHEA5ANT

RUN

NEWTOWN,

PA. 18940 215/968-4739

'36

OMNI

TARGET:.EARTH

EXPLDRMTIDfUS
By Roy A. Gallant

The

time;

June

30, 1908.

The place;

Vladivostok, peppering an area about 5

billions of years,

however, the forces of

central Siberia. Imperial Russia.

giant meteorite, blindingly

incandescent, streaked across the sky to Earth near the Tunguska River, devastating a roughly circular region nearly 150 kilometers in diameter. Forests were flattened and several herds of reindeer killed The earth was pitted by

and smashed

kilometers long by 1 .5 kilometers wide with more than 100 impact craters. Some were nearly 30 meters across by 9 meters deep. Astronomers estimate that these monsters weighed 100 tons or more before
partially vaporizing

when

they entered the

films

earth's atmosphere.

Because several popular disaster

are provoking interest
in

cone-shaped craters up to 50 meters Ground vibrations from the impact shattered windows scores of kilometers away. Heat seared the bark from trees, and
across.

an end-of-the-

world scenario involving giant meteorites, it seems timely to point out that anyone can visit the sites of such catastrophes.

geology and weather eroded many of them beyond recognition. Even so, geoscientists discover more giant meteorite cralers each year. In Canada some of the oldest known craters on our planet have survived because they were long protected under sheets of glacial ice. The Canadian Shield region around Hudson Bay boasts many well-preserved craters. The most ancient of these are a billion
years old.

Astronomers have long suspected

that

smoke

billowed

many

atmosphere. Shock were "heard" around the world by delicate microbarographs, instruments that measure pulsations in atmospheric pressure set up by very long sound waves. Had the Tunguska meteorite fallen on New York City, the destruction would have extended east to the iip of Long Island, north to New Haven, Connecticut, west to
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,
Atlantic City,
In

kilometers into the waves from the blast

Before we take you to the craters themselves, however, a look at their origins
will make clearer just how spectacular these now-quiet landscapes really are. Just after the solar system formed about four billion years ago, the new planets swept millions of rocks and metal fragments from their paths. At that time
it

many

meteorites originate

in

the rubble of

between Mars and Jupiter. More than 2,000 "midget planets" have been observed in this region. Comets have also been implicated as a source of
the asteroid belt, meteorites, both large
or "earthgrazers,"

and

small.

Some 30

asteroidlike bodies called Apollo objects,

swoop close

to our

craters were

gouged on

the

moon,

Earth,

planet periodically.

Many astronomers

Mars, and Venus a thousand times more

often than they are today. Missiles 1,000

and south

to

New

Jersey.
fell

1947 another giant

from space,

its

kilometers across plunged into the earth, rupturing newly solidified crustal rock.

brilliance rivaling that of the sun.

Known

as

The moon, Mercury, and Mars

still

have

presume they may be remnants of old comets rather than asteroids. (For a more detailed account of the origins, composition, and structure of meteorites, see the Space column in our February issue,)

Sikhote-Alin, this fireball strewed several

tons of iron over eastern Siberia near

thousands of craters. Earth must surely have had as many in its youth. Over

One Apollo object, named Adonis, comes within 2.5 million kilometers of
Hermes, approaches 780,000 kilometers, only twice the
Earth. Another,
to

distance of the moon from the earth. Others have come even closer. Astronomers don't become nervous when earthgrazers sweep in close to Earth. The probability that one will plunge into our planet is very small: A direct hit occurs every 250,000 years. But if one

should strike a bull's-eye, watch out. could produce the impact of 100,000

It

ten-megaton hydrogen bombs and blast a crater 20 kilomelers in diameter. If you happen to be touring the United
States or Canada, there are numerous giant meteorite craters you can visit. It
will

The spectacular Arizona

Crib-',

near Wtnshw.

