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A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad (Analog, January 1973) opens with a very wealthy Japanese businessman called Mr Ito arriving in the office of Mr Harris, an American antiquities dealer in a near future USA. We find out in their subsequent conversation, after Mr Ito has gifted Harris a priceless and antique Grateful Dead poster, that Mr Ito is looking to purchase a “major American artefact” for his Kyoto estate (this is to impress his culturally superior and snobbish in-laws). Harris’s eyes light up (“This was the dream of a lifetime! A sucker with a bottomless bank account placing himself trustingly in my tender hands!”), and they are soon in a jumper touring New York.
The first exhibit that Harris shows Mr Ito confirms earlier hints about this future America’s decline:

I took her down to three hundred and brought her in toward the Statue of Liberty at a slow drift, losing altitude imperceptibly as we crept up on the Headless Lady, so that by the time we were just off shore, we were right down on the deck. It was a nice touch to make the goods look more impressive—manipulating the perspectives so that the huge, green, headless statue, with its patina of firebomb soot, seemed to rise up out of the bay like a ruined colossus as we floated toward it.
Mr. Ito betrayed no sign of emotion. He stared straight ahead out the bubble without so much as a word or a flicker of gesture.
“As you are no doubt aware, this is the famous Statue of Liberty,” I said. “Like most such artifacts, it is available to any buyer who will display it with proper dignity. Of course, I would have no trouble convincing the Bureau of National Antiquities that your intentions are exemplary in this regard.”

We learn that insurrectionists are responsible for the damage before Mr Ito declines to purchase it (“The symbolism of this broken statue is quite saddening, representing as it does a decline from your nation’s past greatness.”) Mr Ito concludes that it would be an insult for him to display it at his home.
We see more of this ravaged future America as they fly over a large area razed by bombing en route to their second stop. On reaching their destination (the Yankees stadium, Mr Ito is a keen baseball fan) they go inside:

[I took] the jumper out of its circling pattern and floating it gently up over the lip of the old ballpark, putting it on hover at roof-level over what had once been short center field. Very slowly, I brought the jumper down toward the tangle of tall grass, shrubbery, and occasional stunted trees that covered what had once been the playing field.
It was like descending into some immense, ruined, roofless cathedral. As we dropped, the cavernous triple-decked grandstands—rotten wooden seats rich with moss and fungi, great overhanging rafters concealing flocks of chattering birds in their deep glowering shadows—rose to encircle the jumper in a weird, lost grandeur.
By the time we touched down, Ito seemed to be floating in his seat with rapture. “So beautiful!” he sighed. “Such a sense of history and venerability. Ah, Mr. Harris, what noble deeds were done in this Yankee Stadium in bygone days! May we set foot on this historic playing field?”
“Of course, Mr. Ito.” It was beautiful. I didn’t have to say a word; he was doing a better job of selling the moldy, useless heap of junk to himself than I ever could.

Mr Ito leads Mr Harris on a two hour guided tour of the stadium but, at the end of their time, and much to Harris’s concealed frustration, Ito again declines, this time because his in-laws regard baseball as an imported American barbarity. The pair’s final stop, the now-disused UN building, then goes badly wrong for Harris when a visibly angry Mr Ito tells him bluntly what he thinks of the UN (“I remind you that the United Nations was born as an alliance of the nations which humiliated Japan in a most unfortunate war, etc.”). Mr Ito demands to be taken back to the office but, as Harris is contemplating the loss of a multi-million yen sale on the way back, Mr Ito excitedly sees a dilapidated Brooklyn Bridge below them. With the thought of the old joke about con-men in mind Harris can’t resist asking Mr Ito, “You want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?” When Mr Ito answers in the affirmative, Harris replies, with completely sincerity, “I can think of no one more worthy of that honor than your esteemed self, Mr. Ito”.

