FIRST ANSWERS The clerk simply requested over the laser intercom that the occupants of each room move next door to the room with the next higher number. This left room 1 vacant for the creature from Andromeda. A few days later, when the inn was still filled to capac ity, ten humanoid couples on a parallel-universe tour ar rived at the inn. Each couple had a reservation for a separate room. The inn had, of course, no difficulty taking care of them. The clerk merely moved everybody to a room with a number ten higher than the number of the room they were in. This left rooms 1 through 10 vacant for the ten couples. In a similar manner the inn found rooms for thousands of guests with reservations who arrived during the next twelve days, even though all rooms were occupied when each new guest arrived. On the thirteenth day, however, an unusual event oc curred for the first time in the inn’s history. A convention had been scheduled for science fiction buffs from all the parallel worlds associated with the Black Tube, and an infi nite number of fans showed up. Every single one had a reservation. At first the clerk was puzzled over how to accommo date such a large set, but one of the fans, a youngster who somewhat resembled a purple ostrich, had been studying Cantorian set theory in school. “It’s ridiculously simple,” he said to the kangaroo. “All you have to do is . . What suggestion did he make?
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