: one

or [he rncsl

accessible

in

the United States.

some hiking or, better yet, a light plane to get to some of them, but they are well worih the effort. The best-known impact site is the Arizona Crater, located in the desert just south of Highway 40, about 48 kilometers is also known west of Winslow. Arizona. as the Barringer Crater, after Q M
take
It

Barringer,

who

stoutly

defended

its

gentle,

butthe inner walls are steep. The

1958, contains pictures of geoiogica

features around ancient craters on the Canadian Shield. 'Apollo Objects," by George W Wetherill, in the Scientific American of March 1979, describes these earthgrazing juggernauts in more detail The Observer's Handbook for 1979, by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, contains a more extensive list of craters in the United States and Canada. DO

meteoric origin against a host of geological doubting Thomases around the turn of the century The Arizona Crater is a mode! meteorite crater, closely resembling those on the moon. It is nearly circular, about 1,200

meters across and 200 meters deep. The upturned lip of its rim rises some 30 meters above the surrounding desert. Rock and metal fragments have been found scattered several kilometers from the impact site. Deep drilling in the crater has produced materials rich in nickel-iron, but no massive meteorite has ever been discovered. Astronomer E. J. Opik
estimates that the Arizona meteorite weighed 2.6 million tons before it entered the atmosphere a lump ot iron the size of

rim may be blanketed by rubble, ranging from fine dust to large boulders, also found in the bowl itself. Older craters tend to fill up with sediment, and the rim and outer debris erode away. The outer slopes and the surrounding plain ot young and small craters, such as the Arizona site, are sprinkled with meteorite fragments, sand,

and lagged

rock.
of

While the remains

are easily iden'iTed

an iron meteorite
of metal,

lumps

fragments of a stony meteorite may be impossible to distinguish from local rock. Near a relatively young crater the rock may be fused into glass csiag similar to
volcanic cinders.

THE BEST CRATERS

Name
Brent, Ont.

Diameter (km)
3.8

Surface Features
Sediment-filled

200 ranch-style houses. It may have measured 100 meters in diameter

New Quebec, Canada,

water-filled

Another spectacular meteorite crater, in is a colossal bowl 3.2 kilometers across. It

in I950.

was discovered

The highest

point

of its crater wall rises 410 meters above the lake bottom. While the Arizona Crater
is

about 50,000 years

old, the

New

Crater is roughly five million years Arizona Crater, the New Quebec Crater is not accessible by road. All known meteorite craters have several
old. Unlike the

Quebec

Meteorites striking at the rate of more than four kilometers per second produce geological features that may elude the untrained eye. Something called shock metamorphism creates igneous rock, recrystallized after being melted by the heat of impact. Also found are rocks containing high-density forms of quartz called coesiie and stishovite, which are produced only by the combination of intense heat and pressure. You may also see shatter cones large structures of
quartzite that flare outward

depression

Crooked
Creek, Mo.

5.6

Oval area of disturbed rocks, shallow depression

Slight oval

Decaturville,

6.0
3.8

Mo.
Flynn Creek,

depression
Sediment-filled

shallow depression with

slight central

and

downvelocity.

elevation

produced by the meteorite's high

features

in

common. They
The outer

look

like

bowl-shaped excavations surrounded by

uplifted rims.

Several sources of information that help you enjoy your hunt include: "Fossil Meteorite Craters," by C. S.
Beals,
in

may

Haviland,

Kans

0.011

Excavated depression
Sediment-filled

Holleford, Ont.

2.0

crater slopes are

the Scientific

American

of

June
Kentland. Ind.
13.0

shallow depression
Central uplift

exposed
buried

in

quarries, resl

Lake Wanapitei,

8.5

Lake-filled.

Ont.
6.0

partly circular

Middlesboro,
Ky.

Circular

depression
0.17

Odessa, Tex.

Sediment-filled

shallow depression with very slight rim

Serpent

6.4

Mound, Ohic

Circular area of disturbed rock,

slight central

elevation

and

surrounding depression
Sierra
Tex.

Madera

13.0

Central hills, depression, outer rim of hills

Wells Creek, Tenn,

14.0

Basin with
central
hill

and inner and outer rings of

valleys

and

ridges

West Hawk Lake, Man.

Winslow, Ariz.

2.7

Circular lake

1.2

(See text

for

description)

(Data from Observer's Handbook. 1979, Royal Astronomical Society of Cs'iada;

PHEfiaUlETUM

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Fret no longer:

Here are the

answers

to

May Games

MfUSUUERS
By Scot Morris
1. Flip-Off. You flip two coins, and your opponent flips one; you win only if you have more heads than he. It's an even bet. On those occasions when you flip bofh coins heads, you will win automalically, no matter what your opponent flips. This will

ten-centimetei--rli:r. meter

didn't

know
you

that,
in
it

sphere. You you say? Oh, but you did.

solvable.