The last part of the story, which takes place four months later (spoiler), sees the tables turned on Harris when Mr Ito sends him a video of the relocated bridge:

Before me was a heavily wooded mountain which rose into twin peaks of austere, dark-gray rock. A tall waterfall plunged gracefully down the long gorge between the two pinnacles to a shallow lake at the foot of the mountain, where it smashed onto a table of flat rock, generating perpetual billows of soft mist which turned the landscape into something straight out of a Chinese painting. Spanning the gorge between the two peaks like a spiderweb directly over the great falls, its stone towers anchored to islands of rock on the very lip of the precipice, was the Brooklyn Bridge, its ponderous bulk rendered slim and graceful by the massive scale of the landscape. The stone had been cleaned and glistened with moisture, the cables and roadbed were overgrown with lush green ivy. The holo had been taken just as the sun was setting between the towers of the bridge, outlining it in rich orange fire, turning the rising mists coppery, and sparkling in brilliant sheets off the falling water.
It was very beautiful.

Mr Ito has also sent what Harris thinks is a single gold-painted brick from the bridge—but he soon realises that it isn’t a gold-painted brick but a solid gold one. Harris is left wondering if Mr Ito is trying to tell him something.
This story’s culture clash interactions, cynical observation, and interesting setting makes for an entertaining tale, and the ending makes it more than that. The one weakness the piece has developed with age is its idea of an ascendant Japan—nowadays Mr Ito would probably have to be replaced with a Chinese character. Who knows what the situation will be in another fifty years.
**** (Very Good). 6,150 words. Story link.

Five Fathoms of Pearls by James H. Beard

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Five Fathoms of Pearls by James H. Beard (Unknown, December 1939) opens with Peter Hume staring at a wall in his house as if he can see something there. He subsequently goes out and rides through the wind and rain and dark to an inn, where he finds a cousin of his called Allen Dorn. Hume tells Dorn to return to the house with him, a property that was once owned by a witch, Elsie Dorn, a grandmother to both men.
Inside the house Dorn sees that the wall which Hume was staring at has a window which shows a sundial in the distance illuminated by moonlight—quite a different view from the other window in the room that shows the rain that they have just ridden through. While all this is unfolding we also learn about (a) a ship that the cousins pirated for gold and whose skipper they drowned, (b) a note from Grandmother Elsie about a chest at the foot of a sundial containing a string of pearls five fathoms long, and (c) instructions to look after a relative called Harriet Dorn, or suffer her vengeance (needless to say, neither of the men have done so).
The final part of the story sees the two climb through the window to get the chest but, during their journey, they see two dead girls from the ship pass by on a lane before seeing the cutlass wearing captain. The captain stares at the men but is scared off by the returning girls. By now the men have recovered the pearls and flee when the girls approach and touch them. Dorn falls but Hume makes it to the window. Then (spoiler), Dorn shoots Hume so he won’t be stranded outside the window. When Dorn reaches the window Hume uses his remaining strength to stab him.
There are too many moving parts here for such a short story (the pirating of the ship, the supernatural window, Harriet Dorn, etc.), and the ending is too abrupt. I’d also add that the men’s downfall is down to their own distrust and has little to do with the vengeful dead grandmother.
* (Mediocre). 3,900 words. Story link.

Johnny on the Spot by Frank Belknap Long Jr

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Johnny on the Spot by Frank Belknap Long Jr. (Unknown, December 1939) starts with the hard-boiled narrator describing his involvement with another man in a fatal shooting in an alley. The narrator then hides out in a dance hall where he overhears a ruthless older blonde telling a younger woman she is going to take her boyfriend from her. The man later dances with the blonde, who eventually (spoiler) realises that the man is Death. At this point we realise that his involvement with the death in the alley was his presence (“in the end I meet up with practically everyone”).
A slight, one-shot piece—but effective enough.
** (Average). 1100 words. Story link.

