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+ The Project Gutenberg eBook of Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Subjectivity
+
+Author: Norman Spinrad
+
+Illustrator: Leo Summers
+
+Release Date: December 21, 2009 [EBook #30722]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUBJECTIVITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p class="center">This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact &amp; Fiction January 1964. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img class="img1" src="images/image_001.jpg" width="400" height="469" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>subjectivity</h1>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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...!</p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>NORMAN SPINRAD</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>Illustrated by Leo Summers</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="13" height="50" /></div>
+<p>nterplanetary flight having been perfected, the planets and moons of
+the Sol system having been colonized, Man turned his attention to the
+stars.</p>
+
+<p>And ran into a stone wall.</p>
+
+<p>After three decades of trying, scientists reluctantly concluded that a
+faster-than-light drive was an impossibility, at least within the
+realm of any known theory of the Universe. They gave up.</p>
+
+<p>But a government does not give up so easily, especially a unified
+government which already controls the entire habitat of the human
+race. <i>Most</i> especially a psychologically and sociologically
+enlightened government which sees the handwriting on the wall, and has
+already noticed the first signs of racial claustrophobia&mdash;an
+objectless sense of frustrated rage, increases in senseless crimes,
+proliferation of perversions and vices of every kind. Like grape juice
+sealed in a bottle, the human race had begun to ferment.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, the Solar Government took a slightly different point of
+view towards interstellar travel&mdash;Man <i>must</i> go to the stars. Period.
+Therefore, Man <i>will</i> go to the stars.</p>
+
+<p>If the speed of light could not be exceeded, then Man would go to the
+stars within that limit.</p>
+
+<p>When a government with tens of billions of dollars to spend becomes
+monomaniacal, Great Things can be accomplished. Also, unfortunately,
+Unspeakable Horrors.</p>
+
+<p><i>Stage One</i>: A drive was developed which could propel a spaceship at
+half the speed of light. This was merely a matter of technological
+concentration, and several billion dollars.</p>
+
+<p><i>Stage Two</i>: A ship was built around the drive, and outfitted with
+every conceivable safety device. A laser-beam communication system was
+installed, so that Sol could keep in contact with the ship all the way
+to Centaurus. A crew of ten carefully screened, psyched and trained
+near-supermen was selected, and the ship was launched on a
+sixteen-year round-trip to Centaurus.</p>
+
+<p>It never came back.</p>
+
+<p>Two years out, the ten near-supermen became ten raving maniacs.</p>
+
+<p>But the Solar Government did not give up. The next ship contained five
+near-supermen, and five near-superwomen.</p>
+
+<p>They only lasted for a year and a half.</p>
+
+<p>The Solar Government intensified the screening process. The next ship
+was manned by ten bona-fide supermen.</p>
+
+<p>They stayed sane for nearly three years.</p>
+
+<p>The Solar Government sent out a ship containing five supermen and five
+superwomen. In two years, they had ten super-lunatics.</p>
+
+<p>The psychologists came to the unstartling conclusion that even the
+cream of humanity, in a sexually balanced crew, could not stand up
+psychologically to sixteen years in a small steel womb, surrounded by
+billions of cubic miles of nothing.</p>
+
+<p>One would have expected reasonable men to have given up.</p>
+
+<p>Not the Solar Government. Monomania had produced Great Things, in the
+form of a c/2 drive. It now proceeded to produce Unspeakable Horrors.</p>
+
+<p>The cream of the race had failed, reasoned the Solar Government,
+therefore, we will give the dregs a chance.</p>
+
+<p>The fifth ship was manned by homosexuals. They lasted only six months.
+A ship full of lesbians bettered that by only two weeks.</p>
+
+<p>Number Seven was manned by schizophrenics. Since they were <i>already</i>
+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 and
+masochists. No luck.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe it was because thirteen was still a mystic number, or maybe it
+was merely that the Solar Government was running out of ideas. At any
+rate, ship Number Thirteen was the longest shot of all.</p>
+
+<p><i>Background</i>: From the beginnings of Man, it had been known that
+certain plants&mdash;mushrooms, certain cacti&mdash;produced intense
+hallucinations. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists&mdash;and others
+less scientifically minded&mdash;had begun to extract those hallucinogenic
+compounds, chiefly mescaline and psilocybin. The next step was the
+synthesis of hallucinogens&mdash;L.S.D. 25 was the first, and it was far
+more powerful than the extracts.</p>
+
+<p>In the next few centuries, more and more different hallucinogens were
+synthesized&mdash;L.S.D. 105, Johannic acid, huxleyon, baronite.</p>
+
+<p>So by the time the Solar Government had decided that the crew of ship
+Number Thirteen would attempt to cope with the terrible reality of
+interstellar space by denying that reality, they had quite an
+assortment of hallucinogens to choose from.</p>
+
+<p>The one they chose was a new, as-yet-untested ("Two experiments for
+the price of one," explained economy-minded officials) and
+unbelievably complex compound tentatively called Omnidrene.</p>
+
+<p>Omnidrene was what the name implied&mdash;a hallucinogen with all the
+properties of the others, some which had proven to be all its own, and
+some which were as yet unknown. As ten micrograms was one day's dose
+for the average man, it was the ideal hallucinogen for a starship.</p>
+
+<p>So they sealed five men and five women&mdash;they had given up on sexually
+unbalanced crews&mdash;in ship Number Thirteen, along with half a ton of
+Omnidrene and their fondest wishes, pointed the ship towards
+Centaurus, and prayed for a miracle.</p>
+
+<p>In a way they could not possibly have foreseen, they got it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>As starship Thirteen passed the orbit of Pluto, a meeting was held,
+since this could be considered the beginning of interstellar space.</p>
+
+<p>The ship was reasonably large&mdash;ten small private cabins, a bridge that
+would only be used for planetfalls, large storage areas, and a big
+common room, where the crew had gathered.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/image_002.jpg" width="450" height="380" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>They were sitting in All-Purpose Lounges, arranged in a circle. A few
+had their Lounges at full recline, but most preferred the upright
+position.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Brunei, the nominal captain, had just opened the first case of
+Omnidrene, and taken out a bottle of the tiny pills.</p>
+
+<p>"This, fellow inmates," he said, "is Omnidrene. The time has come for
+us to indulge. The automatics are all set, we won't have to do a thing
+we don't want to for the next eight years."</p>
+
+<p>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 a
+person crossed the equator for the first time. Since we are crossing a
+far more important equator, I thought we should have some kind of
+ceremony."</p>
+
+<p>The crew squirmed irritably.</p>
+
+<p>I <i>do</i> tend to be verbose, Brunei thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Well ... anyway, I just thought we all oughta take the first pills
+together," he said, somewhat defensively.</p>
+
+<p>"So come on, Ollie," said a skinny, sour-looking man of about thirty
+years.</p>
+
+<p>"O.K., Lazar, O.K." Marashovski's gonna be trouble, Brunei thought.
