The Funhouse Effect

"DID YOU SEE WHAT'S playing at the theater tonight, Mr. Quester?" The stewardess

was holding a printed program in her hand.

"No, and I haven't the time now. Where's the captain? There are some things he

should—"

"Two old flat movies," she went on, oblivious to his protests. "Have you ever

seen one? They're very interesting and entertaining. A Night to Remember and The

Poseidon Adventure. I'll make a reservation for you."

Quester called out to her as she was leaving.

"I'm trying to tell you, there's something badly wrong on this ship. Won't

anybody listen?"

But she was gone, vanished into the crowd of merrymakers. She was busy enough

without taking time to listen to the wild tales of a nervous passenger.

Quester was not quite right in thinking of Hell's Snowball as a ship. The

official welcoming pamphlet referred to it as an asterite, but that was

advertising jargon. Anyone else would have called it a comet.

Icarus Lines, Inc., the owners, had found it drifting along at a distance of 500

AU. It had been sixty kilometers in diameter, weighing in at about one hundred

trillion tons.

Fortunately, it was made up of frozen liquids rich in hydrogen. Moving it was

only a matter of installing a very large fusion motor, then sitting back for

five years until it was time to slow it down for orbit in the umbra of Mercury.

The company knew they would not get many passengers on a bare snowball. They

tunneled into the comet, digging out staterooms and pantries and crew's quarters

as they went. The ship-fitters went in and paneled the bare ice walls in metal

and plastic, then filled the rooms with furniture. There was room to spare,

power to spare. They worked on a grand scale, and they had a grand vision. They

intended to use the captive comet for sightseeing excursions to the sun.

Things went well for fifty years. The engine would shove the Snowball out of the

protective shadow and, with the expenditure of ten million tons of ice and

ammonia for reaction mass, inject it into a hyperbolic orbit that would actually

brush the fringes of the solar corona. Business was good. Hell's Snowball became

the vacation bonanza of the system, more popular than Saturn's Rings. But it had

to end. This was to be the last trip. Huge as it is, there comes a time when a

comet has boiled off too much of its mass to remain stable in a close approach

to the sun. Hell's Snowball was robbed of a hundred million tons with each trip.

The engineers had calculated it was good for only one more pass before it

cracked apart from internal heating. But Quester was beginning to wonder. There

was the matter of the engines. Early on the fourth day of the excursion, Quester

had gone on a guided tour of the farside of the comet to see the fusion engines.

The guide had quoted statistics all the way through the tunnel, priming the

tourists for the mind-wrenching sight of them. They were the largest rocket

engines ever constructed. Quester and everyone else had been prepared to be

impressed.

He had been impressed; first at the size of the pits that showed where the

engines had been, then at the look of utter amazement on the face of the tour

guide. Also impressive had been the speed with which the expression had been

masked. The guide sputtered for only a moment, then quickly filled in with a

story that almost sounded logical.

"I wish they'd tell me these things," he laughed. Did the laugh sound hollow?

Quester couldn't tell for sure. "The engines weren't due for removal until

tomorrow. It's part of our accelerated salvage program, you see, whereby we

remove everything that can be of use in fitting-out the Icarus, which you all

saw near Mercury when you boarded. It's been decided not to slow Hell's Snowball

when we complete this pass, but to let it coast on out where it came from.

Naturally, we need to strip it as fast as possible. So equipment not actually

needed for this trip has been removed already. The rest of it will be taken off

on the other side of the sun, along with the passengers. I'm not a physicist,

but evidently there is a saving in fuel. No need to worry about it; our course

is set and we'll have no further need of the engines." He quickly shepherded the

buzzing group of passengers back into the tunnel.

Quester was no physicist, either, but he could work simple equations. He was

unable to find a way whereby Icarus Lines would save anything by removing the

engines. The fuel was free; by their own admission whatever was left on the

comet was to be discarded anyway. So why did it matter if they burned some more?

Further, ships removing passengers and furnishings from the Snowball on the

other side would have to match with its considerably velocity, then expend even

more to slow down to solar system speeds. It sounded wasteful.

He managed to put this out of his mind. He was along for the ride, to have fun,

and he wasn't a worrier. He had probably dropped a decimal point somewhere in

his calculations, or was forgetting a little-known fact of ballistics. Certainly

no one else seemed worried.

When he discovered that the lifeboats were missing, he was more angry than

frightened.

"What are they doing to us?" he asked the steward who had come when he pressed

the service bell. "Just because this is the last trip, does that mean we're not

entitled to full protection? I'd like to know what's going on."

The steward, who was an affable man, scratched his head in bewilderment as he

once more examined the empty lifeboat cradle.

"Beats me," he said, with a friendly grin. "Part of the salvage operation, I

guess. But we've never had a spot of trouble in over fifty years. I hear the

Icarus won't even carry lifeboats."

Quester fumed. If, sometime in the past, an engineer had decided Hell's Snowball

needed lifeboats, he'd have felt a damn sight better if the ship still had

lifeboats.

"I'd like to talk to someone who knows something about it."

"You might try the purser," the steward ventured, then quickly shook his head.

"No, I forgot. The purser didn't make this trip. The first mate... no, she's...

I guess that leaves the captain. You might talk to him."

Quester grumbled as he swam down the corridor toward the bridge. The company had

no right to strip the ship before its final cruise. On the way there, he heard

an announcement over the public address system.

"Attention. All passengers are to report to A Deck at 1300 hours for lifeboat

drill. The purser... correction, the second officer will call the roll.

Attendance is required of all passengers. That is all."

The announcement failed to mollify him, though he was puzzled.

