title: Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry
author:  Ross A. Klein 
description: Ross Klein has taken more than 30 cruises in all parts of the world, comprising over 300 days. An Associate Professor of Social Work at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland, he has written widely on the cruise industry and his previous book, Cruise Ship Blues, caused waves in the industry.
zlib_text: ![](~export~_files/image002.gif)RSV
  
  ACORNA
  
  By Anne McCaffrey
  
  ^Preface
  
  The space/time coordinate system
  
  they used has no relationship to
  
  Earth, our sun, the Milky Way, or
  
  any other point of reference we could use to find
  
  our way around, and in any coordinate system we
  
  use, they're so far off the edge of the chart that
  
  nobody has ever contemplated going there, even
  
  with the proton drive. So let's just say that they
  
  were somewhere between the far side of nowhere
  
  and the near side of here when their time and space
  
  ran out, and what started as a pleasure cruise ship
  
  turned into a death chamber. They are like us in
  
  many ways besides appearance. They didn't want
  
  to die if they could possibly avoid it; if they
  
  couldn't live, then at least they wanted to die with
  
  dignity and peace instead of in a Khievii torture
  
  cell; and they would happily have thrown away life,
  
  dignity and everything else to save their youngling,
  
  who didn't even know what was about to happen
  
  to them.
  
  2