+Why did they put <i>him</i> on the ship?</p>
+
+<p>He handed the pills around. Lazar Marashovski was about to gulp his
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute!" said Brunei. "Let's all do it together."</p>
+
+<p>"One, two, <i>three</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>They swallowed the pills. In about ten minutes, thought Brunei, we
+should be feeling it.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>he</i> here?</p>
+
+<p>Me, at least with me it's simple&mdash;this or jail.</p>
+
+<p>What a crew! Drug addicts, occultists, sensationalists ... <i>and what
+else?</i> What makes a person do a thing like this?</p>
+
+<p>It'll all come out, thought Brunei. In sixteen years, it'll all come
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"Feel anything yet, Ollie?" said Marsha Johnson. No doubt why <i>she</i>
+came along. Just an ugly old maid liking the idea of being cooped up
+with five men.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing yet," said Brunei.</p>
+
+<p>He looked around the room. Plain steel walls, lined with cabinets full
+of Omnidrene on two sides, viewscreen on the ceiling, bare floor, the
+other two walls decked out like an automat. Plain, gray steel
+walls....</p>
+
+<p><i>Then why were the gray steel walls turning pink?</i></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh ..." said Joby Krail, rolling her pretty blond head, "oh, oh ...
+here it comes. The walls are dancing...."</p>
+
+<p>"The ceiling is a spiral," muttered Vera, "a winding red spiral."</p>
+
+<p>"O.K., fellow inmates," said Brunei, "it's hitting." Now the walls
+were red, bright fire-engine red, and they were melting. No, not
+melting, but evaporating....</p>
+
+<p>"Like crystal it is," said Lin Pey, waving his delicate oriental
+hands, "like jade as transparent as crystal."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a camel in the circle," said Lazar, "a brown camel."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's all try and see the camel together," said Vera Galindez
+sharply. "Tell us what it looks like, Lazar."</p>
+
+<p>"It's brown, it's the two-humped kind, it has a two-foot tail."</p>
+
+<p>"And big feet," said Lin Pey.</p>
+
+<p>"A stupid face," said Donner.</p>
+
+<p>"Very stupid."</p>
+
+<p>"Your camel is a great bore," said the stocky, scowling Bram Daker.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have something else," said Joby.</p>
+
+<p>"Okay," replied Brunei, "now someone else tell what they see."</p>
+
+<p>"A lizard," said Linda Tobias, a strange, somber girl, inclined to the
+morbid.</p>
+
+<p>"A lizard?" squeaked Ingrid Solin.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Lin Pey, "a dragon. A green dragon, with a forked red
+tongue...."</p>
+
+<p>"He has little useless wings," said Lazar.</p>
+
+<p>"He is totally oblivious to us," said Vera.</p>
+
+<p>Brunei saw the dragon. It was five feet long, green and scaly. It was
+a conventional dragon, except for the most bovine expression in its
+eyes....</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he thought, the dragon is <i>here</i>. But the greater part of him
+knew that it was an illusion.</p>
+
+<p>How long would this go on?</p>
+
+<p>"It's <i>good</i> that we see the same things," said Marsha. "Let's always
+see the same things...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Now a mountain, a tall blue mountain."</p>
+
+<p>"With snow on the peak."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and clouds...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><i>One week out</i>:</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Brunei stepped into the common room. Lin Pey, Vera, and Lazar
+were sitting together, on what appeared to be a huge purple toadstool.</p>
+
+<p>But that's <i>my</i> hallucination, thought Brunei. <i>At least, I think it
+is.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Hello Ollie," said Lazar.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi. What're you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're looking at the dragon again," said Vera. "Join us?"</p>
+
+<p>Brunei thought of the dragon for a moment. The toadstool disappeared,
+and the by-now-familiar bovine dragon took its place. In the last few
+days, they had discovered that if any two of them concentrated on
+something long enough to "materialize" it, anyone else who wanted to
+could see it in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"What's so interesting about that silly dragon?" said Brunei.</p>
+
+<p>"How about the camel?" said Lazar.</p>
+
+<p>The dragon turned into the two-humped brown camel.</p>
+
+<p>"Phooey!" said Lin Pey.</p>
+
+<p>"O.K.," said Vera, "so what do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>Lin Pey thought for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"How about a meadow?" he said. "A soft lawn of green grass, the sky is
+blue, and there are a few white clouds...."</p>
+
+<p>"Clover is blooming," said Lazar. "Smell it."</p>
+
+<p>Brunei reclined on the soft green grass. The smell of the earth
+beneath him was warm and moist. "A few apple trees here and there," he
+said, and there was shade.</p>
+
+<p>"Look over the hill!" said Lazar. "There's the dragon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you <i>please</i> get rid of that dragon?" snapped Brunei.</p>
+
+<p>"O.K., Ollie, O.K."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><i>One month out</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of the way!" yelled Brunei. He gave the dragon a kick. It
+mooed plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't very nice, Ollie," said Lazar.</p>
+
+<p>"That dragon is always underfoot," said Brunei. "Why don't you get rid
+of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've taken a liking to it," said Lazar. "Besides, what about your
+Saint Bernard?"</p>
+
+<p>"This ship is getting too cluttered up with everyone's
+hallucinations," said Brunei. "Ever since ... when was it, a week
+ago?... ever since we've been able to conjure 'em up by ourselves, and
+make everyone else see 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Daker dematerialised the woman on his lap. "Why don't we get
+together?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Get together?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We could agree on an environment. Look at this common room for
+example. What a mess! Here, it's a meadow, there it's a beach, a