We

told

the last sentence of the

puzzle that

was

happen on one fourth of the trials, (On another one fourlh of the trials you will flip two tails and you will lose automatically) But your coins are head and fail (which will happen 50 percent of the time), you will win half the bels only when your opponent throws a tail. These two probabilities, the only ways you can win,
if

7. Ten Coins in Three Glasses. The only distribute ten coins into three glasses so that there is an odd number of in each glass is to nest one glass inside another. For example:

way to
coins

add up

to

50 percent.
4. Odd Coins. Three coins in a bag: one double-headed, one double-tailed, and one a normal coin. Draw one at random. If the upface is heads, what's the chance

2. Solve It Before They Crash. The two cars are 50 kilometers aparl and traveling toward each other at a combined speed of 50 kilometers per hour; so they will meet in one hour. In that hour, a fly that goes 100 kilometers per hour will travel 100

that the

downface

is

tails?

One

third.

Each'

coin has a one-third

chance

of being

kilometers.

3.

No Hole in

This Logic. There's a hole

ten centimeters long drilled through the center of a sphere. What's the volume of

the remaining mutilated sphere? Your clue

problem lay in its title and in our assurance that was solvable. From that, you should have deduced that no matter how wide a hole through a sphere is, and no matter what the size of the original sphere is, the hole is a given length, the volume of what's left must be constant. Otherwise, the problem wouldn't
fo solving this
it if

drawn. Once drawn, a coin can be displayed in either of two ways: with one side up or the other side up. This fact remains true even if a coin has the same face on both sides. If a head is up, there are three possibilities: (1) that it is side A of the two-headed coin, (2) that it is side B of ihe two-headed coin, or (3) that it is side A of the normal head-tail coin. Each occurrence is equally Uelv, but in only one third of them is the downface a tail.
5.

8.

Is

Every Checkered Card an Ace?

4.

How many

cards must you turn over to answer the question? Two: cards 1 and

Toothpick Puzzle. There are several

four

You needn't turn over card 2, of course, since the question asks only about checkered cards. But you needn't turn over card 3. either. Why? Because, if card 1 is a deuce or if card 4 is checkered, you may answer the question no, immediately, without looking at any more cards. If card 1 is an ace and card 4 is striped, you may

ways to make two squares and

neatest,

answer the question yes, without peeking

at

triangles out of eight toothpicks, but the

card

3.

Nothing
is

is

changed

if

card 3's

be solvable. The simplest case would be a wire-thin hole that removed nothing at all from a
sphere.
Its

we

think,

is this:

downside
only about

striped, for the question asks

checkered cards.

length would be the sphere's

diameter. The formula for a sphere's volume is 4/3 n r 3 which for a sphere 10
,

own

centimeters in diameter works out to 523.6 cubic centimeters. We didn't expect you to
calculate the whole
realize that

you could and that

answer but only to it would be

9.

Circles in the Squares.

If

the outside

the volume of a sphere ten centimeters in diameter. If a.hole fen centimeters long were cut through a larger sphere, it would

circle

has a diameter

of ten centimeters,

6.

Ct/fffrjg

Up

the Circle. With four

what's the diameter of the Inside circle? Five centimeters. You can obtain the

be a huge, gaping space leaving only a

thin ring of the original sphere, which would have the same volume as a

you can cut a circle into, at most, 11 sections. Each successive line must divide as many sections as possible.
straight lines,

answer wiihout complex figuring if you know only two facts: (1) that a square's side is the diameter of an inscribed circle,

while ils diagonal is the diameler of a circumscribed circle, and (2) a square's side may be found by dividing ils diameter by the square root of 2. If you attack the problem as a whole, you don't have to know what the square root of 2 is. The diameter of the middle circle is 10 cm/V2~ The diameter of the small circle is
(10

undoubtedly,
the
all

many

possible answers, but

the

one we had in mind was DUNE, since words may be preceded by sand.
For Cathoiics Only This question
left

16.

and

the next were

file.

over from our April Fools'

noi allow a

The Catholic Church does

to

man

marry

his

widow's

sister.

How can

cm/V2J/V27or

10 cm/2, or 5 cm.

dead man marry anyone?

17.