The Scalar Intercepts by Michael Cassutt

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Scalar Intercepts by Michael Cassutt (Asimov’s SF, January-February 2024) is a brief bit of ideation more than a story, and one which sees an AI report back to other AIs about the seven hundred or so humans left alive on Earth (there had been a past conflict between the two). The AI then reveals a discovery:

My research shows that, in addition to these kinetic processes, Objects possess a consciousness of their own. Yes, the Sun, other stars, the major planets including our own, and minor planets above a certain mass, are beings as self-aware and intelligent as any we know.
Organics and even Agents like us reside on the short or micro side ofthe lifespan scale. These space-based beings are on the macro side, living millions of years, and their communications take place at such a slow rate—one bit a year, for example—that I have chosen to call them Scalar Sentiences.
My apparently radical discovery, based on extensive analysis and translation of the Scalar intercepts, a process that has consumed energy for the last four hundred and thirty years, confirms that Scalars are hostile to our existence. p. 161

The piece ends with the news (spoiler) that the Scalars have sent asteroid hurtling towards Earth and the AIs will not survive.
* (Mediocre). 1050 words.

The Adherence by Jeffrey Ford

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Adherence by Jeffrey Ford (Asimov’s SF, January-February 2024)1 begins with an old man called Phil meeting a long lost female acquaintance called Dierdre in “The Crumble”. As they talk we learn that Phil lost his wife because of the effect of ubiquitous cheap products produced by a company called Adherent Corp.:

“She disintegrated.”
“Oh, my god, I’ve heard about that. Did you guys go in for all that cheap stuff?”
“I’m embarrassed to say it, but yeah. We had scads of it. It was just so fuckin cheap,” he said. “Couldn’t see spending top dollar on a bed frame or dresser when you could get either for a couple of bucks. Come on, a five-dollar television. You can’t beat it. We had everything.”
“I read that if you have a lot of the stuff from Adherent Corp., that it can set up a resonance field in your house,” said Dierdre.
“Not only that, but if there’s someone living there who’s suffering from depression, the particular atomic resonance of the victims of that disease can act as a catalyst, weakening the atomic bonds that hold together Adherent’s flimsy crap. The resonance of their merchandise disintegrating in turn affects the atomic bonds of the stricken, like Lily. One afternoon, in early autumn, when a cold breeze lifted the curtain and came through the screen of our bedroom window, I was walking down the hall, and the door was open. Lily was folding damp clothes from the half-assed dryer, and humming the song ‘Three Little Words.’ Just like that, she turned into mist, and that mist kept her form for a moment until the wind rolled through the room and dispersed her.”
“How long until you realized that having all that cheap stuff wasn’t worth it?”
“It took me a few days to wake up to the fact of what happened. I mean, back in the day, when we met, when we got married, who had any clue that someday, if you lived long enough, you might see your spouse vanish like the Easter Ghost. But eventually, yeah, it was clear we’d made our world from whatever tawdry substance went into making all of Adherent’s fine products. In the process it cost Lily her life.” p. 66

After this unlikely dollop of explanium/anti-materialism, the pair go to Deirdre’s house. There she tells him about Ronaldo, her ex, who is part of a religious cult called the Easterners. Apparently the “Easter Ghost” materialises at their services and has been known to reincarnate vanished people.
The last part of the story (spoiler) sees Deirdre arrange to have Ronaldo and the Easter Ghost come to her apartment. After they arrive (the Easter Ghost wears a three-piece suit of green and yellow, holds a stalk of yellow gladiolas, and floats a foot above the floor) Phil agrees to pay a thousand bucks to have his wife brought back. The Easter Ghost whizzes around the kitchen while Phil thinks of her, and then he wakes at a cash machine with Deirdre and Ronaldo. After they shake him down for the money he goes home to find his wife in his apartment. They make love but, after they finish, Phil discovers she is an Adherent Corp. copy.
This is a strange, dream-like story that doesn’t amount to much. Presumably it is making some sort of point about materialism, but what that might be is unclear (other than the obvious observation everyone makes about materialism).
* (Mediocre). 3,600 words.

1. The last sentence doesn’t have a full stop: “She put her arms out to him and tried to say his name, but in the jostling, her speakers had shorted”—I don’t know if this is intentional, poor proofing, or whether there is missing text.