+palace, a boudoir."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean we should make it the same for all of us?" asked Lazar.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. We can have whatever we want in our cabins, but let's make some
+sense out of the common room."</p>
+
+<p>"Good idea," said Brunei. "I'll call the others."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><i>Three months out</i>:</p>
+
+<p>Brunei stepped through the stuccoed portal, and into the central
+Spanish garden. He noticed that the sky was blue, with a few fleecy
+white clouds.</p>
+
+<p>But then, the weather was always good. They had agreed on it.</p>
+
+<p>Lazar, Ingrid, Lin Pey and Vera were sitting on the green lawn
+surrounding the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>Daker, Joby, Linda and Donner preferred the shade, and lounged against
+the white arabesqued wall which enclosed the garden on four sides,
+broken only by four arched entrance portals.</p>
+
+<p>The garden had been a good compromise, thought Brunei. Something for
+everyone. Fresh air and sun-shine, but also the mental security
+offered by the walls, which also provided shade for those who wanted
+it. A fountain, a few palm trees, grass, flowers, even the little
+formal Japanese rock garden that Lin Pey had insisted on.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Ollie," said Lazar. "Nice day."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it always?" replied Brunei. "How about a little shower?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I notice a lot of sleeping people today," said Brunei.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Lin Pey. "By now, the garden seems to be able to maintain
+itself."</p>
+
+<p>"You think it has a separate existence?" asked Ingrid.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," said Vera. "Our subconscious minds are maintaining
+it. It's probably here when we're all asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"No way of telling <i>that</i>," said Brunei. "Besides, how can it exist
+when we're asleep, when it doesn't really exist to begin with?"</p>
+
+<p>"Semantics, Ollie, semantics."</p>
+
+<p>Brunei took a bottle of Omnidrene out of his pocket. "Time to charge
+up the old batteries again," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He passed out the pills.</p>
+
+<p>"I notice Marsha is still in her cabin."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah," said Lazar, "she keeps to herself a lot. No great&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Just then, Marsha burst into the garden, screaming: "Make it go away!
+Make it go away!"</p>
+
+<p>Behind her slithered a gigantic black snake, with a head as big as a
+horse's, and bulging red eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought we agreed to leave our private hallucinations in our
+cabins," snapped Brunei.</p>
+
+<p>"I tried! I tried! I <i>don't want</i> it around, but it won't go away! Do
+something!"</p>
+
+<p>Ten feet of snake had already entered the garden. The thing seemed
+endless.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it easy," said Lazar. "Let's all concentrate and think it away."</p>
+
+<p>They tried to erase the snake, but it just rolled its big red eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"That won't work," said Vera. "Her subconscious is still fighting us.
+Part of her must <i>want</i> the snake here. We've <i>all</i> got to be together
+to erase it."</p>
+
+<p>Marsha began to cry. The snake advanced another two feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, quiet!" rasped Lazar. "Ollie, do I have your permission to bring
+my dragon into the garden? He'll make short work of the snake."</p>
+
+<p>Brunei scowled. "You and your dragon.... Oh, maybe it'll work."</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, the green dragon was in the garden. But it was no longer
+five feet long and bovine.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good twelve feet long, with cold reptilian eyes and big
+yellow fangs.</p>
+
+<p>It took one look at the snake, opened its powerful jaws, and belched a
+huge tongue of orange flame.</p>
+
+<p>The serpent was incinerated. It disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Brunei was trembling. "What happened, Lazar?" he said. "That's not the
+same stupid little dragon."</p>
+
+<p>"Hah ... hah...." squeaked Lazar. "He's ... uh ... grown...."</p>
+
+<p>Brunei suddenly noticed that Lazar was ashen. He also noticed that the
+dragon was turning in their direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Get it out of here, Lazar! Get it out of here!"</p>
+
+<p>Lazar nodded. The dragon flickered and went pale, but it was over a
+minute before it disappeared entirely.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><i>Six months out</i>:</p>
+
+<p><i>Things</i> wandered the passageways and haunted the cabins. Marsha's
+snake was back. There was Lazar's dragon, which seemed to grow larger
+every day. There was also a basilisk, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat
+with a five-foot wingspread, an old-fashioned red spade-tailed demon
+and other assorted horrors.</p>
+
+<p>Even Oliver Brunei's friendly Saint Bernard had grown to monstrous
+size, turned pale green, and grown large yellow fangs.</p>
+
+<p>Only the Spanish garden in the common room was free of the
+monstrosities. Here, the combined conscious minds of the ten crew
+members were still strong enough to banish the rampaging
+hallucinations.</p>
+
+<p>The ten of them sat around the fountain, which seemed a shade less
+sparkling.</p>
+
+<p>There were even rainclouds in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like it," said Bram Daker. "It's getting completely out of
+control."</p>
+
+<p>"So we just have to stay in the garden, that's all," said Brunei. "The
+food's all here, and so is the Omnidrene. And <i>they</i> can't come here."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," said Marsha.</p>
+
+<p>They all shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"What went wrong?" asked Ingrid.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," said Donner. "They didn't know what would happen when they
+sent us out, so we can't say they were <i>wrong</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Very comforting," croaked Lazar. "But can someone tell me why we
+can't control <i>them</i> any more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows?" said Brunei. "At least we can keep them out of here.