Which

Is

Correct?

Is

it

correct to say

that the yolk of

yolk of

an egg is white or that the an egg are white? Neither, of

course.

The yolk

is

yellow.

10.

Coin Triangle-

Shift three

coins to

reverse the triangle:

The Smartest Applicant- Three job applicants try to figure out what color spot is on their foreheads. They think a spot could be red or black, but in fact all are black. Each raises a hand to indicate that he or she sees a black spot on at least one of the other foreheads. From this information none of the applicants can deduce the color of his own spot. Applicant A knew that the others were also finalists for the job of assistant to the
13.'

18.

Launch Pads. The reason space

like

centers located
rotation,

Cape Canaveral
climates
in

in tropical

is

are usually that rockets

are launched

the direction of the earth's

from west to east. To take advantage of the maximum "push" from the earth, launch sites are located as close to the equator as possible.

THE OMNI CRYPTOGRAM: The uncoded

message, including all punctuation, is: "For apes to come out of the trees, and change in the direction of being able to
write think

Games
it

editor

and

that either of

them

Inside Straight- Measure the long diagonal of a box by constructing a that you can get your ruler "inside." Examples, using a broom handle and a table corner, are illustrated below:
11.

phantom box

would be capable of solving the problem if was solvable. Applicant A reasoned: "If either of them saw a red spot on me, they would know their own spot was black, by noticing that the third applicant has a hand raised. Neither of them is speaking out; so must have a black spot." The fact that all
I

down

Maxwell's equations

...

don't

selection at

you can explain that by natural all. It's just a miracle."

his

Freeman Dyson. (From

October 1978.)

Omni

Interview,

three applicants
to start with

had the same information

this a fair test to find

made

the

SPELLING TEST
Asinine; braggadocio; rarefy; liquefy;
pavilion; vermilion; impostor;

best

Games

assistant.

moccasin;

14. Money. There's nothing wrong with the opening lines of "The Gift of the Magi." "One dollar and eighiy-seven cents. That

accommodate; consensus; rococo;

titillate;

sacrilegious; mayonnaise;

impresario; inoculate; supersede;

obbligato; desiccate; resuscitate

And sixty cents of was in pennies." When 0. Henry wrote this

was
all.
it

story

the United States

still

had two- and

three-cent pieces
12. Square Pegs. To carvs a plug that will fit all three holes, start with a cylinder five centimeters in diameter and five centimeters tall. Viewed from one side, it has a square cross section. Slice two pieces from the cylinder so that a third cross section is an isosceles triangle. A picture is worth a thousand words;

in circulation.

One

These are the words most commonly misspelled. Reasons for common errors

two-cent piece or four three-cent pieces would explain the statement.

15.

may

often

lie in

word's root forms,

has nothing

to

do

mistaken notions about a Word 10 (consensus) with the census. Word 13

least

Word Associations

(sacrilegious) has nothing to

religion.

BAG STORM BANK BAR MOON FLOOR STORE DUNE

Which word from the bottom group belongs with those at the top? There
are,

Words with the

do with chance

of

being spelled correctly are impostor and accommodate, and the latter is misspelled in more different ways than any other

OO

The Omni Final Exam:

Winners of Competition

#3

By Scot Morris

THE WORLD'S HARDEST SPELLING TEST

Eight hundred college graduatesincluding a large proportion ot teachers,
editors, journalists, and advertising people were given a test of 60 difficult words. Not one of them got a perfect score. The 20 words missed by the most

to

head-scratching, eyebrow-raising,

dropped
potential

into acid.

Where does the

(S25)

all-night rap sessions, or

nervous breakdowns; the simple, childish questions for which the only safe answer is. "Go ask your mother":
If

Barry Ratihn, Aloha, Oreg.

3.

energy go?

everything

is

made

of molecules,

why

not through

persons are listed below, phonetically, if grotesquely, misspelled. How do you spell
these words?
1.

can we see through glass molecules, but wood molecules? If God is omnipotent, can He build a

Why are so many more people right-handed than left-handed? David Dinsfriend, Irvington, N.J. ($25)

4.