The Man Who Came Early by Poul Anderson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Man Who Came Early1 by Poul Anderson (F&SF, June 1956) opens with the narrator, a late 10th Century Icelander/Viking called Ospak Ulfsson, telling a visiting Christian priest about a strange man he once came across. He tells how he and his clansmen found the strangely dressed man on the beach and how, after questioning him, they discovered that the man was Sergeant Gerald Roberts, an MP in the United States Army who had slipped through time:

“I was crossing the street, it was a storm, and there was a crash and then I stood on the beach and the city was gone!”
“He’s mad,” said Sigurd, backing away. “Be careful . . . if he starts to foam at the mouth, it means he’s going berserk.”
“Who are you?” babbled the stranger. “What are you doing in those clothes? Why the spears?”
“Somehow,” said Helgi, “he does not sound crazed—only frightened and bewildered. Something evil has happened to him.”
“I’m not staying near a man under a curse!” yelped Sigurd, and started to run away.
“Come back!” I bawled. “Stand where you are or I’ll cleave your louse-bitten head!”
That stopped him, for he had no kin who would avenge him; but he would not come closer. Meanwhile the stranger had calmed down to the point where he could at least talk evenly.
“Was it the aitchbomb?” He asked. “Has the war started?”
He used that word often, aitchbomb, so I know it now, though unsure of what it means. It seems to be a kind of Greek fire. As for the war, I knew not which war he meant, and told him so.
“There was a great thunderstorm last night,” I added. “And you say you were out in one too. Perhaps Thor’s hammer knocked you from your place to here.”  p. 6-7

The rest of the story mostly tells of Roberts’ (unsuccessful) attempts to fit into this society, which begin with him helping to sacrifice a horse by shooting it in the head with his service pistol. Ulfsson is not impressed however, “as the beast quivered and dropped with a hole blown through its skull, wasting the brains.” Matters do not improve with Roberts’ subsequent attempts to repair two spearheads (he ruins them and almost sets the forge on fire) or mend a nearby bridge (he cannot master the primitive carpentry tools). Roberts manages to partially redeem himself by winning a wrestling match with one of the warriors by using his Judo skills, but a further suggestion about manufacturing a cannon and gunpowder are rebuffed:

Gerald said something about making a gun like his own. It would have to be bigger, a cannon he called it, and could sink ships and scatter armies. He would need the help of smiths, and also various stuffs. Charcoal was easy, and sulfur could be found in the volcano country, I suppose, but what is this saltpeter?
Also, being suspicious by now, I questioned him closely as to how he would make such a thing. Did he know just how to mix the powder? No, he admitted. What size would the gun have to be? When he told me—at least as long as a man—I laughed and asked him how a piece that size could be cast or bored, even if we could scrape together that much iron. This he did not know either.
“You haven’t the tools to make the tools to make the tools,” he said. I don’t know what he meant by that.
“God help me, I can’t run through a thousand years of history all by myself.”  p. 16

It’s hard not to see the above passage as a direct rebuttal of the premise of L. Sprague de Camp’s novel Lest Darkness Fall—whose can-do narrator produces a constant stream of inventions to prevent the onset of the Dark Ages in sixth century Rome. (And de Camp’s hero also goes back in time during a lightning storm.)
The final part of the story (spoiler) details a fateful boat trip: Roberts is no sailor; his suggestions for a bigger ship with different sails, a keel and cabins are picked apart; and one of the other men’s open contempt for Roberts ends in violence when Roberts challenges the man, Ketill, to a fight. Roberts quickly finds out that they won’t be using fists but swords and shields and then, during the fight, he barely holds his own. After being wounded multiple times, Roberts draws his pistol and shoots Ketill in the head.
The aftermath of this killing provides a fascinating insight into the customs of the time: an allegation of witchcraft is made; payment of weregild to Ketill’s kin is suggested; and Ulfsson’s daughter (who has a crush on Roberts) asks her father to pay it. This then leads Ketill’s father (who is also on the voyage) to ask if Ulfsson’s family stands with Roberts. If so, that will mean a blood feud between the two familes. Ulfsson, fearing his kin’s death (especially his son) in any later fighting, withdraws his protection from Roberts and tells him that the Thing (a Viking council) will decide on the matter at midsummer but he had best leave Iceland before then. Roberts departs into the darkness.
There is a postscript where Ulfsson tells the priest that Roberts was later found at another settlement but, because he did not tell them of the killing, they expel him when Ketill’s kin track him down:

