Larry Niven's "How the Heroes Die": Troubles of an all-male expedition to Mars

This story is set as a sequel to Niven's "Eye of an Octopus", where the first human expedition to Mars digs up a grave & finds evidence of local intelligent life. This story's second expedition is dispatched to make contact. A ship has dumped the 15-member crew near the site of first landing; another one will later take them back.

Because of a crime plot, momentum carries you through the story. No boredom.

Story summary.

Explained as due to the long journey & all male crew - Lew Harness makes homosexual advances towards John Carter. In the ensuing trouble, John ends up killing Lew. Expedition includes Lew's brother, Alf Harness.

While chased by other crew members, John escapes by running his Marsbuggy through the walls of the camp ("bubbletown") - starting a major oxygen leak & endangering the life of all crew members. No one is killed, leak is fixed, & he is chased by Alf & Rufus Doolittle.

Leader of the expedition, Lieutenant Major Acchael Shute, doesn't like the idea of all 3 Marsbuggies they have away from camp; he calls back Rufus. Alf doesn't leave the chase.

Most of the story is of Alf chasing John, & their conversations over radio. Running out of fuel is not a problem; buggy is "powered by a Litton battery holding a tenth as much energy as the original Hiroshima bomb". But limited stock of oxygen is a problem.

John is carrying 13x4 hours oxygen supplies, two 4-hour tanks more than Alf. John is relying on Alf turning back at a time where he can get safely back to camp before his oxygen runs out; he then plans to sneak behind him, destroy the bubbletown of camp to kill the crew while securing his own oxygen supplies, & await next ship from earth with a made up story of an accident: "how a meteorite had touched down at a corner of the dome, how John Carter had been outside at the time, the only man in a suit."

Only, Alf has something else in mind. His halfway point has run out, & he is not giving up the chase! Then the plan is revealed. One of them will have to kill the other; other will then have enough oxygen between the two vehicles to safely go back to camp!

As part of climax, John ends up killing Alf. Only he also will die on his way back. Alf had hidden 3 tanks where he could find them again - just for this eventuality! So John will not have enough oxygen for return trip. But John's vehicle will reach the camp with his dead body.

In between the chase, we get glimpses of local Martians. And a reassertion that oxygen is poison for them.

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "Breaking Strain": Another story where only one of the two men can live because of limited oxygen supplies. But everything else about the plot is different.

Fact sheet.

"How the Heroes Die", short story, review
First published: Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1966.
Rating: A
Series: "Eye of an Octopus", "How the Heroes Die" (A), "At the Bottom of a Hole" (B).

Eric Frank Russell's "Mindwarpers" aka "With a Strange Device" (novel): Cold War spy thriller

This is not quite a typical Russell - at least when compared to his other stories I have read.

It has a somewhat tedious beginning; I actually used to avoid picking it up - though when in hand, it was easy enough to read. Story really picks up about half way through, & the rest is unputdownable. But even the later half is not very original - at least not now. You must have read innumerable spy stories of the ilk.

This story also has a lot in common with Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged": men of brains keep retiring or vanishing, making authorities nervous. There is a man named Reardon. The hero of the story is a metallurgist. Though the government is good here, unlike in Rand's. Note that Rand's book came a decade before Russell's.

Story summary.
I don't recall the countries named, but it's obvious the story is US vs USSR. And especially near end, it is obvious that US is good & USSR is bad!

Story begins in a US government weapons research facility. Russell must be a prophet - for I see some of the most annoying parts of this establishment in some modern software companies in Bangalore: color coded interiors (though they don't convey status or access control hierarchy in software companies); heavily segmented interiors with strict access barriers for employees (in software companies, barriors usually are to meet intellectual property protection needs when the same company services multiple clients - but they always tend to annoy employees).

Anyway, one fine day, an otherwise stable employee quits for no reason. He has no alternate job, & doesn't have a plan. He refuses to give any reasons.

Soon, there is a flood. From this facility, as well as many others across the country. Usually, the quitters are highly skilled & emotionally stable specialists. Some simply fail to turn up, others formally quit. Most soon leave the country; some start a new life in isolated small towns doing inconspicuous things like running a hardware store or tending to land.