Whenshaved, why will

hair

ona
its

stone so big
but not

He

can't

lift

it?

ass-uh-9

2.

brag-uh-doe-c-o
rare-uff-eye
lick-wiff-eye

3. 4.
5.

puh-vill-yun ver-mill-yun

6.
7.

im-pah-ster

8.
9.

mock-uh-sun
uh-kahm-uh-date
kon-sen-sus
roe-ko-ko
tittle-8
.

l_

10.
1 1

12.

13. 14.
15. 16.

sack-ruh-lijus

may-ufi-naze

__

Why does a mirror reverse left and right up and down? If an airplane gets its lift from the curved upper part ot its wing, how can an airplane fly upside down? The queries were mostly serious, scientific, sincere {"Don't bother to send me the prize money. I'd rather have the answer to my question"). Questions about traveling faster than light or backward in time, about black holes, pre-big bang scenery, and God's creator were omnipresent. Some old standby puzzlers were revived the zebra's stripes, the chicken and the egg, the irresistible force and the immovable object, and the tree falling in the forest. (One reader had the nerve to submit a question once censored from Saturday Night Live: "If Helen Keller fell over in the forest when there was no one around to hear would she make a
sound?") Some questions were too big, so overwhelming in scope that they lost their special wonderment: How did life begin? Is there life on other worlds? Why is light

person's forearm grow back just to original length and no longer?

- Ralph
5.

Page, Urbana,
a tabletop.

III.

(25)

A compass rests on

magnetized ball rolls around it, the compass's needle pointing to the ball at all times. When the ball has gone completely around the compass, has it gone around the needle?

-P
6.

Kaszyk, Alexandria, Va. ($25)

Light travels at different

different

media.
it

It

slows

speeds in down when

It

it

leaves
air.

air

and goes

into water.

speeds

up when leaves water and goes back to But where does the energy come from back up? {When a hockey puck to speed slows but does not enters rough ice, speed back up when gets to a smooth
it it it

region.)

David
7.
If

C.

Moore, Cleveland, Ohio ($25)

im -p ray-so rry-o
in-ock-u-late

the tides are

in

gravitational pull,

caused by Ihe moon's why are there two high

17.
18.
19.

sooper-seed
obly-gahto

tides

E. Marquis, New Brunswick, Canada

($25)

24 hours?

the universal
-

speed

limit?

dessuh-kate
re-sussah-tate

We

looked

for simpler,

20.

questions.

When

paradoxical ideas overlapped, we

the clearest, shortest

gave preference
Scoring:

to.

6 correct= average 12 correct=excellent {better than 90 percent of college graduates)

18 correct=comparable to English professors

version or the earliest postmark. Some questions below have been paraphrased for brevity. The winning entries and

Why does the shower curtain insist on blowing in and up, against the force of the water shooting down and out? John Wolf, Rochester, Minn. ($25)
8.
9.

honorable mentions
final

make up an Omni
curl

exam

that

would

even the

mirror-lined
off?

Wheredoesthe light go in asealed, room when the light is turned

hardiest toes.

David Kolodny, Columbia, Md. ($25)

St.

Answers, including

last

month's,

pages142-43

THE WINNERS:
1

(Special mention: Craig Hamer, Mo.; Angie

Louis,

Why

can't you tickle yourself?

McGehee, Orlando,

Fla.)

THE OMNI FINAL EXAM: RESULTS OF COMPETITION #3

In

Dariush Saghafi, University Heights,

Ohio ($100)
2-.

we

our third competition (January Omni), asked for questions, the kind that lead

spring

is

compressed and

tied,

then

10. What color does a chameleon turn when placed on a mirror? -Paul Folk. APON.Y ($25)

Did

HONORABLE MENTION: Adam have a belly button?

particles in

Dale Park, Sunnyvale, Calit.

a swirling
liquid

Where has all the rubber that wore off all the automobile tires gone? flobertE. Marganski, Ansonia, Conn.; Sean Murphy, Wahiawa, Hawaii

How would Adam and Eve ever have had grandchildren without incest? Robert B. Agran, Baltimore, Md.
What would be the proper thing to say to he sneezed? the Pope Walt Buckley, Grand Rapids, Mich.
if

Why do solid

have a tendency to move to the center, seemingly contrary to centrifugal force? Glenn G. Mazzei, Uncasville, Conn.

Evidence shows that the distant stars are moving outward with acceleration. If everything started with one big bang,

where

is

the force for this acceleration?

