the ship's computer for company. They have created distractions for themselves: Doolittle, formerly a surfer from Malibu, California, has constructed a musical bottle organ; Talby spends his time in the ship's observation dome, content to watch the universe go by; Boiler obsessively trims his moustache, enjoys smoking cigars, and shoots targets with the ship's emergency laser rifle in a corridor; while Pinback plays practical jokes on the crew members, maintains a video diary, and has adopted a ship's mascot in the form of a mischievous "beachball"-like alien who refuses to stay in a storage room, forcing Pinback to chase it around the ship. With regard to Pinback, he may not actually be "Sgt. Pinback" at all; in his video diary, he states he is liquid fuel specialist Bill Froug, who inadvertently took the "real" Sgt. Pinback's place on the mission. It is unclear, however, whether or not this is a paranoid illusory fiction Sgt Pinback has created, due to his prolonged time working in