The door to the bridge was ajar. There was a string spanning the open doorway

with a hand-lettered sign hanging from it.

"The captain can be found at the temporary bridge," it read, "located on F Deck

aft of the dispensary." Inside the room, a work crew was removing the last of

the electronic equipment. There was the smell of ozone and oil, and the purple

crackle of sparks. The room was little more than an ice-walled shell.

"What...?" Quester began.

"See the captain," the boss said tiredly, pulling out one of the last memory

banks in a shower of shorting wires. "I just work here. Salvage crew."

Quester was reminded more of a wrecking crew. He started back toward F Deck.

"Correction on that last announcement," the PA said. "Lifeboat drill has been

cancelled. The social director wishes to announce that he is no longer taking

reservations for tours of the engine room. The second officer... correction, the

third officer has requested all personnel to stay clear of the reactor room.

There has been a slight spillage during the salvage program. Passengers are not

to worry; this incident presents no danger to them. The power requirements of

the ship are being taken over by the auxiliary reactor. The social director

wishes to announce that tours of the auxiliary reactor are suspended. That is

all."

"Is it just me?" Quester asked himself as he drifted by the groups of other

passengers, none of whom seemed upset by any of this.

He located the temporary bridge, at the end of a little-used corridor that was

stacked high with plastic crates marked "Immediate Removal—Rush, Urgent, Highest

Priority." He insinuated his way past them with difficulty and was about to

knock on the door when he was stopped by the sound of voices on the other side.

The voices were angry.

"I tell you, we should abort this trip at once. I've lost the capability to

maneuver the ship in the event of an emergency. I told you I wanted the attitude

thrusters to remain in place until after perihelenion."

"Captain, there is no use protesting now," said another voice. "Maybe I agree

with you; maybe I don't. In any case, the engines are gone now, and there's no

chance of installing them again. There is to be no argument with these orders.

The company's in bad shape, what with outfitting the new asterite. Can you

picture what it would cost to abort this trip and refund the fares to seven

thousand passengers?"

"Hang the company!" the captain exploded. "This ship is unsafe! What about those

new calculations I gave you—the ones from Lewiston? Have you looked them over?"

The other voice was conciliatory. "Captain, Captain, you're wasting energy

worrying about that crackpot. He's been laughed out of the Lunar Academy; his

equations simply do not work."

"They look sound enough to me."

"Take it from me, Captain, the best minds in the system have assured us that the

Snowball will hold together. Why, this old hunk of junk is good for a dozen more

trips, and you know it. We've erred, if at all, on the conservative side."

"Well, maybe," the captain grumbled. "I still don't like that lifeboat

situation, though. How many did you say we had left?"

"Twenty-eight," the other soothed.

Quester felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He peeked into the room,

not knowing what he would say. But there was no one there. The voices were

coming from a speaker on the wall. Evidently the captain was in another part of

the ship. He considered going to his cabin and getting drunk, then decided it

was a bad idea. He would go to the casino and get drunk. On the way he passed a

lifeboat cradle that was not empty. It was the site of bustling activity, with

crews hurrying up and down ramps into the ship. He stuck his head in, saw that

the seats had been stripped and the interior was piled high with plastic crates.

More were being added every minute.

He stopped one of the workers and asked her what was going on.

"Ask the captain," she shrugged. "They told me to stack these boxes in here,

that's all I know."

He stood back and watched until the loading was complete, then was told to stand

clear as the nullfield was turned off to allow the boat to drift clear of the

Snowball. At a distance of two kilometers, the engines fired and the boat was

away, blasting back toward the inner planets.

"Twenty-seven," Quester mumbled to himself and headed for the casino.

"Twenty-seven?" the woman asked.

"Probably less by now," Quester said with a broad shrug. "And they only hold

fifty people."

They were sitting together at the roulette table, pressed into close company by

the random currents of humanity that ebbed and flowed through the room. Quester

was not gambling; his legs had just happened to give out, and the nearest place

to collapse had been the chair he was sitting in. The woman had materialized out

of his alcoholic mist.

It was nice to get back to gravity after the weightless levels of the Snowball.

But, he discovered, getting drunk in a weightless state was less hazardous. One

needn't worry about one's balance. Here in the casino there was the problem of

standing. It was too much of a problem for Quester.

The casino was located at one end of a slowly rotating arm, which was mounted

horizontally on a pivoted mast that extended straight up from Hell's Snowball.

On the other end of the arm were the restaurants that served the passengers.

Both modules were spherical; the structure resembled an anemometer with silver

balls instead of cups on the ends. The view was tremendous. Overhead was the

silver sphere that contained the restaurants. To one side was the slowly moving

surface of the comet, a dirty gray even in the searing sunlight. To the other

side were the stars and the main attraction: Sol itself, blemished with a choice

collection of spots. The viewing was going to be good this trip. If anyone was

alive to view it, Quester added to himself.

"Twenty-seven, you say?" the woman asked again.

"That's right, twenty-seven."

"One hundred Marks on number twenty-seven," she said and placed her bet. Quester

looked up, wondering how many times he would have to repeat himself before she

understood him.

The ball clattered to a stop, on number twenty-seven, and the croupier shoveled

a tottering stack of chips to the woman. Quester looked around him again at the

huge edifice he was sitting in, the incalculable tonnage of the spinning

structure, and laughed.

"I wondered why they built this place," he said. "Who needs gravity?"

"Why did they build it?" she asked him, picking up the chips.

"For him," he said, pointing to the croupier. "That little ball would just hang

there on the rim without gravity." He felt himself being lifted to his feet, and

stood in precarious balance. He threw his arms wide.