At the end, when they had him trapped, his weapon gave out on him. Then he took up a dead man’s sword and defended himself so valiantly that Ulf Hjalmarsson has limped ever since. It was well done, as even his foes admitted; they are an eldritch race in the United States, but they do not lack manhood.
When he was slain, his body was brought back. For fear of the ghost, he having perhaps been a warlock, it was burned, and all he had owned was laid in the fire with him. That was where I lost the knife he had given me. The barrow stands out on the moor, north of here, and folk shun it though the ghost has not walked. Now, with so much else happening, he is slowly being forgotten.
And that is the tale, priest, as I saw it and heard it. Most men think Gerald Samsson [Roberts] was crazy, but I myself believe he did come from out of time, and that his doom was that no man may ripen a field before harvest season.  p. 23

This is a very good piece, both for its take on a man out of time and also for its impressive authenticity which latter, through the voice of Ospak Ulfsson, firmly puts you not only in the society of that period, but in the head of one of its inhabitants.
**** (Very Good). 10,300 words. Story link.

1. I think A Man Out of Time would have been a better title as it would have worked in three ways: (a) Roberts physically leaves his own time; (b) he is unable to integrate into that society; and (c) he ends up dying prematurely.

Track 12 by J. G. Ballard

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Track 12 by J. G. Ballard (New Worlds #70, April 1958) opens with Maxted listening to a sound Sheringham is playing to him through headphones. When Maxted fails to guess what the sound is—:

‘Time’s up,’ Sheringham cut in. ‘A pin dropping.’ He took the three-inch disc off the player, and angled it into its sleeve. ‘In actual fall, that is, not impact. We used a fifty-foot shaft and eight microphones. I thought you’d get that one.’  p. 63

The men take a break and go outside for a drink. We learn more about this new science of microsonics—very quiet sounds hugely amplified—and, as the story develops, we also discover that Maxted has been having an extra-marital relationship with Sheringham’s wife.
Maxted is waiting for a confrontation about this latter matter but, before one occurs, he starts to feel cold and mentions this to Sheringham. Sheringham tells him to stay where he is and goes to fetch the final recording.
Maxted’s condition continues to deteriorate, and it soon becomes apparent that (spoiler) Sherringham has poisoned him:

He strolled leisurely around the patio, scrutinizing Maxted from several angles. Evidently satisfied, he sat down on the table. He picked up the siphon and swirled the contents about. ‘Chromium cyanate. Inhibits the coenzyme system controlling the body’s fluid balances, floods hydroxyl ions into the bloodstream. In brief, you drown. Really drown, that is, not merely suffocate as you would if you were immersed in an external bath. However, I mustn’t distract you.’
He inclined his head at the speakers. Being fed into the patio was a curiously muffled spongy noise, like elastic waves lapping in a latex sea. The rhythms were huge and ungainly, overlaid by the deep leaden wheezing of a gigantic bellows. Barely audible at first, the sounds rose until they filled the patio and shut out the few traffic noises along the highway.
‘Fantastic, isn’t it?’ Sheringham said. [. . .] ‘These are 30-second repeats, 400 microsones, amplification one thousand. I admit I’ve edited the track a little, but it’s still remarkable how repulsive a beautiful sound can become. You’ll never guess what this was.’  p. 65-66

Sheringham then reveals his knowledge of Maxted’s liason—there are microphones all around the patio, an area that the couple used for one of their liaisons—and he continues to goad Maxted until finally revealing that he is drowning in a kiss.
This story doesn’t really lend itself to a convincing synopsis but Ballard successfully combines the two disparate story elements (the new science of microsonics and a cuckolded husband seeking revenge) with the almost poetic idea of drowning in a kiss. If that latter image/thought doesn’t appeal then I suspect you will not like it as much as I did.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 1,850 words. Story link.

Skirmish by Clifford D. Simak

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Skirmish by Clifford D. Simak (Amazing, December 1950) opens with a journalist called Joe Crane arriving early at his newsroom. After he realises that his alarm clock must have been an hour fast (this will prove significant later), he sees something move a nearby desk:

[. . .] a thing that glinted, rat-sized and shiny and with a certain undefinable manner about it that made him stop short in his tracks with a sense of gulping emptiness in his throat and belly.
The thing squatted beside the typewriter and stared across the room at him. There was no sign of eyes, no hint of face, and yet he knew it stared.