+That's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There was a snuffling at the wall. The head of something like a
+Tyrannosaurus Rex peered over the wall at them.</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh!" said Lin Pey. "I think that's a new one."</p>
+
+<p>The dragon's head appeared alongside the Tyrannosaur's.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, at least <i>there's</i> a familiar face," tittered Linda.</p>
+
+<p>"Very funny."</p>
+
+<p>Marsha screamed. The huge black snake thrust its head through a
+portal.</p>
+
+<p>And the flap of leathery wings could be heard. And the smell of
+sulphur.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on! Come on!" shouted Brunei. "Let's get these things out of
+here!"</p>
+
+<p>After five minutes of intense group concentration, the last of the
+horrors was banished.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a lot harder this time," said Daker.</p>
+
+<p>"There were more of them," said Donner.</p>
+
+<p>"They're getting stronger and bolder."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe some day they'll break through, and...." Lin Pey let the
+sentence hang. Everyone supplied his own ending.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be ridiculous!" snapped Brunei. "They're not real. <i>They can't
+kill us!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe we should stop taking the Omnidrene?" suggested Vera, without
+very much conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"At <i>this</i> point?" said Brunei. He shuddered. "If the garden
+disappeared, and we had nothing but the bare ship for the next fifteen
+and a half years, and we <i>knew</i> it, and at the same time knew that we
+had the Omnidrene to bring it back.... How long do you think we'd hold
+off?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," said Vera.</p>
+
+<p>"We just have to stick it out," said Brunei. "Just remember: <i>They
+can't kill us. They aren't real.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," the crew whispered in a tiny, frail voice, "they aren't
+real...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><i>Seven months out</i>:</p>
+
+<p>The garden was covered with a gloomy gray cloud layer. Even the
+"weather" was getting harder and harder to control.</p>
+
+<p>The crew of starship Number Thirteen huddled around the fountain,
+staring into the water, trying desperately to ignore the snufflings,
+flappings, wheezes and growls coming from outside the walls. But
+occasionally, a scaly head would raise itself above the wall, or a
+pterodactyl or bat would flap overhead, and there would be violent
+shudders.</p>
+
+<p>"I still think we should stop taking the Omnidrene," said Vera
+Galindez.</p>
+
+<p>"If we stopped taking it," asked Brunei, "which would disappear first,
+<i>them</i> ... <i>or the garden?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Vera grimaced. "But we've got to do something," she said. "We can't
+even make them disappear at all, any more. And it's becoming a full
+time job just to keep them outside the walls."</p>
+
+<p>"And sooner or later," interjected Lazar, "we're <i>not</i> going to be
+strong enough to keep them out...."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Brr!</i>"</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/image_003.jpg" width="450" height="356" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"The snake! The snake!" screamed Marsha. "It's coming in again!"</p>
+
+<p>The huge black head was already through a portal.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop the snake, everyone!" yelled Brunei. Eyes were riveted on the
+ugly serpent, in intense concentration.</p>
+
+<p>After five minutes, it was obviously a stalemate. The snake had not
+been able to advance, nor could the humans force it to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Then smoke began to rise behind the far wall.</p>
+
+<p>"The dragon's burning down the wall!" shrieked Lazar. "Stop him!"</p>
+
+<p>They concentrated on the dragon. The smoke disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>But the snake began to advance again.</p>
+
+<p>"They're too strong!" moaned Brunei. "We can't hold them back."</p>
+
+<p>They stopped the snake for a few moments, but the smoke began to
+billow again.</p>
+
+<p>"They're gonna break through!" screamed Donner. "We can't stop 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>"What are we gonna do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Help!"</p>
+
+<p>Creakings, cracklings, groanings, as the walls began to crack and
+blister and shake.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Bram Daker stood up, his dark eyes aflame.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one thing's strong enough!" he bellowed. "Earth! <i>Earth!</i> EARTH!
+Think of Earth! All of you! We're back on Earth. Visualize it, make it
+real, and the monsters'll have to disappear."</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>where</i> on Earth?" said Vera, bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"The Spaceport!" shouted Brunei. "The Spaceport! We all remember the
+Spaceport."</p>
+
+<p>"We're back on Earth! The Spaceport!"</p>
+
+<p>"Earth!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Earth!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"EARTH! EARTH!"</p>
+
+<p>The garden was beginning to flicker. It became red, orange, yellow,
+green, blue, violet, invisible; then back again through the spectrum
+the other way&mdash;violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, invisible.</p>
+
+<p>Back and forth, like a pendulum through the spectrum....</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Brunei's head hurt unbearably, he could see the pain on the
+other faces, but he allowed only one thought to fill his
+being&mdash;<i>Earth! The Spaceport! EARTH!</i></p>
+
+<p>More and more, faster and faster, the garden flickered, and now it was
+the old common room again, and <i>that</i> was flickering.</p>
+
+<p>Light was flickering, mind was flickering, time, too, seemed to
+flicker....</p>
+
+<p><i>Only Earth!</i> thought Brunei. Earth doesn't flicker, the Spaceport
+doesn't flicker.</p>
+
+<p>Earth! EARTH!</p>
+
+<p>Now all the flickerings, of color, time, mind and dimensions, were
+coalescing into one gigantic vortex, that was a thing neither of time,
+nor space, nor mind, but all three somehow fused into one....</p>
+
+<p>They're screaming! Brunei thought. Listen to the horrible screams!