"For that matter, that's what all the gravity in the system's for. To bring

those little balls down to the number, the old wheel of fortune; and when

they've got your number, there's nothing you can do because your number's up,

that's all there is, twenty-seven, that's all..."

He was sobbing and mumbling philosophical truths as she led him from the room.

The ride in the elevator to the hub of the rotating structure sobered Quester

considerably. The gradually decreasing weight combined with the Coriolis effect

that tended to push him against one wall was more than an abused stomach could

take. The management knew that and had provided facilities for it. Quester

vomited until his legs were shaky. Luckily, by then he was weightless and didn't

need them.

The woman towed him down the passageway like a toy balloon. They ended up in the

grand ballroom.

The ballroom was a hemisphere of nullfield sitting on the surface of the

Snowball. From inside it was invisible. The dance area was crowded with couples

trying out free-fall dances. Most of them had the easy grace of a somersaulting

giraffe.

Quester sobered a bit in the near-zero gee. Part of it was the effect of the

antinausea drugs he had taken for free-fall; they also tended to reduce the

effects of alcohol.

"What's your name?" he asked the woman.

"Solace. You?"

"I'm Quester. From Tharsis, Mars. I'm... I'm confused about a lot of things."

She floated over to a table, still towing Quester, and fastened him to one of

the chairs. He turned his attention from the twisting bodies in the dance area

to his companion.

Solace was tall, much taller than a man or a woman would naturally grow. He

estimated she was two and a half meters from head to toe, though she had no

toes. Her feet had been replaced with peds, oversized hands popular with

spacers. They were useful in free-fall, and for other things, as he discovered

when she reached across the table with one slender leg and cupped his cheek with

her ped. Her legs were as limber and flexible as her arms.

"Thanks," she said, with a smile. "For the luck, I mean."

"Hmmm? Oh, you mean the bet." Quester had to drag his attention back from the

delightful sensation on his cheek. She was beautiful. "But I wasn't advising you

on a bet. I was trying to tell you..."

"I know. You were saying something about the lifeboats."

"Yes. It's astounding, I..." He stopped, realizing that he couldn't remember

what was astounding. He was having trouble focusing on her. She was wearing a

kaleidoholo suit, which meant she was naked but for a constantly shifting

pattern of projections. There seemed to be fifty or sixty different suits

contained in it, none persisting for longer than a few seconds. It would melt

smoothly from a silver sheath dress to an almost military uniform with gold

braid and buttons to a garland of flowers to Lady Godiva. He rubbed his eyes and

went on.

"They're salvaging the ship," he said. "The last I heard there were only

twenty-seven lifeboats left. And more are leaving every hour. They're taking the

electronic equipment with them. And the furnishings and the machinery and who

knows what else. I overheard the captain talking to a company representative.

He's worried, the captain! But no one else seems to be. Am I worrying over

nothing, or what?"

Solace looked down at her folded hands for a moment, then brought her eyes back

up to his.

"I've been uneasy, too," she said in a low voice. She leaned closer to him.

"I've shared my apprehensions with a group of friends. We... get together and

share what we have learned. Our friends laugh at us when we tell them of our

suspicions, but..." She paused and looked suspiciously around her.

Even in his befuddled state Quester had to smile. "Go on," he said.

She seemed to make up her mind about him and leaned even closer.

"We'll be meeting again soon. Several of us have been scouting around—I was

covering the casino when we met—and we'll share our findings and try to come to

a consensus on what to do. Are you with us?"

Quester fought off the feeling, quite strong since his suspicions began to haunt

him, that he was somehow trapped in an adventure movie. But if he was, he was

just getting to the good part. "You can count me in."

With no further ado, she grabbed his arm in one of her peds and began towing him

along, using her hands to grab onto whatever was handy. He thought of objecting,

but she was much better than he at weightless maneuvering. "May I have your

attention, please?"

Quester looked around and spotted the captain standing in the center of the

stage, in front of the band. He was not alone. On each side of him were women

dressed in black jumpsuits, their eyes alertly scanning the audience. They were

armed.

"Please, please." The captain held up his arms for quiet and eventually got it.

He wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

"There is no cause for alarm. No matter what you may have been hearing, the ship

is in no danger. The stories about the main engines having been removed are

lies, pure and simple. We are looking for the people who planted these rumors

and will soon have all of them in custody. The chief engineer wishes to announce

that tours of the engine room will be resumed—"

One of the women shot the captain a glance. He mopped his brow again and

consulted a slip of paper in his hand. The hand was shaking.

"Ah, a correction. The engineer announces that tours will not be resumed. There

is, ah... that is, they are being overhauled, or... or something." The woman

relaxed slightly.

"The rumor that the main reactor has been shut down is unfounded. The surgeon

has told me that there has been no spillage of radioactive material, and even if

there had been, the amount was insignificant and would only have been a danger

to those passengers with high cumulative exposures. The surgeon will be

collecting dosimeters at 1400 hours tomorrow.

"Let me repeat: there is no cause for alarm. As captain of this ship, I take a

very dim view of rumormongering. Anyone caught disseminating stories about the

unspaceworthiness of this vessel in the future will be dealt with sternly."

"Lifeboat drill will be held tomorrow on A Deck, as scheduled. Anyone who has

not as yet been checked out on his life jacket will do so by noon tomorrow,

ship's time. That is... is that all?" This last was addressed to the woman to

his left, in a whisper. She nodded curtly, and the three of them walked off the

stage, their magnetized shoes sticking to the deck like flypaper.

Solace nudged Quester in the ribs.

"Are those women bodyguards?" she whispered. "Do you think his life is in

danger?"