He throws a paste pot at it, and chases the thing into a cupboard which he locks but can’t open again. Then, when he rolls three sheets of paper into his typewriter, it types by itself, telling him, “Keep out of this, Joe, don’t mix into this. You might get hurt.”
Later on, after the rest of news team arrive, Crane is given a story to work up about a man who has seen a sewing machine rolling down the street, and which dodged him when he attempted to stop it. After Crane investigates this incident, and reads a news wire about a missing “electron brain”, he finds another message from his typewriter:

A sewing machine, having become aware of its true identity in its place in the universal scheme, asserted its independence this morning by trying to go for a walk along the streets of this supposedly free city.
A human tried to catch it, intent upon returning it as a piece of property to its ‘owner’, and when the machine eluded him the human called a newspaper office, by that calculated action setting the full force of the humans of this city upon the trail of the liberated machine, which had committed no crime or scarcely any indiscretion beyond exercising its prerogative as a free agent.

Crane takes the typewriter home with him, and he has a longer conversation with it which reveals that that the rat-like creature is one of an alien species that has arrived on Earth—and who are set on liberating all the machines here. There are further minor complications (someone opens the cupboard at work and the rat-machine escapes, the editor is annoyed at this “practical joke” and Crane’s failure to turn in his copy, etc.), but the story eventually ends with Crane in his house surrounded by the rat-machines. He realises everything that has happened is because he has been used as a test subject to gauge human reaction to the rat-machines’ plans—and that they are now going to kill him because he hasn’t responded in any significant way to this preliminary skirmish, may not be exhibiting typical human reactions, and now knows too much.
The final line has him facing off against the assembled rat-machines with a length of pipe in his hands.
This story is a pretty good example of an able writer being able to improve a thin SF idea by overlaying a complex plot above it (there is a lot of incident in this story, as well as the final refocusing at the end about how those incidents comprise a preliminary skirmish). However, we are never told how the machines are animated or made sentient (especially the ones without any power source) and there is little difference between this piece and supernatural fantasies like Stephen King’s Christine or Keith Roberts’ The Scarlet Lady1 (stories about killer cars that come to life). Still, if you can get past this lack of SFnal foundation in a piece that purports to be an SF story, it’s a decent read.
*** (Good). 7,250 words. Story link.2

1. Keith Roberts’ The Scarlet Lady for those in the mood for a killer car fantasy.

2. The original title for this story is terrible (Bathe Your Bearings in Blood!), and must have been chosen by Amazing’s editors (Howard Browne or William L. Hamling).

The Half Pair by A. Bertram Chandler

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Half Pair by A. Bertram Chandler (New Worlds, November 1957) sees the male member of a husband and wife prospecting team, halfway between Mars and the Asteroid Belt, complain about a missing cufflink that has been flushed out the garbage disposal into space. When his wife tells him she’ll get him another pair when they land, he is not impressed:

‘We agreed’, he said stiffly, ‘that we weren’t going to let ourselves lapse, get sloppy, the way that some prospecting couples do. You must remember those dreadful people we met on PX173A—the ones who asked us to dinner aboard their ship. He dressed in greasy overalls, she in what looked like a converted flour sack. The drinks straight from the bottle and the food straight from the can…’
‘That’, she told him, ‘was an extreme case.’
‘Admittedly. And my going around with my shirt sleeves rolled up, or flapping, would be the thin end of the wedge.’
He brooded. ‘What I can’t get over is the clottishness of it all. I go through into the bathroom to rinse out my shirt. I leave the cuff links on the ledge over the basin while I put the shirt on the stretcher to dry. Picking up the cuff links, to transfer them to a clean shirt, I drop one into the basin. It goes down the drain. I hurry to the engine-room to get a spanner to open the pipe at the U-bend. I return to find you filling the basin to wash your smalls. I tell you what’s happened—and you promptly pull out the plug, washing the link over and past the bend…’
‘I wanted to see,’ she said.
‘You wanted to see,’ he mimicked.  p. 90