+Suddenly he noticed that he, too, was screaming.</p>
+
+<p>The vortex was growing, swirling, undulating, and it, too, began to
+flicker....</p>
+
+<p>There was an unbearable, impossible pain, and....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The sight of starship Number Thirteen suddenly appearing out of
+nowhere, and sitting itself calmly down in the middle of the Spaceport
+was somewhat disconcerting to the Spaceport officials. Especially
+since at the very moment it appeared, and even afterward, they
+continued to have visual and laser contact with its image, over three
+light-months from Earth.</p>
+
+<p>However, the Solar Government itself was much more pragmatic. One
+instant, starship Thirteen had been light-months from Earth, the next
+it was sitting in the Spaceport. Therefore, starship Thirteen had
+exceeded the speed of light somehow. Therefore, it was possible to
+exceed the speed of light, and a thorough examination of the ship and
+its contents would show <i>how</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore.... You idiots, throw a security cordon around that ship!</p>
+
+<p>In such matters, the long-conditioned reflexes of the Solar Government
+worked marvelously. Before the air-waves had cooled, two hundred
+heavily armed soldiers had surrounded the ship.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours later, the Solar co-ordinator was on the scene, with ten
+Orders of Sol to present to the returning heroes, and a large
+well-armored vehicle to convey them to laboratories, where they would
+be gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.</p>
+
+<p>An honor guard of two hundred men standing at attention made a pathway
+from the ship's main hatch to the armored carrier, in front of which
+stood the Solar Co-ordinator, with his ten medals.</p>
+
+<p>They opened the hatch.</p>
+
+<p>One, two, five, seven, ten dazed and bewildered "heroes" staggered
+past the honor guard, to face the Co-ordinator.</p>
+
+<p>He opened his mouth to begin his welcoming speech, and start the five
+years of questioning and experiments which would eventually kill five
+of the crew and give Man the secret of faster-than-light drive.</p>
+
+<p>But instead of speaking, he screamed.</p>
+
+<p>So did two hundred heavily armed soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>Because, out of starship Thirteen's main hatch sauntered a twelve-foot
+green dragon, followed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a pterodactyl, a
+vampire bat with a five-foot wingspan, an old-fashioned red,
+spade-tailed demon, and finally, big as a horse's, the pop-eyed head
+of an enormous black serpent....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad
+
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Subjectivity
+
+Author: Norman Spinrad
+
+Illustrator: Leo Summers
+
+Release Date: December 21, 2009 [EBook #30722]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUBJECTIVITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://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 of
+the Sol system having been colonized, Man turned his attention to the
+stars.
+
+And ran into a stone wall.
+
+After three decades of trying, scientists reluctantly concluded that a
+faster-than-light drive was an impossibility, at least within the
+realm of any known theory of the Universe. They gave up.
+
+But a government does not give up so easily, especially a unified
+government which already controls the entire habitat of the human
+race. _Most_ especially a psychologically and sociologically
+enlightened government which sees the handwriting on the wall, and has
+already noticed the first signs of racial claustrophobia--an
+objectless sense of frustrated rage, increases in senseless crimes,
+proliferation of perversions and vices of every kind. Like grape juice
+sealed in a bottle, the human race had begun to ferment.
+
+Therefore, the Solar Government took a slightly different point of
+view 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 the
+stars within that limit.
+
+When a government with tens of billions of dollars to spend becomes
+monomaniacal, Great Things can be accomplished. Also, unfortunately,
+Unspeakable Horrors.
+
+_Stage One_: A drive was developed which could propel a spaceship at
+half the speed of light. This was merely a matter of technological
+concentration, and several billion dollars.
+
+_Stage Two_: A ship was built around the drive, and outfitted with
+every conceivable safety device. A laser-beam communication system was
+installed, so that Sol could keep in contact with the ship all the way
+to Centaurus. A crew of ten carefully screened, psyched and trained
+near-supermen was selected, and the ship was launched on a
+sixteen-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 five
+near-supermen, and five near-superwomen.
+
+They only lasted for a year and a half.
+
+The Solar Government intensified the screening process. The next ship
+was manned by ten bona-fide supermen.
+
+They stayed sane for nearly three years.
+
+The Solar Government sent out a ship containing five supermen and five
+superwomen. In two years, they had ten super-lunatics.
+
+The psychologists came to the unstartling conclusion that even the
+cream of humanity, in a sexually balanced crew, could not stand up
+psychologically to sixteen years in a small steel womb, surrounded by
+billions 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 the
+form 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 and
+masochists. No luck.
+
+Maybe it was because thirteen was still a mystic number, or maybe it
+was merely that the Solar Government was running out of ideas. At any
+rate, ship Number Thirteen was the longest shot of all.
+
+_Background_: From the beginnings of Man, it had been known that
+certain plants--mushrooms, certain cacti--produced intense
+hallucinations. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists--and others
+less scientifically minded--had begun to extract those hallucinogenic
+compounds, chiefly mescaline and psilocybin. The next step was the
+synthesis of hallucinogens--L.S.D. 25 was the first, and it was far
+more powerful than the extracts.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the next few centuries, more and more different hallucinogens were
+synthesized--L.S.D. 105, Johannic acid, huxleyon, baronite.
+
+So by the time the Solar Government had decided that the crew of ship
+Number Thirteen would attempt to cope with the terrible reality of
+interstellar space by denying that reality, they had quite an
+assortment of hallucinogens to choose from.
+
+The one they chose was a new, as-yet-untested ("Two experiments for
+the price of one," explained economy-minded officials) and
+unbelievably complex compound tentatively called Omnidrene.
+
+Omnidrene was what the name implied--a hallucinogen with all the
+properties of the others, some which had proven to be all its own, and
+some which were as yet unknown. As ten micrograms was one day's dose
+for the average man, it was the ideal hallucinogen for a starship.
+
+So they sealed five men and five women--they had given up on sexually
+unbalanced crews--in ship Number Thirteen, along with half a ton of
+Omnidrene and their fondest wishes, pointed the ship towards
+Centaurus, 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 that
+would only be used for planetfalls, large storage areas, and a big
+common room, where the crew had gathered.
+
+They were sitting in All-Purpose Lounges, arranged in a circle. A few
+had their Lounges at full recline, but most preferred the upright
+position.
+
+Oliver Brunei, the nominal captain, had just opened the first case of
+Omnidrene, and taken out a bottle of the tiny pills.
