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Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, October 1984. The story can also be found in the anthology The Science Fiction Yearbook (1985) edited by John F. Carr, Jim Baen and Jerry Pournelle.

Sea Venture, CV for short, is the largest ocean-going vessel ever built by man. It is not a ship but a huge sea habitat housing a scientific research station, an entire city of two thousand permanent residents and a thousand passengers.

For some, CV is the vacation dream of a lifetime; for others, a vision of man's conquest of the seas; for two men it becomes the arena for a deadly game of cat and mouse.

But for one, CV is something else: a place to stalk its next victim. It is not human, it is not even of Earthly origin. To be touched by it is deadly.

What important are the hopes and dreams, fears and schemes of the people of Sea Venture when they are threatened by a force that could destroy all of human civilization?

McNulty's Disease has escaped the Sea Venture and is now epidemic on land. The disease kills only a few of its victims... but no one knows what long-term effects it has on those who survive. For the public's safety, the U.S. government sets up a giant internment camp on the old CV herself, and attempts to find as many survivors as possible to keep safely on board the ship. Fortunately, Julie Prescott has a most resourceful and clever husband (he used to be a high-priced hired killer) who doesn't want his wife locked up forever. So he sets himself up against the entire government bureaucracy - with remarkable results.

Plague... or paradise?

2005 A.D. Six years have passed since the alien Symbionts invaded Sea Venture, Earth's largest ocean habitat. Now, despite the government's best attempts at quarantine, the Symbionts have spread all over the planet, infecting the bodies of both humans and animals - and slowly, subtly forcing mankind in new directions.

Once possessed by the Symbionts, men and women become smarter, wiser - or else they die. War and violence are punished by instant execution from within. A new era dawns, but there are those who would turn back the millennium, who will stop at nothing to prevent... A Reasonable World.