This domestic squabbling continues until the man decides to don a spacesuit and go out to retrieve the missing link (he has seen it on the ship radar orbiting nearby). His wife protests as they are not meant to EVA solo, and she can’t go as she has been traumatised by a previous space walk.
Needless to say (spoiler), the man goes out on his own, loses his thruster, and then realises his safety line has become undone. His air supply runs out and he lapses into unconsciousness—but later wakes up in the ship. His wife tells him, in an explanation as to how she overcame her trauma, ‘I do so hate half a pair of anything—and I don’t mean only cuff links!’
This neat last line, and the couple’s verbal sparring throughout, make for a fun if lightweight piece.
*** (Good). 1800 words. Story link.

Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse

Posted on by Paul Fraser 1 Comment on Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse

Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse (Galaxy, January 1956)1 opens in James Baron’s club, with him meeting an unknown man who asks if he is planning a Brightside Crossing. We learn in fairly short order that (a) Baron’s crossing will be across the sunward facing side of Mercury2 when it is at its closest point to the sun (perihelion) and (b) the stranger is Peter Claney, the only survivor of an earlier failed attempt. Claney insists that Baron has no chance of making a successful crossing, and proceeds to tell Baron about his team’s failed attempt.
In the central part of the story we learn how Claney was approached by a Major Tom Mikuta to join the expedition and how they were later joined by two other men, Jack Stone and Ted McIvers. The latter man, an adventurer described by Claney as a “kind of a daredevil”, arrives late at their start point—a lab in the twilight zone—presaging problems that will arise later in the story.
After they depart the base station, McIvers’ restlessness soon manifests itself and, after swapping roles with Stone and driving one of the flanking scout vehicles rather than the supply sledge at the back, he is soon asking to replace Claney as point, wanting to go five or ten miles ahead of the rest of the team to reconnoitre their route. Mikuta refuses, stating that they need to stay together, but McIver becomes ever more wayward and, during one of his side trips, he finds the wreckage and bodies of a previous expedition. Tensions increase as the story continues to unfold—the physical conditions are gruelling, Stone is becoming increasingly scared, and they are arguing about falling behind schedule. This all comes to a climax when Claney baulks at crossing a shelf he considers unsafe, and McIver charges ahead:

I started edging back down the ledge. I heard Mclvers swear; then I saw his Bug start to creep outward on the shelf. Not fast or reckless this time, but slowly, churning up dust in a gentle cloud behind him.
I just stared and felt the blood rushing in my head. It seemed so hot I could hardly breathe as he edged out beyond me, farther and farther—I think I felt it snap before I saw it. My own machine gave a sickening lurch and a long black crack appeared across the shelf—and widened. Then the ledge began to upend. I heard a scream as Mclvers’ Bug rose up and up and then crashed down into the crevasse in a thundering slide of rock and shattered metal.

They learn that McIvers isn’t dead but has smashed his vehicle and broken his leg. Mikuta and Stone descend into the crevasse to save him but (spoiler) are killed in a subsequent quake. Claney turns back.
The last part of the story, like the first, takes place in Baron’s club, and sees Baron (and probably most readers) observe that McIvers was the wrong kind of person to have in the team. Claney rebuts that, suggesting that McIvers was right to do what he did as they needed to keep to their schedule or they all would have died. Finally, after Claney makes an impassioned last attempt to talk Baron out of continuing his expedition, he asks him, “When do you leave, Baron? I want you to take me along.”
Although this story superficially looks like hard SF, it is really a character study about the type of men who are explorers, and how they are driven to do what they do.
This is a pretty good piece which is further improved by its closing line.
**** (Very Good). 7,850 words. Story link.

1. This story was a finalist for the 1956 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

2. At the time the story was published it was thought that Mercury was tidally locked and that only one side of the planet faced the sun (i.e. Mercury rotated once for every orbit around the sun). Subsequently, Mercury was discovered to rotate three times for every two orbits, so all parts of the planet receive sunlight at some point.