+
+"This, fellow inmates," he said, "is Omnidrene. The time has come for
+us to indulge. The automatics are all set, we won't have to do a thing
+we 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 a
+person crossed the equator for the first time. Since we are crossing a
+far more important equator, I thought we should have some kind of
+ceremony."
+
+The crew squirmed irritably.
+
+I _do_ tend to be verbose, Brunei thought.
+
+"Well ... anyway, I just thought we all oughta take the first pills
+together," he said, somewhat defensively.
+
+"So come on, Ollie," said a skinny, sour-looking man of about thirty
+years.
+
+"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 his
+down.
+
+"Wait a minute!" said Brunei. "Let's all do it together."
+
+"One, two, _three_!"
+
+They swallowed the pills. In about ten minutes, thought Brunei, we
+should 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 what
+else?_ What makes a person do a thing like this?
+
+It'll all come out, thought Brunei. In sixteen years, it'll all come
+out.
+
+"Feel anything yet, Ollie?" said Marsha Johnson. No doubt why _she_
+came along. Just an ugly old maid liking the idea of being cooped up
+with five men.
+
+"Nothing yet," said Brunei.
+
+He looked around the room. Plain steel walls, lined with cabinets full
+of Omnidrene on two sides, viewscreen on the ceiling, bare floor, the
+other two walls decked out like an automat. Plain, gray steel
+walls....
+
+_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 walls
+were red, bright fire-engine red, and they were melting. No, not
+melting, but evaporating....
+
+"Like crystal it is," said Lin Pey, waving his delicate oriental
+hands, "like jade as transparent as crystal."
+
+"There is a camel in the circle," said Lazar, "a brown camel."
+
+"Let's all try and see the camel together," said Vera Galindez
+sharply. "Tell us what it looks like, Lazar."
+
+"It's brown, it's the two-humped kind, it has a two-foot tail."
+
+"And big feet," said Lin Pey.
+
+"A stupid face," said Donner.
+
+"Very stupid."
+
+"Your camel is a great bore," said the stocky, scowling Bram Daker.
+
+"Let's have something else," said Joby.
+
+"Okay," replied Brunei, "now someone else tell what they see."
+
+"A lizard," said Linda Tobias, a strange, somber girl, inclined to the
+morbid.
+
+"A lizard?" squeaked Ingrid Solin.
+
+"No," said Lin Pey, "a dragon. A green dragon, with a forked red
+tongue...."
+
+"He has little useless wings," said Lazar.
+
+"He is totally oblivious to us," said Vera.
+
+Brunei saw the dragon. It was five feet long, green and scaly. It was
+a conventional dragon, except for the most bovine expression in its
+eyes....
+
+Yes, he thought, the dragon is _here_. But the greater part of him
+knew that it was an illusion.
+
+How long would this go on?
+
+"It's _good_ that we see the same things," said Marsha. "Let's always
+see the same things...."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Now a mountain, a tall blue mountain."
+
+"With snow on the peak."
+
+"Yes, and clouds...."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_One week out_:
+
+Oliver Brunei stepped into the common room. Lin Pey, Vera, and Lazar
+were sitting together, on what appeared to be a huge purple toadstool.
+
+But that's _my_ hallucination, thought Brunei. _At least, I think it
+is._
+
+"Hello Ollie," said Lazar.
+
+"Hi. What're you doing?"
+
+"We're looking at the dragon again," said Vera. "Join us?"
+
+Brunei thought of the dragon for a moment. The toadstool disappeared,
+and the by-now-familiar bovine dragon took its place. In the last few
+days, they had discovered that if any two of them concentrated on
+something long enough to "materialize" it, anyone else who wanted to
+could see it in a moment.
+
+"What's so interesting about that silly dragon?" said Brunei.
+
+"How about the camel?" said Lazar.
+
+The dragon turned into the two-humped brown camel.
+
+"Phooey!" said Lin Pey.
+
+"O.K.," said Vera, "so what do you want?"
+
+Lin Pey thought for a moment.
+
+"How about a meadow?" he said. "A soft lawn of green grass, the sky is
+blue, and there are a few white clouds...."
+
+"Clover is blooming," said Lazar. "Smell it."
+
+Brunei reclined on the soft green grass. The smell of the earth
+beneath him was warm and moist. "A few apple trees here and there," he
+said, and there was shade.
+
+"Look over the hill!" said Lazar. "There's the dragon!"
+
+"Will you _please_ get rid of that dragon?" snapped Brunei.
+
+"O.K., Ollie, O.K."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_One month out_:
+
+"Get out of the way!" yelled Brunei. He gave the dragon a kick. It
+mooed plaintively.
+
+"That wasn't very nice, Ollie," said Lazar.
+
+"That dragon is always underfoot," said Brunei. "Why don't you get rid
+of it?"
+
+"I've taken a liking to it," said Lazar. "Besides, what about your
+Saint Bernard?"
+
+"This ship is getting too cluttered up with everyone's
+hallucinations," said Brunei. "Ever since ... when was it, a week
+ago?... ever since we've been able to conjure 'em up by ourselves, and
+make everyone else see 'em."
+
+Daker dematerialised the woman on his lap. "Why don't we get
+together?" he said.
+
+"Get together?"
+
+"Yes. We could agree on an environment. Look at this common room for
+example. What a mess! Here, it's a meadow, there it's a beach, a
+palace, a boudoir."
+
+"You mean we should make it the same for all of us?" asked Lazar.
+
+"Sure. We can have whatever we want in our cabins, but let's make some
+sense out of the common room."
+
+"Good idea," said Brunei. "I'll call the others."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Three months out_:
+
+Brunei stepped through the stuccoed portal, and into the central
+Spanish garden. He noticed that the sky was blue, with a few fleecy
+white clouds.
+
+But then, the weather was always good. They had agreed on it.
+
+Lazar, Ingrid, Lin Pey and Vera were sitting on the green lawn
+surrounding the fountain.
+
+Daker, Joby, Linda and Donner preferred the shade, and lounged against
+the white arabesqued wall which enclosed the garden on four sides,
+broken only by four arched entrance portals.