Quester looked at the way the women gripped the captain's elbows. Not

bodyguards, but guards, certainly...

"Say, I just remembered I still have some unpacking to do," he said. "Maybe I

can join you and your friends later on. I'll just nose around, see what I can

pick up, you know, and—"

But he couldn't squirm free of her grip. Those peds were strong.

"May I have your attention, please? Lifeboat drill for tomorrow has been

canceled. Repeat, canceled. Passengers showing up at the cradles for lifeboat

drill will be interrogated, by order of the captain. That is all."

On the way to Solace's room, the two were shoved out of the way by a group of

people in uniform. Their faces were determined, and some of them carried clubs.

"Where does that corridor lead?" he asked.

"To the bridge. But they won't find anything there, it's been—"

"I know."

"I think we're being followed."

"Wha'?" He looked behind him as he bounced along in her wake. There was someone

back there, all right. They turned a corner and Solace hauled Quester into a

dimly lit alcove, bumping his head roughly against the wall. He was getting fed

up with this business of being dragged. If this was an adventure, he was

Winnie-the-Pooh following Christopher Robin up the stairs. He started to object,

but she clapped a hand around his mouth, holding him close.

"Shhh," she hissed.

A fine thing, Quester grumbled to himself. Can't even speak my mind. He thought

he was better off before, alone and puzzled, then he was with this mysterious

giantess towing him around.

Of course, things could have been worse, he reflected. She was warm and naked to

the touch no matter what his eyes told him. And tall. Floating there in the

hall, she extended above and below him by a third of a meter.

"How can I think of something like that at a time like this?" he began, but she

hushed him again and her arms tightened around him. He realized she was really

scared, and he began to be so himself. The liquor and the sheer unlikelihood of

recent events had detached him; he was drifting along, rudderless. Nothing in

his life had prepared him to cope with things like the black-suited man who now

eased slowly around the corner in shadowy pursuit of them.

They watched him from the concealment of the alcove. Many of the lights in the

corridor were not working or were mere empty sockets. Earlier, Quester had been

alarmed at this, adding it to his list of ways not to run a spaceship. Now, he

was grateful.

"He doesn't look much like a man at all," Solace whispered. And sure enough, he

didn't. Nor a woman. He didn't look too human.

"Humanoid, I'd say," Quester whispered back. "Pity no one told us. Obviously the

system's been invaded by the first intelligent race of humanoids."

"Don't talk nonsense. And be quiet." The man, or whatever it was, was very close

now. They could see the ill-fitting pink mask, the lumps and nodules in odd

places under his sweater and pants. He passed them by, leaving a pungent odor of

hydrogen sulfide.

Quester found himself laughing. To his surprise, Solace laughed along with him.

The situation was so grotesque that he had to either laugh or scream.

"Listen," he said, "I don't believe in sinister humanoid invaders."

"No? But you believe in superhuman heavy-planet Invaders like the ones that have

occupied the Earth, don't you? And you haven't even seen them."

"Are you telling me you do believe that thing was an... an alien?"

"I'm not saying anything. But I'm wondering what those people were doing,

earlier, armed with clubs. Do you believe in mutiny?"

"Solace, I'd welcome a mutiny, I'd throw a party, give away all my worldly

wealth to charity if only such a normal, everyday thing would happen. But I

don't think it will. I think we've fallen through the looking glass."

"You think you're crazy?" She looked at him skeptically.

"Yep. I'm going to turn myself in right now. You're obviously not even here.

Maybe this ship isn't even here."

She twisted slightly in the air, bringing her legs up close to his chest.

"I'll prove to you I'm here," she said, working with all four hands and peds at

unbuttoning him.

"Hold it. What are you... how can you think of that at a time like..." It

sounded familiar. She laughed, holding his wrists with her hands as her peds

quickly stripped him.

"You've never been in danger before," she said. "I have. It's a common reaction

to get aroused in a tight spot, especially when the danger's not immediate. And

you are, and so am I."

It was true. He was, but didn't like doing it in the hallway.

"There's not room here," he protested. "Another of those critters could come

along."

"Yes, isn't it exciting?" Her eyes were alight by now, and her breath was fast

and shallow. "And if you think there isn't room, you haven't done it in

free-fall yet. Ever tried the Hermesian Hyperbola?"

Quester sighed, and submitted. Soon he was doing more than submitting. He

decided she was as crazy as everyone else, or, alternatively, he was crazy and

she was as sane as everybody else. But she was right about the free-fall. There

was plenty of room.

They were interrupted by a crackle of static from the public address. They

paused to listen to it.

"Attention, your attention please. This is the provisional captain speaking. The

traitor running-dog lackey ex-captain is now in chains. Long Live the

Revolutionary Committee, who will now lead us on the true path of Procreative

Anti-Abortionism."

"Free-Birthers!" Quester yelped. "We've been hijacked by Free-Birthers!"

The new captain, who sounded like a woman, started to go on, but her voice was

cut short in a hideous gurgle.

"Long Live the Loyalist Faction of the Glorious Siblings of the—" a new voice

began, but it, too, was cut short. Voices shouted in rapid succession.

"The counterrevolution has been suppressed," shouted yet another captain.

"Liberate our wombs! Our gonads—our Freedom! Attention, attention! All female

persons aboard this ship are ordered to report at once to the infirmary for

artificial insemination. Shirkers will be obliterated. That is all."

Neither of them said anything for a long time. At last Solace eased herself away

a bit and let him slip out of her. She let out a deep breath.

"I wonder if I could plead double jeopardy?"

"Insanity four, reality nothing," Quester giggled. He was in high spirits as

they skulked their way down the dim corridors.

