hey 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