Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction January 1964. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
subjectivity
Boredom on a long, interstellar trip can be quite a problem ... but the entertainment technique the government dreamed up for this one was a leeetle too good...!
NORMAN SPINRAD
Illustrated by Leo Summers
* * * * *
Interplanetary flight having been perfected, the planets and moons ofthe Sol system having been colonized, Man turned his attention to thestars.
And ran into a stone wall.
After three decades of trying, scientists reluctantly concluded that afaster-than-light drive was an impossibility, at least within therealm of any known theory of the Universe. They gave up.
But a government does not give up so easily, especially a unifiedgovernment which already controls the entire habitat of the humanrace. _Most_ especially a psychologically and sociologicallyenlightened government which sees the handwriting on the wall, and hasalready noticed the first signs of racial claustrophobia--anobjectless sense of frustrated rage, increases in senseless crimes,proliferation of perversions and vices of every kind. Like grape juicesealed in a bottle, the human race had begun to ferment.
Therefore, the Solar Government took a slightly different point ofview towards interstellar travel--Man _must_ go to the stars. Period.Therefore, Man _will_ go to the stars.
If the speed of light could not be exceeded, then Man would go to thestars within that limit.
When a government with tens of billions of dollars to spend becomesmonomaniacal, Great Things can be accomplished. Also, unfortunately,Unspeakable Horrors.
_Stage One_: A drive was developed which could propel a spaceship athalf the speed of light. This was merely a matter of technologicalconcentration, and several billion dollars.
_Stage Two_: A ship was built around the drive, and outfitted withevery conceivable safety device. A laser-beam communication system wasinstalled, so that Sol could keep in contact with the ship all the wayto Centaurus. A crew of ten carefully screened, psyched and trainednear-supermen was selected, and the ship was launched on asixteen-year round-trip to Centaurus.
It never came back.
Two years out, the ten near-supermen became ten raving maniacs.
But the Solar Government did not give up. The next ship contained fivenear-supermen, and five near-superwomen.
They only lasted for a year and a half.
The Solar Government intensified the screening process. The next shipwas manned by ten bona-fide supermen.
They stayed sane for nearly three years.
The Solar Government sent out a ship containing five supermen and fivesuperwomen. In two years, they had ten super-lunatics.
The psychologists came to the unstartling conclusion that even thecream of humanity, in a sexually balanced crew, could not stand uppsychologically to sixteen years in a small steel womb, surrounded bybillions of cubic miles of nothing.
One would have expected reasonable men to have given up.
Not the Solar Government. Monomania had produced Great Things, in theform of a c/2 drive. It now proceeded to produce Unspeakable Horrors.
The cream of the race had failed, reasoned the Solar Government,therefore, we will give the dregs a chance.
The fifth ship was manned by homosexuals. They lasted only six months.A ship full of lesbians bettered that by only two weeks.
Number Seven was manned by schizophrenics. Since they were _already_mad, they did not go crazy. Nevertheless, they did not come back.Number Eight was catatonics. Nine was paranoids. Ten was sadists.Eleven was masochists. Twelve was a mixed crew of sadists andmasochists. No luck.
Maybe it was because thirteen was still a mystic number, or maybe itwas merely that the Solar Government was running out of ideas. At anyrate, ship Number Thirteen was the longest shot of all.
_Background_: From the beginnings of Man, it had been known thatcertain plants--mushrooms, certain cacti--produced intensehallucinations. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists--and othersless scientifically minded--had begun to extract those hallucinogeniccompounds, chiefly mescaline and psilocybin. The next step was thesynthesis of hallucinogens--L.S.D. 25 was the first, and it was farmore powerful than the extracts.
In the next few centuries, more and more different hallucinogens weresynthesized--L.S.D. 105, Johannic acid, huxleyon, baronite.
So by the time the Solar Government had decided that the crew of shipNumber Thirteen would attempt to cope with the terrible reality ofinterstellar space by denying that reality, they had quite anassortment of hallucinogens to choose from.
The one they chose was a new, as-yet-untested ("Two experiments forthe price of one," explained economy-minded officials) andunbelievably complex compound tentatively called Omnidrene.
Omnidrene was what the name implied--a hallucinogen with all theproperties of the others, some which had proven to be all its own, andsome which were as yet unknown. As ten micrograms was one day's dosefor the average man, it was the ideal hallucinogen for a starship.
So they sealed five men and five women--they had given up on sexuallyunbalanced crews--in ship Number Thirteen, along with half a ton ofOmnidrene and their fondest wishes, pointed the ship towardsCentaurus, and prayed for a miracle.
In a way they could not possibly have foreseen, they got it.
* * * * *
As starship Thirteen passed the orbit of Pluto, a meeting was held,since this could be considered the beginning of interstellar space.
The ship was reasonably large--ten small private cabins, a bridge thatwould only be used for planetfalls, large storage areas, and a bigcommon room, where the crew had gathered.
They were sitting in All-Purpose Lounges, arranged in a circle. A fewhad their Lounges at full recline, but most preferred the uprightposition.
Oliver Brunei, the nominal captain, had just opened the first case ofOmnidrene, and taken out a bottle of the tiny pills.
"This, fellow inmates," he said, "is Omnidrene. The time has come forus to indulge. The automatics are all set, we won't have to do a thingwe don't want to for the next eight years."
He poured ten of the tiny blue pills into the palm of his right hand."On Earth, they used to have some kind of traditional ceremony when aperson crossed the equator for the first time. Since we are crossing afar more important equator, I thought we should have some kind ofceremony."
The crew squirmed irritably.
I _do_ tend to be verbose, Brunei thought.
"Well ... anyway, I just thought we all oughta take the first pillstogether," he said, somewhat defensively.
"So come on, Ollie," said a skinny, sour-looking man of about thirtyyears.
"O.K., Lazar, O.K." Marashovski's gonna be trouble, Brunei thought.Why did they put _him_ on the ship?
He handed the pills around. Lazar Marashovski was about to gulp hisdown.
"Wait a minute!" said Brunei. "Let's all do it together."
"One, two, _three_!"
They swallowed the pills. In about ten minutes, thought Brunei, weshould be feeling it.
He looked at the crew. Ten of us, he thought, ten brilliant misfits.Lazar, who has spent half his life high on baronite; Vera Galindez,would-be medium, trying to make herself telepathic with mescaline;Jorge Donner.... Why is _he_ here?
Me, at least with me it's simple--this
or jail.
What a crew! Drug addicts, occultists, sensationalists ... _and whatelse?_ What makes a person do a thing like this?
It'll all come out, thought Brunei. In sixteen years, it'll all comeout.
"Feel anything yet, Ollie?" said Marsha Johnson. No doubt why _she_came along. Just an ugly old maid liking the idea of being cooped upwith five men.
"Nothing yet," said Brunei.
He looked around the room. Plain steel walls, lined with cabinets fullof Omnidrene on two sides, viewscreen on the ceiling, bare floor, theother two walls decked out like an automat. Plain, gray steelwalls....
_Then why were the gray steel walls turning pink?_
"Oh, oh ..." said Joby Krail, rolling her pretty blond head, "oh, oh ...here it comes. The walls are dancing...."
"The ceiling is a spiral," muttered Vera, "a winding red spiral."
"O.K., fellow inmates," said Brunei, "it's hitting." Now the wallswere red, bright fire-engine red, and they were melting. No, notmelting, but evaporating....
"Like