OMNI COMPETITION
Graffiti,

#7: GRAFFITI

Which way do whirlpools

equator?

rotate at the

Jim Walker, Miami, Fla.

life is a continuous cycle of how is it that the population increases? Carole Sterne, Long. Beach, Calit.
If

the inscriptions scratched on

Thomas Hughes, San Diego, Calif.

reincarnation,

one of mankind's oldest forms of communication. From "Serena hates Isadore," a message
walls, etc., constitute

water can be pumped only to a height of 32 feet under normal atmospheric pressure, how does water get to the top of an 80-foot tree? David DeKoeyer, South Haven, Mich.
If

preserved on the walls of Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius' erupted there in the first
century c.E., to the ubiquitous "Kilroy was here" of World War II, public scribblings are a universal reflection of folk culture.

Why does

a full moon look so much larger on the horizon than it does overhead? Paul Parker, Las Vegas, Nev

Can you
lies in

convict an atheist ot perjury if he court under an oath to God? Keith Wolf, Lake Ozark, Mo.

Since nitrogen gas is lighter than oxygen, why isn't all the Nj above the O s in the

atmosphere?

Steve Hudson, Carrollton, Ga.

Define the universe. Give three examples. Richard K. Tangard, Norwalk, Conn.

They are usually associated with bathrooms, but their information -packed eloquence and public ownership are comparable to the public-domain slogans we see all around us.
This competition
is for

future- or

In a steep rain, do you get wetter (i.e., encounter more drops per minute) you run or walk?
if

science-oriented graffiti. What sentiments might be expressed on the stalls of ivy at Harvard or MIT? Whaf slogans might be tacked to the bulletin board at NASA?

-Ned
travel faster in

Cotter,

New York,

N.Y

Sound travels faster in warm air than in dense air. Why, then, does sound dense materials, such as
cold,

Why does
colder?

feel hotter but

high humidity make hot weather make cold weather feel

wood and metal? You'd think that as air became more dense, sound should travel
faster.
It

Lois Sharpless Brooks, New York, N.Y

ice

What sayings will be scribbled in the ijien's room of the Enterprise? What will appear on the twenty-first-century equivalent of lapel pins. T-shirts, and bumber stickers?

doesn't.

Donn Brazier,

Why

not?

St.

Louis,

Mo.

An

cube
its

stirred in

a cup of cold water

December 20 is the shortest day. But it is not the day that the sun rises latest or sets earliest these events occur in early
January and early December, respectively.

stops water

rotation quickly, while

rotate until
it

one

in

hot

will

dissolves.

P Kaszyk, Alexandria, Va.

Why?

HEISENBERG MIGHT HAVE BEEN HERE NIELS ISBOHRING BLACK HOLES ARE OUT OF SIGHT! GRAVITY DOESN'T EXIST THE EARTH SUCKS WARNING: BRAKE FOR ALIENS
I

If

people's knees bent the other way, what

Why the asymmetry?

N. Chris Paulhus, Harvard, Mass.

If

shape would our chairs take?

Steven Julian,

Bloomington, Ind.

with an

The competition: Submit one graffito Omn/ flavor a.slogan, pun, or

fibrinogen, the clotting

substance

in

Why do

blood, is insoluble, then why does water dissolve a blood clot on the skin?

boys have nipples? Romanas Buskus, Chicago,

III.

Mike Jesse,

Bradenton, Fia

Why does

hot water sound different when poured than cold water does?

catchphrase along the lines of the above examples. Postcards only, please, with one entry per card. All enlries must be postmarked by July 15, 1979. First-prize winner will receive $100. Runners-up {2 through 10) will receive $25 each.
All

Why does
air

roorn-temperature water feel cold to the touch while room -temperature doesn't? Joe Heitman, Portage, Mich.

Judy Wright,

Climax, Mich.

entries

become the

property of

Omni
to:

and

will

not be returned.

Send

entries

OMNI Competition #7, 909 New York, N.Y 10022. DO

Third Avenue,

VAMPIRES REVAMPED

UTJORD
By Bruce Wallace
ram ^^3 |Bb
Stoker through his novel Dracuia, and the motion-picture

Wm^J

industry, through its many have led us to consider Count Dracuia, a fifteenth -century Romanian nobleman, as the vampire. The count, who was known as Vlad the Impaler, was a seemingly unpleasant person who was known to lunch in the presence of scores of impaled enemies. Once, during such a lunch, an ambassadorial guest complained that the sights and sounds interfered with his appetite. Count Dracuia ordered one more stake (pun intended), on which he had his guest impaled. He then continued

portrayals,

dining, alone.