"Are you still on that?" Solace shot back. She sounded a bit tired of him. She

kept having to hang back as he struggled to keep up with her supple

quadridexterous pace. "Listen, if you want to get fitted for a straitjacket, the

tailor's in the other direction. Me, I don't care how ridiculous the situation

gets. I'll keep coping."

"I can't help it," he admitted. "I keep feeling that I wrote this story several

years ago. Maybe in another life. I dunno."

She peered around another corner. They were on their way to the temporary

bridge. They had stopped three times already to watch black-suited figures drift

by. Everyone else they had seen— those dressed in holiday clothes—had ducked

into doorways as quickly as they themselves. At least it seemed that the

passengers were no longer in the holiday mood, were aware that there was

something wrong.

"You a writer?" she asked.

"Yes. I write scientifiction. Maybe you've heard of it. There's a cult

following, but we don't reach the general public."

"What's it about?"

"Scientifiction deals with life on Earth. It's set in the future— each of us

creates our own hypothetical future with our own ground rules and set of

assumptions. The basic assumption is that we figure out a way to fight the

Invaders and reclaim the Earth, or at least a beachhead. In my stories we've

managed to rout the Invaders, but the dolphins and whales are still around, and

they want their allies back, so humans fight them. It's adventure stuff, purely

for thrills. I have a hero called the Panama Kid."

She glanced back at him, and he couldn't read the expression. He was used to

taking the defensive about his vocation.

"Is there a living in that?"

"I managed to get aboard the Snowball for the final trip, didn't I? That wasn't

cheap, but then you know that. Say, what do you do for a living?"

"Nothing. My mother was a holehunter. She made a strike in '45 and got rich. She

went out again and left the money to me. She's due back in about fifty years,

unless she gets swallowed by a hole."

"So you were born on Pluto?"

"No. I was born in free-fall, about one hundred AU from the sun. I think that's

a record so far." She grinned back at him, looking pleased with herself. "You

made up your mind yet?"

"Huh?"

"Have you decided if you're the author or a character? If you really think

you're crazy, you can shove off. What can you do but accept the reality of your

senses?"

He paused and really thought about it for the first time since he met her.

"I do," he said firmly. "It's all happening. Holy Cetacean, it really is

happening."

"Glad to have you with us. I told you you couldn't experience the Hermesian

Hyperbola and still doubt your senses.

It hadn't been the love-making, Quester knew. That could be as illusory as

anything else; he had the stained sheets to prove it. But he believed in her,

even if there was something decidedly illogical about the goings-on around her.

"Attention, attention."

"Oh, shit. What now?" They slowed near a speaker so they could listen without

distortion.

"Glad tidings! This is the provisional captain, speaking for the ad hoc steering

committee. We have decided to steer this comet into a new, closer approach to

the sun, thus gaining speed for a faster departure from solar space. It has been

decided to convert this vessel hereafter to be referred to as the Spermatozoa,

into an interstellar colony ship to spread the seed of humanity to the stars.

All passengers are hereby inducted into the Proletarian Echelon of the Church of

Unlimited Population. Conversion of all resources into a closed-ecology system

will begin at once. Save your feces! Breathe shallowly until this crisis is

past. Correction, correction, there is no crisis. Do not panic. Anyone found

panicking will be shot. The steering committee has determined that there is no

crisis. All surviving officers with knowledge of how to work these little

gadgets on the bridge are ordered to report immediately."

Quester looked narrowly at Solace.

"Do you know anything about them?"

"I can pilot a ship, if that's what you mean. I've never flown anything quite

this... enormous... but the principles are the same. You aren't suggesting that

we help them, are you?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I didn't really think in terms of plans until a

few minutes ago. What was your plan? Why are we headed for the bridge?"

She shrugged. "Just to see what the hell's going on, I guess. But maybe we ought

to make some preparations. Let's get some life jackets."

They found a locker in the hall containing emergency equipment. Inside were

twenty of the nullfield devices called life jackets. More accurately, they were

emergency spacesuit generators, with attached water recyclers and oxygen supply.

Each of them was a red cylinder about thirty centimeters long and fifteen in

diameter with shoulder straps and a single flexible tube with a metal connector

on the end. They were worn strapped to the back with the tube reaching over the

shoulder.

In operation, the life jackets generated a nullfield that conformed closely to

the contours of the wearer's body. The field oscillated between one and one and

a half millimeters from the skin, and the resulting bellows action forced waste

air through the exhaust nozzle. The device attached itself to a tiny metal valve

that was surgically implanted in all the passengers. The valve's external

connection was located under Quester's left collarbone. He had almost forgotten

it was there. It was just a brass-colored flower that might be mistaken for

jewelry but was actually part of a plumbing system that could route venous blood

from his pulmonary artery to the oxygenator on his back. It then returned

through a parallel pipe to his left auricle and on to his body.

Solace helped him get into it and showed him the few manual controls. Most of it

was automatic. It would switch on the field around him if the temperature or

pressure changed suddenly.

Then they were off again through the silent corridors to confront the hijackers.

At the last turn in the corridor before reaching the temporary bridge, they

stopped to manually switch on their suit fields. Solace instantly became a

mirror in the shape of a woman. The field reflected all electromagnetic

radiation except through pupil-sized discontinuities over her eyes which let in

controlled quanta of visible light. It was disquieting. The funhouse effect, it

was called, and it looked as if her body had been twisted through another

spatial dimension. She almost disappeared, except for a pattern of distortions

that hurt Quester's eyes when he looked at it.

They reached the door leading to the bridge and stopped for a moment. It was a

perfectly ordinary door. Quester wondered why he was here with this impulsive

woman.