Government is worried, & is convinced their is a plan behind this: "there are two ways of weakening the enemy. You can acquire his brains for your own use or, if that proves impossible, you can deprive him of the use of them."

That is when Richard Bransome, a metallurgist at the facility, with a wife & kids, begins to behave oddly. Government puts an agent on his tail - one Joseph Reardon, of Military Intelligence.

Richard has been having nightmares. After overhearing a conversation of two men in a coffee shop, he remembers a crime he committed 2 decades ago; he had ruthlessly killed a woman named Arline Lafarge in a tiny town called Burleston - though he will recall the details over a period of time. The overheard conversation conveyed a piece of gossip that the bones of the woman had been accidentally discovered recently at the place Richard had buried her.

Richard has a feeling he will soon be arrested as investigation proceeds. Other odd events have been happening around him - like a man who looks like plainclothes cop tailing him.

Eventually, he cannot take it anymore. Gives a story to office, another at home, & vanishes. Only, Reardon is still on his tail.

He spends a while in Burleston trying to discretely dig the level of police investigation. Over a large part of the story, he will discover that there was no murder, nor any bones discovered. He has been chasing ghosts of his own mind.

Anger makes him go for some amateur sleuthing - to discover the culprits who planted the ghosts in his mind. He will eventually lead the tailing Reardon to enemy spy ring & their ingenious weapon - a hypnosis machine that can plant chosen memories in the brain of a doped man. Turns out, Burleston was kidnapped, drugged, & given the treatment in a way he could discover only much later - even now, he has his memory blank for some 2 hours on a particular day.

Fact sheet.
"With a Strange Device" aka "Mindwarpers", novel, review
First published: 1965
Rating: A
Related: All stories of Eric Frank Russell.

Eric Frank Russell & Maurice G Hugi's "Mechanical Mice": An inventor doesn't know what he has invented!

Even this most fantastic story from Russell is so easy to follow & absorbing. A lot of modern sf'ish fantasy authors can take useful lessons.

Story summary.

Dan Burman, 40, is a very rich inventor. 12 years ago, he had invented "Burman Bullfrog Battery" - the greatest known power source for small portable devices. Now he has invented a new thing - after spending many years & huge sums of money; only he doesn't know what the little device he has invented is supposed to do!

He seeks help of Bill - the narrator, a press reporter & a friend of Dan. During this discussion, Dan reveals that he is not the real inventor either of his famous battery or this new device that does god knows what. He stole the design from future!

His only genuine invention is a kind of crystal ball he calls "psychophone" - a virtual-reality time-travel machine that can take you to future - within your mind; not physically. And not very precisely either - say to an accuracy worse than a decade. Since it is impossible to go back to same time & place, a single session is all you have to learn what you can about anything specific.

This is how the battery came into being. And the new machine.

That is when the new machine - sitting in the same room - automatically comes into action. Arms stretch out to pick expensive precision machinery like Dan's wrist watch. Machine appears to be doing something inside, but what! Eventually, they lock the lab, & go home for the night.

That is the night the terror begins in the neighborhood. Burglery in a big jewelery shop, & a precision instrument maker. Several cats dead in the streets - ruthlessly butchered.

Dan will discover later next day what he has manufactured: a robot programmed to survive above all else, & capable of giving birth to children! The brood has been snatching food, & killing whatever comes in the way.

Great action, & ultimate destruction of the robots.

Collected in.

1. Raymond J Healy & J Francis McComas (Eds)' "Adventures in Time and Space".
   

See also.

1. Other stories on essentially the same theme - a "minor toy" from an advanced civilization somehow ends up in human space, causing puzzlement & chaos: Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "The Twonky" & "Mimsy Were the Borogoves"; & C M Kornbluth's "The Little Black Bag".
2. Pat Forde's "In Spirit": A very different story, but uses a time travel device similar in concept to psychophone. And uses it to move to past - something psychophone cannot do.
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science Fiction, January 1941
Rating: A
Authorship of this story is complex; see this note.
Related: All stories of Eric Frank Russell.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.

Eric Frank Russell's "Jay Score": A passenger spaceship is on its way to fall into the Sun!