Count Dracuia makes a splendid vampire, but wish to push the vampire legend beyond tifteenth-century Transylvania, back thousands of years to the prehistoric cave dwellers of Europe.
I

rabies-infected horses and cows, which, despite being herbivorous, attack and bite nearby animals. Because the rabies virus is concentrated in saliva, the biting reaction can be viewed as an adaptive neurological disorder induced in the now-dying host by the virus. Another general symptom of rabies exhibited by recently infected animals is a preference for solitude, perhaps accompanied by discomtort when one is exposed to light. Thus, while the disease is developing, dogs seek out cool, shaded shelters and ioxes retire to their dens. A final, simple, and well-known point: Rabies is typically transmitted from one animal to another by the bite of an infected individual. The mad dog is but one example; terminally foxes attack both
ill

these bats were infected with rabies, and.

occasionally, a rabid bat, driven to aberrant behavior

by the

virus,

would delib-

erately attack and bite a human being, Such odd behavior on the part of a bat would have been noted by those present,
just

as farmers

in

Austria note

the attack on a person by

In

a crazed fox, due time the bat's victim would

of

develop rabies. During the early stages

the disease, the victim would seek solitude in the rear of the cave, away irom daylight

and the heat and light of the fire. Friends and family members bringing food and water to the one would note that his newly exhibited preference placed him in
ill

the

company

of the bats, not with his

own

kind.
Finally, in

The account am about

I

to relate

was told
birth

human beings and dogs. Since 1972, 600 Europeans have died of rabies. The ultimate source of the virus in Europe
today
is

victim

the course of his disease, the would become feverishly alert and

to

me

by

my

elder brother,

whose

the population of wild foxes.

occurred only a few years closer to those ancient times than mine. Many of the aspects of his story are so attractive that wish to place them on record To appreciate the elegant simplicity of the story am about to propose, a number
I
I

All that

now remains

is

to

assemble my

brother's story. In prehistoric times,

when

human beings were

primarily

dwellers, they clustered near the

cave opening

of biological

and anthropological
the glacial periods,

facts

must be listed. Throughout

of the cave, where they were warmed and protected by a fire. The bats lived in the rear of the cave, where the ceiling approached the floor, and in the more remote and inaccessible caverns. Many of

primitive

human beings sought

shelter

in

caves. Archaeological finds from these caves include paintings, stone and metal implements, shallow graves, ashes, and other debris of cave life. Bats normally inhabit caves. The

Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico, for example, were discovered because of a

aggressive perhaps shrewdly rather than blindly so. He would be driven to bite those who came near him, driven by the same terminal neurological control the rabies virus exerts over all its victims. The unlucky Samaritan, bitten by the now-rabid victim, would inexorably pass through the same stages as the original victim who was bitten by the bat: retirement into the dark recesses of the cave in a seeming preference for the company of bats over humans and the eventual alertness and craze to bite. Thus, the victim of a bat's bite would have taken on, in the eyes of his contemporaries, the habits of a bat even the urge to bite that was observed in the original bat's behavior. Furthermore, the strange ability to cause another person to take on the behavior of a bat would confirm that the
first

plume of bats issuing from a small hole in the ground at eventide. Bat populations are natural reservoirs of
the rabies virus, and bats are important vectors of that disease. The drive to
eliminate the vampire bat from tropical

victim

had indeed become

batlike.

the truth
it.

That is my brother's story. Because of a nineteenth-century novel, most people associate vampirism with a fifteenthcentury count. suspect, however, that lies more as my brother sees
I

America
rabies as

is
it

aimed as much
is

at eradicating

at the prevention of

involuntary bovine anemia.

General symptoms of rabies

among

The vampire legend has been handed down for thousands of years, starting with the observations of cave dwellers on the effects of rabies and ending with the
this

mammals
urge to
146

of all sorts are a (terminal) feverish alertness, aggression, and an

bite; this

transmission of

disease from bats

to

to

humans and from one human being

another

urge extends to

DO

OMNI