"Do we knock first, or what?" she mused. "What do you think, Quester? What would

the Panama Kid do?"

"He'd knock it down," Quester said without hesitation. "But he wouldn't have

gotten here without his trusty laser. Say, do you think we ought to go back

and..."

"No. We'd better do it now before we think about it too hard. These suits are

protections against any weapon I know of. The most they can do is capture us."

"Then what?"

"Then you can talk us out of it. You're the one who's fast with words, aren't

you?"

Quester remained silent as she backed up and planted herself against the

opposite wall, coiled and ready to hit the door with her shoulder. He didn't

want to point out that skill with a typer and skill at oratory are not

necessarily related. Besides, if she wanted to risk forcible insemination, it

was her business.

Just on the off chance, he touched the door plate with his palm. It clicked, and

the door opened. It was too late. Solace howled and barreled end-over-end into

the room, reaching out with all four limbs like a huge silver starfish to grab

onto something. Quester rushed after her, then stopped short as soon as he was

into the room. There was no one in it.

"Talk about your anticlimax," Solace breathed, getting herself sorted out from a

pile of crates at the far end of the room. "I... never mind. It was my fault.

Who'd have thought it'd be unlocked?"

"I did," Quester pointed out. "Hold it a minute. We're sort of, well, we're

being pretty hasty, aren't we? I haven't really had time to stop and think since

we got going, but I think we're going at this the wrong way, I really do. Damn

it, this isn't an adventure, where everything goes according to a set pattern.

I've written enough of them, I ought to know. This is life, and that means

there's got to be a rational explanation."

"So what is it?"

"I don't know. But I don't think we'll find it this way. Things have been

happening... well, think about the announcements over the PA, for instance. They

are crazy! No one's that crazy, not even Free-Birthers."

Quester's chain of thought was interrupted by the noisy entrance of four people

in life jackets. He and Solace jumped up, banged their heads on the ceiling, and

were quickly captured.

"All right, which one of you is the provisional captain?"

There was a short silence, then Solace broke it with a laugh.

"Lincoln?" she asked.

"Solace?"

The four were part of Solace's short-lived cabal. It seemed the ship was

crawling with people who were concerned enough about the situation to try and do

something about it. Before Quester caught all the names, they were surprised by

another group of four, with three more close on their heels. The situation

threatened to degenerate into a pitched battle of confused identities until

someone had a suggestion.

"Why don't we hang a sign on the door? Anybody who comes in here thinks we're

the hijackers." They did, and the sign said the provisional captain was dead.

While new arrivals were pondering that and wondering what to do next, someone

had time to explain the situation.

Someone arrived with a tray of drinks, and soon the would-be liberators were

releasing their tensions in liquor and argument. There were fifteen pet theories

expounded in as many minutes.

Now that he felt he had his feet under him, Quester adopted a wait-and-see

attitude. The data was still insufficient.

" 'When you have eliminated the impossible,' " he quoted, " 'whatever is left,

however improbable, must be the truth.' "

"So what does that gain us?" Solace asked.

"Only a viewpoint. Me, I think we'll have to wait until we get back to Mercury

to find out what's been happening. Unless you bring me a live alien, or

Free-Birther, or... some physical evidence."

"Then let's go look for it," Solace said.

"Attention, attention. This is the ship's computer speaking. I have grave news

for all passengers. The entire crew has been assassinated. Until now, I have

been blocked by a rogue program inserted by the revolutionaries which has

prevented me from regaining control of operations. Luckily, this situation has

been remedied. Unluckily, the bridge is still in the hands of the pirates! They

have access to all my manual controls from their position, and I'm afraid there

is but one course open to those of you who wish to avoid a catastrophe. We are

on a trajectory that will soon intersect with the solar chromosphere, and I am

powerless to correct it until the bridge is regained. Rally to me! Rise in

righteous fury and repulse the evil usurpers! Storm the bridge! Long live the

counterrevolution!"

There was a short silence as the implications sank in, then a babble of near

panic. Several people headed for the door, only to come back and bolt it. There

was an ominous roar from outside.

"...chromosphere? Where the hell are we? Has anyone been out on the surface

lately?"

"...some pleasure cruise. I haven't even seen the sun and now they say we're

about to..."

"...pirates, revolutions, counterrevolutions, Free-Birthers, aliens, for

heaven's sake..."

Solace looked helplessly around her, listened to the pounding on the door. She

located Quester hunkered down beside an instrument console and crouched beside

him.

"Talk your way out of this one, Panama Kid," she yelled in his ear.

"My dear, I'm much too busy to talk. If I can get the back off this thing..." He

worked at it and finally pulled off a metal cover. "There was a click from here

when the computer came on the line."

There was a recorder inside, with a long reel of tape strung between playback

heads. He punched a button that said rewind, watched the tape cycle briefly

through, and hit the play button.

"Attention, attention. This is the ship's computer speaking. I have grave news

for all passengers."

"We've heard that one already," someone shouted. Quester held his head in his

hands for a moment, then looked up at Solace. She opened her mouth to say

something, then bit her lip, her eyebrows almost touched in a look of puzzlement

so funny that Quester would have laughed out loud. But the roof of the bridge

evaporated.

It took only a few seconds. There was a blinding white light and a terrible

roaring sound; then he was whisked into the air and pulled toward the outside.

In an instant, everyone was covered in a nullfield and milling around the hole

in the roof like a school of silverfish. In two's and three's they were sucked

through. Then the room was empty and Quester was still in it. He looked down and

saw Solace's hand around his ankle. She was grasping the firmly anchored

computer console with one ped. She hauled him down to her and held him close as

he found handholds. His teeth were chattering.