+
+The garden had been a good compromise, thought Brunei. Something for
+everyone. Fresh air and sun-shine, but also the mental security
+offered by the walls, which also provided shade for those who wanted
+it. A fountain, a few palm trees, grass, flowers, even the little
+formal Japanese rock garden that Lin Pey had insisted on.
+
+"Hello, Ollie," said Lazar. "Nice day."
+
+"Isn't it always?" replied Brunei. "How about a little shower?"
+
+"Maybe tomorrow."
+
+"I notice a lot of sleeping people today," said Brunei.
+
+"Yes," said Lin Pey. "By now, the garden seems to be able to maintain
+itself."
+
+"You think it has a separate existence?" asked Ingrid.
+
+"Of course not," said Vera. "Our subconscious minds are maintaining
+it. It's probably here when we're all asleep."
+
+"No way of telling _that_," said Brunei. "Besides, how can it exist
+when we're asleep, when it doesn't really exist to begin with?"
+
+"Semantics, Ollie, semantics."
+
+Brunei took a bottle of Omnidrene out of his pocket. "Time to charge
+up the old batteries again," he said.
+
+He passed out the pills.
+
+"I notice Marsha is still in her cabin."
+
+"Yeah," said Lazar, "she keeps to herself a lot. No great--"
+
+Just then, Marsha burst into the garden, screaming: "Make it go away!
+Make it go away!"
+
+Behind her slithered a gigantic black snake, with a head as big as a
+horse's, and bulging red eyes.
+
+"I thought we agreed to leave our private hallucinations in our
+cabins," snapped Brunei.
+
+"I tried! I tried! I _don't want_ it around, but it won't go away! Do
+something!"
+
+Ten feet of snake had already entered the garden. The thing seemed
+endless.
+
+"Take it easy," said Lazar. "Let's all concentrate and think it away."
+
+They tried to erase the snake, but it just rolled its big red eyes.
+
+"That won't work," said Vera. "Her subconscious is still fighting us.
+Part of her must _want_ the snake here. We've _all_ got to be together
+to erase it."
+
+Marsha began to cry. The snake advanced another two feet.
+
+"Oh, quiet!" rasped Lazar. "Ollie, do I have your permission to bring
+my dragon into the garden? He'll make short work of the snake."
+
+Brunei scowled. "You and your dragon.... Oh, maybe it'll work."
+
+Instantly, the green dragon was in the garden. But it was no longer
+five feet long and bovine.
+
+It was a good twelve feet long, with cold reptilian eyes and big
+yellow fangs.
+
+It took one look at the snake, opened its powerful jaws, and belched a
+huge tongue of orange flame.
+
+The serpent was incinerated. It disappeared.
+
+Brunei was trembling. "What happened, Lazar?" he said. "That's not the
+same stupid little dragon."
+
+"Hah ... hah...." squeaked Lazar. "He's ... uh ... grown...."
+
+Brunei suddenly noticed that Lazar was ashen. He also noticed that the
+dragon was turning in their direction.
+
+"Get it out of here, Lazar! Get it out of here!"
+
+Lazar nodded. The dragon flickered and went pale, but it was over a
+minute before it disappeared entirely.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Six months out_:
+
+_Things_ wandered the passageways and haunted the cabins. Marsha's
+snake was back. There was Lazar's dragon, which seemed to grow larger
+every day. There was also a basilisk, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat
+with a five-foot wingspread, an old-fashioned red spade-tailed demon
+and other assorted horrors.
+
+Even Oliver Brunei's friendly Saint Bernard had grown to monstrous
+size, turned pale green, and grown large yellow fangs.
+
+Only the Spanish garden in the common room was free of the
+monstrosities. Here, the combined conscious minds of the ten crew
+members were still strong enough to banish the rampaging
+hallucinations.
+
+The ten of them sat around the fountain, which seemed a shade less
+sparkling.
+
+There were even rainclouds in the sky.
+
+"I don't like it," said Bram Daker. "It's getting completely out of
+control."
+
+"So we just have to stay in the garden, that's all," said Brunei. "The
+food's all here, and so is the Omnidrene. And _they_ can't come here."
+
+"Not yet," said Marsha.
+
+They all shuddered.
+
+"What went wrong?" asked Ingrid.
+
+"Nothing," said Donner. "They didn't know what would happen when they
+sent us out, so we can't say they were _wrong_."
+
+"Very comforting," croaked Lazar. "But can someone tell me why we
+can't control _them_ any more?"
+
+"Who knows?" said Brunei. "At least we can keep them out of here.
+That's--"
+
+There was a snuffling at the wall. The head of something like a
+Tyrannosaurus Rex peered over the wall at them.
+
+"Ugh!" said Lin Pey. "I think that's a new one."
+
+The dragon's head appeared alongside the Tyrannosaur's.
+
+"Well, at least _there's_ a familiar face," tittered Linda.
+
+"Very funny."
+
+Marsha screamed. The huge black snake thrust its head through a
+portal.
+
+And the flap of leathery wings could be heard. And the smell of
+sulphur.
+
+"Come on! Come on!" shouted Brunei. "Let's get these things out of
+here!"
+
+After five minutes of intense group concentration, the last of the
+horrors was banished.
+
+"It was a lot harder this time," said Daker.
+
+"There were more of them," said Donner.
+
+"They're getting stronger and bolder."
+
+"Maybe some day they'll break through, and...." Lin Pey let the
+sentence hang. Everyone supplied his own ending.
+
+"Don't be ridiculous!" snapped Brunei. "They're not real. _They can't
+kill us!_"
+
+"Maybe we should stop taking the Omnidrene?" suggested Vera, without
+very much conviction.
+
+"At _this_ point?" said Brunei. He shuddered. "If the garden
+disappeared, and we had nothing but the bare ship for the next fifteen
+and a half years, and we _knew_ it, and at the same time knew that we
+had the Omnidrene to bring it back.... How long do you think we'd hold
+off?"
