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this film."
    Yoki shook her head. "Don't forget, hon, this thing was probably made before they even had computers. At least a hundred years before the First Martian Colony."
    Mahree settled down to watch, giggling. The tensions of the day made make-believe a refuge, and the audience eagerly plunged into the "movies"
    as Rob cal ed them, hissing the vil ains, cheering the heroes, laughing uproariously at the comic elements. In addition, the films were rife with unintentional humor, since they contained so many anachronisms and scientific errors.
    "I can't believe they were that dumb!" Mahree gasped, her stomach muscles sore from whooping. "They didn't even know sound doesn't carry in vacuum!
    And they thought you could pilot a spaceship by the seat of your pants in a fight, not to mention firing weapons using line-of-sight--" Her voice failed her and she laughed till she choked.
    "Hey, have a heart," Jerry said. "People had never been out in space when these were made. Pass the popcorn, please."
    "Sure they had," Ray Drummond argued. "This was made at least a hundred years after the OldNorthAm Civil War, so they had begun early orbital flights.
    What year did Armstrong land on the Moon?"
    "1970?" Yoki guessed.
    "July 20, 1969," Mahree said.
    "Shhhhh!" Rob admonished good-naturedly. "Now comes the scene where our heroes get their just deserts."
    "Well, that was fun," Yoki said, a few minutes later. "Even though that presentation scene was pretty sappy. My favorite was the big hairy guy."
    "You think that scene was sappy, you ought to see the one at the end of the third film," Rob said.
    Yoki stood up and stretched. "Well, I'm still game . . . still wide awake. Got any more movies, Rob?"
    "Sure," he said, sorting through his cassettes. "Make some more popcorn while I find one, will you? But in defense of my prizes, I've got to tell you that you're being too hard on them. Educated people during that time period knew that sound doesn't
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    travel in a vacuum, but the filmmakers included those 'sound effects'
    because they felt they made the work more dramatic. Be fair, folks. How often do you catch modern holo-vid programs doing the same thing--
    sacrificing scientific accuracy for convenience or drama? All the time!"
    "At least our spaceships look like spaceships," Ray insisted.
    "That's because when holo-vid producers want to show a spaceship, they don't have to build one from scratch. They can just vid a real one doing whatever they want the audience to see," Rob said. "These early filmmakers had to design these ships, and then construct them--or at least models of them. And it's not as though they were astronomical engineers, either."
    A moment later he pulled a cassette out of the file with an exclamation of triumph. "Ah, ha! Wait till you see what happens to the crew of this freighter!
    Try laughing through this one!"
    He dimmed the lights and the credits began to roll.
    Mahree found herself riveted, despite the whooshing noises the spaceship made. Her muscles tensed and jerked as she unconsciously tried to help the hapless crew, trapped aboard the doomed vessel. Adrenaline surged through her veins as she watched the heroine fling herself through the dark, dank passageways.
    "No ..." someone groaned softly a few seats away. "Forget the damned cat, just get out of there!"
    Mahree nervously caressed Sekhmet, who lay purring in her lap. She wasn't the only one to spill her popcorn during the film's climax.
    "Hey, Simon," joked Ray Drummond when Rob finally activated the lights, "I wouldn't want to encounter one of those babies belowdecks, would you?"
    Mahree glanced at the Bio Officer. Viorst's eyes looked glassy, and he didn't respond to the jibe, only licked his lips repeatedly.
    All around them, people were silently getting up and leaving. "Hey," Rob protested, "wait a minute, guys! We've got to give the good aliens equal time.
    Here's The Star Makers, one of my favorites ... and The Day the Earth Stood Still, arguably the