The door burst open, and there was another flurry of astonished passengers

sucked through the roof. It didn't take as long this time; the hole in the roof

was much larger. Beyond the hole was blackness.

Quester was surprised to see how calm he was once his initial shock had

dissipated. He thanked Solace for saving him, then went on with what he had been

about to say before the blowout.

"Did you talk to anyone who actually saw a mutineer, or a Free-Birther, or

whatever?"

"Huh? Is this the time to...? No, I guess I didn't. But we saw those aliens, or

whatever they—"

"Exactly. Whatever they were. They could have been anything. Someone is playing

an awfully complicated trick on us. Something's happening, but it isn't what

we've been led to believe."

"We've been led to believe something?"

"We've been given clues. Sometimes contradictory, sometimes absolutely insane,

and encouraged to think a mutiny is going on; and this recorder proves it isn't

happening. Listen." And he played back the recordings of various announcements

they had heard earlier. It sounded tinny in their middle-ear receivers.

"But what does that prove?" Solace wanted to know. "Maybe this thing just taped

them as they happened."

Quester was dumfounded for a moment. The theory of a vast conspiracy had

appealed to him, even if he didn't know the reason for it.

He played past the point of the computer's announcement and sighed with relief

when he heard that there was more. They let it natter on to no one about crises

in the engine room, spillage in the second auxiliary reactor, and so on. It was

obvious that it was playing a scenario that could no longer happen. Because the

ship had already broken down completely and they were headed directly for...

They seemed to reach that thought simultaneously and scrambled up toward a hole

in the ceiling to see what was going on. Quester forgot, as usual, to hang onto

something and would have drifted straight up at near-escape velocity but for

Solace's grasping hands.

The sun had eaten up the sky. It was huge, huge.

"That's what we paid to see," Solace said, weakly.

"Yeah. But I thought we'd see it from the ballroom. It's sort of... big, isn't

it?"

"Do you think we're...?"

"I don't know. I never thought we'd get this close. Something the captain

said—no, wait, it wasn't the captain, was it? But one of the recordings said

something about..."

The ground heaved under them.

Quester saw the revolving casino complex off to his right. It swayed, danced,

and came apart. The twin balls broke open, still rotating, and spilled tables

and roulette wheels and playing cards and dishes and walls and carpets to the

waiting stars. The debris formed a glittering double spiral of ejecta, like

droplets of water spraying from the tips of a lawn sprinkler. Bits of it twisted

in the sunlight, cartwheeling, caroming, semaphoring, kicking.

"Those are people."

"Are they...?" Quester couldn't ask it.

"No," Solace answered. "Those suits will protect them. Maybe they can be picked

up later. You see, when you hit something wearing one of these suits, you—"

She didn't have time to finish, but Quester soon had a demonstration of what she

was talking about. The ground opened a few meters from them. They were swept off

their feet and tumbled helplessly across the dirty white surface until they hung

suspended over the pit.

Quester hit the far side of the rift and bounced. He felt little of the impact,

though he hit quite hard, because the suit field automatically stiffened when

struck by a fast-moving object. He had cause to be thankful for that fact,

because the rift began to close. He clawed his way along the surface toward the

sunlight, but the walls of ice closed on him like a book snapped shut.

For a brief moment he was frozen while the ice and rock around him shook and

vaporized under the incredible pressures of shearing force. He saw nothing but

white heat as frozen methane and water became gas in an instant without an

intermediate liquid stage. Then he was shot free as the masses came apart again.

He was still frozen into a climbing position, but now he could see. He was

surrounded by chunks of debris, ranging from fist-sized rocks glowing bright red

to giant icebergs that sublimated and disappeared before his eyes. Each time the

suit began to lose its rigidity he was hit by another object and frozen into a

new position as the suit soaked up the kinetic energy.

In a surprisingly short time, everything had vanished. Every particle of the

explosion was impelled away from every other particle by the pressures of

expanding superheated steam.

But Solace was still clinging to his ankle. She was the only thing left in his

universe apart from a few tiny flashing stars of debris far in the distance,

tumbling, tumbling.

And the sun.

He could look directly at it as it swung past his field of vision once every ten

seconds. It could barely be seen as a sphere; each second it looked more like a

flat, boiling plane. The majestic, crushing presence of it flattened his ego

with a weight he could barely tolerate. He found Solace in his arms. He looked

at her face, which was endless mirrors showing a vanishing series of suns

rebounding from his face to hers and back to infinity. The funhouse effect, so

disconcerting only an hour ago, seemed familiar and reassuring now in comparison

to the chaos below him. He hugged her and closed his eyes.

"Are we going to hit it?" he asked.

"I can't tell. If we do, it'll be the hardest test these suits have ever had. I

don't know if they have limits."

He was astounded. "You mean we might actually...?"

"I tell you, I don't know. Theoretically, yes, we could graze the chromosphere

and not feel a thing, not from the heat, anyway. But it would be bound to slow

us down pretty quickly. The deceleration could kill us. The suits protect us

from outside forces almost completely, but internal accelerations can break

bones and rupture organs. This suit doesn't stop gravity or inertia from

working."

There was no use thinking too long on that possibility.

They were hurtling through the corona now, building up a wake of ionized

particles that trailed after them like the tail of a tiny comet. They looked

around them for other survivors but could find nothing. Soon, they could see

little but a flickering haze as the electrical potential they had built up began

discharging in furry feathers of hot plasma. It couldn't have lasted longer than

a few minutes; then it began to fade slowly away.

There came a time when the sun could be seen to have shrunk slightly. They

didn't speak of it, just held onto each other.