+
+"You're right," said Vera.
+
+"We just have to stick it out," said Brunei. "Just remember: _They
+can't kill us. They aren't real._"
+
+"Yes," the crew whispered in a tiny, frail voice, "they aren't
+real...."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Seven months out_:
+
+The garden was covered with a gloomy gray cloud layer. Even the
+"weather" was getting harder and harder to control.
+
+The crew of starship Number Thirteen huddled around the fountain,
+staring into the water, trying desperately to ignore the snufflings,
+flappings, wheezes and growls coming from outside the walls. But
+occasionally, a scaly head would raise itself above the wall, or a
+pterodactyl or bat would flap overhead, and there would be violent
+shudders.
+
+"I still think we should stop taking the Omnidrene," said Vera
+Galindez.
+
+"If we stopped taking it," asked Brunei, "which would disappear first,
+_them_ ... _or the garden?_"
+
+Vera grimaced. "But we've got to do something," she said. "We can't
+even make them disappear at all, any more. And it's becoming a full
+time job just to keep them outside the walls."
+
+"And sooner or later," interjected Lazar, "we're _not_ going to be
+strong enough to keep them out...."
+
+"_Brr!_"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"The snake! The snake!" screamed Marsha. "It's coming in again!"
+
+The huge black head was already through a portal.
+
+"Stop the snake, everyone!" yelled Brunei. Eyes were riveted on the
+ugly serpent, in intense concentration.
+
+After five minutes, it was obviously a stalemate. The snake had not
+been able to advance, nor could the humans force it to retreat.
+
+Then smoke began to rise behind the far wall.
+
+"The dragon's burning down the wall!" shrieked Lazar. "Stop him!"
+
+They concentrated on the dragon. The smoke disappeared.
+
+But the snake began to advance again.
+
+"They're too strong!" moaned Brunei. "We can't hold them back."
+
+They stopped the snake for a few moments, but the smoke began to
+billow again.
+
+"They're gonna break through!" screamed Donner. "We can't stop 'em!"
+
+"What are we gonna do?"
+
+"Help!"
+
+Creakings, cracklings, groanings, as the walls began to crack and
+blister and shake.
+
+Suddenly Bram Daker stood up, his dark eyes aflame.
+
+"Only one thing's strong enough!" he bellowed. "Earth! _Earth!_ EARTH!
+Think of Earth! All of you! We're back on Earth. Visualize it, make it
+real, and the monsters'll have to disappear."
+
+"But _where_ on Earth?" said Vera, bewildered.
+
+"The Spaceport!" shouted Brunei. "The Spaceport! We all remember the
+Spaceport."
+
+"We're back on Earth! The Spaceport!"
+
+"Earth!"
+
+"_Earth!_"
+
+"EARTH! EARTH!"
+
+The garden was beginning to flicker. It became red, orange, yellow,
+green, blue, violet, invisible; then back again through the spectrum
+the other way--violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, invisible.
+
+Back and forth, like a pendulum through the spectrum....
+
+Oliver Brunei's head hurt unbearably, he could see the pain on the
+other faces, but he allowed only one thought to fill his
+being--_Earth! The Spaceport! EARTH!_
+
+More and more, faster and faster, the garden flickered, and now it was
+the old common room again, and _that_ was flickering.
+
+Light was flickering, mind was flickering, time, too, seemed to
+flicker....
+
+_Only Earth!_ thought Brunei. Earth doesn't flicker, the Spaceport
+doesn't flicker.
+
+Earth! EARTH!
+
+Now all the flickerings, of color, time, mind and dimensions, were
+coalescing into one gigantic vortex, that was a thing neither of time,
+nor space, nor mind, but all three somehow fused into one....
+
+They're screaming! Brunei thought. Listen to the horrible screams!
+Suddenly he noticed that he, too, was screaming.
+
+The vortex was growing, swirling, undulating, and it, too, began to
+flicker....
+
+There was an unbearable, impossible pain, and....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The sight of starship Number Thirteen suddenly appearing out of
+nowhere, and sitting itself calmly down in the middle of the Spaceport
+was somewhat disconcerting to the Spaceport officials. Especially
+since at the very moment it appeared, and even afterward, they
+continued to have visual and laser contact with its image, over three
+light-months from Earth.
+
+However, the Solar Government itself was much more pragmatic. One
+instant, starship Thirteen had been light-months from Earth, the next
+it was sitting in the Spaceport. Therefore, starship Thirteen had
+exceeded the speed of light somehow. Therefore, it was possible to
+exceed the speed of light, and a thorough examination of the ship and
+its contents would show _how_.
+
+Therefore.... You idiots, throw a security cordon around that ship!
+
+In such matters, the long-conditioned reflexes of the Solar Government
+worked marvelously. Before the air-waves had cooled, two hundred
+heavily armed soldiers had surrounded the ship.
+
+Two hours later, the Solar co-ordinator was on the scene, with ten
+Orders of Sol to present to the returning heroes, and a large
+well-armored vehicle to convey them to laboratories, where they would
+be gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.
+
+An honor guard of two hundred men standing at attention made a pathway
+from the ship's main hatch to the armored carrier, in front of which
+stood the Solar Co-ordinator, with his ten medals.
+
+They opened the hatch.
+
+One, two, five, seven, ten dazed and bewildered "heroes" staggered
+past the honor guard, to face the Co-ordinator.
+
+He opened his mouth to begin his welcoming speech, and start the five
+years of questioning and experiments which would eventually kill five
+of the crew and give Man the secret of faster-than-light drive.
+
+But instead of speaking, he screamed.
+
+So did two hundred heavily armed soldiers.
+
+Because, out of starship Thirteen's main hatch sauntered a twelve-foot
+green dragon, followed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a pterodactyl, a
+vampire bat with a five-foot wingspan, an old-fashioned red,
+spade-tailed demon, and finally, big as a horse's, the pop-eyed head
+of an enormous black serpent....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad
+
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