This thriller is a very good variant of Arthur Clarke's "Breaking Strain": a spaceship on earth to Venus voyage is hit with a tiny meteor. In Clarke's version, it's a cargo ship, & air is limited - making that a survival problem. In Russell's version, it's a passenger ship, & loses machines that control propulsion system - so the ship is about to be sucked into the Sun.

Story summary.
Space ship Upskadaska City aka Upsydaisy is headed for a human settlement on Venus with 8 passengers. And a crew drawn from at least 4 races:

1. "white Terrestrials to tend the engines".
2. Black terrestrials as medics "because for some reason no one can explain why no Negro gets gravity bends or space nausea."
3. Ten-tentacled martians. "Every outside repair gang is composed of Martians who use very little air, are tiptop metal workers and fairly immune to cosmic ray burn."
4. Emergency pilot Jay Score, a terrestrial who is neither black nor white.

Story is narrated by ship's Seargent-at-Arms. The accident described happens in the year 2270, & will eventually be known as "McNulty's Miracle Move"; McNulty is captain.

Jay Score is fairly new to the job, but quickly becomes known as competent & reliable crew member. But there are two specific actions that put him in a class of his own.

First is when the meteor hits. A part of the ship loses air, trapping an engineer beyond hope. It's Jay's heroics that save the engineer. The hit also damaged the ship's propulsion system that actually precipitates the crisis - the ship is headed for the Sun.

Propulsion system is quickly fixed, but how to get out of Sun's gravitational drag? I didn't quite catch the technicalities: "The idea is to build up all the velocity that can be got and at the same time to angle into the path of an elongated, elliptical orbit resembling that of a comet. In theory, the vessel might then skim close to the Sun so supremely fast that it would swing pendulum like far out to the opposite side of the orbit whence it came... The only point about which we have serious doubts is that of whether we can survive at our nearest to the Sun."

Tension in story is provided by this nearness to Sun - for four dangerous hours. Everyone will hide in the ship's "cold room", but someone needs to be in the cockpit! Jay Score, of course. When the time is past, everyone in the cold room has passed out but not fatally.

When Jay is retrieved, he is blind & mute, but alive in cockpit that has lost its air.

We will learn the secret of Jay's survival late in the story. Very good ending.

Collected in.

1. "Major Ingredients" (ed Rick Katze). 

Fact sheet.
First published: Astounding Science Fiction, May 1941
Rating: A
Series: Jay Score (A), Mechanistria (B), Symbiotica (B), Mesmerica (B)
Related: All stories of Eric Frank Russell.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.

See Also.

1. Robert Heinlein's "Gentlemen, Be Seated". Shared plot element is: to survive an accident in space, protagonists must expose their body physically to elements guaranteed to kill them. Protagonists survive in both stories.
2. Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth": A spaceman loses eye sight & later life when performing valiant action during an accident in space.

Robert Heinlein's "Gentlemen, Be Seated": An accident on moon

This fast paced story is of an accident on moon - an underground pressurized passage losing its air due to a rocket crash on surface. And the superhuman effort & novel technique that saved the three men trapped.

Story summary.
Told in first person by Jack Arnold, a journalist who is visiting Luna City on moon.

There is some construction work going on - building pressured underground tunnels. One Mr Knowles is Jack's guide, & takes him down a tunnel where some sections have been completed & pressured, but other end i still being built. Because they are going through pressured parts, they don't take space suites along.

Near the end of the completed parts, they meet a gang of workmen returning from the day's work. Knowles knows them; enlists one called Konski to provide some expert guidence for the visitor.

They are in the pressured tunnel section still undergoing testing when there is a leak. Chamber already has some kind of balloons that automatically go to the point of leak to fix it - only the leak is too big for them. Lights go out, then heating. Knowles is sent to get help - returns because next section has also lost pressure.

Title of the story comes from the novel way they fix leak till help comes - and almost die. Konski & Jack take turns sitting on the point of leak after placing part of the space suite Konski was carrying!

Fact sheet.
Gentlemen, Be Seated, short story, review
Rating: B
First published: May 1948
Publication history.

See also.

1. Eric Frank Russell's "Jay Score" (1941): A shared plot element is: to survive an accident in space, protagonists must expose their body physically to elements guaranteed to kill them.