"What are our chances of pickup?" Quester wanted to know. The sun was now much

smaller, receding almost visibly behind them. They were concerned only for the

next twenty hours, which was the length of their oxygen reserves.

"How should I know? Someone must know by now that something's happened, but I

don't know if any ships can get to us in time. It would depend on where they

were at the time of the disaster."

Quester scanned the stars as they swept past his field of vision. They had no

way to slow their rotation; so the stars still went around them every ten

seconds.

He didn't expect to see anything but was not surprised when he did. It was the

next-to-last in a long series of incongruities. There was a ship closing in on

them. A voice over the radio told them to stand by to come aboard and asked them

how they enjoyed the trip.

Quester was winding up for a reply, but the speaker said one word, slowly and

clearly:

"Frightfulness."

And everything changed.

I woke up and found out it had all been a dream.

The very first story I wrote, back when I was five years old, ended with words

very much like that last sentence. I'm not ashamed of it. The thought was not

new, but it was original with me. It was only later that I learned it's not a

fair way to end a story, that the reader deserves more than that.

So here's more.

I woke up and found out it had almost all been a dream. The word,

"frightfulness," was a posthypnotic trigger that caused me to remember all the

things which had been blocked from me by earlier suggestion.

I don't know why I'm bothering to explain all this. I guess old writing habits

die hard. No matter that this is being written for a board of psychists,

mediartists, and flacks; I have to preserve the narrative thread. I've broken

the rules by changing to first person at the end, but I found I could not write

the account Icarus Lines requested of me unless I did it in the third person.

"I" am Quester, though that's not my real name. I am a scientifiction writer,

but I have no character named the Panama Kid. Solace's name is something else.

It was suggested that I change the names.

I signed aboard Hell's Snowball knowing that it was going to break apart along

the way. That's why so much of it had been stripped. They retained only enough

to preserve a tenuous illusion that the trip was a normal one, then threw in

everything they could think of to scare the daylights out of us.

We knew they would. We agreed to and submitted to a hypnotic treatment that

would fool us into thinking we were on a normal trip and were released into the

crazy world they cooked up for us. It's the first time they had ever tried it,

and so they threw in everything in the book: aliens, accidents, mutiny,

confusion, crackpots, and I didn't even see it all. The experience is different

for each passenger, but the basic theme is to put us into a scary situation with

evident peril of life and limb; shake well, and then let us come through the

experience safe and sound.

There was no danger, not from the first to the last. We were on a stable,

carefully calculated orbit. The life jackets were enough to keep us absolutely

safe against anything we would encounter, and we were conditioned to have them

on at the right time. As proof of this, not a single passenger was injured.

We were all nearly scared to death.

It says here you want to know the motive. I remember it clearly now, though I

remembered an entirely different one at the time. I went on the Disaster Express

because I had just sold a novel and wanted to do something wild, out of

character. That was the wildest thing I could think of, and I could wish I had

gone to a museum instead. Because the next question you want me to answer is how

I feel about it now that it's over, and you won't like it. I hope I'm in the

majority and you people at Icarus will give this thing up and never run another

like it.

There used to be something called a "haunted house." One was led blindfolded

through it and encountered various horrors, the effect being heightened by the

unknown nature of the things one touched and was touched by. People have done

things like that for as long as we have history. We go to movies to be scared,

ride on roller coasters, read books, go to funhouses. Thrills are never cheap,

no matter what they say. It takes skill to produce them, and art, and a

knowledge of what will be genuinely thrilling and what will be only amusing.

You people had mixed success. Part of it was the kitchen-sink approach you took

on this first trip. If you unified your theme the next time, stuck to a mutiny

or an invasion, for instance, instead of mucking it up with all the other

insanity you put in... but what am I saying? I don't want you to improve it.

It's true that I was a little bemused by the unreality of the opener, but it was

stark terror all the way when we approached the sun. My stomach still tightens

just to think about it.

But—and I must cry it from the rooftops—you have gone too far. I'm basically

conservative, as are all scientifiction writers, being concerned as we are with

the past on Earth rather than the future in the stars. But I can't avoid

thinking how frivolous it all was. Have we come to this? While our precious home

planet remains under the three-hundred-year Occupation, do we devote ourselves

to more and more elaborate ways of finding thrills?

I hope not.

There is a second consideration, one that I find it difficult to put into words.

You hear of the "shipboard romance," when passengers become involved with each

other only to part forever at their destination. Something of the sort happened

to me and to Solace. We grew close on that loop through the corona. I didn't

write about it. It's still painful. We clung to each other for two days. We made

love with the stars at our feet.

We might even have remained involved, if our minds had been our own. But upon

the utterance of that magic word we suddenly found that we were not the people

we had been presenting ourselves as being. It's difficult enough to find out

that one you care for is not the person she seemed to be; how much harder when

it is you who are not what you thought you were?

It is a tremendous identity crisis, one that I am only now getting over. I,

Quester, would not have behaved as I did aboard the Snowball if I had been in

possession of all my faculties. We were tested, destructively tested in a way,

to see if the injunction against discovering the underlying facts was strong

enough to hold. It was, though I was beginning to see through the veils at the

end. With a more consistent emergency I'm sure I would have had no inkling that

it was anything but real. And that would be much worse. As it was, I was able to

retain a degree of detachment, to entertain the notion that I might be insane. I

was right.

The trip to the sun is thrill enough. Leave it at that, please, so that we may

be sure of our loves and fears and not come to think that all might be illusion.

I'll always have the memory of the way Solace looked when she woke from the

dream she shared with me. The dream was gone; Solace was not the person I

thought she might be. I'll have to look for solace elsewhere.